It was a close call, but it sure looks like Donald Trump is going to get his East Wing ballroom, at least for now. Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that construction could continue. The Court declined to rule on the actual legality of Trump’s decision to tear down the East Wing, but held that the historical preservationists who had brought the suit to stop it lacked the standing to sue. Sure seems we’re hearing that a lot these days! Happy Tuesday.

Join Bill Kristol and Andrew Egger for Morning Shots Live today at 10:00 a.m. EDT on Substack and YouTube.

Florida (?) Woman

by Andrew Egger

Republican House candidate Te Mayonna Brown is fighting an uphill battle. Florida’s 24th Congressional District, where she took the Republican nomination after running unopposed last month, is one of the bluest in the state.

But that’s not the only hurdle she appears to be facing. Before getting involved in the FL-24 race, Brown lost a different Republican House primary this year—not in Florida, but in Illinois. Oh, and there’s this: Back in Illinois, she appears to be under indictment for felony wire fraud. Per publicly available court documents, her trial is set to begin just weeks after Election Day.

I am saying “appears” here a lot, because Brown denied it. Not just that she did the things she’s been accused of, but that she’s been accused of them at all. When I reached her by phone yesterday, she flatly insisted—despite clear photographic, social-media, and campaign-records evidence to the contrary—that she, Te Mayonna Brown, wasn’t the Tedora M. Brown who ran for Congress in Illinois or the Te Dora Brown named in a federal indictment. She then asked if I was with law enforcement before hustling off the phone.

Politics attracts strange characters. But few seem to match this.

The tale begins in March 2023, when federal prosecutors in Illinois indicted one Te Dora Brown of Palos Park on thirteen felonies, accusing her and her husband Christopher Scott of fraudulently obtaining hundreds of thousands of dollars in COVID relief money by applying for federal loans on behalf of phony employees at companies that turned out not to exist. Prosecutors alleged Brown and Scott spent the money on themselves—making splurge buys at Tiffany, Nordstrom, and Saks Fifth Avenue, buying Uber Eats, and withdrawing huge sums in ATM cash. Scott pleaded guilty; Brown decided to fight the charges.

She also decided to run for office. When she threw her hat in the ring last year for Illinois’s 11th District, Tedora M. Brown (as she now styled her name) was suddenly calling herself a “former lifelong Democrat” who was “waking up to what the Democratic party was doing to her community and her country.”

And she wasn’t hiding the criminal charges. “They came after me because I’m a Republican and I’m an American Black woman,” Brown told a local paper. “If I was guilty, why would I run for Congress? Why would I put myself in the limelight? It just doesn’t make any sense.”

On March 17, Brown came in fourth in her primary, picking up just 5.7 percent of the vote. One month later, a “Te Brown” popped up in Florida business records, incorporating a new company: TM Brown Incorporated. Was this the same person? It appears so. The company was registered in the name of Brown’s former campaign treasurer, Dratonyai Ratcliff. The same records named the company president as “Te Brown,” listing her under a Palos Park, Illinois address.

A few weeks after that, Ratcliff filed new paperwork on behalf of “Te Brown”—this time with the Federal Election Commission. The campaign was headquartered at the same Aventura address where TM Brown Inc. had just been incorporated; Ratcliff was listed once more as treasurer. Brown was running for Congress again, in Florida’s 24th District.

And this time, she lucked out: Nobody else jumped into the race on the Republican side. The primary was canceled and she advanced by default to face Democrat Oliver Gilbert in the general election this November.

Again, I should stress that Brown disputed this entire account. On the phone yesterday, she repeatedly insisted she is not Te Dora Brown or Tedora M. Brown of Illinois. When I pointed out that the same Dratonyai Ratcliff had filed the paperwork for both of Te Brown’s campaigns, she suddenly swerved: “Wait, hold on, is this—are you the police?” Moments later, she begged off the call: It was a busy day, she said, and she needed to prep for “an exclusive interview that I’m doing tomorrow with NBC.” She promised to call back the next day—this morning—at 6 a.m., but she never did.

The evidence linking the indicted Te Dora Brown, Illinois candidate Tedora M. Brown, and Florida candidate Te Brown goes well beyond the Ratcliff tie.

Brown’s Illinois congressional website, taken offline but still available in archived form, writes out her full name as “Te Dora Mayonna Brown”; her current Florida website gives her name as “Te Mayonna Brown.” An X account under the name “Te Mayonna Brown” regularly shares inspirational quotes and updates on her Florida campaign. But the account’s handle, @TeamLSAcademy, is an apparent shoutout to Brown’s former company Little Shepherd’s Academy, Inc.—one of the allegedly fraudulent businesses named in the federal indictment against Te Dora Brown.

That same X account also points in old tweets to an Instagram account, @missbrownalways. That account’s bio listed Brown as the president of two companies, Scottland Construction and Women in Construction of Illinois. Both companies appeared in Tedora M. Brown’s biography on her Illinois campaign website. After I pressed Brown on this connection yesterday, both companies suddenly vanished from the @missbrownalways Instagram bio. Here it was before: