Welcome to the RedState Weekly Briefing  — where we take a quick look at the week’s most viewed stories in case you missed any of them. Grab a cup of coffee and sit down with this 21st Century Weekend Edition of your favorite (online) publication!

#1 – Tucker: Bombshell From Insider About CIA Involvement in JFK Assassination; RFK, Jr Calls It ‘Coup D’Etat’ — by Nick Arama

Carlson noted that if this is true, it means you have a CIA that is totally beyond the control of the democratically elected government, so much so that it’s not held responsible for any involvement in the murder of a president. Carlson said that meant the former directors of the CIA including Mike Pompeo and John Brennan would have known this. He said they asked Pompeo to be on the show but he refused to come on the show.

One reaction to Tucker’s report was also some news: from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, who had some words for what he thought about the CIA.

#2 – Kari Lake Legal Team Finds 42.5 Percent of Ballots Examined Were Invalid — by Bob Hoge

Arizona Republican Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s legal team said Wednesday that a review of 113 randomly chosen ballots cast in the November election found that 48—or 42.5 percent—were invalid because they were “19-inch ballots produced on 20-inch paper.” It’s kind of hard to contemplate that in such a high-tech world, ridiculous errors like this could still happen. You can’t get the ballot size right? Come on.

Lake lost to Democrat Secretary of State Katie Hobbs in the November election by less than 18,000 votes out of a total of over 2.5 million cast.

#3 – Report on Trump Tax Returns Has Been Released, Here’s the Big ‘Bombshell’ the Press Is Obsessing Over — by Bonchie 

Wait, do you mean to tell me that Trump’s financial fortunes went up or down depending on what year it was? And that he didn’t pay income taxes in the years that his losses outpaced his gains? What a shocking turn of events. We better spend the next week of the news cycle on this, pretending that it’s a major scandal.

The long and short of this is that Trump did absolutely nothing outside the bounds of the current tax system. One could argue the current tax system sucks and benefits the ultra-wealthy. I might even agree, but that’s not what we were promised. We were promised Russian collusion and reams of fraud. Where is it?

#4 – Rand Paul Says What His Spineless Republican Colleagues Won’t — by Bonchie 

It’s that time of year again. No, I’m not talking about the wonders of the Christmas season. I’m talking about the US Congress coming together to shove a giant omnibus bill down the throats of hurting Americans.

Yeah, inflation is still crazy high, and eggs cost $6 a dozen now, but what we really need is to spend millions of dollars in taxpayer money on LGBT “pride centers” while shoveling even more money into the black hole that is the Department of Defense. You’d hope that we’d at least get extra spending for border security in such a monstrosity of a bill, but nope, there’s a provision that expressly disallows that.

Because of course there is.

#5 – Yikes: Clown Behind ‘ElonJets’ Harassment Openly Tries to Extort Musk on CNN — by Bonchie 

I mean, that’s a bold strategy. I guess we’ll find out how it works for him, but it does reveal exactly the kind of person Musk is dealing with. This isn’t someone who even believes he’s providing a public service, though it would have been hard to imagine an argument for that anyway. Rather, it’s an obsessed leftwinger harassing Musk just for the sake of harassing him. Actually, now that I said that out loud, it’s not really surprising at all.

Worse, if you watch the clip, it appears this has been Sweeney’s game all along. He says “I’m not gonna up it, there’s no need to” when talking about what he’s trying to extract. In other words, this wasn’t just some cheap joke on CNN. He actually wants Musk to pay him off.