Donald Trump offered Julian Assange a pardon if he would say Russia was not involved in leaking Democratic party emails, a court in London has been told. The extraordinary claim was made at Westminster magistrates court before the opening next week of Assange’s legal battle to block attempts to extradite him to the US.
Rohrabacher told the Wall Street Journal that as part of the deal he was proposing, Assange would have to hand over a computer drive or other data storage device that would prove that Russia was not the source of the hacked emails. “He would get nothing, obviously, if what he gave us was not proof,” Rohrabacher said.
The report quoted an unnamed administration official as saying that Kelly had told Rohrabacher that the proposal “was best directed to the intelligence community”. The same official said Kelly did not convey Rohrabacher’s message to Trump, who was unaware of the details of the proposed deal.
Of course, Trump dispatched Rohrabacher to bribe Assange to clear him in the Russia probe. Isn’t it obvious?
Longtime Trump ally Roger Stone will be sentenced today after being convicted last year on charges of obstruction, lying to Congress and witness tampering. Follow live updates: https://t.co/KPejhlQdGjpic.twitter.com/cJmyk5FXTH
Welp, as I said to a colleague, the Democratic primary is not shaping up as I wanted. A strong field has been reduced to a handful of flawed candidates. And leading that list are Sanders and Bloomberg. Ugh.
Sanders is killing in the national polls, but that’s due in large part to his popularity in states that are going to vote blue anyway. Like California.
But we have the electoral college, and Sanders needs to win swing states. Trump, in his tweets, clearly wants to run against Bernie, and it’s not hard to see why. People fear socialism. 58% of Americans fear it according to a recent poll. And all they have to do is tack that on to Bernie, and Dems have lost.
Sanders has emphasized that his version of socialism is avowedly small-d democratic and anti-authoritarian. “We must recognize that in the 21st century, in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, economic rights are human rights. That is what I mean by democratic socialism,” the senator said last year in a speech where he defined his views.
The results of a separate poll, also released Wednesday, indicate that maybe socialism isn’t quite enjoying the surge that Bernie is. Only 28% of Americans said they had a favorable view of the Sanders-embraced ideology — and 58% said they had an unfavorable impression, according to an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.
But that’s not the case among Democrats. Among them, socialism is surging and progressives are especially likely to be down with it. Half of Democrats said they had a favorable view of socialism, and more than two-thirds of self-identified progressives said the same.
Whatever the case may be for “socialism” as a label, Dem-leaning voters don’t appear to have much of a problem with Bernie’s platform. Among the respondents to the Post-ABC poll, only 17 percent said Bernie was “too liberal,” and 62 percent of Democratic-leaning adults said his stance was “about right” ideologically.
Half of all Americans — Republican and Democrat — said Sanders’ embrace of socialism would make no difference in their vote. About 7 in 10 Democrats said his socialism wouldn’t make a difference in their vote.
And Bloomberg? Well, he’s only up there because of money. He has spent more in some states than all the other candidates combined. He’s a Republican light, He will appeal t swing voters, but he won’t bring out the youth.
And don’t get me started on the chances of a brokered convention.
THIS IS FRUSTRATING! But a debate is tonight. Maybe one of the better people will emerge.
Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich — who was released from prison yesterday after Trump commuted his sentence — says the President “didn't have to do this.” Follow live updates: https://t.co/8aoPbsbXtmpic.twitter.com/u0Sy8ZCsmJ
Attorney General William Barr has considered stepping down over Trump's interference with DOJ matters, particularly the President's tweets, a source says https://t.co/ObNvOvzD6dpic.twitter.com/8B5LpVFid6
BREAKING: Trump signed an executive order granting clemency for Eddie DeBartolo Jr., the former owner of the San Francisco 49ers who was convicted in a gambling fraud scandalhttps://t.co/ZYQrNSCeGx
POTUS announces that in addition to commuting Blagojevich’s sentence, he has pardoned Bernie Kerik, who pleaded guilty to 8 charges that included tax fraud and lying to WH officials.https://t.co/nQGmwsm7uU
Most of Trump’s pardons are aimed at one thing: nullifying laws when they are used against his friends and allies. No effort to hide it. And with full Republican support.
Oh, more….
BREAKING: Trump pardons Michael Milken, face of 1980s financial scandals https://t.co/DBXQTWPYe8
In addition, President Trump signed Executive Grants of Clemency granting commutations to Rod Blagojevich, Tynice Nichole Hall, Crystal Munoz, and Judith Negron.
What is the point of all these pardons? Is it to own the libs or to show that rule of law is not something the United States is really interested in pursuing anymore? Or that the President likes bad boys? Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t really get it.
Pres. Trump’s new pardons are for well-connected insiders convicted of the *same offenses* Trump and several of his advisers are accused of — serious crimes of extortion, bribery, misleading authorities or abuse of office.
President Trump says he has commuted ex-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's prison sentence. He faced sharp blowback when he hinted at doing so last year. https://t.co/tV4JM2H6G9pic.twitter.com/ukkw13gj0B
The Trump administration announces sanctions against a Russian oil firm accused of supporting the regime of embattled Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro https://t.co/Io2eCfQkE7pic.twitter.com/3wuTLy9GhI
The leaders of a group of federal judges will meet Tuesday to “address growing concerns” about the recent intervention of President Donald Trump and the Justice Department in “politically sensitive cases,” USA Today reports.
Trump and Attorney General William Barr ignited fresh concerns about the impartiality of the Justice Department last week when Barr retracted a recommended sentence for Trump ally Roger Stone after the President criticized it on Twitter. Barr is also ordering a re-examination of several high-profile cases, including that of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.The actions prompted more than 2,000 former Justice Department officials who served in Republican as well as Democratic administrations to sign a statement calling on Barr to resign.
This is unprecedented but a welcome response to attacks on the judicial branch of government.
Even this morning….
He also tweeted this….
AG Barr said these kinds of tweets make it impossible for him to do his job. Will he resign today?
William Barr still micromanaging Stone case: AG Barr appoved the filing of a motion opposing a request by Roger Stone for a new trial. The motion, filed under seal, was made by DC US atty prosecutors who are handling the case but was approved by AG Barr, justice official.
Speaking at a media briefing last week, the executive director of the World Health Organization made it clear that things are simply not clear. The epidemic of 2019-novel coronavirus that has generated tens of thousands of cases around the city of Wuhan may become a broad global pandemic … or not. Meanwhile, officials at health agencies around the world are bracing for the possibility of a broader outbreak. That’s a good thing. But no one should be assuming that a global pandemic is a foregone conclusion. Because it’s not.
In the same way, no one should be dismissing the possible effects of a widespread pandemic as “like a cold” or “no worse than the flu,” because we have all the evidence we need to see that is not true. A worldwide pandemic of novel coronavirus would be devastating both in terms of the lives and economic effects.
Over and over again, we’ve been reminded that the flu affects millions of Americans and has already killed over 11,000 in this year alone. That’s absolutely true. Flu, in the best year, is simply a horror we’ve learned to live with, and which many people treat far too casually. This isn’t even one of the best years.
But the idea that should the virus between COVID-19 sweep the world it would be, at worst, like a new source of flu, is way, way off base. Yes, the official case fatality rate for those hospitalized with the flu is often quite high—above 7%. The official case fatality rate for COVID-19 is currently only between 2% and 3%.
The two things are not comparable. They’re not comparable because, to the extent that is possible, everyone who is determined to be infected with the virus behind COVID-19 is currently being counted as a case. Whether it’s the 50,000 people who have proven to have the virus through lab testing, or the additional 20,000 who are showing clinical signs, everyone who is suspected of having COVID-19 is part of that case count. You don’t have to be in serious or critical condition to be added to the case load for COVID-19.
In the United States alone, some 20 million people will have flu this season. The actual chances that a case of flu will result in death is something less than 0.1% — and it still generates tens of thousands of deaths. If even the broadest assumptions are taken about the relationship between the cases that we’re now counting and the actual pool of coronavirus out there, the numbers are at least 6 times worse than flu. If the case count is actually close to the total pool, then the number is more like 30 times worse.
And there are very good reasons to believe that the real effect of widespread cases of COVID-19 would be hugely worse than even those numbers suggest. Because we’re seeing what that looks like on the ground in Hubei province.
Outside Hubei, the outcome for those who have COVID-19 remains optimistic, with only 3 deaths compared to 130 people who have recovered. Inside Hubei, the outcomes are very different. On Sunday, the outcome mortality in Hubei remained close to 15%. That is the difference between dealing with this infection in a handful of cases, and dealing with it in huge numbers.
The biggest reason for that difference is likely one simple factor: Oxygen. About 25% of patients with the closely-related SARS virus require some form of respiratory assistance to make it through. For those infected with the other member of this beta coronavirus triptych, MERS, that requirement is 80%. Why did MERS overwhelm a wealthy Saudi city and generate 600 deaths in just 2,000 cases? Because it quickly exceeded the ability of the system to provide the level of treatment that patients require to survive. That’s happening in Hubei right now with COVID-19.
In short, if 20,000,000 Americans were infected with COVID-19, somewhere between 2,000,000 and 4,000,000 of those infected would probably require a hospital bed with respiratory assistance, or they would die. And guess what? The reason there are only 20,000,000 cases of flu is because many people do get flu shots and many people do have some latent resistance to the the type of flu circulating in any give year. So for COVID-19 take that 20,000,000, and multiply it by everyone.
Yes, endemic human coronaviruses cause about 15% of colds. This isn’t one them. Organizations like WHO and the CDC don’t keep novel beta coronaviruses at the top of their global pandemic threat lists because they’re worried about increasing the global need for Puffs plus lotion. They do it because these diseases are rat bastards that will kill millions if they get out.
Okay, let’s do numbers. Because those are looking pretty hopeful.
COVID-19: Total cases (including clinically diagnosed)
Several days later, it’s easy to see that the big and terrifying spike that happened when officials in Hubei province began reporting clinically-diagnosed cases wasn’t a harbinger of “Go to bunker, go immediately to bunker, do not pass grocery story for one last can of beans, just slam that door!” Instead, it was more of a cleaning of the books. Any upward movement is bad. But now it’s a helluva lot less bad.
Here’s out that looks on a daily basis.
COVID-19: New cases by day
This shows a disease that, once again, is very much on its way to being at least somewhat controlled. There are some concerns about the cases popping up outside China, and we’ll get to some of that shortly. But if you scrub the clinical cases off of those numbers, it shows numbers that peaked ten days ago and have been in a steady, if somewhat uneven, decline. Check the new chart that’s been added to the WHO dashboard if you want to see how things look with only the lab-tested cases on the books.
COVID-19: Case Fatality Rate
The case fatality rate (total deaths / total cases) took a tick down when the load of clinical cases were added. As we saw on previous days, that seems to be because the clinical cases are in general milder than those which have been lab confirmed. Considering the quarantine conditions that have been featured in some really shocking videos out of China, its likely that only a fraction of even lab-tested cases are in hospital beds. The decline in the number of clinical cases — from 13,000, to 4,000, to 2,000, to 1,000 — over just a few days hopefully indicates that health care workers have cleared up their backlog of cases. But we should all try to not get disheartened if there’s another spike of these cases ahead.
COVID-19: Outcomes
The number of deaths in reports on Sunday morning actually matches the worst total to date (144). But that number has been almost steady for four days (144, 125, 143, 144) while the number of recoveries has finally moved above 1,000 a day. That’s genuinely good news.
COVID-19: Outcome mortality
So even though the number of deaths per day has been more or less flat, the increasing number of cases reported as recovered is pushing outcome mortality ever lower. It’s not going down as fast as anyone would like, but today may be the first day where the number of active cases in Hubei was pretty much the same as it was yesterday. China is currently listing 11,000 cases as “severe” or “critical.” The odds of each of those severe cases receiving the treatment necessary to drastically improve outcomes could be just a few days away.
In Singapore, another cluster of cases appears to be connected to Grace Assembly of God church, which has already been the source for almost half the cases in the nation. These also include some secondary cases where people who appear to have acquired an infection at the church have spread it to others. To all those people who have cancelled conferences large and small … thank you.
The single new death comes from Taiwan. It involves a taxi driver who had never left the country. There have also been a burst of cases in Japan in the last few days involving taxi drivers. Apparently that plastic shield (assuming they have one in Taiwan and Japan) is far from germ proof. Considering how many people may have hopped into a cab right after someone infected, or even shared a ride from the airport, this is certainly a concerning vector.
Speaking of Japan, they had six new cases — not counting the cases on board the Diamond Princess. Japan and Singapore continue to be sources of special concern when it comes to establishment of a second epicenter outside of China.
And finally, most of the Americans on the Diamond Princess are coming home, with what seem to be pretty good precautions. Those patients already displaying symptoms, or who have tested positive for the COVID-19 virus, will remain in Japan— either on the ship, or in quarantine at a Japanese hospital. Other passengers are also being given the choice of being quarantined in Japan. Those that come back to the United States will do so on a charter flight where part of the plane is isolated to take any passengers who begin to show any symptoms in flight. Finally, all passengers will go into a 14-day quarantine when they land in the United States. It’s hard to find a lot of fault with that process.
So long as they’re careful. Because one of the cases in Japan is a quarantine officer who has been working outside the ship.
More than 1,100 former Department of Justice officials are calling on Attorney General William Barr to resign after his department lowered the prison sentence recommendation for Roger Stone, a longtime ally of President Trump, in a move that’s led to accusations of political interference.
The letter was released yesterday. It was signed by former DOJ officials who have worked across Republican and Democratic administrations. They write that Barr’s intervention in the Stone case has tarnished the department’s reputation:
We, the undersigned, are alumni of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) who have collectively served both Republican and Democratic administrations. Each of us strongly condemns President Trump’s and Attorney General Barr’s interference in the fair administration of justice.
As former DOJ officials, we each proudly took an oath to support and defend our Constitution and faithfully execute the duties of our offices. The very first of these duties is to apply the law equally to all Americans. This obligation flows directly from the Constitution, and it is embedded in countless rules and laws governing the conduct of DOJ lawyers. The Justice Manual — the DOJ’s rulebook for its lawyers — states that “the rule of law depends on the evenhanded administration of justice”; that the Department’s legal decisions “must be impartial and insulated from political influence”; and that the Department’s prosecutorial powers, in particular, must be “exercised free from partisan consideration.”
All DOJ lawyers are well-versed in these rules, regulations, and constitutional commands. They stand for the proposition that political interference in the conduct of a criminal prosecution is anathema to the Department’s core mission and to its sacred obligation to ensure equal justice under the law.
And yet, President Trump and Attorney General Barr have openly and repeatedly flouted this fundamental principle, most recently in connection with the sentencing of President Trump’s close associate, Roger Stone, who was convicted of serious crimes. The Department has a long-standing practice in which political appointees set broad policies that line prosecutors apply to individual cases. That practice exists to animate the constitutional principles regarding the even-handed application of the law. Although there are times when political leadership appropriately weighs in on individual prosecutions, it is unheard of for the Department’s top leaders to overrule line prosecutors, who are following established policies, in order to give preferential treatment to a close associate of the President, as Attorney General Barr did in the Stone case. It is even more outrageous for the Attorney General to intervene as he did here — after the President publicly condemned the sentencing recommendation that line prosecutors had already filed in court.
Such behavior is a grave threat to the fair administration of justice. In this nation, we are all equal before the law. A person should not be given special treatment in a criminal prosecution because they are a close political ally of the President. Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics; they are autocracies.
We welcome Attorney General Barr’s belated acknowledgment that the DOJ’s law enforcement decisions must be independent of politics; that it is wrong for the President to interfere in specific enforcement matters, either to punish his opponents or to help his friends; and that the President’s public comments on DOJ matters have gravely damaged the Department’s credibility. But Mr. Barr’s actions in doing the President’s personal bidding unfortunately speak louder than his words. Those actions, and the damage they have done to the Department of Justice’s reputation for integrity and the rule of law, require Mr. Barr to resign. But because we have little expectation he will do so, it falls to the Department’s career officials to take appropriate action to uphold their oaths of office and defend nonpartisan, apolitical justice.
For these reasons, we support and commend the four career prosecutors who upheld their oaths and stood up for the Department’s independence by withdrawing from the Stone case and/or resigning from the Department. Our simple message to them is that we — and millions of other Americans — stand with them. And we call on every DOJ employee to follow their heroic example and be prepared to report future abuses to the Inspector General, the Office of Professional Responsibility, and Congress; to refuse to carry out directives that are inconsistent with their oaths of office; to withdraw from cases that involve such directives or other misconduct; and, if necessary, to resign and report publicly — in a manner consistent with professional ethics — to the American people the reasons for their resignation. We likewise call on the other branches of government to protect from retaliation those employees who uphold their oaths in the face of unlawful directives. The rule of law and the survival of our Republic demand nothing less.
The fundamental problem with Barr is that he does not believe in the central tenet of our system of government—that no person is above the law. In chilling terms, Barr’s own words make clear his long-held belief in the need for a virtually autocratic executive who is not constrained by countervailing powers within our government under the constitutional system of checks and balances.
The system that Barr is working to tear down was built up in the aftermath of the Watergate scandals, during which the Justice Department’s leadership was compromised by its support of a president who sought to use the machinery of government to advance his personal interests and prospects for reelection. As Richard Nixon later told David Frost, he believed that “when the President does it, that means it is not illegal.” But the system held, and after two attorneys general and numerous other government officials were convicted for their conduct in these scandals, the Ford administration turned to the task of restoring public trust in government.
President Gerald Ford chose as his attorney general Edward Levi, a distinguished legal scholar and professor who was then president of the University of Chicago. “Levi took restoring faith in the legitimacy of government and adherence to the rule of law as his very highest priority,” his special assistant at the time, Jack Fuller, later recalled. Levi said at his swearing-in that the central goal of the Justice Department must be to sustain “a government of laws and not men,” which he knew would take “dedicated men and women to accomplish this through their zeal and determination, and also their concern for fairness and impartiality.”
In two short years, Levi enshrined these ideas at the Department of Justice, turning them into articles of faith for its employees. He created new mechanisms of accountability to ensure their endurance, such as the Office of Professional Responsibility, an ethics watchdog for the department. His reforms substantially restored public trust in our justice system. For the past 45 years, the vision he articulated has also inspired thousands of Justice Department lawyers. This was the department that I served, as an assistant U.S. attorney, United States attorney, principal deputy solicitor general, and deputy attorney general in the Carter, Reagan, and first Bush administrations.
Barr’s frontal attack on this system begins with an assault on Levi’s central premise, that ours must be a “government of laws and not men,” in which no person is above the law. Far from emphasizing thorough, transparent, and evenhanded processes—like the investigations presided over by former Special Counsel Mueller and Inspector General of the Department of Justice Michael Horowitz—Barr has done whatever he can to suppress findings adverse to the president, and to endorse conclusions more favorable to Donald Trump.
His views on that point were set forth with breathtaking clarity in June 2018, in an unsolicited 19-page memorandum that Barr sent to then–Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, arguing that Mueller’s investigation of the president for obstruction of justice was fundamentally misconceived. The president “alone is the Executive Branch,” he wrote, and “the Constitution vests [in him personally] all Federal law enforcement power, and hence prosecutorial discretion.” (The emphasis is his.) Thus, as a matter of constitutional law, Barr concluded that Congress is without any power to bar the president from “[exercising] supervisory authority over cases in which his own conduct might be at issue.” It followed, according to Barr, that the whole idea of a prosecutor within the executive branch operating beyond the president’s direct oversight—even a special counsel like Mueller—was a constitutional nonstarter. So the president’s recent statement that he has a “legal right” to interfere in criminal investigations just repeats what Bill Barr has told him.
The benefit of the doubt that many were ready to extend to Barr a year ago—as among the best of a bad lot of nominees who had previously served in high office without disgrace—has now run out. He has told us in great detail who he is, what he believes, and where he would like to take us. For whatever twisted reasons, he believes that the president should be above the law, and he has as his foil in pursuit of that goal a president who, uniquely in our history, actually aspires to that status. And Barr has acted repeatedly on those beliefs in ways that are more damaging at every turn. Presently he is moving forward with active misuse of the criminal sanction, as one more tool of the president’s personal interests.
Bill Barr’s America is not a place that anyone, including Trump voters, should want to go. It is a banana republic where all are subject to the whims of a dictatorial president and his henchmen. To prevent that, we need a public uprising demanding that Bill Barr resign immediately, or failing that, be impeached.
This week, unchecked by checks and balances, Trump continued his retaliation tour, unabashedly showcasing his will to control the Justice Department. After career prosecutors made recommendations for sentencing for his longtime associate Roger Stone, which were overridden by the DOJ, a mass exodus ensued, nicknamed the ‘Tuesday massacre’ — a nomenclature now familiar in the era of Trump. Feeling unshackled, Trump publicly criticized prosecutors, judges, and even jurors, seeming to openly seize the DOJ as a department under his control, without a hint of independence.
Trump also flexed his political will by deploying the Department of Homeland Security to impose measures on so-called sanctuary cities, while inviting the New York governor to the White House, after suggesting in a tweet that the state should terminate lawsuits against him and his businesses in exchange for reopening Global Entry to New York citizens. Trump continued to threaten his perceived political enemies and the so-called deep state with retribution for his grievances despite aides’ attempts to calm him down.
Senators, now fully recognizing Trump had only been further empowered by their impeachment acquittal, reigned in his ability to strike Iran, and expressed odd surprise that this was indeed the outcome of their lapse in holding Trump accountable. Without consequences for his actions, the public increasingly worried about what an unbridled Trump will do next.
On Sunday, Trump spent the day tweeting at his perceived enemies in a day long tweet-storm of 52 tweets and retweets. Trump also retweeted the Time magazine cover video of Trump forever for the third time in 4 days.
Trump also again attacked Sen. Joe Manchin, tweeting, “they are really mad at Senator Joe Munchkin” — assigning him a derogatory nickname — saying, “He couldn’t understand the Transcripts.”
Trump also tweeted, “WHO PAYS THE PRICE?” and “This is the biggest political crime in American History, by far. SIMPLY PUT, THE PARTY IN POWER ILLEGALLY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN.”
On Monday, a Quinnipiac poll found 55-40% believe the Senate voting to acquit Trump does not clear him of any wrongdoing in the Ukraine matter, while 59-35% believe the impeachment trial was conducted unfairly.
Barr added, “we have to be very careful with respect to any information coming from the Ukraine. There are a lot of agendas in the Ukraine, a lot of cross currents,” and we cannot take information at “face value.”
Trump also said, “That was a horrible aberration. These are, I guess, the same Mueller people that put everybody through hell and I think it was a disgrace,” adding, “They ought to be ashamed of themselves.”
Schumer asked the DOJ IG to investigate: “This situation has all the indicia of improper political interference in a criminal prosecution.” Former AG Eric Holder called it “unprecedented,” “wrong,” and “dangerous.”
Later, Trump tweeted, “four prosecutors (Mueller people?) who cut and ran after being exposed” for an investigation that was “illegal, the Mueller Scam, and shouldn’t ever even have started…13 Angry Democrats?”
Trump also criticized the judge, tweeting, “Is this the Judge that put Paul Manafort in SOLITARY CONFINEMENT, something that not even mobster Al Capone had to endure? How did she treat Crooked Hillary Clinton?”
Trump also tweeted, “Impeachment King Steyer (how did that work out?) spent 200 Million Dollars” and got little support in Iowa and New Hampshire, adding, “Could it be that something is just plain missing?”
Trump, who basically ran unopposed, also tweeted, “Wouldn’t a big story be that I got more New Hampshire Primary Votes than any incumbent president, in either party, in the history of that Great State?”
The committee said in a statement Barr will “address numerous concerns regarding his leadership of the Department of Justice and the President’s improper influence over the Department and our criminal justice system.”
Yovanovitch added, “We need to re-empower our diplomats to do their job. We can’t be afraid to share our expertise or challenge false assumptions,” and that international institutions need “a reboot, not the boot.”
Kelly also criticized Trump for attacking the media, saying, “The media…and I feel very strongly about this, is not the enemy of the people,” adding, “if you only watch Fox News…you are not an informed citizen.”
Trump added, “His incredible wife, Karen, who I have a lot of respect for, once pulled me aside & said strongly that ‘John respects you greatly. When we are no longer here, he will only speak well of you,’’’ adding, “Wrong!”
When asked by Rivera why he allowed it, Trump responded, “Well, that’s what they’ve done over the years,” adding, “When you call a foreign leader, people listen. I may end the practice entirely. I may end it entirely.”
Trump added, “But also, other presidents had them. FDR had a lawyer who was practically, you know, was totally involved with government. Eisenhower had a lawyer. They all had lawyers.”
On Thursday, NYT reported Hope Hicks will return to the White House in a new role as “counselor to the president,” in which she will help Jared Kushner with project overseas and will also help with the re-election campaign.
Ahead of the meeting, Cuomo told MSNBC, “I have no problem with them looking at the database for Trusted Traveler Program people. But that’s not what it’s about,” saying, “It’s about retaliation.”
On Friday, McCabe told CNN, “I don’t think I’ll ever be free of this President and his maniacal rage that he’s directed towards me and my wife since October of 2016 for absolutely no reason whatsoever.”
Trump’s tweet was referencing Tomeka Hart, a former president of the Memphis City Schools Board of Commissioners who said on Facebook she “can’t keep quiet any longer” after the DOJ reduced its sentencing request.
Hart wrote in her post, “It pains me to see the DOJ now interfere with the hard work of the prosecutors,” adding, “They acted with the utmost intelligence, integrity, and respect for our system of justice.”
Trump also attacked McCabe, quoting Fox News host Laura Ingraham: “IG report on Andrew McCabe: Misled Investigators over roll in news media disclosure,” and adding, “IG RECOMMENDED MCCABE’S FIRING.”
