Tag: Trump administration lies

The Four Pinocchio claim at the center of the census citizenship question

The Trump administration’s move to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census is coming up for oral argument at the Supreme Court on Tuesday. That means the justices could be weighing a Four-Pinocchio claim by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

Ross, who oversees the Census Bureau and approved the question last year, claimed in congressional testimony that the Justice Department “initiated the request for inclusion of the citizenship question.”

But, as part of this court case, emails were released showing that Ross was talking to top advisers to President Trump and maneuvering to add the citizenship question months before the Justice Department sent a letter in December 2017 with a formal request.

View the complete April 22 article by Salvador Rizzo on The Washington Post logo here.

Sarah Sanders decides to double down on the lie she admitted to Mueller

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is peddling a new explanation for a lie she told the American people. In at least three different interviews since the release of the redacted Mueller report Thursday, Sanders has attempted to stand by a claim that she had told the investigation — under oath — was utterly bogus.

The lie in question is Sanders’ claim that in May 2017, the White House had heard from “countless” members of the FBI who had lost confidence in James Comey, then-director of the agency. At the time, she claimed the loss of confidence was one of the primary reasons President Donald Trump had fired Comey. Trump himself had written in his letter terminating Comey that morale at the FBI was at an all-time low. But the Mueller investigation found no evidence to support any of those claims, and according to the report, “Sanders acknowledged to investigators that her comments were not founded on anything.”

But in new interviews with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, and CBS This Morning, Sanders stood by the lie she had previously told. Using almost the exact same, clearly rehearsed language in each interview, Sanders insisted the original claim was true.

View the complete April 19 article by Zack Ford on the ThinkProgress website here.

What Attorney General Barr buried, misrepresented or ignored in clearing Trump

Attorney General William P. Barr has twice ensured that he had the first word on the conclusions drawn by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III after Mueller’s almost-two-year probe into President Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia’s efforts to interfere in that election.

In March, shortly after Mueller’s team completed its work, Barr offered the country a four-page overview of what Mueller found, one that necessarily elided a lot of detail from Mueller’s work.

On Thursday, Barr held a news conference an hour before the Justice Department released a redacted version of Mueller’s full report to make pointed comments about what the report contained. Barr repeatedly declared that Trump had been cleared of collusion, for example, words that were music to Trump’s ears.

View the complete April 18 article by Philip Bump on The Washington Post website here.

Watch: Trump’s pick for the Fed is caught flat-footed when a CNN host debunks his lies about backing the gold standard

CNN”s Erin Burnett caught Stephen Moore, recently picked by President Donald Trump to join the Federal Reserve, in a whopper of a lie Thursday night when she pressed him on his past advocacy for the gold standard.

When she raised his past advocacy for the idea, he pretended like it never happened.

“I don’t really think I’ve said anything much about the gold – I’m not in favor of a gold standard,” Moore said.

View the complete April 12 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.

Internal memo contradicts DeVos on using federal money to buy guns for teachers

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos refused to say yes — or no — when asked last year whether schools could use federal money to buy guns for teachers. She said the law was vague and she couldn’t take a side.

The result was de facto permission for states to go ahead.

On Wednesday, House Democrats released an internal Education Department memo that showed the matter was viewed differently inside the agency. The memo advised that the agency’s general counsel believed DeVos did have the power to make a call about the funding and laid out arguments that could be made on both sides.

View the complete April 10 article by Laura Meckler on The Washington Post website here.

Fox News’ Chris Wallace takes on Kellyanne Conway over Trump’s claims of exoneration: ‘Just isn’t true’

Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace badgered White House advisor Kellyanne Conway early Sunday morning over President Donald Trump’s claim of total exoneration, with Conway repeatedly attempting to bat it away.

“The special counsel cleared the president on collusion, absolutely no question about it. But he especially did not clear him on the question of obstruction, so why is the president telling Americans something that is not true?” Wallace pressed.

As Conway insisted Trump had not fired special counsel Robert Mueller, Wallace pulled her up short.

View the complete March 31 article by Tom Boggioni of Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Jeff Merkley requests FBI perjury investigation into Kirstjen Nielsen

Sen. Jeff Merkley is requesting that the FBI open a perjury investigation into Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen Credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

At issue is testimony before Congress about family separations at border

Sen. Jeff Merkley is requesting that the FBI open a perjury investigation into Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, based on testimony she gave to Congress in December on family separations at the southern border.

Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee in December, Nielsen stated “I’m not a liar, we’ve never had a policy for family separation.”

Memos made public Thursday show that officials from the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security were exploring family separation polices as a deterrent for illegal immigrants a full year before that testimony.

 

A guide to understanding the administration’s spin on terrorists at the border

The Trump administration has repeatedly made this claim, but the data isn’t clear. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

Sean Hannity, Fox News: “We’ve been able to apprehend 3,700 people that we’ve identified as having ties to terror?”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: “There’s lots of risks associated. The narcotics risk itself has enormous implications for people inside the United States. There are lots of things that come across that southern border that we need to get control over, and President Trump is determined to make that happen. It includes the risk that we have terrorists come across that border.”

— Interview on “Hannity,” Jan. 3, 2019

Hannity: “I’d argue probably 98 percent of people that want to come here want hope, opportunity, liberty, freedom and all the things we may even take for granted ourselves. But it’s a 2 percent I worry about that are part of the gangs, the drug cartels. The 2 percent maybe you have talked about, but you can’t give numbers. There are instances that you can confirm that you know of terrorists that have tried to cross our southern border and we’ve apprehended them.”

View the complete January 14 article by Salvador Rizzo on The Hill website here.

FACT CHECK: Pence Lies On Trump’s Behalf

Vice President Mike Pence took to the airwaves yesterday morning to lie on Trump’s behalf and perpetuate his manufactured crisis at the border. Here’s the truth:

Pence was unable to support Trump’s blatant lie that past presidents had told him they should have built a border wall after all four living presidents denied it.

NBC’s Jackson: “Which former presidents told President Trump, as he said, that he should have built a wall? All of their representatives have denied that that was the case.”

Pence: “Well, I know the president has said that that was his impression from previous administrations, previous presidents. I know I’ve seen clips of previous presidents talking about the importance of border security and talking about the issue of illegal immigration.”

Pence cited a debunked stat about suspected terrorists attempting to enter the United States to try to misleadingly justify a wall at the southern border.

Pence: “Nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists were apprehended attempting to come into the United States through various means in the last year.”

CNN: “That number, however, is deeply misleading as justification for a wall on the southern border. According to a senior administration official familiar with Customs and Border Protection data, just 12 of those were encountered on the southern border between October 2017 and October 2018.”

Pence misleadingly claimed that a border wall would stop drugs coming in from Mexico.

Pence: “90% of all the heroin that comes into this country that claims the lives of 300 Americans every week comes through our southern border.”

CNN: “According to the latest Drug Enforcement Administration threat assessment report, the majority of heroin that enters the US does come through Mexico, but via legal ports of entry.”

FactCheck.org: “But experts, including those within his own administration, say the vast majority of the illegal heroin enters the U.S. through legal ports of entry.”

Pence brushed off criticism of the administration’s repeated lies about immigration, saying Americans “aren’t as concerned” about that.

ABC’s Karl: “How can the American people trust the president when he says this is a crisis, when he says things over and over again that aren’t true?”

Pence: “The American people aren’t as concerned about the political debate as they are about what’s really happening at the border.”

It’s high time for media to enter the No Kellyanne Zone — and stay there

It’s time for the media to turn off the microphone when it comes to Kellyanne Conway. Credit: Shawn Thew, EPA-EFE, REX, Shutterstock

Lies are coming at the American public in torrents — raining down on them everywhere they turn.

A report prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee, and obtained by The Washington Post, made that breathtakingly clear over the weekend. The intentional spreading of disinformation on every platform — from Facebook all the way to PayPal — should frighten everyone who cares about democracy.

One place that truth can prevail is in the reality-based news media, where editorial judgment comes into play.

View the complete December 17 column by Margaret Sullivan on The Washington Post website here.