Tag: Trump White House

Alyssa Farah resigns as White House communications director

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Alyssa Farah has resigned as President Trump’s White House communications director after more than three years serving in the administration.

Her resignation follows Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in the presidential election and comes less than two months before the new administration will take over. The Washington Post was first to report Farah’s departure from the White House.

Farah in a statement on Thursday described it as “the honor of a lifetime” to serve in the Trump administration, highlighting a number of the administration’s foreign and domestic policy priorities. She is the most prominent White House aide so far to depart after the election. Continue reading.

Trump, Kushner and White House hit with lawsuit to prevent them from destroying records

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President Donald Trump, his son-in-law White House Senior Advisor Jared Kushner, and the White House were hit with a lawsuit on Tuesday to prevent the Trump administration from destroying documents during the last days of their time in office.

According to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and multiple other groups allege that the president and his administration are already “violating the Presidential Records Act by failing to properly preserve records of official government business,” reports Axios.

The lawsuit is suggesting the White House abrogate an official policy requiring staffers to “preserve screenshots of information sent on non-official messaging platforms as official presidential records.” Continue reading.

Justice Dept. investigated potential ‘bribery-for-pardon’ scheme involving White House

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The Justice Department in August investigated a potential “bribery-for-pardon” scheme in which a large political contribution would be offered in exchange for a presidential pardon by the White House, according to court records unsealed Tuesday.

The documents show that U.S. prosecutors were scrutinizing whether two individuals approached senior White House officials as unregistered lobbyists, and a related scheme in which cash would be funneled through intermediaries for a pardon or reprieve of a sentence for a defendant apparently in Federal Bureau of Prisons custody at some point. The status of the investigation is unclear.

The slender record is heavily redacted and does not identify the investigation’s targets or whether anyone has been or will be charged. It also does not indicate what senior White House officials did after allegedly being approached. Continue reading.

McEnany Whines About 2016 Transition To Justify Trump’s Misconduct

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Friday justified Donald Trump’s refusal to concede that he lost the election by running through a list of grievances about how Democrats treated Trump in 2016.

Trump has refused to admit that he lost the 2020 election, instead tweeting debunked claims of voter fraud and election rigging. The General Services Administration, which is responsible for administering the transition to brief and prepare President-elect Joe, has refused to ascertain that Biden did indeed win the election and continues to block the transition.

The Trump administration’s refusal to cooperate in the transfer of power to the incoming administration is happening despite the increasing death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for a nationwide vaccine distribution plan. Experts say the refusal to cooperate could make the virus, now surging across much of the country, even worse. Continue reading.

‘That’s not doing your job’: Kayleigh McEnany storms out of press conference as reporters shout questions

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White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany abruptly exited today’s press conference as she was criticized about her refusal to answer questions. One reporter also concluded with a few words of advice for the embattled press secretary. 

On Friday McEnany appeared before a group of reporters in the White House press room to take questions for the first time in over a month. At one point during the press conference, McEnany was asked about the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ (FBI) involvement, or lack thereof, in President Donald Trump’s voter fraud case.

McEnany used the moment as an opportunity to rant about the presumed lack of assistance the Trump campaign is faced with in its efforts to challenge the outcome of the election. Then, she abruptly ended the press conference and headed for the exit. At that point, CNN White House Correspondent Kaitlin Collins confronted McEnany for repeatedly refusing to take any of her questions. Continue reading.

Why this retired general says Trump loyalists want to stage a coup: ‘Crazy thing going on inside that White House’

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A four-star United States retired general is sounding the alarm on key national security concerns after President Donald J. Trump shakes up the Pentagon staff less than one week after losing the election to President-elect Joe Biden.

“I have been shot at a lot and nearly killed a bunch of times,” said Gen. Barry Richard McCaffrey (ret.). “I’m not an alarmist. I stay cool under pressure. Mark me down as alarmed. I just listened to Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) — wonderful, experienced, mature guy — say this is just payback to [Mark] Esper not being a loyalist. I don’t believe it. We’re watching a setup of some people who are unqualified for office to be in control of the 2.1 million men and women of the armed forces.”

McCaffrey said, “And I remind our viewers, the only one who can give orders to the armed forces is the president and the secretary of defense. This acting secretary Chris Miller is a perfectly good, experienced combat soldier. He is unqualified for this office. The other three, one of them, a retired one-star, is a dangerous man. That team moving in, no one in his right mind would have accepted an appointment for 90 days. These people are in there to control a coercive institution of U.S. democracy. Watch out.” Continue reading.

White House uncertainty grows over Trump post-election actions

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Officials around the Trump administration are sending mixed signals privately about support for President Trump‘s refusal to concede the election to Joe Biden.

Republicans and some of the president’s family members have publicly entertained the president’s unproven claims that widespread voter fraud is to blame for his deficit in key swing states such as Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania.

But inside the White House, there is more uncertainty about the benefits of Trump’s ongoing fight. Continue reading.

Denial, and Resignation, From Trump and a Handful of Aides

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Aides said the president had no plans to immediately deliver the kind of concession speech that has become traditional in past elections, and his campaign vowed to continue waging its legal battle across the country.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s motorcade was just pulling into the Trump National Golf Club in suburban Virginia on Saturday morning when news organizations ended days of waiting and declared that he had lost the presidency to Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Aides called Mr. Trump to let him know that their predictions over the past several days had come true: Every major news outlet had projected Mr. Biden to be the winner. But the president — who an hour earlier had said on Twitter that “I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!” — was not surprised, they said. And he did not change his plans to go ahead with legal challenges to the election results that several of his own advisers warned him were long shots at best, or to play golf.

The aides said Mr. Trump had no plans to immediately deliver the kind of concession speech that has become traditional in past presidential elections, and his campaign vowed to continue waging the legal battle across the country. In a statement issued while he was still on the golf course, Mr. Trump said Mr. Biden was trying to “falsely pose” as the winner. Continue reading.

Gaffes put spotlight on Meadows at tough time for Trump

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For Mark Meadows, the gaffes have come at exactly the wrong time.

Meadows, President Trump‘s resolutely charming chief of staff, rose from Congress to the White House earlier this year on the wings of his devout loyalty to the president and an uncanny faculty for staying on message in front of the TV cameras.

Yet on several occasions this month — with Election Day looming and Trump trailing badly in the polls — Meadows has found himself racing to mop up contentious comments he’s made about the coronavirus, most recently his statement Sunday that the country is “not going to control the pandemic.” Continue reading.