Tag: Trump White House

Trump Aides Worked With GOP Activist Who Sought To Rig Census

The House Oversight and Reform Committee has obtained evidence showing that the Trump administration worked hand-in-hand with a GOP activist to try to rig the 2020 census.

Thomas Hofeller, who died last year, was a Republican activist who specialized in gerrymandering and redistricting. In 2015, he conducted a study that determined that having a citizenship question on the decennial census would disadvantage Democrats and be “advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.”

During litigation over the Trump administration’s attempts to justify adding the question to the 2020 census, allegations appeared that Hofeller’s study had been instrumental in the administration’s decision to push for the question. The Justice Department flatly denied this, saying that the study “played no role” in the matter.

View the complete November 13 article by Lisa Needham on the National Memo website here.

Stephen Miller E-Mails Show How He Promoted White Nationalist Ideology In Media

The Southern Poverty Law Center has obtained emails from 2015 and 2016 between White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller — at the time an adviser to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) — and then-Breitbart editor Katie McHugh. The emails show both Miller’s dedication to a number of prominent ideas in the white nationalist far-right circles and his determination to see them gain further exposure in the media.

Four years later, the ideas that Miller secretly mentioned in his emails are now being openly discussed on Fox News and saturate right-wing media.

Fox News hosts have avidly pushed the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, the idea that white people are being systematically “replaced” by non-white immigrants. Tucker Carlson, for example, has become Fox’s most prominent mouthpiece for white nationalism by decrying immigration and diversity for “radically and permanently changing our country.”

View the complete November 13 article by John Whitehouse and Eric Kleefeld on the National Memo website here.

John Bolton trashes Trump in private speech — and hints Syria pullout was based on personal financial interests: report

AlterNet logoAccording to a new report from NBC News, former national security adviser John Bolton said during a private speech that President Trump’s foreign policy regarding Turkey is influenced by personal interest.

Sources tell NBC News Bolton suggested that Trump’s claims that his business experience allows him to conduct foreign policy more effectively is without merit — saying that real estate and foreign policy are two different things. During his speech, Bolton reportedly criticized Trump for lacking understanding on how foreign policy works.

Read the full exclusive report over at NBC News.

View the November 12 article from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Mulvaney drops plans to file lawsuit on impeachment testimony

The Hill logoActing White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on Tuesday reversed plans to file a lawsuit regarding his compliance with a subpoena for congressional testimony in the House impeachment inquiry into President Trump.

His attorneys notified a federal court that Mulvaney, after further consideration, “does not intend to pursue litigation regarding the deposition subpoena issued to him by the U.S. House of Representatives” and will instead obey directions from Trump to ignore the subpoena altogether.

The filing came hours after Mulvaney’s lawyers said he planned to file his own suit after encountering opposition to joining a similar one filed by former White House official Charles Kupperman.

View the complete November 12 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

White House struggles to get in sync on impeachment

The Hill logoA White House that has repeatedly struggled to get in sync is sending messages of disharmony days before the first televised public impeachment hearings, which are expected to highlight the divide in the administration over President Trump‘s efforts in Ukraine.

The scattershot White House messaging and strategy is nothing new in and of itself. GOP lawmakers and some outside allies have repeatedly criticized the administration for failing to get on the same page.

But things don’t appear to be improving in the hours before House committees prepare to receive public testimony from officials who are expected to offer damaging accounts of efforts by the president’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to press for investigations by Ukraine. The hearings are likely to receive wall-to-wall coverage on cable news.

View the complete November 11 article by Morgan Chalfant and Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.

House Democrats, ex-Bolton aide ask judge to block Mulvaney from joining lawsuit

The Hill logoHouse Democrats and former deputy national security adviser Charles Kupperman separately asked a federal judge on Monday to block President Trump‘s acting chief of staff from intervening in a lawsuit over subpoenas related to the House’s impeachment inquiry.

Trump’s top aide, Mick Mulvaney, had filed a motion in D.C. District Court on Friday seeking to join Kupperman’s lawsuit over a subpoena in order to fight the House Intelligence Committee’s efforts to compel his own testimony.

But Democrats argued that the original lawsuit is moot since they withdrew the subpoena directing Kupperman to testify.

View the complete November 11 article by Harper Neidig on The Hill website here.

Nikki Haley’s real disclosure: Concerns about Trump’s dangerousness went right to the top

Washington Post logoEver since September 2018, we’ve been trying to figure out who the “senior administration official” was who wrote that anonymous New York Times op-ed. This official described a “resistance” from inside the Trump administration that has worked to “frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.” The author now has a book coming out.

So when Nikki Haley tells us that the president’s former chief of staff and secretary of state spearheaded just such an effort, maybe the story isn’t that she said no?

Haley has a new book of her own, which describes her being approached by John Kelly and Rex Tillerson to, in her words, “undermine” the president. The details of that approach are somewhat in dispute. But here’s the gist of how Haley describes it, via The Washington Post’s Anne Gearan:

View the complete November 11 article by Aaron Blake on The Washington Post website here.

Mulvaney asks to join lawsuit over conflicting demands for impeachment testimony

Washington Post logoActing White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on Friday asked to join a federal lawsuit seeking a judicial ruling on whether Congress can compel President Trump’s senior advisers to testify in the impeachment inquiry.

The lawsuit was originally filed late last month by Charles Kupperman, a former top national security aide to Trump, who said he faced conflicting orders from House Democrats and the White House over whether he must participate in the investigation and needed the court to tell him what his constitutional duty was.

Attorneys for Mulvaney said the acting chief of staff was facing the same dilemma.

View the complete November 9 article by Derek Hawkins on The Washington Post website here.

Bolton Said to Know of ‘Many Relevant Meetings’ on Ukraine, but Will Not Testify

New York Times logoA lawyer for John R. Bolton said he had information to share with impeachment investigators. But, so far, he will not defy the White House.

WASHINGTON — John R. Bolton, President Trump’s former national security adviser, knows about “many relevant meetings and conversations” connected to a pressure campaign on Ukraine that House impeachment investigators have not yet been informed of, his lawyer told lawmakers on Friday.

The lawyer, Charles J. Cooper, tucked the tantalizing assertion into a letter to the chief House lawyer in response to committee chairmen who have sought Mr. Bolton’s testimony in their impeachment inquiry but expressed unwillingness to go to court to get an order compelling it.

Mr. Cooper did not elaborate on what meetings or conversations he was referring to, leaving it to House Democrats to guess at what he might know.

View the complete November 8 article by Nicholas Fandos, Michael D. Shear and Peter Baker on The New York Times website here.

Mulvaney defies House subpoena, cites immunity ‘one minute’ before deposition

The Hill logoActing White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on Friday defied a subpoena for his testimony in the House impeachment probe at the last minute, in what is likely the Democrats’ final effort to hear privately from witnesses about President Trump’s contacts with Ukraine before their inquiry goes public.

Mulvaney did not appear for his closed-door deposition in the Capitol, citing White House claims of immunity, according to an official working on the inquiry. The official said Mulvaney’s outside counsel informed House investigators “one minute” before his scheduled deposition that he would not appear.

“This morning, one minute before his scheduled deposition was to start, Mr. Mulvaney’s outside counsel informed us that his client had been directed by the White House not to comply with the duly authorized subpoena and asserted ‘absolute immunity,’ ” the official said in a statement.

View the complete November 8 article by Olivia Beavers and Mike Lillis on The Hill website here.