Tag: Trump White House

Senior Trump administration official to leave post next week

The Hill logoThe chief liaison between President Trump’s White House and federal government agencies will leave his post next week after more than two years on the job, depriving Trump of one of his last remaining senior staff members from the start of his presidency.

William McGinley, who has served as White House Cabinet secretary since Trump’s inauguration, has told friends he will return to the private sector, though a source close to McGinley says he has not had in-depth conversations with potential employers.

McGinley, a longtime Republican election law expert who served as the top lawyer at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, joined Trump’s campaign in the summer of 2016 as the then-candidate prepared for what might have been a contested convention. McGinley helped quash challenges to party rules that would have hurt Trump’s bid to win the Republican nomination.

View the complete July 11 article by Reid Wilson and Jordan Fabian on The Hill website here.

‘What’s happening with Michael Flynn?’ Reporter explains why Trump’s ex-national security adviser is ‘looking at jail’

AlterNet logoProsecutors have lost confidence in the testimony of former national security adviser Michael Flynn — and now he’s looking at possible jail time.

Politico reporter Josh Gerstein, who covered the latest developments in the case against the retired U.S. Army general, explained to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” how the relationship had soured between Flynn and the prosecutors he agreed to cooperate with as part of a plea agreement.

“Michael Flynn has backed off planned testimony in a federal case against a former business associate,” explained co-host Mika Brzezinski. “Flynn was set to be the government’s star witness at that trial, which deals with foreign lobbying work, however, the prosecution now suggests in court filings that they do not believe Flynn would tell the truth on the stand. They now believe he is a co-conspirator, rather than a cooperating witness.”

View the complete July 10 article by Travis Gettys from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Kellyanne Conway’s flushable claims about the census citizenship question

Washington Post logo“Why can’t we just ask the question the way it was asked for 50 years before the Obama administration yanked it out of there? We’ve been asking questions like this — the American Community Survey every fifth year asks a similar question. And think of all the questions that nobody complains are included in our U.S. Census every 10 years that include a far, far, far smaller number of Americans or, I would argue, are much more intrusive, invasive and expansive. We’re asking people how many toilets in your house, and you don’t want to know who’s using them? It’s absolutely ridiculous, and this is why the president is fighting for its inclusion.”

— White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, in an interview on “Fox and Friends,” July 9, 2019

Conway, a seasoned pollster, got a lot wrong in this defense of President Trump’s plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.

The Supreme Court last month blocked administration officials from adding the question to the census form. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the court that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross — who oversees the Census Bureau and approved the citizenship question — violated a federal law that required him to disclose the real reason for the change. (For more on that, read our previous fact checks here and here.)

At first, the Trump administration responded to the court decision by dropping its plans. Then the Commerce and Justice departments reversed course and began exploring whether they could insert the citizenship question while complying with Roberts’s ruling.

View the complete July 10 article by Salvador Rizzo on The Washington Post website here.

Trump looks to rally controversial online allies at White House social media summit

Washington Post logoCorrection: An earlier version of this story inaccurately described the findings of an investigation by the California attorney general into a 2009 video produced by activist James O’Keefe. The investigators did not conclude that the video was false, but that it had been “heavily edited” and did not reflect “a fuller truth.” The earlier version also omitted O’Keefe’s acknowledgement of an aspect of the finding, which has now been included in the story.

President Trump has summoned Republican lawmakers, political strategists and social media stars to the White House on Thursday to discuss the “opportunities and challenges” of the Web — but his upcoming summit, critics say, could end up empowering online provocateurs who have adopted controversial political tactics entering the 2020 election campaign.

The high-profile gathering follows months of attacks from Trump claiming that Facebook, Google and Twitter — all services the president taps to talk to supporters — secretly censor right-leaning users, websites and other content online, a charge of political bias that the tech giants strongly deny.

“I’m concerned there are people who work at the major technology platforms who want to put their thumb on the scale,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who plans to attend the White House summit.

View the complete July 9 article by Tony Romm, Michael Scherer and Amy B. Wang on The Washington Post website here.

Michael Flynn Changes His Story, Putting Him on Collision Course With Judge

New York Times logoWASHINGTON — Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, backed off his planned testimony in a federal case against a former associate, according to court documents unsealed on Tuesday.

Mr. Flynn had previously admitted that he lied on foreign lobbying disclosure forms submitted to the Justice Department but now is blaming his former lawyers, accusing them of filing inaccurate forms without his knowledge. He did not dispute that the filing itself contained false information.

His latest gambit could provoke another dramatic and risky confrontation with the federal judge who delayed sentencing Mr. Flynn last year in a separate case so he could continue to cooperate with the government in the hopes of a lighter punishment. And it was the latest strange turn in a prosecution that should have run its course without much drama after Mr. Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to investigators and agreed to cooperate with the special counsel’s investigators.

View the complete July 9 article by Adam Goldman on The New York Times website here.

Michael Flynn won’t testify against former business partner, will be designated co-conspirator

The Hill logoFederal prosecutors will not call President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn to testify at the upcoming trial of his former business partner Bijan Kian and plan to list him as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case, according to a court order issued Tuesday.

The order from U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga in the Eastern District of Virginia cites a July 3 notice filed under seal by the government “stating that the government will not be calling Michael T. Flynn as a witness in its case-in-chief.”

A separate court filing made by Kian’s attorneys that was unsealed Tuesday indicates that the government is no longer entirely confident in Flynn as a witness.

View the complete July 9 article by Morgan Chalfant and Jacqueline Thomsen on The Hill website here.

White House blocks key Mueller witness from answering more than 200 questions from House investigators

Washington Post logoAnnHouse Democrats’ hopes of making Annie Donaldson, the former chief of staff to ex-White House counsel Donald McGahn, a star witness in their investigations of President Trump were dashed as White House lawyers blocked her from answering more than 200 questions about potential obstruction of justice by the president.

Donaldson affirmed the accuracy of colorful and striking notes she made while working in the White House — notes that former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III cited 65 times in his report that described 10 episodes that raised concerns about possible obstruction.

But Trump administration lawyers barred her from elaborating on her thinking at the time she captured several exchanges between Trump and her boss — including one note in which she scribbled concern that Trump’s firing of James B. Comey as FBI director would trigger the end of his presidency.

View the complete July 8 article by Rachael Bade, Rosalind S. Helderman and Carol D. Leonnig on The Washington Post website here.

Republicans shriek about ‘the criminalization of politics’ as Trump advisors brazenly break this 1929 law

AlterNet logoWriters, bloggers, commenters, and pundits nearly exhausted the dictionary in the runup to the president’s July 4th Trumpapalooza™. With his tanks, parades, flyovers, and personal address, Donald Trump’s appropriation of America’s Independence Day rightly earned descriptions ranging from inappropriate, disgusting, and self-serving to grotesque, Orwellian, and masturbatory. But word that the Republican National Committee was distributing special reserved-seat tickets to GOP megadonors and VIPs to a taxpayer-funded event produced a qualitatively different reaction. As conservative columnist and Never-Trumper Jennifer Rubin put it, “This is the mother of all Hatch Act violations.”

Writing in Slate, legal analyst Dahlia Lithwick offered a primer on what types of July Fourth hijinks could indeed constitute violations of the Hatch Act, the 1939 law “that bars virtually all federal employees from engaging in partisan political activities.” But whatever Hatch Act transgressions may have emerged from Donald Trump’s autodeification in D.C. last Thursday, one thing is certain: Trump’s right-wing media enablers and Republican allies on Capitol Hill will defiantly brush them under the rug. As the record-setting Hatch Act lawlessness of Trump counselor Kellyanne Conwayshows, today’s Republicans have no problem with politicizing the operations of the federal government and politicizing crime itself. Continue reading “Republicans shriek about ‘the criminalization of politics’ as Trump advisors brazenly break this 1929 law”

Here’s why Ivanka Trump’s role at the G-20 summit was so unsettling. And it wasn’t just about nepotism.

Washington Post logoThis weekend, Ivanka Trump — prized first daughter, presidential sounding board, sometime diplomat — managed to ignite the rage of the Internet by just doing her job.

Wait, what job is that exactly? Officially, the 37-year-old is a senior adviser to the president, who happens to be her dear old dad, Donald J. Trump. In practice, she seems to have unlimited responsibilities. And her “Where’s Waldo?” appearance at the 2019 G-20 summit in Japan — there she is smizing with Shinzo Abe! holding her own with Theresa May! saying stuff in front of Christine Lagarde! — was further evidence of just how far her sphere extends.

The nature of Ivanka’s job would be enough, in a normal profession, to drive an HR manager to tears. It’s not simply that she got her role through nepotism, explains Jennifer Lawless, professor of politics at the University of Virginia. It’s the fact that she now seems to have so much power with zero accountability: “She’s not secretary of state, but she’s acting like she has the same clout as Mike Pompeo. She is not a formal diplomat, but she’s the one having formal conversations.”

View the complete July 3 column by Helena Andrews-Dyer on The Washington Post website here.

Several of Trump’s GOP allies raise alarms about administration’s budget proposal

Washington Post logoSome of President Trump’s biggest Republican allies in Congress are starting to rebel against the administration’s fallback strategy to avert a government shutdown and a potentially catastrophic debt default this fall.

At issue is a plan put forward by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney last month: fund federal government operations at current spending levels for one year, paired with a one-year increase in the debt ceiling, which limits the federal government’s borrowing capabilities.

The two administration officials proposed that option in case the White House fails to reach a broader budget and debt limit deal with top congressional officials, mainly House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

View the complete July 3 article by Seung Min Kim on The Washington Post website here.