Category: Trump Administration

House Judiciary releases McGahn testimony on Trump

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Former White House counsel Don McGahn confirmed to congressional investigators a key account in ex-special counsel Robert Mueller’s report that former President Trump directed him to try to get Mueller removed, according to a transcript of his closed-door testimony released Wednesday. 

The 241-page transcript follows a long fought-for interview the House Judiciary Committee finally secured with McGahn on Friday after the Trump White House challenged a subpoena seeking his testimony during Trump’s first impeachment investigation. The transcript shows that the interview yielded little new information but confirmed some of the details of Mueller’s lengthy report on his 22-month investigation that concluded in March 2018 and with which McGahn cooperated.

Trump has persistently denied any effort to fire Mueller amid the long inquiry, which probed allegations that members of Trump’s team had colluded with Russian figures during his 2016 presidential campaign. Yet in Friday’s interview, McGahn directly disputed Trump’s claims, repeatedly laying out Trump’s consideration of firing Mueller.  Continue reading.

Biden pushes protection for more streams and wetlands, targeting a major Trump rollback

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The change could have broad implications for farming, real estate development and other activities, the latest salvo in a decades-long battle

The Biden administration is set to toss out President Donald Trump’s efforts to scale back the number of streams, marshes and other wetlands that fall under federal protection, kicking off a legal and regulatory scuffle over the fate of wetlands and waterways around the country, from the arid West to the swampy South.

Michael Regan, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said his team determined that the Trump administration’s rollback is “leading to significant environmental degradation.” The EPA and Army Corps of Engineers will craft a new set of protections for waterways that provide habitats for wildlife and safe drinking water for millions of Americans, according to a joint statement.

With the announcement, the Biden administration is wading into a decades-long battle over how far federal officials can go to stop contaminants from entering small streams and other wetlands. Continue reading.

Government watchdog finds failings, but no Trump influence, in clearing of Lafayette Square

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A government watchdog has determined the law enforcement agencies responsible for clearing protesters gathered outside the White House last summer failed to fully warn the crowd to disperse while fractured radio communications led officers to use chemical irritants that had not been authorized.

The report from the Department of the Interior’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) is the first to evaluate the June 1 clearing of protesters shortly before former President Trump crossed Lafayette Square for a photo-op at a nearby church with a Bible in hand.

While the event spurred accusations from lawmakers and others that the protesters were cleared to enable Trump’s passage to the church, the report ultimately determined that Trump’s plans to visit the park did not influence the officers’ decision to clear it. Continue reading.

GOP’s attacks on Fauci at center of pandemic message

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Former President Trump and his GOP allies have stepped up attacks on Anthony Fauci, seizing on portions of his emails and a renewed interest in the origins of the coronavirus pandemic to demonize the nation’s top infectious disease doctor.

The attacks, which are largely based on out-of-context comments and draw on unsubstantiated conclusions, gloss over the Trump administration’s role in the nation’s early failures to respond to the pandemic.

Instead, conservative lawmakers and media personalities are lionizing the former president as someone betrayed by his advisers. Fauci is painted as a liar who misled both Trump and the American people, and is now facing calls for his resignation, prosecution, or both. Continue reading.

8 Months After Election, MN GOP Refuses To Say It Wasn’t Stolen

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GOP continues to give credence to conspiracy theory that led to assault on U.S. Capitol

SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA – Yesterday, in an interview with the Rochester Post Bulletin, Minnesota Republican Party Chairwoman Jennifer Carnahan refused to affirm the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. Per the Post Bulletin:

Asked whether the election was “stolen” from Trump, Carnahan declined to say one way or the other, but said the “concerns that people have should not be overlooked.”

“If there’s ever any question or doubt, or people don’t feel that they have the full transparency on enough things, what is wrong with just looking into things and answering those things?” she said.

DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin released the following statement in response:

 “It is both disgraceful and dangerous that the Minnesota Republican Party is giving credence to a conspiracy theory that fueled an insurrection against the United States. Refusing to condemn the Big Lie will only serve to further radicalize a segment of the Republican base against American democracy.

“The reason the Republican base has questions about the election is because they have been lied to by cowardly politicians who care more about their careers than our democracy. If Republicans make questioning the legitimacy of free and fair elections a regular feature of American politics, it will lead to another attack on our government.

“Minnesota Republican leaders at all levels must denounce this inflammatory and radicalizing rhetoric from Jennifer Carnahan. This has to stop.”

Stephen Colbert Breaks Down Latest Bonkers Election Conspiracy To Emerge From GOP

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“Now this is obviously insane,” the “Late Show” host said of the wild “Italygate” theory.

Stephen Colbert took on the latest wild conspiracy to emerge from the GOP — the so-called “Italygate.”

The baseless theory suggests that people in Italy used military satellites to flip votes in the 2020 presidential election from then-President Donald Trump to his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.

The theory was even pushed by then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the aftermath of Trump’s defeat, according to The New York Times. Meadows reportedly pressured the Justice Department to investigate. Continue reading.

Trump For House Speaker Is A Bannon Brainstorm

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Following former President Donald Trump’s June 4 remark that the idea of becoming speaker of the House after the 2022 midterm election is “very interesting” to him, political media has been abuzz with speculation. The idea has been making rounds in right-wing spheres in various iterations since January, when it was first championed by former White House chief strategist, election conspiracy-theorist-in-chief, and enchanted pile of dirty laundry Steve Bannon.

On January 21, conservative influencer Rogan O’Handley, who goes by “DC Draino” online, appeared on Bannon’s show War Room: Pandemic to discuss his tweet, in which he had proposed that “Trump run for Congress in Florida in ’22” and become speaker of the House, after which he can “impeach Kamala” — a remark that suggests Biden would not be president in 2023.

During the show, Bannon effusively praised O’Handley’s idea. He said the possibility of Trump, the only former president to incite an insurrection, becoming speaker in 2023 means “we don’t have to wait until 2024 to have a presidential election. This nationalizes the midterm elections” and “gives a unifying message” for Trump’s base to rally around. Continue reading.

Brooks’s claim that counting the votes of ‘eligible American citizens’ would have reelected Trump

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Donald Trump won the presidential race “if only lawful votes cast by eligible American citizens were counted … Somewhere in the neighborhood of 900,000 to 1.7 million noncitizens voted in the 2020 presidential election overwhelmingly for Joe Biden.”

— Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), in an interview with the Washington Examiner, published June 7

Brooks, who is running for the Senate, is echoing Trump’s false claim that President Biden actually lost the election. He, like Trump, claims there was all sorts of election fraud behind Biden’s victory. But he also has argued that Biden’s victory was greased by the votes of noncitizens.

The Examiner said that Brooks “did not provide evidence to support the claim” but instead pointed to a speech he made on Jan. 7 that laid out his calculations. In the address on the House floor, he declared: “Noncitizens overwhelmingly voted for Joe Biden in exchange for the promised amnesty and citizenship and, in so doing, helped steal the election from Donald Trump, Republican candidates, and American citizens all across America.”

The speech is actually rather detailed in showing Brooks’s math. But it relies on dubious assertions, some of which we have fact-checked before, to come up with these numbers. Continue reading.

A new study reveals the disturbing truth about the base of Trump’s support

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How do we know anything at all about the 74 million people who voted for Trump in 2020? Are they mostly racist? Sexist, homophobic, xenophobic? Are they white working-class males who suffer from status anxiety as the U.S. population grows more diverse? Are Trump supporters wealthier voters or poorer? Are they anti-elites, or elites themselves? Are working people becoming the core of the Republican Party, as Senator Josh Hawley proclaimed on election night? Or did Joe Biden bring them back into the Democratic fold?

Answers to these questions traditionally come from exit polls supplemented by what we hear from political commentators, labor union officials, and community leaders. An NBC poll (February 21, 2021) reported that the news is not good for labor progressives: 

The GOP is rapidly becoming the blue-collar party. 
In the last decade, the percentage of blue-collar voters who call themselves Republicans has grown by 12 points. At the same time, the number in that group identifying as Democrats has declined by 8 points.

Continue reading.

Trump’s election fraud claims propelled them to the Capitol on Jan. 6. His ongoing comments are keeping them in jail.

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Many of those charged in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol have blamed former president Donald Trump for their actions, saying he riled them with his claims of election fraud and his promises to join them in fighting it.

Now, Trump’s continued refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election is helping to keep some of those supporters behind bars.

“The steady drumbeat that inspired defendant to take up arms has not faded away; six months later, the canard that the election was stolen is being repeated daily on major news outlets and from the corridors of power in state and federal government, not to mention the near-daily fulminations of the former President,” U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote recently in denying bond to a Colorado man. The man is accused of driving to Washington with two firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition after threatening to kill House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D). Continue reading.