Trump Corruption

Politico reports: The Justice Department has quietly asked Congress for the ability to ask chief judges to detain people indefinitely without trial during emergencies — part of a push for new powers that comes as the coronavirus spreads through the United States. Documents reviewed by POLITICO detail the department’s requests to lawmakers on a host of topics, including the statute …

The New York Times reports: It was a lavish birthday party for Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle. The setting was Mar-a-Lago, President Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Fla. The guest list included dozens of Trump family members and friends. But when it came to picking up the tab, hands went out to other attendees. Among them were at …

Wired reports: President Donald Trump announced Friday that the US government’s coronavirus testing apparatus, which has lagged badly behind other developed nations, would soon get an assist from Google. The search and advertising giant will create a website, Trump said, that would help Americans figure out if they need a test for the virus, and if so where they can …

The Verge reports: Google is not working with the US government in building a nationwide website to help people determine whether and how to get a novel coronavirus test, despite what President Donald Trump said in the course of issuing an emergency declaration for the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, a much smaller trial website made by another division of Alphabet, Google’s …

Mediaite reports: Using his typical insult for Biden, Trump first brought up the H1N1 swine flu epidemic that hit during the early years of the Obama administration, and made two inaccurate or misleading statements. The 78 percent figure Trump cited seems to derive from a Gallup poll from early February 2020 — when public focus on the outbreak was low …

ProPublica reports: The Trump Organization paid bribes, through middlemen, to New York City tax assessors to lower its property tax bills for several Manhattan buildings in the 1980s and 1990s, according to five former tax assessors and city employees as well as a former Trump Organization employee. Two of the five city employees said they personally took bribes to lower …

Mediaite reports: Because pronouncing Joe Biden senile is apparently not enough for conservatives, Donald Trump Jr. decided to take things up a notch and diagnose the former vice president with Alzheimer’s. Trump Jr. was referring to Biden’s contentious encounter on Tuesday with an auto plant worker in Detroit who accused him of trying to “end” the Second Amendment. “You’re full …

Bloomberg News reports: Donald Trump told Republican senators on Tuesday that he wants a payroll tax holiday through the November election so that taxes don’t go back up before voters decide whether to return him to office, according to three people familiar with the president’s remarks. Trump spoke to the Republicans at their weekly conference lunch at the Capitol as …

CNN reports: The House of Representatives has won access to secret grand jury material gathered in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and cited in the Mueller report, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday. The appeals panel sided with the chief judge of the DC District Court, who had roundly criticized the Justice Department’s legal theories to …

Axios reports: In an interview for “Axios on HBO,” Donald Trump Jr. told me he wants to debate Hunter Biden over who has benefited more financially from their father’s government service. “We can go full transparency, we show everything, and we can talk about all of the places where I am supposedly grifting but Hunter Biden isn’t,” said the president’s …

The Washington Post reports: Twitter applied its new “manipulated media” label for the first time on Sunday to a deceptively edited video of former vice president Joe Biden. The video was shared by White House social media director Dan Scavino and retweeted by President Trump. The altered video of Biden — who has surged to the front of the Democratic …

The Daily Beast reports: President Trump named Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) as chief of staff on Friday evening. “I am pleased to announce that Congressman Mark Meadows will become White House Chief of Staff,” Trump wrote in a tweet. “I have long known and worked with Mark, and the relationship is a very good one.” He also said that ousted …

Raw Story reports: President Donald Trump invoked his supposedly “perfect” phone call with Ukraine — the one that resulted in his impeachment for abuse of power — while briefing reporters at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. CNN host Jake Tapper dismissed  Trump’s appearance at the CDC as a “photo op” after the president was recorded wearing a “Keep …

CNN reports: A federal judge Thursday criticized Attorney General William Barr for his handling of the Mueller report when it was released last spring, saying Barr’s early description of the report didn’t match the special counsel’s actual conclusions. Judge Reggie Walton asked if Barr’s actions were a “calculated attempt” to help President Donald Trump and opined the attorney general had …

Vox reports: Shortly ahead of the US National 2020 census, President Trump’s campaign is running ads on Facebook that some are saying are misleading users into thinking that a data-gathering and fundraising survey for the Trump presidential campaign is actually the official US national census. Facebook confirmed with Recode that it plans to take down the ads. According to Facebook’s …

The Associated Press reports: President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner has sold his stake in a company investing in Opportunity Zone projects offering tax breaks he had pushed for in Washington, sparking criticism that he was benefiting from his White House role. A filing at the Office of Government Ethics released Monday shows that Kushner received permission to …

Just in via press release: California Attorney General Xavier Becerra today led a coalition of 19 attorneys general in filing a lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration’s illegal diversion of $3.8 billion in taxpayer dollars for the construction of an unauthorized wall along the US-Mexico border. For the second consecutive fiscal year, the Trump Administration has circumvented the will of Congress …

Fox News reports: The Trump campaign filed a libel lawsuit against the Washington Post for “millions of dollars” on Tuesday for publishing “false and defamatory statements” about an alleged conspiracy with Russia. The complaint obtained by Fox News was filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. by attorneys David C. Tobin and Charles J. Harder. It points to …

Axios reports: After being sentenced to 40 months in prison, former Trump associate Roger Stone told “Axios on HBO” that his only fear in life is “not being right with God.” “I feel pretty good because I’ve taken Jesus Christ as my personal savior,” Stone said in his first on-camera interview since his sentencing. “And it’s given me enormous strength …

Talking Points Memo reports: A federal appeals court in D.C. gave President Trump a major legal win on Friday by refusing to enforce the House’s subpoena of former White House Counsel Don McGahn. The majority opinion said that the court agreed with the Justice Department’s argument “that Article III of the Constitution forbids federal courts from resolving this kind of …