Trump Corruption

CNN reports: Each of the four battleground states targeted by a Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn President Donald Trump’s election defeat issued blistering briefs at the Supreme Court on Thursday, with Pennsylvania officials going so far as to call the effort a “seditious abuse of the judicial process.” “Texas’s effort to get this Court to pick the next President has …

ABC News reports:  California billionaire Sanford Diller gave the seven-figure sum, and pledged the potential for an even larger donation, as he pursued a pardon for his friend, a Berkeley psychologist in prison for tax evasion, according to documents reviewed by ABC News. Donations from Diller do not appear on Trump’s federal campaign reports. Sources familiar with the matter told …

Raw Story reports: President Donald Trump is now bringing his pressure campaign to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election to the United States Supreme Court. In a tweet posted on Thursday morning, the president implored the Supreme Court to take up Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit aimed at nullifying election results in four key swing states. The …

Politico reports: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield instructed staff to delete an email from a Trump political appointee seeking control over the agency’s scientific reports on the pandemic, a senior CDC official told congressional investigators this week. An Aug. 8 email was sent by Paul Alexander, who was then the scientific adviser to Health and Human …

The Washington Post reports: Trump claimed Thursday that Biden would be an “illegitimate president” as he continued to push baseless claims that he, and not Biden, had prevailed in key swing states. His tweet came ahead of a planned lunch meeting at the White House with Republican state attorneys general who are supporting a lawsuit led by Texas that seeks …

Right wing columnist Erick Erickson writes: Ken Paxton, the Attorney General of Texas, is under a federal investigation and would love a presidential pardon. His lawsuit is just more performative leg humping by someone desperate to curry favor with President Trump. The various attorneys general who have joined his lawsuit all want to either get re-elected or seek higher office. …

Austin’s NBC News affiliate reports: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is leading a last-ditch effort to overturn election results in four battleground states lost by President Donald Trump, said he has not discussed a presidential pardon with the White House for his own legal troubles. Paxton, a loyal ally of Trump, faces a 5-year-old indictment on felony securities fraud …

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports: President Donald Trump warned Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr not to rally other Republican officials against a long-shot Texas lawsuit seeking to toss out the state’s election results, according to several people with direct knowledge of the conversation. The roughly 15-minute phone call late Tuesday came shortly before U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue issued …

The New York Times reports: Loyalists to President Trump have blocked transition meetings at some government agencies and are sitting in on discussions at other agencies between career civil servants and President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s transition teams, sometimes chilling conversations, several federal officials said. Presidential transition experts said the presence of political officials at agency handoff meetings was not …

The Hill reports: President Trump on Wednesday moved to intervene in Texas’ lawsuit seeking Supreme Court intervention to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in key battleground states that would tip the scales in his favor. Trump has for weeks spread false claims alleging the election was “stolen” or “rigged.” But his lawsuit does not make such claims. …

CNN reports: While the president has yet to concede, Melania Trump is already overseeing shipments of personal items to Mar-a-Lago from both the White House and her Trump Tower penthouse in New York City, a source at the resort confirms to CNN. Tham Kannalikham, the interior decorator Trump hired in 2017 to redesign the personal quarters of the White House …

Mediaite reports: As the president and his allies continue to make unsubstantiated claims that the election was corrupted by mass fraud, Trump’s legal team witnessed a new setback this week when the Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit meant to block the certification for Pennsylvania’s vote results. Trump seemed to hedge his political bets on the case the last time he …

The Hill reports: President Trump on Tuesday tapped former aide Kellyanne Conway and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to government jobs in the final days of his administration. The White House said in a press release that Conway will be appointed to the board of visitors of the U.S. Air Force Academy, and Chao, who is also married to Senate Majority …

Via press release from the Trump campaign: “The ‘Safe Harbor Deadline’ is a statutory timeline that generally denotes the last day for states to certify election results. However, it is not unprecedented for election contests to last well beyond December 8. “Justice Ginsburg recognized in Bush v. Gore that the date of ‘ultimate significance’ is January 6, when Congress counts …

The Associated Press reports: A federal judge dismissed Michael Flynn’s prosecution Tuesday after President Trump’s pardon, but said the act of clemency does not mean the former national security adviser is innocent of lying to FBI agents about his talks with the Russian government before Trump took office. In formally ending Flynn’s three-year legal saga, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. …

Axios reports: President Trump’s lawyer Jenna Ellis has informed associates she tested positive for the coronavirus, multiple sources tell Axios, stirring West Wing fears after she attended a senior staff Christmas party on Friday. Driving the news: There are concerns about the potential for another White House superspreader event, though it was unclear whether Ellis posed a risk when she …

The Washington Post reports: The former top U.S. cybersecurity official responsible for securing November’s presidential election sued the Trump campaign and one of its lawyers for defamation Tuesday, asserting that they conspired to falsely claim the election was stolen, attack dissenting Republicans and fraudulently reap political donations. Christopher Krebs, who was fired Nov. 17 by President Trump after he refuted …

The New York Post‘s Page Six reports: Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner have splurged on a $30 million-plus lot of land on Miami’s uber-swanky and high-security Indian Creek Island — known as the “Billionaire’s Bunker” — Page Six can exclusively reveal. Ahead of President Trump’s exit from the White House, the couple is busy making plans for life after DC …

The Washington Post reports: Trump’s efforts to reverse the election results run into a new hurdle Tuesday, known as “safe harbor” day under federal law. The 1887 law sets a deadline of six days before the convening of the electoral college for states to certify their election results. While the deadline is not mandatory, the law prohibits Congress from undoing …

Mediaite reports: President Donald Trump, desperately ramping up his attacks on allegedly disloyal Republicans as his electoral defeat looms ever larger, lashed out at Georgia’s Republican lieutenant governor, Geoff Duncan, on Monday night and said he “should be replaced.” Duncan had moved up Trump’s hit list after several, recent reality-based comments. Earlier on Monday, for example, Duncan offered a thinly …