Trump Corruption

Axios reports: The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that sought to invalidate 10 million votes in four battleground states — Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin — that President Trump lost. Why it matters: It’s the latest and most significant legal defeat for Trump and his allies in their floundering attempt to …

ABC News reports: In a last-minute pitch to save President Donald Trump’s deal with Sudan, the Trump administration offered to pay victims of the Sept. 11 attacks $700 million of U.S. funds to drop their pursuit of claims against the African country, according to two sources familiar with the negotiations. The negotiations, which have not been previously reported and continued …

From the editor of the highly-respected SCOTUSblog: President Donald Trump, other supportive Republicans, and aligned commentators have firmly convinced many tens of millions of people that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. If that view continues to take hold, it threatens not only our national politics for the next four years but the public’s basic faith in elections of all …

CNN reports: As daughter and as an adviser of President Donald Trump for the last four years, Ivanka Trump can no longer live in obscurity, not that she did pre-White House, but her profile has now raised exponentially. It’s not just the safety that drew Trump to Florida, it is the potential political opportunities of the state itself, said a …

Axios reports: A fallout between President Trump and Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, led to the breakthrough that resulted in the Morocco-Israel normalization deal, sources briefed on the matter told me. Inhofe is Washington’s most avid supporter of the Polisario Front — a Sahrawi rebel national liberation movement aiming to end Moroccan occupation of …

Mediaite reports: President Donald Trump was never going to have a normal concession speech. It is equal parts bizarre and predictable that his first explicit admission that there will be Joe Biden administration came in the middle of a Twitter meltdown that included election conspiracy theories and a demand he be given former President Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize. Now that …

Business Insider reports: President Donald Trump usually makes headlines for the numerous police bills his presidential campaign committee won’t pay. Which is why it’s notable that the city of La Crosse, Wisconsin, recently received a check from the Trump campaign for $5,574, according to copies of the invoice and check obtained by Insider. The Trump campaign’s check arrived a couple …

The Washington Post reports: Behind the scenes, Trump has told others that pitting Newsmax and OAN against Fox News puts pressure on the larger network to cover him more favorably. He has also expressed concern in public and private about Fox News’s coverage in the final months of the campaign. Trump’s advisers, who largely overlooked both Newsmax and OAN in …

Austin’s ABC News affiliate reports: FBI agents have issued at least one federal subpoena for records from the Texas attorney general’s office in an ongoing investigation into allegations against Attorney General Ken Paxton. Sources confirmed to KVUE the requests for information were issued on Wednesday at the agency’s headquarters on West 14th Street. The investigation started after top Paxton aides …

The New York Times reports: State prosecutors in Manhattan have interviewed several employees of President Trump’s bank and insurance broker in recent weeks, according to people with knowledge of the matter, significantly escalating an investigation into the president that he is powerless to stop. The interviews with people who work for the lender, Deutsche Bank, and the insurance brokerage, Aon, …

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. …