Tag Archives: Trump administration

Senate Democrats Demand Testimonies From Sessions And Barr Over Trump DOJ Spying On House Democrats

The Wall Street Journal reports: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) called for former attorneys general Jeff Sessions and William Barr to testify before Congress under oath after revelations that the Trump Justice Department secretly sought records from Apple Inc. related to communications by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee …

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Trump’s DOJ Spied On House Democrats, Their Families

The New York Times reports: As the Justice Department investigated who was behind leaks of classified information early in the Trump administration, it took a highly unusual step: Prosecutors subpoenaed Apple for data from the accounts of at least two Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, aides and family members. One was a minor. All told, the records of at …

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Ex-WH Counsel Don McGahn To Finally Testify Today

Politico reports: Don McGahn is slated to testify before Congress today (sadly, behind closed-doors). It comes more than 25 months after House Democrats first sought to subpoena the former White House counsel for testimony related to his interviews with Robert Mueller that focused on the Russia interference probe and possible obstruction by Donald Trump. The White House sought to block …

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Trump’s DOJ Spied On Four New York Times Reporters

The New York Times reports: The Trump Justice Department secretly seized the phone records of four New York Times reporters spanning nearly four months in 2017 as part of a leak investigation, the Biden administration disclosed on Wednesday. It was the latest in a series of revelations about the Trump administration secretly obtaining reporters’ communications records in an effort to …

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White House To Fired Trump Appointees: Get Over It

Axios reports: The White House has a simple message for Trump appointees venting to the media about losing their jobs since President Biden took office: get over it. The White House has been methodically clearing house, a practice former President Trump followed when he was elected — most prominently at the State Department. The aim is to install staff more …

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Trump Appointee Won’t Resign From Arts Commission, Calls His Firing An “Attack On Traditional Architecture”

CNN reports: The White House has ousted several members of a prestigious arts commission in the nation’s capital, the latest move in the Biden administration’s purge of Trump-era appointees from government agencies and boards. Justin Shubow [photo], who was appointed in 2018 and later elected chairman, received a letter from the White House on Monday requesting he resign from the …

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Impeachment Witness Sues Pompeo For $1.8 Million

The Washington Post reports: President Donald Trump’s former ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, is suing former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and the U.S. government for $1.8 million to compensate for legal fees incurred during the 2019 House impeachment probe. The suit, filed Monday in federal court in the District of Columbia, alleges that Pompeo reneged on his …

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Trump’s Commerce Department Spied On Employees

The Washington Post reports: An obscure security unit tasked with protecting the Commerce Department’s officials and facilities has evolved into something more akin to a counterintelligence operation that collected information on hundreds of people inside and outside the department, a Washington Post examination found. The Investigations and Threat Management Service (ITMS) covertly searched employees’ offices at night, ran broad keyword …

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Judge Orders DeVos To Testify In Student Loans Lawsuit

NBC News reports: Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos must testify in a class-action lawsuit about her handling of student loan forgiveness claims, which involved delays in the administration’s decision-making and ultimate denial of a significant number of the applications, a federal judge ruled. In a 12-page ruling, Judge William Alsup denied a motion to quash a subpoena for the Cabinet …

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Trump’s DOJ Spied On CNN Reporter Barbara Starr

CNN reports: The Trump administration secretly sought and obtained the 2017 phone and email records of a CNN correspondent, the latest instance where federal prosecutors have taken aggressive steps targeting journalists in leak investigations. The Justice Department informed CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr, in a May 13 letter, that prosecutors had obtained her phone and email records covering two months, …

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Trump’s DOJ Tried To Unmask Nunes Parody Account

The Washington Post reports: After Rep. Devin Nunes failed last summer to force Twitter to unmask several accounts dedicated to ruthlessly mocking the California Republican, the Justice Department took aim at one of the congressman’s anonymous critics. Court filings unsealed this week revealed that in the last months of the Trump presidency, the Justice Department used a grand jury subpoena …

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Trump WH Counsel Don McGahn To Testify In Private

The Associated Press reports: Former White House counsel Don McGahn will answer questions in private from the House Judiciary Committee in an apparent resolution of a longstanding dispute over his testimony, according to a court document filed Wednesday evening. Democrats who run the committee have sought McGahn’s testimony for two years as part of an investigation of potential obstruction of …

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Trump DOJ Secretly Got WaPo Reporters’ Phone Records

The Washington Post reports: The Trump Justice Department secretly obtained Washington Post journalists’ phone records and tried to obtain their email records over reporting they did in the early months of the Trump administration on Russia’s role in the 2016 election, according to government letters and officials. In three separate letters dated May 3 and addressed to Post reporters Ellen …

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New York AG: Broadband Industry Behind Millions Of Fake FCC Comments In Opposition To Net Neutrality

Law & Crime reports: On the year former President Trump’s Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal net neutrality, the regulator was inundated with more than 22 million comments. Nearly 18 million of them were fake, and some 40 percent of those came from an influence campaign linked to the broadband industry, New York Attorney General Letitia James found in a …

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DOJ Must Release Memo Against Prosecuting Trump

Politico reports: A federal judge has ordered the release of a key Justice Department memo supporting former Attorney William Barr’s conclusion that former President Donald Trump should not be prosecuted for obstruction of justice over episodes investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller. U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued that ruling in a withering opinion that accused Barr of …

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US Marshals Used Drones To Surveil BLM Protests In DC

The Intercept reports: The U.S. Marshals Service flew unmanned drones over Washington, D.C., in response to last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, documents obtained by The Intercept via the Freedom of Information Act show. The documents — two brief, heavily redacted emails — indicate the Marshals flew the drones over Washington on June 5 and 7, when nationwide protests against …

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Bill Barr And Amy Coney Barrett Score Book Deals

Politico reports: William Barr, Trump’s former attorney general who resigned two days before Christmas after disagreeing publicly with Trump’s voter fraud conspiracy theories, recently sold a book about his time at the Justice Department, according to three people familiar with the deal. This will be Barr’s first book and he started writing it within the last two months, according to …

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Trump Appointee Who Didn’t “Give A Shit” About The Hatch Act Gets Sanctioned For Violating The Hatch Act

The Hill reports: The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) on Tuesday announced a settlement with former Housing and Urban Development (HUD) official Lynne Patton, a political appointee and ally of former President Trump’s, for a Hatch Act violation over a video she produced for last year’s Republican National Convention. As part of the settlement, Patton admitted that she violated the …

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USDA Axes Trump-Era Plan To Cut Food Stamps

CBS News reports: A Trump-era plan to cut food stamps is now off the table after the Biden administration said it is abandoning a previous plan to tighten work requirements for working-age adults without children. Those restrictions were projected to deny federal food assistance benefits to 700,000 adults, a proposal that had had drawn strong condemnation from anti-hunger advocates. USDA …

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REPORT: Navarro Funneled COVID Millions To Cronies

ProPublica reports: A top adviser to former President Donald Trump pressured agency officials to reward politically connected or otherwise untested companies with hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts as part of a chaotic response to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the early findings of an inquiry led by House Democrats. Peter Navarro, who served as Trump’s deputy assistant and …

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