Tag Archives: Trump administration

Axios reports: Two senior members of former President Trump’s White House coronavirus task force accused former Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar in a CNN Special Report, broadcast Sunday, of political interference. Former CDC chief Robert Redfield told CNN’s Sanjay Gupta what he was “most offended by was the calls” from Azar’s office “that wanted me to pressure and …

The Associated Press reports: Suspected Russian hackers gained access to email accounts belonging to the Trump administration’s head of the Department of Homeland Security and members of the department’s cybersecurity staff whose jobs included hunting threats from foreign countries, The Associated Press has learned. The intelligence value of the hacking of then-acting Secretary Chad Wolf and his staff is not …

Axios reports: Former White House coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx told CNN that she believes that the U.S. coronavirus deaths that occurred after the first surge of cases “could have been mitigated or decreased substantially.” “I look at it this way: There were about 100,000 deaths that came from that original surge,” said Birx, who served under the Trump administration. “All …

Axios reports: Former CDC Director Robert Redfield told CNN on Friday that he believes the coronavirus “escaped” from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and that it was spreading as early as September or October of 2019 — though he stressed that it was his “opinion.” It’s a stunning assertion by the man who led the U.S. government’s public health agency …

Politico reports: Seven House committees launched a sweeping investigation Thursday into the federal government’s handling of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol — fueled by thousands of Donald Trump supporters who backed his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen — and the intelligence and security breakdowns that preceded it. In letters to 16 agencies across the Executive …

Reuters reports: The United States squandered both money and lives in its response to the coronavirus pandemic, and it could have avoided nearly 400,000 deaths with a more effective health strategy and trimmed federal spending by hundreds of billions of dollars while still supporting those who needed it. That is the conclusion of a group of research papers released at …

CNBC reports: Moncef Slaoui, who was chief scientist for the U.S government’s Covid vaccine development effort Operation Warp Speed during the Trump administration, was fired as Galvani Bioelectronics chairman over “substantiated” sexual harassment allegations by a woman, it was announced Wednesday. Slaoui’s dismissal by the board of Galvani majority shareholder GlaxoSmithKline came after GSK in February was sent a letter …

From the government watchdog group CREW: Betsy DeVos reported at least $225 million — and potentially well over $414 million — in outside income while working as Donald Trump’s education secretary, according to an analysis of DeVos’s financial disclosures by CREW. It is impossible to know the exact amount because DeVos’s income is reported in broad ranges, but we do …

Vanity Fair reports: The quest to get on the White House list—which was closely guarded by Meadows’s office and a small cadre of NSC officials—attracted an array of supplicants. They ranged from the representatives of cabinet secretaries to young White House desk jockeys to those prepared to leverage their connections to President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. …

The Washington Post reports: Federal health officials have identified several controversial pandemic recommendations released during the Donald Trump administration that they say were “not primarily authored” by staff and don’t reflect the best scientific evidence, based on a review ordered by its new director. The review identified three documents that had already been removed from the agency’s website: One, released …

Vice News reports: One of the most senior Cabinet officials in the Trump administration, Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, has told VICE on Showtime that he believes the speech made by former President Donald Trump on the morning of January 6 was responsible for causing the mob to violently attack the Capitol later that day. Trump installed Miller after …

NBC News reports: The Biden administration notified the Supreme Court on Tuesday that it will no longer defend a government policy seeking to impose new limits on the admission of immigrants considered likely to become overly dependent on government benefits. The Department of Homeland Security announced in 2019 that it would expand the definition of “public charge” to be applied …

The Washington Post reports: President Biden is directing the Education Department to review a controversial regulation governing how colleges and universities handle allegations of sexual assault, with an eye toward unraveling a new system put into place by former education secretary Betsy DeVos. The DeVos regulation released last May spells out due process rights for those accused of harassment or …

The Washington Post reports: Prosecutors said they were seeking to jail him pending trial on grounds that he is charged with assaulting an officer. Federal Defender Shelli Peterson said Klein was retaining private counsel who would oppose that request, arguing that Klein’s charges do not amount to a crime of violence barring his release under appropriate conditions to ensure public …

Politico reports: The FBI on Thursday arrested Federico Klein, a former State Department aide, on charges related to the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, marking the first known instance of an appointee of President Donald Trump facing criminal prosecution in connection with the attempt to block Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s victory. Klein, 42, was taken into …

Politico reports: Senior Pentagon officials took more than three hours to approve sending National Guard troops to the Capitol as it was being violently breached on Jan. 6, even as troops were loaded on buses and ready to go, the commanding general of the D.C. National Guard testified Wednesday. William Walker told senators that senior Pentagon leaders did not approve …

Reuters reports: Jeff Sessions, the top official behind former President Donald Trump’s “zero-tolerance” border strategy, says it was “unfortunate” that migrant children and parents were not reunited quickly after being split apart at the U.S.-Mexico border. “It was unfortunate, very unfortunate, that somehow the government was not able to manage those children in a way that they could be reunited …

NBC News reports: As president, Donald Trump railed against the “deep state” working within the federal government to undermine his presidency. But before he left office, he quietly embedded dozens of his own political appointees in career government positions and appointed other loyalists to influential boards and groups — one of the final, but possibly most enduring, ways he attempted …

NBC News reports: The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus topped 500,000 on Sunday,according to an NBC News tally — a milestone that underscores the grave threat the virus still poses nationwide even as more Americans get vaccinated. The coronavirus has claimed the lives of more than 2,462,000 people worldwide, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The death …

The New York Times reports: In the final months of the Trump administration, senior Justice Department officials repeatedly sought to block federal prosecutors in Manhattan from taking a crucial step in their investigation into Rudolph W. Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine, delaying a search warrant for some of Mr. Giuliani’s electronic records, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The …