Section: TPM (USA)
Where Things Stand: This Should Change The Narrative
But it probably won’t. I wrote last week about my fascination with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s months-long crusade to use the media to pressure the secretary of state to run for Senate in Kansas. McConnell views Mike Pompeo as the ideal candidate: He has enough establishment support to unite the party in the key state...
Trump Fires Another Watchdog: State Department IG Gets The Boot
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has fired the State Department’s inspector general, an Obama administration appointee whose office was critical of alleged political bias in the agency’s management. The ouster is the latest in a series of moves against independent executive branch watchdogs who have found fault with the Trump...
When You Just Can’t Stop Cooperating
Remember Sam Patten? He’s the American political consultant who pleaded guilty in August 2018 to violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and who admitted in his plea to illegally helping a Ukrainian politician client of Paul Manafort’s secure tickets to Trump’s inauguration. Patten has since been sentenced, and, according...
NYT: Skadden Paid $11M To Settle Claim Arising From Manafort’s Ukraine Work
The New York Times has an answer to a mystery first launched by Ukrainian financial disclosures last week. White shoe law firm Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom paid out at least $11 million to settle allegations stemming from an operation imprisoned former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort ran to whitewash the Ukrainian...
Coronavirus Overwhelms Ukraine’s Hospitals Even With Low Number Of Cases
CHERNIVTSI, Ukraine (AP) — Medical workers in homemade protective masks and suits, with plastic bags over their shoes. A hospital intended for 150 coronavirus patients now holding 250. A lack of filtration systems that forces autopsies to be done outside, under the trees, instead of in the hospital morgue. Ukraine’s troubled health care...
Schiff Releases 57 Transcripts From House Intel Trump-Russia Probe
Fifty-seven interview transcripts from the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into allegations of collusion between President Trump and the Russian government during the 2016 election were released to the public on Thursday, after a year-and-a-half long redaction process in which the White House demanded to review and redact the...
Where Things Stand: Breaking Their Own Rules
During the Passover, first daughter Ivanka Trump was shredded in the media for traveling to her father’s resort to celebrate, breaking the White House’s own “essential travel” rules. While President Trump has spent the last month essentially advocating against the rules his own White House established amid a pandemic, it is still...
Obama Called GOP’s Bogus Biden-Ukraine Probe Part Of ‘Russian Disinformation’
A highly politicized GOP Senate investigation into discredited allegations against Joe Biden in Ukraine constitute efforts to boost Russia-sourced disinformation, President Obama’s office said in a March 2020 letter. The former president’s office sent the letter to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in response to...
Schrodinger’s Trump
One of the enduring features of the early Obama administration and the 2008/2009 global financial crisis was how quickly the Republican party pivoted to being the chief critic of efforts to clean up the mess their incumbent President and party had in many respects created. Suddenly the GOP barely knew George W. Bush and the 43rd President was...
Barr Defends Trump’s Firing Of Intel IG, Says POTUS Wants ‘Responsible’ Watchdogs
On Thursday night, Attorney General Bill Barr backed President Donald Trump’s decision to oust Michael Atkinson, the inspector general for the intelligence community, who submitted a whistleblower complaint that eventually led to Trump’s impeachment. “I think the President did the right thing in removing Atkinson,” Barr told Fox News...
