TV News LIES

A federal judge on Monday dismissed New York’s attorney general and state tax commissioner as defendants in U.S. President Donald Trump’s lawsuit seeking to block a House of Representatives committee from obtaining his New York state tax returns.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington, D.C. said he lacked jurisdiction over Letitia James, the attorney general, and Michael Schmidt, commissioner of the state’s Department of Taxation and Finance. The dismissal was without prejudice.

Nichols said Trump could sue the New York officials in that state.

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The ruling Monday from U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, said Trump could not challenge New York's  Attorney General Letitia James and Tax Commissioner Michael Schmidt in federal court in Washington D.C., where Nichols is based and the suit was filed.

The ruling, however, allows Trump the option of refiling the lawsuit in New York or after Congress makes a formal request for his tax returns, meaning the legal battle is likely to continue.

And it also allowed Trump to continue to challenge the House Ways and Means Committee, one of the three congressional committees allowed by the state law to request his taxes, in hopes of blocking it from requesting his taxes from the state.

A lawyer representing an associate of Rudy Giuliani told The New York Times on Sunday that his client warned Ukrainian officials that the Trump administration would freeze military aid to Ukraine unless Kiev announced an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.

According to the Times, Lev Parnas, who has found himself at the center of the impeachment inquiry into President Trump, is planning to tell House Democrats that he traveled to Ukraine to warn top officials that military aid would be frozen and that Vice President Pence would not attend Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's inauguration were the announcement not made.

Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney is asking to join a pending lawsuit aimed at clarifying whether the House of Representatives can require senior advisers to President Donald Trump to testify in the ongoing impeachment probe related to Ukraine.

Mulvaney’s move in a court filing late Friday night could breathe new life into the suit filed last month by former Deputy National Security Adviser Charles Kupperman.

Kupperman’s attorneys billed the lawsuit not as a challenge to Congress’ authority but as an effort to get a definitive ruling on whether the former Trump aide should comply with a subpoena he received to testify before the House Intelligence Committee or whether to abide by instructions from the president not to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry.

The State Department released military aid to Ukraine before President Trump announced that he had stopped withholding it on Sept. 11, Bloomberg reported reported Saturday, citing five people familiar with the matter.

State Department lawyers had found earlier this year that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and therefore Trump could not legally block the aid, Bloomberg reported, noting that this determination resulted in the release of the $141 million.

OMB spokeswoman Rachel Semmel challenged this narrative in a statement to The Hill.

"At no point was this pause inappropriate, let alone illegal," Semmel said. "OMB has the statutory role to manage budget execution, consistent with the law and the President’s policy agenda."

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Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign thought primarily of one person when it wanted to find out what was going on with WikiLeaks: Roger Stone.

That’s the readout Steve Bannon, the former Trump campaign CEO, delivered during a much-anticipated appearance Friday at Stone’s federal trial on charges that he lied to Congress and intimidated a witness.

"I  think we did, yes,” said Bannon, clad in his trademark all-black outfit complete with multiple shirts, when when asked whether the Trump campaign viewed Stone as its “access point” to WikiLeaks and founder, Julian Assange.

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