Monday, Apr 23rd
Last update05:20:13 AM GMT
Political Glance
Former CIA operative Valerie Plame says President Donald Trump's plans to pardon I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby send a message "that you can commit crimes against national security and you will be pardoned."
Plame was exposed as a CIA operative during the George W. Bush administration. Libby, who served as Cheney's chief of staff, was convicted in 2007 of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to FBI investigators. No one, however, was charged for the leak.
The president has already signed off on the pardon, which is something he has been considering for several months, sources told ABC News.
The move would mark another controversial pardon for Trump and could raise questions as an increasing number of the president’s political allies have landed themselves in legal jeopardy. The White House has repeatedly said that no pardons are currently on the table for people caught up in the Russia investigation.
TVNL Comment: This is the dress rehearsal for a mass pardon of every criminal in the Trump mob. Wait and see.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office and President Donald Trump’s legal team are now proceeding with strategies that presume a presidential interview will likely not take place as part of the Russia investigation, after months of talks between the two sides collapsed earlier this week, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
On Monday Trump’s lawyers were discussing a possible interview with Mueller's team and had begun to hash out the final sticking points, including the timing, scope and length, according to people familiar with the discussions. One person familiar with the strategy said the president’s lawyers had over the weekend sought to expand his legal team to include individuals who would prepare him for an interview. Another person familiar with the matter, however, said preparations had not yet gone that far.
Federal judicial nominee Wendy Vitter refused to say on Wednesday whether she agreed with the landmark civil rights case that desegregated U.S. public schools.
During her confirmation hearing, Vitter, whom President Donald Trump nominated to become a federal judge in the Eastern District of Louisiana, would not say whether she believed the Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education, was correctly decided when Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) asked her about it.
“I don’t mean to be coy, but I think I get into a difficult area when I start commenting on Supreme Court decisions ― which are correctly decided, which I disagree with. Again, my personal, political or religious views, I would set aside,” she said, adding that she would uphold legal precedent.
A former top EPA staffer says he was pushed out of the agency after he refused to retroactively approve the first-class travel of one of Administrator Scott Pruitt's closest aides.
Kevin Chmielewski, who previously worked as the deputy chief of staff for operations and handled many of Pruitt’s travel and logistics coordination, told Democratic lawmakers this week that Pruitt had requested his aide, Samantha Dravis, the head of EPA's Office of Policy, join him in first class on a return flight from Morocco in December, where Pruitt went to promote U.S. natural gas.
Within minutes of his firing in May, former FBI director James Comey received a call from John Kelly, then the head of the Department of Homeland Security and now the White House chief of staff.
According to Comey’s account, which is set to appear in his highly-anticipated forthcoming memoir, Kelly was “emotional” over the manner in which Comey was let go. The then-FBI Director had reportedly been in California at the time, speaking to FBI agents in Los Angeles, and only found out that he was out of a job when he saw the news break on TV.
A former Trump World Tower doorman with a salacious tale about the man who would be president sold its rights to the parent company of National Enquirer, which promptly killed the story, multiple media outlets reported Thursday.
Dylan Howard, editor-in-chief of the Enquirer, denied the company was "catching and killing" stories to protect Trump, saying the story was not published because the claims could not be proven.
Enquirer staffers, however, told The New Yorker and the Associated Press that reporters were pulled off the story, which claimed Trump had fathered a love-child almost three decades ago. Both outlets acknowledged, however, that they were unable to prove the story.
Page 6 of 158
