Source: Business Insider

Republican Rep. Devin Nunes of California told the local radio station KMJNOW on Friday that he had tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

Nunes is one of more than 40 members of Congress who have contracted the virus, which the World Health Organization declared a pandemic in March. Overall, since the start of the pandemic, 11 senators and 34 House members have tested positive for the virus or for antibodies, according to CNN.

The US currently has the highest number of cases of any country in the world, with more than 15 million confirmed cases and over 293,000 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Nunes' announcement of a positive diagnosis comes after the lawmaker spent months downplaying the severity of the pandemic and once suggested officials should "stop looking at the death counters" and "talk about how we can keep as many people employed as possible."



Read more: https://www.businessinsider.com/republican-rep-devin-nunes-tests-positive-for-covid-19-2020-12

Source: Detroit News

Lansing — The Michigan Supreme Court declined Friday to consider an appeal from President Donald Trump's campaign over the access provided to election challengers at TCF Center, where Detroit's absentee ballots were countered.

"The application for leave to appeal the Dec. 4, 2020, order of the Court of Appeals is considered, and it is denied, because we are not persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by this Court," the Michigan Supreme Court ordered in what appeared to be a unanimous decision.

The Republican president's campaign had asked Michigan's high court to find Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson violated the state Constitution and election law because challengers' observations of the absentee ballot counting and ballot drop boxes were allegedly inhibited by local clerks and, by extension, Benson.

Officials at the TCF Center in Detroit have repeatedly said challengers were given adequate access to the counting process.

Read more: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2020/12/11/michigan-supreme-court-denies-trump-case-over-election-challengers/6511829002/

Source: Dallas News

Texas, accused of ‘seditious abuse’ of courts in trying to overturn Biden’s election, hits back at Supreme Court

WASHINGTON — In response to scathing rebuttals from four states whose elections he’s trying to overturn, Texas Attorney Ken Paxton urged the U.S. Supreme Court to realize that Texas has nowhere else to turn to remedy cheating that led to President Donald Trump’s defeat.

“Texas does not ask this Court to reelect President Trump, and Texas does not seek to disenfranchise the majority of Defendant States’ voters,” Texas argued in its filing. Rather, it says, “Texas asks this Court to recognize the obvious fact that Defendant States’ maladministration of the 2020 election makes it impossible to know which candidate garnered the majority of lawful votes.”

...

The four states whose elections Texas is trying to overturn filed scathing rebuttals at the Supreme Court.

“Texas’s effort to get this Court to pick the next President has no basis in law or fact. The Court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated,” Pennsylvania argued in its motion, deriding Texas’ “bogus claims” of cheating, fraud and ballot manipulation.

Read more: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2020/12/11/texas-accused-of-seditious-abuse-of-courts-in-trying-to-overturn-bidens-election-hits-back-at-supreme-court/

Source: Axios

A fallout between President Trump and Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, led to the breakthrough that resulted in the Morocco-Israel normalization deal, sources briefed on the matter told me.

Why it matters: Inhofe is Washington's most avid supporter of the Polisario Front — a Sahrawi rebel national liberation movement aiming to end Moroccan occupation of the Western Sahara. He has travelled many times to Algeria for meetings with Polisario leaders.

...

Kushner, Berkowitz and Bourita effectively reached a deal a little more than a year ago, but Inhofe joined with then-national security adviser John Bolton to vehemently oppose it. Trump, who was close to Inhofe and needed his political support, agreed not to move forward with the deal.

Driving the news: Relations between Trump and Inhofe soured about a week ago over the National Defense Authorization Act, a key military funding bill that Congress has passed every year since 1961, sources who were involved in the matter told me.

Read more: https://www.axios.com/trump-morocco-israel-inhofe-cc6e66a4-cd1b-4c08-9126-0c3e608b38fb.html

Source: The Hill


President Trump's lawyers asked a court Thursday to pause a lawsuit from a woman who accused him of rape while they appeal a judge's order prohibiting the Department of Justice from representing the president in the case.

Judge Lewis Kaplan, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, ruled in October that the allegations against Trump in the defamation suit have nothing to do with the president's official conduct and that the case could proceed against him in his personal capacity.

E. Jean Carroll, a former magazine columnist, published her account last year of Trump sexually assaulting her in a New York City department store in the 1990s. After Trump publicly denied the allegation and accused her of being a liar, she filed a defamation suit against him.

In a court filing submitted late Thursday, Trump's lawyers argued that the proceedings at the district court should be put on hold while they ask an appeals court to decide whether the Justice Department can represent the president. Both Trump's personal lawyers and the DOJ have appealed Kaplan's order.

Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/529805-trump-seeks-to-halt-rape-accusers-lawsuit-amid-doj-appeal

Source: WSJ

Attorney General William Barr has known about a disparate set of investigations involving Hunter Biden’s business and financial dealings since at least this spring, a person familiar with the matter said, and worked to avoid their public disclosure during the heated election campaign.

Republicans and President Trump have pressed Mr. Barr for months to pursue Mr. Biden, especially as his father, Joe Biden, gained momentum in his ultimately successful bid for president. Mr. Barr has staved off pressure from Republicans in Congress for information into the investigations, the person said, without elaborating on his actions.

One investigation became public this week after federal investigators served a subpoena on Hunter Biden. The subpoena sought detailed financial information in connection with a criminal tax investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware, according to people familiar with the matter.

Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/barr-worked-to-keep-hunter-biden-probes-from-public-view-during-election-11607653188?reflink=desktopwebshare_twitter

Source: The Hill

Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark), a Republican with his eye on a potential White House run in 2024, on Thursday said a special counsel should be appointed to investigate Hunter Biden, President-elect Joe Biden’s son.

Cotton alleged during a Fox News interview that Hunter Biden appears to be the subject of a far-ranging investigation and cited allegations of securities fraud, money laundering and “a crooked hospital deal with Jim Biden, Joe Biden’s brother” in Western Pennsylvania.

“These investigations span multiple jurisdictions and if Joe Biden becomes president then all of those prosecutors are in line to be fired next month. If there were ever circumstances that created a conflict of interest and called for a special counsel, I think those circumstances are present here,” Cotton said.

“The Biden family has been trading on Joe Biden’s public office for fifty years,” he added. “Do we really think that that will change if Joe Biden becomes president, the highest office in the land?”

Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/529643-cotton-calls-for-special-counsel-to-investigate-hunter-biden

Source: WSJ

The chairman of a Democratic-led House oversight subcommittee accused the Trump administration of concealing evidence based on the testimony of a career employee at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who said political appointees interfered in the agency’s work to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

Dr. Charlotte Kent, who oversees the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, told House oversight subcommittee staff that she was instructed to delete an Aug. 8 email that showed a political appointee tried to meddle in the report, according to a Dec. 10 letter from Rep. James Clyburn (D., S.C.), chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

Dr. Kent said her supervisor told her to delete the message, and that she understood the direction came from CDC Director Robert Redfield, according to the letter sent to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Dr. Redfield.

The email from Dr. Paul Alexander, a former scientific adviser within HHS, demanded that CDC insert new language in a previously published scientific report on coronavirus risks to children or “pull it down and stop all reports immediately,” according to the letter. Federal employees must generally preserve documents under the Federal Records Act.

Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/house-panel-accuses-trump-administration-of-concealing-evidence-in-cdc-coronavirus-probe-11607614200?mod=e2twp

Source: The Hill

President Trump on Tuesday tapped former aide Kellyanne Conway and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to government jobs in the final days of his administration.

The White House said in a press release that Conway will be appointed to the board of visitors of the U.S. Air Force Academy, and Chao, who is also married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), will be a member of the board of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Lynn Friess, the spouse of major Republican donor Foster Friess, will also be a member of the board of trustees at the Kennedy Center, and Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, is being appointed to the Library of Congress trust fund board.

The appointments were announced in a press release that included 26 appointments to government postings at places such as the National Cancer Advisory Board and Puerto Rico’s Financial Oversight and Management Board, among others.

Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/529377-trump-taps-conway-chao-to-government-posts-in-waning-days-of

Source: Detroit Free Press

Republican leaders of the Michigan House of Representatives have removed Rep. Cynthia Johnson, D-Detroit, from her committee assignments in response to comments she made in a video she posted Tuesday on Facebook.

House Speaker Lee Chatfield, R-Levering, and Speaker-elect Jason Wentworth, R-Clare, issued a joint news release Wednesday stating Johnson made threats in the video.

At the end of a roughly three-minute video posted Tuesday evening to Facebook, Johnson referenced law enforcement tracking down someone who made a threat against her before issuing what she called a warning.

"So, this is just a warning to you Trumpers. Be careful. Walk lightly. We ain’t playing with you. Enough of the shenanigans. Enough is enough," Johnson states in the video.

Read more: https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/12/09/house-gop-says-detroit-democrat-made-threats-facebook-video/3865617001/