sabra
sabra's JournalChristopher Krebs, a fired Trump official, sues the campaign and the lawyer who said he should be ..
Source: NYT
In late November, one day after Christopher Krebs, the former head of the government’s cybersecurity agency, went on “60 Minutes” to dispute President Trump’s claims of fraud in the election, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers threatened him on television.
“He should be drawn and quartered,” the lawyer, Joseph DiGenova, said of Mr. Krebs on the conservative TV outlet Newsmax. “Taken out at dawn and shot.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Krebs, who was fired by Mr. Trump last month, filed a lawsuit against Mr. DiGenova accusing him and the Trump campaign of defamation and the infliction of emotional distress.
The lawsuit, which seeks monetary damages and the removal of the threatening video from the Newsmax archives, also made a far more extraordinary claim: that Mr. Trump, members of his legal team and Newsmax have been engaging in “a calculated and pernicious conspiracy” to defame and injure not just Mr. Krebs but other members of the Republican Party who have stood up against the president’s baseless claims of fraud.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/briefing/chris-krebs-defamation-lawsuit.html
Armed Mexicans Were Smuggled In to Guard Border Wall, Whistle-Blowers Say
Source: NYT
WASHINGTON — Two whistle-blowers have accused contractors building President Trump’s border wall of smuggling armed Mexican security teams into the United States to guard construction sites, even building an illegal dirt road to speed the operation, according to court documents unsealed by a federal judge on Friday.
The two employees, who were both contracted to provide security at the sites, accused the company, Sullivan Land Services Co., or S.L.S. — as well as a subcontractor, Ultimate Concrete of El Paso — of hiring workers who were not vetted by the United States government, overcharging for construction costs and making false statements about those actions.
The whistle-blowers said Ultimate Concrete went so far as to build a dirt road to expedite illegal border crossings to sites in San Diego, using construction vehicles to block security cameras. An unnamed supervisor at the Army Corps of Engineers approved the operation, according to a complaint filed in February and released on Friday.
Mr. Trump may have failed to make good on his 2016 promise to make Mexico pay for the wall, but if the accusations prove true, the administration apparently did rely on Mexican workers for the project, potentially at the expense of Americans.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/us/politics/border-wall-mexico.html
The Pompeos' dinners at the State Department cost taxpayers $43,000, documents show.
Source: NYT
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has spent at least $43,000 in taxpayer funds to host a series of intimate dinners as he mulled his political future, according to a watchdog group that has sued the State Department for details of the events.
Mr. Pompeo and his wife, Susan, invited about 12 guests to each of the so-called Madison Dinners, held in a State Department reception room, according to documents released on Monday by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW. The guest lists for about two dozen of the dinners, held between 2018 and 2020, included American business leaders and conservative political officials.
Shortly before he was fired as the State Department’s inspector general, Steve A. Linick had asked about the Madison Dinners as part of an internal inquiry into possible misuse of official funds.
Mr. Pompeo has denied any wrongdoing and insisted he was merely hosting the same kinds of activities as had secretaries of state in previous administrations.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/12/07/us/joe-biden-trump/the-pompeos-dinners-at-the-state-department-cost-taxpayers-43000-documents-show
Black Michigan lawmaker gets lynching threat after voter fraud hearing
Source: Detroit News
A state representative said she received threatening phone calls after she heard testimony claming voter fraud following President-elect's Joseph Biden Jr.'s 154,000-vote win over President Trump in Michigan.
State Rep. Cynthia Johnson, a Detroit Democrat, posted the messages on her Facebook page on Sunday following a House Oversight Committee meeting in Lansing on Wednesday.
The voicemails were from a woman from Wheeling, Illinois, based on the number associated with the call, which Johnson posted, and two men. The woman criticized how Johnson questioned a witness and told Johnson she was going to share the lawmaker's phone number with "a million people."
A message from one of the men threatened the state representative, including using vile language to describe women and threatened Johnson, who is Black, with being lynched, telling her: "Your time is coming ...from the (expletive) gallows you'll be hanging."
Read more: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2020/12/06/black-michigan-lawmaker-lynching-threat-voter-fraud-hearing/3852794001/
House conservatives urge Trump not to concede and press for floor fight over election loss
Source: CNN
(CNN)President Donald Trump's staunchest defenders on Capitol Hill are urging him not to concede even after President-elect Joe Biden wins the Electoral College vote next week, calling on their party's leader to fight for his unsubstantiated claims of widespread election fraud all the way to the House floor in January.
...
But conservative House Republicans argue that next week doesn't mark the end of Trump's desperate efforts to overturn the election results, which he has failed to do through scores of fruitless lawsuits and brazen efforts to pressure state and local leaders to subvert the will of voters and appoint new slates of electors to the Electoral College. They said that Congress should engage in a full-throated debate over the results in key states because of their allegations of fraud, which have yet to be borne out in court.
Asked if Trump should concede next Monday, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio said bluntly: "No. No way, no way, no way."
"We should still try to figure out exactly what took place here. And as I said that includes, I think, debates on the House floor -- potentially on January 6," Jordan, a trusted Trump confidant, told CNN.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/07/politics/house-republicans-trump-biden/index.html
Lawyers across the country urge bar associations to investigate Trump's legal team
Source: NYT
Arguing that “a license to practice law is not a license to lie,” nearly 1,500 lawyers issued a letter on Monday calling on bar associations across the country to investigate and, if needed, penalize the members of President Trump’s legal team, including the architect of his post-election strategy, Rudolph W. Giuliani.
“It is indefensible for lawyers to falsely proclaim widespread voting fraud, submit a pattern of frivolous court claims and actively seek to undermine citizens’ faith in our election’s integrity,” said the letter, which was signed by several former judges, former federal prosecutors and law professors. “We condemn this conduct without reservation.”
The letter comes as Mr. Trump and his Republican allies have lost or withdrawn from nearly 50 legal challenges to this year’s election, including five in five different states within about three hours on Friday evening alone. Even so, Mr. Trump’s lawyers and those representing his Republican allies have continued filing lawsuits, igniting criticism that they are acting frivolously, even irresponsibly.
In their letter on Monday, the signers noted that Mr. Giuliani — who recently tested positive for Covid-19, according to President Trump — has made baseless arguments in public about “massive fraud” in the election, but has tempered his claims under questioning in court, saying he was not alleging fraud.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/12/07/us/joe-biden-trump#lawyers-across-the-country-urge-bar-associations-to-investigate-trumps-legal-team
Trump admin set to approve Arizona land swap for mine opposed by Native Americans
Source: kfgo/Reuters
(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's outgoing administration is set to approve a controversial land swap later this month that would give Rio Tinto Ltd and partners more than 2,400 acres (9.7 square kilometers) to build an Arizona copper mine, even though the project would destroy religious and cultural sites sacred to Native Americans.
Tribal leaders and other critics allege that the U.S. government is fast-tracking the environmental review process before Trump is replaced by President-elect Joe Biden next month, charges the government and Rio Tinto deny.
The land swap, outlined in U.S. government documents, reflects the tension between the increasing global attention on the rights of indigenous peoples and the need to boost metals production to power electric vehicles and reduce global carbon emissions. Copper is used to make solar panels, wind turbines and EV batteries.
The San Carlos Apache Tribe says the mine, if built, would destroy land considered the home of religious deities and sites used for tribal ceremonies, including one to celebrate teenage girls who have come of age.
Read more: https://kfgo.com/2020/12/07/trump-admin-set-to-approve-arizona-land-swap-for-mine-opposed-by-native-americans/
'Fauci Effect' Drives Record Number Of Medical School Applications
Source: NPR
...
The number of applicants is up 18% this year over last year, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges, or AAMC, driven by the example of medical workers and public health figures such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
"It's unprecedented," said Geoffrey Young, the AAMC's senior director for student affairs and programs, who compares it to another response to a traumatic moment in American history: the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"After [Sept. 11], there was a huge increase in the number of men and women that were entering into the military," Young said. "So far in my lifetime, at least, and for as long as I've been in medical education, that's the only comparison that I could make."
...
Medical school admissions officers have started calling this the Fauci Effect.
Read more: https://www.npr.org/2020/12/07/942170588/fauci-effect-drives-record-number-of-medical-school-applications
Trump's Afghanistan Airstrikes Increased Civilian Deaths by 330 Percent, Brown Costs of War Study...
Source: The Daily Beast
A new study from the Costs of War Project at Brown University finds the civilian death toll in Afghanistan has skyrocketed under President Donald Trump. As Trump relaxed military authorization rules for airstrikes in 2017, “the number of civilians killed by international airstrikes increased about 330 percent from 2016, the last full year of the Obama administration, to 2019, the most recent year for which there is complete data from the United Nations,” writes study architect Neta C. Crawford. Going back even further, between 2016 and 2017, U.S. and Afghan government forces killed “an average of 582 civilians each year,” a number that rose by nearly 95 percent from 2017 to 2019, when an average of 1,134 civilians were killed annually. Even after the U.S.-Taliban peace deal in February, Crawford finds, a decline in U.S. bombing has led to the U.S.-sponsored Afghan Air Force killing 156 people and injuring 193 through September alone, “exceeding its total harm to civilians compared to 2019.”
Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-afghanistan-airstrikes-increased-civilian-deaths-by-330-percent-brown-costs-of-war-study-reports?via=twitter_page
As first lady, Jill Biden plans to push for debt-free community college
Source: Yahoo News
WASHINGTON — Dr. Jill Biden has devoted her life to the field of education, and that won’t change when she becomes first lady next month. According to a source close to her, Biden will advocate for debt-free community college.
Dr. Martha Kanter, who served as under secretary of education in the Obama administration and who has known Biden for more than a decade, said she has worked hard to make debt-free community college a reality.
“That is what she would like to see. We have often talked about community colleges as the unsung heroes,” Kanter said in a conversation with Yahoo News, adding that Biden has strived “to really help people understand the value proposition and the return on investment and why it’s important.”
Along with promoting debt-free community college, Biden plans to champion other aspects of the education platform her husband, President-elect Joe Biden, put forth during his campaign for the White House.
Read more: https://news.yahoo.com/as-first-lady-jill-biden-plans-to-push-for-debtfree-community-college-180034077.html
Profile Information
Member since: Tue Nov 9, 2004, 04:15 PMNumber of posts: 30,406