Source: The Hill

Top political officials in the Trump White House tried to block public health guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and to eliminate evidence of political interference into scientists' reports on the coronavirus, according to newly released documents from congressional investigators.

The latest documents from a House committee investigating the former administration's response to the pandemic shed additional light on the efforts of some of former President Trump's political appointees to blunt or even block the messages of career officials because they did not align with Trump's rosy projections.

During a press briefing on Feb. 25, 2020, former senior CDC official Nancy Messonnier warned about the coming dangers of COVID-19. She told reporters that the spread of the coronavirus was essentially inevitable.

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Her statement angered Trump, and the administration subsequently stopped granting CDC officials permission to brief the public. The agency held no briefings from early March until June, during some of the earliest and most confusing times of the pandemic.

Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/581322-documents-reveal-new-details-of-trump-political-interference-in-covid

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Source: JPost

Former US president Donald Trump defended his supporters who during the January 6 Capitol riot threatened to hang then-vice president Mike Pence, Axios reported on Friday.

The comments were made in an interview with Trump in Mar-a-Lago back in March by Jonathan Karl for his new book, Betrayal, which is slated for release next week.

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Regarding the chants to hang Pence, Trump justified it by saying "well, the people were very angry."

When Karl continued by saying "They were saying 'hang Mike Pence,'" Trump replied that "it's common sense."

Read more: https://www.jpost.com/american-politics/donald-trump-defends-calls-to-hang-mike-pence-during-capitol-riot-684830

Source: The Daily Beast

The owner of a private COVID testing clinic turned right-wing provocateur Candace Owens away for spreading COVID misinformation and discouraging mask use, according to a screenshot of an email posted online by Owens.

“We cannot support anyone who has pro-actively worked to make this pandemic worse by spreading misinformation, politicizing and DISCOURAGING the wearing of masks and actively dissuading people from receiving life-saving vaccinations,” the owner wrote.

“My team and myself have worked overtime, to exhaustion, unpaid and underpaid this past year, spending our own capital to ensure that our community remains protected. It would be unfair to them and to the sacrifices we have all made this year to serve you.”

According to previous media reports, the owner, Suzanna Lee, runs a private lab in the ski resort town of Aspen, Colorado. She directed Owens to the only other testing site in the city, but said it had inconsistent wait times for results.



Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/covid-testing-clinic-turns-candace-owens-away-for-spreading-misinformation-discouraging-masks

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https://twitter.com/briantylercohen/status/1433265904075292672

Source: Yahoo/Business Insider

In 2020, Blackwater founder Erik Prince pitched plans to hire Ukrainian combat veterans and buy into the country's military-industrial complex in order to create a $10 billion private army, according to a new Time investigation.

The former Navy SEAL created a "roadmap" detailing his goals to acquire factories in Ukraine that make engines for fighter jets and helicopters as well as build munitions factories in the country and combine Ukraine's top aerospace and aviation firms in order to compete with Boeing and Airbus, the outlet reported.

Prince's full plan, obtained by Time, dates back to June 2020 and is one of his most ambitious ventures in a long career of pursuing and creating controversial defense infrastructure, according to the magazine. Documents obtained by the outlet reveal Prince's coveted venture would have given him a pivotal role in Ukraine's military industry amid it's continuous conflict with neighboring Russia.

Several of the proposals required approval from the Ukrainian government, including one that would create a new private military company staffed by veterans of the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine, according to the magazine.

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/blackwater-founder-erik-prince-had-070738973.html

Source: ESPN

IN THE SPRING of 2008, the NFL was in crisis. A hard-charging United States senator from Pennsylvania named Arlen Specter had launched an investigation into the Spygate scandal. He tried to determine how many games the New England Patriots' illegal videotaping operation of opposing coaches' signals had helped the team win and learn why the NFL, under the orders of commissioner Roger Goodell, had destroyed all evidence of the cheating. By May, Specter -- a former Philadelphia district attorney and a lifelong Eagles fan -- was so angry at the "stonewalling" of his inquiry by the league and the Patriots that he called for an independent investigator, similar to the Mitchell investigation of steroid use in professional baseball. League executives and coaches might be forced to testify under oath. The prospect sent the league, and its new commissioner, into panic. "If it ever got to an investigation," Goodell said at one point, "it would be terrible for the league."

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But there was one man, a mutual friend of Specter and Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who believed that he could make the investigation go away. He was a famous businessman and reality television star who routinely threw money at politicians to try to curry favor, whether it worked or not. He had been a generous political patron of Specter's for two decades.

One day in early 2008, Specter had dinner with the man in Palm Beach at his palatial club, not far from Kraft's Florida home. A phone call followed. The friend offered Specter what the senator felt was tantamount to a bribe: "If you laid off the Patriots, there'd be a lot of money in Palm Beach."

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But recently and unexpectedly, there's been movement in the quest. Follow-up conversations with the people closest to Arlen Specter -- his oldest son, Shanin, a Philadelphia personal injury and medical malpractice attorney, and Charles Robbins, Specter's trusted longtime communications aide and the ghostwriter of two Specter memoirs -- revealed this: The man who dangled campaign cash if Specter were to drop the Spygate inquiry was none other than Donald J. Trump.

Read more: https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/31484993/son-ghostwriter-late-senator-say-trump-intervened-stop-probe-patriots-spygate-scandal

Source: The Hill

Most Republicans believe that Donald Trump is still the rightful president and that the results of the 2020 election were tarnished by illegal voting, according to a new Reuters-Ipsos poll released on Tuesday.

The survey found that just over half of Republicans — 53 percent — think that Trump remains the “true president,” despite losing to President Biden last year by roughly 7 million votes nationally. Even more — 61 percent — believe either strongly or somewhat that the 2020 election was “stolen” from the former president.

Similarly, 56 percent of Republican respondents said that the presidential election had been marred by illegal voting or “election rigging,” a baseless claim that Trump has made repeatedly in the more than six months since Election Day.

The poll, which was conducted from May 17 to 19, underscores the influence that Trump still has over much of the GOP’s electorate. Despite losing reelection in November, he has continued to insist that the election had been rigged against him — a claim that has prompted Republican legislators across the country to rewrite election laws and review the results of the presidential race.

Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/555256-53-percent-of-republicans-say-trump-is-true-president-poll

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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/may/23/georgia-investigators-probing-voter-fraud-claims-f/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=manual&utm_campaign=newsalert&utm_content=newsalert&utm_term=newsalert&bt_ee=OwzWlSrzjYlu9HVD3CsmwWK6OMEDqWYeLp7E6mHBu%2BHuhpd3WKpXHX4U%2BPogFcXt&bt_ts=1621817346797

Georgia Investigators sorting through voter fraud claims find nothing to alter results

Georgia state investigators have long been working, under the radar, at going through scores of voter fraud claims from the Nov. 3 election, and to date have found nothing to change the state’s final 11,779-vote victory by President Biden, officials tell The Washington Times.

The examination is focused on Fulton County, Georgia’s largest, where Mr. Biden rang up a big margin, 72% to 26%, and where Donald Trump supporters claimed the most ballot irregularities.

After six months, a state official told The Times, “We found nothing that would lead us to believe the outcome wasn’t what it was reported as.”

Source: cnbc

Rudy Giuliani is not ‘above the law’ or immune to criminal probes despite acting as Trump attorney, Feds say

Federal prosecutors on Friday said in a new court filing that “the mere fact” that Rudy Giuliani is a lawyer — one who represented former President Donald Trump — does not mean that he is “above the law or immune to a criminal investigation.”

The filing pushed back on efforts by Giuliani’s own attorneys to attack the legality of search warrants for his iCloud account in 2019, and for the former New York City mayor’s Manhattan home and office last month, which were issued as part of an ongoing criminal probe into his activities in and related to Ukraine.

Eighteen electronic devices belonging to Giuliani and to employees of Giuliani Partners were seized in late April as part of those warrants.

Giuliani’s lawyers argue that the search of his iCloud — which was not known to Giuliani for about 18 months — may have violated both his attorney-client privilege, and the right of Trump as president to have his communications with his lawyer protected.

Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/21/trump-lawyer-rudy-giuliani-not-above-the-law-prosecutors-say.html

Source: BuzzFeed News

Ukraine’s former top prosecutor says he believes he was fired in March 2020 over his refusal to open the Hunter Biden investigation that Rudy Giuliani and former president Donald Trump asked for, and which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's top aide had promised to see opened.

Rouslan Riaboshapka told BuzzFeed News in an interview from Strasbourg, France, on Wednesday that the transcript of a July 22, 2019, phone call between Giuliani and Andriy Yermak, published last week by BuzzFeed News, is evidence that he was ousted for political reasons.

“It reveals an important detail,” Riaboshapka said of the transcript. “Yermak promised Giuliani to open an investigation into Hunter Biden,” the son of President Joe Biden. “I didn’t know about the essence of the call. I didn’t know Yermak promised to help Giuliani.”

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“Zelensky asked me several times if there are violations of the law in this case started by [former prosecutor general Yuriy] Lutsenko, violations by Hunter Biden,” Riaboshapka said. “We looked at 15 or 16 cases. We reviewed all of them and didn’t find anything that could be a violation of the law.”

Read more: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christopherm51/ukraine-prosecutor-fired-biden-investigation-giuliani?origin=web-hf