Much of Trump’s 2020 infrastructure, established solely around the cause-célèbre of President Trump and his reelection, has not made the jump to the President’s post-election crusade to overturn his loss. Instead, that space is being filled by the President himself and a rag-tag band of allies.
Want Giuliani’s Velvet Rope COVID Treatment? Good Luck.
Hospitals around the country are carefully rationing the treatments for COVID-19 that have been given to President Trump and those in his inner circle, which remain in very short supply as case counts in the U.S. continue to climb.
Continue reading “Want Giuliani’s Velvet Rope COVID Treatment? Good Luck.”
Trump Is Having A Meltdown About Being Kept In The Dark About Hunter Biden Probe
President Donald Trump is fuming that he apparently didn’t know about ongoing federal investigations involving Hunter Biden that pre-date last month’s general election. The President had been hoping for months that a splashy public investigation of Hunter Biden would give his flailing reelection campaign a boost.
Trump’s meltdown over the investigations, which have been kept quiet for years, comes after the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday night that Attorney General Bill Barr had known about investigations involving Hunter Biden’s business and financial dealings since at least this spring and had worked to keep them out of public view in an effort to avoid appearing to impact the outcome of the Nov. 3 presidential election. The probe, which began in 2018, predates Barr’s tenure as attorney general.
Continue reading “Trump Is Having A Meltdown About Being Kept In The Dark About Hunter Biden Probe”
Health Secretary Predicts First COVID Vaccinations Could Start Early Next Week
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar had some good news regarding the COVID-19 vaccine on Friday morning.
Continue reading “Health Secretary Predicts First COVID Vaccinations Could Start Early Next Week”
Manhattan Prosecutor Bears Down On Trump
State prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office have issued subpoenas to President Trump’s insurance broker and lender, the New York Times reports.
The Number Of Democratic Socialists In The House Will Soon Double. But The Movement Scored Its Biggest Victories Down Ballot
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. We are running a series of articles on progressive victories that came out of the 2020 election at the state and local level.
While Democrats debate whether the party has moved too far to the left or not far enough, Democratic Socialists of America — the nation’s largest socialist organization — scored its biggest victories in this year’s election cycle. There are currently 71 DSA members holding public office. This year, one was defeated for reelection and two did not run for reelection.
Another 33 DSAers were elected this year for the first time, bringing the total to 101 when the new winners take office in January. This is greater than at any time since about 1912, when the Socialist Party had a strong foothold in both urban and rural America. Most of the socialists who have recently been elected to office represent safe blue areas, but they have also made inroads in purple areas, including Montana, Indiana, North Dakota, Texas and Tennessee. DSA also spearheaded several impressive ballot measure victories around progressive causes like the minimum wage, rent control and universal pre-school.
Federal Government Executes Man Who Committed Murder When He Was 18
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — The Trump administration Thursday carried out its ninth federal execution of the year in what has been a first series of executions during a presidential lame-duck period in 130 years, putting to death a Texas street-gang member in the slayings of a religious couple from Iowa more than two decades ago.
Four more federal executions, including one Friday, are planned in the weeks before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration. One was carried out in late November.
The case of Brandon Bernard, who received a lethal injection of phenobarbital at a U.S. prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, was a rare execution of a person who was in his teens when his crime was committed.
Several high-profile figures, including reality TV star Kim Kardashian West, had appealed to President Donald Trump to commute Bernard’s sentence to life in prison.
With witnesses looking on from behind a glass barrier separating them from a pale-green death chamber, the 40-year-old Bernard was pronounced dead at 9:27 p.m. Eastern time.
He directed his last words to the family of the couple he played a role in killing, speaking with striking calm for someone who knew he was about to die.
“I’m sorry,” he said, lifting his head and looking at witness-room windows. “That’s the only words that I can say that completely capture how I feel now and how I felt that day.”
As he spoke, he showed no outward signs of fear or distress, speaking lucidly and naturally. He spoke for more than three minutes, saying he had been waiting for this chance to say he was sorry — not only to the victims’ family, but also for the pain he caused his own family.
Referring to his part in the killing, he said: “I wish I could take it all back, but I can’t.”
Bernard was 18 when he and four other teenagers abducted and robbed Todd and Stacie Bagley on their way from a Sunday service in Killeen, Texas, during which Bernard doused their car with lighter fluid and set it on fire with their bodies in the back trunk.
Federal executions were resumed by Trump in July after a 17-year hiatus despite coronavirus outbreak in U.S. prisons.
Todd Bagley’s mother, Georgia, spoke to reporters within 30 minutes of the execution, saying she wanted to thank Trump, Attorney General William Barr and others at the Justice Department.
“Without this process,” she said, reading from a statement, “my family would not have the closure needed to move on in life.” She called the killings a “senseless act of unnecessary evil.”
But she stopped reading from the prepared text and became emotional when she spoke about the apologies from Bernard before he died Friday and from an accomplice, Christopher Vialva, the ringleader of the group who shot the Bagley’s in the head before the car was burned. He was executed in September.
“The apology and remorse … helped very much heal my heart,” she said, beginning to cry and then recomposing herself. “I can very much say: I forgive them.”
Earlier inside the death chamber, Bernard lay on a cross-shaped gurney with IV lines running into both arms. He looked back when a U.S. marshal picked up a phone and asked if there were any reasons not to proceed. Bernard reacted calmly as the marshall put down the phone and said the execution could proceed.
Bernard didn’t exhibit the labored breathing and constant twitching of others executed previously had. A minute after the lethal injection, his eyes slowly closed and he barely moved again.
About 20 minutes later, faint white blotches appeared on his skin and someone entered from a chamber door, listened to his heart, felt for a pulse, then walked out. Seconds later, an official said Bernard was dead.
Alfred Bourgeois, a 56-year-old Louisiana truck driver, is set to die Friday for killing his 2-year-old daughter by repeatedly slamming her head into a truck’s windows and dashboard. Bourgeois’ lawyers alleged he was intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for the death penalty, but several courts said evidence didn’t support that claim.
Before Bernard’s execution, Kardashian West tweeted that she’d spoken to him earlier: “Hardest call I’ve ever had. Brandon, selfless as always, was focused on his family and making sure they are ok. He told me not to cry because our fight isn’t over.”
Just before the execution was scheduled, Bernard’s lawyers filed papers with the Supreme Court seeking to halt the execution, but the high court denied the request, clearing the way for the execution to proceed.
Bernard had been crocheting in prison and even launched a death-row crocheting group in which inmates have shared patterns for making sweaters, blankets and hats, said Ashley Kincaid Eve, an anti-death penalty activist.
Federal executions during a presidential transfer of power also are rare, especially during a transition from a death-penalty proponent to a president-elect like Biden opposed to capital punishment. The last time executions occurred in a lame-duck period was when Grover Cleveland was president in the 1890s.
Defense attorneys have argued in court and in a petition for clemency from Trump that Bernard was a low-ranking member of the group. They say both Bagleys were likely dead before Bernard set the car on fire, a claim that conflicts with government testimony at trial.
The case prompted calls for Trump to intervene, including from one prosecutor at his 2000 trial who now says racial bias may have influenced the nearly all-white jury’s imposition of a death sentence against Bernard, who is Black. Several jurors have also since said publicly that they regret not opting for life in prison instead.
The teenagers approached the Bagleys in the afternoon on June 21, 1999, and asked them for a lift after they stopped at a convenience store — planning all along to rob the couple. After the Bagleys agreed, Vialva, the oldest of the group at 19, pulled a gun and forced them into the trunk.
The Bagleys, both of whom were in their 20s, spoke through an opening in the back seat and urged their kidnappers to accept Jesus as they drove around for hours trying to use the Bagleys’ ATM cards. After the teens pulled to the side of the road, Vialva walked to the back and shot the Bagleys in the head.
The central question in the decision to sentence Bernard to death was whether Vialva’s gunshots or the fire set by Bernard killed the Bagleys.
Trial evidence showed Todd Bagley likely died instantly. But a government expert said Stacie Bagley had soot in her airway, indicating smoke inhalation and not the gunshot killed her. Defense attorneys have said that assertion wasn’t proven. They’ve also said Bernard believed both Bagleys were dead and that he feared the consequences of refusing the order of the higher ranking Vialva to burn the car to destroy evidence.
The first series of federal executions over the summer were of white men. Four of the five inmates set to die before Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration are Black men. The fifth is a white woman who would be the first female inmate executed by the federal government in nearly six decades.
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Utah Senator Suggests Latino And Women’s History Museums Wouldn’t Fit With Smithsonian ‘Brand’
Republican Sen. Mike Lee (UT) on Thursday blocked bipartisan legislation to establish a National Museum of the American Latino and an American Women’s History Museum as part of the Smithsonian Institution, declaring amid calls to recognize the history of both demographics, that the nation does not need “separate but equal museums.”
“The last thing we need is to further divide an already divided nation with an array of segregated, separate-but-equal museums for hyphenated identity groups,” Lee said.
The comments follow decades-long efforts to establish a National Museum of the American Latino in legislation that had passed the House by voice vote in July. The Senate Rules Committee also unanimously approved the legislation, which was co-sponsored by GOP Sen. John Cornyn (TX).
“At this moment in the history of our diverse nation, we need our federal government and the Smithsonian Institution itself to pull us closer together and not further apart,” the Utah lawmaker added.
While Lee appeared to suggest that a museum dedicated to the history of one group would somehow alienate others, saying the nation “should not have an exclusive museum” dedicated to the contributions or legacy of any one group, an underlying theme for him seemed to be that it didn’t rise to the occasion of being worth American tax dollars.
“There is a brand that comes along with the Smithsonian Institution and a lot of money that’s taken from the American people in the form of tax revenue,” Lee said. “And so as a result of that, the Smithsonian Institution has a unique role.”
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) fired back at Lee for attempting to block the recognition of Latino Americans in the patchwork of American history.
“One Republican colleague from Utah stands in the way of the hopes and dreams and aspirations of seeing Americans of Latino descent having their dreams fulfilled and being recognized,” said Menendez, who has long advocated for the museum.
“I see them as part of the collective history mosaic that is coming together under the Smithsonian,” Menendez said.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins (ME) questioned whether Lee had made similar efforts to block the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in 2016 and decried Lee’s effort to block legislation to establish the American Women’s History Museum, citing the centennial of women’s suffrage. The House had voted in February to pass legislation to create a women’s history museum.
“Surely in a year where we’re celebrating the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage, this is the time, this is the moment to finally pass the legislation unanimously recommended by an independent commission to establish an American Women’s History museum in our nation’s capital,” Collins said, adding that she would “not give up the fight.”
GOP Guv. Slams Other Republicans For Refusing To Wear Masks: ‘Don’t Act Like A Bunch Of Children’
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) on Thursday blasted his fellow Republicans over their refusal to wear masks after New Hampshire state Rep. Dick Hinch (R) died from COVID-19.
Report: Barr Tried To Keep Hunter Biden Investigations Quiet Before Election
Attorney General Bill Barr has known about investigations involving Hunter Biden’s business and financial dealings since at least this spring, the Wall Street Journal reported late Thursday.
A person familiar with the matter told the publication that the top DOJ official had made efforts to keep the investigations from public view during the campaigns leading up to last month’s election even as President Donald Trump and his Republican allies urged Barr to investigate the younger Biden.
Trump’s obsession with digging up dirt on Hunter Biden leading up to the 2020 campaign, including a July 2019 call to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into helping, ultimately led to the President’s impeachment.
It remains unclear exactly when or how Barr learned of the inquiries, but investigators — likely quite aware of the potential impact of their work and the President’s interest in fodder to smear his opponent — tried to keep the cases at a very low profile by taking few obvious steps in the weeks before the November election according to the Journal. The probe, which began in 2018, predates Barr’s tenure as attorney general.
In October, as Biden gained momentum in the competing election campaigns, Trump’s Republican allies in Congress dug into a pressure campaign, urging Barr to appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden.
But the efforts to keep the investigations quiet to avoid appearing to impact the election’s outcome accord with Justice Department guidelines.
Federal investigators served a subpoena on Hunter Biden seeking detailed financial information in connection with a criminal tax investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware in one investigation that made headlines earlier this week.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan had also been looking at Hunter Biden’s business and financial dealings, as part of a broader criminal investigation. Two sources told the Journal that the broader investigation had been going on for at least a year, adding that Hunter Biden was not a specific target for criminal prosecution.
Neither of the investigations implicates President-elect Joe Biden, the Journal noted. The Biden transition team released a statement saying that President-elect was proud of his son, who had survived “vicious personal attacks of recent months, only to emerge stronger.”
Hunter Biden said in a statement Wednesday that he took the matter very seriously but remained “confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors.”
The revelation that Barr reportedly knew of the investigations, comes as President Trump told reporters when asked whether he still had confidence in Barr that he would need to revisit the question “a number of weeks from now.”
Trump’s recent anger at his typically dutiful ally, came after the attorney general told the Associated Press in an interview that the Justice Department “not seen fraud on a scale” that would overturn the results of the recent presidential election.
On Thursday night, that anger bubbled over as Trump tweeted his frustration over the investigation which had unwound quietly ahead of the election. “Why didn’t the Fake News Media, the FBI and the DOJ report the Biden matter BEFORE the Election,” he wrote.
Early Friday, Trump doubled down on his attacks of Barr in another tweet, saying he “predicted Biden corruption,” amid news of the investigations that have not drawn any such conclusions. He further asserted that Barr “perhaps knew of the corruption during the impeachment hoax?”
A Bloomberg News report on Thursday indicated that Barr had no intentions for a premature departure, unless Trump fires him during his final days in office.