White House counselor Kellyanne Conway falsely claimed on Wednesday that Joe Biden had no plan to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Less than a minute later, she claimed to have read Biden’s entire COVID-19 plan.
On Fox News, Conway complained that Democrats had not explained how Biden would address the coronavirus.
“If they’ve got a good idea,” she demanded, “they shouldn’t be sitting ’til November 4th.”
Host Sandra Smith corrected Conway, noting that Biden indeed has a plan.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lashed out at an NPR reporter on Saturday and accused her of lying to him after reports emerged of a heated exchangebetween the two.
“NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly lied to me, twice. First, last month, in setting up our interview and, then again yesterday, in agreeing to have our post-interview conversation off the record,” Pompeo said in a statement released by the State Department.
“It is shameful that this reporter chose to violate the basic rules of journalism and decency,” he continued, calling the incident “another example of how unhinged the media has become in its quest to hurt President Trump and this Administration.” Continue reading.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is under fire after responding to a letter from the House Foreign Affairs Committee requesting State Dept. officials sit for depositions as they build an impeachment case against his boss, President Donald Trump.
Pompeo, currently in Italy with former Trump White House official, conspiracy theorist (and alleged neo-Nazi) Sebastian Gorka, working to subvert more than a dozen CIA and FBI investigations into President Trump, decided strong-arm the Democrats. Attorney General Bill Barr was there last week on the same mission, and it was not his first time doing so.
The Secretary, despite having no legal standing or basis to do so, banned his officials from being deposed. And he falsely accused Democrats of trying to “intimidate” and “bully” State Dept. officials.
The House Oversight and Reform Committee on Monday launched an investigation into Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao over whether she is using her office to benefit herself and her family.
The investigation follows a series of reports alleging that Chao used her role in the Trump administration to boost Foremost Group, a shipping company founded by her father, and initially didn’t divest from stock in a major construction company.
“The Committee is examining your misstatements of fact, your actions that may have benefitted the company in which you continued to hold shares, and your compliance with ethics and financial disclosure requirements,” Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), chairman of the Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, wrote in a letter to Chao requesting documents.
Vice President Pence’s office is engulfed in controversy set off by his two-night stay in Ireland at one of President Trump’s family properties.
Pence stayed at Trump International Golf Links & Hotel in Doonbeg on Ireland’s west coast despite his meetings the same day in Dublin, which is on Ireland’s east side and 182 miles away.
The curious decision also came with a shifting story about why Pence ended up at Trump’s property in Doonbeg.
View the complete September 4 article by Brett Samuels and Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.
Joe Balash, a Trump appointee, had served as assistant secretary for land and minerals management until Aug. 30.Last summer, Scott Pruitt left his job heading the Environmental Protection Agency and within a few months had started consulting for coal magnate Joseph W. Craft III. Three weeks after leaving the Interior Department, energy counselor Vincent DeVito joined Cox Oil Offshore, which operates in the Gulf of Mexico, as its executive vice president and general counsel. Now, Joe Balash — who oversaw oil and gas drilling on federal lands before resigning from Interior on Friday — is joining a foreign oil company that is expanding operations on Alaska’s North Slope.
Balash, who served as the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for land and minerals management for nearly two years, confirmed in a phone interview Tuesday night that he will begin working for the Papua New Guinea-based Oil Search, which is developing one of Alaska’s largest oil prospects in years. On Wednesday, Oil Search officials said he would become senior vice president for external affairs in the company’s Alaska operations. Continue reading “Top Interior official who pushed to expand drilling in Alaska to join oil company there”
Democrats might be focusing on meetings and calls kept off Interior secretary’s official calendarRepublicans on two House committees probing Interior Secretary David Bernhardt acknowledged in a report Thursday that the attorney and former energy lobbyist appeared to have met with the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, a trade group affiliated with a former Bernhardt client.
The joint report from Republican staff on the House Oversight and Reform, and Natural Resources committees also said ethics officials at the Interior Department approved the meeting with the trade group. The report, by acknowledging the meeting, may also indicate where the majority Democrats are focusing their examination into whether Bernhardt kept phone calls and meetings with industry representatives and groups off his public calendar.
Bernhardt, who became secretary in December 2018 after serving as deputy secretary, signed an ethics pledge when he joined the department to recuse himself from meetings with former clients. He listed the U.S. Oil and Gas Association as a client. The group’s website lists the Louisiana association as one of its four divisions.
View the complete August 23 article by Jacob Holzman on The Roll Call website here.
If Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani is to be believed, the U.S. State Department aided his efforts to pressure a foreign government to dig up dirt on Trump’s political enemies, according to a report from ABC News on Thursday.
Giuliani claimed the State Department put Ukrainian official Andriy Yermak “in contact with me.” Giuliani insisted it was the State Department that helped him reach out to Yermak, “Not the other way around.”
Giuliani alleges that he told Yermak, a close ally of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, that the Ukrainian government “should not be cowered [out of] fully investigating serious possible crimes like bribery, extortion, fraud, money laundering and illegal interference in 2016 election.”
View the complete August 22 article by Dan Desai Martin on the National Memo website here.
WASHINGTON — Col. Kathryn A. Spletstoser of the Army says she had returned to her hotel room and was putting on face cream on the night of Dec. 2, 2017, after a full day at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in California, when her boss, Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten, the commander of United States Strategic Command, knocked on her door and said he wanted to talk to her.
The military’s itinerary of General Hyten’s movements that day in Simi Valley, which was viewed by The New York Times, said he was having “executive time.” Colonel Spletstoser said in an interview this week that her boss “sat on the bed in front of the TV and asked me to sit down next to him.”
According to her account, General Hyten reached for her hand. She became alarmed, and stood back up. He stood up too, she said, and pulled her to him and kissed her on the lips while pressing himself against her, then ejaculated, getting semen on his sweatpants and on her yoga pants.
View the complete July 26 article by Helene Cooper on The New York Times website here.
