Category: Trump Administration

Republican says ‘classified briefings’ revealed that the Capitol riot was ‘much worse than people realized’

AlterNet logo

Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.), the first Republican lawmaker to publicly support efforts to impeach former President Donald Trump, is speaking out about the deadly Capitol riots that erupted on Jan. 6 as lawmakers worked to complete the Electoral College certification.

Although the American public watched in shock and dismay as the disturbing series of events unfolded, Katko insists the riots were far worse than reported on television. During an interview with Syracuse.com, Katko shared details about the day of the deadly U.S. Capitol riots.

While he could not offer specific details about the classified briefings he has received, he did reveal that the incident was far worse than reported. Continue reading.

States report vaccine shortages and cancel appointments

NEW YORK — The push to inoculate Americans against the coronavirus is hitting a roadblock: A number of states are reporting they are running out of vaccine, and tens of thousands of people who managed to get appointments for a first dose are seeing them canceled.

Karen Stachowiak, a first-grade teacher in the Buffalo area, spent almost five hours on the state hot line and website to land an appointment for Wednesday, only to be told it was canceled. The Erie County Health Department said it scratched vaccinations for over 8,000 people in the past few days because of inadequate supply.

“It’s stressful because I was so close. And my other friends that are teachers, they were able to book appointments for last Saturday,” Stachowiak said. “So many people are getting theirs in, and then it’s like, ‘Nope, I’ve got to wait.'” Continue reading.

Trump pardons former congressman whose actions helped prompt earmark ban

Former Republican Reps. Rick Renzi and Robin Hayes also pardoned

Former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham of California became a lead example of how lawmakers can abuse their office for financial gain and prompted lasting changes to the congressional appropriations process when he went to prison 15 years ago for taking $2.4 million in bribes that involved a yacht named the “Duke-Stir.”

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump gave a full pardon to Cunningham and two other former Republican members of Congress as one of his final acts in office, extending a streak of giving a break to politicians who faced corruption charges.

Also on a list of more than 140 pardons and commuted sentences was former Rep. Rick Renzi of Arizona, who was sentenced to two years in prison on 17 charges of fraud, racketeering and public corruption.  Continue reading.

Trump ends it all with one final scam — and it bodes badly for Trumpism’s future

Washington Post logo

For a presidency that’s been awash in grift and deception from the start, you could not have scripted a more fitting end.

In his final moments as president, Donald Trump hailed his massive tax cut for the rich and corporations as one of his leading accomplishments — just after pardoning the chief architect of his “economic populism,” all to protect him from facing charges that he literally stole money from Trump supporters with a two-bit scam promising to help build his border wall.

As Trump prepared to depart from Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday morning, he hailed his presidency as “amazing, by any standard.” Continue reading.

‘None of it has come true!’ Disillusioned QAnon follower admits she’s starting to lose faith

AlterNet logo

Followers of the QAnon conspiracy fiction are facing an inflection point. With President-elect Joe Biden about to be sworn in on Jan. 20, and Donald Trump about to be a former president, their worldview — which imagines Trump as an exalted leader waging a brilliant battle against the deep state and a satanic cult — is about to fall apart.

Many adherents to QAnon may find new ways to rationalize the developments, but Trump’s role as president has been so central to the belief system that his leaving could create some genuinely jarring cognitive dissonance for true believers. Travis View, who hosts a podcast about the conspiracy theory called QAnon Anonymous, shared a video of one woman who is struggling to cope with the realization that the whole story behind QAnon is collapsing.

“So, who else is feeling just a little silly?” she asked. “Just a little… went too far down the rabbit hole, and now I’m back out again. And if nothing happens on the 20th, how many of you are going to feel stupid as hell? I can’t do it anymore!” Continue reading.

Trump leaves White House, promises to be back in ‘some form’

The Hill logo

President Trump on Wednesday bid farewell to supporters and staffers as he departed Washington, D.C., for the final time as president in a precedent-breaking fashion that has become routine throughout his time in office, touting his administration’s agenda and promising to maintain “some form” of public presence.

Trump, speaking from Joint Base Andrews, said he “rebuilt” the U.S. military and boasted about the strength of the economy before the coronavirus pandemic, which he spoke about in the past tense.

He claimed to have ushered in a “medical miracle” with the production of two successful coronavirus vaccines, comments that come as his administration faces widespread scrutiny for its response to the pandemic and the lagged rollout of vaccinations over the last few weeks. Continue reading.

Trump’s ‘American Heroes’ list is truly unhinged

AlterNet logo

On Monday afternoon the White House released an executive order detailing the figures that Trump wants represented in his National Garden of American Heroes.

Trump originally pitched the idea during a July 2020 speech at Mount Rushmore, amid nationwide protests that again brought questions of who should be memorialized through monuments into focus; across the country, statues of slave owners and Confederate officers were vandalized and removed.

In his speech, Trump said that these actions constituted a branch of “cancel culture.”  Continue reading.

FBI Arrests Woman Accused Of Stealing Pelosi Laptop During Riot

Joining the increasing number of Trump supporters arrested after storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, a Pennsylvania woman who allegedly took a laptop belonging to Speaker Nancy Pelosi was arrested Monday. The woman, identified as 22-year-old Riley June Williams, is charged with intentionally entering into a restricted building without lawful authority in addition to disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. While Williams has not yet been charged with theft, the FBI is investigating the matter and what her intentions were.

According to an FBI court filing on Sunday, a witness who self-identified as a former significant other of Williams told the bureau that Williams “intended to send the computer device to a friend in Russia, who then planned to sell the device to SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service.” The witness also directed the agency to a 32-minute video from inside the Capitol posted to ITV News. The viral video has since been removed from YouTube.

The footage from ITV News depicts Williams in a green T-shirt and brown trench coat. Clips of her from the riot went viral for her directing rioters to repeatedly go “up the stairs” toward Pelosi’s office. Referring to Williams, a reporter can also be heard saying that the woman depicted was “disciplined, focused, with a sense of urgency directing people up a staircase.” Continue reading.

Court Voids a ‘Tortured’ Trump Climate Rollback

New York Times logo

The ruling strikes down weak rules for coal-burning power plants and gives the Biden administration a freer hand to impose tighter restrictions.

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Tuesday struck down the Trump administration’s plan to relax restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, paving the way for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to enact new and stronger restrictions on power plants.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia called the Trump administration’s Affordable Clean Energy rule a “fundamental misconstruction” of the nation’s environmental laws, devised through a “tortured series of misreadings” of legal statute.

On the last full day of the Trump presidency, it effectively ended the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to weaken and undermine climate change policies and capped a dismal string of failures in which courts threw out one deregulation after another. Experts have widely described the E.P.A.’s losing streak as one of the worst legal records of the agency in modern history. Continue reading.

House will transmit article of impeachment to Senate on Monday, Schumer says

Axios logo

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced that the House will deliver the article of impeachment against former President Trump for “incitement of insurrection” on Monday.

Why it matters: The Senate is required to begin the impeachment trial at 1 p.m. the day after the article is transmitted. 

  • Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had been pushing for the trial to begin in mid-February to allow senators more time to gather evidence and to give Trump proper due process.
  • Schumer had countered that it would force the Senate to delay other important business, such as passing COVID relief.

What they’re saying: “I’ve heard some of my Republican colleagues argue that this trial would be unconstitutional because Donald Trump is no longer in office. An argument that has been roundly repudiated, debunked by hundreds of constitutional scholars — left, right, and center — and defies basic common sense,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor. Continue reading.