Category: Trump Administration

Hours before leaving office, Trump undoes one of the only measures he took to ‘drain the swamp’

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President Trump rescinded an executive order early Wednesday morning that had limited federal administration officials from lobbying the government or working for foreign countries after they leave their posts, undoing one of the few measures he had instituted to fulfill his 2016 campaign promise to “drain the swamp.”

Trump had signed the executive order with much fanfare in an Oval Office ceremony in January 2017.

“Most of the people standing behind me will not be able to go to work” after they leave government, Trump said at the time, flanked by senior aides. Continue reading.

The Financial Minefield Awaiting an Ex-President Trump

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Baseless election fraud claims and the Capitol riot have compounded already-looming threats to his bottom line. And the cash lifelines he once relied on are gone.

Not long after he strides across the White House grounds Wednesday morning for the last time as president, Donald J. Trump will step into a financial minefield that appears to be unlike anything he has faced since his earlier brushes with collapse.

The tax records that he has long fought to keep hidden, revealed in a New York Times investigation last September, detailed his financial challenges:

Many of his resorts were losing millions of dollars a year even before the pandemic struck. Hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, which he personally guaranteed, must be repaid within a few years. He has burned through much of his cash and easy-to-sell assets. And a decade-old I.R.S. audit threatens to cost him more than $100 million to resolve. Continue reading.

Online misinformation about the US election fell 73% after Trump’s social media ban

Online misinformation about the US election fell by as much as 73% in the week after President Trump was booted from Twitter and other social media sites.

According to findings by Zignal Labs, conversations about election fraud fell from 2.5 million mentions to 688,000 across several social media sites. The research house looked at conversations that spanned fraud, hacked machines, tampered ballots, and other conspiracies.

The data indicates that tech platforms’ ability to restrict the spread falsehoods is an effective approach to containing misinformation online. Continue reading.

The Memo: Trump leaves changed nation in his wake

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President Trump’s term of office will end at noon on Wednesday, but his impact will reverberate for years.

To his critics — not all of them Democrats — Trump has been a uniquely destructive figure, traducing every norm, insulting every opponent and sowing havoc across the nation.

Those traits reached their nadir in the Jan. 6 insurrectionary violence at the Capitol, which shocked the world and, soon afterward, made Trump the first president in history to be impeached on two occasions.  Continue reading.

Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo claims Democrats infiltrated Capitol wearing MAGA clothing — and Twitter fires back

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Fox Business news anchor Maria Bartiromo was in for a rude awakening when she attempted to blame the U.S. Capitol riots on Democrats who “infiltrated” the federal building wearing Make America Great Again (MAGA) clothing. 

As she discussed the reports about possible threats of right-wing violence looming over the upcoming presidential inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, she falsely that Democrats participated in the Capitol riots, according to Media Matters.

During the broadcast, Bartiromo said, “A new report says that some far-right protesters have discussed posing as members of the National Guard to infiltrate the inauguration — the way Democrats infiltrated two weeks ago and put on MAGA clothing.” Continue reading.

‘A hack job,’ ‘outright lies’: Trump commission’s ‘1776 Report’ outrages historians

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Two days after historians responded with dismay and anger to the White House’s “1776 Commission” report, the Biden transition team announced President-elect Joe Biden would rescind the commission with an executive order on his first day in office.

The report was intended to a version of U.S. history that would “restor[e] patriotic education” in schools. Historians largely condemned it, saying it was filled with errors and partisan politics.

“It’s a hack job. It’s not a work of history,” American Historical Association executive director James Grossman told The Washington Post. “It’s a work of contentious politics designed to stoke culture wars.” Continue reading.

New report reveals multiple GOP lawmakers sought pardons for their roles in the Capitol riot

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With President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration ceremony less than 24 hours away, reporters have been wondering who President Donald Trump will grant pardons to during his remaining time in the White House. And according to CNN’s sources, Trump has decided against granting them to GOP lawmakers who spoke at or helped put together his “Save America Rally” in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6.

That rally took place before a violent mob of far-right extremists and Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol Building. The U.S. House of Representatives has since indicted Trump on an article of impeachment for “incitement to insurrection.”

In an article published by CNN’s website the day before Biden’s inauguration, reporters Kaitlan Collins, Kevin Liptak and Pamela Brown explain: Continue reading.

Self-styled militia members planned on storming the U.S. Capitol days in advance of Jan. 6 attack, court documents say

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Self-styled militia members from Virginia, Ohio and other states made plans to storm the U.S. Capitol days in advance of the Jan. 6 attack, and then communicated in real time as they breached the building on opposite sides and talked about hunting for lawmakers, according to court documents filed Tuesday.

While authorities have charged more than 100 individuals in the riot, details in the new allegations against three U.S. military veterans offer a disturbing look at what they allegedly said to one another before, during and after the attack — statements that indicate a degree of preparation and determination to rush deep into the halls and tunnels of Congress to make “citizens’ arrests” of elected officials.

U.S. authorities charged an apparent leader of the Oath Keepers extremist group, Thomas Edward Caldwell, 66, of Berryville, Va., in the attack, alleging that the Navy veteran helped organize a ring of dozens who coordinated their movements as they “stormed the castle” to disrupt the confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college victory. Continue reading.

Court dumps Trump ‘Affordable Clean Energy’ plan

Biden’s EPA will rewrite the plan for cutting carbon emissions from power plants, which it already planned to do

An appeals court on Tuesday vacated the Trump administration’s primary environmental regulation for electric utilities, sending it back to the Environmental Protection Agency and accusing the agency of “fundamentally” misunderstanding the law.

The court directed EPA to start over with a new plan to regulate greenhouse emissions under federal law. The agency is required to regulate air pollutants, including greenhouse gases, though the incoming Biden administration had said it would strengthen domestic carbon regulations on the books even before Tuesday’s ruling.

Issued unanimously by a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the ruling is a blow to President Donald Trump on his final full day in office and provides President-elect Joe Biden a legal mandate to draft a new rule to tackle domestic greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector. Continue reading.

‘TRAITORS GET SHOT’ … Alleged Threat to His Kids

A Capitol rioter from Texas threatened to shoot his own children if they snitched on him to the feds … at least according to the FBI.

According to his wife, Guy Reffitt told his son and daughter, “If you turn me in, you’re a traitor and you know what happens to traitors … traitors get shot” … and it’s all spelled out in an affidavit signed by FBI special agent Thomas Ryan.

In the affidavit, obtained by TMZ, the FBI agent says Reffitt was seen in restricted areas of the Capitol during the riots. Reffitt’s accused of unlawful entry and obstruction of justice. Continue reading.