President Donald Trump has been discussing the possibility of issuing pardons for his family members and some close associates, multiple sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.
One source said that the conversations in recent days are within the context of a president who feels embattled, and not because Trump believes he or any family members did anything illegal.
The New York Times first reported the discussions and said Trump has discussed whether to grant pre-emptive pardons for his three eldest children, Eric and Donald Jr., and White House advisor Ivanka Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as well as attorney Rudy Giuliani.
The Times reported that Trump had talked with Mr. Giuliani about pardoning him as recently as last week.
On Monday, former Vice President Joe Biden announced he had selected Neera Tanden, the president of The Center for American Progress and a close friend of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as his choice to head the White House Office of Management and Budget, eliciting criticism from both sides of the political aisle.
Sen. John Cornyn, (R-TX) said Tanden “stands zero chance of being confirmed.”
USA Today noted that Tanden has issued 87,000 tweets since joining Twitter in March 2010. Garrett Ventry, who served as a communications aide to the committee chaired by Sen. Charles Grassley,(R-IA), noted, “Watching @neeratanden delete all her negative tweets about Republican Senators is hilarious. Her nomination is already a funeral.”
“convinced ourselves that the vaccine is fine to take or that it is not something that we’ve experienced in our own history in the black community like the Tuskegee experiment.”
Newly declassified documents from Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe show former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may have set up the 2016 Russia investigation into the Trump campaign. The information was released Tuesday afternoon in a letter written to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham.
“In late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee. The IC does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication,” the letter states. “According to his handwritten notes, former Central Intelligence Agency Director Brennan subsequently briefed President Obama and other senior national security officials on the intelligence, including the ‘alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.’”
Police have arrested a Democratic candidate in South Carolina for allegedly filming a fake kidnapping of herself to win votes while running for mayor, reports The State.
Authorities charged Sabrina Belcher with conspiracy as well as filing a false police report following the fake kidnapping. She was filmed being robbed, beaten and kidnapped on Tuesday in a video on Facebook live and according to The State, Belcher arranged the whole incident in order to get “sympathy” before the election.
“They staged a kidnapping and beating in order to garner publicity, sympathy and votes in the November election,” said police.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany pivoted Friday from a question from PBS Newshour’s Yamiche Alcindor to an attack on CNN.
McEnany began the briefing by outlining the Justice Department’s decision to drop the case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, but Alcindor’s question focused on the press secretary’s comments about Trump from five years earlier.
“Crisis comes to every presidency. We don’t blame them for that. What matters is how they handle it. Donald Trump didn’t create the Coronavirus, but he is the one who called hoax, who eliminated the pandemic response team, and who let the virus spread unchecked across America. Crisis comes to every president. This one failed. Unite The County is responsible for the content of this advertising.”
CLINTON: “You know, this is something that you can’t just insult or pretend is a hoax, despite how hard he’s trying you really do have to listen to people who actually know something. There’s a terrible shortage of testing kits they need to make sure that state and local health departments and governors and mayors and others have the resources they need with hospitalization. So there’s a lot of work to be done and, you know, if he will quit calling it a hoax and actually let the experts do their job, I think that will work out better.”
Here it is, folks. With a pandemic at our doorstep and the country looking to its president for leadership, Trump decides to call the coronavirus… a "hoax."
