A judge sentenced a Texas woman to five years in prison for voting illegally in the 2016 presidential election while she was on supervised release from a 2011 fraud conviction, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports.
Archives for March 2018
Russian Ambassador Complains of ‘Toxic’ Relations
Russia’s ambassador to the United States has told NBC News he can’t remember a period of worse relations between Washington and Moscow, after both countries expelled dozens of diplomats following the poisoning of a former Russian spy.
Said Anatoly Antonin: “It seems to me that atmosphere in Washington is poisoned — it’s a toxic atmosphere. It depends upon us to decide whether we are in Cold War or not. But … I don’t remember such a bad shape of our relations.”
Congresswoman Kept Top Staffer After Learning of Threats
Rep. Elizabeth Esty (D-CT) reportedly kept her chief of staff employed in her office for three months after she learned that he had allegedly threatened a former Esty staffer whom he had dated, the Washington Post reports.
Said Tony Baker, in a voicemail message to Anna Kain: “You better fucking reply to me or I wil fucking kill you.”
Pruitt Got Special Rental Deal from Lobbyist Friend
Bloomberg: “Administrator Scott Pruitt’s lease at a Washington apartment owned by a lobbyist friend allowed him to pay $50 a night for a single bedroom — but only on the nights when he actually slept there. White House officials are growing dismayed about the questions surrounding Pruitt’s living arrangement, including his initial inability to produce any documentation about his lease or his actual payments, according to three officials.”
“In all, Pruitt paid $6,100 to use the room for roughly six months.”
Mueller Pushed for Gates’ Help on Collusion
“Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team last year made clear it wanted former Trump campaign deputy Rick Gates’ help, not so much against his former business partner Paul Manafort, but with its central mission: investigating the Trump campaign’s contact with the Russians,” CNN reports.
“Mueller’s team alleges that Gates was in contact with a close colleague of Manafort’s who worked for a Russian intelligence agency — and that Gates knew of the spy service ties in September and October 2016, while he worked on the Trump campaign. Gates would have to talk about the communication with the man if prosecutors wanted.”
Trump Falsely Claims Wall Construction Has Begun
President Trump “repeated a lie that construction on his long-promised wall at the US-Mexico border had started,” BuzzFeed News reports.
Said Trump: “We started building our wall, I’m so proud of it. We started. We have $1.6 billion. You saw the pictures yesterday. I said what a thing of beauty.”
[alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]The pictures he tweeted were actually from work in 2009.[/alert]
Trump Tells Aides Not to Talk About Russia
President Trump’s national security advisers “spent months trying to convince him to sign off on a plan to supply new U.S. weapons to Ukraine to aid in the country’s fight against Russian-backed separatists,” NBC News reports.
“Yet when the president finally authorized the major policy shift, he told his aides not to publicly tout his decision, officials said. Doing so, Trump argued, might agitate Russian President Vladimir Putin.”
Said one White House official: “He doesn’t want us to bring it up. It is not something he wants to talk about.”
Mueller Investigating Russian Contacts at GOP Convention
“Investigators probing whether Donald Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with Russia have been questioning witnesses about events at the 2016 Republican National Convention,” Reuters reports.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team “has been asking about a convention-related event attended by both Russia’s U.S. ambassador and Jeff Sessions, the first U.S. senator to support Trump and now his attorney general… Another issue Mueller’s team has been asking about is how and why Republican Party platform language hostile to Russia was deleted from a section of the document related to Ukraine.”
Sessions Won’t Name Second Special Counsel Yet
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that Utah’s top federal prosecutor, John Huber, “has been examining a cluster of Republican-driven accusations against the FBI and has decided that no second special counsel is needed — at least for now,” CNN reports.
State Senator’s Husband Indicted for Sexual Assault
A grand jury indicted Bryon Hefner, the husband of Massachusetts state Sen. Stanley Rosenberg (D), on multiple charges of sexual assault, criminal lewdness, and distributing nude photographs without consent, the Boston Globe reports.
Walker Reluctantly Calls Two Special Elections
“After a three-month delay, a lightning-quick lawsuit and three orders from as many judges, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) called two special elections Thursday and GOP senators dropped legislation to block the contests,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
“Republican efforts collapsed following a Wednesday ruling by an appellate judge ordering the governor to call the May primary and June general elections. In less than a day, Walker abandoned a state Supreme Court appeal to overturn the ruling and lawmakers in both the Senate and Assembly canceled plans to vote to leave the seats vacant.”
Trump Says U.S. Leaving Syria Soon
President Trump said the United States would leave Syria “very soon” and “let the other people take care of it,” the Washington Examiner reports.
He added: “We’re going to be coming out of there real soon, going back to our country where we belong, where we want to be.”
Swing District Dems Must Be Willing to Work with Trump
A new Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll suggests that Democratic candidates running in swing districts “must express a willingness to work with President Trump when his agenda might help the district.”
The survey also recommends that Democrats “not appear out of sync with what people believe about the economy.”
Axios: “President Trump’s election unleashed the far-left wing of the Democratic Party, but moderate Democrats are the party’s likely path to the majority. This new polling warns Democrats away from campaigning specifically against Trump and, instead, toward embracing the improving economy with a message focused on the middle class.”
Judge Denies Stormy Daniels Attempt to Expedite Case
“A federal judge on Thursday denied a request from Stormy Daniels, who says she was paid to remain silent about an affair with President Trump, to expedite a jury trial in her lawsuit against the president,” the Washington Post reports.
“The request for an expedited jury trial and limited discovery — including a deposition of Trump and his personal attorney, Michael Cohen — was deemed ‘premature and must be denied’ because some questions may wind up being answered by a future petition from Trump and Cohen… The ruling is a temporary setback for Daniels’s case and comes as it is unclear how the high-profile lawsuit will proceed.”
Most Americans Think Trump Will Lose Re-Election
A new CNN poll finds that 54% of Americans think that President Trump will lose his re-election bid in 2020, the exact same number who said Barack Obama would lose the 2012 election at this point in his first term.
Only 40% of Americans think Trump will win in 2020, similar to the 44% who said the same for Obama.
Extra Bonus Quote of the Day
“Be 91 and able to say whatever you want.”
— Former Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), quoted by the Detroit News, on how he gained his Twitter following.
When Fascism Looms
Coming soon: Fascism: A Warning by Madeleine Albright.
House Exodus Gives Democrats a Huge Opportunity
Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “As of this writing, just 379 of 435 House districts will have incumbents running in them this November. That’s the second-lowest total of the post-World War II era.”
“The 56 total open districts include 37 open Republican-held seats and 19 open Democratic seats.”
“Since our last open seat update, the Democratic potential in these seats has grown: It’s possible the Democrats could get a third or more of the way toward flipping the House just through netting gains among the open seats.”
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