“Hunter Biden’s former business partner sent him an email in 2017 saying he did not disclose on his tax returns $400,000 in income from the Ukrainian natural gas company where he sat on the board,” according to a copy of the email obtained by NBC News.
“The message from Eric Schwerin, then president of Rosemont Seneca Partners, says Hunter Biden would need to ‘amend’ his 2014 returns to reflect the ‘unreported’ income, according to the copy of the email.”
The Supreme Court has denied Texas’ last-ditch effort to overturn the election results in four battleground states that voted for Joe Biden.
The court’s unsigned order was short: “Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot.”
New York Times: “The move, coupled with a one-sentence order on Tuesday turning away a similar request from Pennsylvania Republicans, signaled that the court refused to be drawn into President Trump’s losing campaign to overturn the results of the election last month.”
“House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was among 20 new names added Friday to an amicus brief filed by a majority of House Republicans in support of a Texas-led effort with the Supreme Court to effectively reverse the results of the presidential election,” the Washington Post reports.
“With the names added Friday, 126 of the 196 House GOP members have now signed onto the brief.”
For members: Why the GOP Has Given Up on Democracy
BuzzFeed News: “Since May, a number of Facebook employees have quit, saying they were ashamed of the impact the company was having on the world or worried that the company’s inaction in moderating hate and misinformation had led to political interference, division, and bloodshed. Others have been fired for documenting instances of preferential treatment of influential conservative pages that repeatedly spread false information.”
“But in just the past few weeks, at least four people involved in critical integrity work related to reducing violence and incitement, crafting policy to reduce hate speech, and tracking content that breaks Facebook’s rules have left the company. In farewell posts obtained by BuzzFeed News, each person expressed concerns about the company’s approach to handling US political content and hate speech, and called out Facebook leadership for its unwillingness to be more proactive about reducing hate, incitement, and false content.”
“White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Friday told Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, to submit his resignation if the agency does not clear the nation’s first coronavirus vaccine by day’s end,” the Washington Post reports.
Washington Post: “In conjunction with the Democratic National Committee, the campaign has spent about $5 million in the runoff elections, and is paying for about 50 staff members to continue working in the state. The campaign has also shifted about a dozen data analytics staff members to help the two Democratic Senate candidates.”
“Monday’s Electoral College vote formalizing Joe Biden’s presidential win will be the culmination of months of orchestration by the Biden campaign to ensure minimum drama — and maximum coronavirus safety,” Politico reports.
“Interviews with 25 Democratic electors in five states Biden flipped, as well as Biden campaign and state party officials, reveal a determination to leave as little as possible to chance — a significant change for a process that has typically been a postelection afterthought.”
“The Senate passed a $741 billion defense authorization bill on Friday, sending it to President Trump with veto-proof majorities in both chambers of Congress and effectively daring him to make good on his threat to scuttle the legislation,” the Washington Post reports.
Axios: “Overriding Trump’s veto would serve as a rare Republican rebuke to the president in his last weeks in office.”
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) was offered — and declined — the Ambassadorship to the Bahamas, the New Yorker reports.
“The Food and Drug Administration is accelerating the timeline for issuing an emergency authorization for Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, aiming to issue it by Friday evening after planning as recently as Thursday night to finalize the move on Saturday,” the New York Times reports.
“A fallout between President Trump and Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, led to the breakthrough that resulted in the Morocco-Israel normalization deal,” Axios reports.
“Inhofe is one of Trump’s closest allies in the Senate and has asked the president over the last two years not to recognize Moroccan sovereignty in the Western Sahara… Relations between Trump and Inhofe soured about a week ago over the National Defense Authorization Act.”
“Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are currently in the final stages of purchasing a plot of land in an exclusive enclave nicknamed ‘billionaire bunker,’ near Miami Beach, Florida,” CNN reports.
“The lot, which is just shy of two acres and sits on Biscayne Bay, was listed at $31.8 million and the couple offered somewhere in the range of $28-30 million.”
“It’s not just the safety that drew Trump to Florida, it is the potential political opportunities of the state itself… Trump has not ruled out a near-future run for office, nor has she publicly denied she has political ambitions of her own.”
“President Trump lashed out anew at the Food and Drug Administration in a Friday morning tweet, attacking the agency’s commissioner, Dr. Stephen Hahn, by name for not approving a Covid-19 vaccine faster,” the New York Times reports.
Vox: 9 things that could go wrong with the new vaccines.
“Indoor dining will once again be barred in New York City restaurants starting on Monday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Friday, a significant reversal of the city’s reopening that comes as officials try to halt the escalation of a second wave of the coronavirus,” the New York Times reports.
Andrew Cuomo: “Hospitalizations have not stabilized, and with a rising infection rate and NYC’s density, this means that indoor dining is too high of a risk.”
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will share the “Person of the Year” designation by Time magazine for 2020.
The Wall Street Journal picks Fight House: Rivalries in the White House from Truman to Trump by Tevi Troy as one of the best political books of the year.
“Leaking reached new levels during the Trump administration, but strategic and malicious leaking is an old White House tradition. Leaking, as Mr. Troy explains it, can be a kind of art form. The trick is to avoid blame for the leak and, if possible, to make it look as though somebody else did it.”
“I was delighted to learn, for example, that when leakers in the first Bush administration wanted to speak to the press without authorization, they would drop in unusual words—’inchoate,’ say—in order to sound like the aforementioned Darman, then Treasury secretary. In the Reagan White House, leakers tried to implicate Chief of Staff Donald Regan by using the phrase ‘and the like,’ a favorite of Regan. Mr. Troy’s book, at once a serious history of executive-branch policymaking and a droll chronicle of White House bickering and backstabbing, may be just the thing to read at a time when so little in our politics is either serious or funny.”
“Congressional leaders are making a last-ditch attempt to cobble together a stimulus deal before Congress adjourns for the year, hoping to quickly reach agreement on a relief package that’s eluded them for months,” Politico reports.
“Committee leaders in both chambers have begun negotiating noncontroversial aspects of the relief package, including small business funding, according to three senior aides familiar with the talks. Democrats insist this effort is in concert with the bipartisan Senate push to reach a deal and not in lieu of their proposal. Top Republicans, though, are much more pessimistic on the bipartisan group reaching consensus on the major remaining sticking points.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
