“White House communications director Alyssa Farah resigned from her post Thursday after three-and-a-half years in the Trump administration,” the Washington Post reports.
“Farah’s departure, with little over a month remaining in President Trump’s administration, amounts to a tacit acknowledgment that — despite his baseless and dangerous claims to the contrary — Trump lost the 2020 election, and much of his team is now pondering their post-White House future.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) has vowed to continue her office’s investigation into President Trump’s businesses that are based in the state, according to Westchester Business Journal.
“The official serving as President Trump’s eyes and ears at the Justice Department has been banned from the building after trying to pressure staffers to give up sensitive information about election fraud and other matters she could relay to the White House,” the AP reports.
“Heidi Stirrup, an ally of top Trump adviser Stephen Miller, was quietly installed at the Justice Department as a White House liaison a few months ago. She was told within the last two weeks to vacate the building after top Justice officials learned of her efforts to collect insider information about ongoing cases and the department’s work on election fraud.”
Prominent California Democratic strategist Nathan Ballard — a longtime friend and adviser to Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) — was arrested and jailed on two felony domestic violence charges that include attempting “to suffocate a child with a pillow,” Politico reports.
Former Trump adviser Roger Stone claimed without evidence that North Korea had interfered in the U.S. presidential election, Newsweek reports.
Said Stone: “I just learned of absolute incontrovertible evidence of North Korean boats delivering ballots through a harbor in Maine, the state of Maine. If this checks out, if law enforcement looked into that and it turned out to be true, it would be proof of foreign involvement in the election.”
“US Postal Service workers likely delivered more than 99.9% of the nation’s mail ballots in-time to be counted,” NBCLX reports.
“However, it also appears the USPS disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters – who mailed legally-cast ballots the week before the election – through substandard performance.”
“NBCLX analyzed election records – as well as postal records obtained through federal court filings – to find out how many ballots, cast the week before the election, were ultimately rejected… But records indicate the figure is likely no more than a few thousand votes in any given state – not enough to change the results of a single battleground in 2020.”
“The second-ranking Senate Democrat threw his support behind a proposal that would force him to give up a powerful subcommittee post overseeing the Pentagon budget, a peace offering amid a heated internal reckoning after the caucus came up short of expectations in a fourth straight election,” the Washington Post reports.
“The potential ascension of Sen. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), the Democratic whip for the past 16 years, to the top post on the Judiciary Committee — as chairman or ranking minority member, depending on the outcome of Georgia’s Jan. 5 Senate elections — set off a broader debate about the power accumulated by senior Democrats.”
The New York Times has a very cool interactive tool.
Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo (D) ruled out leaving her job to become President-elect Joe Biden’s health and human services secretary, seeking to put the idea to rest after a flurry of reports that she was a finalist for the job, WPRI reports.
New York Times: “By late 2018, regular viewers of cable news would come to know Ms. Ellis as a ‘constitutional law attorney’ — her preferred title — who aggressively came to Mr. Trump’s defense as he faced investigation and impeachment. But a review of her professional history, as well as interviews with more than a half-dozen lawyers who have worked with her, show that Ms. Ellis, 36, is not the seasoned constitutional law expert she plays on TV.”
“Since she graduated law school in 2011, nothing in her record in the courtroom — limited mostly to appearances in state court as a prosecutor or as counsel for clients charged with assault, prostitution, theft and domestic abuse — shows any time spent litigating election law cases. She holds herself out as an expert on the Constitution based on her self-published book and her teaching of pre-law classes to undergraduates.”
The Wisconsin Supreme Court won’t hear President Trump’s election lawsuit, likely dooming state court case seeking to overturn loss, the AP reports.
However, the Wisconsin State Journal reports Trump filed his second lawsuit challenging Wisconsin’s election results, this time in federal court.
“Nestled in the mountains along the border between China and Kazakhstan, a remote rural county conceals an appalling secret: a high-tech, rapidly growing mass internment camp for the area’s Muslim minorities, capable of detaining thousands of people,” BuzzFeed News reports.
“The compound in China’s Mongolküre County, which has been under construction since 2017, is mostly hidden from the outside world. It has even been edited out of much of the satellite imagery that appears on China’s Baidu Maps. But through interviews with former detainees and an in-depth architectural analysis of the site’s development, BuzzFeed News can reveal the true nature of this secretive facility — from its crowded cells where detainees were forbidden from gazing out the window to its solitary confinement rooms — and open its walls to scrutiny.”
“President Trump said Thursday he is disappointed in Attorney General Bill Barr for saying that the Justice Department had no uncovered evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election,” The Hill reports.
Said Trump: “He hasn’t done anything, so he hasn’t looked. When he looks he’ll see the kind of evidence that right now you are seeing in the Georgia senate. They are going through hearings right now in Georgia and they are finding tremendous volumes. So, they haven’t looked very hard. Which is a disappointment, to be honest with you, because it’s massive fraud.”
“The Trump administration is racing to sell oil drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before Joe Biden takes office so the president-elect can’t revoke the contracts,” Bloomberg reports.
“The Interior Department announced Thursday it will hold the auction on Jan. 6 — an accelerated timetable meant to ensure the oil and gas leases are formally issued before Biden is sworn in Jan. 20. Biden has vowed to permanently protect the refuge, but formal leases are contracts with the federal government and are difficult to cancel.”
“President-elect Joe Biden has tapped two close allies to oversee his administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic,” Politico reports.
“Transition co-chair and former Obama administration official Jeff Zients is set to serve as the White House’s Covid-19 coordinator and Vivek Murthy, the former U.S. surgeon general under Obama, will return to that role, but with a broader portfolio that will include serving as the top medical expert and public face of the work.”
“President Trump and his family are looking to cement their hold on the Republican Party with a series of moves aimed at putting themselves in influential places inside conservative circles,” Business Insider reports.
“Donald Trump Jr. and his tight-knit team have been pondering taking control of the NRA. Jared Kushner has discussed developing a media outlet. Lara Trump is looking at running for Senate in North Carolina. And even Kimberly Guilfoyle could find a home at NewsMax.”
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.
