- ‘The boss is not going to leave’: See what ex-Trump attorney told prosecutors CNN
- ‘The boss is not going to leave’: Proffer videos show ex-Trump lawyers telling Georgia prosecutors about efforts to overturn 2020 election ABC News
- Ex-Trump allies detail efforts to overturn election in Georgia plea videos The Washington Post
- Lawyer Says Trump Aide Told Her After 2020 Election: ‘The Boss Is Not Going to Leave’ The New York Times
- Trump aide told Georgia election case defendant ‘the boss is not going to leave’ White House: Report New York Post
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: exTrump
Ex-Trump press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders reveals cancer diagnosis
Former Trump White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders revealed Friday that she had undergone surgery in Arkansas to treat thyroid cancer.
“During a check-up earlier this month, my doctor ordered a biopsy on an area of concern in my neck and the test revealed that I had thyroid cancer,” the 40-year-old Sanders, the Republican candidate for governor of the state, said in a statement.
“Today, I underwent a successful surgery to remove my thyroid and surrounding lymph nodes and by the grace of God I am now cancer-free,” she added.
Dr. John Sims, a surgeon at CARTI Cancer Center in Little Rock, said Sanders was treated for Stage I papillary thyroid carcinoma.
“Sarah is currently recovering from surgery in which we removed her thyroid gland and some of the surrounding lymph nodes in her neck,” he said in a statement.
“The surgery went extremely well, and I expect her to be back on her feet even within the next 24 hours.”
He added that her diagnosis is “the most common type of thyroid cancer and has an excellent prognosis.”
“While she will need adjuvant treatment with radioactive iodine, as well as continued long-term follow-up, I think it’s fair to say she’s now cancer free, and I don’t anticipate any of this slowing her down,” Dr. Sims said.
Meanwhile, the mother of three vowed to get back on the campaign trail “soon.”
“I want to thank the Arkansas doctors and nurses for their world-class care, as well as my family and friends for their love, prayers, and support,” she said in her statement.
“I look forward to returning to the campaign trail soon. This experience has been a reminder that whatever battle you may be facing, don’t lose heart. As governor, I will never quit fighting for the people of our great state.”
Sanders, the daughter of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, is favored to defeat Democrat Chris Jones in the Nov. 8 election. Arkansas has not elected a Democratic governor since 2010.
Sanders joined the Trump White House in 2017 after working as a senior adviser to the Republican’s successful 2016 presidential campaign. She initially served as deputy press secretary under Sean Spicer and took over as press secretary in July 2017. She stayed in the role for two years before stepping down in July 2019 and later went to work for Fox News as a contributor.
Ex-Trump aide sued by government for his White House emails
The lawsuit charges the economic adviser “is wrongfully retaining Presidential records that are the property of the United States, and which constitute part of the permanent historical record of the prior administration.”
A lawyer for Navarro did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
The court filing says the controversy surrounding Navarro’s emails began when a congressional committee reviewing how the government handled the coronavirus pandemic discovered that Navarro, who often played an outsize role in the Trump White House’s public discussion of the pandemic response, had used a private email account to conduct government work. From the National Archives’ point of view, those emails were official government records.
After more than a month of discussions about the subject with government lawyers, Navarro’s attorney told officials that they estimated between 200 and 250 documents could be considered presidential records.
Separately, Navarro has sparred repeatedly with government officials since his arrest in June on charges of contempt of Congress for allegedly refusing to provide testimony or documents to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.
Navarro publicly denounced the agents who arrested him, and is due back in court next week as he prepares for a November trial on contempt charges. Another former Trump adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, was convicted last month in a similar case.
Trial expected to begin for ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon
WASHINGTON (AP) — Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday in the trial of Steve Bannon, a one-time adviser to former President Donald Trump who faces criminal contempt of Congress charges after refusing for months to cooperate with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.
Bannon is charged in Washington’s federal court with defying a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee that sought his records and testimony. He was indicted in November on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress, one month after the Justice Department received a congressional referral. Each count carries a minimum of 30 days of jail and as long as a year behind bars.
The trial follows a flurry of activity in the case since July 9. Over a week ago, the former White House strategist notified the committee that he is now willing to testify. His lawyer, Robert Costello, said the change was because Trump has waived his executive privilege claim from preventing the testimony.
Bannon, 68, had been one of the most prominent of the Trump-allied holdouts in refusing to testify before the committee. He has argued that his testimony is protected by Trump’s claim of executive privilege.
Trump has repeatedly asserted executive privilege — even as a former president — to try to block witness testimony and the release of White House documents. The Supreme Court in January ruled against Trump’s efforts to stop the National Archives from cooperating with the committee after a lower court judge noted, in part, “Presidents are not kings.”
The committee has also noted that Trump fired Bannon from the White House in 2017 and Bannon was thus a private citizen when he was consulting with the then-president in the run-up to the riot.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols declined motions to delay the trial in separate hearings last week, including Thursday when Bannon’s lawyers raised concerns about a CNN report that has since aired about their client and what they said were prejudicial comments made during a hearing last week held by the House committee investigating the riot.
“I am cognizant of current concerns about publicity and bias and whether we can seat a jury that is going to be appropriate and fair, but as I said before, I believe the appropriate course is to go through the voir dire process,” Nichols said Thursday, referring to the questioning of individual jurors before they are selected. The judge said he intended to get a jury that “is going to be appropriate, fair and unbiased.”
While the judge allowed the trial to move forward, Nichols left open the possibility that the letters about Trump waiving his privilege and Bannon’s offer to cooperate with the committee could be referenced at trial, saying the information was “at least potentially relevant” to Bannon’s defense.
Roscoe Howard Jr., the former U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., said the best case for Bannon is if the information on his cooperation offer gets to the jury. Even if it does, claiming that executive privilege stopped him from cooperating earlier will be a hard argument to make because Bannon refused to answer the subpoena, Howard said.
“You have to show up to invoke the privilege claim. You can’t phone it in,” he said.
Ex-Trump aide Steve Bannon offers to testify in U.S. probe of Jan. 6 riot
WASHINGTON, July 10 (Reuters) – Donald Trump’s former close adviser Steve Bannon has told the congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that he is ready to testify, a change of heart days before he is due to be tried for contempt of Congress.
In a letter to the committee seen by Reuters, Bannon’s lawyer Robert Costello, wrote to say the former president would waive the claim of executive privilege which Bannon had cited in refusing to appear before the committee. read more
Bannon, a prominent figure in right-wing media circles who served as Trump’s chief strategist in 2017, is scheduled to go on trial July 18 on two criminal contempt charges for refusing to testify or provide documents. read more
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The letter from the lawyer said Bannon preferred to testify publicly, but Representative Zoe Lofgren, a committee Democrat, told CNN that ordinarily the committee takes a deposition behind closed doors.
A video of Steve Bannon, talk show host and former White House advisor to former President Donald Trump, is seen displayed on a screen, during the third of eight planned public hearings of the U.S. House Select Committee to investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. June 16, 2022. REUTERS/Sarah Silbiger/File Photo
“This goes on for hour after hour after hour. We want to get all our questions answered. And you can’t do that in a live format,” Lofgren said. “There are many questions that we have for him.”
Throughout the House of Representatives committee hearings, videotaped snippets of closed-door testimony by witnesses under oath have been shown to the public.
Trump has been chafing that none of his supporters have testified in his defense at the committee hearings which, separate from the trial, are focused on the attack by Trump supporters seeking to stop the certification in Congress of Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden in the November 2020 election.
In a letter from Trump to Bannon seen by Reuters, Trump said he was waiving executive privilege because he “watched how unfairly you and others have been treated.”
The House panel is due to hold public hearings on Tuesday and Thursday this week. read more
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Reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Howard Goller
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Ex-Trump staff discussing ways to stop him, former spokeswoman Grisham says
Stephanie Grisham, former White House Press Secretary under former President Donald Trump, arrives for a meeting at the O’Neill House office building with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol on the eve of the first anniversary of the January 6, 2021 attack in Washington, U.S., January 5, 2022. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo
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WASHINGTON, Jan 6 (Reuters) – Former White House aide Stephanie Grisham, a one-time loyalist but now sharp critic of former President Donald Trump, said on Thursday she is planning talks next week with ex-Trump staffers to discuss working against him in the next round of elections.
In interviews with CNN and Reuters, Grisham said she was compiling a group that so far includes about 15 former Trump White House staff. They include Olivia Troye, a former national security aide to former Vice President Mike Pence, and Anthony Scaramucci, a New York businessman who had a brief stint as Trump’s communications director, she told Reuters.
What influence the group could have is unclear. Trump is supporting a handpicked group of Republican loyalists for seats in the November 2022 congressional elections and pondering another run for the White House in 2024.
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More than half of Republicans believe the election was “stolen” from Trump, despite the lack of any evidence, Reuters polling shows.
“I can say that next week, a group of former Trump staff are going to come together, administration officials are going to come together, and we’re going to talk about how we can formally do some things to try and stop him, and also the extremism, that kind of violence and rhetoric that has been talked about and continues to divide our country,” Grisham told CNN.
Grisham testified on Wednesday night before the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. She did not elaborate on her testimony.
Grisham resigned as Melania Trump’s chief of staff on the night of Jan. 6, 2021, after Trump’s refusal to work to halt the protesters’ attack on the Capitol that day. She had also been White House press secretary for a year.
Even if no criminal charges are brought against Trump, Grisham said, the committee “is going to show you know, irrefutable proof that he was behind this.”
Grisham released a tell-all book last year that criticized Trump and his entourage, “I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House.”
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Reporting by Doina Chiacu and Steve Holland; Editing by Heather Timmons and Grant McCool
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Biden administration tells ex-Trump officials to resign from military academy advisory boards or be dismissed
The officials asked to resign include prominent former Trump officials like former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, former senior counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway and former national security adviser H.R. McMaster. They were appointed to the advisory boards of the Naval Academy, Air Force Academy and West Point respectively.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday afternoon confirmed the request had been made.
“The President’s objective is what any president’s objective is — to ensure you have nominees and people serving on these boards who are qualified to serve on them and who are aligned with your values. And so yes, that was an ask that was made,” Psaki told reporters at a White House briefing.
Psaki added: “I will let others evaluate whether they think Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer and others were qualified, or not political, to serve on these boards, but the President’s qualification requirements are not your party registration, they are whether you’re qualified to serve and whether you’re aligned with the values of this administration.”
Other more prominent names include Heidi Stirrup, the former White House liaison to the Justice Department who was banned from entering the building after she attempted to access sensitive information about possible election fraud in December 2020, and retired Col. Douglas Macgregor, a former ambassador pick and Pentagon official with a history of controversial comments. The duo were appointed to the boards of the Air Force Academy and West Point.
Other appointees who have been asked to resign are Michael Wynne, who was appointed to the board of the Air Force Academy; retired Gen. John Keane, Meaghan Mobbs, and David Urban appointed to the board of West Point; and John Coale and Russell Vought, Trump’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget, appointed to the Naval Academy’s board.
The dismissal of Trump officials from the military advisory boards comes after the Pentagon has recently restarted its other advisory boards after removing hundreds of appointees from other boards in February. In November, just months ahead of when he was set to leave office, Trump dismissed several longstanding members of the Defense Policy Board ahead of their terms being up.
The military academy advisory boards, according to the Air Force Academy website, were established to oversee the “morale, discipline, social climate, curriculum, instruction, physical equipment, fiscal affairs, academic methods, and other matters” relating to the nation’s military academies. The board for each academy meets several times a year and its members provide independent advice and recommendations to the President.
The members typically serve out three-year terms. At least one Trump appointee, Vought, has signaled he will not resign.
“No. It’s a three year term,” Vought tweeted, attaching an image of the letter requesting his resignation.
When reached for comment by CNN, Spicer said he intends to respond to the resignation demand on his show. Wynne told CNN “it was an honor to be on the board,” and said he was disappointed he wasn’t asked to remain on the board.
“Very disappointed to see the Biden administration not honor a previous president’s appointment to the board of visitors, which has been the tradition for years,” Keane told CNN.
In a statement, Mobbs said she would not be resigning.
“Frankly, I find this whole act unconscionable and not all in the spirit by which this Administration promised to govern. President Biden ran on a supposed platform of unity but his actions speak directly to the contrary. Apparently, unity is only for those who conform,” Mobbs said. “When I joined the Board under the Trump Administration, there were holdovers from the Obama Administration. They were not terminated but instead served alongside Trump appointees. This mix of perspective, experience, and belief systems ensured there was diversity – a value the Democratic party purports to hold above all else.”
In response to CNN, Urban said Mobbs’ statement reflected his views.
CNN has also reached out to Conway, Macgregor, Stirrup, Coale and McMaster for comment.
CNN’s KFile has previously reported that Macgregor, who served in the Trump administration as a senior Pentagon adviser and was nominated to the West Point board late last year, disparaged immigrants, refugees and minorities and spread conspiracy theories that the Biden administration was replacing White people of European ancestry.