| The House Intelligence Committee said it will launch an investigation into claims that President Trump told Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about a Trump Tower project in Moscow. BuzzFeed News reported Thursday that, in 2017, Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie about when negotiations to build the tower in the Russian capital ended. It’s also claimed that Cohen was ordered to cover up Trump’s involvement in the project. “The allegation that the president of the United States may have suborned perjury before our committee in an effort to curtail the investigation and cover up his business dealings with Russia is among the most serious to date,” said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff. “We will do what’s necessary to find out if it’s true.” Cohen has already pleaded guilty to lying to House and Senate Intelligence committees about the Moscow deal. |
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| The Democratic National Committee claims it was hit by a Russian cyberattack in the days after the 2018 midterm elections. According to court documents filed late Thursday, the DNC says “dozens of DNC email addresses were targeted in a spear-phishing campaign” on Nov. 14, but that the attack appears to have failed to gain access to any information. The committee believes the attack was part of a phishing campaign that cybersecurity firms previously linked to a Russian hacking group known as Cozy Bear. Cozy Bear is linked to Russian intelligence and is said to have broken into the DNC’s systems ahead of the 2016 presidential election. “Therefore, it is probable that Russian intelligence again attempted to unlawfully infiltrate DNC computers in November 2018,” the court filing states. The complaint takes aim at Donald Trump, saying they believe the Trump campaign is part of a broad conspiracy with the Russians. |
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| Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla, says he’s going to let 7 percent of the electric-car company’s employees go. In a letter to employees, Musk said preliminary fourth-quarter results show earnings will fall from the previous quarter, and added: “As we all experienced first-hand, last year was the most challenging in Tesla’s history.” Despite cutting thousands of jobs, Musk said he wants to increase production of its Model 3 sedan. “Tesla will need to make these cuts while increasing the Model 3 production rate and making many manufacturing engineering improvements in the coming months,” he said, adding: “There isn’t any other way.” Earlier this month, Tesla cut U.S. prices for all of its vehicles. |
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| Donald Trump wrote “naughty and nice” lists to help him find out which members of White House staff were leaking to the press, Axios reports. Cliff Sims, a former White House communications aide who reportedly won Trump’s trust, says the president summoned him into a private study in the White House to help him get to the bottom of the constant leaks that were plaguing the administration in 2017. In his new book, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House, Sims writes: “‘Give me their names,’ [Trump] said, his eyes narrowing. ‘I want these people out of here. I’m going to take care of this. We’re going to get rid of all the snakes, even the bottom-feeders.’” Sims goes on to say Trump wrote two lists on a “stiff card” with one list of people he could trust and another of people he wanted to let go. There were roughly 10 people on what became known as his “Enemies List,” but most of the targets kept their jobs. |
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| Perdue Foods is recalling 68,244 pounds of chicken nuggets after some diners tucked in to find chunks of wood inside them. “The problem was discovered when the firm received three consumer complaints that wood was found in the product,” the Food Safety and Inspection Service said in a statement, but it added that there have been no reports of illness or injury from the contaminated nugs. It’s Perdue’s ready-to-eat gluten-free nuggets that appear to have been affected—specifically those which have an expiration date of Oct. 25, 2019. “These products should be thrown away or returned to the place of purchase,” the Food Safety and Inspection Service said. |
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| Vice President Mike Pence has complained that he finds the criticism of his wife’s decision to teach at an elementary school that explicitly bans LGBTQ employees and students “deeply offensive.” “My wife and I have been in the public eye for quite a while, we’re used to the criticism,” Pence said in an interview with EWTN, a network that offers “news from a Catholic perspective.” But he added that “to see major news organizations attacking Christian education is deeply offensive to us.” Karen Pence is teaching twice a week at the Immanuel Christian School in Springfield, Virginia, which forbids employees and students from “heterosexual activity outside of marriage... homosexual or lesbian sexual activity, polygamy, transgender identity, any other violation of the unique roles of male and female,” among other sexual activities. Pence added: “We have a rich tradition in America of Christian education, and frankly religious education broadly defined... We’ll let the other critics roll off our back, but this criticism of Christian education in America should stop.” |
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| A New Jersey priest has been arrested on allegations that he sexually abused a girl for three years, starting when she was just 14 years old. The alleged crime is said to have taken place between 1990 and 1994 while Father Thomas P. Ganley, now 63, worked at Saint Cecelia Church in Woodbridge. Ganley, who’s now posted at Saint Philip and Saint James Church in Phillipsburg, has been charged with one count of aggravated sexual assault in the first degree, and two counts of sexual assault in the second degree, NBC News reports. He has a court appearance scheduled for Friday. It’s the first criminal case brought by the state’s new Clergy Abuse Task Force, which was formed following the damning Pennsylvania grand jury report that concluded 300 priests in the state had sexually abused more than 1,000 children. Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said: “This case illustrates that we are prepared to move swiftly to investigate allegations, and where there are viable criminal charges, to pursue those charges.” |
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| First lady Melania Trump flew on a government jet Thursday for a weekend trip to Florida just hours after President Donald Trump called off House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s flight to visit U.S. troops in Afghanistan with other members of Congress. Trump said he had decided to postpone Pelosi’s travel plans due to the government shutdown right before she and other members of a congressional delegation were scheduled to depart on a military plane. As that news broke, the president’s wife reportedly was headed to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to board an Air Force jet. According to CNBC, she arrived in Florida at the Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago resort while the president will remain in Washington. The first lady's flight was reportedly previously scheduled and officially designated EXEC1F, a call-sign known to be used when members of a president’s family are aboard a military plane. |
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| Tamika Mallory, co-president of the embattled Women’s March, wouldn’t say in an excerpt aired Thursday from an interview with Firing Line’s Margaret Hoover if Israel had a right to exist. She said that “the Palestinians are native to the land,” and that “there are people who have a number of sort of ideologies around why the Jewish people feel this should be their land. I’m not Jewish. So for me to speak to that is not fair.” Later, Mallory, who said “everyone has a right to exist,” stressed that she was “speaking of the people who we know are being brutally oppressed in this moment.” The exchange came after Mallory repeated Tuesday that she would not condemn the remarks of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who she’d previously called “the GOAT,” or greatest of all time, and who has called Jews “termites,” wished death on homosexuals, and praised Adolf Hitler. The Democratic National Committee became the latest group to ends its affiliation with the March—which will hold its third annual event Saturday, after a year in which several local affiliates also separated themselves from the national group. Mallory’s full interview with Hoover will air on PBS stations beginning Friday. |
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