In 25th Amendment bid, Pelosi mulls Trump’s fitness to serve
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is questioning President Donald Trump’s fitness to serve, announcing legislation Thursday that would create a commission to allow Congress to intervene under the 25th Amendment to the Constitution and remove the president from executive duties.
Just weeks before the Nov. 3 election, Pelosi said Trump needs to disclose more about his health after his COVID-19 diagnosis. She noted Trump’s “strange tweet” halting talks on a new coronavirus aid package — he subsequently tried to reverse course — and said Americans need to know when, exactly, he first contracted COVID as others in the White House became infected. On Friday, she plans to roll out the legislation that would launch the commission for review.
“The public needs to know the health condition of the president,” Pelosi said, later invoking the 25th Amendment, which allows a president’s cabinet or Congress to intervene when a president is unable to conduct the duties of the office.
Trump responded swiftly via Twitter.
“Crazy Nancy is the one who should be under observation. They don’t call her Crazy for nothing!” the president said.
Trump, Barr at odds over slow pace of Durham investigation
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is increasingly at odds with Attorney General William Barr over the status of the Justice Department’s investigation into the origin of the Russia probe, with the president increasingly critical about a lack of arrests and Barr frustrated by Trump’s public pronouncements about the case, according to people familiar with the matter.
Trump and his allies had high hopes for the investigation led by Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, betting it would expose what they see as wrongdoing when the FBI opened a case into whether the Trump campaign was coordinating with Russia to sway the 2016 election. Trump has also pushed to tie prominent Obama administration officials to that effort as part of his campaign against Joe Biden, who was serving as vice president at the time.
But a year and a half into the investigation, and with less than one month until Election Day, there has been only one criminal case: a former FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty to altering a government email about a former Trump campaign adviser who was a target of secret FBI surveillance.
With time running out for pre-election action on the case, Trump is increasingly airing his dissatisfaction in tweets and television appearances. Barr, meanwhile, has privately expressed frustration over the public comments, according to a person familiar with his thinking. It’s not dissimilar to a situation earlier this year, when Trump complained publicly that he believed ally Roger Stone was getting a raw deal in his prosecution, even as Barr had already moved to amend a sentencing position of the prosecutors in the case.
Despite Trump’s unhappiness, there’s no indication Barr’s job is at risk in the final weeks of the campaign. Still, the tensions between Trump and the attorney general over the fate of the probe underscore the extent to which the president is aggressively trying to use all of the levers of his power to gain ground in an election that has been moving away from him.
Prominent GOP fundraiser charged in covert lobbying effort
WASHINGTON — Elliott Broidy, a prominent fundraiser for President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, has been charged in an illicit lobbying campaign aimed at getting the Trump administration to drop an investigation into the multibillion-dollar looting of a Malaysian state investment fund.
Broidy is the latest person accused by the Justice Department of participating in the covert lobbying effort, which also sought to arrange for the return of a Chinese dissident living in the U.S. A consultant, Nickie Lum Davis, pleaded guilty in August for her role in the scheme.
The case was filed this week in federal court in Washington, D.C., with Broidy facing a single conspiracy charge related to his failure to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires people lobbying in the U.S. on behalf of a foreign entity to disclose that work to the Justice Department.
A lawyer for Broidy declined to comment on Thursday. The allegations are contained in a charging document known as an information, which typically signals a defendant’s intent to plead guilty.
Prosecutors allege that Broidy worked with Davis and others to get the Justice Department to abandon its pursuit of billions of dollars that officials say were pilfered from 1MDB, a Malaysian wealth fund that was established more than a decade ago to accelerate the country’s economic development but that prosecutors say was actually treated as a piggy bank by associates of former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.
Rapper Tory Lanez charged with shooting Megan Thee Stallion
LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles prosecutors on Thursday charged rapper Tory Lanez with shooting artist Megan Thee Stallion during an argument earlier this year.
Lanez is accused of shooting at Megan Thee Stallion’s feet, hitting her, after she left a SUV during a fight in the Hollywood Hills on July 12, according to a release.
He faces two felony charges — assault with a semiautomatic firearm and carrying a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle. The complaint states Lanez “inflicted great bodily injury” on Megan Thee Stallion.
A message sent to Lanez’s representative was not immediately returned.
Lanez, a 27-year-old Canadian rapper and singer whose legal name is Daystar Peterson, is due to be arraigned Tuesday in Los Angeles. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of roughly 23 years.