TV News LIES

lex Azar, the Health and Human Services Secretary, resigned earlier this week, citing the violent Capitol riot inflamed by President Donald Trump in his resignation letter obtained by NBC News.

Azar said his resignation would become effective on Jan. 20th — the same date he would have been leaving office once President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in. The letter was dated Jan. 12, almost a week after the riot.

He said that the attack — which left five people dead and many injured — and the president's slow response to condemn it, threaten to "tarnish" the achievements the administration has made over the past four years. In particular, Operation Warp Speed, which led to the creation of two vaccines to combat the raging coronavirus pandemic.

“The president needs to be investigated and does have real potential criminal liability for incitement for essentially spurring people on, motivating people to go in there and commit these crimes,” said CNN legal analyst and former prosecutor Elie Honig.

“It's not an easy case to make,” he added. “But if you look at his words, if you look at the language he used, the way he not only urged people to do it, but applauded them after they did it, while they were doing it, that suggests to me he knew exactly what it was leading them into.”

An early test for the Biden administration will be whether DOJ chooses to pursue any of the various investigative threads leading to Trump, or if it will opt to turn the page on the Trump era and sidestep the political baggage that might come with prosecuting a former president.

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Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh deactivated his Twitter account on Friday, soon after the social media giant permanently banned President Trump from posting.

Twitter confirmed to Fox News that the radio host and Trump backer had taken down his account, which had 88.6 million followers.

On Friday, Twitter suspended the accounts of former Gen. Mike Flynn and Trump lawyer Sidney Powell.

Some prominent Trump supporters have been fleeing to Parler as an alternative, but that conservative social media platform was also sanctioned by app stores Friday.

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Stephanie Grisham, the former White House communications director and press secretary and current chief of staff for first lady Melania Trump, submitted her resignation Wednesday afternoon, effective immediately, in the wake of the violent protests, a White House official says.

Two top U.S. health officials on Sunday disputed a claim by President Donald Trump that federal data on COVID-19 cases and deaths in the United States is overblown, and both expressed optimism that the pace of vaccinations is picking up.

“The deaths are real deaths,” Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on ABC News’ This Week, adding that jam-packed hospitals and stressed-out healthcare workers are “not fake. That’s real.”

Fauci and U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, who appeared on CNN’s State of the Union, defended the accuracy of coronavirus data published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after Trump attacked the agency’s tabulation methods.

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Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock shattered fundraising records by hauling in more than $100 million each in the past two months, significantly outraising GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in the final stretch of the two Georgia Senate races that will decide control of the chamber next month.

The massive fundraising for the two Democrats was driven largely by small-dollar donations, continuing the pattern this year of the party’s Senate candidates tapping into online donors across the country to fund their challenger campaigns, although Democrats underperformed expectations in November despite the fundraising edge.

Ossoff became the best-funded Senate candidate in history, hauling in $106.8 million in two months. The Democrat spent $93.5 million from Oct. 15 through Dec. 16, and ended that period with $17.5 million in the bank for the closing weeks of the runoff.

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