TV News LIES

The White House's former top lawyer, Don McGahn, defied a congressional subpoena and skipped a hearing Tuesday where lawmakers had planned to press him on President Donald Trump's efforts to thwart the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

McGahn's refusal to comply with a House Judiciary Committee subpoena came at the direction of the White House and after a legal opinion from the Justice Department on Monday said he could not be forced to appear before the panel.

The committee's chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., bristled at McGahn's absence. “This conduct is not remotely acceptable,” he said Tuesday, facing an empty witness chair. “Our subpoenas are not optional.”

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Reacting to a Fox News interview with Attorney General William Barr that included Barr essentially threatening Democrats who criticize him and justifying the president calling the Mueller probe a “witch hunt,” Fox News anchor Chris Wallace said Friday that Trump now has a new fixer.

In the interview that was aired Friday, Barr told Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer that House Democrats who have accused him of contempt of Congress are discrediting him because they’re likely “concerned about the outcome of a review of what happened during the election.” Furthermore, the attorney general said he wants to see if FBI officials “put their thumb on the scale” during the Russia investigation, especially during the origins of it.

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is declining to participate in a Fox News town hall, a move that comes after a number of her fellow 2020 Democratic competitors have agreed to engage with the network’s audience.

“I love town halls. I’ve done more than 70 since January, and I’m glad to have a television audience be a part of them. Fox News has invited me to do a town hall, but I’m turning them down—here’s why,” she wrote Tuesday morning in a series of tweets. “Fox News is a hate-for-profit racket that gives a megaphone to racists and conspiracists—it’s designed to turn us against each other, risking life & death consequences, to provide cover for the corruption that’s rotting our government and hollowing out our middle class.”

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Attorney General William Barr has appointed a U.S. attorney to examine the origins of the Russia investigation and determine if intelligence collection involving the Trump campaign was “lawful and appropriate,” according to a person familiar with the issue.

Barr appointed John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to conduct the inquiry, the person said. The person could not discuss the matter publicly and spoke Monday to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

With the appointment, Barr is addressing a rallying cry of President Donald Trump and his supporters, who have accused the Justice Department and FBI of unlawfully spying on his campaign.

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In a stinging op-ed in the Atlantic, Iowa’s longest-serving legislator Andy McKean says he is becoming a Democrat because of President Donald Trump’s “reckless spending and shortsighted financial policies; his erratic, destabilizing foreign policy; and his disdain and disregard for environmental concerns.”

McKean writes that he might have “limped along” to work for the Republican Party, but the 2020 presidential election made him decide to become a Democrat.

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Russian disinformation operations to exploit racial tensions during the 2016 presidential election in the United States found firm ground in a country where legislators have long sought to suppress the black vote, according to a report released Monday.

The report, “State of Black America,” was released by the National Urban League, a civil rights organization based in New York. It underlined the Russian interference in particular but said that black voting rights were under attack from a wide range of actors, including domestic politicians.

In about two dozen states, voting restrictions have gotten worse since 2010 because of changes including new voter identification laws and decisions to limit locations where voters can cast ballots, the report said.

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Iran said it had started scaling back parts of its commitments under its 2015 nuclear deal on Wednesday and threatened to do more if world powers did not protect it from U.S. sanctions, a year after Washington pulled out of the pact.