President-elect Donald Trump swiftly replaced his controversial pick for Attorney General, Matt Gaetz, with his former lawyer, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed the right to strike NATO countries supplying Ukraine with weapons, as Moscow escalates its military efforts in the war. And, a massive atmospheric river is drenching the West Coast, fueling concerns about the impact of climate change on extreme weather events.
Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Jason Breslow, Andrew Sussman, Neela Banerjee, Mohamad ElBardicy, and Ally Schweitzer. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Milton Guevara. We get engineering support from Robert Rodriguez. And our technical director is Zac Coleman.
Donald Trump once again has the democrats in a tizzy. After an embarrassing loss they are ready to diminish Donald Trump by opposing his nominees even though the country Overwhelmingly voted for him
It is said President-elect Trump is calling senators and asking them personally to confirm Matt Gaetz, his pick for Attorney General. as Gaetz faces mounting scrutiny amid new testimony involving the sexual misconduct allegations against him. According to Media reports.
Trump rips McConnell in lengthy statement after being acquitted in impeachment trial
The Democrats are as animated as they were with the Russia Investigations that ended up in a fizzle.
They mention sexual innuendoes like, Matt Gaetz, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, was once embroiled in a sex-trafficking investigation by the Justice Department that he has been tapped to lead. Gaetz has been under constant scrutiny by the House Ethics Committee over allegations of sexual misconduct, reports news agency AP. To the delight of the democrats.
All this glee from Democratic leaning media shows that Trump continues to out fox them and they miss his agenda completely. They are wasting time on Gates who by himself can never change the American legal system. There are judges in the legal system with Integrity and they would never allow for Donald Trump and Matt Gates to bring frivolous law suits.
The Russian hoax was debunked by John Durham because the Democrats like they are doing with Matt Gates went over Board in their zeal to embarrass The Donald.
Special counsel John Durham’s long-awaited report was, as one would expect, as meticulous as it was damning in its findings of fact.
He concluded that there was no basis to immediately launch a full-fledged investigation against Donald Trump; that the FBI failed to follow up on intelligence reports that Hillary Clinton had approved a scheme to manufacture the Russia hoax and that her campaign funded opposition research to supply to the FBI and media with the false narrative; and that FBI leaders willingly subverted FBI policy, quashed investigations into Clinton’s potential violations of the law, and more.
Gaetz withdraws from attorney general consideration after Trump told him he didn’t have the votes in the Senate
When Vice President-elect JD Vance and Matt Gaetz left the Capitol Hill room where they’d spent Wednesday trying to convince GOP senators to confirm the former Florida congressman as attorney general, Vance told reporters those meetings “went great.”
But on Thursday morning, President-elect Donald Trump called Gaetz with bad news: He did not have the votes in the Senate to win confirmation, Trump told Gaetz, according to a source with direct knowledge of the call.
The president-elect didn’t tell Gaetz to drop out, this source said. He didn’t have to. Early Thursday afternoon, Gaetz — who quit his seat in the House the day Trump announced he’d selected him to helm the Justice Department — wrote on social media that he was withdrawing and that his nomination “was unfairly becoming a distraction.”
“There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I’ll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as Attorney General. Trump’s DOJ must be in place and ready on Day 1,” Gaetz wrote.
By the end of the day, Trump had announced a new pick for attorney general: Pam Bondi, the former attorney general of Florida.
Gaetz’s move came in the face of bipartisan pressure, especially as Democrats were pressing for the release of a House Ethics Committee report into him. In his four terms in the House, Gaetz’s fire-bombing political tactics had also alienated many people within his own party, including senators who greeted his selection for attorney general with skepticism.
Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said Thursday that “it was made clear that there’s not a path” for Gaetz to become attorney general and it wasn’t worth spending political capital over the nomination.
“I know enough people that were a ‘hell no’ in the conference to know the path would have been very, very difficult,” Cramer said, adding that he would be among the no votes if he’d been forced to decide today.
Despite the public-facing optimism from Vance and Gaetz on Wednesday, a source familiar with the matter said lawmakers didn’t shield Gaetz from the reality of what was to come in the confirmation process — and that Trump having picked him wouldn’t be enough to guarantee the votes he’d need.
In one meeting, the source told CNN, a GOP senator wanted Gaetz to grapple with who on the committee he actually could convince to vote for him and what votes he thought he had actually secured. One by one, the senator wanted to know who had told Gaetz “yes” they were with him.
“They had five people at least on the committee just who had given them some version of ‘I wish you the best,’” the source said.
Democrats, meanwhile, were pushing for the disclosure of the House Ethics Committee report detailing its investigation into Gaetz, including over allegations of sexual misconduct and other alleged crimes, after the panel’s Republicans voted on Wednesday not to release the probe’s results.
Gaetz has vehemently denied the allegations investigated by the Justice Department and the committee, including the claim that he had sex with a woman in 2017 when she was a minor.
CNN reported Thursday that sources familiar with her testimony said the woman told the ethics committee she had two sexual encounters with Gaetz at one 2017 party, when she was 17 years old. She testified that the second sexual encounter, which has not previously been reported, included another adult woman. She also testified to both sexual encounters in a civil deposition as part of a related lawsuit, sources said.
After being asked for comment for CNN’s story, Gaetz announced his withdrawal as Trump’s nominee for attorney general.
Trump and members of his transition team were notified that Gaetz would be withdrawing before he made the announcement, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Gaetz called Trump and Vance separately to inform them of his decision to withdraw, per one source familiar with the calls.
There was a belief that more damning information would be coming out from the ethics report, and that members of Gaetz’s orbit learned there might be witnesses who had been interviewed by the committee who had been previously unknown, one source familiar said.
Multiple sources also said that while Gaetz’s meetings with GOP senators on Wednesday were not negative, it became clear that there were too many hard “Nos” from them, and that information expected to come out of the ethics report would likely make confirmation impossible.
While Trump was all in on Gaetz and believed he was the right person to “disrupt” the Justice Department, as one Trump adviser characterized it, many allies and advisers helping with the transition had serious doubts about Gaetz’s ability to make it through Senate confirmation hearings, two sources familiar with the discussions told CNN. Those doubts had been shared directly with Trump.
Trump had privately acknowledged that Gaetz might not be able to be confirmed, although he did not indicate that he would change his position of standing by him, one source said.
Trump’s allies, including some close to the transition team, had begun conversations on what would happen if Gaetz couldn’t get confirmed, but it was not immediately clear if any one brought those conversations to Trump.
Reacting to the news, Trump on Thursday said Gaetz was “doing very well” and suggested he has a bright future. “I greatly appreciate the recent efforts of Matt Gaetz in seeking approval to be Attorney General. He was doing very well but, at the same time, did not want to be a distraction for the Administration, for which he has much respect. Matt has a wonderful future, and I look forward to watching all of the great things he will do!” the president-elected posted on X.
“President Trump remains committed to choosing a leader for the Department of Justice who will strongly defend the Constitution and end the weaponization of our justice system,” Trump-Vance spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “President Trump will announce his new decision when it is made.”
Trump does not have a new name in mind for attorney general and now returns to the drawing board, two people familiar with the matter told CNN.
Trump has selected other controversial Cabinet picks, including former Fox News host Pete Hegseth for secretary of the Defense Department and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for the Department of Health and Human Services. Hegseth, who faces a sexual assault allegation that he has denied, is meeting with senators on Thursday.
GOP senators glad Gaetz withdrew
In the wake of Gaetz’s decision to withdraw, several Republicans applauded the move — making public the backlash that the former Florida congressman, best known on Capitol Hill for his role in ousting former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, faced within his own party.
“It’s a good thing,” Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, the outgoing party leader, said.
Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate Republican, said she was “pleased” with Gaetz’s decision.
Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin, who has been vocal in his past criticism of Gaetz, said his withdrawal “was probably a good decision.”
South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds said Gaetz’s efforts to win confirmation “would have been problematic.”
“I’m not second guessing the president. The president has the right to make the nominations that he sees fit,” Rounds said. “But the Senate also has a responsibility for advice and consent and in this particular case, I think there was advice offered, rather than consent.”
Sen. Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, said Gaetz’s withdrawal is a “positive development.”
Sen. Cynthia Lummis said Gaetz “must have gotten some signals yesterday during conversations that he was having with senators that this was going to be a distraction.”
“He felt this was going to be a major distraction and so good on him to recognize and be self aware to provide President Trump with an opportunity to choose someone who’s equally tenacious about addressing the Department of Justice,” the Wyoming Republican said.
Florida Sen. Rick Scott, however, said he was “disappointed” that Gaetz withdrew.
“I’m disappointed. I’ve known Matt since I started running for governor, and he was a smart guy, worked hard. I had a great, great working relationship with him,” he said.
Will Gaetz return to Congress?
Senior congressional leaders in both parties are scrambling to determine if Gaetz — who resigned from the current Congress earlier this month — can return to the House next year after winning reelection this fall.
Lawmakers and senior aides believe that Gaetz can still return in January — a scenario that some have privately feared could happen all along, according to more than a dozen sources.
Even though Gaetz said in his resignation letter that he does “not intend to take the oath of office” in January, congressional sources say he is still on track to be named to the seat because the governor has not called a special election and he cannot preemptively resign from a Congress that has not started yet.
But it’s a complicated question with murky legal precedent. Some lawmakers have already asked the parliamentarian to weigh in and clear up the confusion, one source told CNN.
As for the ethics report, Democrats anticipate the panel’s findings are even less likely to emerge now that he has withdrawn from consideration and given how reluctant Republicans already were to release it. House Ethics Chairman Michael Guest, a Mississippi Republican, has said part of the reason he has “reservations” about releasing the report is because it is not finished.
Yet at one point during the panel’s closed-door meeting on Wednesday to discuss their investigation, a staff member said it would only take a couple of hours to finish it, two sources told CNN. Democrats believe Republicans have been trying to delay the process.
The panel is expected to vote on the final report on December 5, but before then, the full House is still expected to face a question about whether to force the release of the report – unless it gets pulled by leadership as a result of Gaetz taking himself out of the running.
Although GOP lawmakers were willing to block the ethics report this week, there were signals that more Republicans would want to release it if Gaetz were on the cusp of being confirmed as attorney general. It would only take four House Republicans to join Democrats in voting to release it on the House floor, or one Republican from the Ethics Committee when the panel meets next month.
“We anticipate that there would be a growing number of members who would want this report released,” one GOP lawmaker told CNN.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins contributed to this report.
This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.
President-elect Donald Trump taps Matt Gaetz as Attorney General, sparking questions about Senate approval for the controversial nominee. Democratic-led states are organizing coalitions to push back against policies they expect from the incoming administration. And, Paris police deploy thousands of officers for a tense soccer match between France and Israel, amid fears of violence following unrest after a match in the Netherlands.
Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Anna Yukhananov, Larry Kaplow, Ryland Barton, Mohamad ElBardicy, and Alice Woelfle. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Julie Depenbrock. We get engineering support from Robert Rodriguez. And our technical director is Zac Coleman.
Matt Gaetz: Congressman may be pursuing risky strategy with DOJ probe
According to reporting by NBC unverified by the Maravi Post, Rep. Matt Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend testified Wednesday before a federal grand jury investigating him for sex crimes, which is seen as a major development that suggests the Department of Justice may be moving closer to indicting him.
The ex-girlfriend, whose name is being withheld by NBC News to respect her privacy, has been in talks for months with prosecutors about an immunity deal. Under a possible deal, she would avoid prosecution for obstruction of justice in return for testifying in the investigation into whether Gaetz in 2017 had sex with a 17-year-old female for money and whether months later he and others violated a federal law prohibiting people for paying for prostitutes overseas.
Legal sources familiar with the case say Gaetz is being investigated for three distinct crimes: sex trafficking the 17-year-old; violating the Mann Act, which prohibits taking women across state lines for prostitution; and obstructing justice.
Gaetz, R-Fla., has not been charged with a crime and has denied all accusations, saying he never paid for sex and never had sex with a minor when he was an adult. The firebrand conservative has called the federal investigation into him a DOJ “witch hunt.”
The attorney for Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend, Tim Jansen, declined comment about the case Wednesday, when he was spotted by an NBC News reporter entering the federal courthouse in Orlando with his client. A Department of Justice spokesman declined comment. Gaetz did not respond to a request for comment.
The investigation into Gaetz has lasted for more than a year and began when a former friend and ally of his, former Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg, was charged with a host of crimes — from falsely smearing a political rival as being a pedophile to cheating taxpayers in a cryptocurrency scheme to sex-trafficking the same 17-year-old in the Gaetz investigation.
Greenberg has agreed to plead guilty to six of the charges against him and is cooperating with federal investigators, NBC News has previously reported.
He has pleaded guilty to charges of identity theft, stalking, wire fraud, conspiracy to bribe a public official and sex trafficking of a minor.
According to one source familiar with the case, the alleged sex-trafficking victim told investigators at one point that Gaetz had sex with her.
But the investigation into Gaetz was stalled as prosecutors sought the cooperation of Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend, according to those familiar with the case, because her testimony could help fill in crucial aspects of the case.
The ex-girlfriend was in an open relationship with Gaetz in 2017 and 2018 and allegedly discussed other women he was involved with, according to three friends of the former couple. She allegedly went with Gaetz and a number of other young women and friends of the congressman in 2018 on a trip to the Bahamas, a trip that is also under scrutiny, CBS News and Politico previously reported.
After the investigation began, Gaetz spoke with his ex-girlfriend in a three-way call with yet another woman who was cooperating with federal investigators at that point and was secretly recording the call, according to two sources familiar with the case.
It’s on that call that Gaetz is suspected of obstructing justice, which federal prosecutors are investigating, according to law enforcement sources.
After that phone call was first reported in April, Gaetz denied the allegations through a spokesperson.
“Congressman Gaetz pursues justice, he doesn’t obstruct it,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Jansen, the ex-girlfriend’s attorney, has a reputation in Florida legal circles as a master of immunity deals after he secured one for an admitted murderer who ultimately was not charged in return for helping authorities solve the case.
Malawi breaking news and World News. News about Malawi, Malawi Business, Malawi Tourism, Malawi Politics, Malawi News, World and Africa Top News.