House ethics chairman introduces resolution to expel George Santos
House ethics chairman Michael Guest has introduced a resolution to expel George Santos, a fellow Republican who has been charged with fraud, CNN reports.
Guest’s resolution comes a day after the House ethics commitee released a report on its investigation into the New York representative.
The investigation found “grave and pervasive campaign finance violations and fraudulent activity,” according to the report.
Following the report’s release, Santos said that he will not seek re-election for a second term and went on to call the report “biased” and a “disgusting politicized smear.”
Santos has pleaded not guilty to 23 federal criminal charges including laundering funds and defrauding donors.
Key events
David Boies, one of the country’s most renowned lawyers who was part of cases involving Microsoft, the 2000 presidential election, and the legalization of same-sex marriage, is stepping down next year from the law firm he co-founded.
Reuters reports:
The firm’s partnership has been in tumult in recent years in part because of Boies’ representation of controversial clients like disgraced Hollywood movie producer Harvey Weinstein.
Boies’ tenure as chairman of Boies Schiller Flexner ends December 2024, a firm spokesperson said on Friday. A new chairman-will be selected next month, the spokesperson said. The firm said the 82-year-old Boies is not retiring and will remain a partner. Boies was not immediately available to comment.
Boies Schiller has lost nearly half of its lawyers over the last three years. It now lists 180 lawyers in 13 offices. The firm has altered its leadership structure in the same period, electing multiple co-managing partners as it looked ahead to a future without its founder.
One of them, Nicholas Gravante, departed for rival law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft in 2020. Another who briefly held the role, Natasha Harrison, left Boies Schiller last year to found her own firm.
Boies Schiller is now managed by a trio of managing partners, who praised Boies’ leadership in a statement on Friday. “We greatly appreciate the faith David and the rest of the firm has placed in us,” partners Matthew Schwartz, Sigrid McCawley and Alan Vickery said in a statement.
‘Unacceptable’: White House responds to Elon Musk’s endorsement of antisemitic tweet
The White House has condemned a tweet from Elon Musk that endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jewish communities “push hatred against whites.”
Responding to Musk’s tweet in which he replied to the conspiracy theory and said, “You have said the actual truth,” the White House said:
It is unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act of antisemitism in American history at any time, let alone one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
Like president Biden said weeks ago memorializing the victims of the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting, the October 7 ‘devastating atrocity has brought to the surface painful memories left by millennia of antisemitism;’ and under his presidency ‘we will continue to condemn antisemitism at every turn.’
We condemn this abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans.
With the National Rifle Association fading, an even more zealous gun rights group is starting to rise as a significant lobbying power in US politics.
Peter Stone reports for the Guardian:
A zealous gun rights group, even more uncompromising than the once formidable National Rifle Association, is emerging as a force in US politics with a mission to oppose efforts at gun control and ease further America’s already lax regulations on firearms.
Last year the Gun Owners of America (GOA) spent $3.3m on lobbying, a record sum for the hardline foe of gun control that now claims over 2 million members and activists, and has previously operated in the shadows of the larger NRA.
The GOA’s record lobbying spending in 2022 was spurred in part by a rise in its annual revenues, which more than tripled from $2.3m in 2016 to $8.7m in 2021, according to tax records.
The GOA is an adamant enemy of gun control measures of all stripes, and proudly calls itself the “no compromise” gun lobby. Its surge in lobbying spending reflects one way it has capitalized on the financial and legal problems of the once 5 million-member NRA in the hopes of expanding the GOA’s political clout, say gun experts.
For the full story, click here:
New York Republican representative Elise Stefanik, a staunch Donald Trump ally who filed a judical ethics complaint last week against judge Arthur Engoron, hailed the gag order’s temporary suspension.
In a statement on X, Stefanik said:
I am pleased to see that after my ethics complaint to the New York Commission on Judicial Conduct against Manhattan Judge Arthur Engoron, an appellate court has lifted the unconstitutional gag order against President Trump…
This is so much bigger than President Trump. If Democrats can do this to a billionaire, former President, and leading presidential candidate, just imagine what they can do to the rest of us. That’s why I filed my ethics complaint against Judge Engoron, and I will continue to fight for all New Yorkers.
VICTORY: My statement on the New York Appellate Court lifting the unconstitutional “gag order” in New York’s politicized case against President Trump and the Trump Organization. pic.twitter.com/9JOgTtr3OO
— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) November 16, 2023
House ethics chairman on resolution to expel George Santos: “The most appropriate punishment is expulsion”
In a statement on his resolution to expel George Santos, House ethics chairman Michael Guest said:
Given the intense public scrutiny surrounding Representative Santos and the ongoing activity at the DOJ, including indictments, the Ethics Committee decided to finish its work without going through a lengthier process that provides for the Committee to make a recommendation of punishment to the House.
The evidence uncovered in the Ethics Committee’s Investigative Subcommittee investigation is more than sufficient to warrant punishment and the most appropriate punishment, is expulsion. So, separate from the Committee process and my role as Chairman, I have filed an expulsion resolution.
Here is the resolution introduced by House ethics chairman and Mississippi Republican Michael Guest to expel George Santos:
ALERT: Chair of US House Ethics Committee introduces legislation to expel Rep. George Santos (R-NY)
House could move swiftly when they return on Nov 28 pic.twitter.com/LNY9PBJqP6
— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) November 17, 2023
“Santos must be held accountable to the highest standards of conduct in order to safeguard the public’s faith in this institution,” CBS’s Scott MacFarlane reports the resolution saying.
The expulsion resolution against Rep. George Santos includes this passage:
“Santos must be held accountable to the highest standards of conduct in order to safeguard the public’s faith in this institution”
— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) November 17, 2023
House ethics chairman introduces resolution to expel George Santos
House ethics chairman Michael Guest has introduced a resolution to expel George Santos, a fellow Republican who has been charged with fraud, CNN reports.
Guest’s resolution comes a day after the House ethics commitee released a report on its investigation into the New York representative.
The investigation found “grave and pervasive campaign finance violations and fraudulent activity,” according to the report.
Following the report’s release, Santos said that he will not seek re-election for a second term and went on to call the report “biased” and a “disgusting politicized smear.”
Santos has pleaded not guilty to 23 federal criminal charges including laundering funds and defrauding donors.
Trump goes after judge and clerk in fiery Truth Social post
Donald Trump has also gone after judge Arthur Engoron and his principal law clerk Allison Greenfield, writing in a fiery tirade on Truth Social yesterday:
Judge Arthur Engoron has just been overturned (stayed!) by the New York State Appellate Division (Appeals Court), for the 4th TIME (on the same case!).
His Ridiculous and Unconstitutional Gag Order, not allowing me to defend myself against him and his politically biased and out of control, Trump Hating Clerk, who is sinking him and his Court to new levels of LOW, is a disgrace.
They are defending the Worst and Least Respected Attorney General in the United States, Letitia James, who is a Worldwide disgrace, as is her illegal Witch Hunt against me.
Trump has been fined $15,000 for violating previous gag orders imposed on him and his team by Engoron after they questioned Greenfield’s role in the trial.
Jason Miller, one of Donald Trump’s senior advisors, went after judge Arthur Engoron’s principal law clerk Allison Greenfield shortly after the gag order was temporarily lifted.
Miller took to social media yesterday and wrote:
There’s no way President Trump can receive a fair trial when Democrats are sending partisan attack dogs to do their dirty work. How is this “justice”? “Attorney Allison Greenfield: Democrat Operative and Hack”
There’s no way President Trump can receive a fair trial when Democrats are sending partisan attack dogs to do their dirty work. How is this “justice”?
“Attorney Allison Greenfield: Democrat Operative and Hack” https://t.co/k4MwH5wdHC
— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) November 16, 2023
Trump team resumes attacks on fraud trial judge’s law clerk after gag order lifted
Good morning,
Following the suspension of Donald Trump’s gag order in his ongoing New York fraud trial, the ex president’s team resumed their attacks against the trial’s presiding judge Arthur Engoron’s law clerk, Allison Greenfield.
On Thursday, New York appeals judge David Friedman cited constitutional concerns surrounding Trump’s free speech and issued an interim stay on the gag order while a longer appeals process remains underway.
Shortly after the order’s temporary suspension, Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump, went after Greenfield on X, denouncing her as a “Democrat operative and hack.”
Trump also went on to attack Greenfield, calling her a “politically biased and out of control Trump hating clerk” on Truth Social.
Trump and his team have routinely accused Greenfield, a former Democratic judicial candidate, of attempting to influence Engoron, who himself is also a Democrat.
Engoron has defended Greenfield in court multiple times, saying earlier this month that “these arguments have no basis.”
Here are other developments in US politics:
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Joe Biden has signed a stopgap spending bill to avert a government shutdown.
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Joe Biden and Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador are set to meet amid Apec to talk migration, fentanyl and Cuba.
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New York Republican representative George Santos will not seek re-election next year after the House detailed “pervasive” fraud.