Showing posts with label GIULIANI CORONAVIRUS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GIULIANI CORONAVIRUS. Show all posts

December 11, 2020

Giuliani released from hospital after getting coronavirus treatments many are dying without

Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie listen as President Trump speaks at the White House on Sept. 27. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

WASHINGTON POST DAILY 202

Wednesday was one of the deadliest days in American history, as the coronavirus killed 3,140 people. This is 673 more Americans than the Japanese massacred in their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. It is more than twice the number of souls as perished aboard the Titanic.

In another record, 106,000 Americans are currently hospitalized with covid-19. President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is no longer among them. He flashed reporters a thumbs-up as he was driven away from MedStar Georgetown University Hospital at around 5 p.m. on Wednesday.

“Back 100% and lost little time,” Giuliani tweeted this morning.

The former New York mayor said he received remdesivir, dexamethasone and “exactly the same” treatment that Trump got in October when he was hospitalized, which the president has often credited for his speedy recovery.

“The minute I took the cocktail yesterday, I felt 100 percent better,” Giuliani said in a Tuesday afternoon interview with WABC, a New York talk radio station. “It works very quickly. Wow! … By the next morning, I felt like I was 10 years younger.”

As beds fill up, patients who need hospital care — for the virus or for something else — cannot get it
Many intensive care units are overwhelmed. More and more places face looming, life-and-death decisions about rationing care.

Giuliani himself acknowledged that he got “celebrity” treatment. He said the president’s doctor, apparently referring to White House physician Sean Conley, talked him into being admitted. “I didn’t really want to go to the hospital, and he said, ‘Don’t be stupid,’” Giuliani recounted. “We can get it over with in three days if we send you to the hospital.”

But the VIP treatment for Trump and his crew, including access to the best cocktails of experimental drugs, seems like an important part of the explanation for why the president and his inner-circle continue to speak so flippantly about the dangers of the virus that has now killed at least 288,000 Americans.It is not unique to this era that the rich and well-connected have better access to the highest-quality care than ordinary folks. Our system has long been hideously unequal. It is acutely bad for communities of color.

Ben Carson speaks at a rally for President Trump on Oct. 30 in Michigan. A week later, the HUD secretary announced he tested positive for the coronavirus. (John Moore/Getty Images)

Ben Carson speaks at a rally for President Trump on Oct. 30 in Michigan. A week later, the HUD secretary announced he tested positive for the coronavirus. (John Moore/Getty Images)

The antibody drugs are complicated to make because they are created by live cells. “The manufacturing process can’t be rushed. And the drugs must be administered intravenously, creating challenges for health facilities that must set up separate infusion centers so patients with cancer and autoimmune disorders aren’t exposed to people who are infected,” Laurie McGinley and Josh Dawsey report. “Carson, Christie and Trump all got the drugs under ‘expanded access’ programs before they were authorized by the Food and Drug Administration. Health experts worried their experiences would give Americans the wrong impression about the drugs’ availability. …

“Several other people in Trump’s orbit also have had covid-19 and were offered help getting access to the drugs. One adviser who contracted the virus said the president offered to get the Regeneron drug for him. ‘It’ll make you better overnight,’ the president said,” per McGinley and Dawsey. “After the president’s hospitalization, some advisers also warned him against speaking about the coronavirus as if it were a small inconvenience after he had benefited from experimental drugs unavailable to others. Trump’s response was that he wanted to make a video telling the American people that they’d get the drugs, too, though the White House had no ability to ramp up production.”

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel poked fun at Giuliani during his monologue on ABC, but then he got serious: “Why aren’t we madder about the fact that Rudy and Donnie and Jr. and all the swamp monsters pretending to be human are getting a special miracle cure nobody else seems to be able to get?”

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  • The number of new unemployment claims rose sharply to 853,000 last week, an increase of 137,000 from the week before, another sign of the toll the pandemic is taking on the labor market. An additional 427,600 claims were filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, the program for gig and self-employed workers. (Eli Rosenberg)
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Hunter Biden confirms he is under federal investigation. 

“Federal prosecutors have been investigating Hunter Biden, President-elect Joe Biden’s son, to determine if he failed to report income from China-related business deals, according to people familiar with the matter — a politically explosive probe that is likely to challenge the Justice Department in the incoming administration,” Matt Zapotosky, Devlin Barrett and Colby Itkowitz report. “The investigation into the president-elect’s son began in 2018, though little could be learned immediately about what, if any, wrongdoing it had found. The existence of a tax investigation was confirmed Wednesday by Hunter Biden in a statement saying he had just been advised of it. … FBI agents had been seeking to talk to Hunter Biden as part of the case on Tuesday — though an interview has not yet been scheduled or taken place — as well as serve subpoenas on Hunter Biden and his associates. …

“Although the investigation has been ongoing for some time, it is unclear how far along prosecutors consider themselves toward building a criminal case or closing the matter … A person familiar with the case said that the investigation continued during the election year but that agents took care not to take overt investigative steps as voting neared that would have made it more widely known. Those precautions, the person said, became unnecessary once the election was over. If the investigation is continuing when Joe Biden takes office, it will mark a major test for him and his attorney general. … 

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) quickly called for a special counsel investigation of Hunter Biden. … If Barr does not appoint a special counsel, Joe Biden’s attorney general could face pressure to do so, to help ensure the probe’s independence. Any special counsel would still answer to the attorney general. Another possibility would be for the current Delaware U.S. attorney to remain in that job to continue the Hunter Biden investigation. … A person familiar with the Hunter Biden investigation said it ‘is not connected to the attacks the Trump campaign and their allies made against Hunter during the campaign.’”

  • Hunter Biden statement: “I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately.” 
  • Biden transition team statement: “President-elect Biden is deeply proud of his son, who has fought through difficult challenges, including the vicious personal attacks of recent months, only to emerge stronger.” 


HEATHER COX RICHARDSON 

Today more than half of the Republicans in the House of Representatives signed onto Texas’s lawsuit asking the Supreme Court to overturn the results of the 2020 election and install Trump, rather than the legitimately elected Joe Biden, into the White House.

The story is this: Texas’s Attorney General Ken Paxton is asking the Supreme Court to hear an original case between the states—which it can do, but it’s rare—arguing that Texas was harmed by voting procedures in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Essentially, Paxton is arguing that mail-in voting in those states, which Democrats used more extensively than Republicans did after Trump insisted it was insecure, stepped on Texans’ rights. This will be a hard sell.



It is possible—likely, even—that Paxton is advancing this nonsense because he has been under indictment since 2015 for securities fraud, is now under investigation by the FBI for bribery and abuse of office, and is hoping to impress Trump enough to get a presidential pardon. Just today, the FBI issued at least one subpoena for records from Paxton’s office. Knowing that this lawsuit has virtually no chance of winning, he could file it and win points with Trump while also knowing it would go nowhere.

States have squared off on both sides of Paxton’s lawsuit. Last night, seventeen other states supported the suit to hand the election to Trump, including Missouri, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia. Later, Arizona joined them.

Twenty-three Democratic-led states and territories, along with the Republican Attorney General of Ohio, Dave Yost, today signed a brief supporting the four states Texas is attacking. The District of Columbia, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Guam, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington all backed the states whose votes Texas is trying to throw out.

But six states—Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Utah—joined Texas’s lawsuit today. Pennsylvania’s brief notes that Trump has “flooded” the courts “with frivolous lawsuits aimed at disenfranchising large swaths of voters and undermining the legitimacy of the election.” The brief warns, “Texas’s effort to get this Court to pick the next President has no basis in law or fact. The Court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated.”

What on earth is going on?

First: Trump is throwing at the wall anything he can in hopes of staying in office. The more chaos it creates, the happier he is. The lawsuit crisis has, for example, muted the story that at least 2,923 Americans died today of Covid-19, and 223,570 cases were reported, a 28% increase in the weekly average of cases since two weeks ago.

It has also diverted attention from the fact that there is no deal, and no real sign of a deal, on a coronavirus relief bill. A bipartisan group of senators has managed to hammer out a $908 billion deal but Republicans refuse to allow its $160 billion for aid to state and local governments and Democrats refuse to agree to shield businesses from liability for coronavirus injuries. The bipartisan group tried to put the two things together, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says that’s a non-starter. Meanwhile, 26 million Americans say they don’t have enough to eat.

Second: There is a war underway for control of the Republican Party. While a losing incumbent president usually loses influence in the party, Trump intends to continue to call the shots. He wants to run again in 2024, or at least to anoint a successor, rather than letting the Republican National Committee pick a presidential candidate. There is a struggle going on to control the RNC and, as well, to figure out who gets control of the lists of supporters Trump has compiled. Trump also controls a lot of the party’s money, since he has been out front as its fundraiser without a break since he decided to run for office. He was the first president ever to file for reelection on the day of his inauguration, permitting him to hold “rallies” and to raise money throughout his presidency.

So Republican lawmakers are willing to swear loyalty to him, either because they want to attract his voters in future elections, or because they want access to the cash he can raise, or both. They no longer defend traditional policy positions; they defend Trump.

This loyalty requires contortions. In Georgia, Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, have backed it. The senators are facing a runoff election in January against Democrat challengers Jon Ossoff and the Reverend Raphael Warnock, and they need Trump’s support. So they are taking a stand against their own voters, despite the fact that this position logically would overturn their own elections.


December 6, 2020




MAGGIE HABERMAN, NY TIMES

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and President Trump’s personal and campaign lawyer, has tested positive for the coronavirus, Mr. Trump announced on Twitter on Sunday.

@RudyGiuliani, by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, and who has been working tirelessly exposing the most corrupt election (by far!) in the history of the USA, has tested positive for the China Virus. Get better soon Rudy, we will carry on!!!” Mr. Trump wrote. It was unclear why Mr. Trump was the one announcing it.

Mr. Giuliani was at Georgetown University Medical Center, according to a person who was aware of his condition but not authorized to speak publicly. Mr. Giuliani, at age 76, is in the high-risk category for the virus.

Mr. Giuliani has repeatedly been exposed to the virus through contact with infected people, including during Mr. Trump’s preparation for his first debate against President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. in September, just before the president tested positive, as well as when he appeared with his son, Andrew, at a news conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters about two weeks ago. Andrew Giuliani, who works as an aide in the White House, said on Nov. 20 that he had tested positive, days after Donald Trump Jr. did.

Mr. Giuliani has been acting as the lead lawyer for Mr. Trump’s efforts to overthrow the results of the election. He has repeatedly claimed he has evidence of widespread fraud, but he has declined to submit that evidence in legal cases he has filed.

His infection is the latest in a string of outbreaks among those in the president’s orbit. Boris Epshteyn, a member of the Trump campaign legal team, tested positive late last month. The same day, Mr. Giuliani attended a meeting of Republican state lawmakers in Pennsylvania about allegations of voting irregularities. One of the lawmakers at that meeting was notified shortly after while at the White House that he had tested positive.

Mark Meadows, the president’s chief of staff, and at least eight others in the White House and Mr. Trump’s circle, tested positive in the days before and after Election Day.

Mr. Trump was hospitalized on Oct. 2 after contracting the coronavirus. Kayleigh McEnany, the president’s press secretary, Corey Lewandowski, a campaign adviser, and Ben Carson, the housing secretary, are among those in the president’s circle who have tested positive this fall.

Mr. Giuliani appeared on Fox News earlier on Sunday. Speaking with the host Maria Bartiromo via satellite, Mr. Giuliani repeated baseless claims about fraud in Georgia and Wisconsin on “Sunday Morning Futures.” When asked if he believed Mr. Trump still had a path to victory, he said, “We do.”


Jenna Ellis’s roles as a spokeswoman and a social media activist for President Trump have taken on new prominence as his legal efforts to overturn the election have slowly petered out.

Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis exaggerates her experience and credentials.

“Ellis broke into the legal profession in 2012 as a deputy district attorney in Weld County, Colo., a largely rural area that would soon make headlines for a failed attempt to secede from the rest of the state because some residents resented the growing dominance of more liberal communities to the south like Denver. Ms. Ellis prosecuted crimes like theft and assault,” the Times reports. “A review of her professional history, as well as interviews with more than a half-dozen lawyers who have worked with her, show that Ms. Ellis, 36, is not the seasoned constitutional law expert she plays on TV. … Since she graduated law school in 2011, nothing in her record in the courtroom … shows any time spent litigating election law cases. … 

“She has never appeared in federal district or circuit court … and does not appear to have played a major role in any cases beyond her criminal and civil work in Colorado. … The Trump campaign provided the name of one federal case in which it said Ms. Ellis had participated, in 2012, when she was a year out of law school. But her name is not among the lawyers listed in the decision, and the case was not heard in a regular federal court, but rather in an administrative tribunal. … Lawyers who worked with Ms. Ellis said that she was not the kind of attorney they believed would be particularly helpful to this or any president in these endeavors, given her background. … In 2015 she joined Colorado Christian University as an affiliate faculty member … Colorado Christian does not have a law school or a program in constitutional law. … Eventually she was made an assistant professor of legal studies — but never a ‘professor of constitutional law,’ which is how she identified herself in pieces for The Washington Examiner.” 

“I’m the Cinderella story of the legal world,” Ellis told the Wall Street Journal.