White House Announces Additional Staff

Table Of Content

• New White House Counsel’s To-Do List: Impeachment on Day 2
• ‘Right to Disconnect’ Plan in California Hits Employer Backlash
• Ed Siskel
• What to expect with upcoming Jan. 6 hearings and legislative actions
• These are the California cities where $150,000 still buys you a home. Could you live here?
• Biden names a new White House counsel as he seeks reelection and faces congressional probes

Neil Eggleston, who served as White House counsel in the Obama administration, said Remus has a sophisticated understanding of her role. “Communications, media, public relations, social media managers, or public affairs positions essentially exist to respond in real time to news,” Hoffman wrote in the California Chamber’s letter of opposition. That also could mean their employers would set those employees’ working hours as 24 hours a day, seven days a week, she said. Gonell was in the audience for today's hearing and grew emotional as Raskin described how the police officer's injuries that day ended his career. It will be aired live on CNN and a livestream will be featured on CNN.com without requiring a login.

New White House Counsel’s To-Do List: Impeachment on Day 2

For instance, U.S. forces targeted Houthi missile sites over the past several months before they could launch missiles against shipping in the Red Sea, saying the operation was meant to protect potential targets from attack. Officials described the action in the skies of the Middle East as a ballet of highly coordinated maneuvers requiring deconfliction of antimissile fires from Israel, U.S. destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean and a U.S.-crewed Patriot missile defense battery in Iraq, while Israeli and U.S. aircraft shot down explosive drones. Most of the interceptions, Israeli and U.S. officials said, were before the missiles had reached Israeli airspace. “Our aim is to de-escalate regional tensions” and prevent the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza from becoming a wider conflagration, the senior official said. But this official and others who spoke in official briefings, background interviews and on television throughout the day, emphasized that the United States would not participate in any offensive Israeli response against Iran. The changes came with the end of coronavirus restrictions on asylum implemented during the pandemic health emergency.

‘Right to Disconnect’ Plan in California Hits Employer Backlash

White House lawyers wrote Garland slamming Hur's report before its release - POLITICO

White House lawyers wrote Garland slamming Hur's report before its release.

Posted: Thu, 15 Feb 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Special counsel Robert Hur released a searing report Thursday that concluded President Joe Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified military and national security information but will not face charges after a year-long investigation into his handling of classified documents. The president also sought to explain the circumstances surrounding his interviews with the special counsel’s team, saying they were five hours long over the course of two days right after Israel had been attacked on October 7. Susan E. Rice, the president’s domestic policy adviser, left in May and was replaced by Neera Tanden, the staff secretary, who in turn was replaced by Stefanie Feldman, a longtime Biden aide. Julie Chávez Rodríguez stepped down as director of intergovernmental affairs to take over as campaign manager and was succeeded by Tom Perez, a former labor secretary. Louisa Terrell, the director of legislative affairs who helped coordinate debt ceiling negotiations, announced her departure last month and was replaced by Shuwanza Goff, the president’s liaison to the House.

Ed Siskel

Public saber-rattling from Iran that it would respond to the Israeli attack on its personnel in Damascus “gave us time to prepare,” and Iran also “needed time to prepare to do this,” the official said. U.S. officials characterized the scope of the Iranian attack as at the “high end” of what they had anticipated, and intended “to cause significant damage and death.” But very few Iranian weapons had reached the ground in Israel, causing only minor destruction. She has won several awards for her work in broadcast journalism, including a national Edward R. Murrow award. Delery also played a key role in helping the administration put new rules into place at the U.S. -Mexico border to try to to stop migrants from crossing illegally and encourage them instead to apply for asylum online through a new process. Biden introduced a more modest plan last month to provide some relief for those with college debt.

Prosecutors declined to charge Biden’s ghostwriter over alleged obstruction of probe

The focus of the hearing was on extremist far-right groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and the role they played in the Capitol insurrection. As the chief White House lawyer, Delery was a top adviser as Biden crafted a student loan forgiveness order last year aimed at canceling $400 billion in debt for borrowers. The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision with conservative justices in the majority, said the administration overstepped its authority with the plan, and it left borrowers on the hook for repayments that are expected to resume in the fall. Mr. Delery had indicated to colleagues a few months ago that he would be ready to leave by fall after nearly three years in the White House and the pre-inaugural transition that have been all consuming. Since Republicans took over the House in January, the counsel’s office has been the command post for the White House’s response to a multitude of congressional investigations.

Biden counsels Netanyahu to ‘slow things down’ after Iranian attack

Those firsthand accounts, as relayed to ABC News by sources, underscore what could be at stake as Trump seeks a return to the White House, and they are coming to light as he is likely on the verge of receiving formal government briefings again as the Republican Party's official nominee in the 2024 presidential election. Israeli officials on Sunday expressed conviction that the Iranian attack could turn the tables in terms of widespread international criticism over its actions in Gaza, earning them sympathy as a victim of an Iranian government that is arguably equally unpopular. But there is little sign of progress in efforts to impose a cease-fire in Gaza, where Hamas over the weekend rejected the latest offer from Israel for at least a temporary pause in its offensive in exchange for the release of Hamas-held hostages. A Hamas statement reiterated demands for a full cease-fire and immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces. Stuart Delery has been a trusted adviser and a constant source of innovative legal thinking since Day One of my Administration. "I think what makes a good White House counsel, and what makes Dana a great White House counsel, is a combination of legal acumen, just raw legal horsepower, and an understanding of how the government works," Klain, the chief of staff, told NPR.

The meeting, which lasted six hours, was described as “unhinged” by former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson after hearing screaming coming from the West Wing. Ideas circulated about overturning the election including Flynn's suggestion to invoke martial law and inspection of voting machines. Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone testified for eight hours in front of the House Jan. 6 Committee on Friday in a closed-door interview. Here are some key moments of his testimony played at the committee's seventh hearing on Tuesday. Hur noted in his report there were distinctions between Trump and Biden's classified documents cases. Among them is the fact that the National Archives repeatedly tried and failed to get back documents in Trump’s possession.

These are the California cities where $150,000 still buys you a home. Could you live here?

President Joe Biden on Thursday touted his cooperation in special counsel Robert Hur’s probe, drawing a sharp contrast with how his predecessor has treated a similar probe. On any other week, special counsel Robert Hur's writing that President Joe Biden could be perceived as "a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory" would have been a damning portrait of a sitting president. Trump initially agreed to wait while intelligence officials were then consulted, sources said, but the intelligence officials apparently took too long; about an hour later, Trump posted the image online. In one series of meetings, ahead of an international summit in Europe, Trump met with then-CIA director Gina Haspel, then-Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and others to help plan for the summit. But when Trump was told positive things about one of the people he would likely meet at the summit, Trump "lost it," insisting that he didn't care, then he "lost it" again when he was being updated on a tax-related negotiation involving Mnuchin, sources said. And sources said former aides confirmed to Smith's investigators previous media reports that Trump almost never read the President's Daily Brief, a report summarizing classified intelligence and analysis on the day's most pressing issues.

Biden names a new White House counsel as he seeks reelection and faces congressional probes

She clerked for conservative Justice Alito and taught a class with Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee. "The White House counsel cannot do the entire job by herself, and she's put together a really experienced and terrific team," Eggleston said. "And my impression from talking to her is that she's done a really good job of delegating out responsibility while at the same time maintaining ultimate accountability." But Remus and her team have already broken records on the judge front, steering 40 judges to lifetime appointments in their first year. Just this week, Remus wrote to the National Archives, concluding that the White House would not assert executive privilege over most visitor logs from the Trump era, which are being sought by the Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 riots.

As he has done in public, Trump often privately disagreed with conclusions reached by the U.S. intelligence community, especially related to Russia and Ukraine, choosing instead to rely on unverified claims from other people, sources said that Smith's investigators were told. In particular, the sources said, Smith's team was told that Trump was uninterested in hearing about Latin America or countries that he similarly thought were not essential. The sources said witnesses confirmed previous public reporting that Trump referred to such places as "s---hole countries" and suggested the United States should stop welcoming migrants from them. Pat Cipollone, former White House counsel, testified via recorded testimony on July 12 as the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack presented its findings to the public.

On three separate occasions this week, Biden has confused the names of European leaders who died years ago with those who more recently served in office, raising more questions about his mental recall. "I was so appalled," one former national security official told Smith's team, according to the sources. In 2021, Yahoo! News described how, during his briefing with intelligence officials, Trump thought the image "was very neat, and asked if he could keep it," which made some of the intelligence officials nervous, according to an administration official. But that news report didn't offer the same detailed account provided to Smith by witnesses last year. And at one point, sources said the valet recalled, he even warned the staff secretary's office that classified documents were being taken out of secure locations in white boxes and ending up in all sorts of potentially concerning places. Reached for comment, a spokesperson for Trump referred ABC News to a statement by the former president in which he called the classified documents case a "two-tiered system of justice and unconstitutional selective prosecution."

Though Biden frequently avoids commenting on the case, he said in January 2023 he was surprised to learn that classified documents were found in his former office and that he did not know what was in them. The White House Counsel’s Office has already reviewed the report, according to a spokesperson, and declined to exert any executive privilege on its content. Another set of photos showed Biden’s Delaware garage, which “contained a significant volume of boxes, storage, and clutter,” including one that contained classified documents related to Afghanistan policy.

She pointed out that the administration already treats most visitor logs as public information. And, she said, the Biden team has determined the Capitol Hill insurrection requires "a full accounting to ensure nothing similar ever happens again." Democratic presidents tend to choose judges or luminaries close to retirement to serve as their top attorney in the White House. White House counsel Dana Remus is working around the clock to help President Biden make history — logging hours on the phones, meeting with Republicans and supervising background checks so he can fulfill his promise to nominate a Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. Legislative staff for the Assembly’s Labor and Employment Committee recommended Haney amend the legislation so that the “right to disconnect” wouldn’t apply at all to salaried professionals who are exempt from minimum wage and overtime laws.

The office is also distinct from the judiciary, and from others who are not appointed to positions but nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Supreme Court (and in lower federal courts) for the Justice Department when it is a party to the case. In a statement Thursday, Biden said that he was “pleased” that the special counsel’s report into his handling of classified documents did not include any charges. The president also added that this was “an exhaustive investigation” that went back more than 40 years. Delery’s departure comes as House Republicans investigate Biden’s son Hunter as well as the origins of COVID-19.

Delery joined Biden’s transition legal team after Biden defeated the incumbent Trump in November 2020. The federal probe included interviews with a broad spectrum of witnesses, including Biden himself, who sat for an interview with investigators in October. Investigators also interviewed longtime Biden adviser and current counselor Steve Ricchetti, former White House legal and communications aides, and Kathy Chung, an ex-executive assistant to Biden. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed special counsel Robert Hur, a former Trump-appointed US attorney, to lead the criminal probe after Biden’s aides found classified files at his home in Delaware and a private office in Washington, DC. Biden’s attorneys, on the other hand, notified the National Archives of the materials found in his possession. Those documents were discovered on November 2, just six days before the midterm elections, but the president’s attorneys only publicly acknowledged the discovery of the documents on November 7 — when news reports about the discovery broke.