He surprises you. Last time it was his man date with Jon Gosselin. This time, he leaked a tape-recorded phone call of his daughter, Lindsay Lohan, crying hysterically on the phone to him. [Radar]
Keystone XL may soon be out of stock
U.S. president-elect Joe Biden has indicated plans to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline permit via executive action on his first day in office, sources confirmed to CBC News on Sunday. A purported briefing note from the Biden transition team mentioning the plan was widely circulated over the weekend after being shared by the incoming president’s team with U.S. stakeholders. The words “Rescind Keystone XL pipeline permit” appear on a list of executive actions supposedly scheduled for Day 1 of Biden’s presidency.
Navalny returns to Russia, is immediately detained
Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who recuperated in Germany from a near-deadly poisoning, returned to Moscow on Sunday and was detained shortly after leaving his plane. The detention of Mr. Navalny could set off an international backlash and protests at home. He has accused the Kremlin of trying to murder him in YouTube videos viewed more than 40 million times.
Russia’s penitentiary service, which has said that Mr. Navalny was wanted for violating the terms of a prior suspended sentence, released a statement saying that Mr. Navalny had been detained pending a court hearing. …
Before he was detained at passport control, Mr. Navalny gave an impromptu statement to journalists. He stood in the transit area of the airport’s Terminal D, before a lit-up screen showing a photo of the Kremlin, and apologized to air travelers inconvenienced by the air-traffic tumult surrounding his arrival. “I am not afraid,” he said in remarks carried by Russian news media livestreams from the scene. “I know that I am right. I know all the criminal cases against me are fabricated.”
NSA is installing Trump-selected GOP operative as agency’s top lawyer
The National Security Agency is “moving forward” to install Michael Ellis, a former GOP political operative and White House official, as the agency’s top lawyer, the agency said Sunday. The announcement came a day after acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller ordered the NSA director, Gen. Paul Nakasone, to immediately place Ellis in position as the agency’s general counsel.
Ellis had been selected for the job in November by the Pentagon general counsel after a civil service competition. But Nakasone was not in favor of Ellis’s selection and sought to delay his installation, according to several people familiar with the issue, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. …
Ellis was selected under pressure from the White House, people familiar with the matter said at the time. The move drew criticism from national security legal experts as an attempt to politicize a career position.
A look back at the president’s most notable lies from the most tireless fact-checker of the Trump era
My personal favorite lie: Trump was once named Michigan’s Man of the Year
Trump has never lived in Michigan. Why would he have been named Michigan’s Man of the Year years before his presidency? He wouldn’t have been. He wasn’t. And yet this lie he appeared to have invented in the final week of his 2016 campaign became a staple of his 2020 campaign, repeated at Michigan rally after rally. It’s so illustrative because it makes so little sense.
Trump unveils his Inauguration Day plans
Trump will depart Washington on Wednesday morning before Biden is sworn in, becoming the first modern-day president to skip his successor’s inauguration.
Instead, Trump will attend an unprecedented farewell event at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington, where Air Force One is kept. No recent president has had his own sendoff ceremony at Andrews.
Don’t believe the rumors: Trump and Giuliani are still pals (though it’s unclear if Trump is paying his legal fees)
When Rudolph W. Giuliani was treating his efforts to carry out President Trump’s wishes to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election as a payment opportunity — he proposed a daily retainer of $20,000 for his legal services from the burgeoning Trump campaign legal fund — the president dismissed it and responded by demanding to personally approve each expense.
Nine weeks and another impeachment later, Mr. Trump began the day on Thursday by asking aides to erase any sign of a rift. Stripped of his Twitter account, Mr. Trump conveyed his praise through an adviser, Jason Miller, who tweeted: “Just spoke with President Trump, and he told me that @RudyGiuliani is a great guy and a Patriot who devoted his services to the country! We all love America’s Mayor!”
White House officials are universally angry with Mr. Giuliani and blame him for both of Mr. Trump’s impeachments. But the president is another story.
Even as he complains about Mr. Giuliani’s latest efforts as fruitless, the president remains unusually deferential to him in public and in private. “Don’t underestimate him,” Mr. Trump has told advisers.
But only up to a point. While Mr. Trump and his advisers balked at the $20,000 request weeks ago, it is unclear whether the president will sign off on Mr. Giuliani being paid anything other than expenses.
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