TV News LIES

Lawyers representing the United States at Julian Assange’s extradition trial in Britain have accepted the claim that the WikiLeaks founder was offered a presidential pardon by a congressman on the condition that he would help cover up Russia’s involvement in hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee.

Jennifer Robinson, a lawyer, told the court that she had attended a meeting between Assange, then Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, and pro-Trump troll Charles Johnson at Assange’s hide-out, the Ecuadorian embassy in London, on August 15, 2017.

Two senior public relations experts advising the Food and Drug Administration have been ousted from their positions after fumbled communications about a blood plasma treatment for Covid-19. President Trump and the head of the F.D.A. had erroneously boasted on the eve of the Republican National Convention that the treatment sharply lowered mortality from the disease.

On Friday, the F.D.A. commissioner, Dr. Stephen M. Hahn, removed Emily Miller, the agency’s chief spokeswoman. The White House had installed Ms. Miller, who had previously worked in communications for the re-election campaign of Senator Ted Cruz and as a journalist for One America News, the conservative cable network, in this post just 11 days ago.

Dr. Hahn notified senior leadership at the F.D.A. on Friday that Ms. Miller would no longer be the official spokeswoman for the agency, and that he would be appointing someone to replace her in an interim capacity. Ms. Miller could not be reached for comment.

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The Trump administration’s lead diplomat on Iran, Brian Hook, has announced his resignation days before the US attempts a high-stakes gambit against Tehran at the United Nations.

He will be replaced by Elliott Abrams, who will combine the Iran special representative job with his current role as special envoy for Venezuela. Abrams is a hawk on both countries – and has combined Iranian and Latin American issues before, when he was a significant figure in the Iran-Contra affair under the Reagan administration.

Hook, until now a rare survivor at the top levels of the state department in the maelstrom of the Trump era, did not give a reason for his resignation, claiming the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran had been “very successful”.

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According to a joint filing by lawyers for Trump and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, the president plans by July 27 to file a complaint raising arguments against Vance’s grand jury subpoena, which Trump said the nation’s highest court allowed him to make.

Vance countered that most of these arguments have already been rejected in the litigation, and Trump deserves no special treatment because he is president. The district attorney agreed not to enforce the subpoena through July 27.

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in Manhattan has scheduled a Thursday hearing on the matter.

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