Giuliani reportedly talked preemptive pardon with Trump
Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s lawyer who has led the most extensive efforts to damage his client’s political rivals and undermine the election results, discussed with him as recently as last week the possibility of receiving a preemptive pardon before Trump leaves office, according to two people told of the discussion.
It was not clear who raised the topic.
The men had also talked previously about a pardon for Giuliani, according to the people. Trump has not indicated what he will do, one of the people said.
Giuliani’s potential criminal exposure is unclear.
He was under investigation as recently as this summer by federal prosecutors in Manhattan for his business dealings in Ukraine and his role in ousting the American ambassador there, a plot that was at the heart of the impeachment of Trump.
Giuliani did not respond to a message seeking comment, but after a version of this article was published online, he attacked it on Twitter and said it was false.
A pardon for Giuliani is certain to prompt accusations that Trump has used his pardon power to obstruct investigations and insulate himself and his allies.
Andrew Weissmann, a top prosecutor for special counsel Robert Mueller, has said that Trump’s dangling of pardons for his allies impeded their work.
Science adviser resigns:
Dr. Scott Atlas, a science adviser to President Donald Trump who was skeptical of measures to control the coronavirus outbreak, is leaving his White House post.
A White House official confirmed that the Stanford University neuroradiologist, who had no formal experience in public health or infectious diseases, resigned at the end of his temporary government assignment. Atlas confirmed the news in a tweet.
Atlas joined the White House this summer, where he clashed with top government scientists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, as he resisted stronger efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 270,000 Americans.
Atlas has broken with government experts and the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community to criticize efforts to encourage face covering to slow the spread of the virus. Just weeks ago on Twitter, he responded to Michigan’s latest virus restrictions by encouraging people to “rise up” against the state’s policies.
Atlas was hired as a “special government employee,” which limited his service to government to 130 days in a calendar year — a deadline he reached this week.
Another firing at Pentagon:
The Pentagon policy official overseeing the military’s efforts to combat the Islamic State was fired Monday after a White House appointee told him the United States had won that war and that his office had been disbanded, according to three people briefed on the matter.
The ouster of Christopher Maier, head of the Pentagon’s Defeat ISIS Task Force since March 2017, came just three weeks after
President Donald Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper and three other Pentagon officials, and replaced them with loyalists.
In a statement late Monday, the Pentagon said that acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller had accepted Maier’s resignation and that his duties would be folded into two other offices that deal with special operations and regional policies. Those offices are led by Ezra Cohen-Watnick and Anthony Tata, two of the Trump appointees who have been promoted in the recent purge.
The Pentagon statement said the transition reflected the success of the U.S.-led effort to crush the terrorist state that IS created in large swaths of Iraq and Syria.
But Maier’s supporters say he was summarily forced out of an important but low-profile job that required navigating the shoals of Washington’s counterterrorism bureaucracy as well as flying off to combat zones, including northeast Syria and Iraq to work with precarious partners on the ground in the fight against the Islamic State group.
Chinese spacecraft on the moon:
A Chinese spacecraft landed on the moon Tuesday to bring back lunar rocks to Earth for the first time since the 1970s, the government announced.
The Chang’e 5 probe “successfully landed” at its planned site, state TV and news agencies reported, citing the China National Space Administration.
They didn’t immediately announce any more details.
The lander was launched Nov. 24 from the tropical southern island of Hainan.
It is the latest venture by a Chinese space program that sent its first astronaut into orbit in 2003, has a spacecraft en route to Mars and aims eventually to land a human on the moon.
Runoff for Lewis seat:
Voters in the Atlanta area were summoned back to the polls Tuesday to decide who to send to Washington for a month to briefly fill the seat of the late civil rights legend John Lewis.
Former Atlanta City Council member Kwanza Hall and former Morehouse College President Robert Franklin are contesting a runoff election.
The men finished first and second, but no one won a majority in a first round of voting in September among seven candidates.
The winner of the two Democrats will only fill the seat until Jan. 3, though. State senator and state Democratic Party chair Nikema Williams easily defeated Republican Angela Stanton King in November for a full two-year-term starting in January.
Williams and King didn’t run in the special election.
A man zigzagged an SUV at high speed through a pedestrian zone in the southwestern German city of Trier on Tuesday, killing five people, including a 9-month-old child, and seriously injuring more than a dozen, officials said.
The driver, identified as a 51-year-old German man
Car attack in Germany:
born in Trier, was arrested at the scene and the vehicle was impounded, Trier police said.
The suspect, whose name was not released in line with German privacy laws, had no fixed address and had been living in recent days in the Land Rover that a friend had loaned him, which was used in the attack, said prosecutor Peter Fritzen, who was heading the investigation.
He was being interrogated by police and was to undergo a psychiatric examination, Fritzen said, adding that a doctor had recently reached the preliminary conclusion the man could be suffering from mental illness.
“We have no indication that there was any kind of a terrorist, political or religious motive that could have played a role,” he told reporters.
The suspect had also consumed a “not insignificant” quantity of alcohol before the incident and was well above the legal limit, he added.