White House News (白宮消息) | Jan. 25, 2021

 1 - White House News in Chinese (weebly.com)

White House Pushed by Bipartisan Lawmakers on Relief Plan’s Size

Jan. 25 - White House economic adviser Brian Deese was asked Sunday by Republican and Democratic lawmakers for justification for the $1.9 trillion price tag of the administration’s Covid-19 relief plan.

“Part of what we’re asking for is more data -- where did you get the number?” said Senator Angus King, a Democratically-aligned Maine independent who participated in Deese’s call. King was referring to the potential cost of the package’s components, versus the total price-tag.

The discussion, scheduled to feature 16 Senate Democrats and Republicans, also included the leaders of a bipartisan group of House centrists. Participants characterized it as an initial outreach by the White House as President Joe Biden seeks what would be the second-largest emergency spending bill ever.

The call is the latest sign Biden faces challenges in enacting Covid economic stimulus, his top legislative priority. Moderate GOP Senator Susan Collins said after the call she’s planning to press for the bipartisan group to put forth a narrower plan.

There was support on the call from lawmakers on both sides for funding for distributing Covid-19 vaccines and for coronavirus testing and tracing, according to three aides familiar with the discussions. Republicans including GOP Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, who had expressed skepticism last week about the need for another big relief package, said they at the same time were open to looking at money for the vaccines.     more details

---

Michael Cohen, former President Donald Trump's ex-lawyer, on Sunday suggested that Trump may have issued secret pardons before leaving office.

Michael Cohen Thinks Donald Trump Issued Secret Pardons for Himself, His Children and Giuliani

Jan. 24 - Former Donald Trump lawyer Michael Cohen on Sunday expressed his belief that the ex-president had issued pardons for himself, his children and Rudy Giuliani before leaving office.

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, Trump granted pardons to 73 individuals and commuted the sentences of an additional 70, including Steve Bannon and rapper Kodak Black. But his list did not include preemptive pardons for himself, his family or Giuliani.

Cohen told MSNBC host Alex Witt that he started to ponder why the former president didn't issue pardons for himself, his children or Giuliani after "knowing Donald Trump for well over a decade."

"I started thinking to myself it doesn't really make sense because it's not like Donald Trump, so what am I missing?" he said.

Cohen concluded that Trump could have already pardoned himself, his children and Giuliani in secret, in what he referred to as "pocket pardons."     continue to read

Related Articles:

• Ex-FBI Chief James Comey Says He Wish He Had Stood up More to Donald Trump
• What Joe Exotic Said about Not Getting a Pardon from Trump
• Trump Grants Clemency to Fewer Petitioners Than Predecessors in 120 Years

Utah's Republican Senator Mitt Romney, pictured at the US Capitol on Dec 11, 2020, was the only member of his party to vote to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial.
Republicans signal deep resistance to Trump's impeachment trial

Jan. 25 - WASHINGTON: Republican lawmakers signalled on Sunday (Jan 24) that Democrats will have a fight on their hands to secure the conviction of Donald Trump when the Senate next month opens its first-ever impeachment trial of a former president.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is expected on Monday to send senators a single article of impeachment passed in the House of Representatives that blames Trump for inciting the chaotic Capitol invasion of Jan 6, which left five people dead.

But as both sides prepared for what is expected to be a quick trial, Republicans pushed back with political and constitutional arguments - raising doubts that Democrats, who control 50 seats in the 100-seat chamber, can secure 17 Republican votes to reach the two-thirds majority needed to convict.

"I think the trial is stupid. I think it's counterproductive. We already have a flaming fire in this country and it's like taking a bunch of gasoline and pouring it on top," Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Fox News on Sunday.     more details

Related Articles:

• Democrats build impeachment case against Trump, alleging 'dangerous crime'
• Biden orders food aid for Americans, but Trump impeachment looms

This combination of pictures created on October 22, 2020 shows former President Donald Trump and current President Joe Biden during the final presidential debate in Nashville, Tennessee, on October 22, 2020

Biden plans to continue many of Trump’s foreign policies — at least for now
Biden’s team members have already signaled they intend to continue several of Trump’s policies from Venezuela to Ukraine to Israel and even China.

Date Published on Jan. 22, 2021
...Blinken told lawmakers that he and the Biden administration consider Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel and committed to keeping the US embassy there. Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved the embassy there from its previous location in Tel Aviv in 2018, a move that upended decades of US diplomacy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that some worried would spark widespread violence in the region. That violence didn’t materialize, and now it seems the status quo is just that — the status quo.

Blinken also commended Trump for being “right in taking a tougher approach to China” and said the Trump administration’s decision to label Beijing’s treatment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang a “genocide” was correct. The Biden aide was clear that the new team’s tactics toward China would differ from the Trump team’s, but the general thrust of US policy toward the country — confrontation — would stay the same.

Finally, Biden promised on the campaign trail to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal as long as Tehran came back into compliance by reducing its uranium enrichment levels. But Blinken, along with Biden’s Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and White House press secretary Jen Psaki, have made it clear in recent days that any return to the accord could take a while, and may not even happen at all....   more information

PBS NewsHour Weekend Full Episode January 24, 2021
Jan 25, 2021
On this edition for Sunday, January 24, President Biden is expected to sign a flurry of executive actions in his second week in office, how climate change will feature in his agenda, and a closer look at the attempts to curb methane emissions. Hari Sreenivasan anchors from New York.

White House News (白宮消息) | Jan. 23, 2021

 2 - White House News in Chinese (weebly.com)

Just a part of the White House, now.
Justice Department Independence? Not With Trump
The nonpartisan Office of Legal Counsel appears to be working closely with the president’s personal lawyers.

Jan 22 - President Donald Trump’s legal defense is putting a lot of weight on a brand-new memo from the Office of Legal Counsel. In fact, the memo appears to have been written specifically as part of the president’s defense strategy. That’s noteworthy because the OLC is part of the Department of Justice: It’s supposed to be legally independent, not partisan, and certainly not part of the president’s defense team.

The memo’s reasoning borders on egregious. It concocts a technicality to invalidate the subpoenas issued by the House of Representatives during the impeachment inquiry, making it somehow legitimate for Trump to have obstructed Congress — the basis of one of the articles of impeachment the president faces.

And then there’s the timing of the memo. It’s dated January 19, 2020, two days before the impeachment trial was slated to begin, and one day before Trump’s legal team issued its own memo summarizing his defense. Remarkably, the OLC’s memo was made public in the Trump defense team’s own memo, where it appears as Appendix C (page 126 of the memo PDF, if you’re looking for it).

In other words, the OLC memo was presented to the world as part of Trump’s defense team’s filing. That’s stunning for an office of the Department of Justice that once prided itself on exercising independent judgment from the rest of the department and the executive branch. It’s clear that today’s OLC has been recruited wholesale into Trump’s defense.      continue to read

The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) is an office in the United States Department of Justice that assists the Attorney General's position as legal adviser to the President and all executive branch agencies.

Trump administration[edit]Further information: Legal challenges to the Trump travel banEarly in the Trump administration, OLC approved Executive Order 13769 (referred to as the "travel ban" because it restricted entry from certain foreign countries which had Muslim-majority populations). Days later, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates announced that the Department of Justice would not defend the Order in court.[4] Explaining her decision, Yates stated that OLC's review assessed only whether a "proposed Executive Order is lawful on its face and properly drafted," not outside evidence about the order's purposes or whether the policy of the order is "wise or just."[5] Yates was fired later that day.[4] Her successor as acting attorney general, Dana Boente, referenced OLC's analysis when he reversed her decision.[5] The Executive Order was challenged in court, then superseded by subsequent Executive Orders and Presidential Proclamations.[5]

In a United States Senate hearing, Yates was asked whether she was aware of any past instance of an attorney general rejecting an executive order that had been approved by OLC. Yates testified that she was not aware of that ever happening, but that she was also not aware of a situation in which OLC failed to tell the attorney general about an executive order before it was issued.

---

Why Couldn’t Mueller Indict Trump?
This DOJ Policy Prevented Him

Date Published on May 30, 2019
As he resigned from his post Wednesday, former special counsel Robert Mueller explained that “longstanding” Department of Justice policy prevents a sitting president from being charged with a federal crime. Therefore, while his office investigated potential offenses committed by President Donald Trump, charging Trump was “not an option we could consider.”

The policy blocking indicting a sitting president dates back to the presidency of Richard Nixon. In September 1973, just under a year before Nixon resigned, the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel determined that a criminal case against the president “would interfere with the President’s unique official duties, most of which cannot be performed by anyone else.” Therefore, impeachment is the only manner by which a sitting president can be penalized for wrongdoing.     source

---

White House News (白宮消息) | Jan. 22, 2021

 1 - White House News in Chinese (weebly.com)

Yemen's Houthi movement denounced the Trump administration's decision to designate it a global terrorist group
tests for Joe Biden in 'new' Middle East

"Folks, it's a time of testing." So said America's new president in Wednesday's inauguration speech before listing the tests the country faces and concluding with "America's role in the world".

Jan. 22 - Some of the toughest questions on that exam are in the Middle East.

Joe Biden's team is dominated by old hands from the Obama administration returning to a region with new orders to revisit old issues.

Their biggest challenges involve policies they personally helped to shape - in places in far worse shape now. But some see openings and opportunities in that.

"They've learned from what went wrong with the Obama administration's approach to the Middle East," observes Kim Ghattas, a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of the book, Black Wave, on Saudi-Iranian rivalry in the region. "They may take things in a different direction because they've learned from the mistakes, and because the region today is a very different place."

In the top tray of the new administration's foreign files is policy towards Iran. The landmark 2015 nuclear deal by world powers is now dangling by a thread after Donald Trump discarded it and despatched waves of crushing sanctions. There is also the devastating war in Yemen, which Mr Obama initially supported, partly to assuage Saudi anger over the accord with its arch-enemy Iran.     continue to read

---

JANUARY 19, 2021
Secretary of State Confirmation Hearing
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a confirmation hearing for Antony Blinken to serve as secretary of state. Mr. Blinken was questioned about a range of foreign policy issues that included the Iran nuclear agreement, U.S. strategy toward China, the conflict in Yemen, the coronavirus pandemic, the New START arms reduction treaty with Russia, the State Department workforce, immigration policy, strategy toward Russia, U.S. military intervention, and the Keystone XL pipeline.. Mr. Blinken previously served as the deputy secretary of State during the Obama administration. The nominee was introduced by Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL).

拜登20日入主白宫 危机四伏 美国团结还是分裂？20210120 |
《今日关注》CCTV中文国际
Jan 21, 2021

Antony Blinken, President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee to be secretary of state, salutes US senators as he arrives for his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday.

Antony Blinken, US secretary of state nominee, says Trump’s tough approach to China was right but tactics were wrong

a Senate confirmation hearing, Blinken says US should have acted sooner as ‘democracy was being trampled’ in Hong Kong

‘I’d like to see us be able to take in some of those fleeing Hong Kong, fleeing the repression, for standing up for their democratic rights’

Jan 20 - US President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee to be the secretary of state told Congress on Tuesday that China seeks to become the dominant world power and undermine American interests, the latest sign that the Trump administration’s hardline stance toward an increasingly authoritarian Beijing appears set to continue once the new administration begins on Wednesday.

“I think what we’ve seen in recent years, particularly since the rise of Xi Jinping as leader, has been that the hiding and biding has gone away,” Antony Blinken told lawmakers during his Senate confirmation hearing.

“I also believe that President Trump was right in taking a tougher approach to China,” he added. “I disagree very much with the way that he went about it in a number of areas, but the basic principle was the right one, and I think that’s actually helpful to our foreign policy.”

Blinken’s comments came just hours after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the Trump administration’s new determination that China was committing crimes against humanity and genocide against the Uygurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minority groups in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region.     continue to read

---

White House News (白宮消息) | Jan. 21, 2021

 2 - White House News in Chinese (weebly.com)

JANUARY 20, 2021
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki Holds First Briefing
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki held the first press briefing of the Biden-Harris administration. She highlighted some of the executive orders that President Biden signed on his first day, which include rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, rejoining the World Health Organization, a mask mandate to help combat the coronavirus pandemic, and ceasing the funding and construction of the southern border wall. When asked about her role as press secretary, Ms. Psaki said she understands the “power of the podium, and the power of truth,” and that even though she and the press may not agree all the time, they have a common goal of “sharing accurate information with the American people.”

Jennifer Rene Psaki (/sɑːkiː/; born December 1, 1978)[1][2][3] is an American political advisor who currently serves as the 34th White House Press Secretary in the Biden administration.[4] Previously, she served as the Spokesperson for the United States Department of State and held various senior press and communications roles in the Obama White House.[5] She has also been a CNN contributor.

Biden administrationIn November 2020, Psaki left CNN and joined the Biden-Harris transition team.[19] Later that month, Psaki was named as the White House press secretary for the Biden administration.[20][21][22] She held her first press briefing in the evening of January 20, after the inauguration.[23]

from Wikipedia


Who is Jen Psaki, Joe Biden’s White House press secretary?
Date Published on Jan. 20, 2020

Press experience: Psaki served in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2017, according to The New York Times. She moved to the State Department in 2013, where she served as a spokesperson for Secretary of State John Kerry, the newspaper reported. She previously worked for Kerry as deputy press secretary when he ran for president in 2004.
Back to tradition: For the first question, Psaki called on Zeke Miller, a reporter for The Associated Press. The move returned to the briefing room tradition that allowed the wire service reporter to ask the first question, the Times reported.

Not involved: Psaki was not involved with Biden’s campaign during 2020. Instead, she worked for CNN as a commentator and also worked for private-public relations clients, the Times reported. She was also vice president for communications and strategy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Connecticut Yankee: Jennifer Rene Psaki was born Dec. 1, 1978, in Stamford, Connecticut, and graduated from Greenwich High School in 1996, according to the Connecticut Post. Her father, Jim Psaki, is a retired real estate developer who owned Groton Community and Groton Multifamily in Connecticut, the Times reported. He now lives in Colorado. Psaki’s mother, Eileen D. Medvey, is a psychotherapist in private practice, according to the newspaper.    source from KIRO7

---

Jen Psaki conducted the first news briefing of President Biden’s administration on Wednesday just hours after the inauguration, vowing to bring “truth and transparency back to the briefing room.”
Jen Psaki, Biden’s new press secretary, pledges to bring ‘truth and transparency back.’

Jan. 21 - Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, conducted the first news briefing of President Biden’s administration on Wednesday and vowed to bring “truth and transparency back to the briefing room.”

Ms. Psaki’s appearance at the White House lectern just hours after Mr. Biden’s inauguration was designed to draw a stark contrast with the previous administration, which had engaged in verbal combat with reporters and had all-but abandoned briefings.

Unlike Sean Spicer, Mr. Trump’s first press secretary, who lashed out at the news media and lied about Mr. Trump’s inaugural crowd size during his first appearance in the briefing room, Ms. Psaki engaged in a largely civil exchange of information with reporters.

“There will be moments when we disagree, and there will certainly be days where we disagree for extensive parts of the briefing even, perhaps,” she said to about a dozen journalists in the room. “But we have a common goal, which is sharing accurate information with the American people.”     continue to read

White House News (白宮消息) | Jan. 20, 2021

 2 - White House News in Chinese (weebly.com)

Trump tells people he's decided to pardon Steve Bannon as one of his final acts in office

Jan. 20 - ​(CNN)President Donald Trump has decided to pardon his former chief strategist Steve Bannon, in a last-minute decision made only hours before he is scheduled to depart the White House for a final time.

Officials cautioned CNN that Trump's decision was not final until he signed the paperwork. Trump told people that after much deliberation, he had decided to pardon Bannon as one of his final acts in office.

Bannon faces a federal case that began in August when New York federal prosecutors charged him and three others with defrauding donors of more than a million dollars as part of a fundraising campaign purportedly aimed at supporting Trump's border wall.

Bannon's pardon would follow a frantic scramble during the President's final hours in office as attorneys and top aides debated his inclusion on Trump's outgoing clemency list. Despite their falling out in recent years, Trump was eager to pardon his former aide after recently reconnecting with him as he helped fan Trump's conspiracy theories about the election.

It was a far cry from when Trump exiled Bannon from his inner circle after he was quoted in a book trashing the President's children, claiming that Donald Trump Jr. had been "treasonous" by meeting with a Russian attorney and labeling Ivanka Trump "dumb as a brick." Those statements from Bannon drove Trump to issue a lengthy statement saying he had "lost his mind."
​
"Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency," Trump said at the time.     continue to read

Stephen Kevin Bannon (born November 27, 1953) is an American media executive, political strategist, former investment banker, and the former executive chairman of Breitbart News. He served as the White House's chief strategist in the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump during the first seven months of Trump's term.[2][3] He previously served on the board of the now-defunct data-analytics firm Cambridge Analytica.[4]
Bannon was an officer in the United States Navy for seven years in the late 1970s and early 1980s. After his military service, he worked for two years at Goldman Sachs as an investment banker. In 1993, he became acting director of the research project Biosphere 2. He became an executive producer in Hollywood, and produced 18 films between 1991 and 2016. In 2007, he co-founded Breitbart News, a far-right[i] website which he described in 2016 as "the platform for the alt-right".[I]
In 2016, Bannon became the chief executive officer of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign[31][32] and was appointed Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor to the President following Trump's election. He left the position eight months later, and rejoined Breitbart. In January 2018, Bannon was disavowed by Trump for critical comments reported in the book Fire and Fury,[33] and left Breitbart.
After leaving the White House, Bannon opposed the Republican Party establishment and supported insurgent candidates in Republican primary elections. Bannon's reputation as a political strategist was questioned when Roy Moore, with Bannon's support, lost the 2017 United States Senate election in Alabama.[34][35] Bannon has declared his intention to become "the infrastructure, globally, for the global populist movement."[36] Accordingly, he has supported many national populist conservative political movements around the world, including creating a network of far-right groups in Europe.
In August 2020, Bannon was arrested and he and three others were charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering in connection to the We Build the Wall campaign. He has pleaded not guilty and will stand trial in May 2021.[37][38] In November 2020, Bannon's Twitter account was permanently suspended after he suggested that Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray should be beheaded.     from Wikipedia

Trump to pardon Steve Bannon, reversing course hours before presidency ends: reports

Jan. 20 - U.S. President Donald Trump has decided to pardon his former strategist and far-right figurehead Steve Bannon, according to multiple reports.

The decision, reported by CNN, Bloomberg and Reuters Tuesday night, came after earlier reports that Trump had been talked out of pardoning Bannon by his aides. Yet even those reports admitted the question was still open throughout the day, with Trump continuing to bring up the possibility.
The new reports warned no decisions were final until Trump signed the paperwork for over 100 pardons expected to be issued in the final hours of his presidency. The list had still not been officially released as Tuesday ended.

Bannon — who founded the right-wing news website Breitbart and was the chief architect of Trump’s Muslim travel ban in 2017 — was charged in August 2020 with duping thousands of investors who believed their money would be used to fulfil Trump’s chief campaign promise to build a wall along the southern border.

Instead, Bannon is charged with diverting over a million dollars, paying a salary to one campaign official and personal expenses for himself. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.     continue to read

Related Articles:

•  U.S. Capitol rioters hoping for last-minute Trump pardons ahead of Biden’s inauguration
• Donald Trump has decided to pardon Steve Bannon, reports said Tuesday. The former White House Chief Strategist, center, exits the Manhattan Federal Court on August 20 last year​

---

《鳳凰早班車》伊朗制裁特朗普及9名美國高級官員；
拜登就職典禮如臨大敵 危機四伏；
台灣疫情爆發觀光業急凍，
春節料損失百億
20210120【下載鳳凰秀App，發現更多精彩】
Jan 20, 2021
伊朗外交部19號宣佈，已經將美國總統特朗普，以及其他9名現任或前任美國高級官員，列入恐怖主義和侵犯人權行為的制裁名單。伊朗指這些人出于各種原因，下令并支持殺害伊朗高級軍官蘇萊曼尼。