As of Wednesday, Congressman-elect George Santos still hadn’t bothered to open an office in his district or hire a staff to run it. This raised questions about whether Santos, who is under federal and local criminal investigation in the U.S., and is facing potential extradition to Brazil, and has already vowed not to seek reelection in 2024, is even going to bother going through the motions of pretending to be a real member of Congress. Now it’s gotten even uglier.

It turns out George Santos has in fact hired someone for his congressional staff: a Steve Bannon associate. This sets off alarm bells on a number of levels. For one thing, Bannon is a right wing extremist and an insurrectionist. For that matter, Bannon’s latest stunt centered around trying to convince Jair Bolsonaro to try to remain in office after losing reelection in the race for President of Brazil. And now Santos, who’s about to be criminally charged in Brazil, has hired a Bannon associate?

This whole thing just keeps getting weirder. George Santos has managed to avoid the headlines for a few days, but only due to the sheer spectacle of House Republicans’ embarrassing inability to elect a Speaker of the House. Once that debacle finally dies down, the media’s focus will be right back on Santos. House Republicans seemingly don’t have the guts to expel him, which means House Democrats will keep making Santos the poster child for Republican dishonesty and ineptitude until something finally gives.

The post George Santos isn’t even trying to hide it appeared first on Palmer Report.

A New York judge on Friday said former U.S. President Donald Trump must face a lawsuit by the state’s attorney general accusing him of fraudulently overvaluing his namesake real estate company’s assets and his own net worth.

Attorney General Letitia James had sued Trump, his adult children Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka and the Trump Organization last September over an alleged scheme to inflate Trump’s assets by billions of dollars through a decade of lies to banks and insurers, in what she called a “staggering” fraud.

Justice Arthur Engoron of the state Supreme Court in Manhattan rejected defense claims that James waited too long to sue, fell short of establishing fraud, and should have better justified the $250 million of damages she is seeking.

He also said Ivanka Trump could be sued despite her claims she had not falsified valuations and not worked for the Trump Organization since 2017, saying she could be liable for participating in “continuing wrongs.”

The judge also decided not to sanction the defendants for making arguments including that James was pursuing a political “witch hunt” and lacked legal authority to sue.

“Sophisticated defense counsel should have known better,” Engoron wrote nonetheless.

Lawyers for the defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In a statement, James said Trump “engaged in years of extensive financial fraud to enrich himself and cheat the system,” and must defend himself in court.

She also wants to stop the Trumps from running businesses in New York, and ban Trump and his company from acquiring real estate there for five years. An Oct. 2 trial is scheduled..

The lawsuit is one of many legal woes affecting Trump, who is seeking another term as president in 2024.

They include criminal investigations related to the FBI’s seizure of government documents from his Florida home, and his role in efforts to overturn or interfere with 2020 presidential election results.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office is also conducting a criminal probe relating to James’ civil case, and the Trump Organization faces a Jan. 13 sentencing after being convicted of tax fraud in another New York case.

Fox News never ceases to amaze. Friday is the anniversary of January 6. This is a date most cannot and will not forget. Fox, however, has been doing their damnedest to forget January 6 ever happened. Many of their hosts refuse to even refer to it as a terrorist attack or an insurrection.

This is because Fox is no more than Republican propaganda. And despite their them trying their hardest, nobody has forgotten the events of that terrible day. One thing Fox has done is tried to make the insurrectionists look sympathetic. Of course, most on Fox do not even bother referring to them as insurrectionists. Except for Brian Kilmeade.

That’s right. Kilmeade slipped up on national television. Allow me to explain. It was Thursday, January 5. And Kilmeade was grim-faced. He was angry at the McCarthy holdouts, like Gaetz and Boebert. During a segment on fox and friends, while speaking about the House vote, he said this: “This is how insincere the insurrectionists are.”

Uh-oh. Kilmeade was, of coarse, talking about the Boebert and Gaetz group. And faster than one could say, “I screwed up,” he attempted to backpedal.

“I probably shouldn’t use that word,” he said quickly, repressed hysteria evident in his voice. But it was too late, you see. And his attempt to walk his comment back was greeted by disgust by many.

But I suppose Kilmeade had no choice. The word “insurrectionist” is never used among the Maga crowd. They hate it. The reason they hate it is because they believe it was unfairly applied to Donald Trump — who IS an insurrectionist.

Kilmeade really put his foot in his mouth here. He disobeyed what I suspect is a top rule at Fox — never say one bad thing about any republican ever. Calling any of them insurrectionists certainly would appear to not fit with the Fox non-news agenda.

The post Fox News host blows it on air appeared first on Palmer Report.

The Biden administration on Thursday said it will now refer to Turkey as “Türkiye,” bowing to the Asiatic country’s request that the United States use Ankara’s preferred spelling.

“We will begin to refer to Türkiye and Republic of Türkiye accordingly in most formal, diplomatic, and bilateral contexts, including in public communications,” the State Department said in a statement. “The Turkish embassy requested that the U.S. government use the name ‘Republic of Türkiye’ in communications.”

The name change comes as the Biden administration hopes to win Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s support for admitting Sweden and Finland into NATO. The move requires unanimous agreement among NATO members, and Turkey is the lone holdout.

Turkish officials have said the name change is intended to eliminate associations with the large North American bird. The change will “increase our country’s brand value,” Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.

NATO and other international organizations changed the spelling last year. Several U.S. agencies, including the Treasury Department, had also switched previously.

Admitting the two northern European countries to NATO would expand the organization’s border with Russia. Turkey is complicating this goal and could reject the plan altogether, the New York Times reported:

But one holdout remains: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who has raised objections to the plan and, Western officials fear, may be willing to delay it for several more months. In a nightmare scenario, he might block the expansion entirely — all member countries must approve of additions to the bloc.

Either way, they say, the Turkish strongman is cynically complicating a major step in the showdown with Russia, looking to extract concessions from NATO and the United States before Turkish elections planned for next spring.

Meeting with his Swedish and Finnish counterparts in Washington on Thursday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said he was confident that the two nations would be admitted, vastly expanding NATO’s border with Russia and giving Mr. Putin, as Mr. Biden has put it, “exactly what he did not want” in his confrontation with the West over the war in Ukraine.

The State Department last changed the way it referred to a country in 2019 with North Macedonia, formerly known as Macedonia. The agency, however, still refuses to refer to Burma as Myanmar, where the military government changed the name in 1989.

Editor’s Note: The Washington Free Beacon will continue to use the Anglicized “Turkey.”

The post Biden Admin Bows to Erdogan, Adopts Turkey’s Name Change appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

A Virginia father slammed one the commonwealth’s George Soros-backed prosecutors for letting murderers walk free while throwing the book at concerned parents.

Jon Tigges says Loudoun County commonwealth’s attorney Buta Biberaj (D.) targeted him as a “political enemy” after he refused to leave a June 2021 school board meeting on Loudoun County Schools’ controversial transgender bathroom policy. On Wednesday, Tigges was exonerated of the trespassing charge, which Biberaj handled personally. Tigges says her direct involvement in his case shows her mismanaged priorities.

“She has no regard for actual criminals,” Tigges told the Washington Free Beacon. “She is saying that I was the one making that room unsafe. She cares about the safety of a principal who stands behind a microphone more than she does a mother who was brutally hammered to death by a dangerous criminal.”

Biberaj, who received more than half a million dollars from Soros, has come under fire for her mishandling of multiple murder cases. In 2021, her office released an accused wife-beater who went on to murder his wife with a hammer. Her office also botched two murder cases last fall when a series of mistakes forced them to release the suspects before trial. One of those suspects had to be hunted down later in Georgia; the other is no longer facing charges.

A Loudoun County district court judge dismissed Tigges’s case on Wednesday, saying the concerned father acted in good faith that he had a First Amendment right to remain to air his opinion.

A spokesman for Biberaj said the office was “disappointed at the decision.”

The judge also said disgraced Loudoun County Schools superintendent Scott Ziegler lacked the authority to declare an unlawful assembly and have parents arrested at the contentious board meeting.

Biberaj also personally sought jail time for Scott Smith, another Loudoun County father who protested the June 2021 school board meeting. Smith’s daughter was allegedly raped in a bathroom by a male student who dressed in girl’s clothes and used the women’s restroom.

Biberaj was kicked off that case in September when a Loudoun County judge cited concerns over Biberaj’s “impartiality.” Ziegler and a Loudoun County Public Schools spokesman were both indicted in December for having lied to parents and saying the rape hadn’t occurred.

Reports also found Biberaj was once a member of a closed Facebook group called “Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun,” which harassed and doxxed parents who opposed its work in the school district.

The arrests of Tigges and Smith became national headlines and their cases were later cited by the Biden administration as a pretext to potentially charge parents at school board meetings as domestic terrorists.

“It was those arrests that allowed Merrick Garland to declare people like myself and Scott domestic terrorists,” Tigges said. “And that chilled free speech across the entire country.”

The attempt to silence parents’ frustration over radical gender policy became a rallying cry in the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election for Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin, who pledged to empower parents’ role in their child’s education if elected.

The post Virginia Dad Slams Soros Prosecutor for Prosecuting Concerned Parents More Harshly Than Murderers appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday attended an Orthodox Church Christmas service by himself inside a Kremlin cathedral rather than joining other worshippers in a public celebration.

Russia’s RIA news agency said it was the first time in years that Putin had marked Christmas in Moscow rather than in the region around the capital.

State television showed two live clips of Putin inside the gilded Cathedral of the Annunciation as Orthodox priests conducted the midnight service, known as the Divine Liturgy.

Many Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on Jan. 6-7.

Putin, wearing a blue jacket and a high-necked white sweater, was the sole worshipper and crossed himself several times before television coverage cut away to a public service in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral.

Putin, who celebrated Easter last year in the cathedral with thousands of others, also attended Christmas by himself last year in his official Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow. In 2021, he took part in a public Divine Liturgy in Novgorod.

The Russian Orthodox Church backs the war in Ukraine. Patriarch Kirill of Moscow on Thursday called for both sides to observe a 36-hour Christmas truce that Putin had announced.

In a service given to mark the Divine Liturgy, Kirill on Friday criticised Ukraine for cracking down on a branch of the Orthodox church with longstanding ties to Moscow.

Ukraine’s security service has raided property owned by the church and last month accused a senior cleric of engaging in anti-Ukrainian activity by supporting Russian policies.

“Let us pray for our brothers and sisters and let us believe that someday these diabolical temptations will recede,” said Kirill, mocking what he called “the pathetic attempts” by Kyiv to destroy the church in Ukraine.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved Eisai Co Ltd (4523.T) and Biogen Inc’s (BIIB.O) Alzheimer’s drug lecanemab for the treatment of early forms of the fatal, brain-wasting disease.

Like their earlier Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm, lecanemab, to be sold under the brand name Leqembi, belongs to a class of treatments that aim to slow disease progression by removing sticky clumps of the toxic protein beta amyloid from the brain.

Here’s what we know about access to the drug so far:

Leqembi was approved for patients with Alzheimer’s disease, and is recommended for use in people with mild cognitive impairment or early Alzheimer’s – the same population in which the drug was tested.

To qualify for treatment, patients will need to have a special diagnostic test – either a PET scan of the brain or spinal tap – to confirm the presence of amyloid in the brain.

The companies said the drug would be available to patients during or before the week of Jan. 23. However, most patients will have to pay out of pocket for the drug, which costs $26,500 a year, as insurance coverage will be limited.

The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) said Leqembi falls under its current policy severely limiting coverage of amyloid-lowering drugs to people enrolled in an approved clinical trial if the drug has gone through the FDA’s accelerated approval process.

CMS, which runs the national Medicare healthcare plan for those age 65 and older, said in a statement it is currently reviewing all available data and “may reconsider” its coverage decision. The agency added that it would provide broader coverage if the drug receives standard FDA approval. The companies said they intend to apply for full approval shortly.

“Given the data behind lecanemab, there is a case that Eisai can make for CMS reimbursement for the drug,” said BMO analyst Evan Seigerman, adding that the drugmaker will need to negotiate with the agency.

The drug comes with a requirement that patients undergo four MRI scans over the course of 14 weeks to check for signs of Amyloid Related Imaging Abnormalities or “ARIA,” a type of temporary brain swelling that is frequently seen with drugs that remove amyloid from the brain.

In some patients, this type of brain swelling has led to hemorrhages. Because of that, Leqembi’s label urges doctors to warn patients of this risk, especially if patients are already taking blood thinners.

The label urges doctors to be especially careful in giving the clot-busting stroke treatment known as a tissue plasminogen activator, or t-PA, to patients taking Leqembi, saying it can increase the risk of bleeding in the brain.

Because of this risk, some physicians have said they would not recommend Leqembi for patients on blood thinners.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden marked the second anniversary of the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on Friday by awarding the “Presidential Citizens Medal” to 14 people, some of them posthumously, who battled to defend America’s democracy after the 2020 election.

In a White House ceremony, Biden, a Democrat, described the violence that injured 140 police as “fueled by lies.”

As he spoke, Republicans, many of them loyal to former President Donald Trump who pushed the false election claims, struggled for a fourth straight day to elect a speaker of the House of Representatives.

“All of it was fueled by lies about the 2020 election but on this day two years ago our democracy held because we the people…did not flinch,” Biden said.

“History will remember your names..remember your courage and remember your bravery,” Biden said.

The honorees also included former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who resisted pressure to overturn the 2020 election results in their states, Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman, who diverted rioters from the Senate floor while lawmakers were evacuating, and Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman, who was falsely accused by Trump of election fraud.

The White House on Friday added two names to the list, both of whom took their own lives in the aftermath of Jan. 6, U.S. Capitol Police officer Howard Liebengood and Washington police officer Jeffrey Smith.

Freeman was forced to flee her home last year after death threats from angry Trump supporters. Trump on Wednesday targeted Freeman by name again to his nearly 5 million followers on his social media platform.

Biden said Freeman and others fought back against “predators and peddlers of lies” about the 2020 election won by Biden.

Trump supporters attacked police, broke through barricades and entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a failed effort to prevent congressional certification of Biden’s 2020 election victory.

Trump, who has announced another bid for the presidency in 2024, had pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, to not certify the vote, and he continues to claim falsely that the 2020 election was stolen from him through widespread voting fraud.

The White House event gave Biden another opportunity to condemn the acts of violence two years ago and raise concerns about the threats to U.S. democracy by Trump and people inspired by him. The inability of Republicans so far this week to elect a House speaker, after winning control of the chamber in the November midterm elections, has hinged on a hardline group of mostly Trump-supporting lawmakers, many of whom backed his election fraud claims.

The fight to pick a House leader has raised questions about the capacity of Republicans to govern with a slim majority in the House. Biden has called the speaker election drama embarrassing.

Biden provided another contrast with bickering House Republicans during a joint appearance with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday in Kentucky in a display of bipartisanship. Democrats narrowly control the U.S. Senate.

Shortly before the 2021 rampage, Trump in his waning days as president delivered a speech near the White House urging his supporters to march on the Capitol. Five people died in the ensuing riot and more than 140 police officers were injured. A U.S. House panel investigating the attack said last month that Trump should face criminal charges for his role in provoking the violence.

‘INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT’

Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who died in the days following the attack on the Capitol, was awarded a posthumous medal. Washington’s chief medical examiner ruled that Sicknick died of natural causes following multiple strokes after the attack on the Capitol. His parents, Charles and Gladys Sicknick, accepted the award on his behalf. Biden held Gladys Sicknick’s hand as the citation about her son was read.

“This is warranted, and in some senses overdue but also incredibly difficult for the families, and particularly the families of those who lost a hero defending our democracy,” Biden said in the White House East Room, which was packed with family and friends of those being honored.

Other awardees included Harry Dunn, Caroline Edwards, Michael Fanone, Aquilino Gonell, Eugene Goodman and Daniel Hodges, who were all members of law enforcement who defended the Capitol on the day of the attack.

Shaye Moss, an election worker from Fulton Country, Georgia and Al Schmidt, who was a city commissioner on the Philadelphia County Board of Elections, also received awards.