Weiner Abedin Cartoons

DOJ not appealing transgender military ruling, but not abandoning case

The Department of Justice said it would not appeal the rejection of its stay request in the transgender military case, however, officials told Fox News the DOJ was not abandoning the case, either.

A federal judge earlier this month rejected President Trump's call to delay the enlistment of transgender people in the military, setting a date of Jan. 1, 2018 by which the military must allow enlistment.

The DOJ says it is holding its appeal until the completion of a Department of Defense study that advocates maintain will aid litigation of the case on its merits.
"The Department of Defense has announced that it will be releasing an independent study of these issues in the coming weeks," the official told Fox News. "So rather than litigate this interim appeal before that occurs, the administration has decided to wait for DOD's study and will continue to defend the President's lawful authority in district court in the meantime."
Jake Gibson is a producer working at the Fox News Washington bureau who covers politics, law enforcement and intelligence issues.

Trump administration aims to trim rules on offshore drilling

The Trump administration on Friday proposed to rewrite or kill rules on offshore oil and gas drilling that were imposed after a deadly 2010 rig explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The administration said the rules are an unnecessary burden on industry and rolling them back would encourage more energy production.

An offshore-drilling group welcomed the proposed rollback, while environmentalists said President Donald Trump would raise the risk of more deadly oil spills.
The Obama administration imposed tougher rules in response to the April 2010 explosion on a drilling rig used by BP called the Deepwater Horizon. The accident killed 11 workers and triggered a massive oil spill.
The Obama rules required more frequent inspections to prevent oil spills and dictated that experts onshore monitor drilling of highly complex wells in real time.
Randall Luthi, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, said in a statement that the Trump administration's rollback was a step toward regulatory reform. He said safety experts in the offshore energy industry would now have the chance to comment on the regulations and "assure the nation's offshore energy resources are developed safely and expeditiously."
But Miyoko Sakashita, ocean-program director for an environmental group, the Center for Biological Diversity, said rolling back drilling-safety standards was a recipe for disaster.
"By tossing aside the lessons from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Trump is putting our coasts and wildlife at risk of more deadly oil spills," Sakashita said in a statement. "Reversing offshore safety rules isn't just deregulation, it's willful ignorance."

Disputed Virginia House race may be decided Thursday

RICHMOND, Va. –  As Democrats and Republicans continued partisan sniping Friday over a House seat that could determine the balance of power in the Virginia House of Delegates, state elections officials moved to break the deadlock by scheduling a random drawing to pick the winner.
The Virginia Board of Elections said it will pick the winner's name in the Newport News-based 94th District next Thursday, unless a recount court decides to intervene.
The race between Democrat Shelly Simonds and Republican Del. David Yancey has seesawed since the Nov. 7 election. Initially, it appeared that Yancey had won by 10 votes, but a recount put Simonds ahead by a single vote.
A three-judge recount court later declared the race a tie after agreeing with the Yancey campaign that a disputed ballot was a vote for him. On Wednesday, Simonds asked the court to reconsider, but the panel has not yet responded.
The fight over the seat has been intense as Republicans try to hold on to a majority in the House after a bruising election in which Democrats erased the 66-34 advantage held by Republicans, as voters vented anger toward Republican President Donald Trump.
During a conference call with reporters Friday, GOP House Leader Kirk Cox — who hopes to become the next speaker of the House — criticized Democrats for causing "politically motivated delays" in deciding the 94th District race.
"Democrats have sought to delay and obstruct at every turn," Cox said.
"They've sought to litigate their way to victory."
Cox called Simonds' legal action a "deliberate strategy to make it more difficult for the House to organize smoothly" when the legislature reconvenes on Jan. 10.
He said that even if the winner's name is pulled Jan. 4, the House will not be able to seat the winner by the opening day of the legislative session if the loser asks for a recount. That would leave Republicans with a 50-49 majority as the session opens.
Simonds said Yancey is to blame for the delay.
"We won the recount ... it should have been over, and the next day, the Yancey team pulled a stunt. So this delay is squarely on him," she said Friday.
If Simonds ultimately wins, the House would be evenly split, 50-50, between Democrats and Republicans. If Yancey wins, the Republicans would have a 51-49 edge.
The state Board of Elections had been scheduled to pick the winner's name out of a glass bowl on Wednesday, but postponed the drawing after Simonds filed her legal challenge.
The result is one of two House races still in limbo.
A lawsuit is pending over ballots in a hotly contested race in the 28th District in the Fredericksburg area.

State Department releases Huma Abedin emails found on Anthony Weiner's laptop

The State Department on Friday released a batch of work-related emails from the account of top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin that were discovered by the FBI on a laptop belonging to Abedin's estranged husband, Anthony Weiner, near the end of the 2016 presidential campaign.

At least four of the documents released Friday are marked "classified."

One November 2010 document that was released shows Abedin forwarding an email to an address titled “Anthony Campaign.”
Former FBI Director James Comey said during a congressional hearing earlier this year that he believed Abedin regularly forwarded emails to Weiner for him to print out so she could give them to Clinton.
Comey famously said in July 2016 that Clinton was “extremely careless” in her handling of classified emails on a private server.
That 2010 email was a “callsheet” to Clinton about her upcoming call to Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal to warn about an imminent leak of U.S. diplomatic cables -- so-called Cablegate -- from WikiLeaks.
The rest of the document is redacted and marked classified as of August 2015.
Abedin is a longtime aide to Clinton who worked at the State Department and on Clinton’s campaign.
The emails indicate that Clinton was still invested in party politics despite her cabinet position. In one April 2011 email, Abedin informs her that Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz had been selected as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.
“Is she leaving the Congress?” Clinton replied.
It also shows Abedin in her role as Clinton’s gatekeeper.
“Love when people send her schedule stuff direct,” Abedin sarcastically wrote in an email to a colleague in December 2011, after someone emailed Clinton directly to ask her to speak at a conference.
At the time of the emails, Abedin was married to Weiner, a onetime Democratic congressman who began a 21-month prison sentence last month after being convicted of sexting a 15-year-old girl.
Abedin has since filed for divorce.
The Abedin emails jolted the 2016 presidential race after Comey told Congress just days before the election that FBI agents had found more of Clinton’s messages.
The emails were found on Weiner’s laptop, as the FBI investigated its sexting case against him.
The discovery of the records reopened the case against Clinton several months after Comey said he wasn’t recommending any charges be filed in the case.
HUMA ABEDIN'S COUSIN CONVICTED IN FRAUD CASE INVOLVING FAKE EMAILS
The conservative group Judicial Watch filed suit against the State Department for all official department emails sent or received by Abedin on a non-state.gov email address.
“This is a major victory,” the group’s president, Tom Fitton, said in a Friday statement. “After years of hard work in federal court, Judicial Watch has forced the State Department to finally allow Americans to see these public documents.”
Fitton added, “That these government docs were on Anthony Weiner’s laptop dramatically illustrates the need for the Justice Department to finally do a serious investigation of Hillary Clinton’s and Huma Abedin’s obvious violations of law.”