Illinois House votes to remove Republican rep from session for refusing to wear mask

A Republican state representative in Illinois was reportedly removed from a legislative session in Springfield Wednesday for refusing to wear a mask.
The Illinois House voted 82-27 to remove Rep. Darren Bailey for violating a newly adopted rule requiring masks for members, staff and visitors to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Democratic Rep. Emanuel “Chris” Welch made the motion for removal after Bailey refused to put on a mask when asked.

New Illinois Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, wearing a mask because of the coronavirus at State Capitol May 20, 2020, in Springfield. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune / Pool)

Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Bailey showed a “callous disregard for life, callous disregard for people’s health” in his refusal.
“You just [ask] a doctor [to] tell you why people wear masks in the first place. It’s to protect others. So clearly, the representative is not interested in protecting others," he said.
Illinois House Republican Leader Jim Durkin urged everyone to follow the new rule.
“We cannot ignore nor compromise the health and safety of every member of the General Assembly, their family members, every one of our staffers who works tirelessly for us,” Durkin said, according to the Tribune.
Other members were resistant to wearing masks but eventually complied.
"If we are required. I will play along," Republican state Rep. Chris Miller said, according to WMAQ-TV in Chicago. "I don’t want to be a distraction from the real issues of JB's Failed leadership."
Republican state Rep. Brad Halbrook agreed, “If the rule is adopted I will abide by it.”
Bailey sued the governor in April over Pritzker's extension of the state’s stay-at-home order. A judge ruled against him.
Earlier this month, Bailey told Fox News Pritzker is "trampling" the rights of Illinois residents with the continued coronavirus restrictions. "The law is not being upheld and that's our problem," he said
Bailey told reporters Wednesday he also refused to take a voluntary coronavirus test being offered to lawmakers before the session, WMAQ reported.

Doctors raise alarm about health effects of continued coronavirus shutdown: 'Mass casualty incident'

More than 600 doctors signed onto a letter sent to President Trump Tuesday pushing him to end the "national shutdown" aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus, calling the widespread state orders keeping businesses closed and kids home from school a "mass casualty incident" with "exponentially growing health consequences."
The letter outlines a variety of consequences that the doctors have observed resulting from the coronavirus shutdowns, including patients missing routine checkups that could detect things like heart problems or cancer, increases in substance and alcohol abuse, and increases in financial instability that could lead to "[p]overty and financial uncertainty," which "is closely linked to poor health."
"We are alarmed at what appears to be the lack of consideration for the future health of our patients," the doctors say in their letter. "The downstream health effects ... are being massively under-estimated and under-reported. This is an order of magnitude error."
The letter continues: "The millions of casualties of a continued shutdown will be hiding in plain sight, but they will be called alcoholism, homelessness, suicide, heart attack, stroke, or kidney failure. In youths it will be called financial instability, unemployment, despair, drug addiction, unplanned pregnancies, poverty, and abuse.
"Because the harm is diffuse, there are those who hold that it does not exist. We, the undersigned, know otherwise."
The letter comes as the battle over when and how to lift coronavirus restrictions continues to rage on cable television, in the courts, in protests and among government officials. Those for lifting the restrictions have warned about the economic consequences of keeping the shutdowns in effect. Those advocating a more cautious approach say that having more people out and about will necessarily end with more people becoming infected, causing what National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci warned in a Senate hearing last week would be preventable "suffering and death."
But these doctors point to others that are suffering, not from the economy or the virus, but simply from not being able to leave home. The doctors' letter lists a handful of patients by their initials and details their experiences.
"Patient E.S. is a mother with two children whose office job was reduced to part-time and whose husband was furloughed," the letter reads. "The father is drinking more, the mother is depressed and not managing her diabetes well, and the children are barely doing any schoolwork."
"Patient A.F. has chronic but previously stable health conditions," it continues. "Her elective hip replacement was delayed, which caused her to become nearly sedentary, resulting in a pulmonary embolism in April."
Dr. Mark McDonald, a psychiatrist, noted in a conversation with Fox News that a 31-year-old patient of his with a history of depression who was attending school to get a master's degree in psychology died about two weeks ago of a fentanyl overdose. He blames the government-imposed shutdown.
"She had to stay in her apartment, essentially in house arrest as most people here in [Los Angeles] were for weeks and weeks, she could not see her therapist -- she could speak to the therapist over the phone but she couldn't see her in person. She could not attend any of her group meetings, which were helping to maintain her abstinence from opiates ... and she relapsed into depression.
"She was just too withdrawn to ask for help," McDonald continued before noting that due to regulations only six people could be at her funeral. "She was simply trying to escape from her pain... I do blame these actions by the government for her death."
Fox News asked McDonald, as well as three other doctors who were involved with the letter, if they thought the indirect effects of the shutdowns outweighed the likely direct consequences of lifting them -- the preventable "suffering and death" Fauci referred to in last week's Senate hearing. All four said that they believe they do.
"The very initial argument ... which sounded reasonable three months ago, is that in order to limit the overwhelmed patient flux into hospitals that would prevent adequate care, we needed to spread out the infections and thus the deaths in specific locales that could become hotspots, particularly New York City... It was a valid argument at the beginning based on the models that were given," McDonald said. "What we've seen now over the last three months is that no city -- none, zero -- outside of New York has even been significantly stressed."
McDonald is referring to the misconception that business closures and stay-at-home orders aimed at "flattening the curve" are meant to reduce the total number of people who will fall ill because of the coronavirus. Rather, these curve-flattening measures are meant largely to reduce the number of people who are sick at any given time, thus avoiding a surge in cases that overwhelms the health care system and causes otherwise preventable deaths because not all patients are able to access lifesaving critical care.

Dr. Mark McDonald is one of the doctors who signed onto a letter raising the alarm about health harms caused by coronavirus lockdown orders. (Courtesy/Mark McDonald) 

McDonald said that "hospitals are not only not overwhelmed, they're actually being shut down." He noted that at one hospital in the Los Angeles area where Dr. Simone Gold, the head organizer of the letter, works "the technicians in the ER have been cut by 50 percent."
Gold also said the effects of the shutdown are more serious for the vast majority of people than the potential virus spread if it is quickly lifted.
"When you look at the data of the deaths and the critically ill, they are patients who were very sick to begin with," she said, "There's always exceptions. ... But when you look at the pure numbers, it's overwhelmingly patients who are in nursing homes and patients with serious underlying conditions. Meaning, that that's where our resources should be spent. I think it's terribly unethical... part of the reason why we let [the virus] fly through the nursing homes is because we're diverting resources across society at large. We have limited resources we should put them where it's killed people."
People of all ages, of course, have been shown to be able to catch the coronavirus. And there have been reported health complications in children that could potentially be linked to the disease. Fauci also warned about assuming that children are largely protected from the effects of the virus.
“We don't know everything about this virus … especially when it comes to children,” Fauci said in a Senate hearing last week. “We ought to be careful and not cavalier.”
Newport Beach, Calif., concierge doctor Dr. Jeffrey Barke, who led the letter effort with Gold, also put an emphasis on the disparity in who the virus effects.
"There are thousands of us out there that don't agree with the perspective of Dr. Fauci and [White House coronavirus response coordinator] Dr. [Deborah] Birx that believe, yes, this virus is deadly, it's dangerous, and it's contagious, but only to a select group of Americans," he said. "The path forward is to allow the young and healthy, the so-called herd, to be exposed and to develop a degree of antibodies that both now is protective to them and also prevents the virus from spreading to the most vulnerable."

Dr. Simone Gold is a co-founder of A Doctor a Day, an organization dedicated to elevating the voices of doctors who disagree with the coronavirus shutdowns. (Courtesy/Simone Gold)

Dr. Scott Barbour, an orthopedic surgeon in Atlanta, reflected the comments the other doctors made about how the medical system has been able to handle the coronavirus without being overwhelmed, but also noted that the reported mortality rates from the coronavirus might be off.
"The vast majority of the people that contract this disease are asymptomatic or so minimally symptomatic that they're not even aware that they're sick. And so the denominator in our calculation of mortality rate is far greater than we think," he said. "The risk of dying from COVID is relatively small when we consider these facts."
Gold, an emergency medicine specialist based in Los Angeles, led the letter on behalf of a new organization called A Doctor a Day.
A Doctor a Day has not yet formally launched but sent the letter, with hundreds of signatures from physicians nationwide, to the White House on Tuesday. Gold and the group's co-founder, Barke, said they began the organization to advocate for patients against the government-imposed coronavirus shutdowns by elevating the voices of doctors who felt that the negative externalities of the shutdowns outweigh the potential downside of letting people resume their normal business.
To gather signatures for the letter, Gold and Barke partnered with the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a doctors' group that advocates for less government interference in the relationship between doctors and patients, and notably has taken part in legal challenges against the Affordable Care Act and advocated to allow doctors to use hydroxychloroquine on themselves and their patients.
Gold, in a conversation with Fox News, lamented that the debate around hydroxychloroquine has become politicized, noting that it is taken as a preventative measure for other diseases and that the potentially harmful effects of the drug mainly affect people with heart issues.
The drug is approved to treat malaria, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, but the Food and Drug Administration has said that "[h]ydroxychloroquine and chloroquine have not been shown to be safe and effective for treating or preventing COVID-19."
The FDA has also warned health professionals that the drug should not be used to treat COVID-19 outside of hospital or research settings.
Gold said she has direct knowledge of physicians who are taking hydroxychloroquine and said that although "we will see" about its efficacy as it is studied more, there have been some indicators that it could be effective at preventing or mitigating COVID-19 and she could therefore understand why doctors might take the drug themselves or prescribe it to their patients.
There is also other research that appears to indicate hydroxychloroquine is not an effective treatment for the coronavirus, which has largely informed the consensus that the risks of the drug outweigh the potential benefits.
Gold, who is a member of the national leadership council for the Save Our Country Coalition -- an assortment of conservative groups that aim "to bring about a quick, safe and responsible reopening of US society" -- also said she was concerned that her message about the harms of shutdowns is becoming politicized. She said that she agreed with the general principles of the coalition and decided to sign on when asked, but hasn't done much work with it and is considering asking to have her name removed because people are largely associating her message on reopening the country with a conservative political point of view.
"I haven't done anything other than that," she said. "It's causing a big misunderstanding about what I'm doing so I actually think I'm just going to take my name off because it's not really supposed to be political."
Gold also said she is not associated with the Trump reelection campaign in any way, referring to her inclusion in an Associated Press story about the Trump campaign's efforts to recruit doctors to support the president's message on lifting coronavirus restrictions. The AP story details a call organized CNP Action, also part of the Save Our Country Coalition, which involved a senior Trump campaign staffer and was aimed at recruiting "extremely pro-Trump" doctors to make television appearances calling for the reopening of the economy as quickly as possible.
Fox News' Andrew O'Reilly and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Trump allies lining up doctors to prescribe rapid reopening

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican political operatives are recruiting “extremely pro-Trump” doctors to go on television to prescribe reviving the U.S. economy as quickly as possible, without waiting to meet safety benchmarks proposed by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to slow the spread of the new coronavirus.

The plan was discussed in a May 11 conference call with a senior staffer for the Trump reelection campaign organized by CNP Action, an affiliate of the GOP-aligned Council for National Policy. A leaked recording of the hourlong call was provided to The Associated Press by the Center for Media and Democracy, a progressive watchdog group.

CNP Action is part of the Save Our Country Coalition, an alliance of conservative think tanks and political committees formed in late April to end state lockdowns implemented in response to the pandemic. Other members of the coalition include the FreedomWorks Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council and Tea Party Patriots.

A resurgent economy is seen as critical to boosting President Donald Trump’s reelection hopes and has become a growing focus of the White House coronavirus task force led by Vice President Mike Pence.

Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign communications director, confirmed to AP that an effort to recruit doctors to publicly support the president is underway, but declined to say when the initiative would be rolled out.

“Anybody who joins one of our coalitions is vetted,” Murtaugh said Monday. “And so quite obviously, all of our coalitions espouse policies and say things that are, of course, exactly simpatico with what the president believes. ... The president has been outspoken about the fact that he wants to get the country back open as soon as possible.”

During an emergency such as the current pandemic, it’s important that the government provide consistent science-based information to the public, said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, an epidemiology professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and a member of the White House’s coronavirus task force, has been among the most visible government experts warning that lifting lockdowns too quickly could lead to a spike in deaths.

El-Sadr said having doctors relay contradictory information on behalf of the president is “quite alarming.”

“I find it totally irresponsible to have physicians who are touting some information that’s not anchored in evidence and not anchored in science,” El-Sadr said. “What often creates confusion is the many voices that are out there, and many of those voices do have a political interest, which is the hugely dangerous situation we are at now.”

Murtaugh said the campaign is not concerned about contradicting government experts.

“Our job at the campaign is to reflect President Trump’s point of view,” Murtaugh said. “We are his campaign. There is no difference between us and him.”

On the May 11 call, Nancy Schulze, a GOP activist who is married to former Rep. Dick Schulze, R-Pa., said she had given the campaign a list of 27 doctors prepared to defend Trump’s reopening push.

“There is a coalition of doctors who are extremely pro-Trump that have been preparing and coming together for the war ahead in the campaign on health care,” Schulze said on the call. “And we have doctors that are … in the trenches, that are saying ‘It’s time to reopen.’”

The idea quickly gained support from Mercedes Schlapp, a Trump campaign senior adviser who previously served two years as the president’s director of strategic communications.

“Those are the types of guys that we should want to get out on TV and radio to help push out the message,” Schlapp said on the call.

“They’ve already been vetted. But they need to be put on the screens,” Schulze replied.

Schlapp’s husband agreed the president is getting criticized for not appearing to follow the advice of public health experts. Matt Schlapp is chairman of the American Conservative Union, which hosts the annual Conservative Political Action Conference attended by conservative luminaries.

“The president’s going to get tagged by the fake news media as being irresponsible and not listening to doctors,” Matt Schlapp said on the call. “And so we have to gird his loins with a lot of other people. So I think what Nancy’s talking about … this is the critical juncture that we highlight them.”

Matt Schlapp told AP on Monday that he stood behind what he said on the leaked call.

“There is a big dynamic in the national media that will not give President Trump any credit,” he said. “It’s important to get the message out there that most people recover from corona. Most people are not in mortal danger with corona and that we can safely open up the economy.”

As several Republican governors moved last week to lift their state lockdowns, the National Ensemble Forecast used by the CDC to predict COVID-19 infections and deaths saw a corresponding increase. The CDC now forecasts the U.S. will exceed 100,000 deaths by June 1, a grim milestone that previously was not predicted to occur until late in the summer.

As of Tuesday, more than 1.5 million Americans had tested positive for COVID-19, with more than 91,000 deaths reported nationwide.

Experts, including Fauci, have said that is likely an undercount, with the true number being much higher. Meanwhile, Trump has suggested, without providing evidence, that the official death toll from the virus is being inflated.

Schulze, who was working to organize the pro-Trump doctors, did not respond to messages from AP seeking comment. But after the AP contacted the Trump campaign seeking comment for this story, a Washington public relations firm that frequently works for conservative groups distributed an open letter to Trump signed by more than 400 doctors calling the state coronavirus lockdowns a “mass casualty event” causing “millions of casualties” from alcoholism, homelessness, suicide and other causes.

“It is impossible to overstate the short, medium, and long-term harm to people’s health with a continued shutdown,” the letter said. “Losing a job is one of life’s most stressful events, and the effect on a person’s health is not lessened because it also has happened to 30 million other people. Keeping schools and universities closed is incalculably detrimental for children, teenagers, and young adults for decades to come.”

The first signature on the letter was Dr. Simone Gold, an emergency medicine specialist in Los Angeles who is listed as a member of the Save Our Country Coalition on the group’s website. She has recently appeared on conservative talk radio and podcast programs to advocate for the use of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug that Trump says he is taking because he believes it can prevent COVID-19 even though his own administration has warned it can have deadly side effects. Gold said she has prescribed the drug to two of her patients with good results.

The Food and Drug Administration warned health professionals last month that the drug should not be used to treat COVID-19 outside of hospital or research settings due to sometimes fatal side effects.

Gold told AP on Tuesday she started speaking out against shelter-in-place and other infection control measures because there was “no scientific basis that the average American should be concerned” about COVID-19. Like the president, she is advocating for a fast reopening, and argues that because the majority of deaths so far have been the elderly and people with preexisting conditions, younger people should be working.

Gold denied she was coordinating her efforts with Trump’s reelection campaign.

“But put this in there: I’m honored to be considered,” she said.

Dearen reported from Gainesville, Florida.

California organizations seek weekly assistance for workers in state illegally: report

More than 60 representatives from organizations in central California and local officials signed a letter to state lawmakers Tuesday asking for a weekly stipend for workers in the state illegally who have lost their jobs due to the coronavirus, according to a report.
The letter, which was sent to two assemblymembers from Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo and one state senator, called on lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom to "exercise their authority to put an end to the exclusion of undocumented workers from California’s safety net, and provide weekly income support for all workers whose families are struggling due to job loss during this crisis," according to the News Times San Luis Obispo.
Assemblymember Monique Limón of Santa Barbara, who received a letter, also signed a separate letter on Monday to Newsom, calling on him to adopt an “undocumented worker partial income replacement program.”
Undocumented workers make up an estimated 10 percent of the workforce in California, but the state's $125 million coronavirus relief fund for workers in the state illegally is only expected to help a small fraction of them and some are calling for even more funding.
Santa Maria Councilmember Gloria Soto, who signed Tuesday's letter, previously said supporting local nonprofits will help undocumented workers get financial assistance.
The Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project "is one of the organizations that will be helping the state of California distribute the funds that the state has allocated for undocumented families here in our own community, so continuing to support organizations like those," she said, according to the News Times. 
California’s coronavirus relief website crashed for more than two hours Monday morning by millions seeking benefits on the first day workers in the state illegally could apply.

“The website is currently up and running, and we are continuing to increase its capacity,” Scott Murray, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Social Services, said, acknowledging the high volume, according to The Fresno Bee. “We understand that the demand is high for the Disaster Relief Assistance for Immigrants program.”
In addition, nonprofit relief hotlines were overwhelmed by the number of callers trying to reach the required live person.
The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, one of the nonprofits chosen to distribute the funds, had more than 1 million calls Monday.
“Day 1 of the #DRAI project, CHIRLA worked to ensure 668 residents in LA and Orange County got on their way to receive the #coronavirus aid they desperately need,” the nonprofit said in a tweet. “Not letting the 1,137,000 calls or the 6 million website visits stop us.”
CALIFORNIA OPENS UP CORONAVIRUS FUNDING FOR IMMIGRANTS IN STATE ILLEGALLY, FACES BACKLASH
Lucas Zucker, who runs a nonprofit north of Los Angeles, called the chaotic start a “nightmare we all knew was coming," the Guardian reported. "We’re putting a Band-Aid on an open chest wound."
“Websites and phone lines across the state crashed," he tweeted. "Our team saw so much frustration, anger and sadness from folks just trying to feed their kids. The need here is way too large to be met with a one-time disaster relief fund.

Ana Padilla, executive director of UC Merced’s Community and Labor Center, said the state’s $125 million fund is expected to run out “very quickly.”
The Los Angeles Times reported that Sacramento has freed up $75 million in taxpayer money for the fund, which could help about 150,000 who may be facing severe hardships during the pandemic.
The other $50 million will be paid by organizations and private donors, according to the Guardian.
The fund will give a one-time $500 payment for an individual or $1,000 for a family.
California is the first state to rollout such a program.
A lawsuit filed by the Center for American Liberty seeking to stop the funds from being distributed was dismissed by the state’s Supreme Court earlier this month, according to the Bee.
Recipients must prove they are unable to receive benefits from any federal assistance programs and provide evidence they are going through severe financial hardship because of the virus.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the novel program through an executive order in April.
“Every Californian, including our undocumented neighbors and friends, should know that California is here to support them during this crisis,” Newsom said at the time.
Republican Assemblyman Jordan Cunningham of San Luis Obispo and Democratic state Sen. Hannah Beth-Jackson were also sent letters, according to the News Times. 
Fox News' Edmund DeMarche contributed to this report.

Cotton calls for withholding stimulus funds from states, cities where illegal immigrants get payments

Senate Armed Services Committee member Tom Cotton, R-Ark., joined "Hannity" Tuesday to discuss his proposed legislation that would prevent the federal government from sending taxpayer-funded stimulus dollars to states or cities that issue payments to people in the U.S. illegally.
"We shouldn’t be spending hard-earned taxpayer dollars on illegal immigrants at a time when 35 million Americans are out of work," Cotton said. "If we are going to be giving relief checks to those people who are out of work, we need to focus on American citizens, not illegal immigrants."
Under Cotton's No Bailouts for Illegal Aliens Act, states or cities must certify that illegal aliens are not receiving coronavirus stimulus checks or other payments. State and city governments that refuse to comply with the certification requirements will not be eligible for funds from the CARES Act.
Paycheck Protection Program loans, unemployment benefits and relief checks sent to American citizens in those locations would not be affected.
"New York, Illinois, New Jersey, California have some of the highest state income taxes in the entire country," host Sean Hannity told Cotton. "Now, there is more waste, fraud, abuse, debt, deficits. They are now trying to get people like yourself and people in red states that elect responsible politicians that don’t tax and spend to death to bail them out. That means bailout their stupidity.
"You talk about illegal immigration," Hannity added. "How much is that costing the state of California every year, the state of New York every year? A lot of money.
Cotton also told Hannity that he is still looking to legislate a policy that will encourage domestic production of pharmaceuticals.
While many major pharmaceutical companies currently make their home in places like California, New Jersey and Connecticut, many of the necessary ingredients are sourced from overseas.
"Unfortunately, Sean, it is a tragic irony that the country that unleashed this pandemic on the world also controls many of the most basic pharmaceutical ingredients for the United States," he said. "That does have to stop.
"I've got legislation that would give incentives to build more manufacturing capacity right here in the United States and ultimately ban the import of pharmaceuticals from China many of which are adulterated to begin with."

Susan Rice's resurfaced 2017 comments denying knowledge of Trump team surveillance raise eyebrows

A three-year-old interview clip of former National Security Adviser Susan Rice resurfaced Tuesday after the declassified email she sent to herself on the final day of the Obama administration was released.
During an April 2017 appearance on PBS News Hour, Rice was asked about the then-breaking revelations about members of President Trump's transition team having been surveilled before he took office.
"In the last few hours, we've been following a disclosure by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, that in essence, during the final days of the Obama administration, during the transition after President Trump had been elected, that he and the people around him may have been caught up in surveillance of foreign individuals and their identities may have been disclosed. Do you know anything about this?" PBS anchor Judy Woodruff asked.
"I know nothing about this," Rice said at the time. "I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that count today."
Rice then pivoted to Trump's accusation that then-President Barack Obama had "wiretapped" him during the 2016 election, insisting that "nothing of the sort occurred." She later insisted that "no president, no White House can order the surveillance of another American citizen. That can only come from the Justice Department with the approval of a FISA court."
She later stressed that Nunes' assertion at the time was that the surveillance was "legal and lawful" and that it was a "potentially incidental collection."
"That means that the target was either a foreign entity or somebody under criminal investigation and that the Americans who were talking to those targets may have been picked up," Rice explained.
However, the newly released email appeared to indicate Rice had knowledge of the surveillance that took place that led to the "unmasking" of then-incoming National Security Adviser (NSA) Michael Flynn from his communications with the then-Russian ambassador.
The email, which was written on Jan. 20, 2017, documented a Jan. 5 Oval Office meeting with then-President Obama and others, during which he provided guidance on how law enforcement needed to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential race. Parts of it were released previously, but the section on then-FBI Director James Comey's response had been classified as "TOP SECRET" until now.
Comey suggested to Obama that the National Security Council (NSC) might not want to pass "sensitive information related to Russia" to Flynn, according to a newly declassified email that Flynn's predecessor sent herself on Inauguration Day.
The section showed that Comey affirmed to Obama he was proceeding "by the book," and went on to discuss concerns about Flynn's known conversations with Russia's ambassador at the time -- conversations that would play a role later in the criminal case against Flynn.
Rice continued in her email: "From a national security perspective, Comey said he does have some concerns that incoming NSA Flynn is speaking frequently with Russian Ambassador [Sergey] Kislyak. Comey said that could be an issue as it relates to sharing sensitive information. President Obama asked if Comey was saying that the NSC should not pass sensitive information related to Russia to Flynn."
Rice then wrote: "Comey replied, 'potentially.' He added that he has no indication thus far that Flynn has passed classified information to Kislyak, but he noted that 'the level of communication is unusual.'"
In a statement Tuesday evening about the email's release, a representative for Rice stressed that “no discussion of law enforcement matters or investigations took place, despite accusations to the contrary.” The spokeswoman also insisted the Obama administration did not change the way it briefed Flynn, saying Rice briefed Flynn for more than 12 hours on four separate occasions during the transition.
“Ambassador Rice did not alter the way she briefed Michael Flynn on Russia as a result of Director Comey’s response,” representative Erin Pelton said.
Last week, a list of top Obama officials who had requested the "unmasking" of Flynn was released. The list included Comey, former Vice President Joe Biden, former CIA Director John Brennan, former DNI James Clapper, former U.N. ambassador Samantha Power and former White House chief-of-staff Denis McDonough.
Fox News' Brooke Singman contributed to this report. 

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Sen. Ron Johnson wants email from Susan Rice fully declassified, report says

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., asked the Trump administration to declassify the entire email that President Obama’s former national security Susan Rice sent herself just before her boss was about to leave office, a report said.
Politico reported Monday that it viewed Johnson’s letter, which requested that Rice’s entire email that touched on the January 5, 2017, meeting be released. He said the email summarized the meeting where Obama and his top officials discussed the Michael Flynn case. Flynn was President Trump’s first national security adviser.
Earlier this month, Attorney General William Barr’s Justice Department dismissed the case against Flynn, who was seen as the key prosecution witness from Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign.
Trump has been trying to go on the offensive after a string of developments he says bolstered his claim that the Russian collusion investigation conducted was nothing more than a political witch hunt.
“This was all Obama; this was all Biden,” he told “Sunday Morning Futures” in an exclusive interview Sunday. “These people were corrupt. The whole thing was corrupt and we caught them.”
The White House meeting on Jan. 5, 2017 has been the source of speculation. The roster in attendance included Obama, Vice President Biden, Rice, then-FBI Director James Comey, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, then-CIA Director John Brennan and then-Director of National Intelligence James Capper and they talked about the Flynn investigation.
Obama asked Yates and Comey to "stay behind," and said he had "learned of the information about Flynn" and his conversation with Sergey Kislyak, Russia's ambassador about sanctions, an exhibit in the DOJ's motion to dismiss the Flynn case said. Obama "specified that he did not want any additional information on the matter, but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently, given the information.”
Biden was recently asked about the meeting after the Trump administration released the Obama-era officials behind the Flynn's “unmasking.”  Biden told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that he was “aware that there was, that they’d asked for, an investigation. But that’s all I know about it."
Rice and other Obama officials have insisted that they did nothing wrong and "unmasking" is routine.
Johnson has been a vocal critic of the Obama administration and its role in the Flynn fallout. He recently told Fox News that he has long felt that there “has been a concerted effort to sabotage” the Trump White House.
Johnson wrote the letter to Barr and pointed out that that most of Rice's email was already declassified, but a portion remains a mystery.
“The significance of that meeting is becoming increasingly apparent as more and more information is declassified. For these reasons, it is essential that Congress and the American people understand what occurred during that January 5, 2017, meeting and how it was later characterized by administration officials. The declassification of Ambassador Rice’s email, in whole, will assist these efforts,” he wrote, according to the Politico report.
Fox News' Brooke Singman contributed to this report

'Where is Christopher Wray?' GOP lawmakers say FBI director ignoring them -- and push ahead for key interviews

Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Mike Johnson, R-La., on Monday night said FBI Director Christopher Wray "has declined to respond" to their May 4 letter seeking information and interviews with key FBI officials after the bombshell revelations in the Michael Flynn case -- prompting the lawmakers to take matters into their own hands.
"Because Director Wray has declined to respond to our request, we are forced to write to you directly," Jordan and Johnson wrote in an extraordinary letter to FBI agent Joe Pientka, who participated in the January 2017 White House interview that led to Flynn's prosecution.
Fox News previously determined that Pientka also was intimately involved in the probe of former Trump aide Carter Page, which the DOJ has since acknowledged was riddled with fundamental errors and premised on a discredited dossier that the bureau was told could be part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
Pientka was removed from the FBI's website after Fox News contacted the FBI about his extensive role in Crossfire Hurricane Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) matters -- a change first noticed by Twitter user Techno Fog -- but sources said Pientka remained in a senior role at the agency's San Francisco field office. The FBI told Fox News shortly before Pientka's removal from the website that reporting on his identity could endanger his life, even though he serves in a prominent senior role at the bureau.
Jordan and Johnson sent a similar letter on Monday to an attorney for Bill Priestap, the former assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division.
Explosive handwritten notes that surfaced earlier this month -- written by Priestap after a meeting with then-FBI Director James Comey and then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Fox News is told -- suggested that agents planned to interview Flynn at the White House on January 24, 2017 "to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired."

From left, FBI Director Christopher Wray, CIA Director Gina Haspel and Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats arrive to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2019. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

In the alternative, Preistap's note suggested a possible goal was to get Flynn "to admit to breaking the Logan Act" when he spoke to Russia's then-Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition period.
The Logan Act has never been successfully used in a criminal prosecution and has a questionable constitutional status; it was enacted in 1799 in an era before telephones, and was intended to prevent individuals from falsely claiming to represent the United States government abroad.
Priestap's memo conspicuously surfaced only this month, even though the Justice Department and FBI had been under an obligation to turn over all relevant, potentially exculpatory materials to Flynn's legal team since February 2018. (Attorney General Bill Barr had appointed U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen to review the DOJ's handling of the Flynn case, and Jensen apparently unearthed the documents.)

Meanwhile, top DOJ prosecutor who had repeatedly told the court that the FBI had complied with the order, Brandon Van Grack, was abruptly pulled from the case after Fox News pointed out his apparent misrepresentations.
"Where is Christopher Wray?" Jordan tweeted Monday night.

"Where is Christopher Wray?"
— Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio

Flynn ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of lying to Pientka and anti-Trump FBI agent Peter Strzok in that White House interview, as his mounting legal bills forced him to sell his home -- and prosecutors floated bringing Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) charges for his unrelated work in Turkey. Flynn is now seeking to withdraw his guilty plea, and the DOJ has agreed that the case should be dismissed, citing the new exculpatory evidence. D.C. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, however, has indicated he may not dismiss the case without hearing more argument from third parties.
During the White House interview, Flynn told the agents "not really" when asked if he had sought to convince Kislyak not to escalate a brewing fight with the U.S. over sanctions imposed by the Obama administration, according to a contested FD-302 witness report prepared by the FBI weeks after the interview. Flynn also reportedly demurred when asked if he had asked Russia to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution that condemned Israel’s settlements in the West Bank.
Flynn issued other apparently equivocal responses to FBI agents' questions, and at various points suggested that such conversations might have happened or that he could not recall them if they did, according to the 302. But questions remained as to the strength of the FBI's case. Then-FBI Director James Comey admitted in 2018 that the Flynn interview at the White House didn't follow protocol, and came at his direction. He said it was not "something I probably wouldn't have done or maybe gotten away with in a more... organized administration."
And, then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe later said the interview was "very odd" because "it seemed like [Flynn] was telling the truth" to the two agents who interviewed him. Flynn, the interviewing agents told McCabe, "had a very good recollection of events, which he related chronologically and lucidly," did not appear to be "nervous or sweating," and did not look "side to side" -- all of which would have been "behavioral signs of deception."
Further, the FBI 302 indicated that Flynn apparently was aware his communications had been monitored, and at several points he thanks the FBI agents for reminding him of some of his conversations with Russian officials. A Washington Post article published one day before Flynn's White House interview with the agents, citing FBI sources, publicly revealed that the FBI had wiretapped Flynn's calls with Kislyak and cleared him of any criminal conduct. It was unclear who leaked that information to the Post -- or why the FBI would need to question Flynn about his contacts given that the bureau had already recorded them.

FILE - In this June 7, 2017, file photo, then-FBI acting director Andrew McCabe listens during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

Wray, earlier this year, suggested in testimony that several agents could be under internal investigation by the FBI.
“As for current employees, there are what I would call more line-level employees who were involved in some of the events in the report, all of those employees … were referred to our Office of Professional Responsibility, which is our disciplinary arm," Wray said. He did not elaborate.
There was also action on the Senate side ono Monday. After weeks of bombshell revelations highlighting apparent FBI misconduct in the cases of Page and Flynn, the Republican-controlled Senate on Monday took two major steps toward launching its own comprehensive probe into the matter -- even as the Justice Department's separate criminal investigation, led by U.S. Attorney John Durham, continues.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., specifically announced Monday that his panel will soon vote on a subpoena authorization related to the FBI's apparent surveillance abuses. In a contentious interview, Graham recently told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo that Republicans would conduct a proper investigation, but he was wary of interfering with the DOJ's "ongoing criminal matter," referring to Durham's review.
Graham's office announced in a statement that his subpoena authorization "covers a number of documents, communications and testimony from witnesses, including [former FBI Director] James Comey, [former FBI Deputy Director] Andrew McCabe, [former Director of National Intelligence] James Clapper, [former CIA Director] John Brennan, [former Deputy Attorney General] Sally Yates and others."
A total of 53 other names were on the list of potential subpoena recipients, including: "Trisha Anderson, Brian Auten, James Baker, William Barr, Dana Boente, Jennifer Boone, Kevin Clinesmith [the FBI lawyer who allegedly falsified a CIA email to secure the Carter Page FISA warrant], Patrick Conlon, Michael Dempsey, Stuart Evans, Tashina Gauhar [a top DOJ deputy when classified details of Flynn's calls with the Russian ambassador were illegally leaked to The Washington Post], Carl Ghattas, Curtis Heide, Kathleen Kavalec, David Laufman [who arranged a key meeting with a Steele dossier source], Stephen Laycock, Jacob Lew, Loretta Lynch, Mary McCord, Denis McDonough, Arthur McGlynn, Jonathan Moffa, Sally Moyer, Mike Neufield, Sean Newell, Victoria Nuland, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Stephanie L. O’Sullivan, Lisa Page, Joseph Pientka [who interviewed Flynn at the White House while also playing a key role in the Carter Page probe, and whom the FBI has hidden from scrutiny], John Podesta, Samantha Power, E.W. “Bill” Priestap [who authored the memo debating whether the bureau simply wanted Flynn "fired"], Sarah Raskin, Steve Ricchetti, Susan Rice, Rod Rosenstein, Gabriel Sanz-Rexach, Nathan Sheets, Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, Glenn Simpson, Steve Somma [an FBI case agent who apparently was involved in several key FISA omissions], Peter Strzok, Michael Sussman, Adam Szubin, Jonathan Winer, and Christopher Wray."

Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has announced a sweeping new Russia probe may be imminent. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Also Monday, Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., requested that the Justice Department turn over an unredacted copy of the email that former National Security Adviser Susan Rice sent to herself on Inauguration Day -- a document that could shed light on the secretive January 5, 2017 White House meeting in which then-President Obama shocked a top DOJ official with his knowledge of the FBI's Flynn probe.
"I understand your office is currently reviewing a January 20, 2017, email from former National Security Adviser Susan Rice," Johnson wrote to Attorney General Bill Barr. "In that email, Ambassador Rice summarized an Oval Office meeting with President Obama and other administration officials that occurred on January 5, 2017."
Johnson continued: "A majority of Ambassador Rice's email was declassified but a portion of the email remains classified. The significance of that meeting is becoming increasingly apparent as more and more information is declassified. For these reasons, it is essential that Congress and the American people understand what occurred during that January 5, 2017, meeting and how it was later characterized by administration officials. The declassification of Ambassador Rice's email, in whole, will assist these efforts."
Obama was aware of the details of Flynn's intercepted December 2016 phone calls with Russia's then-Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, apparently surprising Sally Yates in the Oval Office meeting, according to documents released this month as exhibits to the government's motion to dismiss the Flynn case.
Obama personally had warned the Trump administration against hiring Flynn, and made clear he was "not a fan," according to multiple officials. Obama had fired Flynn as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014; Obama cited insubordination, while Flynn asserted he was pushed out for his aggressive stance on combating Islamic extremism.
On January 5, 2017, Yates attended an Oval Office meeting with Comey, then-Vice President Joe Biden, Brennan and Clapper, according to the newly declassified documents, including an FD-302 FBI witness report. They were discussing Russian election interference, along with Rice and other members of the national security council.
After the briefing, Obama asked Yates and Comey to "stay behind," and said he had "learned of the information about Flynn" and his conversation with Russia's ambassador about sanctions. Obama "specified that he did not want any additional information on the matter, but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently, given the information."
A previous memo from Rice stated that Biden also stayed behind after the main briefing had ended.
At that point, the documents showed, "Yates had no idea what the president was talking about, but figured it out based on the conversation. Yates recalled Comey mentioning the Logan Act, but can't recall if he specified there was an 'investigation.' Comey did not talk about prosecution in the meeting."
The exhibit continued: "It was not clear to Yates from where the President first received the information. Yates did not recall Comey's response to the President's question about how to treat Flynn. She was so surprised by the information she was hearing that she was having a hard time processing it and listening to the conversation at the same time."