The White House held its first press briefing of the month today. Sarah Huckabee Sanders answered a handful of questions after both John Bolton and Larry Kudlow addressed reporters.
The Navy confirmed that there was no active shooter at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after a drill raised concerns there.
Mississippi voters are casting ballots in the special election runoff for U.S. Senate between Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democrat Mike Espy.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would block another attempt to pass legislation to protect special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.
Barack Obama recorded a robo call in Mississippi that went out last night to turn out voters. Mississippi has the highest percentage of African American residents of any state in the country.
Zach C. Cohen (@Zachary_Cohen)
NEWS: OBAMA recorded a robocall sent to Mississippi voters last night urging them to vote in the #MSsen special. “My name may not be on the ballot, but our future is, and that’s why I believe this is one of the most important elections in our lifetime.”
November 27, 2018
Democrat Mike Espy has a big hill to climb tonight in Mississippi’s special election runoff. He needs a majority of the vote after getting 40.6% in the first round of voting.
FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight)
Democrats need a record-setting swing to win Mississippi.
November 27, 2018
Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and attorney for Trump, tells Huffington Post that Trump has no idea if Manafort ever met with Julian Assange and the two never discussed the controversial Wikileaks founder.
“I have no idea if Paul Manafort met with Julian Assange. The president has no idea if Paul Manafort met with Julian Assange,” Rudy Giuliani told HuffPost, adding that it wouldn’t prove anything nefarious even if Manafort had done so. “I don’t care if he met Assange over the years. I know there were no conversations between the president and Manafort about Assange.”
Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly)
Rudy Giuliani claims there “were no conversations between the president and Manafort about Assange,” @svdate reports
November 27, 2018
A federal judge in Mississippi just denied an lawsuit to extend the deadline to return absentee ballots in the Magnolia State.
Voters had until 5PM yesterday to do so.
Pema Levy (@pemalevy)
Update: A federal judge just denied a request to extend the deadline for absentee ballots in Mississippi’s Senate runoff today, though he acknowledged the state’s deadline for returning an absentee ballot “is tight-if not impossible-for some voters.”
November 27, 2018
NBC News is reporting that special counsel Robert Mueller has messages from conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi to former Trump advisor Roger Stone about the Wikileaks release of stolen emails from the Clinton campaign.
Yashar Ali ? (@yashar)
NEW: Mueller has emails from Stone pal Corsi about WikiLeaks Dem email dump
November 27, 2018
Although a number of corporate donors have demanded that Cindy Hyde-Smith refund their donations, it’s unclear if the Mississippi Republican has done so yet.
Rick Klein (@rickklein)
For all the companies and entities asking for their money back from Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, there’s no documented evidence that her campaign has reimbursed any of it. Her campaign not commenting on it, per @kendallkarson #MsSen
November 27, 2018
Elizabeth Warren will give a foreign policy speech on Thursday in Washington. The Massachusetts Democrat has long been considered a likely presidential candidate in 2020.
Gideon Resnick (@GideonResnick)
folks pic.twitter.com/XjZpJeyyoD
November 27, 2018
Jerry Nadler, the incoming chair of the House Judiciary Committee, suggests Trump is starting to come close to the line for committing an impeachable offense.
(((Rep. Nadler))) (@RepJerryNadler)
Manafort has done nothing to deserve clemency. If the President pardons his former campaign chair, his motives will be perfectly clear. Just by dangling the pardon in front of a witness, @realDonaldTrump comes dangerously close to obstruction of justice.
November 27, 2018
Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday he would “probably” move to once again block a vote on a bill that would protect special counsel Robert Mueller, who leading the investigation into Russian meddling in the US presidential election.
Senator Jeff Flake, a retiring Republican from Arizona, has vowed to vote against every judicial nominee until the legislation receives a vote. He is expected to join Democratic senators Cory Booker and Chris Coons in an attempt to force a vote on the bill on Wednesday.
Speaking to reporters at a weekly press conference on Tuesday, McConnell said the legislation was a “solution in search of problem”. Despite Trump’s persistent criticism of Mueller and the Russia investigation as a “witch hunt”, McConnell said he is confident the president will not fire the special counsel.
“We have a lot of things to do to try to finish up this year without taking votes on things that are completely irrelevant,” McConnell added.
Over the course of three tweets on Tuesday morning Trump called Mueller “conflicted prosecutor gone rogue”.
“The Fake News Media builds Bob Mueller up as a Saint, when in actuality he is the exact opposite. He is doing TREMENDOUS damage to our Criminal Justice System, where he is only looking at one side and not the other,” Trump wrote.
The Senate is expected to vote this week on the nomination of Thomas Farr to a seat on the US District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. All Democrats have announced their opposition to Farr and on Tuesday they railed against his nomination.
Jon Tester was a rare red state Democrat to win their Senate race in the midterms. He did so despite attracting the personal ire of Donald Trump over the failed nomination of Ronny Jackson to the VA.
The Huffington Post has a deep dive on how Tester pulled off that feat in Montana.
Kevin Robillard (@Robillard)
NEW: Donald Trump made it his personal mission to take out Jon Tester. Here’s how the Montana Democrat survived.
November 27, 2018
Right wing conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi says he has a joint defense agreement with Donald Trump.
Corsi, who said he turned a plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller, outlines his deal with Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow in a new book.
Corsi suggests in his book, which clocks in at 57,000-plus words and was written over the course of a few weeks, that his joint defense agreement with Trump’s legal team was intended to be kept from public view.
He claims that Sekulow, Trump’s lawyer, suggested the agreement could be verbal in nature and did not need to be put in writing.
“This saved creating a document that might appear later in some relevant legal proceeding or newspaper article,” Corsi writes.
U.S. Navy (@USNavy)
CONFIRMED: No active shooter at Naval Support Activity Bethesda. Was ad hoc drill by tenant command.
November 27, 2018
Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney is asking for tomorrow’s election to be DCCC chair be delayed.
Maloney is one of four House Democrats seeking to lead the caucus’s campaign arm for the 2020 cycle. However he is currently hospitalized with a bacterial infection.
A spokesman for Manafort just sent out the following statement:
“This story is totally false and deliberately libelous. I have never met Julian Assange or anyone connected to him. I have never been contacted by anyone connected to Wikileaks, either directly or indirectly. I have never reached out to Assange or Wikileaks on any matter. We are considering all legal options against the Guardian who proceeded with this story even after being notified by my representatives that it was false.”
It appears the situation at Walter Reed may have only been a drill after all.
Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram)
From colleague Lucas Tomlinson: Army Lt. Col. Audricia Harris, a Pentagon spokeswoman, tells Fox News there is no active-shooter at Walter Reed, it was only a drill.
November 27, 2018
Josh Campbell (@joshscampbell)
Update: Department of Defense spokesperson tells CNN that the situation at Walter Reed was an exercise.
-@barbarastarrcnn reports
November 27, 2018
Senator John Barrasso thinks the American response to Russian aggression in the Kerch Strait has been “inadequate.” The Wyoming senator serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram)
Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) on Ukraine/Russia:
I believe the response so far has been inadequate..I think we need to move ships into the Black SeaNovember 27, 2018
