Fox News settled a lawsuit with Seth Rich's family in the fall that was large enough that they weren't required to apologize publicly for lying about the family's son for years. But one provision that New York Times reporter Ben Smith discovered, was that they asked that the settlement news not be announced until after the November election.

"Why did Fox care about keeping the Rich settlement secret for the final month of the Trump re-election campaign?" Smith asked. "Why was it important to the company, which calls itself a news organization, that one of the biggest lies of the Trump era remains unresolved for that period? Was Fox afraid that admitting it was wrong would incite the president's wrath? Did network executives fear backlash from their increasingly radicalized audience, which has been gravitating to other conservative outlets?"

The FBI is vetting all 25,000 National Guard troops after a Defense Department insider confessed that they are fearful of an attack coming from inside the military members assigned to protect the inauguration.

The Associated Press reported Sunday that it has been a massive undertaking in wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection that sent law enforcement to looking for hundreds of President Donald Trump's supporters who broke into the Capitol searching for Democrats.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has spent the weeks after the first of the year trying to rewrite history on Twitter about what he accomplished in the office. If it was up to Pompeo, he would be to thank for establishing peace in the Middle East, saving Israel, bringing the troops home and proclaim he stopped Russian aggression.

Guardian opinion writer Simon Tisdall explained that as Pompeo is walking out the door, "he has laid political booby traps for Biden in a democratic onslaught -- with the aim of winning the White House."