U.S. News

On CNN Wednesday, White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins reported that following the new impeachment for incitement of violence at the Capitol, President Donald Trump is hoping for Rudy Giuliani and Alan Dershowitz to help defend him in the Senate trial.

"There's no clear legal strategy developed for the president yet," said Collins. "Mitch McConnell said he will wait to hear the legal arguments. It's not clear if he has a legal team put together. He has been telling people, call Alan Dershowitz. We expect Rudy Giuliani to be involved. But that's really all we know so far, which is remarkably different than the last time the president was impeached. The question of what that's going to look like is that the president has been increasingly isolated from his top aides. Still remains to be seen."

The Federal Aviation Administration signed an order Wednesday saying that they will take strong action against any airplane passenger who disrupts or threatens the safety of a flight. There will be no warnings, the statement also said.

"Flying is the safest mode of transportation and I signed this order to keep it that way," Administrator Steve Dickson said.

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) confirmed the account by Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) that insurrectionists were doing a "reconnaissance tour" with a member of Congress the day before the attack.

Rep. Sherrill did a 13-minute video on Facebook Tuesday evening recalling seeing the incident.

On Wednesday's edition of CNN's "The Lead," immediately following the historic second impeachment of outgoing President Donald Trump, chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta reported that a White House adviser privately railed to him against Trump's behavior.

"One thing I would want to point you to, and that is some of the reactions I'm getting from Trump advisers ... from somebody who advises the president, speaks with him regularly, just spoke with him the other day," said Acosta. "This is what the adviser said: 'In the end, it all came crashing down,' in the words of this adviser, 'because Donald Trump could never tell the truth. He will be the cautionary tale that parents tell their kids. Don't end up like Trump because of your lies.' I just think that's an extraordinary statement to come from an adviser to the president of the United States, who is now the first president in U.S. history to be impeached twice."

Rep. Tom Rice (R-SC) wasn't expected to support the impeachment of President Donald Trump on Wednesday. He made the tenth Republican to formally agree that what Trump did with the U.S. Capitol attack was unacceptable and qualified as "high crimes and misdemeanors."

Rice said two days ago that he didn't support impeachment.

The House of Representatives on Wednesday voted to impeach President Donald Trump on a single count of "incitement of insurrection" only eight days after the fatal riot by supporters of the president seeking to reject the outcome of the 2020 presidential campaign.

Ten Republicans joined a united Democratic Party caucus in voting for impeachment, setting a record for the most bipartisan impeachment vote in history. The impeachment of former President Bill Clinton had just 5 members of his own party willing to cross the aisle and support impeachment.

The posh private club near the $30 million plot of land Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump purchased in upscale Indian Creek, Florida, isn't likely to accept the couple as members, according to sources speaking to Page Six.

"You have to be nominated and make a formal application. But it only takes one member to object against any new member, and many members are objecting, particularly after the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6," the source said. "Jared and Ivanka can lunch with their fellow 'patriots' at Mar-a-Lago."

Long-time adviser to President Donald Trump Hope Hicks is leaving the White House a week after a violent insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. In the hours that followed the attack, many White House staff abandoned the president saying that they couldn't in good conscious associate themselves with someone who encouraged his supporters to wage a war against the legislative branch. It took Hicks about a week to decide she would leave and she didn't give any reason why.

This is the second time Hicks has abandoned the president. She resigned in 2018 after serving as Communications Director, but she returned in early 2020 as Trump faced his first impeachment. She previously worked with the Fox Corporation in Los Angeles.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is nearing 70 years old, so it might be why he isn't clear on new terms like doxing. Posting a Wall Street Journal article to Twitter on Wednesday, Cornyn said that following and broadcasting the careers of former officials in President Donald Trump's administration is illegal.

The day before the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) said that she witnessed some of the insurrectionists doing what she thinks was a "reconnaissance" tour of the building, Politico reported.

Republicans who participated in the "Stop the Steal" rally with President Donald Trump have denied knowing anything about the violence that was to come. But at least three elected GOP officials were named by one person as giving them inside intelligence on the Capitol during the siege.

In his Tuesday column, Conservative Max Boot recalled the days when Republicans once supported the "free markets."

Writing for the Washington Post, Boot recalled the era when Republicans would say that businesses knew what businesses need. As public opinion shifts, however, businesses shift too, fearful of alienating customers and consumers. The elected members of the GOP once claimed that Democrats wanted to pick economic "winners and losers" with regulations. But now it is Republicans shifting away from the free markets and lashing out at businesses that make business decisions against conservative ideals.

Mike Allen with Axios is reporting Tuesday night that there is a greater than 50/50 chance that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) would vote to remove the president from office.

"The Senate institutional loyalists are fomenting a counterrevolution" to Trump, Allen cited a top Republican close to McConnell.

The overwhelming flood of news this week obscured a simple document that MSNBC host Rachel Maddow wanted to draw viewers' attention to.

According to Maddow, the top military brass in the United States issued a letter in which they officially said that the attack on the U.S. Capitol was "sedition."