GOP Senator's Message to Trump: 'No One Is Above the Law'
The legal nuances of the President of the United States pardoning himself don't seem to rankle Republican Senator James Lankford as much as the fact that the administration is talking about it at all.
"It's really an odd conversation, quite frankly, out of the White House, to be talking about presidential pardons when the whole time you're saying 'I didn't do anything,'" Lankford, Oklahoma's junior senator, told Cheddar's J.D. Durkin on Tuesday.
In [a tweet](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1003616210922147841) the day before, President Trump said, "I have the absolute right to pardon myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong?"
The statement touched off a constitutional debate over presidential powers.
"It seems weird to suddenly have this switch-up message coming from the White House," Lankford said, adding: "I think the White House should be focused on getting information out."
As a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Lankford said that information should be included in a bipartisan report on exactly what happened during the 2016 presidential campaign, and put an end to the speculation over Russian involvement in the election. That includes concluding the work of the special counsel, Robert Mueller.
"At the end of the day, let's get the facts out there, because the nation has to move on," Lankford said.
For more, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/republican-senators-frustrated-by-budget-appropriations-process).
Israel rolled tanks into northern Gaza for what the military called a targeted raid aiming to destroy Hamas infrastructure. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council failed to pass two separate resolutions proposed by the U.S. and Russia on humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza.
Republican Mike Johnson is the new speaker of the House, but the ally of Donald Trump inherits many of the same political problems that have tormented past GOP leaders.
President Joe Biden on Wednesday spoke out against retaliatory attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. He also says he's redoubling his commitment to working on a two-state solution.
The U.N. warned on Wednesday that it is on the verge of running out of fuel in the Gaza Strip, forcing it to sharply curtail relief efforts in the territory blockaded and devastated by Israeli airstrikes since Hamas militants launched an attack on Israel more than two weeks ago.
The judge in Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial fined the former president $10,000 on Wednesday, saying Trump violated a limited gag order barring personal attacks on court staffers.
Republicans eagerly elected Rep. Mike Johnson as House speaker on Wednesday, elevating a deeply conservative but lesser-known leader to the seat of U.S. power and ending for now the political chaos in their majority.
With mail theft and postal carrier robberies up, law enforcement officials have made more than 600 arrests since May in a crackdown launched to address crime that includes carriers being accosted at gunpoint for their antiquated universal keys, the Postal Service announced Wednesday.