scandal

World leaders, in a stunning and awkward rebuke, laughed at President Donald Trump on Tuesday. He responded by lashing out at one of the women who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct when both were in college.  

Trump began what was billed by his top aides as a major foreign policy address targeting Iran and setting the stage for new talks with North Korea by touting what he sees as top domestic accomplishments. The United Nations General Assembly hall in New York seemed a strange place for what has become a campaign-trail applause line in front of his “Make America Great Again” gear-sporting supporters. And the world leaders there to hear his message agreed.

The race for Rep. Dave Brat’s bid for a third term in Virginia’s 7th District appears to be tightening, according to a new Monmouth University poll that shows the conservative House Freedom Caucus member trailing former CIA officer Abigail Spanberger by 5 points.

Spanberger captured support from 47 percent of the 400 potential voters pollsters surveyed by phone from Sept. 15 through Sept. 24. Brat garnered 42 percent support among potential voters — which the Monmouth poll characterizes as voters who have participated in at least one election since 2010 or have newly registered to vote (a group that represents roughly nine in 10 of all registered voters in the district).

A second woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misdeeds should be allowed to testify alongside Christine Blasey Ford, the first to come forward, during a high-stakes Senate hearing on Thursday, President Donald Trump’s top spokeswoman says.

Deborah Ramirez, 53, who was at Yale University at the same time as Kavanaugh in the 1980s, told the New Yorker in an article published Sunday evening that he exposed himself at a party while extremely intoxicated. Ford, 51, says the federal appellate judge pinned her to a bed in high school and covered her mouth so forcefully she worried he might kill her while groping her against her will. Kavanaugh denies all the allegations.

The Justice Department has issued an indictment of former non-profit head Kevin Oksuz for his role in a plot to hide the fact that a 2013 congressional delegation trip to Azerbaijan was funded by that country’s government.

According to the indictment, which was unsealed Monday, Kevin, also known as Kemal, Oksuz allegedly lied on disclosure forms filed with the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ethics prior to, and following, a privately sponsored congressional trip to Azerbaijan. Oksuz ran a Houston based nonprofit that he is accused of using to funnel money to fund the congressional trip from an oil company controlled by the Azerbaijan government.

ANALYSIS — Circumstance, confusion and chaos have collided to ensure Thursday will be one of the most consequential — and perhaps the most by a wide margin — days of the tumultuous Trump presidency.

Washington has rarely seen the kind of spectacle ahead in just a few days, and the inevitable ramifications will trigger ripple waves that will be immediately apparent but not fully known until voters head to the ballot box on Nov. 6. For President Donald Trump, the already high stakes seem to only grow by the day.

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser Christine Blasey Ford are expected to testify Thursday in a tiny room before the Senate Judiciary Committee.  If the hearing is held in the small room as scheduled, there won't be much room for the public — including protesters — or reporters to watch the proceedings. But that could change. 

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on tap for Thursday is set to be in Dirksen 226, a small room that can accommodate lawmakers, a few staffers and a witness, but not much beyond that. The highly anticipated meeting is sure to draw enormous media attention and throngs of protesters.

Rep. Steve King fiercely defended Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh over the weekend at an Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition event, saying that accusations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted a woman who went to high school with him amounted to “character assassination.”

King and other Iowa GOP leaders, including Sen. Joni Ernst, Rep. David Young, and Gov. Kim Reynolds, rallied the nearly 700 Christians in the crowd behind Kavanaugh, the Des Moines Register reported, as Iowa’s senior senator, Judiciary Chairman Charles E. Grassley, negotiates the conditions of a public hearing this Thursday with the nominee's accuser, California psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford.

President Donald Trump on Monday said he is sticking with Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, telling reporters “I am with him all the way.”

“There’s a chance that this could be one of the single most unfair, unjust things to happen to a candidate for anything,” the president said on the sidelines of a United Nations conference in New York hours after another accuser came forward alleging sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh.