scandal

Lawmakers are responding to credit-reporting company Equifax’s loss of data on up to 143 million customers with a flurry of proposed legislation, demands for explanations, hearings and calls for regulators to investigate.

Democrats are leading the charge on legislation and investigations while Republicans join in with demands for an explanation from the company and with plans to hold hearings. Members of both parties are seeking details of Equifax’s work for government agencies. Democrats are also trying to pressure Republicans to be at least as tough on Equifax as they were with a government agency that suffered its own breach.

Updated 6:23 p.m. | Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s explosive comments about the firing of former FBI Director James B. Comey is pulling administration officials away from their intended messaging about two federal hurricane responses and a quest for bipartisan tax legislation.

White House officials set up a week featuring a series of high-level meetings, including several involving President Donald Trump and key lawmakers, meant to portray him and his senior team as aggressively working with members of both parties on issues such as revisions to the tax code, racial tensions, and other matters.

Donald Trump Jr. spent about five hours Thursday answering questions from Senate Judiciary Committee staff about a meeting he set up between his father’s presidential campaign and a Russian lawyer, but the details beyond his opening statement remain private for now.

Several senators attended the closed-door, voluntary interview with the president’s son, part of the committee’s probe into possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Only Senate staffers asked questions, however, and the committee will have to vote at a later time on whether to make the transcript public.

Updated at 8:53 a.m. | By writing a statement exonerating Hillary Clinton over her use of a private server while secretary of state before concluding his investigation, then-FBI Director James Comey revealed a system “rigged” in her favor, President Donald Trump said Friday.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., chairman of Judiciary’s Crime and Terrorism subcommittee, revealed Comey’s actions Thursday. They cited transcripts they reviewed of interviews federal investigators conducted last fall with two FBI officials who were close to Comey: James Rybicki, Comey’s chief of staff, and Trisha Anderson, the principal deputy general counsel of National Security and Cyberlaw.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Federal law enforcement is outlining its case against Sen. Robert Menendez, alleging they have the evidence to show a pattern of corruption that includes a $20,000 flight to the local airport here.

When the private plane of a South Florida eye doctor who has been a friend and supporter of Menendez was unavailable to transport the New Jersey Democrat and others from the Dominican Republic, Dr. Salomon Melgen procured a friend’s plane.

It’s hard to be mad at the neighbor you don’t know when both of you and everyone else are wearing goofy glasses and looking skyward. That was America in the grip of eclipse-mania, when people who may not have had one thing or opinion in common gathered in common spaces to be transfixed and transformed.

Maybe it was the reality that there is something, a universe, greater than all of us — and all you can do is give in to the majesty. For those few minutes and the days leading up to them, scientists, as unlikely as it seems, were kings. The kind of educated folks whose findings on everything from climate change to the effects of pollution have been disparaged and disputed were the experts, featured on news shows for perhaps the first and only time in their lives.

Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz defended keeping a fired IT worker on her payroll despite the fact he was banned from the House network and fired by another member of Congress. 

Wasserman Schultz said it would have been easier to fire Imran Awan.

It started out small: Rumors swirled in March that disgraced former Rep. Michael Grimm was considering a political comeback by running for Staten Island borough president.

But now he’s thinking bigger: Grimm wants to win back New York’s 11th District seat, according to local media reports.

Lashing out at Congress yet again, President Donald Trump blamed the 517 lawmakers who voted for a bill he signed Wednesday slapping new sanctions on Russia for what he calls a “dangerous low” in U.S.-Kremlin relations.

Trump used a morning tweet, after laying off his post-dawn social media blasts for two days, to continue his days-long Twitter assault on members of Congress — including his fellow Republicans — amid signs of growing intra-party tensions as the forced marriage strains under an unproductive legislative session.

President Donald Trump signed bipartisan legislation slapping new sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea — then harshly criticized the legislation and the 517 lawmakers who voted for it.

Trump’s words reveal anew his growing irritation at Republican lawmakers’ inability to pass legislation he prefers and Democrats’ unwillingness to help. A statement issued by the White House after he signed the sanctions bill includes this line: “Congress could not even negotiate a healthcare bill after seven years of talking.”