Politics Random, Random

[ti-amie]

Exclusive: Key figure in fake electors plot concealed damning posts on secret Twitter account from investigators
By Em Steck, Andrew Kaczynski, Marshall Cohen and Allison Gordon, CNN

CNN Kenneth Chesebro, the right-wing attorney who helped devise the Trump campaign’s fake electors plot in 2020, concealed a secret Twitter account from Michigan prosecutors, hiding dozens of damning posts that undercut his statements to investigators about his role in the election subversion scheme, a CNN KFile investigation has found.

Chesebro denied using Twitter, now known as the platform X, or having any “alternate IDs” when directly asked by Michigan investigators last year during his cooperation session, according to recordings of his interview obtained by CNN.

But CNN linked Chesebro to the secret account based on numerous matching details — including biographical information regarding his work, family, travels and investments. The anonymous account, BadgerPundit, also showed a keen interest in the Electoral College process and lined up with Chesebro’s private activities at the time.

The Twitter posts reveal that even before the 2020 election, and then just two days after polls closed, Chesebro promoted a far more aggressive election subversion strategy than he later let on in his Michigan interview.

Chesebro’s lawyers confirmed to CNN that the BadgerPundit account belonged to Chesebro, describing it as his “random stream of consciousness” where he was “spitballing” theories about the election – but insisted that it was separate from his legal work for Trump’s campaign.

“When he was doing volunteer work for the campaign, he was very specific and hunkered-down into being the lawyer that he is, and gave specific kinds of legal advice based on things that he thought were legitimate legal challenges, versus BadgerPundit, who is this other guy over there, just being a goof,” said Robert Langford, an attorney for Chesebro.

Chesebro has not been charged with any crimes in Michigan and sat for an hourslong interview with the state attorney general’s office in early December. In his retelling to Michigan prosecutors, Chesebro has cast himself as a moderate middleman who was duped by Trump’s more radical lawyers.

Asked about the secret tweets, Danny Wimmer, a spokesman for Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, said in a statement to CNN, “Our team is interested in the material and will be looking into this matter.”

Chesebro claimed to investigators he saw the alternate slates of Republican electors only as a contingency plan to have ready in case the Trump campaign won any of its more than 60 lawsuits challenging the election results — which it didn’t. He also told Michigan investigators that in his conversations with the Trump campaign, he made clear that “state legislatures have no power to override the courts.”

But just days after the 2020 election, BadgerPundit tweeted that the court battles didn’t matter and that Republican-controlled legislatures should send in their own GOP electors, predicting even then that then-Vice President Mike Pence could use them to throw the election to Trump.

“You don’t get the big picture. Trump doesn’t have to get courts to declare him the winner of the vote. He just needs to convince Republican legislatures that the election was systematically rigged, but it’s impossible to run it again, so they should appoint electors instead,” wrote BadgerPundit on November 7, 2020, the day multiple media outlets, including CNN, called the election for Joe Biden.

Yet in his interview with Michigan investigators, Chesebro said the very opposite, claiming that the entire electors plan was contingent on the courts.

“I saw no scenario where Pence could count any vote for any state because there hadn’t been a court or a legislature in any state backing any of the alternate electors,” Chesebro said.

‘Clearly a conflict’
After the 2020 election, BadgerPundit tweeted more than 50 times that Pence had the power to count the electors benefitting Trump, according to a CNN KFile analysis of the account.

Chesebro also told investigators that he felt “misled” by the Trump campaign for concealing the entirety of their plan from him. He claimed that it wasn’t until last year that he fully realized the campaign had always intended to deploy the fake electors regardless of the outcome of its election lawsuits.

That idea was first raised in a September 2020 article in The Atlantic, which quoted a “Trump legal adviser” who described using alternate electors to overturn a Trump loss.

When asked by Michigan investigators if he had knowledge of The Atlantic article at the time it was published, Chesebro said he did not. Yet BadgerPundit tweeted about it the same day it was published and defended the plot.

Chesebro’s attorneys acknowledged in an interview with CNN that “there’s clearly a conflict” between some of his tweets and what he told Michigan prosecutors, and that some of the elector theories he embraced online were “inconsistent” with his subsequent legal advice to the Trump campaign.

Some of Chesebro’s anonymous tweets were previously reported by Talking Points Memo. The BadgerPundit account went private sometime in late 2022, but CNN was able to access the since-removed public tweets by using the Wayback Machine, an internet archive.

‘That was our screw-up’
The fake electors plot features prominently in special counsel Jack Smith’s federal election subversion indictment against Trump, who has pleaded not guilty. Chesebro has been identified by CNN as an unindicted co-conspirator in that case.

Chesebro was indicted alongside Trump in a separate 2020 election interference case in Georgia. He struck a plea deal there in October, agreeing to plead guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents. He gave proffer interviews to Georgia prosecutors as part of the cooperation agreement, though it’s unclear if he was asked about his social media accounts.

Michigan investigators secured Chesebro’s cooperation in December, after previously charging the 16 fake electors in that state with multiple felonies. Chesebro has additionally met with investigators in Wisconsin and Arizona who are probing their fake electors, and he avoided charges in Nevada after cooperating with prosecutors there.

If Chesebro intentionally misled investigators, he could face legal jeopardy.

“Chesebro appears to have pursued a legally perilous path in his dealings with Michigan authorities,” said Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University, who reviewed the posts for CNN. “The Twitter posts strongly suggest Chesebro committed the crime of making false statements to investigators… his entire cooperation agreement may now fall apart.”

It appears Chesebro “hid highly important evidence in the form of these social media posts from the investigators,” Goodman said, adding that it could put Chesebro “at great legal risk.”

“We should have asked for clarity, and that was our screw-up,” Chesebro attorney Manny Arora told CNN about Chesebro denying to Michigan prosecutors that he used Twitter. Arora said he has since provided “all the information on BadgerPundit” to investigations in “all the different states that are involved,” where Chesebro sat for interviews.

CNN has not reviewed the agreement between Chesebro and the Michigan Attorney General’s office. Wimmer, a spokesman for the office, confirmed that it was a “proffer agreement,” where a witness can provide information with some protection from prosecution. Wimmer declined to describe the details of the agreement.

The same prosecutors signed a more sweeping cooperation deal with one of the 16 fake electors where they dropped his charges in exchange for his testimony and future cooperation. That deal required the fake elector to “provide full and complete information” and turn over “any and all relevant documents.” If the cooperator “gives false, incomplete, misleading testimony or information,” the deal would be voided and they’d be “subject to full prosecution, including perjury and obstruction of justice.”

Identifying BadgerPundit

CNN was able to verify Chesebro’s connection to the BadgerPundit account by reviewing emails between Chesebro and the Trump campaign that reference the account, as well as by matching numerous biographical details between the two.

In an email to Trump attorneys in early December 2020, Chesebro linked to a Google Drive account for the email address TheBadger14@Gmail.com, which was once used by BadgerPundit in a tweet as his contact information. Chesebro also cited the BadgerPundit account in emails to a Trump campaign official and attorney John Eastman on January 5, 2021, pointing to tweets from BadgerPundit arguing that Pence had the authority to pick the electors on January 6.

Other biographical details related to his personal life also matched Chesebro, including his current marriage, his past legal work on Bush v. Gore, investments in cryptocurrency, past references to high school and growing up in Wisconsin – the Badger state.

BadgerPundit, like Chesebro, said he was with right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on January 6, 2021. The account also references staying at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, from January 3 through the 8 – the same dates Chesebro told Trump lawyers he was staying at the hotel in emails obtained by the January 6 committee.

Chesebro distances himself from the plot
In his interview with Michigan investigators, Chesebro repeatedly tried to downplay his knowledge of the electors plan. He told investigators that he did not know that the Trump campaign planned to deploy “alternate electors” in contested states when he first spoke with the campaign in mid-November 2020.

“I naively assumed that it hadn’t occurred to them to have alternate electors. That is, I only thought of it because I’d been involved in Bush v. Gore in 2000 and I’d worked on a law review article with Professor [Laurence] Tribe in 2001 about Bush v. Gore,” Chesebro said. “So, I thought I was educating them about this.”

He continued to tell investigators that the plan went beyond what he advised them to do.

“The idea of alternate electors wasn’t something I’d come up with and then the Trump campaign learned about it and then backed off. My understanding is that they planned to do this all along,” Chesebro said.

Chesebro denied to investigators that at the time he was aware of The Atlantic article from September 23, 2020 detailing how a more radical fake electors plan might work, and he reiterated that he always viewed fake electors as a way to buy more time for lawsuits, and as a contingency to be used only if the Trump campaign had pending litigation in the seven contested states.

But privately, as BadgerPundit on Twitter, Chesebro was familiar with the fake electors plot as early as September 2020, and defended the Trump campaign’s ability to pursue the plan just days after the election.

As BadgerPundit, Chesebro rebutted a Twitter user who said The Atlantic article foreshadowed the “death of democracy.” Chesebro replied, “it’s called politics, dude,” and argued that state legislatures get the “ultimate call” on who wins and loses presidential elections.

Chesebro told investigators that only later did he realize that the Trump campaign had plans to pursue a more radical version of the fake electors scheme no matter what — something that he told investigators he did not advise at the time.

“And so my point is, it seems if you credit The Atlantic article, they wanted to do unconditional alternate electors, lobby the state legislatures, and then pressure Pence to back that,” said Chesebro.

“I just feel like I was misled into pushing alternate electors for a reason to win more time, to win litigation when there was, there was certainly more to the agenda. I mean, maybe not every person that was in touch with me had this plan, but the campaign as a whole had a different plan than [what] they revealed to me,” said Chesebro.

“I certainly would not have said what I said to the electors and advise them on what the campaign wanted if I’d known the campaign had a broader agenda than they told me,” said Chesebro.

In his interview with Michigan investigators, Chesebro said that after the 2020 election, he repeatedly advocated for a more conservative approach to the fake electors plot.

“Ultimately where I came down was I wanted conditional language in all the states that I suggested three times to Trump campaign on December 12th, that they make it conditional on winning litigation. Number two, I made clear in November 23rd that the state legislatures have no power to, to override the courts. And number three, I made clear in December 13th that I didn’t think Pence should be involved at all,” Chesebro told investigators, adding, “I was never on board with what apparently they planned to do from the beginning, and which they never told me they planned to do.”

Promoting the fake electors
Less than two days after polls closed on the 2020 presidential election, Chesebro, as BadgerPundit, began publicly tweeting the framework for the “alternate elector” strategy that the Trump campaign ended up pursuing.

That included embracing the end-around plan of using state legislatures to overturn the results – which he later claimed to oppose in his interviews with Michigan prosecutors. He tweeted: “the election can’t be rerun. This [sic] only solution is for the Legislature to intervene and select the electors.”

In another tweet from November 5, 2020, BadgerPundit outlined a potential plan for Trump.

“He will push it all the way to early January, and if necessary, rely on Pence to count only electoral votes sent in by the Republican legislatures, or count no disputed electoral votes, and throw the election to the House, which will elect Trump. 80/20 in Trump’s favor,” he wrote.

In a series of tweets, BadgerPundit suggested he knew the plan was extremely controversial and suggested how to make the plot more palatable after a user wrote that no state “will want to be first.”

“The key to the politics” of the plan would rest on state legislatures not invalidating the results of election day but rather “expressing their own preference… of electors to be sorted out in January,” Chesebro wrote.

Pence can count the votes
Speaking to Michigan investigators, Chesebro criticized the more radical plan put forth by conservative attorney John Eastman, which included having state legislatures choosing their own slates of electors for Pence to count on January 6.

“So, Eastman, he had this idea the state legislatures could somehow be effective in overturning the courts, which I thought was ridiculous,” Chesebro told investigators.

But under his online alter ego, BadgerPundit, after the election he tweeted numerous times that Pence had the power to count the fake electors benefitting Trump.

“I think Pence, in counting electoral votes, could decide that the electoral votes of the legislature take priority,” the pseudonymous Twitter account wrote on November 7, 2020, hours after the election was called for Biden by multiple media outlets.

Though Chesebro’s lawyers told CNN that BadgerPundit and the Trump campaign “never intersected,” emails obtained by CNN reveal that he sent two emails to the campaign citing a BadgerPundit thread arguing that Pence had the power to count disputed electoral votes. Chesebro sent the thread to Eastman and Trump lawyer Boris Epshteyn, but he did not tell them it was his account, the emails show.

On November 9, 2020, BadgerPundit wrote, “I predict that on December 14, in several states both the Trump and Biden electors will cast their votes, and the electoral votes of any State still in dispute on January 6 won’t be counted. If neither candidate has 270 votes, the House will then vote Trump a second term.”

A few days later, on November 11, 2020, BadgerPundit repeatedly tweeted that the fake electors could cast their votes for Trump and that Republican legislatures would certify only those votes.

“It’s obvious Trump will win. You overlook the power of the Republican legislatures to certify that Trump is the winner, thus leading the Senate not to find that Biden attained 270 electoral votes. Then, game over,” he wrote.

BadgerPundit wrote on December 28, 2020, “My understanding is that they’re the votes of the Trump-Pence electors who were actually on the ballot in the contested States. So if whoever counts electoral votes thinks they won … well, they won.”

Chesebro traveled to Washington in early January 2021, he told investigators, to be available for strategy meetings. He was seen outside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, following Alex Jones.

Even after the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, Chesebro continued to insist that Pence had the power to count electors to benefit Trump but “pretended his hands were tied.”

BadgerPundit tweeted on January 7, 2021, “But … There was a non-frivolous argument that the Electoral Count Act is unconstitutional, and the VP has the power to count, as Jefferson did. Pence could have set up a test case, yet he pretended his hands were tied. And, Trump really believes he won!”

CNN’s Selwyn Rocha contributed to this report.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/26/poli ... index.html


There are exhibits at the link.

[ti-amie]

Christopher David @Tazerface16

Matt Rosendale has dropped out of the Senate race in Montana after getting his 20 year old aid pregnant, demonstrating one of the very few times that a man's career options have been limited by an unplanned pregnancy.

[ponchi101]

Is it a coincidence that Matt Gaetz is in the background?

[ti-amie]

Is it a coincidence that Matt Gaetz is in the background?

You're not the only one who has asked that question...

[ashkor87]

interesting opinion piece I read smewhere that even if Trump goes to jail, Haley may not be nominated by the party. They might choose someone else.. can that even happen? Wouldnt that be the scenario I had laid out earlier, that would cause the GOP to implode?

I hasten to add my usual disclaimer - I dont care either way, just speculating scenarios..as a non-citizen, I would not want to comment on whom I prefer, I am only commenting on the scenario..

[Suliso]

Haley will not have enough delegates to be nominated outright. I too would rate her chances as very low.

[ashkor87]

Haley will not have enough delegates to be nominated outright. I too would rate her chances as very low.

yes, but she would have more than anyone else not in jail, right? there is no second-preference vote, is there?

[dryrunguy]

Associated Press is reporting Mitch McConnell has announced he will step down as Senate Republican Leader.

[patrick]

Will be very interested to see who will be nominated to replace McConnell. Hopefully, not Scott.

[ti-amie]

3-Year-Old Among ‘Victims’ in Lauren Boebert’s Son’s Alleged Crime Spree
YIKES
The 18-year-old faces a total of 22 charges after a “string of vehicle trespass and property thefts.”

Dan Ladden-Hall
News Correspondent
Justin Rohrlich
Reporter
Updated Feb. 28, 2024 3:28PM EST / Published Feb. 28, 2024 8:03AM EST

Ultra-MAGA Rep. Lauren Boebert’s son victimized a toddler, a senior citizen, and four others during a recent crime spree, according to a police incident summary obtained by The Daily Beast.

New dad Tyler Boebert was arrested Tuesday and now faces 22 charges stemming from a string of alleged thefts and vehicle break-ins in Rifle, Colorado. He was taken into custody at around 2:30 p.m. the Rifle PD said in a statement. The town of 10,000 sits in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, which Tyler’s mom currently represents.

Three other suspects were also arrested as alleged accomplices, the incident summary shows. Because the three are underage, their names have been redacted. However, they are listed as a 16-year-old while male, a 16-year-old white female, and a 17-year-old white female.


Tyler Boebert’s mug shot.
Rifle Police Department/Facebook

A total of six victims are listed in the incident summary, also with their names and races redacted. The youngest is marked down as 3 years-old; the oldest is listed as 64. The rest range in age from 18 to 32, according to the summary.

The details are slim, and the specific items and forms of ID allegedly lifted by Boebert remain unknown. One “victim vehicle” is listed in the incident summary—a 2008 Kia Sorento, gold in color, with Colorado plates.

In an email, a Rifle PD spokeswoman said the investigation is ongoing and an affidavit accompanying the incident summary is not yet publicly releasable.


Rifle PD

The teen was hit with “four felony counts of criminal possession of ID documents - multiple victims, one felony count of conspiracy to commit a felony, criminal possession of a financial device, first-degree criminal trespass of an automobile with intent to commit a crime, three counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and three counts of theft of under $300.

“I love my son Tyler, who has been through some very difficult, public challenges for a young man and the subject of attention that he didn’t ask for,” Lauren Boebert said in a statement issued Wednesday. “It breaks my heart to see my child struggling and in this situation, especially when he has been provided multiple opportunities to get his life on track. I will never give up on him and I will continue to be there for him. As an adult and father, Tyler will take responsibility for his actions and should be held accountable for poor decisions just like any other citizen.”

The arrest is the latest drama involving Lauren Boebert’s family which has come as she runs for election in a new Colorado district. (In December, the congresswoman said the switch would offer her a “fresh start” after what has been “a pretty difficult year for me and my family.”)

The Trump loyalist’s ex-husband, Jayson Boebert, was arrested last month for an alleged assault on Tyler. That arrest also followed an incident three days earlier in which Jayson called 911 claiming that he had been repeatedly punched by Lauren Boebert, though authorities cleared her of wrongdoing.

She was granted a restraining order against Jayson earlier this month, a move that he described as a “cruel and unfair” attempt at stopping him from seeing his kids.

The conservative lawmaker was also caught up in another messy headline-generating incident last September relating to her behavior in a Denver theater during a live production of Beetlejuice.

After initially insisting she hadn’t been vaping during the show, she later admitted that she had when security camera footage emerged refuting her initial denials. Apologizing for the contradiction, she noted that she had been having a “challenging personal time” after a “public and difficult divorce.”

Tyler Boebert—who became a father last year, making his mom a 36-year-old grandmother—has also previously been in the public eye. In September 2022, at the age of 17, Tyler flipped his dad’s SUV, injuring Noble D’Amato, a friend who was also in the car at the time. D’Amato later criticized the Boebert family for allegedly downplaying the incident.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/lauren-bo ... crime-wave

[ti-amie]

Trump White House Was Awash in Drugs Because No One Wanted to Be There
“You try working for him and not chasing pills with alcohol,” one former Trump staffer said.

Under Donald Trump’s leadership, the West Wing operated more like a pill mill than the White House, at least according to a January report by the Department of Defense inspector general, which capped a six-year investigation into the administration’s medical practices.

But sources knowledgeable on the matter paint an even more dramatic image than that, describing the nation’s highest office as “awash in speed,” reported Rolling Stone.

Common pills included modafinil, Adderall, fentanyl, morphine, and ketamine, according to the Pentagon report. But other, unlisted drugs—like Xanax—were equally easy to come by from the White House Medical Unit, according to sources that spoke to the magazine.

At least two senior staffers would regularly mix the depressant with alcohol, a potentially life-threatening combo, to deal with the stress of working with a highly erratic boss.

“You try working for him and not chasing pills with alcohol,” one source told Rolling Stone.

While other presidents were known to take a mix of drug cocktails to fight off back pain (like JFK) or bad moods (like Nixon), no previous administrations matched the level of debauchery of Trump’s, whose in-office pharmacists unquestioningly handed out highly addictive substances to staffers who needed pick-me-ups or energy boosts—no doctor’s exam, referral, or prescription required.

“It was kind of like the Wild West. Things were pretty loose. Whatever someone needs, we were going to fill this,” another source said.

Ultimately, the unmitigated access to controlled substances fostered an environment that would have been considered highly illegal and problematic anywhere else in the nation—if it weren’t inside the very office that helps craft those regulations.

“Is it being done appropriately or legally all the time? No. But are they going to get to that end result that the bosses want? Yeah,” said another, referring to the high demands of the office.

Meanwhile, pharmacists described an atmosphere of fear within the West Wing, claiming they would be “fired” if they spoke out or would receive negative work assignments if they didn’t hand pills over to staffers.

https://newrepublic.com/post/179531/tru ... wash-drugs

[ti-amie]

[ponchi101]

Isn't it the other way around? She would be a good president because...
Never mind.

[ti-amie]

Navy demoted Ronny Jackson after probe into White House behavior
Trump’s former physician and GOP ally is now a retired captain, not an admiral
By Dan Diamond and Alex Horton
March 7, 2024 at 9:00 a.m. EST

Ronny Jackson, the former White House physician turned GOP congressman, regularly touts his military bona fides.

“As a retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral with nearly three decades of military service I understand the commitment and sacrifices made by servicemen and servicewomen to serve our country,” the two-term Texas representative writes on his congressional website, posted to a page listing his work on veterans issues.

But Jackson is no longer a retired admiral. The Navy demoted him in July 2022 following a damaging Pentagon inspector general’s report that substantiated allegations about his inappropriate behavior as a White House physician, a previously unreported decision confirmed by a current defense official and a former U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive personnel move.

Jackson is now a retired Navy captain, those people said — a demotion that carries significant financial burden in addition to the social stigma of stripped rank in military circles.

Despite the demotion, Jackson has continued to refer to himself as a retired rear admiral, including in statements released since the Navy reclassified him as a retired captain. Former president Donald Trump and other Republicans have also continued to publicly describe Jackson using his former rank; it’s unclear if they were aware of his demotion.

Jackson’s office did not respond to requests for comment about the Navy’s 2022 personnel action and his demotion. The former White House physician has become a prominent voice in the 2024 campaign, repeatedly affirming Trump’s fitness to serve while castigating President Biden’s.

After publication of this story, the Navy provided Jackson’s service record, which shows the rank of captain retroactively applied to the date of his retirement in December 2019.

For an officer who served 24 years like Jackson, there is more than a $15,000 difference in annual pension payouts between a retired one-star admiral, the rank that Jackson held when he retired from the Navy in December 2019, and a retired captain, according to an estimate by Katherine L. Kuzminski, a military policy expert at Center for a New American Security. That payout gap is likely to widen over time as the military periodically increases its pay rates for each position.

Kuzminski also said that it was inappropriate for Jackson to describe himself as a retired rear admiral. “While it is possible that others will mistakenly refer to him as ‘Admiral’ in perpetuity, he himself should not make that mistake,” she said.

A Navy official confirmed that the service took unspecified action against Jackson in the wake of the 2021 inspector general’s report, which found that Jackson berated subordinates in the White House medical unit, “made sexual and denigrating statements” about a female subordinate, consumed alcohol inappropriately with subordinates and consumed the sleep drug Ambien while on duty as the president’s physician. At the time of the report, Jackson was classified by the Navy as a rear admiral (lower half), a one-star admiral that is distinct from the two-star rear admiral position.

“The substantiated allegations in the DoDIG [Department of Defense inspector general] investigation of Rear Adm. (lower half) Ronny Jackson are not in keeping with the standards the Navy requires of its leaders and, as such, the secretary of the Navy took administrative action in July 2022,” Lt. Cmdr. Joe Keiley, a Navy spokesman, said via email.

Keiley declined to comment on Jackson's current rank and whether he had been demoted. The Pentagon inspector general's report had recommended that the Navy secretary take action against the retired officer, concluding that Jackson did not behave in the “exemplary” manner that is required of Navy officers.

Military guidelines allow a provisional retirement rank if an officer is under investigation for misconduct at the time, as Jackson was during his departure from the Navy. Military officials have the option to downgrade the final rank if adverse findings are made, busting down an officer to the last grade at which they satisfactorily served.

Retired officers can respond to the decision, according to Navy regulations, but it is unclear if Jackson did so or otherwise challenged the Navy secretary’s determination.

In his July 2022 memoir, “Holding the Line,” Jackson dismisses the inspector general’s report as politically motivated.

“If I had retired and not gotten into politics, this investigation would have never gone anywhere,” Jackson wrote. “This was happening because I am a perceived threat to the Biden administration and because a few political appointees in the Department of Defense want to make a name for themselves.”

In the memoir, Jackson did not address the prospect of being demoted by the Navy.

The Pentagon oversees the White House medical team, which is staffed by career military medical personnel and has become the focus of several investigations in the wake of Jackson’s tenure. The Defense Department in January released a second inspector general report into the White House medical team’s operations that does not name Jackson but faults aspects of how the unit was run while he served in the White House, such as the unit’s lax controls for powerful drugs like Ambien and the stimulant Provigil.

Jackson, who first arrived at the White House in 2006, served as the medical unit’s director between 2010 and 2014 and as personal physician to Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump between 2013 and 2018.

Former colleagues, political officials and Jackson himself have all described his strategy of providing complimentary, round-the-clock care to numerous White House officials and even their friends and family. The Pentagon’s most recent investigation found that many of the patients who received complimentary care from the White House medical team were not eligible for it.

But in the White House, Jackson’s approach won him favor within two presidential administrations. Obama, who personally chose Jackson as his physician in 2013, considered him a friend and promoted him to a one-star admiral in October 2016.

Jackson also endeared himself to Trump, particularly after a January 2018 news conference in which the White House physician extolled Trump’s health — joking to reporters that the then-71-year-old president could “live to be 200 years old” if he only ate healthier. Jackson added that Trump performed exceedingly well during a cognitive exam, a test that Jackson scheduled to rebut growing questions about the president’s fitness for office.

Trump soon attempted to put Jackson in his Cabinet as secretary of veterans affairs, a failed nomination that prompted a whistleblower complaint to Congress and, later, the Pentagon’s inspector general’s investigations. Trump also twice nominated Jackson to become a two-star admiral, although the nominations stalled and he was not promoted.

Jackson retired from the military and left the White House in 2019 to run for Congress, a long-shot campaign that succeeded with the backing of Trump.

Jackson won reelection in 2022 and has emerged as a leading critic of President Biden’s fitness for office, injecting himself into this year’s presidential campaign with frequent TV appearances, news conferences and public statements assessing the 81-year-old Biden’s mental and physical health. Jackson also has publicly called for Biden to undergo a cognitive exam comparable to the one he administered to Trump in January 2018, invoking concerns that are shared by many independent voters and some Democrats. A Monmouth University poll conducted last month found that 32 percent of registered voters were confident in Biden’s physical and mental stamina, compared to 51 percent of voters who were confident in the 77-year-old Trump’s fitness.

Around Capitol Hill and in political circles, Jackson is frequently referred to by his onetime military rank.

“Where’s the admiral, Ronny Jackson? Come on up here,” Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), a retired Pennsylvania Army National Guard brigadier general, urged at a House Republican news conference in July 2023 as lawmakers discussed a defense spending bill.

Speaking at the August 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference — days after the Navy privately demoted Jackson — Trump also extolled his former physician.

“He was an admiral, a doctor and now he’s a congressman, and I said, which is the best if you had your choice? And he sort of indicated doctor because he loved looking at my body, it was so strong,” Trump joked before pivoting to the reason for his affection for Jackson. “He said I’m the healthiest president that’s ever lived. … I said, I like this guy.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... unit-navy/


Here's the report.
https://media.defense.gov/2021/Mar/03/2 ... 21-057.PDF

[ponchi101]