In other news, Trump claims he has written answers to special prosecutor Robert Mueller's questions, but he hasn't submitted them yet. So, he probably hasn't written anything.
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says they won't be voting on a criminal justice reform bill this year. That means they never will. The next session of the Senate will be slightly more right wing than this one.
Finally, House Republicans are reportedly planning to fuck that chicken one more time before they formally lose control of the House. They're planning to subpoena former FBI director James Comey and former attorney general Loretta Lynch after Thanksgiving.
Here are some other stories I didn't get to this week:
A federal judge ordered the White House to reinstate CNN reporter Jim Acosta's press pass. Acosta was banned from the White House last week and smeared with doctored video.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is leaving behind a $2 billion budget shortfall for the state's education system on his way out the door. This is how every Republican administration ends.
The Indy Star reports that Bruce Smith, the former supervisor of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department’s Child Abuse Unit, conspired with USA Gymnastics to push back against negative stories when Larry Nassar's decades of abuse was revealed.
Emails, texts and other communications obtained by IndyStar reveal Smith collaborated with Penny to deflect criticism of USA Gymnastics in 2016 and 2017 — as a growing number of survivors claimed the national governing body failed to protect them from child sexual abuse.
Even after Smith disclosed the friendship as a conflict of interest in 2015 and recused himself from investigating USA Gymnastics, he tried to influence the public’s understanding of the situation, pushing his version of the story to reporters. He went as far as writing a press release defending USA Gymnastics — even sending draft language to Penny prior to forwarding it to officials at IMPD and the prosecutor’s office.
Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin says mass shootings are caused by zombie television shows like The Walking Dead. Obviously.
The Department of Defense apparently failed the first-ever audit the Pentagon has ever conducted. I can hardly contain my shock.
Conservative political operatives in Kansas say Kris Kobach lost the race because his campaign was a disaster behind the scenes.
Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state, struggled to pay his campaign staff on time and at one point lacked a working phone system at his Johnson County campaign office, according to GOP sources familiar with the campaign. And people who offered to volunteer were never contacted.
“It was the most dysfunctional thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” said a long-time GOP operative in Kansas.
Pence says North Korea will not be required to disclose how many nuclear weapons they have ahead of the next summit between Trump and his large adult son Kim Jong-un.
Some veterans have not received benefits under the GI Bill for months and some are at risk of losing their homes because of "glitches" at the VA.
Shelley Roundtree departed the U.S. Army in 2013 after seeing friends and fellow soldiers die in combat during his tour in Afghanistan. He was committed to transitioning to civilian life, and one of his first steps was to enroll in college with tuition and housing benefits he'd earned under the GI Bill.
Roundtree, 29, began studying marketing at Berkeley College in Midtown Manhattan. He dreams of working in the fashion industry, and he's close to graduating — but now there's a serious obstacle.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is suffering from a series of information technology glitches that has caused GI Bill benefit payments covering education and housing to be delayed or — in the case of Roundtree — never be delivered.
"I’m about to lose everything that I own and become homeless," Roundtree said. "I don’t want to be that veteran on the street begging for change because I haven’t received what I was promised."
You may recall that Jared Kushner was tasked with fixing the VA's technology systems.
Programming note... next week is going to be a short week because of the holiday, but I am planning to be here on Monday and Tuesday at the very least.
Have a good weekend.