The tense two days began Jan. 18. The New York Times, citing two people briefed on the matter, reported that Trump was considering commuting the 6 ½-year sentence of Silver from a 2018 corruption conviction. The conviction was related to Silver accepting $700,000 in fees from a Manhattan tax law firm for steering cases to it from real estate developers who were seeking Silver’s support for rent-control legislation and in other matters.

Trump had known and worked with Silver for decades in Albany on legislation concerning Trump’s building developments and the state’s approval of casinos. The story was preceded by a Times tweet.

"I went ballistic when I saw that," Buffalo developer Carl Paladino, the 2010 GOP nominee for governor, said of the tweet. Paladino said he sent a message to a Trump ally whom he wouldn’t identify, saying that Silver "was not deserving of a pardon. He was the worst scoundrel to ever work in New York State."

Then came a tweet that surprised many.

"Make no mistake," tweeted the state Republican Party under chairman Nick Langworthy, one of Trump’s most loyal allies. "Disgraced former NYS Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver deserves no clemency or pardon. Silver deserves to actually serve the jail time that he was sentenced for selling the incredible power he yielded to enrich himself. He was a corrupt and dishonest politician."

Acting Alaska Attorney General Ed Sniffen’s abrupt resignation was announced Friday as the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica were preparing an article about allegations of sexual misconduct with a 17-year-old girl three decades ago.

Nikki Dougherty White, now 47, recently contacted the news organizations with a detailed account of how she and Sniffen began a sexual relationship in 1991 while she was a student at West Anchorage High School. At the time, he was a 27-year-old attorney with a local law firm and a coach of her school’s mock trial competition team.

The sexual relationship began during a trip to New Orleans for a national competition when she was 17, and it continued for about two years back in Anchorage, she said.

One of White’s former teammates said White confided in her about the sexual encounter with Sniffen while the team was still in New Orleans. A second former teammate said he learned of the sexual encounter around the same time, possibly on the plane ride home. A third teammate remembered hearing that something inappropriate had happened between Sniffen and White upon the team’s return to Anchorage.

President Biden urged swift passage of his $1.9 billion coronavirus relief plan Friday, arguing during an Oval Office appearance that Americans will be “badly, badly hurt” if Congress does not pass legislation soon.

Biden later headed to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., to visit wounded troops, his first trip to the hospital since taking office. During the visit, he also toured a coronavirus vaccination site and thanked hospital officials for the care they provided to his son Beau during the final days of his battle with brain cancer in 2015.

President Donald Trump was treated at Walter Reed in October after contracting the coronavirus.

Weeks before the murderous mob of insurrectionists stormed the United States Capitol on January 6 to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory, a leader of the so-called Stop the Steal movement stood before a crowd of angry Donald Trump loyalists in California and called for the “execution” of those who had supposedly plotted against Trump. Afterward, he posted video of his demand for blood on YouTube.

On December 12, Trump supporters, ahead of the official counting of electoral votes, staged protests across the country, with the main demonstration in Washington leading to violence, as the Proud Boys rampaged through the district and clashed with Antifa activists. A smaller gathering occurred in Huntington Beach, California. One hundred or so Trump devotees, some waving Trump and “Fuck Biden” flags, assembled at the town’s picturesque pier. The man leading that protest was Alan Hostetter, a police-chief-turned-yoga-instructor who last year became a prominent opponent of COVID shutdowns in the Golden State.

“There must be long prison terms, while execution is the just punishment for the ringleaders of this coup.”
Hostetter, who heads a group called the American Phoenix Project, praised the Trumpers, “as America from the ground-up fights back agains this communist takeover of our country.” Reading from a prepared text, he declared, “Both foreign and domestic enemies and traitors surround us. They are protected and enabled by a corrupt and evil…mainstream media. And this mainstream media joined forces with an even more corrupt group of tech tyrants in the Silicon Valley.”

As the demonstrators cheered, he said, “President Trump and his ground troops here with the patriots—we’re going to fix this….There must, absolutely must be a reckoning. There must be justice. President Trump must be inaugurated on January 20.”