by tyler | Sep 27, 2023 | CNN, politics
A New York judge has found Donald Trump and his adult sons liable for fraud, saying the Trumps provided false financial statements for roughly a decade.
Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling came days before the civil case involving the New York attorney general’s office and the former president was set to go to trial.
Engoron granted Attorney General Letitia James’ motion for summary judgment, finding Trump, his sons, and others “to be liable as a matter of law for persistent violations” of New York state law. He found the financial statements the Trumps provided to lenders and insurers for about a decade to be false and said they repeatedly engaged in fraud.
The decision is a blow to Trump and a complete rejection of his arguments that he didn’t inflate the values of his golf courses, hotels, homes at Mar-a-Lago and Seven Springs on financial statements that were repeatedly used in business.
The attorney general has sought $250 million in damages, a ban on the Trumps from serving as officers of a business in New York, and to stop the company from engaging in business transaction for five years.
Among other things, Trump is accused of inflating the value of his triplex apartment at Trump Tower by three times its size, resulting in an overvaluation of between $114 million to $207 million, Engoron wrote.
“A discrepancy of this order of magnified, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud,” Engoron wrote.
“Exacerbating defendants’ obstreperous conduct is their continued reliance on bogus arguments, in papers and oral argument,” Engoron wrote. “In defendants’ world: rent regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies …”
The judge added: “That is a fantasy world, not the real world.”
The state supreme court judge likened the Trumps’ legal defense of his fraudulent financial statements to a Chico Marx line in the comedy “Duck Soup”: “Well, who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”
Trump’s attorney Christopher Kise called the ruling “completely disconnected from the facts and governing law.”
He added: “While the full impact of the decision remains unclear, what is clear is that President Trump and his family will seek all available appellate remedies to rectify this miscarriage of justice.”
In a statement on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Eric Trump said: “Today, I lost all faith in the New York legal system. Never before have I seen such hatred toward one person by a judge – a coordinated effort with the Attorney General to destroy a man’s life, company and accomplishments. We have run an exceptional company – never missing a loan payment, making banks hundreds of millions of dollars, developing some of the most iconic assets in the world. Yet today, the persecution of our family continues…”
James has alleged that Trump, three of his children, his companies and his business executives defrauded lenders, insurers and other entities. (An appeals court dismissed Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka, as a co-defendant from the case in June.)
In the lawsuit, James claims that Trump reaped a “substantial” financial benefit by putting forward faulty information in his financial statements, including $150 million in the form of favorable interest rates he obtained from the banks that the attorney general said his team misled.
In the order, the judge rejected Trump’s deposition testimony in which the former president said that the financial statements were not fraudulent because they contained disclaimers. Trump said the statements contained a “worthless clause” in them warning lenders and others that they shouldn’t be relied on.
Tuesday, the judge said that “the defendants’ reliance on these ‘worthless’ disclaimers is worthless.”
The ruling means the attorney general’s office won on its first two claims and will receive some amount of disgorgement to be determined at trial. The case will still proceed to trial but the attorney general’s office won’t need to prove the financial statements are false as they seek to hold him and his sons liable for insurance fraud and false business records.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
by tyler | Sep 27, 2023 | CNN, politics
With just days to go before the government runs out of money, the Senate has unveiled a bipartisan stopgap bill in a bid to avert a shutdown – but there’s no guarantee that it will be able to pass in the House.
The Senate stopgap bill, which would keep the government funded until November 17, includes $6.2 billion in Ukraine aid and $6 billion for natural disasters.
The release of the Senate bill, which was negotiated on a bipartisan basis, sets up a stark contrast – and a showdown – with the House, where the Republican majority faces deep divisions and the demands of hardline conservatives have been highly influential in driving the agenda as a shutdown looms.
The House and Senate are now on a collision course and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has little room to maneuver with only a narrow majority. Hardline conservatives have railed against the prospect of a short-term funding extension and many oppose additional aid to Ukraine, two major obstacles to finding consensus with the Senate.
McCarthy told his leadership team Tuesday night that he plans to amend the Senate’s stopgap spending bill to include a House GOP border security package, according to multiple sources familiar, teeing up a massive confrontation with the Senate over immigration on the eve of the shutdown deadline.
McCarthy’s strategy, which has been echoed by Republicans all day, is to make the shutdown fight squarely centered on the issue of the border.
It is also likely that House Republicans will strip out the minimal money for Ukraine that the Senate has included in its stopgap, senior GOP sources said, given that many hardliners are opposed to it and they can’t afford many defections.
Schumer said on Tuesday as he outlined the Senate’s stopgap proposal, “We will continue to fund the government at present levels while maintaining our commitment to Ukraine’s security and humanitarian needs, while also ensuring those impacted by natural disasters across the country begin to get the resources they need.”
Now that the Senate has unveiled its own stopgap measure, the chamber will still need to pass it before it can be sent to the House and any one senator can slow passage under tight time constraints.
The Senate took an initial step to advance its bipartisan stopgap bill on Tuesday with a procedural vote of 77 to 19.
Lacking the GOP votes to pass a stopgap bill, McCarthy is turning attention early in the week toward an effort to advance a series of spending bills, including for the departments of Defense and Homeland Security.
Passing those bills won’t stop a shutdown at the end of the week, but as conservatives demand the passage of full-year funding bills, McCarthy had been hoping that momentum on the measures might swing enough holdouts to support a Republican stopgap bill. However, it is not clear that even those bills can advance amid deep divisions within the House Republican conference.
McCarthy is expected to face yet another test of his leadership on Tuesday as House GOP leadership has indicated that they plan to hold a procedural vote on a rule to advance those measures. The expected vote comes after hardliners tanked a similar procedural vote for a defense bill last week in a major embarrassment for the House GOP leaders. All eyes will be on the House to see if that spectacle repeats itself.
McCarthy remained insistent on Tuesday that that a government shutdown is the worst possible option and warned his conference of the perils of that strategy. “I don’t think shutdowns ever help,” he said.
A shutdown would have major impacts that would be felt across the country. If that were to happen, many government operations would come to a halt, while some services deemed “essential” would continue.
Government operations and services that continue during a shutdown are activities deemed necessary to protect public safety and national security or considered critical for other reasons. Examples of services that have continued during past shutdowns include border protection, federal law enforcement and air traffic control.
The White House on Tuesday highlighted “damaging impacts” of a shutdown that would undermine national security, pointing to the 1.3 million active-duty military members who would not be paid until the shutdown concludes and the furlough of civilian Defense Department employees.
This story and headline have been updated with additional information.
by tyler | Sep 8, 2023 | CNN, politics
While House Democrats are confident they can defend President Joe Biden against a potential impeachment inquiry, many wish for a clearer strategy against GOP allegations on a known sensitive topic in the West Wing: Hunter Biden.
A new CNN poll out Thursday shows the issue has potency: Most Americans (55%) think the president was involved in his son’s business dealings with Ukraine and China while he served as vice president, with even one-third of Democrats saying so. The Hunter Biden headaches show no signs of going away either, as the Justice Department said Wednesday it intends to seek an indictment against Hunter relating to gun charges by the end of the month.
Conversations with more than a dozen House Democrats and aides reveal that the party has contrasting views on how to best message a sensitive issue at a critical time – even as the White House has been adamant it has been aggressively providing Democrats with information as needed. The House is set to begin a contentious month of work next week, with House Republicans ratcheting up the threat of launching an official impeachment inquiry against the president and using his son in large part to do it. As congressional recess comes to a close, the White House, outside groups and Democrats on Capitol Hill are ramping up a coordinated strategy, welcome news for some in the party who will be on the front lines.
Some rank-and-file Democrats want the White House to be more forceful in shutting down the Republican allegations, which at this point Democrats view as a political ploy to hurt the president and his reelection bid since Republicans have yet to reveal any wrongdoing by the president or tie the president directly to his son’s business dealings.
Democratic lawmakers also see more opportunity to frame the GOP probes into the Biden family as a distraction from the four times that former President Donald Trump has now been indicted on various criminal charges.
“I fear we are missing an opportunity here to put Republicans back on their heels, to say it is pretty sick that someone who is in recovery and trying to redeem themselves is subjected to these political attacks for something that happened before Joe Biden was president and with no evidence that Joe Biden did anything wrong,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat.
If Democrats don’t come out loudly, said Rep. Dan Kildee, a Michigan Democrat, others will.
“It is dragging out and the obvious effect of it is to create the opportunity for false equivalency given Trump’s problems,” Kildee said. “That void is going to be filled. Now it is being filled by Republicans.”
Some Democrats wish the president, who has said he has done nothing wrong, would be more aggressive in framing Republican failed efforts to connect him to his son Hunter’s foreign business dealings as a personal political attack.
“I know a lot of Democrats have wondered why the president is so accommodating of a son who’s clearly been unethical and casts a really unfortunate shadow on both the president, the administration and Democrats writ large,” another Democratic member told CNN.
“But I’ve made my case that President Biden is a remarkably compassionate and decent human being and I think Democrats have that in their soul as well,” the member said. “At the end of the day, while it’s politically frustrating, it’s also principled and compassioned, especially in the light of addiction, something that a lot of families can relate to in this country.”
Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat and member of the House Oversight panel, argues that too many assaults on Hunter Biden will eventually lead to sympathy for Joe Biden.
“There are a lot of families in America, who have had a son, a sister, a cousin, a brother who have dealt with addiction,” Connolly said.
But the topic of Hunter Biden is known to be a sensitive one in the White House and some House Democrats say they’ve felt the brunt of that.
“If someone talks to someone in the White House staff, they get yelled at or they are told it’s a non-touchable issue,” one member told CNN.
“We aren’t getting any information to help respond or defend the president and his family,” said the other. “Not exactly a rapid response operation.”
A White House aide objected to characterizations that the White House has rebuffed any Democratic members along the way, stressing that any members who seek out messaging guidance on the GOP investigations get assistance, and also noted that the White House has pushed out dozens of rapid response releases refuting GOP claims.
The White House has spent over a year assembling a team of more than two dozen legal, legislative and communications experts to build out a war room effort to respond to the expanding portfolio of investigations launched by House Republicans. Senior White House aides from the White House counsel’s office, legislative affairs and the communications team made the rounds in Capitol Hill as far back as December to meet with Democratic caucus members and key committee leaders to establish a strong line of communication and make sure the members on the front lines of this had the resources they needed, a person familiar but not authorized to discuss the private gatherings told CNN.
A source close to the campaign told CNN, “Members of Congress should do a better job of reaching out if they feel like they’re not getting enough pushback materials,” and added that the campaign regularly provides talking points on Hunter Biden to Biden campaign surrogates, including around the recent Republican presidential primary debate.
Even though Republicans have tried tying Hunter’s business dealings to the president, the White House has drawn some clear distinctions. The White House has worked tirelessly to defend the president for months against GOP allegations. But, it has also made a conscious decision to not comment on claims that pertain to the status of the ongoing criminal investigation into Hunter Biden, now being run by a special counsel. That’s not an accident.
“We’re not going to intervene or send around talking points on anything that would impact an ongoing legal proceeding,” a White House aide said.
A Democratic source told CNN that it would be “inappropriate” for the White House, run by Hunter’s father, to send out talking points on Hunter’s ongoing criminal situation, even if some Democrats think that would be a good idea.
Beyond just how to respond to the Republican allegations about Hunter, the Democratic messaging strategy on Capitol Hill against a Republican impeachment effort of the president is still taking shape.
One Democratic leadership aide told CNN the reason for that is because House Democrats want to see if the House GOP even has the votes to move forward with an impeachment effort.
Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, who also serves on the Judiciary Committee, told CNN she has gotten whatever information she needs from the White House to be prepared to respond to Republican allegations, and said Democrats can do a better job of contrasting Republican allegations against Biden with the criminal charges Trump is facing, even if it’s an area the White House doesn’t want to touch.
“To me, that’s the area that I think we could use a little bit more time and space on,” she said.
Another member, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told CNN that Democrats “should be much more muscular” in reaching persuadable voters to debunk Republican allegations.
But it’s a delicate balance. Other Democrats believe that no unnecessary oxygen should be spent on responding to the GOP’s unverified allegations because the party should be focused on talking about issues that move them towards their ultimate goal of taking back the House in 2024. A number of lawmakers told CNN they did not focus on this topic nor were they asked about it back in their districts during recess, a point that polling provided to Democrats has shown.
“You do not want to breathe more air into this cynicism,” said Democratic freshman Rep. Becca Balint of Vermont, who told CNN she has always been prepared for her work on the House Oversight Committee. “But you also have to be ready to shut it down.”
“Our job is not to defend Hunter or Joe Biden,” said another Democratic source. “Our job is to take back the House.”
Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman of New York, who serves on the House Oversight Committee, is in regular communication with the White House and has been on the front lines defending against these allegations. He told CNN, “When we have a choice between what we’re going to focus on, these baseless partisan allegations that are meritless and the critical issues that are facing the American people, the Democrats will choose the people over politics.”
Goldman said the reason the Democratic strategy may seem confusing is because Republicans keep moving the goal posts of their investigation.
“I think that it’s understandable that people don’t quite know how to respond,” he told CNN. “I think that it’s understandable that there’s no clear-cut messaging because there’s no clear theory of what (the) president did, it is literally shifting every week as Republicans grasp desperately for some link to President Biden, which they have not found yet.”
But as Democrats on the Hill and the White House continue to flush out there strategy, there is an acknowledgment from members and aides alike that Democrats, despite differences of opinion, have been able to contain Republican allegations from snowballing too far out of control, and believe that if Republicans continue to pursue this path it will only backfire on them.
The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, said in a statement to CNN, “Throughout the Republicans’ probe, Committee Democrats have beaten back their efforts to distort facts, lie about evidence, and promote long-discredited conspiracy theories. At every turn, our Members have defended the truth and gone on offense by reminding America that the calculated hit on Joe Biden is a pathetic effort to distract America from the crimes and corruption of Donald Trump.”
“Our unified rapid response efforts have been sharp, and the close coordination between Members and staff has been striking. All of our work has documented that the ‘evidence’ collected by the GOP shows no wrongdoing by President Biden,” Raskin, who regularly shares talking points and holds meetings with committee members and staff to hone messaging, added.
For some Democrats on the Hill, the Biden team is doing exactly what it should. Rep. Robert Garcia said the White House has been a strong partner to members on the Oversight Committee, where he is a member.
“They’ve been really good about giving us information that we’re asking for,” said Garcia, a California Democrat.
Besides that, an outside Democratic group, the Congressional Integrity Project, regularly sends out memos and information to push back on Republican allegations and talking points.
“Since day one, the Congressional Integrity Project has been exposing MAGA Republican investigations for what they are: political stunts designed to hurt President Biden and put Donald Trump back in office.” Executive Director Kyle Herrig said in a statement to CNN. “It’s past time they stop with their partisan charades and focus on helping the American people.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
by tyler | Sep 8, 2023 | CNN, politics
Justice Brett Kavanaugh said Thursday that the Supreme Court is working on “concrete steps” to address ethics issues at the high court amid an array of recent news stories on justices’ travel and relationships with political donors.
Appearing before an audience of judges and lawyers during a judicial conference in Ohio, Kavanaugh noted that Chief Justice John Roberts had pledged in May to assure the public that the court was committed to adhering to the highest standards of conduct.
“The chief justice spoke about that in May and said that we are continuing to work on those issues and that is accurate,” Kavanaugh told the audience. “We are continuing to work on those issues and I’m hopeful that there will be some concrete steps taken soon on that.”
In a conversation with Judges Jeffrey S. Sutton and Stephanie Dawkins Davis – who both sit on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals – Kavanaugh did not address specific allegations of late. ProPublica, the Associated Press and other outlets have reported on issues concerning Supreme Court justices’ unreported luxury travel on private jets, lavish vacations and the use of taxpayer-funded staff to perform tasks related to book ventures.
Speaking generally, Kavanaugh said the court consists of “nine public servants, who are hardworking, and care a lot about the court and care a lot about the judiciary.”
“We respect the institution and want that respect for the institution to be shared by the American people” he said, even if the public ultimately disagrees with the court’s opinions.
“To the extent that we can increase confidence, we are working on that,” Kavanaugh said.
Kavanaugh’s statements go slightly further than a speech he made in July when he suggested he did not want to go beyond Roberts’ statements on the issue.
The comments come weeks before a new term is set to start and critics, including Democrats in Congress, are pressuring the justices to develop a code of conduct specific to the justices themselves.
In a statement signed last term by the full court, the justices reiterated that they voluntarily follow guidelines that apply to lower court judges.
But it’s done little to appease critics of the court who say the justices need to do more to ensure better transparency concerning their lives off the bench. Despite criticism, the justices have refused – so far – to be bound by an official ethics code specific to the high court.
“It is an institution of law and not of politics, not of partisanship,” Kavanaugh said of the court, adding that the key to judging is to be “consistent in your principles regardless of who the parties are in the particular case.”
To make his point, as he often does, Kavanaugh turned to a sports analogy.
“One umpire might have a narrow strike zone, one umpire might have a bigger strike zone,” he said. “That’s fine as long as the umpire is consistent calling it the same way for the Red Sox and the Yankees – you don’t want an umpire favoring the Red Sox in every call and going against the Yankees in every call,” Kavanaugh stressed.
He said that judges should set their own set of constitutional principles and then “call it the same way” whether it “hurts the Democratic party, hurts the Republican party or whether it hurts business or the environmental group.”
This story has been updated with additional information.
by tyler | Sep 8, 2023 | CNN, politics
The alarm bells are ringing for Democrats who look at a new CNN Poll out Wednesday.
Some key lines from CNN’s report by Ariel Edwards-Levy and Jennifer Agiesta:
Read the full report.
But the fact remains that despite Democrats’ obvious unease with Biden, there’s no organized clamoring for someone else. Even if there was, there’s not much time.
There is no nationwide date by which candidates must declare their candidacies. If additional Democrats were to challenge Biden, they would do so within the 50-state patchwork party primary process. Each state has its own primary rules and deadlines. Nevada requires primary candidates to submit their paperwork by mid-October. South Carolina requires candidates to submit their paperwork in November.
But the Democratic National Committee, at Biden’s behest, is currently locked in a standoff with both Iowa and New Hampshire, which for decades have held the first caucus in Iowa and first-in-the-nation primary in New Hampshire.
Biden didn’t win either state during the 2020 primaries and, in an effort to reward the South Carolina primary that reignited his campaign, Democrats moved both states out of their traditional positions under national party rules. Iowa Democrats haven’t yet said when their nominating process will take place and while the New Hampshire government is set on holding its primary first, a date still hasn’t been announced.
The end result may be that Democrats essentially ignore Iowa’s caucus or New Hampshire’s primary
Biden may not even be on the ballot in New Hampshire if, as predicted, it carries forward with a January primary.
The most visible person who is challenging Biden, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is a noted vaccine message and has pushed conspiracy theories that make him unpalatable to most voters.
The fact that notable progressives à la Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who has run for president twice as a Democrat, are not clamoring for a Biden alternative is tell that the motivated base on the left wing of the party is at least content with Biden’s chances and his performance so far.
Anti-Trump Republicans like New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu are adamant that a viable Trump alternative exists.
Sununu became “animated and agitated” when CNN’s Jeff Zeleny asked if Trump was on an unstoppable march to the nomination.
“Oh God no!” Sununu told Zeleny.
But none of the candidates challenging Trump have yet caught on in polling and in fact Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has faded in recent surveys.
The idea that a Republican who is not running – Virginia’s Gov. Glenn Younkin, say – could jump in the race and rocket to challenge Trump seems equally unlikely.
Which is why until you see someone with some name recognition and either deep pockets or financial backing seriously talk about entering the race, a believable Democratic alternative to Biden or a last-minute Republican alternative to Trump seems academic. Could it technically happen? Sure. Are there any indications it is happening? No.
While navigating the party primary system might seem complicated, the advantage of utilizing it is that the main political parties, and frequently some minor ones, have a reserved slot on the general election ballot in December.
A major obstacle to an independent candidate would be to gain that ballot access in all 50 states and the District of Columbia – or at least enough states to cobble together 270 electoral votes. Most of those filing deadlines do not arrive until later in 2024.
A national independent campaign would require staffers, fundraising and organizers. That process takes time and even some established third parties do not get on the ballot in every state.
The Libertarian Party is frequently able to get its candidate ballot access in all 50 states and the Green Party works each year to maintain the support it needs to appear on ballots. As of July, the Green Party lacked ballot access in a large portion of the country.
The group No Labels is pushing what it calls a “2024 insurance project,” by which it plans to obtain ballot access to “potentially offer” to an “independent Unity Ticket,” but only “if that’s what the American people want.”
The moderate group is skirting election rules by obtaining ballot access as a nonprofit rather than a political party. Its nonprofit status also allows it to keep the identities of its financial backers secret, a move it has defended to protect its fundraisers’ privacy and defend them from pressure to abandon the movement. It also obviously violates at least the spirit of transparency in politics and fundraising, which is not very democratic.
No Labels has featured West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who is seriously considering becoming an independent, at an event in New Hampshire. Manchin has not said if he will seek reelection to the Senate, launch an independent presidential bid, or do something else entirely.
Sen. Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” last month that he has personally discouraged Manchin from running and he disparaged the No Labels effort.
“This is a few individuals putting dark money behind an organization,” he said. “That’s not what our democracy should be about.”
The term No Labels favors – “Unity Ticket” – suggests it would require both a Republican and a Democrat and be exciting enough to pull a sizable chunk of voters out of their partisan corners. At least right now, it’s hard to imagine any person that fits that bill.
Got any ideas about who could unify the country? Let us know at what.matters@cnn.com.
Here’s some more phrasing from the No Labels website: “We are simply clearing away the ballot access obstacles built by the major parties to create space for the potential nomination of an independent Unity Ticket, if that’s what the American public wants.”
Who’s to say what the public wants? That’s presumably what elections are for. The most notable No Labels figureheads include former Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, both moderates who moved out of step with their parties but lack national followings.
Independent and third party candidates are bad news for incumbents
Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans have warned that any kind of moderate alternative could only help Trump. There’s plenty of evidence to support that claim. Candidates who resonate outside typical Republican and Democratic bases tend to benefit the out-of-power major party candidate.
This is all to say that despite frustration on both sides of the political aisle, the avenue to any serious alternatives remains very much obstructed.
by tyler | Sep 8, 2023 | CNN, politics
First lady Dr. Jill Biden has tested negative for Covid-19, the White House announced Thursday.
The first lady, 72, has been isolating in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, since Monday evening, when she first tested positive for Covid-19. According to the White House, President Joe Biden has tested negative for Covid-19 daily since the first lady’s diagnosis.
The diagnosis arrived at the beginning of a high-stakes week for Biden, 80, who departed for India Thursday for the G20 Summit.
“The President tested negative for COVID,” the White House said in a statement to pool ahead of his departure Thursday. CNN previously reported that there are no changes to White House Covid protocols or to the president’s schedule at this time.
The first couple spent the weekend together, traveling to storm-ravaged Florida Saturday before a trip to their Rehoboth Beach home.
The first lady, who was slated to begin teaching Fall semester classes at Northern Virginia Community College, is working with the school to “ensure her classes are covered by a substitute” in her absence, Vanessa Valdivia, the first lady’s spokesperson, said earlier this week.
Dr. Biden will follow the White House medical team’s advice about when to return to the White House, Valdivia said.
Her diagnosis comes as Covid-19 cases have again been on the rise, though still relatively low, in the US. Hospitalizations are up 15.7% over the past week, and deaths are up 17.6% over the past week, according to data from the CDC.
A new variant, BA.2.86, has captured scientists’ attention because it’s highly mutated, but so far it’s only been detected in a small number of people globally. Nonetheless, “it doesn’t look good … in terms of the virus’ nonstop evolution,” Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist at the Scripps Research Translational Institute, said. The virus “keeps finding new ways to challenge humans, to find new hosts and repeat hosts, and it’s relentless.”
Dr. Biden tested positive for Covid-19 last year while vacationing in South Carolina in August and President Biden tested positive last July. Both experienced rebound cases shortly after being treated with Paxlovid.
This story has been updated with additional information.
