2017

After reports of an extramarital affair torpedoed former Rep. Tim Murphy’s congressional career, the Navy launched its own review of his conduct.

Murphy, a commander in the Navy Reserves, was honorably discharged. That officially happened on Sept. 11, 2017, according to the Navy.

Disgraced former Rep. Blake Farenthold’s new employer is seeking the opinion of Texas’ attorney general about the legality of his hiring.

The Calhoun Port Authority is asking whether Farenthold’s hiring violated the Texas Open Meetings Act, the Victoria Advocate reported.

Former Pennsylvania Rep. Tim Murphy, who was brought down last year by an an extramarital affair, has a new job working for a government relations consulting firm.

Murphy now works for Crammer Consultants as a federal consultant, the Pittburgh Tribune-Review reported.

Failed Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore filed a new lawsuit Monday accusing several women who made allegations of sexual misconduct against him of a “political conspiracy” to prevent him from winning the state’s December special election.

The allegations that Moore, 71, courted and made sexual contact with teenage girls when he was a district attorney in his 30s are “false,” said Melissa Isaak, Moore’s attorney. She spoke at a news conference Monday in Gadsden, Alabama, where many of the incidents are claimed to have taken place roughly 40 years ago.

Jeff Bezos has given more than $20,000 split between four lawmakers — two Democrats and two Republicans — since he bought The Washington Post in October 2013, a review of the billionaire’s Federal Elections Commission files revealed.

In the last three election cycles, Bezos has donated the maximum amount allowed by election laws to two Washington Democrats and two Utah Republicans.

An owner of the controversial Sinclair Broadcast Group has donated more than $10,000 to Montana Republican Rep. Greg Gianforte in the last year and a half.

Robert E. Smith, whose family owns the largest local television station operator in the country, gave the maximum $5,400 to Gianforte’s campaign in March, The Guardian reported. He did the same last year, ahead of Gianforte’s 6-point special election victory over Democrat Rob Quist.

Taxes were the talk of Congress Tuesday, the deadline for taxpayers to file returns for 2017, with Republicans messaging on the tax overhaul they passed last year and Speaker Paul D. Ryan promising a vote this year on a measure to make the individual tax cuts permanent.

“We fully intend to make these things permanent and that’s something we’ll be acting on later this year,” Ryan said of the individual tax rate reductions. Taxpayers will begin using the new rate structure in the 2018 filing season, but absent congressional action the individual rates will expire after 2025. 

As Rep. Gregg Harper prepares to leave Congress, he has high hopes the internship program he created for individuals with intellectual disabilities will grow and lead to more alumni getting hired.

Helping the disabled has been a priority for the Mississippi Republican since his election to the House in 2008. He has sponsored multiple pieces of legislation to help people with disabilities transition into adulthood, including his Transition toward Excellence, Achievement, and Mobility, or TEAM, Act in 2013, which stalled in committee.

The U.S. military — together with French and British forces — struck three targets inside Syria on Friday night, just days after Bashar Assad’s government allegedly carried out a chemical attack on a Damascus suburb and amid new U.S.-Russia tensions.

In a televised address, President Donald Trump announced that strikes against Assad's forces were “now underway.”

Updated at 9:36 a.m. | President Donald Trump on Wednesday signaled his coming response to the Syrian government’s recent chemical weapons attack, tweeting his intention to launch a missile strike. He also again lashed out at the Justice Department's Russia probe.

Trump later fired off other tweets lamenting souring U.S.-Russia relations, using one to blame “bad blood” with the Russian government on what he dubbed the “Fake & Corrupt Russia Investigation” being led by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III. And he went right after the deputy attorney general who legal experts say is standing between a frustrated president and pushing out or clamping down on Mueller.