Category: US Politics

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You’d never know it from news coverage — or from last month’s midterms — but the electorate has warmed up to Donald Trump. An Emerson College poll shows the president getting his best job approval ratings since near the beginning of his presidency. That doesn’t make them good, but it’s going in the right direction:

The last Emerson poll of 2018 finds President Trump’s job disapproval rating fell below 50% for the first time this year, with approval at 43% and disapproval at 47% on his job performance. These are the strongest job numbers for the President in an Emerson poll since February 2017, when Trump had 48% approval/47% disapproval. This survey data was collected December 6-9, US Residents, MM, n=800, +/-3.6%. …

A Generic Presidential ballot test forecast a similar 2020 race with what was predicted in 2016, with 45% currently leaning for the generic Democrat and 43% for the generic Republican.

Even with the turbulence of his presidency, a majority (56%) of GOP voters surveyed do not believe a Republican candidate should challenge President Trump in the 2020 Presidential Primary; 25% believe a Republican candidate should challenge President Trump.

A 43/47 job approval rating on its own isn’t a very strong number. If Trump goes into the next election cycle with those numbers against a candidate who’s not named Hillary Clinton, he’ll be in serious trouble. However, the trend line has improved all year long despite a number of political storms and a few setbacks, including the midterms which took away the GOP’s House majority. If that trend continues in 2019, Trump could find himself in reasonably good shape to compete for re-election.

This is, of course, just one poll. What about the full trend across multiple poll series? This chart at RealClearPolitics shows similar trends for the past year, even if the amplitude in the job-approval average is different:

This shows more of a plateau in the second half of 2018 rather than the improvement Emerson notes, but it does demonstrate improvement. Maybe it’s better to describe it as America getting used to Trump, as most of the improvement has come from a decline in disapproval, especially in 2018. The individual polls themselves are still wildly divergent — CNN gives Trump a -13 approval spread, while Rasmussen gives him a -2 and Fox a -6. (His last positive spread came in April 2017 from Rasmussen.) Again, these aren’t great numbers or even good ones, but the trend is at least pointing in the right direction.

Emerson also polled for the 2020 Democratic primaries, and the news there may not be too good for their party either. Nearly half of all respondents pick two men whose combined ages will come close to 160 in 2020:

That should be worrisome in a populist, anti-establishment environment. Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders not only will be in their late 70s in the next election cycle, so will their combined tenures in Washington DC (44 years for Biden, 29 for Sanders by 2020). The only outsider on in the top six candidates would be Robert “Beto” O’Rourke, who lost his Senate election last month after serving three terms as a non-entity in the House. Democrats need someone who can compete against Trump’s ability to cast himself as outside the Beltway swamp, not another flavor of establishmentarian. Trump may still be vulnerable in 2020, but running yet another DC insider against him is akin to throwing the GOP a lifeline.

After Cleveland radio station WDOK banned the holiday classic, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,’ in an effort to be politically-correct, the popularity of the son skyrocketed, enjoying more than 10 million plays on radio.

WDOK sparked a national controversy over the song in November by publicly declaring it was banning the song because a listener claimed its 1944 lyrics are sexually predatory.

But, according to Billboard.com, the latest weekly ranking of holiday tunes shows the song has, since, enjoyed a surge in sales, far exceeding the 34% sales increase recorded by all holiday songs:

“Most notably, on Billboard‘s Holiday Digital Song Sales chart dated Dec. 15, three interpretations of “Baby” appear the most of any title, and they make the survey’s three largest gains, respectively.”:

1. Dean Martin, up 257%
2. Idina Menzel-Michael Bublé duet, up 165%
3. Leon Redbone-Zooey Dechanel duet, up 130%

Likewise, streaming of “Baby” renditions rose far more than all holiday songs overall (up 32%):

• Dean Martin, up 54%,
• Idina Menzel-Michael Bublé duet, up 54%,
• Brett Eldredge-Meghan Trainor duet, up 36%

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Russia reportedly decided to pull nuclear-capable jets from Venezuela following a diplomatic spat with Washington over their support for the Maduro regime, the White House confirmed on Wednesday.

This week, Russia placed two nuclear-capable Tupolev Tu-160 strategic bombers in Venezuelan territory and showed them off in the skies as a show of force for the Maduro regime.

“During the international visit of the Aerospace Defense Forces’ delegation to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, pilots of strategic bombers Tu-160 conducted a flight in the airspace over the Caribbean Sea. The flight lasted for about 10 hours,” the Russian Defense Ministry’s press service said on Wednesday.

“In certain parts of the route, the flight of Russian bombers was conducted together with Su-30 and F-16 fighter jets of the Venezuelan National Bolivarian Military Aviation,” they continued. “The pilots from the two countries practiced air cooperation when fulfilling air tasks.”

The move drew up immediate anger from the United States, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denouncing “two corrupt governments squandering public funds, and squelching liberty and freedom while their people suffer.”

#Russia‘s government has sent bombers halfway around the world to #Venezuela. The Russian and Venezuelan people should see this for what it is: two corrupt governments squandering public funds, and squelching liberty and freedom while their people suffer. pic.twitter.com/bCBGbGtaHT

— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) December 11, 2018

Russia’s Foreign Ministry denounced Mr. Pompeo’s comments as “unacceptable” and “unprofessional.”

“We have taken note of the brash tweet posted by @SecPompeo regarding the training flight of Russian strategic bombers to Venezuela,” they wrote on Twitter. “What the US Secretary of State has tweeted is completed unacceptable, not to say unprofessional.”

🔹We have taken note of the brash tweet posted by @SecPompeo regarding the training flight of Russian strategic bombers to Venezuela

🔹What the US Secretary of State has tweeted is completed unacceptable, not to say unprofessionalhttps://t.co/q2V4EV0XzA pic.twitter.com/UB5FyuWjfg

— MFA Russia 🇷🇺 (@mfa_russia) December 12, 2018

Venezuelan Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino López said the exercises were part of Russia’s support for the country’s military, which he claimed was needed because the United States is planning an invasion that would lead to the overthrow of the Maduro regime.

“This we are going to do with our friends, because we have friends in the world who defend respectful, balanced relations,” he said. “We are preparing to defend Venezuela to the last inch when necessary.”

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Wednesday that Russian forces had agreed to leave the area and return to Russia after President Donald Trump spoke with senior Russian officials.

“We have spoken with representatives of Russia and have been informed that their military aircraft, which landed in Venezuela, will be leaving on Friday and going back to Russia,” Sanders said in a statement Wednesday.

The Kremlin has expanded its support for the Maduro regime, which is currently overseeing a dire economic and humanitarian crisis. Over the past decade, Vladimir Putin has been one of the most reliable backers of Maduro, providing at least $17 billion in loans and credit lines since 2006, as well as arms deals and military intelligence sharing.

Moscow negotiated repayment in the form of oil shipments, although it is struggling to meet its requirement due to the ongoing collapse of the country’s state oil company Petroleum of Venezuela.

Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart.com.

A federal judge ruled against Rep. Bruce Poliquin’s (R-ME-02) constitutional challenge to Maine’s “rank voting” system  (also known as “RCV,” or ranked-choice voting) on Thursday.

Poliquin and three voters filed the lawsuit after Maine’s “Secretary of State Matt Dunlap declared Democrat Golden the winner in the November 6 election [in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District] on November 15, despite the fact that Poliquin received 2,632 more votes than Golden on election day, due to the first-in-the-nation implementation of a controversial ‘rank voting’ system,” as Breitbart News reported.

Due to a 2016 referendum passed by Maine voters, the state adopted a “rank voting” system for federal elections in 2018. Under that system, second choice, third choice, and fourth choice votes cast by voters for the third place and fourth place candidate were split between Golden and Poliquin in a second round of vote calculations. Using that methodology, Golden won by more than 2,000 votes.

“Whether RCV is a better method for holding elections is not a question for which the Constitution has an answer,” U.S. District Judge Lance Walker, a Trump appointee, said in his 30 page decision, adding:

To the extent that the Plaintiffs call into question the wisdom of using RCV, they are free to do so but for the reasons that I have indicated previously and upon which I elaborate presently, such criticism falls short of constitutional impropriety. A majority of Maine voters have rejected that criticism and Article I does not empower this Court to second guess the considered judgment of the polity on the basis of the tautological observation that RCV may suffer from problems, as all voting systems do. The proper question for the Court is whether RCV voting is incompatible with the text of Article I by giving the language its plain and ordinary meaning.

Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution, known as “The Elections Clause,” describes the manner in which elections to the U.S. House of Representatives are to be held:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

In his opinion, Walker wrote that “Article I is perfectly silent as to a prescribed method by which the States must elect their representatives.”

Though Article 1 Section 4 specifically refers to the legislature of each state as the body that has the authority to prescribe that method, Walker asserts that the 2016 public referendum process by which the “rank voting” or RCV method became law in Maine is equivalent an act of the state legislature, citing recent judicial precedent:

Exercising the power vested in them by Article I, “[t]he people, in several States, functioning as the lawmaking body for the purpose at hand, have used the initiative to install a host of regulations governing the ‘Times, Places and Manner’ of holding federal elections,” Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Indep. Redistricting Comm’n, 135 S. Ct. 2652, 2676 (2015), and the people of Maine are no exception.

The Supreme Court held in its five to four Arizona State Legislature v Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission decision in 2015 that “The Framers may not have imagined the modern initiative process in which the people’s legislative power is coextensive with the state legislature’s authority, but the invention of the initiative was in full harmony with the Constitution’s conception of the people as the font of governmental power.”

“It would thus be perverse to interpret “Legislature” in the Elections Clause to exclude lawmaking by the people, particularly when such lawmaking is intended to advance the prospect that Members of Congress will in fact be ‘chosen . . . by the People of the several States,’ ” the Court continued.

“[T]he Arizona Legislature sued the AIRC in federal court seeking a declaration that the Commission and its map for congressional districts violated the “Elections Clause” of the U. S. Constitution,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the majority opinion, in which Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Breyer, and Kennedy concurred.

Though she conceded that “Direct lawmaking by the people was ‘virtually unknown when the Constitution of 1787 was drafted,’” Justice Ginsburg wrote that “our precedent teaches that redistricting is a legislative function, to be performed in accordance with the State’s prescriptions for lawmaking, which may include the referendum and the Governor’s veto. The exercise of the initiative, we acknowledge, was not at issue in our prior decisions.”

Ginsburg concluded, “we see no constitutional barrier to a State’s empowerment of its people by embracing that form of lawmaking.”

But writing in the dissenting opinion, in which Justices Thomas, Alito, and Scalia concurred, Chief Justice Roberts identified numerous constitutional barriers to this “direct lawmaking by the people” in Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution.

“Just over a century ago, Arizona became the second State in the Union to ratify the Seventeenth Amendment. That Amendment transferred power to choose United States Senators from “the Legislature” of each State, Art. I, §3, to ‘the people thereof.’ The Amendment resulted from an arduous, decades-long campaign in which reformers across the country worked hard to garner approval from Congress and three-quarters of the States,”  Chief Justice Roberts wrote.

“What chumps! Didn’t they realize that all they had to do was interpret the constitutional term “the Legislature”to mean “the people”? The Court today performs just such a magic trick with the Elections Clause. Art. I, §4,” he continued. (emphasis added)

“The Court seems to conclude, based largely on its understanding of the “history and purpose” of the Elections Clause . . . that “the Legislature” encompasses any entity in a State that exercises legislative power. That circular definition lacks any basis in the text of the Constitution or any other relevant legal source,” Chief Justice Roberts added:

[E]ven under the majority’s preferred definition, “the Legislature” referred to an institutional body of representatives, not the people at large.

Any ambiguity about the meaning of “the Legislature” is removed by other founding era sources. “[E]very state constitution from the Founding Era that used the term
legislature defined it as a distinct multimember entity comprised of representatives.” . . .

The unambiguous meaning of “the Legislature” in the Elections Clause as a representative body is confirmed by other provisions of the Constitution that use the same term in the same way. When seeking to discern the meaning of a word in the Constitution, there is no better dictionary than the rest of the Constitution itself. Our precedents new and old have employed this structural method of interpretation to read the Constitution in the manner it was drafted and ratified—as a unified, coherent whole.

The Constitution includes seventeen provisions referring to a State’s “Legislature.” . . . Every one of those references is consistent with the understanding of a legislature as a representative body. More importantly, many of them are only consistent with an institutional legislature—and flatly incompatible with the majority’s reading of “the Legislature” to refer to the people as a whole.

In Thursday’s decision, Judge Walker also rejected Poliquin’s Fourteenth Amendment arguments.

“The ‘one person, one vote’ principle is well established under the law,” Walker wrote.

“Plaintiffs insist that their votes received less weight. However, Plaintiffs have not demonstrated that their votes received less weight,” he continued:

They understood that a majority victory  was the standard to avoid a second round of ballot counting. At round one of the RCV  election, they cast votes of equal weight, but their candidate failed to achieve a majority victory. At round two, votes cast for the two trailing candidates were reviewed to see  whether they expressed a preference for the remaining, viable contestants. Defendant Dunlap distributed those votes that were earmarked to either Plaintiff Poliquin or  Intervenor Golden. Plaintiffs’ votes were not rendered irrelevant or diluted by this process. They remained and were counted.

Walker’s decision did not, however, appear to directly address whether the principle of “one person, one vote” was applied to the more than 8,000 voters in the 2nd Congressional District whose votes were discarded in the second round because they voted for either the third place or fourth place candidate in the November 6 election, and did not list second, third, or fourth choices.

Judge Walker was nominated to the federal judiciary by President Trump in April 2018 by Sen Susan Collins (R-ME) and Sen. Angus King (I-ME). He was confirmed by the Senate in a voice vote on October 11, 2018.

As of late Thursday, neither Poliquin nor any of the other three plaintiffs had commented on whether they intend to appeal the decision, as the Press Herald reported:

It was unclear Thursday whether Poliquin or the three other plaintiffs in the case – all 2nd District voters – would appeal the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals. In a statement posted on Twitter, Poliquin once again suggested that many Mainers were confused by the ranked-choice process and alluded to unsubstantiated claims of a small number of wrong ballots being distributed at some polling places. But the Republican did not indicate directly whether he will appeal.

“From the beginning, I’ve made it clear this Constitutional voting rights issue goes far beyond one election,” Poliquin tweeted. “Now that Maine voters have experienced the complicated and confusing Rank Voting in a real general election, it’s more important than ever to ensure that every Mainer is able to cast his vote legally and fairly.”

Golden’s campaign said it was clear with each passing day that the Democrat Golden “is the unquestionable winner” of the race to represent Maine’s rural, sprawling 2nd Congressional District.

Any appeal will be filed with the United States Court of Appeals for the First District.

Secretary of State Matt Dunlap, a Democrat, began a recount of the election results on December 6, at the request of Poliquin.

Originally expected to take four weeks, the recount has been proceeding faster than expected, and could be completed before the 116th Session of Congress convenes in Washington, D.C. on January 3.

The case is Baber v. Dunlap, No. 1:18-cv-465 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine.

George Conway, an attorney and husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, mocked Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s defense against claims that President Donald Trump committed campaign finance violations by directing longtime Trump Organization lawyer Michael Cohen to issue hush-money payments during the 2016 election.

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, except where nobody gets killed or robbed,” Conway, in a play on the presidential oath of office, wrote on Twitter in response to a statement Giuliani gave to the Daily Beast, in which the Trump lawyer dismissed concerns regarding the payments.

“Nobody got killed, nobody got robbed… This was not a big crime,” Giuliani said of the payments in an interview with the news outlet Wednesday. “I think in two weeks they’ll start with parking tickets that haven’t been paid.”

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, except where nobody gets killed or robbed.” https://t.co/H5W6gDGTIq

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) December 14, 2018

Shaken and facing a prison term, Cohen alleged said Friday that President Trump directed him to buy the silence of two women during the 2016 campaign because he was concerned about how their stories of alleged affairs with him “would affect the election.”

Cohen told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that he “gave loyalty to someone who, truthfully, does not deserve loyalty.”

“I am done with the lying,” Cohen told the veteran anchor. “I am done being loyal to President Trump.”

He added: “I will not be the villain of this story.”

Cohen was sentenced on Wednesday to three years in federal prison after pleaded guilty to several charges, including campaign finance violations and lying to Congress. Prosecutors have said then-candidate Donald Trump directed Cohen to arrange the payments to buy the silence of porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal in the run-up to the 2016 campaign.

The decisions to pay off Daniels, who alleged she had an affair with a married President Trump in 2006, during the run-up to the 2016 election was made soon after an old Access Hollywood tape surfaced, in which Trump was heard talking about groping and trying to have sex with women, according to Cohen.

“He was very concerned about how this would affect the election,” Cohen told Stephanopoulos.

Asked whether the president also knew it was wrong to make the payments, Cohen said, “Of course.” However, Cohen did not provide any specific evidence or detail in the interview.

“First of all, nothing at the Trump organization was ever done unless it was run through Mr. Trump,” Cohen said. “He directed me to make the payments, he directed me to become involved in these matters.”

President Trump has denied directing Cohen to break the law and has asserted in a series of tweets over the last several weeks that Cohen is a “liar” who cut a deal in order to get a reduced prison sentence and to help himself and his family.

I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law. He was a lawyer and he is supposed to know the law. It is called “advice of counsel,” and a lawyer has great liability if a mistake is made. That is why they get paid. Despite that many campaign finance lawyers have strongly……

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2018

….stated that I did nothing wrong with respect to campaign finance laws, if they even apply, because this was not campaign finance. Cohen was guilty on many charges unrelated to me, but he plead to two campaign charges which were not criminal and of which he probably was not…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2018

….guilty even on a civil basis. Those charges were just agreed to by him in order to embarrass the president and get a much reduced prison sentence, which he did-including the fact that his family was temporarily let off the hook. As a lawyer, Michael has great liability to me!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2018

Attorney Lanny Davis represented President Bill Clinton in the 1990s during the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the subsequent impeachment. He did enough to keep Clinton in office, and went on to serve as a surrogate for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns.

But it is unclear what, if any, benefit Davis provided to his client Michael Cohen, the former personal attorney for President Donald Trump who was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison.

Cohen hired Davis last July — though Davis’s statement at the time suggested it was he who selected Cohen, not the other way around.

Davis said he had followed Cohen’s case in the media and had spoken to him for two weeks. “Then I read his words published on July 2” — an ABC News interview with former Clinton spokesman George Stephanopoulous, in which Cohen hinted he could turn on Trump — and “recognized their sincerity,” Davis said.

So after a former Clinton aide elicited the right responses, a former Clinton lawyer was convinced to take the case.

Davis had already published a book claiming Clinton deserved to win the 2016 presidential election, and calling for Trump to be ousted from office. In addition to removing Trump under the 25th Amendment for “mental disorder,” Davis argued that the way Trump had won the election was sufficient grounds for impeachment.

He concluded:

Whether to decide to impeach and remove President Trump cannot be clear until all the evidence is fully and fairly examined, giving Trump due process and the right to present his own evidence and rebuttal. But not to begin the process and conduct a bipartisan impeachment investigation, given the undisputed facts and conduct already on the public record, is not acceptable. The American people, who saw him achieve the highest office in an impaired election process, deserve no less.

Davis understood that Cohen could provide new “facts” to bring down the president.

A few weeks after taking on Cohen as a client, Davis gave CNN a recording of a conversation Cohen had with Trump about buying the rights to the story of former Playboy playmate and alleged Trump paramour Karen McDougal. Trump had already waived attorney-client privilege regarding the tape, believing it exonerated him.

But for Davis, the tape provided an opportunity to incriminate Trump.

In a remarkably candid moment, Davis told CNN: “Why am I representing [Cohen]? They [Trump’s lawyers] fear that he has the truth about Donald Trump. He will someday speak the truth about Donald Trump.”

He accused Trump of telling Cohen to pay McDougal in “cash,” adding, “only drug dealers and mobsters talk about cash,” though the audio was unclear and no cash was ever paid.

The leak did not help Cohen: a month later, he pleaded guilty to a variety of crimes.

Davis rushed to highlight what he felt was the key part of Cohen’s pleading: “Today [Cohen] stood up and testified under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime,” he tweeted. He noted Cohen was “fulfilling his promise made on July 2nd to put his family and country first and tell the truth about Donald Trump” — the reason Davis had cited for taking the case.

Davis admitted to Chuck Todd of MSNBC that there was actually no new evidence that Trump had committed a crime, and that it “may come down to Mr. Cohen’s word versus Mr. Trump’s.” What was important, to him, was that Cohen had made the accusation in court, and prosecutors approved it, placing the president under suspicion.

That delighted Davis and the media, but it did not save Cohen from prison. Indeed, though Cohen told a federal court on Wednesday that Trump had committed “dirty deeds,” and that his loyalty to Trump “led me to choose a path of darkness over light,” the judge sentenced him to three years in prison anyway.

In July, Davis was a source for a CNN story that claimed Cohen was prepared to tell Mueller that “then-candidate Trump knew in advance about the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower in which Russians were expected to offer his campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton.”

That testimony would have provided the first evidence linking Trump to some kind of “Russian collusion.”

But Davis’s claim also implied that Cohen had lied in his testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Davis later backtracked, saying, “I could not independently confirm what happened.” He also lied about his role as a source for CNN’s story, as did CNN itself.

Davis was apparently eager to sacrifice his client’s interests to further the “Russia collusion” narrative, and undermined both. The Washington Post called the debacle “damaging to Cohen’s credibility,” though the Post appeared more concerned about the damage to Mueller’s case against Trump.

On Wednesday, following Cohen’s sentencing, Davis told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow he no longer represents Cohen. Davis then described things Cohen had told him — “long, heartfelt conversations” — in which Cohen said “he recognizes Donald Trump, as president, was a danger to his family and to the country.”

Davis said something similar in August when he adamantly refused the possibility of a pardon for his client, apparently with Cohen’s authorization: “Mr. Cohen would never accept a pardon from a man that he considers to be both corrupt and a dangerous person in the Oval Office.”

A prison term, and a lifetime as a convicted felon who might never practice law again, are a heavy price to pay for that opinion.

Davis never cared about the case for Michael Cohen as much as he cared about the case against Donald Trump. On Wednesday, he accomplished his mission, as Cohen denounced Trump, leading the media to speculate that “Trump is next.”

It was politically brilliant. But even by the low standards of the legal profession, it was morally troubling.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — CBS reached a $9.5 million confidential settlement last year with actress Eliza Dushku after on-set sexual comments from Michael Weatherly, star of the network’s show “Bull,” made her uncomfortable when she was beginning a run as a recurring character.

CBS confirmed the settlement Thursday night in a statement to The Associated Press.

Dushku was written off the show after complaining about Weatherly’s comments on her appearance and jokes involving sex and rape made in front of cast and crew in March of 2017, according to the New York Times , which first reported the settlement.

“The allegations in Ms. Dushku’s claims are an example that, while we remain committed to a culture defined by a safe, inclusive and respectful workplace, our work is far from done,” the CBS statement said. “The settlement of these claims reflects the projected amount that Ms. Dushku would have received for the balance of her contract as a series regular, and was determined in a mutually agreed upon mediation process at the time.”

The settlement remerged during the current investigation of former CBS CEO Leslie Moonves, who was ousted in September after the New Yorker published allegations from 12 women who said he subjected them to mistreatment that included forced oral sex, groping and retaliation if they resisted.

Weatherly, who appeared on the CBS series “NCIS” for 13 years before “Bull” began in 2016, said in an email to the Times that he had made jokes to Dushku during taping mocking lines in the script.

“When Eliza told me that she wasn’t comfortable with my language and attempt at humor, I was mortified to have offended her and immediately apologized,” the email said. “After reflecting on this further, I better understand that what I said was both not funny and not appropriate and I am sorry and regret the pain this caused Eliza.”

Dushku declined comment to the Times. Her manager did not immediately reply to an AP request for comment.