Elan Carr was sworn in on Thursday as the U.S. Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo administered the oath of office to Carr, who placed one hand over a Hebrew Bible, or Tanach, that was held by his wife, Dahlia. The secretary remarked that the Iraq War veteran and attorney was chosen for “fierceness and vigor that he’ll bring to combating anti-Semitism,” according to a source at the event, which was closed to the press.

Former FBI Director James Comey said Thursday that he had “no idea” what Attorney General William Barr meant when he testified that he believed the government spied on President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.
“I have no idea what he’s talking about, so it’s hard for me to comment,” Comey said in response to a question at the Hewlett Foundation’s conference. “Maybe the only thing I can say generally is — I think that his career has earned him the presumption that he will be one of the rare Cabinet members who will stand up for things like truth and facts, and institutional values.”

President Donald Trump considered nominating his eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, to be president of the World Bank in part because “she’s very good with numbers,” according to a new interview published Friday.
Speaking to the Atlantic, Trump lavished praised on his daughter, a 37-year-old White House adviser, and suggested she would be suitable for other administration positions, including U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
“She’s a natural diplomat,” Trump said. “She would’ve been great at the United Nations, as an example.”
Asked why he didn’t nominate her, Trump replied: “If I did, they’d say nepotism, when it would’ve had nothing to do with nepotism. But she would’ve been incredible.”

The lead article Thursday on the opinion page of the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper compared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with the 1940 Nazi antisemitic movie The Eternal Jew.
The article was titled in the paper “The Eternal Netanyahu” in a word play in connection with the antisemitic pseudo-documentary organized by Adolf Hitler’s minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels and widely-considered to be the most violent anti-Jewish film ever made.
The Rundschau wrote in its apology it is “especially difficult” to find words that are not associated with antisemitism.
Read more at JPOST.
{Matzav.com}

President Reuven Rivlin will begin doing a round of consultations on Monday with all factions chosen for the Knesset, all of which will be broadcast live.
Rivlin will move from large to small factions that were elected for the Knesset in coordination with the chairman of the Central Elections Committee, Judge Hanan Melzer.
As is customary, Rivlin will hear the parties’ recommendations and at the end will announce the member of the Knesset to whom he has entrusted the task of forming a government. Once this has been done, that person has 28 days to form a new government.
Read more at JPOST.
{Matzav.com}
 

 
Benny Gantz formally conceded defeat to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday, calling the incumbent to congratulate him on being re-elected.
“With the end of the vote count and the announcement of final results, I congratulate you on the achievement in the elections, we will continue to serve the citizens of Israel and I wish you and all of Israel a happy holiday,” Gantz told Netanyahu in a phone call.
“Thank you, I wish you a happy holiday. We will restore Israel to calm, each in his own capacity. Have a good Sabbath,” Netanyahu told Gantz.
Netanyahu was declared the winner of the elections on Thursday after the final results revealed Likud had received 36 seats, giving it one more seat than Blue & White.

FULL REMARKS: While meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the White House, President Trump answers reporters’ questions on his relationship with North Korea, the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Attorney General Bill Barr’s testimony that there was spying during the 2016 campaign.
WATCH:

Businessman and former presidential candidate Herman Cain is expected to withdraw from consideration for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board, ABC News reported Thursday, citing an administration official and source familiar with the matter.
President Trump last week announced he would nominate Cain to the board. His nomination faced strong criticism and four Republican senators said they would vote against confirming him, likely sinking his nomination.
Cain ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, but dropped out of the race after harassment allegations. The accusations have made him a controversial pick for the board.

Uber filed documents Thursday to take the ride-hailing giant public, the most anticipated of the year’s high-profile technology stock-exchange listings.
It’s a watershed moment for Uber, which said its stock market symbol would be UBER. The company is expected to list its shares on May 10 as it seeks to raise funding in the neighborhood of $10 billion at a $100 billion valuation.
Since its launch in 2009, Uber has worked toward global dominance of the ride-hailing industry through a cash-burning strategy of investor-subsidized fares. Uber operates in 63 countries and has millions of customers. By the end of 2018, 74 percent of its trips were taking place outside the United States, Uber said in its filing.

American officials had debated bringing charges against Julian Assange almost from the moment in 2010 that his organization WikiLeaks dumped onto the internet a historic trove of classified documents, including internal State Department communications and assessments of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.
But through the years, the case languished. Some prosecutors reasoned that Assange was arguably a publisher, if a capricious one. Concerned that proving a criminal case against him would run up against the First Amendment and, if successful, set a precedent for future media prosecutions, the Obama administration chose to put the case aside.