Trump Transgressions Timeline Part II - June 17, 2019 to February 28, 2020
Post 2020 Election Transgressions Continued
March 29, 2023 - Following a mass shooting at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, by a former student - that killed three adults and three nine year-old children - Josh Hawley, a Republican US senator from Missouri, condemned the "murderous rampage at a Christian school known as the Covenant School". Hawley continued: "It is commonplace to call such horror senseless violence. But properly speaking, that is false. Police report the attack here was targeted ... against Christians ... I urge you to immediately open an investigation into this shooting as a federal hate crime. The full resources of the federal government must be brought to bear ... Hate that leads to violence must be condemned and hate crimes must be prosecuted." NOTE: Less than two years ago, Hawley was the only US senator to vote against a bill to crack down on hate crimes against Asian Americans during the Covid 19 pandemic saying the bill would "turn the federal government into the speech police [and] give government sweeping authority to decide what counts as offensive speech and then monitor it".
Notable response to Hawley's response to the Nashville shooting:
"One out of 100 senators voted against the anti-hate crime bill in 2021. His name is Josh Hawley. He's a fraud and a coward. Some days it's more obvious than others." - Lucas Kunce, a Democrat who will be running to unseat Hawley in 2024
Tommy Tuberville, a Republican US senator from Alabama, who has been holding up the quick processing of more than 150 civilian nominees and senior officer promotions since October, because he objects to travel expenses being covered by the Department of Defense for troops who have to travel to obtain an abortion, was asked by Lloyd Austin, the Defense secretary, to lift the hold. According to Austin: "Not approving the recommendations for promotions actually creates a ripple effect through the force that makes us far less ready than we need to be. The effects are cumulative and it will affect families. It will affect kids going to schools because they won't be able to change their duty station. It's a powerful effect and will impact on our readiness ... Almost one in five of our troops is women. And they don't get a chance to choose where they're stationed. So almost 80,000 of our women are stationed in places where they don't have access to non-covered reproductive healthcare." Tuberville responded to Austin saying: "Now my colleagues on the left think this abortion issue is good for a campaign, and that's what this shouldn't be about. I'm not going to let our military be politicized ... I want to be clear on this: my hold has nothing to do with the supreme court's decision to the access of abortion. This is about not forcing the taxpayers of this country to fund abortions."
Mike Rounds, a Republican US senator from South Dakota, was asked if more can be done about gun control following the mass shooting at an elementary school in Nashville, TN. Rounds responded: "I think the things that have already been done have gone about as far as we're going to with gun control." Rounds then proposed reallocating $500 million for solar panels in schools to increase security so the schools can be "more difficult to get into."
The Republican majorities in the North Carolina House and Senate overrode a veto by Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, which repealed a requirement for permits when buying pistols. NOTE: Democrats warned that the repeal would allow more dangerous people to obtain weapons through private sales, which do not require a background check, and limit law enforcement's ability to prevent them from committing violent crimes.
According to newly released emails in the $1.6bn Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against Fox News, Suzanne Scott, the chief executive at Fox News, was furious that one of the network's reporters was fact-checking Donald Trump's false claims about fraud in the 2020 election. In a December 2020 email, Scott stated: "This has to stop now. This is bad business and there clearly is a lack of understanding [sic] what is happening in these shows. The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. Bad for business."
March 28, 2023 - Following a mass shooting at Covenant school in Nashville, TN, where three children and three adults were killed, Andrew Ogles, a Republican congressman who represents the district where the school is located, tweeted that he was "utterly heartbroken" over the shooting. Critics of Ogles were quick to point to the Christmas picture that Ogles posted online in 2021 that showed Ogles and his family, including his kids, holding assault style rifles.
Bill Lee, the Republican governor of Tennessee, responded to the Covenant school shooting in his state by asking his constituents to "join us in praying for the school, congregation & Nashville community." Critics were quick to point out that Lee refused to pass firearm restrictions in June following the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and also, Lee signed a bill in 2021 that allows open carry of handguns without a permit in the state. The signing ceremony for the new law was held at a Beretta gun making factory.
Mike Pence, the vice president under Donald Trump, has been ordered to testify about conversations he had with Trump in the lead up to the January 6 insurrection.
Writing for the Guardian, Peter Stone offers the following analysis of Trump's "incendiary rhetoric" to deter investigations: "Donald Trump's demagogic attacks on prosecutors investigating potential criminal charges against him are aimed at riling up his base and could spark violence – but show no signs of letting up as a potential indictment in at least one case looms, say legal experts. At campaign rallies, speeches and on social media, Trump has lambasted state and federal prosecutors as 'thugs' and claimed that two of them – who are Black – are 'racist', language designed to inflame racial tension. He has also used antisemitic tropes by referring to a conspiracy of 'globalists' and the influence of the billionaire financier George Soros, who is Jewish. Trump's drive to undercut four criminal inquiries he faces is reaching a fever pitch, as a Manhattan district attorney's inquiry looks poised to bring charges against Trump over his key role in a $130,000 hush-money payment in 2016 to the adult film star Stormy Daniels, with whom he allegedly had an affair. In his blitz to deter and obfuscate two of the criminal investigations, Trump has resorted to verbal assaults on two Black district attorneys in Manhattan and Georgia, calling them 'racist', even as he simultaneously battles to win the White House again. In a broader attack on the four state and federal investigations, at a Texas rally on Saturday Trump condemned the 'thugs and criminals who are corrupting our justice system', while on his Truth Social platform last week he warned of 'possible death and destruction' if he is charged in the hush-money inquiry ... 'None of these accusations about the motives of prosecutors, however, will negate the evidence of Trump's own crimes. A jury will focus on the facts and the law, and not any of this name-calling. The Trump strategy may work in the court of public opinion, but not in a court of law,' said Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for the eastern district of Michigan. That may explain why Trump has received more political cover from three conservative House committee chairs, who joined his effort to intimidate the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, by launching investigations to obtain his records and testimony, threats that Bragg and legal experts have denounced as political stunts and improper."
March 27, 2023 - According to the AP, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right extremist Republican congresswoman, led a congressional delegation to visit defendants charged in the January 6 insurrection, who she claimed are "political prisoners". Greene high-fived detainees and shook their hands, and as the tour group departed, the detainees chanted "Let's go Brandon!" Greene was joined by far-right extremist Lauren Boebert, and other far-right members of congress. Also in attendance were some Democratic members, who attended so that they could hold their Republican peers to account. According to Robert Garcia, a Democratic representative: "We won't let Marjorie Taylor Greene and these ... extremists tell lies about the insurrectionists and their attack on our democracy."
March 25, 2023 - On the 30th anniversary of the 51-day standoff that led to the deaths of 80 members of the religious cult known as the Branch Davidians, Donald Trump held his first official 2024 campaign rally in Waco, Texas. Here are some highlights:
- The rally opened with the song "Justice for All" that features a choir of men imprisoned for their role in the January 6 insurrection singing the national anthem, which is intercut with Trump citing the Pledge of Allegiance.
- Trump repeated hi false claim that the 2020 presidential election was "rigged".
- Trump praised the January 6 rioters.
- Trump raged against the "weaponization of law enforcement".
- Trump called the prosecutors overseeing investigations into his conduct "absolute human scum".
- Trump claimed "prosecutorial misconduct by radical left maniacs" have turned his personal life "upside down".
- Trump claimed "You will be vindicated and proud. The thugs and criminals who are corrupting our justice system will be defeated, discredited and totally disgraced."
- Trump declared that his "enemies are desperate to stop us" and "our opponents have done everything they can to crush our spirit and to break our will. But they failed. They've only made us stronger. And 2024 is the final battle, it's going to be the big one. You put me back in the White House, their reign will be over and America will be a free nation once again."
Notable response to the Trump rally in Waco:
"Trump doubled down on his usual violent rhetoric and threats against his political enemies. After spending this week threatening the New York City district attorney Alvin Bragg and calling for 'protests', he talked about the 'final battle, 'weaponization' of the office, and how he would be the 'justice' for his supporters. His choice of Waco on the anniversary of the Branch Davidian standoff was to embrace the rightwing extremists who gave him the violent protests he craves. His followers got the message, loud and clear." - The Lincoln Project
March 24, 2023 - Donald Trump, the twice impeached former president, posted the following on his Truth Social network: "What kind of person can charge another person, in this case a former president of the United States, who got more votes than any sitting President in history, and leading candidate (by far!) for the Republican Party nomination, with a crime, when it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country? Why & who would do such a thing? Only a degenerate psychopath that truely hates the USA!"
Notable response to Donald Trump's post:
"The former president's rhetoric is reckless, reprehensible and irresponsible. It's dangerous. And if he keeps it up, he's gonna get someone killed." - Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic House leader
Federal judge Beryl Howell, has rejected claims by Donald Trump that Mark Meadows and others could not be compelled to testify before the federal grand jury investigating Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election due to executive privilege.
George Santos, the Republican congressman whose political career was built on a web of lies, has agreed to formally confess and pay damages for defrauding a Rio de Janeiro clerk of $1,300 in 2008. The agreement was accepted by prosecutors in Brazil.
According to NBC News, a letter containing "a death threat and white powder" was received at the Manhattan office of Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney. The letter was address to Bragg, and said: "ALVIN: I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Writing for the Guardian, Lauren Gambino offers the following analysis of the Rightwing "parents' rights" movement: "With the 2024 election cycle looming, Republicans are leaning into the education culture wars, championing policies that they say will give parents more of a say in their children's education, from the subjects they are taught to the books they read, with hopes of appealing to suburban voters who recoiled from the party during the Trump years. In their telling, Republicans are the defenders of America's schoolchildren whose education is threatened by a leftwing ideology that promotes activism, racial history and gender fluidity over academic outcomes. But critics and many educators say conservatives are using the term 'parents' rights' as a guise to advance a rightwing education agenda that undermines public schools, whitewashes American history and marginalizes LGBTQ+ students. The debate took center stage in the House this week, where Republicans broke into cheers after narrowly advancing their 'Parents Bill of Rights'. Friday's vote followed a contentious 16-hour committee hearing and a bitter floor debate over the legislation, whose sponsor argued would 'bring more transparency and accountability to education' and whose opponents derisively rebranded the 'politics over parents act'. Democrats argued that the bill would only serve to embolden a far-right movement that has pushed book bans, restrictions on the instruction of American history and turned classrooms into 'ground zero' for conservative culture wars ... The origins of the 'parents' rights' movement, experts say, can be traced back to the 1925 'trial of the century' in which a Tennessee biology teacher was fined for teaching evolution in violation of state law. The term has been invoked repeatedly in the decades since, notably in clashes related to desegregation, the red scare, sex education and homeschooling. 'The idea of parents' rights is really nothing new in American politics,' said Melissa Deckman, the CEO of the non-partisan Public Religion Research Institute who has written extensively about culture war battles in education. The present-day movement emerged in response to the upheaval sparked by the coronavirus pandemic, when extended school lockdowns led to a burst of political activism by parents who felt overwhelmed and abandoned, and by the racial justice protests that erupted in the summer of 2020, with the murder of George Floyd. Conservative politicians were quick to seize on any backlash, channeling voter frustration into a sophisticated national campaign aimed at restricting instruction on race and gender ... In Iowa this month, Trump vowed to prohibit the teaching of 'critical race theory', 'transgender insanity' and 'any other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content' in public classrooms while calling for universal school choice, the direct election of school principals by parents and breaking up the Department of Education ... Nikki Haley, Trump's former UN ambassador who is now challenging him for the nomination, has denounced critical race theory as 'un-American' and blamed leftwing ideology for fueling a culture of 'woke self-loathing' she has called a 'virus more dangerous than any pandemic'. And in a likely preview of the education fights to come, Haley suggested Florida's so-called 'don't say gay' law 'didn't go far enough' ... Educators and librarians have come under attack, inundated with conspiracy-fueled accusations that they are 'grooming' students by offering books that address LGBTQ+ issues. Some have quit or retired early, exacerbating, some say, the nation's teacher shortage. A survey by the Pew Research Center found that parents divided sharply along partisan lines when asked how their school-age children should be taught about gender identity, the legacy of slavery and whether they had enough influence over school curriculum. But some polls have found broader support for laws restricting certain instruction on gender and sexuality in elementary grades. There are areas of consensus. In general, Americans strongly oppose book bans and believe students should be taught both 'the good and bad' aspects of American history. And though public attitudes on transgender rights are complex and still being shaped, especially on issues involving trans youth, Americans remain widely supportive of laws that protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination."
March 23, 2023 - According to the Guardian, Trump lost an appeal to stop his attorney Evan Corcoran from turning over documents and testifying before a grand jury investigating the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago. From the story: "In losing the appeal – a major defeat for Trump – Corcoran must provide additional testimony and produce documents to the grand jury hearing evidence about Trump's potential unauthorized retention of national security materials at Mar-a-Lago – and possible obstruction of justice. The obstruction part of the investigation is centered on Trump's incomplete compliance with a subpoena in May that demanded the return of any classified-marked documents in his possession. That was after documents he returned earlier to the National Archives included 200 that were classified. In June, Corcoran searched Mar-a-Lago and produced about 30 documents with classified markings to the justice department, and had another Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, sign a certification that attested to compliance with the subpoena 'based on the information provided to me'. But, according to court filings, the justice department developed evidence that more documents that were marked as classified remained at the resort, along with 'evidence of obstruction'. And when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, they found 101 such documents in a storage room and in Trump's office. The ruling by the appeals court could mark a momentous moment in the criminal investigation, and could make Corcoran a crucial witness for the special counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing the matter."
According to the Guardian, House Republicans have demanded that Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg provide testimony and documents related to his investigation into Donald Trump's porn star hush money payments. Bragg responded by calling the request "an unprecedented inquiry into a pending local prosecution". Bragg also stated: "The Letter only came after Donald Trump created a false expectation that he would be arrested the next day and his lawyers repeatedly urged you to intervene. Neither fact is a legitimate basis for congressional inquiry." Bragg did agree to provide details into how his office has used federal funds, and requested a meeting to "understand whether the committee has any legitimate legislative interest in the requested materials".
Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, who is expected to announce a run for the presidency, reversed his position on Ukraine following widespread criticism. DeSantis had previously called the Russian invasion a "territorial dispute", but during an interview with Fox Nation, DeSantis stated his previous remarks had been "mischaracterized". DeSantis then said " Obviously, Russia invaded – that was wrong” and that “They invaded Crimea and took that in 2014 – that was wrong.” DeSantis also called Vladimir Putin a “war criminal”.
Donald Trump put out a statement that included the following: "Total disarray in the Manhattan D.A.'s Office. Tremendous dissension and chaos because they have NO CASE, and many of the honest people in the Office know it, and want to do the right thing. They think back to the Late, Great, Bob Morgenthau, the best ever, and know what he would have done. JUSTICE FOR ALL!"
According to NBC News, Riley Williams, a January 6th insurrectionist, who federal prosecutors argued "led an army" of rioters to Nancy Pelosi's office, was sentenced to three years in prison. From the story: "Williams' federal public defender Lori Ulrich said that while Williams might have 'distasteful' beliefs, she was a young woman equipped with only a 'cell phone and her fuzzy zebra bag' who even posted at one point that she was 'STORMING THE WHITE HOUSE' when she was, in fact, in the legislative branch. Williams, her defense argued, 'wanted to be somebody.' At the hearing ahead of her sentencing, Williams said she is embarrassed watching the actions of the 'young and stupid girl' she now sees in all of those videos. She said she is now 'a responsible woman' and had been 'addicted to the internet since before I can remember.' But Assistant U.S. Attorney Samuel Dalke argued that Williams was not some 'impulsive Gen-Z gadfly' or 'the Forrest Gump of January 6.' Williams 'participated in domestic terrorism, plain and simple.' Dalke said. Williams was ultimately convicted on six counts: felony civil disorder, resisting and impeding certain officers, and four misdemeanor charges. The jury deadlocked on a count of obstruction of an official proceeding as well as on the question of whether Williams aided and abetted the theft of Pelosi's laptop. Jackson had ordered Williams remanded after the verdict, saying she had 'no confidence whatsoever' that Williams had respect for the rule of law."
According to the inspector general of the EPA, Trump administration appointees meddled in agency science to weaken the toxicity assessment of PFBS, a type of PFAS compound (which are known as "forever chemicals" due to their longevity in the environment) that is toxic at low levels. In the report, the watchdog described "unprecedented" interference. NOTE: The change would have allowed companies required to clean up pollution to leave higher levels of the chemical in the environment, which would have led to less cost for clean-up, which would have also put human health at higher risk.
March 22, 2023 - According to the Guardian, Trump wants to be handcuffed when and if he answers to an indictment. From the story: "Donald Trump has told advisers that he wants to be handcuffed when he makes an appearance in court, if he is indicted by a Manhattan grand jury for his role in paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels, multiple sources close to the former president have said. The former president has reasoned that since he would need to go to the courthouse and surrender himself to authorities for fingerprinting and a mug shot anyway, the sources said, he might as well turn everything into a 'spectacle'. Trump's increasing insistence that he wants to be handcuffed behind his back for a perp walk appears to come from various motivations, including that he wants to project defiance in the face of what he sees as an unfair prosecution and that it would galvanize his base for his 2024 presidential campaign. But above all, people close to Trump said, he was deeply anxious that any special arrangements – like making his first court appearance by video link or skulking into the courthouse – would make him look weak or like a loser."
According to the Guardian, Donald Trump is using the possibility of an indictment as part of a fundraising effort. In emails sent to supporters, Trump is cast as a victim of "globalist power brokers", the "deep state" and "witch hunt-crazed radicals".
March 21, 2023 - During an appearance on Fox & Friends, Lindsey Graham, a Republican US senator, stated that the potential Trump indictment is "going to blow up our country, and this is a bunch of BS."
Abby Grossberg, a senior producer at Fox News, and head of booking for Tucker Carlson, who also worked on Maria Bartiromo's show, filed a pair of lawsuits claiming the network lawyers "coached" and "intimidated" her into giving misleading testimony in the $1.6bn Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit. Grossberg also alleged the network tried to pin the blame for the airing of voting conspiracies on her and Bartiromo, which Grossberg said was part of a broader culture of sexism and misogyny at Fox. NOTE: Fox News has filed a counter lawsuit seeking a restraining order to prevent Grossberg from revealing conversations she had with network lawyers.
March 20, 2023 - Joe Biden, the president of the United States, issued the first veto of his presidency today. The legislation was an attempt to overturn a labor department rule regarding "ESG" investing which stands for "environmental, social and governance" that Republicans have derided as "woke capitalism". According to Biden: "The legislation passed by the Congress would put at risk the retirement savings of individuals across the country. They couldn't take into consideration investments that would be impacted by climate, impacted by overpaying executives. And that's why I decided to veto it." NOTE: The rule allows, but does not require retirement fund managers to consider environmental, social and corporate governance factors when making investment decisions, which reversed restrictions that were imposed by the Trump administration that made it harder for retirement fund managers to consider such factors.
Sandra Parker, Laura Steele, William Isaacs and Connie Meggs, all members of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, were convicted of conspiracy and obstruction charges related to the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. This is the third group of Oath Keepers members to be tried on charges related to the riot.
According to the New York Times, John Connally, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1980, met Middle Eastern leaders in 1980 to convince Iran to delay releasing American hostages as part of a Republican effort to sabotage Jimmy Carter's re-election campaign. According to the story, the message delivered by Connally was "Don't release the hostages before the election. Mr Reagan will win and give you a better deal."
March 19, 2023 - Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney looking into hush money payments to adult actor Stormy Daniels in 2016, sent the following email to his office staff: "As with all of our investigations, we will continue to apply the law evenly and fairly, and speak publicly only when appropriate ... We do not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York ... Our law enforcement partners will ensure that any specific or credible threats against the office will be fully investigated and that the proper safeguards are in place so all 1,600 of us have a secure work environment."
March 18, 2023 - Donald Trump, the twice impeached former president, announced through a post on his Truth Social platform, that he expects to be arrested this coming week in the criminal case involving hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. The post: "The far and away leading Republican candidate and former president of the United States of America will be arrested on Tuesday of next week." Trump also posted "PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!" Notable responses to the announcement:
"The idea of indicting a former president of the United States is deeply troubling to me, as it is to tens of millions of Americans" - Mike Pence, Former Vice President Under Donald Trump
"an outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA [district attorney] who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance" - Kevin McCarthy. Republican Speaker of the House
"the former president's announcement this morning is reckless: doing so to keep himself in the news and to foment unrest among his supporters. He cannot hide from his violations of the law, disrespect for our elections and incitements to violence." - Nancy Pelosi, Former Democratic Speaker of the House
"The prosecutor in New York has done more to help Donald Trump get elected." - Lindsey Graham, Republican US Senator
Writing for the Guardian, David Smith offers the following commentary on Trump's hypocrisy. From the article: "When a fiery train derailment took place on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border last month, Donald Trump saw an opportunity. The former US president visited East Palestine, accused Joe Biden of ignoring the community – 'Get over here!' – and distributed self-branded water before dropping in at a local McDonald's. Then, when the Silicon Valley Bank last week became the second biggest bank to fail in US history, Trump again lost no time in making political capital. He predicted that Biden would go down as 'the Herbert Hoover of the modrrn [sic] age' and predicted a worse economic crash than the Great Depression. Yet it was Trump himself who, as US president, rolled back regulations intended to make railways safer and banks more secure. Critics said his attacks on the Biden administration offered a preview of a disingenuous presidential election campaign to come and, not for the first time in Trump's career, displayed a shameless double standard. 'Hypocrisy, thy name is Donald Trump and he sets new standards in a whole bunch of regrettable ways,' said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. 'For his true believers, they're going to take Trump's word for it and, even if they don't, it doesn't affect their support of him.' ... The drama reverberated in Washington, where Trump's criticism was followed by that of Republicans and conservative media, seeking to blame Biden-driven inflation or, improbably, to Silicon Valley Bank's socially aware 'woke' agenda. Opponents saw this as a crude attempt to deflect from the bank's risky investments in the bond market and more systemic problems in the sector. The 2008 financial crisis, triggered by reckless lending in the housing market, led to tough bank regulations during Barack Obama's presidency. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act aimed to ensure that Americans' money was safe, in part by setting up annual 'stress tests' that examine how banks would perform under future economic downturns. But when Trump won election in 2016, the writing was on the wall. Biden, then outgoing vice-president, warned against efforts to undo banking regulations, telling an audience at Georgetown University: 'We can't go back to the days when financial companies take massive risks with the knowledge that a taxpayer bailout is around the corner when they fail.' But in 2018, with Trump in the White House, Congress slashed some of those protections. Republicans – and some Democrats – voted to raise the minimum threshold for banks subject to the stress tests: those with less than $250bn in assets were no longer required to take part. Many big lenders, including Silicon Valley Bank, were freed from the tightest regulatory scrutiny. Sabato commented: 'The worst example is the bank situation because that is directly tied to Trump and his administration and changes made in bank regulations in 2018. Yes, some Democrats voted for it, but it was overwhelmingly supported by Republicans and by Trump who heralded it as the real solution to future bank woes.'"
According to the Guardian, Mark Gordon, the Republican governor of Wyoming, signed a law that makes it illegal to "prescribe, dispense, distribute, sell or use any drug for the purpose of procuring or performing an abortion", making Wyoming the first state to outlaw medically induced abortion. Violation of the ban is a criminal misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $9,000. NOTE: The measure stipulates that a woman "upon whom a chemical abortion is performed or attempted shall not be criminally prosecuted".
March 17, 2023 - According to ABC News, Hunter Biden, the president's son, has filed a countersuit against a Delaware computer repairman who played a key role in publicizing data from his laptop. The countersuit is in response to a defamation lawsuit filed by John Paul Mac Isaac. From the story: "'[Hunter] Biden had more than a reasonable expectation of privacy that any data that he created or maintained ... would not be accessed, copied, disseminated, or posted on the Internet for others to use against him or his family or for the public to view,' according to the countersuit. Attorneys for Hunter Biden challenged Mac Isaac's claim that the laptop and an external hard drive became his property when Hunter Biden failed to retrieve them within 90 days of leaving them at the repairman's Wilmington, Delaware, shop for servicing, citing the fine print of a repair order allegedly signed by Hunter Biden at the time. 'Contrary to Mac Isaac's Repair Authorization form, Delaware law provides that tangible personal property is deemed abandoned' when the rightful owner has failed to 'assert or declare property rights to the property for a period of 1 year,' lawyers for Biden wrote in legal documents. The counterclaim adds that 'other obligations must then also be satisfied before obtaining lawful title, such as the court sending notice to the owner and the petitioner posting notice in five or more public places, and advertising the petition in a newspaper.' Hunter Biden is seeking a jury trial and unspecified 'compensatory damages' from Mac Isaac."
Youtube has reinstated Donald Trump's channel, which was suspended following the January 6 insurrection.
According to the Washington Post, researchers hired by president Trump to find evidence that deceased and double voters were the reason for his loss in crucial states turned up little to support those claims. From the story: "Researchers paid by Trump's team had 'high confidence' of only nine dead voters in Fulton County, defined as ballots that may have been cast by someone else in the name of a deceased person. They believed there was a 'potential statewide exposure' of 23 such votes across the Peach State — or 4,977 fewer than the 'minimum' Trump claimed. In a separate failed bid to overturn the results in Nevada, Trump's lawyers said in a court filing that 1,506 ballots were cast in the names of dead people and 42,284 voted twice. Trump lost the Silver State by about 33,000 votes. The researchers paid by Trump's team had 'high confidence' that 12 ballots were cast in the names of deceased people in Clark County, Nev., and believed the 'high end potential exposure' was 20 voters statewide — some 1,486 fewer than Trump's lawyers said. According to their research, the 'low end potential exposure' of double voters was 45, while the 'high end potential exposure' was 9,063. The judge tossed the Nevada case even as Trump continued to claim he won the state."
According to CNN, Evan Corcoran, an attorney for Donald Trump, has been ordered by federal district judge Beryl Howell to provide more testimony to a grand jury convened by special counsel Jack Smith. From the story: "The decision hands Trump yet another loss under seal in court as his team and allies have tried to hold off Smith's investigators from learning about direct conversations the former president had with some of his closest advisers. The development is particularly notable because of accusations prosecutors would have made about Trump as they argued to the judge for the grand jury testimony. Corcoran, an attorney-turned-witness, had previously testified to the grand jury but declined to answer some questions, citing attorney-client privilege. The department argued to the judge he should not be able to avoid answering, because his discussions with the former president may have been part of an attempt to plan a crime. Howell's ruling is one of her last on sealed grand jury disputes as chief judge. The Obama appointee has repeatedly green-lit Justice Department requests to pursue information about Trump's actions during her tenure as chief of the DC District Court, but she rotates out of the administrative role on Friday. When Corcoran first testified to the grand jury in January, he was asked about what happened in the lead-up to the August search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence. Corcoran had drafted a statement in June that attested Trump's team had done a 'diligent search' and there were no more classified documents at Trump's Florida residence. After that, the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago and found hundreds of government records, including classified material, raising questions about the lawyer's attestation."
March 16, 2023 - Writing for the Guardian, Peter Stone offers the following analysis of Kremlin disinformation tactics and the rightwing: "As Russia's ruthless war against Ukraine has faced major setbacks since it began a year ago, the Kremlin has deployed new disinformation themes and tactics to weaken US support for Kyiv with help from conservative media stars and some Republicans in Congress, according to new studies and experts. Moscow'’s disinformation messages have included widely debunked conspiracy theories about US bioweapon labs in Ukraine, and pet themes on the American right that portray the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, as an ally in backing traditional values, religion and family in the fight against 'woke' ideas. Further, new studies from thinktanks that track disinformation have noted that alternative social media platforms such as Parler, Rumble, Gab and Odysee have increasingly been used to spread Russian falsehoods since Facebook and Twitter have imposed more curbs on Moscow's propaganda. Other pro-Russian messages focused on the economic costs of the war for the US have been echoed by Republicans in the powerful far-right House Freedom Caucus such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Scott Perry and Paul Gosar, who to varying degrees have questioned giving Ukraine more military aid and demanded tougher oversight. Since Russia launched its invasion last February, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Trump ally – turned influential far-right podcaster – Steve Bannon have promoted some of the most baseless claims that help bolster the Kremlin's aggression. For instance, Bannon's War Room podcast in February 2022 featured an interview with Erik Prince, the wealthy US founder of Blackwater, where they both enthused that Putin's policies were 'anti-woke' and praised Putin's homophobia and transphobia. Last month too on the anniversary of Moscow's invasion, Carlson revved up his attacks on US support for Ukraine claiming falsely that Biden's goal had become 'overthrowing Putin and putting American tanks in Red Square because, sure, we could manage Russia once we overthrow the dictator'. Analysts who track Russia's disinformation see synergies between the Kremlin and parts of the US right that have helped spread some of the biggest falsehoods since the start of the invasion. 'Russia doesn't pull even its most outlandish narratives out of thin air – it builds on existing resentments and political fissures,' Jessica Brandt, a policy director at the Brookings Institution who tracks disinformation and foreign interference, told the Guardian. She added: 'So you often have a sort of harmony – both Kremlin messengers and key media figures, each for their own reasons, have an interest in dinging the administration for its handling of the Ukraine crisis, in amplifying distrust of authoritative media, in playing on skepticism about the origins of Covid and frustration with government mitigation measures.' 'That was the case with the biolabs conspiracy theory, for example, which posits that the Pentagon has been supporting the development of biological weapons in Ukraine. The Charlie Kirk Show and Steve Bannon's War Room podcast, among others, devoted multiple segments to the claim. It's not so much that we're witnessing any sort of coordination, but rather an alignment of interests.' Brandt also noted that Russia had an 'interest in promoting authentic American voices expressing views that align with the Kremlin's foreign policy goals. And that's why you often see them retweet Americans that make these arguments.' Likewise, two reports issued separately last month by the Alliance for Securing Democracy and the Atlantic Council, reveal how Russian state media have shifted some messaging themes and adopted new tactics with an eye to undercutting US backing for Ukraine."
According to the Guardian, more than a quarter of Republicans approve of the January 6 insurrection. More than half think it was a form of legitimate political discourse. NOTE: Nine deaths, including law enforcement suicides, have been linked to the attack. More than 1,000 people have been arrested and hundreds convicted.
Barry Loudermilk, a Georgia Republican in the US House of Representatives, who was accused after January 6th of giving Capitol tours of the Capitol just before it was stormed, will chair the committee convened by the GOP leadership to investigate the committee that investigated the insurrection. According to Loudermilk "What I'd like to do is show what really happened on Jan 6. Where was the security failure and why were we not ready?"
Notable response to the committee's probe:
"I think it's obscene to go back and try to redo the work of a bipartisan committee that was very focused on learning what happened. It serves no purpose other than if you are an insurrectionist or if you support an insurrectionist and want to portray a different story than what truly happened that day." - Norma Torres, Democratic Representative
According to the AP, despite claims by Republicans that Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) failed due to "woke" policies gone wrong, the failure was actually due to other things like a failure to invest properly as interest rates rose, along with increasing cash demands from the tech and venture capital firms that made up its deposit base. From the story: "The institution's fall had all the hallmarks of a 'classic run on the bank,' Peter Cohan, a professor of management practice at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, said in an email. 'A focus on DEI had nothing to do with the collapse of SVB.' Rodney Ramcharan, a finance professor at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, agreed, dismissing criticism that the bank reportedly donated millions to BLM and similar groups over the years as 'trivial and irrelevant,' given the bank had more than $200 billion in assets before it failed. It's not even clear the bank donated more than $70 million to those causes, as social media users and conservative news outlets claim. Many cite a database maintained by the Claremont Institute, a California-based conservative think tank, that purports to track donations to the 'BLM movement and related causes.' The institute database links to several SVB company reports and press releases to support its tally, but an Associated Press review shows none of the documents actually mention Black Lives Matter or BLM. In fact, the majority of the documents deal with the bank's environmental and sustainability efforts."
March 15, 2023 - Guo Wengui, a.k.a Ho Wan Kwok, a.k.a Miles Guo, a Chinese tycoon with close ties to Steve Bannon and other prominent Trumpy Republicans, has been indicted on 12 counts relating to an alleged $1bn fraud. The charges were announced by the US attorney for the southern district of New York, and include wire fraud, securities fraud, bank fraud and money laundering.
Greg Steube, a Republican US congressman, has introduced legislation to install weapons lockers in the buildings used by the House of Representatives.
March 14, 2023 - According to the Guardian, individuals and groups involved in promoting election disinformation and attempts to overturn the 2020 election have poured more than $3.9m into the Wisconsin supreme court election that will be held April 4th in support of conservative candidate Daniel Kelly.
Speaking about an upcoming book called Letters to Trump, the twice impeached former president told Breitbart News regarding Queen Elizabeth II, Diana, Princess of Wales, Richard Nixon, Oprah Winfrey, Hillary Clinton and others: "I knew them all – and every one of them kissed my ass, and now I only have half of them kissing my ass."
March 13, 2023 - Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, blamed the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on the liberal policies he's been railing against, such as a "focus on DEI" which stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. He also blamed the "massive federal bureaucracy" for being incapable of stopping it from happening. NOTE: When DeSantis was a US House lawmaker in 2018, he voted for legislation that rolled back some of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulations, which are now being blamed for Silicon Valley Bank's collapse.
Josh Hawley, the Republican US senator who raised his fist in solidarity with January 6th rioters, sent the following in a tweet: "So these SVB guys spend all their time funding woke garbage ('climate change solutions') rather than actual banking and now want a handout from taxpayers to save them"
According to the New York Times, after the GOP took control of the House, its oversight committee dropped an inquiry into whether Donald Trump profited improperly from his time as president.
Donald Trump, the twice impeached former president, responded to comments by Mike Pence that history would hold him accountable, saying: "Had he sent the votes back to the legislatures, they wouldn't have had a problem with January 6, so in many ways you can blame him for January 6 ... Had he sent them back to Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona ... I believe, number one, you would have had a different outcome. But I also believe you wouldn't have had 'January 6' as we call it."
March 12, 2023 - Mike Pence, the former vice president, spoke at the Gridiron dinner in Washington where he stated: "President Trump was wrong. I had no right to overturn the election, and his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable ... What happened that day was a disgrace. And it mocks decency to portray it any other way. For as long as I live, I will never, ever diminish the injuries sustained, the lives lost, or the heroism of law enforcement on that tragic day."
March 10, 2023 - Lachlan Murdoch, the son of Fox News tycoon Rupert Murdoch, spoke at an industry conference hosted by Morgan Stanley, where he claimed that "middle America" love Fox News because it reports "without fear or favor". Murdoch also stated: "They see Fox News as not just a news channel, but really a channel that speaks, to sort of, middle America and respects the values of middle America as a media business that is most relevant to them. I think a lot of the noise that you hear about [the lawsuit] is actually not about the law, and it's not about journalism."
Notable response to Murdoch's statements:
"Text messages, emails, and deposition transcripts show that Fox's coverage after the 2020 election was, in fact, shaped by fear of the audience and most definitely was in favor of Republicans. To claim otherwise is an affront to the truth" - CNN's Reliable Sources Newsletter
Lewis Kaplan, a federal court judge, has ruled that E Jean Carroll can use the infamous Access Hollywood tape as evidence in her defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump.
Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, who is expected to announce his candidacy for the 2024 presidential nomination, spoke at a casino in Davenport, IA, where he told the crowd: "We will never surrender to the woke mob ... Our state is where the woke mob goes to die."
Writing for the Guardian, Suzanne Nossel offers the following commentary on the Republican attacks on drag queens: "Since the beginning of this year, at least 32 bills have been filed in Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia targeting drag performances, with more on the way. Tennessee was the first to pass its bill into law last week, barring 'adult cabaret performances' on public property or in places where they might be within view of children. The bill bans, among other things, 'male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest, or similar entertainers'. Violators may face misdemeanor or even felony charges. In Texas, at least four different bills would put venues that host drag performances in the same category as adult movie theaters and strip clubs. Driving support for these bills is discomfort and distaste for expression that defies conventional gender norms. The growth of library Drag Queen Story Hours – programs that feature drag performers as a way to provide 'unabashedly queer role models' for kids – have led some to question whether young children should be exposed to those who defy traditional gender patterns. Participation in Drag Queen Story Hours is voluntary – libraries decide whether to program these events and families choose whether to attend them – but some critics seem to regard their very existence as deviant or dangerous. This reaction is part of a wider backlash against the increased visibility of transgender and non-binary identities. States and communities have banned books featuring transgender characters and prohibited teaching about transgender identities in school. Though the history and cultural role of drag goes well beyond current tensions over transgender issues, this form of performance and display has now come into the crosshairs. Drag performances have been targeted with violence and are now the subject of state laws to limit or even outlaw them. Anti-drag legislation varies from state to state, but tends to share some common provisions. Most bills define a drag performer as someone performing while using dress, makeup and mannerisms associated with a gender other than the one assigned to them at birth. A number of bills include lip-syncing within their definitions and many specify that the person must be performing for an audience. Some bills would designate any establishment that hosts drag performances as an 'adult' or sexually oriented business, often making it illegal for such businesses to be located within a certain distance of schools or residential areas. While the details of the legislation may change from state to state, most of these bills represent a broad and dangerous chilling of Americans' right to free speech. The US supreme court has repeatedly found that clothing choices are a constitutionally protected form of expression under the first amendment. The Tennessee law's reference to 'prurience' – defined as something intended to arouse sexual interest – should limit the sweep of the law so it doesn't affect things like children's story hours. But, inevitably, concerns over the intent and enforcement of the law will cast a chill over shows, jokes or comedy bits that might be anywhere close to the line. That chilling is intentional: by targeting drag performances, lawmakers intend to intimidate transgender and non-binary performers and shows into hiding."
Writing for the Guardian, Poppy Noor offers the following commentary on Republican bills that would bring homicide charges for abortion: "For decades, the mainstream anti-abortion movement promised that it did not believe women who have abortions should be criminally charged. But now, Republican lawmakers in several US states have introduced legislation proposing homicide and other criminal charges for those seeking abortion care. The bills have been introduced in states such as Texas, Kentucky, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Some explicitly target medication abortion and self-managed abortion; some look to remove provisions in the law which previously protected pregnant people from criminalization; and others look to establish the fetus as a person from the point of conception. It is highly unlikely that all of these bills will pass. But their proliferation marks a distinct departure from the language of existing bans and abortion restrictions, which typically exempt people seeking abortion care from criminalization. 'This exposes a fundamental lie of the anti-abortion movement, that they oppose the criminalization of the pregnant person,' said Dana Sussman, the acting executive director of Pregnancy Justice. 'They are no longer hiding behind that rhetoric.' Some members of the anti-abortion movement have made it clear the bills do not align with their views, continuing to insist that abortion providers, rather than pregnant people themselves, should be targeted by criminal abortion laws ... The bills being introduced in Arkansas, Texas, Kentucky and South Carolina look to establish that life begins at conception. Each of these bills explicitly references homicide charges for abortion. Homicide is punishable by the death penalty in all of those states. Bills in Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas also explicitly target medication abortion, which so far has fallen into a legal grey zone in much of the country. A bill in Alabama has also been announced, although not yet been introduced, by Republican representative Ernest Yarbrough, that would establish fetal personhood from conception and repeal a section of Alabama's abortion ban that expressly prevents homicide charges for abortion. The state's current law makes abortion a class A felony, on the same level as homicide, but exempts women seeking abortions from being held criminally or civilly liable. Laws that establish fetal personhood also bring the risk of opening pregnant people up to battery and assault charges for endangering a fetus. Such charges have already been documented in hundreds of cases, using criminal laws championed in recent decades by the anti-abortion movement that recognize fetuses as potential victims. 'It never starts or stops with abortion,' said Sussman of the far-reaching effects of fetal personhood laws. 'That means that not getting prenatal care, not taking pre-natal vitamins, working a job that is physically demanding – all of those things could impose some risk to the fetus – and that could be a child neglect or child abuse case.' Such laws have been used to target pregnant people who have taken prescribed medication, taken illegal drugs or drunk alcohol while pregnant, even when there has been no adverse outcome on the fetus. Some of the bills, such as the one in Arkansas, allow a partner to file an unlawful death lawsuit against a pregnant person who has had an abortion. 'The ways in which pregnant people could become a mere vessel for an entity that has separate and unique rights is becoming closer and closer to reality. And there are ways in which this could be used that we haven't even contemplated yet,' said Sussman."
March 9, 2023 - According to the Guardian, some election-denying Republicans who aided Trump's "big lie" were promoted. From the story: "Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election brought the US to the brink of a democratic crisis. Refusing to concede his loss to Joe Biden, he attempted to use every lever available to try and throw out the results of the election, pressuring state lawmakers, Congress and the courts to declare him the winner. Those efforts didn't succeed. But Trump nonetheless created a new poison that seeped deep in the Republican party – a belief that the results of US elections cannot be trusted. The belief quickly became Republican orthodoxy: it was embraced by Republican officeholders across the country as well as local activists who began to bombard and harass local election officials, forcing many of them to retire. The January 6 attack on the US Capitol – in which thousands stormed the building, and five people died as a result – was the starkest reminder of the potential violent consequences of this rhetoric. In 2022, several Republicans who embraced election denialism lost their races to be the top election official in their state. But at the same time, many Republicans who unabashedly embraced the idea and aided Trump's efforts to overturn the election were re-elected and, in some cases, elevated to higher office."
Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, was hospitalized after he tripped and fell and suffered a concussion at a private dinner.
March 8, 2023 - According to new filings in the $1.6bn defamation lawsuit against Fox News by Dominion Voter Systems, behind the scenes, Fox News Hosts were trashing Trump and some of his surrogates. In a text sent on January 4th of 2021, Tucker Carlson told the recipient: "We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait ... I hate him passionately ... What he's good at is destroying things. He's the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong." In another text, Carlson stated: "the last four years ... We're all pretending we've got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it's been is too tough to digest. But come on. There isn't really an upside to Trump." In one message, Laura Ingraham called Sidney Powell a "complete nut ... no one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy."
Regarding revelations in the Dominion Voter Systems lawsuit, Fox News released a statement that accuses Dominion of "using further distortion and misinformation in its PR campaign to smear Fox News and trample on freedom of speech and freedom of the press".
Additional text messages sent by Tucker Carlson in November of 2020 were revealed in Dominion Voter Systems filings:
- "I don't think there is evidence of voter fraud that swung the election. There is info here and there showing fraud, But not the amount required to swing the election to Biden."
- "I'm sure Trump campaign will put out ten obituary examples tomorrow. That is real evidence of something wrong with system but certainly not evidence that election was stolen."
Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host who's commentary Fox's own attorneys have argued repeatedly in court "cannot reasonably be interpreted as facts", has repeatedly aired selectively chosen January 6 footage to make the argument that there was no insurrection, and that instead January 6 was a day of "peaceful chaos." In his latest segment, Carlson claimed Democrats had shown "hysteria, overstatement, crazed hyperbole, red-in-the-face anger"" over his use of January 6 footage. Carlson even claimed the footage would show that the security failure on the 6th was the fault of then House speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Jamie Raskin, a member of the House select committee that investigated January 6, responded to claims made by rightwing Fox News hosts that January 6 was a "false flag" with leftwing extremists or "deep staters" pretending to be Trump supporters as they attacked the Capitol. Raskin's response: "They claim they were really ANTIFA and FBI agents but on the other hand they are trying to get them out of jail. Which is it? Why are they trying to get these ANTIFA imposters out of jail for waging war against the government for trying to overthrow an election which they apparently won? There's no logical coherence or order to anything they're saying."
Merrick Garland, the US Attorney General, released the results of a civil rights investigation into the Louisville police department. According to Garland: the DoJ found "unlawful racial disparities" in Louisville law enforcement. The Louisville/Jefferson county metro government and Louisvill Metro Police Department "engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law". The report found that the Louisville police "discriminate against Black people in its enforcement activities," uses excessive force, and conducts searches based on invalid warrants. The report also found that the department violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech.
March 7, 2023 - Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host who has called January 6 a "false flag" attack, staged by authorities to entrap Trump supporters, told his viewers that the 41,000 hours of footage taken on January 6, 2021, that was given to him by Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy, shows "mostly peaceful chaos ... The footage does not show an insurrection or a riot in progress. Instead it shows police escorting people through the building ... Taken as a whole, the video does not support the claim that January 6 was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim."
The family of Brian Sicknick, the US Capitol police officer who died the day after the January 6 insurrection, released a statement in response to Tucker Carlson downplaying the attack on the Capitol saying that Fox and Carlson "will do the bidding of [Donald] Trump or any of his sycophant followers, no matter what damage is done to the families of the fallen, the officers who put their lives on the line and all who suffered on January 6, due to the lie started by Trump and spread by sleaze-slinging outlets like Fox ... [Fox] has shown time and time again that [it is] little more than the propaganda arm of the Republican party, and like Pravda will do whatever [it is] told to keep the hatred and the lies flowing while suppressing anything resembling the truth. Fox does this not for any sense of morality as they have none but for the quest for every penny of advertising money they can get from those who buy airtime from them ... [McCarthy is] a disgusting excuse for a House speaker ... [Carlson downplayed] the horrid situation faced by US Capitol police and DC Metro police who were incredibly outnumbered and were literally fighting for their very lives ... What will it take to silence the lies from people like Carlson? What will it take to convince people that the January 6 insurrection was very real, it was very violent, and that the event was orchestrated by a man [Trump] who is every bit as corrupt and evil as Vladimir Putin ... The Sicknick family would love nothing more than to have Brian back with us and to resume our normal lives. Fictitious news outlets like Fox and its rabid followers will not allow that. Every time the pain of that day seems to have ebbed a bit organisations like Fox rip our wounds wide open again and we are frankly sick of it ... Leave us the hell alone and instead of spreading more lies from Supreme Leader Trump, why don't you focus on real news?"
Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, responded to the airing of, and downplaying of, the January 6 insurrection, by Tucker Carlson on Fox News. From Schumer's remarks: "Last night, millions of Americans tuned into one of the most shameful hours we have ever seen on cable television. With contempt for the facts, disregard of the risks, and knowing full well he was lying to his audience, Fox News host Tucker Carlson ran a lengthy segment arguing the January 6 Capitol attack was not a violent insurrection. By diving deep into the waters of conspiracy, and cherry picking from thousands of hours of security footage, Mr Carlson told the bald faced lie that the Capitol attack, which we all saw with our own eyes, was somehow, not an attack at all. He tried to argue it was nothing more than a peaceful sightseeing tour. Can you imagine, a non-violent demonstration, a perfectly fine and appropriate instance of people expressing their opinion? I and so many others who were here in the Capitol, and millions and millions of Americans are just furious with Tucker Carlson and Kevin McCarthy today. Many of my staff were here at the Capitol on January 6, their lives were put in danger, as were the lives of many of my colleagues, as well as police, maintenance staff, reporters, countless others. To say January 6 was not violent is a lie. A lie pure and simple. I don't think I've ever seen a primetime cable news anchor manipulate his viewers the way Mr Carlson did last night. I don't think I've ever seen an anchor treat the American people and American democracy with such disdain."
Writing for the Guardian, Martin Pengelly offers the following analysis of complaints filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) regarding collusion between Fox News and the Trump 2020 campaign: "A US Federal Election Commission complaint over the collusion of Fox News with the Trump campaign in 2020 could be the first of many, the complainant said, amid continued fallout from dramatic court filings in Dominion Voter Systems' $1.6bn defamation suit against the network. Media Matters for America, a liberal watchdog, filed its FEC complaint last week, over the revelation that Rupert Murdoch personally gave Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and adviser, confidential information about a Biden campaign ad. A progressive political action committee, End Citizens United, also filed a complaint. As defined by the Harvard Law Review, FEC 'campaign finance restrictions do not apply to costs associated with producing news'. Media Matters alleges that 'press exemption' does not apply to Murdoch's decision to give the Biden ad to Kushner. Saying the move was 'diametrically opposed to Fox Corporation's regular press activity', the complaint says: 'Fox Corporation, through Murdoch, appears to have engaged in the exact type of campaign activity to which the commission has repeatedly affirmed the press exemption does not apply. Therefore, Fox Corporation cannot try to exploit the press exemption to avoid the consequences of making an illegal corporate in-kind contribution.' The complaint seeks the maximum fine permitted and 'appropriate remedial action'."
Hatchet Speed, a former navy reservist, who stormed and occupied the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and who told an undercover FBI agent about a plan to "wipe out" the nation's Jewish population, was convicted for his role in the insurrection. Speed marched on the Capitol with members of the Proud Boys extremist group.
March 6, 2023 - Matt Rosendale, a Republican US congressman from Montana, has come under fire for posing for pictures in front of the US Capitol with Ryan Sanchez, and Greyson Arnold, both of which are neo-Nazis. Rosendale claims he was not aware of the individuals' identities or affiliation with hate groups.
Joseph Hutchinson and Olivia Pollock, both participants of the January 6 insurrection, have gone missing. According to the Guardian, Hutchinson and Pollock were wearing ankle monitors to track their location, and both either tampered with or removed the monitors. The FBI is currently trying to locate the two fugitives, both of whom assaulted police officers on January 6th, 2021.
Robert Gieswein, of Woodland Park, Colorado, plead guilty to using a chemical spray to attack police officers on January 6, 2021. Gieswein was armed with a baseball bat when he stormed the Capitol building, and was seen marching to the Capitol with members of the Proud Boys.
Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, who is expected to announce a campaign for president, spoke at the Ronald Reagan library in California, where he attacked Democratic governors and leaders as being infected with a "woke mind virus".
Kari Lake, a former tv news anchor from Arizona who ran for governor in 2022, and who has made a name for herself as an election denier, both of her 2022 loss and of the 2020 election, was the keynote speaker at CPAC's Ronald Reagan dinner. Here are some highlights:
- Lake referred to Democrats saying "They stole that election. The crime was committed in broad daylight on November 8. They sabotaged election day."
- Lake claimed Democrats "had to pump in hundreds of thousands of phony ballots" and that they jammed tabulators in Republican precincts to cause long lines at the polls.
- Lake declared: "I will not stand by and let these bastards get away with it."
March 4, 2023 - Donald Trump spoke at CPAC today. Here are some highlights:
- Trump framed the 2024 election as "the final battle" for America.
- Trump stated: "In 2016, I declared: I am your voice. Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution."
- Trump stated: "We are going to finish what we started. We started something that was a miracle. We're going to complete the mission, we're going to see this battle through to ultimate victory. We're going to make America great again."
- Trump stated: "With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the war mongers ... We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists. We will throw off the political class that hates our country ... We will beat the Democrats. We will rout the fake news media. We will expose and appropriately deal with the Rinos [Republicans in name only]. We will evict Joe Biden from the White House. And we will liberate America from these villains and scoundrels once and for all."
- Trump stated: "I am the only candidate who can make this promise: I will prevent world war three. Before I arrive in the Oval Office, I will have the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine ended ... I know what to say."
March 2, 2023 - Mike Pence, the former vice president under Donald Trump, was asked if he would support Trump should he become the Republican nominee. Pence's response: "I'm very confident we'll have better choices come 2024. And I'm confident our standard-bearer will win the day in November of that year ... different times call for different leadership."
Writing for the Washington Post, Monica Hesse describes how right wing commentators are attacking the wives of Joe Biden and John Fetterman in an article titled "How Gisele Fetterman became the right wing's favorite super villain". In the article, Hesse describes attacks on the two women from commentators like Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson, rightwing commentator Candace Owens, and the rightwing Washington Examiner. The basic line of attack is that these women are letting their husbands down because they are allowing them to campaign for office despite them being either too old (Joe Biden) or too ill (John Fetterman). According to Carlson: "a woman, a spouse, who loved her husband" would keep him away from campaigns. Carlson also called Jill Biden "a ghoulish, power-seeking creep". According to Owens: "These women are monsters." According to Ingraham: "Who's the bigger elder abuser, Jill Biden or Gisele Fetterman?" The Examiner titled their article: "Jill Biden and Gisele Fetterman are failing their husbands." According to Hesse: "It's not hard to guess why pundits are going after Jill and Gisele instead of Joe and John. Attacking someone who is ill or elderly simply because they are ill or elderly is beyond the pale in our culture (for now, at least), even for those pundits whose flexible morals usually find a way to drain-snake around any barricades of decency. But by placing blame on the wives, these commentators get to spread harmful messages against the president and senator while having plausible deniability against charges of ableism. The commentators are not – heavens, no – throwing mud at these poor men. They are merely scolding the women who should know better. It's ableism, with a little sexism, as a treat."
Gisele Fetterman, the wife of US Senator John Fetterman, responded to rightwing attacks on her saying in a tweet: "In the worst moments of our lives, women are told it's their fault. In case you need to hear it today: It's. Not. Your. Fault. I will keep living and fighting with love. We all need more of it."
Writing for the Guardian, Martin Pengelly offers the following analysis of the US justice department position that Donald Trump is not entitled to absolute immunity in civil lawsuits related to the US Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, which is now linked to nine deaths, which includes law enforcement suicides. From the article: "Trump faces civil cases brought by congressional Democrats and US Capitol police officers who fought his supporters on January 6. His lawyers have urged dismissal. A Washington DC appeals court asked the Department of Justice for its opinion. Trump argued that he could not be sued for statements made before the riot, when he was still president, because presidents enjoy wide-ranging protections when performing their official duties. Government lawyers disagreed, saying in a new court filing: 'Speaking to the public on matters of public concern is a traditional function of the presidency, and the outer perimeter of the President's Office includes a vast realm of such speech. But that traditional function is one of public communication. It does not include incitement of imminent private violence. In the United States' view, such incitement of imminent private violence would not be within the outer perimeter of the Office of the President of the United States.' Trump is the subject of an ongoing Department of Justice investigation, led by the special counsel Jack Smith. The House January 6 committee, which disbanded when Republicans took control after the midterms, made four criminal referrals of Trump to the DoJ. Lawyers for Trump have until 16 March to respond to the DoJ brief about civil cases."
Jack Carpenter III, of Tipton, Michigan, sent a tweet saying he was returning to his home state to "carry out the punishment of death to anyone" who is Jewish in Michigan government "if they don't leave, or confess". Carpenter also declared a new country called "New Israel" around his home. Four days after sending the tweet, Carpenter was arrested in Texas. According to prosecutors, when Carpenter was arrested, there were half a dozen firearms in his vehicle, which also included ammunition. NOTE: Dana Nessel, the Democratic attorney general of Michigan, was notified by the FBI that she was confirmed to be a target of Carpenter.
Tony Gonzales, a Republican US congressman from Texas, is facing censure from his state party. Here is a list of Gonzales' transgressions:
- Voted in support of same-sex marriage.
- Voted for a gun safety measure introduced in response to the Uvalde elementary school shooting, in which 19 children and two adults were killed.
- Voted against the Republican House majority's rules package.
The House ethics committee has opened an investigation into George Santos, the Republican lawmaker who has admitted to lying about his resume in his campaign. The investigation will focus on "whether Representative George Santos may have: engaged in unlawful activity with respect to his 2022 congressional campaign; failed to properly disclose required information on statements filed with the House; violated federal conflict of interest laws in connection with his role in a firm providing fiduciary services; and/or engaged in sexual misconduct towards an individual seeking employment in his congressional office."
Nina Jankowicz, who resigned as director of the homeland security department's disinformation governance board, after threats were made against her and her family following the spread of misinformation by Fox News, is trying to raise money for a lawsuit against the network. According to Jankowicz: "I became the young, female, easy-to-attack public face of what Fox pundits were recklessly spinning as 'men with guns [telling] you to shut up.' Congressional Republicans and the right-wing media characterized me as an unhinged, partisan, unserious, dangerous fascist, despite my track record of measured, bipartisan work, including testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2018 at the GOP chair's invitation ... My life has been irrevocably altered because Fox News repeatedly force-fed lies about me to tens of millions of their viewers. Tens of thousands have harassed me online. Hundreds have violently threatened me. I am far from the only American to experience this type of Fox-led hate campaign, and it must stop."
March 1, 2023 - According to the Washington Post, agents from the FBI's Washington field office were resistant to searching Mar-a-Lago for classified materials, because they trusted statements from Trump's lawyers that all the classified materials had been turned over, and actually advocated for closing the inquiry altogether. From the story: "Some FBI field agents then argued to prosecutors that they were inclined to believe Trump and his team had delivered everything the government sought to protect and said the bureau should close down its criminal investigation, according to some people familiar with the discussions. But they said national security prosecutors pushed back and instead urged FBI agents to gather more evidence by conducting follow-up interviews with witnesses and obtaining Mar-a-Lago surveillance video from the Trump Organization. The government sought surveillance video footage by subpoena in late June. It showed someone moving boxes from the area where records had been stored, not long after Trump was put on notice to return all such records, according to people familiar with the probe. That evidence suggested it was likely more classified records remained at Mar-a-Lago, the people said, despite the claim of Trump's lawyers. It also painted for both sides a far more worrisome picture — one that would soon build the legal justification for the August raid. By mid-July, the prosecutors were eager for the FBI to scour the premises of Mar-a-Lago. They argued that the probable cause for a search warrant was more than solid, and the likelihood of finding classified records and evidence of obstruction was high, according to the four people. But the prosecutors learned FBI agents were still loath to conduct a surprise search. They also heard from top FBI officials that some agents were simply afraid: They worried taking aggressive steps investigating Trump could blemish or even end their careers, according to some people with knowledge of the discussions. One official dubbed it 'the hangover of Crossfire Hurricane,' a reference to the FBI investigation of Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible connections to the Trump campaign, the people said. As president, Trump repeatedly targeted some FBI officials involved in the Russia case."
Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, and Hackeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, sent a letter to Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News. The letter was written in response to testimony released earlier this week in which Murdoch knew Fox News hosts "endorsed" misinformation about the 2020 presidential election. From the letter: "As noted in your deposition released yesterday, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and other Fox News personalities knowingly, repeatedly, and dangerously endorsed and promoted the Big Lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election. Though you have acknowledged your regret in allowing this grave propaganda to take place, your network hosts continue to promote, spew, and perpetuate election conspiracy theories to this day ... We demand that you direct Tucker Carlson and other hosts on your network to stop spreading false election narratives and admit on the air that they were wrong to engage in such negligent behavior ... As evidenced by the January 6 insurrection, spreading this false propaganda could not only embolden supporters of the Big Lie to engage in further acts of political violence, but also deeply and broadly weakens faith in our democracy and hurts our country in countless other ways."
According to the Washington Post, a review by seven US intelligence committees could not conclude that a foreign adversary was behind "Havana syndrome" a mysterious health ailment that affected US government workers overseas that was first reported at the US Embassy in Havana in 2016.
Donald Trump, the twice impeached former president, responded to the release of Rupert Murdoch's testimony in the Dominion Voter System's billion-dollar defamation suit against Fox News saying on Truth Social: "If Rupert Murdoch honestly believes that the Presidential Election of 2020, despite MASSIVE amounts of proof to the contrary, was not Rigged & Stolen, then he & his group of MAGA Hating Globalist RINOS should get out of the News Business as soon as possible, because they are aiding & abetting the DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA with FAKE NEWS. Certain BRAVE & PATRIOTIC Fox News Hosts, who he scorns and ridicules, got it right. He got it wrong. THEY SHOULD BE ADMIRED & PRAISED, NOT REBUKED & FORSAKEN!!!"
According to Politico, Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican who vice-chaired the House January 6 committee, is joining the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia as a professor of practice.
February 28, 2023 - Writing for the Guardian, Ed Pilkington offers the following analysis of the admissions made by Rupert Murdoch during his deposition in the Dominion Systems election case: "Not only did he admit that he knew that Fox News hosts spread lies about the 2020 presidential election being stolen from Donald Trump, but he confessed that he had allowed them to keep on doing so on air to millions of viewers. To say that the 91-year-old's statement astounded close Murdoch watchers would be an understatement. 'I was shocked,' said Angelo Carusone, president of the watchdog Media Matters for America. 'It is stunning, as it not only exposes a lot about how Fox works, it opens them up to potentially cascading litigation and liability.' Fox News and its parent company now face escalating damage on two fronts: to its reputation as a journalism outlet that ostensibly pays lip service to truth and accuracy – and to the financial health of the operation. Media and legal experts told the Guardian that, partly as a result of his stunning testimony, Murdoch can now expect potentially severe injury to both. A former Republican strategist who co-founded the anti-Donald Trump Lincoln Project, Rick Wilson, said that the reputational damage was self-evident. 'This is so profoundly cynical, and deeply corrosive to the role of the largest cable news network in the country,' Wilson remarked. 'They admittedly engaged in fraud and lied to their audience.' ... In his deposition, Murdoch – whose newspaper holdings include the Sun in the UK and the Wall Street Journal – made an admission that could have dire consequences, not only reputationally but also to the Dominion lawsuit on which a lot of money is riding. Under heavy pressure from Dominion's lawyers, he admitted that several Fox News hosts – Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity – had endorsed the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump and handed to Joe Biden. 'Some of our commentators were endorsing it,' he said. 'Yes. They endorsed.'"
Bill Lee, the Republican governor of Tennessee, announced that he plans to sign a bill passed by his state's legislature that prohibits drag in public and in front of children. Lee also said he would sign a bill that bans gender-affirming care for Tennessee minors. NOTE: A high school picture of Lee taken in 1977 has gone viral. The photo is of Lee wearing a wig, a cheerleader's uniform, and a pearl necklace, in other words, it's a picture of Lee dressed in drag.
Blaise Ingoglia, a conservative state senator in Florida, introduced legislation to have the Florida Democratic party formally terminated. According to Blaise, the legislation requires Florida's division of elections to decertify any political party that has "previously advocated for, or been in support of, slavery or involuntary servitude." In addition, the bill would automatically transfer registrations of Florida's 4.9m registered Democratic voters to no-party affiliates.
Julie Su, the former California labor secretary, has been nominated by Joe Biden to replace Marty Walsh as labor secretary. Walsh departed the Biden administration to lead the National Hockey League's players' union. NOTE: If confirmed, Su will be the Biden administration's first cabinet-level secretary of Asian-American descent.
Matt Gaetz, a far-right member of the House of representatives, grilled Colin Kahl, the defense department's undersecretary for policy during a House armed services committee hearing on America's military aid to Ukraine. Gaetz cited a report from the Global Times regarding the Azov battalion and American weapons. Here's the end of that exchange:
KAHL: "Is this the Global Times from China?"
GAETZ: "No, this is well ... yeah, it might be. Yeah ..."
KAHL: "I don't take Beijing's propaganda at face value."
GAETZ: "Fair enough."
February 26, 2023 - According to the Wall Street Journal, a classified 2021 US energy department study concluded that Covid-19 likely emerged from a laboratory leak, but not as part of a weapons program. The finding came with "low confidence".
Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee's chairperson, declared that all GOP primary candidates should sign a loyalty pledge to support the eventual nominee if they wish to participate in the presidential debates.
February 23, 2023 - Emily Kohrs, the Georgia grand jury foreperson, did an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution where she was told Trump had claimed "total exoneration" through the jury's report. Kohrs response was to "roll her eyes" and "burst out laughing". During an interview with the New York Times, Kohrs said it was "not rocket science" to work out if Trump indictments were among those recommended.
Kevin McCarthy, the Republican speaker of the House, turned over 40,000 hours of surveillance video from the Capitol insurrection to Tucker Carlson, a conservative mouthpiece from Fox News. This was the fulfillment of a promise McCarthy made to far-right Republicans in exchange for their vote for House speaker. NOTE: Carlson has claimed the insurrection was a "false flag" attack, and has generally tried to downplay it by claiming it was a "forgettably minor" outbreak of "mob violence".
Notable responses to McCarthy giving video footage to Tucker Carlson:
"Giving someone as disingenuous as Tucker Carlson exclusive access to this type of sensitive information is a grave mistake by Speaker McCarthy that will only embolden supporters of the Big Lie and weaken faith in our democracy" - Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader
"Unfortunately, the apparent disclosure of sensitive video material is yet another example of the grave threat to the security of the American people represented by the extreme MAGA Republican majority." - Hakeem Jeffries, Leader of the House Democrats
In response to a New York City fire sale of equipment bought to combat the pandemic, George Santos, the Republican known for his penchant to lie, wrote the following message on Twitter to New York mayor Eric Adams: "Hey ... care to explain what's going on here?" Maxwell Young, Adams's communications director responded to Santos saying: "Hey ... care to explain where you worked, why you lied about being on the volleyball team, who funded your campaign, why you faked a dog charity and bounced checks trying to buy puppies, and where you got the nerve to lie to the New Yorkers who elected you?"
According to the AP, mass killings linked to extremism are on the rise. From the story: "The number of US mass killings linked to extremism over the past decade was at least three times higher than the total from any other 10-year period since the 1970s, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The ADL report also found that all extremist killings identified in 2022 were linked to rightwing extremism, with an especially high number linked to white supremacy. They include a racist mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, that killed 10 Black people and a mass shooting that killed five people at an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs. 'It is not an exaggeration to say that we live in an age of extremist mass killings,' the report from the ADL Center on Extremism says. Between two and seven extremism-related mass killings occurred every decade from the 1970s to the 2000s but in the 2010s that number rocketed to 21, the report found. The trend has continued with five extremist mass killings in 2021 and 2022, as many as there were during the 2000s. The number of victims has risen too. Between 2010 and 2020, 164 people died in ideological extremist-related mass killings, according to the report. That was much more than in any other decade except the 1990s, when the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City killed 168."
Garret Miller, a January 6 rioter from Richardson, TX, who assaulted police and threatened congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was sentenced to 38 months in prison. NOTE: When Miller was arrested, he was wearing a t-shirt with a picture of Donald Trump on it that said "I Was There, Washington DC, January 6, 2021".
February 22, 2023 - Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, Donald trump's son-in-law and daughter respectively, have been subpoenaed by special counsel Jack Smith to testify before a federal grand jury regarding the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
According to the Guardian, Donald Trump, the former twice impeached president, made an appearance in the town of East Palestine, OH, where he called the federal response to a toxic train derailment earlier this month a "betrayal". NOTE: The Trump administration watered down several regulations at the behest of the rail industry. For instance, according to the Guardian: "He withdrew an Obama-era plan to require faster brakes on trains carrying highly flammable materials, shelved a rule that demanded at least two crew members on freight trains and dropped a ban on transporting liquified natural gas by rail, despite fears this could cause explosions."
According to the Washington Post, Mark Brnovich, the former Republican attorney general of Arizona, failed to release documents to the public that showed the results of his office's investigation into the 2020 election, which did not find evidence of widespread voter fraud in Maricopa county. Kris Mayes, the current Democratic attorney general, released the records, which showed several reports that debunked rampant claims of election problems. NOTE: What Brnovich did release was a report that gave one example of a dead person voting, and an "interim report" that made some nebulous, unfounded criticisms of the county's elections, such as that there were issues with the handling and verification of mail-in ballots, and that Maricopa county had not turned over information, making the investigation more difficult. A draft of the interim report was found to have the following written by Brnovich's staff: "We did not uncover any criminality or fraud having been committed in this area during the 2020 general election." The interim report also stated that investigators believed the county "was cooperative and responsive to our requests".
Vladimir Putin has threatened to suspend Russian participation in New Start, which is the last remaining nuclear arms treaty with the US. Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brooking Institution, who previously worked in the Trump administration on the White House National Security Council, claimed the threat is "playing to the rifts in the United States. It's playing to all those people who want Ukraine to surrender and capitulate to avoid a massive nuclear exchange and world war three, a kind of nuclear armageddon."
February 21, 2023 - According to the New York Times, the special grand jury in Georgia which is investigating election interference led by Donald Trump, has recommended several indictments, which remain sealed.
February 20, 2023 - Writing for the Guardian, Charles Kaiser offers the following analysis on Fox News "deliberate lying" about the 2020 election: "The Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe said Dominion Voting Systems' brief requesting summary judgment against Fox News for defamation – and $1.6bn – is 'likely to succeed and likely to be a landmark' in the history of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. 'I have never seen a defamation case with such overwhelming proof that the defendant admitted in writing that it was making up fake information in order to increase its viewership and its revenues,' Tribe told the Guardian. 'Fox and its producers and performers were lying as part of their business model.' The case concerns Fox News's repetition of Donald Trump's lie that his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud, including claims about Dominion voting machines. Tribe said the filing 'establishes that Fox was not only reckless' but also that producers, owners and personalities were 'deliberately lying and knew they were lying about the nature of Dominion's machines and the supposed way they could be manipulated'. Filed last week, the 192-page document makes it clear that senior figures at Fox News from Rupert Murdoch down knew immediately after the election that claims of voter fraud, in particular those aimed at Dominion, were false. Tucker Carlson called the charges 'ludicrous' and 'off the rails'. Sean Hannity texted about 'F'ing lunatics'. A senior network vice-president called one of the stories 'MIND BLOWINGLY NUTS'. But none of this knowledge prevented hosts from repeating lies about everything from imaginary algorithms shaving votes from Dominion machines to non-existent ties between the company and Venezuela. Tribe was one of several first amendment experts to call the filing nearly unprecedented. 'This is the most remarkable discovery filing I've ever read in a commercial litigation,' said Scott Horton, a Columbia Law School lecturer, Harper’s Magazine contributing editor and litigator with clients including CBS and the Associated Press. 'A summary judgment motion by a plaintiff in this kind of case is almost unheard of. These suits usually fail because you can't prove the company you're suing knew they were spreading falsehoods. That you would have evidence they knew it was a lie is almost unheard of ... in this case the sheer volume of all the email and text messages is staggering.' Horton said Dominion's case gets 'huge benefit' from the way Fox employees 'express themselves with a huge measure of hyperbole about absolutely everything'."
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican rightwing extremist who suggested Jewish space lasers are responsible for wildfires, and who speculated whether 9/11 was a hoax and supported the QAnon conspiracy theory, sent the following in a tweet: "We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat's traitorous America Last policies, we are done." NOTE: After the Civil War, the Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional for a state to secede from the union.
Mitt Romney, a Republican US Senator from Utah, responded to Marjorie Taylor Greene's call for a "national divorce" saying: "I think Abraham Lincoln dealt with that kind of insanity ... We're not going to divide the country. It's united we stand and divided we fall."
February 19, 2023 - Kristina Karamo, an election denier who was defeated in her bid to become the secretary of state in Michigan, was chosen to lead the state Republican party for the next two years. Karamo addressed her fellow party delegates saying "our party is dying [and needs to be rebuilt into] a political machine that strikes fear in the heart of Democrats". NOTE: Karamo had claimed on conservative talk shows following the 2020 election that she had personally witnessed "ballots being dropped off in the middle of the night, thousands of them" while she was acting as a poll watcher in Detroit.
February 17, 2023 - Nikki Haley, a Republican candidate for governor, who has argued that the constitution allows for states to secede, spoke to a New Hampshire audience about Florida's "don't say gay" education law that was signed by Ron DeSantis. According to Haley "Basically what it said was you shouldn't be able to talk about gender before third grade. I'm sorry. I don't think that goes far enough." NOTE: The law bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity through third grade, which some pediatric psychologists say could harm the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth who are already more likely to face bullying and attempt suicide than other children.
According to court filings in a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against the Fox News network, top hosts at Fox privately ridiculed Donald Trump's stolen election claims while simultaneously peddling those same lies on the air. Here are some of the highlights from the filings:
"He's acting like an insane person" - Sean Hannity
"really crazy stuff ... very hard to credibly claim foul everywhere" - Rupert Murdoch
"Sidney Powell is lying ... unguided missile ... dangerous as hell" - Tucker Carlson
"[Trump is a] demonic force [good at] destroying things. He's the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong." - Tucker Carlson
"[Powell is a] complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy" - Laura Ingraham
"that whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second" - Sean Hannity
"mind-blowingly nuts ... totally off the rails ... completely BS" - Various Fox News executives
"From the top down, Fox knew the Dominion stuff was total BS ... Not a single Fox witness testified [in depositions] that they believe any of the allegations about Dominion are true. Indeed, Fox witness after Fox witness declined to assert the allegations' truth or actually stated they do not believe them." - Dominion Systems
Fox responded to the Dominion filings saying: "Dominion brought this lawsuit to punish FNN [Fox News Network] for reporting on one of the biggest stories of the day – allegations by the sitting president of the United States and his surrogates that the 2020 election was affected by fraud. The very fact of those allegations was newsworthy."
February 16, 2023 - According to the Guardian, Shane Lemond, a Metropolitan police lieutenant, shared internal information about law enforcement operations with Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, in the weeks leading up to the January 6th insurrection. Lemond was responsible for monitoring groups like the Proud Boys.
Glenn Youngkin, the Republican governor of Virginia, who has pushed for a 15-week abortion ban, killed a bill through procedural moves that was passed by the Democrat-led senate, that would stop law enforcement from obtaining menstrual histories of women in the state that is stored in tracking apps on mobile phones or other electronic devices. NOTE: Advocates for the bill feared private health information could be used in prosecutions for abortion law violations.
A Georgia judge has released parts of a Fulton County special purpose grand jury's final report about Donald Trump's election meddling campaign to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Here are some highlights:
- Grand jurors expressed concerns that at least one witness lied under oath during their testimony writing: "A majority of the Grand Jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it. The Grand Jury recommends that the District Attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling".
- Grand jurors concluded "by a unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election".
February 15, 2023 - Matt Gaetz, a far-right Republican member of Congress, announced that the justice department has ended a sex-trafficking case with no charges against him.
According to the Guardian, video has surfaced of Nikki Haley saying that states have a right to secede. In the video, which is from 2010, Haley says "I think they do. I mean, the constitution says that."
Notable response to Haley's comment:
"No, Nikki Haley, the constitution does not provide a right for secession. See, Texas v White (1869). See also, the civil war." - Anthony Michael Kreis, Law Professor and Political Scientist at Georgia State University
February 14, 2023 - According to the Guardian, Michael Windecker, an FBI informant, infiltrated Black Lives Matter in Denver in May of 2020 during protests over the killing of George Floyd, where he encouraged activists to take the protests to the next level, saying in audio from undercover FBI recordings: "I can teach you how to shoot a gun, to hand-to-hand combat, all the way up to like blowing up fucking buildings and guerrilla warfare tactics and sabotage." Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator who sits on the Senate intelligence committee, responded to the news saying: "If the allegations are true, the FBI's use of an informant to spy on first amendment-protected activity and stoke violence at peaceful protests is an outrageous abuse of law-enforcement resources and authority .... appears to show another instance of the Trump administration trampling on the rights of Americans in order to divide our country and gain a political advantage. The FBI owes the public a full accounting of its actions, including how anyone responsible for attempting to entrap and discredit racial justice activists will be held accountable." NOTE: A Republican subcommittee chaired by right-wing extremist Jim Jordan, has just begun an investigation into the "weaponization of the federal government" in an attempt to show how the main victim of federal overreach is Donald Trump and his supporters, not minority or progressive groups.
Daniel Rodriguez, a California man who used a stun gun to attack Washington DC police officer Michael Fanone on January 6th, 2021, pleaded guilty to four felony charges, including conspiracy and assaulting a law enforcement officer with a deadly weapon. Rodriguez was part of a Telegram group chat called "PATRIOTS 45 MAGA Gang", that advocated violence, and discussed Trump's false claims of a stolen election. Rodriguez, who posted in December of 2020: "Congress can hang. I'll do it. Please let us get these people dear God" sent a text message to friends after the attack on Fanone that said: "Tased the fuck out of the blue." NOTE: Nearly 1,000 January 6 rioters have been charged with federal crimes. More than 500 have plead guilty. Approximately 400 have been sentenced, with more than half given sentences ranging from 7 to 10 years. Fanone, who suffered a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury, claims the attack cost him his police career.
Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations under Donald Trump, and former governor of South Carolina, has announced that she is running for president. Haley and Donald Trump are the only Republicans who have declared thus far in the 2024 race for the presidency.
George Santos, the Republican representative known for his fantastical lies, sent the following in a tweet: "Let me be very clear, I'm not leaving, I'm not hiding and I am NOT backing down."
According to Letitia James, the New York attorney general, Donald Trump has been ordered to pay $110,000 for defying a subpoena. According to James: "Once again, the courts have ruled that Donald Trump is not above the law. For years, he tried to stall and thwart our lawful investigation into his financial dealings, but today's decision sends a clear message that there are consequences for abusing the legal system. We will not be bullied or dissuaded from pursuing justice.".
Writing for the Guardian, Martin Pengelly offers the following analysis of George Santos and his lies: "There are lies, there are damned lies, and then there is George Santos's CV. In the short time that he has been in the public eye, the 34-year-old has been accused of fabricating almost every facet of his life. During his election campaign, Santos claimed to be a 'proud American Jew' whose grandparents 'survived the Holocaust'. After being challenged, Santos clarified that he was raised Catholic and argued that he had always said he was 'Jew-ish'. His education and work history appear to be fabrications. He has said his mother was working in the World Trade Center on 9/11, yet records show she was in Brazil. He has said that he 'lost four employees' in the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Florida, but the New York Times has not been able to verify these claims. He has claimed to have been a college volleyball star (unlikely) and a producer on Spider-Man (untrue). No one is even sure what Santos's real name is. I could go on and on with the lies, but I need to get to the scandals. There is the scandal about his former life as a drag queen in Brazil, which he originally denied, then appeared to admit. (To be clear: the only outrageous thing about his alleged drag-queen past is that he is now active in a party that demonises and wants to criminalise drag queens as part of a broader anti-LGBTQ+ agenda.) There is the $365,000 in campaign funds he can't account for. And then there are the multiple dog-related scandals. Last week, Politico reported allegations that Santos spent 2017 cruising around Pennsylvania's Amish Country buying puppies from dog breeders with cheques that bounced. A few days after allegedly writing $15,125 in bad cheques to breeders, Santos held an adoption event at a pet store in New York. It's not clear if he made money from this, but adoption fees can range from $300 to $400. Santos was charged with theft by deception, but those charges were dropped when he claimed his chequebook had been stolen. The other dog-related scandal? The congressman is accused of promising to raise funds for a homeless man's dying dog in 2016, then taking off with the money."
February 10, 2023 - Writing for the Guardian, Peter Stone offers the following analysis of the Durham inquiry: "When the Trump justice department tapped a US attorney to examine the origins of the FBI inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, conservatives and many Republicans hoped it would end the idea Donald Trump's campaign was boosted by Moscow and back his charges that some FBI officials and others had conspired against him. But instead, as the multi-year investigation winds down, it is ending with accusations that unethical actions by that special counsel – John Durham – and ex-attorney general William Barr 'weaponized' the US Department of Justice (DoJ) to help Trump. Former DoJ officials and top Democrats are voicing strong criticism that Durham and Barr acted improperly in the almost four-year-old inquiry, citing an in-depth New York Times story that added to other evidence the inquiry looked politically driven to placate Trump's anger at an investigation he deemed a 'witch-hunt'. The Times report provided disturbing new details, for instance, about how a key prosecutor, Nora Dannehy, quit Durham's team in 2020 over 'ethical' concerns, including his close dealings with Barr, and discussions about releasing an unorthodox interim report before the 2020 election that might have helped Trump, but which didn't come to fruition. Critics of the Durham inquiry also noted early on that Barr on several occasions, and contrary to longtime DoJ policies, suggested publicly that Durham's inquiry would yield significant results, which in effect would help validate Trump's charges that some officials at the FBI and CIA had led a political witch-hunt. Further, Barr and Durham, in highly unusual public statements early in their investigation, tried to undermine a chief conclusion of a report by the DoJ inspector general, Michael Horowitz, that the Russia investigation was based on sufficient facts to warrant opening the investigation in 2016. Ex-DoJ officials say the Durham inquiry seemed aimed from the start at boosting Trump's political fortunes ... 'The Durham special counsel investigation was tainted from the outset by the excessive involvement of attorney general Barr and its reaching significant conclusions before it had done any significant investigation,' said the ex-DoJ inspector general Michael Bromwich. Bromwich added: 'From the outset, there was no pretense that this was an independent investigation in which the facts would determine the outcome. The scorecard: an interminable, four-year investigation; a single conviction based on a case handed over by the IG on a silver platter; and two humiliating acquittals. There has never been a record like that in the half-century history of independent counsels and special counsels.'"
According to ABC News, Mike Pence, the former vice president, received a subpoena related to the January 6 investigation.
According to CNN, the FBI searched the Indiana home of Mike Pence today for classified documents and found at least one additional classified document.
Ken Paxton, the Republican Attorney General of Texas, has agreed to apologize and pay $3.3m in taxpayer money to four former staffers who accused him of corruption, which ignited an ongoing FBI investigation. Paxton had called the whistleblowers "rogue employees" after they accused him of misusing his office to help a campaign contributor, who also employed a woman whom Paxton admitted to having an extramarital affair with.
February 9, 2023 - According to the AP, the Missouri House of Representatives, which is majority Republican, voted against a bill which would ban children from openly carrying firearms in public without adult supervision. Donna Baringer, a Democrat, said police in her district had asked for the bill to stop "14-year-olds walking down the middle of the street in the city of St Louis carrying AR-15s. Now they have been emboldened, and they are walking around with them. Until they actually brandish them, and brandish them with intent, our police officers’ hands are handcuffed." Tony Lovasco, a Republican who voted against the bill, stated "While it may be intuitive that a 14-year-old has no legitimate purpose, it doesn't actually mean that they're going to harm someone. We don't know that yet."
Writing for the Guardian, Francine Prose offers the following analysis of Republican attacks on books: "For some time now, conservative groups pressured libraries and classrooms to remove certain 'controversial' books from their shelves and their syllabi. These are texts that tell uncomfortable or unpopular truths about our nation's origins, including inequality, race, history, gender, sexuality, power and class – a range of subjects that a small but vocal group of Americans would prefer to ignore or deny. These efforts achieved one of their most notable successes last April when Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed the Stop Woke Act, which prohibits in-school discussions about racism, oppression, LBGTQ+ issues and economic inequity. Books that have not been officially vetted and approved must be hidden or covered, lest teachers unknowingly break an ill-defined law against distributing pornography – a felony. On 1 February, these pernicious restrictions on academic freedom spread beyond Florida, when the College Board announced its decision to severely restrict what can and cannot be taught in the newly created advanced placement class in African American studies. Cut from the curriculum (or in some cases made optional) was any discussion of Black Lives Matter, mass incarceration, police brutality, queer Black life, of the Black Power movements of the 1960s and 70s. Writers who have been removed from the reading list include bell hooks, Angela Davis and Ta-Nehisi Coates. These decisions are alarming and disturbing on so many levels that it's hard to decide which aspect is the most damaging and insidious. At risk are our foundational principles of free speech, our conviction that educators – and not politicians – should be writing up our lesson plans and deciding what transpires in our classrooms, our belief that students can (and need to) consider complicated issues."
According to ABC, Mike Pence, the former vice president, was issued a subpoena by special counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing federal investigations into Donald Trump.
February 8, 2023 - A new proposal in Missouri would only allow licensed mental healthcare providers to talk to students about LGBTQ issues and gender identity in k-12 public schools, and only if guardians grant permission first.
North Carolina senators passed a bill that requires public school teachers to notify parents before addressing a student by a different name or pronoun.
Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House speaker, appointed far-right Republican representative Matt Gaetz to replace Chip Roy on a committee investigating government "weaponization".
Nathan Hart, a Florida man who was one of 19 people charged by the a new statewide agency known as the office of election crimes and security, as part of an effort by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to root out voter fraud, was acquitted on charges that he voted illegally, but was convicted of lying on his voter registration application.
Mississippi House Republicans passed a bill to create a separate, unelected court system in the city of Jackson that would fall outside the purview of the city's voters, the majority of whom are Black. Chokwe Lumumba, Jackson's mayor, called the proposed law "some of the most oppressive legislation in our city's history".
February 7, 2023 - Harry Whittington, 95, died today. Whittington, a Texas attorney, gained notoriety in 2006 after vice president Dick Cheney accidentally shot him in the face, neck and body during a quail hunt. Whittington, who suffered a collapsed lung and a mild heart attack as a result of the shooting, spent a week recovering in an intensive care unit. NOTE: Whittington later apologized to Cheney for having been shot because of the bad publicity it brought on Cheney.
Today, Joe Biden gave his state of the union speech. Here are some highlights:
- Mitt Romney, a Republican senator from Utah, was overheard telling Republican representative George Santos "you don't belong here". After that, according to Santos, the following exchange took place:
SANTOS: "Go tell that to the 142k that voted for me"
ROMNEY: "You're an ass"
SANTOS: "You're a much bigger asshole"
- Biden stated that "Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans ... want Medicare and Social Security sunset." Republicans responded with loud heckling, including Marjorie Taylor Greene who shouted "liar!" NOTE: Some Republicans, including senator Ron Johnson, have suggested that these programs should be subject to annual approval, which could result in the programs being eliminated. Senator Tim Scott has proposed that "all federal legislation would have a sunset provision five years after it passes."
- Biden pointed out that "Fentanyl is killing more than 70,000 Americans a year." One Republican was heard shouting "It's your fault!"
- Donald Trump issued a video rebuttal to Biden's speech that included: "But the good news is we are going to reverse every single crisis, calamity and disaster that Joe Biden has created. I am running for President to end the destruction of our country and to complete the unfinished business of Making America Great Again. We will make our country better than ever before, and we will always put America First."
- George Santos tweeted: "Hey @MittRomney just a reminder that you will NEVER be PRESIDENT!"
- Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the former press secretary for Donald Trump, and current governor of Arkansas, delivered a response speech that included the following: "Republicans believe in an America where strong families thrive in safe communities. Where jobs are abundant, and paychecks are rising. In the radical left's America, Washington taxes you and lights your hard-earned money on fire, but you get crushed with high gas prices, empty grocery shelves, and our children are taught to hate one another on account of their race, but not to love one another or our great country ... And while you reap the consequences of their failures, the Biden administration seems more interested in woke fantasies than the hard reality Americans face every day. Most Americans simply want to live their lives in freedom and peace, but we are under attack in a left-wing culture war we didn't start and never wanted to fight. Every day, we are told that we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols ... all while big government colludes with Big Tech to strip away the most American thing there is— your freedom of speech. That's not normal. It's crazy, and it's wrong."
February 5, 2023 - George Santos, the Republican representative from New York who is widely recognized as a serial liar, has been accused of sexual harassment by Derek Myers, a former aide. According to Myers, while sitting next to Santos, Santos first put his hand on Myers' knee, then moved his hand to Myers' inner thigh and groin and told him "My husband is out of town tonight if you want to come over." Myers said he then pushed Santos away and left his office. Five days later, Myers said he was "informed that my job offer was being rescinded".
Ted Cruz, a far-right Republican senator from Texas, introduced a bill to limit US senators to two terms, which Cruz said would remove "permanently entrenched politicians [who are] totally unaccountable to the American people." Cruz then appeared on CBS where the following exchange took place:
MARGARET BRENNAN: "You introduced a bill to limit terms to two six-year terms in office for senators. Why aren't you holding yourself to that standard? You said you're running for a third term."
TED CRUZ: "Well, listen, I'm a passionate defender of term limits. I think that Congress would work much better if every senator were limited to two terms, if every House member were limited to three terms. I've introduced a constitutional amendment to put that into the constitution."
MARGARET BRENNAN: "But you're still running."
TED CRUZ: "And if and when [the term limits amendment] passes I will happily, happily comply. I've never said I'm going to unilaterally comply. I'll tell you what, when the socialists and when the swamp are ready to leave Washington, I will be more than happy to comply by the same rules that apply for every one. But until then, I'm going to keep fighting for 30 million Texans because they've asked me to do..."
NOTE: In 2018, Cruz received 4.26 million votes. More than 4 million voted for his opponent.
February 4, 2023 - Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Republican representative from Georgia who blamed forest fires on Jewish space lasers, appeared on Glenn Greenwald's podcast recently where she aired the following complaints: "Becoming a member of Congress has made my life miserable. I made a lot more money before I got here. I've lost money since I've gotten here. It's not a life that I think is like something that I enjoy because I don't enjoy it ... The nature of this job, it keeps members of Congress and senators in Washington so much of the time, too much of the time ... that we don't get to go home and spend more time with our families, our friends ... or maybe just be regular people because this job is so demanding. It's turned into practically year-round ... I have people come up to me and say crazy things to me out of the blue in public places that they believe because they read it on the internet or saw it on some news show about me.”
Notable response to Greene's complaints:
"Feel free to step aside if it isn't too cushy of a job for you. Millions of us won't mind. #stopwhining" - Twitter user
The Chinese spy balloon that has been crossing North American airspace since January 28th, has been shot down off the coast of the Carolinas by an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile fired from a US Air Force F-22 Raptor. NOTE: Republicans have been very critical of the Biden administration's handling of the balloon, however, they have little to say about the Pentagon disclosure that three Chinese spy balloons passed undetected over the US during Donald Trump's presidency.
February 3, 2023 - According to the AP, in a newly released audio recording from November 2020, Andrew Iverson, the man who led the re-election campaign of Donald Trump in Wisconsin, and who is now the mid-west regional director for the Republican National Committee, can be heard saying: "Here's the deal: comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election. We'll do whatever they need. Just be on standby if there’s any stunts we need to pull".
News surfaced that a Chinese spy balloon is flying over the US. The Pentagon has decided not to shoot it down citing safety reasons.
22,000 text messages sent by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, that were mistakenly sent by Jones' lawyers to the lawyers representing parents of Sandy Hook victims, were reviewed by the Southern Poverty Law Center's Hatewatch team. Here are some of the things uncovered by the team:
- Jones repeatedly texted with members of the Proud boys, including Gavin Mcinnes, the founder, and Jason Biggs, who is on trial for seditious conspiracy in connection with the Capitol insurrection on 6 January 2021.
- Jones frequently texted with Roger Stone, who was sentenced to 40 months in prison in 2020 over his attempts to sabotage a congressional investigation that posed a political threat to Donald Trump. Trump pardoned Stone in December 2020.
- Jones regularly texted links to pornographic videos, despite regularly railing against pornography on his infowars broadcasts as a plot to "end the family".
Writing for the Guardian, Moustafa Bayoumi offers the following analysis of the removal of Ilhan Omar form the foreign affairs committee: "Who remembers how, in 2018 and just days before the deadliest attack on Jewish people in US history, a prominent US politician tweeted: 'We cannot allow Soros, Steyer, and Bloomberg to BUY this election!'? The tweet was widely – and correctly – understood as dangerously antisemitic, particularly heinous in a period of rising anti-Jewish hatred. And whose tweet was this? If you thought the answer was Minnesota's Democratic representative Ilhan Omar then, well, you'd be wrong. The author was none other than the House majority leader at the time, Republican Kevin McCarthy. And who can forget when Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has tweeted that 'Joe Biden is Hitler', speculated that the wildfires in California were caused by a beam from 'space solar generators' linked to 'Rothschild, Inc.', a clear wink to bizarre antisemitic conspiracy theories. Incidentally, Greene, who has a long record of antisemitic and anti-Muslim statements, has been recently appointed, by the same Kevin McCarthy, now speaker of the House, to the homeland security committee. Then there's former president Donald Trump, who dines with Holocaust deniers like Nick Fuentes and antisemites like Ye. In stereotypically anti-Jewish moves, Trump has repeatedly called the loyalty of Jewish Americans into question. Just this past October, he wrote that 'US Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel – Before it is too late!' In case it's not obvious, let me state it plainly. Today's Republican party has a serious antisemitism problem. The easy acceptance and amplification of all sorts of anti-Jewish hate that party leaders engage in emboldens all the worst bigots, raving racists, and far-right extremists across the globe, all the while threatening Jewish people here and everywhere. So it is more than a little rich that House Republicans voted on Thursday to remove Omar from the foreign affairs committee, where she's served since 2019, because, they say, of her antisemitic views."
According to Bloomberg News, George Santos, the New York Republican congressman known for his fantastical lies, told potential donors he was a producer on the Spider-Man musical. According to Michael Cohl, the lead producer: "[Santos] was not a producer on the musical."
February 2, 2023 - Ilhan Omar, a Democratic representative from Minnesota, was removed from the foreign affairs committee by a House vote that was along party lines. Omar called the removal "purely partisan".
Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, announced plans to block state college programs on diversity, equity and inclusion, and critical race theory.
February 1, 2023 - Federal agents searched Joe Biden's Rehobeth Beach, Delaware home as part of the investigation into classified documents. The search was consensual, so no warrant was sought. NOTE: Between 25 and 30 classified documents have been found by both the FBI and Biden's aides at properties owned by Biden.
Matt Gaetz, a far-right Republican representative, proposed an amendment that the House judiciary committee begin each meeting with the pledge of allegiance. In response, David Cicilline, a Democratic representative, proposed tweaking the amendment's language so that people "who supported an insurrection" shall not lead the pledge. The Gaetz amendment passed in the Republican led committee, but the Cicilline tweak was defeated 24-13.
Stormy Daniels, the porn star who was paid $130,000 in hush money by Donald Trump to keep quiet about an alleged affair, described her recent experience as a stand-up comic: "It was the most terrifying experience of my life, and that's saying something because I've seen Trump naked."
January 31, 2023 - Adrian Fontes, the Arizona secretary of state, asked the state attorney general to investigate Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor who lost and refuses to concede. According to Fontes, Lake may have violated state law that protects a voter's signature from being accessed or shared by anyone other than the voter or an "authorized government official in the scope of the official duties". Lake had posted voter signatures on Twitter on the 23rd of January while claiming they were part of a "bombshell" that showed mismatched signatures that shouldn't have been counted. The signatures were from 2020 ballots. NOTE: Lake claims the referral to the state's attorney is proof of her claims that the election was stolen.
Donald Trump, the twice impeached former president, has filed a $50m lawsuit against Bob Woodward, saying he did not agree to have his taped conversations with Woodward published. The tapes of the interviews were released in October of 2022. In a joint statement, Woodward and Simon &Schuster stated: "All these interviews were on the record and recorded with President Trump's knowledge and agreement. Moreover, it is in the public interest to have this historical record in Trump's own words. We are confident that the facts and the law are in our favor."
Newly released video of Trump being deposed by New York state attorney general Letitia James in a civil fraud case last summer shows Trump pleading the 5th more than 400 times. According to Trump: "Anyone in my position not taking the fifth amendment would be a fool, an absolute fool."
George Santos, the Republican congressman and serial liar who who is currently being investigated over his campaign filings, has temporarily withdrawn from two House committees.
January 30, 2023 - Carmen Quiroga, the owner of a newly opened restaurant in Coventry, Connecticut, has faced a barrage of criticism from conservatives over the name of her restaurant, including calls for a boycott. The name of her restaurant: Woke Breakfast and Coffee, with the tagline "You woke up and made the right choice." While defending the restaurant's name on facebook, Tonya Landrie Ohlund, the administrator of the facebook group the Coventry CT Citizen's Open Forum, wrote: "Just a word of warning, any more ridiculous comments about the name of the new breakfast place in town will be deleted. If you are that close-minded that you can't grasp that the name is referring to the fact that it is a breakfast establishment and nothing more, then just keep that to yourself and move on. It's disgusting to read that residents are going to refuse to support a business that is trying to grow in our awesome little town because you don't like what they've named it, without even knowing anything about how they chose that name. Just stop."
Spencer Cox, Utah's Republican governor, signed a bill into law that bans transgender youth from receiving gender-affirming healthcare. The law prohibits transgender surgery for young people and disallows hormone treatments for minors who have not yet been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. NOTE: 18 additional states are considering similar legislation.
Notable response to the signing of the Utah bill into law:
"By cutting off medical treatment supported by every major medical association in the United States, the bill compromises the health and wellbeing of adolescents with gender dysphoria. It ties the hands of doctors and parents by restricting access to the only evidence-based treatment available for this serious medical condition and impedes their ability to fulfill their professional obligations." - ACLU, Utah Chapter
17 experts from medical centers and universities, including the University of Chicago, Duke Medicine and the University of Pennsylvania, published an opinion piece in the journal Trauma Surgery & Acute Care Open, that issued the following warning to surgeons: "In the aftermath of the supreme court's Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health decision, acute care surgeons face an increased likelihood of seeing patients with complications from both self-managed abortions and forced pregnancy in underserved areas of reproductive and maternity care throughout the USA ... While we should strive to prevent such injury by advocating for the protection of access to safe abortion care, surgeons should also prepare to treat resulting complications ... The patient's legal safety should also be of utmost concern and underscores the significance of knowing your state laws around this issue ... Providers have the ethical duty to protect patient privacy and to not report these complications which implicate self-induced abortion to law enforcement in states where this is prohibited ... Again, in those states that restrict access to abortion care, maternal morbidity, and inevitably mortality, will increase and require physicians from all fields to expand their ability to care for these needs."
January 29, 2023 - The Memphis police department announced they will permanently disband the Scorpion unit, whose officers were involved in the beating death of Tyre Nichols.
January 28, 2023 - Trump made campaign stops today in New Hampshire and South Carolina. Here are some of the statements Trump made to enthusiastic Republican audiences:
- "As someone who's won the New Hampshire presidential primary not once but twice, and by the way, I believe we also won two general elections, OK, if you want to know the truth, and I believe it very strongly in plenty of other places also."
- Promised to restore "election integrity".
- Promised to stop an "invasion" at the southern border.
- Claimed "They're sending people that are killers, murderers, they're sending rapists and they're sending frankly terrorists or terrorists are coming on their own and we can't allow this to happen."
- Stated "We're going to stop the leftwing radical racists and perverts who are trying to indoctrinate our youth and we're going to get their Marxist hands off of our children. We're going to defeat the cult of gender ideology and reaffirm that God created two genders called men and women. We're not going to allow men to play in women’s sports."
- Claimed that America is "at the brink of world war three" and said that if he were president, he would have a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine negotiated in 24 hours.
January 27, 2023 - Mike Pence, the former VP under Donald Trump, responded to news that classified documents were found at his house saying: "Those classified documents should not have been in my personal residence. Mistakes were made. And I take full responsibility."
Ibram X Kendi, an anti-racism activist, responded to the murder of Tyre Nichols saying on twitter: "Tyre Nichols should be with us skateboarding and looking up and admiring the sunset. But instead the sadistic scourge of police violence claimed its latest innocent victim. The history of the police is the racist history of violence. Cops of all races have been empowered and socialized to brutalize and terrorize and exploit and sexually assault and harass and lynch people, particularly Black people with near total impunity. There's no reforming an inherently violent institution with a pervasively violent history. How many more Black people have to be brutally killed before we realize the obvious? How many more? How many more?"
Julian Khater, a January 6 rioter who assaulted officer Brian Sicknick - who later died - by spraying him with chemical spray, was sentenced to nearly seven years in prison. Gladys Sicknick, Brian Sicknick's mother, said Khater was "centre stage in our recurring nightmare" and "the reason Brian is dead". She also stated: "Lawlessness, misplaced loyalty and hate killed my son. I hope you are haunted by your crimes behind bars. Whatever jail time you receive is not enough."
Documented, a watchdog group, has traced a mysterious $1m donation for the Arizona audit conducted by the Cyber Ninjas, to Trump's Save America Pac. NOTE: Arizona Republicans who asked Cyber Ninjas to conduct the audit had claimed at the time that the audit "absolutely has nothing to do with Trump".
January 26, 2023 - Meta, the social media company that owns facebook, announced that it will allow Donald Trump back on its facebook and instagram platforms following a two year ban over his incitement of an insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th. Notable reactions to the decision by Meta:
"Make no mistake – by allowing Donald Trump back on its platforms, Meta is refuelling Trump's misinformation and extremism engine. When Trump is given a platform, it ratchets up the temperature on a landscape that is already simmering – one that will put us on a path to increased violence." - Angelo Carusone, President and CEO of Media Matters for America
"cowardly and unethical decision ... will cause incalculable harm ... Meta must bear full responsibility for any harm that results from today's extremely reckless decision" - Jessica J. Gonzalez, Co-CEO of Free Press
"The right call ... Like it or not, President Trump is one of the country's leading political figures and the public has a strong interest in hearing his speech" - Anthony Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberies Union
"Minutes after Meta announced it will allow Trump back, the ex-president was on his Truth Social app posting about supposed fraud in the 2020 election. Meta tells me posts attacking 2020 will be allowed, but posts attacking 2024 are a different story." - Oliver Darcy, Reporter for CNN
"It represents, in my view, a total caving in and copping out. The only motive I can see is a profit motive here." - Adam Schiff, Democratic Congressman
"Why the hell is Zuckerberg giving Donald Trump a free pass to lie and incite violence? The last time Trump's election lies went unchecked, he abused his massive online megaphone to incite the violent January 6th insurrection — which led to his ban in the first place" - Robert Reich, Former US Labor Secretary
"Wow. POS #META, parent of #Facebook and #Instagram will let that sorry excuse for a human being back on their platforms. He should be banned permanently; he's a menace to society. They must be desperate. #repulsive" - Bette Midler
John Eastman, a former attorney for Donald Trump, is facing possible disbarment after the state bar of California charged him with 11 counts of ethics violations, including misleading courts and making false public statements about voter fraud in the 2020 election. According to the bar: Eastman participated in a strategy "unsupported by facts or law" to obstruct the count of presidential electors in Congress.
Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr, Emmitt Martin III and Justin Smith, all former Memphis police officers, were charged with murder and other crimes in the killing of black motorist Tyre Nichols. Nichols died 3 days after the 7 January traffic stop due to extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating according to an attorney representing the family. Video of the beating will be released tomorrow, and is "perhaps worse" than the infamous footage of Rodney King being beaten by Los Angeles police more than 30 years ago, according to Cerelyn Davis, the Memphis police chief.
January 25, 2023 - According to the AP, Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House speaker, has made good on a promise to remove Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, both Democrats, from serving on the House intelligence committee. From the story: "Speaker Kevin McCarthy reiterated Tuesday that he will block Democratic Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell of California from serving on the House committee that oversees national intelligence, saying the decision was not based on political payback but because 'integrity matters, and they have failed in that place'. In the previous Congress, Democrats booted Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona from their committee assignments for incendiary commentary that they said incited potential violence against colleagues. The minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, in a letter sent to McCarthy over the weekend, asked that Schiff and Swalwell be reappointed to the House permanent select committee on intelligence, a prestigious panel with access to sensitive, classified information. There is no 'precedent or justification' for rejecting them, Jeffries said. Unlike most committees, appointments to the intelligence panel are the prerogative of the speaker, with input from the minority leader. McCarthy said he would be submitting his reply later Tuesday, but 'let me be very clear, this is not similar to what the Democrats did. Those members will have other committees, but the intel committee is different. The intel committee's responsibility is the national security to America.'"
Joe Biden announced today that the US will be providing Ukraine with Abrams tanks.
According to NBC, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far right extremist Republican in the House of representatives, wants to be Donald Trump's presidential running mate in 2024. The source for the information: Steve Bannon, the former Trump campaign chair and White House strategist. According to Bannon "This is no shrinking violet, she's ambitious – she's not shy about that, nor should she be. She sees herself on the short list for Trump's VP ... when MTG looks in the mirror she sees a potential president smiling back." NOTE: Here is a short list of some of Greene's greatest hits:
1. She advocated that Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker, be executed.
2. She harassed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the prominent New York progressive.
3. She harassed David Hogg, a Parkland survivor and gun control activist.
4. She was condemned for racist and antisemitic videos made during her campaign.
5. She repeatedly flouted public health measures against Covid-19.
6. She repeated conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks.
7. She said Jewish-controlled 'space lasers' caused forest fires.
8. She expressed sympathy for the QAnon conspiracy theory.
9. She landed in the soup over comments about 'Nancy Pelosi's gazpacho police'.
Joe Morelle and Gregory Meeks, two New York Democrats, wrote a letter to Kevin McCarthy demanding that he deny access to classified information to George Santos. From the letter: "We urge you to act swiftly to prevent George Santos from abusing his position and endangering our nation ... As the newly elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, we call on you to limit to the greatest degree possible Congressman George Santos's ability to access classified materials, including preventing him from attending any confidential or classified briefings for the foreseeable future." NOTE: McCarthy has named Santos to the small business committee, and the science, space and technology committee'
Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House speaker, pledged to remove Ilhan Omar, a Democrat, from her seat on the foreign affairs committee over allegations she used antisemitic language. Omar responded to the news calling the decision "purely partisan" and saying in part: "Not only [is it] a political stunt, but also a blow to the integrity of our democratic institution and a threat to our national security."
Yasser Rabello, who once shared a two-bedroom apartment with George Santos, was interviewed by New York Magazine. Among the details Rabello revealed were that he knew Santos as Anthony Devolder, who told Rabello that he was a reporter at Globo Brazil. This fact was checked by the Columbia Journalism Review who checked with Ali Kamel, the director-general of journalism Globo. Kamel described the claim as "a crazy story" and "a lie, pure and simple." Santos also told his roommate that he was a model and that he worked at New York Fashion Week and that he met all the Victoria's Secret models and would be in Vogue magazine.
Elaine Chao, the former transportation secretary under Donald Trump, who resigned following the January 6 insurrection, and who has been the target of Trump's racist insults, responded to Trump's attacks: "When I was young, some people deliberately misspelled or mispronounced my name. Asian Americans have worked hard to change that experience for the next generation. He doesn't seem to understand that, which says a whole lot more about him than it will ever say about Asian Americans". NOTE: Social media posts by Trump suggest that Mitch McConnell, who is married to Chao, has inappropriate ties to China because of his wife. Chao, who was born in Taiwan, immigrated to the United States when she was eight years old. Earlier this week, Trump posted the following to his Truth Social media network: "Does Coco Chow have anything to do with Joe Biden's Classified Documents being sent and stored in Chinatown? Her husband, the Old Broken Crow, is VERY close to Biden, the Democrats, and, of course, China."
George Santos, the serial liar who was recently elected to the House of Representatives, has amended his campaign finance filing no longer lists over $600,000 in loans as "personal funds of the candidate", but does not disclose the source of the funds.
January 24, 2023 - Never Give an Inch is the newly published memoir of Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state under Donald Trump. A review of the book by the Washington Post called the book "vicious ... a master class in the performative anger poisoning American politics ... Hatred animates this book. It's got more venom than a quiver of cobras." Regarding the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Kashoggi, who was murdered and dismembered by the Saudi Arabian regime in 2018, Pompeo wrote that Khashoggi was not a journalist but "an activist who had supported the losing team". Pompeo went on to criticize what he called "faux outrage" over the killing that "made the media madder than a vegan in a slaughterhouse." Responding to Pompeo's commentary on Kashoggi, Fred Ryan, the publisher of the Washington Post stated that it was "shocking and disappointing to see Mike Pompeo's book so outrageously misrepresent the life and work of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. As the CIA – which Pompeo once directed – concluded, Jamal was brutally murdered on the orders of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. His only offense was exposing corruption and oppression among those in power – work that good journalists around the world do every day." Pompeo responded to the criticism on Twitter writing: "Americans are safer because we didn't label Saudi Arabia a pariah state. I never let the media bully me. Just because someone is a part-time stringer for the Washington Post doesn't make their life more important than our military serving in dangerous places protecting us all. I never forgot that."
According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 39 mass shootings in the US this year. A mass shooting is any armed attack in which at least 4 people are injured or killed, not including the perpetrator.
According to CNN, classified documents have been found at the residence of former vice president Mike Pence. According to the story, the documents have been turned over to the FBI. NOTE: In an interview with CBS News around two weeks ago, Mike Pence said he was "confident" no classified materials were taken when he left the White House in January 2021.
January 23, 2023 - According to Politico, some in the GOP are pondering doing to Democrats what they say Democrats did to them during Trump's term. From the story: "They're pondering aggressive uses of subpoenas, hearings and contempt citations to tar the Biden administration ahead of the 2024 election, all modeled on the January 6 select committee that held tightly scripted, closely watched hearings throughout last year. 'They've almost changed the rules ... [Are] we going to continue that pattern? Look, we want to get as much information as we can get, and they've written a new playbook, so we'll have to talk about it as a committee and as a conference,' James Comer, Republican chair of the House oversight committee, said in an interview with Politico. Or as Oklahoma Republican Tom Cole put it: 'Turnabout is fair play, and they were warned this at the time – on everything from kicking members off committees ... two impeachment efforts, everything else.' But to some Republicans, the idea of a January 6-style inquiry into Biden's misdeeds – perhaps the 'weaponization of the federal government' the House GOP says it will investigate – is risky and counterproductive. 'If we get into a tit for tat — I don't think that will serve Republicans, Congress or the American people well,' North Dakota's Kelly Armstrong said in the piece, which also notes that Democrats involved in the January 6 committee are skeptical that its tactics can be effectively replicated by the GOP."
According to the Guardian, more than 100 laws targeting LGBTQ+ communities have been filed across the US. From the story: "Several anti-LGBTQ+ laws are being passed or proposed across the US as political attacks against the communities continue. In North Dakota, conservative lawmakers have introduced at least eight laws targeting LGBTQ+ communities, many of which target transgender people. One bill, rejected on Friday, mandated people affiliated with schools or institutions receiving public funding having to pay a $1,500 fine for using gender pronouns other than those assigned at birth for themselves or others, the Grand Forks Herald reported. Many in the state's senate judiciary committee that voted down the bill noted that they agreed with the bill's intention to limit transgender rights, but they felt that the bill was poorly written and difficult to enforce, according to ABC News. Christina Sambor of the North Dakota Human Rights Coalition testified against the bill on Wednesday, noting that 'its very purpose is gender-based discrimination' ... In a separate proposal, Republican lawmakers introduced a bill to ban 'sexually explicit' materials from libraries, with possible jail time for librarians that do not comply. Under house bill 1205, public libraries could no longer provide books on a range of topics, including any on 'sexual identity', and/or 'gender identity', the LGBTQ+ magazine Them reported. North Dakota has long been problematic to LGBTQ+ communities ... bills have targeted almost all aspects of life, ranging from sports to healthcare to education. Texas has filed the most anti-LGBTQ+ laws, a total of 36. Missouri has introduced or passed 26 bills, followed by North Dakota, and Oklahoma with six. Several states have attempted to limit gender-affirmative healthcare options for transgender people. West Virginia lawmakers advanced a bill last Thursday that would ban doctors from performing gender-affirmative surgery on transgender youth, a proposal that many in the medical community and advocates have decried as transphobic and unnecessary. In Mississippi, state house legislators passed a bill that bans physicians from administering gender-affirmative care to people under 18, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reported. Last year, Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, faced nationwide outrage after instructing the state's child protection services to investigate any parents providing their children with gender-affirming care, accusing them of 'abuse'. Florida has initiated a number of anti-LGBTQ+ laws since the passage of what has been coined as the 'Don't Say Gay' bill, which bans instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. That state's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has targeted gender-affirmative healthcare at Florida universities. The DeSantis administration issued a blanket request to 12 Florida universities, asking for information on the number of students diagnosed with gender dysphoria or receiving on-campus treatments, Politico reported. His office has not elaborated on what will be done with the collected data but noted that it was for 'governing institutional resources and protecting the public interest'. Republican lawmakers have also taken actions to crack down on drag shows. Lawmakers in at least eight states have taken steps to either restrict or ban drag shows, with at least 14 states introducing such bills. Drag show performances across the country have faced increasing violence from anti-drag protests. In December, an anti-drag protest with 500 participants targeted a public library in the Queens borough where drag queens were reading books to children, NBC News reported. Cities in Illinois and California reported protests, with participants shouting homophobic and transphobic slurs at drag queens participating in similar story times, according to the Associated Press."
Richard Barnett, the January 6 insurrectionist who was famously photographed with his feet on Nancy Pelosi's desk, has been found guilty of all charges against him, including felony obstruction, civil disorder and theft of government property.
Jacob Therres, one of the January 6 rioters, has pleaded guilty to assaulting/resisting police. Therres deployed chemical spray on the 6th, and also threw a 4x4 wooden plank that struck a police officer in the head.
Writing for the Guardian, David Smith offers the following analysis of the GOP's embrace of George Santos: "'He didn't just steal from a service dog. He didn't just steal from a dying service dog. He stole from a disabled homeless veteran's dying service dog. Oh my God. You evil and stupid!' That was how Leslie Jones, guest host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show, summed up just one of this week's revelations about US congressman George Santos, whose shameless fabulism has stunned Washington, a capital that thought it had smelt every flavour of mendacity from politicians. 'What does this man have to do get thrown out of Congress?' Jones asked, echoing the thoughts of many. 'He's a fucking liar.' Yet the answer is that, far from being expelled from the House of Representatives, Santos, 34, was rewarded with assignments on two of its committees. The vote of confidence appeared to be an expedient calculation by the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, aware Republicans have such a slim majority that even losing one seat would make it much harder to pass legislation. But it was also a decision, critics said, that showed the party of Abraham Lincoln and Dwight Eisenhower has lost its moral compass. Stuart Stevens, a political consultant and author of It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump, said: 'Santos is a perfect example of the collapse of the Republican party. It shows that the party stands for nothing. It seems like a million years ago but there was a time when we said character was destiny. Nobody even knows who this guy is. We literally don't know his real name.'"
Ed Vallejo, Roberto Minuta, Joseph Hackett and David Moerschel, all members of the rightwing extremist group the Oath Keepers, have been found guilty of seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct Congress and conspiracy to destroy federal property.
January 20, 2023 - Writing for the Guardian, Hugo Lowell offers the following analysis of the conclusion of one of Trump's many lawsuits: "A federal judge has ordered Donald Trump and one of his attorneys to jointly pay nearly $1m in penalties for pursuing a frivolous lawsuit that accused Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and other perceived enemies of the former president of engaging in racketeering and concocting a vast conspiracy against him. The suit was dismissed in September and Trump was ordered to pay tens of thousands in November after one defendant sought sanctions. The latest order came after a group of the remaining defendants, including Clinton, filed a separate request for sanctions. The end of the lawsuit marks the latest legal setback for Trump as he grapples with an array of civil and criminal investigations, including the probe into his retention of sensitive documents, while some of his lawyers are under scrutiny themselves for conduct in those cases." NOTE: Following this decision, Donald Trump withdrew a lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James, which was being overseen by Donald Middlebrooks, the same US district judge that imposed the $1m penalty in the Hillary Clinton case. Middlebrooks had written in December of the James lawsuit: "This litigation has all the telltale signs of being both vexatious and frivolous."
Robert Hinkle, a district judge in Florida, ruled that Ron DeSantis broke the law when he suspended Andrew Warren, a Hillsborough county state attorney, after Warren said he wouldn't enforce Florida's 15-week abortion ban. According to judge Hinkle, Warren had every right as a state attorney to "exercise prosecutorial discretion at every stage of every case". Hinkle went on to say "The governor violated the first amendment by considering Mr Warren's speech on matters of public concern as motivating factors in the decision to suspend him. The governor [also] violated the first amendment by considering Mr Warren's association with the Democratic party."
Members of Patriot Front, a white nationalist group, were present at the March for Life rally in Washington DC today where they handed out flyers about the "restoration of the American family".
January 19, 2023 - Donald Trump posted the following on his Truth social network: "Making a big political speech today at TRUMP DORAL, in Miami. The Fake News says I am not campaigning very hard. I say they are stupid and corrupt, with the Election still a long time away. But do not fear, MANY GIANT RALLIES and other events coming up soon. It will all be wild and exciting. We will save our Country from DOOM and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"
Writing for the Guardian, Martin Pengelly offers the following analysis of excerpts of Trump's deposition in the E Jean Carroll defamation case: "Donald Trump mistook E Jean Carroll, the writer who accuses him of rape, for his ex-wife Marla Maples during a deposition in the case last year, excerpts released in US district court on Wednesday showed. 'That's Marla, yeah,' Trump said, when shown a photograph. 'That's my wife.' The mistake was corrected by a lawyer for the 76-year-old former president. But observers said it could undermine Trump's claim he could not have attacked Carroll because she is not his 'type'. It was not the first release of excerpts from Trump's deposition, which happened in October. Last week, Trump was shown to have claimed Carroll 'said it was very sexy to be raped'. Carroll says Trump raped her in a department store changing room in the mid-1990s. Trump denies it."
Eula Rochard, a 58-year-old Brazilian drag queen, claims she befriended Santos when he was cross-dressing in 2005 at the first Pride parade in Niteroi, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro. Santos has denied the claim, saying the media "continues to make outrageous claims about my life".
January 18, 2023 - Writing for the Guardian, Martin Pengelly offers the following analysis of some consequences of the GOP's renewed control of the House: "Two far-right members of Congress whose threatening behavior prompted their removal from committees when Democrats controlled the US House were given assignments on Tuesday by the new Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia will sit on the House homeland security committee and the oversight committee. Paul Gosar of Arizona was named to oversight and natural resources. Democrats removed Greene from committees in February 2021, citing incendiary behavior including advocating the assassination of opponents and voicing support for QAnon and other conspiracy theories, including bizarre claims about 9/11 and the Parkland school shooting. Eleven Republicans supported Greene's removal but despite being condemned by party leaders for speaking at a white supremacist conference last February, the Georgia congresswoman has since become close to McCarthy."
Writing for the Guardian, Martin Pengelly offers the following commentary on committee assignments for admitted liar George Santos: "The chairman of one of two House committees on which George Santos will sit defended the decision, despite the New York Republican's résumé having been shown to be largely made-up and amid allegations of deceitful and criminal behavior now including bilking a disabled veteran out of $3,000 raised to save the life of his dog. Roger Williams of Texas, chair of the small business committee, told CNN: 'I don't condone what he said, what he's done. I don't think anybody does. But that's not my role. He was elected.' Santos is also reportedly set to sit on the science, space and technology committee. CNN said requests for seats on panels dealing with the financial sector and foreign policy were rebuffed. Santos won election in New York's third district in November. Since then, he has been the subject of relentless media scrutiny, calls to resign from his own party and from Democrats, and multiple calls for investigations of his campaign finances."
Ian Sams, a White House spokesman, responded to news that Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Scott Perry and Lauren Boebert have all been appointed to serve on the House committee overseeing investigations saying: "[I]t appears that House Republicans may be setting the stage for divorced-from-reality political stunts, instead of engaging in bipartisan work on behalf of the American people."
Donald Trump posted to his Truth social network regarding classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago. Among the claims: "The Fake News Media & Crooked Democrats (That's been proven!) keep saying I had a 'large number of documents' in order to make the Biden Classified Docs look less significant. When I was in the Oval Office, or elsewhere, & 'papers' were distributed to groups of people & me, they would often be in a striped paper folder with 'Classified' or 'Confidential' or another word on them. When the session was over, they would collect the paper(s), but not the folders, & I saved hundreds of them. Remember, these were just ordinary, inexpensive folders with various words printed on them, but they were a 'cool' keepsake ... the Gestapo" may have construed these as classified documents ... "Trump Hating Marxist Thugs" would "plant" classified materials ... "I did NOTHING WRONG. JOE DID!"
Matt Schlapp, a prominent conservative activist, has been accused by a male staffer of failed Senate candidate Herschel Walker, of groping him during a car ride in Georgia. The battery and defamation lawsuit seeks more than $9m in damages. In the suit, the staffer accuses Schlapp of "aggressively fondling" the staffer's "genital area in a sustained fashion" while the staffer drove Schlapp back to his hotel from a bar in October.
According to the New York Times, George Santos claim that his mother was in the World Trade Center during the 9/11 terrorist attacks was found to be false based on immigration records.
January 17, 2023 - Writing for the Guardian, Peter Stone offers the following analysis of the GOP and their ability to govern in the House: "The deals struck between the new House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, and almost 20 members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus are already emboldening the most conservative figures in the Republican party with moves set to give the caucus considerable power in the months ahead. In order to secure the speakership McCarthy was forced into a humiliating series of defeats before his deal-making and concessions finally offered enough to bring rebel members of the Freedom Caucus onboard. Now in McCarthy's first days as speaker, the roughly 40-member Freedom Caucus has already scored big. Several caucus members landed plum seats on rules and appropriations panels, had a role in creating a new panel to launch a far-flung investigation of the Department of Justice (DoJ) and other agencies conservatives argue are 'weaponized' against them, and stand to benefit from the gutting of House ethics oversight."
Daniel Goldman, the lead prosecutor when the House impeached Donald Trump in 2019, was asked by Punchbowl News about the investigations opened by House Republicans. His response: "The American people do not care about Hunter Biden's laptop ... And what we're going to see, as they have foreshadowed, is excessively overreaching partisan investigations that are solely designed to hurt President Biden's reelection chances in 2024. They have determined the narrative and what they will now try to do is find an investigation that can match the narrative. And what we Democrats can do is continue to point out the fact that they are doing nothing for the people while focusing on politicized investigations that have no merit."
Writing for the Guardian, Kira Lerner offers the following analysis of Republican priorities in state legislatures nationwide: "Republican lawmakers across the country have already filed dozens of bills that would restrict voting, including proposals in Texas that would increase criminal penalties on people who violate voting laws and enact a new law enforcement unit to prosecute election crimes. The 2023 legislative session comes in the wake of an election that was described by many voting rights advocates as a triumph of democracy, despite the restrictive voting laws that were in place in 20 states for the first time last year. Before this session, at least 26 states enacted, expanded, or increased the severity of 120 election-related criminal penalties. This year, Republican-controlled legislatures plan to continue pressing for laws that they say would help prevent widespread voter fraud, a problem that voting advocates say does not exist but nonetheless continues to be alleged by Donald Trump and his allies. Several pre-filed bills would further criminalize voters and election officials, a trend that has been occurring across the US in the past few years."
The following exchange took place over twitter:
"Why was President Trump's home raided but not President Biden's? Why did the FBI take pictures of President Trump's so-called classified documents but not President Biden's? Americans are tired of the double standard." - Jim Jordan, Republican Representative
"1) because Trump obstructed justice by failing to comply with a subpoena. Biden volunteered all docs. 2) It's standard procedure for the FBI to photograph everything they find during a search warrant. In the future, feel free to reach out to me directly with your questions. And before you 'investigate the FBI' to obstruct their investigations onto you and others, you might want to brush up on the FBI Manual of Investigative Operations and Guidelines (MIOG) so you don't ask any more dumb questions." - Daniel Goldman, Democratic Representative
January 16, 2023 - Solomon Pena, a former Republican candidate for state representative in New Mexico, who lost the election by roughly 3,600 votes, has been arrested for being the "mastermind" of a series of drive-by shootings at the homes of Democratic lawmakers. Pena had claimed publicly without offering any evidence that the election was "rigged" against him. Pena apparently recruited four other individuals to help him do the shootings. According to Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller "This type of radicalism is a threat to our nation and has made its way to our doorstep right here in Albuquerque."
January 13, 2023 - The Trump Organization has been ordered to pay $1.6m in penalties for 17 felony crimes related to tax charges.
Notable response to the sentence against the Trump Organization:
"Today, former President Trump's companies were sentenced to the maximum fines allowed by law following historic convictions for a total of 17 felony crimes. Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, The Trump Corporation, and The Trump Payroll Corp. conducted and benefitted from sweeping fraud for well over a decade. While corporations can't serve jail time, this consequential conviction and sentencing serves as a reminder to corporations and executives that you cannot defraud tax authorities and get away with it. It is also an important reminder that our state law must change so that we can impose more significant penalties and sanctions on corporations that commit crimes in New York." - Alvin Bragg, Manhattan District Attorney
Writing for the Guardian, Ed Pilkington offers the following analysis of money being spent by rightwing groups to chill ballot box access: "The advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation, the powerful conservative thinktank based in Washington, spent more than $5m on lobbying in 2021 as it worked to block federal voting rights legislation and advance an ambitious plan to spread its far-right agenda calling for aggressive voter suppression measures in battleground states. Previously unreported 2021 tax filings from Heritage Action for America, which operates as the foundation's activist wing, shows that it spent $5.1m on contracting outside lobbying services. The outlay comes on top of $560,000 the group invested in its own in-house federal lobbying efforts that year, as well as registered lobbying by Heritage Action staffers in at least 24 states. The 990 tax filing was obtained by the watchdog group Documented and shared with the Guardian. It points to the pivotal role that Heritage Action is increasingly playing in shaping the rules that govern US democracy."
January 12, 2023 - Writing for the Guardian, Sam Levine offers the following analysis of two men who were caught up in Ron DeSantis's crackdown against people accused of voting illegally: "Heavily armed Florida police officers descended on the homes of two men accused of illegally voting and arrested one of them at gunpoint as part of Ron DeSantis’s crackdown on voter fraud, new body-camera footage obtained by the Guardian can reveal. Both men were in their underwear, unarmed, and placed in handcuffs as police arrested them in front of their Miami-Dade county homes on 18 August. 'Let me put on my pants,' Ronald Miller, 58, said shortly before noon, when he opened the door to find police officers surrounding his home, their guns pointed at him. 'What happened?' he asked as officers instructed him to come outside, their guns still trained on him. As they placed him in handcuffs, agents noted that Robert Wood had taken a long time to answer the door when they knocked on it. 'I was asleep,' he said." NOTE: A judge later dismissed charges against both men.
The New York Times published an in depth look at Hunter Biden, and the Republican efforts to investigate him. From the article: "Despite their years of efforts — including Mr. Trump's attempt to muscle Ukraine into helping him sully the Bidens, an escapade that led to his first impeachment — Republicans have yet to demonstrate that the senior Mr. Biden was involved in his son's business deals or took any action to benefit him or his foreign partners. And some of what Republicans have cast as evidence that could implicate President Biden in questionable behavior by his son — assertions that father and son shared bank accounts, for example, or that the elder Mr. Biden was a partner with his son in his stillborn deal with the Chinese tycoon — is contradicted or undercut by a fuller look at Hunter Biden's activities. An examination by The New York Times of Mr. Weiss's investigation and Hunter Biden's journey to this juncture does not provide either side with the narrative they would prefer. It highlights how he aligned himself with foreign actors eager to leverage their connections to him to further their own interests. But it also underscores how far removed the most likely legal charges against him are from the issues most aggressively promoted by Republicans — and how his father's opponents have often twisted or exaggerated the story of his descent to score political points."
Hakeem Jeffries, a Democratic leader in the House, was asked about newly elected representative George Santos. His response: "It's clear to me that George Santos is not fit to serve in the United States Congress ... He's a complete and total fraud. He lied to the voters of the third congressional district in New York. He deceived and connived his way into Congress, and is now the responsibility of House Republicans to do something about it. This is not a partisan issue, but it is an issue that Republicans need to handle. Clean up your house. You can start with George Santos."
Enrique Tariro, Ethan Nordean, Joe Biggs, Zacahry Rehl, and Dominic Pezzola, all members of the Proud Boys militia group, go on trial today for seditious conspiracy charges related to the January 6 insurrection.
Merrick Garland, the attorney general, has appointed Robert Hur, as special counsel, to handle the inquiry into classified documents found at Joe Biden's properties. NOTE: Hur served as US attorney for Maryland from 2018 to 2021. He was nominated to that role by Donald Trump.
George Santos, the Republican representative who made up big parts of his resume', and has admitted doing just that, said today that he would resign if the 142,000 people who voted for him asked him to do so.
James Comer, the Republican House oversight committee chair, announced he will be opening an investigation into the classified documents found at Joe Biden's home and former office.
January 11, 2023 - According to NBC, a second batch of classified materials has been found at a second location linked to Joe Biden. The documents have been turned over to the justice department.
January 10, 2023 - Writing for the Guardian, Hugo Lowell offers the following analysis of efforts by House Republicans to defang the independent body that could have investigated its lawmakers: "House Republicans moved to pre-emptively kill any investigations against its members as it curtailed the power of an independent ethics office just as it was weighing whether to open inquiries into lawmakers who defied subpoenas issued by the House January 6 select committee last year. The incoming Republican majority also paved the way for a new special subcommittee with a wide mandate to investigate the US justice department and intelligence agencies, which could include reviewing the criminal investigations into Donald Trump and a Republican congressman caught up in the Capitol attack inquiry. The measures took effect as House Republicans narrowly passed the new rules package that included the changes for the next Congress, 220-213, setting the stage for politically charged fights with the Biden administration over access to classified materials and details of criminal investigations."
Pete Aguilar, a House Democrat, responded to comparisons between classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago, and one of Biden's offices. Aguilar responded: "Republican hypocrisy at its finest. What President Biden did is ... exactly the way that you should handle this." NOTE: The White House Counsel's Office notified the National Archives and Records Administration of the existence of the documents the day they were discovered, which was November 2nd.
Mike Pence responded to news of classified materials being found at a Biden office calling it a "double standard" and saying: "It's just incredibly frustrating to me. But the original sin here was the massive overreach".
Allen Weisselberg, the former Trump organization CFO, was sentenced today to five months in jail for accepting $1.7m in job perks without paying tax. As part of a plea agreement, Weisselberg plead guilty to 15 tax crimes and also testified against the Trump Organization.
January 9, 2023 - According to CBS News, classified documents have been discovered at the Penn Biden Center, Biden's think-tank office.
Martha MacCallum, a Fox News anchor, took issue with the limited time packaging of M&M candies which features only female characters to honor women in commemoration of International Women's Day in an ad campaign called "flipping the status quo." According to MacCallum: "I mean, if this is what you need for validation – an M&M that is the color that you think is associated with feminism – then I'm worried about you. I think that makes China say, 'Oh, good, keep focusing on that. Keep focusing on giving people their own color M&Ms while we take over all of the mineral deposits in the entire world'."
According to the Advocate, Sam Miele, an employee of George Santos who was hired to raise money for Santos' House campaign, posed as Dan Meyer, Kevin McCarthy's chief of staff, during phone calls to rich Republican donors to request money for the Santos campaign.
January 8, 2023 - Supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian president who lost the 2022 Brazilian general election, attacked Brazil's federal government buildings in the capital in an attempt to overthrow the democratically elected president Lula. NOTE: The coup attempt failed.
January 6, 2023 - Day 4 of voting for House speaker. After 4 ballots, Kevin McCarthy was elected speaker. The election took place on the 15th ballot, making this the longest speaker election since the December 1859 - February 1860 ballot.
January 5, 2023 - Day 3 of voting for House speaker. After 5 ballots, no speaker was elected.
January 4, 2023 - Day 2 of voting for House speaker. After 3 ballots, no speaker was elected.
January 3, 2023 - The process to elect a House Speaker today with Republicans in the majority. After 3 ballots, no speaker was elected.
January 2, 2023 - According to the New York Times, Brazillian authorities have reopened a fraud case against newly elected Republican representative George Santos. According to the story: "Just a month before his 20th birthday, Mr. Santos entered a small clothing store in the Brazilian city of Niteroi outside Rio de Janeiro. He spent nearly $700 using a stolen checkbook and a false name, court records show. Mr. Santos admitted the fraud to the shop owner in August 2009, writing on Orkut, a popular social media website in Brazil, 'I know I screwed up, but I want to pay.' In 2010, he and his mother told the police that he had stolen the checkbook of a man his mother used to work for, and used it to make fraudulent purchases."
December 30, 2022 - According to testimony released by the January 6 committee, when asked where Kayleigh McEnany "fell" after the 2020 election. Alyssa Farah Griffin, Trump's former communications director, responded: "I'm a Christian woman ... so I will say this. Kayleigh is a liar and an opportunist ... She knew we lost the election, but she made a calculation that she wanted to have a certain life post-Trump that required staying in his good graces. And that was more important to her than telling the truth to the American public."
According to an interview released by the January 6 committee, Ray Epps, a Trump supporter who participated in the January 6 insurrection, recounted to the committee how he was targeted by Trump supporters after Republican representatives spread conspiracy theories about him. Epps said he began receiving death threats, and his grandchildren were bullied at school. The Republican representatives Epps identified: Kentucky's Thomas Massie, Florida's Matt Gaetz and Georgia's Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The Democratic lead House Ways and Means committee released six years of Donald Trump's tax returns. Some of the findings:
- Trump and Melania did not pay any federal income tax in 2020.
- The Internal Revenue Service failed to carry out mandatory audits of Trump during his first two years as president.
Don Beyer, a Democratic representative from Virginia, who sits on the House Ways and Means committee, had the following to say about the release of Trump's tax returns: "Despite promising to release his tax returns, Donald Trump refused to do so, and abused the power of his office to block basic transparency on his finances and conflict of interest which no president since Nixon has foregone. Trump acted as though he had something to hide, a pattern consistent with the recent conviction of his family business for criminal tax fraud. As the public will now be able to see, Trump used questionable or poorly substantiated deductions and a number of other tax avoidance schemes as justification to pay little or no federal income tax in several of the years examined."
Donald Trump reacted to the release of his tax returns saying: "The Democrats should have never done it, the supreme court should have never approved it, and it's going to lead to horrible things for so many people. The great USA divide will now grow far worse. The radical, left Democrats have weaponized everything, but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street! The 'Trump' tax returns once again show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises."
Kevin Brady, the Republican leader of the House Ways and Means committee, responded to the release of Trump's tax returns saying: "With the publicly released transcript of Democrats’ secret executive session, Americans now have confirmation that there was never a legislative purpose behind the public release of these confidential records and that the IRS was conducting audits prior to Democrats' request. Despite these facts, Democrats have charged forward with an unprecedented decision to unleash a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond the former president, overturning decades of privacy protections for average Americans that have existed since Watergate. Going forward, all future Chairs of both the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee will have nearly unlimited power to target and make public the tax returns of private citizens, political enemies, business and labor leaders or even the Supreme Court justices themselves. This is a regrettable stain on the Ways and Means Committee and Congress, and will make American politics even more divisive and disheartening. In the long run, Democrats will come to regret it."
According to information in Trump's tax returns, while he was president, Trump had overseas bank accounts in the UK, Ireland, China and Saint Martin. In 2020, Trump paid nearly $200,000 in taxes to China. Trump has previously accused Joe Biden of being "weak on China" and claimed the Biden family was "selling out our country" to China.
Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, who lost to Katie Hobbs by about 17,000 votes, is appealing a ruling by Peter Thompson, a superior court judge in Maricopa county, in which Lake was found to have failed to prove there was intentional misconduct that cost her the race. Thompson wrote in his ruling that "The court cannot accept speculation or conjecture in place of clear and convincing evidence." Lake is also appealing an order to pay Hobbs around $33,000 to cover some legal costs.
Lloyd Doggett, a Democratic representative from Texas, responded to the release of Trump's tax returns saying: "I think it's really outrageous ... both with regard to Trump personally and with regard to Trump's Internal Revenue Service administration. Here is the most powerful man in the world, the self-described clever genius who brags of his wealth almost daily and he did not pay taxes that the most modest wage earner in this country would pay. Nothing in one year, $75 dollars a year and others, all of this related to claims for big losses, big deductions, big credits, taking advantage of every loophole and because of the sorry job that Trump's IRS did, we don't know how many of these were legal loopholes, for the rich and how many of them were unjust and illegal. Americans should be outraged by that."
According to Trump's tax returns, Trump reported $0 in charitable giving in 2020. NOTE: Trump pledged that he would forgo his $400,000 salary if he became president.
December 22, 2022 - Tucker Carlson, an extremist rightwing host on Fox News, responded to Volodymyr Zelenskiy's historic address to congress saying: "The president of Ukraine arrived at the White House, dressed like the manager of a strip club and started to demand money. Amazingly, no one threw him out. Instead, they did whatever he wanted". NOTE: During Zelenskiy's speech, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, and Matt Gaetz of Florida, two Republican extremists, remained seated as others sprang to their feet in applause.
Notable response to Boebert and Gaetz cold reception and Tucker Carlson's commentary:
"Tucker Carlson, Lauren Boebert, and Matt Gaetz stand with [Russian president Vladimir] Putin; most of America stands with Zelenskiy and the people of Ukraine. The contrast between the far right and most of America has never been more glaring" - Ritchie Torres, Democratic Congressman from New York
George Santos, a Republican who was recently elected to the US House of Representatives, has come under scrutiny after news surfaced that he lied to his constituents about his background. During his campaign, Santos claimed that his grandfather escaped the Holocaust; that he had worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs; that he had graduated from Baruch College; and that he ran a non-profit, tax-exempt pet rescue group. All of these claims were found to be false. Santos responded to the scrutiny tweeting: "To the people of #NY03 I have my story to tell and it will be told next week. I want to assure everyone that I will address your questions and that I remain committed to deliver the results I campaigned on; Public safety, Inflation, Education & more. Happy Holidays to all!"
December 21, 2022 - According to the AP, the IRS failed to conduct mandatory audits on Trump during his first two years in office. From the story: "The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) failed to pursue mandatory audits of Donald Trump on a timely basis during his presidency, a congressional committee found on Tuesday, raising questions about statements by the former president and members of his administration who claimed he could not release his tax filings because of such ongoing reviews."
According to Politico, Donald Trump wrote a "shockingly gracious" letter to Joe Biden before he left office. NOTE: Biden has not shared the contents of the letter.
Jared Smith, a former Hillsborough county circuit judge in Florida, who denied a 17-year-old girl access to an abortion because he said her grades were too low and that she lacked the maturity to make the decision herself, and who received a formal rebuke for "abuse of judicial discretion" for that decision, and who was dumped by voters after the controversial decision, has been rewarded with a seat on the newly created 6th district court by Florida governor Ron DeSantis.
Writing for the Guardian, Michael Harriott provides an analysis of the rightwing "war on woke". From the story: "Having vanquished the manufactured menaces of vaccine mandates, the gay agenda and widespread election fraud, Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis, used his midterm election victory speech to position himself as a wartime leader. Now, he was preparing his constituents for the existential battle posed by their newest imaginary adversary: wokeness. In Churchillian tones, he announced: 'We fight the woke in the legislature. We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die.' DeSantis was summoning the resentment that produced the racial terrorism of Reconstruction, the pro-lynching Red Summer of 1919, and the pro-segregation states' rights movement. This time, it was called anti-woke: a modern-day mixture of McCarthyism and white grievance. In 2021, the right became increasingly irate at what it described as 'wokeness' but which tended to mean any attempt to engage in civil rights or social justice. In 2022, anti-woke became an ideology in itself, an attempt for the right to rebrand bigotry as a resistance movement."
According to the AP, the January 6 select committee will soon be releasing an 800 page report. From the story: "An 800-page report set to be released by House investigators as soon as Wednesday will conclude that then-President Donald Trump criminally plotted to overturn his 2020 election defeat and 'provoked his supporters to violence' at the Capitol with false claims of widespread voter fraud. The resulting January 6 insurrection of Trump's followers threatened democracy with 'horrific' brutality toward law enforcement and 'put the lives of American lawmakers at risk,' according to the report's executive summary. 'The central cause of January 6th was one man, former president Donald Trump, who many others followed,' reads the report from the House January 6 committee. 'None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him'."
Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the president of Ukraine, addressed a joint session of congress. This was Zelenskiy's first trip outside Ukraine since the Russian invasion. Zelenskiy wanted to thank Joe Biden, Congress, and the American people for their support.
December 20, 2022 - The Democratically controlled House ways and means committee voted to publicly release Donald Trump's tax returns. NOTE: Pulitzer prize-winning articles from the Times in 2018 showed that Trump received a modern equivalent of at least $413m from his father's real estate holdings, with significant amounts coming from "tax dodges" in the 1990s. The articles also showed that Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2107 and 2018 and that Trump paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the past 15 years because he lost more money than he made.
Donald Trump reacted to the decision to release his tax returns saying: "There is no legitimate legislative purpose for their action. And if you look at what they've done, it's so sad for our country. It's nothing but another deranged political witch hunt which has been going on from the day I came down an escalator in Trump Tower."
December 19, 2022 - According to the Guardian, the January 6 committee recommends four criminal charges against Donald Trump. From the story: "The January 6 committee has referred Donald Trump to the justice department to face criminal charges, accusing the former president of fomenting an insurrection and conspiring against the government over his attempt to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election, and the bloody attack on the US Capitol. The committee's referrals approved by its members on Monday are the first time in American history that Congress has recommended charges against a former president. They come after 18 months of investigation by the bipartisan House of Representatives panel tasked with understanding Trump's plot to stop Joe Biden from taking office."
Statement in the criminal referral of Donald Trump by the January 6 commission: "Let us take stock of this astonishing moment. For the first time in American history, a congressional committee has recommended that a former president be criminally prosecuted – and not just for any crimes. The chief crimes at the heart of the referral – inciting insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and obstructing an official act of Congress – involve nothing short of an elaborate effort to frustrate and upend the peaceful transfer of presidential power, the bedrock of our constitutional democracy."
December 16, 2022 - Douglas Jensen, an Iowa construction worker, and QAnon follower, was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in the January 6 insurrection.
December 15, 2022 - Donald Trump, the twice impeached insurrection inciting former president declared that he had a major announcement to make, and when he made the announcement, it was to introduce a series of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of him dressed in a variety of "hero" outfits, for $99 each.
Notable reaction to Trump's NFTs:
"Just when you thought this grifter couldn't humiliate himself any more than he already has, there's this. THIS is what the big announcement was." - John Kiriakou
Pete Musico and Joe Morrison, two of the men involved in a plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, were sentenced today. Musico was given a minimum of 12 years, and Morrison, Musico's son-in-law, was given 10 years. Both men were members of a paramilitary group known as the Wolverine Watchmen.
Elon Musk, the owner and CEO of Twitter, and self described Free Speech Absolutist, suspended the accounts of prominent journalists from CNN, the Washington Post, Mashable and the New York Times. All of the journalists had recently written about Musk's suspension of a twitter account called ElonJet that had shared publicly available data about the movements of Musk's private jet. All of the articles highlighted the tension between Musk's commitment to "free speech" and his choice to ban an account that he personally didn't like.
Notable reactions to Musk suspending journalist accounts:
"Undermines Elon Musk's claim that he intends to run Twitter as a platform dedicated to free speech" - Washington Post Statement
"Serious violation of journalists' right to report news without fear of reprisal" - Committee to Protect Journalists
"The impulsive and unjustified suspension of a number of reporters, including CNN's Donie O'Sullivan, is concerning but not surprising. Twitter's increasing instability and volatility should be of incredible concern for everyone who uses the platform. We have asked Twitter for an explanation, and we will reevaluate our relationship based on that response" - CNN
"The move sets a dangerous precedent at a time when journalists all over the world are facing censorship, physical threats and even worse." - Stephen Dujarric, UN Spokesman
December 14, 2022 - Ralph Norman, a Republican congressman from South Carolina, was asked if he regretted a January 17, 2021 text message that he had sent to Mark Meadows, Trump's final chief of staff. The text message read: "Mark, in seeing what's happening so quickly, and reading about the Dominion law suits attempting to stop any meaningful investigation we are at a point of no return in saving our Republic !! Our LAST HOPE is invoking Marshall Law!! PLEASE URGE THE PRESIDENT TO DO SO!!" Norman's response: "Well, I misspelled 'martial".
The House oversight committee is holding a hearing today regarding the rise in anti-LGBTQ+ extremism. From the hearing:
- The Human Rights Campaign recorded a more than 400% rise in online hate talk, including branding LGBTQ+ people as "groomers" or "pedophiles" after Florida passed its infamous "Don't Say Gay" law that bans discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in many classrooms.
- Speaking about the current wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation sweeping across the country, committee chair Carolyn Maloney stated: "These actions are the culmination of years of anti LGBTQ extremism that began in state houses across the country and spread to social media, boiling over into the communities where we reside. In 2018, Republicans and state governments across the country introduced 110 pieces of legislation targeting the health and safety of LGBTQI people. In the past legislative session, this number tripled, to more than 340 pieces of anti LGBTQI legislation. These bills villainized LGBTQI+ people in classroom settings, and targeted health care for LGBTQI people, and more directly threaten the freedom of LGBTQI people to live authentically and safely ... This rhetoric gets amplified on social media, where hate gets organized into action. Facebook too often refuses to act on the content that spreads lies. On Twitter new Media Matters data shows the malicious, defamatory slurs and rumors increased over 1200% from nine accounts since Elon Musk took over. This behavior is all exacerbated when bad actors have easy access to assault weapons."
- James Comer, the Republican ranking member responded to Carolyn Maloney saying: "Democrats are using committee time and resources today to blame Republicans for this horrendous crime. This is not an oversight hearing. This is a 'blame Republicans so we don't have to take responsibility for our own defund the police and soft-on-crime policies'". NOTE: Comer did not cite any policies.
- Kelley Robinson, the president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) spoke of the surge in hate-related killings: "Over the last 10 years, the campaign has tracked over 300 incidents of fatal violence against transgender and gender non-conforming people. In 2022 so far, we've recorded the murder of 35 people. It's fueled by nearly unfettered access to guns, political extremism and rhetoric that is deliberately devised to make our community less safe, less equal, and less free. Violence has become a lived reality for so many in our community."
December 13, 2022 - President Joe Biden signed into law the Respect for Marriage Act. The new law requires that interracial marriage and same sex marriage be recognized in every state in the nation.
The U.S. House of Representatives voted to remove from the Capitol a bust of Roger Taney. Taney was the supreme court justice who wrote the Dred Scott decision in 1857 where he stated that Black people "had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit". NOTE: If the new measure is signed into law by Joe Biden, the bust will be removed from outside the old supreme court chamber and be replaced by a bust of Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice.
December 12, 2022 - Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointed federal judge that appointed a special master in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, has officially dismissed the special master following a ruling by the 11th Circuit that she lacked jurisdiction to appoint one.
Speaking to a gala of the New York Young Republicans Club on Park Avenue in Manhattan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right congresswoman, told the crowd: "January 6 happened, and next thing you know, I organized the whole thing, along with Steve Bannon here. And I will tell you something, if Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, it would've been armed. See that's the whole joke, isn't it? They say that whole thing was planned and I'm like, are you kidding me? A bunch of conservatives, second amendment supporters, went in the Capitol without guns, and they think that we organized that? I don't think so."
The supreme court has agreed to hear a challenge to a plan by Joe Biden to cancel as much as $20,000 in federal student loans.
According to the Hill, the last publicly owned Confederate monument in Richmond, VA, has come down. This was a statue of A.P. Hill, a Confederate general in the Northern Virginia army who was a trusted associate of Gen. Robert E. Lee.
According to the AP, Jack Smith, the special prosecutor handling the criminal probes of Donald Trump, has issued a subpoena to Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state in Georgia. From the story: "The special counsel is seeking 'any and all communications in any form' between June 1, 2020, and Jan. 20, 2021, 'to, from or involving' Trump, his campaign, lawyers and aides, including former campaign officials such as Bill Stepien and Justin Clark and lawyers John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, L. Lin Wood, Sidney Powell and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, according to the subpoena, which was obtained by The Associated Press. Efforts by Trump and his associates to reverse his loss in Georgia are currently the subject of a separate investigation led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in Atlanta. A special grand jury seated to aid that investigation has heard from dozens of witnesses, including a number of high-profile Trump allies, over the past six months and is expected to wrap up its work soon. Among other things, Willis is investigating the Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between Trump and Raffensperger. It was not immediately clear whether any counties in Georgia had also received subpoenas from the special counsel. In the weeks following the 2020 election, Trump focused in part on Fulton County, which includes most of the city of Atlanta, making unsupported allegations of election fraud. But the county had not received a subpoena by Monday morning, a spokesperson said."
Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and former chief executive of the crypto exchange FTX, was arrested in the Bahamas and charged by the US Securities and Exchange Commission with defrauding investors. From the SEC: "The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Samuel Bankman-Fried with orchestrating a scheme to defraud equity investors in FTX Trading Ltd, the crypto trading platform of which he was the CEO and co-founder. Investigations as to other securities law violations and into other entities and persons relating to the alleged misconduct are ongoing."
December 7, 2022 - Herschel Walker, the Trump backed candidate for one of Georgia's U.S. Senate seats, was declared the loser as his rival, Democrat senator Raphael Warnock became the first Black senator elected to a full term from Georgia. NOTE: Other high-profile candidates that lost despite getting Trump's endorsement:
Blake Masters, Republican Senate candidate in Arizona
Kari Lake, Republican candidate for governor of Arizona
Mehmet Oz, Republican senate candidate in Pennsylvania
Adam Laxalt, Republican senate candidate in Nevada
After it became clear that Walker was going to lose in Georgia, Trump posted the following on his Truth social network: "OUR COUNTRY IS IN BIG TROUBLE. WHAT A MESS!"
Notable responses to Walker's loss in Georgia:
"The outcome in Georgia is due primarily to Trump, who cast a long shadow over this race. His meddling and insistence that the 2020 election was stolen will deliver more losses. Trump remains a huge liability and the Democrat's best asset. It's time to disavow him and move on." - John Bolton, Donald Trump's Former National Security Adviser
"Don't beat women, hold guns to peoples [sic] heads, fund abortions then pretend your [sic] pro-life, stalk cheerleaders, leave your multiple minor children alone to chase more fame, lie, lie, lie, say stupid crap, and make a fool of your family, And then maybe you can win a senate seat." - Christian Walker, Herschel Walker's Son
"Trump has now lost 4 races in Georgia in two years. One of his own and 3 by proxy. Similar stories in AZ and PA. He has a swing-state problem for 2024 that is real. Again: those who win primaries, and lose general elections, are still losers." - Mick Mulvaney, Donald Trump's Former Acting White House Chief of Staff
According to the Washington Post, Trump hired an outside firm to search two of his properties for classified material. From the story: "The team also offered the FBI the opportunity to observe the search, but the offer was declined, the people said. It would be unusual for federal agents to monitor a search of someone's property conducted by anyone other than another law enforcement agency. Federal authorities have already searched Mar-a-Lago, Trump's primary residence, and he spends almost all of his time at those three properties, advisers say. Trump's lawyers have told the Justice Department that the outside team did not turn up any new classified information during their search, according to people familiar with the process, and have said they utilized a firm that had expertise in searching for documents. A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the FBI declined to comment. 'President Trump and his counsel continue to be cooperative and transparent,' Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said, accusing the Justice Department of committing an 'unprecedented' and 'unwarranted attack' against Trump and his family. Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell told Trump's legal team to continue to search for documents after the Justice Department expressed concerns that the team had not fully complied with a subpoena earlier this year. Howell, according to people familiar with the matter, did not give specific orders on how a search should be done. The group first conducted a search of Bedminster, and Trump's attorneys have now attested to the Justice Department that no further materials were found, two people familiar with the matter said."
According to the Washington Post, more classified material has been found in a storage unit at a Trump property. From the story: "The ultimate significance of the classified material in the storage unit is not immediately clear, but its presence there indicates Mar-a-Lago was not the only place where Trump kept classified material. It also provides further evidence that Trump and his team did not fully comply with a May grand jury subpoena that sought all documents marked classified still in possession of the post-presidential office. In addition to the storage unit, the team hired an outside firm to carry out the search of his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., and, more recently, Trump Tower in New York, according to people familiar with the matter. The outside team also searched at least one other property. The team also offered the FBI the opportunity to observe the search, but the offer was declined, the people said. It would be unusual for federal agents to monitor a search of someone’s property conducted by anyone other than another law enforcement agency. Trump’s lawyers have told the Justice Department that the outside team did not turn up any new classified information during their search of Bedminster and Trump Tower, according to people familiar with the process, and have said they utilized a firm that had expertise in searching for documents."
According to ABC News, Liz Crokin, a well known promoter of QAnon and "pizzagate" conspiracy theories, was seen at Mar-a-Lago. From the story: "Videos and photos posted to social media appear to show Liz Crokin, a prominent promoter of QAnon and pro-Trump conspiracies theories, speaking at an event at Mar-a-Lago and later posing for photos with Trump. In one photo, the duo make a 'thumbs up' sign together. According to social media posts, the event was billed as a fundraiser in support of a 'documentary' on sex trafficking -- one of the pillars of the QAnon conspiracy theory. The website for the film, which includes multiple falsehoods and claims of mass sex-trafficking in Hollywood, boasts that it is 'Banned by YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and PayPal.' Mar-a-Lago often hosts events for outside groups. 'You are incredible people, you are doing unbelievable work, and we just appreciate you being here and we hope you're going to be back,' Trump said in remarks to the crowd, according to a video of his speech. A representative for the Trump campaign did not respond to ABC News' request for comment."
December 3, 2022 - According to CNN, Donald Trump, the one term, twice impeached, insurrection inciting former president, has called for the US Constitution to be terminated to overturn the 2020 election.
December 2, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Hugo Lowell offers the following analysis of documents seized by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago: "A federal appeals court on Thursday terminated the special master review of documents seized from Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago property, paving the way for the justice department to regain access to the entirety of the materials for use in the criminal investigation surrounding the former president. The decision by the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit marked a decisive defeat for Trump in a ruling that said a lower-court judge should never have granted his request for an independent arbiter in the first place and is unlikely to be overturned in the event of appeal. 'The law is clear,' the appeals court wrote in an unanimous 23-page opinion. 'We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so.' The ruling removed the lower-court judge's order, allowing federal prosecutors to use the unclassified documents – in addition to the documents marked classified they previously regained in an earlier appeal – in the criminal investigation examining Trump's mishandling of national security materials. Trump can only appeal to the US supreme court, according to local rules in the 11th circuit, though it was not immediately clear whether he would do so. The former president has lost multiple cases before the supreme court, most recently including whether Congress can get access to his tax returns. In a statement, a Trump spokesman said: 'The decision does not address the merits that clearly demonstrate the impropriety of the unprecedented, illegal and unwarranted raid on Mar-a-Lago. President Donald J Trump will continue to fight against the weaponized Department of 'Justice.''"
According to the AP, Alex Jones, the rightwing conspiracy theorist and host of Infowars, has filed for bankruptcy. NOTE: Jones has been ordered to pay $473m in punitive damages on top of a nearly $1bn verdict handed down in October for claims he made about the 20212 Sandy Hook massacre, including claims that the massacre was faked.
Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, was suspended from twitter after posting an image that blends a swastika with a star of David. This followed an interview in which Ye praised Adolf Hitler and denied the Holocaust.
Joe Biden responded to news of Kanye West's tweets saying: "I just want to make things clear: The Holocaust happened. Hitler was a demonic figure. And instead of giving it a platform, our political leaders should be calling out and rejecting antisemitism wherever it hides. Silence is complicity."
Jimmy Paiz, a 42 year-old resident of Savannah, Georgia, was charged with aggravated assault and aggravated battery after he shot a 15 year-old who was canvassing for incumbent Democratic senator Raphael Warnock. Paiz shot the teenager through his front door after the teenager knocked on his door. The teenager was hit in the leg.
According to the AP, the Democratic National Committee's rule-making arm voted to remove Iowa as the leadoff state on the presidential nominating calendar and replace it with South Carolina beginning in 2024.
December 1, 2022 - Cheryl Parsa, a former girlfriend of Herschel Walker, came forward regarding her relationship with Walker, saying that in 2005 when she caught Walker with another woman, he "grew enraged, put his hands on her chest and neck, and swung his fist at her". Parsa added that she "fled in fear" as she "thought he was going to beat me". Parsa went on to describe Walker as "a pathological liar". Four other women have come forward with stories of "lying and infidelity - including one woman who claimed she had an affair with Walker while he was married in the 1990s".
November 29, 2022 - Kevin McCarthy, a GOP House leader, and candidate to become the next speaker, was asked about Donald Trump meeting with white supremacist Nick Fuentes. McCarthy responded "I don't think anybody should be spending time with Nick Fuentes, He has no place in this Republican Party". McCarthy also stated that Trump had condemned Fuentes four times, and also stated that Trump did not know who Fuentes was. Reporters responded that Trump has not condemned Fuentes, to which McCarthy shot back: "Well, I condemn."
Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, and Kelly Meggs, one of the groups members, were convicted of seditious conspiracy and evidence tampering for their role in the January 6th insurrection at the US Capitol.
Herschel Walker, the former NFL running back who is running for the US Senate in Georgia, has come under fire after it was revealed that he receives a tax break meant for Texas residents.
Nikema Williams, the Democratic Chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Georgia responded to news of Herschel Walker's Texas tax break saying: "The Georgia Bureau of Investigations and the Georgia Attorney General's office must immediately investigate whether Herschel Walker lied about being a Georgia resident. Georgians deserve answers, and Walker must be held accountable for his pattern of lies and disturbing conduct. This is yet another reminder that Walker lacks both the competence and character to be our U.S. Senator."
The Guardian's Ed Pilkington has a published a piece about the latest claims by several women that Herschel Walker pressured them into having an abortion. From the story: "The second woman to allege that she was pressured into having an abortion by Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee in Georgia's hotly contested US Senate race, on Tuesday presented previously unseen letters, audio recordings and pages of her personal diary that she said were evidence of their relationship, which he has denied. At a press conference in Los Angeles organized by her lawyer, Gloria Allred, the anonymous woman known only as Jane Doe came forward anew with a raft of fresh materials. She said she was doing so because when she first aired her allegations last month 'and told the truth, he denied that he knew that I existed'. The alleged new evidence of the relationship between the woman and the former college football star included a voicemail recording in which Walker was purported to say to her: 'This is your stud farm calling, you big sex puppy you'. Jane Doe also read out a letter which she said had been written by Walker to her parents. 'I do love your daughter and I'm not out to hurt her. She has been a strong backbone for me through all of this,' the letter said ..."
November 27, 2022 - The White House released a statement on the Trump Fuentes dinner. From the statement: "Bigotry, hate, and antisemitism have absolutely no place in America - including at Mar-a-Lago. Holocaust denial is repugnant and dangerous, and it must be forcefully condemned."
November 25, 2022 - According to Politico, on November 22nd, Donald Trump, the twice impeached former president who incited an insurrection at the US Capitol, had dinner with Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, and white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. NOTE: Fuentes, who attended the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville in 2017, has been removed from YouTube and other social media sites due to posting racist and antisemitic content. Trump tried to downplay the event by stating that the "dinner meeting was intended to be Kanye and me only, but he arrived with a guest whom I had never met and knew nothing about." Trump's statement did not include a denunciation of Fuente's commentary, or of Ye's recent antisemitic commentary. In a social media posting, Ye stated that Trump was "impressed by Fuentes" because "he's actually a loyalist".
Notable responses to Trump dining with Nick Fuentes:
"First @RepMTG and now, @realDonaldTrump hanging around with this anti-semitic, pro-Putin white supremacist. This isn't complicated. It's indefensible." - U.S. House Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wy)
"President Trump hosting racist antisemites for dinner encourages other racist antisemites. These attitudes are immoral and should not be entertained. This is not the Republican Party." - U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy
The former president "certainly needs better judgment in who he dines with" - U.S. House Representative James Comer (R-Ky)
"Looking for a single returning or new GOP House member who has condemned Trump for the Fuentes/Ye meeting. Anyone? Rank and file and leadership of course welcome. The wall to wall silence from the incoming majority is speaking volumes." - Representative Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.)
"To all those who profess to condemn antisemitism among our leaders, but are quiet when Holocaust denier/white supremacist Nick Fuentes and avowed antisemite Kanye West are welcomed to dinner by Donald Trump: your silence is deafening. Speak out now by name or don't speak at all." - Representative Elect Daniel Goldman (D-N.Y.)
November 22, 2022 - According to the Guardian, two of three judges hearing an appeal to the appointment of a special master in the classified documents case, have ruled that the Trump appointed judge, Aileen Cannon, "abused her discretion" in granting Trump a special master.
According to the AP, the supreme court will allow the House ways and means committee to receive Donald Trump's tax returns from the Treasury department.
November 21, 2022 - Elon Musk, the new owner of twitter, has followed through on his promise to re-instate Donald Trump's ability to send tweets. The reinstatement followed an online poll on twitter where 51.8% of the respondents said yes to the reinstatement. Musk then posted, "The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei." NOTE: Musk said he will not reinstate conspiracy theorist Alex Jones saying: "no mercy" for people who capitalise on the deaths of children for personal fame.
Brian L. Ott. a Missouri State University professor who has studied Trump's use of twitter, issued the following warning: "As someone who has been studying Mr. Trump's Twitter use since before he was elected president, I believe that his return would mean the heightened spread of both misinformation and disinformation, the proliferation of degrading and dehumanizing discourse, the further mainstreaming of hate speech and the erosion of democratic norms and institutions. But there is something else: Mr. Trump's return to Twitter could escalate the likelihood of political violence ... Given that our communication environment is structurally predisposed to heighten and cement our ever-growing political divide by telling us how right and righteous we are, one may reasonably wonder why I am concerned about one user in particular. First, a large number of people not only listen to Mr. Trump but also are inclined to take direction from him. Second, Mr. Trump combines divisiveness and dogmatism with hatred and angry rhetoric that risks inciting violence. For reasons better left to psychologists, Donald Trump is not content to forget or forgive people he perceives have wronged him. He wants to destroy them. So, he calls them out, often on social media, and then he goads his followers into doing something about it."
Neal Katyal, the former acting US solicitor, predicted that the appointment of a special counsel to handle criminal investigations into Donald Trump will lead to an indictment saying: "Mar-a-Lago is an 'open and shut investigation,' and 'at the end of the day, I expect that Donald Trump will be indicted by the Special Counsel'".
According to the New York Times, Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, is reinvigorating a criminal investigation into a payment made by Donald Trump to porn star Stormy Daniels. From the story: "Under Mr. Bragg's predecessor, the district attorney's office rejected the idea of focusing a case solely on the hush money, concluding, with the help of outside legal experts, that it would hinge on a largely untested and therefore risky legal theory. And if Mr. Bragg were to charge Mr. Trump without uncovering any new evidence or relying on a more conventional theory, he would risk having a judge or appellate court throw out the case. To help build the hush-money case, prosecutors are revisiting another strategy that has yet to work: pressuring a top Trump lieutenant, Allen H. Weisselberg, to cooperate. While Mr. Weisselberg has already pleaded guilty to unrelated tax charges and testified last week against Mr. Trump's company at its trial for the same tax crimes, he has not turned on Mr. Trump. To ramp up the pressure, the prosecutors are considering a new round of charges against Mr. Weisselberg in hopes of securing his cooperation against the former president, the people said. Those potential charges concern insurance fraud and are unrelated to the hush money. Mr. Weisselberg, who has direct knowledge of the hush-money payment, has long resisted the prosecutorial pressure campaign, repeatedly stymieing the investigation into Mr. Trump. There is little indication that the loyal executive, the former president's financial gatekeeper for decades, will suddenly give in to Mr. Bragg."
Donald Trump responded to the appointment of special counsel on his Truth social network saying: "The Polls are really strong, especially since Tuesday's announcement, hence the appointment of a Radical Left Prosecutor, who is totally controlled by President Obama and his former A.G., Eric Holder. This is not Justice, this is just another Witch Hunt, and a very dangerous one at that! No way this Scam should be allowed to go forward!"
Analysis done by Media Matters for America found that of of the 59 candidates interviewed by Steve Bannon on his show, 34, or 58% lost their races.
According to 12News, Liz Harris, a Republican who won a seat in the Arizona House of Representatives, made the following pledge: "Although I stand to win my Legislative District race it has become obvious that we need to hold a new election immediately. There are clear signs of foul play from machine malfunctions, chain of custody issues and just blatant mathematical impossibilities. How can a Republican State Treasurer receive more votes than a Republican Gubernatorial or Senate candidate?". NOTE: Republicans control the Arizona House by two votes.
Riley Williams, one of the rioters who breached Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office on January 6th, has been found guilty of participating in a civil disorder and of impeding the police.
Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has called on Republicans to tone down their rhetoric toward Congresswoman Ilhan Omar saying: "Islamophobia has no place in our country or our government. Ilhan is a dedicated Congresswoman and a powerful member of the USProgressives. But since the moment she arrived in Washington, the Republican Party has weaponized xenophobia and racism to undermine her voice."
November 19, 2022 - Merrick Garland, the US attorney general, has appointed Jack Smith as a special counsel to determine whether Donald Trump should face criminal charges stemming from investigations into his mishandling of national security materials, and his role in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
Armed with an AR-15 style rifle, and wearing body armor, Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, entered Club Q, a gay bar in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he opened fire, killing 5, and injured 25.
November 17, 2022 - Republicans have won a majority in the House of Representatives which ends four years of Democratic control in the lower chamber. Republicans have made clear that they will use this majority to investigate Hunter Biden, the president's son, and the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Some members have even declared they will launch impeachment proceedings against Joe Biden.
Jury selection begins today in the case against Peter Navarro, a Trump aide who defied a subpoena from the January 6 committee.
According to Punchbowl News, James Comer, the incoming Republican leader of the Oversight Committee, announced that his committee will use its investigative powers to look into Hunter Biden's business dealings and what Joe Biden knows about them.
According to Puck News, Nancy Pelosi, 82, will step back from Democratic leadership to allow for the ascendance of a new crop of Democratic leaders in the House. Pelosi was elected House Minority leader in 2003, making her the first woman in history to lead either party in Congress. As she announced her plans to step down, Pelosi said "I have enjoyed working with three presidents, achieving historic investments in clean energy with President George Bush, transformed healthcare reform with President Barack Obama ... and forging the future, from infrastructure to healthcare to climate action, with President Joe Biden". NOTE: Pelosi has served under four presidents, the fourth being Donald Trump.
Kari Lake, a rabid Trump supporter and 2020 election denier, has refused to concede her loss to Katie Hobbs for Arizona governor. While rattling off a list of evidence-free claims against her political opponent, Lake declared: "this fight to save our republic has just begun".
According to Punchbowl News, Steny Hoyer, the most senior Democrat in the House, has announced that he will leave House Democratic leadership.
Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, and former John McCain vice-presidential nominee, has lost her run for a US House seat to Democrat Mary Peltola.
Herschel Walker, the Republican Senate candidate from Georgia, who is facing a run-off election on December 6 against Raphael Warnock, told a crowd of supporters during a rambling speech: "I don't know if you know, but vampires are some cool people, are they not? But let me tell you something that I found out: a werewolf can kill a vampire. Did you know that? I never knew that. So, I don't want to be a vampire any more. I want to be a werewolf."
According to a new report from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Donald Trump's properties are are generating a lot of income from lawmakers and other candidates who have made more than 500 visits to Mar-a-Lago and other properties. From the report:
* Sixty-seven senators and House lawmakers have visited Trump's properties 187 times since he left office. The incoming Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy is the biggest spender, putting down more than $250,000 at the former president's real estate over five visits, despite the lawmaker's condemnation of Trump after the January 6 attack.
* State officials including governors, attorney generals and lawmakers have made 106 visits to the president's properties. Despite their budding rivalry, Florida governor Ron DeSantis showed up the most out of this group, making seven visits.
* Candidates for various offices at the state and federal levels have made nearly half of all political visits to the Trump properties, with 140 aspirants stopping by 236 times. Anna Paulina Luna, an incoming House representative from Florida, made six visits, while Kari Lake, who failed in her bid for Arizona's governorship, made five. NOTE: According to the New York Times, Lake stopped by Mar-a-Lago today.
November 13, 2022 - Democrats have secured control of the Senate for the next two years with the announcement that Catherine Cortez Masto has defeated Republican Adam Laxalt in Nevada. Following her victory, Chuck Schumer, the senate majority leader stated the following: "The election is a great win for the American people. Three things helped secure the Senate majority. One, our terrific candidates. Two, our agenda and accomplishments. And three, the American people rejected the anti-democratic, extremist Maga (Make America Great Again) Republicans. The American people soundly rejected the anti-democratic, authoritarian, nasty and divisive direction the Maga Republicans wanted to take our country, from the days of the big lie, which was pushed by so many, to the threats of violence and even violence itself against poll workers, election officials and electoral processes. And of course, the violence on January 6, all of that bothered the American people. And another thing that bothered them just as much, too many of the Republican leaders went along with that, didn't rebut that violence, and some of them even aided and abetted the words of negativity. Where was the condemnation from the Republican leaders so often missing from so many of them?"
November 12, 2022 - Mark Finchem, a rabid election denier, Trump supporter, and member of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, has been defeated in his bid to become the secretary of state in Arizona. Finchem was beat by Adrian Fontes, a former marine.
Midterm exit polls conducted by Edison Research showed that abortion was the top issue for many Americans, especially young people under the age of 30.
Midterm exit polls conducted by AP Votecast found that 60% of voters said they were dissatisfied or angry with the supreme court's decision to overturn Roe.
A video has gone viral that shows Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker calling America "the greatest country in the US". NOTE: The Senate seat will be decided in a 6 December runoff between Walker and Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock.
According to CNN, dozens of protesters have been gathering outside the Maricopa county elections office in Phoenix, Arizona where they are calling officers who are protecting elections officials "evil traitors".
November 10, 2022 - Following a disappointing midterm election for Trump endorsed candidates, some anti-Trump conservatives are speaking out. Here are some notable quotes:
"He cost them a much larger victory in the midterms. He is the albatross around the Republican party's electoral neck and will continue to be as long as he is alive and breathing." - Tara Setmayer, Senior Adviser to the Lincoln Project
"We've seen this movie before. He led a fucking insurrection and the party still bowed to him. So will the dam finally break with this one? No, I don't think it will. I still think it's his party." - Joe Walsh, Former Tea Party Congressman from Illinois
The New York Post, a pro-Trump tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, carried the following headline today: "TRUMPTY DUMPTY - Don (who couldn't build a wall) had a great fall - can all the GOP's men put the party back together again?"
The Wall Street Journal's editorial board published an editorial with the following headline: "Trump is the Republican Party's Biggest Loser" The subheading added: "He has now flopped in 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2022." The article that follows is scathing: "Since his unlikely victory in 2016 against the widely disliked Hillary Clinton, Mr Trump has a perfect record of electoral defeat ... The GOP was pounded in the 2018 midterms owing to his low approval rating. Mr Trump himself lost in 2020. He then sabotaged Georgia' 2021 runoffs by blaming party leaders for not somehow overturning his defeat ... Now Mr Trump has botched the 2022 elections, and it could hand Democrats the Senate for two more years."
According to the AP, Montana has become the latest state to reject abortion restrictions when it rejected a law that was meant to stop the killing outside the womb of babies who survived a failed abortion - which is already illegal. From the story: "Health care professionals and other opponents argued the proposal could rob parents of precious time with infants born with incurable medical issues if doctors are forced to attempt treatment. 'Today's win sends a clear message to state leadership: Montanans demand our right to make private health care decisions for ourselves and our families with the help of our trusted medical teams — and without interference from politicians,' said a statement from Hillary-Anne Crosby, a spokesperson for an organization called Compassion for Montana Families that opposed the measure. The outcome comes after a series of wins for abortion rights supporters in states around the country where abortion was directly on the ballot during the midterm elections. Voters enshrined abortion protections into state constitutions in Michigan, California and Vermont. They also voted down an anti-abortion constitutional amendment in conservative Kentucky, just as voters did in Kansas in August. Supporters said the proposed Montana law was meant to prevent the killing of infants outside the womb in rare occurrence of a failed abortion, something that already is illegal. Penalties for violating the proposed law would have included up to $50,000 in fines and up to 20 years in prison. At least half of U.S. states have similar post-abortion born-alive laws in place, according to Americans United for Life, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that opposes abortion, aid in dying and infant stem cell research. 'This initiative would have criminalized doctors, nurses and other health care workers for providing compassionate care for infants, and, in doing so, overridden the decision-making of Montana parents,' said a statement from Lauren Wilson of the Montana Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics."
According to the Washington Post, voter turnout this year was the second highest of any midterms since 1940.
Kari Lake, a Trump-endorsed Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, made the following statement on the conservative Charlie Kirk show: "Now, I feel 100% confident we are going to win this, I hate that they're slow-rolling and dragging their feet and delaying the inevitable. They don't want to put out the truth, which is that we won. We're going to win this, and there's not a darn thing they can do about it. But they’re trying to pour cold water on this movement." NOTE: Votes are still being counted in Arizona's Maricopa county.
Bill Gates, the chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, responded to Kari Lake's comments saying: "Quite frankly, it is offensive for Kari Lake to say these people behind me are slow rolling this."
Donald Trump has started lashing out at Florida governor Ron DeSantis, as DeSantis has begun entertaining media questions about whether he'd run for president against Trump. In an email to supporters Trump refereed to DeSantis as "Ron DeSanctimonious" and accused him of lacking "loyalty and class".
November 8, 2022 - Today is election day for the mid-term elections.
During an interview with NewsNation, Donald Trump made the following statement regarding the candidates he has endorsed: "Well, I think if they win, I should get all the credit. If they lose, I should not be blamed at all."
November 4, 2022 - According to the Guardian, the Arizona secretary of state has received more than a dozen complaints from voters about intimidation from drop box watchers. From the story: "In suburban Mesa, Arizona, people staked out an outdoor ballot drop box, taking photos and videos of voters dropping off ballots. Some wore tactical gear or camouflage. Some were visibly armed. Others videotaped voters and election workers at a ballot drop box and central tabulation office in downtown Phoenix. They set up lawn chairs and camped out to keep watch through a fence which had been added around the facility for safety after 2020 election protests. Some voters claim the observers approached or followed them in their vehicles. Other observers hung back, watching and filming from at least 75ft from the drop boxes."
Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, testified today in his seditious conspiracy trial. Rhodes, who discussed the prospect of a "bloody" civil war ahead of January 6, told jurors today that Joe Biden's 2020 election victory was 'invalid' and stated further that "you really can't have a winner of an unconstitutional election".
According to the AP, the following disclosure by Judge Loretta "Lori" Giorgi was presented in a court filing in the case against David DePape, the guy who attacked Paul Pelosi, the husband of House speaker Nancy Pelosi: "In court filings released earlier this week, officials said DePape broke into the home, carrying zip ties, tape and a rope in a backpack. He woke up Paul Pelosi and demanded to talk to 'Nancy,' who was out of town. Two officers who raced to the home after Paul Pelosi's 911 call witnessed DePape hit him in the head with the hammer. No one objected during Friday's hearing to Giorgi's ties to the Pelosi family but either side could in the future and San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said the case might be heard by another judge regardless. The public defender's office did not immediately have a comment. 'I do want to make a disclosure on the record that the daughter of Mr. Pelosi, Christine Pelosi, and I were in the city attorney's office together in the 90s,' Giorgi told the court. 'And I have disclosed to counsel the interactions that I had when she and I were together. I haven't seen or heard or talked to Ms. Pelosi after she left the office. I do see her here today.' Giorgi worked in the city attorney's office from 1985 to 2006, when she was appointed to the bench. She rose to the rank of deputy city attorney and was the office's public integrity chief. Christine Pelosi attended Friday's hearing but seemed to leave through a back door in order to avoid media waiting in the hallway. She entered the courtroom right before the proceeding started and sat in the front row away from reporters."
November 3, 2022 - According to Reuters, vest-wearing canvassers aligned with Donald Trump are knocking on doors in neighborhoods across the country asking people about their voting history and who they live with and using the information gathered to prove voter fraud. From the story: "The activists often seem more interested in undermining confidence in U.S. democracy than trying to improve it, said Arizona's Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican. 'They're hoping that we fail. They're hoping that mistakes occur and they're even trying to do things to disrupt the system,' he said. In Shasta County, a rugged, mountainous region of more than 180,000 people where pro-Trump Republicans dominate the local government, clerk Cathy Darling Allen said she noticed problems in the middle of September when three residents complained about canvassers on Facebook. When Allen contacted the voters, they all asked whether the county had sent the canvassers. Allen replied that the visitors had nothing to do with her office. A week later, a fourth resident called police when canvassers showed up at his door and demanded voting information that made him suspicious, according to a report by the Redding Police Department. In a public statement issued Sept. 26, Allen warned that canvassers' actions amounted to intimidation and violations of election laws. 'I was very concerned that it would have a chilling effect on people's willingness to be registered to vote, and that's not OK,' she said in an interview. Reuters identified at least 23 state-wide or local efforts where canvassers may have crossed the line into intimidation, according to election officials and voting rights lawyers. Some carried weapons, wore badges, asked people who they'd voted for or demanded personal information, election officials said. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 200 civil rights groups, said it has received more such reports than in previous elections. 'These tactics are very concerning,' said YT Bell, an election adviser for the coalition."
October 31, 2022 - Donald Trump Jr, the son of the twice impeached former president, posted online a meme featuring a hammer, with the caption: "Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready". After being criticized for the post, Jr doubled down by posting a reference to a baseless conspiracy theory about the assault that suggests Pelosi was in a homosexual relationship with his attacker.
According to Bloomberg Law, Donald Trump has filed an emergency petition to the supreme court asking it to halt the release of six years of his tax returns to the House ways and means committee.
The justice department has announced charges against David DePape, the man who was arrested for attacking the husband of House speaker Nancy Pelosi, with a hammer. The charges are the following: assault on a family member of a US official in retaliation for their work, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, and a charge of attempting to kidnap a US official over their work, for which he could face a maximum of 20 years in prison. New details of the attack have come to light from the complaint: "DePape stated that he was going to hold Nancy hostage and talk to her. If Nancy were to tell DePape the 'truth,' he would let her go, and if she 'lied,' he was going to break 'her kneecaps.' DePape was certain that Nancy would not have told the 'truth.' In the course of the interview, DePape articulated he viewed Nancy as the 'leader of the pack' of lies told by the Democratic Party. DePape also later explained that by breaking Nancy's kneecaps, she would then have to be wheeled into Congress, which would show other Members of Congress there were consequences to actions.'"
Rolling Stone published a piece about the attack on Paul Pelosi and the misinformation being peddled by rightwing personalities. From the story: "Because DePape had a history of blogging about far-right ideas and even dabbled in QAnon conspiracy theories, the GOP has scrambled to deny that this was an attempted assassination of a leading Democrat. Some have gone as far as peddling a conspiracy theory of their own. An 'opinion' piece in the fake news publication the Santa Monica Observer falsely claimed that DePape was a sex worker hired by Pelosi and the two had gotten into a physical dispute. The piece was amplified by, among others, Elon Musk, who later deleted his tweeted link without explanation or apology".
Kari Lake, a Republican candidate for governor in Arizona, stated the following at one of her rallies: "Nancy Pelosi, well, she's got protection when she's in DC -- apparently her house doesn't have a lot of protection." The crowd burst into laughter, and the moderator was laughing so hard he covered his face with his notes.
According to the New York Times, there has been a tenfold increase in threats of political violence since Trump's election to the presidency. Senator Susan Collins is quoted in the story saying: "I wouldn’t be surprised if a senator or House member were killed. What started with abusive phone calls is now translating into active threats of violence and real violence."
October 29, 2022 - Hillary Clinton posted the following to twitter: "The Republican party and its mouthpieces now regularly spread hate and deranged conspiracy theories. It is shocking, but not surprising, that violence is the result. As citizens, we must hold them accountable for their words and the actions that follow."
Elon Musk, responded to the tweet by Hillary Clinton saying: "there is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye". Musk's tweet included a link to a story in the Santa Monica Observer, which is notorious for publishing false news. The Observer story suggested Paul Pelosi was engaged in a homosexual trist with his attacker. Musk later deleted his post.
Carl Cameron, a former Fox News correspondent, told the Washington Post that the aim of pro-Trump figures posting conspiracy theories and misinformation is to create "a dystopia wherein lying and physical violence become part of politics".
October 28, 2022 - Paul Pelosi, the husband of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was attacked with a hammer during an invasion of his California home. Pelosi was able to summon help by secretly telephoning for help from the bathroom. The intruder was identified as David DePape. Pelosi suffered a skull fracture as well as injuries to his hands and right arm during the attack. While confronting Pelosi, DePape asked him "Where is Nancy?". According to internet sleuths, DePape has posted delusional, conspiracy-laced writings online, some echoing Qanon and election denial conspiracies familiar in Trumpist circles.
October 27, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Dani Anguiano reports of election workers facing unprecedented threats ahead of the 8 November midterms, many driven by Donald Trump's campaign to undermine the results of the 2020 election: "Inside the office of the Shasta county clerk and registrar of voters, which runs elections for about 111,000 people in this part of far northern California, Cathy Darling Allen can see all the security improvements she would make if she had the budget. 'We have plexi on the counter downstairs for Covid but that won't stop a person. It's literally just clamped to the counters,' the county clerk and registrar said. For about $50,000, the office could secure the front, limiting access to upstairs offices, she estimated. Another county put bulletproof glass in their lobby years earlier, she knew, something officials there at one point considered removing, though not any more. Elections offices didn't used to think about security in this way, Allen said. Now they can't afford not to. Following Donald Trump's refusal to acknowledge his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, Allen says the once low-profile job of non-partisan local election official has transformed in counties like hers. A culture of misinformation has sown doubt in the US election system and subjected officials from Nevada to Michigan to harassment and threats. The FBI has received more than 1,000 reports of threats against election workers in the past year alone."
According to a new study published in Plos One, Americans die younger in conservative states than in those governed by liberals. According to the authors: "Simulations indicate that changing all policy domains in all states to a fully liberal orientation might have saved 171,030 lives in 2019, while changing them to a fully conservative orientation might have cost 217,635 lives."
Elon Musk posted to twitter that he has "acquired Twitter" and that "The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilisation to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence." Musk added: "I didn't do it because it would be easy. I didn't do it to make more money. I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love."
According to the Wall Street Journal, Albuquerque Cosper Head, who was part of a group that attacked police officer Michael Fanone during the January 6 insurrection, was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison. From the story: "Calling him one of the 'most serious offenders' during the Capitol riot, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson imposed the 90-month sentence on Albuquerque Cosper Head during an emotional court hearing Thursday in the District of Columbia. Mr. Head, a 43-year-old construction worker, pleaded guilty in May to participating in a group attack on Michael Fanone, a former Washington Metropolitan Police Officer. Mr. Fanone has spoken extensively about the attack and the injuries he sustained, including a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury. According to a recent Justice Department court filing, Mr. Head 'forcibly dragged Officer Fanone into the riotous mob' and 'continued to restrain Officer Fanone while another rioter applied a Taser to the base of the officer's skull.' Judge Jackson called Mr. Head's actions 'some of the darkest acts committed on one of our nation's darkest days,' adding that he went after the officer like he was 'prey' and a 'trophy.' Mr. Head will receive credit for time spent in custody since his arrest in April 2021. The Justice Department had asked Judge Jackson to impose the maximum potential sentence of 96 months, citing Mr. Head's criminal history, which includes convictions for domestic violence and approximately 45 arrests. Mr. Head's lawyer, G. Nicholas Wallace, argued unsuccessfully for a 60-month sentence, saying his client was 'embarrassed and remorseful' and has accepted responsibility for his actions."
October 26, 2022 - According to the New York Times, Mark Meadows, a former White House chief of staff for Donald Trump, has been ordered to appear before a Georgia special grand jury investigating efforts to meddle with that state's 2020 election results.
According to the AP, a jury in Michigan has convicted three men on charges related to a plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic governor of Michigan. From the story: "Joe Morrison, his father-in-law Pete Musico, and Paul Bellar were found guilty of providing 'material support' for a terrorist act as members of a paramilitary group, the Wolverine Watchmen. They held gun drills in rural Jackson County with a leader of the scheme, Adam Fox, who was disgusted with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and other officials in 2020 and said he wanted to kidnap her. Jurors read and heard violent, anti-government screeds as well as support for the 'boogaloo,' a civil war that might be triggered by a shocking abduction. Prosecutors said COVID-19 restrictions ordered by Whitmer turned out to be fruit to recruit more people to the Watchmen. 'The facts drip out slowly,' state Assistant Attorney General Bill Rollstin told jurors in Jackson, Michigan, 'and you begin to see — wow — there were things that happened that people knew about. ... When you see how close Adam Fox got to the governor, you can see how a very bad event was thwarted.'"
Results from a new Reuters/Ipsos poll show that 2 in 5 US voters fear violence or intimidation at polling stations during the upcoming midterm elections. Two thirds of respondents feared violence from rightwing extremists after the elections if the results don't go their way.
Attorney Gloria Allred held a press conference today where she introduced a woman who claims that Herchel Walker, the anti-abortion candidate running for US senate in Georgia, paid for her to have an abortion. The woman claimed that she began dating Walker in 1987, and saw him for a number of years. The woman, who is using the pseudonym Jane Doe, said she got pregnant in 1993, and when she told Walker, according to Allred, he "clearly wanted her to have an abortion and convinced her to do so". After the abortion was performed "Walker began to distance himself from our client. She was very distraught because she felt that Mr. Walker had pressured her into having an abortion. ... Mr. Walker professes to be against abortion, even though he paid for and pressured our client to have an abortion". Allred also produced a picture of Walker sitting on a bed in a hotel room. NOTE: Walker was married at the time.
Herschel Walker, the anti-abortion candidate for US senate from the state of Georgia, responded to the claim that he pressured a woman to have an abortion in 1993. Walker's response: "It's a lie".
October 25, 2022 - Following weeks of calls to boycott Adidas over their silence on Ye's (Kanye West) repeated antisemitic comments, Adidas announced that they are cutting ties with the artist. NOTE: Ye's partnership with Adidas over nearly a decade, made him a billionaire.
Ted Cruz, a senate Republican from Texas, claimed in a Fox News interview that his new book lays out "evidence of election fraud and voter fraud in November 2020, which the Democrats and the corporate media insists doesn't exist". Philip Bump, a writer for the Washington Post responded to Cruz saying: "This particular 'corporate media' outlet can now report that, in fact, rampant fraud continues not to exist – as demonstrated, here at least, by Cruz's failure to present any of his promised evidence of election or voter fraud ... Cruz quotes from the speech he gave shortly before the Capitol riot: 'Voter fraud has posed a persistent challenge in our elections, although its breadth and scope are disputed. By any measure, the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes.' Let's shift the focus to make the gambit here clear: 'UFOs remain a threat to our nation's cows. By any measure, the claims of people seeing UFOS exceed any in our lifetimes.' See how that works?"
October 24, 2022 - A group of white supremacists unfurled a banner over a Los Angeles freeway that says "Kanye is right about the Jews". A photograph of the group shows them standing behind the banner with their arms extended out in a Nazi salute.
Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward released excerpts from hours of interviews with Donald Trump with the following warning: "Trump is an unparalleled danger.” Woodward went on to describe Trump as “overwhelmed by the job” while in office as Covid-19 spread across the United States, and warned that Trump continues to pursue “a seditious conspiracy” to overturn the 2020 election – and end democracy itself. Woodward also stated "Trump reminds how easy it is to break things you do not understand — democracy and the presidency".
According to an analysis published in the New York Times, districts whose congressional representatives have embraced conspiracy theories about the 2020 election tend to be poorer, less educated and have experienced declines in their white population. From the story: "When Representative Troy Nehls of Texas voted last year to reject Donald J. Trump's electoral defeat, many of his constituents back home in Fort Bend County were thrilled. Like the former president, they have been unhappy with the changes unfolding around them. Crime and sprawl from Houston, the big city next door, have been spilling over into their once bucolic towns. ('Build a wall,' Mr. Nehls likes to say, and make Houston pay.) The county in recent years has become one of the nation's most diverse, where the former white majority has fallen to just 30 percent of the population. Don Demel, a 61-year-old salesman who turned out last month to pick up a signed copy of a book by Mr. Nehls about the supposedly stolen election, said his parents had raised him 'colorblind.' But the reason for the discontent was clear: Other white people in Fort Bend 'did not like certain people coming here,' he said. 'It's race. They are old-school.' A shrinking white share of the population is a hallmark of the congressional districts held by the House Republicans who voted to challenge Mr. Trump's defeat, a New York Times analysis found — a pattern political scientists say shows how white fear of losing status shaped the movement to keep him in power. The portion of white residents dropped about 35 percent more over the last three decades in those districts than in territory represented by other Republicans, the analysis found, and constituents also lagged behind in income and education. Rates of so-called deaths of despair, such as suicide, drug overdose and alcohol-related liver failure, were notably higher as well."
Issue One Action, a "nonpartisan advocacy organization dedicated to uniting Republicans, Democrats and Independents in the fight to fix our broken political system", released a report which names "the nine most dangerous anti-democracy candidates running to administer US elections". Here are the nine:
1. Wes Allen - Running for secretary of state in Alabama.
2. Mark Finchem - Running for secretary of state in Arizona.
3. Diego Morales - Running for secretary of state in Indiana.
4. Kristina Karamo - Running for secretary of state in Michigan.
5. Kim Crockett - Running for secretary of state in Minnesota.
6. Jim Marchant - Running for secretary of state in Nevada.
7. Audrey Trujillo - Running for secretary of state in New Mexico.
8. Doug Mastriano - Running for secretary of state in Pennsylvania.
9. Chuck Gray - Running for secretary of state in Wyoming.
October 21, 2022 - Steve Bannon, who will be sentenced today after being convicted in July on two counts of defying a subpoena issued by the January 6 Committee, arrived at the district court in Washington DC where bystanders could be heard shouting "traitor" and "fascist". NOTE: Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison, with a fine of $6500. The judge said he would stay the sentence pending an appeal, as long as the legal paperwork is filed promptly. As Bannon left the courthouse he told the press gathered that "On November 8, there's gonna have [sic] judgment on the illegitimate Biden regime and, quite frankly, Nancy Pelosi and the entire [January 6] committee. And we know which way that's going. This is democracy. The American people are weighing and measuring what went on with the justice department and how they comported themselves. Merrick Garland will end up being the first attorney general that's brought up on charges of impeachment, and he'll be removed from office."
The eighth circuit court of appeals has issued a temporary stay on Joe Biden's plan to cancel billions of dollars in federal student loan debt. The appeal comes from a motion by six Republican-led states that are trying to block the program by arguing that the Biden Administration overstepped its authority. NOTE: Biden blasted Republicans saying "their outrage is wrong and it's hypocritical" considering some of those complaining have had debt and pandemic relief loans forgiven.
The January 6 committee has formally transmitted a subpoena to Donald Trump which compels him to provide an accounting under oath about his potential foreknowledge of the Capitol insurrection and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. NOTE: The subpoena orders Trump to produce documents by November 4th, and to testify on November 14th about interactions with key advisers. From the subpoena: "You were at the center of the first and only effort by any US president to overturn an election and obstruct the peaceful transfer of power. The evidence demonstrates that you knew this activity was illegal ... As demonstrated in our hearings, we have assembled overwhelming evidence, including from dozens of your former appointees and staff, that you personally orchestrated and oversaw a multi-part effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and to obstruct the peaceful transition of power"
Mike Pence, the former vice president, predicted "pro-life majorities" in the House and Senate following the midterm elections. Notable response to Pence's prediction:
"I've got news for you. Absolutely no one wants to hear what your plan is for their uterus." - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Congresswoman from New York
Charges against Robert Lee Wood have been dismissed. Wood was swept up by Florida governor Ron DeSantis's much publicized efforts to crack down on voter fraud with a much maligned "office of elections integrity". According to the judge, DeSantis's office of statewide prosecutors (OSP) had no authority to be bringing such a case as any such crime must have taken place in two or more judicial circuits, or be an organized criminal conspiracy, neither of which occurred in this case. NOTE: Shortly after DeSantis announced the arrest of 20 felons he claimed had illegally voted, news emerged that most had been sent voter registration cards by authorities and accordingly believed they were eligible to vote.
According to the Washington Post, some of the classified documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago included "highly sensitive intelligence regarding Iran and China". According to the story: "if shared with others ... such information could expose intelligence-gathering methods that the United States wants to keep hidden from the world".
Trump responded to the latest Washington Post story regarding documents recovered at Mar-a-Lago saying: "The FBI and the department of 'justice,' which paid a man $200,000 to spy on me, and offered a $1 million 'bounty' to try and prove a totally made up and fake 'dossier' about me (they went down in flames!), are now leaking nonstop on the Document Hoax to the Fake News. Who could ever trust corrupt, weaponized agencies, and that includes Nara [the US national archives and records administration] who disrespects our constitution and Bill of Rights, to keep and safeguard any records, especially since they've lost millions and millions of pages of information from previous Presidents. Also, who knows what NARA and the FBI plant into documents, or subtract from documents – we will never know, will we?"
During an interview with the far-right news network Newsmax, Lara Logan, an award winning war correspondent who has turned into a rightwing pundit, made the following claims: "God believes in sovereignty and national identity and the sanctity of family, and all the things that we've lived with from the beginning of time. And he knows that the open [southern US] border is Satan's way of taking control of the world through all of these people who are his stooges and his servants. And they may think that they're going to become gods. That's what they tell us ... You know, the ones who want us eating insects, cockroaches and that while they dine on the blood of children? Those are the people, right? They're not going to win. They're not going to win." NOTE: Newsmax released a statement that "condemns in the strongest terms the reprehensible statements made by Lara Logan" and had "no plans to interview her again".
October 20, 2022 - Liz Truss, who has served as British Prime Minister for 45 days, resigned, making her the shortest-serving prime minister in UK history. NOTE: Truss was forced to step down after proposing a widely unpopular economic plan and losing the confidence of her fellow Conservatives.
Anthony Scaramucci, who served as Donald Trump's communications director for 11 days in 2017, posted the following tweet: "Liz Truss lasted 4.1 Scaramuccis"
Congressional Republicans introduced a measure that would prohibit the use of federal funds to teach children under 10 about "sexually-oriented material" as well as "any topic involving gender identity, gender dysphoria, transgenderism, sexual orientation, or related subjects." If enacted, the law would give parents the ability to sue in federal court if their child is exposed to the barred material that is funded "in whole or in part" by federal funds. The measure is being referred to as a national "don't say gay" law.
October 19, 2022 - Randy Kaufman, a Republican candidate for the governing board of the Maricopa County Community College District in Arizona, was arrested after he was observed by a police officer masturbating in his truck, which was parked near a preschool where children were playing outside. NOTE: In May of this year, Kaufman posted to his facebook account that he wanted "our children protected [from] the progressive left."
According to US district judge David Carter, Donald Trump signed a legal statement alleging voter fraud in the 2020 election despite being told the numbers underpinning the case were false. The legal document had claimed that more than 10,000 votes cast by dead people, felons and unregistered voters were added to the count in one Georgia county, despite email evidence showing that Trump knew the numbers were wrong. According to the judge: "The emails show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public. The Court finds that these emails are sufficiently related to and in furtherance of a conspiracy to defraud the United States." NOTE: The ruling came out of a lawsuit filed by John Eastman, a former Trump attorney, to block disclosure of the emails to the January 6 select committee. Within the emails was evidence that Eastman and other lawyers suggested that their "primary goal" of filing lawsuits was to delay Congress's certification of the 2020 election results. According to the judge, Other emails "demonstrate an effort by President Trump and his attorneys to press false claims in federal court for the purpose of delaying the January 6 vote."
According to recordings released by journalist Bob Woodward, Donald Trump acknowledged in 2019 that letters he received from Kim Jong-un and later took with him to Mar-a-Lago, were secret. In the recording, Woodward asks Trump if he can see the letters, to which Trump responded: "Oh, those are top secret". NOTE: Trump has claimed publicly that he took no government secrets with him upon leaving the White House.
October 18, 2022 - Igor Danchenko, a thinktank analyst, was acquitted of charges he lied to the FBI about his role in the creation of the Steel Dossier. NOTE: This was the third of three cases that have come out of the investigation led by special counsel John Durham to look into how the FBI conducted its inquiry into allegations of collusion between Trump and Russia. The first two cases ended in an acquittal, and a guilty plea with a sentence of probation.
New video from January 6 was released by the January 6 committee that shows Nancy Pelosi calling for back-up from the National Guard. NOTE: The video contradicts Republicans like Steve Scalise who publicly questioned whether Democrats sought help on January 6th. Scalise is seen in the video standing next to Pelosi and listening as she makes the call for assistance. During a June news conference, Republican Indiana congressman Jim Banks told reporters: "Was Speaker Pelosi involved in the decision to delay national guard assistance following January 6? Those are serious and real questions that this committee refuses to even ask." Scalise then thanked Banks for his comments and added: "Banks just raised some very serious questions that should be answered by the January 6 commission, but they're not. And they're not for a very specific reason. And that's because Nancy Pelosi doesn't want those questions to be answered."
Notable responses to the newly released video:
"He was in the room. He was in the room where it happened ... I mean, come on." - Joe Scarborough, Host of MSNBC's Morning Joe
"Why are we surprised to see Scalise in the room, at the table, next to the phone that's open for everybody to hear and then go out there and lie about it?" - Michael Steele, Former Chair of Republican National Committee, and Frequent Critic of the GOP
October 17, 2022 - Kari Lake, the Trump endorsed Republican gubernatorial nominee in Arizona, refused to say whether she would accept the results of the election if she loses in November. During an interview with CNN's Dana Bash, Lake was asked three times if she would accept the results of the November election. Lake's response all three times: "I'm going to win the election, and I will accept that result" Lake also claims she would not have certified the 2020 vote, calling that election "corrupt, rotten".
In a legal filing, the justice department is recommending six months in prison and a $200,000 fine for Steve Bannon, for "his sustained, bad-faith contempt of Congress". Bannon was found guilty on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress in July for ignoring a subpoena from the January 6 committee.
Ye, the guy who was formerly known as Kanye West, is buying the rightwing social media network Parler. Parler was effectively forced offline last year for allowing violent videos of the January 6 Capitol attack on its platform. Ye was blocked recently from posting on Twitter and Instagram for posting antisemitic comments. Ye released a statement about the purchase saying in part: "In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves"
Fiona Hill, one of the nation's foremost experts on Russia and Putin, claimed recently that Putin is waging a world war, and that Putin is using messengers like Elon Musk to propose an end to the conflict in Ukraine on his terms. Hill also stated: "This is a great power conflict, the third great power conflict in the European space in a little over a century. It's the end of the existing world order. Our world is not going to be the same as it was before."
According to documents released by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Trump hotels and properties charged the Secret Service "exorbitant" rates - as much as $1,185 per night at the Trump International Hotel in DC - during Trump's presidency. According to New York representative Carolyn Maloney: "The exorbitant rates charged to the Secret Service and agents' frequent stays at Trump-owned properties raise significant concerns about the former president's self-dealing and may have resulted in a taxpayer-funded windfall for former president Trump's struggling businesses." According to the Washington Post, US taxpayers paid the president's company at least $1.4m for Secret Service agents' stays at Trump properties for his and his family's protection. Analysis also shows that the Secret Service received more than 40 waivers to let the agency spend more than the recommended rates.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, responded to a question about Donald Trump's attack on American Jews saying the comments are "antisemitic, as you all know, and insulting both to Jews and to our Israeli allies. But let's be clear, for years, for years now, Donald Trump has aligned with extremists and antisemitic figures and it should be called out. We need to root out antisemitism everywhere it rears its ugly head. ... With respect to Israel, our relationship is iron clad and it's rooted in shared values and interests. Donald Trump clearly doesn’t understand that either."
Ye, the guy who was formerly known as Kanye West, appeared on NewsNation with Chris Cuomo where he criticized the so-called "Jewish underground media mafia" and alleged that "every celebrity has Jewish people in their contract." Ye also claimed "we are Semite, we Jew, so I can't be antisemite." NOTE: Antisemitic extremist groups have embraced Ye and his comments, groups like Black Hebrew Israelite sects, White Lives Matter and the Goyim Defense League.
October 16, 2022 - Will Wilkerson, the co-founder of Donald Trump's Trump Media and Technology Group, has turned whistleblower. According to Wilkerson, the company's bid to raise more than $1bn via an investment vehicle known as a special purpose acquisition company or (Spac) relied on "fraudulent misrepresentations ... in violation of federal securities laws". Wilkerson has filed a whistleblower complaint to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Donald Trump posted the following to his Truth Social network: "No President has done more for Israel than I have. Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S. Those living in Israel, though, are a different story — Highest approval rating in the World, could easily be P.M.! U.S. Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel - Before it is too late!". NOTE: It is an antisemitic trope to suggest that Jews hold "dual loyalty" or are more loyal to Israel than the US.
Ye, the guy who was formerly known as Kanye West, appeared on Rovolt TV's "Drink Champs" where he blamed "Jewish media" and "Jewish Zionists" for numerous alleged misdeeds like "Jewish people have owned the Black voice" and "the Jewish community, especially in the music industry ... they'll take us and milk us till we die." Ye also said he was "#Me Too-ing the Jewish culture. I'm saying y'all gotta stand up and admit to what you have been doing."
October 14, 2022 - According to the Washington Post, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has eased voting rules for voters in Lee, Charlotte and Sarasota counties, which were hit hard by Hurricane Ian. DeSantis did not do the same for Orange county, which was also hit hard by Hurricane Ian. The difference between these counties, the former are all Republican-leaning, while the latter leans Democratic. Jasmine Burney-Clark, the founder of Equal Ground, a voter rights organization, responded to the disparity saying: "Tens of thousands of Floridians have been displaced, and today's executive order fails to meet the moment and ensure voting access for all Florida voters. Instead, Governor DeSantis is politicizing a natural disaster."
Herschel Walker and Raphael Warnock, the Republican and Democratic candidates for a Senate seat in Georgia, debated. Here are some highlights:
- Walker was asked about his support for "a complete ban on a national level" for abortion. Walker responded that the moderator misstated his position. NOTE: Walker has stated on the campaign trail that it was "a problem" that no national ban existed.
- Warnock criticized Walker for having claimed to be a law enforcement officer saying: "You can support police officers as I've done ... while at the same time holding police officers, like all professions, accountable. One thing I have not done, I've never pretended to be a police officer. And I've never, I've never threatened a shootout with the police."
- Walker responded to Warnock's criticism by pulling a badge out of his pocket and then claimed that it gives him legal authority. NOTE: The badge had been given to Walker by a police organization as a symbol of their appreciation for his support. Walker has never had any law enforcement training.
Writing for the Guardian, Sam Levine offers the following analysis of how evidence laid out by the January 6 committee could form the backbone of a criminal case against Trump: "After more than a year of work that consisted of interviewing 1,000-plus witnesses and reviewing hundreds of thousands of documents, the committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol chose a simple message for its final public hearing: Donald Trump was singularly responsible for the attack. Since its first hearing in June, the committee's work has been aimed at two audiences. One of those has been the broad American public. Tactfully using video, the committee has told a disciplined, clear story of what happened on January 6, and the days leading up to it, filled with jaw-dropping soundbites from Trump's closest aides. But the committee's public coda on Thursday appeared more directed at its second audience: an audience of one, the US attorney general, Merrick Garland. Garland will ultimately decide whether to bring criminal charges against Trump over January 6, and the committee's work, which has run parallel to the justice department's investigation, has made a public case for bringing charges, attempting to bring along public support for doing so."
According to NBC News, Paul Abbate, number two at the FBI, was warned via an email about agents within the bureau showing sympathy to January 6 insurrectionists. From the email: "There's no good way to say it, so I'll just be direct: from my first-hand and second-hand information from conversations since January 6th there is, at best, a sizable percentage of the employee population that felt sympathetic to the group that stormed the Capitol ... Several also lamented that the only reason this violent activity is getting more attention is because of 'political correctness.'"
According to the New York Times, more than two-thirds of Republicans seeking office in the November mid-term elections have cast doubt on the results of the 2020 election. From the story: "They include candidates for the U.S. House and Senate, and the state offices of governor, secretary of state and attorney general — many with clear shots to victory, and some without a chance. They are united by at least one issue: They have all expressed doubt about the legitimacy of the 2020 election. And they are the new normal of the Republican Party. More than 370 people — a vast majority of Republicans running for these offices in November — have questioned and, at times, outright denied the results of the 2020 election despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, according to a monthslong New York Times investigation. These candidates represent a sentiment that is spreading in the Republican Party, rupturing a bedrock principle of democracy: that voters decide elections and candidates accept results."
According to CNN, Scott Hall, a Republican poll watcher in Fulton county, GA, was deposed for more than three hours last week by Fani Willis, a Fulton county district attorney, who is looking into a group that may have improperly accessed voter information in another county. From the story: "On January 7, 2021, the day after the attack on the US Capitol, Hall and others connected to Trump lawyer Sidney Powell spent hours inside a restricted area of the Coffee County elections office, where they set up computers near election equipment and appeared to access voting data. Willis's criminal investigation recently expanded to include the breach of voting systems in the deeply-red Coffee County by operatives working for Powell. Hall did not respond to repeated requests for comment. According to court documents obtained by CNN, Hall's role investigating supposed voter fraud in Georgia is also referenced in a November 2020 email that the head of Trump's election day operations in Georgia received from the state's Republican Party Chairman. 'Scott Hall has been looking into the election on behalf of the President at the request of David Bossie. I know him,' David Shafer, the Georgia Republican Party chairman wrote on November 20, 2020, to Robert Sinners, the head of Trump's Georgia election day operations. Shafer, who was among the 16 individuals who served as a fake Trump elector in Georgia, has been informed he is a target in the Fulton County DA's criminal investigation."
October 13, 2022 - The January 6th Committee held its 9th public hearing today. Here are some highlights:
- "Over the course of these hearings, the evidence has proven that there was a multi-part plan led by former President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election ... We understood that some people watching those proceedings would wrongly assume that the committee's investigation was a partisan exercise. That's why we asked those who was skeptical of our work, to simply to listen, to listen to the evidence, to hear the testimony with an open minded and to let the facts speak for themselves before reaching any judgment" - Bennie Thompson, January 6 Committee Democratic Chair
- "None of this would have happened without him. He was personally and substantially involved in all of it. Today we will focus on President Trump's state of mind, his intent, his motivations, and how he spurred others to do his bidding. And how another January 6 could happen again, if we do not take necessary action to prevent it." - Liz Cheney, January 6 Committee Republican Co-chair
- "We now know more about President Trump's intention for election night. The evidence shows that his false victory speech was planned well in advance before any votes had been counted. It was a premeditated plan by the President to declare victory no matter what the actual result was. He made a plan to stay in office before election day" - Zoe Lofgren, Democratic Congresswoman
- Video of Roger Stone was played where Stone stated: "I really do suspect that [the election result] will still be up in the air. When that happens, the key thing to do is to claim victory. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. No, we won, fuck you. Sorry, over. You're wrong, fuck you."
- Video from Roger Stone deposition was played:
INVESTIGATOR: "Do you believe violence on January 6 was justified?"
STONE: "On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer your question on the basis of the Fifth Amendment."
- Video of Roger Stone played where Stone stated: "I say fuck the voting, let's get right to the violence."
- Regarding an order by Trump on November 11 to withdraw American troops from Somalia and Afghanistan, Adam Kinzinger stated: "Knowing that he had lost and that he had only weeks left in office, President Trump rushed to complete his unfinished business. Keep in mind, the order was for an immediate withdrawal. It would have been catastrophic, and yet President Trump signed the order. These are the highly consequential actions of a president who knows his term will shortly end."
- Adam Schiff read a tip received by the Secret Service: "the Proud Boys plan to march armed into DC. They think that they will have a large enough group to march into DC armed, the source reported, and will outnumber the police so they can't be stopped. The source went on to say their plan is to literally kill people. Please take this tip seriously and investigate further." Schiff then stated: "The Secret Service had advance information more than 10 days beforehand regarding the Proud Boys planning for January 6. We know now, of course, that the Proud Boys and others did lead the assault on our Capitol building."
- A text message from Jason Miller to Mark Meadows was displayed that said "I got the based FIRED up" which included a link to a website where supporters of Trump wrote comments like: "Gallows don't require electricity", "If the filthy commie maggots try to push their fraud through, there will be hell to pay", and "Our lawmakers in Congress can leave one of two ways: one, in a body bag, two after rightfully certifying Trump the winner."
- Video of Alyssah Farah testifying where she says that a week after the election was called in favor of Biden, Trump stated while watching Biden on television in the Oval Office: "Can you believe I lost to this effing guy?"
- Video of Cassidy Hutchinson testimony where she said that Trump told Mark Meadows: "I don't want people to know we lost, Mark. This is embarrassing. Figure it out."
- A memo written on October 31st by Tom Fitton, a pro-Trump activist, was shown. The memo said that Trump would simply "declare we had an election today and I won".
- "The president knew the crowd was angry because he had stoked that anger. He knew that they believe that the election had been rigged and stolen because he had told them falsely that it had been rigged and stolen. And by the time he incited that angry mob to march on the Capitol, he knew they were armed and dangerous. All the better to stop the peaceful transfer of power." - Adam Schiff
- "After concluding its review of the voluminous additional Secret Service communications from January 5, and January 6, the committee will be recalling witnesses and conducting further investigative depositions based on that material. Following that activity, we will provide even greater detail in our final report. And I will also note this, the committee is reviewing testimony regarding potential obstruction on this issue, including testimony about advice given not to tell the committee about this specific topic. We will address this matter in our report." - Pete Aguilar
- "It was President Lincoln at the start of the civil war in 1861, who best explained why democracy rejects insurrection. Insurrection, he said, is a war upon the first principle of popular government, the rights of the people. American democracy belongs to all the American people, not to a single man." - Jaimie Raskin
The January 6 committee voted unanimously to subpoena Donald Trump to compel his testimony before the bipartisan congressional panel.
Letitia James, the New York attorney general, released a statement regarding Trump organization efforts to evade her investigation into their business practices, saying she has asked a judge to approve several steps: "to stop Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization's ongoing fraudulent scheme and ensure funds are available to satisfy any disgorgement award. Since we filed this sweeping lawsuit last month, Donald Trump and the Trump Organization have continued those same fraudulent practices and taken measures to evade responsibility. Today, we are seeking an immediate stop to these actions because Mr. Trump should not get to play by different rules."
The US Supreme Court has denied a motion by Donald Trump seeking to re-include 103 documents in the special master review. NOTE: This motion is largely seen as an effort to frustrate the federal investigation into government secrets discovered at Mar-a-Lago.
Fourteen members of the family of Arizona Republican Senate candidate Adam Laxalt signed a letter endorsing his Democratic opponent, Catherine Cortez Masto.
October 12, 2022 - US district judge Lewis Kaplan rejected a request by Donald Trump that his deposition next week in a lawsuit brought by E Jean Carroll be delayed. NOTE: Carroll claims that Trump raped her in an upscale Manhattan department store's dressing room.
Alex Jones, the rightwing conspiracy theorist who hosts InfoWars, has been ordered to pay $965m to the families of Sandy Hook victims who were hurt by his lies about the massacre. NOTE: 26 children and teachers were executed during the 2012 bloodbath.
October 11, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Ed Pilkington offers the following analysis of candidates who are running for office in the November 8 midterms who have openly said they will use their positions to ensure Donald Trump returns to power: "The head of a US coalition of election deniers standing for secretary of state positions in key battleground states has made the most explicit threat yet that they will use their powers, should they win in November, to subvert democracy and force a return of Donald Trump to the White House. Jim Marchant, who is running in the midterms as the Republican candidate for secretary of state in Nevada, has vowed publicly that he and his fellow coalition members will strive to make Trump president again. Speaking at a Make America Great Again rally in Minden, Nevada, on Saturday night, he repeated the lie that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from Trump. Marchant said he had investigated what he described as the 'rigged election' and had discovered 'horrifying' irregularities. He provided no details – an official review of the 2020 count in Nevada, which Joe Biden won by 34,000 votes, found no evidence of mass fraud."
Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, announced that she is leaving the Democratic party.
October 10, 2022 - While speaking at a Trump rally in Alabama, Republican senator Tommy Tuberville said the following: "They want crime. They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparations because they think the people that do the crime are owed that. Bullshit!"
At a Trump rally in Mesa, Arizona, Marjorie Taylor Greene told the crowd: "Joe Biden's 5 million illegal aliens are on the verge of replacing you, replacing your jobs and replacing your kids in school and, coming from all over the world, they're also replacing your culture. And that's not great for America." NOTE: These comments echo the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory that has long been promoted by white nationalists that nonwhite immigrants could eventually displace native-born white Americans.
October 7, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Martin Pengelly offers the following analysis of investigator skepticism that Donald Trump has turned over all government documents in his possession: "The US Department of Justice has told lawyers for Donald Trump it thinks he has not handed back all the documents he took from the White House, the New York Times reported. The paper said Jay Bratt, the DoJ head of counterintelligence operations, communicated with lawyers for Trump 'in recent weeks'. The news, the Times said, is 'the most concrete indication yet that investigators remain skeptical that Mr Trump has been fully cooperative in their efforts to recover documents ... supposed to have [been] turned over to the National Archives at the end of his term'. Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor, said the news 'looks like a major step toward an indictment of Trump by DoJ for obstruction of justice'."
According to the AP, a federal judge in Wisconsin has dismissed a lawsuit from a taxpayer group trying to stop a Biden measure that would cancel as much as $20,000 in student loans. From the story: "The Brown County Taxpayers Association argued that Biden's order unlawfully circumvented Congress' power over spending. They also argued the plan was discriminatory by seeking to give particular help to borrowers of color. U.S. District Judge William Griesbach, an appointee of President George W. Bush, tossed the case Thursday, writing that the group does not have standing to challenge the plan simply because they are taxpayers. Biden enacted the debt relief plan under the HEROES Act, which was passed after the Sept. 11 attacks sparked an American-led military campaign aimed at terrorism. The act gave the executive branch authority to forgive student loan debt in association with military operations or national emergencies. The president cited COVID-19 as reason to invoke the act. The lawsuit, filed by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty on behalf of the taxpayers group, had argued it was an overextension of executive power that improperly sidestepped Congress."
Republican senators Mike Lee and James Lankford introduced a bill to repeal provisions of an August spending measure that give Medicare and Medicaid the ability to negotiate drug prices saying it: "creates even more barriers to effectively bringing down the cost of prescriptions, particularly for senior adults on Medicare." Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary responded to the Republican effort saying: "Today, MAGA Congressional Republicans introduced legislation that puts special interests before working families. Their new bill is a giveaway to big pharma at the expense of seniors by ending Medicare's new ability to negotiate lower drug prices. Their vision for the country is extreme and out of touch with working families across the country."
Ye, the guy who was formerly known as Kanye West, posted the following tweet: "I'm a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I'm going death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE The funny thing is I actually can't be Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jew also You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda" NOTE: The tweet was deleted by Twitter
October 6, 2022 - According to the Washington Post, 299 GOP politicians who are running for House, Senate or statewide office, believe the baseless claim that Joe Biden did not win the 2020 election. From the story: "The implications will be lasting: If Republicans take control of the House, as many political forecasters predict, election deniers would hold enormous sway over the choice of the nation's next speaker, who in turn could preside over the House in a future contested presidential election. The winners of all the races examined by The Post — those for governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, attorney general, Senate and House — will hold some measure of power overseeing American elections. Many of these candidates echo the false claims of former president Donald Trump — claims that have been thoroughly investigated and dismissed by myriad officials and courts. Experts said the insistence on such claims, despite the lack of evidence, reflects a willingness among election-denying candidates to undermine democratic institutions when it benefits their side. The Post's count — assembled from public statements, social media posts, and actions taken by the candidates to deny the legitimacy of the last presidential vote — shows how the movement arising from Trump's thwarted plot to overturn the 2020 election is, in many respects, even stronger two years later. Far from repudiating candidates who embrace Trump's false fraud claims, GOP primary voters have empowered them. The issue has dominated in key battlegrounds. In Warren, Mich., on Saturday, Trump campaigned for three statewide candidates, all of them deniers: Tudor Dixon for governor, Matthew DePerno for attorney general and Kristina Karamo for secretary of state. 'I don't believe we'll ever have a fair election again,' Trump told the crowd. 'I don't believe it.'"
According to CNN, if Republicans win a majority in the House of Representatives on November 8th, they may pursue impeachments against Democrats, with homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas at or near the top of their list. From the story: "GOP Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas said Republicans 'should focus on policy' and 'leave some of the other more emotional topics for another day. The risk is if people lose faith in the ability of Congress to even do its basic function,' Womack said of voter blowback for impeaching Mayorkas. 'The people that I talk to from all stripes tell me they want a Congress that works – not a Congress that is preoccupied with kind of revenge-type agendas. Because then a lot of other things (that) need to happen don't get to happen. And then that hurts the country.' So far, McCarthy has carefully sidestepped impeachment questions, insisting Republicans are not going to pre-determine the outcome but are willing to go wherever the facts and the law lead them. Yet McCarthy has not shut the door on the idea either, particularly when it comes to Mayorkas. And when pressed by CNN on whether Mayorkas is vulnerable to impeachment in a GOP-led House, he replied: 'What happens at the border is above everything else.'"
During an interview with conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt, Republican senator Tom Cotton made the following statement: "The Democrats are always saying, 'Never forget January 6th.' Yeah, remember that on January 6th gas was at $2.40 a gallon."
Writing for the Guardian, human rights lawyer Steven Donziger offers the following analysis of a case which will soon be heard by the supreme court: "It is well-known that intense competition between democracy, authoritarianism, and fascism is playing out across the globe in a variety of ways – including in the United States. This year's supreme court term, which started this week, is a vivid illustration of how the situation is actually worse than most people understand. A supermajority of six unelected ultraconservatives justices – five put on the bench by presidents who did not win the popular vote – have aggressively grabbed yet another batch of cases that will allow them to move American law to the extreme right and threaten US democracy. The leading example of this disturbing shift is a little-known case called Moore v Harper, which could lock in rightwing control of the United States for generations. The heart of the Moore case is a formerly fringe legal notion called the Independent State Legislature (ISL) theory. This theory posits that an obscure provision in the US constitution allowing state legislatures to set 'time, place, and manner' rules for federal elections should not be subject to judicial oversight. In other words, state legislatures should have the absolute power to determine how federal elections are run without court interference. Think about this theory in the context of the last US election. After Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump resoundingly in both the popular vote and in the electoral college, Trump tried to organize a massive intimidation campaign to steal the election which played out in the storming of the Capitol building on 6 January. But behind the scenes, the legal core of this attempt was to convince the many Republican-controlled state legislatures (30 out of 50 states) to send slates of fake Trump electors from states like Arizona, Georgia and Michigan where Trump lost the popular vote. If Trump had succeeded, he would have 'won' the election via the electoral college (itself an anti-democratic relic) and been able to stay in office. If the supreme court buys the theory in the Moore case, this could easily happen in 2024 and beyond. In fact, it is possible Republicans will never lose another election again if this theory is adopted as law. Or put another way, whether Republicans win or lose elections via the popular vote will not matter because they will be able to maintain power regardless. That's not democracy."
President Joe Biden announced a pardon of all prior federal offenses of simple possession of marijuana, saying: "There are thousands of people who have prior Federal convictions for marijuana possession, who may be denied employment, housing, or educational opportunities as a result. My action will help relieve the collateral consequences arising from these convictions".
According to the AP, Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, who is currently on trial for seditious conspiracy in relation to the January 6th insurrection, had a contact in the secret service. From the story: "John Zimmerman, who was part of the North Carolina chapter, said Rhodes told him that Rhodes had a Secret Service agent's telephone number. Zimmerman said he believed Rhodes spoke on the phone with the agent about the logistics of a September 2020 rally that then-President Donald Trump held in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The claim came on the third day of testimony in the case against Rhodes and four others charged with seditious conspiracy for what authorities have described as a detailed, drawn-out plot to use force to stop the transfer of presidential power from Trump to Democrat Joe Biden, who won the election. Prosecutor Kathryn Rakoczy had asked Zimmerman whether Rhodes ever told him about having any kind of connection to Trump. Zimmerman could not say for sure that Rhodes was speaking to someone with the Secret Service — only that Rhodes told him he was — and it was not clear what they were discussing. Zimmerman said Rhodes wanted to find out the 'parameters' that the Oath Keepers could operate under during the election-year rally. The significance of the detail in the government's case is unclear. Trump's potential ties to extremist groups have been a focus of the House committee investigating the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Another Oath Keeper expected to testify against Rhodes has claimed that after the riot, Rhodes phoned someone seemingly close to Trump and made a request: tell Trump to call on militia groups to fight to keep him in power. Authorities have not identified that person; Rhodes' lawyer says the call never happened. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said it is not uncommon for 'protest groups' to contact the agency with logistical questions about rallies. He noted that firearms are always prohibited within restricted areas being secured by the agency. 'The Oath Keepers are certainly a known demonstration group.' he said. Guglielmi said he is not aware of any contact between Rhodes and an agency representative but would not be surprised if Rhodes said he had contacted the secret Service before the North Carolina event. 'I don't have any way to track that down without some more information,' the spokesman said. Rhodes, from Granbury Texas, and four associates are being tried on a Civil War-era charge."
Ye, the guy who was formerly known as Kanye West, appeared on Fox News' Tucker Carlson show because of media attention he received following an appearance at Paris Fashion Week wearing a "White Lives Matter" shirt. During the interview, Ye told Carlson that Jews are actually Black people, and that when he refers to Jews he means "the 12 lost tribes of Judah, the blood of Christ, who the people known as the race Black really are". Ye also claimed that Planned Parenthood was the product of a collaboration between the KKK and Margaret Sanger "to control the Jew [i.e. Black] population." Ye also claimed that it is impossible for him to be fairly described as antisemitic, because as a Black person, he is actually a Jew. NOTE: Fox news did not air some of the interview due to concerns over additional antisemitic statements.
October 5, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Martin Pengelly reviewed Confidence Man, a new book by Maggie Haberman, a New York times reporter. Here are some key takeaways:
- "Trump was long said to be in the habit of ripping up notes from White House meetings and throwing them in the toilet. Haberman published photos."
- "Haberman shows Trump relentlessly mocking Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and adviser, for his voice and manner; wishing Ivanka had married the NFL star Tom Brady instead; deciding to fire both of them then chickening out; ranting about Kushner's Jewish religious observance; and predicting that Kushner would be attacked, even raped, were he ever to choose to go camping."
- "Trump fell out with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and denies wrongdoing associated with him – but nonetheless worried aloud that Epstein's former girlfriend might talk about him after her own arrest."
- "Trump thought Black political staffers were waiters. He said he couldn't afford to alienate white supremacists, because they tended to vote. He persisted in asking if a notional transgender debate questioner was 'cocked or de-cocked'."
- "Wrong-footed by a health official's uniform, Trump thought the confused apparatchik could organise bombing raids on drug labs in Mexico. 'The response from White House aides,' Haberman writes, 'was not to try to change Trump's view, but to consider asking [Adm Brett] Giroir not to wear his uniform to the Oval Office anymore.'"
- "Trump's apparent affinity with or interest in Nazi Germany – widely reported but now at issue in a lawsuit against CNN – contributed to one chief of staff, John Kelly, deciding the president was a fascist years before Joe Biden said the same."
- "[Trump] came up with a plan he told associates was inspired by the singer James Brown, whom he loved watching toss off his cape while onstage, but it was in line with his love of professional wrestling as well. [Trump] would be wheeled out of Walter Reed in a chair ... dramatically stand up, then open his button-down dress shirt to reveal [a] Superman logo beneath it. (Trump was so serious about it that he ... instruct[ed] an aide, Max Miller, to procure the Superman shirts; Miller was sent to a Virginia big-box store.)"
Rick Scott, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, issued a statement regarding the controversy surrounding Herschel Walker saying in part: "When the Democrats are losing, as they are right now, they lie and cheat and smear their opponents. That's what's happening right now." NOTE: Accusations against Walker are coming from the mother of one of his children, and Walker's own son.
Lawyers for Donald Trump have petitioned the supreme court to intervene in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents situation, asking them to overturn a lower court ruling which limited the special master's review to the non-classified documents only.
Bloomberg released a report regarding classified materials being found at Mar-a-Lago, specifically regarding Trump's claim that it was the General Services Administration (GSA) that packed the boxes of records from the White House. From the report: "Former President Donald Trump publicly said that one reason that the FBI found boxes of classified documents improperly stored at his Florida estate was that federal workers had packed up the White House after his 2020 defeat. But documents obtained by Bloomberg News under a Freedom of Information Act request suggest a different story. More than 100 pages of emails and shipping lists between White House and transition staff and the US General Services Administration describe the minutiae of moving the Trump White House from Washington, DC, to Florida, down to how many rolls of bubble wrap and tape, all within a plan signed by then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. One thing is clear: The boxes were packed when the movers got there. While the records don't specify what the boxes contained, they provide the most detailed account to date of how the GSA assisted the outgoing administration between January and September 2021. After the FBI's unprecedented Aug. 8 search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, the former president and his allies, including Fox News's Sean Hannity, Stephen Bannon's Breitbart News and former Trump defense official Kash Patel, have claimed that Trump can't be held legally responsible for the dozens of boxes of highly classified documents found around Mar-a-Lago because the GSA — essentially the federal government's office and property manager — was in charge of filling boxes and shipping them."
According to NBC News, Ron Johnson, a conservative Republican Senator representing Wisconsin, who tried through one of his staff members to get fake slates of electors to vice-president Mike Pence, talked about the issue during a campaign appearance. From the story: "Of the electors scheme, Johnson said he communicated with Jim Troupis, a Wisconsin-based attorney who led legal efforts for Donald Trump in a recount of the state's 2020 results. 'What would you do if you got a text from the attorney for the president of the United States?' Johnson said. 'You respond to it. I got a text from the president's lawyer asking if we could deliver something to the vice president and if I could have a staff member handle it,' Johnson said. Asked whether he knew what it was he was being asked to deliver, he said: 'No. I had no idea.' Johnson said he turned it over to his chief of staff, who was new at the time. 'Next thing I know he's letting me know the vice president's not accepting anything, so I just texted back 'no, we're not delivering it,' end of story. Nothing happened. I had no idea there were even an alternate slate of electors.'"
October 4, 2022 - Herschel Walker, a Republican nominee for US Senate, and prior professional football player, who was endorsed for political office by Donald Trump, is denying accusations that he paid for an abortion for a woman while they were dating. The issue is getting lots of media attention because Walker is running for office in Georgia as a staunch anti-abortion candidate. Walker called the accusation a "flat-out lie" and "another repugnant hatchet job from a democrat activist disguised as a reporter who has obsessively attacked my family and tried to tear me down since this race started". According to the Daily Beast, which broke the story, the woman making the accusation has a receipt showing a $575 payment for the procedure, and a get-well card from Walker. Herschel Walker's son Christian posted the following notes to Twitter: "I know my mom and I would really appreciate if my father Herschel Walker stopped lying and making a mockery of us. You're not a 'family man' when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence." and "I don't care about someone who has a bad past and takes accountability. But how DARE YOU LIE and act as though you're some 'moral, Christian, upright man.' You've lived a life of DESTROYING other peoples lives. How dare you." NOTE: Walker, who has stated that he will sue the Daily Beast over the abortion story, has become notorious for making bizarre comments on the campaign trail. Here are some examples:
- "How can global warming be real if it's cold outside? A lot of money it's going to trees. Don't we have enough trees?"
- "Our good air floats over to China's bad air. China's bad air moves over to our good air space, which would force us to clean that back up"
The following is an excerpt from an NPR article about Herschel Walker and his controversial background: "The allegation against Walker is the latest in a series of stories about the football legend's past that has rocked the first-time candidate's campaign in one of the most competitive Senate races in the country. Earlier this year, Walker acknowledged reports that he had three children he had not previously talked about publicly. Walker has often boasted of his work helping service members and veterans struggling with mental health. Yet The Associated Press reported in May that various records showed he overstated his role in a for-profit program that is alleged to have preyed upon veterans and service members while defrauding the government. The AP also has reported that a review of public records detailed accusations that Walker repeatedly threatened his ex-wife's life, exaggerated claims of financial success and alarmed business associates with unpredictable behavior. Walker himself has at times discussed his long struggle with mental illness. As a Senate hopeful, Walker has supported a national ban on abortions with no exceptions for cases involving rape, incest or a woman's health being at risk — particularly notable at a time when Roe v. Wade has been overturned by the Supreme Court and Democrats in Congress have been discussing codifying abortion rights into federal law."
Donald Trump asked the US supreme court to partially reverse an appellate court ruling that prevented the special master from examining 100 documents with classification markings.
According to the Guardian, a lawyer for Trump refused to report to the National Archives that Trump had turned over all Oval Office documents as required out of concern the claim was a lie.
October 3, 2022 - The US supreme court has rejected an appeal by Mike Lindell, the CEO of My Pillow, to dismiss a $1.3bn lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems accusing Lindell of promoting debunked conspiracy theories that the company's machines manipulated vote counts in favor of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
October 2, 2022 - Michael Fanone, a former Washington DC police officer who was attacked and seriously injured during the January 6 insurrection, sat down with Rolling Stone for an interview. Here are some highlights from that interview:
- Fanone spoke of Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House leader saying: "I think at night, when the lights are turned off, Abe Lincoln and Ronald Reagan have some pretty choice words to say about the fact that they have to hang on Kevin McCarthy's wall. They did some fucking above-average things. And they've got to adorn the wall of this fucking weasel bitch named Kevin McCarthy, with his fake fucking spray-on tan, whose fucking claim to fame, at least in my eyes, is the fact that he amassed a collection of Donald Trump's favorite-flavored Starburst, put them in a Mason jar, and presented them to fucking Donald Trump. What the fuck, dude?"
- Fanone said his new mission in life is to "wage a one-man war against Donald Trump and the fucking people that refuse to accept reality".
- Regarding Republicans who have sought to downplay the Capitol attack, Fanone said: "You call [January 6] a 'tourist day', You say it was 'hugs and kisses'. I'm going to be that fucking inconvenient motherfucker that pops his head up every time you say some stupid shit like that."
- Fanone said he does not want to be thought of as an American hero, in part because "Motherfuckers think [former vice-president] Mike Pence is a goddamn hero" for resisting Trump's scheme to stay in power, and "don’t lump me in with that fucking pathetic coward"
- Regarding the insurrectionists, Fanone said: "To me, every last one of them should have been charged with sedition. These guys love 1776 so much. They should be damned glad we're not in 1776 because I'm pretty sure they would all end up on the fucking business end of a musket or the gallows."
October 1, 2022 - Donald Trump, the one term, twice impeached, disgraced former president, posted the following to his Truth Social network: "Is McConnell approving all of these Trillions of Dollars worth of Democrat sponsored Bills, without even the slightest bit of negotiation, because he hates Donald J. Trump, and he knows I am strongly opposed to them, or is he doing it because he believes in the Fake and Highly Destructive Green New Deal, and is willing to take the Country down with him? In any event, either reason is unacceptable. He has a DEATH WISH. Must immediately seek help and advise (sic) from his China loving wife, Coco Chow!"
September 30, 2022 - According to the Guardian, Ginni Thomas, the wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, told the January 6 committee yesterday that she still believes the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.
In the new book "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America", Maggie Haberman writes about how Donald Trump came up with his excuse for not releasing his tax returns. According to the book, Trump was discussing the issue with aides, who pointed out that since Trump was about to be confirmed as the favorite for the Republican nomination, the issue of his tax returns needed to be addressed. From the book: "Trump thought for a second about how to 'get myself out of this', as he said. He leaned back, before snapping up to a sudden thought. 'Well, you know my taxes are under audit. I always get audited,' Trump said ... 'So what I mean is, well I could just say, 'I'll release them when I'm no longer under audit. 'Cause I'll never not be under audit.'"
Hurricane Ian, a massive category 4 storm, hit Florida's West coast, causing tremendous damage to the state. During an appearance on Fox News with far-right host Tucker Carlson, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, told Carlson: "So I actually spoke with the president and he said he wants to be helpful. So we did submit a request for reimbursement for the next 60 days at 100%. That's significant support, but it's a significant storm. We live in a very politicised time, but you know, when people are fighting for their lives, when their whole livelihood is at stake, when they've lost everything, if you can't put politics aside for that, that you're just not going to be able to do so. So I'll work with anybody who wants to help the people of south-west Florida and throughout our state." Critics of DeSantis were quick to point to his reaction to Hurricane Sandy, which battered the east coast in 2012. At that time, DeSantis was a member of the US House of Representatives, and was one of 67 Republicans to vote against a $9.7bn federal aid package for Sandy victims.
September 29, 2022 - Ginni Thomas, the wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, will testify today before the January 6 committee.
The Guardian obtained a copy of "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America". Here's a portion of a write up by Martin Pengelly: "In a meeting supposedly about campaign strategy in the 2020 election, Donald Trump implied his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, might be brutally attacked, even raped, should he ever go camping. 'Ivanka wants to rent one of those big RVs,' Trump told bemused aides, according to a new book by Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, before gesturing to his daughter's husband. 'This skinny guy wants to do it. Can you imagine Jared and his skinny ass camping? It'd be like something out of Deliverance.' According to Haberman, Trump then 'made noises mimicking the banjo theme song from the 1972 movie about four men vacationing in rural Georgia who are attacked, pursued and in one case brutally raped by a local resident' ... In his first White House meeting with a major foreign leader, Donald Trump asked Theresa May: 'Why isn't Boris Johnson the prime minister? Didn’t he want the job?' At the time, the notoriously ambitious Johnson was foreign secretary. He became prime minister two years later, in 2019, after May was forced to resign."
September 28, 2022 - According to Business Insider, two Danish filmmakers followed Roger Stone on and off over the last three years. Some of the video from that documentary have been released to the January 6 committee. In one of the clips, which was filmed on November 2, 2020, Stone can be heard saying "Fuck the voting, let's get right to the violence ... Shoot to kill, you see antifa - shoot to kill". In another clip filmed on election night in 2020, Stone tells a group of followers that even if Trump loses "the key thing to do is to claim victory ... No, we won, sorry fuck you".
Doug Mastriano, a Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, is facing criticism over a 2019 interview he did with radio station WITF. The interview was focused on a bill sponsored by the state senator that would have barred most abortions when cardiac activity could be detected, or roughly at 6 weeks into a pregnancy. During the interview, the following exchange took place:
WITF: "You can give me a yes or no on this. Would that woman who decided to have an abortion which would be considered an illegal abortion be charged with murder?"
MASTRIANO: "OK, let's go back to the basic question there. Is [a fetus] a human being? Is that a little boy or girl? If it is, it deserves equal protection under the law."
WITF: "So you're saying yes?"
MASTRIANO: "Yes, I am. If it's a human being, if it's an American citizen there, a little baby, I don't care what nationality it is, it deserves equal rights before the law."
Maggie Haberman, a New York Times reporter, has published a soon to be released book called "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America". The Washington Post obtained an early copy of the book and reported on the contents. Here's a snippet of their write-up: "Throughout the book, Trump is portrayed as transactional and narcissistic — at times charming, at other times cruel — but always attuned to his own political fortunes, no matter the issue. During his meeting in the Oval Office with Barack Obama in 2016, he eschewed policy and asked Obama how he kept his approval ratings high, according to the book. He told advisers that he needs people such as Pennsylvania Senate nominee Mehmet Oz (R) in office in case the election is challenged in 2024 or they try to impeach him again. When Trump first met British Prime Minister Theresa May, he soon turned the conversation to abortion. 'Some people are pro-life, some people are pro-choice. Imagine if some animals with tattoos raped your daughter and she got pregnant?' he said, according to the book. Pointing to then-Vice President Mike Pence, he described him as the 'tough one' on abortion. He soon moved the topic away from Northern Ireland to an offshore wind project he wanted to block near his property, the book says. Trump was often crass and profane about world leaders and others in his orbit. He referred to German Prime Minister Angela Merkel as 'that b----,' according to the book. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg was dying in 2020, the book says, Trump would sarcastically raise his hands to the sky in prayer and say: 'Please God. Please watch over her. Every life is precious,' before asking an aide: 'How much longer do you think she has?'"
Other notable outtakes from "Confidence man":
- When Republican former governor Chris Christie asked candidate Trump in 2016 to more forcefully condemn white supremacists, Trump responded "a lot of these people vote."
- Trump asked aides if it would be possible to bomb drug labs in Mexico.
NOTE: The book will be released next week.
Ian Benjamin Rogers, of Napa, California, who in May plead guilty to conspiring to destroy the state's Democratic party headquarters following the defeat of Donald Trump, will be sentenced today.
Lizzo, a singer-songwriter and trained flautist, performed before an audience in Washington DC, where she played a 200-year-old crystal flute that was made for President James Madison. The flute is part of a collection of artifacts stored at the Library of Congress. When a librarian for the Library heard Lizzo was coming to town, she approached Lizzo to see if she was interested in playing Madison's instrument as part of her show, which Lizzo did. NOTE: Lizzo was criticized extensively by far-right pundits for essentially desecrating a piece of American history, which makes sense when you understand that Lizzo is black.
September 27, 2022 - Today is the first day of the seditious conspiracy trial for Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, and 4 of the group's members.
Kyle Young, one of the January 6 rioters, who restrained DC police officer Michael Fanone while another rioter shocked Fanone with Young's taser, will be sentenced today. Michael Fanone wrote of his hope for Young's sentencing: "On Tuesday, Young's attorney will ask a judge to sentence him to two years – a laughably short sentence. Prosecutors have asked for a seven-year term – not quite a joke but also not nearly long enough. By comparison, a former New York police officer with no criminal record received 10 years for attacking officers during the riot. What do I think Young deserves? Not less than 10 years in prison. And an assigned cell in maximum security with his co-conspirator: Donald Trump."
According to the Texas Tribune, when process server Ernesto Martin Herrera tried to serve a subpoena to Ken Paxton, the Texas state attorney general, regarding a case filed by abortion rights groups, Paxton fled. From the story: "When Herrera arrived at Paxton's home in McKinney on Monday morning, he told a woman who identified herself as Angela that he was trying to deliver legal documents to the attorney general. She told him that Paxton was on the phone and unable to come to the door. Herrera said he would wait. Nearly an hour later, a black Chevrolet Tahoe pulled into the driveway, and 20 minutes after that, Ken Paxton exited the house. 'I walked up the driveway approaching Mr. Paxton and called him by his name. As soon as he saw me and heard me call his name out, he turned around and RAN back inside the house through the same door in the garage,' Herrera wrote in the sworn affidavit. Angela Paxton then exited the house, got inside a Chevrolet truck in the driveway, started it and opened the doors. 'A few minutes later I saw Mr. Paxton RAN from the door inside the garage towards the rear door behind the driver side,' Herrera wrote. 'I approached the truck, and loudly called him by his name and stated that I had court documents for him. Mr. Paxton ignored me and kept heading for the truck.' Herrera eventually placed the subpoenas on the ground near the truck and told him he was serving him with a subpoena. Both cars drove away, leaving the documents on the ground."
According to NBC, the Election Count Reform Act, which would stop a coup like the one attempted on January 6th, has enough support in the Senate to pass.
Christopher Guldbrandsen, a Danish filmmaker who followed Roger Stone around on and off for three years, told the Washington Post: "Being with Roger Stone and people around him for nearly three years, we realized what we saw after the 2020 election and Jan. 6 was not the culmination but the beginning of an antidemocratic movement in the United States." Guldbrandsen's documentary is called "A Storm Foretold".
According to a Monmouth University poll, 4 in 10 Americans hold Donald Trump responsible for the January 6 insurrection. 3 in 10 believe the election was stolen from Donald Trump.
September 26, 2022 - Denver Riggleman, a former Republican congressman who acted as a technical adviser to the January 6 Committee, was interviewed on CBS's 60 Minutes. During the interview, Riggleman described text messages that were retrieved from Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, as a "road map to an attempted coup."
According to CNN, Anton Lunyk, one of the January 6 rioters, received a phone call from the White House during the insurrection. Who made the call is still a mystery.
Robin Vos, the Republican speaker of the Wisconsin state assembly, has been subpoenaed by the January 6 Committee. The committee would like to know about a phone call that Vos had with Trump in July. Vos is suing to stop the subpoena saying he wasn't given enough notice, and also that the subpoena oversteps the select committee's authority.
Writing for the Guardian, Maya Yang offers the following analysis of the other areas of medicine affected by abortion bans: "A few weeks after the supreme court's 24 June decision to overturn the nationwide abortion rights established by Roe v Wade, the pharmacy chain Walgreens sent Annie England Noblin a message, informing her that her monthly prescription of methotrexate was held up. Noblin, a 40-year-old college instructor in rural Missouri, never had trouble getting her monthly prescription of methotrexate for her rheumatoid arthritis. So she went to her local Walgreens to figure out why, standing in line with other customers as she waited for an explanation. When it was finally her turn, a pharmacist informed Noblin – in front of the other customers behind her – that she could not release the medication until she received confirmation from Noblin's doctor that Noblin would not use it to have an abortion."
According to the Guardian, the University of Idaho advised its employees that because the state's abortion law is not written clearly, it may prohibit employees from offering birth control, and so they should refrain from doing so to avoid being charged with a felony.
September 25, 2022 - Douglas Jensen, a 43-year-old man from Iowa, who is a QAnon follower, and who participated in the capitol insurrection, was found guilty of the following felonies: assaulting police, obstructing a congressional proceeding, interfering with law enforcement, entering a restricted building and disorderly conduct with a dangerous weapon (Jensen was carrying a knife with a three-inch blade in his pocket). Jensen could face more than 50 years in prison. NOTE: A bipartisan Senate report linked seven deaths to the Capitol attack and said it left more than 140 police officers injured. As of this week, more than 870 people have been charged for their participation in the insurrection.
Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, is facing intense criticism for misleading asylum seekers, mostly from Venezuela, by making them believe that jobs, housing and other assistance is waiting for them, to get them to agree to be loaded onto a plane where they are flown to various Democratic run cities, including Martha's Vineyard. No coordination is done with the destination cities, so when the migrants arrive, they are essentially left stranded. Critics have called the effort a "vile political stunt" which mirrors a rightwing strategy in the civil rights era of the 1960s called "reverse freedom rides," where racial minorities were duped into boarding buses destined for northern cities with false promises of jobs and housing and better lives. Notable responses to DeSantis' immigrant stunt:
"Americans have generally been very welcoming to immigrants, especially those who are fleeing persecution, such as these Venezuelan asylum seekers and migrants. But what we're seeing is DeSantis playing toward the xenophobic and nationalistic white supremacist impulses that are at the base of the modern Republican party. It's a well-timed act of political theater to propel him forward and gain as much national media attention as possible as part of his bid to become our next president." - Elora Mukherjee, Professor of Social Justice and Human Rights at Columbia Law School
"If folks are really serious about solving capacity issues, or spending funds in a way that could be productive, they would coordinate with receiving states and cities, but that's not the objective here. You have human beings used for clearly political purposes, to galvanize the media around this issue. DeSantis and Abbott have done this. I think it's going to require some sort of public reckoning in the polls. There's more likely a political remedy than a legal remedy." - Daniel Morales, Professor of Immigration Law at the University of Houston Law School
"It's a war on Hispanics by his administration. It's a war on women. It's a disaster. It's inhumane. This is not the act of a sincere, dedicated, compassionate public servant. This is the act of a raw political animal" - Charlie Crist, former Florida Governor
Demonstrations have continued to spread in Iran over the death of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by the "morality police" for not wearing a hijab properly, and died in custody about 2 hours later. NOTE: As many as 35 people have died in clashes with security forces, although activists believe the number is much higher. Ebrahim Raisi, Iran's president, has vowed to "deal decisively" with the ongoing protests.
The Guardian has a preview of a new book by Andy Campbell called We Are Proud Boys: How a Right-Wing Street Gang Ushered in a New Era of American Extremism. From the preview: "Its subject is the Proud Boys, racist, beer-addled and violence-addicted street fighters who have become best friends with many of Trump's warmest supporters, from Ann Coulter to Roger Stone ... The organization's father is Gavin McInnes, 52, a child of Scots who moved to Canada. In Montreal in the early 1990s McInnes founded a magazine called Pervert, which in 1999 he and two others rebranded as Vice. He moved the magazine to New York a couple of years later, then left in 2008. In spring 2016, on his own talkshow, he declared his main priority: 'I want violence. I want punching in the face. I'm disappointed in Trump supporters for not punching enough' ... McInnes's alliance with the GOP warmed up after he was invited to speak at the headquarters of the New York state Republican party in October 2018 ... After his speech, McInnes left the club with his sword. But Proud Boys 'and their skinhead pals' attacked a handful of antifascist protesters after one knocked a MAGA hat from one of their heads. 'They turned it into a pummeling,' a Huffington Post reporter remembered. 'This was three people on the ground and people just kicking the shit out of them.' The two most violent attackers were each sentenced to four years in prison. The judge didn't hesitate to draw the appropriate parallel to 1930s Germany. Mark Dwyer, of the New York state supreme court, said he knew what had happened then, 'when political street brawls were allowed to go ahead without any type of check from the criminal justice system. We don't want that to happen in New York'. Regardless, the New York brawl became another opportunity for the Republican establishment to normalize fascist behavior. Immediately after the attack, Fox News quoted Ed Cox, the Republican state chairman (and son-in-law of Richard Nixon) as 'calling on Democrats to cease inciting these attacks' ... As Campbell writes, the event at the Republican club was 'a jumping-off point for the GOP into what would eventually become a full embrace of domestic extremist violence'. Kelly Weill, a reporter who covers domestic extremism, explained, the Proud Boys 'really embody the political violence the GOP needs just a little bit of a proxy for. They can't personally be out there doing it, so they have the Proud Boys' ... 'If you look at who the Proud Boys really are,' said Cohen, 'they're an army. This is Trump's army ... and when he loses he's going to use them to try and keep control of power.' Which of course is what happened. Proud Boys were some of the most active players when Trump urged the crowd in front of him on 6 January 2021 to march on the US Capitol. Thirteen months after the deadly attack, the Republican endorsement of fascist violence became official: the Republican National Committee unanimously approved a resolution which memorialized the Capitol attack as nothing more than 'legitimate political discourse.'"
According to Maggie Haberman, a New York Times reporter, Donald Trump told her during a sit down interview at Mar-a-Lago that he wasn't watching television on January 6th, but was instead involved in meetings with Mark Meadows and others, and only found out about the rioting "on the late side".
September 23, 2022 - According to Axios, the National Republican Congressional Committee has withdrawn $1 million in television advertisements for Republican House candidate J.R. Majewski. Majewski, who embraces QAnon conspiracies, and who participated in the January 6 insurrection, and who has called for states supporting Donald Trump to secede from the union - none of which jeopardized his funding support - was recently found to have lied about seeing combat in Afghanistan, which prompted the withdrawl of financial support. It turns out that the closest Majewski came to combat was loading planes in Qatar for six months. NOTE: Majewski is calling the negative stories "fake news".
Steny Hoyer, the House majority leader, has distributed a list of questions Democrats have for Republicans about their platform. Here are some of those questions:
1. Who won the 2020 Presidential Election?
2. Like President Trump, do you believe that the January 6 insurrectionists were engaged in 'legitimate political discourse' and should not be prosecuted for their violent actions?
3. Do you support defunding the FBI in retaliation for executing a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago?
4. Will Republicans pursue a nationwide abortion ban?
5. If given the chance, will you try again to repeal the Affordable Care Act and strip health-care access away from millions of Americans?
According to Axios, David Malpass, the Trump-appointed president of the World Bank, was asked if he believed climate change was manmade. His response: "I don't even know -- I'm not a scientist and that is not a question." Malpass claimed afterwards that he is "not a denier" of climate change.
According to the Washington Post, Anika Collier Navaroli, a former Twitter employee who testified before the January 6 committee, is warning that "without intervention, we really are on a path to catastrophe". From the story: "After Trump told the Proud Boys, a far-right group with a history of violence, at a September 2020 presidential debate to 'stand back and stand by,' Navaroli pushed for the company to adopt a stricter policy around calls to incitement. Trump 'was speaking directly to extremist organizations and giving them directives,' she told the committee. 'We had not seen that sort of direct communication before, and that concerned me.' She had also seen how his tweets were quickly sparking replies from other accounts calling for 'civil war.' After Trump's 'will be wild' tweet in December, she said, 'it became clear not only were these individuals ready and willing, but the leader of their cause was asking them to join him in ... fighting for this cause in D.C. on January 6th.' The company, however, declined to take action, she told the committee. She pleaded with managers, she said, to face the 'reality that ... if we made no intervention into what I saw occurring, people were going to die ... 'My fear within the American context is that we have seen our last peaceful transition of power,' Navaroli said. But 'the same playbook,' she added, is being used around the world, 'teeing up the idea that if an election is not in someone's favor, it's been rigged. Without intervention we really are on this path to catastrophe.'"
Judge Robert Hinkle, a federal judge in Florida, has denied a motion by Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Andrew Warren, a former Florida prosecutor, who was suspended by DeSantis for a "woke agenda" after Warren stated publicly that he would not enforce an abortion ban or prosecute providers of gender transition treatment for young people. According to Warren: "The governor now has to answer it to a court of law where facts matter and where you have to tell the truth ... It's a victory for the truth. A federal judge has ruled that the governor has to come into court to explain the reasons behind my suspension, to show that it wasn't political, to show that it wasn't in violation of my free speech rights, to show that it wasn't in violation of the voters' rights to have the state attorney of their choice."
Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, an American army reservist, and Januray 6th insurrectionist, who is openly antismeitic, and wears a mustache styled after Adolf Hitler, was sentenced to four years in prison for his role in the Capitol attack, and for lying under oath. NOTE: Hale-Cusanelli was arrested after he bragged to a friend about how "exhilarating" it was to be in the Capitol, and after he declared that "the blood of patriots and tyrants" would refresh the metaphorical tree of liberty.
September 22, 2022 - A three-judge panel on the 11th circuit court of appeals, two of whom were put on the bench by Donald Trump, overturned a lower court's ruling that blocked the justice department from reviewing documents seized from Mar-a-Lago. In the ruling the judges wrote: "Plaintiff has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents. Nor has he established that the current administration has waived that requirement for these documents. And even if he had, that, in and of itself, would not explain why Plaintiff has an individual interest in the classified documents ... Plaintiff suggests that he may have declassified these documents when he was President. But the record contains no evidence that any of these records were declassified. In any event, at least for these purposes, the declassification argument is a red herring because declassifying an official document would not change its content or render it personal. So even if we assumed that Plaintiff did declassify some or all of the documents, that would not explain why he has a personal interest in them."
During an appearance on Fox News with far-right commentator Sean Hannity, Trump claimed that he had the power to declassify documents just "by thinking about it".
Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican senator, called a new highway project "a great bipartisan victory" that will bring "jobs to Texas and millions of dollars to the state". NOTE: Cruz voted against the measure.
According to the AP, a judge has blocked Indiana's anti-abortion law on grounds that the state's constitution protects access to the procedure. From the story: "Owen County Judge Kelsey Hanlon issued a preliminary injunction against the ban that took effect one week ago. The injunction was sought by abortion clinic operators who argued in a lawsuit that the state constitution protects access to the medical procedure. The ban was approved by the state's Republican-dominated Legislature on Aug. 5 and signed by GOP Gov. Eric Holcomb. That made Indiana the first state to enact tighter abortion restrictions since the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated federal abortion protections by overturning Roe v. Wade in June. The judge wrote 'there is reasonable likelihood that this significant restriction of personal autonomy offends the liberty guarantees of the Indiana Constitution' and that the clinics will prevail in the lawsuit. The order prevents the state from enforcing the ban pending a trial on the merits of the lawsuit. Republican state Attorney General Todd Rokita said in a statement: 'We plan to appeal and continue to make the case for life in Indiana.'"
In a new court filing, Raymond Dearie, the special master in the Mar-a-Lago document seizure case, is demanding that by September 30, Trump's lawyers must provide "A list of any specific items set forth in the Detailed Property Inventory that Plaintiff asserts were not seized from the Premises on August 8, 2022." NOTE: Trump has asserted publicly that documents were planted. This demand will settle once and for all whether Trump is willing to make that claim in a legal setting.
September 21, 2022 - According to the AP, the House of Representatives will begin debate today on a bill to overhaul the United States' election law to stop political objections from preventing the accession of a new president. From the story: "The bill, which is similar to legislation moving through the Senate, would clarify in the law that the vice president's role presiding over the count is only ceremonial and also sets out that each state can only send one certified set of electors. Trump's allies had unsuccessfully tried to put together alternate slates of illegitimate pro-Trump electors in swing states where Biden won. The legislation would increase the threshold for individual lawmakers' objections to any state's electoral votes, requiring a third of the House and a third of the Senate to object to trigger votes on the results in both chambers. Currently, only one lawmaker in the House and one lawmaker in the Senate has to object. The House bill would set out very narrow grounds for those objections, an attempt to thwart baseless or politically motivated challenges. The legislation also would require courts to get involved if state or local officials want to delay a presidential vote or refuse to certify the results. The House vote comes as the Senate is moving on a similar track with enough Republican support to virtually ensure passage before the end of the year. After months of talks, House Democrats introduced the legislation on Monday and are holding a quick vote two days later in order to send the bill across the Capitol and start to resolve differences. A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation this summer and a Senate committee is expected to vote on it next week." NOTE: Republican House leadership opposes the measure, and is encouraging its members to vote no via a message from House Republican whip Steve Scalise.
According to the Washington Post, Mitch McConnell initially supported the effort to convict Trump for the January 6 insurrection, but backed down after he understood the level of support for Trump among his colleagues in the Senate. From the story: "McConnell knew many of his rank-and-file were torn over how to handle the situation — and that in their uncertainty, they would look to him for guidance. If he declared the trial to be constitutional, breaking with Trump in the process, he could set the stage for a party mutiny, helping the GOP turn the page on Trump for good. It was an appealing prospect: conviction could enable the Senate to bar Trump from holding office again — and McConnell didn't ever want Trump in office again. But in all his years as GOP leader, McConnell had never led such a rebellion. And that day, he wasn't sure he was up to the task."
Joe Biden spoke at the United Nations today, a day in which Putin alluded to the possibility of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Here are some highlights from his speech:
- "A permanent member of the United Nations Security Council invaded his neighbor, attempted to erase a sovereign state from the map. Russia has shamelessly violated the core tenets of the United Nations Charter"
- "This war is about extinguishing Ukraine's right to exist as a state, plain and simple, and Ukraine's right to exist as a people. Wherever you are, wherever you live, whatever you believe ... That should make your blood run cold."
- "If nations can pursue their imperial ambitions without consequences, then we put at risk everything this very institution stands for, everything."
- "A nuclear war cannot be won, and must never be fought."
- "We still believe by working together, we can bend the arc of history toward a freer and more just world for all our children, although none of us have fully achieved it. We're not passive witnesses to history. We are the authors of history. We can do this we have to do it, for ourselves and for our future. For humankind."
According to the Guardian, Letitia James, the attorney general for New York, announced a lawsuit against Donald Trump and three of his adult children for lying to tax collectors, lenders and insurers in a "staggering" fraud scheme that routinely misstated the value of his properties to enrich themselves. From the story: "The attorney general of New York state has filed a civil lawsuit against Donald Trump and members of his family, the culmination of a years-long investigation of financial practices at the Trump Organization. Letitia James announced the suit in New York on Wednesday. In a statement, the attorney general said the suit was filed 'against Donald Trump, the Trump Organization, senior management and involved entities for engaging in years of financial fraud to obtain a host of economic benefits. The lawsuit alleges that Donald Trump, with the help of his children Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump, and senior executives of the Trump Organization, falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to induce banks to lend money to the Trump Organization on more favorable terms than would otherwise have been available to the company, to satisfy continuing loan covenants, induce insurers to provide insurance coverage for higher limits and lower premiums, and to gain tax benefits, among other things.'"
Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, released a statement regarding the state's suit against Donald Trump. From the statement: "For too long, powerful, wealthy people in this country have operated as if the rules do not apply to them. Donald Trump stands out as among the most egregious examples of this misconduct. With the help of his children and senior executives at the Trump Organization, Donald Trump falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself and cheat the system. In fact, the very foundation of his purported net worth is rooted in incredible fraud and illegality. Mr. Trump thought he could get away with the art of the steal, but today, that conduct ends. There are not two sets of laws for people in this country; we must hold former presidents to the same standards as everyday Americans. I will continue to ensure that no one is able to evade the law, because no one is above it." NOTE: James is asking that Trump pay at least $250m in penalties, and that his family be banned from running businesses in the state. James also referred allegations of criminal fraud to federal prosecutors in manhattan, and the Internal Revenue Service.
According to the AP, the special master in the Mar-a-Lago documents seizure case appears skeptical of Trump's lawyers declassification claims. From the story: "The independent arbiter tasked with inspecting documents seized in an FBI search of Donald Trump's Florida home said on Tuesday he intends to push briskly through the review process and appeared skeptical of Trump lawyers' reluctance to say whether they believed the records had been declassified. 'We're going to proceed with what I call responsible dispatch,' Raymond Dearie, a veteran Brooklyn judge, told lawyers for Trump and the Department of Justice in their first meeting since his appointment last week as a so-called special master ... Though Trump's lawyers requested the appointment of a special master, they have resisted Dearie's request for more information about whether the seized records had been previously declassified – as Trump maintains. His lawyers have consistently stopped short of that claim even as they asserted in a separate filing on Tuesday that the department of justice had not proven that the documents were classified. In any event, they say, a president has absolute authority to declassify information ... But Dearie said that if Trump's lawyers will not actually assert that the records have been declassified, and the department of justice makes an acceptable case that they remain classified, he will be inclined to regard them as classified. 'As far as I'm concerned,' he said, 'that's the end of it.' ... The three statutes the department of justice listed on a warrant do not require that the mishandled information be classified in order for prosecutors to initiate a criminal case."
Virginia Thomas, a conservative activist, and wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, has agreed to be interviewed by the January 6 committee regarding the January 6 insurrection. NOTE: Thomas contacted lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin in 2020 as part of an effort to overturn Donald Trump's election defeat.
September 20, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Andrew Witherspoon, Chris Michael and Richard Luscombe describe the history of security breaches at Mar-a-Lago:
- "April 2022: FBI agents found boxes of secret and classified documents in a basement 'storage area' beneath the Great Hall, the public hub of the Mar-a-Lago resort."
- "April 2017: Trump held an 'international summit' with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, in the living area of the Great Hall in full view of resort members and paying guests."
- "April 2019: Chinese national Yujing Zhang is detained in the lobby after passing through Secret Service security in possession of four cellphones and flash drives containing malware (malicious software designed to infiltrate computers for nefarious purposes). She was receiving a golf cart ride to the club."
- "February 2017: Trump discussed the North Korean missile crisis in the company of the then Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, in the resort's open-air dining room, perusing classified materials on a laptop watched by diners and waiters."
- "May 2021: Ukrainian fake heiress and alleged charity scammer Inna Yashchyshyn gains access to Mar-a-Lago, posing for pictures by the swimming pool and, later, with Trump and South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham at nearby Trump International golf club."
- "August 2022: FBI agents search Trump's bedroom inside his private quarters at Mar-a-Lago, one of three areas targeted according to the affidavit supporting the search warrant application. It is not known what was found there."
- "April 2017: Trump sets up an impromptu 'situation room' in an office in order to monitor US missile strikes on Syria. Analysts noted the insecure set-up and presence of officials with no connection to national security."
- "August 2022: FBI agents discover dozens of highly classified and top secret folders in an office in a converted bridal suite above the Grand Ballroom. Some of the papers are found stuffed in a desk drawer."
- "November 2018: Student Mark Lindblom is arrested for trespassing after entering the resort through a tunnel linking Mar-a-Lago to its beach club, passing through security and mingling with guests. Lindblom tells a judge: 'I wanted to see how far I could get.'"
Liz Cheney, one of two Republican members of the January 6 committee, expressed frustration at Republican efforts to make excuses for Trump after he was caught with top secret documents in his Florida residence, saying: "Does defending Donald Trump now mean excusing obstruction of justice? How many of our elected officials today are willing to do that? Bit by bit, excuse by excuse we're putting Donald Trump above the law. We are rendering indefensible conduct normal, legal and appropriate – as though he were a king."
Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republican members of the January 6 committee, explained what can be expected if Republicans retake control of the House in November: "They're going to demand an impeachment vote on President Biden every week."
A criminal investigation has been launched in Texas to determine if 50 asylum seekers from Venezuela were illegally flown from Texas to Martha's Vineyard on flights chartered on behalf of Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Evidence has emerged that the migrants were misled when they were told their destination would have jobs and shelter waiting for them.
E Jean Carroll, a former columnist for Elle magazine, who accused Trump of raping her over twenty years ago, says she plans to use New York states' Adult Survivors Act, which was signed into law recently by governor Kathy Hochul, to bring a civil suit against Trump for battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress. NOTE: The new law takes effect on 24 November.
September 19, 2022 - Tom Barrack, the chair of Donald Trump's inaugural committee, goes on trial starting today for failing to register as a foreign agent. Barrack, who was once described as part of a "set of nightlife musketeers" along with Trump and deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, worked on behalf of the United Arab Emirates from 2016 to 2018 to influence the Trump administration.
Ted Cruz, a Republican senator from Texas, complained that the Freedom to Marry Act, which will be voted on after the mid-terms, and is intended to codify same-sex marriage, is "about empowering the Biden IRS to target every church and school and university and charity in America that refuses to knuckle under to their view of gay marriage".
Writing for the Guardian, Richard Luscombe offers the following analysis of Trump's latest embrace of QAnon: "Donald Trump made one of his highest-profile embraces to date of the extremist conspiracy group QAnon at a political rally in Ohio on Saturday, making the apparently deliberate choice to play music that is virtually indistinguishable from the cult organization's adopted anthem. Dozens of the former president's supporters in Youngstown engaged in raised-arm salutes as Trump delivered a fiery address to the background of a song his team insisted was a royalty-free tune from the internet, but to many ears it was nearly identical to the 2020 instrumental track Wwg1wga."
September 17, 2022 - Protesters have started taking to the streets of Iran over the death of Mahsa Amini.
September 16, 2022 - Politico has published a profile of Raymond Dearie, the special master in the Mar-a-Lago seizure case. From the profile: "Lawyers and litigants who have appeared before Dearie describe him as independent, thorough and even-handed jurist who is fit to wrangle the dueling sides. As much as any judge put in this difficult position, they say he's up to the task. 'He's one of the few judges who both sides want to appear in front of. He is held in the highest regard by attorneys. He's someone who actually listens to the lawyers and considers what they have to say before he makes a decision,' said Lindsay Gerdes, a former Brooklyn federal prosecutor. Sean Hecker, an attorney at Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP who has had several cases before Dearie (including one pending) said much the same. 'He's independent-minded, extremely smart and wise. Hard to imagine a more qualified person for this challenging assignment.'"
According to the AP, Donald Trump appears to be reaching out to QAnon supporters. From the story: "The former president may be seeking solidarity with his most loyal supporters at a time when he faces escalating investigations and potential challengers within his own party, according to Mia Bloom, a professor at Georgia State University who has studied QAnon and recently wrote a book about the group. 'These are people who have elevated Trump to messiah-like status, where only he can stop this cabal,' Bloom told the AP on Thursday. 'That's why you see so many images (in online QAnon spaces) of Trump as Jesus.' On Truth Social, QAnon-affiliated accounts hail Trump as a hero and savior and vilify President Joe Biden by comparing him to Adolf Hitler or the devil. When Trump shares the content, they congratulate each other. Some accounts proudly display how many times Trump has 're-truthed' them in their bios. By using their own language to directly address QAnon supporters, Trump is telling them that they've been right all along and that he shares their secret mission, according to Janet McIntosh, an anthropologist at Brandeis University who has studied QAnon's use of language and symbols. It also allows Trump to endorse their beliefs and their hope for a violent uprising without expressly saying so, she said, citing his recent post about 'the storm' as a particularly frightening example." NOTE: Trump recently posted a meme to his Truth Social media account that shows a picture of himself wearing a QAnon pin that includes the captions "The storm is coming" and also "WWG1WGA".
Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman, died in custody in Tehran, Iran, after having been arrested by the Guidance Patrol (morality police) for not wearing the hijab in accordance with government standards. Her brother Kiaresh, was told Mahsa had died of a heart attack, but according to doctors, Mahsa suffered a brain injury, which included bleeding from the ears and bruises under the eyes. Scans of her skull showed bone fracture, hemorrhage, and brain edema.
September 15, 2022 - US district judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointed judge, named Raymond Dearie, a senior US district judge, to serve as a special master to review documents seized from Mar-a-Lago. Dearie will be tasked with deciding which if any of the seized documents are privileged and should be off limits to federal investigators. Dearie has been given a November 30 deadline to finish his review.
During an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump was asked by Hewitt if being indicted would deter him from running for president again, which led to the following exchange:
TRUMP: "It would not. But I think if it happened, I think you'd have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we've never seen before. I don't think the people of the United States would stand for it."
HEWITT: "What kind of problems, Mr. President"
TRUMP: "I think they'd have big problems, big problems. I just don't think they'd stand for it. They will not, they will not sit still and stand for this ultimate of hoaxes. We went through phony impeachments. We went through phony Mueller reports that came out with no collusion. We came, everything that they've done to try and stop progress. And on top of that, I did more than virtually any president. You take a look, with the biggest tax cuts, with the rebuilding of our military, with all of the things we've done. I don't think the people of this country would stand for it, especially since they know, especially since they know I'm totally innocent."
HEWITT: "You know that the legacy media will say you're attempting to incite violence with that statement. How do you respond to what will inevitably..."
TRUMP: "That's not, that's not inciting. I'm just saying what my opinion is. I don't think the people of this country would stand for it."
In a new book by Peter Baker of the New York Times and Susan Glasser of the New Yorker, called The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, the authors describe how John Kelly, Trump's chief of staff, secretly purchased a book in which 27 mental health professionals warned that Trump was psychologically unfit for the job. According to Baker and Glasser, Kelly used the book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a bestseller in 2017, as a guide as he tried to cope with Trump's irrational behavior. NOTE: in 2018, Yale psychiatrist Bandy Lee, described the aims of the book thusly: "While we keep within the letter of the Goldwater rule – which prohibits psychiatrists from diagnosing public figures without a personal examination and without consent – there is still a lot that mental health professionals can tell before the public reaches awareness. These come from observations of a person's patterns of responses, of media appearances over time, and from reports of those close to him. Indeed, we know far more about Trump in this regard than many, if not most, of our patients. Nevertheless, the personal health of a public figure is her private affair – until, that is, it becomes a threat to public health."
Reality Winner, an intelligence contractor who served more than four years in prison after she was caught leaking a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, and was prosecuted for doing so by the Trump administration, said she finds accusations that Trump himself has mishandled sensitive documents "incredibly ironic".
Mark Meadows, Trump's former chief of staff, has complied with a subpoena from the justice department investigation into events surrounding the January 6 insurrection.
September 14, 2022 - According to the AP, federal investigators issued a subpoena for surveillance footage from inside Mar-a-Lago and has received a hard drive in response. From the story: "The newly visible portions of the FBI agent's affidavit show that the FBI on June 24 subpoenaed for the footage after a visit weeks earlier to Mar-a-Lago in which agents observed 50 to 55 boxes of records in the storage room at the property. The Trump Organization provided a hard drive on July 6 in response to the subpoena, the affidavit says. The footage could be an important piece of the investigation, including as agents evaluate whether anyone has sought to obstruct the probe. The Justice Department has said in a separate filing that it has 'developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government's investigation."
According to the Guardian, FBI agents surrounded Mike Lindell, the CEO of My Pillow, who was waiting in the drive-thru line at a Hardee's in Mankato, Minnesota. According to Lindell, the agents questioned him about Tina Peters, a fellow election denier who is facing criminal charges in Colorado for tampering with voting machinery as a county clerk, and also seized his cellphone.
September 13, 2022 - For the sixth time, Republican senator Lindsey Graham has introduced a national abortion ban in Congress. If the bill were to become law, abortion would be banned nationwide after 15 weeks. According to Graham: "I think we should have a law on the books that says after 15 weeks, no abortion on demand except in cases of rape, incest, to save the life of the mother, and that should be where America's at." NOTE: Graham, who claimed one month ago that the states should regulate abortion, claims the 15 week threshold is when fetuses feel pain, despite most scientists saying that doesn't happen before 24 weeks, if even then. The subject is continuing to be researched.
According to Reuters, the US Justice Department has issued about 40 subpoenas over the past week seeking information about efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election. Some of the subpoenas also seek information on Trump's Save America political fundraising group, which is a new line of inquiry for the justice department.
September 12, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Hugo Lowell offers the following analysis regarding court filings in the search for government documents at Mar-a-Lago: "The filings amounted to a forceful response against the decision by the judge – a Trump appointee – to give unusually deferential treatment to Trump on account of his status as a former president. The justice department focused on the classified documents in its motion to stay the order barring it from reviewing the seized materials, arguing that Trump did not have 'possessory interest' for the records – the key legal standard at issue – and were themselves the subject of the investigation. Even if Trump attempted to make an executive privilege argument to set aside the classified documents from the evidence cache, the government argued, he could not say that he had a 'possessory interest' for classified documents that belonged to the state."
According to Politico, if the GOP wins control of congress in the mid-term elections, they will shift the focus of January 6 investigation away from Trump, and instead look at security breaches that led to the attack. From the story: "While past investigations by the Senate and Capitol Police inspector general have thoroughly explored many of those areas and made a laundry list of recommendations to bolster security, not to mention a forthcoming report from the Democratic-run Jan. 6 select committee, House GOP lawmakers are determined to run their own, Trump-free inquiry. It's a contradictory turn for a conference that has struggled for a successful message defending Trump against revelations already uncovered by the select panel, instead largely urging Washington to move on. But after two years of being on the outside looking in —Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy pulled his picks from the panel after Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected two of them — House Republicans are eager to flip the script. 'I think it's been very well-documented that there were significant intelligence and communications failures on Jan. 6. It's not the first time we've had those issues,' Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), who voted to certify President Joe Biden's Electoral College win, said in an interview. 'We have to stop that.' Though House Republicans have stayed almost completely out of the ongoing Jan. 6 probe, they've quietly laid the groundwork for changes to the Capitol's security apparatus that would take effect much more quickly than the investigations they plan to mount. For example, they want to get rid of the metal detectors installed around the House floor after Jan. 6 that have fueled GOP ire and resulted in hefty fines for lawmakers who tried to dodge them. They are also eager to reopen the Capitol complex, which still has restrictions in place after shuttering at the start of the pandemic. Armstrong noted while many of his colleagues will look back at Jan. 6, his focus is on how the building operates moving forward on a 'general 11 a.m. on a Wednesday.'"
September 11, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Peter Stone offers the following analysis of the ever increasing threat to law enforcement because of Trump's tirade against the FBI and DoJ: "Donald Trump's non-stop drive to paint the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago to recover classified documents as a political witch hunt is drawing rebukes from ex-justice department and FBI officials who warn such attacks can spur violence and pose a real threat to the physical safety of law enforcement. But the concerns have not deterred Republican House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and other Trump allies from making inflammatory remarks echoing the former US president. The unrelenting attacks by Trump and loyalists such as McCarthy, senator Lindsey Graham, Steve Bannon and false conspiracy theorist Alex Jones against law enforcement have continued despite strong evidence that Trump kept hundreds of classified documents illegally. Before the 8 August raid, Trump and his attorneys stonewalled FBI and US National Archives requests for the return of all classified documents and did not fully comply with a grand jury subpoena in a criminal probe of Trump's hoarding of government documents. The FBI search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago home and club recovered 33 boxes with over 100 classified documents, adding to the 200 classified records Trump had earlier returned in response to multiple federal requests. Trump's high decibel attacks on law enforcement officials for trying to recover large quantities of classified documents including some that reportedly had foreign nuclear secrets was palpable in Pennsylvania recently when Trump at a political rally branded the FBI and justice department 'political monsters' and labelled president Joe Biden 'an enemy of the state'. The day before in Pennsylvania, to coincide with a major Biden speech about threats to democracy posed by Trump and some of his allies, McCarthy mimicked Trump's high decibel attacks on the court-approved FBI raid by calling it an 'assault on democracy'. Former law enforcement officials and scholars warn that using such conspiratorial rhetoric impugning the motives and actions of justice department and the FBI runs the risk of inciting threats of violence and actual attacks, fears that have already been proven warranted ... 'I have been dealing with law enforcement and the criminal justice system for close to 40 years. I have never seen the type or virulence of attacks being made every day against the FBI, DoJ lawyers, and judges,' former justice department inspector general Michael Bromwich told the Guardian. 'It's a chorus led by Trump but that includes elected officials at every level. It is dangerous and unacceptable.' Bromwich added: 'It's one thing for professional rabble rousers, liars, and nihilists – such as Bannon and Jones – to attack law enforcement and DoJ in the way that they have since the search; it's quite another for so-called respectable political figures such as McCarthy and Graham to do so. Their recent actions and words reflect that theirs is a politics detached from facts and principle.' ... To historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who has studied authoritarian leaders and wrote the book Strongmen, Trump's attacks on the FBI and justice department and his retention of classified documents are consistent with his 'authoritarian' leadership style. 'It's very typical of authoritarians to claim that they're the victims and that there are witch hunts against them,' Ben-Ghiat told the Guardian. Trump's furious assaults on law enforcement also targeted the National Archives and Records Administration, causing a notable uptick in threats against the agency, according to sources quoted by the Washington Post ... The frenzied attacks on law enforcement began almost immediately after the raid and included some especially rabid Trump supporters. Former White House adviser Bannon, who has been convicted on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the House January 6 panel, made unsupported claims to conspiracy monger Jones on Infowars that the FBI planted evidence against Trump during the Mar-a-Lago raid, and that the 'deep state' is planning to kill Trump. 'I do not think it's beyond this administrative state and their deep state apparatus to actually try to work on the assassination of President Trump,' said Bannon, who on 8 September was charged by New York prosecutors with fraud, money laundering and conspiracy involving his role in a private fundraising scheme to fund constructing the US-Mexico border wall ... William Barr, Trump's former attorney general who formerly was a close ally, told Fox News on 2 September he didn't see any reason why classified documents were at Mar-a-Lago once Trump left office. 'People say this was unprecedented,' Barr told Fox News 'But it's also unprecedented for a president to take all this classified information and put them in a country club, okay?' To historian Ben-Ghiat, the fact that 'Trump had those classified documents and they were mixed in with golf balls and family photos is very typical of authoritarian type leaders who don't recognize any divides between public and private. Everything is theirs to trade, to sell and to use as leverage.' For Bromwich, the attacks on law enforcement by Trump and his ardent allies is unprecedented and very dangerous. 'For those of us who have spent time with federal law enforcement personnel, the idea that they are members of the deep state or doing the bidding of the radical left is ridiculous. In my experience, the majority are conservative and Republican. Whatever their politics, they don't let their political views affect their work. The search of Mar-a-Lago was indeed unprecedented. It was preceded by an unprecedented and colossal theft of government property by the former president.'"
September 10, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Samira Asma-Sadeque offers the following analysis of subpoenas issued to two Trump officials for their knowledge of fundraising to undermine elections: "Two of Donald Trump's top officials are facing subpoenas for an investigation against him regarding fund-raisers following the 2020 elections that aimed to undermine the results of the election. Stephen Miller, once one of the former US president's most senior aides, and Brian Jack, his former director of political affairs at the White House, were part of a large group of Trump's officials and allies who were subpoenaed by the grand jury this week, the New York Times reported. The current investigation is examining funds related to the Save America political action committee (Pac) and an alleged plan that would entail sending fake electors to states that had contested results in the 2020 elections."
Louie Gohmert, a Republican US Representative, presented Dr. Simone Gold, who pleaded guilty earlier this year for her role in the January 6th insurrection, with an American flag that flew over the US Capitol. Gold, who was sentenced to 60 days in prison, was met by Gohmert as she was released two weeks early. Gohmert referred to Gold as "a patriot and an American hero". NOTE: Gold founded America's Frontline Doctors, a group that spread misinformation about the global pandemic, including false information about the drug hydroxychloroquine.
September 9, 2022 - Politico offers the following analogy to help explain the current situation with Trump, sensitive documents found at Mar-a-Lago, and the judge who ruled recently in his favor: "Imagine that someone allegedly stole a sack of diamonds from a jewelry shop and then stashed the gems in junk drawers around their house. The cops raid the place, take away everything in the drawers where they find stolen diamonds, and spend two weeks separating them from the junk. Then a judge comes along and says that the big issue in the case isn't the stolen diamonds but that the cops still have some of the alleged thief's personal belongings. She halts the heist investigation until an outside expert can sort the gems from the junk. The government thinks the judge's decision is absurd - no other suspect has received this special treatment - but they offer the judge a compromise: let us keep all of the diamonds, and we'll return all of the alleged thief's junk, even a few cheap watches that they think he might have swiped from the store."
According to the Guardian, more than half of the parties that filed amicus briefs to the supreme court calling for an end to a federal abortion right, have political connections to Ginni Thomas, raising concerns about a possible conflict of interest at the supreme court, where her husband, Clarence Thomas, voted to eliminate the constitutional right.
Donald Middlebrooks, a US district judge, dismissed a lawsuit by Donald Trump which claims that Hillary Clinton and former top FBI officials, acted in concert to concoct the Russia investigation. According to Middlebrooks, the suit contained "glaring structural deficiencies" and many of the "characterizations of events are implausible." Middlebrooks also dismissed the idea that Trump sued to correct an actual legal harm, saying that "instead, he is seeking to flaunt a 200-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him, and this court is not the appropriate forum."
Writing for the Guardian, Andrew Gawthorpe offers the following analysis of Steve Bannon: "By all appearances, Steve Bannon likes to think that he represents the soul of the Maga movement. He sees himself as a tireless champion of the common man, fighting their battles against America's corrupt elites. It's not for nothing that his radio show is called War Room and carried by the Real America's Voice network. But just like everybody else who has worked closely with Donald Trump, Bannon is either delusional or trying to delude. He's not the everyman – he's the corrupt elite. This was driven home once again on Thursday, when Bannon surrendered himself to New York prosecutors to face charges of defrauding donors to We Build the Wall, a non-profit organization that raised more than $25m to build a wall to keep immigrants from crossing America's southern border. Although donors to the group were assured that 100% of their money would be used on construction, large sums were siphoned into the pockets of those running the group. And who as chairman of the board allegedly took the greatest sum of all? None other than Steve Bannon."
Nicholas Ochs, who founded the Hawaii Proud Boys chapter, and Nicholas DeCarlo, who with Ochs shared a social media channel called Murder the Media, pleaded guilty today to felony charges for their role in the January 6 insurrection. One of the things the men admitted to doing was scrawling "murder the media" on a door in the Capitol.
September 8, 2022 - Queen Elizabeth II died today. She was 96. Prince Charles will assume the throne as King Charles III.
Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's former chief strategist, surrendered to New York authorities over his role in an alleged fundraising scam. Bannon is being charged with six counts, two for money laundering in the 2nd degree, three for conspiracy in the fourth and fifth degree, and one for scheming to defraud in the fifth degree. According to the charges, Bannon siphoned off more than $1m for personal expenses from the "We Build the Wall" fundraising effort which promised donors that all proceeds would be used to fund the completion of the US-Mexico border wall. Bannon was previously charged by the federal government for the same crime, but Trump issued a pardon in the last days of his presidency which expunged the federal charges. The current prosecution is state-level, which a federal pardon does not cover. As Bannon arrived at court, a heckler could be heard yelling out: "Stop hurting America, you greasy, two-bit grifter!" Earlier this week, Bannon released a defiant statement which called the indictment "phony" and a "partisan political weaponization of the criminal justice system". Bannon also stated: "They are coming after all of us, not only president Trump and myself. I am never going to stop fighting. In fact, I have not yet begun to fight. They will have to kill me first." NOTE: Donald Trump told the American people repeatedly that Mexico would pay for the wall.
Geoffrey Berman, who was the US attorney for the southern district of New York until he was fired by Bill Barr, the attorney general under Donald Trump, released a new book called Holding the Line: Inside the Nation's Preeminent US Attorney's Office and its Battle with the Trump Justice Department. In the book, Berman calls Barr stupid, a liar, a bully and a thug.
According to ABC News, the justice department is probing Trump's fundraising committee Save America. A federal grand jury has been empaneled to look at the group's fundraising operations and it has issued subpoenas for "documents, records and testimony from potential witnesses". NOTE: The Save America PAC has brought in more than $135m since its inception in the days following the 2020 election, and as of the end of July, has just under $100m in cash on hand.
Ted Cruz, a Republican US Senator, has warned that $80bn earmarked for the IRS in the Inflation Reduction Act as a way to modernize outdated technology and to increase enforcement of tax laws, is actually to fund a "shadow army of 87,000 IRS agents"
Letitia James, the New York attorney general, and Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, gave a press briefing regarding charges against Steve Bannon. According to Bragg: We Build the wall Incorporated "that netted more than $15m from thousands of donors across the country based on false pretenses ... Specifically the false promise that all of the funds obtained to We Build The Wall would go to the construction of a wall on the border of the United States and Mexico and that, and I quote, 'not a penny' would go to its president's salary. We Build The Wall's fundraisers use that phrase time and again, not a penny, as they solicited donations through media appearances, emails to potential donors, social media posts, and more. But instead of pennies, the president of We Build the Wall received more than $250,000 in a salary funded by donations, at least $140,000 of which we allege was laundered by Steve Bannon ... Bannon and three other individuals were indicted by the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York for crimes related to this fundraising scheme and then just months later received a presidential pardon from former president Donald Trump. We then began investigating and determined that Mr Bannon must be held accountable ... for his conduct as the architect of this scheme, which impacted hundreds of Manhattan residents. Because the simple truth is that it is a crime to profit off the backs of donors by making false pretenses. This is the work we do, ensuring that when a Manhattanite hands over money for a particular purpose they know where it's going and that it actually goes there without any smokescreens or false pretenses. And so we are here to say today in one voice that in Manhattan and in New York, you will be held accountable for defrauding donors." Letitia James added: "They think that they are above the law, and the most egregious of them take advantage of hardworking Americans in the process. And Steve Bannon stands out as a perfect example of this blatant inequality. He gained power and influence as a top adviser to the former president. And he used that influence and those connections to cheat everyday Americans and carry out this fraud. When Mr Bannon created a fundraising scheme to finance the construction of that wall, he basically stole millions of dollars to line his own pocket, and those of other politically connected people. Simply put, Mr Bannon lied to ordinary citizens about this project. He diverted their hard-earned money. He preyed upon the emotions of New Yorkers and Americans. And then when Mr Bannon was held accountable for his criminal actions, the former president pardoned him. Given this reality, it is understandable how hard working honest ordinary citizens are cynical about the two systems of justice in our country, one for the rich and powerful, and another for everyone else. But in New York, we have zero tolerance for corruption and or for abuses of power."
Steve Bannon, who appeared in a Manhattan courtroom today in handcuffs, pleaded not guilty to all six felony counts. In the hallway outside the courtroom, Bannon told reporters: "It's all nonsense. They will never shut me up. Ever." Bannon was released without bail until next month.
The justice department has appealed District court judge Aileen Cannon's ruling, which granted Trump's request to appoint a special master over documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago by the FBI, to the Atlanta-based 11th US circuit court of appeals.
September 7, 2022 - According to the Washington Post, among the papers found by the FBI during the search at Mar-a-Lago last month was one describing a foreign government's nuclear capabilities. Notable responses to this news:
"The fact we now know there were highly classified, restricted access documents about another country's nuclear defense capabilities stored at Mar-a-Lago is a gamechanger with regard to the risk it poses to our national security. That these documents may have been seen by unauthorized personnel ... tells individuals what our capabilities are with regard to intelligence collection related to nuclear programs. More important is it identifies or exposes our gaps with regard to intelligence collection. The bottom line is others are going to look at this information and determine what we know and don't know, and they're going to make decisions about their nuclear programs based on that information. And that is an extremely dangerous thing." - Shawn Turner, Former Director of Communications for US National Intelligence
"New reporting that Trump had highly classified information, including on foreign nuclear programs. If true, it raises yet more questions. Why would Trump take them to Mar-a-Lago? Why did he refuse to return them? The investigation must continue uninterrupted and unimpeded." - Adam Schiff
"NB (note bene): this is just the beginning ... and it's gonna get much, much worse. Special Access Programs (SAP), TS/SCI, NOFORN ... some of our most closely guarded secrets. Yeah, this is more than a 'storage problem,' @marcorubio" - Mark Hertling, Retired US Army Lietenant General and National Security Analyst
"Donald Trump was, and remains, a U.S. national security disaster. Anyone else in America holding highly classified nuclear information at their residence would have been arrested and indicted. And Trump as ex-President doesn't even have a security clearance." - Ted Lieu, US Representative
"Donald Trump is a serious threat to the national security of the United States ..." - John W Dean, Former White House Counsel to Richard Nixon
"The seriousness of the documents eliminates any question about whether or not the department and the FBI actually had to go in with a search, which at the time was perceived as this overly aggressive move taken out of the blue, without any sort of appropriate wind up. Of course, we now know that that's not true. We know that the parties were not negotiating in good faith. We know that the folks on the Trump team were misleading the government ... [and] resisted the return of these documents for basically a year and a half. Knowing what was in there, they absolutely have to go in and recover this material. It's essential to national security." - Andrew McCabe, Former Deputy Director of the FBI
Donald Trump posted the following to his Truth Social network: "Not only did the FBI steal my Passports in the FBI Raid and Break-In of my home, Mar-a-Lago, but it has just been learned through court filings that they also improperly took my complete and highly confidential medical file and history, with all the bells and whistles. Plus personal Tax Records (Illegal to take), and lawyer/client/privileged information, a definite NO, NO. Days of the Soviet Union!"
Writing for the Guardian, Hugo Lowell offers the following analysis of indictment expected to be handed down later this week against Steve Bannon for fraud: "The expected move by the Manhattan district attorney's office was quietly communicated to Bannon in recent days, the sources said of the sealed indictment, and indicated the state charges will likely mirror the federal case in which he was pardoned. Bannon and three others were charged in that case by federal prosecutors in Manhattan with falsely claiming that they would not take compensation in the private 'We Build the Wall' fundraising effort to underwrite part of the construction of the wall on the US-Mexico border. The architect of Trump's 2016 election campaign and later White House adviser was accused of personally taking more than $1m from what people had donated to the fundraising push that promised to secure funding in order to ensure the completion of the border wall. Bannon – alongside disabled veteran Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea – raised more than $25m in the online crowdfunding effort, which also promised donors that all of the proceeds would go towards constructing the wall. Though Bannon pleaded not guilty to the federal charges in August 2020, two others, Kolfage and Badolato, pleaded guilty to siphoning off money from the scheme and defrauding others for their own gain. Bannon received a last-minute pardon in the final days of the Trump administration that expunged the federal indictment. But presidential pardons do not apply to state-level charges. The Manhattan district attorney's office started examining whether to pursue a case against Bannon almost immediately after he received the pardon, one source with knowledge of the matter said, and several close Bannon allies were subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury in recent months."
Writing for the Guardian, Julian Borger offers the following analysis of the Trump residence: "Mar-a-Lago – the Palm Beach resort and residence where Donald Trump reportedly stored nuclear secrets among a trove of highly classified documents for 18 months since leaving the White House – is a magnet for foreign spies, former intelligence officials have warned. The Washington Post reported that a document describing an unspecified foreign government's defences, including its nuclear capabilities, was one of the many highly secret papers Trump took away from the White House when he left office in January 2021. There were also documents marked SAP, for Special-Access Programmes, which are often about US intelligence operations and whose circulation is severely restricted, even among administration officials with top security clearance. Potentially most disturbing of all, there were papers stamped HCS, Humint Control Systems, involving human intelligence gathered from agents in enemy countries, whose lives would be in danger if their identities were compromised. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is conducting a damage assessment review which is focused on the sensitivity of the documents, but US officials said it is the job of FBI counter-intelligence to assess who may have gained access to them. That is a wide field. The home of a former president with a history of being enthralled by foreign autocrats, distrustful of US security services, and boastful about his knowledge of secrets, is an obvious foreign intelligence target. 'I know that national security professionals inside government, my former colleagues, [they] are shaking their heads at what damage might have been done,' John Brennan, former CIA director, told MSNBC. 'I'm sure Mar-a-Lago was being targeted by Russian intelligence and other intelligence services over the course of the last 18 or 20 months, and if they were able to get individuals into that facility, and access those rooms where those documents were and made copies of those documents, that's what they would do.'"
According to the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism, leaked documents containing the names of 38,000 members of the Oath Keepers, include 370 people believed to be active members of police agencies, more than a 100 who are active military, and more than 80 people running for office or currently serving as elected officials.
Elizabeth Gleicher, a Michigan judge, struck down a 1931 anti-abortion law in the state of Michigan saying "A law denying safe, routine medical care not only denies women of their ability to control their bodies and their lives – it denies them of their dignity. Michigan's Constitution forbids this violation of due process." Gleicher added that the law "compels motherhood", prevents a woman from determining the "shape of her present and future life" and "forces a pregnant woman to forgo her reproductive choices to instead serve as 'an involuntary vessel entitled to no more respect than other forms of collectively owned property'".
September 6, 2022 - In an email to the New York Times, Samuel W Buell, a Duke University Law Professor, had the following to say about Judge Aileen Cannon's ruling granting Trump's request for a special master: "To any lawyer with serious federal criminal court experience who is being honest, this ruling is laughably bad, and the written justification is even flimsier. Donald Trump is getting something no one else ever gets in federal court, he's getting it for no good reason, and it will not in the slightest reduce the ongoing howls that he is being persecuted, when he is being privileged."
William Barr, Trump's former attorney general, reacted to the special master ruling calling it a "crock of shit" adding that "Even if [the documents] are subject to executive privilege, they still belong to the government. And any other documents that were seized ... those were seizeable under the warrant".
According to the Washington Post, Doug Logan and Jeffrey Lenberg, both election deniers seeking evidence of voter fraud for Trump, made multiple visits to a county elections office in Coffee county, Georgia. The two men are under investigation for alleged breaches of voting machines in Michigan. Cathy Latham, chairwoman of the Coffee county Republican party, can be seen in surveillance video greeting a group outside the elections office shortly before noon on the day of an alleged breach there. NOTE: Latham was one of 16 Republicans who signed certificates declaring Trump the rightful winner of the 2020 election as part of the "fake electors" scheme now under investigation by federal and state prosecutors.
Francis Mathew, a New Mexico state district court judge, issued a ruling that disqualifies Cuoy Griffin, the cofounder of Cowboys for Trump, from holding or seeking local or federal office, for his participation in the January 6th insurrection. Griffin, who is currently a county commissioner in Otero County in southern New Mexico, must step down immediately. From the ruling: "Mr Griffin aided the insurrection even though he did not personally engage in violence. By joining the mob and trespassing on restricted Capitol grounds, Mr Griffin contributed to delaying Congress's election-certification proceedings." Grifin responded to the ruling by calling it a "total disgrace" that disenfranchises his constituents in Otero county. NOTE: The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit brought by three plaintiffs in New Mexico with support from Washington-based Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Hillary Clinton responded on Twitter to Republican "whataboutism" in response to Trump's legal woes regarding sensitive data by resurrecting her prvate email server: "I can't believe we're still talking about this, but my emails... As Trump's problems continue to mount, the right is trying to make this about me again. There's even a 'Clinton Standard.' The fact is that I had zero emails that were classified."
Michael Kirk, who has been making documentaries for half a century, released his latest, which is called Lies, Politics and Democracy. Kirk's latest project is described by the guardian like this: "Lies, Politics and Democracy tells the story of how, like a colonial army of occupation, Donald Trump subdued the Republican party with a combination of brute force and manufactured consent. It is a chilling character study in how, one after another, party leaders ignored, acquiesced, collaborated and enabled a demagogue while fearing his fervent fanbase." The film will air on PBS's investigative series Frontline. Kirk described the project this way: "There's never been a film I made where I was more anxious, unhappy to make it, unwilling to discover the things we were discovering. 'Worried' is not a strong enough word for how I feel about where we are as a country and I don't think I'm alone."
September 4, 2022 - Donald Trump spoke at a rally in Pennsylvania in support of Mehmet Oz, the Republican candidate for US Senate, and Doug Mastriano, the candidate for governor. Mastriano, who is a supporter of Trump's lie that election fraud propelled Biden to the White House, compared the January 6 assault on the Capitol to the Reichstag fire, the event in Berlin in 1933 which propelled Adolf Hitler to power. Mastriano has also been photographed wearing the uniform of a Confederate soldier. Here are some highlights from the rally:
- A guest speaker named Cynthia Hughes, spoke in defense of the January 6 rioters, specifically calling out her nephew, Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, who was been jailed since the insurrection, which Hughes cited as an example of the injustice facing the rioters. NOTE: What Hughes didn't mention is that Hale-Cusanelli, who sports a Hitler mustache, and following the riot expressed "looking forward to civil war" also has a history of harrassing Jewish people.
- Trump praised China's Xi Jinping for ruling his country "with an iron fist". Claimed it made him "smart".
- Donald Trump stated: "The FBI and the justice department have become vicious monsters, controlled by radical-left scoundrels, lawyers and the media, who tell them what to do."
- Donald Trump called Biden's remarks in Philadelphia: "the most vicious, hateful, and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president"
- Donald Trump said of Joe Biden: "He's an enemy of the state, you want to know the truth."
- Regarding the Mar-a-Lago search, Trump said: "It was not just my home that was raided last month. It was the hopes and dreams of every citizen who I've been fighting for ... one of the most shocking abuses of power by any administration in American history ... a travesty of justice ... They're trying to silence me and more importantly they're trying to silence you. But we will not be silenced, right?"
September 3, 2022 - Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist, and Donald Trump's niece, stated the following during an MSNBC interview: "The window of opportunity for Donald to squirm out of this is closing because of the seriousness of the potential charges that are coming his way. And what have we seen in the past? He goes to violence. When he said that President Biden was calling for political violence, he was, as usual, projecting. That was what Donald's going to be calling for as he gets more and more cornered."
September 2, 2022 - Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, released a joint statement with family and friends of 9/11 victims which criticized a Saudi-funded women's golf tournament that will be hosted at Trump Golf Links, a Trump owned golf course located in the Bronx. From the statement: "It is outrageous that the Trump Organization agreed to host a tournament with this organization while knowing how much pain it would cause New Yorkers." NOTE: The FBI declassified documents related to 9/11 that revealed that the Saudi government provided logistical support to the attackers and helped fund the attacks.
A new Pew Research poll shows that opinions of the supreme court are more polarized than ever. Only 28% of Democrats and liberal independents have a favorable view of the court, versus 73% of Republicans and conservative independents.
A reporter asked Joe Biden if "all Trump supporters are a threat to this country". Biden responded: "I do think that anyone who calls for the use of violence, fails to condemn violence when it’s used, refuses to acknowledge when an election has been won, insists upon changing the way in which you count votes, that is a threat to democracy and everything we stand for. Everything we stand for rests on the platform of democracy."
Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, responded to criticism that Joe Biden's speech in Philadelphia last night was "political". Jean-Pierre's response: "Denouncing political violence is not political. Standing up for freedom and rights is not political. We don't call any of that political. We see that as leadership and as presidential."
Pat Cipollone and Pat Philbin, both of whom served as White House counsel to Donald Trump, testified before a grand jury investigating a "fake electors" plot to send fake electors to Congress to fraudulently inflate the number of electors in Trump's favor, despite him losing the election.
John Harwood, a White House correspondent for CNN, announced that today is his last day at CNN. NOTE: Critics believe Harwood was pushed out over comments he made yesterday in which he called Trump a "dishonest demagogue".
According to the Guardian, among the items retrieved from Mar-a-Lago by the FBI were 90 empty folders, which has raised concerns that some highly sensitive documents may still be unaccounted for. The empty folders carried one of two designations: some files had "Classified" banners, while others were labeled "Return to Staff Secretary/Military Aide".
September 1, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Sam Levine offers the following analysis of Trump's offer of pardons to insurrectionists: "Trump said he would pardon and apologize to those who participated in the deadly attack on the US Capitol on January 6 if he were elected to the White House again. 'I mean full pardons with an apology to many,' he told Wendy Bell, a conservative radio host on Thursday. 'I will be looking very, very strongly about pardons, full pardons.' Five people died in connection with the attack and more than 140 law enforcement officers were injured. More than 875 people have been charged with crimes related to January 6, according to an NPR tracker. 370 people have pleaded guilty to crimes so far. Trump also said he was offering financial support to some of those involved in the attack. 'I am financially supporting people that are incredible and they were in my office actually two days ago, so they're very much in my mind,' Trump said. 'It's a disgrace what they've done to them. What they've done to these people is disgraceful.' It was not immediately clear what the extent of Trump's financial assistance was."
According to the Guardian, the January 6 committee sent a letter requesting testimony from former House speaker, and staunch Trump ally, Newt Gingrich. The committee is interested in emails between Gingrich and former Trump senior advisers, that provided input for advertisements which repeated election lies. From the committee's letter: "These advertising efforts were not designed to encourage voting for a particular candidate. Instead, these efforts attempted to cast doubt on the outcome of the election after voting had already taken place. They encouraged members of the public to contact their state officials and pressure them to challenge and overturn the results of the election. To that end, these advertisements were intentionally aired in the days leading up to December 14, 2020, the day electors from each state met to cast their votes for president and vice-president."
Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader, demanded that Joe Biden "apologize for slandering tens of millions of Americans as 'fascists'".
Joe Biden addressed the nation today from Philadelphia. Here are som highlights:
- Biden stated "As I stand here tonight, equality and democracy are under assault ... We do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise. So tonight, I've come to this place where it all began to speak as plainly as I can to the nation, about the threats we face, about the power we have in our own hands to meet these threats, and about the incredible future that lies in front of us."
- Biden identified the threat as "Donald Trump and the Maga Republicans".
- Biden stated that Maga forces "are determined to take this country backwards. Backwards to an America where there is no right to choose. No right to privacy. No right to contraception, no right to marry."
- Biden stated that Maga forces "promote authoritarian leaders and they fan the flames of political violence" and are a threat "to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country".
- Biden stated "There's no question that the Republican party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the Maga Republicans, and that is a threat to this country. Maga Republicans are destroying American democracy."
- Biden stated that "Democracy endures only if we the people respect the guardrails of the Republic".
John Harwood, a White House correspondent for CNN, made the following comments following Biden's speech: "Of course it was a political speech, we're — in a midterm reelection year, the issues that he’s talking about are inherently political. But, I think it's also important to say that the core point he made in that political speech about a threat to democracy, is true. Now, that's something that's not easy for us as journalists to say. We're brought up to believe there's two different political parties with different points of view, and we don't take sides in honest disagreements between them. But that's not what we're talking about. These are not honest disagreements. The Republican Party right now is led by a dishonest demagogue. Many, many Republicans are rallying behind his lies about the 2020 election, and other things, as well. And a significant portion, or a sufficient portion, of the constituency that they're leading attacked the Capitol on January 6, violently. By offering pardons or suggesting pardons for those people who violently attacked the Capitol — which you've been pointing out numerous times this morning — Donald Trump made Joe Biden's point for him."
Thomas Webster, a retired New York police officer with 20 years of service, turned January 6 rioter, received a 10-year sentence for his involvement in the Capitol insurrection. Webster was caught on video attacking police officers, including beating an officer with a flagpole.
According to the Guardian, Ginni Thomas, the wife of US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, lobbied lawmakers in Wisconsin as well as Arizona in November 2020, to overturn the results of the election. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have responded to Thomas's attempts to overturn the election saying: "Ginni Thomas tried to overthrow the government. Clarence Thomas gets to rule on that attempt to overthrow the government. See the problem?". NOTE: Following the attack on the Capitol, Clarence Thomas was the only justice to say Trump should not have to give White House records to the investigating committee.
Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, and former vice-presidential nominee as a Republican running mate of John McCain, who was endorsed by Donald Trump, lost the race for a US House seat in Alaska in an attempt to make a political comeback. Palin lost to Mary Peltola, a Democrat in a state that Trump carried in 2020 by 10 points. Palin released a statement saying: "Alaskans know I'm the last one who'll ever retreat. I'm going to reload." NOTE: Palin resigned as governor of Alaska in 2009 which she tried to explain by saying "Only dead fish go with the flow." Palin's critics accused her of being "flaky" and also of "walking away from her post".
Kellye SoRelle, a lawyer for the anti-government extremist group Oath Keepers, which describe themselves as a politically incorrect men's club for "western chauvanists", has been charged with conspiracy in connection with the January 6 insurrection. SoRelle had previously called the investigation into her involvement "a witch-hunt".
August 31, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Lloyd Green offers the following analysis of how Trump's current legal woes paint him as a liar: "As a first-time presidential candidate, Donald Trump repeatedly demanded that Hillary Clinton be sent to jail. 'Lock her up' emerged as a battle cry for the 45th president and his fans. He also pledged that his presidency would properly handle the nation's secrets. 'In my administration, I'm going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information,' Trump intoned at a 2016 rally in North Carolina. 'No one will be above the law.' As promises go, this one aged badly – much like his commitment to release his tax returns. On Tuesday night, the government filed its 36-page opposition to the ex-reality-show host's demand that a special master be appointed. (A special master is an independent mediator appointed to go through documents and determine which may be protected by privilege.) Trump's gambit backfired, however. Once again, he looks like a liar. Beyond that, his lawyers became his lackeys. Christina Bobb meet William Barr."
According to Bloomberg, people familiar with the justice department's investigations into Trump say that federal prosecutors are likely to wait until after the November midterm elections to announce any charges against Donald Trump, if they determine that he has broken any laws.
John Eastman, a Trump attorney who was involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, appeared today before the special grand jury in Georgia. Eastman pleaded the fifth, and also cited attorney-client privilege.
Mehmet Oz, a Republican candidate for US Senate in Pennsylvania, has come under criticism for his campaign's continued efforts to mock the health of his opponent, John Fetterman, who recently suffered a stroke. The most recent mocking came in the form of criticism for Fetterman's refusal to debate. The Oz campaign released a statement saying: "Dr Oz promises not to intentionally hurt John's feelings at any point. We will allow John to have all of his notes in front of him along with an earpiece so you can have the answers given to him by his staff in real time. At any point John Fetterman can raise his hand and say bathroom break ... We will pay for any additional medical personnel who might need to have on standby." Fetterman responded to the comments saying "Dr Oz's team ... think it is funny to mock a stroke survivor."
According to Rolling Stone, Donald Trump had boasted to close associates that he knew secrets about Emamanuel Macron's sex life from US intelligence sources. NOTE: One of the documents listed in the official inventory of what was seized during the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago was listed as "Info re: President of France".
August 30, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Hugo Lowell offers the following analysis of a court filing from the Justice Department that explains in detail their conclusions from the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago: "The FBI searched Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after it obtained evidence there was probably an effort to conceal classified documents in defiance of a grand jury subpoena and despite Trump's lawyers suggesting otherwise, the Department of Justice said in a court filing late on Tuesday night. The filing, opposing Trump's request for an independent review of materials seized, amounted to the most detailed picture of potential obstruction of justice yet outlined by the DoJ. 'Efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government's investigation,' the filing alleged. Among new revelations in the 36-page filing were that agents recovered three classified documents from desks in Trump's office and additional classified files from a storage room, contrary to what Trump's lawyers indicated. The DoJ suggested the effort to conceal documents started on 3 June, as Trump's representatives produced a single legal envelope, double-taped, in response to a subpoena for materials removed from the White House. The file was given to Jay Bratt, the chief DoJ counter-intelligence official, by a Trump lawyer and his records custodian, who signed a letter certifying a 'diligent search' had been conducted and all documents responsive to the subpoena were being returned. The lawyer also told Bratt all records in the envelope had come from one storage room, that there were no other records elsewhere at Mar-a-Lago, and that all boxes brought from the White House had been searched, the DoJ said. A copy of the letter reproduced in the filing redacted the custodian's name. Two sources familiar with the matter identified the custodian as Christina Bobb, a member of Trump's legal team. According to the filing, the FBI uncovered evidence through multiple sources that classified documents remained at Mar-a-Lago in defiance of the subpoena, and that other records were 'likely' removed from the storage room and concealed. The DoJ said the evidence – details of which were redacted in an affidavit unsealed last week – allowed it to obtain a warrant to enter Mar-a-Lago, where FBI agents found more classified documents in Trump's office. 'The government seized 33 items of evidence, mostly boxes,' the filing said. 'Three classified documents that were not located in boxes, but rather were located in the desks in the '45 Office' were also seized.' In an exhibit resembling how the justice department would show the results of a drug bust, the filing included a photo of retrieved documents emblazoned with classification markings including 'top secret' and 'secret' designations. The DoJ said the documents collected most recently included 'sensitive compartmented information', while other documents were so sensitive that counter-intelligence agents reviewing them needed additional security clearances. The filing said: 'That the FBI recovered twice as many documents with classification markings as the 'diligent search' that the former president's counsel and other representatives had weeks to perform, calls into serious question the representations made in the 3 June certification.' Trump responded on Wednesday with a post on his social media platform, alleging without evidence that the photo of documents was staged and that the documents were supposedly declassified. 'Terrible the way the FBI, during the Raid of Mar-a-Lago, threw documents haphazardly all over the floor (perhaps pretending it was me that did it!), and then started taking pictures of them for the public to see,' Trump said. 'Thought they wanted them kept Secret? Lucky I Declassified!' Trump and allies have insisted he issued some sort of a standing order when he was president that any materials he took to Mar-a-Lago were declassified. He has produced no paperwork that might confirm that claim. In a subsequent post, Trump wrote: 'Whatever happened to NUCLEAR, a word that was leaked early on by the FBI/DOJ to the Fake News Media!' – a reference to a news report that the FBI sought materials relating to nuclear weapons. The justice department appears to have asked Trump representatives in the June subpoena to return documents marked as 'S/FRD', short for 'Secret/Formerly Restricted Data', a control relating to nuclear weapons information designated by the Atomic Energy Act. Trump has never addressed the central question of why he had classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, why they were in his private office, and why the documents were not surrendered when he was subpoenaed in June."
Tony Ornato, a top US Secret Service official, who according to White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, was an eyewitness to Trump becoming "irate" when his security detail refused to drive him to the Capitol on January 6th, has retired.
August 29, 2022 - Fulton, GA, county superior court judge Robert McBurney, ruled today that Brian Kemp, the Republican governor of Georgia, must testify before a special grand jury investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election, but not until after the upcoming November midterm elections.
August 28, 2022 - Adam Kinzinger, a Republican representative from Illinois and member of the January 6 committee, criticized his Republican colleagues for defending Donald Trump's treatment of sensitive government documents saying: "The hypocrisy of folks in my party that spent years chanting, 'Lock her up,' about Hillary Clinton because of some deleted emails or – quote/unquote – 'wiping a server', are now out there defending a man who very clearly did not take the national security of the United States to heart. And it'll be up to [the US justice department] whether or not that reaches the level of an indictment. But this is disgusting in my mind. And, like, no president should act this way, obviously."
August 27, 2022 - According to the Organized Crime & Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), Inna Yashchyshyn, a Ukrainian woman, is under bureau investigation for posing as a member of the Rothschild banking dynasty and infiltrating Mar-a-Lago under false pretenses. According to the report, she was able to mingle with Trump, Senator Lindsey Graham, and others, demonstrating "the ease with which someone with a fake identity and shadowy background" could bypass security at Trump's club.
August 26, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Hugo Lowell offers the following analysis of what the redacted FBI search at Mar-a-Lago affidavit shows: "The details contained in the affidavit used to secure a warrant to search Mar-a-Lago – partially redacted to protect the ongoing criminal investigation into Trump's unauthorized retention of government secrets – offered the clearest insight yet into the basis for the FBI's seeking permission to search the resort. 'There is probable cause to believe that additional documents that contain classified NDI or that are presidential records subject to record retention requirements currently remain at the premises. There is also probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found,' it said. The affidavit made the case that the FBI needed to forcibly retrieve the United States government's most sensitive secrets, especially after it came to suspect Trump and his team were holding on to classified documents despite repeated efforts – including with a subpoena – to secure their return. Most pressing, according to the affidavit, was that the FBI had identified probable cause that documents containing national defense information were scattered across Mar-a-Lago, potentially jeopardizing intelligence gathering and revealing the identities of human clandestine sources ... In making the case that the FBI needed to search Mar-a-Lago, the affidavit – produced by an FBI agent working in the bureau's Washington field office – also showed how Trump had previously retained government secrets at Mar-a-Lago after he was no longer president. The FBI noted that after Trump finally returned about a dozen boxes of materials to the National Archives this year, an FBI triage found 184 unique classified documents, including 25 marked top secret, 92 marked secret, 67 marked confidential, and some with Trump's distinctive handwriting. The documents also included some with markings like 'SI' for special intelligence, 'HCS' for intelligence from human clandestine sources, 'NOFORN', for 'Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals', 'FISA' for the 'Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act', and 'ORCON', which restricts non-US dissemination. 'Of most significant concern was that highly classified records were unfoldered, intermixed with other records, and otherwise unproperly [sic] identified,' it warned. According to the affidavit, the FBI essentially concluded that Mar-a-Lago was the scene of potential violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice and a statute that criminalizes the unauthorized removal or retention of government records more generally."
During two appearances on Fox News, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham warned that there will be "riots in the street" if Donald Trump is prosecuted. Notable reactions to Graham's "riot" comment:
"prediction that violence may follow any prosecution of the former Potus may not qualify legally as incitement but it is irresponsible all the same as it will be seen by some as a call for violence. Public officials are obligated to call for the rule of law." - Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations
"Yes, if Trump is indicted, there will be violence. I see & hear those threats all the time. But threats of violence should NEVER stop the pursuit of justice. NEVER. And you KNOW that Lindsey. But you're too much of a coward to say that. Shameful." - Joe Walsh, former Republican Congressman
Joshua Pruitt, a member of the far-right Proud Boys, was sentenced to more than four years in prison for his role in storming the US Capitol on January 6th.
Nancy Davis, a Louisiana woman, discovered that she is carrying a fetus that is missing the top of its skull, and will die within minutes or days after birth. Davis tried to get an abortion through her local medical provider, but the provider refused to perform the procedure amid confusion over whether the state's abortion ban outlawed it, fearing that if they did perform the abortion, they could be subject to prison time, costly fines and possible forfeiture of their operating license. Davis has used a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds to travel to North Carolina to terminate the pregnancy. Benjamin Crump, who is representing Davis, told reporters: "Louisiana lawmakers inflicted unspeakable pain, emotional damage and physical risk upon this beautiful mother. They replaced care with confusion, privacy with politics and options with ideology. Ms Davis was among the first women to be caught in the crosshairs of confusion due to Louisiana's rush to restrict abortion. But she will hardly be the last."
August 25, 2022 - Asha Rangappa, a former FBI agent and former associate dean at Yale Law School, responded to Trump's claim that some of the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago could be subject to executive privilege, saying: "If he's acknowledging that he's in possession of documents that would have any colorable claim of executive privilege, those are by definition presidential records and belong at the National Archives. And so it's not clear that executive privilege would even be relevant to the particular crime he's being investigated for and yet in this filing, he basically admits that he is in possession of them, which is what the government is trying to establish."
In a review of Breaking History, Jared Kushner's memoir of his time in the White House, Dwight Garner called the book "earnest and soulless" and stated that "Kushner looks like a mannequin, and he writes like one." Garner summarized the book saying: "Kushner's fealty to Trump remains absolute. Reading this book reminded me of watching a cat lick a dog's eye goo"
Writing for the Guardian, Sam Levine offers the following analysis of Ron DeSantis' announcement last week that 19 people had been charged with voter fraud: "Several Floridians facing criminal voter fraud charges, loudly trumpeted by Governor Ron DeSantis last week, believed they were eligible to vote, and in some cases said they were advised by government officials that they could cast ballots. Court and election documents reviewed by the Guardian raise questions about whether the 19 people charged last week knowingly committed fraud or whether they were confused about their eligibility. All those charged have prior murder or sexual offense convictions, which means they cannot vote in Florida unless they receive clemency. All of the defendants also submitted voter registration applications, which were approved by local election officials, ahead of the 2020 election, and several said they had received voter registration cards in the mail, which they took as a signal that they were eligible to vote."
The New York Times has an article about what the release of the affidavit used to outline the reasons for the warrant authorizing the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago could mean: "The submission by the Justice Department is a significant legal milepost in an investigation that has swiftly emerged as a major threat to Mr. Trump, whose lawyers have offered a confused and at times stumbling response. But it is also an inflection point for Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, who is trying to balance protecting the prosecutorial process by keeping secret details of the investigation, and providing enough information to defend his decision to request a search unlike any other in history. 'There are clearly opposed poles here,' said Daniel C. Richman, a former federal prosecutor and a law professor at Columbia University, who said it might be difficult, even impossible, for Mr. Garland to strike the right balance. Last week, Bruce E. Reinhart, a federal magistrate judge in Florida, surprised prosecutors by saying he was inclined to release portions of the affidavit at the request of news organizations, including The New York Times, after the government proposed redactions. Disclosing even a partial version of the affidavit would be highly unusual: Such documents, which typically include evidence gathered to justify the search, like information provided by witnesses, are almost never unsealed before the government files criminal charges. There is no indication the Justice Department plans to file charges anytime soon. Judge Reinhart reiterated this week that he might agree to extensive redactions, acknowledging that they could be severe enough to render release of the final document 'meaningless.' 'I cannot say at this point that partial redactions will be so extensive that they will result in a meaningless disclosure, but I may ultimately reach that conclusion after hearing further from the government,' he wrote in an order issued on Monday."
Kenneth Chesebro, an attorney for Donald Trump, who assisted in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, filed a court motion to block a Fulton County, GA, Grand Jury subpoena, claiming he is bound by attorney-client privilege to the Trump campaign.
According to the Guardian, abortion trigger bans went into effect today in three states which are Tennessee, Texas, and Idaho. Nancy Northrup, chief executive of the Center of Reproductive rights, responded to the news saying: "Evidence is already mounting of women being turned away despite needing urgent, and in some cases life-saving, medical care. This unfolding public health crisis will only continue to get worse. We will see more and more of these harrowing situations, and once state legislatures reconvene in January, we will see even more states implement abortion bans and novel laws criminalizing abortion providers, pregnant people, and those who help them." NOTE: Nearly 1 in 3 women between the ages of 15 to 44 live in states where abortion has been banned or mostly banned, which according to US census data, equates to nearly 21 million women.
Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander, who were engaged in a scheme to sell a diary and other items belonging to Joe Biden's daughter, to the conservative group Project Veritas, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property.
During an appearance on the podcast Honestly with Bari Weiss, Bill Barr, the former attorney general under Donald Trump, accused Trump of using "extortion" to "exert control over the Republican Party. That shows what he's all about. He's all about himself."
Bruce Reinhart, the magistrate judge handling the case of the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago, ordered the affidavit unsealed, with redactions by noon tomorrow.
While speaking to donors at a private home in Maryland, Joe Biden told the group: "What we're seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy. It's not just Trump, it's the entire philosophy that underpins the -- I'm going to say something: It's like semi-fascism."
Twitter users have been working overtime to point out the hypocrisy of Republicans who are calling Joe Biden's decision to forgive $10,000 in student loan debt for millions of people "student loan socialism". Here are two recent examples of criticism, followed by PPP loan forgiveness amounts:
"It's not complicated. Bailing out irresponsible behavior will spur more irresponsible behavior." - PragerU
"This you? Prager University Foundation. Loan Amount: $704,057. Amount Forgiven $705,132" - Jacqueline the woke
"For our government just to say ok your debt is completely forgiven ... it's completely unfair" - Marjorie Taylor Greene
"Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene had $183,504 in PPP loans forgiven." - The White House
August 24, 2022 - Scott Perry, a Republican House representative from Pennsylvania, whose phone was seized by federal agents as part of an investigation into 2020 election meddling, has filed a lawsuit to stop the justice department from reviewing his phone data.
Writing for the Guardian, Hugo Lowell offers the following analysis of Trump admitting to having documents he should not have at his Florida resort: "Donald Trump appeared to concede in his court filing surrounding the seizure of materials from his Florida resort that he unlawfully retained official government documents, as the former president argued that some of the documents collected by the FBI could be subject to executive privilege. The motion submitted on Monday by the former president's lawyers argued that a court should appoint a so-called special master to separate out and determine what materials the justice department can review as evidence due to privilege issues. But the argument from Trump that some of the documents are subject to executive privilege protections indicates that those documents are official records that he is not authorized to keep and should have turned over to the National Archives at the end of the administration."
A federal judge in Texas blocked a Biden administration guidance that required hospitals to provide emergency abortions, even in states like Texas, which prohibits the procedure. Karin Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, condemned the decision saying: "Texas filed this suit to ensure that it can block medical providers from providing life-saving and health-preserving care. Because of this decision, women in Texas may now be denied this vital care – even for conditions like severe hemorrhaging or life-threatening hypertension. It's wrong, it's backwards, and women may die as a result. The fight is not over. The President will continue to push to require hospitals to provide life-saving and health-preserving reproductive care" NOTE: Black, Latino and Indigenous women are mostly affected by this, as they disproportionately suffer from deaths during childbirth.
The House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis released a report outlining efforts by officials in the Trump White House to pressure health experts in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to reauthorize hydroxychloroquine, which had been authorized for emergency use in late March of 2020 based on a small number of studies, but the authorization was revoked after the FDA concluded the drug was probably ineffective and could cause potentially dangerous heart complications. James Clyburn, the subcommittee chairman, stated: "As today's report makes clear, senior Trump administration officials undermined public health experts because they believed doing so would benefit the former president politically." Clyburn also stated that officials had been "plotting covertly with known conspiracy theorists to dangerously push a disproven coronavirus treatment, bullying FDA to change its vaccine guidance, and advocating for federal investigations into those who stood in their way."
August 23, 2022 - According to the New York Times, the US government has retrieved more than 300 classified documents from Donald Trump since he left office, beginning with an initial 150 recovered in January. From the story: "The extent to which such a large number of highly sensitive documents remained at Mar-a-Lago for months, even as the department sought the return of all material that should have been left in government custody when Mr. Trump left office, suggested to officials that the former president or his aides had been cavalier in handling it, not fully forthcoming with investigators, or both. The specific nature of the sensitive material that Mr. Trump took from the White House remains unclear. But the 15 boxes Mr. Trump turned over to the archives in January, nearly a year after he left office, included documents from the C.I.A., the National Security Agency and the F.B.I. spanning a variety of topics of national security interest, a person briefed on the matter said. Mr. Trump went through the boxes himself in late 2021, according to multiple people briefed on his efforts, before turning them over. The highly sensitive nature of some of the material in the boxes prompted archives officials to refer the matter to the Justice Department, which within months had convened a grand jury investigation. Aides to Mr. Trump turned over a few dozen additional sensitive documents during a visit to Mar-a-Lago by Justice Department officials in early June. At the conclusion of the search this month, officials left with 26 boxes, including 11 sets of material marked as classified, comprising scores of additional documents. One set had the highest level of classification, top secret/sensitive compartmented information."
According to Politico, some of the documents Trump kept after leaving the White House were marked "special access program materials", which is one of the government's most highly sensitive classifications. From the story: "The May 10 letter – posted late Monday on the website of John Solomon, a conservative journalist and one of Trump's authorized liaisons to the National Archives to review papers from his presidency – showed that NARA and federal investigators had grown increasingly alarmed about potential damage to national security caused by the warehousing of these documents at Mar-a-Lago, as well as by Trump's resistance to sharing them with the FBI. These records included 700 pages of classified material, according to the letter, sent by National Archivist Debra Wall to Trump's attorney, Evan Corcoran, and it doesn't include records recovered by the Justice Department and FBI during a June meeting and the Aug. 11 search of the Mar-a-Lago premises. Wall's letter describes earlier correspondence in which Trump's team objected to disclosing the contents of the 15 boxes to the FBI. 'As you are no doubt aware, NARA had ongoing communications with the former President's representatives throughout 2021 about what appeared to be missing Presidential records, which resulted in the transfer of 15 boxes of records to NARA in January 2022,' Wall wrote. 'In its initial review of materials within those boxes, NARA identified items marked as classified national security information, up to the level of Top Secret and including Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Program materials.' NARA aides did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter, and Corcoran could not immediately be reached. The correspondence shows that even though NARA retrieved the 15 boxes in January, Justice Department and FBI investigators didn't see their contents until May, after extended negotiations with Trump's representatives. The letter also shows that in the interim, DOJ asked President Joe Biden to authorize NARA to provide the records to investigators despite an effort by Trump to claim executive privilege over the records. Wall indicated she had rejected Trump's claim because of the significance of the documents to national security. 'NARA informed the Department of Justice about that discovery, which prompted the Department to ask the President to request that NARA provide the FBI with access to the boxes at issue so that the FBI and others in the Intelligence Community could examine them,' Wall wrote."
According to the Washington Post, lawyers who were trying to overturn the 2020 election shared election data with conspiracy theorists and rightwing commentators. From the story: "A Georgia computer forensics firm, hired by the attorneys, placed the files on a server, where company records show they were downloaded dozens of times. Among the downloaders were accounts associated with a Texas meteorologist who has appeared on Sean Hannity's radio show; a podcaster who suggested political enemies should be executed; a former pro surfer who pushed disproven theories that the 2020 election was manipulated; and a self-described former 'seduction and pickup coach' who claims to also have been a hacker. Plaintiffs in a long-running federal lawsuit over the security of Georgia's voting systems obtained the new records from the company, Atlanta-based SullivanStrickler, under a subpoena to one of its executives. The records include contracts between the firm and the Trump-allied attorneys, notably Sidney Powell. The data files are described as copies of components from election systems in Coffee County, Ga., and Antrim County, Mich. A series of data leaks and alleged breaches of local elections offices since 2020 has prompted criminal investigations and fueled concerns among some security experts that public disclosure of information collected from voting systems could be exploited by hackers and other people seeking to manipulate future elections. Access to U.S. voting system software and other components is tightly regulated, and the government classifies those systems as 'critical infrastructure.' The new batch of records shows for the first time how the files copied from election systems were distributed to people in multiple states. Marilyn Marks, executive director of the nonprofit Coalition for Good Governance, which is one of the plaintiffs in the Georgia lawsuit, said the records appeared to show the files were handled recklessly. 'The implications go far beyond Coffee County or Georgia,' Marks said."
According to the Guardian, Donald Trump filed suit against the US government over the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. The suit seeks to temporarily stop the bureau reading seized materials until they can be reviewed by a special master. The suit also "requires the government to provide a more detailed receipt for property; and ... requires the government to return any item seized that was not within the scope of the search warrant".
Kevin Priola, a Republican state senator from Colorado, announced that he is switching parties by becoming a Democrat. According to Priola: "I haven't changed much in 30 years; but my party has. I cannot continue to be a part of a political party that is okay with a violent attempt to overturn a free and fair election and continues to peddle claims that the 2020 election was stolen." Priola also cited the GOP resistance to address climate change.
Donald Trump released a statement regarding his suit over the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. In the statement, Trump suggests that evidence has been planted, which he has claimed multiple times since the search. NOTE: Trump has also claimed that all of the documents were declassified.
According to the AP, two men who plotted to kidnap Michigan Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer, have been found guilty. From the story: "The jury also found Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr. guilty of conspiring to obtain a weapon of mass destruction, namely a bomb to blow up a bridge and stymie police if the kidnapping could be pulled off at Whitmer's vacation home. Croft, 46, a trucker from Bear, Delaware, was also convicted of another explosives charge. It was the second trial for the pair after a jury in April couldn't reach a unanimous verdict. Two other men were acquitted and two more pleaded guilty and testified for prosecutors. The result was a victory for the government following the shocking mixed outcome last spring. 'You can't just strap on an AR-15 and body armor and go snatch the governor,' Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler told jurors. 'But that wasn't the defendants' ultimate goal,' Kessler said. 'They wanted to set off a second American civil war, a second American Revolution, something that they call the boogaloo. And they wanted to do it for a long time before they settled on Gov. Whitmer.' The investigation began when Army veteran Dan Chappel joined a Michigan paramilitary group and became alarmed when he heard talk about killing police. He agreed to become an FBI informant and spent summer 2020 getting close to Fox and others, secretly recording conversations and participating in drills at 'shoot houses' in Wisconsin and Michigan. The FBI turned it into a major domestic terrorism case with two more informants and two undercover agents embedded in the group. Fox, Croft and others, accompanied by the government operatives, traveled to northern Michigan to see Whitmer's vacation home at night and a bridge that could be destroyed. Defense attorneys tried to put the FBI on trial, repeatedly emphasizing through cross-examination of witnesses and during closing remarks that federal players were present at every crucial event and had entrapped the men. Fox and Croft, they said, were 'big talkers' who liked to smoke marijuana and were guilty of nothing but exercising their right to say vile things about Whitmer and government."
According to the AP, Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota, and close ally of Donald Trump, is facing some serious ethics issues. From the story: "A South Dakota ethics board on Monday said it found sufficient information that Gov. Kristi Noem may have 'engaged in misconduct' when she intervened in her daughter's application for a real estate appraiser license, and it referred a separate complaint over her state airplane use to the state's attorney general for investigation ... the governor took a hands-on role in a state agency soon after it had moved to deny her daughter’s application for an appraiser license in 2020. Noem had called a meeting with her daughter, the labor secretary and the then-director of the appraiser certification program where a plan was discussed to give the governor's daughter, Kassidy Peters, another chance to show she could meet federal standards in her appraiser work."
Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, traveled to Ohio to campaign for JD Vance, who is a Republican candidate for an open Senate seat. The event was organized by the Trump-aligned Turning Point Action, which put in place strict rules for attending journalists. Chris Quinn, the editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, refused to send journalists from his organization, and published the following editorial to explain why: "Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely presidential candidate in 2024, scheduled a trip to Ohio Friday to stump for Senate candidate J.D. Vance, and our reporters were not there because of ridiculous restrictions that DeSantis and Vance placed on anyone covering the event. The worst of the rules was one prohibiting reporters from interviewing attendees not first approved by the organizers of the event for DeSantis and Vance. When we cover events, we talk to anyone we wish. It's America, after all, the land of free speech. At least that's America as it exists today. Maybe not the America that would exist under DeSantis and Vance. Think about what they were doing here. They were staging an event to rally people to vote for Vance while instituting the kinds of policies you’d see in a fascist regime. A wannabe U.S. Senator, and maybe a wannabe president. Another over-the-top rule was one reserving the right to receive copies of any video shot of the event for promotional use. That's never okay. News agencies are independent of the political process. We do not provide our work product to anyone for promotional use. To do so would put us in league with people we cover, destroying our credibility. Yet another of the rules reserved the right to know in what manner any footage of the event would be used. We are news people. We use footage on news platforms. But this rule set up a situation in which reporters could be grilled on their intentions. I'm scratching my head over one other rule, one that prohibited reporters from entering the hotel rooms of any attendees of the event. If someone invites a reporter into a hotel room for an interview, what's the harm? Anyway, we didn't accept the limitations, because they end up skewing the facts. If we can speak only with attendees chosen by the candidate, we don't get a true accounting of what people thought of the event. You get spin from the most ardent supporters."
According to the Washington Post, the Internal Revenue Service is launching a safety review following attacks by Republicans who were trying to derail the Biden administration's plan to lower healthcare costs and carbon emissions via the Inflation Reduction Act. Part of that act allocates $80bn to the IRS over the next 10 years, which Republicans claimed was meant for armed agents to begin going through American's bank accounts, despite there not being a specific purpose for the funds yet. Charles Rettig, the IRS Commissioner responded to the story saying: "We see what's out there in terms of social media. Our workforce is concerned about their safety". More from the story: "In a letter to employees sent Tuesday, he wrote that the agency would conduct risk assessments for each of the IRS’s 600 facilities, and evaluate whether to increase security patrols along building exteriors, boost designations for restricted areas, examine security around entrances and assess exterior lighting. It will be the agency's first such review since the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, which killed 168 people. 'For me this is personal,' Rettig wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Post. 'I'll continue to make every effort to dispel any lingering misperceptions about our work. And I will continue to advocate for your safety in every venue where I have an audience. You go above and beyond every single day, and I am honored to work with each of you.'"
August 18, 2022 - A federal magistrate judge will be holding a hearing today to consider releasing the affidavit behind the FBI's search at Mar-a-Lago. Donald Trump, who has been arguing for the document to be made public, posted to his Truth Social network: "There is no way to justify the unannounced RAID of Mar-a-Lago. I call for the immediate release of the completely Unredacted Affidavit pertaining to this horrible and shocking BREAK-IN". The justice department argued that the "affidavit would serve as a roadmap to the government's ongoing investigation, providing specific details about its direction and likely course. Disclosure of the government's affidavit at this stage would also likely chill future cooperation by witnesses whose assistance may be sought as this investigation progresses, as well as in other high-profile investigations."
Harriet Hagerman, the Trump-backed Republican who beat Liz Cheney in the Wyoming House primary earlier this week, told Fox News that Cheney had not made "any kind of concession or anything else". NOTE: Following Hagerman's claim, Cheney released a recording of her concession call to Hagerman in which she can be heard saying "Hi, Harriet, it is Liz Cheney calling. It is about 8.13 [pm] on Tuesday the 16th. I'm calling to concede the election and congratulate you on the win. Thanks."
Writing for the Guardian, Sam Levine offers the following analysis of a lawsuit filed by the justice department against Florida for discrimination against African Americans. From the story: "Florida Republicans intentionally targeted Black voters when they enacted new voting restrictions last year, the justice department said in a court filing on Wednesday. The department told a federal appellate court that a lower court had correctly evaluated claims of racial discrimination when it came to Florida's new law. In March, US District Judge Mark Walker blocked new restrictions on the availability of absentee ballot drop boxes, regulations for third party voter registration groups, and a ban on providing food and water to people standing in line to vote. The US court of appeals for the 11th circuit paused that ruling earlier this year while it considers an appeal from Florida officials. The justice department's allegation of racial discrimination is significant because the agency carefully chooses when to get involved in voting dispute litigations filed by private plaintiffs, and the department's voice carries significant credibility in court. After going largely quiet under Donald Trump, the justice department's voting section has filed challenges to voting laws in Georgia, Texas and Arizona, in addition to filing several briefs in other voting disputes."
According to a new poll from Reuters and Ipsos, 54% of Republicans believe the FBI behaved irresponsibly when they searched Mar-a-Lago. 23% believe they acted responsibly. Among Democrats, 71% believe the FBI acted responsibly. Regarding attitudes about using violence for political ends, 12% of both Democrats and Republicans see it as allowable.
Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, pleaded guilty to 15 charges related to tax violations. Under an agreement, Weisselberg will serve a five-month prison term at New York's Rikers Island jail, and must pay back more than $1.9m in taxes.
The Texas Tribune published a story about Republican Louie Gohmert's 18 years in Congress. Gohmert, who managed to pass one bill into law during his stint as a House representative, will be retiring in January. Here's an excerpt from the story: "His retirement will be less of the end of an era, and more of a changing of the guard — as the House is attracting a new, younger class of like-minded firebrands who similarly seek conflict over policymaking and who came into office during Trump's presidency. In recent years, Gohmert's found allies in the House Freedom Caucus including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida. Last year, they attempted to visit a Washington, D.C., jail where rioters from the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol are being imprisoned. Greene recently urged the GOP to become the party of Christian nationalism and has made comments supportive of QAnon, an unfounded conspiracy theory and far-right political movement that claims Trump is waging a secret war against Satanic pedophiles."
Lindsey Graham, a US Senator from South Carolina, has appealed a judge's order that he testify before a grand jury investigating Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia. NOTE: According to Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, Graham had called him and asked whether he had the authority to toss out all mail-in ballots in counties that accepted higher rates of mismatched signatures. Raffensperger said he was "stunned" that Graham was appearing to suggest that he find a way to throw out legally cast absentee ballots saying: "It sure looked like he was wanting to go down that road." Graham is arguing to the court that his call was part of his duties as chair of the Senate Judiciary committee, which protects him from having to appear before the grand jury.
Rick Scott, a Republican US senator from Florida, warned Americans not to apply for new positions with the Internal Revenue Service because the Republican party will defund that government organization if Republicans take control of Congress in November. NOTE: Scott declared in an open letter that Democrats planned "to defund the actual police and create an IRS super-police force" in their new spending bill and that this would "not be tolerated by the American people". Scott's claim has been thoroughly debunked.
Reuters has a story about the Mar-a-Lago search affidavit hearing in Florida. From the story: "The justice department has opposed the release of the affidavit containing the evidence, which gave investigators probable cause to believe crimes were committed at Donald Trump's Palm Beach home. Jay Bratt, head of the department's counterintelligence and export control section, appeared in court on Thursday to argue the government's position. The search at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort was part of a federal investigation into whether Trump illegally removed documents when he left office in January 2021 after losing the presidential election to Joe Biden. The justice department is investigating violations of three laws, including a provision in the Espionage Act that prohibits the possession of national defense information and another statute that makes it a crime to knowingly destroy, conceal or falsify records with the intent to obstruct an investigation. Attorneys for media outlets including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, ABC News and NBC News are asking a US magistrate judge, Bruce Reinhart, to unseal the affidavit and other related materials filed with the court, saying the public's right to know and the historic significance of the search outweigh any arguments to keep the records sealed. 'The affidavit of probable cause should be released to the public, with only those redactions that are necessary to protect a compelling interest articulated by the government,' attorneys for the media companies wrote in a filing."
In 2020, Mother Jones commissioned an art piece that consisted of the GOP's elephant symbol with the inclusion of Ku Klux Klan hoods. The art was created to accompany an article about racism in the GOP. According to the Associated Press, the Lawrence County, Alabama, Republican Party, used the image to accompany a tweet congratulating Shanon Terry, the new party chairman. Clara Jeffery, Mother Jones editor-in-chief, sent the following tweet in response to the appropriation of the image: "Two years ago, we commissioned this art from Woody Harrington to reference how white supremacy was taking over the GOP. Not only did they not get it, they appropriated copyrighted art."
According to Axios, rightwing activists have been engaging in a campaign of threats against Boston children's hospital because of allegations that the hospital provides gender-affirming care to children, an allegation the hospital says are false. The threats have been amplified by Libs of TikTok, which has 1.3 million followers on Twitter. Rachel S Rollins, the US attorney for Massachusetts, issued the following warning against people who threaten the hospital: "I want to make it clear that the Department of Justice will ensure equal protection of transgender people under the law. While free speech is indeed the cornerstone of our great nation, fear, intimidation and threats are not. I will not sit idly by and allow hate-based criminal activity to continue in our District."
A federal judge in Florida ordered the US justice department to redact and prepare for release the affidavit used to justify the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago.
Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, announced that 20 people had been arrested as part of a crackdown on alleged voter fraud in that state. Sam Levine, a Guardian contributor, responded to the news with the following tweet: "Really important to see the charges, indictments, and how the cases play out. There is a history of prosecutors trumpeting voter fraud charges against people with felonies and then having them turn out to be people who didn't know they were ineligible."
August 17, 2022 - Dwight Garner, a New York Times literary critic, published a review of the newly published memoir by Jared Kushner, called Breaking History. According to Garner: "Kushner almost entirely ignores the chaos, the alienation of allies, the breaking of laws and norms, the flirtations with dictators, the comprehensive loss of America's moral leadership, and so on, ad infinitum, to speak about his boyish tinkering with issues he was interested in".
Andrew Warren, a former state attorney for Hillsborough county in Florida, has filed a federal lawsuit against Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who suspended Warren earlier this month for following a "woke agenda". Warren, who stated publicly that he would not enforce the state's new 15-week abortion ban, was suspended after making the comments. The lawsuit accuses DeSantis of abuse of power and unlawful suspension. Warren posted online that "The governor has broken two laws. He's violated my first amendment rights by retaliating against me for speaking out on abortion and transgender rights, and he's violated the Florida constitution by removing me from office without any legal justification" NOTE: Some legal analysts question the legality of the suspension based on something that has not occurred, and, its also been pointed out that DeSantis has not taken any action against the so-called "constitutional" sheriffs who have stated publicly that they will not enforce certain Florida gun laws.
According to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an email sent by the Secret Service on January 6th, during the insurrection, warning of threats to House speaker Nancy Pelosi, was based on information the Secret Service had received two days earlier.
Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the January 6 select committee, called Harriet Hageman, her opponent for her House seat, to concede her loss. When she could not reach Hageman after three attempts, she left a message conceding the race. Hageman never called her back.
Kimberly A. Strassel, a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, wrote an editorial in which she states that Merrick Garland's "raid has made even the highest political figures fair prosecutorial game, and the media's new standard is that the department can't be questioned as it goes about ensuring 'no one is above the law.' Let's see how that holds when a future Republican Justice Department starts raiding the homes of Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, James Comey and John Brennan. ... What goes around always comes around. What went around this week will come around hard."
August 16, 2022 - Liz Cheney, Republican Representative from Wyoming, and vice chair of the January 6 committee, lost the primary for her seat in the US House of Representatives. In her concession speech, Cheney said in part: "A few years ago, I won this primary with 73 percent of the vote. I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear, but it would have required that I go along with President Trump's lie about the 2020 election ... That was a path I could not and would not take."
Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, calling the $369bn of climate spending the "largest investment ever in combatting the existential crisis of climate change".
August 15, 2022 - Far-right Republican lawmakers continue to attack federal law enforcement over the Mar-a-Lago search. Here are some notable examples:
"Impeach Merrick Garland and Defund the corrupt FBI! End political persecution and hold those accountable that abuse their positions of power to persecute their political enemies, while ruining our country. This shouldn't happen in America. Republicans must force it to stop!" - Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene
"It is crucial that we hold our Department of Justice accountable after the obvious political persecution of opposition to the Biden Regime. The 'national security state' that works against America must be dismantled." - Republican Representative Paul Gosar
Writing for the Guardian, Oliver Laughland offers the following analysis of over the apparent rift in the Republican party over how much to blame the FBI for the search at Mar-a-Lago: "A handful of Republican governors have criticized the 'outrageous rhetoric' of their party colleagues in the US Congress, who have accused federal law enforcement officers of a politicized attack on former president Donald Trump after executing a court-approved search warrant on his Florida home this week. Maryland governor Larry Hogan, a Republican moderate, described attacks by party members as both 'absurd' and 'dangerous', after a week in which certain Republicans have compared the FBI to the Gestapo and fundraised off the slogan: 'Defund the FBI'. Speaking to ABC News on Sunday, Hogan described the comparisons of the FBI to Nazi Germany's secret police, made by Florida senator Rick Scott, as 'very concerning to me, it's outrageous rhetoric'."
A federal judge in Georgia denied an attempt by Republican senator Lindsey Graham to quash a grand jury subpoena related to attempts to undermine the 2020 election results in the state.
According to the Washington Post, Republicans have overwhelmingly nominated 2020 election deniers for posts overseeing the vote in battleground states. From the story: "The predilection among Republican primary voters toward candidates who deny the result of the last election extends well beyond Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona — three states that together accounted for 47 electoral votes in 2020, more than enough to flip the last election to Trump. In the 41 states that have held nominating contests this year, more than half the GOP winners so far — about 250 candidates in 469 contests — have embraced Trump's false claims about his defeat two years ago, according to a Post analysis of every race for federal and statewide office with power over elections. The proportion of election-denying nominees is even higher in the six critical battlegrounds that ultimately decided the 2020 presidential contest, where Trump most fiercely contested the results. In Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, at least 54 winners out of 87 contests — more than 62 percent of nominees — have embraced the former president's false claims. The count covers offices with direct supervision over election certification, such as secretaries of state, as well as the U.S. House and Senate, which have the power to finalize — or contest — the electoral college count every four years. Lieutenant governors and attorneys general are also included, with each playing a role in shaping election law, investigating alleged fraud or filing lawsuits to influence electoral outcomes. Among the six battlegrounds, only Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania have nominated statewide candidates who would have direct power over the certification process and who worked to overturn the 2020 result or have said they would not have certified it."
According to the New York Times, Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump's former attorney, has been told he is a target of the criminal inquiry into Trump's efforts to meddle in the results of Georgia's 2020 election.
Donald Trump posted to his Truth Social network that his passports were taken during the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago, adding that "This is an assault on a political opponent at a level never seen before in our Country. Third World!"
According to Politico, Eric Herschmann, a lawyer who advised Donald Trump, has been subpoenaed by the federal grand jury investigating the January 6 insurrection.
According to the Guardian, sources close to Donald Trump are urging him to announce his 2024 campaign for the presidency soon to avoid being indicted under the Espionage Act following the Mar-a-Lago search last week. According to the source, it would be harder for the US Department of Justice to indict a candidate for office than it would be to indict a former president out of electoral running.
According to the Washington Post, Democrats fear that if Republicans win the House this fall, they may reinstate the Holman Rule, which allows the party in control of the chamber to write language into spending bills to cut salaries of federal employees such as the attorney general or FBI officials, and that they may engage in this "defunding of the police" so to speak as a way to protect Donald Trump.
August 14, 2022 - According to CBS News, federal authorities are warning of an increase in threats to law enforcement officials following the FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago. From the story: "The threats, which are 'occurring primarily online and across multiple platforms, including social media sites, web forums, video sharing platforms, and image boards,' were identified by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the days following the FBI's authorized seizure of 11 sets of classified documents from the former president's home, including four sets that were classified 'top secret,' according to the unsealed search warrant ... According to the bulletin, 'the FBI and DHS have observed an increase in violent threats posted on social media against federal officials and facilities, including a threat to place a so-called dirty bomb in front of FBI Headquarters and issuing general calls for 'civil war' and 'armed rebellion.' ... Since 8 August 2022, the FBI and DHS have identified multiple articulated threats and calls for the targeted killing of judicial, law enforcement, and government officials associated with the Palm Beach search, including the federal judge who approved the Palm Beach search warrant,' the bulletin continued. 'The FBI and DHS have also observed the personal identifying information of possible targets of violence, such as home addresses and identification of family members, disseminated online as additional targets.' ... The posts represent just a fraction of the violent extremist content flooding far-right message boards and social media platforms in the wake of the FBI's search of the Mar-a-Lago resort. Phrases including 'civil war' and 'lock and load' trended across Telegram channels, Gab, Reddit and TheDonald, a popular forum among Trump supporters. 'As a result of recent activities, we assess that potential targets of DVE violence moving forward could include law enforcement, judicial officials, individuals implicated in conspiracy theories and perceived ideological opponents who challenge their worldview,' the joint bulletin continues. It warns that events could 'escalate the threat environment' further, including 'possible future law enforcement or legal actions against individuals associated with the Palm Beach search, statements by public officials which incite violence, high profile successful DVE attacks that inspire copycats, or the emergence of additional conspiracy theories.' The bulletin also states that the threats seen so far since the search point to the possibility that domestic violent extremists could see the 2022 midterm elections in November as 'an additional flashpoint around which to escalate threats against perceived ideological opponents, including federal law enforcement personnel.'"
According to the New York Times, Donald Trump sent a message to Merrick Garland through a close associate. The message: "The country is on fire. What can I do to reduce the heat?" Notable reaction to Trump's message:
"Just a normal former president hinting to the current attorney general of the United States - who was about to make an announcement about the investigation into the former president - that he can fan the flames of violence, before asking 'What can I do to reduce the heat?'" - Robert Maguire, Research Director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
NOTE: Armed Trump supporters have protested outside an FBI office in Phoenix since news of the search broke.
August 13, 2022 - Trump released a statement that offered the following explanation for why highly sensitive documents were being stored at Mar-a-Lago: "As we can all relate to, everyone ends up having to bring home their work from time to time. American presidents are no different." Trump also claimed in the statement that he had a "standing order" to declassify documents "the moment" they left the Oval Office and that he didn't need approval from a "paper pushing bureaucrat." NOTE: Trump implied in an earlier statement that the FBI may have planted documents. Notable response to Trump's "standing order" claim:
"He can't just wave a wand and say it's declassified. There has to be a formal process. That's the only way the system can work." - Richard Immerman, Historian and Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence in the Obama Administration
August 11, 2022 - During a campaign stop, Beto O'Rourke, who is running for governor of Texas, was interrupted by a heckler who laughed as he talked about the Uvalde shooting, specifically while he was describing the wartime capabilities of the AR-15. O'Rourke turned to the individual who was laughing and said: "It may be funny to you, motherfucker, but it is not funny to me." NOTE: The remark drew cheers and sustained applause from the crowd, as well as criticism from Republicans.
According to the Harrisburg Pennsylvania Patriot News, the FBI delivered subpoenas to several Republican state lawmakers over the last two days.
Writing for the Guardian, Victoria Bekiempis offers the following analysis of an informant's tip that preceded the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago: "Federal investigators searched Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach after an informant told them he might be storing classified records at his private club, the Wall Street Journal has reported. The search on Monday reportedly came two months after federal law enforcement officials came to Mar-a-Lago to talk about boxes of government documents that were being stored there. Federal authorities searched Trump's sprawling south Florida residence having obtained a warrant to seek classified and White House records that the US justice department thought Trump had kept unlawfully, two sources previously told the Guardian."
Ricky Shiffer, a Trump supporter, attempted to break into an FBI office in Cincinnati while armed with a nail gun and an AR-15. After failing to get into the facility, Shiffer fled, then engaged in a shootout with law enforcement in a corn field outside the city. Shiffer was killed in the shootout. NOTE: Prior to today's events, Shiffer had posted on Trump's Truth Social network urging other Trump supporters to obtain weapons and be "ready for combat" and that "we must not tolerate this one" and "When they come for you, kill them. Be an American, not a steer." all of which followed Trump telling his supporters that Mar-a-Lago was "under siege, raided, and occupied".
Bruce Reinhart, the federal judge who approved the warrant served at Mar-a-Lago, has been the subject of death threats. One message posted on a pro-Trump message board reads: "I see a rope around his neck" which is followed by another poster saying "Let's find out if he has children....where they go to school, where they live...EVERYTHING."
According to the New York Times, documents at Mar-a-Lago were subpoenaed prior to the raid by the FBI. From the story: "Former President Donald J. Trump received a subpoena this spring in search of documents that federal investigators believed he had failed to turn over earlier in the year, when he returned boxes of material he had improperly taken with him upon moving out of the White House, three people familiar with the matter said. The existence of the subpoena helps to flesh out the sequence of events that led to the search of Mr. Trump's Florida home on Monday by F.B.I. agents seeking classified material they believed might still be there, even after efforts by the National Archives and the Justice Department to ensure that it had been returned. The subpoena suggests that the Justice Department tried methods short of a search warrant to account for the material before taking the politically explosive step of sending F.B.I. agents unannounced to Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump's home and members-only club ... Two people briefed on the classified documents that investigators believe remained at Mar-a-Lago indicated that they were so sensitive in nature, and related to national security, that the Justice Department had to act."
Merrick Garland, the US attorney general, addressed the nation regarding the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago. In his address, Garland said the justice department will ask a court to unseal the search warrant saying: "The department filed the motion to make public the warrant and receipt in light of the former president's public confirmation of the search, the surrounding circumstances, and the substantial public interest in this matter". Garland also addressed attacks on the FBI saying: "I will not stand by silently when their integrity is unfairly attacked."
August 10, 2022 - Donald Trump appeared in New York today to be deposed for an investigation into his real estate dealings. The investigation is being lead by New York's attorney general Letitia James, whom Trump referred to last evening on his Truth Social network as "racist". Following the deposition, Trump released a lengthy statement in which he stated that he refused to answer questions, opting instead to invoke his fifth amendment right against self incrimination. NOTE: In September of 2016, Trump declared that "the mob takes the fifth". NOTE 2: Letitia James, who is Black, is the first woman of color ever to hold statewide elected office in New York.
According to the justice department, Shahram Poursafi, a member of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, promised an unnamed person in the United States $300,000 to kill John Bolton, a national security adviser under Donald Trump, in retaliation for the assassination of Qassem Suleimani in January of 2020. NOTE: The unnamed person was a confidential informant. Poursafi remains at large.
Rudy Giuliani, Trump's former lawyer, has been ordered to appear in person on August 17 before an Atlanta special grand jury looking into attempts to tamper with the state's election results in 2020. Giuliani has claimed his health doesn't allow him to fly to the state, but superior court judge Robert C.I. McBurney offered up other forms of travel: "On a train, on a bus or Uber, or whatever".
Writing for the Guardian, Hugo Lowell offers the following analysis of new details that are emerging regarding the FBI's search at Mar-a-Lago: "Federal investigators searched Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida on Monday bearing a warrant that broadly sought presidential and classified records that the justice department believed the former president unlawfully retained, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The criminal nature of the search warrant executed by FBI agents, as described by the sources, suggested the investigation surrounding Trump is firmly a criminal probe that comes with potentially far-reaching political and legal ramifications for the former president. And the extraordinary search, the sources said, came after the justice department grew concerned – as a result of discussions with Trump's lawyers in recent weeks – that presidential and classified materials were being unlawfully and improperly kept at the Mar-a-Lago resort. The unprecedented raid of a former president's home by FBI agents was the culmination of an extended battle between Trump and his open contempt for the Presidential Records Act of 1978 requiring the preservation of official documents, and officials charged with enforcing that law."
Opening statements were made today in a second attempt to convict Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr of kidnapping and weapons conspiracy charges. Fox and Croft, members of the Three Percenters, a self-styled militia group- are accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020 from her vacation home and stage a "trial" for treason. Their first trial was declared a mistrial in April. Two other defendants were found not guilty in the first trial.
Donald Trump issued the following statement on his Truth Social network: "The FBI and others from the Federal Government would not let anyone, including my lawyers, be anywhere near the areas that were rummaged and otherwise looked at during the raid on Mar-a-Lago. Everyone was asked to leave the premises, they wanted to be left alone, without any witnesses to see what they were doing, taking or, hopefully not, 'planting.' Why did they STRONGLY insist on having nobody watching them, everybody out? Obama and Clinton were never 'raided,' despite big disputes!"
August 9, 2022 - Donald Trump released a video on his Truth Social network in which he claims: "we're a nation that has weaponized its law enforcement against the opposing political party like never before. We've never seen anything like this. We're a nation that no longer has a free and fair press. Fake news is about all you get. We are a nation where free speech is no longer allowed".
Notable reaction to the late night FBI search at Mar-a-Lago:
"Hey GOP/MAGA/Fox News, if Trump and his henchmen can launch a campaign of harassment, intimidation, and retaliation against a serving Army Officer for testifying before Congress, it can happen to anyone." - Alexander S. Vindman
Writing for the Guardian, David Smith offers the following analysis of the Republican reaction to the search at Mar-a-Lago: "Republicans responded furiously to the development, following Trump's lead in claiming that the search showed the justice department waging a politically motivated witch-hunt. Their florid rhetoric will do little to assuage fears that a prosecution of Trump could lead to social unrest and even political violence. Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, said: 'Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Countless times we have examples of Democrats flouting the law and abusing power with no recourse.' The Republican response on Monday drew from a familiar playbook: Trump has long maintained that the Russia investigation, for example, was a 'hoax' and part of a 'deep state' conspiracy against him. Scrutiny of his removal of presidential records, or his role in the January 6 insurrection, is likely to produce a similar backlash. David Axelrod, ex-strategist under Barack Obama, said: 'This is why Trump is going to run. He wants to portray any criminal probe or prosecution as a plot to prevent him from once again becoming POTUS. Many of his followers will believe it – as they did his lies about the LAST election.'"
Writing for the Washington Post, Aaron Blake offers the following analysis of the search at Mar-a-Lago: "Trump has marshalled his army of supporters to declare, in knee-jerk fashion, any legal scrutiny of him a deep-state operation. It's also an army that, it bears noting, was once quite consumed with the import of document security by would-be presidential candidates — and quite happy to promote the idea that their preferred candidate ought to 'lock' such an opponent 'up.' Trump's handling of government documents has long been a focal point. The question from there is whether this is a matter that merits a search warrant. That the Justice Department would go this route would seem to suggest it sees something potentially incriminating beyond merely shoddy record-keeping and document retention. The department knows this decision will be harshly scrutinized; going down this path only for its destination to be a minor finding, ending in a slap on the wrist, isn't worth the blowback it'll get from 40 to 45 percent of the country. It also bears noting that this portion of the country was once quite laser-focused on keeping tabs on potentially sensitive government documents. Trump's best attack on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign was her private email server. Many of those who raised alarm bells about that were very quiet when we learned that government documents had made their way to Mar-a-Lago."
Appearing on CNN, George Conway, a lawyer and Washington Post contributor, offered the following analysis of the Mar-a-Lago search: "You have to meet the basic standard of any search warrant. You have to show probable cause that someone – might not be Donald Trump – committed a crime and probable cause that there is evidence of that crime in the location being searched. And you have to particularise exactly what it is that you're looking for. And you have to put that all in an affidavit that a federal judge reviews and then makes a determination that there is sufficient cause to invade someone's privacy and to come into someone's home and to do this. That's one thing, but this is a former president, and the political consequences, the national consequences, of going over your skis on this are just too huge for anything. But [it would take] the most significant evidence I think, that would justify Merrick Garland, who is a cautious person, to authorise this, and it had to be authorised by him personally. And so you have to ask, what is it about this particular circumstance that has led the Justice Department to this step? Obviously, they don't quite trust him [Trump], because they obviously don't think that subpoenaing or requesting documents from him, will get them the answers they want, but what is it that they want?"
Notable reactions to the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago:
"Biden is playing with fire by using a document dispute to get the @TheJusticeDept to persecute a likely future election opponent Because one day what goes around is going to come around And then we become Nicaragua under Ortega" - Marco Rubio
"DEFUND THE FBI!" - Marjorie Taylor Greene
"The FBI raiding Donald Trump is unprecedented. It is corrupt & an abuse of power. What Nixon tried to do, Biden has now implemented: The Biden Admin has fully weaponized DOJ & FBI to target their political enemies. And with 87K new IRS agents, they're coming for YOU too." - Ted Cruz
NOTE: Regarding the politicization of the FBI, the following is a list of 25 political opponents that Trump has claimed publicly should be investigated:
1. 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for the Uranium One Deal
2. The Clinton campaign for supposed "Russian collusion"
3. The Clinton Foundation for alleged "corruption" with foreign countries
4. Former President Barack Obama for not doing enough to stop Russian election-meddling
5. The Obama administration for "illegal surveillance" of the Trump campaign
6. President Joe Biden for participating in a "treasonous ... coup" against his campaign while VP
7. Rep. Adam Schiff for "treason" during the 2019 impeachment probe
8. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for supposedly "lying" about her ties to Russia
9. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) for "illegally" discussing the Mueller probe
10. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) for lying about his military service
11. Former Rep. Elijah Cummings for the "corrupt mess" in Baltimore
12. The anonymous NYT op-ed author for threatening "national security"
13. Tech giant Google for "treason" and "working with the Chinese government"
14. The FBI to see if it "infiltrated" the Trump campaign with informants
15. The Justice Department to see if it "infiltrated" the Trump campaign with informants
16. Special counsel Robert Mueller for his "conflicts" of interest
17. Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann for unspecified wrongdoing
18. Former FBI director James Comey for his "lies" and "leaks"
19. Former FBI director Andy McCabe for political donations received by his wife
20. Ex-British spy Christopher Steele for his "phony and corrupt" dossier
21. Opposition research firm Fusion GPS for its coordination with Steele
22. Former DOJ official Bruce Ohr for his meeting with Chris Steele
23. Former FBI agent Peter Strzok about his political texts with Lisa Page
24. Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page about her political texts with Strzok
25. MSNBC host Joe Scarborough regarding the possible "murder" of his intern in 2001
"Attorney General Garland: preserve your documents and clear your calendar." - Kevin McCarthy
"Merrick Garland, Chris Wray, come to the House judiciary committee this Friday and answer our questions about this action today, which has never happened in American history. What was on the warrant? What were you really doing? What are you looking for? Why not talk to President Trump and have him give you the information you're after? This is unbelievable." - Jim Jordan
"we believe in the rule of law. That's what our country is about. And no person is above the law. Not even the president of the United States. Not even a former president of the United States." - Nancy Pelosi
An excerpt of a book called Confidence Man by New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman, features photos of torn pieces of paper in the bottom of toilets, reported to be from toilets that Trump used and periodically blocked by flushing documents he had previously torn up. In the photos, Trump's handwriting can be seen on the documents.
Donald Trump has begun fundraising off of the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago, saying in one of his emails: "Please rush in a donation IMMEDIATELY to publicly stand with me against this NEVERENDING WITCH HUNT ... It was the home of every patriotic American who I have been fighting for since that iconic moment I came down the Golden Escalators in 2015".
Joe Biden signed into law the Chips and Science Act, which provides more than $200bn to boost domestic production of semiconductor computer chips.
A DC Court of Appeals has ruled that the House ways and means committee can receive Trump's tax returns and audit files "immediately".
Mark Bankston, an attorney for the Sandy Hook family that sued Alex Jones for defamation, confirmed that among the messages found in the trove of phone records accidentally sent to him, was a nude photo of Jones' wife that Jones had sent to Roger Stone.
Joe Biden signed a measure ratifying US support for Finland and Sweden to join the Nato alliance.
Ben Collins and Ryan Reilly, both reporters for NBC News, monitored some pro-Trump forums during the Mar-a-Lago search, here's what they observed:
- Users agitating for "civil war"
- Tyler Welch Slaeker, who is awaiting sentencing for his involvement in the January 6 insurrection, was among those online discussing an upcoming "civil war"
- A post from the Proud Boys referred to the FBI as "Biden's gestapo" and said that "civil war is imminent."
August 8, 2022 - According to Donald Trump, The FBI executed a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump posted to his Truth Social site calling the search a "raid", compared it to "Watergate", and blamed it on "Radical left Democrats". From Trump's post: "After working and cooperating with the relevant government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate ... They even broke into my safe!"
Notable details regarding the search:
- According to multiple reports, Trump was in New York during the FBI search.
- The White House claims it had no advance information about the FBI's search.
- According to sources familiar with the matter, the FBI obtained a warrant to search Mar-a-Lago because they were able to establish probable cause to a federal magistrate judge in West Palm Beach that Trump was unlawfully holding official White House records at his residence in Florida.
- According to top FBI officials, the very presence of government records at the resort is potentially a crime.
- A former acting US solicitor general said the search makes it likely that Trump is the target of a criminal investigation by the justice department.
- House minority leader Kevin McCarthy claimed the search was evidence of "an intolerable state of weaponized politicization" at the justice department.
Donald Trump released a statement about the search saying: "It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don't want me to run for President in 2024, especially based on recent polls and who will likewise do anything to stop Republicans and Conservatives in the upcoming midterm elections"
August 5, 2022 - In new data released by the federal government, the US added 528,000 jobs in July, bringing the jobs market back to pre-pandemic levels. The unemployment rate is now at 3.5%.
According to CNN, the justice department and Donald Trump's lawyers have started talking amid a growing criminal probe into the January 6 insurrection. From the story: "At this stage, the conversations are focused mostly on whether any communications that witnesses from the Trump West Wing had with the former President can be kept from a federal criminal grand jury under Trump's claims of executive privilege, the people said. The Justice Department has been anticipating a court fight with Trump over executive privilege. The issue has arisen as grand jury subpoenas have been issued to two former White House counsel's office officials and to former Vice President Mike Pence's chief counsel and chief of staff. Trump's legal defense team has warned him that indictments are possible, sources tell CNN. Some members of Trump's legal team have discussed his potential defense strategies on at least two occasions in recent months, according to two sources familiar with the matter, as they brace for new developments in the Justice Department probe and a separate investigation by Georgia officials into his potentially criminal meddling in the state's 2020 election results. Rolling Stone previously reported that Trump had been briefed. Trump has grilled his attorneys on whether they actually believe he will face formal charges, sources said. Yet the former President has expressed a heavy dose of skepticism that he will be indicted, one of the sources familiar with the matter said. Another source close to the former President told CNN that Trump also has posed questions about a potential indictment to members of his inner circle, some of whom believe the President is concerned about the possibility of federal charges."
According to the New York Times, Republican state treasurers are coordinating efforts to retaliate against financial institutions that have taken steps to mitigate climate change. From the story: "Last week, Riley Moore, the treasurer of West Virginia, announced that several major banks — including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo — would be barred from government contracts with his state because they are reducing their investments in coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel. Mr. Moore and the treasurers of Louisiana and Arkansas have pulled more than $700 million out of BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager, over objections that the firm is too focused on environmental issues. At the same time, the treasurers of Utah and Idaho are pressuring the private sector to drop climate action and other causes they label as 'woke.' And treasurers from Pennsylvania, Arizona and Oklahoma joined a larger campaign to thwart the nominations of federal regulators who wanted to require that banks, funds and companies disclose the financial risks posed by a warming planet. At the nexus of these efforts is the State Financial Officers Foundation, a little-known nonprofit organization based in Shawnee, Kan., that once focused on cybersecurity, borrowing costs and managing debt loads, among other routine issues. Then President Biden took office, promising to speed the country's transition away from oil, gas and coal, the burning of which is dangerously heating the planet. The foundation began pushing Republican state treasurers, who are mostly elected officials and who are responsible for managing their state's finances, to use their power to promote oil and gas interests and to stymie Mr. Biden's climate agenda, records show."
Speaking at CPAC, Republican Senator Ted Cruz shrieked to laughter and applause: "My pronouns are 'kiss my ass'."
Slate has published a story on the internet meme "Dark Brandon". From the story: "The term 'Dark Brandon' first surfaced in early 2022 as part of the usual gamut of memes and burns deployed by America's extremely online socialists—especially those who've found themselves feeling euphorically apocalyptic in the face of unchecked climate change, a theocratic Supreme Court, and Joe Manchin's seemingly insurmountable veto power. For them, 'Dark Brandon' was a way to lean into despair. The invaluable resource Know Your Meme delved into the paper trail and uncovered a trove of extremely dark viral tweets from the spring, where Dark Brandon could be found, say, pointing a gun into a woman's mouth in a Photoshop or overseeing public executions in a Twitter user's ironic fantasy. The idea here is that Joe Biden was not the fuddy-duddy centrist he appeared to be and instead represented some sort of satanic, Revelations-esque figure, way worse than anyone can imagine. It's an aesthetic that mirrors the related Dark MAGA trend, in which alt-right dead-enders and QAnon veterans have adopted an increasingly occultist tone to sheathe their reactionary beliefs. (Here, for instance, is an image of Jordan Peterson with the same facial tattoos as the rapper 6ix9ine.) The difference is that Dark MAGA posters fantasize about the return of an even-more-unhinged, gloves-off Trump, out for revenge. Dark Brandon, on the other hand, was the creation of people without much hope at all. We can debate over whether it's foolish to assign any intellectual significance to the tweets made by weirdos on the internet, but I do think that both Dark Brandon and DarkMAGA were interesting artifacts of America's superheated political environment. The country does feel like it's perched on the precipice of some sort of prophetic rebirth, and perhaps, as our institutions erode into the sea, Dark Brandon is the harbinger of that final judgment. Meanwhile, because Trump does feel like he might come back, more vengeful than before, DarkMAGA's attempts to speak that into existence feel like a warning."
Thomas Connally of Snowshoe West Virginia, was sentenced to three years in federal prison for sending threatening emails to Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease expert in the US. NOTE: One email said that Fauci and his family would be "dragged into the street, beaten to death, and set on fire".
August 4, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Ramon Antonio Vargas offers the following analysis of cellphone data belonging to Alex Jones falling into the hands of those who were suing him: "Attorneys for Alex Jones 'messed up' and sent to his legal adversaries 'every text message' he had written in the past two years – contradicting claims Jones had nothing on his phone pertaining to the deadly Sandy Hook school shooting, which he long maintained was a hoax, it was revealed at his defamation trial on Wednesday. The revelation surfaced during an exchange in an Austin, Texas, courtroom between Jones and Mark Bankston, a lawyer representing the parents of a six-year-old boy killed in the 2012 attack. For years, Jones, a bombastic far-right conspiracy theorist, ranted to his millions of followers that the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting was a hoax, that children were not killed and that parents were 'crisis actors' in an elaborate ruse to force gun control. The parents of six-year-old Jesse Lewis are seeking at least $150m (£123m) in a defamation trial brought against the prominent radio host."
According to Reuters, four current and former Louisville, Kentucky, police officers have been arrested by the FBI for their role in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor in 2020. According to the department of justice, the officers were charged with civil rights violations while executing a no-knock warrant at Taylor's home. The officers are Joshua Jaynes, Brett Hankison, Kelly Goodlett and Sgt Kyle Meany. Attorney general Merrick Garland addressed the arrest saying the officers "took steps to cover up their unlawful conduct" and "met in a garage where they agreed to tell ... a false story" to investigators. One officer opened fire through a window during the raid that killed Taylor, even though he couldn't see through the window because the blinds were drawn.
Viktor Orban, the Hungarian Prime Minister, spoke at CPAC today. During his speech, Orban described Hungary as "under the siege of progressives, liberals day by day" and described himself as "the only anti-migration political leader on our continent" which was greeted by enthusiastic applause.
Alex Jones has been found guilty in his defamation trial, and ordered to pay $4.1 million in compensatory damages for spreading conspiracy theories about the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting.
August 3, 2022 - According to the New York Times, two Republican politicians in Arizona who were involved in efforts to overturn Biden's victory in that state, worried the scheme could "appear treasonous".
According to NBC News, attorneys for far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, the host of Infowars, who is being tried in a defamation suit brought by parents of Sandy Hook shooting victims, accidentally sent text messages from Jones' phone to the lawyers for the plaintiffs.
According to Rolling Stone, the January 6 committee plans to take advantage of the accidental unveiling of Alex Jones' phone data, by issuing a subpoena for the information for their inquiry.
According to CNN, a federal grand jury investigating the January 6th insurrection has subpoenaed Pat Cipollone, the former White House counsel, and Patrick Philbin, who worked as Cipollone's deputy.
August 2, 2022 - Voters in Kansas, a Republican stronghold, voted to protect abortion rights in their state constitution, by a margin of 59% in favor. NOTE: Abortion providers in Kansas have been repeated targets of violence since the 1990s. Physician George Tiller was assassinated in Wichita in 2009.
August 1, 2022 - According to the AP, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is challenging a subpoena to testify before the grand jury investigating whether Donald Trump and his cohorts broke any laws when they tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia. Graham, who made at least two telephone calls to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and members of his staff, asking about reexamining certain absentee ballots "to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former president Donald Trump". Graham's lawyers claim the calls were "quintessentially legislative fact-finding - both to help him form election-related legislation, including in his role as then-chair of the judiciary committee, and to help inform his vote to certify the election."
Responding to news that the Chinese are upset by an upcoming visit to Taiwan by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and have issued threats that their military will "not sit idly by" if the visit happens, John Kirby, a White House national security spokesman stated: "There is no reason for Beijing to turn a potential visit consistent with long-standing US policy into some kind of crisis or conflict or use it as a pretext to increase aggressive military activity in or around the Taiwan strait. We will not take the bait or engage in sabre rattling. At the same time, we will not be intimidated. We will keep operating in the seas and the skies in the western Pacific, as we have for decades. We will continue to support cross-strait peace, stability, support Taiwan, defend a free and open Indo-Pacific, and we're still going to seek to maintain lines of communication with Beijing. All of that is important and all of that is preserving the status quo."
Guy Reffitt, the first January 6 insurrectionist to be convicted for his role in the attack, was sentenced today to more than seven years (87 to 108 months) in prison. The justice department had requested 15 years.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, the top al-Qaida leader who succeeded Osama bin Laden, was killed in downtown Kabul, Afghanistan, via a drone strike on his safe house. According to official reports, Zawahiri was killed while standing on his balcony overlooking the city.
July 29, 2022 - Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's former campaign chair, will soon be publishing his memoir, which is titled: "Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced". In the memoir, Manafort admits to indirectly advising Trump in 2020, while in home confinement as part of a seven-year sentence saying: "I didn't want anything to get in the way of the president's re-election or, importantly, a potential pardon." NOTE: Manafort got the pardon.
According to the Washington Post, text messages of by Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli, two of Trump's chief homeland security officials, are missing for a "key period" surrounding the January 6th insurrection.
Speaking to the press regarding his testimony to the January 6 committee, Mick Mulvaney, Trump's former acting chief of staff, stated: "the information that you are getting is from Republicans, like myself, who are testifying - you are not under oath but you still can't lie to Congress anyway, that's still a crime, and I think the information they are getting is good and sound information."
July 27, 2022 - The House of Representatives passed a bill pledging support for human trafficking victims. There were 20 no votes, all from Republicans. Notable reaction to the "NAY" votes:
"20 Republicans just voted NO on a bill to support human trafficking victims. Among the no votes are accused human trafficker Matt Gaetz, insurrectionist Paul Gosar, & self-described 'Christian Nationalist MT Greene. When people show you who they are—believe them the first time." - Qasim Rashid, Esq
July 26, 2022 - According to the Washington Post, the Justice Department is investigating the actions of Donald Trump as part of its criminal probe of efforts to overturn the 2020 election. From the story: "Prosecutors who are questioning witnesses before a grand jury — including two top aides to Vice President Mike Pence — have asked in recent days about conversations with Trump, his lawyers, and others in his inner circle who sought to substitute Trump allies for certified electors from some states Joe Biden won, according to two people familiar with the matter. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. The prosecutors have asked hours of detailed questions about meetings Trump led in December 2020 and January 2021; his pressure campaign on Pence to overturn the election; and what instructions Trump gave his lawyers and advisers about fake electors and sending electors back to the states, the people said. Some of the questions focused directly on the extent of Trump's involvement in the fake-elector effort led by his outside lawyers, including John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, these people said. In addition, Justice Department investigators in April received phone records of key officials and aides in the Trump administration, including his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, according to two people familiar with the matter. That effort is another indicator of how expansive the Jan. 6 probe had become, well before the high-profile, televised House hearings in June and July on the subject. The Washington Post and other news organizations have previously written that the Justice Department is examining the conduct of Eastman, Giuliani and others in Trump's orbit. But the degree of prosecutors' interest in Trump's actions has not been previously reported, nor has the review of senior Trump aides' phone records."
Writing for the Guardian, David Smith offers the following analysis of a speech given by Donald Trump to a conservative audience in Washington DC: "America first, irony last. Donald Trump, the former US president accused of a coup attempt in which police were speared and sprayed, returned to Washington on Tuesday with a plea for law and order to give police 'the respect that they deserve'. Trump spoke at a luxury hotel less than two miles from the US Capitol where, 18 months ago, his supporters furiously attacked law enforcement in a bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election result. It was his first visit to the nation's capital since he snubbed Joe Biden's inauguration and took flight to Florida. There were chants of 'four more years!' as Trump gave a 90-minute address to a summit hosted by the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a rightwing thinktank conceived by alumni of his White House. Less than a week after the congressional January 6 committee detailed 187 minutes in which he chose not to stop the deadly insurrection, Trump sought to blame Democrats for what he described as rampant crime. 'There is no higher priority than cleaning up our streets, controlling our border, stopping the drugs from pouring in, and quickly restoring law and order in America,' he said to applause. Trump complained: 'There is no longer respect for the law and there certainly is no order. Our country is now a cesspool of crime. We have blood, death and suffering on a scale once unthinkable because of the Democrat party's effort to destroy and dismantle law enforcement all throughout America. It has to stop and it has to stop now.' Wearing his signature dark suit, white shirt and red tie, Trump went on to cite individual murder cases in lurid detail and argue that police have been unfairly maligned. 'Every time they do something, they're afraid they're going to be destroyed, their pension is going to be taken away, they'll be fined, they'll be put in jail. Let them do their job, give them back the respect that they deserve. He added: 'The radical left's anti-police narrative is a total lie. Let's call it 'the big lie'. Have you ever heard that expression before?' More than 140 Capitol police and DC Metropolitan police officers were injured while defending the US Capitol, according to official figures. Officer Caroline Edwards told the January 6 committee: 'I was slipping in people's blood. I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage, it was chaos.' In the days and weeks after the attack, five officers who had served at the Capitol on January 6 died. Biden said on Monday: 'You can't be pro-insurrection and pro-cop, You can't be pro-insurrection and pro-democracy. You can't be pro-insurrection and pro-American.' ... Democrats mocked Trump's return to Washington and noted the irony of his law-and-order message. Cedric Richmond, a senior adviser to the Democratic National Committee, said: 'If Donald Trump wants to talk about crime, he should explain why he incited a mob to violently attack police officers defending the Capitol, or why he proposed massive cuts to community policing programs, or why his Maga Republican allies voted against funding that has bolstered law enforcement.'"
July 22, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Andrew Lawrence offers the following analysis of the alternative universe known as Fox News: "On Thursday night as the Congressional hearings into the January 6 Capitol riot drew to a close, Tucker Carlson directed his outrage at a president he felt had lied and was not being held accountable for falsehoods that shook popular faith in the American democratic system. But he wasn't talking about Donald Trump inciting rioters to storm the Capitol. He was talking about Joe Biden getting Covid. While millions of people last night tuned into America's other TV news channels and heard testimony about what Trump did, or rather did not do, during the hours when the rioters stormed the Capitol, Fox News viewers saw the network's primetime stars Carlson and Sean Hannity chide the 'twice jabbed, double-boosted' president for contracting the virus they say he allegedly couldn't have caught with a vaccine."
According to Axios, Donald Trump has a plan to remove and replace tens of thousands of civil servants across the US government should he get back into office in 2024. From the story: "Trump signed an executive order, 'Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,' in October 2020, which established a new employment category for federal employees. It received wide media coverage for a short period, then was largely forgotten in the mayhem and aftermath of Jan. 6 — and quickly was rescinded by President Biden. Sources close to Trump say that if he were elected to a second term, he would immediately reimpose it. Tens of thousands of civil servants who serve in roles deemed to have some influence over policy would be reassigned as 'Schedule F' employees. Upon reassignment, they would lose their employment protections. New presidents typically get to replace more than 4,000 so-called 'political' appointees to oversee the running of their administrations. But below this rotating layer of political appointees sits a mass of government workers who enjoy strong employment protections — and typically continue their service from one administration to the next, regardless of the president's party affiliation. An initial estimate by the Trump official who came up with Schedule F found it could apply to as many as 50,000 federal workers — a fraction of a workforce of more than 2 million, but a segment with a profound role in shaping American life. Trump, in theory, could fire tens of thousands of career government officials with no recourse for appeals. He could replace them with people he believes are more loyal to him and to his 'America First' agenda. Even if Trump did not deploy Schedule F to this extent, the very fact that such power exists could create a significant chilling effect on government employees. It would effectively upend the modern civil service, triggering a shock wave across the bureaucracy. The next president might then move to gut those pro-Trump ranks — and face the question of whether to replace them with her or his own loyalists, or revert to a traditional bureaucracy."
According to Reuters, the license administrator for Washington DC's law licenses is considering disciplinary action against Jeffrey Clark, the man Trump tried to appoint to lead the justice department to assist in overturning the 2020 election. Clark was needed by Trump because he was willing to send a letter to Georgia state lawmakers that informed them of "significant concerns" with the election results showing Joe Biden winning the state. From the story: "Clark, who is now also facing a federal investigation into his conduct, is accused of attempting to 'engage in conduct involving dishonesty' and attempting actions 'that would seriously interfere with the administration of justice,' according to a petition filed by the D.C. Bar's Office of Disciplinary Counsel. The ethics charges, dated June 29 and received by the Bar of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals on July 19, were made public on Friday, after Clark was served a copy of them in the morning, said Hamilton 'Phil' Fox, the head of the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel. Rachel Semmel, a spokesperson from Center for Renewing America, Clark's new employer, called the charges 'the latest attack on the legal qualifications of one of the only lawyers at the DOJ who had the interests of the American people at heart.' Jeff Clark is an American hero and the media sure seems to enjoy being the press secretary for the J6 committee,' she added."
A Washington DC jury has found Steve Bannon guilty on two counts of contempt of congress for refusing to cooperate with a subpoena from the January 6 committee. Sentencing will occur on October 21 which could mean as little as 30 days in jail, up to as much as a year, and fines could range from as little as $100 to as much as $100,000. NOTE: David Schoen, Bannon's attorney, told reporters that he has a "bulletproof appeal" and that "you will see this case reversed on appeal." Bannon declared in a press conference following his conviction that "we may have lost a battle today, but we're not going to lose this war. I stand with Trump, and the constitution."
James Murray, the Secret Service director, issued a statement reaffirming his willingness to cooperate with the January 6 committee regarding missing text messages from around the time of the Capitol insurrection. From the statement: "As an American and director of this incredible agency, I found the events at the Capitol on January 6th to be abhorrent. What happened on that day in January 2021 is anathema to democracy and the processes our constitution guarantees. Since day one, I have directed our personnel to cooperate fully and completely with the committee and we are currently finalizing dates and times for our personnel to make themselves available to the committee for follow up inquiries." NOTE: Adam Kinzinger, a Republican lawmaker serving on the committee, stated that Trump's former deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato, and former Secret Service lead agent Robert Engel, have stopped cooperating with the inquiry.
Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, the Democratic and Republican chairs of the January 6 committee, released a statement applauding the conviction of Donald Trump's former adviser Steve Bannon, saying in part: "The conviction of Steve Bannon is a victory for the rule of law and an important affirmation of the Select Committee's work. As the prosecutor stated, Steve Bannon 'chose allegiance to Donald Trump over compliance with the law'. Just as there must be accountability for all those responsible for the events of January 6th, anyone who obstructs our investigation into these matters should face consequences. No one is above the law."
California has taken inspiration from anti-abortion legislation and passed a law that allows people to sue anyone who distributes illegal assault weapons, parts that can be used to build weapons, guns without serial numbers, or .50 caliber rifles. Those filing the lawsuit would be awarded at least $10,000 in civil damages for each weapon, plus attorneys fees.
July 21, 2022 - The January 6 select committee held its eighth public hearing today, which was focused on the 187 minutes of inaction by Donald Trump while a mob of his supporters attacked police and hunted for lawmakers inside the US Capitol. Testifying live today were Matt Pottinger, a former deputy national security adviser, and Sarah Matthews, a former White House deputy press secretary.
July 20, 2022 - According to Milwaukee broadcaster WISN, Robin Vos, the Republican speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly, was called by Donald Trump recently, who urged him to use a recent supreme court ruling that ballot drop boxes are illegal to overturn the 2020 election results. After Vos told Trump during the call that what he's requesting is not allowed under the constitution, Trump posted to his Truth Social network that Vos is a "RINO" who let Democrats "get away with murder." NOTE: The court case does not speak to 2020 and before, but only to the future. The 2020 election was 624 days ago.
Rusty Bowers, the speaker of the house of representatives in Arizona, was formally censured by the Arizona state Republican party. According to the Arizona GOP, Bowers was censured for his opposition to various bills, and for his collaboration with Democrats, and the party is now calling for voters to replace him during the August primary. NOTE: Bowers testified publicly about Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the election results in Arizona in 2020.
Writing for the Guardian, Ed Pilkington offers the following analysis of the future of political violence: "One in five adults in the United States, equivalent to about 50 million people, believe that political violence is justified at least in some circumstances, a new mega-survey has found. A team of medical and public health scientists at the University of California, Davis enlisted the opinions of almost 9,000 people across the country to explore how far willingness to engage in political violence now goes. They discovered that mistrust and alienation from democratic institutions have reached such a peak that substantial minorities of the American people now endorse violence as a means towards political ends. 'The prospect of large-scale violence in the near future is entirely plausible,' the scientists warn. A hardcore rump of the US population, the survey recorded – amounting to 3% or by extrapolation 7 million people – believe that political violence is usually or always justified. Almost one in four of the respondents – equivalent to more than 60 million Americans – could conceive of violence being justified 'to preserve an American way of life based on western European traditions'. Most alarmingly, 7.1% said they would be willing to kill a person to advance an important political goal. The UC Davis team points out that, extrapolated to US society at large, that is the equivalent of 18 million Americans."
According to the Guardian, the Secret Service turned over a single text message in response to a subpoena to turn over all messages sent and received on January 5th and 6th of 2021. According to investigators, the rest of the messages were lost as part of an agency-wide reset of phones on 27 January 2021, which was 11 days after Congress first requested the communications and two days after agents were reminded to back up their phones.
July 19, 2022 - Zoe Lofgren, a California congresswoman, spoke on ABC's this Week regarding news that texts sent by the Secret Service the day of the insurrection at the Capitol, have been deleted. According to Lofgren "You can imagine how shocked we were to get the letter from the [Department of Homeland Security] inspector general saying that he had been trying to get this information and that they had, in fact, been deleted after he'd asked for them."
The board of the Pulitzer Prizes, which determines the winners of American Journalism's highest honor, has released a statement upholding its awarding of the 2018 prize in National Reporting to reporters from the New York Times and the Washington Post for their coverage of Russia's interference in the 2016 election, and the Trump campaign's involvement. From the statement: "The Pulitzer Prize Board has an established, formal process by which complaints against winning entries are carefully reviewed. In the last three years, the Pulitzer Board has received inquiries, including from former President Donald Trump, about submissions from The New York Times and The Washington Post on Russian interference in the U.S. election and its connections to the Trump campaign--submissions that jointly won the 2018 National Reporting prize. These inquiries prompted the Pulitzer Board to commission two independent reviews of the work submitted by those organizations to our National Reporting competition. Both reviews were conducted by individuals with no connection to the institutions whose work was under examination, nor any connection to each other. The separate reviews converged in their conclusions: that no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes. The 2018 Pulitzer Prizes in National Reporting stand." NOTE: An investigation into allegations that Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 election found no overarching conspiracy with Moscow, but did find plenty of troubling conduct. For example, The 450 page Mueller Report described 11 instances in which Donald Trump or his campaign engaged in potential obstruction of justice including the following:
- Trump's efforts to fire Mueller.
- Trump's firing of the former FBI director James Comey.
- Trump's efforts to hijack oversight of the Mueller investigation.
- Trump's order to the White House counsel, Donald McGahn, to deny that Trump had tried to fire Mueller.
- Trump's conduct with regard to associates who have pleaded guilty to crimes, including Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen.
According to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight, there are 120 Republican candidates who deny the results of the 2020 election that will be on the ballot this fall. According to FiveThirtyEight, this may not be the full count.
In a 4-3 ruling, the Ohio supreme court struck down that state's congressional districts saying they were so distorted in favor of Republicans that they violated the state constitution. The court gave the state legislature 30 days to come up with a new map. The ruling marks the seventh time the Ohio supreme court has struck down congressional and state legislative maps this cycle. Despite those previous rulings, all of the maps that were struck down will be in place for at least the 2022 elections.
Writing for the Guardian, Hugo Lowell offers the following analysis of deleted Secret Service text messages from January 5th and 6th of 2021: "The US National Archives has asked the Secret Service to conduct an internal investigation over 'erased' text messages from the day before and the day of the Capitol attack, according to a letter sent to the agency’s records management officer on Tuesday. The request marks the latest escalation of the matter after the watchdog for the Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security inspector general, notified Congress he had sought the texts only to be told they no longer existed. In the letter sent to the Secret Service records officer, reviewed by the Guardian, the National Archives requested the agency launch an internal review and report within 30 calendar days if it finds any texts were 'improperly deleted'."
July 14, 2022 - According to the Guardian, text messages sent by Secret Service agents on 5 an 6 January 2021 "were erased after the agency's oversight body sought the communications in a review into the Capitol attack, according to a letter from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) ... The timing of the message destruction raised in the letter, earlier reported by the Intercept and also reviewed by the Guardian, raised the prospect that senior leadership at the Secret Service, tasked with protecting the president, tampered with records. The letter indicated that the erasure came as part of a 'device-replacement program'. But it was not clear on Thursday as to why that would involve the loss of communications just as they were being investigated by the agency's independent oversight body."
July 12, 2022 - Jamie Raskin, a member of the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, told NBC News today that Pat Cipollone, who served as Donald Trump's White House counsel, "corroborated almost everything that we’ve learned from the prior hearings. I certainly did not hear him contradict Cassidy Hutchinson. ... He had the opportunity to say whatever he wanted to say, so I didn't see any contradiction there."
Judge Carl Nichols, from the District of Columbia, a Trump appointee, dismissed a motion by Steve Bannon, Trump's former top strategist, to delay his trial, which is scheduled for next week. Nichols said he saw no reason to push back the proceedings.
The Senate judiciary committee held a hearing today on the supreme court's decision to overturn Roe v Wade. Those testifying today include Dr Colleen P McNicholas, the chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood of the St Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, Juliana Stratton, the lieutenant governor of Illinois, Denise Harle, the director of the Center For Life at the Alliance Defending Freedom and Khiara M Bridges, professor at UC Berkeley School of Law. Here are some highlights:
- McNicholas testified that the reversal of Roe has created "two nations", one where Americans still have reproductive rights and another where politicians "have effectively appointed themselves as decisionmakers over our bodies, our lives and our futures".
- Republican Senator Tom Cotton asked the witnesses if they condemn recent violence against anti-abortion groups, to which Juliana Stratton responded that she condemns all violence, including that committed against abortion providers and clinics, Stratton also noted that incidents of arson, bombings and assaults carried out against abortion clinics have increased exponentially in the past two years. Denise Harle responded: "I do condemn all violence, and I would just note that abortion is an act of violence against the most innocent and vulnerable human beings. Khiara M Bridges responded saying "I condemn violence, and I would like to note that forced birth is an act of violence."
- Khiara M Bridges argued that the legal reasoning used by the conservative justices on the supreme court to overturn Roe was that the 14th amendment only protects rights that were deeply rooted in history in 1868, when the amendment was ratified, which "the majority concludes that abortion rights are not part of the nation's history and tradition." Bridges explained that that reasoning could imperil other rights that were not established in 1868 - including access to contraception, the right for same-sex couples to marry and the right to participate in consensual intimate relationships without fear of prosecution. Bridges concluded: "The method of constitutional interpretation that the majority uses in the Dobbs decision should frighten everyone who holds dear these rights that are necessary for people to live fully human lives with dignity in this country".
The January 6 select committee held its seventh hearing today, which is focused on Donald Trump's potential ties to far-right extremist groups who helped carry out the violence at the Capitol during the insurrection. Testifying live today are Stephen Ayres, who participated in the Capitol insurrection, and Jason Van Tatenhove, who at one time served as a spokesperson for the Oath Keepers. Here are some highlights:
- Liz Cheney, the Republican vice-chair opened the hearing by describing the current strategy for defending Trump's actions which has now shifted to arguing that Trump was manipulated by his campaign lawyers into embracing lies about the election. Cheney responded to this strategy saying: "President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child. Just like everyone else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices." Cheney then explained that Trump was told "over and over again" in the weeks leading up to January 6 that he had lost the presidential election to Joe Biden, and that "No rational or sane man in his position could disregard that information and reach the opposite conclusion. And Donald Trump cannot escape responsibility by being willfully blind."
- Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy described how on December 19th, after rejecting his advisers' conclusion that he lost the 2020 election, Trump sent a tweet urging his supporters to come to Washington on January 6th for a "wild" event. Murphy explained that the tweet was a call to action and in some cases a call to arms for many of his most loyal supporters. According to Murphy: "The president's goal was to stay in power for a second term despite losing the election. The assembled crowd was one of the tools to achieve that goal."
- Video of Pat Cipollone's interview with investigators shows Cipollone explaining that he had seen no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, and that Mark Meadows, Trump's former chief of staff, assured him and William Barr, the former attorney general, that Trump would concede the election after the electoral college met on December 14th to finalize Biden's victory. NOTE: Trump did not concede after the electoral college met, but instead continued to peddle baseless lies about election fraud, and those lies culminated in the deadly attack on the Capitol on January 6th.
- Video of an interview with Eugene Scalia was played. Scalia is the son of late supreme court justice Antonin Scalia. In the interview, Scalia said that he called Trump in mid-December and advised him to concede the election, but said Trump refused to do so.
- Video of an interview with Ivanka Trump was played. In the interview, Ivanka said she considered the election to be over by the time the electoral college met "Probably prior as well".
- Video of an interview with Kayleigh McEnany was played. In the interview, McEnany told investigators "In my view, on the conclusion of litigation was when I began to plan for life after the administration."
- In video testimony, Judd Deere, a former White House spokesperson, said he tried to convince Trump the election was settled after the electoral college met, but "He disagreed".
- Cipollone testified that "If your question is, did I believe he should concede the election at a point in time? Yes, I did." Cipollone also testified that the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell also expressed that same belief after the electoral college meeting.
- Cipollone testified about the idea from Sidney Powell, a Trump campaign lawyer, that they seize voting machines in battleground states after the 2020 election, saying "To have the federal government seize voting machines, it's a terrible idea. That is not how we do things in the United States. There's no legal authority."
- Cipollone described a December 18th meeting in which Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser, urged Trump to seize voting machines. According to Cipollone, the idea was sharply criticized by Eric Herschmann, a Trump adviser, who called the idea "nuts". NOTE: Cassidy Hutchinson had described the atmosphere of the West Wing on December 18th as "unhinged".
- An anonymous Twitter employee testified that Trump's December 19th tweet coincided with an increase in violent rhetoric among Trump supporters online. One Trump supporter promised there would be a "red wedding going down January 6th", which is a Game of Thrones reference to a wedding where many of the attendees are murdered.
- Committee member Jamie Raskin shared a facebook post by Kelly Meggs from December 19th, the same day Donald Trump posted his "wild" tweet, in which Meggs said he had organized an "alliance" between the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters and the Proud Boys. Raskin also stated that the committee had obtained phone records showing Meggs spoke with Enrique Tarrio for several minutes later that afternoon.
- Committee member Stephanie Murphy shared a draft tweet written by Donald Trump which encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol on January 6th. The draft tweet stated: "I will be making a Big Speech at 10AM on January 6th at the Ellipse (South of the White House). Please arrive early, massive crowds expected. March to the Capitol after. Stop the Steal!!" The draft tweet was obtained from the National Archives, and was stamped with the words "president has seen". Murphy then stated: "The evidence confirms that this was not a spontaneous call to action, but rather a deliberate strategy decided upon in advance by the president."
- The committee showed messages from January 6 rally organizers that showed they knew of plans of a march to the Capitol, but kept them quiet. One such message was from Kylie Kremer, which said that Trump was just going to call for the march to the Capitol "unexpectedly".
- In Cipollone's video testimony, he stated: "I think the vice-president did the right thing. I think he did the courageous thing. I think he did a great service to this country. And I think I suggested to somebody that he should be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his actions."
- The committee identified 10 Republican House members who attended a White House meeting on December 21 to discuss options for overturning the 2020 election. Those members were:
* Brian Babin
* Andy Biggs
* Matt Gaetz
* Louie Gohmert
* Paul Gosar
* Andy Harris
* Jody Hice
* Jim Jordan
* Scott Perry
* Marjorie Taylor Greene
- In video testimony, Brad Parscale, a former senior campaign adviser to Donald Trump, texted that he felt "guilty" about helping Trump win the presidency following the Capitol insurrection. Parscale also described Trump as "a sitting president asking for civil war". In response to his text, Katrina Pierson, a fellow Trump adviser, said "You did what you felt right at the time and therefore it was right." Parscale then responded: "Yeah, but a woman is dead".
- Jason Van Tatenhove testified that he left the Oath Keepers when he heard members suggest the Holocaust wasn't real. Tatenhove also stated: "I can tell you that they may not like to call themselves a militia, but they are. They're a violent militia".
- Stephen Ayres testified that Trump had gotten "everybody riled up" and that "we basically just followed what he said". Ayres also stated that he left the Capitol "when President Trump put his tweet out, we literally left right after that come out". Ayres also testified about how he feels now as Trump continues to peddle lies about widespread election fraud: "It makes me mad because I was hanging on every word."
- Tatenhove testified that some of the insurrectionists planned "an armed revolution" on January 6th.
- Committee member Liz Cheney pointed out that Donald Trump had tried to contact one of the witnesses in the investigation. According to Cheney, the witness declined the call, then contacted their lawyer, who passed the information to the justice department. Cheney then said: "Let me say one more time: we will take any efforts to influence witness testimony very seriously."
- A video clip was played where Pat Cipollone said he and other White House officials were urging Donald Trump to call off the insurrection, but Trump refused to do so for hours.
- In his closing statement, committee member Jamie Raskin stated: "American carnage: that's Donald Trump's true legacy. His desire to overthrow the people's election and seize the presidency, interrupting the counting of electoral college votes for the first time in American history, nearly toppled the constitutional order and brutalized hundreds and hundreds of people, The Watergate break-in was like a cub scout meeting compared to this assault on our people and our institutions. The crucial thing is the next step -- what this committee, what all of us will do to fortify our democracy against coups, political violence and campaigns to steal elections away from the people. We need to defend both our democracy and our freedom with everything we have to declare that this American carnage ends here and now."
Writing for the Guardian, Martin Pengelly offers the following analysis of the December 18 2020 meeting at the White House: "In a bizarre, angry and 'unhinged' White House meeting on 18 December 2020, outside advisers to Donald Trump screamed insults at presidential aides who were resisting their plan to seize voting machines and name a special counsel in pursuit of Trump's attempt to overturn the election. The meeting – which the House January 6 committee in its public hearing on Tuesday described as a 'heated and profane clash' – was held between those who believed the president should admit he lost the election to Joe Biden, and a group of outsiders referred to by some Trump advisers as 'Team Crazy'. They included Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani; the retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser; and a lawyer for his campaign team, Sidney Powell. In testimony to the House January 6 committee played at the hearing, Giuliani said that at the meeting he had called the White House lawyers and aides who disagreed with that plan 'a bunch of pussies'. Eric Herschmann, a White House lawyer, said that Flynn 'screamed at me that I was a quitter and kept standing up and turning around and screaming at me. I'd sort of had it with him so I yelled back, 'Either come over or sit your effing ass back down.'"
Writing for the Guardian, David Smith offers the following analysis of the state of our democracy: "Viewers learned of an 'unhinged' White House meeting and rioters ready for war – but will it close the case against Trump? 'We settle our differences at the ballot box.' Bennie Thompson, chairman of the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, emphasised this article of faith in his opening remarks on Tuesday. Trump allies 'screamed' at aides who resisted seizing voting machines. Jan 6 panel hears. But what followed was a three-hour story about how American democracy, like a rickety old house, creaked and bent and struggled to hold itself together during a thunderstorm of political violence. There was the tale of an Oval Office meeting that almost ended in fisticuffs. There was testimony from a former true believer in the 'big lie' who joined the rampage at the Capitol. There were predictions that if Trump runs again, no one will be safe. It was a chilling reminder that in a nation that has the genocide of Indigenous Americans, slavery, civil war and relentless gun violence in its cultural DNA, bloodshed is never far from the surface. Since white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, extremist groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers have been ascendent. Jamie Raskin, another member of the panel, observed: 'The problem of politicians whipping up mob violence to destroy fair elections is the oldest domestic enemy of constitutional democracy in America.' He quoted Abraham Lincoln: 'Mobs and demagogues will put us on a path to political tyranny.'"
July 13, 2022 - According to the Indianapolis Star, Gerson Fuentes, of Columbus Ohio, has been arrested and charged with raping and impregnating a 10-year-old Ohio girl, who had to travel to Indiana to get an abortion due to restrictions on the procedure in her home state. According to Dan Meyer, an assistant Franklin County prosecutor, the girl had recently turned 10, meaning she was likely impregnated at 9 years old. The victim has identified Fuentes as the rapist.
July 11, 2022 - Louie Gohmert, a Republican US Representative, implied that Nancy Pelosi was responsible for the Capitol insurrection when he stated the following to an audience at CPAC: "On January 6th, the sergeant at arms had turned down, on behalf of the speaker, having the National Guard there to help protect the Capitol. Why did that happen? You think they were setting things up?"
July 9, 2022 - Conservatives have begun calling the story about a 10-year-old who was raped and became pregnant, a fake News story. Here are some examples:
- "A week ago, @DanaBashCNN tried to trap me with a story about a 10-year old girl who got an abortion. I pointed out that nobody was asking about the pervert who raped that child. Now it looks like the story was fake to begin with. Literal #FakeNews from the liberal media." - Kristi Noem, South Dakota Governor
- "the mainstream media and president of the United States [were] seizing on another hoax." - Jesse Watters, Fox News Host
- "What I find so deeply offensive, they had to make up a fake one!" - Emily Compagno, Fox News Host
- "not a damn scintilla of evidence" - Dave Yost, Ohio Republican Attorney General
- "Another lie. Anyone surprised?" - Jim Jordan, Republican Senator from Ohio
- "sure [hope] they catch the imaginary rapist who impregnated the imaginary 10 year old girl who had to go to Indiana for an imaginary abortion." - Gary Callahan, Podcast Host
July 8, 2022 - While speaking of the extreme bans that Republicans are putting in place across the country to restrict abortion, Joe Biden spoke of the 10-year-old rape victim who was recently denied an abortion in Ohio saying: "in a number of these states, the laws are so extreme they have raised the threat of criminal penalties for doctors and healthcare providers. They're so extreme that many don't allow for exceptions, even for rape or incest. Let me say that again: Some of the states don't allow for exceptions for rape or incest. This isn't some imagined horror. It's already happening. Just last week, it was reported that a 10-year-old girl was a rape victim in Ohio — 10 years old — and she was forced to have to travel out of the state, to Indiana, to seek to terminate the pregnancy and maybe save her life. That's — the last part is my judgment. Ten years old. Ten years old. Raped, six weeks pregnant. Already traumatized. Was forced to travel to another state. Imagine being that little girl. Just — I’m serious — just imagine being that little girl. Ten years old. Does anyone believe that it's the highest majority view that that should not be able to be dealt with, or in any other state in the nation? A 10-year-old girl should be forced to give birth to a rapist's child? I can tell you what: I don't. I can't think of anything as much more extreme."
Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota, appeared on CNN's state of the Union with Dana Bash, where the following exchange took place:
BASH: "The Indianapolis Star is reporting that a 10-year-old girl in Ohio who was 6 weeks and 3 days pregnant now has to travel across state lines to Indiana to get an abortion ... Will the state of South Dakota going forward, force a 10-year-old in that very same situation to have a baby?"
NOEM: "Do you know what I think is incredible Dana, in this tragic story, cause I just heard about this last night, what's incredible is no one is talking about the pervert, horrible and deranged individual that raped a 10-year-old. And what are we doing about that?"
BASH: "I agree with you, that is an important discussion to have, but.."
NOEM: "... We also need to address the sick individuals that do this to this to our children."
BASH: "... Should she have to have a child?"
NOEM: "Every single life is precious ... but in South Dakota, the law today, is that abortions are illegal except to save the life of the mother."
BASH: "And you would be ok with that? A 10-year-old girl having to have a baby?"
NOEM: "No, I'm never ok with that. In fact that story will keep me up at night. It absolutely will."
BASH: "So will you try to change the law? To have an exception for situations like this?"
NOEM: "I'm a mother, a grandmother, Ihave a 1-year-old little granddaughter ... I don't believe a tragic situation should be perpetuated by another tragedy, and so there's more that we've got to do to make sure we really are living a life that says every life is precious, especially innocent lives that have been shattered like that 10-year-old girl."
July 1, 2022 - According to the Indianapolis Star, a 10-year-old rape victim was forced to travel from Ohio to Indiana to receive an abortion, because of a strict anti-abortion law in Ohio. According to the story, the girl was found to be six weeks and 3 days pregnant, but state law in Ohio bans abortions after six weeks. The story of the 10-year-old was brought to light after Dr. Caitlin Bernard, a prominent obstetrician-gynecologist who is an assistant professor at Indiana University medical school, talked to reporters about a phone call she had with a child-abuse physician in Ohio.
June 30, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Oliver Milman offers the following analysis of a new ruling by the supreme court in West Virginia v Environmental Protection Agency, which will hobble efforts to move the US away from coal-burning power plants and toward sources of renewable energy: "The case, which was backed by a host of other Republican-led states including Texas and Kentucky, was highly unusual in that it was based upon the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era strategy to cut emissions from coal-fired power plants that never came into effect. The Biden administration sought to have the case dismissed as baseless given the plan was dropped and has not been resurrected. Not only was this case about a regulation that does not exist, that never took effect, and which would have imposed obligations on the energy sector that it would have met regardless. It also involves two legal doctrines that are not mentioned in the constitution, and that most scholars agree have no basis in any federal statute. However, the supreme court has sided with West Virginia, a major coal mining state, which argued that 'unelected bureaucrats' at the EPA should not be allowed to reshape its economy by limiting pollution – even though emissions from coal are helping cause worsening flooding, heatwaves and droughts around the world, as well as killing millions of people through toxic air. It is the most important climate change case to come before the supreme court in more than a decade."
Notable reactions to the WV v EPA ruling:
"Decisions like WV vs. EPA make it clear just how much the system is rigged against us. A Supreme Court that sides with the fossil fuel industry over the health and safety of its people is anti-life and illegitimate." - Sunrise Movement
"Our planet is on fire, and this extremist Supreme Court has destroyed the federal government's ability to fight back. This radical Supreme Court is increasingly facing a legitimacy crisis, and we can't let them have the last word." - Elizabeth Warren
"The Court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency — the decision-maker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening. Respectfully, I dissent." - Justice Elana Kagan
Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman named to the supreme court, was officially sworn in today, making her the first Black woman to serve on the US supreme court.
In a new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, nearly half of US adults believe Trump should be charged with a crime for his role in the January 6 insurrection, compared to 31% who believe he should not be charged.
John Cooper, a Florida judge, has issued a temporary block on a 15-week abortion ban in Florida, saying the law is "unconstitutional in that it violates the privacy provision of the Florida Constitution." Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, says the state will appeal the ruling.
Clarence Thomas, a conservative supreme court justice, dissented to a ruling by the supreme court not to hear a challenge to New York's vaccine mandate. In the dissent, Thomas claimed that Covid-19 vaccines were developed using the cells of "aborted children". Politico responded to the claim saying: "None of the Covid-19 vaccines in the United States contain the cells of aborted fetuses. Cells obtained from elective abortions decades ago were used in testing during the Covid vaccine development process, a practice that is common in vaccine testing — including for the rubella and chickenpox vaccinations. A group of doctors, nurses and other health care workers brought the case, suing the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York in an objection to the state's vaccine mandate on religious grounds. The district court issued a preliminary injunction, but the Court of Appeals reversed it and the Supreme Court ultimately declined to hear the challenge on Thursday. Conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch joined Thomas in his dissenting opinion. And some Thomas defenders noted that he was simply reciting the allegations made by those refusing to get the vaccine."
Writing for the Guardian, Peter Kalmus offers the following analysis of the WV v EPA decision: "In an era of crises, global heating increasingly stands out as the single greatest emergency humanity faces. Global heating is driving extreme heat, drought and flooding in the US and around the world. It's driving wildfire and ecosystem collapse, and may already be contributing to famine and warfare. Crucially, this is all worsening day by day, and it will continue to worsen until we end the fossil fuel industry. ... Without a livable planet, nothing else matters. As the Earth's capacity to support life continues to degrade, millions, eventually billions of people will be displaced and die, fascism will rise, climate wars will intensify and the rule of law will break down. The myth of American exceptionalism will offer no protection from deadly heat and climate famine. In the US we now live under the sway of robed, superstitious fools hellbent on rolling back basic civil liberties and rejecting scientific facts. Carl Sagan, warning against this sort of anti-science, wrote: 'The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.' The consequences of ignoring scientists for too long are coming home to roost. We desperately need a government working to stop Earth's breakdown rather than accelerate it, but petitions or pleas to 'vote harder' will not make this happen. Due to capture by the ultra-rich, our only option is to fight. To shift society into emergency mode and end the fossil fuel industry, we must join together and do all we can to wake people up to the grave danger we are in. We must engage in climate disobedience. I believe that the tides could still turn, that power could shift suddenly. But this can only happen when enough people join the fight."
June 29, 2022 - Tina Peters, a Mesa County clerk and 2020 election denier, made famous after being indicted for her role in a break-in of her own county election system, has lost her bid for the GOP nomination for Colorado secretary of state.
Ron Hanks, a Colorado businessman, who denies that Joe Biden is the legitimately elected president, and who attended the January 6 insurrection, has lost his bid for the GOP nomination for Senator.
Andrew Giuliani, son of Rudy Giuliani, who is anti-vaccine, lost his bid to become the GOP nominee for governor of New York.
Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani, was sentenced to one year and eight months in prison for fraud and campaign finance crimes. NOTE: Parnas conspired to give investors false information about a Florida-based business, known as Fraud Guarantee, which was promoted as a company that could protect investors against fraud.
June 28, 2022 - The January 6 select committee held its sixth public hearing today, which is focused on phone calls and conversations among Trump, his children and and his top aides in the weeks leading up to and during the January 6 insurrection. Testifying today is Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as a senior adviser to Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff. Here are some highlights:
- Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the January 6 committee opened the hearing by thanking Hutchinson for her "courage" in coming forward to provide information, which he followed up with: "It hasn't always been easy to get that information because the same people who drove the former president's pressure campaign to overturn the election are now trying to cover up the truth about January 6. But thanks to the courage of certain individuals, the truth won't be buried. The American people won't be left in the dark."
- Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Rudy Giuliani asked Hutchinson on January 2nd if she was "excited" for January 6. Hutchinson said she then asked Giuliani what was going to happen on January 6th, to which Giuliani responded that Trump's supporters were "going to the Capitol". Hutchinson asked Mark Meadows about Giuliani's comments, to which Meadows responded: "There's a lot going on, Cass, but I don't know. Things might get real, real bad on January 6." Hutchinson said that conversation marked the "first moment I remember feeling scared and nervous for what could happen on January 6".
- Hutchinson testified that Mark Meadows was warned at around 10am on January 6 that attendees of the rally at the Ellipse were carrying weapons. She then stated that Tony Ornato, the White House deputy chief of staff, came to meadows office and described some of the weapons being carried by Trump's supporters, which included knives, guns, bear spray, body armor and spears. At some point Ornato asked Meadows if he had any questions, to which Meadows responded by asking if Trump had been warned that rally attendees were carrying weapons. Ornato responded that yes, Trump had been told about it. According to Hutchinson, Meadows did not react to Ornato's information or even bother to look up from his phone during the conversation.
- Hutchinson testified that Trump was "furious" about the crowd size at the rally, as those with weapons were not able to get in, and Trump wanted the Secret Service to remove the magnetometers to allow more people in. According to Hutchinson: "I was in the vicinity of a conversation where I overheard the president say something to the effect of, 'I don't f'ing care that they have weapons. They're not here to hurt me. Take the f'ing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here. Let the f'ing people in. Take the mags way.'"
- Hutchinson testified that White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, warned her that she should absolutely not let Trump go up to the Capitol out of fears of potential criminal liability for him. According to Hutchinson, Cipollone said something to the effect of "We're going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we let that happen."
- Hutchinson testified that after Trump indicated in his January 6 speech at the Ellipse that he may go up to the Capitol, she spoke to House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who expressed severe concern about the possibility of Trump traveling to the Capitol, and instructed her: "Don't come up here."
- Hutchinson testified that Tony Ornato told her Trump was "irate" when he was told he would be returning to the West Wing instead of the Capitol. According to Hutchinson, Trump told a Secret Service agent "I'm the effing president, take me to the Capitol now." When the agent responded that he could not take Trump to the Capitol, Trump tried to grab the steering wheel of his limousine (known as the Beast), and when that failed, he lunged for the agent's throat. Hutchinson said the agent who was driving was listening while Ornato recounted the story, and did not dispute what was being said.
- Hutchinson testified that after attorney general Bill Barr refused to go along with Trump's lies about widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, Trump was so enraged that he threw a plate at a wall in the White House. Hutchinson said she walked into the room where Trump had eaten lunch and said she saw a porcelain plate shattered on the floor and ketchup smeared on the wall. Hutchinson was asked if this was a common occurrence for Trump, to which Hutchinson responded: "There were several times throughout my tenure with the chief of staff that I was aware of him either throwing dishes or flipping the tablecloth." NOTE: During an interview with the AP in 2020, Barr stated: "To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election."
- The committee presented video of Michael Flynn's testimony with investigators. Flynn did not answer any questions, instead repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
- Hutchinson testified that she was present for a conversation between Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, and Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, when Cipollone said to Meadows "Mark, we need to do something more. They're literally calling for the vice-president to be f-ing hung." Meadows then replied "You heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn't think they are doing anything wrong."
- Hutchinson testified that she was horrified by Trump's tweet at 2:24pm on January 6th as insurrectionists were storming the Capitol. That tweet said that "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution." Regarding the tweet, Hutchinson stated: "As an American, I was disgusted. It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie."
- Hutchinson testified that both Mark Meadows and Rudy Giuliani sought presidential pardons after January 6th. She also testified that Trump wanted to add a line to his January 7th speech about potential pardons for the Capitol insurrectionists, but ultimately did not do so.
- Liz Cheney, the Republican vice-chair of the committee, stated: "Our nation is preserved by those who abide by their oaths to our Constitution. Our nation is preserved by those who know the fundamental difference between right and wrong. I want all Americans to know that what Miss Hutchinson has done today is not easy. The easy course is to hide from the spotlight, to refuse to come forward, to attempt to downplay or deny what happened."
- Liz Cheney spoke about witnesses who say they have been contacted by colleagues who told them to stay in Donald Trump's good graces with their comments to the committee. According to Cheney, one witness stated: "as long as I continue to be a team player, they know that I'm on the right team. I'm doing the right thing, I'm protecting who I need to protect. ... They have reminded me a couple of times that Trump does read transcripts and just to keep that in mind as I proceed through my depositions and interviews with the committee." Cheney then added: "I think most Americans know that attempting to influence witnesses to testify untruthfully presents very serious concerns. We will be discussing these issues as a committee, carefully considering our next steps."
Notable reactions to Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony:
"Anyone downplaying Cassidy Hutchinson's role or her access in the West Wing either doesn't understand how the Trump WH worked or is attempting to discredit her because they're scared of how damning this testimony is." - Sarah Matthews, Former Deputy White House Press Secretary in the Trump Administration
"Cassidy Hutchinson is my friend. I knew her testimony would be damning. I had no idea it'd be THIS damning. To anyone who would try to impugn her character, I'd be glad to put you in touch w/@January6thCmte to appear UNDER OATH." - Alyssa Farah Griffin, Former White House Communications Director in the Trump Administration
"It was a set up. They set up the Capitol Police and Congress to to get overrun. @MarkMeadows you traitorous fuck." - Ruben Gallego, Democratic Congressman from Arizona
Lauren Boebert, a Republican Representative from Colorado, made the following comments about Church State Separation: "The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church. I'm tired of this separation of church and state junk. It was not in the Constitution, it was in a stinking letter and it means nothing like what they say it does." NOTE: Andrew Seidel, of Americans United, responded to Boebert's comments saying: "America’s Constitution was the first not to mention a deity. And the only reference to religion in the founding document is to prohibit a religious test for those seeking to hold public office. ... We are about to get a very brutal real-world lesson in what it's like to live in a country that doesn't have that separation. And that looks like conservative, white Christians as this privileged class and everybody else as these second class citizens."
June 27, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Melody Schreiber offers the following analysis of the overturning of Roe: "After the revocation of the constitutional right to abortion in the United States, pregnancy-related deaths will almost certainly increase – especially among people of color, experts say. They called for urgent action to protect reproductive rights and the health of patients around the country. 'There are going to be more people who are forced to carry a pregnancy to term, which means that there's going to be a greater number of people who are at risk,' said Rachel Hardeman, a reproductive health equity professor and researcher at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. 'More pregnancy means more likelihood of deaths.' Existing state bans could lead to an additional 75,000 births a year for those who can't access abortions, according to one estimate. The bans will disproportionately affect younger, poorer people of color and those who already have children. But America is an incredibly difficult place to be pregnant, with the highest maternal mortality rate by far of any developed country – and it's rising sharply. For every 100,000 births, 23.8 people died from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes in 2020 – a total of 861 women – according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)."
In a 6 to 3 decision split along ideological lines, the conservative justices on the supreme court ruled in Kennedy v Bremerton School District that Joseph Kennedy, a former public high school football coach, was exercising his first amendment rights when he prayed with his players after games, and that his firing violated his rights. NOTE: The dissenting liberal justices argued that the conservative ruling pays "almost exclusive attention to the Free Exercise Clause's protection for individual religious exercise while giving short shrift to the Establishment Clause's prohibition on state establishment of religion" and that "Today’s decision goes beyond merely misreading the record. The Court overrules Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602 (1971), and calls into question decades of subsequent precedents that it deems 'offshoot[s]' of that decision. In the process, the Court rejects longstanding concerns surrounding government endorsement of religion and replaces the standard for reviewing such questions with a new 'history and tradition' test." NOTE: Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority that "Joseph Kennedy prayed during a period when school employees were free to speak with a friend, or call for a reservation at a restaurant, check email, or attend other personal matters. He offered his prayers quietly while his students were otherwise occupied. Still, the Bremerton School District disciplined him anyway." In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor attached a photograph of the coach surrounded by dozens of players who are kneeling and bowing their heads in prayer, while coach Kennedy is standing in the middle of the group with a helmet raised in the air, which contradicted Gorsuch's claim that Kennedy "offered his prayers quietly while his students were otherwise occupied".
Notable reactions to the Bremerton ruling:
"The conservative majority in Kennedy overrules #SCOTUS's major prior Establishment Clause precedent in Lemon, but tries to pretend that the Court had *already* overruled it in prior cases (spoiler alert: it hadn't). This is sketchy *even if* you think it's correct." - Steve Vladeck, Professor at the University of Texas School of Law.
"Public schools should be open and welcoming to all, regardless of background or belief. And since 1962, the Supreme Court has consistently recognized that school prayer is coercive, undermining the religious freedom rights of students who feel pressured to participate. Yet today's decision dismantles decades of progress." - Katy Joseph, Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Group Interfaith Alliance
Writing for the Guardian, Adam Gabbatt offers the following analysis of new posts by Qanon: "The leader of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which captivated a wave of Donald Trump supporters and infiltrated the Republican party, began posting again over the weekend, after nearly two years of silence. 'Q', as the figurehead of the movement is known, published three cryptic posts on a message board on Friday night – the account's first posts since December 2020. 'Shall we play a game once more?' the account posted on the far-right board 8kun. The post was signed: 'Q'. The account had a unique identifier, the New York Times reported, which had been used on previous Q posts. When a user asked why Q had been absent, the account replied: 'It had to be done this way.' Later, the account posted: 'Are you ready to serve your country again? Remember your oath.' QAnon is an antisemitic internet conspiracy theory that swept the US right wing in 2017. Proponents claim that Trump was waging a secret battle against a cabal of pedophiles and its 'deep state' collaborators."
June 24, 2022 - Check My Ads, an organization run by two former marketers, is targeting Fox News to strip it of advertising revenue. According to the site, Fox News is "working overtime to fuel the next insurrection".
In a 6 to 3 decision, split along ideological lines, the conservative justices on the supreme court ruled in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization, that there is no constitutional right to abortion, and voted to overturn Roe v Wade, ending nearly half a century of abortion rights in the United States.
Notable reactions to the ruling:
"Today, the Supreme Court not only reversed nearly 50 years of precedent, it relegated the most intensely personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologues—attacking the essential freedoms of millions of Americans." - Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States
"For nearly fifty years, the Supreme Court has imposed an unpopular and extreme abortion policy on our nation, but as the annual March for Life gives witness to, Roe's allowance of abortion-on-demand, up-until-birth has never represented where most Americans stand on life!" - Jeanne Mancini, President of March for Life
"This Court's blatant disregard for settled precedent, along with the previously leaked draft opinion, undermines the Court's legitimacy and America's trust in the federal judiciary. But even more troubling are the impacts on women who live in states banning or restricting abortion access. We are going to see 'Two Americas,' one that protects women's health and rights and one where women will have few, if any, reproductive rights. The Supreme Court's decision will widen racial and health disparities across America. The Supreme Court has made the United States an outlier among peer countries that safeguard the right to abortion." - Lawrence Gostin, Faculty Director of the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown Law
"People will be forced to give birth. They'll be forced to seek unsafe abortions. This is the outcome of a decades-long campaign to control the bodies of women, girls, and people who can become pregnant. And it paves the way for unprecedented state legislation to criminalize abortion, as well as other bills that will aim to strip human rights from people in the United States, including the potential for bills that will affect access to birth control, gender, and marriage equality as well as other anti-discrimination laws ... Regardless of what the Supreme Court says, abortion remains a human right and states all over the world are still obligated to uphold that right." - Tarah Demant, Interim National Director for Programs, Advocacy and Government Affairs at Amnesty International USA
"The Supreme Court has eliminated an established right that has been an essential component of women’s liberty for half a century – a right that has safeguarded women’s ability to participate fully and equally in society. And in renouncing this fundamental right, which it had repeatedly recognized and reaffirmed, the Court has upended the doctrine of stare decisis, a key pillar of the rule of law. The Justice Department strongly disagrees with the Court's decision. This decision deals a devastating blow to reproductive freedom in the United States. It will have an immediate and irreversible impact on the lives of people across the country. And it will be greatly disproportionate in its effect – with the greatest burdens felt by people of color and those of limited financial means." - Merrick Garland, Attorney General
"This decision is inconsistent with what Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said in their testimony and their meetings with me, where they both were insistent on the importance of supporting long-standing precedents that the country has relied upon" - Susan Collins, Republican US Senator NOTE: During the confirmation hearings of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, Collins repeatedly reassured the public that they would not overturn Roe v Wade.
"The court has done what it has never done before: expressly taken away a constitutional right that is so fundamental to so many Americans. It's a sad day for the court and for the country." - Joe Biden, President of the United States
"Today's decision is a direct blow to bodily autonomy, reproductive health, patient safety and health equity in the United States. Reversing the constitutional protection for safe, legal abortion established by the Supreme Court nearly fifty years ago exposes pregnant people to arbitrary, state-based restrictions, regulations, and bans that will leave many people unable to access needed medical care. The restrictions put forth are not based on science nor medicine; they allow unrelated third parties to make decisions that rightfully and ethically should be made only by individuals and their physicians. ACOG condemns this devastating decision, which will allow state governments to prevent women from living with autonomy over their bodies and their decisions." - Iffath A Hoskins, MD, President of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
"The American Medical Association is deeply disturbed by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn nearly a half century of precedent protecting patients' right to critical reproductive health care—representing an egregious allowance of government intrusion into the medical examination room, a direct attack on the practice of medicine and the patient-physician relationship, and a brazen violation of patients' rights to evidence-based reproductive health services. States that end legal abortion will not end abortion — they will end safe abortion, risking [devastating] consequences, including patients' lives." - Jack Resneck Jr MD, President of the American Medical Association
"In future cases, we should reconsider all of this court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell" - Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court Justice, in his concurring opinion to the ruling on Roe
"This decision is unconstitutional, dangerous and discriminatory. It will not stop abortions from being performed, it will unfortunately only make the procedure more dangerous. Women of color, poor women and other disadvantaged individuals who don't have the resources to travel to obtain the medical care they need will be disproportionately impacted. At a time when maternal mortality rates are worsening, particularly for Black women, it is deeply disappointing that our institutions are actively harming — not helping — women's health. Abortion is part of total health care for a woman. Doctors should be able to provide medical care based on scientific fact and evidence-based medicine, and free from any political interference. The entire medical community should be gravely concerned about the precedent this decision sets." - Rachel Villanueva, President of the National Medical Association
"The people have won a victory. The right to life has been vindicated. The voiceless will finally have a voice. This great nation can now live up to its core principle that all are created equal. Not born equal. Created equal." - Kevin McCarthy, Republican Minority Leader
"A new and bare majority of this court – acting at practically the first moment possible – overrules Roe and Casey. It converts a series of dissenting opinions expressing antipathy toward Roe and Casey into a decision greenlighting even total abortion bans. It eliminates a 50-year-old constitutional right that safeguards women's freedom and equal station. It breaches a core rule-of-law principle, designed to promote constancy in the law. In doing all of that, it places in jeopardy other rights, from contraception to same-sex intimacy and marriage. And finally, it undermines the court's legitimacy." - Taken From a Dissenting Opinion by Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, the Supreme Court's Three Liberal Justices
"The Supreme Court has stripped women of their liberty and let red states replace it with mandated birth. This is an attack on American freedom. CA, OR and WA are creating the West Coast offensive. A road map for other states to stand up for women. Time to fight like hell." - Gavin Newsom, Democratic Governor of California
"The contrast between our parties could not be clearer: while Democrats are the party of freedom and safety, Republicans are the party of punishment and control. We must Remember in November that the rights of women, and indeed all Americans, are on the ballot." - Nancy Pelosi, Democratic House Speaker
Abortions were banned in 9 states today. Those states are:
Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah and Wisconsin
83 district attorneys and state attorneys general signed a commitment saying they were united in their belief that "prosecutors have a responsibility to refrain from using limited criminal legal system resources to criminalize personal medical decisions. As such, we decline to use our offices' resources to criminalize reproductive health decisions and commit to exercise our well settled discretion and refrain from prosecuting those who seek, provide, or support abortions."
Eric Schmitt, the attorney general of Missouri, authored an opinion that bans all abortions, making Missouri the first state in the country to end abortion entirely.
June 23, 2022 - According to 8 News Now, Michael McDonald, a top Republican party official in Nevada, had his phone seized by the FBI in connection with his involvement in creating a list of fake electors.
According to the Washington Post, FBI agents visited the home of Brad Carver, a lawyer in Georgia who signed documents saying he was a Trump elector. Agents also visited the home of Thomas Lane, who worked for Trump in Arizona and New Mexico. David Shafer, the Georgia GOP chair, received a subpoena.
Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general during the January 6th insurrection, told the AP: "Some argued to the former president and public that the election was corrupt and stolen. That view was wrong then and it is wrong today."
Derrick Evans, a West Virginia lawmaker who participated in and even live-streamed the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, has been sentenced to 3 months in prison. NOTE: Evans is among 21 lawmakers known to have joined the rioters trying to overturn the 2020 election.
In a 6-3 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen, the supreme court struck down a New York law that regulated who is allowed to carry a concealed weapon in public. NOTE: The decision was split among ideological lines, with the 3 liberal justices dissenting.
Writing for the Guardian, Ed Pilkington offers the following analysis of the Bruen decision: "The US supreme court has opened the door for almost all law-abiding Americans to carry concealed and loaded handguns in public places after the conservative majority struck down a New York law that placed strict restrictions on firearms outside the home. The majority decision renders the New York law an unconstitutional violation of the second amendment right to bear arms. The law had required anyone wanting to carry a handgun in public to prove that they had a 'proper cause' to do so. The ruling has profound implications for the safety and conduct of up to 83 million people who live in New York and seven other states plus Washington DC, which have similar 'proper cause' laws. They include some of the most heavily populated states in the country such as California and New Jersey, which between them account for roughly three out of every four Americans."
Notable reactions to the Bruel ruling:
"They have taken away our right to have reasonable restrictions. We can have restrictions on speech — you can't yell fire in a crowded theater — but somehow, there's no restrictions allowed on the second amendment ... This is New York. We don't back down. We fight back. I'm sorry this dark day has come." - Kathy Hochul, Governor of New York
"Today's ruling is out of step with the bipartisan majority in Congress that is on the verge of passing significant gun safety legislation, and out of touch with the overwhelming majority of Americans who support gun safety measures. Let's be clear: the supreme court got this decision wrong, choosing to put our communities in even greater danger with gun violence on the rise across the country." - John Feinblatt, President of Everytown for Gun Safety
"The supreme court misapplied fundamental constitutional principles in ruling against New York. Even so, states can still pass and enforce a wide array of laws to keep public spaces safe from gun violence, and we're ready to go to court to defend these laws." - Eric Tirschwell, Chief Litigation Counsel at Everytown Law
"Since 1911, the State of New York has required individuals who would like to carry a concealed weapon in public to show a need to do so for the purpose of self-defense and to acquire a license. More than a century later, the United States supreme court has chosen to strike down New York's long-established authority to protect its citizens. This ruling contradicts both common sense and the constitution, and should deeply trouble us all" - Joe Biden, President of the United States
"Today's ruling is a watershed win for good men and women all across America and is the result of a decades-long fight the NRA has led." - Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice-President of the NRA
"We respectfully disagree with the Court's conclusion that the Second Amendment forbids New York's reasonable requirement that individuals seeking to carry a concealed handgun must show that they need to do so for self-defense. The Department of Justice remains committed to saving innocent lives by enforcing and defending federal firearms laws, partnering with state, local and tribal authorities and using all legally available tools to tackle the epidemic of gun violence plaguing our communities" - Dena Iverson, Spokeswoman for the Department of Justice
"Today's Supreme Court ruling on guns is deeply troubling as it defies commonsense and the Constitution. Lives are at stake. Congress should pass the bipartisan gun safety proposal immediately and continue to do more to protect our communities." - Kamala Harris, Vise President of the United States
"It is unfathomable that, while families in Uvalde, Buffalo and countless other communities mourn their loved ones stolen by gun violence, a supermajority of the Supreme Court has chosen to endanger more American lives. Today's decision by a radical, Republican-controlled Court extends what was intended to be a limited right to self-defense at home to a new right to bring guns into our public spaces. Disturbingly, the twisted logic of this ruling could hinder the ability of local, state and federal governments to keep families safe from gun violence – at a time when urgent steps are deeply needed. By making it more difficult to enact measures that reduce gun violence, the GOP Supermajority Court is condoning the horrific mass shootings and ongoing tragedy of daily gun deaths plaguing our nation." - Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker
According to the Guardian, federal investigators searched the home of Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official under Donald Trump. From the story: "It was not immediately clear what investigators were looking for or which agencies were involved, though Clark was a key figure in former president Donald Trump's unsuccessful plans to coerce the justice department into endorsing his election fraud claims as he attempted to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden ... In a statement on the search, Trump's former director for the office of management and budget, Russ Vought said: 'more than a dozen DoJ law enforcement officials searched Jeff Clark's house in a pre-dawn raid' and 'took his electronic devices.' Vought is now the head of the Center for Renewing America, where Clark also works."
The January 6 select committee held its fifth public hearing today, which focuses on Donald Trump's efforts to get the justice department to go along with his plans to overturn Joe Biden's 2020 election victory. Testifying today are Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general for the final weeks of Trump's term. Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, who during a prior hearing was shown on video threatening to resign if Trump appointed Jeffrey Clark to head the justice department, and Steven Engel, the former assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel. Here are some highlights:
- Republican Liz Cheney offered some details about the actions of justice department official Jeffrey Clark saying that Clark and another justice department lawyer drafted a letter to the Georgia state legislature that said the department "identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states, including the state of Georgia" and that the legislature should convene and consider approving a new slate of electors. Cheney went on to say "In fact, Donald Trump knew this was a lie. The Department of Justice had already informed the president of the United States repeatedly that its investigations had found no fraud sufficient to overturn the results of the 2020 election." Cheney then explained that Clark met privately with Trump and agreed to help him sway these states' legislatures without telling his bosses at the justice department. According to Cheney, those superiors, who are testifying today, refused to sign the letter, which is why Trump considered installing Clark at the helm of the justice department, but then backed off.
- Richard Donoghue testified that Pat Cipollone, a Trump lawyer, described the Clark letter as a "murder-suicide pact. It's going to damage everyone who touches it."
- Donoghue testified that he told Trump: "States run their elections. We are not quality control for the states" and that "The bottom line was, if a state ran their election in such a way that it was defective, that is to the state or Congress to correct, it is not for the justice department to step in." Donoghue said that Trump responded with "That's not what I'm asking you to do. Just say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen."
- Text messages were presented that were between Republican congressman Scott Perry and chief of staff Mark Meadows, which showed that Perry was encouraging Meadows to work on promoting Clark.
- Donoghue testified about a phone call in which Scott Perry claimed fraud in the results in Pennsylvania, claims the justice department determined were unfounded.
- Donoghue testified to his reaction to the Clark letter saying "I had to read both the email and the attached letter twice to make sure I really understood what he was proposing because it was so extreme to me I had a hard time getting my head around it initially."
- Donoghue stated that he responded in writing to Clark's letter saying its allegations were "not based on facts" and that in his view "for the department to insert itself into the political process this way, I think, would have had grave consequences for the country. It may very well have spiraled us into a constitutional crisis. And I wanted to make sure that he understood the gravity of the situation because he didn't seem to really appreciate it."
- The committee presented video of Clark responding to questions by the select committee by invoking his fifth amendment privilege against self incrimination.
- Jeffrey Rosen testified about a request from Trump to seize voting machines saying "We had seen nothing improper with regard to the voting machines. And so that was not something that was appropriate to do ... I don't think there was legal authority either."
- Donoghue recalled a meeting with Trump where Trump pushed him to seize voting machines. Donoghue stated that by the end "The president again was getting very agitated. And he said, 'People tell me I should just get rid of both of you. I should just remove you and make a change in the leadership with Jeff Clark, and maybe something will finally get done'" to which Donoghue said he responded "Mr President, you should have the leadership that you want. But understand the United States justice department functions on facts and evidence, and then those are not going to change. So you can have whatever leadership you want, but the department's position is not going to change."
- Jeffrey Rosen talked about Trump's efforts to replace him with Jeffrey Clark saying Trump told him "he would be replacing me" and asked to meet him alone "because he thought it would be appropriate in light of what was happening to at least offer me that I could stay on as his deputy. I thought that was preposterous. I told him that was nonsensical and that there was no universe where I was going to do that, to stay on and support someone else doing things that were not consistent with what I thought should be done. So I didn't accept that offer."
- Donoghue testified that Rosen made the decision to begin informing other justice department officials about the quandary, and almost all of the assistant attorney generals said they would resign if Trump replaced Rosen with Clark. Donoghue said he told Trump during a meeting "You're gonna lose your entire department leadership. Every single (assistant attorney general) will walk out. Your entire department of leadership will walk out within hours. And I don't know what happens after that. I don't know what the United States attorneys are going to do. My guess would be that many of them would have resigned."
- The select committee revealed that the following Republican congressmen requested pardons from Trump during his final days in office:
* Mo Brooks sent an email on January 11th seeking pardons for "every congressman and senator who voted to reject the electoral college vote submissions of Arizona and Pennsylvania."
* Scott Perry
* Andy Biggs
* Louie Gohmert
* Jim Jordan
- Rosen testified that on the day of the insurrection he "spoke to a number of senior White House officials, but not the president"
- Bennie Thompson, the committee chair, ended the hearing with: "Up to this point, we've shown the inner workings of what was essentially a political coup and attempt to use the powers of the government, from the local level all the way up, to overturn the results of the election. Send fake electors, just say the election was corrupt. Along the way, we saw threats of violence, we saw what some people were willing to do. In a service of the nation, the constitution? No. In service of Donald Trump. When the Select Committee continues this series of hearings, we're going to show how Donald Trump tapped into the threat of violence, how he summoned the mob to Washington, and how after corruption and political pressure failed to keep Donald Trump in office, violence became the last option."
June 22, 2022 - A civil court awarded $500,000 to a girl who was abused in the Playboy mansion nearly 50 years ago, by convicted rapist Bill Cosby.
Writing for the Guardian, Hugo Lowell offers the following analysis of yesterday's January 6 hearing: "The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack made the case at its fourth hearing on Tuesday that the Trump 2020 campaign tried to obstruct Joe Biden's election win through a potentially illegal scheme to send fake slates of electors to Congress. The panel presented a text message sent on 4 January 2021 that appeared to indicate the Trump campaign was seeking to use fraudulent election certificates they would have known were not state-certified to obstruct the congressional certification of Biden's win. 'Freaking Trump idiots want someone to fly original elector papers to the Senate president,' said Mark Jefferson, the executive director of the Republican party in Wisconsin in the text, seemingly referring to the Trump campaign and then vice-president Mike Pence."
The city of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota has agreed to pay $3.2m to the family of Daunte Wright, who was shot by a police officer during a traffic stop in April of 2021. The city also agreed to change its police training and traffic stop policies.
Writing for the Guardian, Robert Reich offers the following analysis of the Republican party: "We tragically fool ourselves if we believe that the televised hearings of the January 6 committee will change the Republican party or end Donald Trump's attempted coup. The Republican party is becoming ever more divorced from reality, and Trump's attempted coup continues unabated. The first four hearings of the committee have demolished the myths of voter fraud repeated incessantly by Trump. Yet the Republican response to those hearings has ranged from indifference to hostility. Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader of the House, tweeted that the members of the committee 'will not stop lying about their political opponents,' and called the committee 'despicable.' On Friday, speaking at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Nashville, Trump repeated his big lie – as if the hearings never happened. The lie is now so deeply entrenched in the Republican party that it has become a central tenet of Republican dogma. It is now the vehicle by which Republican candidates signal their fealty both to Trump and to a broad range of grievances (some imaginary, some derived from the so-called 'culture wars') that now constitute the Republican brand. So far, at least 108 Republican candidates who embrace the big lie have won their nominations or advanced to runoffs, and there is no sign that the hearings have reduced the intensity of their demagoguery. Republican voters have chosen eight big liars for the US Senate, 86 for the House, five for governor, four for state attorney general and one for secretary of state. These big lie candidates feel no pressure to respond to the findings of the committee because their districts or states already lean Republican, and most voters in them have dismissed or aren't paying attention to the committee hearings."
June 21, 2022 - The January 6 select committee held its fourth public hearing today which focuses on Trump's pressure campaign on state officials to throw the 2020 election his way, and on the scheme by Trump and his advisers to send fake slates of electors to Washington. The witnesses for this hearing are Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia Secretary of State, Rusty Bowers, the Arizona House speaker, Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the Georgia secretary of state's office, and Wandrea "Shaye" Moss, a Georgia poll worker, who along with her mother, was accused of rigging the vote in a number of conspiracies promoted by Trump supporters. Here are some highlights:
- Rusty Bowers testified about a phone call from Trump and Giuliani following the 2020 election in which he was pressured to change the state's vote in the electoral college from Biden to Trump. During the call, Giuliani told Bowers: "We've got lots of theories, we just don't have the evidence." Giuliani also told Bowers that he would provide proof of voter fraud. During the testimony, Representative Adam Schiff asked Mr. Bowers the following question: "Did you ever receive from him that evidence, either during the call, after the call or to this day?" Bowers responded: "Never". Bowers went on to say that he told Trump and Giuliani: "Look, you are asking me to do something that is counter to my oath. You're asking me to do something against my oath, and I will not break my oath." Bowers testified that he was also called by Republican House representative Andy Biggs. Bowers said he told the callers regarding their requests: "We have no legal pathway, both in state law nor to my knowledge in federal law for us to execute such a request"
- Evidence was presented that groups of Trump supporters from several states met after the 2020 election to create "fake electors documents" which were sent to Washington in an attempt to change their state's electoral votes. The states included Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada and Wisconsin, and the meetings were done at the request of the Trump campaign. Text messages were also presented which suggested that Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson attempted to get fake elector documents to Pence, which was torpedoed by one of Pence's aides.
- Bowers testified about the cost for refusing to go along with Trump's plot saying: "We received, my secretaries would say, in excess of 20,000 emails, tens of 1000s of voicemails and texts which saturated our offices and we were unable to work ... We have various groups combined. They have had video panel trucks with videos of me, proclaiming me to be a pedophile and a pervert and a corrupt politician and blaring loudspeakers in my neighborhood, and leaving literature, both on my property and arguing and threatening with neighbors, and with myself."
- Gabriel Sterling testified that it was necessary for him to denounce Trump's baseless claims saying: "I lost my temper. But it seemed necessary at the time, because it was just getting worse." Sterling also testified that he's not aware of any request from Trump to his supporters not to use violence.
- Sterling discussed the various conspiracy theories that were being tossed about by Trump supporters saying: "It was kind of like a shovel trying to empty the ocean. It was frustrating. I even have family members who I had to argue with about some of these things, and I would show them things, and the problem you have is you're getting to people's hearts. Once you get past the heart, the facts don't matter as much. And our job, from our point of view, is to get the facts out."
- Raffensperger addressed claims of a stolen election saying: "The numbers are the numbers and numbers don't lie. Every single allegation, we checked, we ran down the rabbit trail to make sure that our numbers were accurate."
- Adam Schiff pointed out that at the time of the dispute over Georgia's vote, Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff, wanted to send Georgia election investigators autographed Maga hats, Trump coins, and other Maga stuff, but White House staff intervened to make sure that didn't happen.
- Wandrea Moss testified about the conspiracy theories that were being pushed by Rudy Giuliani, one of which was that her and her mother Ruby Freeman were passing around USB ports "as if they are vials of heroin or cocaine" said Rudy Giuliani to the Georgia senate. This false allegation started a campaign of attacks by Trump supporters against Wandrea and her mother. Wandrea stated that she doesn't go out anymore, has gained about 60 pounds, all because of the threats. Wandrea also addressed comments by Trump where he called her mother a "vote scammer" in a call with Brad Raffensperger. In taped testimony Freeman stated: "There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States to target you? The President of the United States is supposed to represent every American. Not to target one. But he targeted me." Freeman also described how people would make pizza orders and send the drivers to her house, and on one occasion some strangers showed up to her house to make a "citizens arrest". Freeman had to go into hiding after the FBI warned her to leave her home for her safety.
Notable responses to the poll worker's testimony:
"I know what it's like to have the President of the United States attack me. Stay strong. We are better than him and we will prevail. Much love!" - Alexander S. Vindman
"If Shaye Moss can come testify, so can Mike Pence" - Preet Bharara
According to the AP, the director of Texas's Department of Public Safety told a state Senate committee that police officers could have stopped the mass shooting at a Uvalde grade school three minutes after it began. From the story: "Police officers with rifles instead stood and waited in a school hallway for nearly an hour while the gunman carried out the May 24 attack that left 19 children and two teachers dead. Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, testified at a state Senate hearing on the police handling of the tragedy. Delays in the law enforcement response have been the focus of federal, state and local investigations of the mass shooting. McCraw told the Senate committee that Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde school district police chief, decided to put the lives of officers ahead of the lives of children. The public safety chief began outlining for the committee a series of missed opportunities."
According to prosecutors in South Dakota, Jason Ravnsborg, the Republican South Dakota state attorney general, lied to investigators and abused the power of his office after he struck and killed a pedestrian. Ravnsborg is currently the target of the state's first ever impeachment trial over the motor vehicle accident. According to Alexis Tracy, the Clay County state's attorney who is leading the prosecution: "He absolutely saw the man that he struck in the moments after."
June 17, 2022 - According to Reuters, Peter Navarro, a former top adviser on trade to Donald Trump, pleaded not guilty to two charges of contempt of congress over his refusal to provide documents or testify to the House panel.
While speaking at the Faith & Freedom Road to Majority conference, Senator Rick Scott, the former Republican governor of Florida, stated the following: "The woke left have an agenda to end the American experiment. They want to replace freedom with control ... They're the modern day version of book burners." NOTE: Book burning/banning by conservatives is taking place across the country.
Donald Trump spoke at the Faith & Freedom Road to Majority conference. Here are some highlights:
- Trump addressed the many ongoing investigations saying: "It's the same people with the same words. If you just insert the same words with 'January 6' instead of 'Russia, Russia, Russia'"
- Trump addressed the January 6th committee saying: "Every one of them is a radical left hater. Hates all of you. Hates me even more but I'm just trying to help you out ... They're knowingly spinning a fake and phony narrative in a chilling attempt to hurt opponents. Video that's been deceptively edited ... What you're seeing is a complete and total lie. It's a complete fraud ... They have their narrative and they know we're leading in every single poll ... Crazy Liz Cheney."
- Trump addressed the claims about his conversations with Mike Pence prior to January 6th saying: "I never called Mike Pence a wimp. I never called him a wimp. Mike Pence had a chance to be great. He had a chance to be frankly historic ... But Mike did not have the courage to act ... Mike was afraid of whatever he was afraid of ... They said I told Pence to decide the election. I never said that. It's not true. I wanted him to send it up to the legislatures, so it goes back to Pennsylvania, state legislatures ... I said to Mike, 'If you do this, you could be Thomas Jefferson'. And after all it went down I looked at him one day and said, 'Mike, you're not Thomas Jefferson'."
- Trump spoke about the popular vote in the 2020 election saying: "We did much better in the second election than the first. Millions and millions more votes ... They say we lost. Don't believe it."
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein spoke today at the DC Headquarters of the Washington Post to mark the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in. While speaking about Watergate, Bernstein called Trump a "seditious, criminal president" who "staged an attempted coup, such as you would see in a junta [or] in a banana republic ... But one of the things that's developing that's very different than in Watergate is that the wife of a supreme court justice is now part of the story ... It looks very much like -- and certainly is the opinion of a number of people on that committee -- that she is caught up in the conspiracy and very likely is a co-conspirator ... They’re treading very carefully, and I think wisely."
June 16, 2022 - Today is the third public hearing by the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. Today's hearing is about the actions of Mike Pence in torpedoing Trump's plan to stop Biden from taking office, Here are some highlights:
- Bennie Thompson, the committee chair, opened the hearing saying in part: "We are fortunate for Mr. Pence's courage. On January 6, our democracy came dangerously close to catastrophe. That courage put him in tremendous danger. When Mike Pence made it clear that he wouldn't give in to Donald Trump's scheme, Donald Trump turned the mob on him."
- The committee aired video that showed Trump telling his supporters "Mike Pence is gonna have to come through for us and if he doesn't, that will be a sad day for our country." The video then shows Trump supporters breaching the Capitol while chanting "hang Mike Pence!" The video ends with the image of a makeshift gallows with a hangman's noose in front of the Capitol.
- J Michael Luttig, a retired US appellate court judge and informal Pence adviser, testified about Trump's "well developed plan" to overturn the election. Here's an excerpt of Luttig's opening remarks: "The war on democracy instigated by the former president and his political party allies on January 6 was the natural and foreseeable culmination of the war for America. It was the final fateful day for the execution of a well-developed plan by the former president to overturn the 2020 presidential election at any cost, so that he could cling to power that the American People had decided to confer upon his successor, the next president of the United States instead. Had the Vice President of the United States obeyed the President of the United States, America would immediately have been plunged into what would have been tantamount to a revolution within a paralyzing constitutional crisis."
- Greg Jacob, a lawyer/counsel for Mike Pence, opened his remarks saying in part: "The law is not a plaything for presidents or judges to use to remake the world in their preferred image ... Our Constitution and our laws form the strong edifice within which our heartfelt policy disagreements are to be debated and decided. When our elected and appointed leaders break, twist, and fail to enforce our laws in order to achieve their partisan ends, or to accomplish frustrated policy objectives they consider existentially important, they are breaking America."
- Greg Jacob talked about the "legal theory" put forward by John Eastman that Pence had the power to decide the winner of the election by certifying slates of alternate electors instead of the official electors. According to Jacob: "The vice-president's first instinct when he heard this theory was that there was no way that our framers, who abhorred concentrated power, who had broken away from the tyranny of George III, would ever have put one person, particularly not a person who had a direct interest in the outcome, because they were on the ticket for the election, in a role to have decisive impact on the outcome of the election. And frankly, just common sense, all confirmed the vice-president's first instinct on that point. There is no justifiable basis to conclude that the vice-president has that kind of authority."
- Greg Jacob testified about a January 4th meeting attended by Jacob, Marc Short, Pence's chief of staff, and Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff. In the meeting, John Eastman presented Mike Pence with two options on January 6th: "One of them was that he could reject electoral votes outright. The other was that he could use his capacity as presiding officer to suspend the proceedings and declare essentially a 10-day recess."
- Greg Jacob testified about another meeting, this time on January 5th, where John Eastman told Pence: "I'm here to request that you reject the electors." Jacob said he and Eastman debated the legality of that approach, and that he concluded that if the courts didn't declare it illegal, it would create a standoff pitting the president against the vice president, Congress and the states nationwide, and that the "issue might well then have to be decided in the streets. Because if we can't work it out politically, we've already seen how charged up people are about this election, and so it would be a disastrous situation to be in." Jacob said he told Eastman: "John, in light of everything that we've discussed, can't we just both agree that this is a terrible idea?" Jacob said that Eastman responded: "Well, yeah, I see. We're not going to be able to persuade you to do this."
- Video was played of Marc Short, Pence's former chief of staff, saying: "The concern was for the vice-president's security and so I wanted to make sure the head of the vice-president's Secret Service was aware that likely, as these disagreements became more public, that the president would lash out in some way."
- Pete Aguilar, a committee member stated: "Despite the fact that the vice-president consistently told the president that he did not have and would not want the power to decide the outcome of the presidential election, Donald Trump continued to pressure the vice-president, both publicly and privately. You will hear things reached a boiling point on January 6, and the consequences were disastrous."
- Testimony was introduced about a phone call between Mike Pence and Donald Trump that took place the morning of January 6th. Video showed Ivanka Trump describing the call as "pretty heated". Nicholas Luna, an assistant to Trump, was shown in video describing the conversation saying: "I remember hearing the word wimp. I don't remember, he said you are a wimp. You'll be a wimp. Wimp is the word I remember." Gen Keith Kellog, Pence's national security advisor said Trump told Pence he was "not tough enough to make the call."
- An affidavit was introduced in which an informant in the Proud Boys militia group told the FBI "They said that anyone they got their hands on they would have killed including Nancy Pelosi, members of the Proud Boys said that they would have killed Mike Pence if given a chance."
- Greg Jacob testified that even after the Capitol had been stormed, Trump lawyer John Eastman continued to pressure Pence to try to overturn the election saying: "I implore you one last time, can the vice-president please do what we've been asking him to do these last two days: suspend the joint session, send it back to the states."
- Video is shown of John Eastman testifying before the committee. In the video, Eastman can be heard saying: "I assert my fifth amendment right against being compelled to be a witness against myself." The video then shows Eastman replying "Fifth" each time he is asked a question.
- Video is shown of Eric Herschmann, a former White House attorney, describing a phone call with John Eastman. According to Herschmann: "He started to ask me about something dealing with Georgia and preserving something potentially for appeal. And I said to him, are you out of your effing mind? I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth from now on: orderly transition. I don't want to hear any other effing words coming out of your mouth, no matter what. Eventually, he said 'orderly transition.' I said, good, John. Now I'm going to give you the best free legal advice you're ever getting in your life. Get a great effing criminal defense lawyer, you're going to need it. And then I hung up on him."
- J Michael Luttig testified that: "Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy. That's not because of what happened on January 6. It's because to this very day, the former president and his allies and supporters pledge that in presidential election of 2024, if the former president or his anointed successor as the Republican party presidential candidate were to lose that election, that they would attempt to overturn the 2024 election in the same way that they attempted to overturn the 2020 election but succeed in 2024 where they failed in 2020. That's what the former president and his allies are telling us."
- According to the committee, John Eastman, the Trump lawyer who was the architect of the legal strategy for overturning the election, sought a pardon from Donald Trump in the closing days of Trump's presidency via a letter to Rudy Giuliani. From the letter: "I've decided that I should be on the pardoned list, if that is still in the works."
According to the Guardian, a new study published in PNAS finds that the US could have saved more than 338,000 lives and more than $105bn in healthcare costs during the Covid-19 pandemic with a universal healthcare system. From the story: "More than 1 million people died in the US from Covid, in part because the country's 'fragmented and inefficient healthcare system' meant uninsured or underinsured people faced financial barriers that delayed diagnosis and exacerbated transmission, the report states. The US had the highest death rate from the virus among large wealthy countries and is also the only one among such countries without universal healthcare. It spends almost twice as much on healthcare per capita as the other wealthy countries, according to Kaiser Family Foundation data."
Bennie Thompson, the chair of the January 6 select committee, announced that the committee will ask Ginni Thomas, the wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, to testify about her role in trying to overturn the 2020 election. According to Thompson: "We think it's time that we, at some point, invite her to come talk to the committee."
John Hinkley, who in 1981 shot Ronald Reagan and several others, was released from court oversight.
According to Reuters, an appeals court has ruled that Cushman & Wakefield plc, a real estate company, must comply with subpoenas from Letitia James, the New York attorney general, as part of her civil investigation into Donald Trump and his family company to determine if the Trump Organization misled banks and tax authorities about the value of its assets to get financial benefits like favorable loans and tax breaks.
June 15, 2022 - According to the AP, the Buffalo, New York mass shooter could face the death penalty. From the story: "Payton Gendron already faced a mandatory life sentence without parole if convicted on state charges in the 14 May shooting which also wounded three survivors – one Black, two white. The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, was in Buffalo on Wednesday to visit families of the 10 people killed. He was expected to address the federal charges during the visit. Gendron's radical, racist worldview and extensive preparation for the attack at the Tops Friendly Market are laid out in documents he apparently posted online. The documents embrace a conspiracy theory about a plot to diminish white Americans' power and 'replace' them with people of color, through immigration and other means. The posts detail months of reconnaissance, demographic research and shooting practice for a bloodbath meant to scare anyone not white and Christian into leaving the country. Gendron drove more than 200 miles from his home in a nearly all-white town near the New York-Pennsylvania border to a predominantly Black part of Buffalo. There, authorities say, he killed shoppers and workers using an AR-15-style rifle, wearing body armor and livestreaming the carnage from a helmet-mounted camera. The 18-year-old surrendered to police as he exited the supermarket."
Judge Carl Nichols has denied a motion from Steve Bannon, a former campaign manager and senior White House strategist for Donald Trump, to dismiss the indictment against him for contempt of Congress. The trial is set to start on July 18th. NOTE: Following the ruling, Steve Bannon held a press conference where he claimed his attorney will call members of the January 6 select committee to testify at his trial, which Bannon has referred to as "the misdemeanor from hell".
The federal reserve announced a .75 percentage-point increase in interest rates today to tame inflation, the largest rate hike since 1994.
According to Huffpost, Bill Stepien, Trump's 2020 campaign manager, who told the January 6th committee he never believed the election was stolen, and implied in his testimony that he had cut ties with the former president, is still involved with Trump. From the story: "Yet Stepien never really left Trump, with his firm receiving $20,000 in both February and March of 2021, and as much as $30,000 and no less than $10,000 in every month since. His work for Trump to this day, according to an adviser to the former president, is to coordinate Trump's political strategy, including Trump's efforts to defeat candidates who challenge his false claim that the election was stolen from him or, worse, voted to impeach him for inciting the Jan. 6 attack. Each week, Stepien is on an hourlong call with other top Trump aides, including Dan Scavino, Jason Miller, and Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. The last such call was June 6; Monday's call was canceled because it conflicted with the Jan. 6 committee hearing. 'He's trying to tell the world he quit,' the Trump adviser, who is familiar with Trump's political operation, said on condition of anonymity. 'He has been on every call since Jan. 6. He gets paid every month to do that. ... I mean, come on, man.'"
Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the US, has tested positive for coronavirus.
Kevin Seefried and his son Hunter Seefried, were found guilty today for their role in the January 6 insurrection. The elder Seefried was seen in the Capitol carrying a confederate flag, which he used to jab at Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman. NOTE: Goodman, who testified at the trial of the Seefried's, has been credited with saving lawmaker's lives after he diverted rioters away from the lawmaker's location.
According to CNN, members of the January 6 committee agree that Trump committed crimes by acting to stop Joe Biden from entering the White House, but are not in agreement on whether to recommend criminal charges to the DOJ. From the story: "The internal debate, which has heated up in recent weeks, spilled into the open on Monday night when the committee's chairman, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, repeatedly told a group of reporters at the Capitol that the committee would not be issuing any criminal referrals. 'No, that's not our job,' Thompson said when pressed. Thompson's off-the-cuff remarks sparked an immediate response from several of his fellow committee members who rushed to knock down the notion they would not be pursuing criminal charges. 'The January 6th Select Committee has not issued a conclusion regarding potential criminal referrals. We will announce a decision on that at an appropriate time,' GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the vice chair of the committee, tweeted 15 minutes after Thompson's comments. Sources tell CNN Cheney is a leading voice among those members who believe the committee should issue a criminal referral. Committee member Elaine Luria, a Virginia Democrat, took it one step further, tweeting Monday night that the committee has yet to vote on whether it will recommend criminal referrals but made clear she believes 'if criminal activity occurred, it is our responsibility to report that activity to the DOJ.' In a video released Tuesday, Cheney said that Trump likely violated two criminal statues in his efforts to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count lawful electoral votes. The episode Monday night illustrates that after nearly a year of work, the committee remains divided over what is likely the most pressing question it faces: whether to seek criminal charges against Trump based on the evidence it has uncovered."
June 14, 2022 - According to the Washington Post, 2020 election denial is pervasive among GOP primary winners. From the story: "About a third of the way through the 2022 primaries, voters have nominated scores of Republican candidates for state and federal office who say the 2020 election was rigged, according to a new analysis by The Washington Post. District by district, state by state, voters in places that cast ballots through the end of May have chosen at least 108 candidates for statewide office or Congress who have repeated Trump's lies. The number jumps to at least 149 winning candidates — out of more than 170 races — when it includes those who have campaigned on a platform of tightening voting rules or more stringently enforcing those already on the books, despite the lack of evidence of widespread fraud. The analysis offers a fresh portrait of the extent to which embracing Trump's false claims has become part of a winning formula in this year's GOP contests, and what it means for the immediate future of American democracy. The majority of the election-denying candidates who have secured their nominations are running in districts or states that lean Republican, according to Cook Political Report ratings, meaning they are likely to win the offices they are seeking. Many will hold positions with the power to interfere in the outcomes of future contests — to block the certification of election results, to change the rules around the awarding of their states' electoral votes or to acquiesce to litigation attempting to set aside the popular vote. As the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol laid out in vivid detail at a hearing on Monday, Trump's obsession with discrediting and overturning the 2020 result began even before Election Day. Members of his inner circle testified they repeatedly told him that his fraud claims were baseless."
Eric Barber, a former city councilmember in the city of Parkersburg, West Virginia, was sentenced to 45 days in jail for his role in the Capitol insurrection. From the MetroNews: "Barber, 43, was being sentenced today in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after pleading guilty to two misdemeanors. One is a count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol Building. The other is theft, an accusation that Barber stole a charging station belonging to a C-SPAN employee. He has to pay $500 restitution as his share of damage to the Capitol that day, and he has to pay back C-SPAN a little less than $60 for the charger that he took home. Barber was not accused of violence that day, but prosecutors noted that he wore a Kevlar helmet and went to Washington, D.C. to 'go punch a Antifa terrorist in the face,' referring to the loosely-knit antifascist activists sometimes accused of violence themselves."
According to the Guardian, the GOP is launching a nine-day "election integrity" tour throughout Wisconsin. Critics of the tour say it is meant to spread lies that the 2020 election was fraudulent ahead of the primaries and November's midterm election.
June 13, 2022 - The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection held their second public hearing today. Here are some highlights:
- Bennie Thompson, the committee chair, opened the hearing by saying: "This morning, we will tell the story of how Donald Trump lost an election and knew he lost an election and as a result of his loss, decided to wage an attack on our democracy and attack on American people, trying to rob you of your voice in our democracy, and in doing so lit the fuse that led to the horrific violence of January 6."
- Liz Cheney, the committee's vice chair, presented videos of lawyers who worked for Trump testifying that they never saw evidence that the 2020 election was stolen. Cheney summarized the videos with: "The Trump campaign legal team knew there was no legitimate argument, fraud, irregularities or anything to overturn the election. And yet, President Trump went ahead with his plans for January 6 anyway."
- Zoe Lofgren, a Democratic representative on the committee opened her remarks stating: "You'll hear detailed testimony from attorney general Barr describing the various election fraud claims the department of justice investigated. He'll tell you how he told Mr. Trump repeatedly that there was no merit to those claims. Mr. Barr will tell us that Mr. Trump's election night claims of fraud were made without regard to the truth, and before it was even possible to look for evidence of fraud."
- The committee played video of Bill Barr saying: "Right out of the box on election night, the president claimed that there was major fraud underway." The committee then described the "red mirage" that often occurs on presidential election nights, when Republicans who vote on election day have their votes counted first, but Democrats, who often vote early or by mail, sometimes have their votes counted later, creating the impression that Republicans are leading early in the night only to have their share eroded as more Democrats have their votes counted. The committee then played video of Bill Barr saying: that this dynamic was familiar and Trump had been warned about it, but instead seized upon it to allege fraud. Barr testified: "That seemed to be the basis for this broad claim that there was major fraud. And I didn't think much of that because people had been talking for weeks and everyone understood for weeks that that was going to be what happened on election night".
The hearing's first witness is Chris Stirewalt, a former politics editor for Fox News:
- Stirewalt testified regarding Fox News's decision to call Arizona for Biden early on election night saying: "We knew it would be a consequential call because it was one of five states that really mattered, along with Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia ... By the time we found out how much everybody was freaking out and losing their minds over this call, we were already trying to call the next state, we had already moved on"
- Zoe Lofgren asked Stirewalt what chance he thought Trump had of winning the election, based on what he saw on election night. Stirewalt replied "None".
- In taped testimony, Bill Stepien, Trump's campaign manager, stated that "As the week wore on, as we paid attention to those numbers every single day, multiple times a day ... I was feeling less confident for sure ... Someone had thrown out ... the claim that there were 1000s of illegal citizens who are not eligible to vote and cast their ballots in Arizona,” Stepien said he looked into it and discovered "overseas voters voting in the election. I saw obviously, people who are eligible to vote." Stepien testified that he eventually came to believe that what was happening with the campaign was not "necessarily honest or professional" and so he opted to leave.
- Video taped testimony of Bill Barr is shown where Barr says that he told Trump: "our role is to investigate fraud and look at something if it's if it's specific, credible and could have affected the outcome of the election and ... we're doing that and it's just not." Lofgren responded to Barr's statement saying: "Even after his attorney general told him his claims of election fraud were false. President Trump continued to promote these claims."
- In taped testimony, Bill Barr discusses the Dinesh D'Souza movie 2000 Mules. According to Barr: "I think the photographic evidence of it was lacking. There was a little bit of it but it was lacking and it didn't establish widespread illegal ballot harvesting."
- In taped testimony, Richard Donaghue, a former acting attorney general under Trump, stated: "I tried to again put this into perspective and further put it in clear terms to the president, and I said something to the effect of, sir, we've done dozens of investigations, hundreds of interviews. The major allegations are not supported by evidence ... There were so many of these allegations that when you gave him a very direct answer on one of them, he wouldn't fight us on it but he would move on to another allegation."
- Donoghue said the justice department looked into claims a truck driver transported ballots from New York to Pennsylvania, and that there was a suitcase of ballots used to sway the outcome in Georgia, and that people were getting paid to vote on Native American reservations. Regarding these and other claims, Donoghue stated: "Much of the information he's getting is false and/or just not supported by the evidence."
- Bjay Pak, a former US Attorney for the northern district of Georgia testified about the claim of election fraud by Trump and his supporters about a suitcase full of ballots used to sway the vote in Georgia for Biden. According to Pak: "We found that the suitcase full of ballots, the alleged black suitcase that was being seen pulled from under the table, was actually an official lockbox where ballots were kept safe ... The FBI interviewed the individuals that are depicted in the videos. There's ... double, triple counting of the ballots (which) determined that nothing irregular happened in the county and the allegations made by Mr. Giuliani were false."
- Al Schmidt, a former Philadelphia City Commissioner, testified to what happened after Trump began calling him out by name in a tweet as one who was involved in election fraud in the city: "It feels almost silly to talk about a tweet, but we can really see the impact they have because prior to that, the threats were pretty general in nature. After the president tweeted at me by name, calling me out the way that he did, the threats became much more specific, much more graphic and included not just me by name but included members of my family, my name, their ages, our address, pictures of our home, just every bit of detail that you can imagine. That was what changed with that tweet."
- Zoe Lofgren discussed court rulings regarding Trump's fraud claims: "The rejection of president Trump's litigation efforts was overwhelming. Twenty two federal judges appointed by Republican presidents, including 10 appointed by President Trump himself and at least 24 elected or appointed Republican state judges dismissed the president's claims." Lofgren also noted that that 11 lawyers have been referred for disciplinary proceedings "due to bad faith and baseless efforts" to undermine the election.
- Benjamin Ginsberg, a Republican election lawyer, testified: "In no instance did a court find that the charges of fraud were real." Ginsberg also noted that of 62 lawsuits filed by the campaign, 61 were dismissed, and the one upheld didn't affect the outcome.
- Video taped testimony from Eric Herschmann, a White House lawyer, recounted a phone call with John Eastman, a Trump attorney. Herschman stated: "I said to him, Are you out of your effing mind? I said I ... only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth from now on: orderly transition."
- Amanda Wick, the committee's senior investigative counsel stated: "As the select committee has demonstrated, the Trump campaign knew these claims of voter fraud were false, yet they continued to barrage small dollar donors with emails encouraging them to donate to something called Official Election Defense Fund. The select committee discovered no such fund existed." According to Wick, the fundraising emails "continued through January 6, even as President Trump spoke on the ellipse. Thirty minutes after the last fundraising email was sent, the Capitol was breached."
June 12, 2022 - After receiving a tip that a "little army was loading into" a U-Haul in the parking lot of a hotel in Idaho, police pulled over the truck and found 31 members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front inside. According to Coeur d'Alene police, the men, who were wearing khakis, navy blue shirts and beige hats with white balaclavas covering their faces, were planning to riot in several areas of downtown, where an LGBTQ Pride event was taking place. During their search, police found riot gear, a smoke grenade, shin guards, and shields. While processing the men, it was determined that they had come from 11 states, including Washington, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, Illinois, Wyoming, Virginia, and Arkansas. Only one of the men was from Idaho. According to Bob Norris, the Kootenai county sheriff: "It appears these people did not come here to engage in peaceful events". The men were all charged with conspiracy to riot, a misdemeanor.
Steve Bannon, a former aide to Donald Trump, can be heard in leaked audio stating that Trump was planning to declare himself the winner of the election even if he lost. The audio was recorded on October 31, 2020. From the audio: "What Trump's gonna do, is just declare victory. Right? He's gonna declare victory. But that doesn't mean he's a winner. He's just gonna say he's a winner." Bannon can also be heard saying that people should expect some "crazy shit" from Trump after the election and that "at 10 or 11 o'clock Trump's gonna walk in the Oval, tweet out 'I'm the winner. Game over. Suck on that.'"
June 10, 2022 - Donald Trump responded on his Truth Social network regarding daughter Ivanka's taped testimony in yesterday's hearing saying: "Ivanka Trump was not involved in looking at, or studying, Election results. She had long since checked out and was, in my opinion, only trying to be respectful to Bill Barr and his position as Attorney General (he sucked!)."
Speaking on MSNBC, Jamie Raskin, a member of the House select committee, said of the GOP: "You have a party which now claims to be on the side of law enforcement ... and yet are turning a total blind eye to the most vicious, massive assault on police officers."
According to the Washington Post, Ginni Thomas, wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, sent 29 Republican state lawmakers in Arizona form emails encouraging them to "choose" their own presidential electors and ignore Joe Biden's victory in that state. From the story: "The message, just days after media organizations called the race for Biden in Arizona and nationwide, urged lawmakers to 'stand strong in the face of political and media pressure' and claimed that the responsibility to choose electors was 'yours and yours alone.' They had 'power to fight back against fraud' and 'ensure that a clean slate of Electors is chosen,' the email said. Among the lawmakers who received the email was then-Rep. Anthony Kern, a Stop the Steal supporter who lost his reelection bid in November 2020 and then joined U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) and others as a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Vice President Mike Pence, a last-ditch effort to overturn Biden's victory. Kern was photographed outside the Capitol during the riot on Jan. 6 but has said he did not enter the building, according to local media reports. Kern did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. He is seeking his party's nomination for a seat in the Arizona state Senate and has been endorsed by former president Donald Trump. On Dec. 13, the day before members of the electoral college were slated to cast their votes and seal Biden's victory, Thomas emailed 22 House members and one senator. 'Before you choose your state's Electors ... consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you don't stand up and lead,' the email said. It linked to a video of a man urging swing-state lawmakers to 'put things right' and 'not give in to cowardice.' Speaker of the House Russell 'Rusty' Bowers and Rep. Shawnna Bolick, the two recipients previously identified, told The Post in May that the outreach from Thomas had no bearing on their decisions about how to handle claims of election fraud. But the revelation that Ginni Thomas was directly involved in pressing them to override the popular vote — an act that would have been without precedent in the modern era — intensified questions about whether her husband should recuse himself from cases related to the 2020 presidential election and attempts to subvert it. Ginni Thomas's status as a leading conservative political activist has set her apart from other spouses of Supreme Court justices." NOTE: Ginni Thomas' husband Clarence, a supreme court justice, was the lone dissenter in a supreme court decision that granted the select committee access to records from the Trump administration.
Jack Del Rio, a coach for the Washington Commanders football team, was fined $100,000 for questioning why the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd didn't get as much scrutiny as the Capitol attack, which he referred to as a "dust up".
June 9, 2022 - According to The Detroit News, Ryan Kelley, a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor in Michigan, who took part in the January 6th insurrection, has been arrested by the FBI. NOTE: In a speech earlier this year, Kelley told a crowd to unplug voting machines if "you see something you don't like happening with the machine."
Writing for the Guardian, Oliver Laughland offers the following analysis of a civil rights investigation of the Louisiana State Police by the Justice Department in the wake of the fatal beating of Ronald Greene, a Black motorist, in 2019. From the story: "Greene, an unarmed 49-year-old, was arrested by six white officers with body camera footage of the incident, obtained years later by the Associated Press, revealing he had been punched, tasered and placed in a chokehold and later dragged face down in handcuffs and left prone for over nine minutes. Police initially claimed Greene had died from injuries sustained after crashing his car into a tree, and a local coroner's report later determined the death to be accidental. It was not until a federal criminal investigation into the incident began that the finding was challenged by re-examining the autopsy. The incident is currently being investigated in the Louisiana state legislature, which is examining an alleged cover-up instigated by senior members of the state police. Greene's death is one of a number of recent brutality cases, uncovered by the Associated Press, which found at least a dozen cases in the past decade where troopers or their superiors are alleged to have concealed evidence of brutality or blocked investigations."
According to the New York Times, a Michigan police officer has been charged with second-degree murder in the shooting of Patrick Lyoya, a Black man who was shot in the back of his head while on the ground. From the story: "Christopher Becker, the Kent County prosecuting attorney, said the officer, Christopher Schurr, acted unreasonably when he shot Mr. Lyoya, 26, while wrestling with the motorist, who had run away. The officer told Mr. Lyoya he pulled him over for having license plates that did not match his car ... 'Patrick Lyoya immigrated to the United States from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to pursue the American dream and provide a better and safer life for himself and his family,' Ben Crump, a lawyer for the family, said in a statement when the videos were released. 'Instead, what found him was a fatal bullet to the back of the head, delivered by an officer of the Grand Rapids Police Department.'"
According to USA Today, Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump's education secretary, contemplated invoking the 25th amendment to remove Trump from office following the January 6th insurrection. From the story: "'I spoke with the vice president and just let him know I was there to do whatever he wanted and needed me to do or help with, and he made it very clear that he was not going to go in that direction or that path', DeVos says. 'I spoke with colleagues. I wanted to get a better understanding of the law itself and see if it was applicable in this case. There were more than a few people who had those conversations internally.' Once she understood removing the president was pretty much impossible, DeVos resigned later that day."
Writing for the Guardian, David Smith offers the following analysis of Republican efforts to derail the House select committee's primetime hearings, which begin later today: "Trump loyalists are expected to flood the airwaves with claims that the January 6 select committee lacks credibility and Democrats are out of touch with more pressing concerns such as inflation, crime, border security and baby formula shortages. Elise Stefanik, chair of the House Republican Conference, told reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday: 'They are scrambling to change the headlines, praying that the nation will focus on their partisan witch-hunt instead of our pocketbooks. It will not work.' In what amounted to an attempt at a prebuttal, Stefanik described the January 6 committee as 'unconstitutional' and 'illegitimate' and designed to 'punish' the House speaker Nancy Pelosi's opponents. She criticised its decision to hire James Goldston, the former president of ABC News, to help make its presentation compelling. 'This further solidifies what we have known from day one: this committee is not about seeking the truth - it's a smear campaign against President Donald Trump, against Republican members of Congress, and against Trump voters across this country.' The comments set the template for Republican counter-programming on conservative media such as Fox News, Newsmax, the One America News Network, Steve Bannon's 'War Room' podcast and other outlets that will seek to portray the hearings as a sinister show trial in which Trump supporters are the victims. Congress's January hearings aim to be TV spectacular that 'blows the roof off'. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House judiciary committee, wrote on the Federalist website: 'The committee's real goal, and what it hopes to achieve with its unprecedented subpoenas and its bright-light hearings, is a repudiation of conservatism and all those who hold conservative values.'"
Writing for the Guardian, Hugo Lowell offers the following analysis of the key themes of the House select committee's investigation: "How deeply was Trump involved? What Trump knew, and when he knew it, has been a driving focus for the select committee. House investigators have come to the conclusion behind closed doors, say sources familiar with the matter, that Trump was the common thread for all efforts to overturn the election. The panel has evidence about a number of potentially unlawful schemes, including the plot to seize voting machines or the plan to send fake electors to Congress to potentially persuade the then vice-president, Mike Pence, into refusing to certify states with 'duelling' slates. But the central question has long been whether Trump had advance knowledge – through his network of political operatives – of the Capitol attack. That remains unanswered, but it appears he did know of the political plan to stop Biden's election certification. Did Trump violate the law? As the investigation progressed, the select committee appeared to indicate that it had amassed enough evidence of potential criminality on the part of Trump as he sought unsuccessfully to return himself to the White House for a second term. At a business meeting last year, the panel's vice-chair, Liz Cheney, suggested by reading from the US criminal code that Trump, by failing to stop the Capitol attack through 'inaction', violated a federal law that prohibits obstructing a congressional proceeding. A federal judge earlier this year ruled that Trump and a lawyer, John Eastman, who advised the former president on post-election legal strategies, on a preponderance of evidence, probably also overtly conspired to obstruct Congress and defraud the United States. Is the evidence enough for charges? The question to consider at the hearings is whether the select committee appears to have the evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump and his top advisers committed felonies – either for an obstruction charge, or other related crimes. The final conclusions about the strength of the evidence will probably come after the hearings, when the panel releases its final report, currently slated for September, and whether it shows corrupt intent on the part of the former president – a key benchmark. The select committee will also decide at that stage whether to make criminal referrals for prosecution. But regardless of the referrals, whether Trump or anyone else is charged with crimes related to January 6 remains a call for the justice department alone."
The first House select committee hearing took place today. Here are some highlights:
- Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the committee opened up the hearing with the following: "We can't sweep what happened under the rug. The American people deserve answers. So I come before you this evening not as a Democrat, but as an American who swore an oath to defend the Constitution. The Constitution doesn't protect just Democrats or just Republicans. It protects all of us: 'We the People.' And this scheme was an attempt to undermine the will of the people. So tonight, and over the next few weeks, we're going to remind you of the reality of what happened that day. But our work must do much more than just look backwards. Because our democracy remains in danger. The conspiracy to thwart the will of the people is not over. There are those in this country who thirst for power but have no love or respect for what makes America great: devotion to the Constitution, allegiance to the rule of law, our shared journey to build a more perfect Union. January 6th and the lies that led to insurrection have put two and a half centuries of constitutional democracy at risk. The world is watching what we do here. America has long been expected to be a shining city on a hill. A beacon of hope and freedom. A model for others—when we're at our best. How can we play that role when our own house is in such disorder? We must confront the truth with candor, resolve, and determination. We need to show that we are worthy of the gifts that are the birthright of every American."
- A video clip was played of former Attorney General Bill Barr testifying where he called claims of a stolen election "bullshit". Following the video, Bennie Thompson stated: "Here was the attorney general of the United States, the top law enforcement official in the country, telling the president exactly what he thought about claims of a stolen election ... That was only the beginning of what became a sprawling, multistep conspiracy, aimed at overturning the presidential election, aimed at throwing out the votes of millions of Americans. Your vote. Your voice."
- Liz Cheney, the committee's vice-chair, opened her comments by stating: "President Trump believed his supporters at the Capitol were, and I quote, 'doing what they should be doing'". This was a reference to Trump's reaction to the rioter's chants of "Hang Mike Pence" where Trump is reported to have said "Maybe our supporters have the right idea ... Mike Pence deserves it". Cheney then stated: "On the morning of January 6, President Donald Trump's intention was to remain president of the United States, despite the lawful outcome of the 2020 election and in violation of his constitutional obligation to relinquish power."
- A video clip of Ivanka Trump was played where she was asked what she thought of Attorney General Barr's statements that the election was legitimate, to which Ivanka responded: "I respect Attorney General Barr so I accepted what he was saying."
- The following email exchange that took place during the insurrection was presented:
Legal Counsel for Mike Pence: "Thanks to your bullshit, we are under siege."
John Eastman: "My bullshit - seriously? .. The 'siege' is because you and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way ..."
Meanwhile, over on Fox News:
"It was not even close to an insurrection." - Tucker Carlson
Back to the hearing:
- Video of violent Trump supporters attacking police officers was shown while audio played of Trump calling the people who were at the Capitol "peaceful people".
The following facts were revealed during the hearing:
- Congressman Scott Perry, a Republican from Pennsylvania, inquired about a pardon after the 6 January riot. Perry played a key role in efforts to overturning the election.
- Ivanka Trump told the committee she was persuaded by Bill Barr's statement that there was no widespread fraud in the election saying: "I respect attorney general Barr, so I accepted what he was saying".
- Jared Kushner dismissed threats by White House counsel to resign on January 6th as "whining".
- Bill Barr, the attorney general, told Trump his claims of a stolen election were "bullshit".
- A Trump campaign lawyer told Mark Meadows in November that they weren't finding widespread fraud.
Caroline Edwards, a Capitol police officer, testified that she was knocked unconscious by the violent mob. Edwards said people in the mob called her "Nancy Pelosi's dog", "incompetent", "villain", and "traitor". Edwards described how she was slipping in others' blood saying "it was carnage. It was chaos. I can't even describe what I saw."
Nick Quested, a film maker, testified that he was confused to see "a couple hundred" Proud Boys walking away from Trump's speech and toward the Capitol.
Here are the key takeaways according to the Guardian:
"The committee made the case that the attack on January 6 was the 'culmination of an attempted coup.' Presenting an overview of this hearing and the ones to come, House select committee chair Bennie Thompson and vice-chair Liz Cheney presented their finding that the violent mob that descended on the Capitol was no spontaneous occurrence. Video testimony from Donald Trump's attorney general, his daughter, and other allies make the case that the former president was working to undermine the election results and foment backlash. 'The central question is whether the attack on the Capitol was coordinated and plan that you witnessed this what a coordinated and planned effort would look like,' Thompson said. 'It was the culmination of months long effort spearheaded by President Trump.' Even as Trump carried on his lies that victory was stolen from him, his own administration and allies agreed there the election was legitimate. Former attorney general William Barr testified that he expressed that Trump's claims of a stolen election were 'bullshit'. A Trump campaign lawyer told Mark Meadows in November 'there's no there there' to support Trump's claims of widespread fraud. Even Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter, said she was convinced by Barr that the election was legitimate. Graphic footage and harrowing testimony from officer Caroline Edwards, who on the first line of defense against the attacking mob, reiterated the terror of the insurrection. Edwards compared the scene to a war zone, saying she was slipping on others' blood as she fought off insurrectionists. 'It was carnage. It was chaos. I can't even describe what I saw,' she said. The officer sustained burns from a chemical spray deployed against her, and a concussion after a bike rack was heaved on top of her. Officers and lawmakers watching the hearings teared up as they relived the violence of that day. As the attack was being carried out, and the mob was threatening vice president Mike Pence's life, Trump and his team working to undermine the election carried on their work. After Pence refused to block the election certification, Trump and his supporters turned against him, and Trump fomented resentment in his tweets. As the mob cried 'Hang Mike Pence!' the committee presented evidence that Trump suggested that might not be a bad idea. '“Mike Pence deserves it,' the president then said. As violence ensued, 'the Trump legal team in the Willard Hotel war room,' continuing attempts to subvert the election results, Cheney said. Footage and testimony from film-maker Nick Quested, one of two witnesses at the hearing, suggested that the Proud Boys had planned to attack. On the morning of January 6, Quested testified that he was confused to see 'a couple of hundred' Proud Boys walking away from Trump's speech and toward the Capitol. The committee implied that this might have allowed them to scope out the defenses and weak spots at the Capitol."
June 8, 2022 - During a press briefing, Joseph Gramaglia, the police commissioner of Buffalo, NY, stated: "It is often said that a good guy with a gun will stop a bad guy with a gun, However, retired Buffalo police officer Aaron Salter Jr., who was working as a security guard at the Tops Market and was killed in the shooting Was no match for what he went up against a legal AR-15 with multiple high capacity magazines ... The grim reality is that shootings have become a daily occurrence in American cities. Emerging trends like ghost guns and guns modified with switches continue to pose a challenge for law enforcement. Congress must update our laws to account for these new threats and carnage that has accompanied them. It will be nearly impossible to address the gun violence epidemic without first addressing the underlying violent crime problem."
Nicholas John Roske, a California man, was arrested outside Justice Brett Kavanaugh's house in Maryland after he called 911 to say that he was having suicidal thoughts and planned to kill the supreme court justice.
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell reacted to the arrest of Nicholas John Roske saying: "This is where we are, Mr President, if these reports are correct, an assassination attempt against a sitting justice, or something close to it. This is exactly the kind of event that many feared the terrible breach of the court's rules and norms would fuel [with the leak last month of the draft opinion that the conservative majority wants to overturn constitutional abortion rights afforded by the 1973 Roe V Wade ruling]. This is exactly that kind of event that many worried the unhinged, reckless, apocalyptic rhetoric from prominent figures towards the court going back many months and especially in recent weeks could make more likely."
According to a court filing, Donald Trump will testify under oath on July 15th in New York regarding an investigation into his business practices. Also testifying that day are Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr.
June 7, 2022 - According to the Guardian, the January 6th committee will begin conducting public hearings later this week. All of the major networks will air them, with the exception of Fox News.
According to the AP, the Department of Homeland Security released a National Terrorism Advisory System bulletin warning of heightened domestic extremism threat over the next six months due to various issues that include the supreme court's upcoming ruling on abortion, the midterm elections and the arrival of migrants at the southern border. From the story: "The bulletin, which is scheduled to expire Nov. 30, said calls for violence by domestic extremists directed at democratic institutions, candidates and election workers will likely increase through the fall. A senior DHS official, speaking to reporters ahead of the release of the bulletin, said it describes the situation as 'dynamic' because authorities are seeing a wider variety of people motivated by a broader range of grievances and incidents than in the past. The upcoming decision from the Supreme Court, which could overturn Roe v. Wade, could lead to violence from either extremist supporters or opponents of abortion rights depending on the outcome, said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss some factors that went into the preparation of the bulletin. Racial extremists may be motivated by immigration enforcement or whether the government continues to rely on Title 42, the public health order that has been used since the start of the coronavirus pandemic to prevent people from seeking asylum at the southwest border, DHS said. The agency and the FBI are working with state and local law enforcement to raise awareness of the threat, and DHS has increased grant funding to local governments and religious organizations to improve security, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said in a statement released with the bulletin."
The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing today on domestic terrorism. Here are some highlights:
- Garnell Whitfield Jr, whose mother was killed in a mass shooting in Buffalo, NY, stated the following: "We believe in God we trust in God. But this wasn't an act of God. This was an act of a person and he did not act alone. He was radicalized by white supremacists. His anger and hatred were metastasized like a cancer by people with big microphones in high places screaming that Black people were going to take away their jobs and opportunities. Every enforcement agency charged with protecting the homeland has conducted risk and threat analysis and determined that white supremacy is the number-one threat to the homeland. And yet, nothing has been done to mitigate it or eradicate it. I ask every one of you to imagine the faces of your mothers, as you look at mine and ask yourself, is there nothing that we can do? Is there nothing that you personally are willing to do to stop the cancer of white supremacy... Because if there is nothing, then respectfully, senators, you should yield your positions of authority and influence to others that are willing to lead on this issue. The urgency of the moment demands no less. My mother's life mattered. My mother's life mattered. Your actions here today would tell us how much it matters to you."
- Robert A Pape, a University of Chicago political science professor stated: "Increasingly, some politicians and media figures tell whites they are deliberately being replaced by minorities and destined to become second class citizens. White decline in one's community can reinforce and seemingly confirm these political and media narratives and have impact beyond electoral politics ... Our country needs a national conversation based on the facts about the consequences of violent ideas moving into the mainstream. Ultimately, the solutions to violent populism are the pillars that have always guided our great American democracy, dialogue and listening to each other ... Donald Trump, the former president of the United States, is more powerful today as a result of January 6th than he would have been without January 6th. That is a very, very worrisome trend."
- Chuck Grassley, the Republican ranking member, condemned extremist violence from "all sides of the political spectrum". NOTE: According to the Anti-Defamation League, political extremists have committed 450 murders in the US over the past decade. Of those, 75% were carried out by right-wing extremists, and nearly half of those were specifically linked to white supremacists. Islamic extremism accounted for 20% of the murders. Left-wing extremists accounted for 4% of the murders.
June 6, 2022 - The supreme court declined to take up a case brought by Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who were made famous for pointing guns at Black Lives matter protesters in 2020. The McCloskeys were seeking a review of the professional disciplinary action they faced, as lawyers, for pointing guns at racial justice protestors who were walking past their home, arguing that their conduct was protected by the Second Amendment, and therefore not warranting disciplinary action. NOTE: The McCloskeys faced disciplinary action from the Missouri Supreme Court after pleading guilty to misdemeanors related to the June 2020 incident, in which the court found their conduct to be "moral turpitude" deserving of professional legal sanction. The governor of Missouri later pardoned the gun waving couple.
A CBS/YouGov poll found that 62% of Americans support a nationwide ban on semi-automatic rifles.
Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, and some of his closest associates, have been charged with seditious conspiracy for their role in the January 6th insurrection. The others charged are Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, Charles Donohoe and Dominic Pezzola.
June 3, 2022 - According to new employment data, the US added 390,000 jobs in May. The unemployment rate is currently at 3.6%.
Peter Navarro, a top former White House adviser to Donald Trump, has been indicted by a grand jury on two counts of contempt of congress. This indictment follows Navarro's refusal to honor a subpoena issued by the House select committee investigating the January 6th insurrection at the US Capitol. One count is for his refusal to appear at a deposition, and one count for refusing to turn over documents.
Writing for the Guardian, Peter Stone offers the following analysis of Trump lawyers that are under the microscope of the Justice Department: "Legal experts believe the US Justice Department has made headway with a key criminal inquiry and could be homing in on top Trump lawyers who plotted to overturn Joe Biden's election, after the department wrote to the House panel probing the January 6 Capitol attack seeking transcripts of witness depositions and interviews. While it's unclear exactly what information the DoJ asked for, former prosecutors note that the 20 April request occurred at about the same time a Washington DC grand jury issued subpoenas seeking information about several Trump lawyers including Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, plus other Trump advisers, who reportedly played roles in a fake electors scheme. Giuliani, Trump's former personal lawyer, worked with other lawyers and some campaign officials to spearhead a scheme to replace Biden electors with alternative Trump ones in seven states that Biden won, with an eye to blocking Congress' certification of Biden on January 6 when a mob of Trump loyalists attacked the Capitol."
According to the New York Times, Marc Short, a top deputy to Mike Pence, warned the Secret Service about a security risk to the former vice-president the day before the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. From the story: "Mr Short did not know what form such a security risk might take, according to people familiar with the events. But after days of intensifying pressure from Mr Trump on Mr Pence to take the extraordinary step of intervening in the certification of the Electoral College count to forestall Mr Trump's defeat, Mr Short seemed to have good reason for concern. The vice president's refusal to go along was exploding into an open and bitter breach between the two men at a time when the president was stoking the fury of his supporters who were streaming into Washington."
According to Reuters, some family members of the victims of the Robb Elementary massacre in Uvalde, TX, are taking the initial steps to sue Daniel Defense, the manufacturer of the weapon that was used. NOTE: An attorney for one of the families has requested information from the manufacturer about its marketing to children and teens.
According to Reuters, Republicans in the Ohio House of Representatives have passed a bill that would ban transgender girls from school sports, and if a student's sex is "disputed" would require a physician's statement verifying "internal and external reproductive anatomy" and other criteria.
June 2, 2022 - Democrats in the House are considering a bill called the Protecting Our Kids Act which proposes raising the age requirement for purchasing semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21, and also establishes severe restrictions on the sale and possession of high-capacity magazines among other reforms. Notable reaction to the bill:
"I think it's just wrong to attack the Second Amendment liberties of law-abiding citizens, and that's what these bills do. The answer is to make sure you have school facilities secured, and you have security officers who are trained and well-equipped to protect kids and teachers and the educational environment – not these various bills that they've piled into one hodgepodge package." - Jim Jordan, Republican Representative
NOTE: According to analysis of 225 school shootings by the Washington Post between 1999 and 2018, 40% of affected campuses had a police officer on duty. Only two of the incidents involved a school police officer shooting the attacker.
During discussions of gun control measures by the House judiciary committee, Jim Jordan, the Republican ranking member, accused Democratic lawmakers of trying to repeal the Second Amendment. To support his argument, Jordan pointed to recent comments by filmmaker Michael Moore who has called for repealing the second Amendment. Jerry Nadler, the Democratic chairman of the committee responded: "I wasn't aware that Michael Moore was a Democratic member of the House."
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of two Planned Parenthood affiliates and six abortion providers to block a Florida law that bans abortion after 15 weeks.
The Ohio Republican led legislature passed House Bill 99 which will allow teachers and other school employees to forgo hundreds of hours of training normally needed to carry a gun at work. The current requirement is that teachers go through 700 hours of training. The new bill reduces the requirement to 24 hours. According to the AP, the bill is opposed by teacher unions, gun control advocates and the Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio. Michael Weinman, director of government affairs for the police union, reacted to the bill by calling it "ridiculously inadequate". Weinman went on to say: "What you're going to have is people with very minimal training carrying firearms in schools."
Donald Trump reacted to the acquittal of Michael Sussman, a lawyer for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign who was charged with lying to the FBI, saying: "If anything, it makes me want to fight even harder. If we don't win, our country is ruined. We have bad borders, bad elections and a court system not functioning properly."
President Joe Biden called on congress to do the following:
* Ban assault weapons, if not, then raise the purchase age from 18 to 21.
* Limit high-capacity ammunition magazines.
* Expand background checks with two House-passed bills.
* Safe storage laws, with personal liability if someone takes your gun and uses it in a crime.
* Red flag laws like those already passed in 19 states.
* Repeal the liability shield for gun manufacturers.
* Expand mental health resources available in schools.
Notable responses to Biden's call for gun reforms:
"This isn't a real solution, it isn't true leadership, and it isn't what America needs" - National Rifle Association
"PREPARE TO BE UNARMED" - Tucker Carlson, Fox News Host
NOTE: According to a study by the University of Michigan, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, gun violence overtook car accidents as the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the US in 2020.
June 1, 2022 - According to Heidi Przybyla writing for Politico, there is a concerted effort by Republicans to "target and potentially overturn" votes in heavily Democratic precincts. From the story: "The plan, as outlined by a Republican National Committee staffer in Michigan, includes utilizing rules designed to provide political balance among poll workers to install party-trained volunteers prepared to challenge voters at Democratic-majority polling places, developing a website to connect those workers to local lawyers and establishing a network of party-friendly district attorneys who could intervene to block vote counts at certain precincts ... 'This is completely unprecedented in the history of American elections that a political party would be working at this granular level to put a network together,' Nick Penniman, founder and CEO of Issue One, an election watchdog group, tells Przybyla. 'It looks like now the Trump forces are going directly after the legal system itself, and that should concern everyone.'"
Admiral Linda Fagan, the second in command of the Coast Guard since last summer, became the commandant of the branch, and also the first woman to lead one of the US military services.
May 31, 2022 - Peter Navarro, a top White House adviser to Donald Trump, has revealed through court filings that he has been ordered to testify before a federal grand jury and produce any records associated with January 6th, including communications with the former president. The revelation comes from an 88-page filing by Navarro that seeks to declare the House select committee unlawful. The basis for the filing is the claim that the select committee is not properly constituted and therefore illegal, because Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, refused to appoint some Republican members put forward by House minority leader Kevin McCarthy.
Michael Sussmann, a lawyer for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, has been acquitted of lying to the FBI when he pushed information meant to cast suspicions on Donald Trump and Russia in the run-up to the 2016 election. NOTE: This case was brought by special counsel John Durham, who was appointed by Trump to search for government misconduct during the investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump's campaign.
Louie Gohmert, a Republican US Representative, gave the keynote address at the For God & Country Patriot Roundup in Dallas Texas, where he told the conservative audience that January 6th "wasn't just right-wing extremists." When asked by reporters if he knew the group For God & Country Patriot Roundup was strongly associated with QAnon, Gohmert replied: "I did not know, and still do not know about a supposed QAnon event, nor did I know what the QAnon slogan was or is—or that there was even a QAnon slogan— nor do I know who or what a QAnon slogan is" NOTE: The group adopted the QAnon slogan "WWG1WGA". Gohmert was one of 17 Republicans and one independent to vote against a resolution in the House condemning QAnon in October of 2020.
May 26, 2022 - Guadalupe "Joe" Garcia – the husband of 46-year-old Irma Garcia, who was shot and killed while sheltering children in her classroom at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, TX - died of a heart attack. NOTE: Many believe that Garcia's death was the result of a broken heart.
May 25, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, David Smith offers the following analysis of the state of the Republican party: "Donald Trump's big lie lost bigly in Georgia on Tuesday night. Some might take this as proof that his spell over the Republican party has finally been broken, but that is what the Republican party wants people to believe. The former president had been waging a personal vendetta against Georgia's governor Brian Kemp and secretary of state Brad Raffensperger for failing to overturn the 2020 presidential election in his favor. Trump handpicked former senator David Perdue and congressman Jody Hice to challenge Kemp and Raffensperger in the Republican primaries. Both parroted the big lie and both were soundly beaten. It was a tangible sign that even many Trump voters are now weary of 'stop the steal' and eager to look forward. It was also a blow to Trump in a primary season where his scattergun endorsements have come up with a decidedly mixed win-loss record. But studying Trump's recent record as kingmaker misses the point. In fact, it actively helps Republicans create the illusion that they have moved on from 'Make America great again' (Maga) even as they continue to push its radical rightwing agenda. It all began with Glenn Youngkin, who last year won election as governor of Virginia as a Trump-lite Republican. He never campaigned alongside the ex-president but also took pains to avoid criticizing him and alienating his base. 'Don't insult Donald Trump but do everything to keep him away,' was how columnist Peggy Noonan put it in the Wall Street Journal. Youngkin projected the image of a safe, sane, old school Republican who could win back suburban and independent voters. But he went Maga by pushing hot button issues such as coronavirus mask mandates, transgender bathrooms and 'critical race theory' and portraying his opponent as a 'woke' liberal. He flirted with, but did not embrace, Trump's false claims of a stolen election. The formula has been emulated in various ways by candidates facing extreme Trump-backed challengers. It worked for Brad Little, the governor of Idaho, and now for Kemp in Georgia. Neither should be mistaken for 'NeverTrumpers' in the mould of Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger or Larry Hogan."
According to a Marquette Law School poll, approval of the Supreme Court has fallen to 44%, from 54% in March.
In a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th circuit, the court ruled that people who take part in insurrections against the US government can be barred from office. This ruling reverses a prior ruling in favor of Madison Cawthorn, an extremist Republican politician form North Carolina.
May 24, 2022 - Kandiss Taylor, a candidate who is running in the Republican primary for governor of Georgia, has made news for calling the current Georgia government a "satanic regime" which she has vowed to "bring it to its knees" as "the ONLY candidate bold enough to stand up to the Luciferian Cabal". At a recent rally, Taylor stood in front of a banner referencing Jesus, guns and babies while calling for the execution by firing squad of sheriffs who "don't do the will of the people".
Matthew Ryan Miller, a 23-year-old from Maryland, who pleaded guilty in February to felony obstruction of an official proceeding for his role in the January 6th insurrection, has been sentenced to two years and nine months in jail. NOTE: Miller was filmed spraying a fire extinguisher at police during the riot.
An independent commission has recommended new names for nine Army posts that currently commemorate Confederate officers. If the recommendations are approved, Fort Bragg would become Fort Liberty. Fort Gordon would become Fort Eisenhower. Fort Polk would become Fort Johnson. Fort A.P. Hill would become Fort Walker.
Salvador Romas, an 18-year-old resident of Uvalde, TX, walked into Robb Elementary school and opened fire with an AR-15, killing nineteen 4th graders and two teachers. Police arrived within 4 minutes, but waited over 70 minutes more in the hallway before confronting and killing the shooter.
Herschel Walker, who prevailed in a Republican primary race for a seat in the US Senate in the state of Georgia, and who was endorsed by Donald Trump, was asked if he believed Congress should pass new gun laws in response to the shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Walker's response: "What I like to do is see it and everything and stuff. I like to see it." NOTE: Walker has a history of domestic violence.
May 23, 2022 - Karl Racine, the attorney general of Washington DC, has sued Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of facebook, for his role in allowing Cambridge Analytica to harvest the personal data of millions of Americans during the 2016 election cycle. According to Racine: "This unprecedented security breach exposed tens of millions of Americans' personal information, and Mr Zuckerberg's policies enabled a multi-year effort to mislead users about the extent of Facebook's wrongful conduct." NOTE: The data harvesting was an attempt to help Donald Trump's election campaign.
Dr Deborah Birx, the former White House coronavirus response coordinator under Donald Trump, released a book about the White House response to the pandemic, which addresses issues involving Donald Trump. In response to the book, Donald Trump issued the following statement on his social media platform Truth Social: "Dr. Deborah Birx, while working as a top health official in government, lost all credibility when she told people, in the strongest terms, NOT TO TRAVEL DURING A MAJOR HOLIDAY because of the China Virus. She then traveled a very long distance to be with a large number of people within her family. What she did was so shameful and egregious that her own family actually turned her in. So cool! How much did they hate her? She had few dresses, many scarves, and no 'class.' I said, You're Fired!!!" Notable response to Trump's statement"
"He's such a petty, small man. Factcheck: he never fired Dr. Birx." - Alyssa Farah Griffin, Conservative Commentator
A Florida appeals court has ruled that key parts of a law pushed by Republican governor Ron DeSantis, which prohibited politicians and prominent persons from being "deplatformed" by tech companies, was unconstitutional.
The US House ethics committee is investigating allegations that Madison Cawthorn, a North Carolina Republican congressman, improperly promoted a cryptocurrency in which he had a financial interest that he didn't disclose, and engaged in an improper relationship with a staffer in his office. NOTE: Cawthorn recently lost a primary challenge for his seat, and after conceding, called on "dark forces" of former president Trump's Make America Great Again movement to take revenge against the Republican establishment.
May 20, 2022 - According to the Washington Post, Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, a conservative activist and wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, pressed Arizona lawmakers to set aside Joe Biden's victory in that state in the 2020 election by choosing "a clean slate of electors". According to emails obtained by the Post, Thomas urged the lawmakers to "stand strong in the face of political and media pressure" and that the responsibility to choose the electors was "yours and yours alone" and that they had the "power to fight back against fraud". NOTE: There is no evidence of widespread fraud in Arizona or in any other state.
According to the AP, Donald Trump has paid the $110,000 in fines he racked up after being held in contempt of court for being slow to respond to a civil subpoena that was issued by Letitia James, the attorney general of New York.
According to the Guardian, a Florida appeals court has removed a block on new congressional maps drawn up by Republican governor Ron DeSantis. NOTE: The maps effectively remove Black representation from areas in the state's north by dividing Florida's Black majority fifth district into four smaller ones where the vote will be diluted.
According to the Washington Post, emails obtained from a laptop once owned by Hunter Biden include some from Tucker Carlson and his wife Susie. Those emails show that the Carlson's were asking Hunter Biden for help in getting their son Buckley into an elite Washington university in 2014. In one of the emails, Susie Carlson tells Hunter: "Tucker and I have the greatest respect and admiration for you. Always!!"
According to the Washington Post, billionaire tech mogul Larry Ellison, a co-founder and chairman of Oracle, and the eighth richest person in the world, was involved in a call of Trump allies who were trying to figure out how to keep Trump in office after his election defeat in 2020. Others on the call included Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, Fox News host Sean Hannity, attorney Jay Sekulow and attorney for True Vote James Bopp Jr.
May 19, 2022 - Oklahoma's Republican-led legislature has passed the nation's strictest abortion ban, which allows citizens to sue anyone who "aids or abets" a woman in terminating her pregnancy. The ban begins at the moment of conception.
According to the Guardian, the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol has written to Georgia Republican representative Barry Loudermilk regarding a "tour" he hosted at the Capitol the day before it was overrun by a mob of Trump supporters. NOTE: The committee's concern is that evidence suggests there may have been "reconnaissance tours" at the Capitol before January 6th.
According to Fiona Hill, the former White House aide to Donald Trump, who testified during Trump's first impeachment, Vladimir Putin "had to keep explaining things" to Donald Trump, and "Putin doesn't like to do that". Hill went on to say "You could see that he got frustrated many times with President Trump. Even though he loves to be able to spin his own version of events, he wants to have predictability in the person that he's engaging with."
May 18, 2022 - Madison Cawthorn, a scandal-plagued first-term congressman from North Carolina, who was endorsed by Donald Trump, lost his primary run for a second term. Here are a few of the scandals that Cawthorn was mired in:
- Called Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, a "thug", after Russian invaded Ukraine.
- Claimed Washington figures he "looked up to" had invited him to orgies and used cocaine.
- Was stopped by the police for driving citations three times since October.
- Was caught with guns at airport checkpoints twice since last year.
- Videos released recently show Cawthorn in sexually suggestive poses.
The primary race in Pennsylvania between TV celebrity Mehmet Oz and hedge fund CEO David McCormick for a US Senate seat is currently too close to call. Trump, who endorsed Oz, has called on Oz to declare himself the victor.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors, declared the following on twitter: "In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party. But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican. Now, watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold ..."
May 17, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Ed Pilkington offers the following analysis of the far right's "great replacement" theory: "On Saturday, a white man armed with an AR-15-style rifle entered a supermarket in Buffalo in New York state and killed 10 people, almost all of whom were African American. The gunman is suspected of having posted a 180-page racist diatribe in which he repeatedly referenced the extremist conspiracy theory known as the "great replacement". The Buffalo shooter drew heavily on the white supremacist rantings of the gunman in the 2019 massacre at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which 51 people were killed. His similarly hate-filled statement was titled "The Great Replacement". At its heart, the theory claims falsely that white people are being stripped of their power through the demographic rise of communities of color, driven by immigration. The lie has been integral to many of the most horrifying recent acts of white supremacist violence in the US. Far-right protesters at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which led to the killing of a woman, chanted 'You will not replace us'. Replacement theory featured in the rants of mass shooters at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 in which 11 people were murdered; a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in which 23 were killed in 2019; and a synagogue in Poway, California, the same year in which one person died. Replacement theory is a set of racist and antisemitic paranoid lies and delusions that has cropped up around the world in the past decade. In the US it is expressed as the false idea that an elite cabal of Jews and Democrats is 'replacing' white Americans with Black, Hispanic and other people of color by encouraging immigration and interracial marriage – with the end goal being the eventual extinction of the white race."
According to the AP, a group of Black students who were suspended for attempting to protest Confederate flag displays at their high school in Georgia, are suing the school district. From the story: "The district and its board members allowed 'overt bigotry and animosity by some white students and teachers against African American students,' the lawsuit alleges. The planned protest at Coosa high school in Rome was stifled last fall, when administrators suspended four Black students who tried to organize it. The lawsuit claims that students in the conservative district, which is represented in Congress by the extremist Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, were permitted to wear Confederate flags on their clothing, but prohibited from displaying Black Lives Matter material. It further states that the school's principal threatened one of the Black students with jail for 'instigating a riot' if the protest went ahead." NOTE: School officials say they will defend the lawsuit.
According to the Guardian, the FBI has opened a federal hate crime investigation into a shooting last week at an Asian-American owned hair salon in Dallas that wounded three women. From the story: "The Dallas FBI field office is working with the US attorney's office for the northern district of Texas, and the US justice department's civil rights division, the Associated Press reports. Last Wednesday's shooting, at the Hair World salon in the city's Koreatown neighborhood, occurred three days before Saturdays racist massacre of Blacks at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, and four days before one person was shot dead and five others wounded at a Taiwanese church in California. A suspect is in custody, the Dallas police department said."
Speaking to mourners in Buffalo, New York, president Joe Biden stated the following: "What happened here is simple and straightforward terrorism, domestic terrorism, violence inflicted in the service of hate, and a vicious thirst for power. The media, and politics, the internet, have radicalized angry and lost and isolated individuals into falsely believing that they will be replaced. That's the word. Replaced by other people who don't look like them. I call on all Americans to reject the lie, and those who spread the lie for power, political gain, and for profit ... We've seen the mass shootings in Charleston, South Carolina; El Paso, Texas and Pittsburgh. Last year in Atlanta, this week in Dallas, Texas. Now in Buffalo ... Buffalo, New York ... White supremacy is a poison. It's a poison running through our body politic that's been allowed to fester and grow right in front of our eyes. No more. No more. We need to say as clearly and forcefully as we can, that the ideology of white supremacy has no place in America ... The American experiment and democracy is in a danger like it hasn't been in my lifetime. It's in a danger this hour. Hate and fear are being given too much oxygen by those who pretend to love America but who don't understand America. To confront the ideology of hate requires caring about all people, not making distinctions."
According to the AP, three Democratic voters in Wisconsin have sued 10 Republicans and 2 attorneys for their role in submitting false electoral ballots to Congress declaring Donald Trump the winner of the 2020 election. The lawsuit seeks $2.4m in damages, and seeks to disqualify the Republicans from serving as electors in the future.
May 16, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Richard Luscombe offers the following analysis of the Republican embrace of "great replacement theory": "The massacre by a white supremacist gunman of Black shoppers at a Buffalo grocery store has drawn renewed scrutiny of Republican figures in the US who have embraced the racist “great replacement theory” he is alleged to have used as justification for the murders. Born from far-right nationalism, the extremist ideology expounding the view that immigration will ultimately destroy white values and western civilization has found favor not only with media figures, such as the conservative Fox News host Tucker Carlson, but a host of elected politicians and others seeking office. Those who have convinced themselves Democrats are operating an open-door immigration policy to “replace” Republican voters with people of color and keep themselves in power permanently include Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, chair of her party’s House conference, and JD Vance, the Donald Trump-approved Republican nominee to represent Ohio in the US Senate. After the Buffalo shooting, the pair are among those receiving blowback for embracing the conspiracy theory that the killer referred to repeatedly in an online manifesto authorities believe he posted to justify the attack. Citing “despicable” Facebook advertisements promoting great replacement theory Stefanik utilized in 2021, in which she said “radical Democrats are planning their most aggressive move yet: a permanent election insurrection”, the Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger blasted his House colleague. “Did you know: @EliseStefanik pushes white replacement theory? The #3 in the house GOP @Liz_Cheney got removed for demanding truth. @GOPLeader should be asked about this,” he said in a tweet, referring to Wyoming Republican Cheney’s ousting by the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, over her place on the 6 January panel. Kinzinger, of Illinois, is the only other Republican on the House committee looking into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his election defeat to Joe Biden. He also attacked Stefanik this week for a tweet in which she accused Democrats of being “pedo grifters” – meaning pedophiles – for providing baby formula for immigrant babies at the southern border during a national shortage. Meanwhile Vance, who credits the former president’s endorsement for helping him to victory in last week’s Ohio primary, is another vocal exponent of the discredited theory. “You’re talking about a shift in the democratic makeup of this country that would mean we never win, meaning Republicans would never win a national election in this country ever again,” he claimed at a campaign event in Portsmouth last month. Josh Mandel, who was defeated by Vance, went even further in an interview on Breitbart in October. “This is about changing the face of America, figuratively and literally. They are trying to change our culture, change our demographics and change our electorate. This is all about power,” he said, without acknowledging that only US citizens can vote, and the path to citizenship can take legal immigrants many years. In a study of the history of great replacement theory in Republican circles, Vice notes that it “isn’t new to American politicians”. In 2017, the Iowa congressman Steve King, a fierce Trump loyalist, said in a tweet: “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” Arguably the biggest rightwing apologist for great replacement theory, however, is Carlson, the Fox News host. On his show last year, he stated: “Demographic change is the key to the Democratic party’s political ambitions. In order to win and maintain power, Democrats plan to change the population of the country.” His “nefarious” stance, the Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent wrote: “exposes the ideological underbelly of the broader right-wing populist nationalist movement that he and his defenders champion”. Buffalo was not the first time a mass shooter with white supremacist motivations had cited great replacement theory. It also featured in the manifesto of a gunman who slaughtered 51 Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March 2019. After the Christchurch murders, the UK-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a counter-extremist organization, issued a report that found the once-obscure ideology was promoted so effectively by the far right that it became ingrained in political discourse, and that social media references doubled in four years to more than 1.5m Twitter mentions alone. “It’s shocking to see the extent to which extreme-right concepts such as the great replacement theory and calls for ‘remigration’ have entered mainstream political discourse and are now referenced by politicians who head states and sit in parliaments,” Julia Ebner, the report’s co-author, said at the time. The effect of the backlash against US politicians promoting the theory following the Buffalo attack remains to be seen. The pugilistic Stefanik, for example, was not backing down on Sunday, making no mention of the massacre in her home state as she retweeted criticism of Democrats over the baby formula shortage. Her only social media comment to date, a single tweet on Saturday, failed to acknowledge the race of most of the victims, or the circumstances or motivation for the shooting."
Dr Anthony Fauci, the US's top infectious disease expert, was asked if he would stay on as the director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases if Trump were to become president again. Fauci's response: "No." Fauci continued: "If you look at the history of what the response was during the administration, I think at best you could say it wasn't optimal. And I just think history will speak for itself. I don't need to make any further comment about that – it's not productive."
The group of voters who challenged the eligibility of Marjorie Taylor Greene to run for re-election have filed an appeal of the decision by Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, who ruled that Greene can run for re-election. NOTE: The voters are represented by Free Speech for People, a national election campaign finance group which is also challenging eligibility of lawmakers in Arizona and North Carolina.
Liz Cheney, the Wyoming congresswoman who was removed from her leadership position after she joined the House Select committee investigating the January 6th insurrection, sent the following tweet: "The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism. History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse. @GOP leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them."
May 14, 2022 - Payton Gendron, an 18-year-old white supremacist, and supporter of the far right's "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory, walked into a Tops Friendly Market store in Buffalo, New York, armed with an AR-15 rifle, where he murdered ten black people, and injured three others. Gendron live streamed the attack on Twitch. According to a 180 page manifesto, that was mostly plagiarized, Gendron claimed the attack was "intended to terrorize all nonwhite, non-Christian people and get them to leave the country."
Roger Stone, a self described "dirty trickster" and staunch Trump supporter, spoke at a ReAwaken America Tour, held in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. During his remarks, Stone declared: "There is a Satanic portal above the White House, you can see it day and night. It exists. It is real. And it must be closed. And it will be closed by prayer"
May 13, 2022 - The House Select Committee investigating the January 6th insurrection issued subpoenas to compel five Republican members of Congress to reveal inside information about Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Those five Republicans are Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry, Andy Biggs and Mo Brooks. According to Bennie Thompson, The Democrat chair of the committee: "We inquired to most of them via letter to come forward, and when they told us they would not come, we issued the subpoena. It's a process. And the process was clearly one that required debate and discussion."
May 11, 2022 - Charles Herbster, a candidate in the Republican primary for governor of Nebraska, lost his primary challenge to Jim Pillen. Herbster, who had been accused of groping multiple women, was endorsed by Donald Trump.
Arthur Engoron, the judge in the contempt case against Donald Trump, has ordered that the $10,000 per day fines will cease, although Trump must pay $110,000 that has already accumulated, and must meet other conditions to purge the contempt order. NOTE: Letitia James, the New York attorney general, says her investigation of the Trump Organization has found evidence of fraudulent behavior in tax filings.
A Florida state judge has struck down new congressional districts in north Florida saying Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor, made it harder for Black voters to elect candidates of their choice. NOTE: A provision of Florida's constitution says that new districts can't "diminish" the ability of minority voters to elect candidates of their choosing.
In a 51 to 49 vote, Republican senators, along with West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, defeated the Women's Health Protection Act, which would have enshrined the right to an abortion into federal law.
May 9, 2022 - Letitia James, New York's attorney general, announced a program in New York that will expand abortion access to residents, and those from states where the procedure will become illegal if Roe v Wade is overturned. NOTE: New York currently performs at least 7,000 abortions a year for women from out of state, which is 9% of its annual total. If Roe is overturned, New York officials believe that residents coming from Ohio and Pennsylvania alone could add an additional 32,000 per year to New York's total.
Nancy Pelosi released the following in a "Dear Colleague" letter to fellow Democrats: "Republican state legislators across the country are already advancing extreme new laws, seeking to arrest doctors for offering reproductive care, ban abortion entirely with no exceptions, and even charge women with murder who exercise their right to choose. These draconian measures could even criminalize contraceptive care, in vitro fertilization and post-miscarriage care, dragging our nation back to a dark time decades into the past. Make no mistake: once Republicans have dispensed with precedent and privacy in overturning Roe, they will take aim at additional basic human rights. At this pivotal moment, the stakes for women - and every American – could not be higher."
The NAACP has filed a lawsuit against the Colorado-based group known as US Election Integrity Plan (USEIP), which has pedaled Trump's baseless election fraud claims, and has gone door to door in some counties questioning residents about their voting status, sometimes while bearing arms and wearing badges, although they are not government officials. NOTE: Voter intimidation is a crime.
The House Committee on Oversight and Reform is investigating EchoMail, a firm that helped push false election fraud claims in Arizona and has been paid $50,000 by a New Mexico county to oversee a local "audit force" which is doing intrusive door-to-door voter canvassing. NOTE: Voter intimidation is a crime.
Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, announced plans to integrate citizenship checks into the voter registration process. NOTE: Raffensperger admits that noncitizen voting is not a problem, and acknowledges that state law already bars those who aren't US citizens from voting. NOTE: An audit conducted by Raffensperger flagged more than 1,600 potential noncitizens who tried to register to vote over the last 25 years, none of which was successful.
Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, signed into a law a bill that requires students receive at least 45 minutes of instruction about the "victims of communism" every November.
May 6, 2022 - Aaron Mostofsky, the 35-year-old son of a New York judge, was sentenced today to 8 months in prison for his role in the Capitol insurrection. Mostofsky, who stole body armor and a riot shield from the police, came to the Capitol dressed like a caveman. Mostofsky was interviewed during the insurrection where he made the following statements: "The election was stolen. ... We were cheated. ... I don’t think 75 million people voted for Trump. I think it was close to 85 million". NOTE: Up to now, prosecutors have charged about 800 people in the attack on the Capitol. More than 250 have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors, and about 160 have been sentenced.
Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas, announced that the state bar association plans to sue him over his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election, an action Paxton calls a "witch-hunt". Paxton had petitioned the US supreme court to block Joe Biden's victory over Donald Trump, which was unanimously rejected by the high court. Paxton claims he still stands behind his challenge to the "unconstitutional 2020 presidential election" and stated "I am certain that the bar will not only lose but be fully exposed for what they are: a liberal activist group masquerading as a neutral professional association". NOTE: Complaints to the bar about Paxton allege that his petitioning the US supreme court to overturn the 2020 election was frivolous and unethical. NOTE: Eight of Paxton's top deputies told the FBI in 2020 that the attorney general was using his office to benefit a wealthy donor. They accused him of bribery, abuse of office and other crimes, which prompted an ongoing investigation.
The Texas state bar responded to Ken Paxton's announcement, saying in part: "The system is designed to ensure fairness to all parties. Partisan political considerations play no role in determining whether to pursue a grievance or how that grievance proceeds through the system. Any claims to the contrary are untrue."
According to the AP, Charles Beaudrot, a judge in Georgia, has ruled that Marjorie Taylor Greene, a US representative from that state, is eligible to run for re-election, despite challenges from a group of voters over allegations that Greene played a significant role in the January 6th insurrection. The final decision is now left to Brad Raffensperger, the Republican Secretary of State. NOTE: Lawyers for the voters seeking to bar Greene from the ballot have accused Greene of lying in the case. During the hearing, Greene claimed she could not recall advocating for Donald Trump to impose Martial law after the Capitol insurrection. However, a text message released this week by the House Select Committee shows that on January 17th Greene sent the following in a text to Mark Meadows: "In our private chat with only Members several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call Marshall [sic] law. I just wanted you to tell him. They stole this election. We all know. They will destroy our country next."
Bill Lee, the Republican governor of Tennessee, has signed into law a bill that strictly regulates the dispensing of abortion pills, and imposes harsh penalties on doctors who violate those rules. According to the AP: "Once enacted, a medical clinician will be required to be physically present when abortion pills are administered to a patient even though federal regulations now allow mail delivery nationwide. ... Use of abortion pills has been rising in the U.S. since 2000 when the Food and Drug Administration approved mifepristone the main drug used in medication abortions. More than half of U.S. abortions are now done with pills, rather than surgery, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. Two drugs are required. The first, mifepristone, blocks a hormone needed to maintain a pregnancy. A second drug, misoprostol, taken one to two days later, empties the uterus. Both drugs are available as generics and are also used to treat other conditions."
Bill Lee, the Republican governor of Tennessee, has signed into law a bill that bans trans women from participating in collegiate athletics. NOTE: Tennessee is one of eight states that have passed anti-transgender sports bills. The other states are Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Utah.
In his new book A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Defense Secretary in Extraordinary Times, Mark Esper describes how Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff was "stunned" when Robert O'Brien, a national security adviser, said that Trump wanted to kill a senior Iranian military officer operating outside the Islamic Republic, which Milley saw as being for the benefit of Trump politically. The book also reveals that Trump wanted to send "missiles" into Mexico to destroy drug labs; send 250,000 troops to the southern border; and dip the decapitated head of a terrorist leader in pig's blood as a warning to other Islamist militants.
May 5, 2022 - A 10 foot "non-scalable" fence has been erected around the supreme court in response to anger over a leaked draft that threatens abortion rights in the United States..
In response to the outrage being expressed over the leaked supreme court draft, some far-right politicians have sent the following tweets:
"How many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are over-educated, under-loved millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats, and no bumble matches?" - Matt Gaetz
"If we have 'pregnant people' then how can Roe be about 'a woman's right to choose'?" - Marco Rubio
"Where's the outrage from all the pregnant men?" - Lauren Boebert
"Our God is bigger" - Marjorie Taylor Greene
Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, two New York Times journalists who wrote the book This Will Not Pass, have released audio of Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House minority leader discussing the possible removal of Trump from office using the 25th amendment. The recording was made on January 8th, two days after the Capitol insurrection. In the audio, McCarthy responds to an aid who suggested the 25th amendment saying "That takes too long too. It could go back to the House, right?" McCarthy can also be heard saying "What the president did is atrocious and totally wrong. I do think the impeachment divides the nation further and continues the fight even greater. That's why I want to reach out to [Joe] Biden. I wanted the president to meet with Biden, but that's not going to happen. I want to see about us meeting with Biden, sitting down, make a smooth transition..."
Republicans in Louisiana have advanced a bill that would make abortion a crime of murder. Supporters of the bill admitted that while Roe v Wade is the law their bill would be unconstitutional.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, announced that a vote will take place next week on the pregnant workers fairness act saying: "Next week's vote will be one of the most important we ever take because it deals with one of the most personal and difficult decisions a woman ever has to make in her life. Come next week, senate Republicans will have to answer for everything they've done over the years to embolden the hard right's hostility against a woman's choice. The vote will tell next week. America will be watching."
The Nashville public library is offering new library cards which celebrate banned books. Printed on the cards is the phrase "I read banned books." The cards are part of the library's "Freedom to Read" campaign which is a rebuttal to escalating attempts in Tennessee to censor books. According to Kent Oliver, the library's director "This campaign is our way of bringing our community together in our shared Freedom to Read, which is essential to sustaining our democracy" NOTE: In January, a Tennessee school board voted unanimously to ban the pulitzer prize-winning graphic novel Maus from all of its classrooms, because the book, which tells the story of Holocaust survivors, includes eight curse words, and a drawing of a naked mouse. In February, another school board upheld a ban on the 1994 novel Walk Two Moons, which tells the story of a 13-year-old Native American girl. A conservative group called Moms for Liberty had pushed for the ban. In March, Tennessee lawmakers passed legislation that gives a state-run commission the power to ban books in public schools and veto curriculum decisions made by school boards. Bill Lee, the Republican governor of Tennessee, has not said whether he would sign the bill.
Karine Jean-Pierre has been named the new White House press secretary. She will be replacing Jen Psaki on the 13th of May. Jeane-Pierre will become the first Black woman and first openly LGBTQ+ to serve in that role.
May 4, 2022 - A politico/Morning Consult study found that American voters are in favor of preserving abortion rights by a 2 to 1 margin.
A Washington Post/ABC poll found that 70% of Americans think abortion is a private issue between patient and doctor.
Robert Regan, a Republican candidate for state house in Michigan, lost to Democrat Carol Glanville. Regan came under fire during the campaign after he made the following statement: "Having three daughters, and I tell my daughters, 'Well if rape is inevitable, you should just lie back and enjoy it'". NOTE: After Regan announced his candidacy, one of his daughters made the news after she urged voters: "For the love of God, please do not vote for my dad".
According to NBC News, Chad Wolf, Trump's acting homeland security secretary, twice held up intelligence on Russian interference ahead of the 2020 election because it would make Trump "look bad". The intelligence was regarding "Russian malign influence actors" who were spreading unsubstantiated allegations about the health of Joe Biden to reduce voter's confidence in him.
While speaking to the press, Joe Biden referred to Trump supporting Republicans as "the most extreme political organization in American history".
Herschel Walker, a former NFL player, and Trump endorsed candidate for Senate, was a no show for a public debate for the 5th time. During the debate, Latham Saddler, one of many candidates, stated: "A simple question for Herschel Walker is, what do you think the US Senate does? It's the deliberative body of Congress. It's what you do as a US senator, you get up there and you debate ideas. And Herschel Walker can't get up here."
According to some political pundits, the supreme court leak may not have come from a leftwing sources, despite the insinuations coming out of rightwing circles. Rick Wilson of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, offered this analysis of the supreme court's draft leak: "I've seen enough. The supreme court leak looks, smells, and tastes like a giant kayfabe. [In pro wrestling, the fact or convention of presenting staged performances as genuine or authentic.] It's not that I have some secret insight into the court. It's that I'm a damn anthropologist of the rightwing media ecosystem in which I operated for decades. The sweeping media and political class lockstep on the right – histrionics hair-tearing about the leak – are just too coordinated given the short timeframe from release-to-presser. The intervals are too tight and the messages too word-for-word. To quote the political philosopher Ian Fleming, 'Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.' By 7am ET [on Tuesday], the usual suspects on the rightwing media gulag were on EXACTLY the same outrage 'HOW DARE YOU SIR!' tone and message."
Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, has tested positive for Covid-19.
May 3, 2022 - According to Politico, a leaked draft opinion written by supreme court justice Samuel Alito, which was signed by Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, reflects a preliminary vote to strike down the 1973 landmark decision known as Roe v Wade and make abortion a state matter.
Notable reactions to the leaked draft:
"This leaked opinion is horrifying and unprecedented, and it confirms our worst fears … While we have seen the writing on the wall for decades, it is no less devastating, and comes just as anti-abortion rights groups unveil their ultimate plan to ban abortion nationwide… [W]e will continue to fight like hell to protect the right to access safe, legal abortion." - Alexis McGill Johnson, President of Planned Parenthood
"Not surprising. But still outrageous. This decision is a direct assault on the dignity, rights, and lives of women, not to mention decades of settled law. It will kill and subjugate women even as a vast majority of Americans think abortion should be legal. What an utter disgrace." - Hillary Clinton, Former Secretary of State
"An extremist supreme court is poised to overturn #RoeVWade and impose its far-right, unpopular views on the entire country. It's time for the millions who support the constitution and abortion rights to stand up and make their voices heard. We're not going back, not ever." - Elizabeth Warren, Democratic Senator
"I hope that Scotus returns the question of abortion where it belongs: the states. This is why I led a 24-state coalition in support of MS's law banning them after 15 wks. I'll [continue] to ensure that TX protects the unborn and pray for the end of abortion across our nation." - Ken Paxton, Republican Texas Attorney General
"The supreme court and the DoJ must get to the bottom of this leak immediately using every investigative tool necessary. In the meantime, Roe was egregiously wrong from the beginning and I pray the court follows the constitution and allows the states to once again protect unborn life." - Tom Cotton, Republican Senator
"The left continues its assault on the supreme court with an unprecedented breach of confidentiality, clearly meant to intimidate. The justices mustn't give in to this attempt to corrupt the process. Stay strong. I will say, if this is the court's opinion, it's a heck of an opinion. Voluminously researched, tightly argued, and morally powerful." - Josh Hawley, Republican Senator
"This is the equivalent of the pentagon papers leak, but at the Supreme Court. I'm pretty sure there has never ever been such a leak. And certainly not in the years I've been following the Supreme Court." - Neal Katyal, Attorney
"I think states are not going to rest with just saying 'there won't be abortions in our state.' I think they're going to want to ban abortion for their citizens as much as they can, which would mean stopping them from traveling. We're going to see state-against-state battles that are really going to divide this country even deeper on this issue." - David Cohen, Professor at Drexel University's Kline School of Law
"If the report is accurate, the supreme court is poised to inflict the greatest restriction of rights in the past 50 years – not just on women but on all Americans. The Republican-appointed justices' reported votes to overturn Roe v Wade would go down as an abomination, one of the worst and most damaging decisions in modern history. Several of these conservative justices, who are in no way accountable to the American people, have lied to the US Senate, ripped up the constitution and defiled both precedent and the supreme court's reputation." - Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Speaker of the House
"As a pro-choice pastor, I've always believed that a patient's room is way too small for a woman, her doctor, and the United States government. I'll always fight to protect a woman's right to choose. And that will never change." - Raphael Warnock, Democratic Senator
"The Supreme Court appears to be on the verge of setting back women's rights by half-century - a mistake of historic proportions." - Mike Bloomberg, Democratic Former Mayor fo New York
"Democrat leftists demand we protect our 'norms' & defend 'democracy' unless our norms and democracy result in an outcome they don't like" - Marco Rubio Republican Senator
"If you think they'll stop with a women's right to choose, you haven't been paying attention. We have to fight like our lives depend on it, because they clearly do." - Eric Swalwell, Democratic Congressman
"As we've warned, SCOTUS isn't just coming for abortion - they're coming for the right to privacy Roe rests on, which includes gay marriage + civil rights. Manchin is blocking Congress codifying Roe. House has seemingly forgotten about Clarence Thomas. These 2 points must change" - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democratic Congresswoman
"Our daughters, sisters, mothers, and grandmothers will not be silenced. The world is about to hear their fury. California will not sit back. We are going to fight like hell." - Gavin Newsom, Democratic Governor of California
"If this report is true, this is nothing short of a massive victory for life and will save the lives of millions of innocent babies. But while I continue to wait for the Supreme Court's ultimate opinion, I am appalled by the shocking breach of trust posed by this leak." - Ted Cruz, Republican Senator
"If this leaked draft opinion is the final decision and this reporting is accurate, it would be completely inconsistent with what Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh said in their hearings and in our meetings in my office. Obviously, we won't know each justice's decision and reasoning until the supreme court officially announces its opinion in this case." Susan Collins, Republican Senator
"We do not know whether this draft is genuine, or whether it reflects the final decision of the Court. With that critical caveat, I want to be clear on three points about the cases before the Supreme Court. First, my administration argued strongly before the Court in defense of Roe v. Wade. We said that Roe is based on 'a long line of precedent recognizing 'the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty'... against government interference with intensely personal decisions.' I believe that a woman's right to choose is fundamental, Roe has been the law of the land for almost fifty years, and basic fairness and the stability of our law demand that it not be overturned. Second, shortly after the enactment of Texas law SB 8 and other laws restricting women's reproductive rights, I directed my Gender Policy Council and White House Counsel's Office to prepare options for an Administration response to the continued attack on abortion and reproductive rights, under a variety of possible outcomes in the cases pending before the Supreme Court. We will be ready when any ruling is issued. Third, if the Court does overturn Roe, it will fall on our nation's elected officials at all levels of government to protect a woman's right to choose. And it will fall on voters to elect pro-choice officials this November. At the federal level, we will need more pro-choice Senators and a pro-choice majority in the House to adopt legislation that codifies Roe, which I will work to pass and sign into law." - Statement from Joe Biden
"Last night's stunning breach was an attack on the independence of the supreme court. By every indication, this was yet another escalation in the radical left's ongoing campaign to bully and intimidate federal judges and substitute mob rule for the rule of law. The disgraceful statements by President Biden, Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer refuse to defend judicial independence and the rule of law and instead play into this toxic spectacle. Real leaders should defend the court's independence unconditionally. This lawless action should be investigated and punished as fully as possible. The chief justice must get to the bottom of it and the department of justice must pursue criminal charges if applicable. All nine Justices should tune out the bad-faith noise and feel totally free to do their jobs following the facts and the law where they lead." - Mitch McConnell, Republican Senator
"It will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a [Republican] Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception." - Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law Professor
"For years, women in this country have been warning about the end of abortion. That day has arrived ... this is a worst-case-scenario come to life. If and when this decision takes effect, the consequences will be unbearable - and, for many women, lethal. That is no exaggeration. But it's also no exaggeration to say that women will fight back like we always have. We won't take this lying down." - Women's March, A Pro-Choice Group
"In abandoning decades of precedent, the draft opinion exposes the supreme court as no longer conservative, but now merely a partisan institution bent on imposing its anti-choice views on the rest of the country. This decision, if made final, will be devastating for the healthcare of millions of women, even as it destroys any semblance of devotion by the court to the law." - Adam Schiff, Democratic Congressman
"Patients make their own decisions about their own bodies. That's their right. I strongly believe in protecting and promoting access to health care - that includes sexual and reproductive health care, and that includes safe and legal abortion care. Abortion remains legal today and patients can access care. The laws we have seen coming out of states that deny care are dangerous." - Xavier Becerra, Health and Human Services Secretary
"The Republicans have been working towards this day for decades. They have been out there plotting, carefully cultivating these supreme court justices so that they could have a majority on the bench who would accomplish something that a majority of Americans do not want. Sixty-nine percent of people across this country, across this country, red states and blue states, old and young, want Roe vs Wade to remain the law of the land. We need to do that and we have a right." - Elizabeth Warren, Speaking on front of the Supreme Court
"If this report is true and Roe v. Wade is overturned, I will immediately call for a special session to save lives and guarantee that every unborn child has a right to life in South Dakota." - Kristi Noem, Republican Governor of South Dakota
"The United States Supreme Court has now confirmed that the draft opinion that would overturn Roe v Wade is genuine. Roe ensures a woman's right to choose to have an abortion. It also, at its root, protects the fundamental right to privacy. What is clear is that opponents of Roe want to punish women and take away their rights to make decisions about their own bodies. Republican legislators in states across the country are weaponizing the use of the law against women. The rights of all Americans are at risk. If the right to privacy is weakened, every person could face a future in which the government can potentially interfere in the personal decisions you make about your life. This is the time to fight for women and for our country with everything we have." - Statement released by Vice President Kamala Harris
"Today, millions of Americans woke up fearing that their essential freedoms under the constitution were at risk. If the supreme court ultimately decides to overturn the landmark case of Roe v Wade, then it will not only reverse nearly 50 years of precedent, it will relegate the most intensely personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologues. What Roe recognized is that the freedom enshrined in the 14th Amendment requires all of us to enjoy a sphere of our lives that isn't subject to meddling from the state - a sphere that includes personal decisions involving who we sleep with, who we marry, whether or not to use contraception, and whether or not to bear children. The consequences of this decision would be a blow not just to women, but to all of us who believe that in a free society, there are limits to how much the government can encroach on our personal lives. Join with the activists who have been sounding the alarm on this issue for years and act. Stand with them at a local protest. Volunteer with them on a campaign. Join with them in urging Congress to codify Roe into law and vote alongside them on or before November 8 and in every other election. Because in the end, if we want judges who will protect all and not just some of our rights, then we've got to elect officials committed to doing the same." - Barack Obama, Former US President
The Guardian offers the following analysis of those who seek abortions: "Limiting abortion access would disproportionately impact younger women, poorer women and African-American women, as these groups are more likely to seek an abortion, according to official data. The majority of women having abortions in the US are in their 20s. Rachel Jones, a senior researcher at the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice research group told the BBC: 'The typical abortion patient is in their 20s, doesn't have a lot of money and has one or more children.' Research by the institute has shown that 75% of women in the US who have an abortion are classified as low income or poor (based on official US poverty definitions). Dr Antonia Biggs, a researcher at the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health says: 'Structural inequities - including living on low incomes and limited access to health insurance - all contribute to the higher rates of abortions among people of colour.' Black people make up 13% of the US population, but black women receive more than a third of the country's reported abortions and Hispanic women about a fifth."
Writing for the Guardian, Moira Donegan offers the following analysis of the state of abortion in the United States: "In a way, the leaked opinion didn't tell us anything we did not already know: these are the last days of reproductive freedom in America, and most states will soon ban abortion outright, or restrict it so onerously that it is inaccessible within their borders. But Alito's draft opinion nevertheless represents about as odiously maximalist an approach as the court could have taken. The opinion does not just overturn Roe and Casey; it expresses outright contempt for the notion that the constitution protects bodily autonomy for women. It articulates a rigid and unchanging vision of individual rights, one in which only those freedoms with robust historical precedent and explicit enumeration in the text of the constitution will be recognized by the court. [...] The question at hand is whether half of the country will have control over their own insides, or whether the government can be so intimate and torturous that it can enforce its will even inside their own organs. And, in turn, the question is whether she can have the dignity and the freedom to choose her own family, to shape her own life – or whether that freedom is withheld based on her sex. Some have raised doubts about whether America can call itself a democracy, now that policymaking power has been largely taken over by the unelected courts – whose decisions, like this one, are so radically out of step with, and indifferent to, public opinion. But it is also worth wondering whether any country can call itself a democracy that does not protect abortion rights. In making abortion illegal, the court is imposing a legal status that is so cruel, so personal, and so life-altering on half its population, that those subject to this imposition cannot be called free. Is there any condition more essential to democratic citizenship than a person's control over her own body? Can we call ourselves a free country without it?"
John Roberts, the chief justice of the supreme court, announced an investigation into the leak of a draft opinion showing the supreme court provisionally voted to overturn Roe v Wade.
Writing for the Guardian, Jessica Glenza offers the following analysis of the potential effect should the leaked draft opinion become law: "The result would send hundreds of thousands of people in 26 states hostile to abortion elsewhere to terminate a pregnancy – either by traveling hundreds of miles to an abortion clinic or seeking to self-manage abortion through medication from grassroots or illicit groups. Many would also be forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. 'Abortion is an essential part of reproductive healthcare, and this is going to affect people, even people who think, 'I will never have an abortion,'' said Dr Nisha Verma, a Darney-Landy fellow with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. On Monday, a draft supreme court decision in arguably the most contentious case in generations was leaked. The case considered whether Mississippi could ban abortion at 15 weeks gestation. The ban is highly significant because it strikes at the heart of US constitutional protections for abortion. The landmark 1973 decision Roe v Wade established the right for pregnant people to terminate a pregnancy up to the point a fetus can survive outside the womb, roughly considered 24 weeks gestation, and a legal principle called 'viability'. The decision invalidated dozens of state bans, and until the court issues a final decision, prevents states from outlawing abortion before viability. A final decision is expected from the court in late June. The leaked decision in the Mississippi case, called Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization, shows five conservative justices are willing to reverse constitutional protections for abortion on the grounds Roe v Wade was wrongly decided. If the decision is not substantially changed by the time a final opinion is issued, abortion regulation would be returned to the states where lawmakers across the south and midwest of the US have enacted bans in anticipation of the court’s decision."
Kevin Stitt, the Republican Governor of Oklahoma, signed into law a bill that prohibits abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
May 2, 2022 - While speaking at a rally in Ohio in support of JD Vance, a Republican Senate hopeful, Trump stated: "We've endorsed – JP, right? JD Mandel, and he's doing great. They're all doing good. They're all doing good. And let's see what happens." NOTE: Josh Mandel is Vance's opponent. NOTE: At the same rally, Trump criticized Joe Biden, who has worked to overcome a stutter, of stumbling over his words. NOTE: JD Vance once called Trump "America's Hitler" and "a moral disaster".
In a unanimous decision, the supreme court has ruled that the city of Boston violated the first amendment rights of a religious group called Camp Constitution when it banned the group from flying a Christian flag from a municipal flagpole as part of a program that allows private groups to use the flagpole while holding events in the plaza below. The Biden administration backed the religious group.
The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection has asked three Republican members of Congress to voluntarily cooperate in their inquiry. Those Republicans are Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs and Ronny Jackson. All three Republicans were involved in strategizing ways to stop the certification of Joe Biden's election, and had connections to elements of the Capitol insurrection. NOTE: Brooks, Biggs and Jackson announced that they will not provide any assistance to the inquiry. Brooks responded that "At one time I would have voluntarily testified before the Nancy Pelosi witch hunt committee provided the testimony was in public, the questioners were congressmen, and the questions were limited to events related to January 6. But that time has long passed." Biggs called the investigation "illegitimate and Democrat-sympathizing". Jackson denounced the "illegitimate Committee's ruthless crusade against President Trump and his allies".
Thomas Webster, a 20-year NYPD veteran, who attacked a police officer at the US Capitol on January 6th, and was indicted on six counts, including a count for the assault on officer Noah Rathbun with a metal flagpole, was found guilty by a jury. Webster had argued that he was simply trying to protect himself from a "rogue cop". The jury did not buy his self defense argument.
Mike Lindell, the My Pillow CEO and prominent mouthpiece for Donald Trump's election fraud lies, tried unsuccessfully to bypass his permanent ban on twitter by creating a new handle. After posting that he was back, the account was swiftly removed by twitter. NOTE: Lindell has claimed numerous times to have "evidence" backing up his fraud allegations, but has failed to produce any evidence.
According to Axios, a new book called A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense in Extraordinary Times by former defense secretary Mark Esper, describes how Donald Trump wanted to shoot anti-racism protesters in the legs. According to the story, Esper writes that the moment "was surreal, sitting in front of the Resolute desk, inside the Oval Office, with this idea weighing heavily in the air, and the president red faced and complaining loudly about protests under way in Washington DC."
According to the Journal Constitution, a newspaper headquartered in Atlanta, GA, a grand jury has been seated to look at Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his presidential election defeat in the state.
Writing for the Guardian, Thomas Zimmer offers the following analysis of Republicans who speak of their support for democracy, but are actively working against steps to strengthen it: "How can we explain that even those Republicans who openly stand against Donald Trump seem unwilling to support the necessary steps to strengthen democracy? Earlier this month, Liz Cheney described Russia's attack on Ukraine as a 'reminder that democracy is fragile' and talked about her obligation 'to defend our democracy' – yet she doesn’t seem overly concerned with her party's escalating voter suppression or gerrymandering efforts. Similarly, Mitt Romney warned his audience at a private fundraiser in mid-March that 'preserving liberal democracy is an extraordinary challenge' – yet he helped block legislation in the Senate that would have introduced much-needed national standards for voting rights. In general, the few Republican lawmakers in Washington who are opposing the worst excesses of Trumpian authoritarianism have been strikingly unwilling to oppose the ongoing Republican attempts to subvert democracy on the state level."
April 29, 2022 - A transcript has been released of Donald Trump's testimony in a 2015 hearing where Trump defended his "knock the crap out of them" comment. Trump was sued by a group of protesters who were violently removed from that rally in 2015. During the hearing, the following exchange took place between Trump and Benjamin Dictor, an attorney for the protesters:
DICTOR - "And you said: 'If you see someone getting ready to throw a tomato, just knock the crap out of them, would you.' That was your statement?"
TRUMP - "It's very dangerous stuff. You can get killed with those things. We were threatened. They were going to throw fruit. We were threatened. We had a threat."
Dictor then asked Trump how he became aware of the threat of being hit by a tomato.
TRUMP - "We were told. I thought Secret Service was involved in that, actually. And you get hit with fruit, it's very violent stuff. Tomato, when they start doing that stuff, it's very dangerous. There was an alert out that day ... It was said sort of in jest. Buy maybe, you know, a little truth to it. I wanted to have people be ready because we were put on alert that they were going to do fruit. And some fruit is a lot worse than... tomatoes are bad by the way. But it's very dangerous... they were going to hit very hard."
During an interview with Newsmax, William Barr, Trump's former attorney general said of Trump: "I don’t think he should be our nominee – the Republican party nominee. And I think Republicans have a big opportunity – it would be a big mistake to put him forward." NOTE: Barr published a book called One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General, where he wrote that Trump had "shown he has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to provide the kind of leadership that is needed". Barr also wrote that Trump surrounded himself with "sycophants" and "whack jobs from outside the government, who fed him a steady diet of comforting but unsupported conspiracy theories".
According to the Miami Herald, Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, made the following promise at a press conference: "I can't tell you exactly when, but I'm pretty confident that I will be able to sign 'constitutional carry' into law in the state of Florida. The Legislature will get it done. I can't tell you if it's going to be next week, six months, but I can tell you that before I am done as governor, we will have a signature on that bill". NOTE: Constitutional carry allows weapons to be carried without the need for a permit or training.
Nikki Fried, Florida's agriculture commissioner who is responsible for issuing gun licenses, and the only statewide Democrat, responded to DeSantis' constitutional carry comment by saying: "This is absurd political pandering from the governor of a state that has experienced some of the worst mass shootings in our country's history and in a nation where we have the highest rates of gun violence in the world. It's an insult to the memories and families of every victim of gun violence. We should be passing laws to prevent gun violence and working to fix our state's affordable housing crisis, not creating chaos to score political points."
In an affidavit submitted to a New York court, Donald Trump claims he does not have any of the documents Letitia James, the state's attorney general, is seeking for her criminal probe into Trump's business dealings where he is accused of giving banks and tax authorities misleading financing information in order to obtain financial benefits such as favorable loans and tax breaks. Judge Arthur Engoran denied the request to end the $10,000 a day fines and overturn a contempt ruling saying he was not satisfied with the affidavit and that there was no evidence Trump had conducted a thorough search for the records being sought.
April 27, 2022 - According to the Guardian, Kevin McCarthy, the senior House Republican, accused some of his Republican colleagues of putting people in jeopardy following the capitol insurrection. From the story: "Kevin McCarthy, the senior Republican in the House of Representatives, privately accused one of his colleagues of 'putting people in jeopardy' in the wake of the January 6 insurrection, according to a leaked audio recording. In a phone call with Republican leaders on 10 January 2021, McCarthy said that Matt Gaetz, a Florida congressman and ardent Trump supporter, was putting Americans at risk with his comments after the assault on the US Capitol that left five people dead. The New York Times obtained a recording of the call, in which McCarthy and Republicans including Steve Scalise, the No 2 House Republican, discussed an interview Gaetz had given where he attacked GOP members who had criticized Trump. 'He's putting people in jeopardy,' McCarthy said of Gaetz. 'And he doesn’t need to be doing this. We saw what people would do in the Capitol, you know, and these people came prepared with rope, with everything else.' In the days after the insurrection McCarthy strongly criticized Trump, saying: 'The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters.' Since then McCarthy has defended Trump's actions, suggesting Trump was unaware that the riot was taking place. In the 10 January call McCarthy also called out Mo Brooks, a congressman from Alabama who at a rally before Trump supporters attacked the Capitol said: 'Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.' 'You think the president deserves to be impeached for his comments?' McCarthy asked those on the call. 'That's almost something that goes further than what the president said.' Discussing the statements and actions of some Republicans, McCarthy said: 'Our members have got to start paying attention to what they say, too, and you can't put up with that type of shit.' Lauren Boebert, a congresswoman from Colorado, and Barry Moore from Alabama, were among the other GOP members named in the call. Boebert has been a staunch defender of Trump's actions that day. 'Tension is too high, the country is too crazy, I do not want to look back and think we caused something or we missed something and someone got hurt,” McCarthy said in the call."
The US and Russia engaged in a prisoner swap, trading Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot serving a 20-year sentence for smuggling cocaine into the US, for Trevor Reed, a former US marine, who Russian authorities claim assaulted a police officer while being driven to a police station following a heavy night of drinking.
Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice presidential candidate, announced her candiday for Alaska's only congressional seat. Among the other candidates running for that seat is a man named Santa Claus, who lives in a town of about 2,000 people called North Pole.
Thomas Webster, a former NYPD officer, and former memeber of the security detail for New York's ex-mayor Michael Bloomberg, is going on trial starting today for his role in the capitol insurrection. Webster, who was video taped beating a capitol police officer with a flag pole before pushing through barricades and tackling the officer, has pleaded not guilty, saying that the officer is the one who provoked his aggression, and that he was simply trying to protect himself.
Donald Trump, the twice impeached one term former president, has appealed the contempt ruling by a New York judge that fines him $10,000 per day.
Glen Grothman, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin, shouted at members of the media today saying: "You guys obsess over January 6. Nobody cares". NOTE: An ABC poll in January found that 72% of Americans think the assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters to overturn the 2020 election won by Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes "threatened democracy".
Alexander Jerich, a 19 year-old resident of Delray Beach in South Florida, has been ordered by a judge to write a 25-page essay about the 2016 Pulse gay nightclub shooting. Jerich had defaced a rainbow mural in the middle of an intersection with his vehicle after attending a 30-car rally celebrating former president Trump's birthday.
According to the AP, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights released a report which was initially triggered by the police killing of George Floyd. The report describes how the Minneapolis police department engaged in a pattern of race discrimination for at least a decade, saying in part that department data: "demonstrates significant racial disparities with respect to officers' use of force, traffic stops, searches, citations, and arrests." The report also said officers "used covert social media to surveil Black individuals and Black organizations, unrelated to criminal activity, and maintain an organizational culture where some officers and supervisors use racist, misogynistic, and disrespectful language with impunity."
April 26, 2022 - According to the Guardian, Marjorie Taylor Greene sent the following in a text to Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, shortly after the January 6th insurrection: "In our private chat with only Members several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call Marshall [sic] law. I just wanted you to tell him. They stole this election. We all know. They will destroy our country next."
Writing for the Guardian, Martin Pengelly offers the following analysis of Mitch McConnell's feelings about Trump shortly after the January 6th insurrection: "Hours after the deadly Capitol attack on 6 January 2021, the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, told a reporter he was 'exhilarated' because he thought Donald Trump had finally lost his grip on the party. Close to a year and a half later, however, with midterm elections looming, Trump retains control over the GOP and is set to be its presidential candidate in 2024. What's more, McConnell has said he will support Trump if so. McConnell's short-lived glee over Trump's apparent downfall is described in This Will Not Pass, an explosive new book by Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns of the New York Times which will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy. The two authors describe a meeting between one of them and McConnell at the Capitol early on 7 January 2021. The day before, a mob Trump told to 'fight like hell' in service of his lie about electoral fraud attempted to stop certification of Joe Biden's election victory by forcing its way into the Capitol. A bipartisan Senate committee connected seven deaths to the attack. In the aftermath, 147 Republicans in the House and Senate nonetheless lodged objections to electoral results. According to Martin and Burns, McConnell told staffers Trump was a 'despicable human being' he would now fight politically. Then, on his way out of the Capitol, the authors say, McConnell met one of them and 'made clear he wanted a word'. 'What do you hear about the 25th amendment?' they say McConnell asked, 'eager for intelligence about whether his fellow Republicans were discussing removing Trump from office' via the constitutional process for removing a president incapable of the office. Burns and Martin say McConnell 'seemed almost buoyant', telling them Trump was now 'pretty thoroughly discredited'. 'He put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger,' McConnell is quoted as saying. 'Couldn't have happened at a better time.'"
Kamala Harris, the vice president, has tested positive for Covid-19.
April 25, 2022 - The following was tweeted by the House Republicans twitter account: "Hey, @elonmusk it's a great week to free @realDonaldTrump." NOTE: Elon Musk, a self proclaimed "free speech absolutist", is currently in discussions to purchase twitter. Trump was banned form the platform in January of 2021 for violating twitter's "glorification of violence" policy.
According to an AP poll, 48% of Americans approve the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the US Supreme court, while 19% oppose her confirmation. 32% hold no opinion on the matter.
Bill Lee, the GOP governor of Tennessee, signed into law legislation that penalizes public schools that allow transgender athletes to participate in girls sports. NOTE: This legislation is part of a wave of anti-LBGTQ+ legislation that has been enacted by Republican controlled states in recent months.
According to CNN, Mark Meadows, Donald Trump's former chief of staff, received thousands of text messages during the capitol insurrection that urged him to get Trump to call off the mob. Here are some of those texts:
"Mark: he needs to stop this, now. Can I do something to help?" - Mick Mulvaney, a previous chief of staff to Trump
"TELL THEM TO GO HOME !!!" - Reince Priebus, a previous chief of staff to Trump
"Mark I was just told there is an active shooter on the first floor of the Capitol. Please tell the President to calm people. This isn't the way to solve anything" - Marjorie Taylor-Greene
"It's really bad up here on the hill. They have breached the Capitol. This doesn't help our cause." - Barry Loudermilk, Republican Congressman from Georgia
"The president needs to stop this ASAP" - William Timmons, Republican Congressman from South Carolina
According to Reuters, Arthur Engoran, a New York judge, has held Donald Trump in contempt for failing to comply with a subpoena in a civil probe that is looking into his business dealings. According to the story, Trump will be fined $10,000 per day until he complies.
Bill Klepper, a Kansas district court judge, has struck down a Republican-drawn congressional map because it violates the Kansas constitutional provision against political gerrymandering. Critics had argued that the map diluted the political power of Black and Hispanic voters in the Kansas City area by splitting them up.
Letitia James, the New York attorney general, responded to news that Trump will be held in contempt by saying: "Today, justice prevailed. For years, Donald Trump has tried to evade the law and stop our lawful investigation into him and his company's financial dealings. Today's ruling makes clear: No one is above the law."
April 22, 2022 - The New York Times released an audio recording of Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, saying he considered calling on Trump to resign following the January 6th insurrection:
MCCARTHY: "Again, the only discussion I would have with him is that I think this [impeachment resolution] will pass, and it would be my recommendation you should resign. Um, I mean that would be my take. But I don't think he would take it. But I don't know ... Alright, I know this is not fun, I know this is not great. I know this is very tough. But what I want to do, especially through here, is I don't want to rush things. I want everybody to have all the information needed. I've had it with this guy. What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that, and nobody should defend it."
According to the Washington Post, Mark Meadows, Trump's former chief of staff, until last week, was registered to vote in three different states. NOTE: Meadows is very outspoken about voter fraud, specifically as it relates to conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election.
The New York Times released a second audio clip of comments made by House minority leader Kevin McCarthy. In this clip, McCarthy says that he believes Donald Trump was responsible for the January 6th insurrection. From the clip:
MCCARTHY: "Well, let me be very clear to all of you, and I've been very clear to the president: He bears responsibility for his words and actions. No if's, and's or but's. I asked him personally today, 'Does he hold responsibility for what happened? Does he feel bad about what happened?' He told me he does have some responsibility for what happened and he needs to acknowledge that."
A hearing began today to determine whether Marjorie Taylor Green can be barred from Congress because of her activities surrounding January 6th. As the hearing began, Greene sent the following in a tweet: "Republicans must protect election integrity. It's one of the most important issues in our country. When the People lose their right to vote and their freedom to choose their representatives, our country is lost. Only the People have the right to choose who they send to Congress." Some notable highlights from the hearing:
- Plaintiff's attorneys pointed out that Greene posted to social media regarding January 6th: "It's our 1776 moment"
- The following exchange took place:
ATTORNEY: "Would a person who broke the law in terms of interfering with counting electoral votes be an enemy of the constitution?"
GREENE: "Breaking the law is unlawful..."
ATTORNEY: "Those people would be enemies of the constitution?"
GREENE: "I don't know."
- Plaintiff attorney asked Greene about her Facebook account and the fact that in 2019 she "liked" a post calling for House speaker Nancy Pelosi to be shot in the head. Greene claimed she had no memory of that and that someone else could have been responsible for that.
Joe Biden reacted to the news of retaliation by the Republican party against Walt Disney saying: "This is not your father's Republican party. It's not even conservative in a traditional sense of conservatism. It's mean, it's ugly. Look at what's happening in Florida: Christ, they're going after Mickey Mouse."
Black community groups and voting rights advocates have filed a lawsuit that seeks to block the new Florida state congressional map. According to those groups, the new map is a "racist" attempt to curtail Black voting power in Florida that puts Republicans on course to win 20 of the state's 28 congressional districts, four more than present. The groups involved in the lawsuit are Black Voter Matter, Equal Ground Education Fund, League of Women Voters of Florida, Florida Rising Together and individual voters.
At a signing ceremony in Tallahassee, FL, governor Ron DeSantis signed into law two "culture war" bills. One that abolishes Walt Disney's half-century old right to self governance, and another described as "anti-critical race theory" which outlaws companies from espousing what DeSantis calls "woke" ideology over race. DeSantis told the mostly white audience at the signing that corporations like Google and Disney are teaching employees to believe Americans are inherently racist, and that "under this law, that is a violation of your civil rights".
April 21, 2022 - Joe Biden announced new sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. The new sanctions include the banning of Russian-affiliated ships from entering American ports.
The New York Times is reporting on findings in a new book by reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns. According to the reporting, both Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell privately told their Republican associates that they believed Donald Trump should be held responsible for the insurrection. Also, according to the report, McCarthy was so outraged with Trump over his incitement of an insurrection that he wanted Trump to resign.
Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, responded to reporting in the New York Times that he wanted Trump to resign over the Capitol insurrection saying in a statement: "The New York Times' reporting on me is totally false and wrong. It comes as no surprise that the corporate media is obsessed with doing everything it can to further a liberal agenda. This promotional book tour is no different. If the reporters were interested in truth why would they ask for comment after the book was printed? The past year and a half have proven that our country was better off when President Trump was in the White House and rather than address the real issues facing Americans, the corporate media is more concerned with profiting from manufactured political intrigue from politically-motivated sources. Our country has suffered enough under failed on-party Democrat rule and no amount of media ignorance and bias will stop Americans from delivering a clear message this fall that it is time for change."
Mark Bednar, a spokesperson for Kevin McCarthy, stated: "McCarthy never said he'd call Trump to say he should resign."
The Florida legislature passed a bill that dissolves Disney World's self-governance status, which is seen as retaliation for Disney's opposition to Florida's "Don't Say Gay" law.
The Florida legislature approved a congressional map proposed by governor Ron DeSantis which will severely curtail Black voting power in the state. NOTE: The map favors the GOP in 20 of the state's 28 congressional districts in an increase of four seats for the party, by eliminating two congressional districts where Black voters have the ability to elect a candidate of their choosing.
A federal judge has temporarily blocked enforcement of an anti-abortion law in Kentucky which banned the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy, and also called for a combination birth-death or stillbirth certificate for each abortion.
April 20, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Ankita Rao offers the following analysis of upcoming hearings regarding the Capitol insurrection: "Donald Trump attempted a coup on 6 January 2021 as he tried to salvage his doomed presidency, and that will be a central focus of forthcoming public hearings of the special House panel investigating events surrounding the insurrection at the US Capitol, the congressman Jamie Raskin has said. Raskin is a prominent Democrat on the committee and also led the House efforts when Trump was impeached for a historic second time, in 2021, accused of inciting the storming of the US Capitol by his extremist supporters who were trying to stop the certification of Joe Biden's victory. 'This was a coup organized by the president against the vice-president and against the Congress in order to overturn the 2020 presidential election,' Raskin said in an interview with the Guardian, Reuters news agency and the Climate One radio program. Public hearings by the bipartisan special committee investigating January 6 and related actions by Trump and his White House team and other allies, chaired by the Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson, are expected next month. 'We're going to tell the whole story of everything that happened. There was a violent insurrection and an attempted coup and we were saved by Mike Pence's refusal to go along with that plan,' said Raskin. He was referring to Trump's vice-president, who went ahead in his role of overseeing the certification of Biden's win, which was delayed until the early hours of the following day after Pence and other lawmakers, staff and journalists ended up running for their lives as rioters stormed the building, shortly after Trump held a rally near the White House exhorting his supporters to 'fight like hell'."
April 19, 2022 - Amy Totenberg, a federal judge from the northern district of Georgia, announced that an attempt to bar Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress over her support for the January 6 insurrection may proceed. A coalition of liberal groups is behind the effort against the congresswoman, citing the 14th amendment to the US constitution, which says: "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath ... to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof." NOTE: The 14th amendment was passed after the civil war.
In response to a statement by Walt Disney, which criticized the Florida "don't say gay" law, Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, demanded a special legislative session to terminate Disney's right to self-governance. NOTE: In 1967, Florida legislators created the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which allows Disney to raise taxes and conduct operations autonomously.
Writing for the Guardian, Richard Luscombe offers the following analysis of a discussion between Jen Psaki and Jessica Yellin: "The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, broke down in tears during an interview in which she condemned the 'cruelty' of a wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation sweeping through Republican states. Known for her toughness at the briefing room podium, Psaki showed a more emotional side during the discussion with Jessica Yellin, host of the News Not Noise podcast released on Tuesday, Mediaite reported. 'They're doing that in a way that is harsh and cruel to a community of kids, especially,' Psaki said, in tears, after Yellin asked her to 'make sense' of the Republican push for legislation that marginalises the LBGTQ+ community. 'I'm going to get emotional about this issue because it's horrible. But it's kids who are bullied, and all these leaders are taking steps to hurt them, and hurt their lives and hurt their families. 'And you look at some of these laws in these states and who's going after parents, who are in loving relationships, who have kids. It's completely outrageous. Sorry, this is an issue that makes me completely crazy.' Analysts say the wave of legislation, including Florida's so-called 'don't say gay' bill, is designed to provoke 'gender grievance' among voters ahead of November's midterm elections. 'What we're talking about here in Florida, for example ... if you have a kid in a classroom, and I have a kindergartner, I can imagine her saying, 'My friend has two moms. My friend has two dads.' Psaki said. 'And the teacher in her classroom, I would hope would say, 'That's wonderful. They're loving parents, and you have a mom and a dad.' 'This is penalising teachers and educators. There are so many layers of this that are outrageous, and I hope people continue to educate themselves on this because it is a bad side of politics.'"
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, responded to a federal judges ruling yesterday that struck down the federal mask mandate on public transportation saying: "Public health decisions shouldn't be made by the courts. They should be made by public health experts. We've said from the start that our Covid response should be guided by the science and data and by experts."
Writing for the Guardian, Hugo Lowell offers the following analysis of what some text messages reveal about the Capitol insurrection: "Top leaders in the Oath Keepers militia group indicted on seditious conspiracy charges over the Capitol attack had contacts with the Proud Boys and a figure in the Stop the Steal movement and may also have been in touch with the Republican congressman Ronny Jackson, newly released text messages show. The texts – which indicate the apparent ease with which Oath Keepers messaged Proud Boys – could strengthen a theory being explored by the House January 6 committee and the US justice department: that the Capitol attack included a coordinated assault."
April 18, 2022 - Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, a Florida district judge, struck down the federal mask mandate on public transportation. NOTE: Mizelle, who was appointed by Donald Trump, was rated at the time of her appointment by the American Bar Association as "not qualified".
April 17, 2022 - Florida's education department rejected 54 mathematics textbooks from next year's curriculum. Among the reasons cited, because many are alleged to have references to critical race theory (CRT). NOTE: No evidence of the inclusion of CRT in the textbooks was offered by the department.
April 14, 2022 - According to the Guardian, Elon Musk, the world's richest person, has launched a hostile takeover of Twitter. From the story: "Elon Musk has launched an audacious bid to buy Twitter for more than $40bn, saying he wants to release its 'extraordinary potential' to boost free speech and democracy across the world."
Following the lead of Texas governor Greg Abbott, Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, announced that he will begin bussing undocumented aliens to Martha's Vineyard, an ultra-wealthy Massachusetts enclave, and also to Joe Biden's home state of Delaware.
Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, signed into law a bill that bans abortions after 15 weeks. There are two exceptions to the law; the mother's health is threatened, or the baby has a "fatal fetal abnormality".
Karine Jean-Pierre, the deputy White House press secretary, responded to the new anti-abortion law in Florida saying: "Women's constitutional rights are under attack all across the country. That's why this White House administration is doing everything we can in response to these attacks ... Roe v Wade was reaffirmed nearly five decades ago, and the president again calls on Congress to act and send a bill to his desk to shut down these radical steps being taken."
According to Reuters, the Republican National Committee (RNC) voted unanimously to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates, a nonprofit commission which has run the debates since 1987. From the story: "'Today, the RNC voted to withdraw from the biased CPD, and we are going to find newer, better debate platforms to ensure that future nominees are not forced to go through the biased CPD in order to make their case to the American people,' the committee's chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, said in a statement ... Republicans have long accused the debate commission, which was founded to codify the debates as a permanent part of presidential elections, of being biased in favor of Democratic candidates."
The Russian guided missile cruiser Moskva, considered the most powerful warship in the Black Sea region, sunk today following an attack by Ukrainian forces.
Maureen O'Connor, the Republican Chief Justice of the Ohio supreme court, has for the fourth time joined her 3 Democratic colleagues in rejecting Republican efforts to implement a new district map in that state that strongly favors the GOP, saying the new map violates new language in the state constitution which prohibits gerrymandering "primarily to favor or disfavor a political party".
April 13, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Maya Yang offers the following analysis of efforts between lawmakers and extremist groups to undermine democracy: "On Tuesday, the nonpartisan civil rights organization National Urban League released the annual report in its analysis series The State of Black America. The report, called Under Siege: The Plot to Destroy Democracy, outlines the 'conspiracy and the urgent case for a national mobilization to protect and defend our most sacred constitutional right'. It focuses on four main tactics that it says are used in this effort: gerrymandering, voter suppression, misinformation and intimidation. In 2021 alone, 20 states have leveraged census data to redraw congressional maps, it noted. The new maps proposed by Republican state lawmakers 'are no more than modern-day gerrymandering that strips voting power away from communities with Black and brown voters', the report said. It also listed 34 laws passed in 19 states between January 1 and December 7 2021 that make it more difficult for people to vote. In addition to shortening the window to apply and deliver mail ballots, those laws limit absentee voting lists, restrict assistance in returning a voter's mail ballot, reduce the availability of mail ballot drop boxes, and increase barriers for voters with disabilities, among other restrictions. 'The burden of these laws – strict photo ID requirements, the elimination or restriction of Sunday voting, voting by mail and early voting, and the closing of polling locations – overwhelmingly falls on Black voters,' Marc Morial, president and CEO of NUL, said in the report. 'Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the United States has seen a steady rise in disenfranchisement practices giving one party an edge over the other. But never before has the nation seen such an insidious and coordinated campaign to obliterate the very principle of 'one person, one vote' from the political process.'"
According to the Guardian, Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff for Donald Trump, has been stripped from North Carolina's electoral roll amid a criminal inquiry into whether he committed voter fraud by registering to vote at a residence he never owned or lived at. From the story: "Melanie Thibault, director of the Macon county board of elections, confirmed her decision to the Asheville Citizen Times, which reported that the registration for Meadows' wife Debra remained active. According to the New Yorker, which broke the story last month, Meadows registered his address as a rented mobile home in Scaly Mountain, North Carolina, which he reportedly had never visited. He voted from there as an absentee in the 2020 presidential election, and has subsequently registered to vote in Virginia. According to neighbors in Scaly Mountain, and the former owner of the property, Mrs Meadows rented and stayed at the mobile home for 'a few nights' but her husband was never seen there. Thibault said Meadows' removal from the voters roll was a standard procedure under a statute that says a person who votes in another state loses their registration in North Carolina. Meadows, who with his wife owns a condo in Virginia, reportedly voted in that state in a 2021 election, triggering Thibault's decision. The Citizen reported that the North Carolina state bureau of investigation was continuing its inquiry into possible voter fraud by Meadows, a fierce Trump loyalist who has never commented on the story. The bureau, the newspaper said, would not comment on whether Meadows' removal from the North Carolina roll would affect its investigation."
Writing for the Guardian, Thomas Zimmer, a professor at Georgetown University, offers the following analysis of extremism in the Republican party, and the threat it poses to our democracy: "Ever since entering Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene has been making headlines for her long history of peddling conspiracy theories, her blatant embrace of anti-Muslim bigotry and white Christian nationalism, and her aggression against political opponents. The latest escalation came last week, when she smeared her Republican colleagues in the Senate, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins and Mitt Romney, as 'pro-pedophile' after they voted to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the US supreme court; Democrats, she added, 'are the party of pedophiles.' There is a calculating quality to Greene's polemics. Last fall, for instance, she recorded a campaign video in which she used a military-grade sniper rifle to blow up a car that had the word 'socialism' written on it, promising to do the same to the “Democrats' socialist agenda.' It was over-exaggerated campaign nonsense. But Greene knew the unsubtle insinuation of using violence against a political opponent would demand attention. The fact that Greene's antics are so clearly designed to keep herself in the spotlight has prompted calls for the media and commentators to stop paying attention to her rather than be complicit in the amplification of far-right propaganda. And if what's on display here were just the extremist behavior of a fringe figure, it would indeed be best to simply ignore her. This, however, isn’t just Greene's extremism – it is increasingly that of the Republican party itself. Greene and the many provocateurs like her are not just rightwing trolls, but elected officials in good standing with their party. Ignoring them won't work, nor will making fun of them: These people are in positions of influence, fully intent on using their power. In any (small-d) democratic party, Greene's extremism should be disqualifying. In today's Republican party, she's not being expelled, she's being elevated. Greene is undoubtedly one of the rightwing stars in the country, and that's not just a media phenomenon. Republican candidates crave her endorsement. Democrats stripped her of her committee assignments against the vote of nearly all of Greene's Republican colleagues; if the Republicans capture the House in November, she'll probably get those assignments back. It is true that occasionally, Greene's most egregious actions have led to some measure of symbolic distancing from Republican leadership. After she spoke at the white supremacist America First Political Action Conference (Afpac) in February, where she was enthusiastically introduced and embraced by the well-known far-right activist and Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes, minority leader Kevin McCarthy gave her a good talking to – but no serious consequences followed. Overall, Greene's position within the Republican party seems secure. That's partly because the Republican leadership is surely aware that most of the energy and activism in conservatism is in the far-right wing that stands behind Greene. In fact, Greene is the poster child of a rising group of rightwing radicals: in Congress, she likes to present herself and like-minded allies such as representatives Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz as the future of the Republican party, and they aren't shy about their intention to purge whatever vestiges of 'moderate' conservatism might still exist within the Republican party. Greene's rise is indicative of a more openly militant form of white Christian nationalism inserting itself firmly at the center of Republican politics. 'America First' candidates like Greene are representing the Republican party all over the country. In Arizona, for instance, state senator Wendy Rogers proudly declared herself to 'stand with Jesus, Robert E Lee, and the Cleveland Indians' back in December – all of them supposedly 'canceled' by 'satanic communists'; and at the aforementioned AFPAC in February, Rogers suggested building gallows to hang political enemies. In Georgia, gubernatorial candidate Kandiss Taylor runs on a platform of 'Jesus, Guns, and Babies' and openly advocates for the establishment of a Christian theocracy. The Republican party doesn't just tolerate such extremists in an attempt to appease the fringe – this isn't simply a matter of acquiescence out of convenience or cowardice. What we really need to grapple with is the fact that this sort of radicalism is widely seen as justified on the right. The exact language someone like Greene uses might be slightly crasser than what some conservatives are comfortable with, and some Republicans might disagree with specific aspects of the public image she projects. But it's obviously not enough for them to break with her, or with any of the Christian nationalist extremists in their ranks. If anything, most of what Greene is saying actually aligns with the general thrust of conservative politics. Republicans are currently all in on smearing anyone who disagrees with their assault on LGBTQ rights as 'groomers' and declaring any progressive social position adjacent to pedophilia. And it's really hard to tell the difference between Greene's propaganda and what much of the reactionary intellectual sphere has been producing. Rod Dreher, for instance, one of the Religious Right's best-known exponents, has called the Democrats the 'party of groomers' and 'the party of child mutilators and kidnappers' lately. Or take the gun-toting militancy that was on display in Greene's campaign video. Republicans have long embraced the gun cult and made it a key element of their political identity. Now candidates up and down the country have the whole family, including young children, pose for heavily armed photos, reveling in the imagery of using guns to fight off those insidious Democrats and their assault on America. That's precisely the key to understanding why so many Republicans are willing to embrace political extremism. Greene's central message is fully in line with what has become dogma on the right: that Democrats are a radical, 'Un-American' threat, and have to be stopped by whatever means. Everyone suspected of holding liberal or progressive positions is a 'fellow traveler with the radical left,' as senator Ted Cruz put it; as part of the 'militant left,' Democrats need to be treated as 'the enemy within,' according to senator Rick Scott; and Florida governor Ron DeSantis declared that Stacey Abrams winning the Georgia gubernatorial election would be akin to a foreign adversary taking over and lead to a 'cold war' between the two neighboring states. It doesn't matter to the right that Greene's pedophilia accusations lack any empirical basis. What matters is that they adhere to the higher truth of conservative politics: that Democrats are a fundamental threat to the country, to its moral foundations, its very survival. 'How much more can America take before our civilization begins to collapse?' Greene asked last week. There aren't many conservatives left who disagree with her assessment. That's how they are giving themselves permission to embrace whatever radical measures are deemed necessary to defeat this 'Un-American' enemy. Once you have convinced yourself you are fighting a noble war against a bunch of pedophiles hellbent on destroying the nation, there are no more lines you're not justified to cross. Greene and her fellow extremists are perceived to be useful shock troops in an existential struggle for the survival of 'real' America. The right isn't getting distracted by debates over whether Greene's militant extremism or Mitch McConnell's extreme cynicism are the right approach to preventing multiracial pluralism. They are united in the quest to entrench white reactionary rule. I fear that four years of Trumpism in power so inundated us with political stunts and outrageous political acts that we might have become a bit numb to how extreme and dangerous these developments are. Let's not be lulled into a false sense of security by the clownishness, the ridiculousness of it all. Some of history's most successful authoritarians were considered goons and buffoons by their contemporaries – until they became goons and buffoons in power. What we are witnessing is one party rapidly abandoning and actively assaulting the foundations of democratic political culture. Every 'Western' society has always harbored some far-right extremists like Greene. But the fact that the Republican party embraces and elevates people like her constitutes an acute danger to democracy."
According to KHOU-11 in Texas, a bus filled with migrants from Texas arrived in Washington D.C. Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, followed through on a threat he made last week to bus migrants to the US Capital in response to Joe Biden's decision to end a pandemic-era emergency order known as Title 42, which allowed immigration authorities to turn away migrants at the border, even those seeking asylum. The original order was put into place by the Trump administration. According to the article, a second bus is on its way to Washington D.C. NOTE: According to Texas officials, the migrants that are bussed to DC are doing so voluntarily.
April 12, 2022 - According to the Guardian, Kevin Stitt, the Republican governor of Oklahoma, signed a law that makes it a felony to perform an abortion, and is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. From the story: "Legal challenges are certain to follow as the law, approved by state legislators a week ago, is set to take effect 90 days after the state's legislature adjourns next month. That will likely be ahead of the expected decision by the US supreme court this summer that could overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that protected a woman's right to the procedure. 'We want to outlaw abortion in the state of Oklahoma,' Stitt said during a signing ceremony for the bill, flanked by anti-abortion lawmakers, clergy and students, according to the Associated Press. 'I promised Oklahomans that I would sign every pro-life bill that hits my desk, and that's what we're doing here today.' Under the bill, anyone convicted of performing an abortion would face up to 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine. It does not authorize criminal charges against a woman for receiving an abortion, the AP said."
April 11, 2022 - A new law in Maryland allows health care professionals other than doctors to carry out abortions in the state. This makes Maryland the 15th US state to allow midwives, senior nurses and trained doctor's assistants to perform the procedure.
Writing for the Guardian, Adam Gabbatt offers the following analysis of a new study that looked at Fox News viewers who were presented with an alternate source for their news: "Watching Fox News can be like entering an alternative universe. It's a world where Vladimir Putin isn't actually that bad but vaccines may be and where some unhinged rightwing figures are celebrated as heroes but Anthony Fauci, America's top public health official, is an unrivaled villain. Given the steady stream of misinformation an avid Fox News consumer is subjected to, the viewers – predominantly elderly, white and Donald Trump-supporting – are sometimes written off as lost causes by Democrats and progressives, but according to a new study, there is still hope. In an unusual, and labor intensive project, two political scientists paid a group of regular Fox News viewers to instead watch CNN for a month. At the end of the period, the researchers found surprising results; some of the Fox News watchers had changed their minds on a range of key issues, including the US response to coronavirus and Democrats' attitude to police."
According to the Guardian, two men and a woman from Missouri were sentenced to several weeks in jail for their roles in the January 6th Capitol insurrection. From the story: "Judge James Boasberg sentenced Emily Hernandez, of Sullivan, to 30 days in jail. He also sentenced her uncle, William Merry, and another suburban St Louis man, Paul Scott Westover, to 45 days in jail each, the St Louis Post-Dispatch reported. All three also were ordered to pay $500 for damaging the Capitol. The trio entered the Capitol through a smashed door. A government sentencing memo says Merry goaded Hernandez into picking up a broken piece of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's sign. It also says Hernandez shot a video of herself stealing two other signs. Westover pleaded guilty on December 6 to one count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in the Capitol. Merry pleaded guilty on January 5 to one count of theft of government property. Hernandez pleaded guilty on January 10 to one count of entering and remaining in a restricted building."
April 8, 2022 - According to Reuters, a federal grand jury has acquitted two men of conspiring to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, and has deadlocked on the same charges for two others. From the story: "The 12-member panel in Grand Rapids, Michigan, found Adam Fox and Daniel Harris not guilty of kidnapping conspiracy charges. The jury was not able to agree on a verdict for Brandon Caserta and Barry Croft Jr. Harris was also found not guilty of knowingly conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against persons or property for allegations of plotting to use explosives to blow up a bridge after abducting the governor. The jury was not able to reach a verdict against Fox and Croft for the same charge, resulting in a mistrial. Caserta did not face the weapons charge. The case stands one of the most high-profile prosecutions of alleged members of right-wing organizations that have sprung up in the years since former President Donald Trump's election in 2016. It also highlights the extent to which the pandemic and government efforts to control it have become a wedge issue in US politics."
April 7, 2022 - According to CNN, the justice department is blocking the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection from accessing more than a dozen boxes of records recovered from Mar-a-Lago by the National Archives. This block is leading to speculation that the records may be subject to a criminal inquiry by the justice department.
Letitia James, New York's attorney general, has filed a request to hold Donald Trump in contempt of court for refusing to turn over documents that were subpoenaed for a civil investigation of the disgraced former president's business operations. Trump had earlier agreed to comply "in full" with the subpoena. The filing also seeks to fine Trump $10,000 a day until he complies.
The US Senate voted to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the US supreme court. Jackson will be the first Black woman to sit on the nation's highest court. The final vote was 53-47, with only 3 Republicans voting to support the confirmation.
April 6, 2022 - According to the Guardian, right wing figures in the US are doing the Kremlin's bidding in the war of disinformation. From the story: "False and conspiratorial narratives pushed by some American conservative politicians and media figures about Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine have bolstered and created synergies with the Kremlin's legendary disinformation machine, experts on information manipulation say. But even though Russia has embraced and promoted American disinformation, as well as the Kremlin's own much larger stock of Ukraine war falsehoods, both brands have been widely debunked by experts and most media outlets, underscoring Moscow's setbacks in the information war. Led by Tucker Carlson at Fox News, a few Republican rightwingers in Congress, and some key conservative activists, a spate of comments that have disparaged Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and echoed other Russian war disinformation have been recycled by Moscow, say experts."
April 5, 2022 - Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, called the Russian brutality that surfaced in the Ukrainian city of Bucha a "deliberate campaign to kill, to torture, to rape, to commit atrocities".
Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the far-right group the Proud Boys, has pleaded not guilty to federal charges that include conspiracy to obstruct certification of electoral college results. According to prosecutors, Tarrio was found in possession of comprehensive plans to "surveil and storm" government buildings in a document that was entitled "1776 Returns".
A heated exchange took place today between Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary, and congressman Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who is under investigation for sex trafficking:
GAETZ: "You guys have been blowing a lot of calls lately on matters of strategy Mr secretary. You guys told us that Russia couldn't lose. You told us that the Taliban couldn't immediately win. So, I guess I'm wondering, what in the 773bn dollars that you're requesting today is gonna help you make assessments that are accurate in the face of so many blown calls?"
AUSTIN: "You've seen what's in our budget. You've seen how the budget matches the strategy. And so, I'll let that speak for itself."
GAETZ: "Well, I've also seen that we're behind Mr secretary. We're behind on hypersonics. We failed to deter Russia. Last year..."
AUSTIN: "What do you mean we're behind in hypersonics? How do you make that assessment?"
GAETZ: "I don't know. I make that assessment..."
AUSTIN: "Is it a one for one?"
GAETZ: "China is fielding hypersonic weapons systems and we are still developing them. I make that assessment because Russia actually used one. By the way, your own people briefed us that we are behind and China is winning. Are you aware of the briefings we get on hypersonics?"
AUSTIN: "I am certainly aware of briefings that we provide to congress."
GAETZ: "It's not just the hypersonics. It's all over the world. It's in Taiwan where China last year flew more sorties than ever before. It's North Korea on pace to shatter prior records the number of missiles they are testing. And so, while everyone else in the world seems to be developing capabilities, and being more strategic, we got time to embrace critical race theory at West Point, to embrace socialism at the National Defense University, to do mandatory pronoun training."
AUSTIN: "Again, this is the most capable, the most combat critical force in the world. It has been, and it will be so going forward."
GAETZ: "Not if we continue down this path. Not if we embrace socialism."
AUSTIN: "The fact that you're embarrassed by your country, I'm sorry for that."
GAETZ: "No, I'm embarrassed by your leadership. I am not embarrassed for my country. I wish we were not losing to China."
AUSTIN: "That's what you're saying."
GAETZ: "That is so disgraceful that you would sit here and conflate your failures with the failures of the uniformed service members. You guys said that Russia would overrun Ukraine in 36 days. You said that the Taliban would be kept at bay for months. You totally blew those calls. And maybe we would be better at them if the National Defense University actually worked a little more on strategy and a little less on wokeism."
AUSTIN: "Has it occurred to you that Russia has not overrun Ukraine because of what we've done and our allies have done?"
GAETZ: "But that was baked into your flawed assessment. I saw that the Obama administration tried to destroy our military by starving it of resources and it seems the Biden administration is trying to destroy our military by force feeding it wokeism."
April 4, 2022 - Sarah Palin, the former Republican governor of Alaska, and former vice-presidential nominee, has received an endorsement from Donald Trump for a vacant congressional seat in Alaska. From Trump's endorsement: "Sarah shocked many when she endorsed me very early in 2016, and we won big. Now, it's my turn! Sarah has been a champion for Alaska values, Alaska energy, Alaska jobs and the great people of Alaska."
Following news of atrocities being committed by Russian forces in Ukraine, Joe Biden has joined the call by many world leaders for a war crimes trial against Russian president Vladimir Putin.
The senate judiciary committee met regarding the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson. During the meeting, several Republicans spent their time complaining that Janice Rogers Brown, a conservative former judge on the federal appeals court in Washington, who is Black, was not the first Black woman on the supreme court. Here are some notable complaints offered today by Republicans on the committee:
- Lindsey Graham complained that Janice Rogers Brown was opposed by Democrats in the early 2000s for an appointment to the court of appeals after she was nominated by George W Bush. NOTE: According to Democrats, Brown was "far outside the judicial mainstream" and her "judicial philosophy was dedicated to decimating the social safety net, environmental protections and women's reproductive freedoms." Groups that opposed Brown included the following:
Congressional Black Caucus
NAACP
Leadership Conference
National Urban League
National Women’s Law Center
National Organization for Women
AFL-CIO
Here's a quote from then senator Barrack Obama about Janice Rogers Brown: "In almost every legal decision that she has made and every political speech that she has given, Justice Brown has shown she is not simply a judge with very strong political views, she is a political activist who happens to be a judge."
- Ted Cruz complained that, unlike Brett Kavanaugh, "Not a single Republican senator asked [Jackson] about her high school yearbook". NOTE: Unlike Kavanaugh, Jackson was not credibly accused of sexual assault in high school.
Madison Cawthorn, a Republican congressman from North Carolina, took to the House floor to argue that the definition of a woman is "XX chromosomes, no tallywhacker". NOTE: During Senate hearings for the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, Republican senator Martha Blackburn had asked Jackson to provide the definition of a woman, to which Jackson responded that she could not provide one, because she is not a biologist. While Cawthorn claimed that his definition is based on science, it fails to explain women who are born with androgen insensitivity syndrome and have XY chromosomes.
April 1, 2022 - According to the Guardian, Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, is threatening retaliation against Disney, the state's largest private employer, after it pledged to work to overturn the state's new "don't say gay" law that bans gender identity discussions in schools. From the story: "DeSantis has received massive blowback, and mockery, over the law that critics say marginalizes the LGBTQ+ community, including a hard-hitting statement from the theme park giant supporting groups seeking its repeal. In return, DeSantis says Disney 'crossed a line' and is now threatening to strip the company of the self-governing status it has enjoyed for almost 50 years, and which has allowed it to expand operations across central Florida almost unchecked. 'Disney has alienated a lot of people now,' DeSantis said at a West Palm Beach press conference, reported Friday by CNN. 'And so the political influence they're used to wielding, I think has dissipated. And so the question is, why would you want to have special privileges in the law at all? And I don't think that we should.' His comments followed a tweet earlier this week by Republican state congressman Spencer Roach saying discussions were under way to revoke the 1967 Reedy Creek Improvement Act, which gave Disney autonomy over its own affairs. As for Disney, which employs about 80,000 'cast members' in Florida, its opposition reflects something of a reversal after it initially refused to condemn the bill. Some Disney workers in California and Florida walked out in protest. Equality advocates point to DeSantis's history of perceived opposition to the transgender community, and on Thursday filed a lawsuit challenging the law."
March 31, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Sam Levin offers the following analysis of the supreme court's hostility to equal voting rights: "Even for experts who closely follow the US supreme court, there was something stunning about an emergency decision from the justices on Wednesday. In an unexpected move, the court decided to throw out new districts for the state legislature in Wisconsin that had been picked by the state supreme court. But what was even more surprising was that the court's conservative majority seemed to go out of its way to attack the Voting Rights Act, one of the most important civil rights laws designed to prevent discrimination in US elections. 'Extra headspinning,' was how Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, described it. 'Bizarre,' observed Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine. David Wasserman, a redistricting expert at the non-partisan Cook Political Report, tweeted that the supreme court had entered 'uncharted territory'. The court's decision in the Wisconsin case was the latest in a series of rulings that have left little pretense of how aggressively it is trying to weaken section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), the most powerful provision of the law, which outlaws racially discriminatory voting practices. The court is not hiding its skepticism of the use of race in redistricting, even when it's used to protect minority voters, and is making it harder for litigants to justify considering race when district lines are redrawn."
News surfaced that Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, is planning a House hearing on the ethics of the US supreme court which is in response to news that Ginni Thomas, the wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, is connected to the insurrection scandal. According to Pelosi: "Really, it's the supreme court of the United States. They're making judgments about the air we breathe and everything else and we don't even know what their ethical standard is. Why should they have lower standards than members of Congress in terms of reporting and the rest? ... People say it's a personal decision of a judge as to whether he should recuse himself. Well, if your wife is an admitted and proud contributor to a coup of our country, maybe you should weigh that in your ethical standards."
March 30, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Sam Levin offers the following analysis of law enforcement killings in the US: "Police officers in America continue to kill people at an alarming rate, according to a data analysis that has raised concerns about the Biden administration's push to expand police investments amid growing concerns about crime. Law enforcement in the US have killed 249 people this year as of 24 March, averaging about three deaths per day and mirroring the deadly force trends of recent years, according to Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit research group. The data, experts say, suggests in the nearly two years since George Floyd's murder, the US has made little progress in preventing deaths at the hands of law enforcement, and that the 2020 promises of systemic reforms have fallen short. Police have killed roughly 1,100 people each year since 2013. In 2021, officers killed 1,136 people – one of the deadliest years on record, Mapping Police Violence reported."
March 29, 2022 - According to a Politico/Morning Consult poll, 47% of American voters support Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation to the supreme court. 26% are opposed.
Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, was interviewed during the 2022 Toner Prizes for political journalism. During the interview, Pelosi stated "I fear for our democracy if the Republicans were ever to get the gavel. We can't let that happen. Democracy is on the ballot in November."
According to the Washington Post, White House records turned over to the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, show a gap of 7hr 37min in the official communications log, which raises the prospect that Trump may have been using undocumented backchannels, which may include disposable "burner" phones. From the story: "One lawmaker on the panel said the committee is investigating a 'possible coverup' of the official White House record from that day. Another person close to the committee said the large gap in the records is of 'intense interest' to some lawmakers on the committee, many of whom have reviewed copies of the documents. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal committee deliberations."
The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection voted to recommend the prosecution of Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino, two former Trump aides who defied subpoenas to testify.
A panel of three superior court judges have ruled 2-1 to block a North Carolina law that prohibits people with felony convictions from voting while they are not incarcerated. According to the ruling: "Section 13-1’s denial of the franchise to people on felony supervision has the intent and effect of discriminating against African Americans, and unconstitutionally denies substantially equal voting power on the basis of race." NOTE: North Carolina Republicans are expected to appeal the ruling.
Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration for extending the federal mask mandate on public transportation. According to DeSantis: "It's not something that's grounded in any science ... It's created a lot of unruly passenger situations because it's so frustrating for people. We need to let people live their life." NOTE: According to the New York Times, Florida's death rate from Covid-19 is the third highest in the nation at more than 87,000 deaths.
In a new filing by Letitia James, the New York state attorney general, the Trump Organization may have misstated the value of assets on financial statements for more than a decade. One example in the filing are financial statements for the Trump Organization from 2010 to 2012 that "collectively value" rent-stabilized apartment units it owned at $49.59m, which was "over 66 times the $750,000 total value the outside appraiser had assigned to these units".
Writing for the Guardian, Ed Pilkington offers the following analysis of the missing White House communications logs: "The apparent parallels between Donald Trump's missing phone logs and Richard Nixon's Watergate cover-up – both situations enhanced by the presence of Bob Woodward's reporting, as in today's Washington Post exclusive – was too enticing for commentators to ignore. Amid a Twitter blizzard, Bill Kristol, editor-at-large of the anti-Trump conservative website the Bulwark, compared the two presidents' remarks, writing: ''I have never obstructed justice ... I am not a crook.' – Richard M Nixon, Nov 17, 1973. 'I have no idea what a burner phone is ... ' – Donald J Trump, March 29 2022.'' Several people noted the disparity between the infamous 18-and-a-half minutes that were missing in White House tapes of conversations between Nixon and his chief of staff, HR Haldeman, and the vastly longer gap of more than seven hours in Trump's phone logs. The missing Nixon tapes were from 20 June 1972, three days after the Watergate break-in. The constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe tweeted that Trump's gap 'makes the infamous 18-minute gap in Nixon's tapes look like nothing in comparison'."
Writing for the Guardian, Robert Reich asks the question: Why do Putin, Trump and Tucker sound the same? From the article: "To Vladimir Putin, the decadent force is the west. As he put it on Friday, 'domestic culture at all times protected the identity of Russia', which 'accepted all the best and creative, but rejected the deceitful and fleeting, that which destroyed continuity of our spiritual values, moral principles and historical memory'. Hence, a mythic justification for taking Ukraine back from a seductive but inferior western culture that threatens to overwhelm it and Russia. The Donald Trump-Tucker Carlson-white nationalist narrative is similar: America's dominant white Christian culture is endangered by Black people, immigrants and coastal elites who threaten to overwhelm it. The culture wars now being orchestrated by the Republican party against transgender people, gay people, poor women seeking abortions, and schools that teach about sex and America's history of racism, emerge from the same narrative as Putin's culture war against a 'decadent' west filled with 'sociocultural disturbances.' As does the right's claim that 'secularists' have, in the words of former Trump attorney general William Barr, mounted 'an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values'. These tropes have served to distract attention from the systemic economic looting that oligarchs have been undertaking, leaving most people poor and anxious. Which is why the grievances that Putin, Trump, Carlson, and the Republican party use are unremittingly cultural; they are never economic, never about class, and most assuredly not about the predations of the super-rich. Reduced to basics, today's oligarchs and strongmen (along with their mouthpieces and lackeys) are trying to justify their wealth and power by attacking liberal values that have shaped the west, beginning with the enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries – the values of tolerance, openness, democracy, self-government, equal rights, and the rule of law. These values are incompatible with a society of oligarchs and strongmen."
Writing for the Guardian, Martin Pengelly offers the following analysis of one falsehood that found its way into one Republican senator's talking points: "A Republican lawmaker in Nevada has apologized, after repeating a false claim that some schoolchildren identify as cats and dogs and want to be treated accordingly, particularly when it comes to going to the toilet. 'They meow and they bark and they interact with their teachers in this fashion,' state senator Bruce Bostelman said during a televised debate. 'And now schools are wanting to put litter boxes in the schools for these children to use. How is this sanitary?' The claim has spread via social media. When Bostelman found out it wasn't true, he backed down, saying: 'It was just something I felt that if this really was happening, we needed to address it and address it quickly.' As the Associated Press puts it in the report that follows, 'the furor over public school restrooms comes as a growing number of conservative states seek laws to ban transgender students from using bathrooms that match their gender identity'."
March 28, 2022 - According to the Guardian, the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection plans to request an interview with Virginia Thomas, wife of US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. From the story: "Yesterday, Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republican members on the committee, had vowed the panel will 'get to the bottom' of events surrounding the 2021 insurrection but had refused to reveal whether they intended to question conservative activist Virginia 'Ginni' Thomas over reports of her urging the White House then-chief of staff Mark Meadows to make all efforts to overturn Trump's election defeat. Kinzinger did however hint that it would be a topic of conversation on the panel this week and moments ago the Washington Post reported that the committee will indeed request to talk to Thomas, citing a source familiar with the investigation as confirming an earlier report to that effect by CNN. Speaking on CBS yesterday morning, Kinzinger had refused to confirm or deny the existence of text messages Ginni Thomas is reported to have exchanged with Meadows, although he did not contest the Post and CBS's joint revelation last week that they obtained copies of such messages from materials submitted to the congressional committee by Meadows. Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the House select committee investigating the events surrounding 6 January 2021, said of witnesses being summoned to give evidence to the committee: 'We'll call in whoever we need to call in.' He added: 'Was there an effort to overturn the legitimate election of the United States? What was January 6 in relation to that? And what is the rot in our system that led to that and does it still exist today? ... We are going to get to the bottom of this.' He did not say whether that 'rot' extended to the nation's highest court. Thomas and her husband are rightwing political darlings who have described themselves as 'one being – an amalgam,' according to the New York Times. Amid the latest reports, Justice Thomas is now facing calls to recuse himself from any cases surrounding the 2020 presidential election, the insurrection and potentially the 2024 presidential election, should Trump run for re-election. Also yesterday, Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, chairwoman of the Senate rules committee and a member of the Senate judiciary committee, which quizzes nominees for the supreme court, demanded that Clarence Thomas be removed from any cases surrounding the 2020 presidential election, the insurrection and potentially the 2024 presidential election, should Trump run for re-election. 'This is unbelievable,' Klobuchar told ABC's This Week yesterday. 'You have the wife of a sitting supreme court justice advocating for an insurrection, advocating for overturning a legal election, to the sitting president's chief of staff. And she also knows this election, these cases, are going to come before her husband. This is a textbook case for removing him, recusing him, from these decisions.' The 29 exchanges reported between Ginni Thomas and Meadows reveal how the wife of one of the land's top jurists disseminated disinformation related to the QAnon conspiracy theory and other inaccurate arguments during the tempestuous days following the November 2020 election when rightwingers were claiming Democrat Joe Biden had not won. Even as Trump strategized efforts to overturn his defeat through the courts, Virginia 'Ginni' Thomas 'spread false theories, commented on cable news segments and advocated with urgency and fervor that the president and his team take action to reverse the outcome of the election,' the Post reported. It reported she wrote to Meadows: 'Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!...You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America's constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.'"
David Carter, a federal judge, handed down a ruling today that John Eastman, Donald Trump's lawyer, must turn over to the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection around 100 emails he has thus far refused to hand over to the investigation. In the ruling, Carter stated: "Based on the evidence the court finds that it is more likely than not that president Trump and Dr Eastman dishonestly conspired to obstruct the joint session of congress on Jan 6, 2021." Carter also called Trump's effort an attempted "coup in search of a legal theory."
CNN reported on the Judge David Carter's ruling saying in part: "Carter's reasoning is a startling acknowledgment by a federal court that Trump's interest in overturning the election could be considered criminal. Trump has not been charged with any crime nor has Eastman. 'The illegality of the plan was obvious,' Carter writes. 'Our nation was founded on the peaceful transition of power, epitomized by George Washington laying down his sword to make way for democratic elections. Ignoring this history, President Trump vigorously campaigned for the Vice President to single-handedly determine the results of the 2020 election ... Every American – and certainly the President of the United States – knows that in a democracy, leaders are elected, not installed.'"
According to the Guardian, an FBI agent known as "Red" is due to testify today at the trial of four men charged with conspiring to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan. From the story: "Red joined key members of the group on a 2020 trip to Elk Rapids to take a look at Whitmer's vacation home and a nearby bridge that could be blown up to distract police during her kidnapping, according to evidence. Adam Fox, Barry Croft Jr., Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta are charged with conspiracy. Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks, two other men who were also arrested in October 2020, have pleaded guilty and were critical witnesses for the government last week. Authorities said the men were armed extremists who, after weeks of training, were trying to come up with $4,000 for an explosive. They practiced that summer in Wisconsin and Michigan by dashing in and out of crude structures built to resemble a house or office. Garbin testified last week that Whitmer's kidnapping could ignite a U.S. civil war involving antigovernment groups and possibly prevent Joe Biden from winning the presidential election. Fox talked about snatching the governor 'every time I saw him,' Franks said. Defense attorneys deny there was an actual plan to get Whitmer, claiming the men were improperly influenced by undercover agents and informants, and exchanged wild talk while often smoking marijuana. Whitmer rarely talks publicly about the case, though she referred to 'surprises' during her term that seem like 'something out of fiction' when she filed for reelection on March 17. She has blamed former president Donald Trump for fomenting anger over coronavirus restrictions and refusing to condemn right-wing extremists like those charged in the case."
According to the AP, Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, signed into law the so-called "Don't Say Gay" bill which forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity to school children in kindergarten through 3rd grade. From the story: "DeSantis and Republicans have repeatedly said the measure is reasonable and that parents, not teachers, should be broaching subjects of sexual orientation and gender identity with their children. 'We will make sure that parents can send their kids to school to get an education, not an indoctrination,' DeSantis said before he signed the bill into law. He and other speakers stood at a podium affixed with a placard reading Protect Children/Support Parents. Critics say the bill is so vaguely worded that speech could be muzzled throughout public schools. The bill states: 'Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.' Parents would be able to sue districts over violations. DeSantis signed the bill after a news conference held at the Classical Preparatory School in Spring Hill, about 46 miles north of Tampa. The school was founded by Anne Corcoran, wife of Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, according to The Gainesville Sun."
Rick Scott, a Republican senator from Florida, found himself in an awkward position during a Fox News interview, after he stated that tax increases in his "11 point plan to rescue America" were really just "Democratic talking points". Here's the exchange with Fox News host John Roberts:
ROBERTS: "Why would you propose something like that in an election year?"
SCOTT: Accused Roberts of repeating "Democrat talking points"
ROBERTS: "No, no, it's in the plan! It's in the plan!"
SCOTT: "But here's the thing about reality for a second."
ROBERTS: "But, Senator, hang on. It's not a Democratic talking point! It's in the plan!"
According to the AP, a new poll shows that many Americans have anxiety over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. From the story: "Close to half of Americans say they are very concerned that Russia would directly target the US with nuclear weapons, and an additional 3 in 10 are somewhat concerned about that, according to the new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Russian President Vladimir Putin placed his country's nuclear forces on high alert shortly after the 24 February invasion. Roughly nine in 10 Americans are at least somewhat concerned that Putin might use a nuclear weapon against Ukraine, including about 6 in 10 who are very concerned. 'He is out of control, and I don't think he really has concern for much of anything but what he wants,' said Robin Thompson, a retired researcher from Amherst, Massachusetts. 'And he has nuclear weapons.' Seventy-one percent of Americans say the invasion has increased the possibility of nuclear weapons being used anywhere in the world. The poll was conducted before North Korea test-fired its biggest intercontinental ballistic missile on Friday but also shows 51% of Americans saying they are very concerned about the threat to the US posed by North Korea's nuclear program. An additional 29% expressed moderate concern. In the recent AP-NORC poll, close to half of Americans say they are 'extremely' or 'very' concerned that the US might be drawn into a war with Russia. Roughly four in 10 Americans said they are 'somewhat' concerned. The findings reflect not just anxiety about what seems like a proxy war with Russia, even if the US isn't directly involved in the conflict, but also the unprecedented saturation coverage of the war through traditional news outlets and social media. 'We are seeing almost moment by moment what's happening to these poor people,' said Linda Woodward, a retired phone company technician from Hot Springs Village, Arkansas. The concern about nuclear war cuts across party lines and even resonates with some young adults who were born after the cold war."
March 25, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Ed Pilkington offers the following analysis of the growing scandal surrounding Ginni Thomas: "Calls have erupted for ethical conflict-of-interest rules on America's top court after it was revealed that Ginni Thomas, wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, pressed Donald Trump's chief of staff to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The Washington Post reported that it had obtained a stash of 29 text messages between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows, then Trump's top White House aide, which were exchanged in the tumultuous days after the November 2020 election. In the texts, Thomas blatantly urged Meadows to do anything he could to subvert the democratic result so as to frustrate Joe Biden's victory and keep Trump in power. Ethics groups, members of Congress, law professors, pundits and a slew of other interested parties responded to the revelations with astonishment and concern. The Thomas-Meadows texts were contained in a trove of 2,320 digital communications Meadows handed to the House select committee investigating the storming of the US Capitol by Trump supporters on January 6. Those communications were only obtained after the supreme court ordered them transferred to Congress, rejecting claims by Trump that they were covered by executive privilege. The court forced disclosure of the material, including the Ginni Thomas texts, by a vote of 8-1 – with Clarence Thomas providing the only dissent. Norman Ornstein, a senior emeritus fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, called the development 'a scandal of immense proportions'. Branding Ginni Thomas a 'radical insurrectionist', he said it was time for the January 6 committee to subpoena her texts and emails to see what other incriminating evidence was out there. Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard law school, called on the justice department to investigate the apparent conspiracy between Thomas, Meadows and Trump. 'Hard to see Justice Thomas not recusing when that reaches' the supreme court, he said."
Writing for the Guardian, Hugo Lowell offers the following analysis of Steve Bannon's fight against contempt of congress charges: "As the House committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack was negotiating with Donald Trump's former strategist Steve Bannon to cooperate with its inquiry, the panel affirmed a rule: no third-party lawyers could attend witness depositions. So when Bannon's then-attorney asked whether a lawyer for Trump could be present for the closed-door interview to decide what issues were covered by the former president's invocation of executive privilege, the committee flatly refused. Now, that refusal appears set to feature as one of Bannon's central arguments to defend against his contempt of Congress indictment that came after he skipped his deposition last October and refused to produce documents as required. The former Trump aide is advancing a high-stakes – and arcane – defense as he battles the Department of Justice (DoJ) in a case that could mean up to a year in federal prison and thousands of dollars in fines if convicted, but could also de-fang congressional power should he prevail. The all-or-nothing nature of the defense is characteristic of Bannon, a fierce defender and confidante of the former president even after he left the White House seven months into the Trump administration after a turbulent tenure as his chief strategist. It was precisely because of his contacts with Trump in the days before January 6 that the select committee made Bannon one of its first subpoena targets as it seeks to uncover whether Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy that culminated in the Capitol attack. The crux of Bannon's argument is that he could reasonably believe the subpoena was invalid when the select committee refused to allow a Trump lawyer to attend the deposition, after the former president asserted executive privilege over the materials covered by the subpoena."
March 24, 2022 - Vladimir Putin, the leader of Russia, held a televised address where he declared that the Russian military was performing a "special military operation" in Ukraine with a goal of "demilitarization and denazification".
Here are some highlights from the Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation hearing that took place today:
- Steve Marshall, the attorney general of Alabama, testified against Jackson's nomination. The following exchange took place between Marshall and Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse:
WHITEHOUSE: "Is Joseph R Biden of Delaware the duly elected and lawfully serving president of the United States of America?"
MARSHALL: "He is the president of this country."
WHITEHOUSE: "Is he the duly elected and lawfully serving president of the United States?"
MARSHALL: "He is the president of our country."
WHITEHOUSE: "Are you answering that omitting the language duly elected and lawfully serving purposefully?"
MARSHALL: "I'm answering the question he is the president of the United States."
WHITEHOUSE: "And you have no view as to whether he was duly elected or is lawfully serving?"
MARSHALL: "I'm telling you he's the president of the United States."
WHITEHOUSE: "No further questions."
- Representatives from the American Bar Association (ABA) testified that there is "no evidence" to support claims that Jackson was lenient on child abuse cases.
According to Reuters, Donald Trump, the disgraced, twice impeached, insurrection inspiring, former president, filed a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and several other Democrats, alleging they tried to rig the 2016 US presidential election by tying his campaign to Russia. According to the suit: "Acting in concert, the defendants maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative that their Republican opponent, Donald J Trump, was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty." From the story: "Trump, who beat Democratic nominee Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, alleges 'racketeering' and a 'conspiracy to commit injurious falsehood,' among other claims. Trump's allegations in the lawsuit are undermined by a 966-page report issued by a Republican-led U.S. Senate committee in August 2020. That report concluded that Russia used Republican political operative Paul Manafort and the WikiLeaks website to try to help Trump win the 2016 election. Manafort worked on Trump's presidential campaign for five months in 2016. Russia's alleged election interference, which Moscow denies, sparked a two-year-long U.S. investigation headed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. In the lawsuit, Trump is seeking compensatory and punitive damages. Trump said he was 'forced to incur expenses in an amount to be determined at trial, but known to be in excess of twenty-four million dollars ($24,000,000) and continuing to accrue, in the form of defense costs, legal fees, and related expenses.'"
Writing for the Guardian, Joanna Walters offers the following recounting of how Biden responded recently after he was asked about his predecessor: "Biden told the gathered journalists his familiar story of deciding to run for president this time after the violent and ugly far-right protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, in the summer of 2017, during Donald Trump's early months in the White House. Biden recounted how the Nazi flags and hate-chanting reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s had sickened him when he saw white supremacists marching with torches and shouting in Charlottesville. The far right crowds sparked widespread violence when counter-protesters turned out to demonstrate against their nationalist agenda, culminating a day later in a right-wing extremist driving his car into counter-protesters, injuring many and killing liberal activist Heather Heyer. At the time, Donald Trump said there were very good people 'on both sides', which Biden said was the final spur he needed to decide to run for the White House in 2020. Asked about the 2024 presidential election, Biden said he would 'be very fortunate' if the Republican he ended up running against was Trump."
March 23, 2022 - According to the AP, Paul Manafort, a former senior adviser to Donald Trump, was removed from a plane destined for Dubai because he was carrying a revoked passport. From the story: "Miami-Dade police detective Alvaro Zabaleta confirmed that Manafort was removed from the Emirates Airline flight without incident Sunday night but directed further questions to US Customs and Border Protection. (CBP). That federal agency did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. A lawyer who has represented Manafort did not immediately return a call and email seeking comment earlier today. Manafort, 72, led Trump's election campaign for several months during the 2016 presidential race but was ousted in August of that year after revelations about his business dealings in Ukraine. He was later indicted on a broad array of financial crimes as part of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. He was convicted by a jury in August 2018 and later pleaded guilty in federal court in Washington. In May 2020, Manafort was released from a low-security prison where he was serving a seven-year-plus federal sentence, amid concerns about the spread of coronavirus. Although Manafort had not served long enough to be eligible for release under the guidelines, the Bureau of Prisons decided to free him because of his age and health vulnerabilities, a person familiar with the matter has said. Trump pardoned Manafort in December 2020."
According to the Guardian, US secretary of state Anthony Blinken stated today that the US has determined that Russian forces committed war crimes in Ukraine. From the story: "Russia's forces have destroyed apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, critical infrastructure, civilian vehicles, shopping centers, and ambulances, leaving thousands of innocent civilians killed or wounded. Many of the sites Russia's forces have hit have been clearly identifiable as in-use by civilians. This includes the Mariupol maternity hospital, as the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights expressly noted in a March 11 report. It also includes a strike that hit a Mariupol theater, clearly marked with the word 'дети' — Russian for 'children' — in huge letters visible from the sky. Putin's forces used these same tactics in Grozny, Chechnya, and Aleppo, Syria, where they intensified their bombardment of cities to break the will of the people. Their attempt to do so in Ukraine has again shocked the world and, as President Zelenskyy has soberly attested, 'bathed the people of Ukraine in blood and tears.' Every day that Russia's forces continue their brutal attacks, the number of innocent civilians killed and wounded, including women and children, climbs. As of March 22, officials in besieged Mariupol said that more than 2,400 civilians had been killed in that city alone. Not including the Mariupol devastation, the United Nations has officially confirmed more than 2,500 civilian casualties, including dead and wounded, and emphasizes the actual toll is likely higher."
Madeleine Albright, the first female secretary of state, has died. Albright, who served under Bill Clinton, was 84. NOTE: In 2018 Albright released a book called Fascism: A Warning, in which she called Donald Trump "the first anti-democratic president in modern US history".
Writing for the Guardian, Sam Levine offers the following analysis of a supreme court ruling that threw out Wisconsin's new state legislative maps: "The ruling is the latest of many in recent years in which the US supreme court has been hostile to voting rights. In an unsigned ruling, the court took issue with the decision to add an additional Black-majority state assembly district in the Milwaukee area, raising the total in the map to seven. The Wisconsin supreme court picked the plan, drawn by Tony Evers, the state's Democratic governor, earlier this month. The state court had taken over the redistricting process after Evers and the GOP-controlled state legislature failed to agree on a plan. The Wisconsin legislature is heavily distorted in favor of Republicans and it is one of the most gerrymandered bodies in the country. It is virtually impossible for Democrats to win a majority under the current lines. Last year, the state supreme court gave Republicans a boost when they announced they would pick a map that made the least change from the current ones. The court picked Evers' map earlier this month from a range of submitted proposals, saying it complied with its directive to make the least possible change. It gave Democrats one of the best possible outcomes, even though Republicans still would hold their majority. State Republicans asked the US supreme court to step in anyway."
After Donald Trump withdrew his endorsement of Republican congressman Mo Brooks, whom Trump felt was insufficiently toeing the line on calling the 2020 election a fraud, Mo Brooks responded: "President Trump asked me to rescind the 2020 elections, immediately remove Joe Biden from the White House, immediately put President Trump back in the White House, and hold a new special election for the presidency. As a lawyer, I've repeatedly advised President Trump that 6 January was the final election contest verdict and neither the US constitution nor the US Code [the laws of the United States] permit what President Trump asks. Period.”
March 22, 2022 - Today was day two of the nomination hearing for Ketanji Brown Jackson. Josh Hawley, a Republican senator, has suggested on Twitter and during the hearings that judge Jackson is soft on child sex predators, and that she has "opined there may be a type of 'less-serious child pornography offender'". The AP fact checked the claim and concluded "she opined no such thing. She asked questions about it" From the story: "Jackson was vice chair of the US Sentencing Commission when it held a hearing on sentencing guidelines in 2012. She told the hearing she was surprised at a Justice Department expert's testimony that, as she put it, some child-sex offenders may actually 'not be pedophiles' but perhaps 'loners' looking for like-minded company in child pornography circles. Being surprised by an assertion and wanting to know more are not the same as endorsing it. 'So I'm wondering whether you could say that there is a – that there could be a – less-serious child pornography offender who is engaging in the type of conduct in the group experience level?' she asked the expert witness. 'They're very sophisticated technologically, but they aren't necessarily that interested in the child pornography piece of it?' From those questions, Hawley extrapolated that Jackson had drawn conclusions, when she hadn't."
March 21, 2022 - Today is day one of confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson. the Washington Post has a fascinating opinion piece which reads in part: "Over the multiple days of her confirmation hearings for a seat on the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson will have to sit attentively for hours while the 22 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee speechify at her, testing both her endurance and her ability to refrain from rolling her eyes when the likes of Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) ascend the heights of inane demagoguery at her expense. Amid all that pontification, there's a particular phrase you should watch out for that will likely be repeated dozens of times: 'judicial philosophy.' The phrase should raise red flags because it's a signal that the person using it is about to pull a fast one, either to claim they themselves believe something they really don't, or to pretend that an attack they're making on Jackson is far more high-minded than it actually is. 'I want us to vet Judge Jackson's judicial philosophy,' said Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), one of the many potential presidential aspirants who sits on the Judiciary Committee. 'I don't want us to attack her as a human.' Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) claimed, 'Judicial philosophy is a key qualification for the Supreme Court.' While noting that there are plenty of 'smart lawyers' out there, McConnell argued that instead of applying laws neutrally, 'some would rather start with liberal outcomes and reason backwards.' There you have it: The idea that a judge might have a conservative outcome they want to achieve isn't even worthy of consideration; only liberals would be so crass. Conservatives, you see, have a judicial philosophy....Jackson herself was asked about this during her confirmation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; she replied, 'I do not have a judicial philosophy per se, other than to apply the same method of thorough analysis to every case, regardless of the parties.'"
Republicans have promised to be "fair" and "respectful" when Ketanji Brown Jackson testifies before the senate, but some have begun to speak out against her. Here are some notable examples:
"We're in the middle of a violent crime wave including soaring rates of homicides, and car jackings. Amid all this, the soft on crime brigade is squarely in Judge Jackson's corner." - Mitch McConnell, Republican Senate Minority Leader
"I've been researching the record of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, reading her opinions, articles, interviews & speeches. I've noticed an alarming pattern when it comes to Judge Jackson's treatment of sex offenders, especially those preying on children" - Josh Hawley, Republican Senator NOTE: According to NPR: "Fact checkers and some conservative legal experts have labeled his claims misleading and note that his comments are tied to conspiracy theories, including the far-right QAnon."
According to a new poll from Monmouth University, 55% of Americans say Jackson should be confirmed, while 21% say she should not. 24% are unsure.
Ketanji Brown Jackson has received a rating of "well qualified" to serve on the supreme court by the American Bar Association. NOTE: This is the highest possible ranking for a judge.
Ketanji Brown Jackson, the supreme court nominee to replace Justice Stephen Breyer, testified before the senate today. Here are some highlights:
- Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, assured Judge Jackson that the hearing would be "challenging for you, informative for the public and respectful by us".
- Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic Senator from Rhode Island, told the assembled group: "We are holding a hearing for an accomplished, experienced, highly-qualified nominee to the supreme court – who came to us not through a dark-money-funded turnstile, but through a fair and honest selection process. We've already seen dark money groups use dark money to run ads charging that dark money swayed this election. We are hearing that again today. Ironic when hundreds of millions of dollars in right wing dark money built the current court majority."
Writing for the Guardian, Ed Pilkington offers the following analysis of the case against Judge Jackson, according to Republicans: "Chuck Grassley, from Iowa, portrayed the nominee as a darling of progressive 'dark money' groups which he claimed were 'soft on crime' at a time when violent crime was sweeping big cities. Josh Hawley, of Missouri, doubled down on his incendiary accusation last week that in her seven years as a federal district court judge, Jackson showed leniency towards child pornography offenders. Hawley's claims in a Twitter stream were exposed as baseless and misleading by media fact checkers. In his opening statement on Monday, Hawley read out a list of seven cases heard by Jackson in her district court days which the senator claimed showed a disparity between relatively lenient sentences she meted out and both existing sentencing guidelines and prosecutors’ requests. Hawley said the cases 'troubled' him."
Writing for the Guardian, Joan E Greve offers the following analysis of today's confirmation hearing: "History was made Monday, as the first Black woman ever nominated to the US supreme court testified to the Senate judiciary committee. But before Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson could speak at her confirmation hearing, she first had to listen to a lot of white men. The Senate confirmation hearings for Jackson started Monday, giving the judge and every member of the judiciary committee the opportunity to deliver remarks about her nomination. In her opening statement, Jackson took the opportunity to thank her parents, husband and two daughters, all of whom sat behind her in the hearing room as she delivered her remarks. Jackson recounted how her parents, two former public school teachers, had to endure lawful segregation in the years before her birth in 1970. 'My parents taught me that unlike the many barriers that they had had to face growing up, my path was clearer,' Jackson said. 'So that if I worked hard and I believed in myself in America, I could do anything or be anything I wanted to be.' Jackson delivered her moving opening statement about four and a half hours after the hearing began. All 22 members of the judiciary committee spoke before Jackson, alternating between praising her resume and raising questions about her past rulings. Jackson sat quietly for the first few hours of the hearing, occasionally smiling or taking notes about cases mentioned by the senators on the panel. 'You're obviously a good listener because you're doing a lot of listening here today,' Democrat Richard Blumenthal told Jackson."
March 17, 2022 - While speaking before a St Patrick's Day lunch, Joe Biden called Vladimir Putin a "murderous dictator" and a "pure thug".
March 16, 2022 - While speaking with reporters, Joe Biden called Vladimir Putin a "war criminal".
During an interview with NBC's Lester Holt, Volodymyr Zelenski, Ukraine's president, said that a third world war may already be under way.
March 14, 2022 - According to Mother Jones, memos produced by the Russian department of information instruct media outlets in Russia to use more clips of Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has been accused in the US of echoing Russian propaganda about the invasion of Ukraine. From one of the memos: "It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sharply criticized the actions of the United States [and] Nato, their negative role in unleashing the conflict in Ukraine, [and] the defiantly provocative behavior from the leadership of the eastern countries and Nato towards the Russian Federation and towards President Putin, personally."
Ginni Thomas, a conservative activist, and wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, has reacted to accusations that she helped organize the rally that preceded the January 6th insurrection by saying: "I played no role with those who were planning and leading the January 6 events. There are stories in the press suggesting I paid or arranged for buses. I did not. There are other stories saying I mediated feuding factions of leaders for that day. I did not." NOTE: Thomas served on the board of a conservative group that distributed documents about challenging the 2020 election results. In 2021 Thomas signed a letter from the Council for National Policy's political arm condemning the House select committee tasked with investigating the January 6th insurrection. In January of 2022, the supreme court took on Donald Trump's request to block the committee from obtaining White House records which Joe Biden had ordered released, and which had been ordered to be released by two lower courts. Thomas's husband Clarence was the only justice on the supreme court who ruled in favor of Trump's request.
According to the New York Times, American Bridge, a Democratic super PAC, has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Committee ((FEC), which accuses the Trump campaign of violating campaign finance laws by using campaign funds without formally announcing Trump's 2024 presidential run. NOTE: Federal rules state that those who raise or spend more than $5,000 in support of a presidential campaign must register with the FEC. Though Trump has repeatedly teased a 2024 bid, he has not formally filed for re-election - such a filing would restrict how he raises and spends his campaign money, including his existing war chest.
Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who tried but failed to get on the 2020 Democratic presidential ticket, has been repeating Russian misinformation that the US is funding biolabs in Ukraine that are "conducting research on dangerous pathogens". Notable reactions to Gabbard's claims:
"traitorous" - Adam Kinzinger
"Tulsi Gabbard is parroting false Russian propaganda. Her treasonous lies may well cost lives." - Mitt Romney
Tulsi Gabbard responded on twitter to Mitt Romney saying: "So, Senator Romney, you have a choice: out of pride, continue to deny the truth or admit you are wrong, apologize, and resign. Aloha. And remember that without the truth, we can be neither safe nor free."
March 11, 2022 - Responding to intelligence that Russia may be preparing to use chemical weapons in Ukraine, Joe Biden stated that Russia would "pay a severe price" if it used chemical weapons against Ukraine.
Ralph Joseph Celentano III was arrested by the FBI after authorities identified him through a photo posted to the Jenny Albert Sea Turtle Foundation Facebook page. Authorities had been looking for Celentano after he was filmed pushing a police officer over a ledge at the Capitol on January 6th.
March 10, 2022 - The US is joining in on calls for an international war crimes investigation into Russia's actions in Ukraine. NOTE: The International Criminal Court (ICC) announced last week that it is launching a war crimes investigation following a referral from 39 countries.
The Republican-controlled House in Florida passed a bill that overhauls Florida's voting laws, including the creation of a police force that will be dedicated to investigating election crimes. Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, has called for the creation of a police unit for this purpose after claiming that voter fraud is rampant and needs to be severely punished. NOTE: Neither DeSantis, nor any other Florida official has provided any evidence to back the claim of rampant voter fraud. Notable responses to the new "election crimes police force":
"It is very clearly an attempt to satiate a certain sector of the base that has been bombarded with misinformation about the 2020 Election and the Big Lie" - Brad Ashwell, Florida State Director of All Voting is Local
"Florida is going full steam ahead with bills that deter democracy" - Bernice King
The death of Jeffrey Smith, a DC Metro Police Officer who committed suicide days after being assaulted during the January 6th insurrection, has been ruled a line-of-duty death by the DC Police and Firefighters' Retirement Relief Board.
Writing for the Guardian, Hugo Lowell offers the following analysis of what some Trump allies knew about the legality of what they were doing in the lead-up to January 6th: "Interrupting the certification of Joe Biden's election win on January 6 last year as part of the scheme to return Donald Trump to office was known to be unlawful by at least one of the former president's lawyers, according to an email exchange about the potential conspiracy. The former Trump lawyer John Eastman – who helped coordinate the scheme from the Trump 'war room' at the Willard hotel in Washington – conceded in an email to counsel for then vice-president Mike Pence, Greg Jacob, that the plan was a violation of the Electoral Count Act. But Eastman then urged Pence to move ahead with the scheme anyway, pressuring the former vice-president's counsel to consider supporting the effort on the basis that it was only a 'minor violation' of the statute that governed the certification procedure. The admission that the scheme was unlawful undercuts arguments by Eastman and the Willard war room team that they believed there was no wrongdoing in seeking to have Pence delay the certification past January 6 – one of the strategies they sought to return Trump to power. It additionally raises the prospect that the other members of the Willard war room – including Trump's former attorney Rudy Giuliani and Trump's former strategist Steve Bannon – were also aware that the scheme to delay or stop the certification was unlawful from the start."
According to a new report from the Brennan Center for Justice, election workers are facing increased hardship following Donald Trump's misleading claims of election fraud in the 2020 election. According to the report, 1 in 6 election officials say they have experienced threats because of their jobs, with 77% saying those threats have increased in recent years. 1 in 3 say they know someone who has quit because they fear for their safety. 2 in 3 say they are concerned about threats, harassment and intimidation in the long run.
Madison Cawthorn, a North Carolina Republican congressman, has been charged with driving with a revoked license, for the second time. NOTE: Cawthorn is also facing two speeding citations in two different counties.
The AP has the following update from the trial of 4 men who were charged with plotting to kidnap the governor of Michigan: "Prosecutors in the trial of four men charged with plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Thursday played covertly recorded audio for jurors in which one of the men specifically discusses a plan to abduct the Democrat. In the recording, made by a government informant during a meeting in mid-July 2020 in Wisconsin, Barry Croft Jr. describes the possibility of using explosives to 'rain down' fire on law enforcement 'with a team standing by' to abduct Whitmer. He adds without providing details that it should be 'a quick precise grab' of the governor. In another recording made by the same informant, jurors heard the sound of an explosives test Croft was conducting. He's later heard speaking almost giddily about the damage he could cause, saying it would be 'devastating.' Prosecutors say the men — Croft, Adam Fox, Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta — planned to snatch Whitmer from her Michigan vacation home because they were angry about pandemic restrictions she imposed. They also planned to blow up a nearby bridge to slow the police response. The audio played in the federal courtroom in Grand Rapids, Michigan, marked the first time the jury heard a defendant talking specifically about abducting Whitmer. In other recordings played, Croft and Fox mentioned Whitmer and spoke excitedly about taking action that would terrorize people. 'I'm gonna hit soon,' Croft is heard saying during what prosecutors say was a crucial June 6, 2020, meeting of antigovernment activists in Ohio. 'I'm going to terrorize people. The right people. The people who have been terrorizing my people.'"
Writing for the Guardian, Maya Yang offers the following analysis of the undercounted in the 2020 US census: "The 2020 US census undercounted America's Latino population at more than three times the rate of the 2010 census, according to a report released on Thursday by the US Census Bureau. The census also undercounted the nation's Black and Native American residents, while overcounting non-Hispanic white people and Asian Americans. The census helps guide the annual federal distribution of $1.5tn for public services including education, healthcare and transportation. Undercounting communities results in reduced political representation on local, state and federal level. According to the report, Latinos had a net undercount of nearly 5%. The Black population had a net undercount of 3.3%, a slight increase from a 2.1% shortfall a decade ago. American Indian and Alaska Natives living on reservations had a net undercount of 5.6%, up from 4.9% in the last census. The non-Latino white population had a net overcount in the 2020 census of 1.6% while Asians had a net overcount of 2.6%. In comparison, the non-Latino white population had a net overcount of 0.8% in 2010 while Asians had a net undercount of 0.08% that year. Overall, the 2020 census overlooked 0.24% of the total US population. In 2010, the census missed 0.01% of the national population."
Michael Flynn, the disgraced former national security advisor to Donald Trump, who urged Trump to declare martial law and utilize the military to conduct the 2020 election, appeared virtually before the January 6th committee. Flynn invoked his Fifth Amendment rights, and declined to answer any questions.
March 9, 2022 - Stephanie Grisham, the former White House press secretary under Donald Trump, was interviewed on ABC's The View. During the interview, Grisham stated the following: "I think [Trump] feared [Putin]. I think he was afraid of him. I think that the man intimidated him. Because Putin is a scary man, just frankly, I think he was afraid of him. I also think he admired him greatly. I think he wanted to be able to kill whoever spoke out against him. So I think it was a lot of that. In my experience with him, he loved the dictators, he loved the people who could kill anyone, including the press."
Opening statements were made in the trial of Adam Fox, Brandon Caserta, Barry Croft Jr and Daniel Harris, who are charged with conspiracy to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic governor of Michigan. According to prosecutors in the case, the men planned to break into Whitmer's home, hog-tie her and take her away at gunpoint. According to Jonathan Roth, a US Attorney: "To accomplish that, they would shoot, blow up and kill anybody who got in their way, in their own words, creating a war zone here in Michigan".
Today the EPA reversed a Trump Administration attempt to stop California from setting stricter motor vehicle pollution standards.
Amit Mehta, a federal judge in New York, has dismissed civil claims against Republican Alabama congressman Mo Brooks, saying his speech that preceded the Capitol insurrection was constitutionally protected free speech.
According to the Colorado Sun, Tina Peters, a Republican clerk in Mesa county, Colorado, has been indicted on felony charges for allegedly helping facilitate a breach of her county's voting equipment last May. According to the Sun, Peters is accused of giving access to secure areas of her office to a non-county employee when voting machine equipment from Dominion was being updated. Secure information was subsequently leaked online, which led to the investigation of Peters. NOTE: Peters, who is currently running for Colorado secretary of state, and who embraces conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, faces a mix of 10 felony and misdemeanor charges, including attempting to influence a public servant, criminal impersonation, and first degree official misconduct. NOTE: Peters appeared at a symposium hosted by MY Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, a major source of 2020 election conspiracy theories. NOTE: Peter's case is one of the first in which an election official has faced criminal charges for embracing conspiracies about the 2020 election.
March 8, 2022 - The US Senate unanimously passed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, which makes lynching a federal hate crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison. The next stop is Joe Biden's desk, where Biden is expected to sign the bill. NOTE: 200 previous attempts have been made to outlaw lynching at the federal level. The last attempt failed because of efforts by Republican senator Rand Paul. The current measure was opposed by Thomas Massie, Chip Roy and Andrew Clyde. All three are House Republicans.
Joe Biden announced a ban on imports of Russian oil as a blow to "Putin's war machine".
Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the far-right group known as the Proud Boys, has been charged with conspiracy over the attack on the US Capitol.
The Russian parliament passed a law which prevents independent critical coverage of the invasion of Ukraine. Under the new law, journalists face up to 15 years in prison if the government decides their reporting is "fake news". NOTE: The New York Times, Bloomberg, the BBC and CNN have pulled their journalists out of Russia.
Dr Joseph Ladapo, the attorney general of Florida, has recommended that "healthy children" not get the Covid-19 vaccination. Health experts have denounced the recommendation as "irresponsible", "reckless" and "dangerous". NOTE: The recommendation follows two recent Covid-19 surges in Florida in which pediatric hospitalizations were believed to be higher due to low vaccination rates among children.
A bill that critics have labelled the "Don't Say Gay" bill has been passed by the state legislature in Florida. The bill, which forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, now goes to the desk of Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who is expected to sign the bill into law. Notable reactions to the bill:
"What we really need to be doing is teaching tolerance, caring, loving, anti-discrimination, anti-bigotry. Tell me how this bill does that. Tell me how this bill is helping us create kind, giving, tolerate adults. I don’t see it. I see it as exactly the opposite." - Tina Polsky, Democratic Florida State Senator
"We have failed as a legislature if hundreds of kids stand outside screaming for their rights and you can't explain to fifth-graders and sixth-graders and eighth-graders simple definitions of your bill. You’ve failed." - Jason Pizzo, Democratic Florida State Senator
Guy Reffitt, a Texas resident and member of the far-right group Three Percenters, who participated in the Capitol insurrection, has been convicted on five counts in the first trial related to January 6th. The charges against Reffitt included bringing a gun onto Capitol grounds, and obstructing an official proceeding. During the trial, jurors were shown video of Reffitt urging other rioters to drag House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other lawmakers out of the Capitol building while saying "I just want to see Pelosi's head hitting every stair on the way out." NOTE: Reffitt's son testified against him.
March 7, 2022 - Donald Trump spoke to about 250 of the Republican party's top donors at the Four Seasons Hotel, here are some highlights:
- Trump called Nato a "paper tiger"
- Trump claimed that the US military won "skirmishes" against Russian troops while he was president.
- Trump joked that the US should put the Chinese flag on F-22 jets and "bomb the shit out of Russia" in retribution for its invasion of Ukraine "and then we say, 'China did it, we didn't do it, China did it,' and then they start fighting each other and we sit back and watch."
- Trump claimed that he was tougher on Vladimir Putin than any other US leader.
- Trump claimed that Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if he was still in power.
Writing for the Guardian, Martin Pengelly offers the following analysis of a story in the New Yorker about Mark Meadows. It seems that the former White House chief of staff for Donald Trump, who played a key role in supporting and advancing Trump's lies about widespread voter fraud, may have committed voter fraud himself: "According to the New Yorker, Meadows registered to vote at a property in North Carolina at which he appears never to have lived. Meadows resigned from the US House and became Trump's fourth and last chief of staff in March 2020. He registered to vote in September, the New Yorker said. Asked for the address 'where you physically live', the magazine said, Meadows 'wrote down the address of a 14ft-by-62ft mobile home in Scaly Mountain', North Carolina, and “listed his move-in date for this address as the following day, 20 September'. 'Meadows does not own this property and never has,' the New Yorker said. 'It is not clear that he has ever spent a single night there.' Meadows did not comment to the magazine. The New Yorker spoke to the home's former and current owners and neighbors and said that while members of Meadows' family may have spent time in the property, it was not clear he ever slept there. The current owner said: 'I've made a lot of improvements. But when I got it, it was not the kind of place you'd think the chief of staff of the president would be staying.'"
Guy Reffitt, a Texan who participated in the Capitol insurrection, is the focus of the first jury trial for someone charged in the January 6th attack on the Capitol. That trial is expected to end today. Reffitt has been charged with carrying a semi-automatic handgun while on Capitol grounds and obstructing justice by threatening his children with harm if they reported him to authorities. NOTE: About 200 defendants have pleaded guilty to charges relating to the January 6 attack.
Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican senator from Iowa, had the following to say about an expedited confirmation process for Ketanji Brown Jackson: "Vetting a nominee for a lifetime appointment to the high court is serious business ... The American people rightly expect a full and thorough vetting process. We should not sacrifice the integrity of our constitutional advice and consent responsibility to meet an arbitrary timeline. The court's next term doesn't begin until October, so there's absolutely no need to rush." NOTE: Grassley, along with the rest of the Republicans in the senate, with the exception of senator Susan Collins, rushed supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett through the confirmation process in 30 days. According to the Supreme Court Historical Society, the average timeframe for a nominee to go from nomination to confirmation is 68 days.
During White House press secretary Jen Psaki's daily news briefing, the following exchange took place between Psaki and Fox News reporter Peter Doocy:
DOOCY: "Would president Biden rescind his executive order that halts new oil and natural gas leases on public lands?"
PSAKI: "Well, 90% of them happen on private lands, as I'm sure you know, and there are 9,000 unused approved drilling permits. So I would suggest that you ask the oil companies why they are not using those if there is a desire to drill more."
[back and forth]
DOOCY: "Gas prices are approaching an all-time high per gallon. How high would they have to get before President Biden would have to say, 'I'm going to set aside my ambitious climate goals and just increase domestic oil production, get the producers to drill more here, and we can address the fossil fuel future later?'"
PSAKI: "The US produced more oil this year than in President Trump's first year. Next year, according to the department of energy, we will produce more oil than ever before. Those are the facts in terms of oil production. And again, there are 9,000 unused approved permits to drill on shore. I think you're misidentifying what the actual issue is. If we're looking to the future and what we can do to prevent this from being a challenge in future crises, the best thing we can do is to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and foreign oil because that will help us have a reliable source of energy so we are not worried about gas prices going up because of the whims of a foreign dictator."
March 5, 2022 - During a speech to some of the Republican party's top donors, Mike Pence stated: "There is no room in this party for apologists for Putin. There is only room for champions of freedom." NOTE: Trump has recently praised Putin as "smart" and "very savvy".
March 4, 2022 - According to the Washington Post, 20 hours of footage filmed for a documentary was uncovered, which featured Roger Stone, a close ally to Donald Trump, and self-described "dirty trickster". According to the Post, the footage includes the following:
- Following the failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election, Stone calls Trump a "disgrace" who would go to prison and claimed that Trump "betrayed everybody".
- Stone meeting and corresponding with members of a far-right militia since indicted for seditious conspiracy over the Capitol riot.
- Stone discussing a plan in which Trump would issue a blanket pardon to co-conspirators in the attempt to overturn the election, Senator Ted Cruz and congressman Jim Jordan among them.
- Stone saying Jared Kushner should be "punished" in a way that would leave him "braindead".
- Stone suggests that violence against protesters for racial justice would be possible with the election out of the way saying "Once there's no more election, there's no reason why we can't mix it up. These people are going to get what they've been asking for."
Tucker Carlson, a far-right host of one of Fox News opinion shows, ridiculed American solidarity with Ukraine, calling the country "a tyranny" led by "the people who paid off Joe Biden's family".
In a new book by Bill Barr, the attorney general under Donald Trump, Barr states that Donald Trump was unfit to be president, and still will be if he chooses to run again. Naturally, this prompted a response from the disgraced former president, who said: Barr "wouldn't know voter fraud if it was staring him in the face – and it was. The fact is, he was weak, ineffective, and totally scared of being impeached, which the Democrats were constantly threatening to do. They 'broke' him. He should have acted much faster on the Mueller Report, instead of allowing the fake Russia, Russia, Russia, Hoax to linger for so long, but it was the Election Fraud and Irregularities that he refused to act on because he wanted to save his own hide – and he did. He never got impeached, contempt charges never went forward, and the Democrats were very happy with him – but I wasn't."
March 3, 2022 - According to the AP, the House select committee investigating the January 6th insurrection is for the first time saying publicly that Trump and his associates may have committed federal crimes in their attempts to overturn Trump's loss in the 2020 election. In a filing, the committee stated: "The Select Committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States." From the story: "The brief filed Wednesday was an effort to knock down Eastman's attorney-client privilege claims. In doing so, the committee argued there is a legal exception allowing the disclosure of communications regarding ongoing or future crimes. 'The Select Committee is not conducting a criminal investigation,' Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee's Democratic chairman, said in a statement. 'But, as the judge noted at a previous hearing, Dr. Eastman's privilege claims raise the question whether the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege applies in this situation.' The filing also provides new details from the committee's interviews with several top Trump aides and members of former Vice President Mike Pence's team, including chief of staff Marc Short and chief counsel Greg Jacob. The committee said it has evidence that Trump sought to obstruct an official proceeding in this case, the certification of the election results by trying to strong-arm Pence to delay the proceedings so there would be additional time to 'manipulate' the results. 'The evidence supports an inference that President Trump and members of his campaign knew he had not won enough legitimate state electoral votes to be declared the winner of the 2020 Presidential election during the January 6 Joint Session of Congress, but the President nevertheless sought to use the Vice President to manipulate the results in his favor,' the filing states. In a Jan. 6, 2021, email exchange between Eastman and Jacob revealed by the committee, Eastman pushed for Pence to intervene in his ceremonial role and halt the certification of the electoral votes, a step Pence had no power to take. Jacob replied: 'I respect your heart here. I share your concerns about what Democrats will do once in power. I want election integrity fixed. But I have run down every legal trail placed before me to its conclusion, and I respectfully conclude that as a legal framework, it is a results-oriented position that you would never support if attempted by the opposition, and essentially entirely made up.' He added, 'And thanks to your bulls-, we are now under siege.'"
Writing for the Guardian, Hugo Lowell offers the following analysis of the legal issues Trump faces over his 2020 election activities: "The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol believes Donald Trump violated multiple federal laws to overturn the 2020 election, including obstructing Congress and defrauding the United States. The revelations came as part of a filing that intended to force John Eastman to turn over thousands of emails and records, arguing that Trump's participation in potential crimes destroyed his argument that the material is protection by attorney-client privilege. House counsel Douglas Letter said in the 61-page filing that the select committee had a basis for concluding Trump violated the law by obstructing or attempting to obstruct an official proceeding and defrauded the United States by interfering with lawful government functions. The former president knew he had not won enough electoral college votes to win the 2020 election, yet nevertheless sought then vice-president Mike Pence to manipulate the results in his favor, the filing said about Trump's obstruction. Had the effort to pressure Pence into returning Trump to power succeeded, the certification of Joe Biden's win would have been impeded. 'There is no genuine question that the president and plaintiff attempted to accomplish this specific illegal result,' the filing said. The select committee said in the court submission that it believed Trump defrauded the United States by interfering in the certification process, disseminating false information about election fraud, and pressuring state officials to alter state election results. House investigators also said there was evidence to suggest that the conspiracy to defraud extended to the Capitol attack, arguing it was plausible to argue Trump entered a conspiracy with the rioters to disrupt Biden's certification on 6 January. The Guardian first broke the news earlier this year that the select committee was investigating whether Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy that connected the 'political elements' of his scheme to return himself to office with the violence perpetrated by far-right militias. Letter also said in the filing that the select committee believed Trump and his associates appeared to have violated the law by engaging in common law fraud as they sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The select committee's findings came as part of a 16-part court submission to persuade a federal judge to force Eastman, a central figure in Trump's scheme to return himself to office, to at least allow the panel to confidentially review his records. Eastman helped lead a team of lawyers at a Trump 'war room' at the Willard hotel in Washington DC, which Trump called from the White House the night before the Capitol attack to discuss ways to stop Biden's certification from taking place, the Guardian has reported. He has so far turned over about 8,000 pages of emails and documents from 4-7 January to the panel, but has withheld an additional 11,000 documents on the basis that they are protected by attorney-client privilege or constitute confidential attorney work product. The panel also said in the filing that Eastman's attorney-client privilege claims were undercut by his inability to show he had been formally retained as Trump's lawyer. An 'engagement letter' that Eastman produced last week was unsigned. Through Letter's submission, the select committee added Eastman could not claim to assert attorney-client privilege over emails he sent on his Chapman university email server, and those messages were not protected by the attorney work product protection. House investigators said the evidence against Trump – and Eastman's role in counselling Trump to engage in potentially criminal activity – meant that Eastman's claims of attorney-client privilege were destroyed by the so-called 'crime-fraud exception', among other arguments. 'The attorney-client privilege does not shield participants in a crime from an investigation into a crime,' select committee member Jamie Raskin told the Guardian. 'If it did, then all you would have to do to rob a bank is bring a lawyer with you and be asking for advice.' The select committee said that in the first instance, it simply wanted to examine Eastman's records 'in camera' – a process that takes place when a reasonable person would agree a review of the materials may help establish whether the crime-fraud exception applies."
According to the Washington Post, smugglers have breached Trump's US-Mexico border wall more than 3,000 times using common power tools found at hardware stores. Luis Miranda, a spokesperson for Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), "No structure is impenetrable, so we will continue to work to focus resources on modern, effective border management measures to improve safety and security".
The White House announced new sanctions the US will impose on more than 50 Russian oligarchs, saying "The United States, in coordination with allies and partners, is targeting additional Russian elites and family members who continue supporting President Putin despite his brutal invasion of Ukraine." Some individuals mentioned are Alisher Usmanov, a metals magnate with ties to Britain's Everton soccer club, and Dmitry Peskov, whom the White House referred to "Putin's spokesman" and a "top purveyor of Putin's propaganda". Others mentioned are Nikolai Tokarev and his two luxury real estate companies, Boris Rotenber, Arkady Rotenberg, Sergei Chemezo, Yevgeniy Prigozhin and his three companies, and members of their families. Also on Igor Shuvalov and his five companies, his wife Olga, his son Evgeny and his company and jet, and his daughter Maria and her company.
The American version of RT, the Russia-controlled TV network, has been banned in Europe, and dropped by platforms around the world.
According to Reuters, the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection has subpoenaed Kimberly Guilfoyle. From the story: "Guilfoyle, who worked on the elder Trump's presidential campaign, abruptly ended an interview with the select committee on February 25, criticizing House of Representatives members who were present. Her attorney issued a statement afterward saying Guilfoyle had agreed to meet only with attorneys for the Democratic-led House committee, not members of Congress. As a result, the committee said it would issue a subpoena to compel Guilfoyle's cooperation. The panel asked Guilfoyle to appear for a deposition on March 15. Guilfoyle met with (former President) Donald Trump inside the White House, spoke at the rally that took place before the riot on January 6th, and apparently played a key role organizing and raising funds for that event,' Representative Bennie Thompson, committee chairman, said in a statement. Her attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Select Committee is trying to establish the actions of Trump and associates before and during the assault on the Capitol by thousands of his supporters. The mobs attacked police, vandalized the building and sent members of Congress and then-Vice President Mike Pence running for their lives as they gathered to certify Democrat Joe Biden's presidential election victory over Trump. The Select Committee has so far interviewed more than 560 witnesses and issued more than 80 subpoenas as it probes the causes of the attack and the role played by Trump, who continues to push false claims that his election defeat by Biden was the result of fraud. Earlier on Thursday, the panel interviewed Judd Deere, a former White House spokesman who is now a Republican congressional aide."
March 2, 2022 - According to the Guardian, the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection asked former Trump lawyer John Eastman to turn over records containing specific keywords. From the story: "The search terms list – which the select committee transmitted to Eastman – provides a glimpse of what House investigators suspect might be contained among the thousands of emails and documents that Eastman is being forced to review to comply with his subpoena. But the keywords also reveal the current investigative focus of the panel and the role Eastman played as one of the leading members of the Trump 'war room' at the Willard hotel in Washington that coordinated Trump's plan to return himself to office on 6 January 2021. The list is intended to act as a dragnet to catch his records from 4 to 7 January about efforts to overturn the 2020 election results between Eastman and individuals in different 'centres of gravity', according to a source with direct knowledge of the investigation. One focus for the select committee is Eastman's records concerning Donald Trump, former vice-president Mike Pence and top Trump officials, where keywords include items as simple as 'Trump', or 'EOP', the government acronym for the executive office of the president. The select committee is examining Eastman's records about Republican members of Congress including Andy Biggs, Mo Brooks, Ted Cruz, Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar, Josh Hawley, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Jim Jordan, Cynthia Lummis, Roger Marshall, Doug Mastriano, Scott Perry and Tommy Tuberville. Another priority for the panel is messages between Eastman and those he communicated with across the federal government. The list includes the domains 'usdoj.gov' and 'justice.gov' for the justice department, 'senate.gov' for the Senate, and 'house.gov' for the House. The select committee's addition of 'congressnc@gmail.com' – a sometime email address used by Meadows, who was a House Republican representing North Carolina before he became Trump's final chief of staff – indicates it also wants messages not in official email records."
Merrick Garland, the attorney general, announced the creation of a new task force that is being launched by the Department of Justice called KleptoCapture. The purpose of the task force: enforce US sanctions against Russia.
Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, walked on stage to speak at the University of South Florida where high school students were lined up at the back of the stage behind the podium, all wearing masks. DeSantis walked back to the students and said "You do not have to wear those masks. Please take them off. Honestly, it's not going to do anything. We've got to stop with this Covid theater. So if you wanna wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous." During his speech, DeSantis said the following: "A lot of other places around the world, they just fold the minute there's any type of adversity. I mean can you imagine if he [Vladimir Putin] went into France? Would they do anything to put up a fight? Probably not." NOTE: Florida has been one of the most lenient states on Covid restrictions. Covid has killed more than 70,000 people in the state of Florida, which has one of the highest death rates in the country. DeSantis regularly polls second among the group of people that Republicans would like to see run for president, right behind Donald Trump.
March 1, 2022 - Joe Biden gave his state of the union address. Here are some highlights
- Biden addressed the Russian invasion of Ukraine, calling it "premeditated and unprovoked". Biden assured the nation that the US would not send troops to fight in Ukraine, but would "defend every inch of territory of Nato countries with the full force of our collective power".
- Biden took a swipe at the Trump administration's "tax cuts for the rich" which resulted in loud boos from Republicans.
- Biden spoke about security at the US-Mexico border, and was interrupted by extremists Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert yelling "Build the wall!". A Democrat yelled at the extremists to "Sit down".
- Biden spoke of flag-draped coffins returning from Afghanistan, and was interrupted by Lauren Boebert yelling "You put them in 13 of them!" Democrats booed loudly in response.
February 28, 2022 - The Russian Rouble dropped more than 40% after trading opened today due to unprecedented international sanctions against the country's financial system.
Lauren Boebert, a Republican congresswoman, was condemned and ridiculed for comparing the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the clearing of a trucker's protest in Ottowa saying: "We also have neighbors to the north who need freedom and who need to be liberated."
Anthony Housefather, a member of the Canadian parliament, responded to Boebert's comments, which he called "reckless" and "dangerous" saying "while it' good that you are not following the Trump line and are standing with Ukraine instead of Putin, it is sad to hear you compare free and democratic Canada to the invasion of Ukraine. If you would like to learn about Canada please reach out."
According to the Guardian, fencing has been reinstalled around the US Capitol in response to concerns about demonstrations in Washington in connection to the State of the Union tomorrow night.
Wendy Rogers, a Republican state senator in Arizona, told members of the American First Political Action Conference (AFPAC), a white nationalist event, that she fantasizes about building gallows in which to hang her enemies. Rogers told the audience, whom she called "patriots": "we need to build more gallows" with which to "make an example of ... traitors who have betrayed our country". Also speaking at the conference, which was organized by activist Nick Fuentes, a far-right activist and Nazi sympathizer, was congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, and Paul Gosar of Arizona. Rogers complained at the conference that "they de-platform and debunk people like Nick Fuentes and even president Trump. This is like the USSR, but worse." NOTE: Doug Ducey, the Republican governor of Arizona, has been criticized for seeking support from Wendy Rogers.
Clay Higgins, a Republican congressman from Louisiana, sent the following in a tweet: "You millennial leftists who never lived one day under nuclear threat can now reflect upon your woke sky. You made quite a non-binary fuss to save the world from intercontinental ballistic tweets." Notable responses to the tweet:
"We're not entirely sure what this tweet is supposed to mean, and we're literally the dictionary." - dictionary.com
"I don't understand what this means" - Molly Jong-Fast, Writer
"Huh?" - John Sipher, Former CIA Agent
"Not a single millennial – myself included – understands what this means" - Hugo Lowell, Writer
According to the Guardian, the US is moving to expel 12 members of Russia's mission to the United Nations for alleged "espionage activities".
According to the AP, lawyers for Donald Trump appealed a judge's decision that Trump and his two eldest children answer questions under oath in New York state's civil investigation into his business practices. From the story: "In an eight-page ruling, Engoron set a March 10 deadline for Trump and his children, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr., to sit for depositions. Lawyers for the Trumps asked the appellate court for a stay to spare them from questioning while it considers the matter. The court did not set a date for arguments. It typically issues decisions several months after that, but could be inclined to rule on an expedited basis given the urgency of New York Attorney General Letitia James' investigation and the Trumps' desire to swiftly overturn Engoron's ruling. A message seeking comment was left with James' office. In a statement on Friday, as lawyers for the Trumps were preparing their appeal, the attorney general signaled she was ready for a long fight to get them to testify. 'Donald J. Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., and Ivanka Trump were ordered by the court to comply with our lawful investigation into Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization's financial dealings,' James said in the statement. 'While they have the right to seek a delay, they cannot deter us from following the facts and the law wherever they may lead. Make no mistake: My office will continue to pursue this case without fear or favor because no one is above the law.' Trump did not immediately comment on the appeal. In a statement following Engoron's decision, he called the ruling 'a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in history.' James, a Democrat, has said her investigation has uncovered evidence Trump's company, the Trump Organization, used 'fraudulent or misleading' valuations of assets like golf courses and skyscrapers to get loans and tax benefits. At a hearing prior to Engoron's decision, Trump's lawyers argued that having him sit for a civil deposition is an improper attempt to get around a state law barring prosecutors from calling someone to testify before a criminal grand jury without giving them immunity. A lawyer for the attorney general's office told Engoron that it wasn't unusual to have civil and criminal investigations proceeding at the same time, and Engoron rejected a request from lawyers for the Trumps to pause the civil probe until the criminal matter is over. Last summer, spurred by evidence uncovered in James' civil investigation, the Manhattan district attorney's office charged Weisselberg and the Trump Organization with tax fraud, alleging he collected more than $1.7 million in off-the-books compensation. Weisselberg and the company have pleaded not guilty. The future of the criminal probe was thrown into question last week when the two prosecutors leading it abruptly quit."
February 26, 2022 - While speaking at CPAC, Trump told the crowd: "The problem is not that Putin is smart, which of course he's smart, but the real problem is that our leaders are dumb".
February 25, 2022 - Joe Biden announced that he will be nominating Ketanji Brown Jackson as the replacement for Justice Stephen Breyer on the supreme court, calling her "one of the nation's brightest legal minds." Jackson clerked for Breyer, and is currently on the DC federal appellate court. NOTE: Jackson is the first Black woman to be nominated to serve on the US supreme court.
Notable responses to Biden's supreme court nominee announcement:
- "If media reports are accurate, and Judge Jackson has been chosen as the Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice Breyer, it means the radical left has won President Biden over yet again. The attacks by the left on Judge Childs from South Carolina apparently worked." - Republican Senator Lindsey Graham NOTE: Graham supported Ketanji Brown Jackson's nomination to the DC Circuit Court just last year.
- "President Biden's announcement just days after an unprovoked full scale invasion by Russia is extremely inappropriate. Once again, Biden is putting the demands of the radical progressive left ahead of what is best for our nation." - Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn
Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state under Donald Trump, criticized Putin at a recent address to CPAC saying: "We've seen a Russian dictator now terrorize the Ukrainian people because America didn't demonstrate the resolve that we did for the four years prior." NOTE: In recent interviews Pompeo has referred to Putin as "talented", "savvy" and a "capable statesman", remarks that were rebroadcast on Russian television.
Adam Johnson, a Capitol insurrectionist who was famously photographed carrying Nancy Pelosi's lectern during the riot, was sentenced to 75 days in prison, and fined $5,000 for his participation in the riot. Judge Reggie B Walton, the judge who sentenced Johnson, stated: "We're on a dangerous slide in America" and said that what we saw on January 6th is something we would expect to see in "banana republics".
February 24, 2022 - In footage captured at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump can be heard saying: "He's taking over a country for $2 worth of sanctions. I'd say that's pretty smart".
As many Republicans have come out with harsh criticisms for Joe Biden regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine, like Republican congressman Andy Barr who called the invasion "inevitable" because "The Biden Administration's weak and feckless foreign policy not only failed to deter this aggression, it invited this outcome" and Republican congressman Dan Meuser, who claimed "Biden allowed Putin to cross his red line without severe consequences. This weak foreign policy emboldened Putin to act aggressively". Responding to the criticism, Susan Glasser, a New Yorker writer tweeted: "Lord, the gaslighting by Republicans this morning with hawkish BS after literally enabling a pro-Putin President for four years and refusing to stop him even when he literally blackmailed Ukraine with millions in security aid to help Ukraine fight Russia."
Adam Schiff, the House intelligence committee chairman, commented on the US sanctions against Russia saying: "I think the package of sanctions that the president announced is the most severe we've ever levied against Russia and many times more devastating than anything that was implemented after their last invasion in 2014. Nevertheless, I favor going further. I favor expelling them from Swift. I favor imposing sanctions directly on Vladimir Putin. This is an unprecedent situation, and even though we don't generally sanction heads of state, on occasion we do, and I think it's merited here."
February 23, 2022 - Notable responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Joe Biden's response to it:
- "This is a critical moment in history ... and President Biden is NOT seizing the moment ... The sanctions outlined are woefully inadequate to deter Putin's efforts to redraw the European map and dismember a neighboring democracy." - Lindsey Graham, Republican Senator
- "Very shrewd, very capable. I have enormous respect for [Putin]" - Mike Pompeo, Former Secretary of State under Donald Trump
- "I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, 'This is genius.' Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine, of Ukraine, Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that's wonderful. So, Putin is now saying, 'It's independent,' a large section of Ukraine. I said, 'How smart is that?' And he's gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. ... That’s the strongest peace force I've ever seen. There were more army tanks than I've ever seen. They're gonna keep peace all right. No, but think of it. Here's a guy who's very savvy ... I know him very well. Very, very well. By the way, this never would have happened with us. Had I been in office, not even thinkable. This would never have happened. But here's a guy that says, you know, 'I'm gonna declare a big portion of Ukraine independent,' he used the word 'independent,' “and we're gonna go out and we're gonna go in and we're gonna help keep peace.' You gotta say that's pretty savvy. And you know what the response was from Biden? There was no response. They didn't have one for that. No, it's very sad. Very sad." - Donald Trump, Leader of the Republican Party
In a New York Times op-ed, Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state under Bill Clinton, warned that a full-scale invasion of Ukraine would be "a historic error" by Vladimir Putin.
Joe Biden confirmed that his administration will impose sanctions on the company overseeing construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas line saying: "Yesterday, after further close consultations between our two governments, Germany announced that it would halt certification of the pipeline. Today, I have directed my administration to impose sanctions on Nord Stream 2 AG and its corporate officers. These steps are another piece of our initial tranche of sanctions in response to Russia's actions in Ukraine. As I have made clear, we will not hesitate to take further steps if Russia continues to escalate."
Liz Cheney responded to comments in which Donald Trump praised Vladimir Putin's "genius" saying: "Former President Trump's adulation of Putin today – including calling him a 'genius' – aids our enemies. Trump's interests don't seem to align with the interests of the United States of America."
February 22, 2022 - Responding to the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, Germany stopped the certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline that runs between Russia and Germany.
The supreme court has rejected a request by Donald Trump to take on his appeal of a lower-court ruling that allows the House select committee to access his White House records.
According to the AP, lawmakers in Russia have given Vladimir Putin the green light to use force outside Russia, which many believe will clear the way for a broader attack in Ukraine. From the story: "Several European leaders said earlier in the day that Russian troops have moved into rebel-held areas in eastern Ukraine after Putin recognized their independence. But it was unclear how large the movements were, and Ukraine and its Western allies have said Russian troops have been fighting in the region since the separatist conflict erupted in 2014. Moscow denies those allegations. Members of the upper house, the Federation Council, voted unanimously to allow Putin to use military force outside Russia — effectively formalizing a Russian military deployment to the rebel regions, where an eight-year conflict has killed nearly 14,000 people."
Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from the state of South Carolina, had the following message for Joe Biden: "You said a couple of years ago that [Vladimir] Putin does not want you to win, because you're the only person that could go toe to toe with him. Right now, Mr President, you're playing footsie with Putin and you're losing. He's walking all over you and our allies. We have too many Neville Chamberlains in this world. We need more [Winston] Churchills."
Joe Biden responded to the Ukraine invasion by declaring that he will enact the "first tranche" of sanctions on Russian financial institutions, sovereign debt and the country's elite and their family members saying of the families: "They share in the corrupt games of the Kremlin policies and should share in the pain as well". Biden also stated: "And if Russia goes further with this invasion, we stand prepared to go further with sanctions." Biden also stated: "Who in the Lord's name does Putin think gives him the right to declare new so-called 'countries' on territory that belonged to his neighbors?"
February 21, 2022 - Vladimir Putin declared that Russia will formally recognize the self-proclaimed Russian-controlled republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. The territories have been armed, financed and politically controlled by Russia since 2014, but until now were recognized by Russia as part of Ukraine. NOTE: The declaration marks the end of the Minsk peace deal, which would have left the territories in Ukraine.
Russia began its invasion of Ukraine.
February 18, 2022 - Canadian police began arresting members of a "freedom convoy" that has blocked traffic in Canada's capital for weeks. NOTE: While the protest began as opposition to a vaccine mandate, it grew into a protest against all manner of political grievances. Here are some notable reactions to the Canadian "freedom convoy":
"we are with them all the way" - Donald Trump
"solidarity, love and support" - Sean Hannity
"heroes" - Ted Cruz
Writing for the Guardian, Sergio Olmos offers the following analysis of Florida governor Ron DeSantis starkly divergent response to the overwhelmingly white trucker protest, as opposed to the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020: "Draft legislation from DeSantis – seen by many as the leading heir to Donald Trump – was even more draconian. He initially sought to extend 'stand-your-ground' laws that would have granted legal immunity to drivers claiming to have unintentionally killed or injured protesters disrupting traffic. Yet DeSantis has thrown his support behind conservative trucker convoys using similar tactics to protest against vaccine mandates that for weeks have blocked roads between Canada and the US, stalling trade between the two nations and leading to disruptions to the global supply chain. He also announced Florida's attorney general would investigate GoFundMe after it dropped the page for donations to Canadian truckers."
Jared Holt, a researcher of extremism, responded to the obvious disparity between the way Republicans are reacting to the trucker protests and the Black Lives Matter protests saying: "I think the hypocrisy on display makes evident that this kind of rhetoric is best understood as a piece of a broader project and not a hard ideological stance." NOTE: The "broader project" seems to be in line with anything that obstructs the Biden presidency.
Brandon Brown, the NASCAR driver who unwittingly inspired the anti-Biden chant "Let's go Brandon" which translates to "Fuck Joe Biden", stated: "If they're going to use my name, I'd like for it to be productive."
Sean Hannity, a Fox News host, responded to comments by Hillary Clinton who claimed "Fox leads the charge with accusations against me, counting on their audience to fall for it again. And as an aside, they're getting awfully close to actual malice in their attacks." According to Hannity: "It's called discovery and it's called depositions. Bring it on. Malice? Really? It's called news. Hillary, we invite you to bring it on. It's from a legal filing we quoted exactly from the filing that was put in federal court." NOTE: According to media watchdog Mediate, Fox News did not quote exactly from the filing.
Donald Trump and his two eldest children have been ordered by a New York judge to appear for a deposition within 21 days as part of an investigation into Trump's family finances.
Writing for the Guardian, Julian Borger offers the following analysis of the Russians laying the groundwork for a pretext to invade Ukraine: "The omens of impending war we were warned about now seem to be lining up like the horsemen of the apocalypse. The field hospitals have been set near the border, blood banks have reportedly been brought in. On the information war front, a dossier of alleged Ukraine war crimes circulated at the United Nations security council, and a video popped up purporting to show an attempted Ukrainian attack on chlorine tanks in the Donbas. Now the rebel leaders in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts have ordered the evacuation of women and children to Russia, claiming – with no evidence whatsoever – that a Ukrainian attack is imminent. Right on cue, a car bomb went off in Donetsk, injuring no one but providing a fireball for the cameras. All of this is more or less what US and UK briefers have told journalists to expect in the run-up to a Russian invasion. The one piece that had been missing from Vladimir Putin's relentless build-up was an effort to prepare the Russian population for the prospect of a major war. That piece seems to be slotting into place."
News surfaced that Ukraine suffered a cyber-attack targeting two banks and its defense ministry. The US says it has evidence that Russia was behind the attack.
According to the National Archives, classified material was found in the 15 boxes of presidential records Trump took to Mar-a-Lago.
February 17, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Ed Pilkington offers the following analysis of Mazars cutting ties with Trump: "By withdrawing its stamp of approval from the documents, Mazars leaves Trump potentially exposed to substantial legal and financial trouble. The papers, known as statements of financial condition, were used by Trump and his family business to attract and secure hundreds of millions of dollars in loans. They are also at the centre of an escalating investigation by the New York state attorney general, Letitia James. Last month James tightened the screws on Trump and the Trump Organization by releasing details in a filing of several instances involving golf courses, real estate and other assets where the family had allegedly 'falsely and fraudulently valued multiple assets and misrepresented those values to financial institutions for economic benefit'. In a letter dated 9 February, Mazars' general counsel, William Kelly, told the Trump Organization that the annual financial statements it had prepared for the family business between 2011 and 2020 were no longer reliable. The accountants said they had based their decision partly on their own investigation into Trump's finances and on the 'totality of the circumstances', concluding that 'we are not able to provide any new work product to the Trump Organization'. On the back of James's latest attack, Michael Cohen, Trump's former personal attorney and an ex-vice president of the Trump Organization, told the Guardian that in his opinion 'the House of Trump is crumbling'."
Speaking to reporters, Joe Biden stated that regarding Russia: "Every indication we have is that they're prepared to go into Ukraine, attack Ukraine. My sense is it will happen in the next several days." NOTE: Russia is claiming that it is withdrawing military forces, but the US and Nato warn that there is evidence of an increase in the amount of troops massing at the border. The current estimate is that Russia has 150,000 troops around Ukraine.
The AP has a piece about Letitia James's efforts to get Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump to testify under oath about their business practices. From the story: "James is seeking to enforce subpoenas her office issued in December to Trump and his two eldest children, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. James, a Democrat, said her civil investigation has uncovered evidence Trump's company used 'fraudulent or misleading' valuations of assets like golf clubs and skyscrapers to get loans and tax benefits. Trump's lawyers told Judge Arthur Engoron during the hearing that having him sit for a civil deposition now, while his company is also the subject of a parallel criminal investigation, is an improper attempt to get around a state law barring prosecutors from calling someone to testify before a criminal grand jury without giving them immunity. 'If she wants sworn testimony from my client, he's entitled to immunity. He gets immunity for what he says, or he says nothing,' said Trump's criminal defense lawyer, Ronald Fischetti. If Trump testifies in the civil probe, anything he says could be used against him in the criminal investigation being overseen by the new Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg. Trump could invoke his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent in a deposition. But Fischetti said if he did so, it could still hurt a potential criminal defense. 'If he goes in and follows my advice, which will be you cannot answer these questions without ... immunity because that's what the law provides, and take the Fifth Amendment, that'll be on every front page in the newspaper in the world. And how can I possibly pick a jury in that case?' Fischetti said. A lawyer for the attorney general's office, Kevin Wallace, told the judge that it wasn't unusual to have civil and criminal investigations proceeding at the same time. Another Trump son, Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization's finance chief Allen Weisselberg, have previously sat for depositions in the civil investigation and invoked their Fifth Amendment rights hundreds of times when they were questioned by investigators in 2020."
According to a ruling issued by Judge Arthur Engoron, Donald Trump and his two oldest children must testify under a subpoena issued by Letitia James, the New York attorney general. According to the ruling: "In the final analysis, a state attorney general commences investigating a business entity, uncovers copious evidence of possible financial fraud, and wants to question, under oath, several of the entities' principals, including its namesake. She has the clear right to do so."
February 16, 2022 - According to the New York Times, Joe Biden has ordered the National Archives to hand over the White House visitor logs of the Trump administration to the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection. Donald Trump has claimed that the records are protected under executive privilege. NOTE: The authority to invoke executive privilege extends only to the sitting president - which Trump is not. The National Archives responded to Biden's order saying it will be turning the requested records over in the next 15 days.
A new report from the interior department's inspector general lays out the case that Ryan Zinke, the interior secretary under Donald Trump, misused his position to advance a development project in his Montana hometown and lied to an agency ethics official about his involvement. NOTE: Zinke was supposed to break ties with a foundation working on a commercial project in his hometown of Whitefish, Montana, but continued to do so by directing his staff to assist him with the project, and by continuing to communicate and meet with the developers.
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, responded to criticism from Republicans that it is wrong to pick a supreme court justice based on race or gender. Psaki's response: "The supreme court has been around for 230 years and there has never been a Black woman that has served on the supreme court. The president believes that is a problem with past processes, not a lack of qualified black women to serve on the supreme court. The president is proud of the range of qualified, credible candidates that he is looking at and he is looking forward to making an announcement soon."
The Washington Post has put together an interactive piece on the text messages that were being exchanged by Trump insiders in the lead-up and during the January 6th insurrection.
Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, has sued the Biden administration over a government mask mandate requiring masks be worn in airports, on airplanes and on other modes of transit. Following the filing, Paxton tweeted: "Just filed my 22nd suit against Biden, this time regarding anti-science, virtue signaling masks on airlines & airports. Masks on planes are not only silly, but illegal too. Proud to join @TPPF, @robhenneke, @Bethvanduyne in restraining Dems' lawless gov't. End the mask mandates!"
February 15, 2022 - During an interview with the New Yorker, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stated that there is a "very real risk" that democracy would not exist in the US 10 years from now.
Gun manufacturer Remington has agreed to settle liability claims for families of nine victims of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre that took place in Connecticut in 2012. NOTE: This is the first time a gunmaker is being held responsible for a mass shooting in the US.
A jury has rejected Sarah Palin's claim that the New York Times maliciously damaged her reputation by erroneously linking her campaign rhetoric to a 2011 mass shooting in Arizona that left six dead and former congresswoman Gabby Giffords severely wounded. A judge ruled yesterday that if the jury sided with Palin, he would set aside its verdict. NOTE: The Times had issued a correction to the article that inspired the lawsuit in which it claimed it had "incorrectly stated that a link existed between political rhetoric and the 2011 shooting" and it had "incorrectly described" the map that the Palin campaign had put out showing Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized crosshairs.
February 14, 2022 - According to Reuters, District Judge Jed Rakoff has dismissed governor Sarah Palin's defamation lawsuit against the New York Times saying she did not present sufficient evidence to support her lawsuit. Palin is expected to appeal the decision.
According to Reuters, accounting firm Mazars stated in a letter to the New York Attorney General's office, that they can no longer stand behind annual financial statements prepared for the Trump Organization between 2011 and 2020. From the letter: "While we have not concluded that the various financial statements, as a whole, contain material discrepancies, based on the totality of the circumstances, we believe our advice to no longer rely upon those financial statements is appropriate." Mazars also stated in the letter that it would no longer "provide any new work product to the Trump Organization."
February 11, 2022 - Jim Lamon, an anergy executive, and Republican Senate primary candidate in Arizona, has been condemned for one of his campaign ads which shows him shooting lookalike actors portraying Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Arizona senator Mark Kelly.
The US is urging Canada to end a trucker border blockade of the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ontario, which borders Detroit. The truckers, who call their blockade a "freedom convoy", are opposed to coronavirus mandates.
February 10, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Hugo Lowell offers the following analysis of how the Trump administration may have violated the Presidential Records Act: "The House oversight committee on Thursday opened an investigation into potential violations of the Presidential Records Act by Donald Trump, after he retained and destroyed some records relevant to the Capitol attack inquiry. The panel asked the National Archives to turn over communications with the former president about missing and destroyed records, as well as a description of materials in boxes retrieved from Trump's residence in Mar-a-Lago last month. The House committee investigating the Capitol attack has also reportedly found gaps in critical hours on the day of the riot in White House telephone logs, according to the New York Times. Although investigators know Trump was making calls at those times, there are only sparse records of calls in the official logs. Trump was known to regularly use cellphones to communicate, and investigators say they do not have evidence that official phone records were interfered with. The boxes retrieved from Trump contained documents that had been requested by the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack and what the Archives believed were classified materials, according to a source familiar with the matter."
The US State Department is urging US citizens to evacuate Ukraine saying it "will not be able to evacuate citizens in the event of Russian military action anywhere in Ukraine."
February 9, 2022 - According to the Washington Post, the National Archives has asked the Department of Justice to investigate Donald Trump's handling of White House records. From the story: "The National Archives and Records Administration has asked the Justice Department to examine Donald Trump's handling of White House records, sparking discussions among federal law enforcement officials about whether they should investigate the former president for a possible crime, according to two people familiar with the matter. The referral from the National Archives came amid recent revelations that officials recovered 15 boxes of materials from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence that weren't handed back in to the government as they should have been, and that Trump had turned over other White House records that had been torn up. Archives officials suspected Trump had possibly violated laws concerning the handling of government documents — including those that might be considered classified — and reached out to the Justice Department, the people familiar with the matter said ... Among the materials they recovered included correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which Trump once described as 'love letters,' as well as a letter left for Trump by President Barack Obama, people familiar with the matter said. The Archives also retrieved a doctored map of Hurricane Dorian that had been altered with a black Sharpie by Trump in a failed attempt to show he hadn't been wrong about the storm's path, according to a person familiar with the contents of the boxes. The Archives in a statement earlier this week said that Trump representatives are 'continuing to search' for additional records."
The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection issued a subpoena to Peter Navarro, who served as Trump's top trade adviser. Bennie Thompson, the committee chair, stated that "Mr. Navarro appears to have information directly relevant to the Select Committee's investigation into the causes of the January 6th attack on the Capitol. He hasn't been shy about his role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and has even discussed the former President's support for those plans. More than 500 witnesses have provided information in our investigation, and we expect Mr. Navarro to do so as well." NOTE: Navarro wrote about his efforts to overturn the election in his book "In Trump Time: My Journal of America's Plague Year", where Navarro referred to the overturn operation as "Green Bay Sweep". In its subpoena letter, the House select committee stated: "Because you have already discussed these and other relevant issues in your recently published book, in interviews with reporters, and, among other places, on a podcast, we look forward to discussing them with you, too."
Writing for the Guardian, Maya Yang offers the following analysis of applicants to a white supremacist group: "One in five applicants to the white supremacist group Patriot Front claimed to hold current or former ties to the US military, according to leaked documents published and reviewed by the Southern Poverty Law Center and alternative media collective Unicorn Riot. Some 18 out of the 87 applicants, or 21%, said they were currently or previously affiliated with the military. One applicant, who claimed to be a former Marine, also said he currently worked for the Department of Homeland Security, according to the SPLC's Hatewatch, a blog that tracks and exposes activities of American rightwing extremists. A white supremacist and neo-fascist hate group, Patriot Front emerged as a rebrand of the neo-Nazi organization Vanguard America in the aftermath of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. According to the SPLC, the Patriot Front 'represents one of the most prominent white supremacist groups in the country' and is led by Thomas Rousseau, a 23-year old man based in Dallas, Texas. 'A nation within a nation is our goal. Our people face complete annihilation as our culture and heritage are attacked from all sides,' Rousseau once said. In January, Unicorn Riot published over 400 gigabytes of data that included 'ostensibly private, unedited videos and direct messages [that] reveal a campaign to organize acts of hatred while indoctrinating teenagers into national socialism (Nazism),' the journalist collective said. Group members and applicants expressed an open admiration for Nazi ideologies, with the latter expressing various motivations for joining the group."
February 8, 2022 - Elise Stefanik, a New York congresswoman, and senior member of the House Republican leadership, was asked if she agreed with the Republican National Committee that the January 6 assault on the US Capitol was "legitimate political discourse". Stefanik's response: "As Republicans have been very clear, we condemn the violence on January 6. We also condemn the violence on [sic] 2020, as violent criminals attacked federal buildings, including parts of Washington DC. So we have been clear in that condemnation. House Democrats did not condemn the violence that happened all of 2020 and we believe the January 6 commission is political theater. It's about punishing partisan opponents and not getting to the real facts, which should be how can we ensure that the Capitol complex is safe not only for those of us who work here, but for the American people to come continue to advocate for policies they believe in."
Writing for the Guardian, Chris McGreal offers the following analysis of rightwing legislation meant to protect conservative-friendly industries: "An influential rightwing lobby group, the American Legislative Exchange Council or Alec, is driving a surge in new state laws to block boycotts of the oil industry. The group's strategy, which aims to protect large oil firms and other conservative-friendly industries, is modelled on legislation to punish divestment from Israel. Since the beginning of the year, state legislatures in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Indiana have introduced a version of a law drafted by Alec, the Energy Discrimination Elimination Act, to shield big oil from share selloffs and other measures intended to protest the fossil fuel industry's role in the climate crisis. A dozen other states have publicly supported the intent of the legislation. Texas has begun compiling a list of companies to target for refusing to do business with the oil industry after the state passed a version of the law last year. Top of the list is the world's largest asset manager, BlackRock. The push to blacklist firms that boycott the oil industry follows a meeting in December between politicians and Alec, a corporate-funded organisation that writes legislation for Republican-controlled states to adopt and drive conservative causes. At that meeting in San Diego, members of Alec's energy taskforce voted to promote the model legislation requiring banks and financial companies to sign a pledge to not boycott petroleum companies in order to obtain state contracts. The wording closely resembles that of laws drafted by Alec and adopted in more than 30 states to block support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel's oppression of the Palestinians. Similar laws are also being promoted to protect the gun industry from boycotts."
Joyce Beatty, a Democratic representative from Ohio, was heading to the House floor to vote, and as she prepared to board the Capitol's subway, she noticed that Hal Rogers, a Republican representative from Kentuky, wasn't wearing a mask. Beatty asked Rogers to put on a mask, but Rogers refused. Rogers then poked Beatty in the back and demanded that she board the train. When Beatty told Rogers not to touch her, Rogers responded with "kiss my ass". NOTE: Rogers later apologized to Beatty, saying his words were "not acceptable".
Greg Locke, a pastor at Global Vision Bible Church in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, and a pro-Trump Christian nationalist, hosted a book burning. In addition to burning books, the group burned Twilight related materials, tarot cards, Ouija boards, healing crystals, and more. NOTE: During the event, a gay couple tossed a Bible into the massive flames while shouting "hail Satan!" The gay couple was forcibly removed from the circle by the book burners. In response, and to the chagrin of the book burners, the gay couple engaged in a passionate kiss before they vacated the area.
February 7, 2022 - According to the Washington Post, some presidential records, which are required to be turned over to the National Archives, had to be retrieved from Mar-a-Lago after Trump "improperly removed" them from the White House.
According to the Guardian, comments made by Trump at a rally in Texas where he dangled pardons for insurrectionists and called for protests if indicted, could help make the case for obstruction of justice. From the story: "Taken together, veteran prosecutors say Trump's comments seemed to reveal that the former president now feels more legal jeopardy from the three inquiries in Atlanta, Washington and New York, all of which have accelerated since the start of 2022. ... Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor who is of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy, told the Guardian that Trump 'may have shot himself in the foot' with the comments. 'Criminal intent can be hard to prove, but when a potential defendant says something easily seen as intimidating or threatening to those investigating the case it becomes easier,' Aftergut said. Aftergut added that having proclaimed 'his support for the insurrectionists, Trump added evidence of his corrupt intent on January 6 should the DoJ prosecute him for aiding the seditious conspiracy, or for impeding an official proceeding of Congress'. Likewise, a former US attorney in Georgia, Michael Moore, said Trump's comments could 'potentially intimidate witnesses and members of a grand jury', noting that it is a felony in Georgia to deter a witness from testifying before a grand jury."
Writing for the Guardian, Jan-Werner Muller offers the following analysis of political fallout from January 6: "To this day, only footsoldiers have paid a price for the riot at the Capitol last January 6. Politicians who spurred them on, praised them afterwards, and now incite further hatred with hallucinatory talk of 'political prisoners' have remained smugly immune. This could change in one case: the Republican congressman Madison Cawthorn, who was on the mall that fateful day, implored Trumpists to 'fight,' and is now seeking re-election in North Carolina. His candidacy is being challenged on the basis of the 14th amendment. Passed after the civil war, it disqualifies from holding office anyone who has sworn allegiance to the constitution and then engages in insurrection. Other democracies are comfortable not just with restricting individual rights to run for office, but with banning entire parties suspected of undermining democracy. Americans, by contrast, have been inclined to leave things to sort themselves out in the political process. But here drastic measures are justified: citizens in a democracy have to accept being governed by politicians they disagree with; they don’t have to put up with politicians who start insurrections when things don't go their way. Disqualification could have a salutary effect on the Republican party as such; and it might provide a model for banning Trump from holding office again – something that was on the table during the 2021 impeachment and endorsed by seven Republican senators at the time. In North Carolina, citizens can challenge a candidate to prove they meet qualifications for Congress. Unlike the House committee investigating the events of January 6th, the board on elections could force a sitting member of Congress to testify about the role he played before, during, and after the insurrection. In the end, his fate could resemble that of many Confederates after the civil war: not necessarily criminal punishment, but exclusion from exercising power."
According to NBC News, the supreme court, in a 5-4 vote, put a hold on a lower court's order requiring Alabama to redraw its congressional map. The lower court had ruled that the new map violates the Voting Rights Act by diluting the votes of the state's Black residents. From the story: "In drawing Alabama's new map, the Republican-controlled legislature maintained a single district in which Black voters are the majority — the seventh, which includes Birmingham and several counties along the state's western border. In response to lawsuits, a panel of three federal judges said the map should add a second district 'in which Black voters comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it.' The panel, which included one judge appointed by Bill Clinton and two appointed by Donald Trump, said Black voters had less opportunity to elect their candidates of their choice to Congress. An emergency application to the Supreme Court filed by Alabama Republican officials said drawing two minority districts would actually force the state to violate federal law. 'It will result in a map that can be drawn only by placing race first above race-neutral districting criterial, sorting and splitting voters across the state on the basis of race alone,' they said."
Writing for the Guardian, Gloria Oladipo offers the following analysis of the efforts by aides to Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin, to shame a high school boy: "On Saturday, Ethan Lynne, 17 and, according to his Twitter biography, a Democrat, posted an article which suggested Youngkin could be trying to stop work to highlight the history of enslaved people at the Virginia executive mansion. In response, Youngkin's campaign account posted a picture of Lynne with the former governor Ralph Northam, next to a picture from Northam's medical school yearbook of two men in racist costumes: one in Blackface and one in a Ku Klux Klan costume. 'Here's a picture of Ethan with a man that had a Blackface/KKK photo in his yearbook,' Team Youngkin tweeted. In 2019, Northam admitted being one of the men in the photograph, an admission he later recanted. Virginia governors cannot serve consecutive terms. Youngkin beat the Democrat Terry McAuliffe, a former governor, in a bitter 2021 election in which the Republican made teaching about race and racism in US history a key campaign issue. Amid outrage at an attack on a minor, the Team Youngkin tweet was deleted. Speaking to the Washington Post, Lynne said: 'A governor's campaign account has attacked a minor – to me that was a new low ... it was up for over 12 hours. I received no apology, no communication, nothing.' On Monday, Youngkin said: 'On Saturday night, an unauthorized tweet came from a campaign account. I regret that this happened and it shouldn't have. I have addressed it with my team. We must continue to work to bring Virginians together. There is so much more that unites us than divides us.'"
February 4, 2022 - According to Johns Hopkins University, more than 900,000 Americans have died from Covid-19. NOTE: This is the highest reported death toll of any country.
The Republican National Committee, which is holding its winter meeting in Salt Lake City, has advanced a proposal to censure Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the two Republican members of the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection. The resolution refers to the Capitol insurrection, which resulted in the deaths of several people, and has led to hundreds of arrests, as "legitimate political discourse".
Liz Cheney, one of two Republicans on the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection, released a statement criticizing efforts by the RNC to defend Donald Trump and the insurrectionists, saying in part: "The leaders of the Republican Party have made themselves willing hostages to a man who admits he tried to overturn a presidential election and suggests he would pardon Jan. 6 defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy ... I'm a constitutional conservative and I do not recognize those in my party who have abandoned the Constitution to embrace Donald Trump. History will be their judge. I will never stop fighting for our constitutional republic. No matter what."
Notable responses to the Republican party's efforts to censure Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger:
"The RNC is censuring Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger because they are trying to find out what happened on January 6th - HUH?" - Republican Senator Bill Cassidy
"Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol. Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost." - Republican Senator Mitt Romney
"The GOP I believe in is the party of freedom and truth. It’s a sad day for my party—and the country—when you're punished just for expressing your beliefs, standing on principle, and refusing to tell blatant lies." - Republican Governor Larry Hogan
The resolution by the RNC to censure Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger passed overwhelmingly in a voice vote from the 168 members gathered for the winter meeting.
According to CNN, records show that Republican Representative Jim Jordan spoke with Donald Trump the morning of the Capitol insurrection. From the story: "The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection is now in possession of White House records that provide new details about a phone call Donald Trump made to Republican Rep. Jim Jordan on January 6, 2021 -- as the investigation drills down on the former President's communications that day and questions have long swirled around calls between him and lawmakers. Two sources who have reviewed the call records tell CNN that Trump spoke on the phone at the White House residence with Jordan for 10 minutes on the morning of January 6. That afternoon, Jordan took to the House floor to object to the certification of President Joe Biden's Electoral College win, and pro-Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol." NOTE: The select committee has asked Jordan to voluntarily appear before the committee, but Jordan has refused to do so.
Writing for the Guardian, Hugo Lowell offers the following analysis of draft orders reviewed by trump in the weeks following the 2020 election: "Weeks after the 2020 election, Donald Trump reviewed a draft executive order that authorized the national guard to seize voting machines and verbally agreed to appoint Sidney Powell, a campaign lawyer and conspiracy theorist, as special counsel to investigate election fraud. The two previously unreported actions of the former president – which is certain to interest the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack and Trump's efforts to overturn his defeat – came during a contentious White House meeting on 18 December 2020. Trump never followed through with issuing a formal executive order authorizing the seizure of voting machines or appointing a special counsel. But four sources with detailed knowledge of what transpired during the 18 December meeting described to the Guardian how close he came to doing so. The draft executive order Trump reviewed was one of the final versions Powell had prepared. An early version of the document was published by Politico. Another version, obtained by CNN, empowered the Department of Homeland Security instead of the Department of Defense. But all versions included language that would have allowed Trump to appoint a special counsel to investigate claims of foreign interference in the 2020 election, which the Department of Justice had already determined were without foundation."
Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of a government watchdog group called Common Cause, responded to the RNC resolution calling the Capitol insurrection "legitimate political discourse", saying in part: "January 6 was an insurrection that left dead and scores of seriously injured in its wake. It was not legitimate political discourse no matter what the GOP says ... It was a violent attempt to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election and ignore the will of the people. It was a dangerous and irresponsible attempt to try to intimidate Congress with an angry racist mob assembled and then set loose by a man who had just lost the presidential election ... There is no room for ambiguity when it comes to an attack on the peaceful transfer of power and our democratic system of government ... January 6 was an attack on the rule of law, the very concept of free and fair elections, and it was an attack on America. Elected leaders who endorse political violence have no business governing in the name of the American people."
Mike Pence, the former vice president, who was hunted on January 6th by Donald Trump supporters who were chanting "Hang Mike Pence!", spoke at an event held by the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group. Pence stated in part: "I heard this week that President Trump said I had the right to overturn the election. President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone. Frankly there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president."
Matthew Hall, a professor of constitutional studies and political science at the University of Notre Dame, was asked by USA Today about Trump's claim that the vice president has the power to overturn an election. His response: "Any claim that the vice-president can unilaterally overturn the results of a presidential election is patently absurd. If the vice-president had total discretion to overturn election results, the party that controls the White House could simply refuse to surrender power when they lose an election. Such an arrangement would completely undermine the integrity of our democratic system."
In a statement, Donald Trump called on the House select committee to "stop its work immediately". Trump went on to blame House speaker Nancy Pelosi for security issues that occurred during the January 6th Capitol insurrection. NOTE: Capitol security is the responsibility of the Capitol police board, not the speaker of the House.
Michael Avenatti, the lawyer who was previously representing adult film star Stormy Daniels, has been found guilty of cheating the adult star out of nearly $300,000.
In response to statements by Mike Pence that pushed back against Trump's claim that he could overturn the election, the Democratic National Committee issued a strong rebuke of the former vice president, saying in part: "Let's be very clear – former vice-president Mike Pence doesn't deserve credit for 'breaking' with Trump after standing shoulder to shoulder with him for nearly six years ... he surely could have done more before Trump incited a mob to attack the Capitol, assault police officers, and try to overturn an election ... a day late and a dollar short".
Writing for the Guardian, Adam Gabbatt offers the following analysis of a new documentary by Fox News host Tucker Carlson: "Tucker Carlson has been accused of promoting 'antisemitic tropes' in his documentary Hungary vs Soros: The Fight for Civilization, which attacks the billionaire Democratic donor – and frequent target of antisemitic hate – George Soros. The film, which aired last week, sees Carlson, a Fox News host with a long history of inflammatory rightwing rhetoric, travel to Hungary, where he tees up a selection of politicians and commenters to attack Soros, a wealthy philanthropist who has donated billions of dollars to Democratic causes. Soros, who is Jewish and was born in Hungary, has been subjected to antisemitic attacks from conservatives for decades. Far-right activists and believers in the QAnon conspiracy theory have accused Soros of funding violent protests, of supporting an imagined global ring of pedophiles and of driving illegal immigration, a recurring theme in Carlson’s film. Carlson claims in the documentary that Soros has 'spent decades' waging 'a kind of war, political, social and demographic war on the west'. Carlson's narration is accompanied by black and white images and screeching, dystopian music. 'Unlike the threats from the Soviets and the Ottoman empire, the threat posed by George Soros and his nonprofit organizations is much more subtle and hard to detect,' Carlson says. Later, he claims that Soros has plotted to 'oust democratically elected leaders' and 'install ideologically aligned puppets', nodding to antisemitic tropes about a global cabal which controls the world's politics and finances. Soros has given at least $18bn to his Open Society Foundations organization, which offers financial grants to groups around the world, and has been a key donor to Democratic politicians and causes. He has long been a target of the political right, which has projected an array of conspiracy theories about the billionaire. In 2018 a pipe bomb was delivered to Soros's home in Bedford, about 40 miles north of New York City."
David S Fry, a Normal, IL resident who was indicted on 45 counts of being in possession of child pornography, has pleaded not guilty. 16 of the 45 counts are for possession of photos showing victims younger than 13. Fry is currently being held at the McLean County Jail. Bond has been set at $500,000.
February 3, 2022 - Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the leader of ISIS, blew himself up to avoid capture by US armed forces in northwest Syria who were operating on orders from president Joe Biden.
According to the Washington Post, US officials have uncovered plans that Russia plans to stage an attack and blame it on Ukrainian forces as justification for an invasion. From the story: "The details of the plan have been declassified by U.S. intelligence and are expected to be revealed Thursday by the Biden administration, said four people familiar with the matter. The administration last month warned that the Russian government had sent operatives into eastern Ukraine, possibly in preparation for sabotage operations. The alleged operation the United States plans to expose would involve broadcasting images of civilian casualties in eastern Ukraine — and potentially over the border in Russia — to a wide audience to drum up outrage against the Ukrainian government and create a pretext for invasion, two of the people said. It was unclear if the casualties would be real or faked, one U.S. official said. The people familiar with the plan said it was formulated by Russian security services and is in the advanced stages of preparation."
During taping of the show "The Masked Singer", judges Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke walked off the stage after the masked singer was revealed to be Rudy Giuliani, the former attorney to Donald Trump.
February 2, 2022 - Alexander Vindman, the retired US Army lieutenant colonel, who testified during Donald Trump's first impeachment trial, filed a federal lawsuit against Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr, Rudolph Giuliani, Julia Hahn, Daniel Scavino, and Fox News for witness intimidation and retaliation. According to Vindman's lawsuit, Trump and his close allies conspired to portray Vindman as "disloyal to the United States", engaged in "espionage," and as an insubordinate "leftist," which hurt his military career, and forced him into early retirement. In an editorial in USA Today, Vindman stated in part: "We can't have a functional government or healthy democracy if witnesses can't testify, and if federal officials can't do their jobs, without fear of payback ... I filed this lawsuit because I believe in the active role all citizens must play in upholding our democracy ... I hope this lawsuit will shed more light on the abuses that are chipping away at our democracy and eventually bring a measure of justice to those who are responsible."
During an appearance on CBS' Face the Nation, Republican Lindsey Graham stated that it would be "inappropriate" to grant pardons to Capitol insurrectionists saying: "I don't want to reinforce that defiling the Capitol was OK. I don't want to do anything that would make this more likely in the future."
Donald Trump, the one term, twice impeached, disgraced former president, responded to Lindsey Graham's comments during an appearance on Newsmax, saying in part: "Lindsey Graham's wrong. I mean Lindsey's a nice guy, but he's a RINO ... Lindsey Graham doesn’t know what the hell he's talking about if he says that."
According to the US Army, soldiers who refuse to get a Covid-19 vaccination will be discharged immediately. From the announcement: "Army readiness depends on soldiers who are prepared to train, deploy, fight and win our nation's wars. Unvaccinated soldiers present risk to the force and jeopardize readiness."
According to Politico, Trump considered issuing blanket pardons to the Capitol insurrectionists before he left office. From the story: "Between Jan. 6 and Joe Biden's inauguration on Jan. 20, Trump made three calls to one adviser to discuss the idea. 'Do you think I should pardon them? Do you think it's a good idea? Do you think I have the power to do it?' Trump told the person, who summarized their conversations. Another adviser to the former president said Trump asked questions about how participants in the riot might be charged criminally, and how a uniform pardon could provide them protection going forward. 'Is it everybody that had a Trump sign or everybody who walked into the Capitol' who could be pardoned? Trump asked, according to that adviser. He said, 'Some people think I should pardon them.' He thought if he could do it, these people would never have to testify or be deposed.'"
Mitch McConnell, the senate minority leader, was asked about news of Donald Trump's suggestion of issuing pardons to those who attacked the Capitol on January 6th. McConnell's response: "What we saw here on January 6 was an effort to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to another, which had never happened before in our country ... My view is, I would not be in favor of shortening any of the sentences for any of the people who pleaded guilty to crimes."
According to the AP, Aaron Mostofsky, a New York City judge's son, has pleaded guilty to charges related to January 6th. From the story: "Aaron Mostofsky was seen inside the Capitol wearing a fur costume and a bulletproof police vest that he was accused of stealing during the mayhem. He also gave a video interview inside the building, telling the New York Post he was there 'to express my opinion as a free American that this election was stolen.' Mostofsky, 35, pleaded guilty to charges of civil disorder, theft of government property, and entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds. Mostofsky is scheduled to be sentenced May 6. His father is Steven Mostofsky, a state court judge in Brooklyn. A message seeking comment was left with a court spokesperson. Aaron Mostofsky's unusual garb made him stand out from the crowd of camouflage-wearing, flag-waving rioters. At one point, he was photographed sitting on a bench near the Senate chamber holding a stick and the riot shield, which he said he picked up off the floor. According to prosecutors, Mostofsky took a bus from New York to Washington and joined protesters in overwhelming a police line and storming the Capitol. Along the way, he picked up and put on the bulletproof vest, valued at $1,905, and the riot shield, worth $265, prosecutors said. Before the protest, Mostofsky messaged another demonstrator that he could be found at the protest by looking for 'a caveman.' More than 730 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot. More than 200 of them have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors punishable by a maximum of six months imprisonment. Mostofsky is one of about two dozen rioters to plead guilty to a felony. More than 90 riot defendants have been sentenced."
According to Reuters, Jeffrey Clark, a former high-ranking Department of Justice official appeared before the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection. From the story: "Jeffrey Bossert Clark was spotted entering a room inside a US House of Representatives office building where the select committee investigating the Jan 6 attack takes its depositions. A committee spokesman declined to comment. Clark is among a growing list of Trump supporters who have balked at requests to cooperate with the investigation, though the panel has scored some legal victories over Trump's efforts to keep certain government records under wraps. The National Archives said it would be providing some of former Vice President Mike Pence's records to the committee, in a letter that appeared on the Archives' website. The committee has so far interviewed about 400 witnesses, issued more than 60 subpoenas and obtained more than 50,000 pages of records. Clark, who served as the acting head of the Justice Department's Civil Division, drafted a Dec. 28, 2020, letter to Georgia state lawmakers that falsely claimed the agency had found 'significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia.' The draft letter urged state legislators to convene a special session to overturn the election results there. Clark tried to persuade former Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen and former Acting Deputy Attorney General Rich Donoghue to send the letter, but they refused. Rosen and Donoghue later told U.S. Senate investigators that Clark also privately met with Trump to lobby the then-president to oust Rosen so Clark could be installed as acting attorney general, paving the way for him to send the letter and launch voter fraud investigations. Clark in November declined to answer the committee's questions about his legal advice to Trump, saying such discussions were privileged. The panel voted on Dec. 1, 2021, to seek contempt of Congress charges against Clark, but it has not sought a vote of the full House after Clark's attorney said his client intends to invoke his right against self-incrimination, protected by the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution."
According to the AP, a jury has ruled that neither former US senate candidate Roy Moore, nor Leigh Corfman, who accused Moore of molesting her when she was 14, defamed the other. From the story: "In allegations that roiled the 2017 Senate race in Alabama, Leigh Corfman said Moore sexually touched her in 1979 when she was a teen and he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. Corfman filed suit alleging Moore defamed her by branding her a liar when he denied the accusations. Moore countersued, claiming Corfman injured his reputation with false allegations meant to hurt him politically. The jury deliberated for about three hours before ruling that neither party had prevailed in their claim against the other. Moore said afterward that the decision was vindication for him and a 'very heavy burden' had been lifted. 'There is no other way to interpret this but a victory,' Moore said, with his wife, Kayla, standing beside him. 'I've always said these allegations were false and malicious. I mean that today. I'll say that today very clearly. There were meant to overturn a very successful election in 2017 to the United States Senate and they did exactly that,' Moore said. Corfman's attorneys rubbed her back seemingly to comfort her after the verdict was read. Corfman attorney Neil Roman said the decision was not what they had hoped for but noted that jurors must have given credibility to her claim because they didn't rule Corfman defamed Moore when she told the Washington Post he molested her. 'This is not a victory for Roy Moore. It is not a vindication of him. Although we are disappointed that the jury did not find that Mr Moore's statements about Leigh rose to the level of defamation, we are gratified that the jury necessarily found Leigh was telling the truth about her experiences with Mr Moore in 1979,' Roman said."
According to Robert Reich, Trump and his enablers are unwittingly offering Democrats their best hope in the upcoming midterms. From the article: "The midterm elections are just over nine months away. What will Democrats run on? What will Republicans run on? One hint came at a Houston-area Trump rally Saturday night. 'If I run and if I win,' the former guy said, referring to 2024, 'we will treat those people from January 6th fairly.' He then added, 'and if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons, because they are being treated so unfairly.' Trump went on to demand 'the biggest protest we have ever had' if federal prosecutors in Washington or in New York and Atlanta, where cases against him are moving forward, 'do anything wrong or illegal'. He then called the federal prosecutors 'vicious, horrible people' who are 'not after me, they're after you'. Trump's hint of pardons for those who attacked the Capitol could affect the criminal prosecution of hundreds now facing conspiracy, obstruction and assault charges, which carry sentences that could put them away for years. If they think Trump will pardon them, they might be less willing to negotiate with prosecutors and accept plea deals. His comments could also be interpreted as a call for violence if various legal cases against him lead to indictments. But if Trump keeps at it – and of course he will – he'll help the Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections by reminding the public of the attempted coup he and his Republican co-conspirators tried to pull off between the 2020 election and January 6. That would make the midterm election less of a referendum on Biden than on the Republican party. (Don’t get me wrong. I think Biden is doing a good job, given the hand he was dealt. But Republicans are doing an even better job battering him – as his sinking poll numbers show.)"
February 1, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Martin Pengelly offers the following analysis of records turned over to the House select committee by the National Archives: "Some of the White House records turned over to the House committee investigating the January 6 attack were ripped up by Donald Trump. The documents include diaries, schedules, handwritten notes, speeches and remarks. The supreme court rejected Trump's attempt to stop the National Archives turning them over to Congress. In a statement, the Archives said: 'Some of the Trump presidential records received by the National Archives and Records Administration included paper records that had been torn up by former president Trump. These were turned over to the National Archives at the end of the Trump administration, along with a number of torn-up records that had not been reconstructed by the White House. The Presidential Records Act requires that all records created by presidents be turned over to the National Archives at the end of their administrations.' The Archives did not say how it knew Trump had torn the records but his habit of tearing up documents has been widely reported. In 2018, Politico spoke to Solomon Lartey, a records management analyst who spent time 'armed with rolls of clear Scotch tape ... sift[ing] through large piles of paper and put[ting] them back together ... 'like a jigsaw puzzle'.' Lartey and another staffer who taped records were fired by the White House that year, they said summarily. Lartey said: 'They told [Trump] to stop doing it. He didn't want to stop.'"
According to the New York Times, Donald Trump directed Rudy Giuliani to ask the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) if it could seize voting machines in three key states. The call by Giuliani was made six weeks after the 2020 election, and prior to the January 6th insurrection. The DHS told Giuliani that it did not have the authority to seize the machines. Trump also considered a plan to have the Department of Defense seize voting machines, after being told by William Barr, the attorney general, that the Department of Justice would not do so.
According to the Washington Post, Letitia James, the New York attorney general, has subpoenaed documents from the General Services Administration as part of her civil investigation into potential fraud at the Trump Organization. From the story: "The documents James sought included a scorecard GSA used to rank Trump's bid against those of other developers who proposed leasing and redeveloping the federally owned Old Post Office Pavilion downtown. That information could fit into James's broader effort to show a pattern of Trump giving false information to business partners, banks and insurers to secure loans and other deals. James's request appears to differ from previous inquiries into Trump's hotel, which largely focused on whether he should have been allowed to retain the deal while in office. After Trump was elected, he ignored calls from Democrats to sell his stake in the lease to avoid conflicts of interest. Trump is now working to sell that lease, in a deal that could net his company $100 million in profits, and the negotiations have coincided with renewed scrutiny from lawmakers and prosecutors. In October, the House Oversight Committee, chaired by Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), issued a report raising concerns about whether Trump had misled the GSA in pursuing the deal. Maloney and Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) wrote to GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan alleging that Trump 'concealed hundreds of millions of dollars in debts from GSA when bidding on the Old Post Office Building lease' and called for an investigation."
Writing for the Guardian, Martin Pengelly offers the following analysis of Trump's call to investigate Mike Pence. From the story: "Donald Trump wants the House committee investigating the January 6 attack to investigate Mike Pence. In the first of two rambling, lie-filled statements this morning, the former president said: 'The Unselect Committee should be investigating why [House speaker] Nancy Pelosi did such a poor job of overseeing security [at the Capitol on 6 January 2021, a common and baseless complaint from Republicans] and why Mike Pence did not send back the votes for recertification or approval, in that it has now been shown that he clearly had the right to do so!' That has not been shown, clearly or otherwise, however much Trump thinks moves to reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887 suggest that it has. Nothing is getting easier for Pence, as the former vice-president tries to stay relevant in the race for the Republican nomination in 2024, which of course seems Trump's for the taking should he wish to take it. Pence, remember, concluded that he did not have the authority to reject electoral college results, resisted pressure from Trump to do so, and was rewarded with a mob of Trump supporters attacking the Capitol, some chanting that they wished to hang him."
According to Reuters, some Republican lawmakers are prioritizing the goal of regaining control of Congress, rather than help Trump with his desire for vengeance. According to the story, those lawmakers: "Transferred money to the campaigns of seven House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump on a charge of incitement of insurrection arising from last year's Capitol riot and Senator Lisa Murkowski, who voted to convict him. Steve Scalise, the No 2 House Republican, and a group aligned with Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, were among those making the donations. Joe Biden's fellow Democrats control both the House and Senate with slim majorities. Republicans are trying to take over one or both chambers in the Nov. 8 congressional elections. If they do so, they could torpedo Biden's legislative agenda. Election experts said these contributions to colleagues reflect a long-standing practice among lawmakers to share money freely to help their party secure a majority, with incumbents typically seen as having the best chances of winning. 'It's very much a strategic consideration,' said political scientist Zachary Albert of Brandeis University in Massachusetts. Three House lawmakers targeted by Trump already have dropped out of their races following public backlash from Republican leaders. Nonetheless, congressional Republicans are donating to colleagues who Trump has disparaged as 'disloyal' and 'losers,' according to financial disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission ahead of a Monday deadline ... The [three Republican] incumbents targeted by Trump ended 2021 with more money in their campaign war chests than any of their challengers, including those backed by Trump. A week after the deadly January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a mob of Trump's supporters, the House voted to impeach him, with the Senate then falling short of the super-majority needed to convict him and bar him from future public office. [Steve] Scalise gave money in September to at least three House members who voted to impeach Trump: Peter Meijer of Michigan and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington state - who are both facing Trump-endorsed challengers - as well as David Valadao of California. Scalise also transferred money in December to the re-election campaign of Dan Newhouse of Washington, a House Republican who also voted for impeachment. The contributions ranged from $2,000 to $5,000 and came from Scalise's re-election campaign committee or from his 'Eye of the Tiger' fundraising group, a so-called leadership committee that lawmakers use to support other candidates. Representative Elise Stefanik, who replaced Representative Liz Cheney as the No. 3 House Republican after Cheney was ousted from her post following her vote to impeach Trump, made a $5,000 contribution to Herrera Beutler from her 'E-PAC' leadership committee, which Stefanik uses to support Republican women candidates. Cheney, the scion of a storied Republican family and the most forceful Trump critic in Congress, received $5,000 from [Kentuckian] McConnell's 'Bluegrass Committee' fundraising group. The group also gave $10,000 to the campaign of [Alaska's Lisa] Murkowski, who is the only one of the Republican senators who voted to convict Trump in his Senate impeachment trial last year who is seeking re-election this year. Cheney and Murkowski both are facing Republican primary challengers endorsed by Trump, as is Representative Fred Upton of Michigan, another Republican who voted to impeach Trump and took contributions from the leadership committee of Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington. Representatives August Pfluger of Texas, Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, Byron Donalds of Florida and Carlos Gimenez of Florida - who each have been endorsed by Trump in their re-election bids for this year - also transferred money to impeachment voters from their campaigns or leadership committees. Their offices did not respond to requests for comment. A Trump spokesperson and representatives for Scalise, Stefanik, McConnell and McMorris Rodgers also did not respond to requests for comment. Joe Kent, a U.S. Army veteran endorsed by Trump to unseat Herrera Beutler, said the lawmakers backing the incumbent are hoping Trump's movement 'will just go away.' '2022 is a referendum on the establishment,' Kent said."
Writing for the Guardian, Spenser Mestel offers the following analysis of Michigan residents efforts to address gerrymandering in that state: "In recent months, Michigan should have been a hotbed for attempts to rig elections, like it was in 2011. That year, the Republican-led legislature distorted the voting maps so that the GOP was able to win nine of Michigan's 14 congressional seats despite never earning more than 50.5% of the vote statewide. A decade later, as the redistricting cycle has come around again, the dynamics are just as toxic. The battleground state broke for Joe Biden by fewer than 155,000 votes, and the Republican-controlled legislature has fought endlessly with the Democratic governor about election 'audits', voter IDs and absentee ballots. But this cycle, the state's redistricting commission has pulled off something remarkable. Despite a flurry of legal action and very public disputes between members, it has produced some of the fairest maps in the US. How did it manage it – and will the maps survive? Neither party was involved in drawing new maps, a process that is open to abuse if politicians are allowed to allocate particular voters to particular districts in order to guarantee a win there. Instead, the responsibility fell to 13 Michiganders – four Democrats, four Republicans and five independents – who were randomly selected by the state. The Michigan Independent Citizens' Redistricting Commission (MICRC) includes a foster care worker, a retired banker, an aspiring orthopedic surgeon, a mother of six, a college student and a real estate broker. MICRC, and the approach it epitomizes, came about thanks to Katie Fahey, a Michigan resident and political novice who posted a message on Facebook two days after the 2016 presidential election. She said she wanted to take on gerrymandering and eventually recruited more than 14,000 volunteers to campaign for an amendment to the state's constitution. It passed with 61% of the vote and created the commission, one of the most successful ways to unrig the redistricting process so far and a potential model for other states."
According to the Atlantic, book banning is becoming increasingly popular across the country. From the story: "Book banning is back. Texas State Representative Matt Krause recently put more than 800 books on a watch list, many of them dealing with race and LGBTQ issues. Then an Oklahoma state senator filed a bill to ban books that address 'sexual perversion,' among other things, from school libraries. The school board of McMinn County, Tennessee, just banned Maus, Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize–winning graphic memoir about the Holocaust. Officials said that they didn't object to teaching about genocide, but that the book's profanity, nudity, violence, and depiction of suicide made it 'too adult-oriented for use in our schools.' No one has yet figured out how to depict the Holocaust without ugliness, for the very obvious reason that it was one of the greatest crimes in human history. Maus details the cruelties that Spiegelman's father witnessed during World War II, including in Auschwitz, as well as the pair's complicated relationship after the war. Some nudity shows Jews—depicted in the book as mice (their German oppressors are drawn as cats)—stripped naked before their murder. Hiding these images from children purposefully ignores the mechanized gruesomeness of the Holocaust. And Maus's removal isn't a side effect of an otherwise neutral attempt to keep classrooms wholesome. As I wrote in December, getting rid of books that spotlight bigotry is the goal. Books have been the targets of bans in America for more than a century. Maus is not the first, or the last, casualty of an ideology that, in the name of protecting children, leaves them ignorant of the world as it often is. The following 14 books employ difficult, sometimes upsetting imagery to tell complicated stories. That approach has made them some of the most frequently challenged, or outright banned, books in America's schools; it also makes them perfect examples of what literature is supposed to do. Please consider buying them for the students in your life, and for yourselves."
The following is a list of the 14 most targeted books for banning in the US:
1. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
2. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
3. The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
4. Fallen Angels, by Walter Dean Myers
5. Heather Has Two Mommies, by Lesléa Newman
6. Maus, by Art Spiegelman
7. Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson
8. His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman
9. Looking for Alaska, by John Green
10. Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
11. The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas
12. Gender Queer, by Maia Kobabe
13. In the Dream House, by Carmen Maria Machado
14. All Boys Aren't Blue, by George M. Johnson
January 31, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Martin Pengelly offers the following analysis of Trump "saying the quiet part loud". From the story: "Donald Trump is being widely accused of 'saying the quiet part loud', when protesting that Mike Pence could have 'overturned' his boss's election defeat by Joe Biden. Though he has appeared to admit Biden won before, Trump usually insists he won and his opponent stole the election through voter fraud – the 'big lie' which animates rallies like one in Conroe, Texas, on Saturday. At that rally, Trump promised pardons for 6 January rioters if re-elected and exhorted followers to protest against investigations of his business and political affairs in New York and Georgia. The next day, he attempted to seize on moves by a bipartisan group of senators to reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which Trump tried to use to have Pence refuse to certify Biden's victory. In a statement, Trump claimed 'fraud and many other irregularities' in the 2020 election, which is untrue, and asked: 'How come the Democrats and ... Republicans, like Wacky Susan Collins, are desperately trying to pass legislation that will not allow the vice-president to change the results of the election? 'Actually, what they are saying, is that Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away. Unfortunately, he didn't exercise that power. He could have overturned the election!' Pundits seized on Trump's latest apparent blunder into the truth. Bill Kristol, a conservative writer, said: 'Talk about saying the quiet part loud. Trump here admits or rather boasts [about] what he wanted Mike Pence to do.' In Congress, Liz Cheney, one of only two Republicans on the House committee investigating Trump's attempt to overturn the election, said: 'Trump uses language he knows caused the January 6 violence; suggests he'd pardon the January 6 defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy; threatens prosecutors; and admits he was attempting to overturn the election."
Writing for the Guardian, Martin Pengelly offers the following analysis of the Georgia district attorney requesting security help from the FBI. From the story: "Fani Willis, the Georgia prosecutor investigating whether Donald Trump and others broke the law by trying to pressure officials to overturn Joe Biden's election victory has asked the FBI for security help, after the former president railed against prosecutors investigating him during a rally in Texas on Saturday, and called on his supporters to protest 'radical, vicious, racist prosecutors'. The Associated Press reports that Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, 'on Sunday wrote to the FBI office in Atlanta asking for a risk assessment of the county courthouse and government center. She also asked the FBI to provide protective resources 'to include intelligence and federal agents'.' A special grand jury is set to be seated on 2 May in Willis's investigation. She asked the FBI to take the steps requested before then. 'My staff and I will not be influenced or intimidated by anyone as this investigation moves forward,' Willis wrote, adding that her office has already taken steps to address security concerns 'considering the communications we have received from persons unhappy with our commitment to fulfill our duties'. Willis said security concerns were 'escalated' when Trump focused on prosecutors in Georgia, New York and Washington, calling them 'vicious, horrible people'. Willis wrote: 'We must work together to keep the public safe and ensure that we do not have a tragedy in Atlanta similar to what happened at the United States Capitol on 6 January 2021.' Willis has confirmed to the AP that her investigation includes but is not limited to:
- A 2 January 2021 phone call between Trump and Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger
- A November 2020 phone call between Senator Lindsey Graham and Raffensperger;
- The abrupt resignation of the US attorney in Atlanta on 4 January 2021;
- Comments made during December 2020 Georgia legislative committee hearings on the election."
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary was asked about Trump's comments recently where he promised pardons for the Capitol insurrectionists. Psaki's response: "It's just a reminder of how unfit he is for office, and it's telling that even some of his closest allies have rejected those remarks as inappropriate in the days since."
Classes were cancelled at six historically Black colleges and universities today after all six received bomb threats. The affected institutions are Southern University and A&M, Howard University, Bethune-Cookman University, Albany State University, Bowie State University and Delaware State University.
Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican known for his own the libs provocations, like his gun-heavy Christmas card, posted to twitter the following quote: "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize - Voltaire" Massy accompanied the quote with "You mustn't question Fauci, for he is science." NOTE: The quote, which was falsely attributed to Voltaire, was actually coined by Kevin Strom, a neo-Nazi who was convicted in 2008 on child pornography charges.
According to CNN, Marc Short, who worked as former vice president Mike Pence's chief of staff, is cooperating with the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection by providing documents and testimony.
January 28, 2022 - Jason Miyares, the Republican attorney general for the state of Virginia, issued an opinion today that public state universities cannot mandate the Covid-19 vaccine as a condition for enrollment or in-person attendance. NOTE: Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, public schools across the country have required some form of vaccine for a number of illnesses, including measles, mumps and rubella.
In a 3-2 ruling, a state court in Pennsylvania ruled that a 2019 law allowing anyone in the state to vote by mail is unconstitutional.
Andrew Hitt, the former chair of the Wisconsin Republican party, issued a statement saying he will cooperate with a subpoena issued by the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
Writing for the Guardian, Martin Pengelly offers the following analysis of an ongoing back and forth between actor, singer and activist Bette Midler, and Republican governor of West Virginia Jim Justice: "Responding on Thursday to a tweet in which Midler called West Virginia 'poor, illiterate and strung out', the Republican Jim Justice said she could kiss his dog's 'hiney'. On Friday, Midler retweeted a picture of the stunt with the caption: 'Here we can see a dog's asshole. Right next to it is the butt of Jim Justice's dog.' Midler also tweeted: 'Here are the state rankings of all the areas and agencies for which the so-called 'governor' of West Virginia, Jim Justice, is responsible. Judging from these rankings, I'd say his dog's ass would make a better governor than him!' The graphic, from US News and World Report, showed Virginia scoring poorly in healthcare, education, economy and other categories and 47th overall among the 50 US states. The state tends to score poorly in such rankings. Justice, 70, a coalmining magnate who was elected as a Democrat, is an eccentric figure who often uses his English bulldog, Babydog, as a political prop. His State of the State speech, at the capitol in Charleston, was delayed after he contracted Covid-19. Midler angered the governor with comments prompted by her own anger towards the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin. Manchin, a Democrat, recently sank Joe Biden's Build Back Better spending plan, then stood in the way of Senate reform to facilitate the passage of voting rights protections. 'What Joe Manchin, who represents a population smaller than Brooklyn, has done to the rest of America, who wants to move forward, not backward, like his state, is horrible,' Midler tweeted. 'He sold us out. He wants us all to be just like his state, West Virginia. Poor, illiterate and strung out.' She later apologized to 'the good people' of West Virginia."
According to CNN, the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection has issued a subpoena for former White House spokesperson Judd Deere. From the story: "The committee is seeking both documents and a deposition next month from former deputy White House press secretary Judd Deere, who helped with 'formulating White House's response to the January 6 attack as it occurred,' according to the panel's letter. In its letter to Deere, the committee specifically said it wanted to speak with him about the January 5 staff meeting in the Oval Office with the President. The committee said it had obtained information that Trump repeatedly asked in the meeting: 'What are your ideas for getting the RINOs to do the right thing tomorrow? How do we convince Congress?'"
The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection has issued subpoenas to 14 Republicans associated with fake slates of electors that were sent to congress. The subpoenas were issued to the two most senior Republicans who signed onto the fake certificates in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The subpoena targets: Nancy Cottle, Loraine Pellegrino, David Shafer, Shawn Still, Kathy Berden, Mayra Rodriguez, Jewll Powdrell, Deborah Maestas, Michael McDonald, James DeGraffenreid, Bill Bachenberg, Lisa Patton, Andrew Hitt and Kelly Ruh.
January 27, 2022 - Joe Biden reacted to justice Stephen Breyer's retirement announcement saying in part: "I've made no decision except one. The person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience and integrity, and that person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States supreme court."
Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, reacted to Stephen Breyer's retirement saying: the RNC will do "everything in our power to expose Biden's nominee ... an activist judge ... rubber-stamp the far left's political agenda."
During her daily press briefing, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, responded to attacks by Republicans against Joe Biden's supreme court nominee, despite not knowing who the nominee will be. According to Psaki: "We have not mentioned a single name. We have not put out a list. The president made it very clear he has not made a selection. If anyone is saying they plan to characterize whoever he nominates, after thorough consideration with both parties, as radical before they know literally anything about who she is, they just obliterated their own credibility."
According to the AP, Mike Dunleavy, the governor of Alaska, has joined Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, in a lawsuit against the Biden administration over a vaccine mandate for the National Guard. From the story: "The Pentagon has required COVID-19 vaccination for all service members, including the National Guard and Reserve. Attorneys for the two governors, in an amended lawsuit dated Tuesday, say that when National Guard members are serving the state, the federal government has no command authority. The lawsuit said the mandate is an unconstitutional overstepping of bounds. The case dealing with Alaska and Texas guard members is an amended version of the challenge filed by Texas earlier this month. More than 220 members of the Texas Air National Guard and about 40% of Texas Army National Guard members are refusing to be vaccinated for 'either religious accommodation needs or otherwise,' according to the lawsuit. About 8% of Alaska Air and Army National Guard members have not received a first dose of any COVID-19 vaccine and of these members, 'more than 90% have requested a medical or religious exemption, yet no such exemptions have been granted.' 'A small number of additional Alaska National Guard members are refusing any COVID-19 vaccine,' the lawsuit said. The lawsuit names as defendants President Joe Biden, the Department of Defense and military officials."
A Tennessee school board has banned the teaching of the Holocaust novel Maus, saying the novel was removed from the curriculum because it is "too adult-oriented" and because "of its unnecessary use of profanity and nudity and its depiction of violence and suicide." NOTE: Maus is a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel, which depicts author Art Spiegelman interviewing his father about his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp.
While defending Fox News host Tucker Carlson against a slander lawsuit filed by Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who sold the rights to her story of an affair with Donald Trump to the National Enquirer, Fox News lawyers argued that Tucker's comments that McDougal attempted to extort money from Trump "cannot reasonably be interpreted as facts" because he so obviously engages in "non-literal commentary". Mary Kay Vyskocil, a U.S. District judge for the Southern District of New York, agreed, saying "given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the statements he makes" and that "this overheated rhetoric is precisely the kind of pitched commentary that one expects when tuning in to talk shows like Tucker Carlson Tonight, with pundits debating the latest political controversies ... The Court concludes that the statements are rhetorical hyperbole and opinion commentary intended to frame a political debate, and, as such, are not actionable as defamation."
January 26, 2022 - Stephen Breyer, an 83 year-old liberal supreme court justice, announced that he will be retiring. NOTE: The supreme court has a 6 to 3 conservative majority.
Writing for the Guardian, Ed Pilkington offers the following analysis of US prosecutors who are investigating Republicans who sent fake electors to Congress. From the story: "Federal prosecutors have launched an investigation into the attempt by Republicans in seven presidential battleground states won by Joe Biden in 2020 to subvert the election result by sending bogus slates of Donald Trump electors to Congress. The ploy was one of the central tactics used by Trump loyalists as part of the 'big lie' that he had defeated his Democratic challenger. The fake slates of electors were forwarded to congressional leaders, who then came under pressure to delay certification of Biden's victory on 6 January 2021, the day of the Capitol insurrection. In an interview on CNN, the deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, revealed that the justice department has begun an investigation into what she called the 'fraudulent elector certifications'. She said the department had received referrals on the matter and 'our prosecutors are looking at those'. Monaco added: 'We are going to follow the facts and the law wherever they lead to address conduct of any kind and at any level that is part of an assault on our democracy.' Fake slates of Trump electors were sent to Congress from seven states in fact won by Biden – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Of those, two – New Mexico and Pennsylvania – added the caveat that the Trump electors should only be counted in the event of a disputed election. The other five states sent signed statements to Washington giving the appearance that Trump had won despite clear and verified counts placing Biden on top."
Writing for the Guardian, Andrew Witherspoon and Sam Levine offer the following analysis of how Republicans "dismembered" a Democratic stronghold. From the story: "Republican lawmakers in Tennessee gave final approval on Monday to an aggressive plan to split Nashville, a Democratic bastion, in a deeply Republican state, into several congressional districts as part of an effort to tilt the state's congressional map in their favor. The plan is now waiting for approval from Governor Bill Lee, who is likely to sign it. Nashville currently sits in the state's fifth congressional district, represented by Jim Cooper, a Democrat who has held the seat for nearly 20 years. It's a solid Democratic district – Joe Biden carried it by nearly 24 points in 2020 – but on Tuesday, Cooper announced he was retiring from Congress. 'Despite my strength at the polls, I could not stop the general assembly from dismembering Nashville. No one tried harder to keep our city whole,' he said in a statement. 'I explored every possible way, including lawsuits, to stop the gerrymandering and to win one of the three new congressional districts that now divide Nashville. There's no way, at least for me in this election cycle, but there may be a path for other worthy candidates.' The new districts crack the concentration of Democratic voters in Nashville and cram them into three districts that stretch across the state and are filled with reliable Republican voters. Donald Trump would have easily carried all three of the proposed districts in 2020. The plan is one of the clearest, and most brazen, efforts to dismantle a Democratic district to benefit Republicans."
January 25, 2022 - According to the AP, the US is considering a range of financial options that could be used as punishment if Russia invades Ukraine. From the story: "For the U.S. and its European allies, cutting Russia out of the SWIFT financial system, which shuffles money from bank to bank around the globe, would be one of the toughest financial steps they could take, damaging Russia's economy immediately and in the long term. The move could cut Russia off from most international financial transactions, including international profits from oil and gas production, which in all accounts for more than 40% of the country’s revenue... The United States already holds one of the most powerful financial weapons to wield against Putin if he invades Ukraine — blocking Russia from access to the U.S. dollar... White House press secretary Jen Psaki has confirmed that the U.S. is considering imposing export controls — potentially cutting off Russia from the high tech that helps warplanes and passenger jets fly and makes smartphones smart, along with the other software and advanced electronic gear that make the modern world run..."
US district judge Robert Jonker has denied a request to dismiss charges against five men accused of plotting to kidnap and kill Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer. NOTE: The 5 men accused in this case claim that they are victims of entrapment and government overreach. A 6th pleaded guilty and is serving a six-year federal prison sentence.
January 24, 2022 - Newt Gingrich, a former Republican House speaker, and former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, raised eyebrows when he called members of the January 6 committee "wolves [who] are going to find out that they're now sheep" if Republicans retake Congress in November. Gingrich continued: "this is all going to come crashing down ... they're the ones who in fact, I think, face a real risk of jail for the kinds of laws they're breaking ... You have, both with Attorney General [Merrick] Garland and this select committee on 6 January, people who have run amok ... basically a lynch mob ... they're running over people's civil liberties. And what they need to understand is on 4 January next year, you're going to have a Republican majority in the House and a Republican majority in the Senate. And all these people who have been so tough, and so mean, and so nasty are going to be delivered subpoenas for every document, every conversation, every tweet, every email." Here are some notable responses to Gingrich's prediction:
"A former speaker of the House is threatening jail time for members of Congress who are investigating the violent attack on our Capitol and our constitution. This is what it looks like when the rule of law unravels." - Liz Cheney, Republican Congresswoman
"Just bizarre. I think Newt has really lost it. You know, it leaves me speechless." - Zoe Lofgren, Democrat Congresswoman
Today was supposed to be the first day of a defamation trial in which Sarah Palin, a former Alaska governor, and former Republican vice presidential candidate, sued the New York Times for "falsely" linking her in a 2017 editorial to a mass shooting that took place in Tucson, Arizona. NOTE: Palin, who is unvaccinated, and has urged others to not get vaccinated - telling an audience in Arizona last month: "It will be over my dead body that I'll have to get a shot. I will not do that. I won't do it, and they better not touch my kids either" - has tested positive for the virus today, which led US District judge Jed Rakoff to delay the trial until February 3rd.
The US supreme court has decided not to hear a case brought by House minority leader Kevin McCarthy which seeks to invalidate proxy voting for the House of Representatives. NOTE: Proxy voting has been used by members of both parties for various reasons, but mostly because of the pandemic.
The following exchange took place between president Joe Biden and Fox News journalist Peter Doocy:
DOOCY: "Do you think inflation is a political liability in the midterms?"
BIDEN: "It's a great asset – more inflation. What a stupid son of a bitch." NOTE: Biden later called Doocy to apologize.
Writing for the Guardian, Adam Gabbatt offers the following analysis of conservative groups across the country who are carrying out a campaign to band books from school libraries, with a focus on books dealing with race, LGBTQ issues or marginalized communities. From the story: "Literature has already been removed from schools in Texas, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming. Librarians and teachers warn the trend is on the increase, as groups backed by wealthy Republican donors use centrally drawn up tactics and messaging to harangue school districts into removing certain texts. In October, the Texas state representative Matt Krause sent a list of 850 books to school districts, asking that they report how many copies they have of each title and how much had been spent on those books. The Texas Tribune reported that the books included two by Ta-Nehisi Coates; LGBT Families by Leanne K Currie-McGhee; and 'Pink is a Girl Color' ... and Other Silly Things People Say, a children's book by Stacy and Erik Drageset. Krause's list sparked panic in schools, and by December a district in San Antonio said it was reviewing 414 titles in its libraries."
January 21, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Peter Stone offers the following analysis of efforts by Michael Flynn and his allies to lean on Republicans to back vote audits. From the story: "FBI agents and the House panel investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol have both learned of an alleged plan by allies of retired army Lt Gen Michael Flynn to gather 'intelligence' on top Republicans to 'move' them to back election audits in key states Trump lost, said ex-whistleblower Everett Stern who talked to the panel and the FBI. Stern, who runs the intelligence firm Tactical Rabbit and is a Republican vying for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania, in multiple interviews with the Guardian said two Flynn associates with the rightwing Patriot Caucus group enlisted his help in April in a scheme to seek potentially damaging information on two Republican members of Congress to prod them to back an audit of the 2020 vote that Joe Biden won. Stern told the Guardian he spent several hours in November telling House panel investigators about the alleged drive by Flynn associates who sought campaign finance and other dirt on Pennsylvania's Senator Pat Toomey and Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick to win their support for an audit to bolster Trump's debunked charges that Biden's win was fraudulent.'"
Chad Stark, a 54 year-old resident of Texas, became the first person to be arrested by a new special Justice Department unit created to combat threats against election officials. The unit was created in June 2021 by the Biden administration to help address a rise in threats to election workers following the 2020 presidential election. Stark was arrested after he posted a message on Craigslist on January 5th saying he wanted "Georgia Patriots" to kill several election officials. Stark was charged with one count of communicating interstate threats, which has a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
This weekend marks the 49th anniversary of Roe v Wade, the decision in 1973 that established a woman's right to abortion access. Anti-abortion protesters marked the occasion by gathering in Washington DC for a rally called March for Life. Speakers at the rally, whose theme is "equality begins in the womb", wrapped their speeches in the rhetoric of the social justice movement, where they argued that abortion is anathema to racial and gender equality. In response to the rally's theme, the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) released a memo accusing the anti-abortion movement of "co-opting social justice rhetoric in order to make its extreme agenda appear more palatable." The memo went on to say "In this critical moment for the future of reproductive freedom, we must call out the anti-choice movement's fake 'feminism' for what it is: a tactic for maintaining white, patriarchal control."
Writing for the Guardian, Ed Pilkington offers the following analysis of news of a draft Trump order which directed the defense chief to seize voting machines: "In the heady days between Donald Trump's defeat in November 2020 and the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol, an executive order was prepared. It commanded the defense secretary to seize voting machines in battleground states, as part of Trump's 'big lie' that the vote was rigged. The draft executive order, obtained and published by Politico, was never sent and its author is unknown. It was part of a cache of documents handed over to the House committee investigating the 6 January violence, after the supreme court ruled this week that Trump could not shield himself from oversight on grounds of executive privilege. The disclosure of the draft order adds to evidence of the lengths to which Trump and his close advisers were prepared to go to keep him in the White House, against the will of the American people. Under the draft order, the defense secretary would have been required to carry out an assessment of the voting machines 'no later than 60 days from commencement of operations'."
The National Archives has turned over a trove of documents from the Trump administration to the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection. The documents include call logs, daily presidential diaries, handwritten notes and memos from Trump's top aides.
According to the Washington Post, the Manhattan US attorney's office, which is investigating Rudy Giuliani's dealings in Ukraine, has received thousand of documents from the Trump lawyer's devices that were seized by investigators last April. From the story: "The retired federal judge assigned to review the contents of 18 electronic devices seized from Rudolph W. Giuliani's home and offices in Manhattan last spring has withheld about half of what former president Donald Trump's personal lawyer argued should be kept out of the hands of investigators because it was privileged. More than 3,000 communications were released to prosecutors on Wednesday, an action reflected in a four-page report submitted to a judge overseeing litigation on the FBI's April 28 seizure of Giuliani's phones and computers. The contents of the devices were not disclosed. The Manhattan U.S. attorney's office has been investigating Giuliani's dealings in Ukraine while he was representing Trump. Prosecutors have said Giuliani might have acted as an unregistered foreign agent, which was the basis for the agents' search. Giuliani, a former mayor of New York who also once headed the prosecutor's office that now has him under a microscope, has denied any wrongdoing."
In Mississippi, the state's Black senators walked out of legislature and withheld their votes in protest over a bill that would ban schools in that state from teaching critical race theory. Mike McLendon, a Republican, and chief sponsor of the bill, said that he introduced Senate bill 2113 because constituents had heard about the theory in the news, and don't want it taught in Mississippi's schools. NOTE: The state superintendent confirmed that critical race theory is not being taught in public schools in Mississippi. The bill passed by a vote of 32-2.
January 20, 2022 - President Joe Biden issued a warning to Russia saying that if Russian units move across the border into Ukraine "It will be met with severe and coordinated economic response ... Russia will pay a heavy price."
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Fani Willis, the district attorney for Fulton county, Georgia, has requested a special grand jury to aid in her investigation of Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the state's 2020 election results. From the story: "In a Thursday letter to Christopher S. Brasher, chief judge of Fulton County's Superior Court, Willis said the move was needed because a 'significant number of witnesses and prospective witnesses have refused to cooperate with the investigation absent a subpoena requiring their testimony.' She cited comments Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger made during an October 2021 interview with NBC News' Chuck Todd, in which he said 'if she wants to interview me, there's a process for that.' So-called special purpose grand juries are rarely used in Georgia but could be a valuable tool for Willis as she takes the extraordinary step of investigating the conduct of a president while he was in office. Her probe, launched in February, is centered on the Jan. 2 phone call Trump placed to Raffensperger, in which he urged the Republican to 'find' the votes to reverse Joe Biden's win in Georgia in November 2020. Special grand juries, which typically have 16 to 23 members, can't issue indictments. But they can subpoena witnesses, compel the production of documents, inspect and enter into certain offices for the purposes of the investigation. Willis said a special grand jury would be beneficial because jurors can be impaneled for a longer period and would be focused on the one probe. A regular Fulton County grand jury is seated for two months. Jurors typically hear hundreds of felony cases before their service ends. The DA also requested that a Fulton County superior court judge be assigned to assist and supervise the special grand jury in carrying out its investigation and duties. Willis' request must be approved by a majority of the county's superior court judges."
While speaking to the press, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell defended the Republican efforts to block voting rights legislation saying "The concern is misplaced, because if you look at the statistics, African-American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans."
The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection has requested that Ivanka Trump, the daughter of Donald Trump, appear for a voluntary deposition to answer questions about Trump's efforts to stop the certification of Joe Biden's election victory.
The US supreme court has again rejected a bid by abortion providers to block a Texas law that bans abortions as early as six weeks, which is earlier than many even know they're pregnant. In a dissent to the decision, Sonia Sotomayor wrote: "Today, for the fourth time, this court declines to protect pregnant Texans from egregious violations of their constitutional rights."
David S Fry, a 70-year-old resident of Normal, IL, was arrested after a McLean County grand jury indicted him on 45 counts alleging he was in possession of child pornography. Fry, a graduate of Biola University with a degree in Mass Media Communications and a Bible minor, frequented online forums, where he regularly touted his superior ethics which he attributed to his Christian faith.
January 19, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Sam Levine offers the following analysis of Republican redistricting efforts: "Republicans are severely distorting district lines to their advantage and weakening the influence of minority voters as they draw new district lines across the country, according to a new report by the Brennan Center for Justice. The report, which examines the state of play of the ongoing decennial redistricting cycle, notes that Republicans are shielding their efforts to dismantle minority districts by arguing that the new lines are based on partisanship. While racial discrimination in redistricting is illegal, the US supreme court said in 2019 that discrimination based on partisanship was acceptable. 'This cycle is seeing unprecedented efforts to undermine the political power of Black, Latino, Asian, and Native communities through redistricting, especially in southern states that, for the first time in more than half a century, are no longer covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act,' the report says. 'Some of the most aggressive attacks on minority power are coming in the suburbs of southern states like Texas and Georgia. There, Republicans have surgically dismantled rapidly diversifying districts where communities of color have enjoyed increasing electoral success in recent years,' it adds. The report also notes that Republicans, who have complete control over the drawing of 187 of the US House's 435 districts, are making districts much less competitive. Donald Trump won 54 districts by 15 or more points in states where the GOP controls redistricting under old maps. Under the new plan, that number increases to 70. The redistricting cycle is still ongoing. New York, Tennessee, and Missouri are still among the states where lawmakers are drawing new maps."
The US supreme court has rejected a bid by Donald Trump to withhold documents from the congressional committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. Those documents include diaries, visitor logs, drafts of speeches and handwritten notes, held by the National Archives and the Records Administration. Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter.
Senate Republicans successfully blocked the Democrat's voting rights legislation for the 5th time in 6 months. NOTE: The legislation would have set a national baseline for election access, guaranteeing 15 days of early voting as well as online voter registration. It protected election officials from harassment and partisan interference in their jobs and curbed gerrymandering. It also restored a key piece of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that required places with a history of voting discrimination to get their changes approved by either the justice department or a federal court in Washington before they go into effect.
According to a state court filing by New York Attorney General Letitia James, Eric Trump, the son of the former one term, twice impeached president, invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination more than 500 times when he was deposed as part of a civil probe into the Trump Organization's asset valuations in October of 2020.
January 18, 2022 - According to NPR, tensions are high at the supreme court over the wearing of masks. From the story: "It was pretty jarring earlier this month when the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court took the bench for the first time since the omicron surge over the holidays. All were now wearing masks. All, that is, except Justice Neil Gorsuch. What's more, Justice Sonia Sotomayor was not there at all, choosing instead to participate through a microphone setup in her chambers. Sotomayor has diabetes, a condition that puts her at high risk for serious illness, or even death, from COVID-19. She has been the only justice to wear a mask on the bench since last fall when, amid a marked decline in COVID-19 cases, the justices resumed in-person arguments for the first time since the onset of the pandemic. Now, though, the situation had changed with the omicron surge, and according to court sources, Sotomayor did not feel safe in close proximity to people who were unmasked. Chief Justice John Roberts, understanding that, in some form asked the other justices to mask up. They all did. Except Gorsuch, who, as it happens, sits next to Sotomayor on the bench. His continued refusal since then has also meant that Sotomayor has not attended the justices' weekly conference in person, joining instead by telephone."
Laura Ingraham, a far-right Fox News host, stoked outrage when she applauded as she gleefully announced that General Mark Milley, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, had tested positive for coronavirus saying "Triple-vaxxed joint chiefs chairman Mark Milley, our favorite Mark Milley, tested positive for Covid yesterday." Milley is despised in rightwing circles for his work in containing Donald Trump at the end of his presidency by keeping US armed forces out of domestic affairs, and for defending the teaching of critical race theory in military institutions.
Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, who recently proposed a civilian military force that he would control, has now proposed forming a $6m Election Crime and Security agency to investigate election crimes in the state. The proposal asks for 52 staffers, including 45 investigators. NOTE: According to the Tampa Bay Times, the proposed office would have more investigators than law enforcement agencies in some of Florida's biggest cities have to investigate murders. NOTE: There is little evidence of voter fraud in the state of Florida.
Notable response to DeSantis' proposed Office of Election Crime and Security:
"A solution in search of a problem ... a $6m door prize for a QAnon pep rally" - Florida State Prosecutor
Writing for the Guardian, Hugo Lowell offers the following analysis of new subpoenas issued by the House select committee investigating the USA Capitol insurrection: "The US congressional committee investigating the Capitol attack has issued a blitz of subpoenas to some of Donald Trump's top lawyers – including Rudy Giuliani – as it examines whether the former president oversaw a criminal conspiracy on 6 January 2021. The House panel subpoenaed four of Trump's legal team on Tuesday: the former president's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and his associate Boris Epshteyn, as well as Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, who all defended Trump's baseless voter fraud claims as he attempted to overturn the election result. Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the select committee, said in a statement that the panel issued the subpoenas to the four Trump lawyers because they were 'in direct contact with the former president about attempts to stop the counting of electoral votes'. The move by the select committee amounts to another dramatic escalation in the investigation, as the orders compel Trump's lawyers to produce documents and testimony, suggesting the panel believes the lawyers may have acted unlawfully. In its most aggressive move, the select committee ordered Giuliani to testify under oath about his communications with Trump and Republican members of Congress regarding strategies for delaying or overturning the election results."
January 14, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Julian Borger and Luke Harding offer the following analysis of possible Russian plans to use "false-flag" operations as a pretext to invade Ukraine: "The US has alleged Russia has already positioned saboteurs in Ukraine to carry out a false flag operation to use as a pretext for a Russian attack which Washington says could begin in the coming month. The allegations, following similar claims by the government in Kyiv, come after the failure of a week of diplomacy to defuse the crisis provoked by Russia's massing of over 100,000 troops near Ukraine's borders. Moscow has persistently portrayed the crisis as a military threat from Ukraine against Russia, without providing any evidence. 'Russia is laying the groundwork to have the option of fabricating a pretext for invasion, including through sabotage activities and information operations, by accusing Ukraine of preparing an imminent attack against Russian forces in eastern Ukraine,' a US official said. 'We have information that indicates Russia has already prepositioned a group of operatives to conduct a false-flag operation in eastern Ukraine.' 'Russian influence actors already starting to fabricate Ukrainian provocations in state and social media,' the official said, noting that Russia used similar tactics ahead of the annexation of Crimea in 2014."
John Katko, one of 10 house Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump, announced that he will not be seeking re-election.
Elmer Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right militia group known as the Oathkeepers, pleaded not guilty to seditious conspiracy. NOTE: Rhodes and 10 others were charged with conspiring to oppose the transfer of presidential power by force.
According to the Guardian, Right to Life Michiana, an anti-abortion group who had one of its advertisements signed and endorsed by Amy Coney Barret before she joined the supreme court, has been accused of encouraging the harassment of doctors. From the story: "An Indiana group whose anti-abortion campaign was endorsed in a signed advertisement by Amy Coney Barrett before she became a supreme court justice, keeps a published list of abortion providers and their place of work on its website, in what some experts say is an invitation to harass and intimidate the doctors and their staff. In one case, court records show, a doctor whose name was published by the group, which is called Right to Life Michiana, was warned by the FBI of a kidnapping threat that had been made online against her daughter. The threat prompted the doctor to temporarily stop providing abortion services at the Whole Woman's Health Care clinic in South Bend, which is also named on the Michiana group's website. The doctor said in the court document that the clinic regularly attracts large gatherings of protesters, who she feared could identify her. Barrett signed a two-page advertisement in 2006, while she was working as a professor at Notre Dame, that stated that those who signed 'oppose abortion on demand and defend the right to life from fertilization to natural death'. The second page of the ad called Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion, 'barbaric'. The advertisement, which was published in the South Bend Tribune and signed by hundreds of people, was sponsored by a group called St Joseph County Right to Life, which merged with another anti-abortion group in 2020 and is now called Right to Life Michiana. The supreme court is expected to rule this year on challenges to Roe v Wade that many court experts expect will gut the rights of women in the US to obtain legal abortions. In arguments before the court, Barrett – who has said her personal views do not affect her legal judgment – argued that passage of safe haven laws, which allow parents to relinquish their newborns at hospitals or other designated centers without the threat of legal consequences, had in effect given women options outside of abortion for those who did not want to become parents. During her 2020 confirmation hearing, Barrett said she had signed the advertisement as a private citizen, while she was making her way out of church, and had not recalled signing it until it became public following a report in the Guardian. 'It was consistent with the views of my church,' she said, in response to senators' questions about the statement. She later added: 'I do see as distinct my personal, moral, religious views and my task of applying the law as a judge.'"
The Republican bill in Virginia which seeks to ban the teaching of "divisive concepts" has become the subject of ridicule after it became known that one of the historical events deemed suitable for study by the bill is a nonexistent debate between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglas. NOTE: Lincoln did engage in a series of debates on the subject of slavery, but those were against Stephen Douglas, a senator with ties to slavery, not Frederick Douglas, who campaigned for the abolition of slavery and was once enslaved.
Notable reaction to the "divisive concepts" bill in Virginia:
"New rule. If you don't know the difference between Frederick Douglas and Stephen Douglas, you don't get to tell anyone else what to teach" - Steve Vladeck, University of Texas Law Professor
According to Bloomberg News, One America News Network (OANN), which is known for spreading misinformation, and was one of Trump's favorite news sources during his presidency, is being dropped from DirectTV, its largest distributor. NOTE: OANN has never been carried by major providers Comcast Corp., Charter Communications Inc. or Dish Network Corp.
January 13, 2022 - Today the House passed H.R. 5746 - Freedom to Vote: John R Lewis Act. NOTE: The vote was 220 to 203. Every Republican voted no.
According to the AP, Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right group Oath Keepers, has been arrested and charged with seditious conspiracy for his role in the Capitol insurrection. From the story: "Rhodes is the highest-ranking member of an extremist group to be arrested in the deadly siege and it is the first time the Justice Department has brought a seditious conspiracy charge in connection with the attack on the Capitol. Rhodes is charged along with more than a dozen other members and associates of the Oath Keepers, who authorities say came to Washington intent on stopping the certification of President Joe Biden's victory. Rhodes did not enter the Capitol building on Jan. 6 but is accused of helping put into motion the violence that disrupted the certification of the vote."
The justice department released a statement regarding the arrest of Stewart Rhodes which reads in part: "According to the seditious conspiracy indictment, the defendants conspired through a variety of manners and means, including: organizing into teams that were prepared and willing to use force and to transport firearms and ammunition into Washington, D.C.; recruiting members and affiliates to participate in the conspiracy; organizing trainings to teach and learn paramilitary combat tactics; bringing and contributing paramilitary gear, weapons and supplies – including knives, batons, camouflaged combat uniforms, tactical vests with plates, helmets, eye protection and radio equipment – to the Capitol grounds; breaching and attempting to take control of the Capitol grounds and building on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to prevent, hinder and delay the certification of the electoral college vote; using force against law enforcement officers while inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; continuing to plot, after Jan. 6, 2021, to oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power, and using websites, social media, text messaging and encrypted messaging applications to communicate with co-conspirators and others."
According to the AP, the US supreme court blocked the Biden administrations vaccine mandate for companies with at least 100 employees. From the story: "The Supreme Court has stopped the Biden administration from enforcing a requirement that employees at large businesses be vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergo weekly testing and wear a mask on the job. At the same time, the court is allowing the administration to proceed with a vaccine mandate for most health care workers in the U.S. ... The court's conservative majority concluded the administration overstepped its authority by seeking to impose the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's vaccine-or-test rule on U.S. businesses with at least 100 employees. More than 80 million people would have been affected."
Joe Biden issued a statement expressing disappointment in the supreme court decision, then called on businesses to "institute vaccination requirements to protect their workers, customers, and communities."
The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection has subpoenaed the following companies for records related to the January 6th insurrection:
Meta (includes Facebook)
Alphabet (includes Google)
Glenn Beck, a rightwing media personality, who once stated that Hitler's extermination program to eliminate people with disabilities (Action T-4) was borne of empathy - thus "empathy leads you to very bad decisions" - announced during an interview with fellow shock jock Mark Levin, that he has Covid-19 for a second time. According to Beck, who said he is taking Ivermectin: "So far it is way different than the first time I had it in Dec '20. That time it wiped me out for almost three weeks. This time it is just the worst 'cold' I have ever had."
During an interview with Fox News, Republican senator Lindsey Graham criticized senate minority leader Mitch McConnell who had recently sided with senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota, who said Biden won the election. According to Graham: "If you want to be a Republican leader in the House or the Senate, you have to have a working relationship with Donald Trump. He's the most consequential Republican since Ronald Reagan. It is his nomination if he wants it, and I think he'll get re-elected in 2024. I like Senator McConnell, he worked well with President Trump to get a bunch of judges including three supreme court justices on the bench, they got the tax cuts passed working together. But here's the question: can Senator McConnell effectively work with the leader the Republican party, Donald Trump? I'm not gonna vote for anybody that can't have a working relationship with President Trump, to be a team to come up with an America First agenda, to show the difference between us and liberal Democrats, to prosecute the case for Trump policies ... because if you can't do that, you will fail. I will tell you that."
Writing for the Guardian, Martin Pengelly offers the following analysis of Republican efforts to withdraw from US presidential debates: "The Republican party has signaled plans to withdraw from traditional US presidential debates, which it claims are biased against it. The New York Times first reported the move, citing a letter sent on Thursday by the Republican National Committee (RNC) to the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). The commission was set up in 1987, as a non-partisan body 'to ensure, for the benefit of the American electorate, that general election debates between or among the leading candidates for the offices of president and vice-president ... are a permanent part of the electoral process'. In the most recent election, in 2020, Donald Trump made headlines with an aggressive performance in the first debate, in Cleveland, Ohio. The second debate was cancelled after Trump was hospitalized with Covid-19 and the CPD sought to move the event online. Trump and Republicans protested that doing so would help Joe Biden. The final debate took place in Nashville, Tennessee as planned, with Biden widely adjudged the winner. A vice-presidential debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris also went ahead, in Salt Lake City. In December this year, the Guardian first revealed the stunning news that Trump tested positive for Covid before the first debate but concealed the result, potentially putting Biden's life in danger. Trump said that was fake news. So did his former chief of staff Mark Meadows – who wrote the book which contained the bombshell. The Times said the Republican move against the CPD was born of longstanding complaints that it favors Democrats, 'mirroring increasing rancor from conservatives toward Washington-based institutions'. Among Republican complaints in 2020 was that the first debate took place on 29 September, more than a month before election day but after nearly a million votes had been cast. Trump and Republicans also complained about supposed bias among debate moderators – even from Chris Wallace, then of the conservative Fox News network, in the first debate."
In a victory for Wisconsin Republicans, who filed a lawsuit seeking to prohibit voters from submitting ballots anywhere other than the local clerks office, a judge in Waukesha County has ruled that absentee ballot drop boxes cannot be used in Wisconsin. NOTE: Ballot drop boxes have long been used in Wisconsin. Joe Biden narrowly beat Donald Trump in Wisconsin. A Republican led investigation into the 2020 results is ongoing, despite multiple probes and recounts which confirmed Biden's victory.
A study published by Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that 59% of Americans are either Alarmed or Concerned about climate change, while 19% are Doubtful or Dismissive. The other 22% are considered Cautious or Disengaged.
January 12, 2022 - According to NBC News, a former girlfriend of Republican representative Matt Gaetz has provided testimony to a federal grand jury in connection with a sex-trafficking investigation involving the congressman. From the story: "The ex-girlfriend, whose name is being withheld by NBC News to respect her privacy, has been in talks for months with prosecutors to receive an immunity deal. Under a possible deal, she would avoid prosecution for obstruction of justice in return for testifying in an investigation into whether Gaetz in 2017 had sex with a 17-year-old female for money and whether months later he and others violated a federal law prohibiting people for paying for prostitutes overseas. Legal sources familiar with the case say Gaetz is being investigated for three distinct crimes: Sex trafficking the 17-year-old; violating the Mann Act, which prohibits taking prostitutes across state lines; and obstructing justice." NOTE: Joel Greenberg, a close friend of Gaetz, pleaded guilty last year to six federal crimes, including sex trafficking of a child.
Donald Trump, the disgraced, one term, twice impeached former president, called into NPR for an interview. About half way through the interview, Trump hung up the phone after being confronted about his election lies.
Bennie Thompson, the chair of the House select committee, sent a letter to House minority leader Kevin McCarthy requesting information. From the letter: "We write to request your voluntary cooperation with our investigation on a range of critical topics, including your conversations with President Trump before, during and after the violent January 6th attack ... You have acknowledged speaking directly with the former President while the violence was underway on January 6th." NOTE: McCarthy was asked recently whether he would be willing to share information with the select committee. McCarthy's response: "I don't really have anything to add. I have been very public, but I wouldn't hide from anything."
In a 4 to 3 ruling, the Ohio supreme court struck down new maps for the state legislature, saying the maps were so skewed to benefit Republicans that they violated the state constitution. Lawmakers in that state now have 10 days to come up with a new map. NOTE: The heavily gerrymandered maps were drawn in secret by Republican legislators despite anti-gerrymandering provisions in that state that were adopted by Ohio voters in 2015.
January 11, 2022 - Writing for the Guardian, Martin Pengelly offers the following analysis of Eric Trump's complaints about investigations into his family business. From the story: "The attorney general of New York state is acting unconstitutionally and in an un-American way in investigating the Trump Organization, Eric Trump has insisted, claiming a civil inquiry into his father's financial and tax affairs is politically motivated. 'This is what you would expect from Russia,' Trump told Fox News on Monday. 'This is what you would expect from Venezuela. This is third-rate stuff.' The investigation run by Letitia James is looking into questions including whether the Trump Organization altered property valuations for tax purposes. A separate, criminal investigation in Manhattan is covering similar ground. Such alleged behavior has been widely reported. In 2016, as Donald Trump ran for the White House, the Guardian reported on a golf club outside New York City. The headline: How Trump's $50m golf club became $1.4m when it came time to pay tax. Trump denies wrongdoing. Eric Trump initially refused to comply with the James investigation but was taken to court then questioned in 2020. James has issued subpoenas to Donald Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump. They have refused to comply. The family has sued, alleging the investigation is politically motivated – a delaying tactic the New York Times said 'Mr Trump has deployed in the past when faced with scrutiny by law enforcement and others'. As the Times put it, 'there is no constitutional protection against a prosecutor harboring a political bias'. Experts believe the Trump suit will not succeed. Eric Trump's remark about Russia raised eyebrows. He is reported to have told a golf writer, in 2014, that the Trump Organization did not 'rely on American banks' because it had 'all the funding we need out of Russia'. He denies the remark."
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris spoke about voting rights at the historically Black Spelman College in Atlanta. Here are some highlights:
HARRIS: "Anti-voters laws are not new in our nation, but we must not be deceived into thinking they're normal. There is nothing normal about a law that makes it illegal to pass out water or food to people standing in long voting lines ... [Republicans are] interfere with our elections to get the outcomes they want ... Do not succumb to those who would dismiss this assault on voting rights as an unfounded threat. If we stand idly by, our entire nation will pay the price for generations to come."
BIDEN: "We must be vigilant, and the world is watching. They're watching American democracy and seeing if we can meet this moment ... I'm tired of being quiet ... History has never been kind to those who have sided with voter suppression over voters' rights. Do you want to be on the side of Dr King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis? This is the moment to decide."
The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection issued subpoenas for the following individuals:
Ross Worthington - Helped draft the speech Trump delivered prior to the attack on the Capitol
Andy Surabian - Adviser to Donald Trump Jr
Arthur Schwartz - Adviser to Donald Trump Jr
Scott Baldwin, a Republican state senator in Indiana, raised eyebrows while defending Senate Bill 167, a proposed bill that would ban "divisive concepts". According to Baldwin: "Marxism, nazism, fascism ... I have no problem with the education system providing instruction on the existence of those 'isms'. I believe we've gone too far when we take a position ... We need to be impartial ... [teachers should] just provide the facts ... not sure it's right for us to determine how that child should think and that's where I'm trying to provide the guardrails." NOTE: The bill is seen as a response to the ways in which children are taught about racism, history and other subject matters.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease expert in the US, testified before a senate committee today on the government's response to coronavirus. Here are some highlights:
- The following exchange took place between Dr Fauci and Republican Senator Roger Marshall:
MARSHALL: "Yes or no, would you be willing to submit to congress and the public a financial disclosure that includes your past and current investments, after all, your colleague Dr Wolenski and every member of congress submits a financial disclosure that includes their investments."
FAUCI: "I don't understand why you're asking me that question. My financial disclosure is public knowledge and has been so for the last 37 years or so."
MARSHALL: "The big tech giants are doing an incredible job of keeping it from being public. We'll continue to look for it. Where would we find it?"
FAUCI: "All you have to do is ask for it? You're so misinformed, it's extraordinary."
MARSHALL: "Why am I misinformed? This is a huge issue. Wouldn't you agree with me that you have a, you see things before members of congress would see them so that there's an air of appearance that maybe some shenanigans are going on. I don't think that's, I assume that's not the case."
FAUCI: "Senator, What are you talking about? My financial disclosures are public knowledge and have been so. You are getting amazingly wrong information".
MARSHALL: "I cannot find them. Our office cannot find them. Where would they be if they're public knowledge? Where?"
FAUCI: "It is totally accessible to you if you want it."
MARSHALL: "For the public. Is it accessible to the public?"
FAUCI: "To the public. To the public."
MARSHALL: "Great we look forward to reviewing them."
FAUCI: "You are totally incorrect."
MARSHALL: "We look forward to reviewing it."
SENATE CHAIR: "Senator Marshall, Dr Fauci has answered you. It is public information and he's happy to give it to you if you ask."
FAUCI: "What a moron. Jesus Christ."
- After Senator Rand Paul accused Dr Fauci of organizing a smear campaign to denounce conservative academics who opposed shutdown measures, and used a series of emails sent by Fauci as proof, Fauci responded: "In usual fashion, you are distorting everything about me ... what happens when [Paul] gets out and accuses me of things that are completely untrue is that all of a sudden that kindles the crazies out there, and I have ... threats upon my life, harassment of my family and my children with obscene phone calls because people are lying about me ... We are here at a committee to look at a virus now that has killed almost 900,000 people ... and you keep coming back to personal attacks on me that have absolutely no relevance to reality."
January 10, 2022 - Brad Raffensberger, the Georgia secretary of state, who famously turned down Trump's demand that he "find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have [to get]", has announced that he is running for re-election. His opponent will be Jody Hice, a pastor, US congressman, and Trump acolyte.
According to the AP, some North Carolina voters are pushing to have Republican congressman Madison Cawthorn barred from seeking reelection because of his involvement in the January 6th rally that preceded the assault on the Capitol. From the story: "Lawyers filed a candidacy challenge of the Republican on behalf of 11 voters with the State Board of Elections, which oversees a process by which a candidate's qualifications are scrutinized. The voters contend that Cawthorn, who formally filed as a candidate for the 13th District seat last month, can't run because he fails to comply with an amendment in the U.S. Constitution ratified shortly after the Civil War. The 1868 amendment says no one can serve in Congress 'who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress ... to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same.'" NOTE: At the "stop the steal" rally on January 6th, Cawthorn told the crowd: "The Democrats, with all the fraud they have done in this election, the Republicans, hiding and not fighting, they are trying to silence your voice. Make no mistake about it, they do not want you to be heard."
Jim Jordan, a Republican congressman from Ohio, sent a letter to Bennie Thompson, the committee chair of the committee investigating the Capitol insurrection, letting him know that he will not cooperate with the committee. From Jordan's letter: "This request is far outside the bounds of any legitimate inquiry ... violates core constitutional principles and would serve to further erode legislative norms."
Scott Perry, a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, who was involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, has refused to cooperate with the select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.
Mike Rounds, a Republican senator from South Dakota, said the following during an interview on ABC News: "As a part of our due diligence, we looked at over 60 different accusations made in multiple states ... The election was fair, as fair as we've seen. We simply did not win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency"
Donald Trump responded to comments made by Mike Rounds saying: "Is he crazy or just stupid? Even though his election will not be coming up for 5 years, I will never endorse this jerk again."
January 7, 2022 - The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments today regarding the Biden administration's federal vaccine-or-test mandate. Here are some highlights:
- Ben Flowers, an attorney arguing against the mandate, made his arguments remotely because he tested positive for Covid-19.
- After Scott Keller, the solicitor general of Texas said that his side was entitled to a stay, Justice Stephen Breyer responded: "Are you really asking this Court ... to issue a stay from taking effect. Like issue a stay today? ... There were 3/4 of a million new cases yesterday. That's ten times more then when OSHA put in this ruling, the hospitals are full..."
- Justice Neil Gorsuch pointed out that OSHA has never required a polio vaccine, and then stated that "We have flu vaccines. The flu kills hundreds of thousands of people every year. How do we regulate that?" NOTE: According to the CDC, the flu results in about 12,000 to 52,000 deaths annually. 385,343 people died from Covid-19 in 2020. 385,348 people died of Covid-19 in 2021.
- Elizabeth Prelogar, the US solicitor general, responded to Gorsuch by pointing out that the flu is seasonal, and that at one time or another virtually all workers had been inoculated against polio. NOTE: Polio was pretty much eliminated from the US because of a robust vaccination effort. At its peak in 1952, polio killed about 3,000 people per year out of about 58,000 cases.
Ted Cruz, a Republican senator from Texas, who called the January 6th attack on the Capitol "a despicable act of terrorism and a shocking assault on our democratic system", was called out for those remarks by Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Cruz responded to the tongue lashing by Carlson saying: "It was a mistake to say that yesterday and the reason is what you just said, which is we've now had a year of Democrats in the media twisting words and trying to say that all of us are terrorists, trying to say you're a terrorist, I'm a terrorist."
Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chair of the committee investigating the Capitol insurrection, was interviewed by NPR where he stated: "The vice president was put in a tough spot. The president was putting a lot of pressure on him to break the law, and he stood fast. And because of his respect for law, there were people who came to the Capitol a year ago wanting to hang him. And so, if for no other reason, our committee really needs to hear what are his opinions about what happened on January 6."
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