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      George Santos Is In a Class of His Own. But Other Politicians Have Embellished Their Resumes, Too.

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      Mr. Santos, a Republican representative-elect from Long Island, has admitted to lying about his professional background, educational history and property ownership.With his admission this week that he lied to voters about his credentials, Representative-elect George Santos has catapulted to the top of the list of politicians who have misled the public about their past.Mr. Santos, a New York Republican, fabricated key biographical elements of his background, including misrepresentations of his professional background, educational history and property ownership, in a pattern of deception that was uncovered by The New York Times. He even misrepresented his Jewish heritage.While others have also embellished their backgrounds, including degrees and military honors that they did not receive or distortions about their business acumen and wealth, few have done so in such a wide-ranging manner.Many candidates, confronted over their inconsistencies during their campaigns, have stumbled, including Herschel Walker and J.R. Majewski, two Trump-endorsed Republicans who ran for the Senate and the House during this year’s midterms.Mr. Walker, who lost Georgia’s Senate runoff this month, was dogged by a long trail of accusations that he misrepresented himself. Voters learned about domestic violence allegations, children born outside his marriage, ex-girlfriends who said he urged them to have abortions and more, including questions about where he lived, his academic record and the ceremonial nature of his work with law enforcement.Mr. Majewski promoted himself in his Ohio House race as a combat veteran who served in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but the U.S. Air Force had no record that he served there. He lost in November.Some of the nation’s most prominent presidential candidates have been accused of misrepresenting themselves to voters as well; perhaps none more notably than Donald J. Trump, whose 2016 campaign hinged on a stark exaggeration of his business background. While not as straightforward a deception as Mr. Santos saying he worked somewhere he had not, Mr. Trump presented himself as a successful, self-made businessman and hid evidence he was not, breaking with decades of precedent in refusing to release his tax records. Those records, obtained by The Times after his election, painted a much different picture — one of dubious tax avoidance, huge losses and a life buttressed by an inherited fortune.Prominent Democrats have faced criticisms during presidential campaigns too, backtracking during primary contests after being called out for more minor misrepresentations:Joseph R. Biden Jr. admitted to overstating his academic record in the 1980s: “I exaggerate when I’m angry,” he said at the time. Hillary Clinton conceded that she “misspoke” in 2008 about dodging sniper fire on an airport tarmac during a 1996 visit to Bosnia as first lady, an anecdote she employed to highlight her experience with international crises. And Senator Elizabeth Warren apologized in 2019 for her past claims of Native American ancestry.Most politicians’ transgressions pale in comparison with Mr. Santos’s largely fictional résumé. Voters also didn’t know about his lies before casting their ballots.The Spread of Misinformation and FalsehoodsCovid Myths: Experts say the spread of coronavirus misinformation — particularly on far-right platforms like Gab — is likely to be a lasting legacy of the pandemic. And there are no easy solutions.Midterms Misinformation: Social media platforms struggled to combat false narratives during the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, but it appeared most efforts to stoke doubt about the results did not spread widely.A ‘War for Talent’: Seeing misinformation as a possibly expensive liability, several companies are angling to hire former Twitter employees with the expertise to keep it in check. A New Misinformation Hub?: Misleading edits, fake news stories and deepfake images of politicians are starting to warp reality on TikTok.Here are some other federal office holders who have been accused of being less than forthright during their campaigns, but got elected anyway.Representative Madison Cawthorn, who lost his primary this year, was elected in 2020 despite a discrepancy over his plans to attend the Naval Academy.Logan R. Cyrus for The New York TimesMadison Cawthorn’s 2020 House campaignMadison Cawthorn became the youngest member of the House when he won election in 2020, emerging as the toast of the G.O.P. and its Trump wing. North Carolina voters picked him despite evidence that his claim that the 2014 auto accident that left him partly paralyzed had “derailed” his plans to attend the Naval Academy was untrue.Reporting at the time showed that the Annapolis application of Mr. Cawthorn, who has used a wheelchair since the crash, had previously been rejected. Mr. Cawthorn has declined to answer questions from the news media about the discrepancy or a report that he acknowledged in a 2017 deposition that his application had been denied. A spokesman for Mr. Cawthorn did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Mr. Cawthorn, whose term in Congress was marked by multiple scandals, lost the G.O.P. primary in May to Chuck Edwards, a three-term state senator who represents the Republican old guard.Andy Kim’s 2018 House campaignAndy Kim, a Democrat who represents a New Jersey swing district, raised eyebrows during the 2018 campaign when his first television ad promoted him as “a national security officer for Republican and Democratic presidents.”While Mr. Kim had worked as a national security adviser under President Barack Obama, his claim that he had filled a key role in the administration of former President George W. Bush was not as ironclad.A Washington Post fact check found that Mr. Kim had held an entry-level job for five months as a conflict management specialist at the U.S. Agency for International Development.Mr. Kim’s campaign manager at the time defended Mr. Kim, telling The Post that he played a key role as a public servant during the Bush administration that involved working in the agency’s Africa bureau on issues like terrorism in Somalia and genocide in Sudan.Voters did not appear to be too hung up about the claims of Mr. Kim, who last month was elected to a third term in the House.During the 2010 Senate campaign, Senator Marco Rubio described being the son of Cuban immigrants who fled Fidel Castro, but his parents moved to the United States before Castro returned to Cuba.Steve Johnson for The New York TimesMarco Rubio’s 2010 Senate campaignMarco Rubio vaulted onto the national political stage in the late 2000s after a decade-long rise in the Florida Legislature, where he served as House speaker. Central to his ascent and his 2010 election to the Senate was his personal story of being the son of Cuban immigrants, who Mr. Rubio repeatedly said had fled during Fidel Castro’s revolution.But Mr. Rubio’s account did not square with history, PolitiFact determined. In a 2011 analysis, the nonpartisan fact-checking website found Mr. Rubio’s narrative was false because his parents had first moved to the United States in 1956, which was before Castro had returned to Cuba from Mexico and his takeover of the country in 1959.Mr. Rubio said at the time that he had relied on the recollections of his parents, and that he had only recently learned of the inconsistencies in the timeline. He was re-elected in 2016 and again in November.Mark Kirk’s 2010 and 2016 Senate campaignsMark Kirk, who was a five-term House member from Illinois, leaned heavily on his military accomplishments in his 2010 run for the Senate seat once held by Barack Obama. But the Republican’s representation of his service proved to be deeply flawed.Mr. Kirk’s biography listed that he had been awarded the “Intelligence Officer of the Year” while in the Naval Reserve, a prestigious military honor that he never received. He later apologized, but that was not the only discrepancy in his military résumé.In an interview with the editorial board of The Chicago Tribune, Mr. Kirk accepted responsibility for a series of misstatements about his service, including that he had served in the Persian Gulf war of 1991, that he once commanded the Pentagon war room and that he came under fire while flying intelligence missions over Iraq.Mr. Kirk attributed the inaccuracies as resulting from his attempts to translate “Pentagonese” for voters or because of inattention by his campaign to the details of his decades-long military career.Still, Illinois voters elected Mr. Kirk to the Senate in 2010, but he was defeated in 2016 by Tammy Duckworth, a military veteran who lost her legs in the Iraq war. In that race, Mr. Kirk’s website falsely described him as an Iraq war veteran.Richard Blumenthal was a Marine Corps reservist during the Vietnam War, but did not enter combat, as he had suggested.Christopher Capozziello for The New York TimesRichard Blumenthal’s 2010 Senate campaignRichard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, misrepresented his military service during the Vietnam War, according to a Times report that rocked his 2010 campaign.Mr. Blumenthal was a Marine Corps reservist but did not enter combat. After the report, he said that he never meant to create the impression that he was a combat veteran and apologized. Mr. Blumenthal insisted that he had misspoken, but said that those occasions were rare and that he had consistently qualified himself as a reservist during the Vietnam era.The misrepresentation did not stop Mr. Blumenthal, Connecticut’s longtime attorney general, from winning the open-seat Senate race against Linda McMahon, the professional wrestling mogul. She spent $50 million in that race and later became a cabinet member under Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly zeroed in on Mr. Blumenthal’s military record.Wes Cooley’s 1994 House campaignWes Cooley, an Oregon Republican, had barely established himself as a freshman representative when his political career began to nosedive amid multiple revelations that he had lied about his military record and academic honors.His problems started when he indicated on a 1994 voters’ pamphlet that he had seen combat as a member of the Army Special Forces in Korea. But the news media in Oregon reported that Mr. Cooley had never deployed for combat or served in the Special Forces. Mr. Cooley was later convicted of lying in an official document about his military record and placed on two years of probation.The Oregonian newspaper also reported that he never received Phi Beta Kappa honors, as he claimed in the same voters’ guide. He also faced accusations that he lied about how long he had been married so that his wife could continue collecting survivor benefits from a previous husband.Mr. Cooley, who abandoned his 1996 re-election campaign, died in 2015. He was 82.Kirsten Noyes More

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      ‘Do you have no shame?’: Tulsi Gabbard grills congressman-elect George Santos

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      ‘Do you have no shame?’: Tulsi Gabbard grills congressman-elect George SantosThe former presidential candidate called resume-inflating Santos’s claims ‘blatant lies’ in Fox News interview In a Fox News interview with former presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday, Republican congressman-elect George Santos claimed he is not a “fraud” when questioned about the recent revelations – and his eventual admission – that his claims about his career and identity are riddled with lies and fabricated records.First Gen Z congressman Maxwell Frost says he’s part of the ‘mass shooting generation’Read moreThe Fox interview came the same day as fresh allegations that he falsely claimed a Jewish identity.Even though Santos told the New York Post that he never claimed to be Jewish, there is documentation proving otherwise. Santos had been loud about his identity as a “proud American Jew”, and enjoyed coverage in Jewish media where he was celebrated as the “only Jewish Republican member of New York’s House delegation”.He regularly attended events with rabbis and campaigned in Jewish neighborhoods, according to the New York Times.When asked about this, Santos told Gabbard that he has Jewish heritage but was raised Catholic. He said he has joked that he is “Jew-ish”.Santos, who has also admitted to lying about graduating from Baruch College and working at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, said he was not “a fake” and that “everybody wants to nitpick” at him now.But Gabbard put Santos on the spot by asking him how he defines “integrity”.Santos initially talked about the role of integrity for politicians, but Gabbard pushed back: “What does it mean though? … Because the meaning of the word actually matters in practice.”In Tuesday’s interview, he claimed he was courageous to be admitting this on national television, but fell short of an apology.He insisted that somehow this “courage” in his admission would make him fit to serve his district, to which Gabbard asked: “Do you have no shame?”“Do you have no shame [inaudible] the people who are now you’re asking to trust you to go and be their voice for them, their families and their kids in Washington?” she asked, after clarifying that what he keeps referring to as “embellishments” on his resume are much bigger, “blatant lies”.Santos responded, once again deflecting the answer, this time to Democrats and Joe Biden, who he claimed has been “lying to the American people for 40 years”.When Gabbard confronted him further about his lies regarding his work at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, and how he can expect his constituents to trust him, Santos said the lies on his resume are “debatable” and “not false at all”.He added that he could easily explain how things such as private equity work.“We can have this discussion that can go way above the American people’s head”, he said, “but that’s not what I campaigned on”.“Wow,” Gabbard responded. “You just kind of highlighted, I think my concerns and the concerns people at home have – you’re saying that this discussion will go way above the heads of the American people, basically insulting their intelligence.”As of Wednesday morning, Santos’s website no longer had information about his relations with Baruch College, Goldman Sachs or Citigroup.TopicsRepublicansHouse of RepresentativesNew YorkUS politicsUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      First Gen Z congressman Maxwell Frost says he’s part of the ‘mass shooting generation’

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      First Gen Z congressman Maxwell Frost says he’s part of the ‘mass shooting generation’ Maxwell Frost places curbing gun violence at the top of his political agenda, along with addressing the housing crisisMaxwell Frost might not yet have a permanent address in Washington DC, but that hasn’t stopped the hate mail from reaching him. “I got a letter the other day,” he says. “And when I opened it, it just said: ‘Fuck you.’”Frost expected there would be a fair amount of negative reaction after he became the first member of Gen Z to be voted into Congress in last month’s midterm elections.But a heavy campaign focus on gun safety measures has made the 25-year-old Democrat from Orlando, Florida, a marked man. The issue couldn’t be more important to Frost, who calls Gen Z “the mass shooting generation”.‘I’ve been Maced, I’ve been to jail …’ Can 25-year-old Maxwell Frost now be the first Gen Z member of Congress?Read more“It feels like I’ve been through more mass shooting drills than fire drills,” he says.Frost not only came of age with many of the survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas 2018 high school shooting, but barnstormed the country with them to advocate for tougher gun controls.Shortly after Frost beat Republican rival Calvin Wimbish by a considerable margin in Florida’s 10th congressional district in November (which includes Frost’s Orlando home town and many of its surrounding theme parks), the gun-saturated country was rocked by seven more mass shootings in as many days.It’s why passing more substantive measures to curb gun violence is at the top of his list of priorities for his first six months in office.“I think we have an opportunity, even in a Republican Congress, to pass legislation that can help get money for community violence intervention programs that help end gun violence before it even happens,” he said.He further insists that any prospective legislation needs to have a mental health component.“Folks with serious mental health issues are often scapegoated as the reason why there’s gun violence,” Frost says. “But as someone who’s been doing the work, when you look into the numbers, having a serious mental health issue doesn’t make you more likely to shoot someone. It actually makes you more likely to be shot.”Frost intends to keep the pressure on both Republicans “who sweep the deaths of children under the rug” and on members of his own party who have been otherwise disinclined to take bold action. “I’d venture to say that gun control is the slowest-moving issue in the federal government that has the most media coverage when something happens,” he says. “I have to be the consistent voice.”You’d be hard-pressed to take in Frost’s sudden emergence on the national scene without harking back to the rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AKA AOC) who, at age 29 in 2019, became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. Like Frost, she boasts Latino heritage, has a working-class background, counts Bernie Sanders as a close mentor and espouses politics that lean left of most fellow Democrats. All of that has made AOC an easy enemy of the right as she joined up with Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and other young liberals since to alloy the informal progressive caucus known as the Squad.Frost would be a natural fit on that team. But he’s not in much hurry to join forces with them or any other groups right now. “You’re gonna have different allies in different battles and I think it’s really important,” says Frost, who still has plenty of love and admiration for the Squad. “I mean, Cori Bush slept on the Capitol steps and as a result of that, people weren’t evicted from their homes. That is a case study in how working-class people and organizers in Congress are good for our country.”Housing will be another focus of Frost’s first 100 days – one that his own situation, a limbo complicated by bad credit and a $174,000 (£143,687) federal salary that he won’t begin drawing until February, has thrust into the spotlight.“We have the worst affordable housing crisis in the country, per capita in central Florida as of a few months ago,” he says.Senator Chris Murphy: ‘victory after victory’ is coming for US gun safetyRead more“We need to do work to increase the power of renters in the marketplace and ensure that renting is actually accessible for people. It’s really hard right now and I know this personally not just from being houseless in DC, but also from being houseless for a month in central Florida and not having enough capital to move into a place.”He also thinks he can make a credible pitch for more funding for the arts, the cherished avocation that initially got him and his high school band to Washington DC to play in Barack Obama’s 2013 inauguration parade.“The arts are a huge part of my life,” he says. “I went to [an] arts middle school and high school. I work on music festivals and have my own here in Orlando, and I really believe in the power of the arts – and it’s not equitable for everybody right now.”All the while he intends to use his time in Congress to inspire young people to get involved in the political process, starting with making the federal government more approachable. “I want to do a kids’ day on the Hill,” he says. “I want to do concerts on the Hill – with young artists, so we can get young people super excited. I’ve been doing these blogs about what’s going on on the Hill. So just little things like that. I’m just really focused on stretching what it means to be a member of Congress.”TopicsDemocratsUS gun controlHousingUS politicsFloridaUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Donald Trump’s tax returns to be made public by US House panel on Friday

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      Donald Trump’s tax returns to be made public by US House panel on FridayThe House ways and means committee confirmed that the former president’s tax records from 2015 to 2021 will be released Donald Trump’s redacted tax returns will be made public on Friday after a powerful congressional committee voted last week to release them.A spokesperson for the US House of Representatives ways and means committee confirmed the timing of the release in a statement to Reuters on Tuesday.The Democratic-controlled committee obtained the returns last month as part of an investigation into Trump’s taxes, after a lengthy court battle that ended with the US supreme court ruling in the committee’s favor.The move is set to ignite a political firestorm in the US, where the former president’s taxes have long been a contentious matter. Trump broke with decades of presidential precedent by refusing to release his tax returns when he ran for office in 2016, and has fought to keep them under wraps.The New York Times previously released extensive portions of Trump’s tax returns as part of a major investigation that showed how the real estate mogul and reality TV star had suffered serious losses and engaged in extensive tax avoidance.The committee released a report into its findings last week, which said the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) broke its own rules by not auditing Trump for three of the four years of his presidency.The findings raised stark questions about Trump’s insistence that he could not publicly release his tax returns – as other presidents routinely have done to give people a glimpse into their livelihoods – because he said his filings were under an ongoing IRS review. The committee’s report also highlighted shortcomings at the IRS, which has been criticized for auditing lower-income people more often than the rich.House committee votes to release Trump’s tax returns to the publicRead moreThe documents to be released on Friday are expected to include Trump’s tax returns filed between 2015 and 2021, the years he ran for and served as president. It would be the first formal release of his financial records from his time in office.A spokesperson for Trump declined to comment.Trump’s tax returns were not released alongside last week’s report because they contain sensitive information that had to be redacted before publication, committee members said.Democrats on the committee said that making the returns public was necessary to understanding the context of its report, which also included proposed legislation that would mandate the IRS to audit presidents.Trump was the first presidential candidate in decades not to release his tax returns during either of his campaigns for president. He also bragged during a presidential debate that year that he was “smart” because he paid no federal taxes.Democrats on the committee had only a few weeks to decide how to handle the returns once they got them, before Republicans retake control of the US House in January after winning a narrow margin of victory in November’s midterm elections.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reportingTopicsDonald TrumpJanuary 6 hearingsHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      New York congressman-elect admits lying about college and work history

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      New York congressman-elect admits lying about college and work historyRepublican George Santos, elected to represent parts of Long Island and Queens, admits ‘embellishing résumé’ George Santos, the New York Republican congressman-elect at the center of a storm over his apparently fabricated résumé, has admitted he lied about his job experience and college education during his successful US House campaign.I’m a Pulse survivor. Rightwing anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric made the Club Q massacre inevitableRead moreSantos first ran for Congress in 2020. In November this year he was elected to represent parts of northern Long Island and north-east Queens.His exaggerations were first identified by the New York Times, which questioned claims including that he had worked at two prominent Wall Street banks; had obtained degrees in finance and economics from two New York colleges; that he was Jewish; and that four employees of his company were killed in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, in June 2016.On Monday, Santos told the New York Post: “My sins here are embellishing my résumé. I’m sorry.”Santos, 34, also said he “campaigned talking about the people’s concerns, not my résumé … I intend to deliver on the promises I made during the campaign”.But he acknowledged he “didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning. I’m embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my résumé. I own up to that. … We do stupid things in life”.Democrats including the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, have suggested Santos is unfit to sit in Congress. Some have called for him to resign his seat before taking it.Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, said on Twitter: “George Santos, who has now admitted his whopping lies, should resign. If he does not, then [Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House leader] should call for a vote to expel” him.Joaquin Castro, from Texas, said allowing Santos to enter office would set a dangerous precedent.“We’ve seen people fudge their résumé but this is total fabrication,” Castro said, suggesting Santos “should also be investigated by authorities”.Hakeem Jeffries, the incoming Democratic House leader, has said Santos “appears to be a complete and utter fraud”.Republican officials began to publicly respond to Santos’ remarks on Tuesday. Joe Cairo, chairman of the Nassau county GOP on Long Island, said the congressman had “broken the public trust” but “must do the public’s will in Washington”.Santos, Cairo said, “has a lot of work to do to regain the trust of voters and everyone who he represents in Congress”.Santos said he worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. Neither company could find relevant records. Santos told the Post he “never worked directly” for either firm and had used a “poor choice of words”. He said LinkBridge, an investment company where he was a vice-president, did business with both.The Times also uncovered Brazilian court records showing Santos was once charged with fraud for using a stolen checkbook.“I am not a criminal here – not here or in Brazil or any jurisdiction in the world,” Santos told the Post. “Absolutely not. That didn’t happen.”Santos said he experienced financial difficulties that left him owing landlords and creditors.Another news outlet, the Jewish American site the Forward, questioned a claim on Santos’s website that his grandparents “fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine, settled in Belgium and again fled persecution” during the second world war.“I never claimed to be Jewish,” Santos said. “I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish’.”Cairo said: “The damage that his lies have caused to many people, especially those who have been impacted by the Holocaust, is profound.”The Daily Beast has reported that Santos, who has identified as gay, was divorced from a woman in September 2019.“Though the past marriage isn’t necessarily at odds with his sexuality,” the site noted, Santos has never acknowledged that relationship and his biography says he lives with his husband, Matt, and four dogs.“I dated women in the past. I married a woman. It’s personal stuff,” Santos told the Post, adding that he was “OK with my sexuality. People change”.Revising claims that a company he worked for “lost four employees” in the Pulse nightclub shooting, Santos said the four were in the process of being hired.TopicsRepublicansHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsNew YorknewsReuse this content More

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      Will the January 6 report bring a second Christmas for US publishers?

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      Will the January 6 report bring a second Christmas for US publishers? Major imprints are racing to sell the committee’s work to the reading public, with help from reporters, panel members, David Remnick and even a former speechwriter to TrumpThe release of the final report of the House January 6 committee has sparked a deluge of publishing activity: seven editions of the 200,000 word document from six imprints, featuring contributions from the New Yorker editor, David Remnick, the House intelligence chair, Adam Schiff, plus six other journalists, another committee member, a former congresswoman and a former speechwriter to Donald Trump.January 6 report review: 845 pages, countless crimes, one simple truth – Trump did itRead moreThere are two reasons for this hyperactivity: the belief that the completion of the report is a significant historical event, and the conviction that here is a big chance to do well by doing good.The Mueller report sold 475,000 copies in various editions, according to NPD BookScan, so the book business is hoping it can do at least that well with the latest copy provided for free by the federal government.Harper Perennial says it is printing 250,000 copies of its version, which features a powerful introduction by Ari Melber, an MSNBC host, that reads like a smart prosecutor’s multi-part indictment. It helps that Melber’s marketing power is at least as great as his brain power. Pushing it on his nightly show, he has already gotten the book to the top of one Amazon bestseller list, long before it has reached any store.The lawyer turned TV personality does the best job of delineating the eight plots Trump and his allies pursued to try to overthrow the election, seven of which were clearly illegal or unconstitutional.“They attempted a coup,” Melber declares. “That is the most important fact about what happened.”Remnick and Jamie Raskin, like Schiff a committee member, teamed up to write an introduction and an afterword for the version being published by an imprint of Macmillan.Remnick gets straight to the heart of the matter: “Trump does little to conceal his most distinctive characteristics: his racism, misogyny, dishonesty, narcissism, incompetence, cruelty, instability, and corruption. And yet what has kept Trump afloat for so long, what has helped him evade ruin and prosecution, is perhaps his most salient quality: he is shameless.”Because so many of us have nearly lost our “ability to experience outrage”, Remnick concedes that “the prospect of engaging with this congressional inquiry … is sometimes a challenge to the spirit … And yet a citizenry that can no longer bring itself to pay attention to such an investigation or to absorb its astonishing findings risks moving even farther toward a disturbing ‘new normal’: a post-truth, post-democratic America.”Raskin sees the assault on the Capitol as the latest in a series of “systematic threats” to US democracy, including “massive voter suppression, gerrymandering of state and federal legislative districts, the use of the filibuster to block protection of voting rights, and right-wing judicial activism to undermine the Voting Rights Act”.His biggest goal is the elimination of electoral college, without any amendment to the constitution. That can be done through “the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an agreement among participating states that gives electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the nationwide popular vote, and which has already been adopted by 15 states and the District of Columbia with 195 electoral votes, or 72% of the 270 votes needed” to put it into effect.Writing for Random House, Schiff excoriates Republicans for trying so hard to block certification of Biden’s victory even after the Capitol invasion – 147 Republicans including eight senators lodged objections early on the morning of January 7. But he is also careful to give credit to Republican witnesses who did so much to burnish the committee’s credibility.“These officials, Republicans all, not only held fast against enormous pressure from a president of their party but were willing to stand before the country and testify under oath,” Schiff writes.Schiff argues that the report is an undeniable brief for prosecution of Trump: “Bringing to justice a former president who, even now, advocates the suspension of our constitution is a perilous endeavor. Not doing so is far more dangerous.”For Skyhorse, the former congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, the only contributor old enough to have voted to impeach Richard Nixon, echoes Schiff on this point.“Having had to vote to impeach a president when I was in Congress, I am certain that [the January 6 committee] did not make its criminal referrals to the justice department lightly. In the same vein, the DoJ should not treat it lightly – and I hope and believe the American people will not let that happen.”The Hachette book has the largest amount of additional material, including a first-person account of the Capitol attack by a New York Times reporter, Luke Broadwater. After making it to a secure area, Broadwater found he was “much more angry” than “afraid”. So were other more conservative reporters, disgusted by senators who encouraged the myth of election theft. Broadwater recalls “one shouting to a Republican as he passed by, ‘Are you proud of yourself, Senator?’”All of these books are serious efforts to put the committee’s exhaustive findings in a larger political and historical context, including the one published by Skyhorse with an introduction by Holtzman. But Skyhorse also maintains its maverick reputation as a publisher famous for picking up books others have spurned (Woody Allen’s memoir, for example) by publishing two versions of the new report, one with Holtzman’s foreword and another featuring Darren Beattie, a former speechwriter for Trump and Steven Miller.Tony Lyons, the US publisher who picks up books ‘cancelled’ by other pressesRead moreBeattie was fired by the Trump White House after it was reported that he attended a conference with Peter Brimelow, founder of the anti-immigrant website VDare, a “white nationalist” who “regularly publishes works by white supremacists, antisemites, and others on the radical right”, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.Beattie is horrified that the January 6 committee describes the assault on the Capitol as an outgrowth of white supremacy.“Far from serving as an objective fact-finding body, the January 6 committee functioned as such an egregiously performative, partisan kangaroo display as to make propagandists in North Korea blush,” he writes – with characteristic understatement.Beattie provides more comic relief with his approach to the alleged election fraud which is one of the main subjects of the report.“It would take us too far afield to consider the election fraud allegations in detail on the merits,” Beattie writes.Then he gives a long explanation of why no one should think Trump really believed he lost the election, just because that’s what his attorney general and so many others told him.“For all of the committee’s fixation on the term ‘Big Lie’, the committee presents precious little if any evidence that Donald Trump didn’t genuinely believe that election fraud ultimately tipped the balance against him.“… The committee’s first televised hearing repeated ad nauseam a video clip of Trump’s former attorney general Bill Barr referring to Trump’s election fraud theories as ‘bullshit’.“Apart from Barr, the committee referenced numerous Trump associates who claim to have told the former president his election fraud theories were wrong. The simple fact that some of Trump’s senior staffers may have disagreed with Trump on the election issue is hardly proof that Trump was persuaded by them, and that therefore Trump’s efforts to ‘stop the steal’ amounted to a deliberate lie and malicious attempt to prevent the legitimate and peaceful transition of power.Republican senator called Giuliani ‘walking malpractice’, January 6 report saysRead more“Barr’s additional remark that Trump was ‘completely detached from reality’ when it came to the 2020 election unwittingly undermines the committee’s suggestion that Trump was lying about the matter.”Primetime hearings sometimes reached as many 18 million viewers, a number Remnick notes was “comparable to Sunday Night Football on NBC”. In the midterm elections, many exit polls found that the preservation of democracy was a key factor in the decision of many swing voters to vote against Republicans. It seems clear the investigation bolstered American democracy in more ways than one.While a hearty minority obviously remain as far down a rabbit hole as Trump’s former speechwriter, the results of the recent election bolster my conviction that sane Americans still constitute a small majority of American voters.So, like most of the contributors to these volumes, I think there is much to be grateful for in the work of the most successful congressional investigators since the Senate Watergate committee of 50 years ago. Or, as Remnick puts it, “If you are reaching for optimism – and despair is not an option – the existence and the depth of the committee’s project represents a kind of hope. It represents an insistence on truth and democratic principle.”TopicsBooksJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackUS politicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesPolitics booksfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Tlaib and MTG among more than 220 House proxy voters on spending bill

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      Tlaib and MTG among more than 220 House proxy voters on spending billRepublicans rail against pandemic-era rule as 226 House members from left to far right take chance not to vote in person Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, one of two Democrats to oppose the $1.7tn spending bill that averted a US government shutdown on Friday, did so by voting “present”. But Tlaib was not present at the Capitol, voting instead by proxy.House passes $1.7tn spending bill to avert US government shutdownRead moreProxy voting was instituted during the Covid pandemic and is due to come to an end on 3 January, in the new Congress with Republicans controlling the House.On Friday, as a huge winter storm bore down on Washington, threatening flights home for Christmas, 226 House members cast proxy votes on the omnibus bill.Republicans say they will get rid of proxy voting. According to the minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, “In 11 days … [we will] return the House back to a functioning constitutional body by repealing proxy voting once and for all.”On Friday, some on the right of the GOP, a faction McCarthy must woo if he is to win the speaker’s gavel, claimed the large number of proxy voters on the omnibus bill meant the required quorum was not achieved and the bill could thus be challenged. The chair rejected such claims.One high-profile rightwinger was among those who voted by proxy. As reported by Business Insider, a vacation in Costa Rica meant Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia skipped in-person voting on the spending bill and other events this week including the address to Congress by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.By Saturday, Greene was taking heat not just for proxy voting, having introduced a bill to ban the practice earlier this year, but for holidaying while other Georgians endured power outages and plunging temperatures.There was enough anger to go round. Politico observed that though it understood many members of Congress were not “super-thrilled to be in Washington with Christmas in two days … more than half of the chamber skipping out on the most basic duty members face – showing up to vote – is a poor showing, especially given the pandemic rationale under which the system is meant to be used”.The spending bill passed by 225-201, with Tlaib the lone “present” vote and four Republicans not voting.Tlaib said: “People are demanding we take meaningful action in providing relief and protection during this public health emergency. This bill does not go nearly far enough in providing that help and support.”She was joined by another high-profile progressive, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.The New Yorker said she voted no because the bill contained a “dramatic increase” in immigration-enforcement spending which “cuts against the promises our party has made to immigrant communities across the country”.Nine Republicans supported the bill. Seven are leaving Congress, among them Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, the two anti-Trump Republicans on the House January 6 committee.January 6 report review: 845 pages, countless crimes, one simple truth – Trump did itRead moreBrian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Steve Womack of Arkansas supported the bill and will remain in Congress. In the new House, Politico said, “Democrats will surely be getting to know the two of them better”.McCarthy used a long speech on Friday to play to the right-wingers he needs to be speaker, railing against “a monstrosity” of a bill he said was filled with “leftwing pet projects” and “one of the most shameful acts I’ve ever seen in his body”.Nancy Pelosi responded with remarks she said were probably her last as speaker.“It was sad to hear the minority leader earlier say that this legislation is the most shameful thing to be seen on the House floor in this Congress,” the Democrat said.“I can’t help but wonder, had he forgotten January 6?”TopicsHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressUS domestic policyUS politicsDemocratsRashida TlaibAlexandria Ocasio-CorteznewsReuse this content More

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      January 6 report review: 845 pages, countless crimes, one simple truth – Trump did it

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      ReviewJanuary 6 report review: 845 pages, countless crimes, one simple truth – Trump did it The House committee has done its work. The result is a riveting read, utterly damning of the former president and his followersWhether fomenting insurrection, standing accused of rape or stiffing the IRS, Donald Trump remains in the news. On Monday, the House select committee voted to issue its final report. Three days later, after releasing witness transcripts, the committee delivered the full monty. Bennie Thompson, Liz Cheney and the rest of committee name names and flash receipts. At 845 pages, the report is damning – and monumental.January 6 panel accuses Trump of ‘multi-part conspiracy’ in final reportRead moreTrumpworld is a crime scene, a tableau lifted from Goodfellas. Joshua Green of Bloomberg nailed that in The Devil’s Bargain, his 2017 take on Trump’s winning campaign. The gang was always transgressive, fear and violence part of its repertoire.Brian Sicknick, the Capitol police officer who died after the riot. E Jean Carroll, who alleges sexual assault. Shaye Moss, the Georgia elections worker targeted by Rudy Giuliani and other minions. Each bears witness.The January 6 report laments that “thuggish behavior from President Trump’s team, including efforts to intimidate described elsewhere … gave rise to many concerns about [Cassidy] Hutchinson’s security, both in advance of and since her public testimony”.Hutchinson is the former aide to Trump and his final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, whose testimony may have been the most dramatic and impactful.In the same vein, the committee chronicles Trump’s demand that Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state in Georgia, “find 11,780 votes”. Trump reminded Raffensperger of the possible consequences if his directive went unheeded: “That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer … I’m notifying you that you’re letting it happen.”Now, a Fulton county grand jury weighs Trump’s fate. Jack Smith, a federal prosecutor newly appointed special counsel, may prove Trump’s match too.Transcripts released by the committee show Stefan Passantino, Hutchinson’s initial lawyer, engaging in conduct that markedly resembles witness tampering.“Stefan said, ‘No, no, no, no, no. We don’t want to talk about that.’” According to Hutchinson, Passantino was talking about Trump’s fabled post-rally meltdown on January 6, when told he couldn’t go to the Capitol too.Hutchinson understood that disloyalty would mean repercussions. It took immense courage and conscience to speak as she did. Trump’s supporting cast was retribution-ready. She knew she would be “fucking nuked”.In a woeful prebuttal, Passantino claimed to have behaved “honorably” and “ethically”. He blamed Hutchinson. His advice, he said, was “fully consistent” with the “sole interests” of his client. He is now on leave from his law firm.To quote the final report, “certain witnesses from the Trump White House displayed a lack of full recollection of certain issues”. Meadows, for one, is shown to have an allergy to the truth. The committee singles out The Chief’s Chief, his memoir, as an exercise in fabulism. Trump gave Meadows a blurb for his cover: “We will have a big future together”. In so many ways, Donald. In so many ways.Trump tested positive for Covid few days before Biden debate, chief of staff says in new bookRead moreThe book “made the categorical claim that the president never intended to travel to the Capitol” on 6 January, the committee now says, adding that the “evidence demonstrates that Meadows’s claim is categorically false”.He had needlessly cast a spotlight on himself and others. The report: “Because the Meadows book conflicted sharply with information that was being received by the select committee, the committee became increasingly wary that other witnesses might intentionally conceal what happened.”Then again, no one ever accused Meadows, a former congressman, of being the sharpest knife in the drawer. Reptilian calculation is not prudence or prescience. Last year, Trump trashed Meadows as “fucking stupid”. He may have a point. After all, Meadows confessed to Trump of possibly putting Joe Biden’s life in jeopardy at the September 2020 debate, after positive and negative Covid tests that were covered up.Trump himself derided the Chief’s Chief as “fake news”. The committee referred Meadows to the justice department.“It’s easy to imagine Meadows has flipped and is cooperating with the justice department,” said Ryan Goodman, a New York University law professor and former Pentagon special counsel. The vicious cycle rolls on.The committee also gives Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s final press secretary, her own moment in the sun. She too attempted to cover the tracks of her boss.“A segment of McEnany’s testimony seemed evasive,” the committee concludes. “In multiple instances, McEnany’s testimony did not seem nearly as forthright as that of her press office staff, who testified about what McEnany said.”We saw this movie before – when McEnany stood at the West Wing lectern.“McEnany disputed suggestions that President Trump was resistant to condemning the violence and urging the crowd at the Capitol to act peacefully when they crafted his tweet at 2.38pm on January 6,” the report says. “Yet one of her deputies, Sarah Matthews, told the select committee that McEnany informed her otherwise.”Last year, McEnany delivered a book of her own, namely For Such a Time as This. The title riffs off the Book of Esther. McEnany repeatedly thanks the deity, touts her academic credentials and vouches for her honesty. She claims she never lied to reporters. After all, her education at “Oxford, Harvard and Georgetown” meant she always relied on “truthful, well-sourced, well-researched information”.She lauds Trump for standing for “faith, conservatism and freedom” and delivers a bouquet to Meadows. “You were a constant reminder of faith. Thank you for being an inspiring leader for the entire West Wing.”Whether Trump retains the loyalty of evangelicals in 2024 remains to be seen.The January 6 report often kills with understatement. For example, it repeatedly mocks Giuliani and his posse. The committee notes: “On 7 November, Rudy Giuliani headlined a Philadelphia press conference in front of a landscaping business called Four Seasons Total Landscaping, near a crematorium and down the street from a sex shop.”Like Giuliani’s three ex-wives, the members of the committee loathe him.“Standing in front of former New York police commissioner and recently pardoned convicted felon Bernard Kerik, Giuliani gave opening remarks and handed the podium over to his first supposed eyewitness to election fraud, who turned out to be a convicted sex offender.”If the debacle surrounding George Santos, the newly-elected New York congressman, teaches us anything, it is that you can never do enough background-checking.Trump should be barred from holding office again, January 6 panel saysRead moreGiuliani’s law license is suspended, on account of “false claims” in post-election hearings. A panel of the DC bar has recommended disbarment.Nick Fuentes, Trump’s infamous neo-Nazi dinner guest, also appears in the January 6 report, regarding his part in the insurrection. He is quoted: “Capitol siege was fucking awesome.” Recently, Fuentes reaffirmed his admiration for Hitler. Trump still refuses to disavow him.Trumpworld is a tangled web. Ultimately, though, the January 6 report is chillingly clear about the spider at its center.“The central cause of January 6 was one man, former President Donald Trump. None of the events of January 6 would have happened without him.”True.
      The Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol is available here.
      TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesreviewsReuse this content More