Storming of the US Capitol (Jan, 2021)

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      What Happened When Facebook Employees Warned About Election Misinformation

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      Company documents show that the social network’s employees repeatedly raised red flags about the spread of misinformation and conspiracies before and after the contested November vote.Sixteen months before last November’s presidential election, a researcher at Facebook described an alarming development. She was getting content about the conspiracy theory QAnon within a week of opening an experimental account, she wrote in an internal report.On Nov. 5, two days after the election, another Facebook employee posted a message alerting colleagues that comments with “combustible election misinformation” were visible below many posts.Four days after that, a company data scientist wrote in a note to his co-workers that 10 percent of all U.S. views of political material — a startlingly high figure — were of posts that alleged the vote was fraudulent.In each case, Facebook’s employees sounded an alarm about misinformation and inflammatory content on the platform and urged action — but the company failed or struggled to address the issues. The internal dispatches were among a set of Facebook documents obtained by The New York Times that give new insight into what happened inside the social network before and after the November election, when the company was caught flat-footed as users weaponized its platform to spread lies about the vote. More

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      House Finds Bannon in Contempt for Defying Jan. 6 Inquiry Subpoena

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      The vote came after a bitterly partisan debate over the Capitol attack and as Republicans sought to deflect questions about Donald J. Trump’s role in the violence.The House recommended that Stephen K. Bannon, a former top adviser to President Donald J. Trump, face criminal contempt charges for refusing to cooperate with its select committee’s investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesWASHINGTON — The House voted on Thursday to find Stephen K. Bannon in criminal contempt of Congress for stonewalling the investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, pressing for information from a close ally of Donald J. Trump even as Republicans moved to insulate the former president from accountability.The vote of 229 to 202, mostly along party lines, came after Mr. Bannon refused to comply with a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the assault, declining to provide the panel with documents and testimony. The action sent the matter to the Justice Department, which now must decide whether to prosecute Mr. Bannon and potentially set off a legal fight that could drag on for months or years.But what was clear on Thursday was that nine months after the deadliest attack on the Capitol in two centuries, many Republicans in Congress remain bent on whitewashing, ignoring or even validating what took place as their party continues to embrace the lie of a stolen election. Only nine Republicans joined Democrats in voting to enforce the panel’s subpoena.The rest followed the lead of Mr. Trump, who in a statement before the vote derided the election he lost as a crime and praised the mob attack — which injured 140 police officers and claimed several lives — as a legitimate response.“The insurrection took place on Nov. 3, Election Day,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Jan. 6 was the protest!”Before the vote, Republicans argued that the investigation — which Democrats undertook after Republicans blocked the formation of an independent, bipartisan inquiry — was a partisan exercise devised to smear Mr. Trump and persecute his supporters for their political beliefs.On the House floor, Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and an ardent Trump supporter, accused the committee of harassing Mr. Bannon and organizers of the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the riot.“You’re involved in political activity? They’re going to investigate you,” Mr. Jordan said. “You know what this is really about: getting at President Trump.”Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, condemned the former president’s comments and the way Republicans continued to follow his lead.“We live in an age where apparently, some put fidelity to Donald Trump over fidelity to the Constitution,” he said.“He is so feared,” Mr. McGovern added, “that my Republican colleagues are going to keep denying what happened that day.”Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who broke sharply with Mr. Trump, pleaded with her fellow Republicans to stop following him down a path that she warned would lead to ruin.“There’s a moment when politics must stop if we want to defend and protect our institutions,” said Ms. Cheney, the vice chairwoman of the select committee. “A violent assault on the Capitol to stop a constitutional process of counting electoral votes is that moment.”The question of what will happen to Mr. Bannon now goes to the Justice Department, where Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has declined to say whether he will move forward with charges.“We’ll apply the facts in the law and make a decision, consistent with the principles of prosecution,” he told the House Judiciary Committee during an oversight hearing on Thursday.The question of what will happen to Mr. Bannon now goes to the Justice Department. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has declined to say whether he will move forward with charges.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesPresident Biden has endorsed prosecuting those who do not cooperate with the investigation. On Thursday, he made a point of condemning the riot and its origins.“The violent, deadly insurrection on the Capitol nine months ago — it was about white supremacy,” Mr. Biden said in a speech on Thursday to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Martin Luther King Jr. monument in Washington.Robert J. Costello, Mr. Bannon’s lawyer, informed the House committee this month that his client would not comply with its subpoena, citing Mr. Trump’s directive for his former aides and advisers to invoke immunity and refrain from turning over documents that might be protected under executive privilege.Under federal law, any person summoned as a congressional witness who refuses to comply can face a misdemeanor charge that carries a fine of $100 to $100,000 and a jail sentence of one month to one year.Members of the investigative committee, which is controlled by Democrats, believe that Mr. Bannon has crucial information about plans to undermine Mr. Biden’s victory, including conversations Mr. Bannon had with Mr. Trump in which he urged the former president to focus his efforts on Jan. 6.In its report recommending that the House find Mr. Bannon in contempt, the committee repeatedly cited comments he made on his radio show on Jan. 5 — when Mr. Bannon promised “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow” — as evidence that “he had some foreknowledge about extreme events that would occur the next day.”“He was deeply involved in the so-called Stop the Steal campaign,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said of Mr. Bannon. “We know that the forces that tried to overturn the election persist in their assault on the rule of law.”Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, was stripped of her leadership post over her opposition to Mr. Trump’s election lies. She has pleaded with her colleagues to stop enabling him.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMs. Cheney has suggested that Mr. Trump’s insistence on asserting executive privilege is evidence that he was “personally involved” in the plot to overturn the election on Jan. 6.“Today,” she noted, “the former president suggested that the violence was justified.”Ms. Cheney was one of nine Republicans to join House Democrats in voting to find Mr. Bannon in criminal contempt. The others were Representatives Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, the other Republican member of the panel; Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio; John Katko of New York; Nancy Mace of South Carolina; Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington; Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania; and Fred Upton and Peter Meijer, both of Michigan.Understand the Claim of Executive Privilege in the Jan. 6. InquiryCard 1 of 8A key issue yet untested. More

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      ‘Ordinary Citizens’ Turned Rioters on Jan. 6

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      More from our inbox:Republican Contempt for Voting RightsParler’s Free Speech PrinciplesI’ll Take the Jefferson StatueThe Transition From DrivingI Keep My Files on Paper, Not in the Cloud  Joseph RushmoreTo the Editor:Re “90 Seconds of Rage on the Capitol Steps” (front page, Oct. 17):This is one of the best pieces of reporting on the Jan. 6 riot to appear in some time. The role of Proud Boys, neo-Nazis and other committed insurrectionists and troublemakers is easy to understand in connection with the day’s events. The ability of seemingly ordinary, heretofore law-abiding citizens to be swept along in something like this, to the point of violently attacking police officers, is what needs our more considered attention.Donald Trump continues to hold rallies and deliver semi-coherent rants rooted in lies and fantasies. He remains a menace to American democracy, world peace and fundamental human decency.But perhaps we should worry less about the man at the microphone and more about the crowds that continue to cheer him even after all that has come before. Especially after all that has come before.W.T. KoltekLouisville, OhioTo the Editor:What are we to conclude about the insurrection participants you profiled? Their family members, friends and neighbors were quoted as saying that these were nice, giving and very helpful people. Some of the participants stated that they just wanted to be in the rally or to see President Donald Trump.Did they have a short circuit in their brains that made them participate in the riot? Is there some kind of contradiction between their lives back home and their violent behavior on Jan. 6?Not at all. We should not be distracted by the attempts to portray these participants as just ordinary folk. Some of them brought or used other items as weapons, as well as communication devices for coordinating their efforts. These participants engaged in a violent attempt to subvert our democracy and injure or kill our elected officials, as well as the police protectors of our nation’s democratic process and buildings.Actions have consequences. They are responsible for their behavior and must be brought to justice. No niceness can save them from judicial remedies.Robert RosofskyMilton, Mass.To the Editor:This article is chilling because it is likely that Donald Trump, if he becomes president again, would grant a blanket pardon to these and other so-called “patriots” for any federal crimes arising out of the Jan. 6 riots.The article notes that prosecutors and congressional investigators are looking into how “seemingly average citizens — duped by a political lie, goaded by their leaders and swept up in a frenzied throng — can unite in breathtaking acts of brutality.” This statement evokes Kristallnacht and the horror that followed.Donald Trump did goad this group. What these “ordinary citizens” are capable of in the thrall of a demagogue is frightening.Mr. Trump has learned this from Jan. 6. And from past Republican inaction, he’s also learned, and would certainly come into office believing, that the rule of law does not apply to him. That power and mind-set in the hands of this petulant little man are a true danger.Gary H. LevinFort Washington, Pa.Republican Contempt for Voting RightsProtesters demonstrate in support of voting rights on Tuesday in Washington.Shuran Huang for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Voting Rights Impasse Puts Pressure on Filibuster,” by Carl Hulse (news analysis, Oct. 21):The Senate’s failure to pass the Freedom to Vote Act is a cynical corrosion of democratic values. The act would limit partisan gerrymandering, require disclosure of very large campaign contributions and increase election security. These common-sense safeguards are foundational to a functional democracy.Fortunately, my senators, Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer, supported the act. But every Republican senator who blocked it — representing a minority of voters — demonstrates contempt for the system they’re elected to defend.Sarah RichardsonNew YorkParler’s Free Speech Principles Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Hey Parler, My Blue City Isn’t Turning Red,” by Margaret Renkl (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Oct. 18):Parler, a social media platform committed to free speech and to the preservation of a digital “town square,” has recently moved its headquarters to Nashville. Ms. Renkl’s premise is that Parler mistook Nashville to be a right-wing haven, and she zeroes in on my assertion that “Tennessee shares Parler’s vision of individual liberty and free expression.” Ms. Renkl wrongly suggests that these principles are somehow exclusive to those on the political right.At Parler, we draw our inspiration from the Constitution — not the Republican Party’s platform — and we defend the American principle of free speech, which, as far as we are aware, is a principle that transcends party politics and is valued on both the left and the right. Or at least it used to be.It is telling that so many on the left believe that “free expression” and “individual liberty” are code words for “conservative.” Worthy of discussion, isn’t it?George FarmerNashvilleThe writer is the chief executive of Parler.I’ll Take the Jefferson Statue  Dave Sanders for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Jefferson Knocked Off Pedestal in New York Council Chamber” (front page, Oct. 19):Thomas Jefferson was a man of his era who, like all men in all eras, did not always live his ideals. Those ideals — that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” and that the only legitimate government is by consent of the people — are the cornerstones of every modern democracy, including our own.They have enabled our nation to evolve from a society in which slavery was tolerated into one in which, for most Americans, civil and human rights are paramount.The framers’ vision, and the nation that they founded based on an idea, eclipse the frailties that marked Jefferson and his contemporaries as human beings.As James Madison wrote, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”If the New-York Historical Society does not accept the City Council’s Thomas Jefferson statue, the city is welcome to relocate it on my front lawn.Rita C. TobinChappaqua, N.Y.The Transition From Driving Gracia LamTo the Editor:Thanks to Jane E. Brody for her thoughtful column “Keeping Older Drivers Protected on the Road” (Personal Health, Oct. 19).One additional point: To help ease the transition from driving, carefully choose where you live. If possible, pick a location where you can walk (or bike) to many of the places you want or need to go to: stores, doctors, cafes, the library, parks and so on. This will enable you to have a healthier and more pleasant life.And, for those now in your 40s and 50s, think ahead. Move to that more walkable neighborhood before you’re old.David W. SearsBethesda, Md.I Keep My Files on Paper, Not in the Cloud Sophia Foster-DiminoTo the Editor:Re “The Case for Filing Cabinets,” by Pamela Paul (Opinion guest essay, Sunday, Oct. 17):Two phrases from this article — “digitally functional people” and “special I.T. skills” — do not describe this senior citizen who finds file cabinets indispensable.I have an active two-drawer file cabinet that is used daily and culled yearly around tax time or when I need room for additions. My genealogy files contain original documents, pictures and even a braid of hair cut from an ancestor’s head circa 1863 — and my own personal and professional history to pass on to my progeny.My late son was a systems analyst with superior I.T. skills. Our difficulty in accessing his encrypted files in the cloud made his scraps of paper and his voluminous paper files crucial in settling his estate.So I will continue to file away without trying to remember passwords, or relying on internet service, which was out the other day.V.E. FranceWhite Plains, N.Y. More

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      Donald Trump Shouldn’t Be Underestimated

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      Like most Democrats, I initially underestimated Donald Trump. In 2015, I founded a super PAC dedicated to electing Hillary Clinton. Through all the ups and downs of the campaign, I didn’t once imagine that Americans would vote Mr. Trump in.He was an obvious pig (see the “Access Hollywood” tapes), a fraud (multiple failed businesses and bankruptcies) and a cheat (stiffing mom-and-pop vendors). Not to mention the blatant racism and misogyny. About the outcome, I was spectacularly wrong.Once he was in office, I misread Mr. Trump again. Having worked inside the conservative movement for many years, I found his policies familiar: same judges, same tax policy, same deregulation of big business, same pandering to the religious right, same denial of science. Of course, there were the loopy tweets, but still I regarded Mr. Trump as only a difference of degree from what I had seen from prior Republican presidents and candidates, not a difference of kind.When a raft of books and articles appeared warning that the United States was headed toward autocracy, I dismissed them as hyperbolic. I just didn’t see it. Under Mr. Trump, the sky didn’t fall.My view of Mr. Trump began to shift soon after the November election, when he falsely claimed the election was rigged and refused to concede. In doing so, Mr. Trump showed himself willing to undermine confidence in the democratic process, and in time he managed to convince nearly three-quarters of his supporters that the loser was actually the winner.Then came the Capitol Hill insurrection, and, later, proof that Mr. Trump incited it, even hiring a lawyer, John Eastman, who wrote a detailed memo that can only be described as a road map for a coup. A recent Senate investigation documented frantic efforts by Mr. Trump to bully government officials to overturn the election. And yet I worry that many Americans are still blind, as I once was, to the authoritarian impulses that now grip Mr. Trump’s party. Democrats need to step up to thwart them.Are Democrats up for such a tough (and expensive) fight? Many liberal voters have taken a step back from politics, convinced that Mr. Trump is no longer a threat. According to research conducted for our super PAC, almost half of women in battleground states are now paying less attention to the political news.But in reality, the last election settled very little. Mr. Trump not only appears to be preparing for a presidential campaign in 2024; he is whipping up his supporters before the 2022 midterms. And if Democrats ignore the threat he and his allies pose to democracy, their candidates will suffer next fall, imperiling any chance of meaningful reform in Congress.Going forward, we can expect bogus claims of voter fraud, and equally bogus challenges to legitimate vote counts, to become a permanent feature of Republican political strategy. Every election Republicans lose will be contested with lies, every Democratic win delegitimized. This is poison in a democracy.As of late September, 19 states had enacted 33 laws that will make it harder for their citizens to vote. The Republican National Committee’s “election integrity director” says the party will file lawsuits earlier and more aggressively than they did in 2020. Trump wannabe candidates like Glenn Youngkin, running for Virginia governor, are currying favor with the Republican base by promoting conspiracy theories suggesting that Virginia’s election may be rigged.More alarmingly, Republicans in swing states are purging election officials, allowing pro-Trump partisans to sabotage vote counts. In January, an Arizona lawmaker introduced a bill that would permit Republican legislators to overrule the certification of elections that don’t go their way. In Georgia, the legislature has given partisan election boards the power to “slow down or block” election certifications. Why bother with elections?Democrats now face an opposition that is not a normal political party, but rather a party that is willing to sacrifice democratic institutions and norms to take power.The legislation Democrats introduced in Congress to protect our democracy against such assaults would have taken an important step toward meeting these challenges. But on Wednesday, Republicans blocked the latest version of the legislation, and given the lack of unanimity among Democrats on the filibuster, they may well have succeeded in killing the last hope for any federal voting rights legislation during this session of Congress.Having underestimated Mr. Trump in the first place, Democrats shouldn’t underestimate what it will take to counter his malign influence now. They need a bigger, bolder campaign blueprint to save democracy that doesn’t hinge on the whims of Congress.We should hear more directly from the White House bully pulpit about these dire threats. The Jan. 6 investigators should mount a full-court press to get the truth out. Funding voting rights litigation should be a top priority.Where possible, Democrats should sponsor plebiscites to overturn anti-democratic laws passed by Republicans in states. They should underwrite super PACs to protect incumbent election officials being challenged by Trump loyalists, even if it means supporting reasonable Republicans. Donations should flow into key governor and secretary of state races, positions critical to election certification.In localities, Democrats should organize poll watching. Lawyers who make phony voting claims in court should face disciplinary action in state bar associations. The financiers of the voting rights assault must be exposed and publicly shamed.The good news is that liberals do not have to copy what the right is doing with its media apparatus — the font of falsehoods about voter fraud and a stolen election — to win over voters. Democrats can leapfrog the right with significant investments in streaming video, podcasting, newsletters and innovative content producers on growing platforms like TikTok, whose audiences dwarf those of cable news networks like Fox News.Issues like racial justice, the environment and immigration are already resonating online with audiences Democrats need to win over, such as young people, women and people of color. Democratic donors have long overlooked efforts to fund the media, but with so much of our politics playing out on that battlefield, they can no longer afford to.David Brock (@davidbrockdc) is the founder of Media Matters for America and American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic super PAC.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      House Panel Recommends Contempt Charge for Stephen Bannon

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      The committee scrutinizing the Jan. 6 Capitol riot said the former White House counselor had “multiple roles relevant to this investigation.”The House select committee investigating the Capitol riot voted 9-0 to recommend charging the former White House counselor with criminal contempt of Congress for defying its subpoena.Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesWASHINGTON — One day before a mob of former President Donald J. Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, Stephen K. Bannon, a former top adviser to Mr. Trump, made a prediction to listeners of his radio show.“Now we’re on, as they say, the point of attack — the point of attack tomorrow,” Mr. Bannon said on Jan. 5 as he promoted a plan hatched by Mr. Trump and far-right Republican lawmakers to try to overturn President Biden’s victory the next day, when Congress would meet to formalize the election results. “It’s going to kick off. It’s going to be very dramatic.”It is because of comments like that, which foreshadowed the violence that played out during the Capitol riot, that the House committee investigating the assault is interested in questioning Mr. Bannon. But the former counselor to Mr. Trump has refused to cooperate with the inquiry, citing the former president’s claim of executive privilege.The panel voted unanimously on Tuesday to recommend charging Mr. Bannon with criminal contempt of Congress for defying its subpoena, sending the issue to the House. Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader, said members would hold a vote on Thursday. The chamber is expected to approve the move and hand the matter over to the Justice Department for prosecution.“The rule of law remains under attack right now,” said Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee. “If there’s no accountability for these abuses — if there are different sets of rules for different types of people — then our democracy is in serious trouble.“Mr. Bannon will comply with our investigation,” he added, “or he will face the consequences.”Mr. Thompson said he expected the full House to “quickly” take up the matter.The high-profile confrontation is the first of several that promise to test the boundaries of executive privilege — the presidential prerogative to keep official communications secret — and will determine how far the House committee will be able to go in uncovering the story behind the deadliest attack on the Capitol in two centuries.Mr. Trump has filed his own federal lawsuit that touches on similar questions, suing both the chairman of the investigative committee and the head of the National Archives, the custodian of his presidential records, to block the release of material the panel has requested.Many Democrats fear that case, as well as any the Justice Department might decide to bring against Mr. Bannon, may drag on for months, potentially long enough for Republicans to gain the House majority in 2022 and bury the inquiry — and with it, any hope of revealing fresh information about what precipitated the riot.Members of the committee, which is controlled by Democrats, believe that Mr. Bannon has crucial information about plans to undermine Mr. Biden’s victory, including conversations Mr. Bannon had with Mr. Trump in which he urged the former president to focus his efforts on Jan. 6.In a report recommending the House find Mr. Bannon in contempt, the committee repeatedly cited comments he made on his radio show on Jan. 5 — when Mr. Bannon promised “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow” — as evidence that “he had some foreknowledge about extreme events that would occur the next day.”Investigators wrote that Mr. Bannon appeared to “have had multiple roles relevant to this investigation,” including in constructing the “Stop the Steal” public relations effort to spread the lies of a fraudulent election that motivated the attack, and participating in events from a ‘‘war room” organized at a Washington, D.C., hotel with other allies of Mr. Trump who were seeking to overturn the election.The group included members of the Trump campaign’s legal team, including Rudolph W. Giuliani and John C. Eastman; and prominent proponents of false election fraud claims, including Russell Ramsland Jr. and Boris Epshteyn; as well as Trump ally Roger J. Stone Jr., who left the hotel with members of the Oath Keepers militia group acting as bodyguards, the committee wrote.“It’s not going to happen like you think it’s going to happen,” Mr. Bannon told his audience on Jan. 5. “It’s going to be extraordinarily different. And all I can say is: Strap in.”Robert J. Costello, Mr. Bannon’s lawyer, has informed the committee that his client would not comply, citing Mr. Trump’s directive for his former aides and advisers facing subpoenas to invoke immunity and refrain from turning over documents that might be protected under executive privilege.Late Monday, Mr. Bannon and his lawyer sought to delay the vote, citing Mr. Trump’s lawsuit seeking to block the disclosure of White House files related to his actions and communications surrounding the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Mr. Thompson quickly denied the request for a delay.The panel was set to charge Mr. Bannon with criminal contempt of Congress for defying its subpoena.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesUnder federal law, any person summoned as a congressional witness who refuses to comply can face a misdemeanor charge that carries a fine of $100 to $100,000 and a jail sentence of one month to one year.During the Tuesday committee meeting, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the committee’s vice chairwoman, directed a comment to her Republican colleagues, warning them that following Mr. Trump’s lies was a prescription for “national self-destruction.”“Almost all of you know in your hearts that what happened on Jan. 6 was profoundly wrong,” she said. “You know that there is no evidence of widespread election fraud sufficient to overturn the election; you know that the Dominion voting machines were not corrupted by a foreign power. You know those claims are false.”But both Mr. Bannon’s and Mr. Trump’s cases raise novel legal issues. The case against Mr. Bannon is untested because he has not been an executive branch official since he left the White House in 2017, and any conversations he may have had with Mr. Trump pertaining to Jan. 6 are likely to have fallen outside the former president’s official duties. 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.css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}And the Biden administration has refused to assert executive privilege over any of Mr. Trump’s Jan. 6-related material, saying that it would not be in the public interest to keep secret the details of a plot to thwart the peaceful transfer of power.Committee members said they were confident that they would prevail in their push to obtain the information.“The former president’s clear objective is to stop the select committee from getting to the facts about Jan. 6, and his lawsuit is nothing more than an attempt to delay and obstruct our probe,” Mr. Thompson and Ms. Cheney wrote in response to Mr. Trump’s suit. “Precedent and law are on our side.”Claims of executive privilege date back to the very first congressional investigation, in George Washington’s administration, said Douglas L. Kriner, a professor of government at Cornell University and author of the book “Investigating the President: Congressional Checks on Presidential Power.”However, Mr. Bannon’s situation is different from many previous cases in which the privilege was invoked.“It’s hard to imagine how this jeopardizes national security,” Mr. Kriner said of releasing documents from the Trump administration. “It doesn’t involve a current ongoing administration that might be harmed in any way, and it doesn’t even involve the right to frank and open conversation between the president and other advisers within the administration.”The committee vote comes as some Senate Republicans are holding up the confirmation of Mr. Biden’s nominee for the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., who would oversee charges against defendants related to the Jan. 6 attack, including any potential charges against Mr. Bannon.Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, has put a hold on the nomination of Matthew M. Graves to lead the office, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s nonvoting delegate, said she was confident Mr. Graves would eventually win approval, but that his nomination had become mired in Republican hostility around the effort to investigate the Capitol riot.“It really isn’t related to him at all,” Ms. Norton said. “It’s partisan. It does relate to Jan. 6. It’s a tantrum, really.”Mr. Lee’s office did not respond to a request for comment.Emily Cochrane More

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      Hey Parler, Nashville Isn’t Turning Red

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      NASHVILLE — When NPR’s tech reporter, Bobby Allyn, tweeted last week that the social media site Parler was moving its headquarters from Nevada to Nashville, a single word came to my mind — a word this newspaper will not publish, no matter that it is the only word in the English language truly appropriate to the situation.Parler’s chief executive, George Farmer, offered some reasons for moving the company. “Tennessee has great weather, an abundance of Southern hospitality, wonderful music and barbecue,” he wrote in an email announcement. “Even more than that, though, Tennessee shares Parler’s vision of individual liberty and free expression.”Founded in 2018 as a less regulated alternative to Facebook and Twitter, Parler is an online place where high-profile right-wing commentators and political figures can promulgate lies and conspiracy theories without interference. Though the company notified the F.B.I. about threats of violence in advance of the insurrection on Jan. 6, and has since added algorithms to detect posts calling directly for violence, it was nonetheless Parler’s vision of “free expression” that helped bring about the invasion of the U.S. Capitol by homegrown terrorists.The craven Republicans running Tennessee might share that vision of liberty, but Nashville definitely does not. Nashville, according to NBC News, is “a big blue dot in a deep red state.” That fact should tell you all you need to know about the relationship between this city and our state government. You likely know this dynamic already because it exists in virtually every major city or college town in every gerrymandered state governed by Republicans: Think Oxford, Miss.; Atlanta, Ga.; Birmingham, Ala.; Lexington, Ky.; Austin, Texas.; Chapel Hill, N.C.What you might not know is that Nashville is also in the midst of a convulsive identity crisis, unsure whether it wants to remain Music City or become something more like a tech incubator or a health care center or a financial services hub. Or maybe just the place where bridesmaids come to get drunk in the street.A midsize city on its way to becoming a big city can be all these things at once, of course, especially if it is a midsize city that is growing deliberately, in ways that do not displace its low-income residents or its work force. Especially if it is a midsize city that is investing in its public schools and building out its infrastructure to accommodate its meteoric growth.Nashville is doing those things poorly, if at all, and some of the blame for this paralysis can be laid at the feet of state government, which frequently passes pre-emptive laws or issues pre-emptive executive orders designed to tie the hands of Nashville leaders. The very last thing this city needs is to become the headquarters of a social media site favored by the right-wingers who are most poisoned by lies and hatred and fear.The truth is that high-profile members of the far right have been moving to Middle Tennessee since long before Parler announced its impending relocation. As the Nashville Scene’s Steven Hale noted when the conservative media celebrity Ben Shapiro decided to move the headquarters of The Daily Wire, the media company he co-founded, from Los Angeles to Nashville: “Look, we try hard to ignore these people,” Hale wrote. Nevertheless, here they are.And it’s not just celebrities who are moving to town. The coronavirus pandemic taught a lot of people that they can work wherever they want to work, and increasingly where people seem to want to work is in a state with no income tax. In my neighborhood alone, we have newcomers from Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and a bunch of other places I can’t name because I haven’t met the new people yet. A few weeks ago, I overheard a conversation between two new neighborhood children on bicycles. “Are you from Nashville?” the first child asked. “I’m from Des Moines,” the other kid said.We are hospitable people here in Tennessee, it’s true, and we do have great music and barbecue. But Mr. Farmer should know that Tennessee’s “great weather” includes six of the 18 billion-dollar weather disasters to hit the U.S. this year — catastrophic weather events triggered by a changing climate that many on his site deny exists. More

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      Jan. 6 Panel Moves to Recommend Criminal Charges Against Bannon

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      The House select committee investigating the Capitol riot will vote next week to recommend a criminal contempt of Congress charge against Stephen K. Bannon after he defied a subpoena.WASHINGTON — The chairman of the House inquiry into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said the committee would move next week to recommend that Stephen K. Bannon, a former top adviser to President Donald J. Trump, face criminal contempt charges for refusing to cooperate with its investigation.The move would escalate what is shaping up to be a major legal battle between the select committee and the former president over access to crucial witnesses and documents that could shed light on what precipitated the assault, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol and disrupted Congress’s formal count of the votes that confirmed President Biden’s election.The fight will test how far Congress will be able to go in pressing forward on the investigation in the face of stonewalling by the former president. Should the House ultimately approve the referral, as expected, the Justice Department would decide whether to accept it and pursue a criminal case.So far, the Biden administration has taken the unusual step of refusing to honor Mr. Trump’s claims of executive privilege, which can shield White House deliberations or documents involving the president from disclosure.Mr. Bannon informed the panel last week that he would defy a subpoena, in accordance with a directive from Mr. Trump, who has told former aides and advisers that they should not cooperate because the information requested is privileged.“Mr. Bannon has declined to cooperate with the select committee and is instead hiding behind the former president’s insufficient, blanket and vague statements regarding privileges he has purported to invoke,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said in a statement.The committee, which is controlled by Democrats, will consider the referral on Tuesday and is all but certain to agree to it. That would send the criminal contempt citation to the full House, where Democrats have the votes to approve it. The matter would then be sent to the Justice Department with a recommendation that officials pursue a legal case against Mr. Bannon.The cumbersome procedure reflects a challenging reality that Democrats are grappling with as they delve deeper into the Jan. 6 inquiry. Congress is a legislative body, not a law enforcement entity, and its ability to compel cooperation and punish wrongdoing on its own is inherently limited. Its investigative tools are only as powerful as the courts decide, and the process of waging legal fights to secure crucial information and witnesses is likely to be a prolonged one.Robert J. Costello, a lawyer for Mr. Bannon, said in a letter to the committee on Wednesday that his client would not produce documents or testimony “until such time as you reach an agreement with President Trump” on claims of executive privilege “or receive a court ruling.”The case of Mr. Bannon is particularly tricky because he has not been an executive branch official since he left the White House in 2017, and any conversations he may have had with Mr. Trump pertaining to Jan. 6 are likely to have fallen outside the former president’s official duties.No court has definitively said whether conversations with private citizens are covered by executive privilege, which is generally extended in relation to conversations or documents that pertain to presidential duties.“Privilege for a private citizen, who was potentially talking about things outside of the president’s official duties, has never been tested in court,” said Jonathan D. Shaub, a law professor at the University of Kentucky who worked at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.Even as it moves aggressively against Mr. Bannon, the panel has taken a different approach to two other advisers to Mr. Trump who have so far declined to comply with its subpoenas but have not stonewalled the inquiry entirely.Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, and Kash Patel, a former Pentagon chief of staff, were also summoned to sit for depositions this week, but they are not yet facing contempt citations for failing to do so.The committee said it was in communication with Mr. Meadows and Mr. Patel, and a person with knowledge of those talks said that lawmakers were likely to grant them a delay before testifying. Dan Scavino Jr., a former White House deputy chief of staff under Mr. Trump, was served with his subpoena last week.For years while Mr. Trump was president, administration officials refused to comply with congressional subpoenas, thumbing their noses at Democratic lawmakers on matters from election interference to census questions. Democrats, in turn, opted not to try to press their claims in court, concluding that the process would be too time-consuming to be effective, particularly in the case of Mr. Trump’s impeachment.Now that he has left office, Democrats and Mr. Biden’s Justice Department must decide how aggressive they want to be in waging legal battles to insist on congressional prerogatives. That includes the question of whether to try to compel cooperation in the investigation from Mr. Trump himself, which Mr. Thompson has repeatedly said was possible, but which raises legal and logistical challenges that many Democrats privately say make it unlikely.Under federal law, any person summoned as a congressional witness who refuses to comply can face a misdemeanor charge that carries a fine of $100 to $100,000 and a jail sentence of one month to one year.But the Justice Department has generally refrained from prosecuting executive branch officials when they have refused to comply with subpoenas, and Congress has voted to hold them in contempt, according to a 2019 Congressional Research Service report.Justice Department legal opinions from 1984 and 2008 say that the department will not prosecute officials for complying with a president’s formal assertion of privilege over conversations or documents.In 2015, the Justice Department under President Barack Obama said it would not seek criminal contempt charges against Lois Lerner, a former I.R.S. official; and in 2019, the department under Mr. Trump made a similar decision, rebuffing Congress on behalf of Attorney General William P. Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.The last person charged with criminal contempt of Congress, Rita M. Lavelle, a former federal environmental official under President Ronald Reagan, was found not guilty in 1983 of failing to appear at a congressional subcommittee hearing. She was later sentenced to jail for lying to Congress.Jeffrey S. Robbins, a former federal prosecutor and a partner at the law firm Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr, said under different circumstances, the committee might face an uphill battle enforcing the subpoena: if the Justice Department were still under Mr. Trump, Congress were in Republican hands, or there were a reasonable argument — such as protecting national security — for invoking executive privilege. In this case, Mr. Robbins said, none of those circumstances existed.“It’s open contempt of a subpoena without an apparent basis,” said Mr. Robbins, who teaches a course on congressional investigations at Brown University. He called the invocation of executive privilege “patently bogus,” adding, “It’s difficult to imagine it will not be referred for prosecution.”Once Congress votes to hold Mr. Bannon in contempt, the next step would be to refer the matter to the U.S. attorney in Washington. If the White House determines that no claim of executive privilege applies, the U.S. attorney’s office would then decide whether to bring the case before a grand jury, in consultation with top Justice Department officials.But if Mr. Bannon were to sue over the issue, the Justice Department would most likely follow past practice and wait for the courts to resolve the lawsuit before bringing the contempt charge before a grand jury, Mr. Shaub said.In letters transmitting its subpoenas to Mr. Bannon and the three former Trump administration officials, the committee said it was seeking information about the president’s actions in the run-up to and during the riot.Mr. Bannon reportedly communicated with Mr. Trump on Dec. 30 and urged him to focus his efforts on Jan. 6, the committee said. He was also present at a meeting at the Willard Hotel in Washington the day before the violence, when plans were discussed to try to overturn the results of the election the next day, the committee stated. Mr. Bannon was quoted as saying, “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow.”On Wednesday, the committee also issued a subpoena to Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who was involved in Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. The committee’s action came the same day it heard lengthy closed-door testimony from Jeffrey A. Rosen, the former acting attorney general, who has testified publicly and privately about the final days of the Trump administration, when the former president was pressing top officials to use the Justice Department to advance false claims of election fraud.In private testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Rosen said that Mr. Clark had told him that Mr. Trump was getting ready to fire Mr. Rosen and endorse Mr. Clark’s strategy of pursuing conspiracy theories about the hacking of voting booths and fraud.“Well, I don’t get to be fired by someone who works for me,” Mr. Rosen said he told Mr. Clark. More

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      Adam Schiff on Facebook, Fox News and the Trump Cult

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      It’s been nine months since the Capitol attack, and we still don’t have true accountability. Representative Adam Schiff and the rest of the Jan. 6 House select committee are issuing subpoenas to key witnesses, including Steve Bannon, Dan Scavino and two “Stop the Steal” rally organizers. “No one is off the table,” Schiff says.But in a political ecosystem that is defined in part by the spread of misinformation and polarization on platforms like Facebook and the power of right-wing media outlets like Fox News and One America News Network, how much will a congressional investigation actually move the needle on a democracy at risk? Especially when the effort — billed as bipartisan — has only two Republican members?[You can listen to this episode of “Sway” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]In this conversation, Kara Swisher presses Schiff on the Jan. 6 committee’s ability to bring about change and its efforts to subpoena key witnesses. As Swisher points out, “Issuing subpoenas is one thing, but getting people to comply is another” — and that is proving more difficult as Donald Trump advises allies to defy the committee. They also discuss the Facebook whistle-blower Frances Haugen, how Schiff wishes Mark Zuckerberg would have replied to questions about the platform’s role in amplifying polarization and whether Trump will run in 2024. And Schiff reflects on the former president’s nicknames for him.(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThoughts? Email us at sway@nytimes.com.“Sway” is produced by Nayeema Raza, Blakeney Schick, Matt Kwong, Daphne Chen and Caitlin O’Keefe, and edited by Nayeema Raza; fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Michelle Harris and Kristin Lin; music and sound design by Isaac Jones; mixing by Carole Sabouraud and Sonia Herrero; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Mahima Chablani. More