US Capitol attack

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Ginni Thomas, wife of supreme court justice, appears before January 6 panel

      by

      Ginni Thomas, wife of supreme court justice, appears before January 6 panel Thomas, who contacted lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin in weeks after election, gives voluntary interview on Capitol Hill The conservative activist Ginni Thomas, the wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, appeared on Thursday for a voluntary interview with the House January 6 committee.Kushner camping tale one of many bizarre scenes in latest Trump bookRead moreThe committee had for months sought the interview in an effort to know more about Thomas’s role in trying to help Donald Trump overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden.She texted Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and contacted lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin in the weeks after the election.Thomas did not answer questions when she arrived for the interview or later when she briefly left for a break. But Thomas did tell reporters she was looking forward to answering questions from the members of the committee.Testimony from Thomas was one of the remaining items for the committee as it nears completion of its work. The panel has interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses and shown some testimony in eight public hearings.Thomas’s attorney, Mark Paoletta, said last week Thomas was “eager to answer the committee’s questions to clear up any misconceptions about her work relating to the 2020 election”.The extent of her involvement in the Capitol attack is unclear. In the days after the presidential election was called for Biden, Thomas emailed two lawmakers in Arizona to urge them to choose “a clean slate of electors” and “stand strong in the face of political and media pressure”.The AP obtained the emails earlier this year under the state’s open records law.Thomas has said in interviews she attended a pro-Trump rally near the White House on the morning of 6 January 2021 but left before Trump spoke and crowds attacked the Capitol.Thomas has repeatedly maintained that her political activities posed no conflict of interest with the work of her husband.“Like so many married couples, we share many of the same ideals, principles and aspirations for America,” Thomas told the Washington Free Beacon in March.“But we have our own separate careers and our own ideas and opinions too. Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me and I don’t involve him in my work.”Justice Thomas was the lone dissenting voice when the supreme court ruled in January to allow a congressional committee access to presidential diaries, visitor logs, speech drafts and handwritten notes relating to the events of January 6.Ginni Thomas has been openly critical of the committee’s work, including signing a letter to House Republicans calling for the expulsion of Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, for joining the January 6 committee.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 188 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      US supreme court’s approval rating falls to historical low ahead of new term – live

      by

      When its most recent term concluded in June, the supreme court’s conservative majority had flexed its muscles in a big way.They overturned a nearly half-century old precedent to allow states to ban abortion nationwide, expanded the ability to carry a concealed weapon, limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate power plants and expanded prayer in public schools. Thus, much of the drop in the court’s public trust Gallup found in a poll released today comes from Democrats, for which confidence halved in the past year. Overall, only 47% of respondents have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the court, which isn’t bad compared to, say, Congress, but nonetheless represents a 20-percentage-point drop from two years ago and a sharp decline from its usual two-thirds level in Gallup’s surveys.But it’s not just the public itself that has issues with how the court is behaving. The justices, or at least one justice, appear to think it’s gone too far. The White House-appointed jurors usually go to great lengths to appear impartial and stay out of Washington’s daily fray, but something appears to be going on behind the scenes. “If, over time, the court loses all connection with the public and with public sentiment, that is a dangerous thing for democracy,” warned Elena Kagan in a July speech, one of the justices comprising the court’s three-member liberal minority. More unusual was the fact that Samuel Alito, the conservative who wrote the opinion overturning abortion rights established by Roe v Wade, appeared to respond to her comments with a remark delivered not in a speech – the typical venue when justices feel like opening up on a topic – but directly to the Wall Street Journal, as many other players in Washington often do.“It goes without saying that everyone is free to express disagreement with our decisions and to criticize our reasoning as they see fit. But saying or implying that the court is becoming an illegitimate institution or questioning our integrity crosses an important line,” Alito said.“While it is not a crime to lie to Fox News viewers or on social media, there are consequences to lying to a court.” That’s a line from a New York Times piece published today analyzing the decision by Donald Trump’s lawyers to seek the appointment of a special master in the Mar-a-Lago case – and concluding the strategy hasn’t quite paid off the way the ex-president may have hoped.First of all, a reminder of what a special master is: it’s a neutral party that a federal judge assigned to the lawsuit that followed the FBI’s seizure of documents from Trump’s Florida resort. Senior federal judge Raymond J. Dearie was appointed to sift through the documents for those covered by attorney-client and executive privilege. While the ruling temporarily halted the justice department’s investigation into whether Trump unlawfully retained government secrets, an appeals court reversed part of the lower court’s decision earlier this month, allowing the government to continue reviewing the seized documents.Nonetheless, the special master will continue his work, but the article notes that it will be expensive for Trump, who will have to foot the cost for a firm to scan all the documents, the judge to hire an assistant that bills at $500 an hour, plus all the legal fees the former president will incur.Then there’s Dearie’s demands for how the review will be conducted, which the Times reports don’t seem to favor Trump:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}And far from indulging Mr. Trump, as his lawyers likely hoped in suggesting his appointment, Judge Dearie appears to be organizing the document review in ways that threaten to swiftly puncture the former president’s defenses.
      For example, the judge has ordered Mr. Trump to submit by Friday a declaration or affidavit verifying the inventory or listing any items on it “that plaintiff asserts were not seized” in the search.
      But if Mr. Trump acknowledges that the F.B.I. took any documents marked as classified from his personal office and a storage room at Mar-a-Lago, as the inventory says, that would become evidence that could be used against him if he were later charged with defying a subpoena.
      Requiring Mr. Trump’s lawyers to verify or object to the inventory also effectively means making them either affirm in court or disavow a claim Mr. Trump has made in public: his accusation that the F.B.I. planted fake evidence. While it is not a crime to lie to Fox News viewers or on social media, there are consequences to lying to a court.There’s even a Britain angle to the Trump book, Martin Pengelly reports. Meanwhile, the country’s mini-economic crisis continues:In his first White House meeting with a major foreign leader, Donald Trump asked Theresa May: “Why isn’t Boris Johnson the prime minister? Didn’t he want the job?”At the time, the notoriously ambitious Johnson was foreign secretary. He became prime minister two years later, in 2019, after May was forced to resign.May’s response to the undiplomatic question is not recorded in Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, a new book by the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman which will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Trump asked May at debut meeting why Boris Johnson was not PM, book saysRead moreThe Guardian’s Martin Pengelly obtained a copy of “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America” ahead of its release next week. As you might expect, it contained no shortage of troubling anecdotes about what was going on in the White House during his presidency:In a meeting supposedly about campaign strategy in the 2020 election, Donald Trump implied his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, might be brutally attacked, even raped, should he ever go camping.“Ivanka wants to rent one of those big RVs,” Trump told bemused aides, according to a new book by Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, before gesturing to his daughter’s husband.“This skinny guy wants to do it. Can you imagine Jared and his skinny ass camping? It’d be like something out of Deliverance.”According to Haberman, Trump then “made noises mimicking the banjo theme song from the 1972 movie about four men vacationing in rural Georgia who are attacked, pursued and in one case brutally raped by a local resident”.The bizarre scene is just one of many in Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, which will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Kushner camping tale one of many bizarre scenes in latest Trump bookRead morePresident Joe Biden has spoken with Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican who has been critical of the White House and is thought to be mulling a bid for president in 2024, but whose state is now being battered by Hurricane Ian.The pair committed to working together to help the state recover from the storm, according to a readout of the call provided by the White House:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The President spoke this morning with Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida to discuss the steps the Biden-Harris Administration is taking to support Florida in response to Hurricane Ian, including the issuance of a Disaster Declaration this morning. The President told the Governor he is sending his FEMA Administrator to Florida tomorrow to check in on response efforts and see where additional support is needed. The President and Governor committed to continued close coordination.The Guardian has a separate live blog following the latest news on Hurricane Ian:Hurricane Ian: DeSantis says ‘we’ve never seen a flood like this’ as Biden declares disaster – liveRead moreThe Washington Post has a preview of the upcoming supreme court term that indicates new ways the conservative majority could change American law.Here are a few of the issues raised in cases the court will consider, and potentially render consequential decisions on:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Justices have agreed to revisit whether universities can use race in a limited way when making admission decisions, a practice the court has endorsed since 1978. Two major cases involve voting rights. The court again will consider whether laws forbidding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation must give way to business owners who do not want to provide wedding services to same-sex couples. And after limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority in air pollution cases last term, the court will hear a challenge regarding the Clean Water Act.The court’s liberal minority, in particular justice Sonia Sotomayor, last term wrote lengthy dissents to some of the court’s most controversial decisions, which were viewed as ways of signaling just how split the panel was internally. In the Post’s piece, executive director of the Supreme Court Institute at the Georgetown Law Center Irv Gornstein warned that a continued trend of divisive decisions that broke along the court’s ideological lines could further widen the ideological divisions between justices. “I do think there is a potential for ill will carrying over into this term and into future terms,” he said. What the liberal justices’ scorching dissent reveals about the US supreme courtRead moreA CNN reporter managed to find Ginni Thomas somewhere in Washington, presumably near where the January 6 committee does its business, and reports that she spoke to the lawmakers in person:NEW: Ginni Thomas met with Jan 6 committee IN PERSON. She did not answer my questions pic.twitter.com/5z6pypr0S9— Annie Grayer (@AnnieGrayerCNN) September 29, 2022
      The January 6 committee will today take testimony from Ginni Thomas, wife of conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas and herself a promoter of baseless claims that fraud decided the outcome of the 2020 election, Politico reports.NEWS: Ginni Thomas is testifying virtually to Jan. 6 committee *today,* two sources tell me and @nicholaswu12— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) September 29, 2022
      Reports in recent months have found Ginni Thomas lobbied Republican legislators around the country to take steps that could have delayed or prevented Joe Biden from entering the White House, as well as communicated with Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff during Donald Trump’s last days in office. While she has said she doesn’t discuss her work with her husband, Clarence Thomas was the lone dissent earlier this year in a supreme court decision that turned down a petition from Trump and allowed access to records concerning the January 6 attack from his time in the White House.Ginni Thomas lobbied Wisconsin lawmakers to overturn 2020 election Read moreWhen its most recent term concluded in June, the supreme court’s conservative majority had flexed its muscles in a big way.They overturned a nearly half-century old precedent to allow states to ban abortion nationwide, expanded the ability to carry a concealed weapon, limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate power plants and expanded prayer in public schools. Thus, much of the drop in the court’s public trust Gallup found in a poll released today comes from Democrats, for which confidence halved in the past year. Overall, only 47% of respondents have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the court, which isn’t bad compared to, say, Congress, but nonetheless represents a 20-percentage-point drop from two years ago and a sharp decline from its usual two-thirds level in Gallup’s surveys.But it’s not just the public itself that has issues with how the court is behaving. The justices, or at least one justice, appear to think it’s gone too far. The White House-appointed jurors usually go to great lengths to appear impartial and stay out of Washington’s daily fray, but something appears to be going on behind the scenes. “If, over time, the court loses all connection with the public and with public sentiment, that is a dangerous thing for democracy,” warned Elena Kagan in a July speech, one of the justices comprising the court’s three-member liberal minority. More unusual was the fact that Samuel Alito, the conservative who wrote the opinion overturning abortion rights established by Roe v Wade, appeared to respond to her comments with a remark delivered not in a speech – the typical venue when justices feel like opening up on a topic – but directly to the Wall Street Journal, as many other players in Washington often do.“It goes without saying that everyone is free to express disagreement with our decisions and to criticize our reasoning as they see fit. But saying or implying that the court is becoming an illegitimate institution or questioning our integrity crosses an important line,” Alito said.Good morning, US politics readers. The supreme court’s descent into being just another politicized government branch – at least to the public – continued apace, with a new poll showing its approval falling in the wake of a term that saw a series of sharply conservative decisions, including the end to nationwide abortion rights. As if those decisions weren’t enough, liberal justice Elena Kagan twice recently warned of the perils of the court losing its impartiality – prompting an unusual public response from Samuel Alito, the conservative justice who wrote the decision ending Roe v Wade. The court’s new term begins on Monday.Here’s what else is happening today:
      President Joe Biden has declared an official disaster in Florida after Hurricane Ian trapped residents in their homes and knocked out power to millions. He will visit the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency at noon eastern time to assess the response.
      Top House Republicans have a 10am eastern time press conference scheduled to “discuss firing Nancy Pelosi” as the party looks set to reclaim the majority in the chamber.
      The chair of the January 6 committee said it will this week hear testimony from Ginni Thomas, a 2020 election denier and wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      House January 6 committee postpones public hearing, citing Hurricane Ian

      by

      House January 6 committee postpones public hearing, citing Hurricane IanStorm bearing down on Florida nixes session that had been expected to feature footage of Trump ally Roger Stone The House January 6 select committee announced that it would postpone what was expected to be its final investigative hearing scheduled for Wednesday over concerns about a hurricane and as it considers how best to present a number of unresolved questions surrounding the US Capitol attack.McConnell endorses bipartisan bill to prevent efforts to overturn US elections Read more“In light of Hurricane Ian bearing down on parts of Florida, we have decided to postpone tomorrow’s proceedings,” the panel’s chairman Bennie Thompson and the vice-chair Liz Cheney said in a joint statement. “We’re praying for the safety of all those in the storm’s path.”The hurricane is forecast to reach category 4 and make landfall on Florida’s gulf coast around the time the hearing is scheduled to begin in Washington, bringing hurricane-force winds and major flooding around the Tampa area, which has not suffered a direct hit from a major storm since 1921.That was not the optimal time to be holding the hearing, sources close to the investigation said: members felt it was insensitive to have a hearing during a potential natural disaster, while television coverage of the findings surrounding Donald Trump would probably be diminished.And at least one of the select committee’s members, Stephanie Murphy, had communicated that she was unable and unwilling to leave her Florida district at a time of a statewide crisis to make a rehearsal the night before the hearing, the sources said.The panel had not disclosed the topics it intended to cover in the hearing – expected to be the final “investigative” hearing, though the select committee could hold another around the time it releases its final report and makes recommendations to prevent future repeats of the 6 January 2021 events.But the select committee was expected to focus at least in part on how Trump political operatives planned to declare victory in the 2020 election regardless of the actual outcome, through court battles and other extrajudicial means to secure Trump a second term, the sources said.The select committee was also expected at the hearing to play several short clips from a documentary by Danish film-makers who captured on camera Trump operative Roger Stone predicting violent clashes over the election results months before it took place.It was not immediately clear what date the hearing, which was originally slated for Wednesday at 1pm, would be rescheduled for, though one of the sources suggested sometime in October. The panel said in the statement: “We will soon announce a date for the postponed proceedings.”The hearing is supposed to mark the winding down of the investigative phase of the select committee’s work, though several pressing issues remain unresolved since the panel last convened in July and made the case that Trump violated the law in refusing to call off the Capitol attack.Among them is whether there existed an indubitable through-line from the former president to operatives such as Stone and Michael Flynn, who were in close contact with the far-right extremist groups – including the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers – since indicted for seditious conspiracy over the insurrection.The select committee has found some circumstantial evidence about such ties and previously revealed that Trump directed his then White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to call Stone and Flynn the night before as the extremist groups finalized their plans for the day.Another issue for House investigators is whether Trump’s ouster of former defense secretary Mark Esper was an effort to install a loyalist in his place, one who might have had no objection to using the national guard to seize voting machines or delay their deployment to stop the Capitol attack.Republican ex-congressman suggests colleagues ‘had serious cognitive issues’Read moreThe panel has viewed the plot to seize voting machines – suggested by Flynn during a contentious White House meeting in December 2020, hours before Trump sent a tweet urging his supporters to attend a “wild protest” on 6 January 2021 – as a crucial moment in the timeline.House investigators have also spent time in recent weeks examining Microsoft Teams chats and emails sent between Secret Service agents on security details for Trump and former vice-president Mike Pence that day, as well as discussions about invoking martial law even after the riot.The select committee has also debated in private about how best to highlight other information that it has uncovered, with the members differing on what to present in made-for-television hearings that might reach a broader audience than the contents of a report published later this year.The final stages of its investigation is also playing out against a shifting political situation that could impact how the select committee moves next, including on the question of whether to subpoena Trump himself, as Democrats contemplate potentially losing the House in the midterms in November.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsExtreme weatherLiz CheneyDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      January 6 committee postpones Wednesday hearing over hurricane – as it happened

      by

      Five members of the Oath Keepers including founder Stewart Rhodes are facing charges of seditious conspiracy, a dire allegation that the justice department hasn’t pursued since 2010.Federal investigators have alleged that the group spent months planning the attack on the Capitol, with Rhodes spending $20,000 on weapons and equipment in the weeks leading up to the attack. The group also planned to have armed “quick reaction forces” positioned to storm the Capitol, with Rhodes texting an encrypted group chat on January 6, “We will have several well equipped QRF’s outside DC.”A conviction on seditious conspiracy charges could attract a prison sentence of up to 20 years, but keep in mind, the last time the justice department brought the charges in 2010, a judge ultimately threw them out. Elsewhere today, Kyle Young will be sentenced after pleading guilty to one charge of assaulting a police officer. Prosecutors say the Iowa resident restrained Washington, DC police officer Michael Fanone as another rioter shocked him with a taser Young provided. Fanone, who has since left the force but testified before the January 6 committee, wrote for CNN of his hopes for Young’s sentencing:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}On Tuesday, Young’s attorney will ask a judge to sentence him to two years – a laughably short sentence. Prosecutors have asked for a seven-year term – not quite a joke but also not nearly long enough. By comparison, a former New York police officer with no criminal record received 10 years for attacking officers during the riot.
      What do I think Young deserves? Not less than 10 years in prison. And an assigned cell in maximum security with his co-conspirator: Donald Trump.The January 6 insurrection continued to reverberate through Washington, as the trial of five Oath Keepers, including founder of the militant group Stewart Rhodes, began, while another rioter was sentenced to more than seven years in prison after pleading guilty to assaulting a police officer. Meanwhile, the congressional committee investigating the attack postponed its hearing planned for Wednesday, citing Hurricane Ian’s approach towards Florida.Here’s what else happened today:
      The top Senate Republican said he would support a bill tweaking America’s election laws to prevent the types of legal plots that were attempted on January 6, greatly raising its chances of passage.
      The Biden administration condemned Idaho’s anti-abortion laws after a university said its staff should only offer condoms for preventing STIs, not as birth control.
      Texas’s attorney general fled a process server delivering him a subpoena related to a lawsuit filed by abortion advocates against the state’s efforts to stop them from helping women seek care in other states.
      The White House has unveiled a major anti-hunger plan to address the United States’ troublingly high rates of food insecurity.
      Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, has endorsed a measure to change the procedures for counting electoral votes to prevent the types of legal strategies allies of Donald Trump attempted on January 6.“I look forward to supporting the legislation, as introduced in committee,” McConnell said in a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon.While it was already thought to have the votes to pass, McConnell’s endorsement greatly increases the bill’s chances of passing the Democratic-controlled chamber, where most legislation requires the support of at least 10 Republicans in addition to all Democrats. The bill, called the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022, clarifies the 1887 Electoral Count Act, which Trump’s allies cited loopholes in to try to convince vice-president Mike Pence to delay or overturn Joe Biden’s election win when Congress convened on January 6, 2021.Bipartisan Senate group reaches deal to reform Electoral Count ActRead moreThe leaders of the January 6 committee have issued a statement explaining their decision to postpone tomorrow’s hearing, citing the threat of Hurricane Ian.“In light of Hurricane Ian bearing down on parts of Florida, we have decided to postpone tomorrow’s proceedings. We’re praying for the safety of all those in the storm’s path,” the committee’s Democratic chair Bennie Thompson and Republican vice-chair Liz Cheney said in a joint statement. “The Select Committee’s investigation goes forward and we will soon announce a date for the postponed proceedings.”Tomorrow’s hearing of the January 6 committee has indeed been postponed, The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell confirms:New: Confirming Wash Post that the Jan. 6 committee hearing scheduled for tomorrow has been postponed, per source familiar— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) September 27, 2022
      The January 6 committee may reschedule its hearing set for tomorrow due to Hurricane Ian, which is expected to hit Florida’s west coast and could cause severe damage, The Washington Post reports:News: Tmrw’s @January6thCmte hearing is likely to be postponed due to Hurricane Ian, me & @jdawsey1 are told.— Jacqueline Alemany (@JaxAlemany) September 27, 2022
      The Wednesday hearing is the first since late July, and potentially the committee’s last public session before the 8 November midterms. The bipartisan committee investigating the insurrection at the Capitol was expected to air a variety of new evidence, potentially touching on the actions of Trump ally Roger Stone as well as the Secret Service.The White House has condemned Idaho’s anti-abortion law after a university cited it when warning staff that condoms could be provided to prevent sexually transmitted infections, but not as birth control.Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the university’s warning is an indication that the legislation is intended to undercut rights:For years, GOP officials have gone after contraception and family planning services. After the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, GOP officials appear more empowered to strip Americans of their basic rights. https://t.co/3VNpW0dUgd— Karine Jean-Pierre (@PressSec) September 27, 2022
      To be clear, nothing under Idaho law justifies the university’s decision to deny students access to contraception. But the situation in Idaho speaks to the unacceptable consequences of extreme abortion bans.— Karine Jean-Pierre (@PressSec) September 27, 2022
      The overwhelming majority of Americans believe in the right to birth control, as well as the right to abortion, without government interference. These policies are extreme and backwards.— Karine Jean-Pierre (@PressSec) September 27, 2022
      University of Idaho says staff can offer condoms for STDs – not birth controlRead moreThe sentencing of Kyle Young, a January 6 rioter who pled guilty to a charge of assaulting the police, is underway in Washington.Two of the Washington police officers he assaulted have spoken at the Iowa man’s sentencing, including Michael Fanone, who was shocked by another rioter with a taser as Young restrained him. He’s asked for Young to be sentenced to at least 10 years in prison, much more than federal prosecutors are seeking. Here’s more from Politico:HAPPENING NOW: MPD Officers Moore and Fanone are addressing Judge Amy Berman Jackson as she prepares to sentence Jan. 6 defendant Kyle Young, who participated in some of the most brutal violence that day at the Capitols’ Lower West Terrace Tunnel.— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) September 27, 2022
      DOJ is recommenting 86 months for Young, who brought his minor son into the melee and handed a taser to another rioter, who used it against Fanone. Fanone is speaking now, describing the events of the day. https://t.co/6jEktwy8WU pic.twitter.com/NaCK4tGTXU— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) September 27, 2022
      YOUNG, addressing the court, turns to Officer Fanone, apologizes and breaks down crying.”I am so so sorry. And if I could take it back I would.”Turning to the judge, he says, “Whatever you give me as a punishment, I accept.”— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) September 27, 2022
      The Secret Service took cellphones from 24 agents involved in its response to January 6 and turned them over to the homeland security department’s inspector general as he investigates the deletion of text messages and other data from around the time of the insurrection, NBC News reports.While it’s not clear what Joseph Cuffari has been able to obtain from the phones, NBC says the seizure of the government-supplied devices occurred in July, after the inspector general informed the Secret Service that he would launch a criminal probe into the deletion of the records. The missing data has become a major issue for the January 6 committee, which has taken evidence from a variety of people at the Capitol and in the Trump White House around the time of the attack. Interest in what the Secret Service knew about the insurrection was raised after Trump administration aide Cassidy Hutchinson said that agents had witnessed alarming behavior by the then-president shortly before the attack, including a physical altercation for the steering wheel of his limousine. However, the agency said data from 5 and 6 January were lost in a pre-planned upgrade of its cellphones.Cuffari himself has also come in for criticism. Last week, staff of the homeland security watchdog called on president Joe Biden to fire him, accusing him in an anonymous letter of “poor decision-making”, the Project on Government Oversight reported. Appointed by Trump, Cuffari is a former aide to Republican Arizona governors Doug Ducey and Jan Brewer.Secret Service watchdog suppressed memo on January 6 texts erasureRead moreThomas Zimmer writes…As the January 6 hearings are about to resume, it is unlikely that our basic understanding of what happened between the 2020 presidential election and the attack on the Capitol will significantly change. That is a testament to the crucial work the committee has already done and to which we owe much of our detailed knowledge of the weeks long, multi-level coup attempt and the evolving strategies of those involved in this deliberate campaign to nullify the election results, prevent the transfer of power and end constitutional government in America.And yet, the committee’ job is far from done. It still has an important role to play in determining the meaning and role of January 6 in US history. Was the attack on the US Capitol a failed, desperate, last-ditch effort by delusional extremists? Or will it be remembered as a milestone in America’s accelerating descent into authoritarianism – an assault on the system that didn’t succeed initially but played a key role in democracy’s demise? The answer to these questions is not decided by facts and past events. In a very real sense, January 6 isn’t over yet, and the success or failure of the Trumpian coup attempt will be decided by what happens next.If that sounds counter-intuitive, it is helpful to examine how the meaning of another infamous historical event to which January 6 has often been compared – the Beer Hall Putsch, Adolf Hitler’s failed coup attempt in November 1923 – changed significantly over time.More:January 6 changed America. Here are two directions the country could go now | Thomas ZimmerRead moreGloria Oladipo writes…The Department of Justice has pushed back on the unsubstantiated claims from Donald Trump that the agency planted evidence during its search of Mar-a-Lago in August, submitting a slightly amended list of seized materials and an affidavit that the list reflects what was taken.The FBI submitted a first version of the inventory list several weeks ago. It only had one business day to compile that list but had more time to submit the most recent version, CNN reported. The agency also said that in the updated version it filtered out potentially privileged items.Judge Raymond Dearie, the special master appointed to review the case, requested that the FBI provide a “full and accurate” picture of what was obtained in the search.Dearie’s request came after Trump and several allies claimed, without evidence, that the FBI planted items during its search of the Florida mansion.Dearie has given Trump’s lawyers until Friday to provide evidence to back up the accusation that the agency is “incorrectly describing” any materials.DoJ pushes back on Trump’s claims it planted evidence at Mar-a-Lago Read moreDonald Trump has a legal – if incremental – win to celebrate.Earlier today, the 2nd circuit court of appeals ruled that a lower-court judge was wrong when he said Trump, as president, was not covered by a federal law that can shield federal employees from liability in incidents related to their work.The case involved is the defamation suit brought by the writer E Jean Carroll, who alleges that Trump raped her in a New York department store changing room in the 1990s, which Trump vehemently denies.As Politico reports today, “Under Trump, the justice department belatedly invoked that law – known as the Westfall Act – in a bid to shut down the defamation case Carroll filed in 2019 stemming from statements Trump issued denying that he raped Carroll, including a declaration that ‘She’s not my type.’ .css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Last year, under President Joe Biden, the justice department stirred controversy by reaffirming the department’s earlier stance that Trump was essentially immune from suit because he was acting within the scope of his duties when fielding media questions about the alleged rape at the Bergdorf Goodman in 1995 or 1996.”On Tuesday, two of three judges on the appeals court said there was “manifest uncertainty” about whether Trump was covered by the Westfall Act. The third judge said the law did not apply.As Politico reports, any resolution is likely “many more months, if not years” away.Alina Habba, a lawyer for Trump, said: “We are extremely pleased … This decision will protect the ability of all future presidents to effectively govern without hindrance. We are confident that the DC Court of Appeals” – the next stop for the case – “will find that our client was acting within the scope of his employment when properly repudiating Ms Carroll’s allegations.”Carroll and the justice department did not immediately comment.Carroll has said she plans to directly accuse Trump of rape under a new New York law that allows civil claims over alleged sex crimes otherwise subject to a 20-year statute of limitations.More:Writer E Jean Carroll to file new lawsuit after accusing Trump of rapeRead moreAs Hurricane Ian churns towards Florida’s west coast, Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has joined the White House press briefing.She’s talking about the preparations for the latest storm, as well as Puerto Rico’s recovery from Hurricane Fiona last week. .@FEMA_Deanne live in the press briefing room: “I can tell you our biggest concern as we wait for the storm to make landfall is storm surge. It is a leading cause of hurricane-related fatalities. If people are told to evacuate by their local officials, listen to them.” pic.twitter.com/HTqa0RUxp3— Jaclyn Rothenberg (she/her) (@FEMAspox) September 27, 2022
      You can watch the briefing below:The January 6 insurrection continues to reverberate through Washington today, as the trial of five Oath Keepers, including founder of the militant group Stewart Rhodes, begins, while another rioter is sentenced after pleading guilty to assaulting a police officer. Meanwhile, the congressional committee investigating the attack is preparing to hold its first public hearing in more than two months tomorrow, with Trump ally Roger Stone said to feature prominently, among other evidence.Here’s what else happened so far today:
      The Senate appears ready to pass a bill tweaking America’s election laws to prevent the types of legal plots that were attempted on January 6, a Democratic lawmaker sponsoring the bill said.
      Texas’s attorney general fled a process server delivering him a subpoena related to a lawsuit filed by abortion advocates against the state’s efforts to stop them from helping women seeking care in other states.
      The White House has unveiled a major anti-hunger plan to address the United States’ troublingly high rates of food insecurity.
      Opponents of Joe Biden’s student debt relief plan have cast it as expensive and potentially illegal, and the Associated Press reports that a California law firm has taken the plan to court to see whether it will hold up.The libertarian Pacific Legal Foundation sued over the plan in Indiana, where an employee of the firm lives and where the state government said it intends to levy taxes on any canceled debt, according to the AP. The lawsuit challenges the plan on the grounds that the employee is set to get his debt erased through a federal program for civil servants, and thus he will face a tax burden under the White House program.Here’s more from the report:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“Congress did not authorize the executive branch to unilaterally cancel student debt,” said Caleb Kruckenberg, an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation. He said it’s illegal for the executive branch to create the policy “by press release, and without statutory authority.”
      The suit’s plaintiff is Frank Garrison, described as a public interest attorney who lives in Indiana and is employed by the libertarian group.
      Garrison is on track to get his student debt erased through a separate federal program for public servants. Although most borrowers will need to apply for Biden’s plan, Garrison and many others in that program will automatically get the relief because the Education Department has their income information on file.
      Biden’s plan would automatically cancel $20,000 of Garrison’s debt, which in turn would trigger an “immediate tax liability” from the state of Indiana, according to the suit. Under the debt forgiveness program he’s enrolled in now, canceled debt cannot be taxed.
      “Mr. Garrison and millions of others similarly situated in the six relevant states will receive no additional benefit from the cancellation — just a one-time additional penalty,” the suit argues.
      Any student debt forgiven under Biden’s plan would also be subject to state taxes in Arkansas, California, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Carolina and Wisconsin, unless lawmakers in those states change their current laws.
      Biden’s plan promises to cancel $10,000 in federal student debt for borrowers with incomes of less than $125,000 per year or households making less than $250,000. Those who received federal Pell Grants to attend college would get an additional $10,000 erased.
      An application to receive the benefit is expected by early October.Biden unveils plan to cancel $10,000 in student loan debt for millionsRead moreThe United States is one of the world’s richest countries, but many people struggle to put enough food on the table. Nina Lakhani reports on a new White House plan to change that:The Biden government has launched a new strategy to end hunger in the US by 2030 through the expansion of benefits such as free school meals and food stamps.One in 10 households struggled to feed their families in 2021 due to poverty – an extraordinary level of food insecurity in the richest country in the world which has barely budged in the past two decades amid deepening economic inequalities and welfare cuts.The plan, published on Tuesday, also aims to cut diet-related diseases by increasing access to healthy food and exercise as new data shows that more than 35% of people in 19 states and two territories are obese – more the double the number of states in 2018 – while one in 10 Americans have diabetes. It includes proposals to reform food packaging and voluntary salt and sugar reduction targets for the food industry, as well as working to expand Medicaid and Medicare access to obesity counselling and nutrition.US launches effort to end hunger by 2030 by expanding benefits and access to healthy foodsRead more More

    • 200 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Oath Keepers leader to stand trial on seditious conspiracy charges for US Capitol attack – live

      by

      Five members of the Oath Keepers including founder Stewart Rhodes are facing charges of seditious conspiracy, a dire allegation that the justice department hasn’t pursued since 2010.Federal investigators have alleged that the group spent months planning the attack on the Capitol, with Rhodes spending $20,000 on weapons and equipment in the weeks leading up to the attack. The group also planned to have armed “quick reaction forces” positioned to storm the Capitol, with Rhodes texting an encrypted group chat on January 6, “We will have several well equipped QRF’s outside DC.”A conviction on seditious conspiracy charges could attract a prison sentence of up to 20 years, but keep in mind, the last time the justice department brought the charges in 2010, a judge ultimately threw them out. Elsewhere today, Kyle Young will be sentenced after pleading guilty to one charge of assaulting a police officer. Prosecutors say the Iowa resident restrained Washington, DC police officer Michael Fanone as another rioter shocked him with a taser Young provided. Fanone, who has since left the force but testified before the January 6 committee, wrote for CNN of his hopes for Young’s sentencing:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}On Tuesday, Young’s attorney will ask a judge to sentence him to two years – a laughably short sentence. Prosecutors have asked for a seven-year term – not quite a joke but also not nearly long enough. By comparison, a former New York police officer with no criminal record received 10 years for attacking officers during the riot.
      What do I think Young deserves? Not less than 10 years in prison. And an assigned cell in maximum security with his co-conspirator: Donald Trump.When it holds its next public hearing on Wednesday, the January 6 committee will likely show footage of Trump ally Roger Stone discussing violence against left-wing protesters, and predicting that the 2020 election would be overturned by force, The Washington Post reports.The video was obtained from Danish filmmakers who followed Stone around from 2019 through 2021, and decided to cooperate with a subpoena from a congressional panel. “Being with Roger Stone and people around him for nearly three years, we realized what we saw after the 2020 election and Jan. 6 was not the culmination but the beginning of an antidemocratic movement in the United States,” Christoffer Guldbrandsen, director of the documentary titled “A Storm Foretold,” told the Post.Footage reported earlier this year shows Stone advocating for Trump to reject the official results and use federal judges allied with him to ensure his victory. In July 2020, he predicted that Democrats would try to steal the election, and said, “It’s going to be really nasty… If the electors show up at the electoral college, armed guards will throw them out.”“‘I’m the president. F— you… You’re not stealing Florida, you’re not stealing Ohio. I’m challenging all of it, and the judges we’re going to are judges I appointed.’ ” Stone says, mimicking what Trump would say.He also advocates for violence against antifascist protesters and other left-wing groups, saying “F— the voting, let’s get right to the violence. Shoot to kill, see an antifa, shoot to kill. F— ’em. Done with this bulls—.”Stone later added a caveat: “I am of course only kidding. We renounce violence completely. We totally renounce violence. The left is the only ones who engage in violence.”Roger Stone raged at ‘disgrace’ Trump over failure to overturn election – reportRead moreCongress is up against an end-of-the-month deadline to pass a short-term funding measure, or risk shutting down the government – which neither party wants. But as the Senate convenes today, it is also considering legislation that would tweak America’s election laws to stop the sort of plot attempted on January 6.The legislation, a version of which has also been introduced in the House of Representatives, needs the votes of all Democrats and at least 10 Republicans to pass. Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar told MSNBC today she believes it has that support:Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) says the bipartisan Electoral Count Reform Act already has “ten Republicans” and thinks it will have enough votes to pass:”We keep adding senators to this bill, Democrats and Republicans.” pic.twitter.com/yrRaGl2J5i— The Recount (@therecount) September 27, 2022
      Liz Cheney and Zoe Lofgren to propose bill to stop another January 6 attackRead moreThe Oath Keepers trial is kicking off today with jury selection, as well as some last-minute moves by the group’s attorneys to delay the proceedings, which Politico reports have not panned out.Both sides have also given estimates of how long the trial will take:UPDATE from the Oath Keepers trial:Judge Mehta rejected another attempt by defendants to change venue. He noted that of initial 150 jury candidates, 40% had never even heard of the Oath Keepers, and vast majority expressed no prejudgment bias.— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) September 27, 2022
      Those numbers get even smaller, Mehta noted, after a round of jurors were struck by both parties, including one who was a Capitol Police officer and another who worked on the hill on Jan. 6He also said all prospective jurors will be told not to watch Jan. 6 hearing tomorrow.— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) September 27, 2022
      A masked Stewart RHODES was seated in the courtroom as the proceedings got underway. DOJ says it has prepped 40 potential witnesses for trial throughout August/Sept and is providing 302s of prep sessions to defense.— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) September 27, 2022
      Latest trial timing estimates:DOJ: 3-4 weeksDefense: 2-3 weeksIf trial gets underway next week, we’re looking at a mid- to late-November verdict— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) September 27, 2022
      When a process server turned up at his house with a subpoena related to a case filed by abortion rights groups, Texas’s top law enforcement officer did what any reasonable person would do: fled the scene in a truck driven by his wife.The Texas Tribune reports that process server Ernesto Martin Herrera had a hard time getting legal documents to the state’s attorney general Ken Paxton, which would have compelled his testimony today in a lawsuit from abortion groups aimed at blocking Texas’s efforts to retaliate against them for facilitating access to the procedure out of state. Here’s how the encounter played out, according to the Tribune:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}When Herrera arrived at Paxton’s home in McKinney on Monday morning, he told a woman who identified herself as Angela that he was trying to deliver legal documents to the attorney general. She told him that Paxton was on the phone and unable to come to the door. Herrera said he would wait.
      Nearly an hour later, a black Chevrolet Tahoe pulled into the driveway, and 20 minutes after that, Ken Paxton exited the house.
      “I walked up the driveway approaching Mr. Paxton and called him by his name. As soon as he saw me and heard me call his name out, he turned around and RAN back inside the house through the same door in the garage,” Herrera wrote in the sworn affidavit.
      Angela Paxton then exited the house, got inside a Chevrolet truck in the driveway, started it and opened the doors.
      “A few minutes later I saw Mr. Paxton RAN from the door inside the garage towards the rear door behind the driver side,” Herrera wrote. “I approached the truck, and loudly called him by his name and stated that I had court documents for him. Mr. Paxton ignored me and kept heading for the truck.”
      Herrera eventually placed the subpoenas on the ground near the truck and told him he was serving him with a subpoena. Both cars drove away, leaving the documents on the ground.Paxton attacked the report on Twitter, saying he worried he was in danger:This is a ridiculous waste of time and the media should be ashamed of themselves. All across the country, conservatives have faced threats to their safety — many threats that received scant coverage or condemnation from the mainstream media.— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) September 27, 2022
      It’s clear that the media wants to drum up another controversy involving my work as Attorney General, so they’re attacking me for having the audacity to avoid a stranger lingering outside my home and showing concern about the safety and well-being of my family.— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) September 27, 2022
      Denver Riggleman’s book about his time serving as a staffer on the January 6 committee and in Congress comes out today, and while his revelations about the investigation have made headlines, the former lawmaker has plenty to say about his former Republican colleagues, Martin Pengelly reports:The Republican congressmen Louis Gohmert and Paul Gosar adopted such extreme, conspiracy-tinged positions, even before the US Capitol attack, that a fellow member of the rightwing Freedom Caucus thought they “may have had serious cognitive issues”.Denver Riggleman, once a US representative from Virginia, reports his impression of his former colleagues from Texas and Arizona in a new book.The Breach: The Untold Story of the Investigation into January 6th is published in the US on Tuesday. The Guardian obtained an early copy.Riggleman is a former US air force intelligence officer who lost his seat in Congress after he officiated a same-sex marriage. In his book, he describes fallout beyond his primary defeat, including someone tampering with the wheels of his truck, endangering the life of his daughter.Republican ex-congressman suggests colleagues ‘had serious cognitive issues’Read moreBesides the Capitol itself, Mark Meadows’ cellphone is turning into perhaps the most important place for understanding the events around the January 6 attack, The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports:Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, was at the center of hundreds of incoming messages about ways to aid Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to texts he turned over to the House January 6 select committee that have been published in a new book.The texts included previously unreported messages, including a group chat with Trump administration cabinet officials and plans to object to Joe Biden’s election certification on January 6 by Republican members of Congress and one former US attorney, as well as other Trump allies.The book, The Breach, was obtained by the Guardian in advance of its scheduled publication on Tuesday. Written by the former Republican congressman and senior adviser to the investigation Denver Riggleman, the work has already become controversial after being condemned by the panel as “unauthorized”.Meadows was central to hundreds of texts about overturning 2020 election, book saysRead moreInflation is high in America, but one accused rioter in the January 6 insurrection has a plan to cut costs: go hunting.The Washington Post reports that Jon Mott, an Arkansas man facing charges over unlawfully breaching the Capitol’s rotunda, has been granted permission by a federal judge to uses firearms for hunting, though he can’t keep them in his home or office. Mott was arrested in May 2021 after being identified as part of the mob that attacked the Capitol, and his conditions of release prohibited him from possessing weapons. He’s charged with “entering a restricted building, disorderly conduct in a restricted building and two counts of violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds,” according to the Post, and has pled not guilty.More than 2,000 people may face charges related to January 6, but the report notes this isn’t the first time gun possession issues have popped up. A Georgia defendant has asked for two of his firearms back so he can kill snakes on his property, while a Texas woman who had already been sentenced had her right to own a weapon restored by a judge who found she had a credible safety concern. Five members of the Oath Keepers including founder Stewart Rhodes are facing charges of seditious conspiracy, a dire allegation that the justice department hasn’t pursued since 2010.Federal investigators have alleged that the group spent months planning the attack on the Capitol, with Rhodes spending $20,000 on weapons and equipment in the weeks leading up to the attack. The group also planned to have armed “quick reaction forces” positioned to storm the Capitol, with Rhodes texting an encrypted group chat on January 6, “We will have several well equipped QRF’s outside DC.”A conviction on seditious conspiracy charges could attract a prison sentence of up to 20 years, but keep in mind, the last time the justice department brought the charges in 2010, a judge ultimately threw them out. Elsewhere today, Kyle Young will be sentenced after pleading guilty to one charge of assaulting a police officer. Prosecutors say the Iowa resident restrained Washington, DC police officer Michael Fanone as another rioter shocked him with a taser Young provided. Fanone, who has since left the force but testified before the January 6 committee, wrote for CNN of his hopes for Young’s sentencing:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}On Tuesday, Young’s attorney will ask a judge to sentence him to two years – a laughably short sentence. Prosecutors have asked for a seven-year term – not quite a joke but also not nearly long enough. By comparison, a former New York police officer with no criminal record received 10 years for attacking officers during the riot.
      What do I think Young deserves? Not less than 10 years in prison. And an assigned cell in maximum security with his co-conspirator: Donald Trump.Good morning, US politics blog readers. The trial of one of the most notorious groups involved in the January 6 insurrection begins today in Washington, as five members of the Oath Keepers, including its founder Stewart Rhodes, face the rarely used charge of seditious conspiracy for allegedly plotting to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s election win. Separately, a judge will sentence Kyle Young, who pleaded guilty to charges related to violently assaulting a police officer during the attack. More than a year and a half after the insurrection, the cases could bring justice to some of its most high-profile participants.Here’s what else is happening today:
      The Senate is getting to work on two important bills, one to prevent a government shutdown at the end of the month, and the other to reform America’s election laws to prevent another January 6.
      As Hurricane Ian moves towards Florida, Federal Emergency Management Agency head Deanne Criswell will appear at the White House press briefing beginning at 12pm ET.
      Joe Biden will speak about his administration’s efforts to lower healthcare costs and preserve social security at 11.30am ET. More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Republican ex-congressman suggests colleagues ‘had serious cognitive issues’

      by

      Republican ex-congressman suggests colleagues ‘had serious cognitive issues’Paul Gosar and Louie Gohmert were eager to believe ‘wild, dramatic fantasies’, claims Denver Riggleman in new book The Republican congressmen Louis Gohmert and Paul Gosar adopted such extreme, conspiracy-tinged positions, even before the US Capitol attack, that a fellow member of the rightwing Freedom Caucus thought they “may have had serious cognitive issues”.White House switchboard called phone linked to January 6 rioter after attackRead moreDenver Riggleman, once a US representative from Virginia, reports his impression of his former colleagues from Texas and Arizona in a new book.The Breach: The Untold Story of the Investigation into January 6th is published in the US on Tuesday. The Guardian obtained an early copy.Riggleman is a former US air force intelligence officer who lost his seat in Congress after he officiated a same-sex marriage. In his book, he describes fallout beyond his primary defeat, including someone tampering with the wheels of his truck, endangering the life of his daughter.“If I ever find the individual who did that,” he writes, “God help that person.”After leaving Congress, Riggleman worked for the House January 6 committee, members of which were reportedly angered by his decision to publish a book.Describing text messages surrendered to the committee by Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s last chief of staff, Riggleman shows that on 5 November 2020, two days after election day and with the result not called, Gohmert touted his experience as an attorney and tried to join the White House team working to overturn Joe Biden’s win.“I’m in DC,” Gohmert wrote to Meadows. “Thinking I’ll head to Philadelphia to fuss. Would love to be there … at [White House] to be ear for discussions and advice if asked. Handled massive fraud case vs Texas biggest utility … so some legal experience. May I come over?”Meadows asked Gohmert to go on TV instead.But Gohmert remained in Trump’s orbit. On 20 December, along with Scott Perry (Pennsylvania), Andy Biggs (Arizona), Jody Hice (Georgia), Matt Gaetz (Florida), Mo Brooks (Alabama) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia), he attended a White House meeting with Trump at which election subversion was discussed.According to testimony to the January 6 committee, Gohmert, Gaetz, Brooks, Greene, Perry and Biggs asked for pardons before Trump left office.On 6 January 2021, a crowd Trump knew to be armed but told to “fight like hell” breached Congress in an attempt to stop certification of the election. Nine deaths have been linked to the riot, including law enforcement suicides.Riggleman describes how in the aftermath of the attack, Gohmert and other Republicans continued to push conspiracy theories, claiming the attackers were leftwingers disguised as Trump supporters.Such claims have entered the Republican mainstream. So has the far right.Describing his own spell in Congress, between 2019 and 2021, Riggleman says he joined the hardline Freedom Caucus as a way to allay concerns among conservatives that he was insufficiently loyal to Trump.Once in, he says, he “began to understand that some of my colleagues had fully bought into even the more unhinged conspiracy theories I had been seeing out on the campaign trail”.Riggleman describes one meeting in which Gohmert “promoted a conspiracy theory related to master algorithms”, saying he “suspected there was a secret technology shadow-banning conservatives across all platforms”.Riggleman writes that others “nodded along”, though “of course, that’s crazy”. He says he said “something to that effect” during the meeting in question.In subsequent meetings, Riggleman “would come to see that Gohmert was one of a few colleagues who had gone deep down the rabbit hole.“Scott Perry, Jody Hice, Randy Weber and the caucus chairman, Andy Biggs, all said things that stunned me.”Gosar is a far-right provocateur whose many controversies include being censured for tweeting a video depicting violence against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a prominent New York progressive.Riggleman says Gosar and Gohmert “seemed to be joined at the brain stem when it came to their eagerness to believe wild, dramatic fantasies about Democrats, the media and big tech.“I came to believe Gosar and Gohmert may have had serious cognitive issues.”Riggleman also calls Gosar “a blatant white supremacist”, describing him and the Iowa Republican Steve King “making a case for white supremacy over pulled pork and ribs”.“It was unbelievable,” Riggleman writes. “I had always bristled when I’d hear Democrats dismiss Republicans as ‘racists’. To me, it seemed like an easy insult that dodged policy discussions. Now, here I was behind the curtain, seeing that some of my colleagues really seemed to hold these awful views.”Describing his own farewell address, which he made a month before the Capitol attack, Riggleman claims to have been “the canary in the coalmine” regarding extremism in the Republican party.“On 10 December 2020,” he writes, “less than a month before the Capitol attack, I … railed against disinformation and ‘super-spreader digital viruses that create a fever of nonsense’ … I noted how QAnon promoters were linked with both the conspiracists who questioned the Covid pandemic and Trump’s Stop the Steal movement to overturn the election.“… Based on what I had been seeing, I warned that we were heading down a very dark road. No one listened.”TopicsBooksRepublicansThe far rightPolitics booksHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

    • 200 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Former January 6 committee staffer says texts show evidence of ‘attempted coup’ – as it happened

      by

      Denver Riggleman’s interview with 60 Minutes is a rare breach in the carefully stage managed presentation the January 6 committee has given Americans over the past months about what happened during the insurrection at the Capitol.A former Republican congressman who was ousted by a more conservative opponent in 2020 and now considers himself independent, Riggleman acted as a technical adviser for the committee, poring through evidence such as text messages and emails obtained from people thought to have knowledge of the attack. His interview provided a behind-the-scenes look at the investigation, most details about which have come from lawmakers’ comments or the public hearings themselves.Perhaps his most startling admission is his belief that text messages then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows voluntarily turned over the committee amounted to a “roadmap to an attempted coup.” But Riggleman shared other disquieting details in the interview, such as that a White House number called one of the rioters who had stormed the Capitol as it was happening.Then there were the text messages Meadows received containing an array of far-right conspiracy theories from Ginni Thomas, wife of rightwing supreme court justice Clarence Thomas.“What really shook me was the fact that if Clarence agreed with or was even aware of his wife’s efforts, all three branches of government would be tied to the stop the steal movement,” Riggleman said on 60 Minutes.Ginni Thomas’s involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results has been well documented in recent months, leading to calls for the January 6 committee to compel her testimony – efforts Riggleman said he supported. Last week, a deal was reached for Thomas to speak to investigators.Virginia Thomas agrees to interview with House January 6 panelRead moreA former staffer for the January 6 committee went public with a claim that someone at the White House called a Capitol rioter on the day of the attack, while warning that evidence obtained from Donald Trump’s chief of staff looked like an “attempted coup”. The committee’s lawmakers downplayed Denver Riggleman’s interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes program, and have been busy themselves, sending a subpoena to the Republican speaker of Wisconsin’s assembly.Here’s what else happened today:
      Kyrsten Sinema, a Democratic senator known for bucking the party’s priorities, offered few reasons for her mysterious politics in a speech alongside the chamber’s top Republican.
      Joe Biden’s student loan relief plan will cost $400 billion, if not more, the independent Congressional Budget Office said, prompting criticism from budget hawks as well as defense from Democrats.
      Doug Mastriano, a Trump-backed 2020 election denier standing as the GOP’s gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania, appears to be lagging on the campaign trail.
      Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows exchanged texts with another conspiracy theorist and 2020 election denier.
      The Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer along with Wall Street foe Elizabeth Warren have issued a joint statement underlining their support of president Joe Biden’s student debt relief plan, and drawing a contrast with Republican policies that slash taxes for the rich.The statement came after the independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found the plan announced last month would cost a sizable $400 billion or more. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget seized on that estimate to say the plan was too expensive, and could push inflation higher.“Today’s CBO estimate makes clear that millions of middle class Americans have more breathing room thanks to President Biden’s historic decision to cancel student debt,” Schumer, who represents New York, and Warren, who represents Massachusetts, said in their statement.“In contrast to President Trump and Republicans who gave giant corporations $2 trillion in tax breaks, President Biden delivered transformative middle class relief by cancelling student debt for working people who need it most — nearly 90% of relief dollars will go to those earning less than $75,000 a year. We don’t agree with all of CBO’s assumptions that underlie this analysis, but it is clear the pandemic payment pause and student debt cancellation are policies that demonstrate how government can and should invest in working people, not the wealthy and billionaire corporations.”Idaho’s abortion law is being challenged in federal court, but The Washington Post reports that the impact of the strict measure is already being felt by the state’s universities.The University of Idaho has advised employees that because the law is not written clearly, it may prohibit employees from offering birth control, and thus they should refrain from doing so:University of Idaho employees were warned Friday that they could be charged with a felony for talking about abortion, because of the state’s new abortion law. They were also told *they could no longer provide birth control.*Not just Plan B, but regular birth control. pic.twitter.com/qHJoDRzMc2— Caroline Kitchener (@CAKitchener) September 26, 2022
      Idaho judge bars state from enforcing abortion ban in medical emergenciesRead moreThe fiscal hawks at the independent Congressional Budget Office have released their cost estimate for the student loan relief plan president Joe Biden announced last month, and found it comes in at $400 billion, but could vary.The plan partially satisfied Biden’s campaign pledge to provide relief for Americans struggling with loans from higher education, but was criticized both for not being generous enough, and for adding on to the country’s already mammoth federal budget deficit:CBO estimates that the cost of outstanding student loans to the federal government will increase by about $400 billion because of an executive action canceling some debt. https://t.co/FgEHBn2XP6— U.S. CBO (@USCBO) September 26, 2022
      The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which advocates for restraint in federal spending, criticized the plan as simply too expensive:”.@USCBO’s new estimate confirms the outrageous cost of the White House plan to cancel large amounts of student debt, by executive order, to nearly all borrowers almost regardless of need.” https://t.co/KFs9DQ8KYp— CRFB.org (@BudgetHawks) September 26, 2022
      “The debt cancellation and pause alone will cost $420 billion – a bit more than we previously thought – and costs could reach $510 to $610 billion with their IDR changes. The Biden Administration’s failure to release their own cost estimate should have been a red flag.”— CRFB.org (@BudgetHawks) September 26, 2022
      “As @USCBO’s estimates help confirm, the President’s student debt plan would wipe out the ten-year savings from the #InflationReductionAct twice over, worsen inflationary pressures, and deliver benefits to millions of Americans with advanced degrees in upper-income households.”— CRFB.org (@BudgetHawks) September 26, 2022
      “This might be the most costly executive action in history. It’s unacceptable that the President would implement it without offsets and without Congressional approval. Including these actions, the President has now added nearly $4.9 trillion to ten-year federal deficits…”— CRFB.org (@BudgetHawks) September 26, 2022
      “…through legislation and executive actions.With #inflation at a 40-year high and the #nationaldebt approaching record levels, we shouldn’t be adding to deficits – certainly not by executive fiat.”Full statement: https://t.co/KFs9DPR9zP.— CRFB.org (@BudgetHawks) September 26, 2022
      Biden unveils plan to cancel $10,000 in student loan debt for millionsRead moreThe Biden administration is generally keeping mum about Russia’s decision to grant citizenship to Edward Snowden, who leaked National Security Agency documents and fled the United States.Here’s the little state department spokesman Ned Price had to say about it:State Department Spokesperson Ned Price reacts to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden being granted Russian citizenship:“Perhaps the only thing that has changed is … apparently now he may well be conscripted to fight in the reckless war in Ukraine.” pic.twitter.com/ZemSN8CVur— The Recount (@therecount) September 26, 2022
      Putin grants Russian citizenship to US whistleblower Edward SnowdenRead moreA Democratic member of the January 6 committee revealed details of the department of justice’s investigation into the attack and its interaction with the congressional inquiry, describing the government’s effort as plodding, thorough and bolstered by evidence the lawmakers had uncovered.“They have been very slow, though, on the much more comprehensive, and I believe, even more significant investigation of January 6,” California congressman Adam Schiff said of the justice department during an interview at the Texas Tribune Festival, according to CNN. However, he thought it was a mistake for the justice department to start their investigation with the individual rioters and proceed from there. “That works when you have one plot, one conspiracy. It doesn’t work when there are multiple lines of effort to overturn an election, multiple plots, that may be all part of the same whole, but nonetheless each operating independently,” Schiff said.The Democrat acknowledged federal investigators are matching the work of the January 6 committee, saying, “It does appear now that they have interviewed many of the same significant witnesses that we have.” He did note that the justice department had requested much of the committee’s materials, which he found “breathtaking”.“My first reaction when we got the request – ‘Turn over all your files to us’ – was: ‘Why don’t you have your own damn files? Why haven’t you been conducting your own investigation? Why do you need us to do it?” Schiff said.The lawmaker also found it strange that a district attorney in Georgia had been left to singlehandedly investigate Donald Trump and his allies’ involvement in trying to overturn the election there, but noted that situation might not last much longer. “That may be changing too, but it’s a long time coming,” Schiff said.A former staffer for the January 6 committee went public with a claim that someone at the White House called a Capitol rioter on the day of the attack, while warning that evidence obtained from Donald Trump’s chief of staff looked like an “attempted coup”. The committee’s lawmakers downplayed Denver Riggleman’s interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes program, and have been busy themselves, sending a subpoena to the Republican speaker of Wisconsin’s assembly.Here’s what else happened today:
      Kyrsten Sinema, a Democratic senator known for bucking the party’s priorities, offered few reasons for her mysterious politics in a speech alongside the chamber’s top Republican.
      Doug Mastriano, a Trump-backed 2020 election denier standing as the GOP’s gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania, appears to be trailing on the campaign trail.
      Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows exchanged texts with another conspiracy theorist and 2020 election denier.
      There are few mysteries in Congress bigger than Kyrsten Sinema.Once a member of the Green Party, the Democratic senator from Arizona has seized on the party’s one-vote majority in the Senate to act a spoiler for progressive proposals, including changing the filibuster to get voting rights legislation passed, raising the national minimum wage to $15 per-hour and closing a tax loophole that benefited private equity firms. Unlike with Joe Manchin, the fellow Democratic senator and frequent holdout vote who already had a reputation for conservatism and support for the fossil fuel industry, Sinema’s reasons for acting this way aren’t quite clear, and somewhat inexplicable given her left-wing activism earlier in her career. The tactic doesn’t appear to have paid off, either. An AARP poll released last week showed that independents, Republicans and, most of all, Democrats in Arizona viewed Sinema unfavorably.The senator appeared today alongside the chamber’s top Republican Mitch McConnell for a speech in Kentucky, where she extolled the virtues of bipartisanship. While it certainly does not clear up the senator’s mysterious approach to politics, her comments here may give some hints as to why she does what she does in Washington:Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), speaking at the McConnell Center, describes her “friendship” with Senate Minority Leader McConnell (R-KY):“While we may not agree on every issue, we do share the same values.” pic.twitter.com/2vz5ioNFeA— The Recount (@therecount) September 26, 2022
      “Not everyone likes me.”— Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) jokes with the audience at the McConnell Center, after saying Democrats will “likely” lose some control of Congress after the midterms. pic.twitter.com/naEjHhKO5D— The Recount (@therecount) September 26, 2022
      Democrats secure breakthrough with Kyrsten Sinema on climate billRead more“I signed a permission slip for a College and Career Day. What I got was indoctrination and trauma.” That sums up the experience of some of the more than 2,100 high school seniors bussed to a church in Louisiana last week on what was billed as a college fair but, as Maya Yang reports, turned into something else:More than 2,000 public school students in Louisiana were told earlier this week that they were going to a college fair. They were then shuttled to what parents later deemed a sexist and transphobic church event which left many of the students traumatized.On Tuesday, more than 2,100 high school seniors from the East Baton Rouge Parish School System – which serves residents of Louisiana’s capital – were taken to the local Living Faith Christian Center under the promise that they would receive college and career advice, as well as free food.The Christian nonprofit organization 29:11 Mentoring Program organized the event, calling it “Day of Hope,” the Baton Rouge Advocate reported. The permission slips distributed to students promised “free food”, “fun and games”, “college fair” and “special guest”.Louisiana school turned ‘college fair’ into transphobic church event, students sayRead moreThe New York Times sent a reporter to Pennsylvania to check on how the Republican candidate for governor is doing, and the verdict seems to be: not that well.Doug Mastriano is a Donald Trump-endorsed, 2020 election denier who chartered busses to Washington on January 6 and has pledged to completely ban abortion in the state if elected. However, he’s well behind in the polls, and as the Times reports, has shunned much of what amounts to modern campaign tactics.Here’s more from their report:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}There is little indication that he has built a campaign infrastructure beyond the Facebook videos that propelled him to stardom in right-wing circles and to the vanguard of Christian nationalist politics.
      “I can’t even assess things because I don’t see a campaign,” said Matt Brouillette, the president of Commonwealth Partners Chamber of Entrepreneurs, an advocacy group that is a major player in Pennsylvania Republican politics. “I’ve not seen anything that is even a semblance of a campaign.”
      Mr. Brouillette, who backed one of Mr. Mastriano’s rivals in the G.O.P. primary, added: “Now, maybe he knows something we don’t on how you can win in the fifth-largest state without doing TV or mail. But I guess we’re going to have to wait until Nov. 8 to see whether you can pull something like that off.”“The New York from which Trump emerged was its own morass of corruption and dysfunction, stretching from seats of executive power to portions of the media to the real-estate industry in which his family found its wealth,” writes Maggie Haberman in The Atlantic. “But Trump nevertheless stood out to the journalists covering him as particularly brazen.”Haberman, a reporter for The New York Times and longtime watcher of Donald Trump, is one of the best-known chroniclers of his presidency, and the Atlantic article is a good read for those who want to better understand what drives Trump. Adapted from her soon-to-be-released book “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America”, the piece touches on some of the drivers of his inexplicable behavior, such as his insistence that the election was stolen, and that he could even return to office in August 2021.It also shows how Trump viewed the people around him, particularly his supporters, whose ardency appeared to take him by surprise. For more on that, take a look at how the piece starts:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Can you believe these are my customers?” Donald Trump once asked while surveying the crowd in the Taj Mahal casino’s poker room. “Look at those losers,” he said to his consultant Tom O’Neil, of people spending money on the floor of the Trump Plaza casino. Visiting the Iowa State Fair as a presidential candidate in 2015, he was astounded that locals fell in line to support him because of a few free rides in his branded helicopter. In the White House, he was sometimes stunned at his own backers’ fervor, telling aides, “They’re fucking crazy.” Yet they loved him and wanted to own a piece of him, and that was what mattered most. More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Former January 6 committee staffer says texts show evidence of ‘attempted coup’ – live

      by

      Denver Riggleman’s interview with 60 Minutes is a rare breach in the carefully stage managed presentation the January 6 committee has given Americans over the past months about what happened during the insurrection at the Capitol.A former Republican congressman who was ousted by a more conservative opponent in 2020 and now considers himself independent, Riggleman acted as a technical adviser for the committee, poring through evidence such as text messages and emails obtained from people thought to have knowledge of the attack. His interview provided a behind-the-scenes look at the investigation, most details about which have come from lawmakers’ comments or the public hearings themselves.Perhaps his most startling admission is his belief that text messages then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows voluntarily turned over the committee amounted to a “roadmap to an attempted coup.” But Riggleman shared other disquieting details in the interview, such as that a White House number called one of the rioters who had stormed the Capitol as it was happening.Then there were the text messages Meadows received containing an array of far-right conspiracy theories from Ginni Thomas, wife of rightwing supreme court justice Clarence Thomas.“What really shook me was the fact that if Clarence agreed with or was even aware of his wife’s efforts, all three branches of government would be tied to the stop the steal movement,” Riggleman said on 60 Minutes.Ginni Thomas’s involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results has been well documented in recent months, leading to calls for the January 6 committee to compel her testimony – efforts Riggleman said he supported. Last week, a deal was reached for Thomas to speak to investigators.Virginia Thomas agrees to interview with House January 6 panelRead moreWhen the January 6 committee holds its Wednesday hearing, don’t be surprised if lawmakers have more to say about the Secret Service’s actions that day, particularly when it comes to agents’ communications that were deleted following the insurrection.What was on the Secret Service text messages that the agency erased following the insurrection and whether they could be recovered have emerged as two of the biggest outstanding questions of the investigation. Over the weekend, Liz Cheney said the committee had received a trove of evidence from the agency, but not as much cooperation as they would like:1/6 Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-WY) on Saturday said the committee received “about 800,000 pages at least” of Secret Service communications on and around Jan. 6:“There are some [agents] who have not been forthcoming with the committee, and you will hear more about that.” pic.twitter.com/lqSrEkGD1f— The Recount (@therecount) September 26, 2022
      Secret Service watchdog suppressed memo on January 6 texts erasureRead moreIt’s one of the quieter trends in Congress, but The Guardian’s Chris McGreal reports on the slowly boiling outrage over the killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, with a sizable number of Democratic lawmakers warning of consequences if Israel isn’t more forthcoming about her death:Israel has declared the case closed. The US state department has done its best to duck difficult questions. But leading members of the US Congress are refusing to drop demands for a proper accounting of the death of the Palestinian American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, four months ago.The longest-serving member of the US Senate, Patrick Leahy, recently upped the ante by warning that Israel’s failure to fully explain the Al-Jazeera reporter’s killing could jeopardize America’s huge military aid to the Jewish state under a law he sponsored 25 years ago cutting weapons supplies to countries that abuse human rights.Nearly half of the Democratic members of the Senate have signed a letter calling into question Israel’s claim that Abu Akleh was accidentally shot by a soldier. The letter suggests she may have been targeted because she was a journalist.US senators refuse to let killing of Shireen Abu Akleh drop with IsraelRead moreMark Meadows was exchanging text messages with a lot of strange characters in the closing months of 2020. One of them was Phil Waldron, an election conspiracy theorist who texted the then-White House chief of staff about an effort to root out supposed voter fraud in Arizona.CNN reports that the news Waldron brought was that a judge in the state had dismissed the lawsuit from GOP legislators allied with Donald Trump to turn over voting equipment so they could be inspected for alleged election fraud. Waldron, an associate of Michael Flynn, the former Trump White House national security adviser who has lately been known for his Christian nationalist rhetoric, said the ruling meant Trump’s opponents could delay his allies’ efforts to get to voting machines and prove the supposed fraud.Meadows responded with one word: “pathetic”.CNN’s report gets further into Waldron’s activities in both the closing weeks of the Trump administration and in recent months, where he has continued efforts to try to prove that the 2020 election was stolen, without success.The January 6 committee clearly did not take the weekend off ahead of its hearing this Wednesday. Politico reports that investigators have subpoenaed Robin Vos, Republican speaker of the Wisconsin state assembly.They want to know about a phone call he had in July with Donald Trump and are giving him a short deadline to speak to them – today. Vos is suing to stop the subpoena, according to Politico:NEWS: The Jan. 6 select committee subpoenaed Wisconsin House Speaker Robin Vos over the weekend and is seeking his testimony by *today* about a July phone call he had with Donald Trump. https://t.co/ZQD9X84SK4 pic.twitter.com/gfOgHpdfgK— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) September 26, 2022
      Vos is suing to block the subpoena, saying the subpoena didn’t give him enough notice and oversteps the select committee’s authority. He’s seeking an injunction from a federal judge.https://t.co/ZQD9X84SK4— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) September 26, 2022
      Vos suit drew Judge Pamela Pepper, who issued a scorcher of a ruling against one of the many lawsuits aimed at overturning the 2020 election. https://t.co/hK9XMTEztb— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) September 26, 2022
      As eyebrow raising as Riggleman’s interview is, January 6 committee members have also gone out of their way to downplay it, saying he stopped working with them months ago and is not aware of what the investigation uncovered since then.“He does not know what happened after April and a lot has happened in our investigation,” Democratic committee member Zoe Lofgren told CNN. “Everything that he was able to relay prior to his departure has been followed up on and in some cases didn’t really peter out (sic), or there might have been a decision that suggested there was a connection between one number and one e-mail and a person that turned out not to pan out. So we follow up on everything, and, you know, I don’t know what Mr. Riggleman is doing really.”It’s also worth noting the Riggleman has a book out tomorrow called “The Breach: The Untold Story of the Investigation into January 6th”.CNN has more details on the call from a White House number to the phone of one of the rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6.The nine-second phone call went to the phone of Anton Lunyk, a Brooklyn resident who had traveled to the city for the Donald Trump-hosted rally that preceded the attack, CNN reports. Lunyk, along with two friends who came with him from New York, pled guilty to charges of illegally protesting inside the Capitol, and earlier this month where sentenced to a few months of fines and probation.Who was on the other end of the call remains a mystery. CNN was not able to identify which White House official may have placed it, only that it took place at 4:17 pm, shortly after Trump tweeted at rioters to “go home”.Denver Riggleman’s interview with 60 Minutes is a rare breach in the carefully stage managed presentation the January 6 committee has given Americans over the past months about what happened during the insurrection at the Capitol.A former Republican congressman who was ousted by a more conservative opponent in 2020 and now considers himself independent, Riggleman acted as a technical adviser for the committee, poring through evidence such as text messages and emails obtained from people thought to have knowledge of the attack. His interview provided a behind-the-scenes look at the investigation, most details about which have come from lawmakers’ comments or the public hearings themselves.Perhaps his most startling admission is his belief that text messages then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows voluntarily turned over the committee amounted to a “roadmap to an attempted coup.” But Riggleman shared other disquieting details in the interview, such as that a White House number called one of the rioters who had stormed the Capitol as it was happening.Then there were the text messages Meadows received containing an array of far-right conspiracy theories from Ginni Thomas, wife of rightwing supreme court justice Clarence Thomas.“What really shook me was the fact that if Clarence agreed with or was even aware of his wife’s efforts, all three branches of government would be tied to the stop the steal movement,” Riggleman said on 60 Minutes.Ginni Thomas’s involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results has been well documented in recent months, leading to calls for the January 6 committee to compel her testimony – efforts Riggleman said he supported. Last week, a deal was reached for Thomas to speak to investigators.Virginia Thomas agrees to interview with House January 6 panelRead moreGood morning, US politics blog readers. There was a rare look into the January 6 committee’s investigative process yesterday evening when a former staff member spoke to CBS’ 60 Minutes program, and what Denver Riggleman had to say will do little to soothe the nerves of those fearing for America’s democracy. Among his revelations, Riggleman said text messages from Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s chief of staff during the time of the insurrection, amounted to a “roadmap to an attempted coup”. Expect to hear more about Riggleman’s interview today ahead of the January 6 committee’s first public hearing in more than two months on Wednesday.Here’s what else we can expect today:
      Republicans still have a good chance of winning a majority in the House of Representatives, but CBS News believes it won’t be a very large one.
      Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, will hold a re-election rally in Alpharetta at 3pm ET, where he will be joined by fellow GOP governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia.
      Joe Biden is in Delaware but will return to the White House this morning to greet 2021 World Series champions the Atlanta Braves, then preside over the third meeting of the White House Competition Council in the afternoon. More