Tuesday Reads

Pierre Bernard, La Lecture, circa 1905

Good Afternoon!!

After yesterday, all those naysayers who have spent months attacking Merrick Garland need to stop whining and pay attention to what the DOJ is actually doing. I don’t know how many grand juries the DOJ has going, but we’re slowly learning that the ringleaders of the January 6 insurrection and even Trump administration insiders are being called to testify. Yesterday we learned of the most significant one so far: Mike Pence’s chief of staff Mark Short.

ABC News: Former Pence chief of staff appeared before grand jury probing Jan. 6.

Marc Short, the former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, appeared before a federal grand jury investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Short confirmed to ABC News.

Short, in an interview Monday night with ABC News’ Linsey Davis, said he was subpoenaed by a grand jury and complied with the subpoena, adding he “really can’t comment further than that” upon the advice of his legal counsel.

Short was caught by an ABC News camera departing D.C. District Court on Friday alongside his attorney, Emmet Flood.

Short is the highest-ranking Trump White House official known to have appeared before the grand jury.

Here’s what Short told ABC News in an interview last night:

“I think that having the Capitol ransacked the way that it was, I think did present liability and danger,” he told Davis in the interview. “And I think the Secret Service did a phenomenal job that day. I think that the bigger risk and despite the way perhaps it was characterized in the hearings last week, candidly, is that if the mob had gotten closer to the vice president, I do think there would have been a massacre in the Capitol that day.”

Woman reading, James C. Christensen

ABC News also learned that Pence’s chief counsel Marc Jacob also testified to the grand jury. And there’s more:

In March, the Department of Justice expanded its criminal probe into the events of Jan. 6 to include preparations for the rally that preceded the storming of the Capitol, as well as the financing for the event, multiple sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

Grand jury subpoenas were sent to those who assisted in the organizing and planning of former President Donald Trump’s “Save America” rally on the Ellipse near the White House, the sources said, with prosecutors seeking multiple records and documents related to the rally, including text messages and emails, as well as potential communications with other individuals regarding the logistics of the event.

I think there’s a very good chance that subpoenas went to Mark Meadows and Ginni Thomas, both of whom are keeping low profiles.

This is from Hugo Lowell at The Guardian: Mike Pence’s ex-chief of staff testifies to grand jury investigating January 6.

Short testified in response to a subpoena for about two to three hours, according to a source familiar with the matter, though it was unclear what he told the grand jury or whether he produced documents. ABC News earlier reported his appearance.

The development was also the latest indication that the criminal investigation into the Capitol attack has only escalated in recent months, as the House January 6 select committee argues Trump obstructed an official proceeding – a crime – in trying to stop Joe Biden’s certification.

Reading woman dreaming, by Henri Matisse, 1921

It was not clear to which grand jury, and therefore to which investigation, Short testified. The justice department has impaneled several grand juries over the Capitol attack, including one examining Trump’s fake electors scheme, which is also being investigated by a special grand jury in Georgia.

The grand jury investigating the fake electors scheme – grand jury #22-4 – sought information about the involvement of Donald Trump and his lawyers, while the grand jury that subpoenaed former Trump White House official Peter Navarro – grand jury #22-3 – sought his contacts with Trump.

Nonetheless, Short’s grand jury appearance marks the first known time that a top Trump White House official with inside knowledge about Trump’s actions leading up to the Capitol attack and what took place in the West Wing in the following days has cooperated with the justice department.

The DOJ investigation into the fake electors was also in the news yesterday.

The Washington Post: Arizona fake-electors subpoenas show breadth of DOJ Jan. 6 probe.

Elizabeth Weller never dreamed that her own hopes for a child would become ensnared in the web of Texas abortion law.

She and her husband began trying in late 2021. They had bought a house in Kingwood, a lakeside development in Houston. Elizabeth was in graduate school for political science, and James taught middle-school math.

The Wellers were pleasantly surprised when they got pregnant early in 2022.

In retrospect, Elizabeth says their initial joy felt a little naive: “If it was so easy for us to get pregnant, then to us it was almost like a sign that this pregnancy was going to be easy for us.”

Things did go fairly smooth at first. Seventeen weeks into the pregnancy, they learned they were expecting a girl. They also had an anatomy scan, which revealed no problems. Even if it had, the Wellers were determined to proceed.

By Edouard John Mentha

But then disaster struck.

It was May 10, 2022. Elizabeth was 18 weeks pregnant. She ate a healthy breakfast, went for a walk outside and came back home….

Elizabeth stood up to get some lunch. That’s when she felt something “shift” in her uterus, down low, and then “this burst of water just falls out of my body. And I screamed because that’s when I knew something wrong was happening.”

Her waters had broken, launching her into what she calls a “dystopian nightmare” of “physical, emotional and mental anguish.” She places the blame for the ensuing medical trauma on the Republican legislators who passed the state’s anti-abortion law, on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who signed it, and on the inflamed political rhetoric, which Elizabeth says only sees abortion “as one thing, a black-and-white issue, when abortion has all of these gray areas.”

Read the horror story at the link, if you can deal with it. This is what happens when men who have no clue how women’s bodies work think they have the right to tell control women’s choices.

It looks like Biden is considering another extension of the student loan moratorium. NBC News: Student loan servicers told not to contact borrowers as payment pause deadline nears.