Posted: February 25, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because |
Quiet Day, by Lucie Bilodeau
Happy Caturday!!
The weather has been crazy this year. The Midwest has been getting plenty of snow, but here in Massachusetts we’ve seen almost no snow and temperatures mostly above normal–in the 40s and 50s. We’ve also had a couple of freezing cold snaps, including this weekend. Last night it got down into the single numbers with wind chills below zero. The rest of the week we are again expecting above normal temperatures. Dakinikat has been getting more cold weather than usual in New Orleans, with occasional periods of very warm weather. And now Southern California is getting blizzard warnings–and not in the mountains.
The Washington Post: Low-elevation snow, blizzard conditions in California amid season’s coldest storm.
It’s been a week of howling wind and bitter cold in California as winter storms have dropped into the region from the far north. The cold air set the stage for snow at unusually low elevations late in the week. Now, it is combining with an atmospheric river to bring blizzard conditions and possibly unprecedented snowfall to Southern California.
The latest powerful storm, steered by a low-pressure system rotating off the California coast, is taking direct aim at the coastal mountain ranges that run between Santa Barbara and San Diego counties. An atmospheric river could linger over the region for more than 24 hours into Saturday, piling up feet of mountain snow while dousing lower elevations with flooding rains.
The region rarely experiences snow of this magnitude, which is more typical of the Sierra Nevada, according to Alex Tardy, the warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego.
“This is not Lake Tahoe, this is not Mammoth [Lakes], and we’re not talking about a month of snow,” he said. “We’re talking about a three-day storm putting 5 to 6 feet at a location like Big Bear.”
Tardy noted that for Big Bear Lake, a popular weekend ski destination about 100 miles east of Los Angeles, it is possible “that these three- to four-day totals will exceed anything that we’ve recorded before.” He also called the flood risk for urban and rural areas “significant,” given how much rain was expected to fall in a short period.
By late Friday night, the Weather Service in Los Angeles was warning of “life threatening flash flooding of creeks and streams, burn scars, urban areas, highways, streets and underpasses.”
Up to 7 inches of rain had fallen in some parts of Los Angeles County, with more on the way.
An extremely rare blizzard warning is in effect until 4 p.m. Saturday for the mountains of Ventura, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties.
Last night some big news broke about the DOJ’s efforts to get access to Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry’s phone in the January 6 investigation. The phone was seized by the FBI last summer, but Perry has claimed the contents are protected by the “speech and debate clause.” It’s the same argument that Mike Pence is using to fight a grand jury subpoena and that Lindsey Graham tried and failed with in his fight to avoid testifying to the Georgia special grand jury. Now the judge in Perry’s case has also rejected the argument.
The Washington Post: Fight over Rep. Perry’s phone has prevented review of 2,200 documents in Jan. 6 probe.
A secret legal fight over the cellphone of Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) has prevented the Justice Department for more than six months from reviewing more than 2,200 documents in the criminal investigation of former president Donald Trump and supporters’ efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, a federal judge disclosed Friday evening.
Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell of the U.S. District Court in D.C. released a number of previously sealed opinions after finding that the “powerful public interest”outweighed the need for secrecy in the constitutional battle over Perry’s claims and the historic investigation.
By Dee Nickerson
The Pennsylvania Republican has asserted that 2,219 documents contained on his phone are shielded by the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause, which grants members of Congress immunity from criminal investigation in their official capacities. But in a ruling in December, Howell rejected that claim for more than 90 percent of the records, ordering Perry to turn over 2,055 text messages, emails and attachments after concluding that they were only incidentally related to his status as a lawmaker, and not central to that status and constitutionally protected as part of his lawmaking.
“What is plain is that the Clause does not shield Rep. Perry’s random musings with private individuals touting an expertise in cybersecurity or political discussions with attorneys from a presidential campaign, or with state legislators concerning hearings before them about possible local election fraud or actions they could take to challenge election results in Pennsylvania,” Howell wrote.
The scope and nature of the Perry fight had been secret, because they involve an FBI search warrant used to seize Perry’s phone on Aug. 9. But Howell said the Justice Department agreed to unseal details Friday because a federal appeals court held fast-tracked public arguments this week after staying Howell’s order and approved the release of her key opinions to certain members of Congress and the House general counsel’s office. That office has taken Perry’s side. Perry’s lawyers objected to the unsealing, but Howell said redactions protected his interests, noting that the government’s specific allegations about why Perry’s phone might contain evidence of a crime remain under seal.
Perry is a key figure who sought to help Trump replace the attorney general after the 2020 election with former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and get the Justice Department to reverse its finding that Joe Biden had been elected fairly, according to the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol.
More details from Politico: Judge rejected Perry’s bid to shield thousands of emails from Jan. 6 investigators.
Prosecutors homed in on Perry last year, seeking his contacts with top figures connected to Trump, including Clark and attorney John Eastman, an architect of Trump’s last-ditch bid to remain in power despite losing reelection. And in August, Perry’s phone was seized by FBI agents while he was traveling with family.
Thus far, however, investigators have not had access to any of the records because, last month, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to stay Howell’s ruling. On Thursday, those judges heard both public and private arguments about the dispute. The stay remains in place as the appeals court considers whether to leave Howell’s ruling in place, set it aside or modify it in some way.
Cats Relaxing in the Grounds at Napsbury, by Louis Wain
The judges — Karen Henderson, Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao — appeared skeptical of the Justice Department’s position and the breadth of Howell’s ruling, although they discussed her stance only in broad strokes and the details of her opinions remained under seal until Friday.
But the appeals panel’s ultimate leanings remained unclear at the conclusion of the public argument session Thursday. The appeals judges seemed most concerned by Howell’s determination that Perry’s outreach about Jan. 6 was not protected by the speech or debate clause because he was not acting with formal House approval.
That determination was a centerpiece of Howell’s ruling, which she said was rooted in longstanding precedent.
“No matter the vigor with which Rep. Perry pursued his wide-ranging interest in bolstering his belief that the results of the 2020 election were somehow incorrect — even in the face of his own reelection — his informal inquiries into the legitimacy of those election results are closer to the activities described as purely personal or political,” Howell said.
Another judge in Texas is hearing a case that could threaten access to abortion pills in every state.
The Washington Post: The Texas judge who could take down the abortion pill.
ABILENE, Tex. — Matthew Kacsmaryk was a 22-year-old law student when he drove to a small city in west Texas to spend a day with a baby he would probably never see again.
He was in Abilene to support his sister, who, pregnant at 17, had fled to a faraway maternity home to avoid the scorn she feared from their Christian community. But holding his nephew in his arms — then leaving the baby with adoptive parents— also solidified Kacsmaryk’s belief that every pregnancy should be treasured, his sister recalled, even those that don’t fit neatly into a family’s future plans….
Now 45 and a federal judge, Kacsmaryk (kaz-MARE-ik) has the opportunity to impose the most far-reaching limit on abortion access since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.
The judge, nominated by President Trump and confirmed in 2019, will soon rule on a lawsuit seeking to revoke U.S. government approval of mifepristone, a key abortion medication. That outcome could, at least temporarily, halt over half the legal abortions carried out across the country, including in states led by Democrats where abortion rights are protected.
While many experts have said the case relies on baseless medical claims, it is Kacsmaryk’s role as presiding judge that has the abortion rights movement bracing foranother crippling defeat.
The abortion pills lawsuit, which Kacsmaryk could rule on any day, is the latest in a long line of politically explosive cases to appear on the judge’s docket. In a practice known as “forum shopping,” conservative groups have zeroed in on the Amarillo division of the Northern District of Texas as a go-to place to challenge a wide range of Biden administration policies. Because Amarillo is a federal district with a single judge, plaintiffs know their arguments will be heard by Kacsmaryk — who, like any federal judge, is positioned to issue rulings with nationwide implications.
Appeals from Kacsmaryk’s district follow a path that has regularly yielded favorable outcomes for conservatives — reviewed first by the 5th Circuit, which upheld a strict Texas abortion ban long before Roe v. Wade was overturned, then ultimately by the conservative-controlled Supreme Court.
Read more at the WaPo.
Relaxing on the Rug, Ryan Connors
Lots of legal cases in the news today, including updates on the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News.
Analysis by Oliver Darcy at CNN Business: ‘It’s a major blow’: Dominion has uncovered ‘smoking gun’ evidence in case against Fox News, legal experts say.
Fox News is in serious hot water.
That’s what several legal experts told CNN this week following Dominion Voting Systems explosive legal filing against the right-wing talk channel, revealing the network’s executives and hosts privately blasted the election fraud claims being peddled by Donald Trump’s team, despite allowing lies about the 2020 contest to be promoted on its air.
While the legal experts cautioned that they would like to see Fox News’ formal legal response to the filing, they all indicated in no uncertain terms that the evidence compiled in Dominion’s legal filing represents a serious threat to the channel.
“It’s a major blow,” attorney Floyd Abrams of Pentagon Papers fame said, adding that the “recent revelations certainly put Fox in a more precarious situation” in defending against the lawsuit on First Amendment grounds.
Rebecca Tushnet, the Frank Stanton Professor of First Amendment Law at Harvard Law School, described Dominion’s evidence as a “very strong” filing that “clearly lays out the difference between what Fox was saying publicly and what top people at Fox were privately admitting.”
A cache of behind-the-scenes messages included in the legal filing showed Fox Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch called Trump’s claims “really crazy stuff,” and the cable network’s stars — including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham — brutally mock the lies being pushed by the former president’s camp asserting that the election was rigged.
It also showed attempts to crack down on fact-checking election lies. On one occasion, Carlson demanded that Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich be fired after she fact-checked a Trump tweet pushing election fraud claims.
Tushnet said that in all of her years practicing and teaching law, she had never seen such damning evidence collected in the pre-trial phase of a defamation suit. “I don’t recall anything comparable to this,” Tushnet said. “Donald Trump seems to be very good at generating unprecedented situations.”
Read what more legal experts had to say about the case at the CNN link.
The New York Times has an interesting piece about what Fox hosts were saying on the air as opposed to behind the scenes: What Fox News Hosts Said Privately vs. Publicly About Voter Fraud.
Two days after the 2020 election, Tucker Carlson was furious.
Fox News viewers were abandoning the network for Newsmax and One America News, two conservative rivals, after Fox declared that Joseph R. Biden Jr. won Arizona, a crucial swing state.
Belinda Del Pesco
In a text message with his producer, Alex Pfeiffer, Mr. Carlson appeared livid that viewers were turning against the network. The message was among those released last week as part of a lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox. Dominion, an elections technology company, has sued Fox News for defamation….
At the same time, Mr. Carlson and his broadcasting colleagues expressed grave doubts about an unfounded narrative rapidly gaining momentum among their core audience: that the 2020 presidential election was stolen by Democrats through widespread voter fraud. The belief was promoted by then-President Trump and a coalition of lawyers, lawmakers and influencers, though they produced no evidence to support their assertions.
Many hosts, producers and executives privately expressed skepticism about those claims, even as they gave them significant airtime, according to private messages revealed last week by Dominion. What they said in those messages often differed significantly from what Fox hosts said in public, though they weren’t always contradictory.
Two days after the election, Mr. Pfeiffer said that voices on the right were “reckless demagogues,” according to a text message. Mr. Carlson replied that his show was “not going to follow them.” [….]
But he did follow them. The same day, on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Mr. Carlson expressed some doubts about the voter fraud assertions before insisting that at least some of the claims were “credible.”
There’s much more at the NYT link.
One more January 6 story at CBS News: Media organizations demand Jan. 6 videos McCarthy shared with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson.
A group of media organizations, including CBS News, is demanding access to a tranche of surveillance and police videos from the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol that U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy provided to Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
In a letter to congressional leadership Friday, the media companies argue the footage McCarthy allowed Carlson and Fox News to access should be made available to other media groups.
Sphynx Cat Relaxing, Svetlana Novikova
The letter was sent on behalf of CBS News, CNN, Politico, ProPublica ABC, Axios, Advance, Scripps, the Los Angeles Times, and Gannett.
“Without full public access to the complete historical record, there is concern that an ideologically-based narrative of an already polarizing event will take hold in the public consciousness, with destabilizing risks to the legitimacy of Congress, the Capitol Police, and the various federal investigations and prosecutions of January 6 crimes,” wrote attorney Charles Tobin.
McCarthy’s office has not responded to multiple requests for comment from CBS News about the reported release of more than 41,000 hours of police footage to Fox News.
The House speaker said in a Wednesday interview with The New York Times that he expects to make the footage more widely available after Carlson uses the material.
“I was asked in the press about these tapes, and I said they do belong to the American public. I think sunshine lets everybody make their own judgment,” McCarthy said.
In the letter to McCarthy, Tobin wrote that the media organizations agreed with his “sunshine” statement.
“Now that the CCTV videos have been released to one member of the news media – one whose program is categorized by its own network as opinion programming – they must be released to the rest of the news media as well,” Tobin wrote.
That’s all I have for you today. Please share your thought and any other stories that you’re following.
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Posted: February 24, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Donald Trump, morning reads | Tags: Jack Smith, January 6 grand jury, Mar-a-Lago, Mike Pence, Speech and Debate clause, stolen government documents, Ukraine |
Félix Vallotton, Lain down woman, sleeping, 1899, private collection.
Good Morning!!
I’m filling in for Dakinikat today, while she takes her cat Keely to the vet. Keely hasn’t had any problems since the seizure a few days ago, but she needs to be checked out and also get some shots. I’m curious to know what the vet thinks–I hope Dakinikat will update us later on.
The one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is getting lot of coverage today.
This is from The New York Times’ live updates: Here’s what to know on the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
With messages of support and new pledges of weapons, allies rallied around Ukraine on Friday as the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion prompted shows of solidarity around the world and a mix of anxiety and resolve in Ukraine.
“We will be victorious,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine told a news conference, saying that Ukraine could win the war this year as long as its allies remain united “like a fist” and continue delivering weapons.
Even as leaders in Ukraine and around the world marked the anniversary with ceremonies and speeches, the fighting continued much as it has for the past year. The war has already done untold damage: Tens of thousands have been killed on both sides, millions of Ukrainians have been made homeless, and Ukraine has sustained tens of billions of dollars worth of damage that has left cities flattened and people around the country grappling with dark and cold.
But Ukrainians have also found strength in shared sacrifice, and hope in the setbacks their country’s forces have dealt Russia on the battlefield. Ukraine has largely stopped the offensives of its much larger and better-armed neighbor and has regained swathes of captured land, aided by the United States and its European allies, which have remained united, funneling billions of dollars of weapons to Kyiv.
The war has reverberated around the globe, reshaping and strengthening alliances, and affecting everything from grain prices to energy policy. But even as Russia found itself more isolated from the West, sanctions have failed to bring the country to its knees, and much of the rest of the world has continued to provide economic or diplomatic support to Moscow.
Read more details and updates at the NYT link.
From the AP: US commits $2 billion in drones, ammunition, aid to Ukraine.
The Pentagon announced a new package of long-term security assistance for Ukraine on Friday, marking the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion with a $2 billion commitment to send more rounds of ammunition and a variety of small, high-tech drones into the fight.
The announcement comes just days after President Joe Biden made an unannounced visit to Kyiv and pledged America’s continuing commitment to Ukraine. Biden told President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his people that “Americans stand with you, and the world stands with you.”
John William Godward, Expectation
In a statement Friday, the Pentagon said the aid includes weapons to counter Russia’s unmanned systems and several types of drones, including the upgraded Switchblade 600 Kamikaze drone, as well as electronic warfare detection equipment.
It also includes money for additional ammunition for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, artillery rounds and munitions for laser-guided rocket systems. But, in an unusual move, the Pentagon provided no details on how many rounds of any kind will be bought. Including this latest package, the U.S. has now committed more than $32 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement that the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion is a chance for all who believe in freedom “to recommit ourselves to supporting Ukraine’s brave defenders for the long haul — and to recall that the stakes of Russia’s war stretch far beyond Ukraine.”
Biden was scheduled to meet virtually Friday with other Group of Seven leaders and Zelenskyy “to continue coordinating our efforts to support Ukraine and hold Russia accountable for its war,” the White House said.
Those efforts include what the White House called “sweeping” sanctions on over 200 people and entities “to further degrade Russia’s economy and diminish its ability to wage war against Ukraine.” The Biden administration will also further restrict exports to Russia and raise tariffs on some Russian products imported to the U.S.
CNN has a story on the new sanctions: US Treasury takes ‘one of its most significant sanctions actions to date’ on anniversary of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The US Treasury Department on Friday took what it called “one of its most significant sanctions actions to date” to crack down on those aiding Moscow’s war against Ukraine, targeting Russia’s metals and mining sector, its financial institutions, its military supply chain and individuals and companies worldwide that are helping Moscow avoid existing sanctions.
These latest actions by the Treasury Department are among a series of new measures announced by the Biden administration Friday that are meant to strengthen Kyiv and deter those providing support to Moscow as the war enters its second year without signs of abating.
Friday’s sweeping actions are meant to fill in gaps in existing sanctions that have been imposed over the past year of the war and are intended to impair “key revenue generating sectors in order to further degrade Russia’s economy and diminish its ability to wage war against Ukraine,” according to a White House fact sheet.
Frederic Leighton, Flaming June
The administration on Friday imposed sanctions against a total of “over 200 individuals and entities, including both Russian and third-country actors across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East that are supporting Russia’s war effort,” according to the White House fact sheet.
The latest tranche of Treasury Department sanctions target a total of 22 individuals and 83 entities, according to a Treasury Department news release, and were taken in coordination with the Group of 7 nations.
The US State Department also imposed sanctions on dozens of Russian officials and entities involved in the war and will take “steps to impose visa restrictions on 1,219 members of the Russian military, including officers, for actions that threaten or violate the sovereignty, territorial integrity, or political independence of Ukraine,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. Three Russian military officials – Artyom Igorevich Gorodilov, Aleksey Sergeyevich Bulgakov, and Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Vasilyev – will be blocked from entering the US due to their involvement “in gross violations of human rights perpetrated against Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of wars,” Blinken said.
You can also check these two longer reads about Ukraine:
Defense One: EXCLUSIVE: Seven Former NATO Supreme Allied Commanders Say U.S. ‘Must Do Everything We Can’ for a Ukrainian Victory.
Politico has an oral history of the Russian invasion, compiled from hours of interviews by Politico reporters: ‘Something Was Badly Wrong’: When Washington Realized Russia Was Actually Invading Ukraine.
There is some breaking news about the Mar-a-Lago stolen documents case. Both The Guardian and CNN are claiming exclusives.
The Guardian: Classified Trump schedules were moved to Mar-a-Lago after FBI search – sources.
Donald Trump’s lawyers found a box of White House schedules, including some that were marked classified, at his Mar-a-Lago resort in December because a junior aide to the former president had transported it from another office in Florida after the FBI completed its search of the property.
The former president does not appear to have played a direct role in the mishandling of the box, though he remains under investigation for the possible improper retention of national security documents and obstruction of justice. This previously unreported account of the retrieval was informed by two sources familiar with the matter.
Known internally as ROTUS, short for Receptionist of the United States, the junior aide initially kept the box at a converted guest bungalow at Mar-a-Lago called the “tennis cottage” after Trump left office, and she soon took it with her to a government-leased office in the Palm Beach area.
Mary Cassatt, Girl in a Blue Armchair
The box remained at the government-leased office from where the junior aide worked through most of 2022, explaining why neither Trump’s lawyer who searched Mar-a-Lago in June for any classified-marked papers nor the FBI agents who searched the property in August found the documents.
Around the time that Trump returned to Mar-a-Lago from his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey at the end of the summer, the junior aide was told that she was being relocated to a desk in the anteroom of Trump’s own office at Mar-a-Lago that previously belonged to top aide Molly Michael.
The junior aide retrieved her work belongings – including the box – from the government-leased office and took them to her new Mar-a-Lago workspace around September. At that time, the justice department’s criminal investigation into Trump’s retention of national security documents was intensifying.
Read the rest at The Guardian.
CNN: Exclusive: How a box with classified documents ended up in Trump’s office months after FBI searched Mar-a-Lago.
The Justice Department wants to know how a box containing a handful of classified records scattered among copies of presidential schedules turned up at Mar-a-Lago late last year, well after several rounds of searches of the property by federal agents and aides to former President Donald Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.
Investigators working for special counsel Jack Smith in recent weeks have interviewed a Trump aide who copied classified materials found in the box using her phone to put them onto a laptop. After a voluntary interview with the aide, prosecutors subpoenaed the password to the laptop, which she provided, according to one of the sources.
The classified documents contained in the box were discovered in December, after the Justice Department told Trump’s legal team to conduct yet another search for documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
People familiar with the Trump legal team’s efforts to locate documents describe a confusing chain of events that delayed discovery of the box, including having its contents uploaded to the cloud, emailed to a Trump employee, and moved to an offsite location before finally ending up back at a Mar-a-Lago bridal suite that is now Trump’s office – the very place that the FBI had searched just weeks earlier….
The odyssey of the box has been a recent focus of Smith’s investigation into the mishandling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, according to people familiar with the line of questioning from federal prosecutors. The haphazard handling of documents that ended up online, on computers and moved around to multiple locations could further complicate Trump’s case in an investigation with criminal implications.
One person who described the box’s movements and the special counsel’s inquiry into it described federal investigators as suspecting a “shell game with classified documents.” The person said Trump’s daily movements and instructions to staff are a core part of prosecutors’ questions as well.
More details at CNN.
Mike Pence is getting quite a bit of attention in the news today, and it’s not positive attention.
CBS News: Special counsel asks judge to compel Mike Pence to testify in Jan. 6 probe.
Federal prosecutors have asked the chief judge in Washington, D.C.’s federal court to compel former Vice President Mike Pence to comply with a grand jury subpoena and testify as a witness in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, three people familiar with the investigation told CBS News.
The motion to compel Pence’s testimony — filed in secret to Chief Judge Beryl Howell in recent days — came after lawyers for former President Donald Trump asserted executive privilege in response to Pence’s subpoena, the people said.
John Singer Sargent, Repose
That assertion of executive privilege on Pence’s subpoena, the people added, is in line with how Trump’s team has responded to related subpoenas over the past year, with Trump’s attorneys often arguing that private conversations or interactions with a president should remain confidential….
Pence and his lawyers have also been preparing to invoke the Constitution’s Speech or Debate clause as a means of protecting him from the investigation. That clause protects members of Congress from being questioned about their legislative actions by other branches of the federal government.
Pence contends his unique role as both a member of the executive branch and president of the Senate — who presided over Congress’ certification of Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, 2021 — would be covered under the clause….
The motion to compel testimony filed by the special counsel’s office is the logical next step in a criminal probe, with prosecutors seeking to force a witness or third party to comply with a grand jury subpoena. Filed less than two weeks after news broke that Pence had received the subpoena, the legal document asks the court to uphold the subpoena’s legal authority and indicates Justice Department prosecutors are moving quickly in their attempt to get Pence before a grand jury.
Former federal judge Michael Luttig, who advised Pence when he was dealing with Trump’s pressure campaign to get Pence to try to overturn the 2020 election, has an op-ed in The New York Times today: Mike Pence’s Dangerous Gambit.
Former Vice President Mike Pence recently announced he would challenge Special Counsel Jack Smith’s subpoena for him to appear before a grand jury in Washington as part of the investigation into former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and the related Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Mr. Pence claimed that “the Biden D.O.J. subpoena” was “unconstitutional” and “unprecedented.” He added, “For me, this is a moment where you have to decide where you stand, and I stand on the Constitution of the United States.” Mr. Pence vowed to take his fight all the way to the Supreme Court.
A politician should be careful what he wishes for — no more so than when he’s a possible presidential candidate who would have the Supreme Court decide a constitutional case that could undermine his viability in an upcoming campaign.
Felix Vallotton, Laziness
The former vice president should not want the embarrassing spectacle of the Supreme Court compelling him to appear before a grand jury in Washington just when he’s starting his campaign for the presidency; recall the unanimous Supreme Court ruling that ordered Richard Nixon to turn over the fatally damning Oval Office tapes. That has to be an uncomfortable prospect for Mr. Pence, not to mention a potentially damaging one for a man who — at least as of today — is considered by many of us across the political spectrum to be a profile in courage for his refusal to join in the attempt to overturn the 2020 election in the face of Donald Trump’s demands. And to be clear, Mr. Pence’s decision to brand the Department of Justice’s perfectly legitimate subpoena as unconstitutional is a far cry from the constitutionally hallowed ground he stood on Jan. 6.
Injecting campaign-style politics into the criminal investigatory process with his rhetorical characterization of Mr. Smith’s subpoena as a “Biden D.O.J. subpoena,” Mr. Pence is trying to score points with voters who want to see President Biden unseated in 2024. Well enough. That’s what politicians do. But Jack Smith’s subpoena was neither politically motivated nor designed to strengthen President Biden’s political hand in 2024. Thus the jarring dissonance between the subpoena and Mr. Pence’s characterization of it. It is Mr. Pence who has chosen to politicize the subpoena, not the D.O.J.
Read the rest at the NYT.
Another take on this issue from Jennifer Rubin at The Washington Post: Pence has no right to dodge a subpoena.
Former vice president Mike Pence is bent on demonstrating to the MAGA base that he is not about to help prosecute would-be coup instigator Donald Trump, the very person who seemed to delight in egging on the mob that called for Pence’s head. To that end, Pence has threatened to refuse to appear in response to the grand jury subpoena special counsel Jack Smith has issued.
Rather than deploy the executive-privilege defense (almost certainly a loser since President Biden has waived it; in any case, United States v. Nixon stands for the proposition that executive privilege generally gives way in a criminal prosecution), Pence has cited the Constitution’s “speech and debate” clause. This passage from Article I protects lawmakers from arrest on the floor of Congress for things said there.
A close examination of Pence’s claim shows that the defense, even if valid in some respects, does not protect him from testifying about issues relating to the Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt.
The argument that the vice president is an officer of Congress, and hence covered by the clause, is reasonable. Andy Wright and Ryan Goodman writing at Just Security explain: “The Speech or Debate Clause is designed as a safeguard against politically motivated civil litigation or criminal prosecutions that can chill congressional debate or intimidate legislators.” Therefore, they conclude, “It makes sense that the protections should extend to a Vice President when acting as President of the Senate or in other legislative branch capacity.” The Justice Department already conceded as much in multiple civil suits brought against the vice president (both Pence and then-vice president Joe Biden).
Yet, there is a compelling argument that Pence’s use of the speech and debate clause is inconsistent with the clause’s purpose, which is to insulate members of Congress from pressure from the executive. It might also be argued (as retired judge Michael Luttig has) that Pence’s role on Jan. 6 was purely ceremonial, not legislative, and thus the speech and debate clause does not apply. After all, Pence himself argued that day that he had no legislative authority to nullify the electoral votes.
These points might be subjects of novel litigation. But the government need not dispute the clause’s relevance because a good deal of what Smith wants to investigate is beyond any legislative function, and hence outside the scope of the clause.
Read more at the WaPo.
That’s all I have for you today. What are your thoughts on all this? What other stories are you following?
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Posted: February 21, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because |
Good Afternoon!!
I’m extra late today, because I was talking to Dakinikat on the phone. One of her cats, Keely, had two seizures in the middle of the night. They were apparently petit mal seizures, based on information we found on-line. There haven’t been any more seizures this morning, and Keely is behaving normally.
There are apparently multiple possible causes for seizures in cats, including epilepsy, contagious diseases, and brain injuries or brain tumors. Keely has never been outside, so a contagious disease seems unlikely. The problem is that Dakinikat can’t get to a vet today, because everything in New Orleans is shut down for Mardi Gras. I thought I’d mention this here in case anyone has had experience with this.
Now for today’s news . . .
From Kevin Liptak at CNN:
President Joe Biden on Tuesday marked a year since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by celebrating the strength and resilience of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his people.
In a second major address from Warsaw, Poland, in less than a year, Biden pointed to his trip to the Ukrainian capital a day before as evidence that the democracies of the world are growing stronger in the face of autocracy.
“One year ago, the world was bracing for the fall of Kyiv. Well, I’ve just come from a visit to Kyiv and I can report Kyiv stands strong. Kyiv stands proud, it stands tall and most important, it stands free,” Biden said.
The speech comes hours after Putin delivered a major speech to the Federal Assembly, again falsely claiming that Ukraine and its allies in the West started the war and offering no signs he is pulling back in his ambitions.
According to senior US and European officials, Putin’s aims have not changed since he launched his invasion a year ago. Despite humiliating setbacks for his military and an apparent power struggle between the mercenary Wagner Group and the Russian defense ministry, Russia has recently made gains in the east. Putin’s troops appear poised to take the city of Bakhmut, the first significant Russian military victory in months.
Visiting the region this week, Biden hoped to again provide a rallying cry for Ukraine, demonstrating to Putin and Russia that Western resolve isn’t weakening. Harkening to the start of the war, Biden said the challenges of the invasion extended beyond Ukraine’s borders.
“When Russia invaded, it was not just Ukraine being tested. The whole world faced a test for the ages,” he said. “Europe was being tested. America was being tested. NATO was being tested.”
Some video from Aaron Rupar:
See more coverage from Rupar on Twitter.
Last night, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia will halt its participation in the START Treaty.
From The Washington Post article:
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in a state of the nation address Tuesday that Moscow is “suspending” its participation in the New START nuclear nonproliferation agreement, the last remaining arms control treaty between the United States and Russia.
Putin said that Russia will not “withdraw” completely from the treaty, which has been extended to run through Feb. 4, 2026, but that Russia would not allow NATO countries to inspect its nuclear arsenal. He accused the alliance of helping Ukraine conduct drone strikes on Russian air bases that host strategic bombers that are part of the country’s nuclear forces.
The 2011 treaty placed “verifiable limits” on the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads deployed by the countries.
“Our relations have degraded, and that’s completely and utterly the U.S.’s fault,” Putin said.
“If the U.S. conducts tests, then so will we,” Putin said. “Nobody should have any illusions that global strategic parity can be destroyed.” Other nonproliferation agreements, including the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, or INF, treaty have fallen apart in recent years.
Western officials reacted with alarm at Putin’s decision.
“The announcement by Russia that it’s suspending participation in New START is deeply unfortunate and irresponsible,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters. “We’ll be watching carefully to see what Russia actually does.”
Blinken noted the Biden administration’s role in extending New START in 2021. “We extended New START because it was clearly in the security interests of our country and actually in the security interests of Russia,” he said, adding: “We remain ready to talk about strategic arms limitations at any time with Russia irrespective of anything else going on in the world or in our relationship.”
Another large aftershock has hit Turkey and Syria.
BBC News:
Rescuers are once again searching for people trapped under rubble in Turkey after another earthquake hit the country, killing at least six people.
A 6.4 magnitude tremor struck near the city of Antakya near the border with Syria, where massive quakes devastated both countries on 6 February.
The earlier quakes killed 44,000 people in Turkey and Syria with tens of thousands more left homeless.
Buildings weakened by those tremors collapsed in both countries on Monday.
Turkey’s disaster and emergency agency says the 6.4 earthquake occurred at 20:04 local time (17:04 GMT) at a depth of 10km (6.2 miles).
This was followed by a 5.8 aftershock three minutes later and dozens of subsequent aftershocks that were not as severe.
The health minister, Dr Fahrettin Koca, said 294 people have been injured – 18 of them seriously….
Reports from the city of Antakya spoke of fear and panic in the streets as ambulances and rescue crews tried to reach the worst affected areas where the walls of badly damaged buildings had collapsed.
“I thought the earth was going to split open under my feet,” local resident Muna al-Omar told Reuters news agency, crying as she held her seven-year-old son. She had been in a tent in a park in the city centre when the new earthquakes hit.
This is stunning news. Popular Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline is resigning from the House in June.
From CBS News:
Rep. David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat who served as a House impeachment manager during former President Trump’s second impeachment process, will leave Congress to be the CEO of a foundation, he announced Tuesday.
Cicilline, 61, will leave Congress on June 1, a year and a half before his seventh two-year term is up, to be president and CEO of the Rhode Island Foundation. Cicilline was the mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, before joining Congress in 2011.
Cicilline’s departure will prompt a special election.
“For more than a decade, the people of Rhode Island entrusted me with a sacred duty to represent them in Congress, and it is a responsibility I put my heart and soul into every day to make life better for the residents and families of our state,” Cicilline said. “The chance to lead the Rhode Island Foundation was unexpected, but it is an extraordinary opportunity to have an even more direct and meaningful impact on the lives of residents of our state. The same energy and commitment I brought to elected office, I will now bring as CEO of the Rhode Island Foundation, advancing their mission to ensure all Rhode Islanders can achieve economic security, access quality, affordable healthcare, and attain the education and training that will set them on a path to prosperity.”
A member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and House Judiciary Committee, Cicilline was an impeachment manager for the second Trump impeachment over the former president’s actions leading up to and during the Capitol assault of Jan. 6, 2021.
Bennie Thompson attacked Kevin McCarthy for giving January 6 video to Tucker Carlson.
From The Hill:
House Homeland Security Committee ranking Democrat Bennie Thompson (Miss.) on Monday blasted Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for handing over tens of thousands of hours of riot footage from Jan. 6, 2021, to Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
“It’s hard to overstate the potential security risks if this material were to be used irresponsibly,” Thompson said in a statement.
McCarthy’s office granted about 41,000 hours of footage of the Capitol riots to Carlson, Axios first reported. A Fox News spokesperson confirmed the development to The Hill on Monday.
“If Speaker McCarthy has indeed granted Tucker Carlson — a Fox host who routinely spreads misinformation and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s poisonous propaganda — and his producers access to this sensitive footage, he owes the American people an explanation of why he has done so and what steps he has taken to address the significant security concerns at stake,” Thompson said.
The Mississippi Democrat headed the select House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attacks for nearly a year and a half before releasing its final report in December. The committee had interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, read through documents and reviewed troves of video footage of the riots during its investigation.
Carlson has accused the select committee of “lying” about what happened on Jan. 6, and has boasted that Fox News did not cover the proceedings, or what he called “propaganda,” on live television.
One more shocking story, before I wrap this up:
From Raw Story: Given a chance to apologize for the theft of a Black man’s heart, Virginia House Republicans declined.
In what can only be characterized as a stunningly callous decision, last week members of a Rules subcommittee of Virginia’s House of Delegates killed a resolution to acknowledge and apologize for the state-sanctioned medical misuse of Black bodies in Virginia, a common practice in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Four of the subcommittee’s five members – including House Majority Leader Terry Kilgore, R-Scott, Speaker Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah, Del. Barry Knight, R-Virginia Beach, and Del. Kathy Byron, R-Bedford – voted to lay SJ 274 on the table, politi-speak for postponing any action on the legislation indefinitely. The measure had sailed through the Senate with unanimous approval and, at least in the mind of Phillip Thompson, who came up with the idea of the bill, was a no-brainer, low-lift way for the state to recognize the wrongs of the past.
“I thought it had a chance because it’s a very innocuous bill,” Thompson told me. “We weren’t asking for reparations, nothing like that; we just wanted a real apology.”
An apology would be the very least the state could do, considering Virginia institutions’ horrible history of using Black people, living and dead, as guinea pigs.
Thompson said he got the idea for the resolution after reading a Politico article in late 2022 that explained how Black laborer Bruce Tucker’s body was violated in the name of a medical miracle after his accidental death in 1968.
A day after he died from a fatal fall, and without his family’s knowledge or consent, Tucker’s “heart was sewn into the chest of a white business executive” at the Medical College of Virginia, the forebear of what is now Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Medicine, according to Politico’s report. “It was one of the first heart transplants in the country, and it gave the med school the status it had sought at the forefront of transplant science.”
Tucker’s sad fate also underscored Richmond’s record of body snatching, the practice of stealing the bodies of deceased Black people for doctors-in-training to practice dissection. “Resurrectionists” were known to lurk in Black cemeteries in Richmond, seeking to abscond with the remains of the newly dead, according to the documentary “Until the Well Runs Dry: Medicine and the Exploitation of Black Bodies,” directed by Dr. Shawn Utsey, former chair of VCU’s African American Studies Department.
There’s more at the link. The history of racism in this country is so stunning. It’s enough to take your breath away.
Have a nice Tuesday Sky Dancers! I’ll see you in the comment thread.
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Posted: February 18, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because |
Happy Caturday!!
Lorenzo the Cat has learned the identity of the handsome Turkish man who went viral after he rescued a cat from the rubble of the earthquake. His name is Ali Cacas, and he is on Twitter.
Hola!: Pet of the Week: Cat Saved from Turkey Earthquake Refuses to Leave his Rescuer’s Side.
Following the tragic 7.7 and 7.6 magnitude earthquake in Turkey and Syria, search teams worked hard to help the victims of the terrifying natural disaster. Members of the Mardin Fire Department were able to find many survivors, even 11 days after the two earthquakes.
Among the survivors, there was a cat trapped in the rubble of a collapsed building in the district of Defne. Ali Cakas, one of the members of the rescue team, found the adorable cat 9 days after the tragedy and decided to name him Enkas, which translates to Rubble.
The rescued cat instantly became a sign of hope amid the immense tragedy, not just because he was able to survive with minor injuries, but also because he showed how grateful he was with the 33-year-old rescuer.
Rubble became viral after the search team noticed that he decided to stick around. The cat showed his appreciation by not leaving Ali’s side, standing on his shoulder after being found. But the incredible story of Rubble doesn’t end here, as Ali decided to take him home and adopted him, becoming the mascot of the Mardin Fire Department.
The team continues to work day and night to find more survivors, including pets that might still be trapped in the rubble.
This bonus rescued cat is from Ukraine.
Now for the news of the day–interspersed with more cat tweets for relief.
Vice President Harris gave a major speech in Germany this morning. The Washington Post: Russia has committed ‘crimes against humanity’ in Ukraine, Harris declares.
Vice President Harris said Saturday that the United States believes strongly that Russia has committed crimes against humanity and needs to be held to account for ghastly actions that have been describedin intelligence reports and international headlines, including bombing a maternity hospital, forcibly relocating and “reeducating” Ukrainian children, and, just months ago, the suspected sexual assault of a 4-year-old girl.
“In the case of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, we have examined the evidence, we know the legal standards, and there is no doubt: These are crimes against humanity,” Harris said.
Speaking in moral terms a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, Harris told diplomatic, intelligence and defense leaders gathered at the Munich Security Conference that the world has a humanitarian and strategic interest in continued support of the besieged nation, even as the White House has warned Kyiv that fissures and fatigue threaten its global support a year into the conflict.
Harris stressed that standing firm against Russian aggression sends a message to “other authoritarian powers that could seek to bend the world to their will through coercion, disinformation and even a brute force.”
Later, she added, “We have come together to stand for our common values and our common interests. And our common humanity.”
You’ve probably heard about this awful story about child labor. NBC News: Federal officials say more than 100 children worked in dangerous jobs for slaughterhouse cleaning firm.
The Labor Department said Friday it found 102 children as young as 13 working hazardous overnight jobs cleaning slaughterhouses in eight states in what it called a “corporate-wide failure” by one of the largest food sanitation companies in the country, Packers Sanitation Services Inc.
In a statement, the company said, “We are pleased to have finalized this settlement figure as part of our previously announced December resolution with the Department of Labor (DOL) that ends their inquiry. We have been crystal clear from the start: Our company has a zero-tolerance policy against employing anyone under the age of 18 and fully shares the DOL’s objective of ensuring full compliance at all locations.”
“As soon as we became aware of the DOL’s allegations, we conducted multiple additional audits of our employee base. … Our audits and DOL’s investigation confirmed that none of the individuals DOL cited as under the age of 18 work for the company today, and many had separated from employment with PSSI multiple years ago. The DOL has also not identified any managers aware of improper conduct that are currently employed by PSSI.”
“We are fully committed to working with DOL to make additional improvements to enforce our prohibition of employing anyone under the age of 18.”
It seems kind of unbelievable that they bosses didn’t know about this.
Packers Sanitation Services has paid a $1.5 million fine for the violations. The fine amount is dictated by the Fair Labor Standards Act, which allows a penalty of $15,138 for each minor who was employed in violation of the law, according to the Labor Department.
The Labor Department says the children who were working overnight shifts used “caustic chemicals to clean razor-sharp saws.” The company employs 17,000 workers at 700 sites nationwide.
“Our investigation found Packers Sanitation Services’ systems flagged some young workers as minors, but the company ignored the flags. When the Wage and Hour Division arrived with warrants, the adults — who had recruited, hired and supervised these children — tried to derail our efforts to investigate their employment practices,” said Michael Lazzeri, regional administrator for the division in Chicago….
Advocates and lawyers for the children say some of the child workers for PSSI were unaccompanied minors who recently came across the southern border. Unaccompanied minors are processed by the Border Patrol and then turned over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement within the Department of Health and Human Services. The children are then matched with sponsors who usually have some link to their families.
It figures.
Another miserable white man went on a shooting rampage in Mississippi yesterday. CNN: Man arrested after 6 killed, including suspect’s ex-wife, in series of shootings in Mississippi, sheriff says.
Six people are dead and another was wounded Friday in a series of shootings in Tate County, Mississippi after a man opened fire on his ex-wife and potentially other family members, Tate County Sheriff Brad Lance told CNN.
The suspect, Richard Dale Crum, 52, was arrested after the alleged rampage and is facing charges of first-degree murder in connection with the case, the sheriff’s office said. Additional charges are expected to be filed, the department said.
Authorities got the first 911 call around 11 a.m. ET after the suspect pulled into the parking lot of a store in Arkabutla, a small rural town in northern Mississippi, and fired into the car next to him where he fatally shot the driver, Lance said. Another person in the vehicle was not injured.
Lance said the suspected gunman went into the store then took off, driving to his ex-wife’s home. Lance said the suspect shot and killed his ex-wife before striking her fiancé, who was also in the residence.
Deputies caught up to the suspect after finding a vehicle matching its description in front of a residence that authorities determined belonged to him, Lance said.
On a small road behind the suspect’s home, authorities found two men who had been shot and killed. One was found on the road and the other was in a vehicle, Lance said.
Another two victims were found shot and killed in a house neighboring the suspect’s home, Lance said. According to Lance, deputies believe the suspect might be related to the victims, a man and woman.
You’d think even the gun-loving Republicans would be getting sick to death of this, but it seems they will put up with any amount of violence and death to keep their precious assault rifles.
Another Virginia 6-year-old took a gun to school on Thursday. The Virginian Pilot: 6-year-old brings handgun to Norfolk elementary school, police say; mother charged.
Norfolk police charged the mother of a 6-year-old whom police said brought a handgun to Little Creek Elementary School on Thursday.
According to a police press release, police were called to Little Creek Elementary located at 7901 Nancy Drive around 3:30 p.m. Thursday for a report of a student having a weapon in school.
The handgun was turned over to police by a school staff member, and no injuries were reported.
The mother was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor and allowing access to a loaded firearm by children. She was issued a summons. The Virginian-Pilot is not identifying her to avoid the possibility of identifying the child….
Meanwhile, Newport News police are still investigating whether to bring charges against the parents or anyone else in the case of a 6-year-old first grader who shot his teacher at Richneck Elementary School on Jan. 6.
Thank goodness this kid didn’t shoot anyone. Parents have to be charged for these incidents.
At The Grid, Eric Sandy has a deep dive on the train derailment disaster in Ohio: Inside the hell of East Palestine: Unanswered questions, frustration and the lingering threat of toxic chemicals.
EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — As the wind picked up here, on Wednesday, several thousand residents joined public officials, law enforcement officers and members of various news media in a long line leading to the local high school, where a highly anticipated town hall meeting awaited.
By that point — 12 days after a Norfolk Southern train ran off the tracks on the east side of town, prompting an evacuation and a controlled burn of vinyl chloride, and dispersing a wave of other toxic chemicals into the environment — the 4,700 residents of this village were eager to translate that nightmare into plain English. Is their drinking water safe? Will their pets be all right? Will this disaster have any long-term health impacts on the population?
These are straightforward questions with complicated answers.
The residents of East Palestine and nearby communities are trying to square their lived experience — the evacuation, the sight of the toxic plume, the cloying odor drifting through the village — with public health officials’ insistence that the air and water is safe and contaminant-free as of now. Put simply, these families do not know how to plan for the near- or long-term future, and, in an already tenuous economic environment in rural Ohio, that level of uncertainty is a major problem. Even the basic question of who to trust is up for debate. In the midst of this calamity, who’s at the wheel?
Outside the high school, as the crowd shuffled forward an inch at a time, East Palestine residents Cory and Dawn White traded stories with others in line. They were coming to this meeting in search of clarity about a lot of things — about the water quality, yes, but also about the nuances of soil sampling and about the recovery plans for the city. But, like anyone in attendance at the town hall that night could attest, nailing down an answer to most any question — health-related, environment-related, finance-related, you name it — is no easy task.
“That’s the scary part,” Cory said. “Nobody knows what’s going to happen, and no one can give you answers.”
This is best story I’ve seen on the East Palestine disaster. Read the rest at the Grid link.
Did you hear about the Republican operative with longtime ties to Ron and Rand Paul who was convicted of funneling Russian money to Trump in 2016? Russ Choma at Mother Jones: GOP Operative Sentenced to 18 Months for Funneling Russian Money to Trump Campaign.
On Friday, a federal judge in Washington, DC sentenced a veteran GOP operative to 18 months in prison for funneling $25,000 from a Russian businessman to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Jesse Benton, a longtime aide to both Ron and Rand Paul, was convicted in November on six related charges. The court found that he and another GOP operative accepted $100,000 from Roman Vasilenko, a St. Petersburg-based influencer who wanted photos with Trump to display on his social media accounts. Benton kept most of the money for himself but donated $25,000 to the Republican National Committee as part of a plan to secure two tickets to a fundraising event for Trump in Philadelphia. At the event, Vasilenko was allowed to sit close to Trump at a roundtable discussion and later took a photo with him. Foreign nationals, like Vasilenko, are not allowed to donate to US political campaigns or committees, and it is illegal to make a donation on behalf of someone else.
Benton, who is married to Ron Paul’s grandaughter, was previously convicted in 2016of a scheme to pay an Iowa state senator to switch his endorsement from Michele Bachmann to Ron Paul ahead of the state’s 2012 republican presidential caucus. In that case, Benton, after pleading that he had reformed and had a family to support, was sentenced to home confinement. Just six days later, the Trump fundraiser at which Vasilenko met Trump took place. A few weeks after that, Benton was caught in an undercover sting orchestrated by the British newspaper The Telegraph, whose reporters posed as representatives of a Chinese businessman who wanted to donate $2 million to Trump’s campaign. Benton told them he could arrange it. He apparently violated the terms of his home confinement in the Iowa case to meet with the undercover reporters.
Read more at Mother Jones.
https://twitter.com/srvbluesrock/status/1624161574289039360?s=20
One more before I wrap this up. House Republicans have another George Santos on their hands.
Insider: GOP Rep. Andy Ogles claimed to fight international sex crimes and be an economic expert. Like George Santos, his real resume tells another story.
During far-right Republican Andy Ogles’ successful campaign for Congress last fall, he advertised himself as a successful entrepreneur and real estate investor, a tax policy expert, and the former leader of an international nonprofit rescuing sex trafficking victims.
But the freshman member from Tennessee embellished many aspects of his resume, according to interviews, business and property records, tax filings, and local newspaper archives. Ogles’ inflations invite comparisons to his Republican congressional colleague, Rep. George Santos of New York, who has seen nearly every aspect of his past called into question.
Ogles’ business experience seems to be limited to owning two restaurants, a short-lived travel agency, and becoming licensed as an insurance agent. His real estate investments appear limited to a few adjacent parcels of land, including one he lives on, in rural Tennessee, and he reported no rental income from his properties Insider found.
Ogles claimed he studied economics and international relations, and worked at two right-wing think tanks that focus on economic policy. But his educational credentials and supposed policy expertise were thrown into question this week by Nashville’s NewsChannel5, which reported Ogles had studied languages in college – not economics or international policy, as he had claimed.
Ogles’ supposed experience rescuing sex trafficking victims helped propel him into national headlines in his first week in Congress. But his representations about that work are vastly overstated, according to public records and a former manager at an anti-trafficking nonprofit where Ogles worked.
There’s more at the link. Also check out these local stories:
NewsChannel5 Nashville: Congressman Andy Ogles, graduate of respected Vanderbilt, Dartmouth business schools? Not really.
NewsChannel5 Nashville: Businessman, economist, cop, international sex crimes expert? The stories of Congressman Andy Ogles.
Sorry there wasn’t a lot of good news today. What stories are you following?
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Posted: February 16, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because |
At Dacha, by Isaak Brodsky, socialist realism
Good Afternoon!!
BREAKING…Parts of the Georgia special grand jury report were just released. You can read the report here. Just posted stories:
The Washington Post: Parts of Georgia grand jury report on Trump election investigation released.
A Georgia judge released parts of a report produced by an Atlanta-area special grand jury investigating efforts by President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia — though the panel’s recommendations on potential charges in that investigation remain secret.
The five-page excerpt made public on Thursday revealed that a majority of the grand jury concluded that some witnesses may have lied under oath during their testimony before the panel and recommended that charges be filed. The grand jury did not identify those witnesses in the unsealed excerpt.
“A majority of the grand jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it,” the report reads. “The grand jury recommends that the district attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling.”
The unsealed document offered no major clues about the grand jury’s other findings — though the panel pointedly noted that it unanimously agreed that Georgia’s 2020 presidential vote had not been marred by “widespread fraud” as has been claimed by Trump and his allies.
“The grand jury heard extensive testimony on the subject of alleged election fraud from poll workers, investigators, technical experts, and State of Georgia employees and officials, as well as from persons still claiming that such fraud took place,” the report reads. “We find by a unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election.”
The New York Times: Live Updates: Georgia Grand Jury in Trump Inquiry Sees Signs of Perjury by Witnesses.
A special grand jury examined attempts by Donald J. Trump and the former president’s allies to overturn his 2020 loss in the state. A small portion of its report released on Thursday made it difficult determine what, if any, indictments the jury recommended….
A court on Thursday released portions of a report by a special grand jury investigating whether Donald J. Trump and his allies interfered in the presidential election in Georgia in an attempt to overturn the 2020 result. The released portions — just six total pages — do not delve into the grand jury’s conclusions or say whether they recommended indictments related to election interference.
But the jurors said they believed that at least one unnamed witness who testified in the inquiry may have committed perjury and should face indictment. They also found “that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election,” rejecting arguments made by Mr. Trump and his supporters.
Here are the details:
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The publicly released portion of the report does not mention the names of anyone that the jurors think should or should not be indicted. Nor does it mention, beyond potential perjury, which Georgia laws the jurors believe may have been violated. Read the released parts of the report here.
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A judge decided to release only a small portion of the grand jury’s full report. Here’s why.
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The special jury in the Trump case heard months of private testimony from 75 witnesses, including the former president’s allies and state officials. But it will be up to the local district attorney to decide whether to bring any charges.
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A central element of the investigation is the now-famous call by Mr. Trump on Jan. 2, 2021, during which he told Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, that he needed to “find” 11,780 votes — the number he needed to overcome Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s lead in the state.
View of Mylor Creek, Mike Hall, British
Lots of Trump investigation news broke yesterday. We learned that Mark Meadows received a subpoena from Special Counsel Jack Smith in January, before Mike Pence got his. CNN: Exclusive: Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows subpoenaed by special counsel in Jan. 6 investigation.
Donald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows has been subpoenaed by the special counsel investigating the former president and his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s office is seeking documents and testimony related to January 6, and Meadows received the subpoena sometime in January, the source said. An attorney for Meadows declined to comment.
The move to subpoena one of Trump’s most senior aides – in addition to the recent subpoena of former Vice President Mike Pence, as CNN reported last week – marks the latest significant step in the special counsel’s investigation into Trump’s role in seeking to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election.
Smith also is simultaneously investigating Trump’s handling of classified documents after leaving office. While the subpoena is related to January 6, Meadows also may be of interest in the documents investigation. He was one of Trump’s designees to the National Archives and played a role in discussions around returning government records in his possession.
The special counsel’s subpoena could set up a clash with the Justice Department and Meadows over executive privilege. The former White House chief of staff, citing executive privilege, previously fought a subpoena from a special grand jury in Georgia that was investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. A judge later ordered Meadows to testify, finding him “material and necessary to the investigation.”
Meadows was involved in the infamous phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and in a December 2020 White House meeting about election fraud claims. Meadows also visited a site where an audit of Georgia’s election was underway and sent emails to Justice Department officials about unsubstantiated fraud allegations.
On January 6, Meadows was in and out of the Oval Office and witness to Trump’s actions as rioters overtook the US Capitol that day.
The recent subpoena for Meadows also underscores the aggressive nature of the special counsel’s probe.
I’ve seen many people saying this means that Meadows is not cooperating, so I found this tweet from a former federal prosecutor interesting:
More Jack Smith news from CNN: Special counsel is locked in at least 8 secret court battles in Trump investigations.
Special counsel Jack Smith is locked in at least eight secret court battles that aim to unearth some of the most closely held details about Donald Trump’s actions after the 2020 election and handling of classified material, according to sources and court records reviewed by CNN.
The outcome of these disputes could have far-reaching implications, as they revolve around a 2024 presidential candidate and could lead courts to shape the law around the presidency, separation of powers and attorney-client confidentiality in ways they’ve never done before.
Yet almost all of the proceedings are sealed, and filings and decisions aren’t public….
A key sealed case revealed Wednesday is an attempt to force more answers about direct conversations between Trump and his defense attorney Evan Corcoran, where the Justice Department is arguing the investigation found evidence the conversations may be part of furthering or covering up a crime related to the Mar-a-Lago document boxes.
House of Squam Light, Gloucester, Edward Hopper
About half a dozen cases are still ongoing in court, either before Chief Judge Beryl Howell or in the appeals court above her, the DC Circuit. Most appear to follow the typical arc of miscellaneous cases that arise during grand jury investigations, where prosecutors sometimes use the court to enforce their subpoenas.
More challenges from subpoenaed witnesses – including former Vice President Mike Pence – are expected to be filed in the coming days, likely under seal as well. Pence may raise novel questions about the protections around the vice presidency….
Investigations that implicate government officials often beget sealed court proceedings, because confidential grand jury witnesses become more likely to assert privileges that prompt prosecutors to ask judges to compel more answers, criminal law experts say.
“I think we are in extraordinary times. Part of it is I think President Trump continues to assert these theories long after they’ve been batted away by the court,” Neil Eggleston, a former White House counsel who argued for executive privilege during the Clinton administration and the Whitewater investigation.
That train derailment in Ohio has begun getting more attention. Here’s the latest.
Politico: ‘The longer the train, the heavier the train’ — Ohio disaster calls attention to freight’s growing bulk.
The toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, is drawing new attention to the dangers of increasingly long freight trains — part of a series of cost-savings efforts by freight railroads that have drawn scrutiny from the industry’s critics.
The sheer bulk of the 150-car train that went off the rails Feb. 3 is just one factor investigators are expected to consider amid the unfolding ecological disaster near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, which caused a massive fireball, forced an evacuation and has left a lingering odor, fears of lasting contamination and thousands of dead fish. But union officials, regulators and congressional researchers say the industry’s trend toward ever-growing train lengths is causing a host of safety concerns that regulators need to address.
“The longer the train, the heavier the train, the more wear and tear it puts on the actual rail itself, as well as the equipment,” said Jared Cassity, a legislative director for the country’s largest rail union, SMART-Transportation Division. “We’re seeing more wear and tear. We’re seeing more unintended train separations, which is where the train breaks apart.”
The Ohio derailment is still under investigation by multiple agencies, including the Department of Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB, an independent agency, has said preliminarily that an overheated wheel bearing on one of the cars is partially the culprit for the derailment.
However, derailments like these typically have multiple points of failure, and the NTSB’s investigation will likely take over a year to complete. Such NTSB probes typically examine any conceivable cause that could have led to a crash, including equipment malfunctions, poor system design, the lack of safety precautions, inadequate training, crew fatigue and myriad other factors.
The Guardian: What do we know about the Ohio train derailment and toxic chemical leak?
On the night of Friday 3 February, at least 50 out of 150 train cars of a train heading from Conway, Pennsylvania, to Madison, Illinois, derailed. The train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, a town of about 5,000 residents along the Ohio and Pennsylvania border. A huge fire that spanned the length of the derailed cars erupted. No injuries or deaths were reported.
Marshall’s House, Edward Hopper
Residents within a one-mile radius of the derailment were evacuated as officials noted that over a dozen cars carrying vinyl chloride, a carcinogenic chemical, were involved in the derailment and could have been exposed to the fire.
On Monday 6 February, officials enacted a mandatory evacuation, threatening to arrest residents who refused to evacuate, as fear of an explosion rose. Governor Mike DeWine told residents that leaving was “a matter of life and death”. Crews ended up releasing toxic chemicals from five derailed tanker cars to prevent an explosion. Small holes were made into the train cars, whose chemicals were released into pits that were lit on fire. Pictures of the chemical release showed huge clouds of black smoke billowing into the sky over homes.
Evacuated residents, who were staying at shelters and schools, were given the clear to return to their homes on Wednesday 8 February as officials deemed air and water samples safe for residents.
On the chemicals that were released:
The most concerning chemical being carried by the derailed train was vinyl chloride, which is used to make polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, a hard resin used in plastic products. Vinyl chloride is colorless and highly flammable. It has been linked to a rare form of liver cancer, as well as other types of cancer like leukemia and lung cancer. Short-term exposure effects include dizziness and drowsiness, while high exposure can lead to hospitalization and death. Another chemical on board was butyl acrylate, also used in plastic production.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) later released information that showed three previously unreported chemicals were also released upon the derailment: ethylhexyl acrylate, isobutylene and ethylene glycol monobutyl ether. Exposure to the chemicals can cause shortness of breath, burning in the skin and eyes, coughing, headaches and nausea, among other symptoms.
In total, the EPA has reported five chemicals that were contained in rail cars that were “derailed, breached and/or on fire”, in a letter the agency wrote to Norfolk Southern.
There’s more at the link, if you’re interested.
This story on Elon Musk’s giant ego is a couple of days old, but I wanted post it, just in case you haven’t heard about it. Platformer: Yes, Elon Musk created a special system for showing you all his tweets first.
At 2:36 on Monday morning, James Musk sent an urgent message to Twitter engineers.
“We are debugging an issue with engagement across the platform,” wrote Musk, a cousin of the Twitter CEO, tagging “@here” in Slack to ensure that anyone online would see it. “Any people who can make dashboards and write software please can you help solve this problem. This is high urgency. If you are willing to help out please thumbs up this post.”
By Andrew Wyeth
When bleary-eyed engineers began to log on to their laptops, the nature of the emergency became clear: Elon Musk’s tweet about the Super Bowl got less engagement than President Joe Biden’s.
Biden’s tweet, in which he said he would be supporting his wife in rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles, generated nearly 29 million impressions. Musk, who also tweeted his support for the Eagles, generated a little more than 9.1 million impressions before deleting the tweet in apparent frustration.
In the wake of those losses — the Eagles to the Kansas City Chiefs, and Musk to the president of the United States — Twitter’s CEO flew his private jet back to the Bay Area on Sunday night to demand answers from his team.
Within a day, the consequences of that meeting would reverberate around the world, as Twitter users opened the app to find that Musk’s posts overwhelmed their ranked timeline. This was no accident, Platformer can confirm: after Musk threatened to fire his remaining engineers, they built a system designed to ensure that Musk — and Musk alone — benefits from previously unheard-of promotion of his tweets to the entire user base.
A bit more:
In recent weeks, Musk has been obsessed with the amount of engagement his posts are receiving. Last week, Platformer broke the news that he fired one of two remaining principal engineers at the company after the engineer told him that views on his tweets are declining in part because interest in Musk has declined in general.
His deputies told the rest of the engineering team this weekend that if the engagement issue wasn’t “fixed,” they would all lose their jobs as well.
Late Sunday night, Musk addressed his team in-person. Roughly 80 people were pulled in to work on the project, which had quickly become priority number one at the company. Employees worked through the night investigating various hypotheses about why Musk’s tweets weren’t reaching as many people as he thought they should and testing out possible solutions.
There’s more at the link, believe it or not. I never thought anyone could be more of a malignant narcissist than Donald Trump, but Musk might actually surpass him.
I’ll end there. Please share your thoughts on these stories, and post links to stories you have found interesting.
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