Posted: December 27, 2022 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because |
Kees van Dongen, Ice Skating
Good Morning!!
This will be a quickie post, because I’m still sick. I can testify that coughing all day and all night for 5 days in a row is exhausting and debilitating.
There’s not a lot of exciting news, which is to be expected during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. But there’s always something in politics to gossip about. Today’s juicy story is about George Santos, the newly elected New York representative who seems to have lied about his life and history in every way you can imagine. This story has been going on for awhile, and it just keeps getting worse.
CNN: Rep.-elect George Santos admits to lying about resume, says he’s ‘not a criminal.’
GOP Rep.-elect George Santos of New York admitted in two separate interviews on Monday to lying about parts of his resume but claimed that he hasn’t committed any crimes and intends to serve in Congress.
Santos has faced scrutiny over discrepancies in his employment and education history, as well as other public claims he has made about his biography. In interviews with WABC radio and the New York Post – the first times Santos has spoken publicly about the controversy – he acknowledged that he had fabricated some facts.
“I am not a criminal. Not here, not abroad, in any jurisdiction in the world have I ever committed any crimes,” Santos said in an interview with WABC radio host John Catsimatidis.
“To get down to the nit and gritty, I’m not a fraud. I’m not a criminal who defrauded the entire country and made up this fictional character and ran for Congress. I’ve been around a long time. I mean, a lot of people know me. They know who I am. They’ve done business dealings with me,” he added.
“I’m not going to make excuses for this, but a lot of people overstate in their resumes, or twist a little bit. … I’m not saying I’m not guilty of that,” he said.
Santos also admitted that he never worked directly for the financial firms Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, as he has previously suggested, but claimed that he did do work for them through his company, telling the New York Post it was a “poor choice of words” to say he worked for them.
He also told the Post that he didn’t graduate from any college or university, despite claiming he had degrees from Baruch College and New York University.
“I didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning. I’m embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my resume,” he told the Post, adding that he owns up to that and that “we do stupid things in life.”
Do we even know for sure his name is George Santos?
More from the New York Post article: Liar Rep.-elect George Santos admits fabricating key details of his bio.
Santos, elected to Congress on Nov. 8 to represent the Long Island- and Queens-based 3rd District, was also accused of lying about his family history, saying on his campaign website that his mother was Jewish and his grandparents escaped the Nazis during World War II.
Tower of London Ice Rink, by Andrew Macara .
Santos now says that he’s “clearly Catholic,” but claimed his grandmother told stories about being Jewish and later converting to Catholicism.
“I never claimed to be Jewish,” Santos said. “I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish.’”
Santos, the first openly gay non-incumbent Republican elected to the House, also faced accusations that he lied about his sexual orientation, with the Daily Beast reporting last week that he was previously married to a woman until shortly before he launched his unsuccessful 2020 campaign against Democrat Tom Suozzi.
The soon-to-be lawmaker confirmed to The Post on Monday that he was indeed married to a woman for about five years, from 2012 until his divorce in 2017, but insisted that he is now a happily married gay man.
Santos admitted to financial problems:
Santos also acknowledged being a deadbeat tenant in Sunnyside, Queens, where the Times reported he was ordered by a judge to pay more than $12,000 to a former landlord who claimed non-payment of several months of rent — as well as that Santos had tried to pass a check that bounced.
On Monday, Santos claimed that at the time of the lawsuit, his family was deep in medical debt from his mother’s cancer battle.
“We were engulfed in debt,” he said. “We had issues paying rent at the time. It’s the vulnerability of being human. I am not embarrassed by it.”
Santos said his mother died of cancer on Dec. 23, 2016, after living with him at the Queens apartment and acknowledged the judgment against him.
Asked if he ever actually paid the arrears, Santos admitted: “We didn’t pay it off. I completely forgot about it.”
Santos also admitted to lying when he claimed that he owned 13 different properties, saying he now resides at his sister’s place in Huntington but is looking to purchase his own place.
There’s more on Santos’ lies at the link. It’s just endless.
B ut now Santos seems to have plenty of money. Where did it come from? The Washington Post: Rep.-elect George Santos acknowledges ‘résumé embellishment’ but answers little on finances.
George Santos, a Long Island Republican who won a pivotal U.S. House race in November, acknowledged Monday night that he embellished his biography, seeking to explain his actions by saying in a radio interview that “a lot of people overstate in their résumés.”
While Santos played down the harm done with his claims, first raised in a New York Times story last week, he did briefly address how his wealth has skyrocketed in the past several years to enable him to lend hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign.
He told City and State NY that after different jobs, he opened his own firm and “it just worked because I had the relationships and I started making a lot of money. And I fundamentally started building wealth.” With that, he added, “I decided I’d invest in my race for Congress. There’s nothing wrong with that.” [….]
This past week, after the New York Times report raised a host of questions about whether Santos had fabricated much of his biography, Santos’s lawyer said the congressman-elect had been defamed, but he did not address specifics. The Times noted that Santos claimed that he worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. Spokesmen for both companies confirmed to The Post that they had no record of his employment.
Santos said during the 11-minute radio interview on Monday that “the way it’s stated on the résumé, doing work for — I have worked ‘for,’ not ‘on’ or ‘at’ or ‘in’.” He said that he learned a lesson but that it doesn’t mean “I’m some fictional character.”
When Santos in June 2021 announced his bid forNew York’s 3rd District, which largely represents an affluent section of the North Shore of Long Island, he made a promise that few other candidates could match. If elected, he said in a campaign video, “I pledge to never take a salary.”
He furthered the impression that he was independently wealthy by lending his campaign at least $580,000, and his political action committee at least $27,000, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The loans played a key role in his surprising victory and helped give Republicans a narrow majority in the House.
Read more about Santos’ finances at the WaPo link.
Noah Lanard and David Corn published this detailed article about Santos’ finances at Mother Jones on December 21. I’m too sick with this chest cold to read something this complicated, but maybe Dakninkat can make sense of it: Scandal-Struck George Santos Just Revived the Firm That Netted Him Mystery Millions.
The Washington Post reports today that: Democrats call for George Santos to resign seat over résumé ‘lies.’
Democratic lawmakers are calling for Rep.-elect George Santos to resign from the House seat he won in November, after the Long Island Republican admitted to “résumé embellishment” — dialing up the pressure on GOP leadership to respond.
“GOP Congressman-elect George Santos, who has now admitted his whopping lies, should resign,” tweeted Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), urging Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to call a vote to expel Santos if he does not quit.
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) said that if Santos takes his new seat, it would set a precedent encouraging others to seek public office by falsifying their credentials, while Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) accused Santos of “defrauding the voters of Long Island about his ENTIRE resume.”
McCarthy (R-Calif.) has so far not responded to allegations that Santos misled voters about key details of his biography, which were first reported in a New York Times story last week.
Of course not. McCarthy needs this guy for his tiny House majority. Besides Santos fits in perfectly with the party of Trump. Maybe Santos can run for president next.
More stories to check out:
The New York Times: ‘Tragic Battle’: On the Front Lines of China’s Covid Crisis.
The Washington Post: Hitting back at Trump, Biden gears up for more clashes with GOP.
The Guardian: The untold story of how a US woman was sentenced to six years for voting.
The Daily Mail: Another Putin critic ‘falls out a window’ to his death: Sausage tycoon plummets from luxury hotel – two days after his male friend died of a ‘heart attack’ on their trip to India.
Buffalo News: Good Morning, Buffalo: ‘Blizzard of the century’: Life safety remains focus as deaths reach 28 in Buffalo Niagara.
CNN: South Korea fires warning shots after North Korean drones enter its airspace.
The Daily Beast: The Woman Who Plans to Make Elon Musk Pay for His Twitter Sins.
I’m going back to bed for now. Take care, Sky Dancers!
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Posted: December 24, 2022 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because |
Good Morning!!
By Camille Pissarro
I’m still coughing constantly, so not at my best; but I’ll see what news I can find to share with you on this freezing cold Christmas Eve.
First up, I want to recommend this lengthy article at the New York Times Magazine by Dan Draper and Luke Broadwater: Inside the Jan. 6 Committee. Power struggles, resignations and made-for-TV moments — the untold story of the most important congressional investigation in generations.
The story is really fascinating and reads like a political thriller. The authors explain how the Committee carefully structured its presentations with the help of former TV executive James Goldston. Everything in the hearings was very deliberate and planned out. From the article:
One afternoon in early May, a lanky, bespectacled and mostly bald 53-year-old British American named James Goldston sat in a conference room in the Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. House Office Building before the expectant gazes of 25 or so men and women: the staff of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. For almost a year, they had been amassing evidence against former President Donald J. Trump and his associates. In less than a month, the committee would be presenting this evidence in a succession of live televised hearings. Goldston, who had left his position as president of ABC News a year earlier, had just been hired by the committee to assist in this endeavor.
“So what have we got?” he asked the staff members.
Quite a lot, replied the committee’s lead investigator, Tim Heaphy, a former U.S. attorney. The committee staff had conducted nearly 1,000 witness interviews. It had collected over a million pages of documents from the National Archives and other sources. It had obtained hundreds of phone records, in addition to thousands of text messages sent by and to Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff. The committee’s cache of visual material included hundreds of hours of never-before-seen footage that security cameras captured during the attack.
The committee’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, and its vice chairwoman, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, had worked with the staff to organize the hearings around seven specific methods by which Trump and his allies sought to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election: the willful spreading of lies that the election had been stolen; trying to coerce the Department of Justice into disputing the election results; pressuring Vice President Mike Pence; pressuring state and local officials; seeking to recruit phony electors in several contested states; summoning a mob to Washington; and then, upon inciting that mob, sitting back for more than three hours and doing nothing to stop the violence. The idea, Heaphy said, was for every hearing to include a significant audiovisual representation of the evidence the staff had gathered.
I can’t possibly summarize this long story, but here’s just a bit more. I do hope you’ll go read it; it’s really excellent.
The most consequential congressional committee in generations was immersed in high drama from beginning to end. It originated six months after a domestic siege of the Capitol. It devoted a year to seeking evidence from sources who were often reluctant or even hostile. It then presented that evidence in the form of captivating televised hearings that were watched by more than 10 million Americans at a time, leading up to the November 2022 midterms in which a clear majority cast their ballots against election denialism. And then the committee concluded its work by making history with its criminal referrals of a former president to the Department of Justice.
Mujer con gato – Sonya Grassman
But the inner workings of the Jan. 6 committee — members of Congress, lawyers, video producers and assorted staff members totaling about 80 people tasked with investigating a violent attack on American democracy and a sitting president’s role in that attack — have been almost completely shrouded from public view. Through extensive interviews with all nine of the committee’s members and numerous senior staff members and key witnesses, we have been able to reconstruct a previously unreported account of the committee’s fevered, fraught and often chaotic race to a finish line that has always been understood to be Jan. 3, 2023, when the new Congress is sworn in and a new Republican majority in the House would immediately dissolve the committee. Those same efforts took place at a time when the Republican Party was resolutely united behind the committee’s principal target, Trump, with politicians and voters alike joining the former president in lustily condemning the inquiry at every opportunity.
The committee’s first few months were rocky, even “tumultuous,” in the words of one member, as the lawmakers struggled to plot out a strategy to investigate what they saw as a sprawling, complex conspiracy. It was only after they hired around a dozen former federal prosecutors, including two U.S. attorneys and a lawyer who helped put the drug lord known as El Chapo in prison, that things began to get serious: The committee sent requests to telecommunications companies to preserve phone and text records of some 700 potential witnesses. Soon, witnesses started agreeing to testify, with dozens of interviews coming in a week. If a high-ranking Trump official refused to comply, the committee tried to bring in an aide. If the aide refused, the former prosecutors went after the aide’s aide.
Some of the most interesting parts of the story focus on Nancy Pelosi’s decision to ask Liz Cheney to join the Committee and Cheney’s very important role in the investigation. Whatever you think of her politics, Cheney is a remarkable woman.
Jennifer Rubin at The Washington Post: The Jan. 6 report’s most important finding: Trump enabled extremist groups.
It will take weeks to absorb the massive, 845-page report from the House Jan. 6 select committee. No doubt, certain sections will receive more attention than others, such as Chapter 1, about Donald Trump’s role in constructing election lies, and Chapter 7, about the near-total absence of White House records during the four-hour siege of the U.S. Capitol. (Was any evidence destroyed?)
But from a historical, legal and national security perspective, the most alarming information comes in Chapters 6 and 8 and Appendix 1. Those sections cover the right-wing extremists who jointly planned and executed the violent uprising — and the degree to which Trump enabled their attack.
First and foremost, the report busts a myth promoted by right-wing apologists that because some insurrectionists began the assault on the Capitol before Trump concluded his “Stop the Steal” speech, he was not the inspiration for the attack. Wrong.
Chapter 6 details the degree to which members of extremist groups (e.g., Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, Three Percenters) seized upon Trump’s “big lie” of a stolen election. They heard his call to come to D.C. and believed he wanted them to do what was needed to keep him in power. The Proud Boys planned to move ahead of the crowd, which later — at Trump’s instruction — followed them down Pennsylvania Avenue.
In Chapter 8, the report details the early removal of barricades at the Peace Circle by the Proud Boys and their associates. That cleared the way for thousands of protesters to move down Pennsylvania Avenue directly to the Capitol. That provides evidence of the meticulous preparation that went into the assault.
Much of the country experienced a huge winter storm yesterday, and today millions of people are being hit with record cold temperatures.
Read more at the WaPo.
CNN: At least 9 dead as massive winter storm leaves more than a million without power and bitter cold across much of US.
A massive winter storm battered the US on Friday with frigid temperatures, high winds and heavy snow, leaving at least nine people dead, knocking out power to over a million customers and wrecking holiday plans from coast to coast.
By Pierre-John Maurel
The storm – expected to intensify throughout Friday as it barrels through the Midwest and East – is making for grim road conditions with poor visibility and ice-covered streets. Coastal flooding is also an issue, particularly along the shorelines of the Northeast.
All modes of travel – planes, trains and automobiles – were being disrupted: There were hundreds of miles of road closures and flight cancellations were growing rapidly. In New York, flooding along the Long Island Rail Road forced part of the Long Beach branch to temporarily shut down.
“Christmas is canceled,” said Mick Saunders, a Buffalo, New York, resident who was two hours into blizzard conditions that are expected to last through Sunday morning. “All family and friends agreed it’s safer this way.”
At least 9 deaths have been reported since Wednesday.
In north-central Kansas, three people were killed in separate car crashes on Wednesday evening; one death was confirmed to be weather-related, and two were believed to be weather-related but need more investigation, according to Kansas Highway Patrol spokesperson Lt. Candice Breshears.
In Kansas City, one person died after losing control of their Dodge Caravan on icy roads Thursday afternoon, according to the Kansas City Police Department. “The Dodge went down the embankment, over the cement retaining wall and landed upside down, submerged in Brush Creek,” police said in a statement.
In Kentucky, three people died due to the storm, including two in vehicle crashes and the other a “housing insecure” person in Louisville, Gov. Andy Beshear said. The man’s body was found outside with no obvious signs of trauma and an autopsy would determine the cause of death, police said.
And in Ohio, four people have died “as a result of weather-related auto accidents” and several others have been injured, according to Gov. Mike DeWine.
Life threatening cold has pushed all the way to the Gulf Coast and the Mexican border, with below zero wind chills reported as far south as Austin and Atlanta. Many locations in the eastern US are in for their coldest Christmas Eve in decades as the Arctic blast reaches its peak.
More than one million customers in the US are experiencing power outages amid the winter weather and frigid temperatures, according to the website PowerOutage.US. Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania have the most outages.
Mother and Cat, by Mine Ocubo
In Georgia, Fulton County DA Fani Willis’s grand jury investigating the Trump gang’s interference in the state’s 2020 presidential election has finished its work.
AP: Georgia special grand jury wraps up probe of Trump, allies.
A special grand jury investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies illegally tried to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election in Georgia appears to be wrapping up its work, but many questions remain.
The investigation is one of several that could result in criminal charges against the former president as he asks voters to return him to the White House in 2024.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who began investigating nearly two years ago, has said she will go where the facts lead. It would be an extraordinary step if she chooses to bring charges against Trump himself.
“Even if he’s acquitted by a jury, for him to face trial and to have a public trial with evidence on the record would be an epic thing for American history,” Georgia State University law professor Clark Cunningham said….
Over about six months, the grand jurors have considered evidence and heard testimony from dozens of witnesses, including high-profile Trump associates and top state officials. A prosecutor on Willis’ team said during a hearing in November that they had few witnesses left and didn’t anticipate the special grand jury continuing much longer.
The grand jurors are expected to produce a final report with recommendations on potential further action. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who’s supervising the panel, will review the report and recommend to the court’s chief judge that the special grand jury be dissolved. The judges of the county Superior Court will then vote on whether to let the special grand jurors go or whether more investigation is necessary.
The special grand jury cannot issue indictments. Willis will decide whether to go to a regular grand jury to pursue criminal charges.
Click the link to read the rest.
This seems like a big deal. The New York Times: The F.D.A. Now Says It Plainly: Morning-After Pills Are Not Abortion Pills.
The Food and Drug Administration on Friday significantly changed the information that will be in every box of the most widely used emergency contraceptive pills to make clear that they do not prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the womb. The agency explained in an accompanying document that the products cannot be described as abortion pills.
Up to now, packages of the brand-name pill, Plan B One-Step, as well as generic versions of it have said that the pill might work by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting in the womb — language that scientific evidence did not support. That wording led some abortion opponents and politicians who equate a fertilized egg with a person to say that taking the morning-after pill could be the equivalent of having an abortion or even committing murder.
By Paul Kulsha (the mysterious P.A.R.K., the artist behind last week’s illustration of the cat in an overcoat, walking a pet mouse.)
The F.D.A. revised the leaflets inserted in packages of pills to say that the medication “works before release of an egg from the ovary,” meaning that it acts before fertilization, not after. The package insert also says the pill “will not work if you’re already pregnant, and will not affect an existing pregnancy.”
In a question-and-answer document posted on the F.D.A.’s website, the agency explicitly addressed the abortion issue. In answer to the question, “Is Plan B One-Step able to cause an abortion?” the agency writes: “No.” It added: “Plan B One-Step prevents pregnancy by acting on ovulation, which occurs well before implantation. Evidence does not support that the drug affects implantation or maintenance of pregnancy after implantation, therefore, it does not terminate a pregnancy.”
Since the Supreme Court overturned the ruling that ensured the national right to abortion, advocates of abortion rights have warned that some conservative states may outlaw or restrict morning-after pills on the erroneous grounds that they might cause abortions. Advocates and reproductive health providers have also worried that people who are misinformed about how the pills work may decline to use an effective tool to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
For at least a decade, the pills have figured in political debates about abortion. During the 2012 presidential election, Mitt Romney called emergency contraceptives “abortive pills,” and two other Republican presidential candidates, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, made similar statements.
The crazies won’t buy it, but it’s still a good thing.
Speaking of enabling crazies, Elon Musk continues to make a mess of Twitter.
Reuters: Exclusive: Twitter removes suicide prevention feature, says it’s under revamp.
Twitter Inc removed a feature in the past few days that promoted suicide prevention hotlines and other safety resources to users looking up certain content, according to two people familiar with the matter who said it was ordered by new owner Elon Musk.
After publication of this story, Twitter head of trust and safety Ella Irwin told Reuters in an email that “we have been fixing and revamping our prompts. They were just temporarily removed while we do that.” [….]
The removal of the feature, known as #ThereIsHelp, had not been previously reported. It had shown at the top of specific searches contacts for support organizations in many countries related to mental health, HIV, vaccines, child sexual exploitation, COVID-19, gender-based violence, natural disasters and freedom of expression.
Its elimination had led to increased concerns about the well-being of vulnerable users on Twitter. Musk has said that impressions, or views, of harmful content are declining since he took over in October and has tweeted graphs showing a downward trend, even as researchers and civil rights groups have tracked an increase in tweets with racial slurs and other hateful content….
Boy with Cat, by Ivan Generalic, 1959
Eirliani Abdul Rahman, who had been on a recently dissolved Twitter content advisory group, said the disappearance of #ThereIsHelp was “extremely disconcerting and profoundly disturbing.”
Even if it was only temporarily removed to make way for improvements, “normally you would be working on it in parallel, not removing it,” she said.
Washington-based AIDS United, which was promoted in #ThereIsHelp, and iLaw, a Thai group mentioned for freedom of expression support, both told Reuters on Friday that the disappearance of the feature was a surprise to them.
AIDS United said a webpage that the Twitter feature linked to attracted about 70 views a day until Dec. 18. Since then, it has drawn 14 views in total.
Damar Juniarto, executive director at Twitter partner Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network, tweeted on Friday about the missing feature and said “stupid actions” by the social media service could lead his organization to abandon it.
Musk backed down after the blowback.
The Guardian: Twitter restores suicide-prevention hotline feature after outcry.
Twitter has restored a feature that promoted suicide prevention hotlines and other safety resources to users looking up certain content, after coming under pressure from users and consumer safety groups.
The feature, known as #ThereIsHelp, placed a banner at the top of search results for certain topics, listing contacts for support organizations in many countries related to mental health, HIV, vaccines, child sexual exploitation, Covid-19, gender-based violence, natural disasters and freedom of expression.
Reuters said on Friday the feature had been taken down this week. Citing two people familiar with the matter, the report said the removal was ordered by the social media platform’s owner, Elon Musk.
After publication of the story, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, confirmed the removal but said it was temporary….
Musk then denied the feature had been removed, and called the Reuters report “fake news”.
Nonetheless, the report appeared at the start of the Christmas holiday, a fraught time for many, prompting widespread concern. The anonymous sources cited by Reuters said millions had encountered #ThereIsHelp messages on Twitter….
“This is the worst time of the year to remove the suicide prevention feature,” wrote Jane Manchun Wong, a software developer and Twitter user. “Instead of leaving a time gap without suicide prevention feature for a revamp, they could’ve kept the old prompt and replaced it with a new one when it’s ready.”
Early on Saturday, Musk responded, tweeting: “1. The message is actually still up. This is fake news. 2. Twitter doesn’t prevent suicide.”
What an asshole. I hope Tesla stock drops to zero.
That’s all I have for you today. I hope you all have a nice holiday weekend, celebrating in whatever manner you wish.
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Posted: December 17, 2022 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because |
Winter’s Day, by Lucie Bilodeau
Happy Caturday!!
Late last night, after receiving widespread condemnation from the likes of the EU and the UN, Elon Musk restored the Twitter accounts of some of the journalists he had impulsively suspended on Thursday. Supposedly he did this based on an unscientific poll of Twitter users.
The Washington Post: Musk’s suspension of journalists on Twitter spurs U.S., international condemnation.
U.S. and international officials condemned Twitter and Elon Musk on Friday after the social media company abruptly suspended several U.S. journalists, expressing concern about retaliation and the potentially chilling effect on free speech.
The moves invited sharp rebuke from public officials at the European Commission and the United Nations, as well as criticism from a U.S. senator. Even some of Musk’s own supporters, who advocate a broad interpretation of free speech, appeared taken aback by the about turn….
Accounts that were suspended include @ElonJet, which tracks the location of Musk’s private plane through the use of publicly available data, as well as other accounts that track helicopter and plane locations. Twitter suspended the accounts of several journalists on Thursday night, including from The Washington Post, the New York Times and CNN.
Musk later accused the reporters of posting “basically assassination coordinates” for him and his family — although he provided no evidence that any of the journalists had done so.
Also on Friday, the account of Linette Lopez, a journalist who has written critically of Musk and Tesla, also appeared to be suspended. It was not immediately clear what had prompted the suspension….
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) tweeted in defense of the reporters Friday, saying Musk’s actions “are a fast track to Twitter becoming obsolete.”
European Commission Vice President Vera Jourová, whose brief includes the rule of law and disinformation, tweeted that the “arbitrary suspension of journalists on Twitter is worrying.”
“EU’s Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom and fundamental rights. This is reinforced under our #MediaFreedomAct,” she wrote. “@elonmusk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon.”
Late last night, Musk backed down.
Matthew Murphy at The Daily Beast: Elon Musk Lifts Twitter Suspensions: ‘The People Have Spoken.’
Elon Musk has reinstated the accounts of the journalists he had suspended after claiming they had shared details about the location of his private jet.
The Twitter CEO launched a poll on the social media site on Thursday asking if the accounts of the journalists should be reinstated “now,” or in “7 days from now.”
In the early hours of Saturday morning he tweeted, “The people have spoken. Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now.”
More than 58 percent of the 3.8 million respondents voted for “now” in the poll….
Journalists including Insider columnist Linette Lopez, Ryan Mac of The New York Times, Drew Harwell of The Washington Post, Donie O’Sullivan of CNN, Matt Binder of Mashable, Micah Lee of The Intercept, Steven Herman of VOA, as well as Aaron Rupar, Tony Webster, and Keith Olbermann, all found their Twitter accounts suspended with no warning….
While the accounts of Harwell, O’Sullivan, Binder, Lee, Herman, Rupar, Webster, and Mac were all reinstated, those of Olbermann and Lopez still appeared to be suspended as of Saturday morning.
The ElonJet account that has been dedicated to tweeting the location of Musk’s private jet also remained suspended….
Twitter also targeted rival, Mastodon, by blocking users from adding their Mastodon username to their Twitter profile.
There’s quite a bit of news about January 6 investigations. First, the House select committee will be wrapping up its work next week.
Luke Broadwater at The New York Times: Jan. 6 Panel Plans Vote on Referring Trump for Insurrection and Other Charges.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol plans on Monday to vote on issuing criminal referrals against former President Donald J. Trump for insurrection and at least two other charges, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss it.
It had been widely expected the panel would recommend charges against Mr. Trump for obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States. The panel’s members had already argued in federal court that they believed it was likely that he committed those two felonies. But the addition of an accusation of insurrection was a new development.
The House impeached Mr. Trump last year for incitement of insurrection, and the members of the panel have long argued Mr. Trump was the central figure who fomented an insurrection against the United States as he sought to cling to power. Politico earlier reported that a charge of insurrection would be considered.
By Vicky Mount
Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the Jan. 6 committee tasked with studying possible criminal referrals, was the lead impeachment manager against Mr. Trump on the count of incitement of insurrection.
Referrals against Mr. Trump, which the committee is slated to approve as part of its report, would not carry any legal weight or compel the Justice Department to take any action, but they would send a powerful signal that a congressional committee believes the former president committed certain crimes….
The committee also was set to consider whether to issue criminal and civil referrals for some of Mr. Trump’s top allies during a meeting scheduled for Monday as it prepares to release a voluminous report laying out its findings about the attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
Members also were expected to discuss the forthcoming report and recommendations for legislative changes.
Kyle Cheney of Politico reported yesterday that Judge Beryl Howell has ordered the unsealing of emails relevant to the efforts to overturn the 2020 election results: Judge unseals new details of contacts among Rep. Perry, Trump-connected attorneys.
A federal judge revealed Friday that earlier this year she granted Justice Department investigators access to emails between three Trump-connected attorneys and Rep. Scott Perry as part of the federal investigation into election subversion efforts by the former president and others.
At the request of DOJ, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Beryl Howell unsealed a June opinion in which she determined that 37 emails sent among Trump-era Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, his aide Ken Klukowski and conservative attorney John Eastman and Perry (R-Pa.) — another top Donald Trump ally who chairs the House Freedom Caucus — were not protected by attorney-client privilege.
Notably, Howell indicated in her opinion that investigators had prioritized accessing any emails sent to or from Perry’s account.
Howell also unsealed a second opinion, issued in September, in which she determined that 331 documents from Clark — whom Trump nearly installed as acting attorney general as part of his bid to seize a second term — were similarly not protected by attorney-client privilege.
The documents were largely versions of a potential autobiography Clark had outlined in mid-October 2021, writing that recounted a bizarre effort to have Trump install him as acting attorney general in order to get more traction to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. The outline included a description of a pivotal Jan. 3, 2021, meeting between Trump and senior DOJ officials where almost the entire top echelon of the department threatened to resign if the then-president put Clark in charge.
Clark’s legal team waded into the fight over the apparent book outline. But Howell seemed to disapprove of aspects of the approach Clark’s lawyers took to the document dispute, describing their strategy at one point as “throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.”
The information revealed in the opinions is the most significant insight yet into what prosecutors are doing with evidence they have obtained in their review of figures associated with Trump’s quest to remain in power despite losing reelection.
The House Ways and Means Committee is considering publicly releasing Trump’s tax returns next week.
The Wall Street Journal: Trump Tax Returns May Be Released After House Panel Meets Tuesday.
The House Ways and Means Committee scheduled a closed-door meeting for Tuesday at which lawmakers are likely to review former President Donald Trump’s tax returns and may vote to release some of them.
The committee obtained access to the returns last month when the Supreme Court removed the final obstacle after a yearslong fight against Mr. Trump. Democrats have little time left to act before they lose control of the House majority and the committee on Jan. 3.
The meeting notice sent to lawmakers Friday doesn’t specify what action the committee might take or which documents, reports or analysis, if any, it might make public. The panel has focused its efforts and its legal case on potential changes to the Internal Revenue Service program for annual audits of presidents, which is an agency policy not required by law.
Under the tax code, the Ways and Means Committee chairman—currently Rep. Richard Neal (D., Mass.)—has the authority to request anyone’s tax returns and records from the IRS. He can then review them, and so can agents he designates. The committee can consider them in a closed-door meeting and then vote to make those normally confidential records public as part of a report to the House.
Under the tax code, the committee has the authority, at its own discretion, to include otherwise confidential tax-return information in reports to the House, which are made public.
“God willing this is the final chapter in this saga,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell (D., N.J.), a senior Ways and Means member who has been a persistent advocate for obtaining the returns.
Read more at the WSJ. I didn’t encounter a paywall when I clicked a link at Memeorandum.
Shocking new charges have been filed against Edward Kelley, a January 6 defendant, according to Insider: A Capitol riot defendant has been hit with new criminal charges — and this time he’s accused of plotting to kill the law enforcement officials who investigated him.
A man already being investigated for his role in the January 6 riots has been hit with additional charges after being accused of planning to kill the law enforcement officers who investigated his case, according to a criminal complaint unsealed on Friday.
Tennessee resident Edward Kelley, 33, allegedly obtained a list of law enforcement officials and discussed plans, starting December 3, to kill these officials with Austin Carter, 26, and a witness who eventually reported their activities to authorities, the complaint says.
Kelley, who was one of the first people to enter the Capitol grounds on January 6, was previously charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers, civil disorder, destruction of government property, and seven other charges for his role in the Capitol riot.
According to the complaint, a witness who was interviewed by the FBI said Kelley handed Carter an envelope with a document of the names, titles, and phone numbers of approximately 37 law enforcement officials who investigated him and were “present at arrest or home search” of Kelley on May 5, 2022.
The witness then met with Kelley and Carter on December 3 at a park in Maryville, Tennessee, where Kelley discussed plans with both Carter and the witness.
The witness said Kelley stated “with us being such a small group, we will mainly conduct recon missions and assassination missions,” with one of these missions being an attack on Federal agents. KellLaey also asked whether or not the witness owned firearms and said “we will do more long-distance things,” which the witness believed to be a reference to assassinations.
Read more at the link.
I’ll end with this interesting story by Dan Lamothe at The Washington Post: No alien life discovered on Earth, Pentagon says, but search deepens.
A new office at the Pentagon is scrutinizing hundreds of reports of unidentified objects in air, sea, space and beyond, senior U.S. defense officials said Friday, and while it has discovered no signs of alien life, the search is set to expand.
The issue has taken on increasing seriousness as a bipartisan group of lawmakers presses the Defense Department to investigate instances of unidentified phenomena and disclose publicly what they learn. Established in July, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office is evaluating recent reports and soon could evaluate accounts that date back decades, officials said.
Black cat in snow, by Vicky Mount
The Pentagon’s top intelligence official, Ronald Moultrie, told reporters during a news conference, the first to discuss the office and its ongoing work, that “At this time … we have nothing” to affirm the existence of space aliens.
The proliferation of drones, including those operated by foreign adversaries and amateur hobbyists, account for many of the reports, officials said.
“Some of these things almost collide with planes,” said Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of the new office, who spoke to the media alongside Moultrie on Friday. “We see that on a regular basis.”
The U.S. government employs sophisticated sensors around the globe to collect data, and the office analyzes it for relevant information, they said, declining to elaborate.
While most of the reports the Pentagon investigates are about aerial objects, defense officials are increasingly concerned about unusual activity below the surface of the ocean, in space and on land. For that reason, the Pentagon now uses the term unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP, rather than previous descriptions such as “unidentified flying object.”
Moultrie said that, “Unidentified phenomena in all domains …pose potential threats to personal security and operational security, and they deserve our urgent attention.”
Unidentified “trans-medium” objects, he said, is a class of phenomena that would jump between domains, like from the air to the sea. None has been documented yet, Moultrie noted.
What else is happening? What stories are you following today?
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