Posted: July 28, 2022 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because |
Good Morning!!
Georg Scholz, German artist
There’s quite a mixed bag of news this morning. I’ll begin with the January 6 investigation updates, because that’s my personal obsession. Here’s the latest.
ABC News: Jan. 6 committee deepens probe into Trump Cabinet: Sources.
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is working to secure testimony from a growing number of officials in former President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.
Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who reportedly discussed the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment with then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, recently sat with committee investigators for a transcribed interview, the sources said.
ABC News previously reported that Pompeo is expected to speak with the committee in the coming days, though his interview is not officially scheduled.
Among the officials actively negotiating with the committee are the former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and the former acting secretary for the Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf, sources familiar with the negotiations said.
Wolf would also be able to speak to Trump’s desire to order the federal government to seize voting machines.
The engagement shows that even after the committee’s round of dramatic public hearings, it continues to pursue additional evidence about what the administration’s most senior officials knew about Trump’s actions surrounding Jan. 6.
CBS News: Mick Mulvaney will testify Thursday before House Jan. 6 committee.
Former Trump White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney is scheduled to testify Thursday before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol….
Mulvaney told CBS News that he believes Cassidy Hutchinson and other top former Trump officials who have testified about him before the panel….
After the Capitol attack, Mulvaney told CNBC he couldn’t “stay here, not after yesterday.”
“You can’t look at that yesterday and say I want to be a part of that in any way shape or form,” he told CNBC at the time.
Politico: Feds get new warrant to search contents of pro-Trump lawyer’s phone.
The Justice Department revealed on Wednesday that it had obtained a new search warrant to access the contents of attorney John Eastman’s phone, which it seized from the pro-Trump lawyer last month before transporting it to a lab in Virginia.
Landscape with bog canal, Paula Mondersohn Becker
The development, filed in court via Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Windom, came in response to a legal effort by Eastman to block investigators from “rummaging” through his files. The Justice Department had indicated that it would obtain a warrant that would limit investigators’ access to “evidence of specific federal crimes or specific types of material.”
Windom indicated in the filing that the new warrant — dated July 12 — included a “filter protocol” to prevent investigators from accessing privileged material, and that the details of that process had been communicated to Eastman’s attorneys.
Eastman is a central figure in the investigations of then-President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. He helped lead a team of lawyers that developed a fringe strategy to pressure Republican-run state legislatures to adopt “alternate” slates of pro-Trump electors that could be used to overturn Trump’s defeat. A federal judge in March determined that Eastman and Trump likely entered into a criminal conspiracy to overturn the election, in part by using the false electors to try to reverse the outcome on Jan. 6, 2021, the day Congress was required to count electoral votes and certify the election results.
Windom’s filing is a milestone of sorts because, while his identity has been known in media reports for months, before Wednesday the Justice Department never confirmed his involvement in the Jan. 6-related investigation. The filing also indicates that Windom is now working as an assistant U.S. attorney as part of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C.
At The New York Times, Alan Feuer and Katie Benner have a long explainer article on the fake electors scam: The Fake Electors Scheme, Explained. I haven’t read it yet, but both Feuer and Benner are excellent investigative reporters.
Climate Change Bill?
Supposedly, Joe Manchin has made a deal with Chuck Shumer to support a big climate change bill. Politico: ‘Holy s–t’: Surprise Senate deal sets stage for record climate change package.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Joe Manchin salvaged a deal on Wednesday for a bill that includes the biggest climate spending package in U.S. history, devoting hundreds of billions of dollars to clean energy technologies.
Tiger, by Franz Marc
Their agreement, which came after Manchin had rejected climate and energy measures two weeks ago under the Democrats’ reconciliation package, is aimed at slashing carbon emissions an estimated 40 percent from 2005 levels economy-wide by 2030. But italso comes with plans to ease rules that the West Virginia senator has said are constricting fossil fuel production and slowing needed upgrades to the power grid.
“Holy shit,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president of government affairs with the League of Conservation Voters. “This deal is coming not a moment too soon.”
Lawmakers and climate advocates — who had been hammering Manchin in recent days for rejecting the climate measures because of inflation concerns — were ecstatic at the surprise announcement.
“There’s been a ton of work done over the last two weeks to make the case to Sen. Manchin that this package is not inflationary and address his concerns in a serious way,” said Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of labor and environmental groups. “And we’re just thrilled that we’re at this moment,” he added.
The Washington Post: Manchin says he has reached deal with Schumer on economy, climate bill.
The new agreement, brokered between Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), opens the door for party lawmakers to try to advance the measure next week. It caps off months of fierce debate, delay and acrimony, a level of infighting that some Democrats saw as detrimental to their political fate ahead of this fall’s critical elections.
Under the deal, Schumer secured Manchin’s support for roughly $433 billion in new spending, most of which is focused on climate change and clean energy production. It is the largest such investment in U.S. history, and a marked departure from Manchin’s position only days earlier. The Democrats coupled the spending with provisions that aim to lower health-care costs for Americans, chiefly by allowing Medicare to begin negotiating the price of select prescription drugs on behalf of seniors.
The Medicare change would huge if it stays in the bill.
Marianne von Werefkin, The Storm
To pay for the package, Manchin and Schumer also settled on a series of changes to tax law that would raise $739 billion over the next decade — enough to offset the cost of the bill while securing more than $300 billion for cutting the deficit, a priority for Manchin. Democrats sourced the funds from proposals including a new minimum tax on corporations and fresh investments in the Internal Revenue Service that will help it pursue tax cheats.
Taken together, the package represents more than some Democrats once thought they might win from Manchin, who repeatedly has raised fiscal concerns with his own party’s ambitions. Only two weeks ago, the moderate from West Virginia, a coal-heavy state, signaled his opposition to new climate investments out of a fear that spending increases — funded in part by tax hikes — could harm the economy and worsen inflation.
“This is the most significant action we’ve taken on climate, that we will take on climate and clean energy, ever,” said Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), who led Democrats on a plan that would have punished polluters in the electricity sector before Manchin blocked it.
Prisoner Exchange with Russia?
CNN Exclusive: Biden administration offers convicted Russian arms dealer in exchange for Griner, Whelan.
I sure hope they can work something out.
Senate Races
Good news out of Wisconsin–it looks like Ron Johnson could be in trouble. Politico: Mandela Barnes gets open path to take on Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson.
Democrats hoping to flip Wisconsin’s Senate seat got a boost Wednesday when one of the party’s leading candidates bowed out and endorsed a rival, virtually clearing the field ahead of an expensive, hotly contested general election.
Milwaukee Bucks executive Alex Lasry withdrew from the Democratic Senate primary Wednesday afternoon and endorsed Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes to take on Republican Sen. Ron Johnson.
His departure from the race leaves a nearly open path for Barnes to capture the nomination in the Aug. 9 primary. Lasry, who loaned his campaign more than $12 million, has been Barnes’ top opponent for months.
Democrats welcomed the bombshell news, arguing that it will give Barnes a head start against Johnson in one of the most pivotal Senate races in the country and aid his fundraising operation. Johnson has $3.6 million in the bank as of the latest campaign finance reports, compared to Barnes’ $1.5 million.
Wisconsin is the last big question mark left for Senate Democrats in terms of setting their candidate lineup, and Barnes’ likely win means the party has its candidate roster all-but set for the general election.
“I don’t think there’s any question it helps,” said Joe Zepecki, a Wisconsin-based Democratic strategist. “Any time there’s a contested primary, you figure it’s going to take a couple days to put everybody back together. Because of how late our primary is, the faster you can get that done, the better. The other thing that I think is really important is this sends a signal to donors that they can now coalesce as well.”
Read more at the link.
The Economy
The Washington Post: U.S. economy shrinks again in second quarter, reviving recession fears.
The U.S. economy shrank again for a second straight quarter, at an annual rate of 0.9 percent, raising concerns the country may be heading into recession and compounding the Biden administration’s political challenges as it grapples with decades-high inflation.
Gabriele Munter, Sunset over Staffelsee
The U.S. economy shrank again for a second straight quarter, at an annual rate of 0.9 percent, raising concerns the country may be heading into recession and compounding the Biden administration’s political challenges as it grapples with decades-high inflation.
The second quarter slowdown reflected shifting consumer and business behaviors. Retailers bought fewer items, including cars, as consumers shifted their spending away from goods to services such as restaurants and hotels. Declines in home construction and government spending also contributed to the negative reading.
The sour GDP report reflects ongoing problems with inflation, which have been at 40-year highs for several months, as well as weakening home sales and challenges for some corporate sectors, including tech and finance. Even the-red hot labor market is beginning to show cracks. Broader worries about war in Ukraine, the global financial outlook and aggressive interest-rate hikes have prompted many economists to predict a recession in the next year.
See also: Statement by President Biden on Second Quarter GDP Report.
More Stories To Check Out
Reuters: Former Republicans and Democrats form new third U.S. political party. The so-called Democrat is Andrew Yang, the professional troll and troublemaker. The “Republicans” are David Jolly and Christie Todd Whitman, who wrote this Washington Post opinion piece: Most third parties have failed. Here’s why ours won’t.
The Washington Post: Adam Schiff is jockeying to lead House Democrats. It won’t be easy. I’d prefer Hakeem Jeffries.
AP News: Japanese city alarmed by biting, clawing, attacking monkeys.
The New York Times: Potentially Deadly Bacteria Detected in U.S. Soil for First Time. The samples in the U.S. came from the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
That’s my mixed bad of suggested reads for today. Take care, Sky Dancers, and have a great Thursday!
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Posted: July 26, 2022 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because |
Pierre Bernard, La Lecture, circa 1905
Good Afternoon!!
After yesterday, all those naysayers who have spent months attacking Merrick Garland need to stop whining and pay attention to what the DOJ is actually doing. I don’t know how many grand juries the DOJ has going, but we’re slowly learning that the ringleaders of the January 6 insurrection and even Trump administration insiders are being called to testify. Yesterday we learned of the most significant one so far: Mike Pence’s chief of staff Mark Short.
ABC News: Former Pence chief of staff appeared before grand jury probing Jan. 6.
Marc Short, the former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, appeared before a federal grand jury investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Short confirmed to ABC News.
Short, in an interview Monday night with ABC News’ Linsey Davis, said he was subpoenaed by a grand jury and complied with the subpoena, adding he “really can’t comment further than that” upon the advice of his legal counsel.
Short was caught by an ABC News camera departing D.C. District Court on Friday alongside his attorney, Emmet Flood.
Short is the highest-ranking Trump White House official known to have appeared before the grand jury.
Here’s what Short told ABC News in an interview last night:
“I think that having the Capitol ransacked the way that it was, I think did present liability and danger,” he told Davis in the interview. “And I think the Secret Service did a phenomenal job that day. I think that the bigger risk and despite the way perhaps it was characterized in the hearings last week, candidly, is that if the mob had gotten closer to the vice president, I do think there would have been a massacre in the Capitol that day.”
Woman reading, James C. Christensen
ABC News also learned that Pence’s chief counsel Marc Jacob also testified to the grand jury. And there’s more:
In March, the Department of Justice expanded its criminal probe into the events of Jan. 6 to include preparations for the rally that preceded the storming of the Capitol, as well as the financing for the event, multiple sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
Grand jury subpoenas were sent to those who assisted in the organizing and planning of former President Donald Trump’s “Save America” rally on the Ellipse near the White House, the sources said, with prosecutors seeking multiple records and documents related to the rally, including text messages and emails, as well as potential communications with other individuals regarding the logistics of the event.
I think there’s a very good chance that subpoenas went to Mark Meadows and Ginni Thomas, both of whom are keeping low profiles.
This is from Hugo Lowell at The Guardian: Mike Pence’s ex-chief of staff testifies to grand jury investigating January 6.
Short testified in response to a subpoena for about two to three hours, according to a source familiar with the matter, though it was unclear what he told the grand jury or whether he produced documents. ABC News earlier reported his appearance.
The development was also the latest indication that the criminal investigation into the Capitol attack has only escalated in recent months, as the House January 6 select committee argues Trump obstructed an official proceeding – a crime – in trying to stop Joe Biden’s certification.
Reading woman dreaming, by Henri Matisse, 1921
It was not clear to which grand jury, and therefore to which investigation, Short testified. The justice department has impaneled several grand juries over the Capitol attack, including one examining Trump’s fake electors scheme, which is also being investigated by a special grand jury in Georgia.
The grand jury investigating the fake electors scheme – grand jury #22-4 – sought information about the involvement of Donald Trump and his lawyers, while the grand jury that subpoenaed former Trump White House official Peter Navarro – grand jury #22-3 – sought his contacts with Trump.
Nonetheless, Short’s grand jury appearance marks the first known time that a top Trump White House official with inside knowledge about Trump’s actions leading up to the Capitol attack and what took place in the West Wing in the following days has cooperated with the justice department.
The DOJ investigation into the fake electors was also in the news yesterday.
The Washington Post: Arizona fake-electors subpoenas show breadth of DOJ Jan. 6 probe.
Grand jury subpoenas issued last month to two Arizona state lawmakers show the breadth of the criminal investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington into efforts by supporters of Donald Trump to use “false electors” to try to undo Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Copies of two subpoenas issued to Republican state senators from Arizona were released Monday via a public-records request, confirming what has been previously reported about the June demands for records related “to the signing or mailing of any document purporting to be a Certificate certifying Elector votes in favor of Donald J. Trump and/or Michael R. Pence.”
Old man reading, by Carl Spitzweg
The subpoenas issued to Karen Fann, president of the Arizona Senate, and Sen. Kelly Townsend also seek communications “relating to any effort, plan, or attempt to serve as an Elector” in favor of the then-president and then-vice president.
A subpoena is not an accusation but rather a demand for information that investigators believe may help them solve a crime. The documents released Monday cast a wide net for any communications that Fann and Townsend may have had with any member of the executive or legislative branch of the federal government; any representative or agent of Trump or his campaign; or Trump boosters Jenna Ellis, Bernard Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, Boris Epshteyn, James Troupis, Joe DiGenova, John Eastman, Joshua Findlay, Justin Clark, Kenneth Chesebro, Mike Roman or Victoria Toensing.
That’s a pretty wide net. Read more about the Arizona investigation at the WaPo link.
CNN’s Joan Biskupic has a scoop on the SCOTUS fight over Roe v. Wade: The inside story of how John Roberts failed to save abortion rights.
Elizabeth Weller never dreamed that her own hopes for a child would become ensnared in the web of Texas abortion law.
She and her husband began trying in late 2021. They had bought a house in Kingwood, a lakeside development in Houston. Elizabeth was in graduate school for political science, and James taught middle-school math.
The Wellers were pleasantly surprised when they got pregnant early in 2022.
In retrospect, Elizabeth says their initial joy felt a little naive: “If it was so easy for us to get pregnant, then to us it was almost like a sign that this pregnancy was going to be easy for us.”
Things did go fairly smooth at first. Seventeen weeks into the pregnancy, they learned they were expecting a girl. They also had an anatomy scan, which revealed no problems. Even if it had, the Wellers were determined to proceed.
By Edouard John Mentha
But then disaster struck.
It was May 10, 2022. Elizabeth was 18 weeks pregnant. She ate a healthy breakfast, went for a walk outside and came back home….
Elizabeth stood up to get some lunch. That’s when she felt something “shift” in her uterus, down low, and then “this burst of water just falls out of my body. And I screamed because that’s when I knew something wrong was happening.”
Her waters had broken, launching her into what she calls a “dystopian nightmare” of “physical, emotional and mental anguish.” She places the blame for the ensuing medical trauma on the Republican legislators who passed the state’s anti-abortion law, on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who signed it, and on the inflamed political rhetoric, which Elizabeth says only sees abortion “as one thing, a black-and-white issue, when abortion has all of these gray areas.”
Read the horror story at the link, if you can deal with it. This is what happens when men who have no clue how women’s bodies work think they have the right to tell control women’s choices.
It looks like Biden is considering another extension of the student loan moratorium. NBC News: Student loan servicers told not to contact borrowers as payment pause deadline nears.
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Posted: July 23, 2022 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because | Tags: CDC, food crisis, January 6 Committee hearings, Monkeypox, public health emergency, Russia, Secret Service, Turkey, Ukraine, World Health Organization |
Cats on Strike, by Leah Saulnier the painting maniac
Happy Caturday, Sky Dancers!!
As if we didn’t have enough bad news, we are now dealing with another global health emergency. Monkeypox is spreading rapidly around the world and here in the U.S. Cases have been reported in multiple states, including Massachusetts, Maine, New York, Washington, DC, Michigan, Florida, Texas, Illinois, and California. As of two days ago, there were already nearly 2,000 reported cases in the U.S.
Apoorva Mandavilli at The New York Times: W.H.O. Declares Monkeypox Spread a Global Health Emergency.
For the second time in two years, the World Health Organization has taken the extraordinary step of declaring a global emergency. This time the cause is monkeypox, which has spread in just a few weeks to dozens of countries and infected tens of thousands of people.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O.’s director general, on Saturday overruled a panel of advisers, who could not come to a consensus, and declared a “public health emergency of international concern,” a designation the W.H.O. currently uses to describe only two other diseases, Covid-19 and polio.
“We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly through new modes of transmission, about which we understand too little, and which meets the criteria” for a public health emergency, Dr. Tedros told reporters….
The W.H.O.’s declaration signals a public health risk requiring a coordinated international response. The designation can lead member countries to invest significant resources in controlling an outbreak, draw more funding to the response, and encourage nations to share vaccines, treatments and other key resources for containing the outbreak.
It is the seventh public health emergency since 2007; the Covid pandemic, of course, was the most recent.
The article discusses the controversy over how W.H.O. decides when to declare a health emergency. Some experts already think the agency waited too long on monkeypox.
Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy: Largest monkeypox study to date highlights new symptoms.
Many of the people infected in an international monkeypox outbreak experienced a single lesion or sore in their mouth or on their genitals, a departure from typical symptoms of the virus that could lead to clinicians to misdiagnose monkeypox as another sexually transmitted infection (STI).
Coffee with Henry #4, by Kazui Whitemoon
That’s one of the main takeaways from the New England Journal of Medicine‘s (NEJM‘s) new international study of the current outbreak, which is the largest case-study on the virus.
“This truly global case series has enabled doctors from 16 countries to share their extensive clinical experience and many clinical photographs to help other doctors in places with fewer cases. We have shown that the current international case definitions need to be expanded to add symptoms that are not currently included, such as sores in the mouth, on the anal mucosa and single ulcers,” said Chloe Orkin, PhD, of the Queen Mary University of London, in a university press release.
The study included clinical observations from 528 confirmed infections at 43 sites from Apr 27 to Jun 24 of this year. The median incubation period is 7 days in this outbreak, and the median age of a case-patient was 38. No deaths occurred, but 70 patients (13%) required hospitalization.
In the study, authors share many patients are presenting to clinics and hospitals for pain management or difficulty swallowing. Single anal sores have been recorded in several cases. One in 10 people had only a single skin lesion in the genital area, and 15% had anal and/or rectal pain, a symptom not typically seen in other monkeypox outbreaks.
A total of 98% of the cases documented were in gay or bisexual men, and while monkeypox is not an STI, per se, the authors said 95% of transmissions documented occurred during sexual relations. Seventy-five percent of case patients are white, and 41% are HIV-positive.
CNN: CDC reports the first two monkeypox cases in children in the US.
Two cases of monkeypox have been identified in children in the United States, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.
The two cases are unrelated and probably the result of household transmission, the CDC said.
One case is a toddler who is a resident of California. The other is an infant who is not a US resident. Public health officials are investigating how the children were infected.
Both have symptoms but are in good health and receiving treatment with an antiviral medication named tecovirimat or TPOXX, which the CDC recommends for children under the age of 8 because they are considered to be at higher risk from infection.
Painting by Vicky Mount
Since the monkeypox outbreak began in May, most of the cases have happened among men who have sex with men. However, anyone can catch the virus through close skin-to-skin contact. In the case of children, the agency said this could include “holding, cuddling, feeding, as well as through shared items such as towels, bedding, cups, and utensils.”
The CDC says the Jynneos monkeypox vaccine is being made available for children through special expanded use protocols. The agency has also developed new guidance for health care providers about identifying, treating and preventing monkeypox in children and teens.
Dr. Jennifer McQuiston, deputy director of the CDC’s Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology, said Friday that the cases in children were not surprising and that the US should be ready to respond to more.
Politico: Biden administration considering a public health emergency for monkeypox as cases swell.
U.S. health officials are discussing whether to declare a public health emergency for the monkeypox outbreak as they work to make treatments and vaccines available to more people.
The discussions come as the virus — which is endemic in West and Central Africa but unusual in the United States — continues to spread across the country. As of Thursday, there were 2,593 cases reported, up from 1,470 last week. The federal government announced Friday it has shipped over 300,000 doses of the vaccine to states and cities to control the outbreak.
“We’re looking at … what are the ways the response could be enhanced, if any, by declaring a public health emergency,” White House Covid response coordinator Ashish Jha told reporters during a briefing Friday.
Officials at the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also working to make tecovirimat, the only treatment available for monkeypox (though only FDA–approved for smallpox), easier for physicians to prescribe to patients. A more streamlined process to get the antiviral is expected to be announced to providers next week.
The White House will also use a new research agenda, which was announced Thursday and consists of $140 million in ongoing projects, to study stretching limited monkeypox vaccine doses, find new testing methods and expand treatment options, three White House officials told POLITICO.
Lunch with cats, Pierre Bonnard, 1906
We haven’t talked much about the war in Ukraine lately, but it has caused a global food crisis. Yesterday Russian supposedly agreed to stop blocking shipments of grain, but the Ukraine and U.S. governments are skeptical that Russia will follow through.
BBC News: Food crisis: Ukraine war: Deal signed to allow grain exports to resume by sea.
Ukraine and Russia have signed “mirror” deals which will allow Kyiv to resume exports of grain through the Black Sea.
The agreement will allow millions of tonnes of grain, currently trapped in Ukraine by the war, to be exported.
The world shortage of Ukrainian grain since Russia’s 24 February invasion has left millions at risk of hunger.
However, Kyiv refused to sign a direct deal with Moscow, and warned “provocations” would be met with “an immediate military response”.
Both sides attended the signing ceremony in Istanbul but did not sit at the same table. Russia’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu signed Moscow’s deal first, followed by Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov signing Kyiv’s identical agreement.
The deal – which took two months to reach – is set to last for 120 days, with a co-ordination and monitoring centre to be established in Istanbul, staffed by UN, Turkish, Russian and Ukrainian officials. It can be renewed if both parties agree.
The blockade of Ukraine’s grain has caused a global food crisis with wheat-based products like bread and pasta becoming more expensive, and cooking oils and fertiliser also increasing in price.
In January 6 news, CNN’s Whitney Wild and Jeremy Herb broke a story yesterday on those missing Secret Service text messages: First on CNN: Secret Service identified potential missing text messages on phones of 10 individuals.
Secret Service investigators were scrutinizing the phones of 10 Secret Service personnel that contained metadata showing text messages were sent and received around January 6, 2021, but were not retained, two sources told CNN.
Grandma and 10 cats in the bedroom, by Linda Benton
The scrutiny came after the Department of Homeland Security inspector general asked for the text records last year of 24 individuals at the Secret Service who were involved in January 6, but only one text had been produced. After the issue spilled into public view this month, the inspector general launched a criminal investigation into the matter, and lawmakers demanded answers from the Secret Service to go back and find out what happened to the texts that may have been deleted.
But the Secret Service’s internal investigation ground to a halt after a July 20 letter from the DHS inspector general informed the agency there was an ongoing criminal investigation, directing the Secret Service to stop its own probe.
Investigators had been working to determine whether the content of the text messages sent by the 10 personnel contained relevant information that should have been preserved, the sources said. Among the 24 Secret Service personnel under scrutiny, 10 other Secret Service personnel had no text messages, and three had only personal records, according to the sources.
The details of scrutiny of messages from 10 Secret Service personnel caps an extraordinary week of turmoil for the agency, which started with the inspector general
demanding answers about potential missing texts and led to a congressional subpoena and a criminal investigation into the matter.
There has to be a way to recover those text messages. I’m sure The Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig, author of a book on the Secret Service, is working her sources to find out more.
Dakinikat covered the final January 6 Committee hearing yesterday, but here are some more follow-up articles:
NPR: The Jan. 6 committee isn’t done. Expect more hearings, revelations and reports.
The House Select January 6th committee made clear they are going to resume hearings in September.
Republican Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., opened the final summer hearing by noting the progress the committee has made, but she added that there’s now new evidence and more witnesses to consider.
“Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued, and the dam has begun to break,” Cheney said.
Already, in the buildup to Thursday’s presentation, select committee aides had hinted future hearings could be on tap.
Kim Haskins, psychedelic cat
And Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., told reporters recently that the committee could issue an initial report in September, followed by a final report later this year. The findings would be accompanied by hearings, he said.
“We’re just getting a significant amount of information,” Thompson said. And the new evidence “pushes the timetable out.” [….]
Cheney also noted in this week’s hearing that the panel will now return to its investigative mode for the next several weeks.
“Our committee will spend August pursuing emerging information on multiple fronts, before convening further hearings this September,” Cheney said….
With plans to issue their findings in the form of reports and more hearings, the committee is racing to address new evidence along the way.
For example, the panel is now looking into allegations that the Secret Service deleted text messages during a two-day period surrounding the Jan. 6 attack. Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari has claimed the messages were erased after a request by his office, while the Secret Service has denied these allegations, saying the deletions were part of a system migration.
The Hill: Jan. 6 panel shows few signs of slowing down despite midterm risks.
The select committee’s prime-time hearing on Thursday was widely expected to mark the end of a crucial phase in the panel’s probe of last year’s riot, capping six weeks of publicly aired testimony — almost all of it from Republicans — aimed at pinning culpability for the rampage squarely onto Trump’s shoulders.
But every new revelation seems to turn up as many questions as answers, and the panel has altered its schedule to accommodate what it calls a wave of new information in need of perusal. The arrival of new witnesses has been accompanied by successful committee efforts to fight stonewalling in the form of executive privilege claims, and the panel has recently issued new subpoenas for even more evidence.
“The dam has begun to break,” Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), vice chair of the select committee, said Thursday night. “We have far more evidence to share with the American people — and more to gather.”
The Owl and the Pussycat, 2009 by P J Crook
With that in mind, the committee said it intends to use Congress’s long August recess to wade through the influx of new information, with designs to hold more hearings on its findings in September when lawmakers return to Washington. How many they’ll stage remains unclear, but the investigators are leaving themselves the flexibility to determine that schedule on the fly.
“We are pursuing many additional witnesses for testimony,” said Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who participated in Thursday’s hearing remotely after testing positive for COVID-19 earlier in the week. “We will reconvene in September to continue laying out our findings.” [….]
“We’re not done. The information continues to come in. The evidence is continuing to flow in,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) told CNN heading into Thursday’s hearing. “So this is … not the end of the story.”
More interesting January 6 stories to check out, links only:
Vicky Ward on her blog yesterday: What Trump World Really Thinks About Last Night’s Jan. 6 Hearing.
Alan Feuer and Michael Schmidt at The New York Times: The Jan. 6 Panel After 8 Hearings: Where Will the Evidence Lead?
Ruth Marcus at The Washington Post: Now we know the truth on what Trump sought to obscure about Jan. 6.
David Siders at Politico: ‘His life was threatened.’ But Pence isn’t talking about it.
Isaac Stanley Becker and Josh Dawsey at The Washington Post: Hearings test Trump’s clout and GOP’s wish to ‘forget about Jan. 6’
Michelle Goldberg at The New York Times: The Myth of the Good Trump Official.
That’s it for me today. I hope you’re all having a terrific weekend!
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Posted: July 21, 2022 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: January 6, January 6 Committee Public Hearings, Joe Biden, morning reads, Treason and Sedition Republican Style | Tags: Covid-19, Donald Trump, Joseph Cuffari, Matthew Pottinger, Rep. Andrew Clyde, Sarah Matthews, Secret Service |
Good Morning!!
Tonight is the final January 6 Committee hearing, at least for this month. It should be a blockbuster. There are plenty of predictions about what will happen tonight. There is also more news about the Secret Service deleting text messages from January 5 and 6. I’ll get to those stories in a minute, but first some breaking news.
Despite his advanced age, Biden appears to be healthy and fit. Here’s hoping his symptoms stay mild.
Tonight’s January 6 Committee Hearing
Hugo Lowell at The Guardian: January 6 panel to show Trump violated law by refusing to stop Capitol attack.
The January 6 House select committee is expected to make the case at its hearing on Thursday that Donald Trump potentially violated the law when he refused entreaties to take action to stop the 2021 attack on the US Capitol by a mass of his supporters, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
The panel will demonstrate that the former Republican president was “derelict in his duty” to protect the US Congress and might have also broken the federal law that prohibits obstructing an official proceeding before Congress, which had gathered to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
Matthew Pottinger
Trump could have called on national guard troops to restore order when he saw on TV the melee unfolding at the Capitol, the panel is expected to argue, or he could have called off the rioters via a live broadcast from the White House press briefing room, but he did not. Or he could have sent a tweet trying to stop the violence far earlier than he actually did, during the 187-minute duration of the Capitol attack.
The former president instead only reluctantly posted a tweet in the afternoon of January 6, hours after his top advisors at the White House and Republicans allies in Congress repeatedly implored him to intervene, the select committee will show….
The sources described what the select committee sees as potential legal culpability for the former president, speaking on the condition of anonymity ahead of the prime time hearing.
Two insider witnesses, “former deputy national security advisor Matthew Pottinger and former Trump press aide Sarah Matthews,” will testify in the hearing.
The two witnesses with inside knowledge of how the West Wing operated on January 6 are expected to narrate how that day unfolded, starting with how desperately Trump did not want to return to the White House after delivering his speech at the rally at the nearby Ellipse, where he had urged supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat….
The Guardian has learned, according to a person directly familiar with the matter, that in a previously unreported incident, the fracas [described in testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson” about going to the Capitol, after Trump told his supporters at the rally to go to Congress and “I’ll be there with you”, continued when he arrived back at the White House, and the argument spilled into the West Wing driveway.
Pottinger and Matthews are expected to testify about what happened when Trump was back at the White House, including details on Trump in his dining room off the Oval Office, where he watched the Capitol attack erupt on TV, transfixed by the images as rioters overran police and rampaged through the halls of Congress, the sources said.
The select committee will show through videotaped testimony from the Trump White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, and other aides, that the former president ignored repeated entreaties from advisers to help stop the Capitol attack, the sources said.
Rolling Stone: Exclusive: Jan. 6 Committee Plans to Humiliate MAGA Lawmakers Who Cowered During Capitol Attack.
The Jan. 6 committee plans to use its Thursday-night hearing to call out insurrection-friendly lawmakers who cowered during the Capitol attack but have since downplayed the insurrection’s severity, according to two sources familiar with the committee’s planning.
“They have plans to paint a really striking picture of how some of Trump’s greatest enablers of his coup plot were — no matter what they’re saying today — quaking in their boots and doing everything shy of crying out for their moms,” one source tells Rolling Stone. “If any of [these lawmakers] were capable of shame, they would be humiliated.” [….]
The committee has at times switched plans at the last minute, and it remains unclear which specific lawmakers the committee could call out. But at least some Republicans have already had their attempts to downplay or justify the attempted coup undone by footage from the day of the attack. When Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) claimed the insurrection “a normal tourist visit,” social media users quickly located photos of the Georgia Republican gasping in terror and hiding behind an armed Capitol police officer pointing a handgun at a barricaded entrance to the Senate floor.
https://twitter.com/BettyBowers/status/1394670227628171265?s=20&t=s2PoA7SQaC58YWCCbk_awg
In the 18 months since the insurrection, Republican lawmakers have tried to whitewash it through a series of contradictory talking points. Republicans have alternately downplayed the attack by calling it “a peaceful protest,” claimed it was violent but that the violence was carried out solely by nonexistent “antifa” or federal informants at the Capitol, or that Democrats were to blame for failing to adequately defend the Capitol against the protesters they variously claim weren’t violent or a threat.
Republicans like Reps. Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Paul Gosar have gone so far as to cast alleged rioters held in pretrial detention as unjustly accused political prisoners.
Read more at Rolling Stone.
The Washington Post: Even a day after Jan. 6, Trump balked at condemning the violence.
One day after the last rioter had left the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, President Donald Trump’s advisers urged him to give an address to the nation to condemn the violence, demand accountability for those who had stormed the halls of Congress and declare the 2020 election to be decided.
He struggled to do it. Over the course of an hour of trying to tape the message, Trump resisted holding the rioters to account, trying to call them patriots, and refused to say the election was over, according to individuals familiar with the work of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.
The public could get its first glimpse of outtakes from that recording Thursday night, when the committee plans to offer a bold conclusion in its eighth hearing: Not only did Trump do nothing despite repeated entreaties by senior aides to help end the violence, but he sat back and enjoyed watching it. He reluctantly condemned it — in a three-minute speech the evening of Jan. 7 — only after the efforts to overturn the 2020 election had failed and after aides told him that members of his own Cabinet were discussing invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.
“This is what he wanted to happen,” Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.), who is scheduled to lead the questioning Thursday along with Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), said in an interview this week. “You might have earlier on said, ‘Was he incompetent? Was he someone who freezes in a moment when they can’t react to something? Or was it exactly what he wanted to have happened?’ And after all of this, I’m convinced that this is exactly what he wanted to have happen.”
CNN: Trump had ‘extreme difficulty’ with his speech on the day after January 6.
The House committee investigating the insurrection plans to show footage at Thursday’s hearing of then-President Donald Trump having difficulty working through efforts to tape a message to his supporters on January 7, 2021, the day after the Capitol riot, sources familiar with the committee’s plans tell CNN….
Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who is a member of the committee, confirmed Wednesday night to CNN’s Anderson Cooper that the panel has the outtakes and plans to share some of them during the hearing.
“The President displayed extreme difficulty in completing his remarks,” Raskin said on “Anderson Cooper 360.”
“It’s extremely revealing how exactly he went about making those statements, and we’re going to let everybody see parts of that,” he added.
Rep. Adam Schiff, another committee member, told CNN’s Don Lemon later Wednesday that the outtakes “will be significant in terms of what the President was willing to say and what he wasn’t willing to say.”
The California Democrat said the outtakes will show “all of those who are urging him to say something to do something to stop the violence. You’ll hear the terrible lack of a response from the President, and you’ll hear more about how he was ultimately prevailed upon to say something and what he was willing to say and what he wasn’t.”
The video tape outtakes will be one part of a larger presentation during which the committee plans to detail Trump’s lack of attention to the ongoing riot. The committee has said it will focus on the 187 minutes that Trump sat back, refusing to act, as the Capitol was under siege. Some committee members have described this as Trump’s “dereliction of duty.”
The Secret Service and the Missing Text Messages
This shocking story broke last night. Carol Leonig and Maria Sacchetti at The Washington Post: Secret Service watchdog knew in February that texts had been purged.
A watchdog agency learned in February that the Secret Service had purged nearly all cellphone texts from around the time of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but chose not to alert Congress, according to three people briefed on the internal discussions.
Joseph Cuffari, Homeland Security Inspector General
That watchdog agency, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, also prepared in October 2021 to issue a public alert that the Secret Service and other department divisions were stonewalling it on requests for records and texts surrounding the attack on the Capitol, but did not do so, the people briefed on the matter said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal investigations.
The previously unreported revelation about the inspector general’s months-long delay in flagging the now-vanished Secret Service textscame from two whistleblowers who have worked with Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari, the people knowledgeable about the internal discussions said.
In recent days, one former employee approached the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), an independent government-accountability group, and described the decision from Cuffari’s office not to promptly disclose that Secret Service records had been wiped from agency phones starting in January 2021. The group relayed the information to congressional staff, who independently corroborated the account with a second whistleblower.
The congressional staff and two whistleblowers shared a concern that Cuffari’s office not alertingcongressional investigators to the missing records reduced the chances of recovering critical pieces of evidence related to the Jan. 6 attack.
The purged texts of Secret Service agents — some of whomplanned President Donald Trump’s movements on Jan. 6 and shadowed Trump as he sought to overturn the election results — could shed light on what Trump was planning and saying.
This story broke this morning on CNN.
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Posted: July 19, 2022 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because |
Summertime, 1894, by Mary Cassatt
Good Afternoon!!
Down in New Orleans, Dakinikat has been dealing with day after day of 90 degree weather for most of the summer. Now New England is going to heat up. So far we’ve had a relatively cool summer here in the Boston area, but today we begin an extended heat wave. WBUR: An extended heat wave begins in Boston on Tuesday.
Boston so far this year has seen two days hit 90 degrees or higher (June 26 and July 1), but that’s about to change. Hot air comes to the region Tuesday, and the heat will be here for an extended stay.
It’s likely the city will be coping with a six-day-long heat wave. That’s nearly a week of temperatures reaching 90 degrees or higher.
Typically, Boston averages about 15 days a year with such highs. In 2021, Boston recorded four heat waves, the longest of which occurred between June 5-9. We also saw 24 days at 90 degrees or higher last year, including a day in which the city hit 100 degrees.
Over 100 years ago, back in 1912, Boston endured its longest stretch of consecutive 90-degree days in history: nine in a row.
The heat is really bad in Europe too. From The Washington Post Capitol Weather Gang:
A historic and deadly heat wave has been scorching western Europe, killing hundreds in Spain and Portugal. Temperatures spiked to 115 degrees on the Iberian Peninsula amid bone-dry conditions, fueling wildfires and displacing thousands of people in France. The mercury topped 100 degrees (38 Celsius) in Britain on Monday and is expected to surge higher Tuesday.
For the first time, the U.K. Met Office has issued a red warning for heat, its most extreme alert. The warning, in effect through Tuesday, includes Birmingham, Oxford, Nottingham and London.
Wales already established its highest temperature on record Monday, and England could be next Tuesday, with temperatures as high as 104 degrees (40 Celsius).
Sitting in the Shade, by Roelof Rossouw
At the same time, another heat wave is brewing across the pond in the United States — one that produced a tie for Salt Lake City’s highest temperature Sunday and could bring readings as high as 113 degrees in Texas and Oklahoma on Tuesday.
A third heat wave is simmering in Central Asia.
These heat waves fit into a pattern of increasingly frequent, intense and prolonged events catalyzed by climate change. Human activities are pushing already high-end heat into record territory.
You can see maps of the high temperatures around the world at the WaPo link.
From AP News: UK breaks record for highest temperature as Europe sizzles.
Britain shattered its record for highest temperature ever registered Tuesday amid a heat wave that has seared swaths of Europe — and the national weather forecaster predicted it would get hotter still in a country ill prepared for such extremes.
The typically temperate nation was just the latest to be walloped by unusually hot, dry weather that has triggered wildfires from Portugal to the Balkans and led to hundreds of heat-related deaths. Images of flames racing toward a French beach and Britons sweltering — even at the seaside — have driven home concerns about climate change.
The U.K. Met Office registered a provisional reading of 40.2 degrees Celsius (104.4 degrees Fahrenheit) at Heathrow Airport in early afternoon — breaking the record set just an hour earlier and with hours of intense sunshine still to go. Before Tuesday, the highest temperature recorded in Britain was 38.7 C (101.7 F), set in 2019.
As the nation watched the mercury rise with a combination of horror and fascination, the forecaster warned temperatures could go higher still.
The sweltering weather has disrupted travel, health care and schools in a country not prepared for such extremes. Many homes, small businesses and even public buildings, including hospitals, don’t even have air conditioning, a reflection of how unusual such heat is in the country better known for rain and mild temperatures.
Summer Day by Berthe Morisot
Unfortunately, Joe Manchin, along with the Republicans in the Senate, refuses to vote for legislation to deal with climate change. Now Biden is considering executive action. The Washington Post: Biden could declare climate emergency as soon as this week, sources say.
President Biden is considering declaring a national climate emergency as soon as this week as he seeks to salvage his environmental agenda in the wake of stalled talks on Capitol Hill, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private deliberations.
The potential move comes days after Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) told Democratic leaders that he does not support his party’s efforts to advance a sprawling economic package this month that includes billions of dollars to address global warming. If an emergency is invoked, it could empower the Biden administration in its efforts to reduce carbon emissions and foster cleaner energy.
In anticipation of a potential announcement, Biden is set to travel to Somerset, Mass., to deliver a speech on climate change on Wednesday. The president intends to speak on “tackling the climate crisis and seizing the opportunity of a clean energy future to create jobs and lower costs for families,” the White House announced Tuesday morning.
Two of the individuals with knowledge of the discussions said also they expect the president to announce a slew of additional actions aimed at curbing planet-warming emissions. The exact scope and timing of any announcements remain in flux.
Boats in the Harbour at Collioure, 1905 (oil on canvas), Andre Derain
“The president made clear that if the Senate doesn’t act to tackle the climate crisis and strengthen our domestic clean energy industry, he will,” a White House official, who requested anonymity to describe the deliberations, said in a statement late Monday. “We are considering all options and no decision has been made.”
Jared Bernstein, a top White House economic adviser, emphasized to reporters at a news briefing earlier in the day that Biden would work “aggressively fight to attack climate change.”
“I think realistically there is a lot he can do and there is a lot he will do,” Bernstein said.
The prime time January 6 hearing is coming up on Thursday at 8PM. Unfortunately, Chairman Bennie Thompson has tested positive for Covid and won’t be able to preside. As of now, the hearing will go ahead as planned. I sure hope he didn’t pass the virus on to other committee members at recent in-person meetings.
The Guardian: Primetime January 6 hearing to go ahead despite chairman’s positive Covid test.
The chairman of the congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by extremist Trump supporters has contracted Covid – but Thursday’s primetime hearing will proceed, according to a statement from the chairman, Mississippi congressman Bennie Thompson.
“While Chairman Thompson is disappointed with his Covid diagnosis, he has instructed the select committee to proceed with Thursday evening’s hearing. Committee members and staff wish the chairman a speedy recovery,” committee spokesperson Tim Mulvey said….
Meanwhile, two former White House aides are expected to testify at the hearing as the panel examines what then president Donald Trump was doing as his supporters stormed the US Capitol, according to a person familiar with the plans.
Matthew Pottinger, former deputy national security adviser, and Sarah Matthews, a former press aide, are expected to testify, according to the person, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and requested anonymity.
Mrs. Monet and a friend in the garden. Two women sitting in the shade of a tree, by Claude Monet
Pottinger and Matthews resigned immediately after the January 6 insurrection, which interrupted the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the election.
Lawmakers on the nine-member panel have said the hearing will offer the most compelling evidence yet of Trump’s “dereliction of duty” that day, with witnesses detailing his failure to stem the angry mob.
“We have filled in the blanks,” Illinois Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger said on Sunday. “This is going to open people’s eyes in a big way.”
He added: “The president didn’t do very much but gleefully watch television during this timeframe.”
Kyle Cheney and Nicholas Wu at Politico: ‘Sprint through the finish’: Why the Jan. 6 committee isn’t nearly done.
The Jan. 6 select committee once envisioned a single month packed with hearings. Then a fire hose of evidence came its way — and now its members have no interest in shutting or even slowing the spigot.
As its summer hearings show some signs of chipping at Donald Trump’s electoral appeal, select panel members describe Thursday’s hearing as only the last in a series. Committee members, aides and allies are emboldened by the public reaction to the information they’re unearthing about the former president’s actions and say their full sprint will continue, even past November.
The only hard deadline, they say, is Jan. 3, 2023, when Republicans likely take over the House.
Sea Watchers, 1952, by Edward Hopper.
Thursday’s hearing will focus on Trump’s hours of inaction on Jan. 6, 2021, while a mob ransacked the Capitol and supporters, aides and family members begged him to speak out. But beyond that, the committee is pursuing multiple new avenues of inquiry created by its investigation of Trump’s scheme to seize a second term he didn’t win, from questions about the Secret Service’s internal communications as well as leads provided by high-level witnesses from his White House.
“It’s been amazing to see, kind of, the flurry of people coming forward,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), one of the panel’s two Republican members. “So it’s not the time to wind it down.” [….]
A major reason to continue, for many select panel members, is the public discussion they’ve driven about what they see as an ongoing threat to democracy posed by Trump and his allies. With every new hearing, particularly as White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson described an enraged Trump directing armed supporters to the Capitol and trying to join them there, the panel has seemed to get further under the skin of the former president as he contemplates a third bid for the White House.
What else is happening? What stories are you following today?
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