Posted: July 16, 2022 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: abortion rights, Afternoon Reads, just because | Tags: abortion, cat art, caturday, Department of Justice, Donald Trump, Dr. Caitlin Bernard, Grace Paley, January 6 Committee, Mark Meadows, Mike Roman, Rep. Mike Kelly |
Jacques Hnizdovsky, born Pylypcze, Ukraine 1915-died New York City 1985
Good Afternoon!!
There’s quite a bit of January 6 investigation news today, but before I get to that I want to call your attention to two long reads on abortion. Some of us here are old enough to remember the days before Roe v. Wade declared that women had a right to make decisions about our own bodies. Now that right has been taken away.
This is a very good essay by short story author and poet Grace Paley about the days when abortion was a crime and getting access to birth control was extremely difficult, republished in 2017 at The Literary Hub: Women Died All the Time: Grace Paley on Illegal Abortions.
It was the late 30s, and we all knew that birth control existed, but we also knew it was impossible to get. You had to be older and married. You couldn’t get anything in drugstores, unless you were terribly sick and had to buy a diaphragm because your womb was falling out. The general embarrassment and misery around getting birth control were real.
There was Margaret Sanger at that time, and she had a clinic right here in Manhattan in a beautiful house on Sixteenth Street; I still walk past and look at it. As brave as the Margaret Sanger people were, they were under very tough strictures. It was scary to go there. I was 18, and it was 1940 when I tiptoed in to get a diaphragm. I said I was married….
Most of my friends married early. I married when I was 19; then my husband went overseas during the Second World War. I would have loved it if I had had a child when he went overseas, but we had decided against it.
When he came back, I was in my late 20s, and in the next couple of years, I had two children. When the children were one and a half and three, I got pregnant again. I don’t remember if my birth control failed . . . I wasn’t the most careful person in the world. Something in me did want to have more children, but since I had never gotten pregnant until I really wanted to—I was 26 and a half when I had my first child—I had assumed that the general mode would continue.
I knew I couldn’t have another child. I was exhausted with these two tiny little kids; it was just about all I could do to take care of them. As a child, I had been sick a lot, and people were always thinking I was anemic . . . I was having bouts of that kind. I was just very tired, all the time. I knew something was wrong because my whole idea in my heart had always been to have five, six children—I loved the idea of having children—but I knew I couldn’t have this kid.
Please go read the rest. It’s well worth your time. I also recommend this series of reactions to the loss of abortion rights at the London Review of Books: Prejudice Rules LRB contributors on the overturning of Roe v. Wade. I haven’t read them all yet, but I plan to.
More abortion stories:
The Guardian: Daughter of doctor who gave 10-year-old an abortion faced kidnapping threat. Caitlin Bernard of Indiana is named on an extreme anti-abortion website linked to Amy Coney Barrett.
Dr. Caitlin Bernard testified last year, in a case involving abortion restrictions in Indiana, that she was forced to stop providing first-trimester abortions at a clinic in South Bend. She stopped the procedures after she was alerted by Planned Parenthood – who in turn had been alerted by the FBI – that a kidnapping threat had been made against her daughter.
The Black Cat Stretch, by chocolatefrizz89 at deviant art
The Guardian reported in January that the names of six abortion providers, as well as their educational backgrounds and places of work, were listed on the website of an extreme anti-abortion group called Right to Life Michiana, in a section of the website titled “Local Abortion Threat”. Bernard was among the list of doctors named on the extremist website.
Barrett, who voted to overturn Roe v Wade last month, signed a two-page advertisement published by the group in 2006, while she was working as a professor at Notre Dame. It stated that those who signed “oppose abortion on demand and defend the right to life from fertilization to natural death”. The second page of the ad called Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion, “barbaric”. The advertisement was published in the South Bend Tribune by St Joseph County Right to Life, which merged with Right to Life Michiana in 2020.
Bernard said in sworn testimony that she had started to travel to South Bend once a month – beginning in 2020 – in order to perform first trimester abortions, but stopped making the 2.5-hour trip once she learned of the threat against her daughter.
It’s time for Amy Coney Barrett to recuse herself from cases involving abortion.
The Washington Post: Confusion post-Roe spurs delays, denials for some lifesaving pregnancy care.
A woman with a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy sought emergency care at the University of Michigan Hospital after a doctor in her home state worried that the presence of a fetal heartbeat meant treatingher might run afoul of new restrictions on abortion.
At one Kansas City, Mo., hospital,administrators temporarily required “pharmacist approval” before dispensing medications used to stop postpartum hemorrhages, because they can also be also used for abortions.
And in Wisconsin, a woman bled formore than 10 days from an incomplete miscarriage after emergency room staffwould not remove the fetal tissueamid a confusing legal landscape that has roiled obstetric care.
Robert Smithson, American, b. Passaic, New Jersey, 1938–1973
In the three weeks of turmoil since the Supreme Court overturnedthe constitutional right to abortion, many physicians and patients have been navigating a new reality in which the standard of care for incomplete miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies and other common complications is being scrutinized, delayed — even denied — jeopardizing maternal health, according to the accounts of doctors in multiple states where new laws have gone into effect.
While state abortion bans typically carve out exceptions when a woman’s life is endangered, the laws can be murky, prompting some obstetricians to consult lawyers and hospital ethics committees on decisions around routine care.
And it’s going to get a lot worse. We’re going back to the dark ages. See also this piece at The Texas Tribune: Texas hospitals are putting pregnant patients at risk by denying care out of fear of abortion laws, medical group says.
Now for some January 6 investigation news:
The Wall Street Journal: Justice Department Steps Up Jan. 6 Probe of Those in Trump’s Orbit.
The Justice Department is adding prosecutors and resources to its investigation into the actions of former President Donald Trump’s allies to overturn the 2020 election, according to people familiar with the matter, as the related congressional hearings have turbocharged interest in Mr. Trump’s own role in that effort.
A Justice Department team focusing on elements of the investigation beyond the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has in recent weeks been given more personnel, office space and an expanded mandate, the people said….
As the Justice Department began in late 2021 to develop cases alleging complex conspiracies and investigate sources of funding, it assigned an experienced prosecutor from Maryland, Thomas Windom, to focus on those efforts.
Mr. Windom previously met with some skepticism within the department when he pushed to explore the activities of several members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle, the people said, with some officials believing prosecutors lacked sufficient evidence to pursue those paths. But the hearings have revealed new details of Mr. Trump’s actions leading up to and on Jan. 6, 2021, that legal experts have said could put the former president in greater legal jeopardy for charges such as fraud, inciting a riot or obstructing the election’s certification.
The Cat, by Pablo Picasso
The testimony of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson in particular—including her allegation that Mr. Trump knew some of the protesters were armed but wanted them at his rally and at the Capitol anyway—has broadened some Justice Department officials’ view of the potential scope of the probe, the people said, though officials said the testimony didn’t prompt any change in investigative strategy.
Ms. Hutchinson told the committee on June 28 that Mr. Trump was concerned that magnetometers were keeping supporters from attending his speech at the Ellipse earlier in the day on Jan. 6. She said she overheard him saying something to the effect of, “I don’t effing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the mags away. Let the people in, they can march to the Capitol from here.”
Former prosecutors have identified that testimony as the first to speak to Mr. Trump’s intent as tension escalated that day, and said it suggests he knew some of the protesters were armed and urged them toward the Capitol anyway as lawmakers were certifying President Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. Prosecutors would need to prove that Mr. Trump knew his actions would result in violence to pursue a related criminal case against the former president.
Read more at the WSJ. I didn’t encounter a paywall when I click on the link at Memeorandum.
Politico: Trump campaign operative who delivered Jan. 6 false elector lists is identified.
A little-known Donald Trump campaign operative delivered lists of false electors to Capitol Hill in a bid to get them to Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6, 2021, according to two people familiar with the episode.
Mike Roman, then Trump’s 2020 director of Election Day operations, delivered those false elector certificates — signed by pro-Trump activists in Michigan and Wisconsin — to Rep. Mike Kelly’s (R-Pa.) chief of staff at the time, both people told POLITICO. Kelly was a Trump ally in the effort to overturn the 2020 election, and his then-top aide received the documents from Roman before deputizing a colleague to disseminate copies on Capitol Hill, according to both people.
Cat Gathering (Night) by Inagaki Tomoo, 1957, color woodcut
Roman’s role in the effort to deliver those slates of electors directly to Pence has not previously been reported. The onetime Trump White House researcher and former aide to the conservative Koch network, who was subpoenaed in February by the Jan. 6 select committee, did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
The origin of the false elector lists, which never got to Pence before he presided over certification of Joe Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, has become an enduring subplot in the select panel’s investigation of the Capitol attack designed to disrupt that day. After the committee revealed the role of a top aide to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) in the episode during a hearing last month, Johnson said the false elector lists came from Kelly — who has repeatedly denied any involvement by his office in their distribution.
More at the link.
Politico: Jan. 6 committee subpoenas Secret Service amid text message controversy.
The Jan. 6 select committee has subpoenaed the Secret Service following a string of conflicts with the agency and revelations that a large swath of text messages sent by agents on the day of the Capitol attack have been erased.
The move marks the first time the select committee has publicly announced the subpoena of an Executive Branch agency and comes the same day the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general privately briefed committee members on the discovery of the missing text messages.
The subpoena, directed at agency director James Murray — who is retiring later this month — demands the production of records by July 19.
“The Select Committee seeks the relevant text messages, as well as any after action reports that have been issued in any and all divisions of the USSS pertaining or relating in any way to the events of January 6, 2021,” Chairman Bennie Thompson said in a letter accompanying the subpoena.
Committee members emerging from the DHS briefing said they were awaiting details about whether the inspector general will be able to obtain any of the missing messages.
“We’re interested in getting the texts from the Secret Service that happened on the fifth and sixth and we want to get the IG’s perspective on what he thought was going on,” Thompson told reporters Friday.
One more from Politico: Justice Dept. backs House over Jan. 6 subpoena to Meadows.
The Justice Department declared Friday that the Jan. 6 select committee has adequately justified its subpoena for testimony and documents from Mark Meadows, a former chief of staff in Donald Trump’s White House.
A Cat Named Sam, Andy Warhol
That conclusion came as part of a landmark filing taking a position for the first time that former advisers to presidents who have left office are not “absolutely immune” from congressional subpoenas.
DOJ filed the brief Friday evening in a civil suit Meadows filed in December against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the committee’s members in a bid to quash subpoenas the former Trump aide received from the House panel.
Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols asked the Justice Department to weigh in on what immunity, if any, Meadows is entitled to in the dispute.
“When a congressional committee demands testimony from an immediate presidential adviser after the President’s term of office has ended, the relevant constitutional concerns are lessened. Accordingly, the Department does not believe that the absolute testimonial immunity applicable to such an adviser continues after the President leaves office. But the constitutional concerns continue to have force,” the department argues in the new brief, signed by DOJ Civil Division attorney Elizabeth Shapiro and endorsed by other top officials.
Finally, a preview of Thursday’s prime-time January 6 Committee hearing by Luke Broadwater at The New York Times: Jan. 6 Panel to Dissect Trump’s 187 Minutes of Inaction During Riot.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is planning to return to prime time on Thursday for what could be the finale of its summer hearing schedule: a session focused on former President Donald J. Trump’s 187 minutes of inaction as a mob of his supporters assaulted Congress.
The hearing, scheduled for 8 p.m. on July 21, is expected to give a detailed account of how Mr. Trump resisted multiple entreaties from staffers, lawyers and even his own family to call off the attack, which raged for hours in the early afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021.
Representatives Elaine Luria, Democrat of Virginia, and Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, are expected to play leading roles in the hearing.
One witness the panel could hear from is Sarah Matthews, a former White House press aide who resigned in the aftermath of Jan. 6. She has told the committee that a tweet Mr. Trump sent attacking Vice President Mike Pence while the riot was underway was like “pouring gasoline on the fire.” [….]
The committee is also likely to play clips of the testimony of other witnesses who attempted to intervene with Mr. Trump during those more than three hours, including Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel. The committee has also said it received testimony from Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who was Mr. Pence’s national security adviser, about Mr. Trump’s refusal to condemn the violence as the mob engulfed the Capitol.
Mr. Kellogg said Ivanka Trump, Mr. Trump’s eldest daughter, urged her father at least twice to call off the violence, as did Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, and Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary.
Read the rest at the NYT.
That’s it for me today. What are your thoughts? What stories are you following?
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Posted: July 14, 2022 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, just because | Tags: 10-year-old rape victim, Abortion horror stories, Department of Justice, Donald Trump, January 6 Committee, Jared Yates Sexton, journalism, Roe v. Wade, Supreme Court |
Summer Porch, by Childe Hassam
Good Afternoon!!
I’m feeling kind of blue today. Partly it’s just the inevitable losses that come with my advanced age, and of course I’m sad about what’s happening to our country. In the past 7 years, we were forced to deal with an evil and incompetent man as presidential candidate and then president, and a still-ongoing global pandemic that has killed more than a million Americans. No wonder so many of us are exhausted. I got this in an e-mail from political writer Jared Yates Sexton this morning. He describes our situation better than I ever could.
There are nine members of the Supreme Court of the United States of America. It might be presumptuous, but I’m guessing if you’re reading this you are not counted among them.
The last time I checked, there was one President, one hundred members of the Senate and 435 representatives in the House. Though there are individuals in the White House and Congress who read this newsletter, their ability to effectively pass legislation or break up the intentional logjam at the federal level is somewhat negligible.
Meanwhile, our political and economic systems have been largely corrupted and co-opted by an increasingly wealthy group of power brokers hellbent on growing their wealth and power at any cost, including the destruction of the Earth and total dismantling of liberal democracy. Chances are, considering the math, you are probably not a member of this historically wealthy class of individuals, but if you are, feel free to get a hold of me. I’ve got some ideas should you want to make a difference.
All of it is overwhelming. To watch detestable actions like the overthrow of Roe V. Wade, followed by a yawning lack of response by those charged with protecting us, leaves a person feeling desperate and, over time, isolated and demoralized. The system, after all, is designed with this in mind. The founding of the United States was predicated on neutralizing the power of the masses in favor of rule by a tiny group of wealthy white men. Almost everything that has happened since then has been to either shore up that rule or battle attempts to trouble it.
To be clear, it feels as if the deck is stacked against you because it is. The flow of history is the story of how the powerful have continually protected themselves from situations where the fate of the masses is weighed more heavily than their own self-interest.
This newsletter appears to be a promo for Sexton’s upcoming book, and it doesn’t offer solutions; but it sure does paint a picture of where we are as a country right now. Sexton says, “we are not alone and we are not powerless.” I guess he’ll explain that in the book.
There isn’t that much I can do at my age, but I keep posting on this blog; somehow that gives me a sense of being a small part of the resistance to authoritarianism. At least I’m paying close attention to daily events and what is being written about them. We’ve been posting to this blog for many years now, and we’ve seen people come and go. If you’re still coming here, I’m very grateful for your presence. Thank you for reading and sharing your thoughts with us.
A Ten-Year-Old Pregnant Rape Victim and Clueless Male Journalists
Last week a story broke about a 10-year-old Ohio girl who was raped and impregnated. The Guardian:
The case of a 10-year-old child rape victim in Ohio who was six weeks pregnant, ineligible for an abortion in her own state, and forced to travel to Indiana for the procedure has spotlighted the shocking impact of the US supreme court ruling on abortion.
Breakfast Porch, William James Glackens, 1925
The story of the girl came to light three days after the court overturned a nationwide right to terminate pregnancy, and Ohio’s six-week “trigger ban” came into effect.
Dr Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, said she had received a call from a colleague doctor in Ohio who treats child abuse victims and asked for help….
Abortion providers like Bernard say they are receiving a sharp increase in the number of patients coming to their clinics for abortion from the neighboring states where such procedures are now restricted or banned.
“It’s hard to imagine that in just a few short weeks we will have no ability to provide that care,” Bernard told the Columbus Dispatch.
You’d think since the story mentioned a doctor by name, people would accept that the story was legitimate. Bernard even appeared on MSNBC’s The Last Word to talk about the case. But Republicans in Ohio claimed the story was fabricated, and that triggered claims that the story was fake on Fox News and social media. Even the Washington Post fact checker got involved.
But yesterday we learned that the perpetrator of the rape has been arrested. CNN: A man was charged in the rape of a 10-year-old who traveled to Indiana for an abortion.
Fox News’s Tucker Carlson was still pretending the story was false last night.
At Neiman Lab, Laura Hazard Owen writes: Unimaginable abortion stories will become more common. Is American journalism ready?
As more states restrict or ban abortion, more girls who are raped will face a choice between crossing state lines for care or having babies while they are still in elementary school.
House with a porch, by Andrew Wyeth
I wish that this weren’t true. But events this week make it very clear that if you can’t bear to believe it — even if it seems so impossible that it needs a heartily skeptical fact-checking treatment — it is going to happen.
And reporters who want to tell these stories (and the news organizations those reporters work for) may have to abandon some conventional journalism wisdom in order to give the stories the attention they deserve….
The two-byline story — written by Shari Rudavsky and Rachel Fradette — made headlines around the world. But the first reaction of mainly right-leaning news organizations — despite the fact that the doctor who performed the abortion was on the record saying this happened — was to try to debunk it. Why? I mean, in part because it’s horrible and we don’t want to believe a 10-year-old could get raped and pregnant, because 10-year-olds are babies themselves. (By the way, Covid appears to have increased early-onset puberty around the world. Getting your period “early” now means getting it when you’re younger than 8. People for whom a pregnant 10-year-old strains credulity should keep this in mind.)
The debate over the story’s veracity started with a Washington Post “Fact Checker” column. In “A one-source story about a 10-year-old and an abortion goes viral,”
You can read the quotes at Neiman Lab, but lets just say Kessler was extremely skeptical.
“An abortion by a 10-year-old is pretty rare,” Kessler notes. (Oh, that “by.”) “The Columbus Dispatch reported that in 2020, 52 people under the age of 15 received an abortion in Ohio.” Definitions of “rare” may vary, but if 52 under-15-year-olds got abortions in Ohio in 2020, that’s one a week — and it’s just abortions that were reported, during a pandemic when a lot of abortion clinics were closed.
The Post column opened the door to worse takes. “Every day that goes by, the more likely that this is a fabrication. I know the cops and prosecutors in this state. There’s not one of them that wouldn’t be turning over every rock, looking for this guy and they would have charged him,” Ohio attorney general Dave Yost told USA Today’s Ohio Network bureau on Tuesday. Picking up on Kessler’s “single source” criticism, Yost added, “Shame on the Indianapolis paper that ran this thing on a single source who has an obvious axe to grind.”
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board called the episode “An abortion story too good to confirm,” as if there was something particularly juicy and delicious about this one (hint: It’s her age!)
We’re going to be seeing many more horror stories now that the Extreme Court has returned women and girls to second-class citizen status. And no, male journalists will not be ready to deal with the onslaught.
January 6 Committee News
CNN: Trump tried to call a member of the White House support staff talking with January 6 committee, sources say.
Trump’s crimes just keep on piling up. When will he pay a price? No one outside the DOJ knows.
Donald Ayer, Stuart Gerson, and Dennis Aftergut at The Atlantic: January 6 Was Trump’s Project All Along. And The Department of Justice Has More Than Enough Evidence To Prosecute Him For It.
After seven hearings held by the January 6 committee thus far this summer, doubts as to who is responsible have been resolved. The evidence is now overwhelming that Donald Trump was the driving force behind a massive criminal conspiracy to interfere with the official January 6 congressional proceeding and to defraud the United States of a fair election outcome.
The evidence is clearer and more robust than we as former federal prosecutors—two of us as Department of Justice officials in Republican administrations—thought possible before the hearings began. Trump was not just a willing beneficiary of a complex plot in which others played most of the primary roles. While in office, he himself was the principal actor in nearly all of its phases, personally executing key parts of most of its elements and aware of or involved in its worst features, including the use of violence on Capitol Hill. Most remarkably, he did so over vehement objections raised at every turn, even by his sycophantic and loyal handpicked team. This was Trump’s project all along.
By Edward Hopper
Everyone knew before the hearings began that we were dealing with perhaps the gravest imaginable offense against the nation short of secession—a serious nationwide effort pursued at multiple levels to overturn the unambiguous outcome of a national election. We all knew as well that efforts were and are unfolding nationwide to change laws and undermine electoral processes with the specific objective of succeeding at the same project in 2024 and after. But each hearing has sharpened our understanding that Donald Trump himself is the one who made it happen.
As former prosecutors, we recognize the legitimacy of concerns that electoral winners prosecuting their defeated opponents may look like something out of a banana republic rather than the United States of America; that doing so might be viewed as opening the door to prosecutorial retaliation by future presidential winners; and that, in the case of this former president, it might lead to civil unrest.
But given the record now before us, all of these considerations must give way to the urgency of achieving a public reckoning for Donald Trump.
Read the rest of the argument at The Atlantic.
The New York Times: Jan. 6 Panel Will Turn Over Evidence on Fake Electors to the Justice Dept.
The Justice Department has asked the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol for evidence it has accumulated about the scheme by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies to put forward false slates of pro-Trump electors in battleground states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020.
Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, disclosed the request to reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, and a person familiar with the panel’s work said discussions with the Justice Department about the false elector scheme were ongoing. Those talks suggest that the department is sharpening its focus on that aspect of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, one with a direct line to the former president.
Mr. Thompson said the committee was working with federal prosecutors to allow them to review the transcripts of interviews the panel has done with people who served as so-called alternate electors for Mr. Trump. Mr. Thompson said the Justice Department’s investigation into “fraudulent electors” was the only specific topic the agency had broached with the committee.
A Justice Department official said the agency maintained its position that it was requesting copies of all transcripts of witness interviews.
More details at the NYT.
CNBC reports that the next hearing is scheduled for next Thursday at 8PM. and will focus on “Trump’s hourslong failure to stop the Capitol riot.”
NBC News says there may be more hearings in August: The Jan. 6 committee won’t rule out more hearings this summer.
Have an enjoyable Thursday everyone!!
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Posted: July 12, 2022 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Cassidy Hutchinson, Donald Trump, extremist groups, Jamie Raskin, January 6 Committee hearings, Jason Van Tatenhove, Oath Keepers, Pat Cipillone, Patrick Byrne, Proud Boys, Stephanie Murphy, Stephen Ayres, Will be wild tweet |
Good Morning!!
The January 6 Committee will hold a hearing today beginning at 1PM. There won’t be a hearing on Thursday night, but at least one is planned for next week. As Dakinikat wrote yesterday, the hearing is expected to focus on ties between Trump and militia groups the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, and how Trump used tweets to communicate with them and urge his followers to converge on Washington DC to interfere with the certification of electoral votes on January 6, 2021.
Nicholas Wu and Kyle Cheney at Politico: Jan. 6 panel zeroes in on Trump’s ‘clarion call’ to extremists.
The Jan. 6 select committee plans to make its most complex case yet at its public hearing Tuesday: that Donald Trump’s words and actions influenced extremists and brought them to the steps of the Capitol.
“Be there. Will be wild,” Trump tweeted on Dec. 19, 2020, barely two weeks before a mob seeded with members of the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers besieged the Capitol and threatened the transfer of power to Joe Biden. That tweet will be the focal point of the Jan. 6 panel’s seventh public hearing, as House investigators aim to show that the former president’s most extreme supporters were intently listening — and quickly began preparing for potential violence in support of Trump’s goal to stay in power.
The tweet was a “clarion call” to the groups, said Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), who is leading Tuesday’s hearing along with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.).
Tuesday’s hearing will require investigators to delve into the sordid world of internet extremism and specifically lay out how Trump’s words rippled through its corners.
Former Oath Keepers spokesperson Jason Van Tatenhove is expected to be one of the witnesses Tuesday afternoon, according to a person familiar with the situation. Van Tatenhove has described himself as a former “propagandist” for the Oath Keepers, and left the group several years ago, he told local television station KDVR. The select panel has cited concerns about harassment and security of the witnesses, mostly declining to name them before the hearings begin.
A bit more detail:
The panel intends to highlight how adherents to the antisemitic, fringe conspiracy theories of QAnon latched onto Trump’s stolen-election claims, as well as how the extremist Proud Boys and Oath Keepers used Trump’s crusade to fundraise for a violent effort to keep Biden from office. Committee members will also get into how the White House pushed forward with plans for a march on the Capitol — one witnesses say Trump desperately tried to join — even as warnings about the likelihood of brutality grew.
Jason Van Tatenhove, former spokesperson for the Oathkeepers
The role of social media platforms in extremists’ mobilization will also play a role in Tuesday’s hearing, Murphy said. The select panel subpoenaed companies like Alphabet, the parent company of Google; Meta, Facebook’s parent company; and Twitter earlier this year for records related to the attack. The committee has scrutinized the companies’ roles in spreading misinformation and providing breeding grounds for extremism….
Committee aides previewing the hearing said it would also touch on members of Congress who helped fan the flames of the false election fraud claims and how that effort helped drive forward the pressure campaign against then-Vice President Mike Pence, who presided over the Jan. 6 session of Congress to count electoral votes.
Another preview of the hearing from Scott Wong at NBC News: Ties between Trump allies and extremist groups to be focus of Jan. 6 panel hearing.
The Jan. 6 committee on Tuesday plans to demonstrate how right-wing militia groups that led the assault on the U.S. Capitol were connected to key Trump allies, including Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, who were at the center of the plot to overturn the 2020 election.
“We’ll show how some of these right-wing extremist groups who came to D.C. and led the attack on the Capitol had ties to Trump associates, including Roger Stone and General Flynn,” a committee aide said Monday on a conference call with reporters.
“And we know that both members of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys have been charged with seditious conspiracy by the DOJ in relation to their actions on Jan. 6.” [….]
In linking the domestic extremist groups and the Trump inner circle that was aggressively working to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory, the committee is making the case that actions by President Donald Trump and his allies resulted in the violence at the Capitol, which claimed the lives of both police officers and Trump supporters.
Aides said the hearing will also reveal ties between some Trump associates and the QAnon movement, which subscribes to a set of bizarre, sometimes antisemitic conspiracy theories in which Trump is viewed as a savior fighting the evil forces of the deep state.
ABC News Reports another expected witness: Accused Jan. 6 rioter who warned of possible ‘civil war’ expected to testify to House committee Tuesday.
An Ohio man who accused Joe Biden, other Democrats, and the mainstream media of “treason” is set to testify in a public hearing Tuesday before the House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol last year, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The hearing is expected to focus on the rise of radical extremism in the United States, and the source said one of the key witnesses will be Stephen Ayres of Warren, Ohio, who recently admitted to illegally entering the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021….
In court documents filed last month, Ayres acknowledged that the day before the riot, he drove to Washington, D.C., to protest Congress’ certification of the 2020 presidential election results.
Stephen Michael Ayres
On Facebook, Ayres had spotlighted then-President Donald Trump’s call for supporters to descend on Washington on Jan. 6, which Trump said will “be wild” in a Tweet he posted on Dec. 19, 2020….
Two days before he left for the nation’s capital, Ayres posted a message on Facebook saying, “Mainstream media, social media, Democrat party, FISA courts, Chief Justice John Roberts, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, etc….all have committed TREASON against a sitting U.S. president!!! All are now put on notice by ‘We The People!'”
In the week before that, Ayres said in social media posts that it was “time for us to start standing up to tyranny!” and he warned that “If the [deep state] robs president Trump!!! Civil War will ensue!” according to the FBI.
Ayres joined the mob outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, then entered the building that afternoon, court documents say.
The Committee is also expected to show clips of testimony from Pat Cipillone, Trump’s White House Counsel. NBC News: Cipollone corroborated virtually everything from Hutchinson, Jan. 6 panel member says.
Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone corroborated virtually all of the revelations from previous witnesses, including former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, in lengthy testimony before the panel last week, a top Jan. 6 committee member told NBC News.
“Cipollone has corroborated almost everything that we’ve learned from the prior hearings,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said in an exclusive interview just hours before the next hearing. “I certainly did not hear him contradict Cassidy Hutchinson. … He had the opportunity to say whatever he wanted to say, so I didn’t see any contradiction there.”
It was unclear if Cipollone was directly asked by investigators about the specifics of some of the more explosive aspects of Hutchinson’s testimony — including that they would be charged with “every crime imaginable” if Trump went to the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Raskin added this additional preview of the hearing:
Raskin said the hearing will include new details about what committee members have been told was “the craziest meeting in the Trump presidency,” on Dec. 18, 2020, describing it as “hot-blooded, contentious, deranged” when the president met with outside and internal legal advisers for a “Hail Mary desperation ploy” to subvert an election they had lost, including possibly seizing state election machines and appointing Trump ally Sidney Powell as a special counsel.
More January 6 Committee news from CNN’s Jamie Gangel: Exclusive: Former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne to meet with January 6 investigators.
Former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, an ally of former President Donald Trump, is expected to meet Friday with the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
Patrick Byrne
There have been no ground rules or topics defined, according to one of the sources. The meeting will be behind closed doors….
Byrne played an active role supporting efforts to question and push baseless claims about the 2020 election, including attending a meeting in mid-December at the White House to discuss strategies to overturn the election. That meeting with Trump also included former national security adviser Michael Flynn and his lawyer Sidney Powell, as well as some White House staff. It focused on ideas to block Joe Biden’s certification as president and discussed the prospect of seizing voting machines. White House officials in the meeting pushed back at the ideas in heated exchanges, CNN previously reported.
CNN reported earlier Monday that former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone had been asked about the December 18, 2020, meeting in his interview with the committee last week….
Two sources familiar with Cipollone’s testimony told CNN that he was asked extensively about his role in that meeting where Trump welcomed the group of extreme election deniers to the West Wing and what was discussed. One source familiar with Cipollone’s testimony told CNN that he described to the committee his view of how insane the meeting was.
The session, which, according to two people familiar with the matter, began as an impromptu gathering, devolved and eventually broke out into screaming matches at certain points as some of Trump’s aides pushed back on Powell and Flynn’s more outrageous suggestions about overturning the election.
The day after this meeting, Gangel notes, Trump sent his infamous “will be wild” tweet.
Finally, The New York Times’ Luke Broadwater has a profile of Rep. Jamie Raskin: Raskin Brings Expertise on Right-Wing Extremism to Jan. 6 Inquiry.
When Representative Jamie Raskin enters a Capitol Hill hearing room on Tuesday to lay out what the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack has uncovered about the role of domestic extremists in the riot, it will be his latest — and potentially most important — step in a five-year effort to crush a dangerous movement.
Long before the Jan. 6, 2021, assault, Mr. Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, had thrown himself into stamping out the rise of white nationalism and domestic extremism in America. He trained his focus on the issue after the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., five years ago. Since then, he has held teach-ins, led a multipart House investigation that exposed the lackluster federal effort to confront the threat, released intelligence assessments indicating that white supremacists have infiltrated law enforcement and strategized about ways to crack down on paramilitary groups.
Now, with millions of Americans expected to tune in, Mr. Raskin — along with Representative Stephanie Murphy, Democrat of Florida — is set to take a leading role in a hearing that promises to dig deeply into how far-right groups helped to orchestrate and carry out the Jan. 6 assault at the Capitol — and how they were brought together, incited and empowered by President Donald J. Trump.
“Charlottesville was a rude awakening for the country,” Mr. Raskin, 59, said in an interview, rattling off a list of deadly hate crimes that had taken place in the years before the siege on the Capitol. “There is a real pattern of young, white men getting hyped up on racist provocation and incitement.”
Tuesday’s session, set for 1 p.m., is expected to document how, after Mr. Trump’s many efforts to overturn the 2020 election had failed, he and his allies turned to violent far-right extremist groups whose support Mr. Trump had long cultivated, who in turn began assembling a mob to pressure Congress to reject the will of the voters.
Read the rest at the NYT.
Have a great Tuesday everyone! If you’re watching the hearings, I hope you’ll share your reactions with us.
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Posted: July 9, 2022 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because |
Cat Cary Grant in North by Northwest, by Susan Herbert, British artist
Good Afternoon!!
Yesterday, Trump’s former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, met behind closed doors with the House January 6 Committee for more than 8 hours. Naturally reporters are trying to find out what he had to say. Here’s what we know so far, mostly based on an interview on CNN with Rep. Zoe Lofgren.
NBC News: Ex-Trump White House counsel Cipollone ‘cooperative’ with Jan. 6 committee during lengthy interview.
Cipollone, who panel vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., has repeatedly described as a critical witness, joined the committee for a videotaped and transcribed closed-door interview around 8:45 a.m. ET, and left shortly before 5:30 p.m., taking numerous breaks with his attorneys throughout the day. He was in the deposition room for about seven-and-a-half hours.
“He’s been a cooperative witness within the parameters of his desire to protect executive privilege for the office of general counsel,” a sourcefamiliar with the first part of his testimony said earlier Friday.
After the interview, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a member of the Jan. 6 committee, told CNN it was “a grueling day for all involved” but “well worth it.” The California Democrat said Cipollone “did answer a whole variety of questions” and “did not contradict the testimony of other witnesses.”
“I think we did learn a few things, which we will be rolling out in hearings to come,” Lofgren said.
The Hill: Lofgren says Cipollone ‘did not contradict the testimony of other witnesses’ in meeting with Jan. 6 panel.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, on Friday said former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone did not contradict the testimony of previous witnesses when he met with the panel Friday.
Cat James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause, by Susan Herbert
The meeting took place behind closed doors and came after explosive public testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to ex-Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, that placed Cipollone as a central player in the behind-the-scenes drama at the White House on Jan. 6.
“Mr. Cipollone did appear voluntarily and answer a whole variety of questions. He did not contradict the testimony of other witnesses. And I think we did learn a few things, which we will be rolling out in the hearings to come,” Lofgren told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer….
Blizter asked if people could be assume that Cipollone confirmed the testimony offered by Hutchinson.
“Not contradicting is not the same as confirming,” Lofgren said.
“He could say so and so was wrong, which he did not say. There were things that he might not be present for, or, in some cases, couldn’t recall with precision. My sense was that he, as I say, he did appear voluntarily. I think he was candid with the committee. He was careful in his answers, and I believe that he was honest in his answers,” she said.
CNN appears to have at least one more source from the committee: Jan. 6 panel didn’t specifically ask Cipollone about Hutchinson’s testimony on legal consequences of going to Capitol during riot, sources say.
Two people familiar with former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s testimony Friday told CNN that the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, did not ask him if he told then-White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson the day of the attack that they would “get charged with every crime imaginable” if they went to the US Capitol.
If asked, he would not have confirmed that particular statement, the sources said.
A separate source familiar with the committee told CNN, “The select committee sought information about Cipollone’s views on Trump going to the Capitol on January 6,” implying that the committee’s questions were focused on Cipollone’s perspective as opposed to his take on other witness’ testimony.
“Mr. Cipollone provided a great deal of new information relevant to the select committee’s investigation, which further underscores President Trump’s supreme dereliction of duty,” the source said. “The committee will show much of this to the American people in the days ahead.”
The source also added that no one has refuted any of Hutchinson’s testimony under oath.
Cat Julie Andrews in Sound of Music, by Susan Herbert
Three different sources familiar with Cipollone’s testimony characterized it as very important and extremely helpful and told CNN it will become evident in upcoming public committee hearings.
Cipollone told the committee on Friday that he wasn’t giving legal advice to staff regarding movements on January 6. This came up during his testimony as part of a question not relating to the specific anecdote from Hutchinson.
It is unclear if Cipollone corroborated other parts of Hutchinson’s testimony, such as telling former chief of staff Mark Meadows he would have blood on his hands if he didn’t help stop the riot.
Both Hutchinson and Cipollone testified under oath.
I heard yesterday that the committee is considering hold more hearings in August.
This morning, MSNBC’s Ali Velshi interviewed attorney Daniel Goldman about the Cipollone testimony. Raw Story: Cipollone’s 8-hour testimony will light a fire under Trump’s inner circle to talk to investigators: legal analyst.
Appearing on MSNBC with host Ali Velshi early Saturday morning, the Democrat’s chief counsel during Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial claimed the 8-hour testimony given by former White House counsel Pat Cipollone will likely provoke a rush of members of Donald Trump’s inner circle to talk to investigators out of fear they might have been implicated in the Jan 6th insurrection….
“They don’t know what each other has said, now they are now starting to see what the committee understands, what the other witnesses have said,” he explained. “It is almost like a sprint to get in first to tell the story in your own terms. That is always more beneficial than being the last one nd having to have a bit more of a target on your back.”
“This is what happens often in criminal investigations,” he elaborated. “I am very interested to see whether and to what extent any of these witnesses go marching into the Department of Justice to cooperate with them. Because what everybody is realizing now is that there was a crime spree as Cipollone indicated to Cassidy Hutchinson. The question now, who is going to have a target on his or her back as a part of the criminal investigation? You don’t want to be the last one standing. You want to be the first one to cooperate and gave your information and get on the right side of the investigation.”
“That is why Cipollone came in,” he suggested. “I expect that others have realized, ‘oh boy, we better get in’.”
Cat Gene Kelly Cat in Singing In The Rain, by Susan Herbert
Next week the committee plans hearings on Tuesday at 10AM and Thursday at 8PM. Here’s what they plan to cover.
Kyle Cheney at Politico:
A federal judge noted in February that there’s no evidence former President Donald Trump ever met or plotted with a Proud Boy or an Oath Keeper. But some conspiracies, he added, can be “tacit.”
The Jan. 6 select committee’s next hearing is expected to delve deeply into that relationship, exploring all the subtle signaling between Trump’s orbit and the seamy underworld of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers that prosecutors and congressional investigators have been probing….
On Tuesday, the committee will…plunge into conspiracy-driven fever swamp, where groups like the Proud Boys flourished and strategized openly ahead of Jan. 6.
The hearing is unlikely to produce explicit evidence of Trump’s approval of the groups’ tactics or plans, but the more important concept, according to Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), is “convergence.”
“Our investigation shows that there was a tremendous convergence of interests between the domestic violent extremist groups and the broader MAGA movement,” Raskin, who will lead next week’s hearing, told Nightly in an interview. “This hearing will be the moment when one sees both the convergence of efforts at a political coup with the insurrectionary mob violence. We see how these two streams of activity become one.”
The select committee only recently obtained one of its most potent pieces of evidence on the nexus between Trump and the Jan. 6 violence from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified that Trump was informed early on that members of his rally crowd were armed. Hutchinson also testified that she heard the words “Oath Keepers” and “Proud Boys” when Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani was around.
According to Cheney, the DOJ will be closely watching the next week’s hearings since their investigation of the January 6 insurrection has revealed a great deal of information about these groups and their involvement with Trump world.
Hugo Lowell at The Guardian: Trump’s possible ties to far-right militias examined by January 6 committee.
Towards the end of her testimony to the House January 6 select committee, former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson raised for the first time the prospect that Donald Trump might have had a line of communication to the leaders of the extremist groups that stormed the Capitol.
Cat Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, by Susan Herbert
The potential connection from the former US president to the extremist right-wing groups came through her account of Trump’s order to his White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to call Roger Stone and Mike Flynn – which Meadows did – the evening before the Capitol attack.
Trump’s order to Meadows, even though Hutchinson said she did not know what was discussed, is significant because it shows the former president seeking to have a channel to two figures with close ties to the leaders of the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers groups.
The directive is doubly notable since it was Trump himself who initiated the outreach to Stone and Flynn, suggesting it was not an instance of far-right political operatives freelancing, for instance, potential strategies to overturn the 2020 election results….
Now next Tuesday, at its seventh public hearing led by congressman Jamie Raskin, the select committee is expected to examine the connections between Trump and the extremist groups in closer detail, according to a source familiar with the investigation. There seems to be a lot to go after.
The account of Trump’s order was not the only link from the White House to the extremist groups. Hutchinson also testified that she recalled hearing the terms “Oath Keepers” and “Proud Boys” whenever former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was around at the White House.
Read the rest of the article to learn why Stone and Flynn could have given Trump information about what the Oathkeepers and Proud Boys were planning for January 6.
If you’re interested, you can also check out Bernard Gellman’s deep dive into Michael Flynn’s fall from grace at The Atlantic: What Happened to Michael Flynn?
One more from CNN on the DOJ investigation: Oath Keeper members brought explosives to DC area around January 6 and had a ‘death list,’ prosecutors say.
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Posted: July 7, 2022 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because |
Edvard Munch, Garden in Åsgårdstrand, 1902
Good Morning!!
This is going to be a quick post, because I’m having a pain flareup, and it’s difficult to use my computer. There is quite a bit of news today; here are some stories that caught my attention.
NBC News: British PM Boris Johnson steps down after scandals prompt a wave of resignations.
LONDON — Scandal-ridden British Prime Minister Boris Johnson capitulated to mounting pressure to step down Thursday, announcing his decision after days of high-profile government resignations and calls from fellow Conservative Party members to quit.
“In the past few weeks, I have been trying to convince my colleagues it would be eccentric to change governments when we have achieved so much,” he said in his speech outside No. 10 Downing St. amid loud booing from the crowd nearby. “I regret not to be successful in those arguments and, of course, it’s painful not to be able to see through those projects myself.”
Johnson also said he planned to remain as prime minister until a successor is chosen — a move that may face opposition from others in an increasingly hostile Parliament.
In his speech, he hailed his government’s achievements, including supporting Ukraine after the Russian invasion and weathering the Covid pandemic.
He becomes the third consecutive British prime minister to resign before their term in recent years, following in the footsteps of Theresa May and David Cameron.
While Johnson was met by applause from colleagues on Downing Street, boos from a crowd nearby threatened to drown out his speech. Meanwhile, a loudspeaker blasted a reworked version of the Bay City Rollers song “Bye Bye Baby” with the lyrics changed to “Bye bye Boris.”
Yesterday, The New York Times’ Michael Schmitt broke this news: Comey and McCabe, Who Infuriated Trump, Both Faced Intensive I.R.S. Audits.
Among tax lawyers, the most invasive type of random audit carried out by the I.R.S. is known, only partly jokingly, as “an autopsy without the benefit of death.”
Wassily Kandinsky, Murnau, Garden
The odds of being selected for that audit in any given year are tiny — out of nearly 153 million individual returns filed for 2017, for example, the I.R.S. targeted about 5,000, or roughly one out of 30,600.
One of the few who received a bureaucratic letter with the news that his 2017 return would be under intensive scrutiny was James B. Comey, who had been fired as F.B.I. director that year by President Donald J. Trump. Furious over what he saw as Mr. Comey’s lack of loyalty and his pursuit of the Russia investigation, Mr. Trump had continued to rail against him even after his dismissal, accusing him of treason, calling for his prosecution and publicly complaining about the money Mr. Comey received for a book after his dismissal.
Mr. Comey was informed of the audit in 2019. Two years later, the I.R.S., still under the leadership of a Trump appointee after President Biden took office, picked about 8,000 returns for the same type of audit Mr. Comey had undergone from the 154 million individual returns filed in 2019, or about one in 19,250.
Among those who were chosen to have their 2019 returns scrutinized was the man who had been Mr. Comey’s deputy at the bureau: Andrew G. McCabe, who served several months as acting F.B.I. director after Mr. Comey’s firing.
Both men were fired after Trump became enraged about the FBI’s Russia investigation. Shades of Nixon’s enemies list.
Trump is probably getting very nervous today, because his last White House Counsel Pat Cippilone is expected to testify tomorrow in a private hearing of the January 6 Committee.
CBS News: Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone to appear before Jan. 6 committee on Friday.
Pat Cipollone, who served as White House counsel under former President Donald Trump, has reached an agreement to appear Friday before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, two sources familiar with the matter tell CBS News.
Woman with a parasol in a garden, Pierre Auguste Renoir
The panel issued a subpoena for Cipollone’s testimony last week after former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Cipollone strongly opposed Trump’s efforts to travel to the Capitol on Jan. 6. Other witnesses have testified that Cipollone was one of the main White House officials opposed to attempts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He previously sat for an informal interview with the committee.\Hutchinson testified that Cipollone said a trip to the Capitol would present “serious legal concerns” and urged her multiple times to work to make sure such a trip didn’t happen.
“Please make sure we don’t go up to the Capitol, Cassidy. Keep in touch with me. We’re going to get charged every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen,” Hutchinson recalled Cipollone telling her.
Hutchinson also recounted an exchange between White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who was her boss, and Cipollone as rioters breached the Capitol on Jan. 6. Cipollone urged Meadows to speak to the president, Hutchinson said. She testified that Cipollone told Meadows that “something needs to be done or people are going to die, and the blood is going to be on your effing hands.”
Also see Jennifer Rubin’s opinion piece at The Washington Post: Trump has every reason to panic about Cipollone testifying.
This shocking story was first posted at Rolling Stone, but I can’t get past the paywall. Raw Story: Right-wing activist boasted of ‘praying’ with SCOTUS justices after they cited her organization’s brief to overturn Roe.
A right-wing activist whose organization wrote a brief that was cited by the United States Supreme Court in its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade also posted a video in which she boasted of praying with the justices.
Rolling Stone is reporting that Peggy Nienaber, who serves as the executive director of a ministry that falls under Liberty Counsel’s umbrella organization, boasted that she and her associates are “the only people” who get an opportunity to pray with sitting Supreme Court justices.
A video obtained by the publication shows that Nienaber made the admission to a live streamer who was filming outside the court during a celebration of its decision to overturn 50 years of precedent on abortion rights.
Paul Cézanne, Poplars
“You actually pray with the Supreme Court justices?” the live streamer asked her at one point.
“I do,” Nienaber replied. “They will pray with us, those that like us to pray with them.”
Rolling Stone notes that this could be a conflict of interest for the justices who chose to pray with Nienaber.
“Such an arrangement presents a problem for the Orlando-based Liberty Counsel, which not only weighed in on the Dobbs case as a friend of the court, but also litigated and won a 9-0 Supreme Court victory this May in a case centered on the public display of a religious flag,” the publication writes.
JJ sent me this story from The New York Post: Crimo dad washes hands of guilt but talked with son about a mass shooting night before Highland Park massacre.
HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. – The dad of the accused Fourth of July parade killer told The Post on Wednesday that his son talked about a mass shooting in Denmark the night before allegedly launching his own massacre — and the dad washed his hands of any guilt over how the suspect got his gun.
The father, Robert Crimo Jr. — who has tapped one of R. Kelly’s lawyers to battle claims that he helped his mentally disturbed kid buy guns — said that the night before Monday’s shooting, he and son Robert Crimo III discussed the 22-year-old Danish man who shot and killed three people at a mall outside Copenhagen on Sunday.
“He goes, ‘Yeah, that guy is an idiot.’ That’s what he said!” the dad recalled his son saying of the Denmark shooter.
Irises in the artist’s garden at giverny, Claude Monet, 1900
The father said his son added, “People like that … [commit mass shootings] to amp up the people that want to ban all guns.”
“I talked to him 13 hours before [Monday’s massacre]. That’s why I guess I’m in such shock. … Like, did he have a psychiatric break or something?” the father said of his son.
On Tuesday, Steven Greenberg, who previously represented R. Kelly in the fallen singing superstar’s federal sex-trafficking case out of Brooklyn, announced that Crimo Jr. and his estranged wife, Denise, had retained him in the wake of their son’s arrest.
The father, a onetime local mayoral candidate who used to run a neighborhood sandwich shop, has faced a wave of criticism for sponsoring his son’s gun license application, which allowed Crimo III to buy four guns, including his alleged slay weapon, before age 21.
The dad sponsored the application three months after his son was labeled a “clear and present danger” by authorities for threatening to kill relatives in 2019.
There are more excuses from the father at the link. Some people just shouldn’t be parents.
Here’s some creepy news about the guy who wants to own Twitter: Elon Musk Reportedly Welcomed Twins in November With One of His Execs.
Congratulations are apparently in order for Elon Musk: The Tesla chief executive had twins in November with Shivon Zilis, a top executive at his company Neuralink. The news of the twins’ arrival, first reported Wednesday by Insider, brings Musk’s total brood count to nine.
Court filings obtained by the outlet showed that Musk and Zilis filed a petition to change their children’s names to “have their father’s last name and contain their mother’s last name as part of their middle name” in April. One month later, a Texas judge approved the petition.
The twins were reportedly born just “weeks” before the SpaceX founder and musician Grimes had a baby daughter via surrogate. The girl is the couple’s second child. Her existence was also kept secret until March this year, when a Vanity Fairreporter sent to profile Grimes heard the “lone cry” of a baby upstairs.
Pierre Bonnard, The Small Garden
Zilis, 36, is identified on her LinkedIn as director of operations and special projects at Neuralink, a neurotechnology firm co-founded and chaired by Musk. She began working at the company in May 2017, the same month she was named a project director in artificial intelligence at Tesla, where she remained until 2019.
An expert in artificial intelligence, Zilis met Musk, 51, in 2015. Insider reported that her work at OpenAI, a research laboratory co-founded by Musk. He exited his leadership role there in 2019 to focus on “a painfully large number of engineering & manufacturing problems” at other companies under his umbrella, including Tesla and SpaceX, Bloomberg News reported at the time.
Zilis has “been floated” as a potential pick to run Twitter should Musk’s $44 billion deal go through, Insider said. She often publicly engages with Musk on Twitter, replying to his tweets and in at least one instance defending him from critics.
That’s all I have for you today. I wish you all a peaceful Thursday.
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