I’m getting a late start today after a night of tossing and turning. The news is depressing, as usual. Crazy Grandpa Trump is making an complete ass of himself on his Asian trip, where he’s temporarily left behind all the messes he’s left us with here.
People walk along a road during the passing of Hurricane Melissa in Rocky Point, Jamaica, on Tuesday. Matias Delacroix AP
Before I get to the politics news, here’s a brief update from CNN on the devastation Hurricane Melissa is leaving in her wake.
• Severe damage: Melissa hit Jamaica as one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record, caused major damage to public infrastructure and left most of the island without power. The full extent of the devastation there is unclear with some areas inaccessible.
• Deadly storm: Twenty five people have died in Petit-Goâve, Haiti, after a river flooded by Melissa burst its banks, the local mayor said. Three people were killed in Jamaica during storm preparations, and one person died in the Dominican Republic.
Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica Tuesday as the strongest storm in the island’s history. The Category 5 hurricane tore a path of destruction across the island, causing major flooding and power cuts. Prime Minister Andrew Holness declared the country a “disaster area.”
The massive storm swept through Cuba early this morning as a Category 2 hurricane. Over 750,000 residents were evacuated ahead of the storm. Melissa is now carving a path towards the Bahamas.
The intense winds have diminished in Jamaica, but the National Hurricane Center warns that heavy rains and flooding might continue.
And this is a monster of a storm that meteorologists say will be in the history books. Only six other Atlantic storms have done that since record-keeping began.
Click the NPR link to see more photos.
We’re expecting stormy weather from Melissa here in Massachusetts on Thursday night and Friday. I hope it won’t interfere too much with kids’ Halloween plans.
Some lowlights from Trump’s embarrassing foreign trip:
You probably saw this video of spaced-out Trump being guided around by the new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
Trump in Japan.He has no idea what's going on, just wanders off.His brain is cooked.This is insane.
President Donald Trump treated his time in Japan on Tuesday as a victory lap — befriending the new Japanese prime minister, taking her with him as he spoke to U.S. troops aboard an aircraft carrier and then unveiling several major energy and technology projects in America to be funded by Japan.
By the end of the day, Trump — by his administration’s count — came close to nailing down the goal of $550 billion in Japanese investment as part of a trade framework. At a dinner for business leaders in Tokyo, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced up to $490 billion in commitments, including $100 billion each for nuclear projects involving Westinghouse and GE Vernova….
It was not immediately clear how the investments would operate and how they compared with previous plans, but Trump declared a win as he capped off a day of bonding with Takaichi.
Because they are probably fake “investments.” There’s more at the link.
President Donald Trump rarely has anything negative to say about the men and women of the U.S. military, but he made an exception on Tuesday to offer a rare criticism of America’s fighting forces: They may be too “good-looking” for his tastes.
Trump was in the midst of an address to sailors aboard the U.S.S. George Washington, the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier that is semi-permanently based at the American naval base in Yokosuka, Japan, when he paused an attempt to praise the assembled service members to rant about their excessive attractiveness.
Speaking on the second day of a multi-day, multi-country trip through Asia that will conclude after a planned summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday, Trump said the Navy’s “ultimate strength” comes from “the men and women of the rank and file,” calling his uniformed audience “incredible people” and “good-looking people.”
After a beat, he said there were “too many good-looking people” present.
“I don’t like good-looking people,” he continued, as the sailors laughed at their commander-in-chief’s bizarre remark.
“I never liked good-looking people, I’ll be honest with you … never admitted that before,” he said.
Trump: You take a little glass of water and you drop it on magnets. I don't know what's going to happen.
Donald Trump went on a deranged rant about the power of water to destroy magnets during a rambling address to the U.S. Navy just off the coast of Japan.
Speaking aboard the USS George Washington aircraft carrier during his tour of East Asia, the president appeared to suggest—in a largely incoherent speech—that he is pushing for aircraft carriers to use “steam for the catapults” and hydraulics for elevators, while wrongly claiming that water can disable magnets.
The elderly president was talking about the magnetic catapults used to launch planes from the latest Navy super carriers, the USS Gerald R. Ford class, and the electromagnetic elevators used to move weaponry to the flight deck. Both systems double the speed with which planes can be armed and launched but slowed the delivery and commissioning of the $13 billion flagship of the class.
“You know, the new thing is magnets. So instead of using hydraulic that can be hit by lightning and it’s fine. You take a little glass of water, you drop it on magnets, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Trump said.
“So, you know, the elevators come up in the new carriers—I think I’m going to change it, by the way—they have magnets. Every tractor has hydraulic, every excavator, every excavating machine of any kind has hydraulic. But somebody decided to use magnets.”
The 79-year-old president then stumbled over his words and failed to complete a coherent sentence before moving on and asking the watching troops whether they preferred hydraulics or magnets.
Trump then called out to a “top-ranking general” in the crowd for his opinion before continuing his tirade against the 2,000-year-old technology.
“I’m going to sign an executive order. When we build aircraft carriers, it’s steam for the catapults and it’s hydraulic for the elevators. We’ll never have a problem,” Trump said. “He agrees. Everybody agrees. But, ahh, these people in Washington.”
President Trump told American troops assembled in Japan on Tuesday that he was prepared to send “more than the National Guard” into cities to enforce his crackdowns on crime and immigration, further escalating how he has talked about using the military at home and abroad.
Trump “dances” for the troops in Japan.
Speaking to thousands of military service members aboard an aircraft carrier at the Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan on Tuesday, Mr. Trump delivered a partisan speech that resembled the raucous rallies that made him an ascendant force in U.S. politics.
But throughout his nearly hourlong speech, his usual ramblings about the physical appearances of audience members and steam-powered catapults were laced with dark warnings about how he might choose to deploy military forces.
“We have cities that are troubled, we can’t have cities that are troubled,” Mr. Trump said. “And we’re sending in our National Guard, and if we need more than the National Guard, we’ll send more than the National Guard, because we’re going to have safe cities.”
Legal disputes over what troops under federal control may be used to do on domestic soil — like a bar on using them to enforce the law, except when there is an insurrection — treat National Guard troops under federal control and active-duty troops as the same.
Mr. Trump also defended the U.S. military’s strikes against what the administration has said are suspected drug smugglers. The tactics have drawn widespread rebuke from experts who have said it is illegal to use the military to target civilians — including criminal suspects — who are not directly participating in hostilities.
Mr. Trump has increasingly used speeches to the military to air his grievances and bolster his accomplishments. Still, the scene was striking: an American president defending war and military deployments on U.S. soil, and employing partisan talking points on the global stage.
It’s a lot more than “striking,” IMHO.
Next stop for Trump: South Korea.
They all know how to play him. It isn’t difficult. bsky.app/profile/acyn…
GYEONGJU, South Korea, Oct 29 (Reuters) – South Korea welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday with a replica gold crown and awarded him with the “Grand Order of Mugunghwa”, the country’s highest decoration, the presidential office said.
Trump landed in South Korea on the final leg of a trip through Asia that also saw stops in Malaysia and Japan, with high-profile trade talks expected with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
U.S. and South Korean warplanes escorted Air Force One on approach, and on the tarmac a South Korean military band greeted Trump with a rendition of “YMCA” and guns fired a salute.
Lee is hoping to win concessions from Trump in drawn-out negotiations aimed at lowering U.S. tariffs on South Korea, and has wooed the U.S. president by praising his outreach to North Korea.
Lee’s office said that in recognition of Trump’s role as a “peacemaker” on the Korean peninsula, he was awarded the “Grand Order of Mugunghwa”, which is named after South Korea’s national flower, a pink hibiscus also known as the Rose of Sharon in English.
They really know how to suck up to Trump.
Trump was gifted a replica of the golden Cheonmachong crown. The delicate original, which was found in a tomb in Gyeongju, features towering gold prongs and dangling leaf shapes.
“This symbolizes the history of Silla, which maintained a long-term era of peace on the Korean Peninsula, and a new era of peaceful coexistence and common growth on the Korean Peninsula that the United States and South Korea will work together for.”
The leaders had a working lunch that included Thousand Island salad dressing, in what Lee’s office said was a nod to Trump’s “success story in his hometown of New York.” The meal also included local specialties “according to President Trump’s preferences.”
On the menu were “mini beef patties with ketchup”, a “Korean Platter of Sincerity” featuring U.S. beef and local rice and soybean paste, and grilled fish with a glaze of ketchup and gochujang, a red chilli paste.
The lunch was capped by a “Peacemaker’s Dessert” consisting of a brownie adorned with gold.
A gold crown, junk food and being lauded as a “peacemaker.” What more could Trump ask for?
Donald Trump gushed over Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the most cringeworthy way possible on Wednesday, describing the leader as “the nicest-looking guy” and then attempting to impersonate him.
The elderly president went there at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, during his tur of East Asia. He was bragging again that he single-handedly brought a swift end the four-day armed conflict between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan earlier this year by allegedly threatening both nations with 250 percent tariffs.
Indian officials have publicly rejected Trump’s repeated claims that he mediated the ceasefire. Sources told Bloomberg that Modi skipped the entire summit in Malaysia this week because Indian officials were worried Trump would once again repeat his self-proclaimed role in ending the conflict. They probably didn’t anticipate the accent.
“I’ll tell you what, Prime Minister Modi is the nicest looking guy,” Trump said, adding Modi looked like someone “you’d like to have as your father.”
“He’s tough as hell,” Trump said, before launching into a Modi impersonation, complete with what sounded like an attempt at an Indian accent: “No, we will fight!”
“I said, ‘Whoa, is that the same man that I know?’” Trump told the room.
Trump then took credit again for ending the escalating crisis, a claim disputed by officials in New Delhi. He said it wouldn’t have been resolved “if it wasn’t for the tariffs.”
“After a little while, and they’re good people, and after literally two days they called up, and they said we understand, and they stopped fighting—isn’t that amazing?”
The White House on Tuesday fired all six members of the Commission of Fine Arts, an independent federal agency that had expected to review some of President Donald Trump’s construction projects, including his planned triumphal arch and White House ballroom.
“On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as a member of the Commission of Fine Arts is terminated, effective immediately,” reads an email reviewed by The Washington Post that was sent to one of the commissioners by a staffer in the White House presidential personnel office.
The commission, which was established by Congress more than a century ago and traditionally includes a mix of architects and urban planners, is charged with providing advice to the president, Congress and local government officials on design matters related to construction projects in the capital region. Its focus includes government buildings, monuments and memorials. White House officials have traditionally sought the agency’s approval.
President Joe Biden appointed the six sitting commissioners to four-year terms, several of which would have extended through 2028. Their termination comes as the White House gears up for several Trump construction projects, including his planned $300 million White House ballroom, and seeks to install allies on key review boards.
A White House official confirmed that the Commission of Fine Arts members had been terminated.
“We are preparing to appoint a new slate of members to the commission that are more aligned with President Trump’s ‘America First’ policies,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.
I guess Trump will get approval for his tasteless ballroom and Hitler arch then.
Democrats are expanding their probes into President Donald Trump’s demolition of the East Wing and construction of his planned ballroom, with lawmakers pressing the White House and outside companies to explain the project’s finances and what was promised to contributors.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California), a frequent critic of President Donald Trump, is opening a probe into the president’s planned White House ballroom. (Demetrius Freeman, The Washington Post)
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California) and colleagues on Tuesday demanded that the White House provide a “complete accounting” of how it is paying for the ballroom, including any terms for donors. Trump said Friday that he had raised more than $350 million to pay for the project, and the White House has said that at least three dozen companies and private individuals have helped fund it.
“The opaque nature of this scheme reinforces concern that President Trump is again selling presidential access to individuals or entities, including foreign nationals and corporate actors, with vested interests in federal action,” Schiff wrote to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in a letter shared with The Washington Post. Schiff, a frequent critic of the president, also sent his request to the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan watchdog that conducts oversight of the executive branch.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) separately sent letters Tuesday to contractors involved in the White House construction project, including McCrery Architects, Clark Construction and engineering firm AECOM, questioning the “rapidly changing and secretive terms” of Trump’s planned ballroom. The letters were also shared with The Post.
Trump said in July that the ballroom would cost about $200 million and hold 650 guests, estimates that he increased last week to $300 million and nearly 1,000, respectively. The ballroom donors include defense and tech companies including Amazon, Apple, Google, Lockheed Martin and Meta, which frequently have business before the administration. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post.)
Lawmakers said they were frustrated that the White House had neither consulted Congress nor received approval from at least two relevant federal commissions before rapidly demolishing the East Wing last week.
Five Senate Republicans voted with Democrats on Tuesday night to pass a resolution terminating President Trump’s emergency authority to impose steep tariffs on Brazil, one of the biggest exporters of coffee to the United States.
The Senate voted 52 to 48 to pass the resolution sponsored by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to terminate Trump’s 50 percent tariffs on Brazilian imports, such as coffee, oil and orange juice.
Paul, speaking on the Senate floor, called the tariff a tax on U.S. consumers.
The Kentucky Republican argued that the Constitution requires that “taxes must originate in the House” of Representatives.
“Yet, these taxes are originating with the White House,” he said.
McConnell, in a statement, said that Trump’s tariffs are hurting Kentucky businesses and farms.
It’s symbolic, but still could be a positive sign.
I guess this post is kind of disorganized–I’m just not that with it today. But that’s all I have for you. I hope there’s something here worth reading/watching.
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Yesterday Robert Hur testified before the House Judiciary Committee. Before his appearance, Hur resigned from the Department of Justice and reportedly worked with Republicans in preparing his testimony. Hur and his Republican pals made every effort to make Biden look bad, but Democrats were well prepared to counter those efforts. And, unfortunately for Hur, the transcript of his interviews with Biden was also released yesterday.
You probably recall that Hur’s final report included gratuitous claims about President Biden’s age and cognitive abilities. Some observers have compared Hur’s behavior with that of James Comey’s attack on Hillary Clinton just before the 2016 election. Fortunately, we are months away from the 2024 vote.
“Don’t be silly,” said my friend, who I suspect later voted for Trump. The New York Times had the story on the front page: “Emails in Anthony Weiner Inquiry Jolt Hillary Clinton’s Campaign.” On Nov. 8, 2016, Clinton lost the election to Trump 304 to 227. The Comey letter had created just enough muddiness to make it seem like both candidates were ethically challenged. It was the false equivalence that Trump was able to ride to the White House. Data guru Nate Silver wrote that the Comey letter “was probably enough to change the outcome of the Electoral College.” Not only did Comey make Trump president but then he wrote numerous very tedious books. He became a resistance hero, riding his regret all the way to the bank.
Fast-forward to Feb. 8, 2024, when Republican special counsel Robert Hur released his 345-page report. The report is being seen by some as an exoneration, saying that no criminal charges are warranted in the classified documents case against President Joe Biden. But Hur, who used to work for the Trump administration, couldn’t let Biden off the hook entirely, especially 269 days before an election. Hur, a member of a Republican Party that now largely works as a campaign arm for the former president, delivered the goods for his party. Sure, he found no legal basis to charge Biden, but but but… Hur proceeded to editorialize ad nauseam about Biden’s mental acuity, delivering right-wing talking points up on a platter. He wrote, “[At] trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Saying you don’t remember stuff in a deposition is pretty much standard. For example, Dr. Anthony Fauci said “I don’t recall” 174 times during a deposition about alleged collusion between the Biden administration and social media platforms — but because there isn’t a narrative about Fauci’s age crafted by Trump World, no one thought this had anything to do with his mental acuity….
Lies, by Edel Rodriguez
Hur’s report was a partisan hit job, but it didn’t matter, as former Obama chief of staff Jim Messina tweeted: “Let’s be clear — the special counsel isn’t a dummy and we should be very careful not to take the bait after Comey pulled this in 2016. Hur, a lifelong Republican and creature of DC, didn’t have a case against Biden, but he knew exactly how his swipes could hurt Biden politically.”
Joe Scarborough put it even more succinctly: “He couldn’t indict Biden legally, so he tried to indict Biden politically.” Yet again, a Republican special counsel had put his finger on the scale, just like Comey did in 2016. Hur isn’t a neurologist; he has no idea what Biden’s mental acuity is. Former attorney general Eric Holder condemned the report: “Special Counsel Hur report on Biden classified documents issues contains way too many gratuitous remarks and is flatly inconsistent with long standing DOJ traditions,” he posted on X, adding: “Had this report been subject to a normal DOJ review these remarks would undoubtedly have been excised.” Shame on Attorney General Merrick Garland for letting this partisan hit job be released.
The special counsel who impugned the president’s age and competence in his report on how Joe Biden handled classified documents will himself be up for questioning this week.
Some Biden aides and allies have suggested that Hur, a Republican appointed to his role as U.S. attorney by Donald Trump, is a political partisan. Hur’s defenders say he has shown throughout his career that his work is guided by only facts and the law — not politics.
A review of Hur’s professional life shows he’s no stranger to politically charged investigations. He prosecuted former elected officials as Maryland’s chief federal law enforcement officer. And as a Justice Department official, he helped monitor special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election….
The Naked Truth and the Masked Lies, by Rosita Allinckx
Hur held one of the most powerful jobs in the Justice Department during a tumultuous time in the Trump administration, serving as the top aide to [Rod] Rosenstein, the department’s second-in-command.
As the principal associate deputy attorney general, Hur helped run day-to-day operations of the department in 2017 and early 2018. He also helped Rosenstein stay on top of Mueller’s progress in the Russia investigation. Hur held bi-weekly meetings with the special counsel’s team and reported back to Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general said in an interview.
Rosenstein said he hired Hur because he knew he would maintain a calm and steady demeanor and “approach cases in a nonpartisan way.”
Um . . . Sure, Jan. Read more background at the link.
Why did Hur resign from the DOJ before testifying? Doesn’t that seem suspicious?
Hur, a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney who was tapped to lead the Biden probe by Attorney General Merrick Garland, formally stepped down one day before his Tuesday appearance at the request of Republicans led by Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. He drew criticism from Biden and the Democrats for criticizing the president’s memory in the report even as he declined to charge him.
Former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann explained that the Justice Department “cannot give instructions” to a former employee about what he “can and cannot testify to.”
“That makes it even more problematic from our perspective … if he was still a federal employee, DOJ would have to approve his testimony and they’d be involved in his appearance tomorrow,” a Democratic Judiciary Committee source told The Independent.
“It’s hard not to anticipate some real ugliness with Robert Hur’s testimony,” tweeted former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman. “He already showed his partisan colors in the inappropriate parts of his report. And he and the [Republicans] obviously contemplate he can vilify Biden now that he’s testifying as a ‘private citizen.’”
So it appears Hur’s motivation was to have the freedom to attack Biden without any DOJ influence on what he would say. Before I get to the testimony, here are some stories about Hur’s final report:
“First impressions stick,” writes Serwer. No matter that clarifications follow–it’s what people hear first that stays with them.
Five years ago, a partisan political operative with the credibility of a long career in government service misled the public about official documents in order to get Donald Trump the positive spin he wanted in the press. The play worked so well that a special counsel appointed to examine President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, Robert Hur, ran it again.
In 2019, then–Attorney General Bill Barr—who would later resign amid Trump’s attempts to suborn the Justice Department into backing his effort to seize power after losing reelection—announced that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had not found sufficient evidence to indict Trump on allegations that he had assisted in a Russian effort to sway the 2016 election and had obstructed an investigation into that effort. Mueller’s investigation led to indictments of several Trump associates, but he later testified that Justice Department policy barred prosecuting a sitting president, and so indicting Trump was not an option. Barr’s summary—which suggested that Trump had been absolved of any crimes—was so misleading that it drew a rebuke not only from Mueller himself but from a federal judge in a public-records lawsuit over material related to the investigation. That judge, Reggie Walton, wrote in 2020 that the discrepancies “cause the court to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller report to the contrary.”
Truth and Lies, by Louise Fletcher
As my colleague David Graham wrote at the time, the ploy worked. Trump claimed “total exoneration,” and mainstream outlets blared his innocence in towering headlines. Only later did the public learn that Mueller’s report had found “no criminal conspiracy but considerable links between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia, and strongly suggested that Trump had obstructed justice.”
Now this same pattern has emerged once again, only instead of working in the president’s favor, it has undermined him. Hur, a former U.S. attorney in the Trump administration, was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Biden for potential criminal wrongdoing after classified documents were found at his home. (Trump has been indicted on charges that he deliberately mishandled classified documents after storing such documents at his home in Florida and deliberately showing them off to visitors as “highly confidential” and “secret information.”)
In Hur’s own summary of his investigation, he concluded that “no criminal charges are warranted in this matter,” even absent DOJ policy barring prosecution of a sitting president. But that part was not what caught the media’s attention. Rather it was Hur’s characterization of Biden as having memory problems, validating conservative attacks on the president as too old to do the job. The transcripts of Hur’s interviews with Biden, released yesterday by House Democrats, suggest that characterization—politically convenient for Republicans and the Trump campaign—was misleading.
When special counsel Robert Hur released his report last month explaining why he wouldn’t charge President Joe Biden with mishandling classified documents, his claim that Biden displayed a “poor memory” and “diminished faculties” in their interview received enormous attention.
But now, the full transcripts of Hur’s interviews with Biden have been released — and they make Hur’s claims about Biden’s memory appear cherry-picked and exaggerated.
Biden sat for more than five hours with Hur’s team over two days. In that time, he said he did not recall specifics about how particular boxes ended up in his residences or offices after his vice presidency. But he engaged at length about his process for handling classified information and many other topics.
Hur’s claim that Biden had demonstrated some sort of general “poor memory” hangs almost entirely on mix-ups by Biden about in what specific year several years-old events occurred. The transcript makes clear Biden remembers all those events. But it seems Biden just doesn’t pay a lot of attention to which specific year stuff happened in.
So why did Hur hype this up so much?
His report and his House testimony Tuesday suggest one reason. Hur proposed a theory, outlined in the report, about Biden’s deliberate wrongdoing — that Biden kept classified documents about Afghanistan policy deliberations to help burnish his reputation and legacy.
However, Hur couldn’t prove this theory, in part because Biden said he couldn’t recall why these documents were in his garage. Hence, the special counsel bashed Biden for his “poor memory” — knowing full well how that would play when the report became public.
Truth Hidden Between the Lies, by Jeff Klena
This is a good article, and it also deals with Hur’s testimony and how Democrats’ countered his claims. After breaking down problems with Hur’s report, Prokop quotes Adam Schiff:
Hur’s report looks less like a smoking gun proving Biden’s supposed age-related decline, and more like dirty pool, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) argued.
“You know this, I know this, there is nothing more common with a witness of any age, when asked about events that are years old, than to say ‘I do not recall.’ Indeed, they’re instructed by their attorney to do that, if they have any question about it,” Schiff said.
Hur argued back that his consideration of Biden’s memory was relevant to his charging decisions, and that he was perfectly willing, indeed required, to explain his thinking on that topic in his report to the attorney general.
Schiff disputed this. “What is in the rules is, you don’t gratuitously do things to prejudice the subject of an investigation when you’re declining to prosecute. You don’t gratuitously add language that you know will be useful in a political campaign.”
“You were not born yesterday,” Schiff added. “You understood exactly what you were doing. It was a choice.”
Why on earth did Merrick Garland appoint this guy?
The White House knew it had a political problem on its hands when a special counsel report questioned President Joe Biden’s memory last month, but Biden saw a much more personal affront as well.
Robert Hur, who had been appointed to investigate whether Biden mishandled classified documents, wrote that the president couldn’t recall in an interview with prosecutors the date when his adult son, Beau, died of cancer. It was a shocking contention about a keystone event in Biden’s life, and it fed into questions about whether the 81-year-old president is fit to serve another term….
Hur didn’t ask the president about his son’s death; Biden brought it up himself during a discussion about how he stored documents at a rental home in Virginia after leaving the vice president’s office in 2017.
And Biden recalled the specific date that Beau died, although he briefly wondered aloud about the year as the conversation toggled between various events.
“What month did Beau die?” Biden mused. “Oh, God, May 30th.”
A White House lawyer interjected by saying, “2015.”
“Was it 2015 he had died?” Biden asked. When someone responded affirmatively, the president added, “It was 2015.” [….]
Hur, in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, said his report’s discussion of Biden’s memory was “necessary and accurate and fair” because his state of mind was an important part of evaluating whether he committed a crime.
“I did not sanitize my explanation nor did I disparage the president unfairly,” he said.
What an asshole! As Adam Serwer wrote, Hur made sure that the first impression he gave of Biden’s interviews was on of a doddering old man with cognitive issues.
Although special counsel Robert Hur impugned Joe Biden’s memory in his investigation over whether the president mishandled classified documents, he actually told Biden that he appeared “to have a photographic understanding and recall.”
The comment, which appears in transcripts of Hur’s interviews with Biden, did not make it into Hur’s final report. Hur concluded in the report that Biden should not be charged over the documents, but made sure to mention his doubts about the president’s memory.
The California Democrat asked Hur about a comment that appears on “Day 1, Page 47” of the transcript.
“You said to President Biden, ‘You appear to have a photographic understanding and recall of the House,’” Swalwell said. “Did you say that to President Biden?”
Hur conceded that “those words do appear on Page 47 of the transcript.”
Swalwell pressed further.
“‘Photographic’ is what you said, is that right?” he asked.
“That word does appear on Page 47 of the transcript,” Hur responded.
“Never appeared in your report, though. Is that correct? The word ‘photographic’?” Swalwell asked.
The Special Counsel Robert Hur report has been grossly mischaracterized by the press. The report finds that the evidence of a knowing, willful violation of the criminal laws is wanting. Indeed, the report, on page 6, notes that there are “innocent explanations” that Hur “cannot refute.” That is but one of myriad examples we outline in great detail below of the report repeatedly finding a lack of proof. And those findings mean, in DOJ-speak, there is simply no case. Unrefuted innocent explanations is the sine qua non of not just a case that does not meet the standard for criminal prosecution – it means innocence. Or as former Attorney General Bill Barr and his former boss would have put it, a total vindication (but here, for real).
But even without the prompting of a misleading “summary” by Barr, the press has gotten the lede wrong. This may be because of a poorly worded (we’re being charitable) thesis sentence on page 1 of Hur’s executive summary. Hur writes at the outset: “Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.” You have to wait for the later statements that what the report actually says is there is insufficient evidence of criminality, innocent explanations for the conduct, and affirmative evidence that Biden did not willfully withhold classified documents. Put another way, that same sentence about “our investigation uncovered evidence” could equally apply to Mike Pence, who had classified documents at his home, which is similarly some “evidence” of a crime, but also plainly insufficient to remotely establish criminality.
The press incorrectly and repeatedly blast out that the Hur report found Biden willfully retained classified documents, in other words, that Biden committed a felony; with some in the news media further trumpeting that the Special Counsel decided only as a matter of discretion not to recommend charges.
Read a details analysis of the report at the link.
Former special counsel Robert Hur appeared before Congress on Tuesday to explain his investigation into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents – which led to no charges against the president but plenty of consternation among Democrats when Hur described Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” in his report.
While Hur came ready to defend his investigation, outlining a specific, legal case — or lack thereof – the members of the House Judiciary Committee were fighting a battle over the much more subjective political consequences to Hur’s report just months before the 2024 presidential election.
Truth Lies at the Bottom of the Well, by Frances MacDonald
Republicans attacked Biden as they pressed Hur on his decision not to prosecute the president, while Democrats criticized Hur for his comments about Biden’s memory – while also focusing much of their attention on former President Donald Trump and the differences in the former president’s classified documents case, which led to an indictment last year.
Hur tried his best to stick to what was in his report, even as he was pushed to go further either to criticize Biden – or to declare his innocence.
Hur was clear on Tuesday that he did not want to play ball with Republicans on whether Biden is “senile,” given the former special counsel’s decision to describe Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory” in his investigative report.
“Webster’s Dictionary defines ‘senile’ as exhibiting a decline of cognitive ability, such as memory, associated with old age,” Republican Rep. Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin said. “Mr. Hur, based on your report, did you find that the president was senile?”
“I did not. That conclusion does not appear in my report,” Hur replied emphatically.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Washington state Democrat, tussled with Hur over his conclusions, claiming Hur “exonerated” Biden. But Hur immediately took issue with the term during a tense exchange in which they both repeatedly cut each other off.
“This lengthy, expensive an independent investigation resulted in a complete exoneration of President Joe Biden for every document you discussed in your report, you found insufficient evidence that the president violated any laws about possession or retention of classified materials,” Jayapal said.
“I need to go back and make sure that I take note of a word that you used, ‘exoneration,’” Hur said. “That is not a word that is used in my report and that is not a part of my task as a prosecutor.”
“You exonerated him,” Jayapal retorted.
“I did not exonerate him,” Hur said. “That word does not appear in the report.”
Okay then. But he didn’t charge him either. What can I say. Hur is just an asshole. Also, please note that Hur was question about whether he would accept a role in a second Trump administration, and he refused to answer. We can only hope that this controversy will be forgotten by the time we get to November.
Yesterday was Super Tuesday, but there were few surprises. Oath-breaking insurrectionist Donald Trump will most likely face President Joe Biden in November unless something happens to either of these old guys. Trump continued his pattern of losing 30-40 percent of the Republican primary votes, and Niki Haley won a second primary–in Vermont. This morning, she withdrew from the race without endorsing Trump.
On the heels of Super Tuesday and Nikki Haley’s departure from the 2024 presidential race, Donald Trump is poised to officially be the GOP nominee for president—despite 91 felony counts, four separate indictments, and being found liable for sexual assault.
In poll after poll, most recently a New York Times/Siena College poll, Trump dominates Joe Biden head-to-head, as well as with key demographics. But those polls seem to be missing a flashing red warning sign for Trump in a general election: his disapproval with Republican voters.
Niki Haley suspends campaign
Haley’s quixotic race for the GOP nomination exposed Trump’s flawed and weakened standing within the Republican Party, but more broadly with the American electorate. A new Associated Press survey found that two in ten Iowa primary voters, a third of New Hampshire Primary voters, and a quarter of South Carolina Republican voters would refuse to vote for Trump in the fall.
voters, 78 percent would not commit to voting for the Republican nominee in November. In California, 69 percent of Haley voters said they wouldn’t vote for Trump in November, according to an NBC News exit poll. Even more striking were exit polls out of North Carolina that found 81 percent of Haley voters would not commit to voting for the eventual GOP nominee.
These numbers are remarkable if you consider that GOP primary voters are historically among the most intense of voters—meaning they will turn out and skew strongly more to the right than the average general election voter.
For hours his fans had partied in the gilded ballroom of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, accompanied by Abba’s Dancing Queen, Elton John’s Rocket Man, Queen’s We Are the Champions and other golden oldies. Waiters glided between them serving pastries, prawns and sausage rolls. Each time Fox News – displayed on four giant TV screens – declared another state for Trump, they whooped and cheered and chanted “Trump! Trump! Trump! USA! USA! USA!”
Then, after 10pm, into this gaudy pageant walked the Grim Reaper, raining on their parade with a 19-minute speech laden with doom and gloom about the state of the nation.
This was Trump as Eeyore.
No balloons, no confetti, no parade of family members on stage and no mention of opponent Nikki Haley. No fun.
“Some people call it an experiment – I don’t call it an experiment,” Trump said of the United States. “I just say this is a magnificent place, a magnificent country, and it’s sad to see how far it’s come and gone … When you look at the depths where it’s gone, we can’t let that happen. We’re going to straighten it out. We’re going to close our borders. We’re going to drill baby drill.”
As the unhappy warrior spoke, 10 guests headed for the exit, apparently worn down by the misery of it all….
If only he had still been running things, he lamented, Russia would not have invaded Ukraine, Israel would not have been attacked and Iran would be broke. Now inflation is “destroying the middle class, it’s destroying everything”. He added morosely that inflation was called the “country buster”.
But wait, there is one bright spot: the stock market! It’s going gangbusters. According to Trump, this has nothing to do with Biden, “the worst president in the history of our country”, but the Republican frontrunner’s own healthy poll numbers indicating his return.
Then it was back to the bad news of border security and immigration….
“It happens in third world countries,” he said. “And in some ways, we’re a third world country. We live in a third world country with no borders … We need a fair and free press. The press has not been fair nor has it been free … The press used to police our country. Now nobody has confidence in them.”
The grim list kept coming: the deadly coronavirus pandemic, the loss of American soldiers in Afghanistan. And Trump naturally could not resist circling back for another bite at the border – no matter that he was the one who ordered Republicans to torpedo bipartisan legislation that might have begun to fix the crisis.
“We have millions of people invading our country,” he asserted. “This is an invasion. This is the worst invasion probably.” For good measure, he tossed out an uncheckable fact. “The number today could be 15 million people. And they’re coming from rough places and dangerous places.”
Fueled by throat-soothing tea, guided by teleprompters and surrounded by six aides and one historian, President Biden spent hours at Camp David last weekend honing a State of the Union speech that will be watched by one of his biggest audiences before the November election.
So the pressure is on.
Mr. Biden, it should be noted, had with him at Camp David a copy of “Possible: How We Survive (and Thrive) in an Age of Conflict,” a book by William Ury, an international negotiation expert.
“You’ll hear me on Thursday,” Mr. Biden said when reporters asked on Tuesday about his preparations.
White House officials have not said what topics the president will address, or whether he will mention Donald J. Trump, his likely 2024 challenger, by name. But Mr. Biden is almost certain to talk about the war in Ukraine, the war between Israel and Hamas, China, abortion, immigration, trade and other topics in a speech he and his aides have been working on since December.
The final speech, which aides say will be edited up until Mr. Biden gives it, will be delivered by a president under pressure to reassure voters that he is not too old for the job and, more than at any point in his tenure, guard against political outbursts that have become commonplace during such speeches. Mr. Biden’s aides say he has prepared for Republicans to heckle him, as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene did last year.
Getting the speech into shape played out, in true Biden fashion, inside a circle of aides who have been around the president for years and treat such proceedings like a state secret.
The Camp David weekend group included Bruce Reed, the White House deputy chief of staff, who helped guide policy-related additions to the speech; Mike Donilon, the aide who has the best understanding of Mr. Biden’s voice; Anita Dunn, who oversees communications strategy for the White House; and Jeffrey D. Zients, Mr. Biden’s chief of staff. Rounding out the group was Steve Ricchetti, counselor to the president and a longtime friend, and Vinay Reddy, Mr. Biden’s speechwriter.
The historian Jon Meacham, who is called upon to add historical heft, was also there.
In other Super Tuesday news, Adam Schiff beat out two other Democrats to win the California primary for the U.S. Senate, along with Republican and former pro-baseball player Steve Garvey.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), using ruthless tactics belied by his cherubic face and upstanding public persona, has won the California Senate primary, according to the Associated Press.
Steve Garvey, a former professional baseball player, is projected to come in second almost entirely thanks to Schiff’s maneuvering. The millions Schiff spent on ads boosting Garvey’s profile with Republican voters helped edge out Reps. Katie Porter (D-CA) and Barbara Lee (D-CA), both of whom would have posed an actual threat to Schiff in the general election (California’s jungle primary lets two candidates of the same party go through to the general).
Porter — Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) protegé, who gained a national profile by taking CEOs to task at committee hearings, armed with her omnipresent whiteboard — and Lee — famous for being the only member of Congress to vote against authorizing military force after 9/11 — are both considered more progressive than Schiff. But a lack of left-wing consolidation around either woman, as well as the lack of involvement by key groups like EMILY’s List, left the progressive flank of the party split. Schiff got the moderate lane to himself.
Schiff has also been incredibly successful in riding his high-profile role in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial to national fame, becoming omnipresent on cable news. It didn’t hurt that he won the endorsement of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), a famed fundraiser.
Schiff will virtually certainly win the seat of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) in the fall, taking over for Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-CA) who was, ironically, appointed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) so a Black woman would again represent the state. The state will now be without a woman in either of its two Senate seats for the first time in over 30 years.
While Schiff lacks the progressive bona fides of Porter and Lee, he does meet what will be a key Democratic litmus test for candidates for the upper chamber from here on out: He supports ending the filibuster, along with more expansive proposals to nix the Electoral College and expand the Supreme Court.
In Arizona, Kyrsten Sinema announced, in a whiny, narcissistic speech, that she won’t be running for reelection to the U.S. Senate. That’s good news for Democrats and specifically for Ruben Gallego. Again from Kate Riga at Talking Points Memo: Kyrsten Sinema Drove Herself Out Of Politics.
In a video replete with her own accomplishments — “I believe in my approach. But, it’s not what America wants right now” — she on Tuesday delivered her constituents a final “it’s not me, it’s you” farewell.
The senselessness of her trajectory is thrown into even starker relief next to that of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), inextricably linked to her throughout Joe Biden’s first two years in the White House due to the pair’s devotion to the filibuster and eagerness to buck their party. Manchin comes from one of the Trumpiest states in the country. He’s the last generation of a dying breed, as red state Democrats and blue state Republicans drop or are forced out of their parties.
Sinema’s state, in contrast, has only trended bluer. While certainly still battleground territory, it’s a more comfortable get for Democrats than at any other time in recent history. Had she acted like a normal Democrat — look no further than fellow Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) — she’d be preparing for her reelection right now, relieved to have the kooky Kari Lake to run against, and swimming in a helpful current of money funneled by the national party organs.
But she habitually took loud, splashy stands on issues that not only set her apart from her party, but did so on issues central to its very ideology (she’s now an independent, though never stopped caucusing with the Democrats). This was not taking some swings to look tough on the border, or to distance herself from super lefty proposals. It was curtseying while voting down an increased federal minimum wage, threatening the Inflation Reduction Act over preserving a tax loophole for hedge fund managers and law firm partners, limiting the lift of the corporate tax rate….
Ruben Gallego
She did all of this with a rare disrespect for norms around the Hill, one of the very few senators who refused to do hallway interviews, even when she was a deciding player on major legislation, leaving the public to learn her views through other sources or rare sit-downs she’d grant to friendly press. It helped keep her a cypher to political observers: a lawmaker who’d come up through very liberal politics, who’d been open and admirably proud about her bisexuality, suddenly tacking to the corporate right and infuriating those who’d supported her rise and who she’d need to run again in the process. Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), essentially running in her stead, was drafted by Democrats wholly alienated by her decisions.
This means that Ruben Gallego will face insane conspiracy theorist Kari Lake in November. Here’s hoping he wins.
Mark Robinson, who easily won North Carolina’s Republican gubernatorial primary on Tuesday, has the misfortune of having spent years on Facebook without thinking about his future political career. The current lieutenant governor of the state—and the first Black man to hold the position—was a furniture manufacturer who was launched into politics in 2018 when he gave a viral pro-gun speech at a city council meeting in the wake of the Parkland school shooting. Two years later he was elected to his current office. He will face Democrat Josh Stein, the state’s attorney general, in the general election in November. The race is expected to be extremely close.
Mark Robinson
He has not, in the time since his profile rose, worked to purge his social media of controversial content. Nor has he played things safe when speaking at churches and other public events in recorded sermons and speeches. So it doesn’t take a lot of probing to find how Robinson really feels about certain hot-button issues.
Robinson, who is also into conspiracy theories, has voiced enough offensive comments for a full accounting to be too unwieldy. But even a sampling of his views like the one below—not a comprehensive list—showcases just what kind of candidate North Carolina Republicans just selected to be their standard-bearer this November.
Abortion “I don’t care if you’re 24 hours pregnant. I don’t care if you’re 24 weeks pregnant. I don’t care. If you kill that young’un, it is murder.” (Robinson has said he paid for an abortion in 1989 and maintained that that decision was “wrong.”)
Climate Science “… pseudoscience, junk science that has not proven a single solitary thing.”
The Media “See through their lies and look at the big picture of their TRUE intent, which is to push US towards their new world order.”
Jewish People He voiced agreement with a pastor who claimed the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” are the CIA, China, Islam, and the Rothschild family of “international bankers that rule every single … central bank.”
Also, regarding Black Panther: “It is absolutely AMAZING to me that people… can get so excited about a fictional ‘hero’ created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic marxist. How can this trash, that was only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets, invoke any pride?”
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Read more examples at the Slate link.
I’m going to end there. What do you think? What stories are you following today?
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Bowes, Josephine; Study of Birch Trees; The Bowes Museum.
Good Morning!!
Today’s January 6 Committee hearing has now been scheduled for 1PM. As you know, the hearing will focus on Trump’s efforts to pressure state lawmakers to set up slates of fake electors. It could be a blockbuster. Politico just broke the news that Ginni Thomas’s communications with Arizona lawmakers could come up in the questioning.
The logistics … Chair BENNIE THOMPSON (D-Miss.) and Vice Chair LIZ CHENEY (R-Wyo.) are expected to open the hearing, and Rep. ADAM SCHIFF (D-Calif.) will play a key role. There will be four witnesses broken up over two panels.
— The first panel features (1) Arizona House Speaker RUSTY BOWERS, (2) Georgia Secretary of State BRAD RAFFENSPERGER and (3) his deputy, GABRIEL STERLING.
Bowers is expected to describe the pressure campaign from Trump, RUDY GIULIANI and VIRGINIA THOMAS, the wife of Supreme Court Justice CLARENCE THOMAS. In one phone call, Trump and Giuliani pushed Bowers to change Arizona law retroactively “to allow the Legislature to choose a different slate of presidential electors than picked by voters.”
And the Playbook also broke this news this morning:
SCOOP: The House select committee investigating Jan. 6 sent a subpoena last week to ALEX HOLDER, a documentary filmmaker who was granted extensive access to President DONALD TRUMP and his inner circle, and who shot interviews with the then-president both before and after Jan. 6. The existence of this footage is previously unreported.
Landscape with trees, Felix Edouard Vallotton
A source familiar with the project told Playbook on Monday night that Holder began filming on the campaign trail in September 2020 for a project on Trump’s reelection campaign. Over the course of several months, Holder had substantial access to Trump, Trump’s adult children and VP MIKE PENCE, both in the White House and on the campaign trail.
According to the subpoena, which was obtained exclusively by Playbook, the committee wants three main things from Holder:
(1) Raw footage from Jan. 6.
(2) Raw footage of interviews from September 2020 to present with Trump, Pence, DONALD TRUMP JR., IVANKA TRUMP, ERIC TRUMP and JARED KUSHNER.
(3) Raw footage “pertaining to discussions of election fraud or election integrity surrounding the November 2020 presidential election.”
Holder is expected to fully cooperate with the committee in an interview scheduled for Thursday. Read the full subpoena
The second panel will focus on an election worker from Georgia:
— The second panel has just one witness: SHAYE MOSS, an election worker in Georgia. She and her mother processed ballots in 2020 and were targets of a smear campaign by Trump allies. David Wickert at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a deep dive on Moss, who was accused “of rigging the November 2020 election for Joe Biden with ‘suitcases’ of ballots on election night. The pair were featured in a video that Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani called a ‘smoking gun’ for voting fraud.”
A committee aide said that Moss would outline how “being targeted by the former president has upended her life and that of her mother. … They were subjected to death threats, intimidation, coercion, forced to go into hiding.”
Raffensperger and Sterling are relatively well known now, but I had not heard of Rusty Bowers before. Here’s some information about him from The Washington Post: Who is Rusty Bowers?
Arizona House Speaker Russell “Rusty” Bowers, a Republican, was pressured by Donald Trump and other members of his party to refuse to accept the results of Arizona’s election in 2020. Bowers is expected to be Tuesday’s first live witness before the Jan. 6 panel.
Vickerman, Stanley; Tree Roots; Kirklees Museums and Galleries
Bowers, 69, supported Trump’s 2020 campaign. When the former president lost the election in Arizona by 10,457 votes, he and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani called Bowers to persuade him to block the state legislature from certifying the results.
Bowers refused.
His decision to stand firm against Trump put him at the center of the ire of the former president’s supporters. Armed protesters gathered outside his house and screamed that he was a pedophile. Last summer, the state’s right-wing Patriot Party attempted to recall Bowers from office, complaining that he did not do enough to support an audit of the 2020 election. The effort failed, the Arizona Republic reported.
The state lawmaker, who will not be in charge of the Arizona House next year — he decided to seek a state Senate seat instead — received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in April for resisting intimidation from Trump.
The select committee intends to lay out Tuesday how Trump leaned on statehouse Republicans — from Pennsylvania, to Georgia, to Michigan, to Arizona and others — to pull off a scheme that would culminate on Jan. 6, 2021, when then-Vice President Mike Pence presided over the counting of electoral votes.
Under Trump’s plan, Pence would be presented with competing slates of electors — those certified by the governors, and those certified by state legislators — and he would assert the extraordinary power to choose which slates to count. But no state legislature responded to Trump’s demand, and Pence, without any genuine controversy, rejected the scheme as illegal.
In fact, the legality of the plan will be at the heart of Tuesday afternoon’s hearing, which will be led in part by panel member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). It’s the select panel’s fourth public hearing as investigators lay out their findings.
Dancing around the large trees at Perros Maurice Denis – 1914, Bo Fransson
Trump-aligned lawyers concocted the effort, leaning on fringe constitutional theory and the guidance of John Eastman, a primary architect of the effort to pressure Pence on Jan. 6. Eastman himself acknowledged in emails obtained by the select committee that the Pence plan would be “dead on arrival” without the backing of state legislatures — yet he pushed ahead anyway, suggesting that the confusion around alternate electors would give Pence enough cover to act.
Trump’s own White House counsel’s office also raised doubts about the plan, according to testimony released by the select panel in court filings. And in the days before Jan. 6, Pence’s chief counsel Greg Jacob engaged in an intense debate with Eastman, contending that not a single justice of the Supreme Court would back his plan — a point he said Eastman reluctantly conceded.
Select committee aides told reporters Monday that the hearing would highlight new evidence of Trump’s direct awareness and involvement in the fake electors scheme. To highlight the issue, the panel plans to hear from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, his aide Gabriel Sterling and other state and local officials. Several of Tuesday’s witnesses were subpoenaed to appear. Schiff told the Los Angeles Times Monday the panel would also highlight proof of then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ involvement in Georgia.
The convening of the electoral college on Dec. 14, 2020, was supposed to mark the end of the wild, extended presidential election that year.
But when the dayarrived, a strange thing happened. In seven swing states won by JoeBiden, when the Democrat’s electors assembled to formally elect him president, Trump supporters showed up, too, ready to declare that their man had actually won.
“The electors are already here — they’ve been checked in,” a state police officer told the group in Michigan, according to a video of the encounter, as he barred the Republicans from the Capitol in a state Biden won by more than 154,000 votes.
In Nevada,a state Biden had won by about 33,600 votes,a photo distributed by the state Republican Party showed Trump supporters squeezing around an undersize picnic table dressed up with a bit of bunting, preparing to sign formal certificates declaring that they were “the duly elected and qualified” electors of their state.
Ellison, R.; Oak Trees; Colchester and Ipswich Museums Service
At the time, the gatherings seemed a slapdash, desperate attempt to mimic President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede.
But internal campaign emails and memos revealthat the convening of the fake electors was apparently a much more concerted strategy, intended to give Vice President Mike Pence a reason to declare that the outcome of the election was somehow in doubt on Jan. 6, 2021, when he was to preside over the congressional counting of the electoral college votes.
The documents show that Trump’s team pushed ahead and urged the electors to meet — then pressured Pence to cite the alternate Trump slates — even as various Trump lawyers acknowledged privately that they did not have legal validity and the gatherings had not been in compliance with state laws.
The House Jan. 6 committee plans to show in its fourth hearing Tuesday that President Trump’s then-chief of staff Mark Meadows “had an intimate role … in this plot to put pressure on [Georgia] state legislators and on elections officials,” Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), a member of the panel, told The Times in an interview.
Among other things, Schiff said the committee investigating the 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol will release new information about Meadows’ appearance at a key election meeting in Georgia and text messages revealing that he wanted to send autographed Make America Great Again hats to people conducting the audit….
In the interview, Schiff, a former prosecutor, expressed surprise that the House committee got so many people to speak on the record.
“I’m glad these people are coming forward,” he said. “I’m glad they’re speaking out. It took a long time for [former Atty. Gen.] Bill Barr to do the right thing. It took a long time for many others who enabled Donald Trump to say ‘I can’t go any further.’”
But he added, if they had spoken out earlier, “we might have been spared all the trauma we went through.”
Bough, Samuel; Entrance to Cadzow Forest, near Glasgow; York Museums Trust.
Two months after rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to help President Donald Trump stay in office, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, attended a gathering of right-wing activists where a speaker declared to roaring applause that Trump was still the “legitimate president,” a video recording of the event shows.
“There is a robbery that is going on in this country right now,” pastor and conservative radio personality C.L. Bryant told the crowd, according to video posted to Facebook by an attendee. “In fact, I say it to you and I’ll say it loud and clear, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I won’t bite my tongue. I do believe that Donald John Trump is the only legitimate president.”
The event on March 6, 2021, was a meeting of Frontliners for Liberty. The group vaulted from obscurity to national attention last week with the disclosure that Thomas had invited pro-Trump lawyer John Eastman to speak to its members in December 2020.
The revelation, originating from emails that a judge ordered Eastman to turn over to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, showed that Thomas was in contact with Eastman, a key legal architect of the attempt to subvert the election. The judge, David O. Carter of the Central District of California, wrote in a June 7 opinion that the emails, including two in which the group’s “high-profile leader” invited Eastman to speak — were relevant to the committee’s work.
While text messages and emails unearthed in recent weeks have shown that Thomas was involved in those efforts before Jan. 6, her attendance at the Orlando gathering indicates that her alliance with election deniers continued even after Joe Biden was inaugurated. Frontliners has hosted hard-right lawmakers, insisted on strict secrecy and proclaimed that the nation’s top enemy is the “radical fascist left,” according to social media posts, court filings and interviews with several people involved in the group.
I can’t wait for 1:00! If you’re watching the hearing, please share your thoughts in the comment thread.
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The former US president Bill Clinton’s health is improving but he will remain in a California hospital for at least another night to receive antibiotics intravenously for a urological infection that spread to his bloodstream, his spokesperson said on Friday.
The 75-year-old Clinton, who served as president from 1993 to 2001, entered the University of California, Irvine, medical center on Tuesday evening after suffering from fatigue. He spoke with Joe Biden on Friday.
Clinton’s spokesperson Angel Ureña said that Clinton’s white blood count has decreased, indicating his health is improving.
“All health indicators are trending in the right direction, including his white blood count which was decreased significantly,” Ureña said on Twitter. “In order to receive further IV antibiotics, he will remain in the hospital overnight.”
Since his admission to the intensive care unit at the hospital, Clinton has received fluids along with antibiotics, his doctors said.
His wife, a former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, was at the hospital on Thursday and Friday, and the two read books and talked about politics, Ureña told Reuters.
It remained unclear when Clinton would be released.
Biden said Clinton would likely go home soon, though it was not clear whether he would be released on Saturday or later.
“He is getting out shortly. … Whether that’s tomorrow or the next day, I don’t know,” Biden told reporters in Connecticut. “He’s doing fine. He really is.”
The urologic infection that a source close to Bill Clinton says led to the former president’s hospitalization is common in older individuals and can be serious, experts say.
But when treated in a timely manner, the prognosis for such cases is excellent….
A source close to Clinton told NBC News that his initial diagnosis was a urologic infection that morphed into a broader infection.
While little else was immediately revealed about Clinton’s condition, including whether it originated in his urinary tract or elsewhere in the urinary system, experts who were not involved in his care said such spread of infection can be life-threatening without prompt medical attention.
“This is not uncommon. This is something we frequently treat in the emergency room, where somebody comes in with a urinary tract infection,” NBC News senior medical correspondent Dr. John Torres said Friday on the “TODAY” show. “Especially as they get older, their body is not able to contain that, so it moves from the urinary tract, from the bladder and the kidneys, into the bloodstream.”
At that point, Torres said, a patient is at risk of sepsis — a dangerous overdrive of the immune system in response to an infection — or septic shock, when organs start to fail.
Doctors must keep a close eye on these patients to make sure the strong antibiotics they are treating them with are lowering their white blood cell counts, which would indicate the infection is getting under control, said Dr. Ash Tewari, a urologist and prostate cancer specialist at Mount Sinai in New York.
Doctors will also work to identify any underlying conditions that may have led to the infection in the first place: a blockage, a kidney stone, even diabetes, Tewari said. Sometimes, procedures are necessary to prevent future recurrences.
The Jefferson Parish Shraeriff’s Office is investigating a deputy accused of holding a Black woman by her hair and slamming her head repeatedly into the pavement with such force that a witness to the Sept. 20 incident said it ripped several of Shantel Arnold’s braids from her scalp. A 14-second video captured the incident in the New Orleans suburb where, for decades, Black residents have accused the Sheriff’s Office of targeting them.
It was the second time that hour that Arnold had been assaulted. By the time the deputies arrived, she said she had already fended off an attack by some local boys.
In an interview, the 34-year-old Arnold, who has not been previously identified, told the news organizations she had needed the police’s protection. But protection is not what she got.
The video begins with a sheriff’s deputy seen holding the wrist of Arnold, who is lying on her back on the sidewalk. The deputy appears to be dragging her along the pavement. The deputy then grabs Arnold’s arm with his other hand and jerks her upward, lifting her body off the ground. They briefly disappear behind a parked white vehicle. When they come back into view, the deputy is holding Arnold by her braids, slamming her repeatedly onto the cement. At one point, he whips her down so violently her body spins around and flips over.
The footage ends as the deputy crouches down and places a knee onto Arnold’s back.
Arnold is only 4 feet eight inches tall and weighs about 100 pounds.
The incident started around 2 p.m. on Sept. 20 when Arnold was attacked by three boys as she was walking down the street near her family’s trailer home. At 4-foot-8 and about 100 pounds, her left eye missing from a car accident years earlier, Arnold regularly made an easy target for the neighborhood bullies, her family said.
During the attack, which lasted several minutes and was captured in a cellphone video, the boys slammed Arnold to the ground and beat her while a crowd watched and laughed. She tried to defend herself with a stick, which is visible in the video. The assault ended only after 71-year-old Lionel Gray, whom Arnold considers her stepfather, chased the boys away.
Disheveled and covered in dirt, Arnold stumbled down the road toward her home when an unidentified sheriff’s deputy rolled up beside her in his patrol car.
BENTON HARBOR, Mich. — During the three years that officials have known about dangerous amounts of lead flowing from faucets in Benton Harbor, Mich., they have sent out notices, distributed filters and tried to improve water treatment. But the problems persisted, and some residents said they never heard about the risks of the toxic water coming from their taps.
Now, in scenes reminiscent of the water crisis in Flint, Mich., state officials have told Benton Harbor residents not to drink, cook or brush their teeth with tap water. Elected officials came to town Thursday promising help. And so many cars have turned out for bottled water giveaways that traffic has been snarled, a rarity in a place with 9,100 residents.
“It’s horrible to watch, to see my city like this,” Rosetta Valentine, 63, said as she directed traffic at a water distribution site where some people lined up nearly an hour before the event started.
Residents of Benton Harbor see parallels between their plight and the water crisis that unfolded less than three hours up the highway in Flint, also a majority-Black city, where a change in the water source in 2014 led to residents drinking contaminated water despite repeated assurances that it was safe. In Benton Harbor, where thousands of homes are connected to the water system by lead pipes, efforts to bring down problematic lead readings by using corrosion controls have so far failed, and officials have recently grown concerned that lead-removing filters given to residents since 2019 might not work.
The problems in Benton Harbor and Flint are extreme examples of a broader, national failure of water infrastructure that experts say requires massive and immediate investment to solve. Across the country, in cities like Chicago, Pittsburgh and Clarksburg, W.Va., Americans are drinking dangerous quantities of brain-damaging lead as agencies struggle to modernize water treatment plants and launch efforts to replace the lead service lines that connect buildings to the water system. Health officials say there is no safe level of lead exposure.
Congressional Democrats, who control both chambers and have a majority on the January 6 committee, can ask the House or Senate sergeant-at-arms to arrest Bannon. Yesterday afternoon, though, Representative Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chairs the committee, announced that he will pursue a more moderate path: Next week, the committee will vote on whether to refer Bannon to the Justice Department for potential criminal prosecution.
“We fully intend to enforce” the subpoenas, Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who is one of two Republicans on the special committee, assured me. “That doesn’t come with the snap of a finger, but we will get to the bottom of these questions and pursue all avenues.”
Democrats want to uphold norms of interparty civility while also preventing Trump and his buddies from completely undermining democracy. But time is running out. The January 6 committee is one of Congress’s last chances to narrate the Capitol riots and the Trump administration’s efforts to subvert the peaceful transfer of power. The only way to fight fascism is with narrative, Masha Gessen, the writer and activist, once told me. The select-committee probe presents a real opportunity to do just that.
Enforcing the committee’s subpoenas isn’t a controversial idea, Representative Eric Swalwell of California told me. “We must enforce congressional subpoenas not just for holding insurrectionists accountable but to show everyone in America that we all follow the same rules,” he said. “If Bannon and company are above the law, why wouldn’t nonpublic figures toss their lawful subpoenas in the trash?”
Perhaps Bannon thinks that the committee won’t follow through, or that jail time might martyr him. He’s dodged consequences for alleged misconduct before. Last year, he faced prison for his role in the “We Build the Wall” scheme, which prosecutors said was fraudulent, but Trump granted him an 11th-hour pardon. At least he’s had some time to think about what he might have to pack.
The congressional committee tasked with investigating the January 6 Capitol Riots is closing in on top Trump ally and adviser Steve Bannon with an expected vote to recommend criminal contempt charges against the former White House aide for defying a subpoena.
Adam Schiff, the House Intelligence Committee chairman who also sits on the January 6 committee, went as far as to say that he expects the Justice Department to prosecute.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who also sits on the January 6 panel, said he expects the Justice Department to prosecute the cases.
The chairman of the special committee, Representative Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said the panel will vote Tuesday to recommend charges against Bannon, an adviser to Donald Trump for years who was in touch with the president ahead of the most serious assault on Congress in two centuries….
If approved by the Democratic-majority committee, the recommendation of criminal charges would go to the full House. Approval there would send them to the Justice Department, which has final say on prosecution.
The showdown with Bannon is just one facet of a broad and escalating congressional inquiry, with 19 subpoenas issued so far and thousands of pages of documents flowing to the committee and its staff. Challenging Bannon’s defiance is a crucial step for the panel, whose members are vowing to restore the force of congressional subpoenas after they were routinely flouted during Trump’s time in office.
Why is the January 6th Committee waiting until Tuesday to hold Steve Bannon’s criminal contempt hearing? Because they’re doing it in prime time and airing it in public. They’re going to make an example out of him as loudly as possible. Get your popcorn ready.
Of course no matter how forcefully the hearing is conducted, and no matter how serious the resulting criminal contempt referral is, we’ll still have to put up with the defeatists. Whatever the committee does, most pundits will naturally insist that it should have done the opposite, because that’s the only way that a lot of pundits feel they can keep themselves relevant.
And of course the defeatists will falsely insist that the Department of Justice “won’t do anything” and that Bannon will “get away with it all.” But at this point that kind of background whining is just par for the course.
What the whiniest of pundits and activists don’t get is that these kinds of hearings are not for their benefit. Their minds are already made up. The January 6th Committee, its actions, its hearings, and its conclusions are for the benefit of average Americans in the middle who know that something went wrong that day but want to be convinced of what specifically happened in painstaking fashion.
We’ll find out next week. I can’t wait.
I’ll add a few more links in the comment thread. Have a nice weekend everyone!!
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
Yesterday was Super Tuesday, but there were few surprises. Oath-breaking insurrectionist Donald Trump will most likely face President Joe Biden in November unless something happens to either of these old guys. Trump continued his pattern of losing 30-40 percent of the Republican primary votes, and Niki 
No balloons, no confetti, no parade of family members on stage and no mention of opponent 
“You’ll hear me on Thursday,” Mr. Biden said when reporters asked on Tuesday about his preparations.
Schiff has also been incredibly successful in riding his high-profile role in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial to national fame, becoming omnipresent on cable news. It didn’t hurt that he won the endorsement of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), a famed fundraiser. 
Sinema’s state, in contrast, has only trended bluer. While certainly still battleground territory, it’s a more comfortable get for Democrats than at any other time in recent history. Had she acted like a normal Democrat — look no further than fellow Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) — she’d be preparing for her reelection right now, relieved to have the kooky Kari Lake to run against, and swimming in a helpful current of money funneled by the national party organs. 
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