Posted: August 11, 2022 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Criminal Justice System, FBI, FBI raids, just because | Tags: classified documents, Department of Justice, Donald Trump, FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, MAGA crazies |
R. Kenton Nelson, 1954
Good Afternoon!!
The top stories today are focused on the earthshaking FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Of course there is other news; but I’m obsessed with bringing down Trump, so those stories are what interest me.
The only really new information to come out yesterday was this story by national security reporter William Arkin at Newsweek: Exclusive: An Informer Told the FBI What Docs Trump Was Hiding, and Where.
The raid on Mar-a-Lago was based largely on information from an FBI confidential human source, one who was able to identify what classified documents former President Trump was still hiding and even the location of those documents, two senior government officials told Newsweek.
The officials, who have direct knowledge of the FBI’s deliberations and were granted anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters, said the raid of Donald Trump‘s Florida residence was deliberately timed to occur when the former president was away….
Both senior government officials say the raid was scheduled with no political motive, the FBI solely intent on recovering highly classified documents that were illegally removed from the White House. Preparations to conduct such an operation began weeks ago, but in planning the date and time, the FBI Miami Field Office and Washington headquarters were focused on the former president’s scheduled return to Florida from his residences in New York and New Jersey.
“They were seeking to avoid any media circus,” says the second source, a senior intelligence official who was briefed on the investigation and the operation. “So even though everything made sense bureaucratically and the FBI feared that the documents might be destroyed, they also created the very firestorm they sought to avoid, in ignoring the fallout.”
Of course it was Trump himself who ignited the firestorm by publicly announcing the FBI search, then whining, ranting, and grifting from his followers based on his supposed victimization.
In the past week, the prosecutor in the case and local Assistant U.S. Attorney went to Florida magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart in West Palm Beach to seek approval for the search of Donald Trump’s private residence. The affidavit to obtain the search warrant, the intelligence source says, contained abundant and persuasive detail that Trump continued to possess the relevant records in violation of federal law, and that investigators had sufficient information to prove that those records were located at Mar-a-Lago—including the detail that they were contained in a specific safe in a specific room.
“In order for the investigators to convince the Florida judge to approve such an unprecedented raid, the information had to be solid, which the FBI claimed,” says the intelligence source.
There’s much more background information in the article if you want a refresher.
By Onelio Marrero
Today, The Wall Street Journal has more on the events that led up to the FBI warrant and search of Trump’s property: FBI Quest for Trump Documents Started With Breezy Chats, Tour of a Crowded Closet. Why interactions between FBI, Trump team soured remains a mystery.
Around lunchtime on June 3, a senior Justice Department national security supervisor and three FBI agents arrived at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida to discuss boxes with government records sitting in a basement storage room along with suits, sweaters and golf shoes.
A few days later, the FBI sent a note asking that a stronger lock be installed on the storage room door, signing off: “Thank you. Very truly yours, Jay Bratt, chief of counterintelligence and export control section.”
In the following weeks, however, someone familiar with the stored papers told investigators there may be still more classified documents at the private club after the National Archives retrieved 15 boxes earlier in the year, people familiar with the matter said. And Justice Department officials had doubts that the Trump team was being truthful regarding what material remained at the property, one person said. Newsweek earlier reported on the source of the FBI’s information.
Two months later, two dozen Federal Bureau of Investigation agents were back at Mar-a-Lago with a warrant predicated on convincing a federal magistrate judge that there was evidence a crime may have been committed. After hours at the property, the agents took the boxes away in a Ryder truck.
Many elements of what happened between those events—one seemingly cordial, the other unheard of—remain unknown. But the episode points to a sharp escalation in the Justice Department’s inquiry into Mr. Trump, which also includes an investigation into the events leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on the Capitol. And it has prompted outrage from Republicans, who have rallied around Mr. Trump as he contemplates running again for president.
The WSJ says it’s a mystery why the DOJ investigation “escalated” to the point where the FBI was directed to search Trump’s property. It doesn’t seem that mysterious to me. Right-wing “reporter” John Solomon writes that Trump received a grand jury subpoena “months before” the “raid.” Obviously, the situation escalated when Trump ignored the subpoena.
The WSJ story doesn’t seem to have a paywall (I got there from Memeorandum), so you can read much more at the link. It’s very long, but Politico has a good summary of the facts from the WSJ article:
On June 3, JAY BRATT, chief of counterintelligence and export control section at the Department of Justice, visited Mar-a-Lago to inspect a storage room that contained presidential documents. By this point in his standoff with the government, Trump had already returned 15 boxes of records to the National Archives, which subsequently found “classified national security information” among the returned items.
Trump, who stopped by the June inspection to greet Bratt, had told the government that there was no more classified material in his possession. The dispute, it appeared, when Bratt showed up, was about returning what Trump represented to be non-sensitive documents. Retaining non-classified documents is still a violation of the strict Presidential Records Act, but the available evidence suggests the two sides were working it out.
Being Transported by Onelio Marrero
But things started to escalate. Five days later, Bratt sent Trump’s lawyer, EVAN CORCORAN, an email, a copy of which was read over the phone to the Journal: “We ask that the room at Mar-a-Lago where the documents had been stored be secured and that all the boxes that were moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago (along with any other items in that room) be preserved in that room in their current condition until further notice.”
Then, on June 22, the government subpoenaed Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage, which the Journal says was provided.
And then on Monday, the FBI warrant was executed.
The mystery is: What changed?
The answer, according to the Journal, is that an informant told the FBI that Trump was lying.
This morning, Mick Mulvaney spoke to CNN about the FBI search, and in the midst of multiple lies and obfuscation he revealed something important. Politicus USA: Mick Mulvaney Says The FBI Informant Is Someone Very Close To Trump.
Former White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said that only six or eight people would have the info given to the FBI, so the informant is someone very close to Trump.
“I didn’t know there was a safe at Mar-a-Lago and I was the chief of staff for 15 months. This would be someone handling things on day to day, who knew where documents were, so it would be somebody very close to the president, my guess is there are probably six or eight people who had that kind of information.
I don’t know the people on the inside circle these days. I can’t give any names of folks who come to mind, but your instinct is a good one if you know where the safe is and you know the documents are in ten boxes in the basement, you are pretty close to the president.”
If Mulvaney is correct, and the informant is someone very close to the former president, it makes sense that the FBI might also have knowledge of what Trump was planning on doing with the documents that he stole from the White House.
Jacob Lawrence, the Library, 1960
Of course the MAGA maniacs are up in arms. Kyle Cheney and Meredith McGraw at Politico: Trump world gripped with anger, fear and a host of conspiracies about the FBI search.
In the wake of news that the FBI agents executed a court-authorized search warrant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, Trump’s allies and aides have begun buzzing about a host of potential explanations and worries. Among those being bandied about is that the search was a pretext to fish for other incriminating evidence, that the FBI doctored evidence to support its search warrant — and then planted some incriminating materials and recording devices at Mar-a-Lago for good measure — and even that the timing of the search was meant to be a historical echo of the day President Richard Nixon resigned in 1974.
“There are no coincidences when it comes to the Deep State. They could have done this raid a couple of days before or tomorrow, but they chose Aug. 8 for a reason,” Monica Crowley, a former top official in the Trump Treasury Department, said on the “War Room” podcast.
Trump world is no stranger to being deeply suspicious, even conspiratorial. But the speculation sparked by the FBI search has taken on a different scope, coming amid a combination of anxiety — that the so-called Deep State is out to get the former president — and a dearth of public information about the bureau’s actions.
“I can tell you all of us agree this is corrupt,” said Michael Caputo, a longtime Trump confidante whose service in the Trump administration was marked by attacks he waged on career officials and an acrimonious exit. “Many people in Trump world agree with me that this is theater and this is designed to damage the president, this is designed to damage Republicans in the midterms and it is designed to advance the interests of the Democratic Party. And you know what, they completely failed.”
There is no evidence that the Department of Justice did anything improper, and it in fact obtained approval from a federal court to obtain its search warrant. Trump himself could answer some of the lingering questions. He is at liberty to disclose the warrant — though he has not been provided the underlying affidavit — and to describe the files that were confiscated by the FBI. But so far he has opted against doing so.
Adolph Menzel, A Seated Woman Reading (Portrait of Emilie Fontane
More on Trump’s and MAGA world’s paranoia from Asawin Suebsaeng at Rolling Stone: With Feds Circling, Trump Asks Allies: Who’s ‘Wearing a Wire’?
Donald Trump is worried he may have a rat — or multiple rats — in his midst. He’s wondering if his phones are tapped, or even if one of his buddies could be “wearing a wire.”
As the federal and state investigations into Trump and his orbit swell, so have the former president’s suspicions, according to two sources familiar with the matter and another two people close to the twice-impeached former Oval Office occupant.
This summer, Trump has asked close associates if they think his communications are being monitored by the feds, or — per his phrasing — “by Biden.” As a source close to Trump describes it to Rolling Stone: “He has asked me and others, ‘Do you think our phones are tapped?’ Given the sheer volume of investigations going on into the [former] president, I do not think he’s assuming anything is outside the realm of possibility.”
The source adds, “He’s talked about this seriously [in the past few months], but I know of one time when he made a joke that was something like, ‘Be careful what you say on the phone!’”
Moreover, on at least a couple of occasions since May, the former president has wondered aloud if there were any Republicans visiting his clubs who could be “wearing a wire,” according to another person close to Trump and a different source familiar with the matter. Trump and his allies are baselessly floating the idea that federal agents could be guilty of “planting” incriminating evidence at his private resort. And the ex-president and several of his longtime advisers are trying to figure out if they have, in their terminology, a “mole” or a “rat” in Trump’s inner sanctum who is slipping his secrets to the feds.
More stories about the search to check out:
I highly recommend this piece by Brian Karam at Salon: No exit: After Mar-a-Lago raid, Trump is trapped — and his fear is palpable. It actually helped me feel somewhat hopeful.
Emptywheel: The Likely Content of a Trump Search Affidavit.
The Washington Post: Citizen Trump may have broken a law that President Trump made a felony.
The Daily Beast: Hell Week: How Trump’s Problems All Converged at Once.
Vice News: Far-Right Extremists Are Violently Threatening the Trump Search-Warrant Judge.
Law and Crime: Federal Magistrate Judge Orders DOJ to Respond to Media and Non-Profit Requests to Unseal Trump Search Warrant.
New York Magazine: ‘You Can’t Play the Cable-News Game in Court.’
Have a great Thursday Sky Dancers!!
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Posted: August 2, 2022 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Afghanistan, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Build Back Better, burn pits, China, Donald Trump, drone strikes, immigration, January 6 investigations, Joe Manchin, Nancy Pelosi, Taiwan, Trump family separations, veterans bill protests |
Good Afternoon!!
I’m very pleased to report that today’s top story isn’t about Trump or his Republican enablers. That’s a very good thing for me because I’ve reached peak Trump exhaustion once again. Today Nancy Pelosi leads the politics news.
Reuters: Pelosi arrives in Taiwan, voicing U.S. ‘solidarity’ as China fumes.
TAIPEI, Aug 2 (Reuters) – U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Taiwan late on Tuesday on a trip she said was intended to express American solidarity with the Chinese-claimed island, the first such visit in 25 years and one that risks pushing relations between Washington and Beijing to a new low.
Pelosi and her delegation disembarked from a U.S. Air Force transport plan at Songshan Airport in downtown Taipei and were greeted by Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu and Sandra Oudkirk, the top U.S. representative in Taiwan.
“Our congressional delegation’s visit to Taiwan honors America’s unwavering commitment to supporting Taiwan’s vibrant democracy,” Pelosi said in a statement shortly after landing. “America’s solidarity with the 23 million people of Taiwan is more important today than ever, as the world faces a choice between autocracy and democracy.” read more
China immediately condemned Pelosi’s visit, with the foreign ministry saying it seriously damages peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, “has a severe impact on the political foundation of China-U.S. relations, and seriously infringes upon China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” The ministry said it had lodged a strong protest with the United States.
Chinese warplanes buzzed the line dividing the Taiwan Strait on Tuesday before her arrival, and Chinese state media said People’s Liberation Army would hold exercises near Taiwan from Thursday through Sunday.
More info from CNN:
Pelosi and the congressional delegation that accompanied her said in a statement on Tuesday that the visit “honors America’s unwavering commitment to supporting Taiwan’s vibrant democracy.”
“Our discussions with Taiwan leadership will focus on reaffirming our support for our partner and on promoting our shared interests, including advancing a free and open Indo-Pacific region,” the statement said. “America’s solidarity with the 23 million people of Taiwan is more important today than ever, as the world faces a choice between autocracy and democracy.”
Pelosi is traveling with House Foreign Affairs Chairman Gregory Meeks of New York, Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Mark Takano of California and Reps. Suzan DelBene of Washington state, Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois and Andy Kim of New Jersey.
The House speaker is expected to visit Taiwan’s presidential office and parliament on Wednesday morning (local time), a senior Taiwanese official told CNN. She will first visit the parliament before heading to the presidential office for a meeting with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, the official said….
The American Institute in Taiwan said Pelosi’s delegation will meet with senior Taiwanese leaders “to discuss US-Taiwan relations, peace and security, economic growth and trade, the Covid-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, human rights, democratic governance, and other significant issues of mutual interest,” the institute said in a statement.
Pelosi also wrote an op-ed explaining why she chose to go to Taiwan, despite criticism. You can read it at The Washington Post: Nancy Pelosi: Why I’m leading a congressional delegation to Taiwan.
Ayman al-Zawahiri
Yesterday the White House announced the death of the leader of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan: U.S. kills al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in drone strike in Kabul.
The United States has killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda and one of the world’s most-wanted terrorists, who, alongside the group’s founder, Osama bin Laden, oversaw the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Biden announced Monday evening.
Zawahiri was killed in a CIA drone strike in Kabul over the weekend, according to U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.
When U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan last August, Biden administration officials said they would retain capability for “over-the-horizon” attacks from elsewhere on terrorist forces inside Afghanistan. The attack against Zawahiri is the first known counterterrorism strike there since the withdrawal.
Speaking in a live television address from a balcony at the White House, Biden announced that days ago he had authorized a strike to kill Zawahiri. “Justice has been delivered, and this terrorist leader is no more,” Biden said.
The strike occurred at 9:48 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters on the operation. A drone fired two Hellfire missiles at Zawahiri as he stepped onto the balcony of a safe house in Kabul, where he had been living with members of his family, the official said.
Read more at the WaPo.
At NBC News, Julia Ainsley and Jacob Soboroff report on a non-violent Biden success story: Biden administration task force reunites 400 migrant families separated under Trump.
The Biden administration has reunited 400 children with their parents after they were separated as migrants crossing the southern border under the Trump administration, said Michelle Brané, the executive director of the Family Reunification Task Force.
More than 5,000 families were separated under Trump’s 2018 “zero tolerance” policy and a 2017 pilot program and advocates estimate over 1,000 remain separated. Because the Trump administration did not keep records of which children were separated and where they were sent, the task force and lawyers working on behalf of separated families have had a difficult time identifying families to offer them the chance of reunification.
In the majority of recently reunited cases, Brané said, the parents were deported while the children remained in the U.S. Now, parents are given the opportunity to come to the U.S. on paid travel, bring other members of their family who are dependent on them, and live and work in the U.S. legally for three years.
Lawyers for the families have advocated for legal permanent status on behalf of separated families, but so far the Biden administration has not agreed to that provision.
Brané said the reunification also includes mental health services for families both before and after reunification. She said many of the families have suffered from profound mental health issues after their separation and counseling is often needed before they reunify.
“You don’t want to just throw kids into an environment with a parent they may not have seen for five years,” Brané said.
Click the link to read the rest.
Republicans are licking their wounds after the public reaction to their votes against health care for veterans exposed to burn pits. Politico: Senate GOP backtracks after veterans bill firestorm.
Senate Republicans are reversing course on a veterans health care bill, signaling they’ll now help it quickly move to President Joe Biden’s desk after weathering several days of intense criticism for delaying the legislation last week.
Republicans insist their decision to hold up the bill, which expands health care for veterans exposed to toxic substances while on active duty, was unrelated to the deal on party-line legislation that top Democrats struck last week. The GOP blocked the bill hours after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced an agreement on a health care, climate and tax package — angering Republicans who thought the Democrats-only plan would be much narrower.
Regardless of their reasoning, the GOP was quickly forced to play defense against both Democrats and veterans’ advocates who were caught off-guard by Republican delaying tactics after the party greenlit a nearly identical bill in June.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declined to respond to a question Monday about why the legislation was held up.
“It will pass this week,” he said.
Other Republicans in Senate leadership struck a similar tone. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told POLITICO he would “expect it to pass” and Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), McConnell’s No. 2, echoed that at “some point this is going to pass and it will pass big.”
In another potential win for Democrats in Congress, Joe Manchin finally came through with something good. William Saletan at The Bulwark (link above):
Joe Manchin has rescued the Democratic agenda. After blocking President Biden’s Build Back Better plan for nearly a year—as well as subsequent, pared-down versions of the legislation—the West Virginia senator has reversed course. Last Thursday he endorsed a revised $400 billion package that focuses on health insurance subsidies, cutting the cost of prescription drugs, and funding new energy technologies to reduce carbon emissions.
With Manchin’s vote, the bill is likely to pass. But he isn’t just voting for it; he’s selling it. Over the weekend, he appeared on all five Sunday morning talk shows—a rare feat often referred to as a “full Ginsburg”—to make his case for the bill. It was an eye roll-worthy display of political spin. Here’s a summary of his talking points.
(Abridged–You’ll need to go to the Bulwark to read all the details.)
1. It’s not Build Back Better. It’s the Inflation Reduction Act.
The vast majority of the new bill comes from Biden’s BBB framework. Most Democrats liked BBB and would be happy to celebrate the passage of these elements of it. But Manchin, who represents a conservative state, doesn’t want to be associated with BBB. He doesn’t want to look like he’s saving the Democratic agenda. He wants to look like he’s killing it.
2. It’s not spending. It’s investment.
“I couldn’t get there with Build Back Better. It was $3.5 trillion of spending,” Manchin explained on CNN’s State of the Union. In contrast, he argued, the Inflation Reduction Act knocked “$3.5 trillion dollars of spending down to $400 billion of investment.” On Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday, and This Week, he made the same pitch: BBB was a “spending bill,” but the IRA was an “investment bill.”
3. It doesn’t raise taxes. It closes loopholes.
On Fox News Sunday, Manchin insisted that his bill’s establishment of a 15 percent minimum tax for billion-dollar companies—up from zero percent—wasn’t really a tax increase. “It does not raise taxes,” he told Bret Baier. “All we did was close loopholes.” Thirty seconds later, Manchin repeated, “We did not raise taxes. We’ve closed loopholes. . . . I made sure there was no tax increases in this whatsoever.”
4. It’s not a green bill. It’s red, white, and blue.
In much of the United States, being “green” is poCpular. Restaurants, grocery stories, and retailers advertise it. But Manchin, who represents a coal state, seems to have decided that among his target audience, “green” is a dirty word. So he’s pointedly rejecting it.
“This is not a green deal. It’s not a Republican deal. It’s not a Democrat deal. It is a red, white, and blue deal,” Manchin declared on CNN. A few minutes later, he repeated: “It’s definitely not a green bill. This is a red, white, and blue bill.” On Fox, he delivered the same message: “It’s not a green bill. This is a red, white, and blue bill.
There are a few Trump investigation stories today.
CNN: Retired DC cop who testified before January 6 committee says Trump ‘adamantly’ wanted to go to Capitol.
A retired Washington, DC, police officer who was part of Donald Trump’s motorcade on January 6, 2021, told CNN’s Don Lemon on Monday night that the then-President was adamant about going to the US Capitol as the riot unfolded.
The comments by Mark Robinson, who has testified to the January 6 committee, further corroborate key details first revealed by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who spoke at length about Trump’s behaviorto the House select committee. Hutchinson said that she was told that Trump became “irate” when informed by security that he would not be going to the Capitol on January 6, because the situation was not secure.
Robinson was not physically with Trump on January 6. He was in the lead car of the motorcade and said that he learned Trump wanted to go to the Capitol through communications from the Secret Service.
“We’ve heard it several times while it was on the motorcade. I think during the speech, shortly thereafter, he had finished the speech, that the President was getting into the motorcade and he was upset. And he adamantly wanted to go to the Capitol,” Robinson told Lemon. “And even when we departed from the Ellipse it was repeated again. … It was a heated argument in the limo. And he wanted to definitely go to the Capitol.” [….]
“I think it would have probably encouraged more rioting. And (the rioters would have) felt supported. If the presidential motorcade came in support of them. So I think the insurrectionists probably would have felt as though they had the support of the President,” Robinson said.
More details at the CNN link.
Two more Trump investigation stories to check out:
Politico: Judge rejects Trump effort to toss lawsuits accusing him of Jan. 6 conspiracy.
The New York Times: Top Democrats, Alleging Cover-Up, Seek Testimony on Secret Service Texts.
I hope you all have a great Tuesday!
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Posted: July 21, 2022 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: January 6, January 6 Committee Public Hearings, Joe Biden, morning reads, Treason and Sedition Republican Style | Tags: Covid-19, Donald Trump, Joseph Cuffari, Matthew Pottinger, Rep. Andrew Clyde, Sarah Matthews, Secret Service |
Good Morning!!
Tonight is the final January 6 Committee hearing, at least for this month. It should be a blockbuster. There are plenty of predictions about what will happen tonight. There is also more news about the Secret Service deleting text messages from January 5 and 6. I’ll get to those stories in a minute, but first some breaking news.
Despite his advanced age, Biden appears to be healthy and fit. Here’s hoping his symptoms stay mild.
Tonight’s January 6 Committee Hearing
Hugo Lowell at The Guardian: January 6 panel to show Trump violated law by refusing to stop Capitol attack.
The January 6 House select committee is expected to make the case at its hearing on Thursday that Donald Trump potentially violated the law when he refused entreaties to take action to stop the 2021 attack on the US Capitol by a mass of his supporters, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
The panel will demonstrate that the former Republican president was “derelict in his duty” to protect the US Congress and might have also broken the federal law that prohibits obstructing an official proceeding before Congress, which had gathered to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
Matthew Pottinger
Trump could have called on national guard troops to restore order when he saw on TV the melee unfolding at the Capitol, the panel is expected to argue, or he could have called off the rioters via a live broadcast from the White House press briefing room, but he did not. Or he could have sent a tweet trying to stop the violence far earlier than he actually did, during the 187-minute duration of the Capitol attack.
The former president instead only reluctantly posted a tweet in the afternoon of January 6, hours after his top advisors at the White House and Republicans allies in Congress repeatedly implored him to intervene, the select committee will show….
The sources described what the select committee sees as potential legal culpability for the former president, speaking on the condition of anonymity ahead of the prime time hearing.
Two insider witnesses, “former deputy national security advisor Matthew Pottinger and former Trump press aide Sarah Matthews,” will testify in the hearing.
The two witnesses with inside knowledge of how the West Wing operated on January 6 are expected to narrate how that day unfolded, starting with how desperately Trump did not want to return to the White House after delivering his speech at the rally at the nearby Ellipse, where he had urged supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat….
The Guardian has learned, according to a person directly familiar with the matter, that in a previously unreported incident, the fracas [described in testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson” about going to the Capitol, after Trump told his supporters at the rally to go to Congress and “I’ll be there with you”, continued when he arrived back at the White House, and the argument spilled into the West Wing driveway.
Pottinger and Matthews are expected to testify about what happened when Trump was back at the White House, including details on Trump in his dining room off the Oval Office, where he watched the Capitol attack erupt on TV, transfixed by the images as rioters overran police and rampaged through the halls of Congress, the sources said.
The select committee will show through videotaped testimony from the Trump White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, and other aides, that the former president ignored repeated entreaties from advisers to help stop the Capitol attack, the sources said.
Rolling Stone: Exclusive: Jan. 6 Committee Plans to Humiliate MAGA Lawmakers Who Cowered During Capitol Attack.
The Jan. 6 committee plans to use its Thursday-night hearing to call out insurrection-friendly lawmakers who cowered during the Capitol attack but have since downplayed the insurrection’s severity, according to two sources familiar with the committee’s planning.
“They have plans to paint a really striking picture of how some of Trump’s greatest enablers of his coup plot were — no matter what they’re saying today — quaking in their boots and doing everything shy of crying out for their moms,” one source tells Rolling Stone. “If any of [these lawmakers] were capable of shame, they would be humiliated.” [….]
The committee has at times switched plans at the last minute, and it remains unclear which specific lawmakers the committee could call out. But at least some Republicans have already had their attempts to downplay or justify the attempted coup undone by footage from the day of the attack. When Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) claimed the insurrection “a normal tourist visit,” social media users quickly located photos of the Georgia Republican gasping in terror and hiding behind an armed Capitol police officer pointing a handgun at a barricaded entrance to the Senate floor.
https://twitter.com/BettyBowers/status/1394670227628171265?s=20&t=s2PoA7SQaC58YWCCbk_awg
In the 18 months since the insurrection, Republican lawmakers have tried to whitewash it through a series of contradictory talking points. Republicans have alternately downplayed the attack by calling it “a peaceful protest,” claimed it was violent but that the violence was carried out solely by nonexistent “antifa” or federal informants at the Capitol, or that Democrats were to blame for failing to adequately defend the Capitol against the protesters they variously claim weren’t violent or a threat.
Republicans like Reps. Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Paul Gosar have gone so far as to cast alleged rioters held in pretrial detention as unjustly accused political prisoners.
Read more at Rolling Stone.
The Washington Post: Even a day after Jan. 6, Trump balked at condemning the violence.
One day after the last rioter had left the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, President Donald Trump’s advisers urged him to give an address to the nation to condemn the violence, demand accountability for those who had stormed the halls of Congress and declare the 2020 election to be decided.
He struggled to do it. Over the course of an hour of trying to tape the message, Trump resisted holding the rioters to account, trying to call them patriots, and refused to say the election was over, according to individuals familiar with the work of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.
The public could get its first glimpse of outtakes from that recording Thursday night, when the committee plans to offer a bold conclusion in its eighth hearing: Not only did Trump do nothing despite repeated entreaties by senior aides to help end the violence, but he sat back and enjoyed watching it. He reluctantly condemned it — in a three-minute speech the evening of Jan. 7 — only after the efforts to overturn the 2020 election had failed and after aides told him that members of his own Cabinet were discussing invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.
“This is what he wanted to happen,” Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.), who is scheduled to lead the questioning Thursday along with Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), said in an interview this week. “You might have earlier on said, ‘Was he incompetent? Was he someone who freezes in a moment when they can’t react to something? Or was it exactly what he wanted to have happened?’ And after all of this, I’m convinced that this is exactly what he wanted to have happen.”
CNN: Trump had ‘extreme difficulty’ with his speech on the day after January 6.
The House committee investigating the insurrection plans to show footage at Thursday’s hearing of then-President Donald Trump having difficulty working through efforts to tape a message to his supporters on January 7, 2021, the day after the Capitol riot, sources familiar with the committee’s plans tell CNN….
Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who is a member of the committee, confirmed Wednesday night to CNN’s Anderson Cooper that the panel has the outtakes and plans to share some of them during the hearing.
“The President displayed extreme difficulty in completing his remarks,” Raskin said on “Anderson Cooper 360.”
“It’s extremely revealing how exactly he went about making those statements, and we’re going to let everybody see parts of that,” he added.
Rep. Adam Schiff, another committee member, told CNN’s Don Lemon later Wednesday that the outtakes “will be significant in terms of what the President was willing to say and what he wasn’t willing to say.”
The California Democrat said the outtakes will show “all of those who are urging him to say something to do something to stop the violence. You’ll hear the terrible lack of a response from the President, and you’ll hear more about how he was ultimately prevailed upon to say something and what he was willing to say and what he wasn’t.”
The video tape outtakes will be one part of a larger presentation during which the committee plans to detail Trump’s lack of attention to the ongoing riot. The committee has said it will focus on the 187 minutes that Trump sat back, refusing to act, as the Capitol was under siege. Some committee members have described this as Trump’s “dereliction of duty.”
The Secret Service and the Missing Text Messages
This shocking story broke last night. Carol Leonig and Maria Sacchetti at The Washington Post: Secret Service watchdog knew in February that texts had been purged.
A watchdog agency learned in February that the Secret Service had purged nearly all cellphone texts from around the time of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but chose not to alert Congress, according to three people briefed on the internal discussions.
Joseph Cuffari, Homeland Security Inspector General
That watchdog agency, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, also prepared in October 2021 to issue a public alert that the Secret Service and other department divisions were stonewalling it on requests for records and texts surrounding the attack on the Capitol, but did not do so, the people briefed on the matter said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal investigations.
The previously unreported revelation about the inspector general’s months-long delay in flagging the now-vanished Secret Service textscame from two whistleblowers who have worked with Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari, the people knowledgeable about the internal discussions said.
In recent days, one former employee approached the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), an independent government-accountability group, and described the decision from Cuffari’s office not to promptly disclose that Secret Service records had been wiped from agency phones starting in January 2021. The group relayed the information to congressional staff, who independently corroborated the account with a second whistleblower.
The congressional staff and two whistleblowers shared a concern that Cuffari’s office not alertingcongressional investigators to the missing records reduced the chances of recovering critical pieces of evidence related to the Jan. 6 attack.
The purged texts of Secret Service agents — some of whomplanned President Donald Trump’s movements on Jan. 6 and shadowed Trump as he sought to overturn the election results — could shed light on what Trump was planning and saying.
This story broke this morning on CNN.
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Posted: July 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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Happy Caturday!!
It gets worse day by day. This is from CNN: 
From Raw Story: 
Experts are divided over whether the disappearance of phone data from around the time of the insurrection is a sign of incompetence, an intentional coverup
At least three witnesses in DOJ’s investigation of so-called alternate electors in the 2020 election — two in Arizona and another in Georgia — have received subpoenas demanding communications to and from Joshua Findlay, who is now the RNC’s national director for election integrity.
That the DOJ soon will have a vehicle for obtaining evidence from the Jan. 6 committee has me thinking about a wholly different witness, however, and one whose name I don’t even know. Based on former Trump White House aide 
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