Last Call For Hunting The Hunter, Con't

The newly McCarthy approved "impeachment inquiry" into President Biden and his son Hunter is again going about as well as it has been for the last four years, which is "nowhere because there's nothing there."

 

New testimony from a number of FBI and Internal Revenue Service officials casts doubt on key claims from an IRS whistleblower who alleges there was political interference in the federal criminal investigation of Hunter Biden’s taxes.

According to transcripts provided to CNN, several FBI and IRS officials brought in for closed-door testimony by House Republicans in recent days said they don’t remember US Attorney David Weiss saying that he lacked the authority to decide whether to bring charges against the president’s son, or that Weiss said he had been denied a request for special counsel status.

Those twin claims, made by IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, form the basis of Republican accusations that the Justice Department’s investigation into Biden’s taxes was tainted by political influence and that Weiss and Attorney General Merrick Garland tried to protect Hunter Biden in the investigation.

The new testimony comes as House Republicans begin an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden and his family, potentially undercutting one element of that effort.

At issue is an October 2022 meeting between prosecutors and case agents working on the Hunter Biden investigation. Shapley alleges that during that meeting, Weiss, the then-US attorney for Delaware, told participants that he was “not the deciding person” on whether Hunter Biden was charged, according to Shapley’s notes from the meeting. House Republicans have taken that to mean Weiss was not in charge of his own investigation, and was deferring to a higher authority.

In addition to Shapley and Weiss, there were five others in that meeting, three of whom have recently testified to the Republican-led congressional committees now spearheading the impeachment inquiry.

While the witnesses disputed Shapley’s key allegations from that meeting, they acknowledged Weiss was having trouble finding a venue to bring charges against the president’s son, as US attorneys from other states rejected partnering on the case. They also expressed frustration with the pace of the probe, which at that point had been ongoing for roughly four years.

 

And to the surprise of nobody, the cherry-picked GOP-aligned "whistleblower" is full of shit, and there's no corroborating evidence to back his claims up. For four years now Republicans have been trying to make anything they can stick to Hunter Biden, who definitely needs some help and care to deal with his issues, into the end of Joe Biden's career.

 

Next week's public "impeachment inquiry" is going to go just as badly for James Comer and the GOP.

 

Supremely Corrupt Cads, Crooks, And Creeps, Con't

More corruption was revealed today involving Justice Clarence Thomas being bought like the puppet he is. First up, Right-wing billionaire and Nazi memorabilia enthusiast Harlan Crow paid for years of tuition for Thomas's grandnephew to attend a private boarding schools.

In 2008, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decided to send his teenage grandnephew to Hidden Lake Academy, a private boarding school in the foothills of northern Georgia. The boy, Mark Martin, was far from home. For the previous decade, he had lived with the justice and his wife in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Thomas had taken legal custody of Martin when he was 6 years old and had recently told an interviewer he was “raising him as a son.”

Tuition at the boarding school ran more than $6,000 a month. But Thomas did not cover the bill. A bank statement for the school from July 2009, buried in unrelated court filings, shows the source of Martin’s tuition payment for that month: the company of billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow.

The payments extended beyond that month, according to Christopher Grimwood, a former administrator at the school. Crow paid Martin’s tuition the entire time he was a student there, which was about a year, Grimwood told ProPublica.

“Harlan picked up the tab,” said Grimwood, who got to know Crow and the Thomases and had access to school financial information through his work as an administrator.

Before and after his time at Hidden Lake, Martin attended a second boarding school, Randolph-Macon Academy in Virginia. “Harlan said he was paying for the tuition at Randolph-Macon Academy as well,” Grimwood said, recalling a conversation he had with Crow during a visit to the billionaire’s Adirondacks estate.

ProPublica interviewed Martin, his former classmates and former staff at both schools. The exact total Crow paid for Martin’s education over the years remains unclear. If he paid for all four years at the two schools, the price tag could have exceeded $150,000, according to public records of tuition rates at the schools.

 

Crow's lawyer confirmed yesterday that this happened.

It was bad enough for Thomas yesterday morning, and then yesterday evening's corruption story dropped.

Conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo arranged for the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to be paid tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work just over a decade ago, specifying that her name be left off billing paperwork, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

In January 2012, Leo instructed the GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill a nonprofit group called the Judicial Education Project and use that money to pay Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the documents show. The same year, the Judicial Education Project filed a brief to the Supreme Court in a landmark voting rights case.

Leo, an adviser to the Judicial Education Project and a key figure in a network of nonprofits that has worked to support the nominations of conservative judges, told Conway that he wanted her to “give” Ginni Thomas “another $25K,” the documents show. He emphasized that the paperwork should have “No mention of Ginni, of course.”

Conway’s firm, the Polling Company, sent the Judicial Education Project a $25,000 bill that day. Per Leo’s instructions, it listed the purpose as “Supplement for Constitution Polling and Opinion Consulting,” the documents show.

In all, according to the documents, the Polling Company paid Thomas’s firm, Liberty Consulting, $80,000 between June 2011 and June 2012, and it expected to pay $20,000 more before the end of 2012. The documents reviewed by The Post do not indicate the precise nature of any work Thomas did for the Judicial Education Project or the Polling Company.

The arrangement reveals that Leo, a longtime Federalist Society leader and friend of the Thomases, has functioned not only as an ideological ally of Clarence Thomas’s but also has worked to provide financial remuneration to his family. And it shows Leo arranging for the money to be drawn from a nonprofit that soon would have an interest before the court.

In response to questions from The Post, Leo issued a statement defending the Thomases. “It is no secret that Ginni Thomas has a long history of working on issues within the conservative movement, and part of that work has involved gauging public attitudes and sentiment. The work she did here did not involve anything connected with either the Court’s business or with other legal issues,” he wrote. “As an advisor to JEP I have long been supportive of its opinion research relating to limited government, and The Polling Company, along with Ginni Thomas’s help, has been an invaluable resource for gauging public attitudes.”

Of the effort to keep Thomas’s name off paperwork, Leo said: “Knowing how disrespectful, malicious and gossipy people can be, I have always tried to protect the privacy of Justice Thomas and Ginni.”

 

Again, if any other federal employee did a fraction of what Justice Clarence Thomas has copped to in the last few weeks, the Justice Department would have already opened the investigation, if not issued charges. 

At some point, the theory is, it'll be too much for Thomas to keep his job.

How much exactly "too much" is, well. We'll see.

Presenting, Not Lamenting, The Zients King

The Biden White House is moving extremely quickly on replacing outgoing Chief of Staff Ron Klain, and former WH COVID response czar/Midterm shuffle transition aide Jeff Zients is the person for the job.

President Biden will name Jeff Zients to serve as his next chief of staff, turning to a management consultant who oversaw the administration’s coronavirus response to replace Ron Klain, who is expected to leave in the coming weeks, according to four people familiar with the decision.

Zients left the White House in April after steering the administration’s pandemic response and leading the largest vaccination campaign in U.S. history. He returned to the White House in the fall to help Klain prepare for staff turnover after the midterms — a project that was ultimately limited in scope, as few senior staff members have left across the administration. But, in recent weeks, Klain has assigned him different projects, which some viewed as preparing Zients for the top role, people familiar with the arrangement said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.

A White House spokesperson declined to comment.

Zients takes over the top job as Biden is entering a new and challenging stretch of his presidency: Republicans have already launched a barrage of investigations into the administration and the business dealings of the president’s son. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to investigate the handling of classified documents found at Biden’s personal office and Wilmington, Del., home. And Biden is preparing to launch his reelection bid.

Zients comes into the job with a vastly different profile than Klain: His first government job was during the Obama administration, and he has spent most of his career in the private sector. He has only ever worked in the executive branch. His personal Twitter account has no posts.

But colleagues have praised Zients as a master implementer who engenders deep loyalty from the people he oversees.

As Biden ramps up his political activity, some Democrats said they expect the structure of the chief of staff role to change, with Biden’s political advisers, including Anita Dunn, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti and Bruce Reed, taking on even more prominence in the building.

They compared the arrangement to that of the Obama White House, when Jack Lew served as chief of staff in 2012 and focused on keeping the federal government running, while David Plouffe, a political strategist, came into the White House from 2011 to 2013 as a senior adviser to oversee the reelection campaign. Democrats say Dunn, a senior adviser, will serve in a Plouffe-like role.

 

So the message being sent here is that Zients is a fighter and will be free to take on the House GOP Circus of the Damned, while Anita Dunn will run Biden's 2024 campaign.

Having said that, Zients will certainly find himself a giant target of House Republicans, both for his new role and for his runningCOVID-19 response last year. Let's hope he's as much of a combatant as he is a manager, because Kevin McCarthy's clown crew is definitely going to try to drag him into hearing after hearing.

We'll see how he fares, but it looks like this has been in the works for a while now, and he's had time to prepare for the sheer magnitude of the job ahead, and the stakes that are in play, starting with the GOP trying to default on America's debt and pitch us headfirst into a depression with millions of job losses and untold misery.

No pressure, Jeff...

Last Call For The Circus Of The Damned, Con't

GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy was the biggest loser on Tuesday, unable to secure enough of his own caucus to reach the 218 mark for electing a House Speaker, and in fact he was nowhere close, with a good 20 defectors.

It only got worse for him today.

The House voted Wednesday to adjourn for the second time of the day — as Republican leader Kevin McCarthy said he wanted more time to negotiate after six rounds of voting on the speakership resulted in deadlock. It will resume at 12 p.m. ET on Thursday.

Driving the news: “I think it's probably best to let people work through some more. I don't think a vote tonight does any difference but votes in the future will," McCarthy said before the second vote to adjourn.He lost three speaker election bids on Tuesday and three more on Wednesday.

Why it matters: It's the first time since 1923 that the speaker vote has required multiple ballots and it's unclear when — or how — lawmakers will eventually break the deadlock.

The latest: The California Republican's latest defeats came hours after former President Trump urged Republicans to back him — and with his colleagues voting instead for Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) multiple times.20 Republicans voted for Donalds during each round Wednesday. Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), who voted for McCarthy three times on Tuesday, voted present Wednesday.

Republicans started looking for other options this afternoon. Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) — who backed McCarthy over six ballots — told CNN: "He either needs to make a deal to bring the 19 or 20 over, or he needs to step aside and give somebody a chance to do that." Other Republicans are waiting in the wings as they struggle with this same calculus, GOP lawmakers and aides tell Axios.

It's abundantly clear that McCarthy won't get enough GOP votes to be Speaker. It's unclear if there's an Republican who actually can.

Enter the Democrats.  

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) on Wednesday said “preliminary talks” had begun with Democrats about supporting a “consensus candidate” for Speaker.

Bacon told CNN, however, he wanted to hold back on the details of the conversations so as to not get ahead of the negotiations.

“There are preliminary talks, but we don’t want to go too fast on this because that then hijacks what Kevin is trying to do, and we want to support Kevin, he’s worked hard to get this,” Bacon said.

Kevin's already sold his soul to Trump.  But maybe, just maybe, there's someone on the GOP side willing to cut a real deal with the Dems and blindside McCarthy, the holdouts, and a lot of the circus clowns to boot.

I'm not saying it'll happen. I'm not saying there's anyone on the GOP side I'd trust to make this happen.

What I'm saying is Kevin McCarthy won't be Speaker. 

We're back at it tomorrow...

Last Call For Bugging Out The Troops

The Biden White House is pissed tonight that House Democrats and Nancy Pelosi folded and gave in to Kevin McCarthy's extortion on the Pentagon funding bill, as McCarthy had threatened to kill the bill entirely unless Pelosi removed the military's Covid vaccine mandate.

The Biden administration fumed Wednesday at the near-certainty that Congress will strip away the Defense Department’s requirement that all military personnel be vaccinated against the coronavirus, upending a politically divisive policy that has led to the dismissal of nearly 8,500 service members and numerous lawsuits disputing its fairness.

The agreement, brokered as part of the Pentagon’s next spending bill, was celebrated by Republicans as a victory for individual choice. It comes despite opposition from President Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who characterized the vaccine mandate as a way of protecting troops from covid-19 and preventing sprawling outbreaks that sideline entire units, undermine the military’s readiness and endanger national security.

The looming reversal — spurred by Republicans who had threatened to block passage of the $858 billion spending bill if the mandate wasn’t struck down — creates a rat’s nest for the Pentagon. Commanders whose job it was to enforce the mandate will face the onerous task of assessing whether — and how — to allow back into uniform those already separated from the military for refusing to follow orders. Managing overseas deployments, especially in countries that require visitors to be vaccinated, will create burdensome logistical headaches as well, officials said.

John Kirby, a White House spokesman, would not say whether Biden would entertain vetoing the bill, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), if as expected the legislation passes both chambers of Congress with the repeal intact. But Kirby emphasized that the administration believes scrubbing the vaccine mandate is a “mistake” and castigated those in the GOP who pushed to end it.

Republicans, he said, “have obviously decided that they’d rather fight against the health and well-being of those troops rather than protecting them.”

Privately, some Defense Department personnel were even more pointed.

One senior defense official said that when service members “inevitability get sick, and if they should die, it will be on the Republicans who insisted upon this.” The official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the polarizing issue, cited the sprawling coronavirus outbreak aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in spring 2020. The vessel — a major power-projection weapon — was sidelined for weeks through a cumbersome quarantine process with more than 1,200 cases in a crew of about 4,800, and one sailor died.

“How does this impact deployments? How does this impact overseas training assignments? How does this impact overseas assignments generally?” this official asked. “What are the downstream consequences of this shortsighted insistence in the new law?”

 

In fact, Republicans got several victories in the House version of the Pentagon funding bill.

 

“Make no mistake: this is a win for our military,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in a statement late Tuesday night, warning that when the GOP takes over the House next year, Republicans will “work to finally hold the Biden administration accountable and assist the men and women in uniform who were unfairly targeted.”

While the decision to roll back the vaccine mandate was politically divisive, freezing negotiations between Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate armed services committees for several days, it is far from the only Pentagon policy challenged in the compromise defense bill. The measure, which the full House and Senate still must vote to approve, pushes the Defense Department and related agencies to adopt several ventures, including new programs to arm Taiwan and scrutinize military assistance to Ukraine, and retain aging weapons systems the Biden administration has slated for decommissioning.

The bill creates several new accountability measures for the billions of dollars in military assistance being sent to Ukraine. Those include ordering reports from the Defense Department and a consortium of inspectors general about the methods being employed to track weapons, with the aim of identifying potential shortfalls.

While enhanced oversight of Ukraine aid has become a rallying cry for Republicans skeptical of the continued provision of advanced systems and munitions, the measures included in the defense bill had earlier secured bipartisan support in the House. The Senate never voted on its version of the bill before the compromise legislation’s unveiling.

 

And the reason this happened of course is that neither Pelosi nor Chuck Schumer had the votes to pass the bill without GOP support.

The sausage got made again, $850 billion worth of it.

 

Last Call For The Return Of Nerd Prom

Donald Trump famously canceled the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner at the White House because of his equally famous inability to take a joke at his expense, and then COVID sank the affair for another two years. The WHCA finally held their dinner over the weekend and President Biden and headliner Trevor Noah got in some epic burns of the Village Idiots.

The White House press corps’ annual gala returned Saturday night along with the roasting of Washington, the journalists who cover it and the man at the helm: President Biden.

The White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner, sidelined by the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, featured Biden as the first president in six years to accept an invitation. President Trump shunned the event while in office.

“Just imagine if my predecessor came to this dinner this year,” Biden told an audience of 2,600, among them journalists, government officials and celebrities. “Now that would really have been a real coup.”

The president took the opportunity to test out his comedic chops, making light of the criticism he has faced in his 15 months in office while taking aim at his predecessor, the Republican Party and the members of the press.

“I’m really excited to be here tonight with the only group of Americans with a lower approval rating than I have,” Biden said to the Hilton ballroom filled with members of the media.

Biden also made light of the “Let’s Go Brandon” slogan, which has become the right’s stand-in for swearing at the president.

“Republicans seem to support one fella, some guy named Brandon,” Biden said, causing an uproar of laughter among the crowd. “He’s having a really good year. I’m happy for him.”

As far as roasting the GOP, he said, “There’s nothing I can say about the GOP that Kevin McCarthy hasn’t already put on tape.”

He also took a jab at Fox News. “I know there are a lot of questions about whether we should gather here tonight because of COVID. Well, we’re here to show the country that we’re getting through this pandemic. Plus, everyone has to prove they are fully vaccinated and boosted,” Biden said. “Just contact your favorite Fox News reporter. They’re all here. Vaccinated and boosted.”

In addition to speeches from Biden and comedian Trevor Noah, the hours-long event had taped skits from talk show host James Corden, comedian Billy Eichner and the president himself.

“Thank you for having me here,” Noah said to Biden. “And I was a little confused on why me, but then I was told that you get your highest approval ratings when a biracial African guy is standing next to you.”

While the majority of the speech was filled with cutting jabs, Biden did make note of the important role journalism plays in American democracy, especially in the last decade.

“I mean this from the bottom of my heart, that you, the free press, matter more than you ever did in the last century,” he said. “You are the guardians of the truth.”

The dinner had other serious moments, with tributes to pioneer journalists of color, aspiring student reporters and a dedication to the journalists detained, injured or killed during the coverage of the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine. 

 

Noah's closing monologue at the end of the night made it clear how much trouble journalism is across the globe, and how America's local reporters are the backbone to freedom of the press here. It was good to see them getting a major shoutout. Lord knows none of them would rate an invite to Nerd Prom. 

Still, let's not forget that the relationship between the government and the media in 2022 is 100% transactional access, and it's been that way for decades now. It's definitely necessary to poke fun at it, but it's more so to reform it.

Last Call For January 6th Justice

Some Democrats on the House January 6th Committee are afraid to refer Trump for Justice Department prosecution because it would look partisan, and at this point I have to ask "Did any of you actually look at Washington for the last 30 years, because Republicans are going to be coming after all of you anyway."

The leaders of the House committee investigating the Capitol attack have grown divided over whether to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department of former President Donald J. Trump, even though they have concluded that they have enough evidence to do so, people involved in the discussions said.

The debate centers on whether making a referral — a largely symbolic act — would backfire by politically tainting the Justice Department’s expanding investigation into the Jan. 6 assault and what led up to it.

Since last summer, a team of former federal prosecutors working for the committee has focused on documenting the attack and the preceding efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to reverse his defeat in the 2020 election. The panel plans to issue a detailed report on its findings, but in recent months it has regularly signaled that it was also weighing a criminal referral that would pressure Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to open a criminal investigation into Mr. Trump.

But now, with the Justice Department appearing to ramp up a wide-ranging investigation, some Democrats are questioning whether there is any need to make a referral — and whether doing so would saddle a criminal case with further partisan baggage at a time when Mr. Trump is openly flirting with running again in 2024.

The shift in the committee’s perspective on making a referral was prompted in part by a ruling two weeks ago by Judge David O. Carter of the Federal District Court for Central California. Deciding a civil case in which the committee had sought access to more than 100 emails written by John C. Eastman, a lawyer who advised Mr. Trump on efforts to derail certification of the Electoral College outcome, Judge Carter found that it was “more likely than not” that Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman had committed federal crimes.

The ruling led some committee and staff members to argue that even though they felt they had amassed enough evidence to justify calling for a prosecution for obstructing a congressional proceeding and conspiring to defraud the American people, the judge’s decision would carry far greater weight with Mr. Garland than any referral letter they could write, according to people with knowledge of the conversations.

The members and aides who were reluctant to support a referral contended that making one would create the appearance that Mr. Garland was investigating Mr. Trump at the behest of a Democratic Congress and that if the committee could avoid that perception it should, the people said.

Even if the final report does not include a specific referral letter to Mr. Garland, the findings would still provide federal prosecutors with the evidence the committee uncovered — including some that has not yet become public — that could be used as a road map for any prosecution, the people said.

 

Well holy shit, isn't that the point of an investigation, to gather fucking evidence?

 

Jesus wept, folks. The GOP is already calling you partisan. 

House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy says he has no regrets about having Republicans boycott the special committee probing the Jan. 6 riot, dismissing the investigation as a political hit job.

“This is nothing but a political show,” McCarthy told NBC News in an interview last week just off the House floor. “They already have the report written and they’re trying to create a narrative for it instead of trying to get to the truth.”

But with the Jan. 6 committee preparing to shift next month from the investigative phase to public, televised hearings, McCarthy’s decision last summer to shun the panel will face perhaps its biggest test.

Unlike the first Trump impeachment hearings in 2019, loyalists of the former president will not be in a position to “run interference,” in the words of one GOP source, during the Jan. 6 panel proceedings. Specifically, they won’t be able to aggressively cross-examine witnesses, rebut or interrupt Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and other Democrats, or introduce their own evidence.

Instead, the hearings will be tightly controlled and well-choreographed, focusing on areas like the plot to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory; intelligence and security breakdowns related to the attack; and what former President Donald Trump and his inner circle were doing during the hourslong riot that claimed several lives.

That's opened McCarthy up to criticism from some fellow Republicans.

“I would say it’s absolutely a strategic mistake,” said a senior House GOP aide. “You’re going to have a united front, you’re not going to have a sideshow.

“One of the reasons Democrats’ impeachment hearings failed so spectacularly in 2019 was because you had [GOP Reps.] Elise Stefanik and Jim Jordan and Doug Collins and Mike Turner — all of them running interference because they were sitting on the panels," the aide added. "And they were able to push back on whatever Democrats were trying to press Gordon Sondland and Fiona Hill about. They’re not going to have that this time.”

McCarthy’s decision to yank his members off the Jan. 6 panel — a response to Speaker Nancy Pelosi blocking two of his picks — means pro-Trump Republicans largely have been left in the dark about what's in store for the public hearings. Other than public reporting, Republicans aren't aware of leads the committee is chasing, what witnesses are saying in the 750 depositions the panel has conducted in private, and what’s in the nearly 90,000 documents received by the panel.

“That’s an error,” the GOP aide said. “If Republicans were on a committee and were able to participate in any of this right now, they could be leaking things, they could be setting their own narratives.”

 

GOP aides bragging about using the press, and the press covers it approvingly.

 

We're in so much trouble.

 

Last Call For Secret (Squirrel) Service

Sometimes you have to chutzpah of a criminal plan to bribe Secret Service agents before you crush the whole operation.

 

Federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged two men they say were posing as federal agents, giving free apartments and other gifts to U.S. Secret Service agents, including one who worked on the first lady’s security detail.

The two men — Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 36 — were taken into custody as more than a dozen FBI agents charged into a luxury apartment building in Southeast Washington on Wednesday evening.

Prosecutors allege Taherzadeh and Ali had falsely claimed to work for the Department of Homeland Security and work on a special task force investigating gang and violence connected to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. They allege the two posed as law enforcement officers to integrate with actual federal agents.

Taherzadeh is accused of providing Secret Service officers and agents with rent-free apartments — including a penthouse worth over $40,000 a year — along with iPhones, surveillance systems, a drone, flat screen television, a generator, gun case and other policing tools, according to court documents.

He also offered to let them use a black GMC SUV that he identified as an “official government vehicle,” prosecutors say. In one instance, Taherzadeh offered to purchase a $2,000 assault rifle for a Secret Service agent who is assigned to protect the first lady.

Prosecutors said four Secret Service employees were placed on leave earlier this week as part of the investigation.

The plot unraveled when the U.S. Postal Inspection Service began investigating an assault on a mail carrier at the apartment building and the men identified themselves as being part of a phony Homeland Security unit they called the U.S. Special Police Investigation Unit.

Prosecutors say the men had also set up surveillance in the building and had been telling residents there that they could access any of their cellphones at any time. The residents also told investigators they believed the men had access to their personal information.

Taherzadeh and Ali are scheduled to appear in court on Thursday. It was not immediately clear if they had lawyers who could comment on the allegations.

 

So the question is why bribe the USSS agents, and what they were getting in return. That's going to be a fun investigation, I think. It seems since I started this blog back in 2008, the USSS has not exactly covered itself in glory as an institution.

 

Here's hoping we get real reform.

 

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy gave a virtual address to Congress this morning, citing Pearl Harbor and 9/11 as to why the US needs to enter the airspace over the country and enforce a no-fly zone.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appealed to Congress for help directly Wednesday, telling US lawmakers "we need you right now" as he invoked tragedies in American history like the attack on Pearl Harbor and the September 11 terrorist attack. 

The historic speech given as a virtual address on comes as the United States is under pressure from Ukraine to supply more military assistance to the embattled country as it fights back against Russia's deadly attack. 

"Friends, Americans, in your great history, you have pages that would allow you to understand Ukrainians, understand us now, when we need you right now," he said through a translator at the start of his speech, though at the end of his remarks he spoke in English. 

"Remember Pearl Harbor, terrible morning of December 7, 1941, when your sky was black from the planes attacking you," Zelensky said. "Just remember it, remember, September the 11th, a terrible day in 2001 when evil tried to turn US cities into battlefields, when innocent people were attacked from air, just like nobody else expected it and you could not stop it. Our country experiences the same, every day, right now at this moment." 

While there is widespread bipartisan support for aid to Ukraine, many US lawmakers also believe the US should be careful not to be drawn into any kind of direct, armed conflict with Russia. 

Zelensky also cited his call for the US to help enforce a no-fly zone in Ukraine -- to protect civilians -- and provide fighter aircraft that the Ukrainians can use to defend themselves. 

These two controversial options divide lawmakers, with Republicans more hawkish about giving Ukraine jets, but some Democrats -- and the White House -- concerned Russia could consider such a move an escalation and potentially draw America into war. 

Lawmakers of both parties say they are wary of a no-fly zone at this time because they think it could pit the US directly against Russia in the skies over Ukraine. 

President Joe Biden plans to detail US assistance to Ukraine in a speech of his own later in the day Wednesday.

 

President Biden is expected to announce $800 million worth of direct military aid going to Ukraine this week, on top of last week's $13.6 billion humanitarian aid package, but as I've said before, a no-fly zone means a shooting war with Russia, a nuclear power.

That's what Putin has wanted since day one of this invasion.

Last Call For Lowering The Barr, Con't

Another month, another Trump regime slimeball trying to ooze their way back into polite political company with a tell-all book that trashes Dear Leader, all while making millions on the side, and this month is former Attorney General Bill Barr's turn.

Former Attorney General William Barr writes in a new book that former President Donald Trump has “shown he has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to provide the kind of positive leadership that is needed,” and that it is time for Republicans to focus on rising new leaders in the party.

The release of the former attorney general’s 600-page book, “One Damn Thing After Another,” is coming as Mr. Trump, who remains the GOP’s dominant figure, contemplates another presidential run. Mr. Barr writes that he was convinced that Mr. Trump could have won re-election in 2020 if he had “just exercised a modicum of self-restraint, moderating even a little of his pettiness.”

“The election was not ‘stolen,’ ” Mr. Barr writes. “Trump lost it.” Mr. Barr urges conservatives to look to “an impressive array of younger candidates” who share Mr. Trump’s agenda but not his “erratic personal behavior.” He didn’t mention any of those candidates by name.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Mr. Barr’s book. Last summer the former president called his former attorney general “a disappointment in every sense of the word.”

Mr. Barr’s memoir adds to a growing list of books by senior Trump administration officials and journalists about the former president. It is scheduled for release March 8 by the William Morrow imprint of HarperCollins. Both HarperCollins and The Wall Street Journal are owned by News Corp.

The recollections and conclusions by Mr. Barr are notable because he was one of Mr. Trump’s most powerful cabinet secretaries and was once such a close ally that Democrats accused him of acting more like the president’s defense attorney than an apolitical law-enforcement official.

 

Barr goes on to explain how everyone at the Trump White House and the Justice Department that he ran were all the real problem and not him, but he saves some ammo to blast Trump:

Mr. Barr also describes times when he was privately frustrated by Mr. Trump’s aggressive style and constant comments on the Justice Department’s work.

He provides the details of a contentious meeting on Dec. 1 in the Oval Office hours after Mr. Barr said publicly that there wasn’t evidence of widespread voter fraud in the presidential election that could reverse Joe Biden’s victory, contradicting Mr. Trump’s claims.

“This is killing me—killing me. This is pulling the rug right out from under me,” Mr. Trump shouted at Mr. Barr, according to the book. “He stopped for a moment and then said, ‘You must hate Trump. You would only do this if you hate Trump.’ ”

Mr. Barr writes that he reminded Mr. Trump that he had “sacrificed a lot personally to come in to help you when I thought you were being wronged,” but that the Justice Department had not been able to verify any of his legal team’s assertions about mass voter fraud.

Mr. Trump then launched into a list of other grievances he had with his attorney general: that the federal prosecutor Mr. Barr ordered to review the origins of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Russia probe that preceded the Mueller report hadn’t released his findings before the 2020 election, and that Mr. Barr declined to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey after a department watchdog rebuked him for sharing memos that contained sensitive information about his interactions with Mr. Trump, a complaint brought up repeatedly by the president.

Mr. Barr countered by offering to submit his resignation, according to the book. “Accepted!” Mr. Trump yelled, banging his palm on the table. “Leave and don’t go back to your office. You are done right now. Go home!” White House lawyers persuaded Mr. Trump not to follow through with Mr. Barr’s ouster.

Mr. Barr resigned a few weeks later, bringing a tumultuous end to his time in office.

After the election, Mr. Barr said that Mr. Trump “lost his grip” and that his false claims of voter fraud led to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters trying to thwart the certification of Mr. Biden’s November, 2020, victory.

“The absurd lengths to which he took his ‘stolen election’ claim led to the rioting on Capitol Hill,” Mr. Barr writes.

 

So yeah, the real bravery was the Attorney General of the United States witnessing Trump breaking federal law and not doing a goddamn thing about it.

 

 

 

Sunday Long Read: The Tale Of The Terrible Thomases

Our Sunday Long Read is a vitally important story, as Danny Hakim and Jo Becker at New York Times Magazine presents the case as to why Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas should be removed from the bench over his wife Ginny's unprecedented political activism, up to and including her influence on SCOTUS pertaining to Donald Trump's plan to steal the 2020 election with the Court's help.

 

The call to action was titled “Election Results and Legal Battles: What Now?” Shared in the days after the 2020 presidential election, it urged the members of an influential if secretive right-wing group to contact legislators in three of the swing states that tipped the balance for Joe Biden — Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania. The aim was audacious: Keep President Donald J. Trump in power.

The group, the Council for National Policy, brings together old-school Republican luminaries, Christian conservatives, Tea Party activists and MAGA operatives, with more than 400 members who include leaders of organizations like the Federalist Society, the National Rifle Association and the Family Research Council. Founded in 1981 as a counterweight to liberalism, the group was hailed by President Ronald Reagan as seeking the “return of righteousness, justice and truth” to America.

As Trump insisted, without evidence, that fraud had cheated him of victory, conservative groups rushed to rally behind him. The council stood out, however, not only because of its pedigree but also because one of its newest leaders was Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas and a longtime activist in right-wing circles. She had taken on a prominent role at the council during the Trump years and by 2019 had joined the nine-member board of C.N.P. Action, an arm of the council organized as a 501(c)4 under a provision of the tax code that allows for direct political advocacy. It was C.N.P. Action that circulated the November “action steps” document, the existence of which has not been previously reported. It instructed members to pressure Republican lawmakers into challenging the election results and appointing alternate slates of electors: “Demand that they not abandon their Constitutional responsibilities during a time such as this.”

Such a plan, if carried out successfully, would have almost certainly landed before the Supreme Court — and Ginni Thomas’s husband. In fact, Trump was already calling for that to happen. In a Dec. 2 speech at the White House, the president falsely claimed that “millions of votes were cast illegally in swing states alone” and said he hoped “the Supreme Court of the United States will see it” and “will do what’s right for our country, because our country cannot live with this kind of an election.”

The Thomases have long posed a unique quandary in Washington. Because Supreme Court justices do not want to be perceived as partisan, they tend to avoid political events and entanglements, and their spouses often keep low profiles. But the Thomases have defied such norms. Since the founding of the nation, no spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice has been as overt a political activist as Ginni Thomas. In addition to her perch at the Council for National Policy, she founded a group called Groundswell with the support of Stephen K. Bannon, the hard-line nationalist and former Trump adviser. It holds a weekly meeting of influential conservatives, many of whom work directly on issues that have come before the court.

Ginni Thomas insists, in her council biography, that she and her husband operate in “separate professional lanes,” but those lanes in fact merge with notable frequency. For the three decades he has sat on the Supreme Court, they have worked in tandem from the bench and the political trenches to take aim at targets like Roe v. Wade and affirmative action. Together they believe that “America is in a vicious battle for its founding principles,” as Ginni Thomas has put it. Her views, once seen as on the fringe, have come to dominate the Republican Party. And with Trump’s three appointments reshaping the Supreme Court, her husband finds himself at the center of a new conservative majority poised to shake the foundations of settled law. In a nation freighted with division and upheaval, the Thomases have found their moment.

This article draws on hours of recordings and internal documents from groups affiliated with the Thomases; dozens of interviews with the Thomases’ classmates, friends, colleagues and critics, as well as more than a dozen Trump White House aides and supporters and some of Justice Thomas’s former clerks; and an archive of Council for National Policy videos and internal documents provided by an academic researcher in Australia, Brent Allpress.

The reporting uncovered new details on the Thomases’ ascent: how Trump courted Justice Thomas; how Ginni Thomas used that courtship to gain access to the Oval Office, where her insistent policy and personnel suggestions so aggravated aides that one called her a “wrecking ball” while others put together an opposition-research-style report on her that was obtained by The Times; and the extent to which Justice Thomas flouted judicial-ethics guidance by participating in events hosted by conservative organizations with matters before the court. Those organizations showered the couple with accolades and, in at least one case, used their appearances to attract event fees, donations and new members.

New reporting also shows just how blurred the lines between the couple’s interests became during the effort to overturn the 2020 election, which culminated in the rally held at the Ellipse, just outside the White House grounds, aimed at stopping Congress from certifying the state votes that gave Joe Biden his victory. Many of the rally organizers and those advising Trump had connections to the Thomases, but little has been known about what role, if any, Ginni Thomas played, beyond the fact that on the morning of the March to Save America, as the rally was called, she urged her Facebook followers to watch how the day unfolded. “LOVE MAGA people!!!!” she posted before the march turned violent. “GOD BLESS EACH OF YOU STANDING UP or PRAYING!”

But her role went deeper, and beyond C.N.P. Action. Dustin Stockton, an organizer who worked with Women for America First, which held the permit for the Ellipse rally, said he was told that Ginni Thomas played a peacemaking role between feuding factions of rally organizers “so that there wouldn’t be any division around January 6.”

“The way it was presented to me was that Ginni was uniting these different factions around a singular mission on January 6,” said Stockton, who previously worked for Bannon. “That Ginni was involved made sense — she’s pretty neutral, and she doesn’t have a lot of enemies in the movement.”

 

That's right.

 

Ginny Thomas helped organize the January 6th terrorist attack on the US Capitol.

 

It actually gets worse ahead. This is one of the more important SLR articles in quite some time, folks.

 

Clarence Thomas has to go.

 

The Gavel Crashes Down Once More

Late last night, the five members of The Squad, plus Brooklyn Rep. Jamaal Bowman, called Nancy Pelosi's bluff on passing the Senate infrastructure bill in the House. With their five no votes, the Senate bill could not pass on Democratic votes alone. They thought they had finally beaten her.

And then a baker's dozen House Republicans voted for the bill.

The House on Friday passed the biggest U.S. infrastructure package in decades, marking a victory for President Joe Biden and unleashing $550 billion of fresh spending on roads, bridges, public transit and other projects in coming years.

The vote was 228-206 and sends the legislation to Biden for his signature. It capped a day in which Speaker Nancy Pelosi was forced to deal with a last-minute standoff between party progressives and moderates that took hours of intense negotiations and the president’s intervention to resolve.

Pelosi and Biden, however, were unable to land a House vote at the same time on a more than $1.75 trillion tax and spending package that makes up much of the rest of Biden’s domestic agenda. The House instead is set to approve a procedural measure teeing up a vote after lawmakers return from next week’s break and the Congressional Budget Office delivers a cost analysis.

That was a last-minute concession to a small group of moderates who refused to vote for the spending package without the CBO score. Progressives also made a concession by supporting the infrastructure legislation before a vote on the larger spending package.

“I’ve spoken to the president a number of times today and the president appreciates that we are working in good faith with our colleagues agreement,” Representative Pramila Jayapal, head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a statement. “We’re going to trust each other because the Democratic Party is together on this, we are united that it is important for us to get both bills done.”

Sure, it was all kabuki, Pelosi allowed the Squad to have their purity tantrum and demonstrated to everyone by getting thirteen Republican votes that the bill's passage was preordained. Despite the drama the bipartisan bill passed and Pelosi had a dozen plus Republicans help her, just as more than a dozen Republican senators helped Chuck Schumer 3 months ago.

In the end, never bet against Pelosi when her chips are in and the vote is on. That's the good news. the bipartisan bill is headed for Biden's desk this weekend.

Now the bad news.

The thing is that there's a higher stakes game the next table over in two weeks, the Build Back Better plan. President Manchin has all the chips in that pot. He can trash the game and the Biden plan now...

...but if he does, he's the villain. Is he really okay with that? Is Sinema?

We'll see.

Last Call For Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

The sequel to January 6th is happening later this month, another planned right-wing white supremacist domestic terrorist assault on the US Capitol to "demand justice" for those previously arrested for attacking the Capitol in January.

 

Far right extremist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are planning to attend a rally later this month at the U.S. Capitol that is designed to demand “justice” for the hundreds of people who have been charged in connection with January’s insurrection, according to three people familiar with intelligence gathered by federal officials.

As a result, U.S. Capitol Police have been discussing in recent weeks whether the large perimeter fence that was erected outside the Capitol after January’s riot will need to be put back up, the people said.

The officials have been discussing security plans that involve reconstructing the fence as well as another plan that does not involve a fence, the people said. They were not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

The planned Sept. 18 rally at the Capitol comes as a jittery Washington has seen a series of troubling one-off incidents — including, most recently, a man who parked a pickup truck near the Library of Congress and said he had a bomb and detonator. Among the most concerning events: A series of unexploded pipe bombs placed around the U.S. Capitol ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection remain unexplained and no suspect has been charged.

On Capitol Hill, the politics around fencing in the iconic building and its grounds were extremely difficult for lawmakers after the Jan. 6 insurrection. Many said they disliked closing off access, even as they acknowledged the increased level of security it provided.

The decision on whether or not to erect the fence again will likely be considered by the Capitol Police Board, according to a House aide familiar with the matter and granted anonymity to discuss it. No decisions have been made. The board consists of the Sergeant at Arms of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Sergeant at Arms and Doorkeeper of the U.S. Senate, and the Architect of the Capitol.

The deadly riot overwhelmed the police force that was left badly prepared by intelligence failures and has resulted in internal reviews about why law enforcement agencies weren’t better equippped. More than 100 police officers were injured and the rioters did more than $1 million in damage.

The planned presence of the extremist groups is concerning because, while members and associates of Oath Keepers and Proud Boys make up just a fraction of the nearly 600 people who have been charged so far in the riot, they are facing some of the most serious charges brought so far.

Those charges include allegations that they conspired to block the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory. Several Oath Keepers have pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges and are cooperating with investigators in the case against their fellow extremists, who authorities say came to Washington ready for violence and willing to do whatever it took to stop the certification of the Electoral College vote.

As officials prepare for this month’s rally, Yogananda Pittman, the Capitol Police official who led intelligence operations for the agency when the rioters descended on the building, has been put back in charge of intelligence.

In a statement to the AP, Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said the department was “closely monitoring September 18 and we are planning accordingly.”

“After January 6, we made Department-wide changes to the way we gather and share intelligence internally and externally. I am confident the work we are doing now will make sure our officers have what they need to keep everyone safe,” Manger said.

Still, law enforcement officials are increasingly concerned about the rally and the potential for violence. The Metropolitan Police Department will activate its entire force for that day and has put specialized riot officers on standby, law enforcement officials said.

 

Put up the fences, activate the DC National Guard, and surround the rally with a couple thousand armed troops. You want to act like insurrectionists?

Fine, put them down like it's an armed insurrection. America has enough experience with doing that over the last 400 years, put it to good use for once.

Last Call For The Good Package, Con't

Corporate lobbyists in DC are doing everything they can to burn down the $3.5 billion Good Package, because of the corporate tax hikes and regulatory improvements. They don't want a piece of the pie, they want to bury the whole deal.

 

“We’re doing it in every way you can imagine,” said Aric Newhouse, the senior vice president for policy at the National Association of Manufacturers, when asked about the group’s lobbying. He added that the tax increases Democrats have pursued would mean “manufacturing families will suffer, jobs will be lost.”

Disney, Pfizer and Exxon declined to comment. Jessica Boulanger, a spokeswoman for the Business Roundtable, said in a statement it is engaged in “a significant, multifaceted campaign” to stop tax hikes and would “continue to ramp up our efforts in the coming weeks.”

Brian Newell, a spokesman for PhRMA, stressed that the group supports general pricing reforms — just not the ideas Democrats are pursuing. “The industry is willing to come to the table and do its fair share to help deliver real relief to patients at the pharmacy, not empty promises that will do more harm than good,” he said in a statement.

The raft of lobbying arrives as lawmakers begin to translate Biden’s broader economic vision into legislation. Democratic leaders have said their reconciliation measure can expand Medicare coverage, offer universal prekindergarten, provide new help to low-income families, and invest substantial sums toward fighting climate change.

Hoping to give Biden a win, Democrats have aimed to send the package to his desk as soon as September. Their race to enact legislation has set off a mad dash on Capitol Hill, a process that is sure to test the president’s political influence — and the durability of Democrats’ narrow, potent and fractious majorities in both chambers of Congress.

In a sign of the obstacles Democrats face, the Chamber of Commerce last week took a firm stand against the package, promising to do “everything we can” to prevent Congress from adopting it in full. The group’s president and chief executive, Suzanne Clark, issued the statement hours after the House adopted the $3.5 trillion budget that enabled Democrats to begin crafting tax and spending provisions — an approach, she said, that would “halt America’s fragile economic recovery.”

The Chamber’s opposition marked a major shift in tone from earlier this summer, when the business lobby locked arms with Democrats to help advance another centerpiece of Biden’s economic agenda. The group threw its full weight behind a bipartisan Senate package to improve the nation’s roads, bridges, pipes, ports and Internet connections, arguing that the roughly $1 trillion in fixes were long overdue.

Once the Senate adopted the package, however, the Chamber turned up the pressure on the House. Last week, for example, it unleashed widely viewed ads on Facebook praising the nine moderate Democrats who had threatened to block the party’s budget unless they could first secure a House vote on infrastructure spending. Democrats ultimately resolved their internal stalemate, paving the way for both packages to proceed this month, but not before the Chamber sought to highlight the party’s internal divisions in ads that together received millions of views.

The Chamber declined to comment about its plans, including the behind-the-scenes work to assemble a coalition. Neil Bradley, the group’s executive vice president, blasted Democrats for pursuing a bill “that proposes to fundamentally rewrite the rules of the road across virtually every major industrial sector.”

 

The big issue of course is that one of the main revenue components of the Good Package is reversing the Trump corporate tax cuts. These corporate types will burn the package to the ground and the Dems along with it in order to stop it.

 

We'll see who wins.

The Good Package, Con't

Senate Democrats have passed The $3.5 trillion Good Package™ super infrastructure plan on top of the Biden Infrastructure Bill in the last 24 hours, but now comes the hard work of actually filling in the numbers, and arriving at something that both moderates like Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin can accept that doesn't get sunk by AOC and The Squad in the House may already be an impossibility.

The blueprint now heads to the House, where lawmakers will return early from a scheduled summer recess the week of Aug. 23 to take it up. But moderate Democrats are also agitating for a stand-alone vote on the bipartisan infrastructure package, which could complicate efforts to swiftly pass the measure. Progressives have said they will not vote on the infrastructure bill until the House approves the budget package.

“Democrats have labored for months to reach this point, and there are many labors to come,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader. “But I can say with absolute certainty that it will be worth doing.”

The budget resolution will ultimately allow Democrats to use the fast-track budget reconciliation process to shield the legislation from a Republican filibuster. It will pave the way to expand Medicare to include dental, health and vision benefits; fund a host of climate change programs; provide free prekindergarten and community college; and levy higher taxes on wealthy businesses and corporations.

But months of arduous work remain. That includes not only turning the outline into fleshed-out legislation, but also reconciling the competing demands of liberal and centrist Democrats.

Moderates have begun to express reservations about the size and scope of the legislation. At least one Senate Democrat, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, has said she will not support a final $3.5 trillion price tag, despite voting to advance a budget resolution of that scope, and some House moderates have expressed similar concerns.

But many liberals in both chambers had sought even more spending, and they conditioned their support for the infrastructure deal, which they believe Democrats scaled back too much to secure Republican votes, on passage of the budget blueprint.

Senate Republicans sought to exploit some of those divisions through the so-called vote-a-rama, where an unlimited number of amendments could be offered by both parties. This was the third vote-a-rama this year, after Democrats prevailed through two identical exercises to push their $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package through Congress.

The marathon of nearly four dozen votes also gave Republicans a platform to hammer Democrats for trying to advance a package of this magnitude entirely without their input, as well as distinguish the process from the public works plan many of them had supported hours earlier.

“You’re spending money like drunken sailors,” declared Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the top Republican on the Budget Committee. “You’re putting in motion, I think, the demise of America as we know it. You’re putting in motion a government that nobody’s grandchild can ever afford to pay.”

The proposed changes, many of which were shot down along party lines, were nonbinding and intended more to burnish a political case against the most vulnerable Democratic senators facing re-election in 2022 than to become law. Some Republicans said the brunt of their proposals would wait until the subsequent legislation was finished, when changes could actually be adopted.

“The next vote-a-rama is the one that really matters, because then you’re firing with live ammo,” said Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania. “So I’m much more interested in that one than this one.” 

 

Remember, even if the bill passes the House in a final compromise form and heads back to the Senate, all it will take to sink the bill is one Democrat and all 50 Republicans adding an amendment that wipes out the entire thing. 

And as always, the clock is ticking.

Insurrection Investigation

The House Select Committee on January 6th gets underway today, with this op-ed from Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, explaining the stakes, scope, and goals.

Jan. 6 was supposed to be about the peaceful transfer of power after an election, a hallmark of democracy and our American tradition. The rioters went to the Capitol that day to obstruct this solemn action — and nearly succeeded while defacing and looting the halls of the Capitol in the process. The committee will provide the definitive accounting of one of the darkest days in our history. Armed with answers, we hope to identify actions that Congress and the executive branch can take to help ensure that it never happens again.

The bipartisan members of the committee believe strongly it is important to begin our work by hearing from law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6. On Tuesday, we will be joined by Capitol Police officers Aquilino Gonell and Harry Dunn and Metropolitan Police officers Daniel Hodges and Michael Fanone. These officers will provide firsthand accounts of the chaos of that day and the violence perpetrated by the rioters.

Fanone voluntarily rushed to the Capitol with his partner when he heard about the attacks. As a result of his bravery that day, he suffered a traumatic brain injury and a heart attack. In a video that has now been shared widely, Hodges can be seen being crushed by the mob as he and his fellow officers sought to defend a narrow hallway leading to a Capitol entrance. Dunn was one of the first officers to speak publicly about what law enforcement encountered when the rioters stormed the Capitol and the racial epithets he and others faced. Gonell, a veteran who had been deployed to Iraq, defended the Capitol against rioters who hurled chants of “traitor.” While pulling an officer who had fallen to the ground away from the rioters, Gonell was beaten with a pole carrying an American flag.

The officers’ testimony will bring into focus individual acts of heroism by law enforcement that day. The officers will also speak to how, more than six months after the attack, law enforcement officers continue to deal with the physical, mental and emotional effects of that day. This conversation is an important step, as we look to bolster protection of the Capitol and our democracy.

Regrettably, some are already focusing their energies on maligning the select committee before its work has even begun. We will not be distracted by politically motivated sideshows.

This hearing is just the beginning of the select committee’s work; when it comes to the security of the Capitol — and our democracy — nothing will be off-limits. We will do what is necessary to understand what happened, why and how. And we will make recommendations to help ensure it never happens again. We owe it to the country we love to provide the answers that the American people deserve.

 

Of all the topics that Rep. Thompson covered, it's the promise that "nothing will be off-limits" that is the most impactful. If Thompson is serious about this, it will mean subpoenas for several Republicans in the House and Senate, namely Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, and if there is a just deity in this multiverse, Mike Pence himself.

We'll see how far that "nothing will be off-limits" goes, and given that both the Justice Department and Reps. Cheney and Kinzinger seem serious about the prospect of calling GOP witnesses, this might get real interesting.

We'll see.

Nine Will Get You Thirteen, Supremely

Democrats are pushing for new legislation to raise the number of Supreme Court Justices from nine to thirteen, and while the bill has no chance of getting past the filibuster, it's a big blue marker that the Biden-era Dems are laying down. The real fight comes after the bill.

Four Democratic members of Congress plan to introduce legislation that would add four seats to the Supreme Court, which would, if passed, allow President Biden to immediately name four individuals to fill those seats and give Democrats a 7-6 majority.

The bill, which is being introduced by Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Hank Johnson (D-GA), and Mondaire Jones (D-NY) in the House and by Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) in the Senate, is called the Judiciary Act of 2021, and it is very brief. It amends a provision of federal law providing that the Supreme Court consist of a chief justice and eight associate justices to read that the Court shall consist of ‘‘a Chief Justice of the United States and twelve associate justices, any eight of whom shall constitute a quorum.”

Although the Constitution provides that there must be a Supreme Court, it leaves the question of how many justices shall sit on that Court to Congress. Under the Judiciary Act of 1789, the Court originally had six seats, and it briefly had 10 seats under President Lincoln.

Realistically, the bill is unlikely to pass anytime soon. Until recently, adding seats to the Supreme Court was considered a very radical tactic — President Franklin Roosevelt proposed similar legislation in 1937, and it did not end well for him. President Biden has in the past expressed reluctance to add seats to the Court.

But the politics of Supreme Court reform have moved very quickly in recent years, and it’s possible to imagine a critical mass of lawmakers rallying behind Court expansion if a majority of the current justices hand down decisions that are likely to outrage Democrats, such as a decision neutralizing what remains of the Voting Rights Act.

The new court-expansion bill would effectively neutralize a half-decade of work by Republicans to manipulate the Senate confirmation process in order to ensure GOP control of the nation’s highest Court.

 

So-called "moderate" Senate Republicans don't like being powerless. They particularly don't like that Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is doing a better and more efficient job of playing the concern troll but voting with our side in the end role than they ever could. But this is something they know they can block.

The question is what happens now?

Most likely, nothing. No Republican is going to allow this to pass when they could stop it. But it does become a hell of a negotiation starting point, doesn't it? 

Last Call For Buttigieg, Building Bridges

Mayor Pete, now Secretary of Transportation Pete, has some bridges, roads, highways and other assorted pipes, drains, and dams to sell to voters, and the self-proclaimed "infrastructure nerd" may be the right person in the right place at the right time. At least, that's the plan...

Buttigieg may be the youngest of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet secretaries and the one with the most on-the-job learning to do. But he also comes with the most prominent reputation — a small-town mayor with big ideas and even bigger ambitions; the type of person who plunges so deep into new subjects that he might spend a casual evening sifting through a digital library on transportation and actually enjoy it.

With the White House’s massive infrastructure bill set for its formal unveiling, he and his boss are looking to turn that reputation into a political asset. They want to make him one of the package’s chief pitchmen.

In recent weeks, Buttigieg has held scores of meetings with transportation, business and labor groups on infrastructure, which will take up a major part of the upcoming $3 trillion "Build Back Better" plan. Central to his approach is a Capitol Hill tour that’s part listening session, part charm offensive. It has included meeting with those Democrats helping craft the legislation and those Republicans who he and Biden hope will have a say in the process. Buttigieg, while still in the early stages, has found friendly responses on both sides.

In interviews, more than a dozen people who have spoken with him or been read-in on the conversations — including lawmakers and their aides, and transportation industry groups, environmental outfits and labor organizers — described a capable and engaged emissary for Biden. While many say he’s living up to his reputation as an affable policy wonk, others say they still came away unclear about how much policy influence he will ultimately wield.

Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana, a high-ranking Republican on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, spoke by phone with Buttigieg. The congressman conceded that when the former mayor took over the department, his expectations were not especially high.

“I’ll be really candid with you: My initial impression when they announced the appointment was here we go, a guy who has no knowledge, background or understanding of infrastructure,” Graves said. “But I do think he’s been able to demonstrate some proficiency, and clearly has some experience in the department’s portfolio. I’m trying to keep an open mind.”

The shift to Buttigieg from his predecessor, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, has been among the more jarring transitions of any of the Cabinet posts this year. Chao was reclusive, and a classic Washington insider, having served in prior cabinets and with a powerful husband holding the title of Senate majority leader.

This is Buttigieg’s first D.C. job. And instead of being a homebody, he is seemingly everywhere. He’s continued his torrid pace of television appearances that began during his 2020 presidential campaign and into his role as a top Biden campaign surrogate. And in Washington, where Buttigieg and his husband, Chasten, have relocated to an apartment on Capitol Hill after selling their home in South Bend, Ind., the two have been spotted alone or joined by other dignitaries on strolls through their new neighborhood.

Buttigieg was seen with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and their dogs, in what was described as a chance run-in. He was noticed going for a walk with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), a one-time debate sparring partner, as part of a scheduled get-together so the two could continue what was described as frequent talks about improving infrastructure.

“Secretary Buttigieg’s experience in local government and ability to work across the aisle are key assets,” Klobuchar said, pointing to their desire to expand access to broadband and fixing roads and bridges.

 

Hey, if Secretary Pete is going to build bridges in order to well, build more bridges, I'm all for that. We'll see what he can do, but something tells me it's only a matter of time before he has a political fender-bender or worse.

 

Then we'll see what happens when, well, the rubber meets the road.

The Political Beat Beats Women Back

There should be zero surprise that after decades of access political journalism and Trump's war on the press that women in the reporting field are suffering non-stop harassment from politicos, readers, and critics, to the point where social media is now a daily minefield that male journalists just don't have to deal with, and the male-dominated press still does not understand why they should care.

"It started late one day, and you could see it kind of building on social media,” Washington Post national editor Steven Ginsberg recalled of the torrent of online abuse directed last month at Seung Min Kim. The Post reporter had been photographed showing Senator Lisa Murkowski a critical tweet sent by Neera Tanden and seeking comment, a standard journalistic practice somehow interpreted as out of bounds or even unethical. The first thing Ginsberg and other Post editors did was reach out to Kim—“just to say: We’re here, we see it, we care, and how are you doing?” But the racist and sexist attacks only escalated, propelling Ginsberg to put out a statement to not only take a stand against harassment, but to try to move the ball forward by explaining why what Kim was doing was completely appropriate. “She and other minority women endure vile, baseless attacks on a daily basis, no matter what story they are working on or tweeting about,” he wrote. “The attacks on her journalistic integrity were wildly misguided and a bad faith effort at intimidation.” Ginsberg’s goal, he told me, was “to defend and educate.”

No journalist is above criticism. But what female journalists described to me goes beyond legitimate scrutiny of a headline or story framing and into their sex lives, their families, and other topics unrelated to their work, a wildly disproportionate level of pushback to any perceived journalistic offense. The old newsroom motto “don’t feed the trolls” seems increasingly quaint as top editors and media executives grapple with how and when to respond publicly to the deluge of smears filling a reporter’s inbox or chasing them across social media. “The environment for journalists is getting increasingly dangerous,” Ginsberg said. If not heralding a new era of how media organizations deal with attacks on female reporters, recent statements from the Post and The New York Times reflect the extent to which the problem has worsened, particularly for women on the male-dominated beats of politics and technology.

Earlier this month the Times issued a strongly worded defense of tech reporter Taylor Lorenz, whom Fox News’s Tucker Carlson sicced his followers on by bashing her on his prime-time program for, ironically, speaking out about how destructive the online harassment she’s experienced has been to her life and career over the past year. A week later the Times put out another statement—this time defending Rachel Abrams from “harassment” by One America News after the right-wing network urged viewers to contact the reporter over her upcoming “hit piece.” The statements were striking given that institutions like the Post and the Times don’t tend to acknowledge the toxic internet culture their reporters are constantly subject to. Speaking of the Lorenz incident, one reporter at the Times told me that she was glad the paper put out a statement “to show that the organization was identifying what was happening” and calling it out for what it was.

But the Times reporter, along with several other female journalists, said that overall, major media companies are not doing enough to support them, in part because a lot of news organizations believe the best way to deal with online abuse is to ignore it; journalists are coached to do the same. “What that ignores is the emotional toll that it takes on reporters, and the fact that it’s often a misunderstanding of our reporting” that warrants a response, the Times journalist said, noting that she’s seen false narratives about her work perpetuated because the paper’s social media policies keep her from commenting or engaging. Compounded with the lack of response from leadership, “you’re really just left with this feeling of being hung out to dry,” she told me. (The Times declined to make an editor available to discuss how the paper handles harassment of its reporters.)

“Even the most open-minded media organizations are still run by men who don’t fundamentally understand the misogynistic nature of these attacks,” said another reporter, among several who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of worsened harassment, as well as potential punishment by their employer for speaking out. “I really feel like there’s a space here for some male allies to step up and call this what it is,” the Times reporter told me, pointing to instances where there were multiple bylines on a story, and the only writer who got harassed or bullied online was the woman. This has especially been the case for women of color. Male and female reporters have also received asymmetrical responses after writing similar stories: Such was the case recently for Apoorva Mandavilli, a health and science reporter for the Times, who has spoken publicly about the experience.

Another reason media organizations may still be struggling with how to deal with this abuse is their failure to respond to the digital moment: So-called trolls no longer live only in the comment section at the bottom of an article or in hate mail. The nature of online abuse has evolved along with online media itself. “No media organization right now is prepared for this. Zero,” one reporter told me. “When you’re getting thousands of tweets and messages, and you’re being falsely attacked on TV and in articles, it’s imperative that you respond.” 

 

And the problem is people don't want to respond, because journalists are taught never to be the story themselves, and here their female colleagues getting harassed and threatened daily is definitely the story. 

We need a better press model, and four years of Trump have taught everyone that only sensationalism matters, and now it's physically harming people.

We have to do better.