Last Call For Losing The Clown Show

House GOP Speaker Kevin McCarthy has now fully lost control of his own caucus, with Rep. Lauren Boebert now trying to force an impeachment vote on President Biden as well as a second censure vote for Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy urged House Republicans to vote against the resolution brought forward by GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado forcing a vote to impeach President Joe Biden this week, arguing now is not the right time, multiple sources in the closed door meeting told CNN.

House Republicans are divided over Boebert’s resolution, with a number of members emerging from the meeting expressing frustration with the conservative congresswoman’s push to force a vote on the politically contentious issue.

McCarthy argued that Republicans should let committee investigations play out and warning that jumping to impeachment now could threaten their slim majority, the sources said. The speaker noted that House Republicans have taken back the House five times in the last 100 years, and two of those times lost the majority the next cycle.

“What majority do we want to be,” McCarthy asked his conference, according to a source in the room “Give it right back in two years or hold it for a decade and make real change?”

McCarthy said he asked Boebert to speak during the closed door conference meeting and she declined, a source familiar told CNN. Boebert did not attend the Wednesday meeting, the source said. CNN has reached out to Boebert’s office for comment.

McCarthy told reporters on Wednesday he does not support the resolution.

“I think to prematurely bring something up like that, to have no background in it, it undercuts what we’re doing” at the committee level, he said.

A number of House Republicans have filed articles of impeachment against Biden since the party took the House majority, but Boebert made a specific procedural move on Tuesday that would force the chamber to vote on the impeachment of Biden this week.

It’s not clear when the vote will happen, if at all. Boebert told CNN she would not force the full House to vote Wednesday night, and it’s still possible a vote to kill the impeachment resolution could happen later this week.

Now, it's 100% clear that Boebert doesn't have the votes, but McCarthy is now juggling bottles of nitroglycerin during an earthquake. If he kills the vote, he's going to have a revolt on his hands. If he allows the vote, he's also going to have a revolt on his hands.  He's survived so far, but less than six months into his term as House Speaker, he's already looking at a moment that could break his circus tent poles in half and bring the whole mess down on his head.

There's not much left for McCarthy to give away to keep Boebert sweet, and it'll only take one furious Republican to call for a vote of no confidence in McCarthy's ringmaster performance.

Get the popcorn, folks.

 

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

ProPublica, after exposing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his massive "gifts" from GOP megadonor and Nazi memorabilia enthusiast Harlan Crow, has now zeroed in on Justice Samuel Alito, and boy will you not be surprised at what they discovered.

In early July 2008, Samuel Alito stood on a riverbank in a remote corner of Alaska. The Supreme Court justice was on vacation at a luxury fishing lodge that charged more than $1,000 a day, and after catching a king salmon nearly the size of his leg, Alito posed for a picture. To his left, a man stood beaming: Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to rule in his favor in high-stakes business disputes.

Singer was more than a fellow angler. He flew Alito to Alaska on a private jet. If the justice chartered the plane himself, the cost could have exceeded $100,000 one way.

In the years that followed, Singer’s hedge fund came before the court at least 10 times in cases where his role was often covered by the legal press and mainstream media. In 2014, the court agreed to resolve a key issue in a decade-long battle between Singer’s hedge fund and the nation of Argentina. Alito did not recuse himself from the case and voted with the 7-1 majority in Singer’s favor. The hedge fund was ultimately paid $2.4 billion.

Alito did not report the 2008 fishing trip on his annual financial disclosures. By failing to disclose the private jet flight Singer provided, Alito appears to have violated a federal law that requires justices to disclose most gifts, according to ethics law experts.

Experts said they could not identify an instance of a justice ruling on a case after receiving an expensive gift paid for by one of the parties.

“If you were good friends, what were you doing ruling on his case?” said Charles Geyh, an Indiana University law professor and leading expert on recusals. “And if you weren’t good friends, what were you doing accepting this?” referring to the flight on the private jet.

Justices are almost entirely left to police themselves on ethical issues, with few restrictions on what gifts they can accept. When a potential conflict arises, the sole arbiter of whether a justice should step away from a case is the justice him or herself.

ProPublica’s investigation sheds new light on how luxury travel has given prominent political donors — including one who has had cases before the Supreme Court — intimate access to the most powerful judges in the country. Another wealthy businessman provided expensive vacations to two members of the high court, ProPublica found. On his Alaska trip, Alito stayed at a commercial fishing lodge owned by this businessman, who was also a major conservative donor. Three years before, that same businessman flew Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016, on a private jet to Alaska and paid the bill for his stay.

Such trips would be unheard of for the vast majority of federal workers, who are generally barred from taking even modest gifts.

Leonard Leo, the longtime leader of the conservative Federalist Society, attended and helped organize the Alaska fishing vacation. Leo invited Singer to join, according to a person familiar with the trip, and asked Singer if he and Alito could fly on the billionaire’s jet. Leo had recently played an important role in the justice’s confirmation to the court. Singer and the lodge owner were both major donors to Leo’s political groups.

ProPublica’s examination of Alito’s and Scalia’s travel drew on trip planning emails, Alaska fishing licenses, and interviews with dozens of people including private jet pilots, fishing guides, former high-level employees of both Singer and the lodge owner, and other guests on the trips.

ProPublica sent Alito a list of detailed questions last week, and on Tuesday, the Supreme Court’s head spokeswoman told ProPublica that Alito would not be commenting. Several hours later, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Alito responding to ProPublica’s questions about the trip.

 

So yes, Justice Alito banged out a "pre-buttal" op-ed in the friendly WSJ yesterday, attacking the ProPublica story as "misleading" and stuffed that behind its paywall. Josh Marshall at TPM braves the muck to rake it:

You’ve likely seen that TPM Alum Justin Elliott and the team at ProPublica is back with another big exclusive about the Supreme Court. This time, for once, Clarence Thomas is in the clear. Now we’re talking about the intemperate and peevish Sam Alito who took an all expenses paid fishing trip to Alaska back in 2008, courtesy of hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer. In a characteristic move, Alito refused to respond to the reporters’ questions and then published his answers as an oped in The Wall Street Journal in a kind of prebuttal and attack. Because yes, he’s that guy.

The bulk of the story is a detailed run-down of what Alito did, what a Justice needs to disclose and what kind of high powered gifts should dictate a recusal in cases where Singer had some direct stake – there’ve been a number. But the gem in Alito’s piece is the explanation the private jet flight.

As for the flight, Mr. Singer and others had already made arrangements to fly to Alaska when I was invited shortly before the event, and I was asked whether I would like to fly there in a seat that, as far as I am aware, would have otherwise been vacant. It was my understanding that this would not impose any extra cost on Mr. Singer. Had I taken commercial flights, that would have imposed a substantial cost and inconvenience on the deputy U.S. Marshals who would have been required for security reasons to assist me.

Alito seems to suggest that he was flying to Alaska and it turned out Singer happened to be flying to Alaska too. And he happened to have a spare seat on his private jet. So what sense would there be in having the seat go to waste? In the spirit of the Alaskan wilderness taking the seat was sort of a resource conservation effort in which Alito was lending a hand.

But of course Singer didn’t just happen to going to Alaska. He was going to Alaska specifically to spend quality time with Sam Alito. The whole thing had been arranged by The Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo, who asked Singer if he and Alito could fly up with him on his private jet.

And here’s where the whole picture starts to come into focus – both the Alito story and the Thomas ones. Needless to say none of these billionaires are just old friends in the sense you or I might recognize. But they didn’t just glom on to their Justice on their own. Everyone here is part of Leo’s network. Harlan Crow is a big Republican donor but also a big Federalist Society donor. So is Paul Singer. So is the owner of the fishing lodge. In fact, Leo’s network is so vast and deep-pocketed that eventually he decided he was too big for the Federalist Society and struck out on his own. Indeed last year he secured a record-breaking $1.6 billion donation as a kind of judicial corrupt grub steak to fund all his future endeavors.

 

So we know that at least two Supreme Court Justices are bought and paid for by Federalist Society jackasses, and probably all six of the conservative justices. 

Keep that in mind as the most damaging rulings taking rights from tens of millions are handed down in the next week or so.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

It's slowly beginning to dawn on Team Trump that former Trump WH Chief of Staff Mark Meadows may have cut a deal and is cooperating with Jack Smith.

 

EARLIER THIS YEAR, Donald Trump sent some of his lawyers and political advisers on a “small fact-finding mission,” as a person with knowledge of the matter describes it to Rolling Stone. The former president wanted to know, according to that source and another person close to Trump: “What is Mark doing?”

Trump was referring to his former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Justice Department investigators and Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office had been keen on questioning Meadows under oath about Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election and to hoard government documents. And it’s been an ongoing mystery to Trump and his team how much Meadows has given the feds, and whether or not he’s actually cooperating. Months ago, Meadows and his lawyer severed communications with most of Trumpland, in a move that continues to frustrate people working to keep the now twice–indicted former president out of deeper legal peril.

The Trump attorneys and advisers who went looking for answers returned with bad news for Trump: They couldn’t figure out what was going on, leaving them to repeat rumors and speculation.

Meadows, his lawyer, and Trump’s spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment from Rolling Stone.

Meadows’ team is keeping quiet. Early this month, The New York Times revealed that Meadows had indeed testified before the grand jury, but scant details have been unearthed about what he discussed or to which specific topics his testimony was related. And Meadows’ lawyer George Terwilliger this month offered only vagueness: “Without commenting on whether or not Mr. Meadows has testified before the grand jury or in any other proceeding, Mr. Meadows has maintained a commitment to tell the truth where he has a legal obligation to do so.”

That cryptic statement did not sit well with much of Trumpworld. In recent weeks, several lawyers and confidants had already discussed their unconfirmed suspicions with Trump that Meadows was being very useful to the feds in order to reduce Meadows’ own possible legal exposure, two other people familiar with the matter say. Both sources independently tell Rolling Stone that when the topic has come up within the past several months, Trump has at times said that he doesn’t know what Meadows is doing, adding that it would be a “shame” if the MAGAland rumors were true.

In the days since Terwilliger’s brief statement to media outlets, some of Trump’s longtime allies and close advisers have taken to sardonically referring to Meadows by using the rat emoji in their private conversations, according to a source with knowledge of the situation and a screenshot reviewed by Rolling Stone.

However, others in Trump’s immediate orbit have recently sought to reassure him that, for now at least, he should not read too much into Meadows’ silence, two people with direct knowledge of the matter say. Despite all the rumors that have been flying, these individuals have told Trump that there is no hard evidence yet that Meadows is formally cooperating, and that he could simply be following lawyers’ advice to keep a low profile, answering the feds’ questions when he has to until the special counsel investigation runs its course.
Unfortunately for Meadows and other witnesses, Trump has for years often seen little difference between a witness having an official cooperation agreement with prosecutors, and someone who is legally required to answer questions and in doing so offers up potentially damning information to the authorities, according to sources who’ve spoken to Trump about federal probes and other investigations over the decades. Indeed, Trump was furious over the degree of detail in the notes made by his own attorney, Evan Corcoran, which have since become very useful for prosecutors in this case.

There's no proof that Meadows is singing like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but the Trump camp is deep into the paranoid style, and Meadows continues to refuse to deny the accusations.

Personally, I hope Meadows is indeed giving Jack Smith the grand jury info necessary to indict Trump for January 6th and a host of other charges.

We'll see who's right: if Meadows was cooperating, somebody would have ratted him out for doing so by now.

Last Call For The Big Lie, Con't

The Big Lie about the 2020 election continues unabated.

 

Three-in-10 Americans still believe President Joe Biden won his 2020 election only due to voter fraud, a new poll shows — a durable number that highlights the disconnect on one of the foundational issues facing American democracy.

A new Monmouth poll finds 30% of respondents believe Biden's victory came thanks to voter fraud, while 59% say he won the election "fair and square." That share is virtually unchanged in Monmouth's polling since November of 2020 — the share of Americans who believe it remained between 32% and 29%.

There remains no evidence that widespread fraud substantially affected the outcome of the 2020 election, and virtually all of the dozens of legal cases filed by former President Donald Trump and allies were dismissed or withdrawn. But despite that, Trump has continued to repeat his claims the election was stolen from him, accusations elevated by other prominent allies along the way.

Virtually all Democrats (93%) say Biden won the election fairly, a view shared by 58% of independents. Just 21% of Republicans believe Biden won his election fair and square, while 68% say he won "due to voter fraud."

That's very similar to Monmouth's findings in the weeks after the 2020 election, when 18% of Republicans, 67% of independents and 95% of Democrats said Biden's election victory was fair.

While there has been only small movement among Republicans on the question of the 2020 election's legitimacy, Monmouth finds more significant movement on questions related to the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Forty-four percent of Republicans say it's appropriate to describe the events that occurred that day as a "riot," down from 62% in June of 2021. And only 15% of Republicans say it's appropriate to describe the events as an "insurrection," down from 33% in June of 2021.

 

This won't change anytime soon.  Republicans will continue to swear that 2020 was stolen from them, and that belief will be used to justify a lot of things in the weeks and months ahead.

Paxton Versus Paxton Versus The Stupid

In one of the most brazenly corrupt examples of state government I've seen, impeached Texas AG Ken Paxton will be tried by the state Senate, including his wife, Angela.

The wife of embattled Attorney General Ken Paxton said Monday she will “carry out (her) duties” as a state senator and not recuse herself ahead of her husband’s upcoming impeachment trial.

Angela Paxton, who represents a Dallas-area district, said Texas law compels each member of the Senate to attend the impeachment proceedings on Tuesday when the chamber meets to set the rules for Paxton’s impeachment trial.

The Texas House of Representatives voted to impeach the attorney general in an unprecedented move last month following a legislative probe that faulted the third-term Republican for a yearslong pattern of corruption, including abusing his office’s powers, retaliating against whistleblowers and obstructing justice.

“As a member of the Senate, I hold these obligations sacred and I will carry out my duties, not because it is easy, but because the Constitution demands it and because my constituents deserve it,” Paxton said in a statement, indicating that she will not recuse herself from her role representing a Dallas-area district as the legislative body convenes her husband’s trial.

In 2020, multiple top aides publicly accused Paxton of bribery and abusing his office. The aides, who also reported their allegations to the FBI, were all fired, put on leave or resigned.

The whistleblowers had accused him of using his authority to benefit political friend Nate Paul, a real estate investor who had donated tens of thousands of dollars to Paxton’s campaign. The impeachment vote had its origins in an investigation launched in March by the General Investigating Committee of the Texas House after Paxton had asked the legislature to approve $3.3 million in government funds to settle a lawsuit with four whistleblowers who were fired from his office.

One of the impeachment articles accuses Paxton of using employees of the attorney general’s office to write a legal opinion intended to help Paul avoid the foreclosure sale of properties owned by Paul and his businesses.

It was among a series of articles focused on Paxton’s relationship with Paul, including accusations he hired an outside attorney who issued more than 30 grand jury subpoenas while investigating a “baseless complaint” made by Paul, benefited from Paul hiring a woman with whom Paxton “was having an extramarital affair,” and provided Paul with favorable legal help in exchange for renovations on Paxton’s home.

The articles of impeachment also detail what are described as Paxton’s efforts to cause “protracted” delays in the securities fraud investigation. And the articles say voters in November, who voted for Paxton’s third term did not have a full understanding of Paxton’s legal troubles because he had intentionally obscured the details of the charges he faces.

I don't expect the GOP-controlled state Senate to make Angela Paxton recuse herself, but at the very least she could be a material witness to the case and she should be nowhere near being allowed to sit in judgment of her own husband's bribery and corruption case.

And people are pretending this is okay?

Jesus, this is ludicrous even for Texas GOP nonsense.

BREAKING: Hunter Biden To Plead Guilty On Tax Charges

After a five-year investigation, President Biden's son Hunter will take a plea deal on three misdemeanor tax charges and a felony gun possession charge.

 

The Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for Delaware has reached a plea agreement with Hunter Biden, in which he is expected to plead guilty to two federal misdemeanor counts of failing to pay his taxes. Biden also faces a separate gun possession charge that will likely be dismissed if he meets certain conditions, according to court documents filed on Tuesday.

Two sources familiar with the agreement told NBC News that it includes a provision in which the U.S. attorney has agreed to recommend probation for Biden for his tax violations. Legal experts also said that the tax and gun charges will most likely not result in any jail time for President Joe Biden’s son.

The decision by U.S. Attorney David Weiss, who was nominated by President Donald Trump in 2018, indicates an end to the sweeping, five-year investigation by federal prosecutors, FBI agents and IRS officials into Hunter Biden’s conduct. The Biden administration has kept Weiss in place in order to avoid having a U.S. attorney appointed by the president oversee his son’s criminal case.

Chris Clark, attorney for Hunter Biden, told NBC News in a statement: “With the announcement of two agreements between my client, Hunter Biden, and the Unites States Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware, it is my understanding that the five-year investigation into Hunter is resolved.

"Hunter will take responsibility for two instances of misdemeanor failure to file tax payments when due pursuant to a plea agreement. A firearm charge, which will be subject to a pretrial diversion agreement and will not be the subject of the plea agreement, will also be filed by the Government. I know Hunter believes it is important to take responsibility for these mistakes he made during a period of turmoil and addiction in his life. He looks forward to continuing his recovery and moving forward.”

 

Expect weeks, if not months or even years of Republican screeching that Joe Biden should resign, drop out of the 2024 race, wear a horsehair and sackcloth shirt, and gnash his teeth for the rest of his days. And expect no small amount of horseshoe theory leftists to demand the same. Hell, I expect to see Biden supporters demand Merrick Garland resign for "election interference".

None of this should or will happen. Yes, it grinds my gears to see Hunter Biden rung up on tax charges when Jared Kushner took billions in Saudi blood money and the Trumps are busy cutting a real-estate deal in non-extradition country Oman.

But justice must be served, even if it means the President's son is charged with tax fraud and gets probation. Notice the Biden administration didn't interfere in the investigation or the charges. I suspect Hunter told his father that the deal was coming, lord knows I'd tell Zandardad if I was, I dunno, about to cut a plea deal with the Feds.

This is the right thing on all sides. The GOP will try to force Biden to drop charges against Trump now, but that plea deal ship sailed long ago, didn't it?

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

Trump's biggest tactical flaw is that he can't shut up, something that's going to get him prison time one of these days.

A WEEK AFTER his second post-presidential arrest, this one for his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House, Donald Trump turned to Fox News host Bret Baier on Monday to make the case for why he should lead the country again. But he ended up essentially confessing to the crime of which he’s accused: stealing and sharing top-secret government information.

Before that, however, Baier pressed Trump to explain why he kept the boxes of classified materials at Mar-a-Lago and refused to comply with government requests to return them, as described in his new felony indictment. In between dismissing the case as “the document hoax” or accusing other presidents of illegally hoarding their own sensitive documents, Trump offered the bizarre explanation that he couldn’t give up the boxes to authorities because they also contained… his clothes.

“Like every other president I take things out,” Trump said. “In my case, I took it out pretty much in a hurry. People packed it up and left. I had clothing in there, I had all sorts of personal items in there. Much, much stuff.” After a brief digression to call his former attorney general Bill Barr a “coward,” Trump reiterated, “I have got a lot of things in there. I will go through those boxes. I have to go through those boxes. I take out personal things.” Finally, he clarified what those items were: “These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things: golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes, there were many things,” he said.

While not wanting Dark Brandon to seize your golf shirts may prove a compelling argument in court, another of Trump’s evasions seems less likely to hold water. Baier also brought up one of the most damning parts of the federal indictment, a recording from July 2021 in which Trump is heard showing off a document detailing an attack plan against Iran, revealing that it’s still officially secret and he no longer has the power to declassify it. Trump blustered for a moment about what he actually said, then pivoted to the claim that he wasn’t even holding a particular document — despite corroborating testimony from others in the room when it happened. No wonder this guy’s lawyers keep quitting on him.

And this time, Trump refusing to shut up about the classified documents he had in his possession may end up putting him in a box early. 

A magistrate judge has signed off on special counsel Jack Smith’s request that former President Donald Trump and his co-defendant Walt Nauta be prohibited from disclosing information the discovery handed over to the defense in the criminal case Trump and Nauta now face from the special counsel.

Among the restrictions approved by US Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, who previously approved the search warrant the FBI executed at Mar-a-Lago last year, is that “The Discovery Materials, along with any information derived therefrom, shall not be disclosed to the public or the news media, or disseminated on any news or social media platform, without prior notice to and consent of the United States or approval of the Court.”

The order sought by prosecutors and approved by Reinhart was expected and used standard language. However, it comes in a first-of-its-kind federal criminal case against an ex-president who has a proclivity to express opinions on social media and who is being prosecuted, in part, because of his alleged mishandling of sensitive government information.

The order follows the language that Smith proposed and it governs the unclassified discovery the defense will receive. The defendants did not oppose Smith’s request.

The classified materials federal investigators have collected, which are at the heart of Smith’s case, will be subjected to their own procedures for the case. The two Trump attorneys who have made appearances in the case confirmed Friday to US District Judge Aileen Cannon, who will preside over the case, that they have been in contact with the Justice Department about expediting their security clearances.

Somehow, I don't think this will be the last public interview Trump gives about these very documents. 

Just keep watching.

Insurrection Investigation, Con't

Apparently, Attorney General Merrick Garland fielded calls from his own to slow-walk Trump on January 6th for more than a year after taking office, with Chris Wray and the FBI openly refusing to go directly after Trump.

Hours after he was sworn in as attorney general, Merrick Garland and his deputies gathered in a wood-paneled conference room in the Justice Department for a private briefing on the investigation he had promised to make his highest priority: bringing to justice those responsible for the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021

In the two months since the siege, federal agents had conducted 709 searches, charged 278 rioters and identified 885 likely suspects, said Michael R. Sherwin, then-acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, ticking through a slide presentation. Garland and some of his deputies nodded approvingly at the stats, and the new attorney general called the progress “remarkable,” according to people in the room.

Sherwin’s office, with the help of the FBI, was responsible for prosecuting all crimes stemming from the Jan. 6 attack. He had made headlines the day after by refusing to rule out the possibility that President Donald Trump himself could be culpable. “We are looking at all actors, not only the people who went into the building,” Sherwin said in response to a reporter’s question about Trump. “If the evidence fits the elements of a crime, they’re going to be charged.”

But according to a copy of the briefing document, absent from Sherwin’s 11-page presentation to Garland on March 11, 2021, was any reference to Trump or his advisers — those who did not go to the Capitol riot but orchestrated events that led to it.

A Washington Post investigation found that more than a year would pass before prosecutors and FBI agents jointly embarked on a formal probe of actions directed from the White House to try to steal the election. Even then, the FBI stopped short of identifying the former president as a focus of that investigation.

A wariness about appearing partisan, institutional caution, and clashes over how much evidence was sufficient to investigate the actions of Trump and those around him all contributed to the slow pace. Garland and the deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, charted a cautious course aimed at restoring public trust in the department while some prosecutors below them chafed, feeling top officials were shying away from looking at evidence of potential crimes by Trump and those close to him, The Post found.

In November, after Trump announced he was again running for president, making him a potential 2024 rival to President Biden, Garland appointed special counsel Jack Smith to take over the investigation into Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

On June 8, in a separate investigation that was also turned over to the special counsel, Smith secured a grand jury indictment against the former president for mishandling classified documents after leaving office. Trump was charged with 31 counts of violating a part of the Espionage Act, as well as six counts arising from alleged efforts to mislead federal investigators.

The effort to investigate Trump over classified records has had its own obstacles, including FBI agents who resisted raiding the former president’s home. But the discovery of top-secret documents in Trump’s possession triggered an urgent national security investigation that laid out a well-defined legal path for prosecutors, compared with the unprecedented task of building a case against Trump for trying to steal the election.

Whether a decision about Trump’s culpability for Jan. 6 could have come any earlier is unclear. The delays in examining that question began before Garland was even confirmed. Sherwin, senior Justice Department officials and Paul Abbate, the top deputy to FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, quashed a plan by prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office to directly investigate Trump associates for any links to the riot, deeming it premature, according to five individuals familiar with the decision. Instead, they insisted on a methodical approach — focusing first on rioters and going up the ladder.

The strategy was embraced by Garland, Monaco and Wray. They remained committed to it even as evidence emerged of an organized, weeks-long effort by Trump and his advisers before Jan. 6 to pressure state leaders, Justice officials and Vice President Mike Pence to block the certification of Biden’s victory.

In the weeks before Jan. 6, Trump supporters boasted publicly that they had submitted fake electors on his behalf, but the Justice Department declined to investigate the matter in February 2021, The Post found. The department did not actively probe the effort for nearly a year, and the FBI did not open an investigation of the electors scheme until April 2022, about 15 months after the attack.

The Justice Department’s painstaking approach to investigating Trump can be traced to Garland’s desire to turn the page from missteps, bruising attacks and allegations of partisanship in the department’s recent investigations of both Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

Inside Justice, however, some have complained that the attorney general’s determination to steer clear of any claims of political motive has chilled efforts to investigate the former president. “You couldn’t use the T word,” said one former Justice official briefed on prosecutors’ discussions.

This account is based on internal documents, court files, congressional records, handwritten contemporaneous notes, and interviews with more than two dozen current and former prosecutors, investigators, and others with knowledge of the probe. Most of the people interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal decision-making related to the investigation.

Spokespeople at the Justice Department and FBI declined to comment or make Garland, Monaco or Wray available for interviews.

 

Garland had to be dragged kicking and screaming into investigating Trump because that's where all the evidence of the J6 small fry that they prosecuted led to. Trump forced Garland's hand. 

And as Marcy Wheeler notes, the story means former FBI Washington Field Office head Steve D'Antunio was the biggest purveyor of protecting Trump.

 

The WaPo has a story that many Merrick Garland attackers claim confirms their fears about the DOJ investigation. Except the story has really important gaps, most importantly in its portrayal of the fake electors investigation, which is the damning part of the story about Garland or Lisa Monaco’s direct decisions (as opposed to those of FBI).

Moreover, the one thing it proves definitively is that former FBI Washington Field Office head Steve D’Antuono repeatedly shot down investigative prongs of this investigation, just like he did the stolen documents investigation. That the head of the WFO was running interference for Trump raises key questions about FBI missteps with people like Brandon Straka, someone arrested early who had direct ties to the scheme in the Willard, to say nothing about WFO’s ineptitude in advance of the attack.

Here are the main disclosures.

The story describes that — after such time as Brandon Straka was being treated as a cooperative witness — JP Cooney pitched an idea to get to Stone through the Oath Keepers, not the Proud Boys.

But a group of prosecutors led by J.P. Cooney, the head of the fraud and public corruption section at the U.S. attorney’s office, argued that the existing structure of the probe overlooked a key investigative angle. They sought to open a new front, based partly on publicly available evidence, including from social media, that linked some extremists involved in the riot to people in Trump’s orbit — including Roger Stone, Trump’s longest-serving political adviser; Ali Alexander, an organizer of the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the riot; and Alex Jones, the Infowars host.

[snip]

According to three people who either viewed or were briefed on Cooney’s plan, it called for a task force to embark on a wide-ranging effort, including seeking phone records for Stone as well as Alexander. Cooney wanted investigators to follow the money — to trace who had financed the false claims of a stolen election and paid for the travel of rallygoers-turned-rioters. He was urging investigators to probe the connection between Stone and members of the Oath Keepers, who were photographed together outside the Willard hotel in downtown Washington on the morning of Jan. 6.

[snip]

D’Antuono called Sherwin. The two agreed Cooney did not provide evidence that Stone had likely committed a crime — the standard they considered appropriate for looking at a political figure. Investigating Stone simply because he spent time with Oath Keepers could expose the department to accusations that it had politicized the probe, they told colleagues.

D’Antuono took the matter to Abbate, Wray’s newly named deputy director. Abbate agreed the plan was premature.

It’s genuinely hard to believe this was the plan. To be sure, FBI did investigate Stone’s ties to the Oath Keepers, starting no later than March 2021. But that wasn’t the obvious route to get to Trump.

The route to get there, importantly, was via a route that Bill Barr had affirmatively dismissed in advance of the attack: through the Proud Boys, not the Oath Keepers. Stone’s ties to the Oath Keepers was not obviously criminal; it still may not be. His ties to the Proud Boys are central.

In any case, Steve D’Antuono — who stalled the stolen documents case investigation last summer — shot down this angle of the investigation early on. 

 

So it wasn't Garland's direct call, but he was in charge of the mess that followed. Bill Barr and Chris Wray protected Trump, and stalled out Garland for months.

 

Still a lot of questions to be answered, including when Trump gets J6 charges.

 

If ever.

A Juneteenth Proclamation

In honor of the Juneteenth federal holiday today, the National Archives will add the Emancipation Proclamation to the Rotunda display for the American public to see.

 

The National Archives plans to place the Emancipation Proclamation on permanent public display in its Rotunda alongside the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the agency announced on Saturday.

“I am proud that the National Archives will enshrine this seminal document for public display adjacent to our nation’s founding documents. Together, they tell a more comprehensive story of the history of all Americans and document progress in our nation’s continuous growth toward a more perfect Union,” said Archivist Dr. Colleen Shogan in a statement.

The 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, in which former President Abraham Lincoln wrote that “all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free,” will be up for the National Archives Museum’s annual temporary display to mark Juneteenth, from June 17 to 19.

But Shogan announced ahead of the temporary display that the Archives plans to put the double-sided, five-page document on permanent display in the Rotunda that houses other foundational documents.

The Archives says it’s assessing the best display environment to protect the document condition, and may rotate the original pages on display to preserve the material from light exposure. A timeline for the permanent display was not shared in the Saturday announcement.

In the three-day temporary display period for the Archives’ Juneteenth celebration, the Emancipation Proclamation is viewable along with General Order No. 3, an 1865 document that informed the people of Texas that all enslaved persons were free. The issuance of General Order No. 3 on June 19 of that year is now celebrated as the Juneteenth holiday.

 

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation is definitely a "foundational document" of American history.  In an era where states like Texas and Florida are trying to eliminate as much Black history as they can, the National Archives reminding the country that Black history is very much American history is a statement in and of itself.

Will this foundational document even be taught in schools in red states years from now? Will Juneteenth and its history even be mentioned?

 

The fact that we even have to ask is astonishing.

Sunday Long Read: For Christ's Sake

There is a deeply damaged section of evangelical Christianity that is dangerous, political, and violent that is openly preparing for conflict with the nation, and in this week's Sunday Long Read, Frederick Thompson at Salon notes that this brand of "prayer warriors" just so happens to be targeting the biggest swing state that went for Biden in 2020 and where Dems flipped a US Senate seat to boot: Pennsylvania. 

"You've got a friend in Pennsylvania!" was the theme of the state's ad campaign to promote tourism in the 1980s. That was a veiled historical reference to the Society of Friends, better known as the Quakers, the liberal Christian sect to which William Penn, for whom Pennsylvania is named, belonged. But since the early 2000s there has been a quiet campaign in the Keystone State and beyond to unfriend anyone outside certain precincts of Christianity — and most Quakers would almost certainly be among the outcasts.

That campaign got a lot less quiet this April, as many leaders of the neo-charismatic movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, who have been hiding in plain sight for a generation, began ramping up a contest for theocratic power in the nation and the world. Their first target is Pennsylvania.

On April 30, Sean Feucht, a musician and evangelist for conservative Christian dominion, spoke at Life Center Ministries, the Harrisburg megachurch of Apostle Charles Stock. (The honorific "Apostle" designates a leading church office in the NAR. That said, there are many apostles in the movement, and not all of them pastor churches.) During his appearance, Feucht highlighted his national tour of state capitals, called Kingdom to the Capitol, that he was conducting along with Turning Point USA, the far-right youth group led by Charlie Kirk. "[W]e are going to end this 50-state tour here in Harrisburg," he announced.

It will probably be three to four weeks before the general election. This is a state, it's the Keystone State — the seed of a nation — God is not done with this state.

The "seed of a nation" refers to the famous 17th-century words of William Penn. (Much more on this below.)

Sometimes Feucht's tour has ventured into darker terrain. He told an audience in Austin, Texas, that "no one has hope for" their city:

 

Why are we going to all these 50 capitals — because they're amazing cities? … they're actually not. They're the most horrible cities in America.

 

Indeed. Feucht and his movement consider the 50 state capitals to be demon-infested bastions of ungodly government. His tour has openly become a campaign to "unfriend" the nation. He wrote in an "Open Letter to Church Leaders" on April 23:

 

Unfriend? That seems a little harsh for some. Yet [New Testament author] James didn't seem to think so — "Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God."

Feucht's effort to connect young people with what his movement considers William Penn's ancient vision for Pennsylvania is part of the wider, epochal campaign of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a movement at the cutting edge of Pentecostal and Charismatic evangelicalism, which is now the second largest Christian faction in the world after the Roman Catholic Church and the largest growth sector in American and global Christianity.

This is a central story of our time, and one that has scarcely penetrated our national consciousness. Sean Feucht's ministry, for example, is overseen by NAR apostles — but media coverage does not reflect that context.

The goal here is to capture entire states and then the country as theocratic dominions of a God that sees anyone else as enemies to be exterminated in His name. People like Charlie Kirk and Sean Feucht want not just a Second Civil War, but a Holy Crusade to boot. 

They will do everything they can to get both.

 

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

As America attempts to deal with racist attacks against Black, Latino, Asian and Native folks, we can't forget that white supremacists have been and continue to target Jewish communities. As one terrorist has been convicted in the Tree of Life Synagogue mass shooting this week and faces a possible capital sentence, another potential synagogue attack was stopped by law enforcement in Michigan.

 

A Michigan teenager has been arrested over an alleged plot to carry out a mass shooting at a synagogue, according to a criminal complaint filed against the teen.

The complaint charges 19-year-old Seann Pietila with transmitting in interstate commerce a threat to injure someone. FBI Special Agent Ryan Roskey said in the complaint that Pietila demonstrated through Instagram messages his neo-Nazi ideology, antisemitic beliefs, suicidal ideologies, praise of past mass shooters that have had similar ideologies and intent to copy their actions.

The complaint states Pietila specifically mentioned that he admires Brent Tarrant, who carried out mass shootings at mosques in New Zealand in 2019, killing more than 50 people. The Instagram account that Pietila used sent a message saying they needed a camera for livestreaming, as Tarrant did during his attack, and another saying they planned to mimic “b.t’s” attack, per the complaint.

Investigators also found a Pinterest account from Pietila that included posts containing Nazi imagery and references to mass shooters. They were able to connect the Instagram and Pinterest accounts to Pietila and also found TikTok and Discord accounts tied to him to confirm his identity.

The FBI carried out a search warrant at Pietila’s home on Friday and arrested him. Pietila confirmed during an interview with authorities that he was the Instagram user but said he did not intend to carry out the mass shootings that he referenced, per the complaint.

Officials found a shotgun, rifle, pistol, ammunition, rifle magazines, multiple knives and other instruments, firearm accessories, two tactical vests, a red and white Nazi flag, gas masks and survivor manuals during the search of his home.

Pietila consented to investigators searching his iPhone that was also recovered during the search, and they found a note referring to a synagogue in East Lansing, Mich., according to the complaint. The note lists a date of March 15, 2024, the five-year anniversary of Tarrant’s attacks, and mentions pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails and multiple firearms.

 

Thankfully, it seems like the feds had this clown's number from the start and nobody was hurt. But that date in March of next year seems like something people will want to be paying attention to as we get closer to it, as there's plenty of sick copycat killers out these who want to emulate the slaughter in New Zealand.

 

Last Call For The Original Paper Chase

Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the infamous Pentagon Papers more than 50 years ago, has died at age 92.

 

Mr. Ellsberg, a Harvard-educated Midwesterner with a PhD in economics, was in some respects an unlikely peace activist. He had served in the Marine Corps after college, wanting to prove his mettle, and emerged as a fervent cold warrior while working as an official at the Defense Department, a military analyst at the Rand Corp. and a consultant for the State Department, which dispatched him to Saigon in 1965 to assess counterinsurgency efforts.

Crisscrossing the Vietnamese countryside, where he joined American and South Vietnamese troops on patrol, he became increasingly disillusioned by the war effort, concluding that there was no chance of success.

He went on to embrace a life of advocacy, which extended from his 1971 leak of the Pentagon Papers — a disclosure that led Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s national security adviser, to privately brand him “the most dangerous man in America” — to decades of work advocating for press freedoms and the anti-nuclear movement.

Mr. Ellsberg co-founded the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a Brooklyn nonprofit, and championed the work of a new generation of digital leakers and whistleblowers, including Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning.

He also continued to release secret government documents, including files about nuclear war that he had copied while working on the military’s “mutually assured destruction” strategy during the Cold War, around the same time he leaked the study that made him perhaps the most famous whistleblower in American history.

“When I copied the Pentagon Papers in 1969,” he wrote in the email announcing his cancer diagnosis, “I had every reason to think I would be spending the rest of my life behind bars. It was a fate I would gladly have accepted if it meant hastening the end of the Vietnam War, unlikely as that seemed.”

Commissioned by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in June 1967, the Pentagon Papers comprised 7,000 pages of historical analysis and supporting documents, revealing how the U.S. government had secretly expanded its role in Vietnam across four presidential administrations.

The papers showed that government leaders had concealed doubts about the war’s progress and had misled the public about a troop buildup that eventually took half a million Americans to Vietnam, as part of a war that cost the lives of more than 58,000 U.S. service members and millions of Vietnamese.

The study was given a bland official title, “Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force,” and a classification of “Top Secret — Sensitive,” an informal designation that suggested the contents could cause embarrassment.

Mr. Ellsberg, one of three-dozen analysts who helped prepare the report, had access to a copy at the Rand Corp., an Air Force-affiliated research organization in Santa Monica, Calif. As his opposition to the Vietnam War hardened, he began smuggling the papers out of his office, a full briefcase at a time, and photocopied them with help from a colleague, Anthony J. Russo, whose girlfriend owned a nearby advertising agency with a Xerox machine.

Their efforts got off to a rocky start: On their first night copying papers, they accidentally tripped a burglar alarm in the office, drawing the attention of police who stopped by but saw no sign of trouble.

Hoping to hasten the end of the war, Mr. Ellsberg contacted several U.S. senators and tried to share the documents through official channels. When he found no takers, he contacted New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan, leading to the publication of the first story about the history on June 13, 1971, running above the fold on the front page of the Times.

The disclosures bolstered criticism of the war, horrified Mr. Ellsberg’s former colleagues in the defense establishment and blindsided the White House. After the third day of stories, the Nixon administration won a temporary injunction that muzzled the Times, blocking further publication.

The ruling set up a legal and journalistic showdown, later dramatized in Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-nominated film “The Post” (2017). Mr. Ellsberg, who was played on-screen by Matthew Rhys, had by then started sharing material from the study with almost 20 other media organizations, including The Washington Post, which began printing stories of its own. When The Post, too, was ordered to stop publishing, it partnered with the Times in court, and the newspapers won a landmark decision June 30, with the Supreme Court ruling 6 to 3 in favor of allowing publication to continue.

The ruling was hailed as a victory for the First Amendment and an independent press, and seemed to blunt the government’s use of prior restraint as a tool to block the publication of stories it did not want the public to read. The decision meant the Pentagon Papers would continue to find an audience even if Mr. Ellsberg, who turned himself in to the authorities, faced a potential 115-year sentence.

 

Three observations:

 

One, Ellsberg was one of the reasons any budding journalist in my generation went into the field.

 

Two, live a life that causes Henry Kissinger to label you "The most dangerous man in America."

 

Three, a war secretly expanded over the course of four administrations? That's fiction!

Black Lives Still Matter

Once again, in the cities "rocked by Antifa violence" in the wake of the George Floyd protests, the real issue is large urban police departments are racist garbage fires that routinely hunt and punish Black and brown folks with excessive, lethal force.

 

A federal investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department, launched in the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd, found that the police department and the city itself engage in a "pattern or practice" of excessive force and racial discrimination that violates both the United States Constitution and federal law.

The so-called pattern-or-practice investigation — like the federal investigations into police departments in cities including Baltimore; Ferguson, Missouri; and, most recently, Louisville, Kentucky — focused on widespread issues within the police department rather than individual incidents.

The Minneapolis Police Department, the probe found, “uses excessive force, including unjustified deadly force and other types of force”; “unlawfully discriminates against Black and Native American people in its enforcement activities”; “violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech”; and discriminates against people with behavioral health issues.

As was the case in several other cities, the DOJ investigation found "persistent deficiencies in MPD’s accountability systems, training, supervision, and officer wellness programs," which contributed to the constitutional violations.

The Trump administration, under then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, backed away from investigations of police departments, saying that such probes harmed law enforcement. Attorney General Merrick Garland rescinded Sessions' memo in early 2021, and the Minneapolis probe was launched in April of that year.

Under Garland and Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, the Justice Department has worked to forge collaborative relationships with the law enforcement community. Gupta, a former American Civil Liberties Union official, had the backing of major law enforcement leaders when she was nominated in 2021.

The report acknowledges "the considerable daily challenges" of being a police officer who "must often make split-second decisions and risk their lives to keep their communities safe." The report said that officers "work hard to provide vital services" and said that many officers spoke about their "deep connection" to the city and their desire to see the police department do better.

"Still, since the spring of 2020, hundreds of MPD officers have left the force, and the morale of the remaining officers is low. Policing, by its nature, can take a toll on the psychological and emotional health of officers, and the challenges of the last few years have only exacerbated that toll for some MPD officers," the report states.

The report says that the Justice Department anticipates working collaboratively with the city and police department, and said federal officials appreciated the cooperation and candor of the police and city officials during the investigation.

The report noted the particular challenges in Minneapolis, a city with "stark" racial inequality that is known, along with neighboring St. Paul, as the "Twin Cities."

 

As with Louisville, police departments are trained to hurt Black and brown folks. To Merrick Garland's credit, he's at least working to identify the problem, but the fact of the matter is America's police departments need a massive, national overhaul of personnel, training, and leadership.

 

Black Lives Still Matter.

Shutdown Countdown, The Revenge Con't

Republicans didn't get anywhere near what they wanted in the debt ceiling hostage situation they created for themselves earlier this year, so apparently they see a second bite at that poison apple with the raft of government spending bills due in September, complete with trillions in Social Security and Medicare cuts and rollbacks of Biden's infrastructure and environmental bills.

 

After narrowly avoiding a federal default, the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-led Senate are now on a collision course over spending that could result in a government shutdown this year and automatic spending cuts in early 2025 with severe consequences for the Pentagon and an array of domestic programs.

Far-right Republicans whose votes will be needed to keep the government funded are demanding cuts that go far deeper than what President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy agreed to in the bipartisan compromise they reached last month to suspend the debt ceiling, but such reductions are all but certain to be nonstarters in the Senate.

The looming stalemate threatens to further complicate a process that was already going to be extraordinarily difficult, as top members of Congress try for the first time in years to pass individual spending bills to fund all parts of the government in an orderly fashion and avoid the usual year-end pileup. If they cannot, under the terms of the debt limit deal, across-the-board spending cuts will kick in in 2025, a worst-case scenario that lawmakers in both parties want to avoid.

The clashes began this week, when House appropriators began considering their spending bills and, working to appease their ultraconservative wing, said they intended to fund federal agencies at below the levels that Mr. Biden and Mr. McCarthy had agreed to.

Democrats balked, saying the move would wreak havoc with the economy and the smooth functioning of government.

“I fully intend to follow the dictates of what we passed in the Senate and the House and what the president signed,” said Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee. “I am putting them in their box of chaos,” she said of House Republicans.

The approach was particularly unwise, she added, given that many of the right-wing lawmakers it was aimed at appeasing reflexively vote against government spending bills anyway.

“I don’t believe the country wants us to be there; they don’t want chaos,” Ms. Murray said. “They don’t want a small minority of people to dictate where our economy is going to go.”

Facing a rebellion by hard-right Republicans over the debt limit agreement, Mr. McCarthy and his leadership team blindsided Democrats this week by setting allocations for the 12 annual spending bills at 2022 levels, about $119 billion less than the $1.59 trillion allowed for in the agreement to raise the debt ceiling.

The lower spending levels, demanded by Freedom Caucus members who shut down the House last week to register their ire at the debt limit deal, were pushed through the Appropriations Committee on a party-line vote on Thursday after hours of acrimony during which Democrats accused Republicans of backtracking on the compromise.

“The ink is barely dry on the bipartisan budget agreement, yet we are here to consider the Republican majority’s spending agenda that completely reneges on the compromises struck less than two weeks ago,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee.

Representative Kay Granger, Republican of Texas and the committee’s chairwoman, said using the lower number would allow the House to “refocus government spending consistent with Republican priorities.” Mr. McCarthy said that he considered the spending caps established in the agreement simply as a maximum, and that the House wanted to push spending lower.

“There is no limit to how low you could go,” he said, asserting that Republicans wanted to show the public that they could “be more efficient in government, that we can save the hardworking taxpayer more, that we can eliminate more Washington waste.”

But the divergent approaches on either side of the Capitol from the two parties are certain to make passing the spending bills extremely difficult. Failure to pass and reconcile the House and Senate bills by Oct. 1 could lead to a government shutdown. And if the individual bills are not approved by the end of the year, a 1 percent automatic cut would take effect that defense hawks say would be devastating for the Pentagon and U.S. support of Ukraine’s military.

 

So the GOP plan is "Our hostage situation failed, what we need is a new hostage situation!"  The thought process is that maybe more Republicans will side with killing fewer hostages this time around, making the cruelty more palatable and targeted instead of scorched earth.

 

It's so bad that the damage would be a near-permanent economic depression caused by a catastrophic $16.3 trillion spending cut over the next ten years.

The Republican Study Committee (RSC), the largest conservative caucus in the House, put a heavy focus on opposing “woke” policies in its annual model federal budget, while proposing $16.3 trillion in spending cuts over a decade.

The model budget for fiscal 2024, first shared with The Hill, includes policies that oppose gender-affirming health care for transgender youth and beyond, boost protections for religious institutions, and take aim at critical race theory — a framework that examines systemic racism in institutions.

“Nearly every major problem facing our nation can be traced back to a failure to budget,” said RSC Chairman Kevin Hern (R-Okla.).

“It all boils down to something we’ve heard the President say quite a few times this year: Show me your budget, and I’ll show you your values. Our values are clearly on display with this budget,” Hern said.

It would balance the federal budget in seven years, according to the caucus, while also cutting spending by $16.3 trillion and taxes by $5 trillion over a decade. It cuts spending slightly less and cuts taxes more than the group’s model budget from last year, which had $16.6 trillion in spending cuts and $3.9 trillion in tax cuts.

“The RSC Budget is a reflection of our commitment to defending our constitutional rights, championing conservative values, and safeguarding the foundational principles that make our country great,” Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.), chair of the RSC Budget and Spending Task Force, said in a statement.

The Senate doesn't want to go through this again, so we'll see what happens, but yeah, there was no way Kevin McCarthy and his Clown Show were ever going to keep their word in the debt bill.

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

Right-wing "Christian" churches are increasingly delivering radical calls to terrorist action, and next time you see Republican lawmakers scream about how the FBI is "targeting" churches, understand that the FBI has every reason to do so.

 

Kent Christmas, the radically right-wing pastor of Regeneration Nashville, used his sermon last Sunday to urge those in his congregation to show the same sort of “passion” that drives radical Islamic terrorists to be willing to “die for their beliefs.”

Christmas, a Trump–loving MAGA pastor and conspiracy theorist who has repeatedly declared that God will soon start killing “wicked” elected officials, got himself worked up during his sermon by falsely asserting that the state of Vermont recently passed legislation declaring that “it is legal, up to 21 days after full-term birth, that you can kill a baby.”

“I am at war with evil!” Christmas ranted. “This is one preacher that is not backing down. I can tell you this: I will give my life for the Gospel.”

“You want to know why the Muslim faith has had its advancements?” he continued. “It’s because the Muslims were willing to die for their beliefs. They were willing to strap bombs to their chest. They believed in the afterlife.”

“God, give us some men and women that will get a hold of some passion in their spirit and say, ‘I will lay down my life for the Gospel!'” Christmas thundered. “This thing was born in blood.”

 

Understand these are Christmas's actual words.

And let's remember that downtown Nashville was hit by a terrorist suicide bombing not more than a few years ago.

So yeah, if I were the FBI, I'd absolutely be keeping an eye on this asshole and everyone attending sermons of suicidal, terrorist hatred like this.