A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
But The Internet Never Forgets
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is trying to pretend that he never attempted to discredit the Indianapolis Star’s report of a 10-year-old rape victim in Ohio who was forced to travel to neighboring Indiana to obtain an abortion because abortions are illegal in Jordan’s state.
- Jordan deleted his tweet, which called the report a “lie,” after the Columbus Dispatch reported on Wednesday that the man who allegedly raped the child had been arrested. The Ohio Republican didn’t follow up with a correction or any acknowledgement of his false claim.
- The House Judiciary GOP had retweeted Jordan’s post, by the way.
Jan. 6 Witness Trump Tried To Call Was White House Support Staffer
The unidentified witness whom House Jan. 6 Committee vice chair Liz Cheney (R-WY) said Trump had tried to reach out to was a member of the White House support staff, according to CNN.
- The staffer, who reportedly didn’t have regular contact with Trump and did not pick up the phone, was reportedly alarmed by the call, prompting them to tell their lawyer about it. CNN reported that its sources did not provide the name of the staffer.
- The Jan. 6 panel has referred Trump’s call to the Justice Department, Cheney said during the committee’s hearing on Tuesday, adding that the panel “will take any efforts to influence witness testimony very seriously.”
DOJ Focused On What Jan. 6 Commitee Has On Trump’s Fake Elector Scheme
House Jan. 6 Committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) told reporters on Wednesday that the “only issue” his committee’s “engaged” with with the Justice Department is the panel’s evidence of Trump’s bogus elector plot.
Trumpworld Eyeing Meadows As The Fall Guy
The ex-president and his inner circle have started to consider making ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows take the fall for Trump’s election steal scheme, believing the former official is likely in a whole lotta trouble, sources tell the Rolling Stone.
- The House Jan. 6 Committee has been quietly digging into Meadows’ finances, according to Rolling Stone. More specifically, his financial arrangements with the other cronies who tried to help Trump cling to power after the election.
- Trump himself has reportedly been starting to act like he didn’t always know what Meadows was up to in recent conversations with associates.
Bannon Pushes To Delay Trial Yet Again
Two days after the judge shot down ex-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s request to push back his contempt of Congress trial, which is scheduled for Monday, the Trump crony asked the judge again yesterday to delay the trial.
- Bannon’s legal team claimed there were two new issues that’ve since arisen that create a “very serious risk of prejudice” against him among jurors: That the House Jan. 6 Committee had shown clips of Bannon’s podcast during the panel’s Tuesday hearing, and that CNN will air a one-hour documentary about Bannon Sunday, something Bannon’s lawyers claimed they found out “just today.”
- One of Bannon’s attorneys had openly griped on Monday “What’s the point in going to trial here if there are no defenses?” after the judge threw out several of his potential defenses, so maybe it’s not surprising that “clips of my client’s publicly accessible podcast were used in a hearing and also I didn’t know CNN was going to air a documentary about my client” was the best they could do.
- Meanwhile, House Jan. 6 Committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) says that Bannon still hasn’t sent any documents to the panel in response to its subpoena.
Graham Moves To Quash Georgia DA’s Subpoena
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) filed a motion in federal court in South Carolina on Wednesday to quash a Georgia grand jury’s subpoena that is part of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ probe of Trump’s election interference. The GOP senator’s move comes after a Georgia judge ordered him to comply with the subpoena, saying he was a “necessary and material witness” in Willis’ investigation.
Nope, Herschel Walker’s Global Warming Chinese Air Theory Wasn’t A One-Off Thing
GOP Georgia Senate nominee Herschel Walker offered the following take on climate change during a county GOP event on Saturday: “Since we don’t control the air, our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air. So when China gets our good air, their bad air has got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. And now we’ve got to clean that back up.”
- Several days later, Walker tried to spin the babble as him being “just really being funny.” Just a lil comedy, the nominee claimed during a radio interview on Tuesday.
- Walker’s floated his theory at least three other times on the campaign trail in recent weeks, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution has found:
Cat Does Double Duty As A Lamp
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Republicans really love the police, don’t they???
“I hear some people defending the ‘political prisoners,’” Gonell said. “To me, that tells me they consider me the bad guy of the whole story, and it’s not only me who feels that way. I think there’s a lot of disheartening by the way they are going about fighting for the people who attacked the police officers at the Capitol, continually defending the whole chaos, the insurrection, whatever they want to call it. It was bad, not only for myself or the other officers, for the country, for democracy, but yet those are the people that they are defending, the people who attacked the police officers in full uniform who were defending the Capitol on that day.”