MTG And Boebert Fight Over Jewish Space Lasers And Who’s Crazier

Posted on by David Kurtz

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

Pass The Popcorn!

Kevin McCarthy’s struggle to nail down the speakership is powering venomous recriminations among far-right members who have split over his candidacy. Sad to see it.

  • Lauren Boebert (R-CO), who opposes McCarthy, took a shot at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA): “I’ve been asked to explain MTG’s belief in Jewish space lasers, why she showed up to a white supremacist’s conference, and now why she’s blindly following Kevin McCarthy and I’m not going to go there.”
  • Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who supports McCarthy, fired back with a reference to Boebert’s tiny victory margin in November.
  • Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is publicly splitting with Trump over McCarthy, and he’s not afraid to tell you about it:

Give Me Everything On George Santos

The epic NYT exposé alleging that incoming GOP Rep. George Santos (NY) is a serial fabulist went unrebutted yesterday. Santos put out a statement attacking the newspaper’s report but not denying a single factual allegation in the report. Some highlights from the day:

  • The Santos statement closed with a fake quote attributed to Winston Churchill.
  • Dems pounced. Republicans were largely silent.
  • Where’d Santos get $700,000 to loan to his own campaign?

Highlights From The Jan. 6 Committee’s Big Day

What jumped out from the coverage:

  • TPM: 4 Big Takeaways From The January 6 Committee’s Public Finale
  • NBC: Ivanka Trump, Hope Hicks, and Kayleigh McEnany were not forthcoming with the committee
  • Just Security: How Jan. 6th Committee’s Revelations of Interference in Their Investigation Can Enable the Special Counsel
  • Bloomberg: Committee has serious concerns about testimony of former Secret Service Agent Tony Ornato
  • NYT oped: The Jan. 6 Committee Just Made History. Here’s What That Means for Prosecutors.
  • Politico: The Jan. 6 committee’s big reveal hasn’t happened yet

Liz Cheney Takes Her Final Shot

The defeated Wyoming Republican went out with a bang: “No man who would behave that way, at that moment in time, can ever serve in any position of authority ever again. He is unfit for any office.”

Profile In Courage

Mike Pence remains an insipid little man:

‘Something Is About To Happen’

CBS News obtained more video footage of Mike Flynn’s deposition by the Jan. 6 committee that shows interesting lines of questions about what Flynn knew the day before the Capitol attack. While the former national security adviser turned conspiracist took the 5th repeatedly during the deposition, the committee’s questions reveal quite a bit about alleged communications Flynn was having:

Trump’s Final Words On Jan. 6

SCOOP!

Politico:

Longtime judicial activist Leonard Leo appears to have helped facilitate the sale of former White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway’s polling company in 2017 — as she was playing a key role in advocating for Leo’s handpicked list of Supreme Court candidates, according to previously unreported financial documents reviewed by government ethics and finance experts.

Some Serious Muckraking

NPR: In the Southeast, power company money flows to news sites that attack their critics

Going Deep On The Rising Violence Against Transgender People

Insider closely examines the killings of 175 transgender people over the last five years:

Insider has compiled the most comprehensive account to date of the rising homicidal violence targeting transgender people, systematically filing hundreds of public-records requests and sending reporters around the US to gather information on five years of homicides targeting transgender and gender nonconforming, nonbinary, and two-spirit people across the United States and Puerto Rico from 2017 through 2021. 

Happening On The Hill

Negotiators from both chambers and both parties unveiled a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill to fund the government in 2023. Congress is racing to pass the mammoth bill before the holidays.

Weinstein Convicted On California Rape Charge

A Los Angeles jury deliberated for nine days before finding disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein guilty on one count of rape and two counts of sexual assault, not guilty on a count of sexual battery, and hanging on the remaining three counts.

Earthquake Rocks Northern California

An earthquake with an preliminary magnitude of 6.4 struck Humboldt County, California, at around 2:34 a.m. local time. Initial reports are that the quake knocked power out to more than 50,000 customers in the area.

Teenage Concentration Camp Secretary Sentenced

NYT:

BERLIN — A court in Germany on Tuesday sentenced a 97-year-old woman to two years’ probation for her role in abetting over 10,000 murders committed during her tenure as a teenage concentration camp secretary in World War II, as prosecutors race to bring justice to the last surviving participants of the Nazi killing machine.

Black Celebs Pitch In To Extend A Broadway Run

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – DECEMBER 01: (L-R) Fedna Jacquet, Shannon Matesky, Jordan E. Cooper, Ebony Marshall-Oliver, Crystal Lucas-Perry and Marchánt Davis during the opening night curtain call for the new play “Ain’t No Mo'” on Broadway at The Belasco Theatre on December 1, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Bruce Glikas/WireImage)

The Broadway run of “Ain’t No Mo” had barely gotten underway but by Dec. 9, it was petering out. The provocative premise of 27-year-old Black playwright Jordan Cooper’s play: The U.S. government offers Black Americans one-way tickets to Africa to eliminate racism. After the imminent closing of the show was announced, Tyler Perry, Queen Latifah, Shonda Rhimes, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, and Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade stepped up to buy out entire shows. The run has now been extended a bit, to Dec. 23. Morning Memo saw “Ain’t No More” during its DC run earlier this year. It’s a great show. Check it out.

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4 Big Takeaways From The January 6 Committee’s Public Finale

Posted on by Kate Riga

The Jan. 6 committee held its last public meeting Monday, unanimously referring four criminal charges against Donald Trump and two against former Trump lawyer John Eastman to the Justice Department. 

Continue reading “4 Big Takeaways From The January 6 Committee’s Public Finale” →

January 6 Committee Refers Criminal Charges Against Trump, Eastman To Justice Department

Posted on by Kate Riga

The Jan. 6 Committee concluded its blockbuster public hearings and presentations with a flourish Monday, voting to refer criminal charges against former President Donald Trump and lawyer John Eastman to the Department of Justice. 

Continue reading “January 6 Committee Refers Criminal Charges Against Trump, Eastman To Justice Department” →

Rep. Zoe Lofgren Outlines ‘Findings’ That Could Lead To Criminal Charges Against Trump

Posted on by Hunter Walker

After outlining the large scope of the select committee’s investigation, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) announced that it had “reached a series of specific findings.” She then proceeded to outline conclusions the investigation had reached that seem to be the bases for some of the criminal referrals against former President Trump from the committee to the Justice Department. Lofgren began by accusing Trump of deliberately making fraudulent allegations about the 2020 election.

Continue reading “Rep. Zoe Lofgren Outlines ‘Findings’ That Could Lead To Criminal Charges Against Trump” →

Curious George, Flameout Edition

Posted on by Josh Marshall

This morning The New York Times published an exposé on incoming New York Representative George Santos (R) who will soon represent a district covering western Long Island and a part of Queens. Put simply, this is one of those stories where the reporters check on the various elements of Santos’ inspiring American story and basically none of it checks out. There are the colleges he claimed to attend with no record of him, the investment banks he claimed to have worked at who have no record of his employment. Along the way there’s the criminal record in Brazil and the family real estate company that doesn’t appear to own any real estate. It just goes on and on. As I said, it’s one of those stories.

When I saw the headline I thought, wait, don’t I remember that name? Sure enough, almost exactly a year ago I wrote a couple posts about Santos’ pack of nonsensical tall tales. To be fair, the Times went into infinitely more depth. I was mainly focused on a gas price tale of woe he was pitching on social media. Santos explained how he was paying an insane amount of money putting gas in his car because of Joe Biden’s inflation. The problem was that his claimed spending required him to be logging at least 1,000 miles a week on a 15-mile commute. Needless to say, I found running those numbers irresistible and went to town on it.

Continue reading “Curious George, Flameout Edition” →

EXPOSED! This Incoming GOPer Isn’t At All Who He Claims To Be

Posted on by David Kurtz

Morning Memo comes to you today from the frigid shore of Lake Mendota, where one of the kids graduated from UW this weekend.

Must Read

The New York Times is out with an incredible exposé on an incoming GOP member of Congress from Long Island who does not at all appear to be who he says he is.

Rep.-elect George Santos (R-NY) first hit Morning Memo’s radar a week ago, when he was one of the attendees at the New York City gala where Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) bragged that if she and Steve Bannon had been in charge on Jan. 6, they would have coup’d more effectively.

Now the Times has a blistering examination of Santos’ biography. Let’s just say who he claimed to be on the campaign trail doesn’t match with the newspaper’s reporting.

Let’s start with his work history. NYT could find no record of him actually holding claimed jobs at Citigroup or Goldman Sachs.

Education? No record of him attending Baruch College in NYC as he has claimed, the NYT reported.

A tax-exempt charity he claimed to have started? No record of it having registered in New York or New Jersey, and the IRS had no record of it, the paper found. A supposed beneficiary of a 2017 fundraiser for the group, who declined to be named by the paper, said she never received any of the funds, only excuses from Santos.

The kicker is criminal charges for check fraud in Brazil!

There’s much more. It’s worth a read.

Big Day For The Jan. 6 Committee

The Jan. 6 committee will meet this afternoon to vote on releasing its final report to the public. The committee is also expected to recommend criminal referrals arising from the effort to overturn the 2020 election. The exact sequence of events this week remains a bit opaque as the committee winds up its work before the next Congress. Look for a TPM live blog today to cover the minute-to-minute developments.

The Meadows Texts Series Wraps Up

The concluding installments in TPM’s series on the Meadows Texts:

TPM On TV

Hunter Walker was on with MSNBC’s Yasmin Vossoughian:

GOP Rep Downplays Role In Meadows Texts: ‘I Was The Messenger In This’

Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC) denied to a local paper having any substantive communications with Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows about overturning the 2020 election.

Here’s a sample of what TPM reported on Murphy’s texts to Meadows:

The next day, Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC) sent Meadows a couple of texts with another version of the state legislature strategy . … Murphy’s text was largely copied and pasted from a Revolver article that claimed “The Vote Has Been Hopelessly Contaminated. Republican State Legislatures Must Now Move to Appoint Pro-Trump Electors.”

“Why are we not pursuing this strategy?” Murphy asked before sharing text from the Revolver article, and adding, “Please pay close attention to the very last paragraph.”

Here’s how Murphy spun it to the local paper:

“It is literally a copy-and-paste from something someone sent me with a formal legal opinion to pass on to Mark Meadows because I had his contact information,” he said. “This is what was sent to me to pass on. I was the messenger in this.”

More Reaction And Fallout To The Meadows Texts

The impact of the Meadows Texts series continued to ripple outward:

  • Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA), who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, described Rep. Ralph Norman’s call for “Marshall Law” as “obscene” and “unprecedented.”
  • In an open letter, a bipartisan group of more than 30 former congresspersons called for ethics investigations of members of the House who played a role in the events leading up to and including the Jan. 6 attack.

Other Coverage Of The Meadows Texts

Aaron Rupar’s Public Notice: “Hunter Walker on Mark Meadows’s texts and what he expects from the final J6 report”

Alexandra Petri: “Help us, auto-correct. You are the last best hop for democracy.”

Todd Zwillich: “The texts show various levels of cheerleading, crackpottery, magical thinking, and authoritarian planning on the part of nearly three dozen GOP lawmakers in Meadows’ contacts. The vast majority of them—Norman, Greene, Rep. Scott Perry (who I’m betting you’ll be hearing a lot about on Monday—are all returning to Congress, ready to take power in January and wielding muscular influence over GOP leaders. Those leaders have already promised to do all they can to distort and erase the truth of Jan. 6 from the national memory.”

Francis Wilkinson: “The texts show a group effort, by people who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, to locate American democracy’s weak points and exploit them to overthrow a democratically elected government.”

The Meadville Tribune: “Text messages from three Republican congressmen from Pennsylvania are among a trove of texts exchanged with former President Donald Trump’s last White House chief of staff concerning attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to a report from online news outlet Talking Points Memo.”

Sid Schwab: “Reading the TPM series, there’s no denying the seditious depth of their intentions; their undisguised disregard for democratic processes; their willingness to turn to violence and totalitarianism. Perhaps surprising to people less intent on observation is the amount of paranoid, conspiratorial, uninformed insanity of those people. Elected people. Reelected; not, presumably, in spite of their derision of democracy, but because of it.”

Mar-a-Lago Case Has Quieted Down

I suspect this is the calm before the storm of indictments.

After a flurry of activity in the Mar-a-Lago documents case — including Special Counsel Jack Smith taking over the case, and a federal appeals court shutting down the special master sideshow — things have been quiet publicly, even though the end of the special master fiasco meant the Justice Department could resume its investigation.

In the meantime, some big picture coverage:

  • WaPo: How Trump jettisoned restraints at Mar-a-Lago and prompted legal peril
  • NYT: Inside Mar-a-Lago, Where Thousands Partied Near Secret Files

Proud Boys Seditious Conspiracy Trial Starts

Jury selection begins today in the trial of five Proud Boys, including its former chairman Enrique Tarrio.

A Special Kind Of Stupid

A Jan. 6 riot defendant from Tennessee is facing new charges after he allegedly schemed to kill the FBI agents investigating his case and to attack the FBI office in Knoxville. A cooperating witness apparently recorded a call with 33-year-old Edward Kelley, who has been charged along with an alleged co-conspirator:

On December 14, 2022, at approximately 3:45 PM, Witness 1 had a recorded call with KELLEY over Service 1. KELLEY started the call by saying: “I just sent Austin [CARTER] a message, here’s your course of action: if I’m extradited to DC or you don’t hear about my status within 24 or 48 hours of my, if they are coming to arrest me again, start it. You guys are taking them out at their office. What you and Austin [CARTER] need to do is recruit as many as you can, call [UI] who you need to, and you’re going to attack their office. If the same thing happens to any of you guys, I’m doing the same thing, okay?” Witness 1 replied, “just to make sure I’m understanding which office, we’re going after the Knox one, right?” KELLEY replied “yes.” KELLEY further told Witness 1 “once you guys have enough people … you don’t have time to train or coordinate, but every hit has to hurt, every hit has to hurt.”

A Twit For The Ages

An all-timer:

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The Core Challenges of Social Media

Posted on by Josh Marshall

I know we’ve been a bit Elon-centric here of late, but the latest developments should prompt us to look to some of the core challenges behind what we now call social media. The Musk saga is comparatively simple: a middle-aged buffoon on one-half midlife crisis, one-half power trip running roughshod over everything. But outside such extreme cases there are more basic challenges. The essence of the social media business proposition is to be the venue for literally everyone talking about everything while managing the venue through automated processes which keep the staff capacity and costs low. Put a different way, success means scale: revenues growing exponentially while costs grow arithmetically.

Continue reading “The Core Challenges of Social Media” →

What Mark Meadows’ Phone Taught Us

Posted on by Hunter Walker

It’s been quite a week. On Monday, we began publishing a series of stories based on the 2,319 text messages former President Trump’s last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, provided to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. “The Meadows Texts” showed the high-level coordination behind the frantic, feverish effort to challenge Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. 

Over the course of a dozen different stories, we showed you how members of Congress, Trump administration officials, campaign operatives, local politicians, an army of lawyers, and at least one CEO schemed behind the scenes to fight the will of the people. TPM obtained these texts from multiple sources and our subsequent reporting identified the people who played leading roles in this effort including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA), and Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA). 

This was the political movement that fueled and coincided with the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol that took place on Jan. 6, 2021, as the election was being certified. Our work showed how the challenge to that certification began while the votes were still being counted and continued well after the attack in Washington. The political leaders of this undemocratic campaign may not have broken the windows or brawled with the Capitol Police. But they promoted the baseless conspiracy theories that radicalized and drove the crowds that day. They also conceived of and pursued the extra-legal strategy to stop Congress from certifying the election in the hope that friendly legislatures would overrule the voters and choose their own electors. Additionally, these stories showed the violent rhetoric of the political arm of the election challenge including at least one call for “MARSHALL LAW” from Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) that was an affront to both the English language and American ideals. 

“The Meadows Texts” also revealed some previously unreported instances of Trump’s own involvement including his work to put pressure on a swing state governor and a call for voting machines to be seized. The series also captured how some of the allies who offered to help Trump paired support for the president’s desperate attempt to hold power with requests for political favors. Perhaps most importantly, this series also laid bare the utterly unhinged paranoia and detachment from reality underpinning the assault on the American democratic experiment. 

Despite all of these revelations, we also know these texts were just the tip of the iceberg. They are the messages Meadows and his legal team provided to the committee. Within that log, there are indications discussions were missing, including conversations that clearly begin without context as well as signs Meadows and his associates moved their communications to encrypted channels. It’s frightening to imagine what might have been contained in the calls and texts we could not see. 

Much of the push to reverse the result of the free and fair 2020 election played out in the public eye. Trump spent weeks promoting lies about the vote and his team mounted a wild legal challenge that flailed its way through courts around the country. Over 100 Republican members of Congress objected to the election results at the Capitol on Jan. 6 even after the shocking violence. 

Even though the attack on democracy played out live, there has been an ongoing attempt by many on the right to deny the reality of it. Our reporting on Meadows’ text messages showed how this effort to deflect blame began even as the Capitol was still under siege. When we reached out to the various players who conspired to reverse the vote, some attempted to minimize their roles. However, with this series, readers don’t have to take our word for it or theirs. The American public can see the participants in the push to overturn the election in their own words. 

This project was a massive effort for TPM. A team of five reporters — myself, Josh Kovensky, Kate Riga, Emine Yücel, and Kaila Philo — all worked to write and report these stories. Over five weeks, we reviewed thousands of messages and burned up the phone lines. This evidence was initially compiled by investigators working with the Jan. 6 committee, but we hope you will agree that our context, analysis, and publication helped make them accessible and understandable. 

For me personally, this project is the culmination of nearly two years of extensive reporting on Jan. 6 that included broadcasting from the steps of the Capitol that day and co-writing the book “The Breach” with Denver Riggleman, a former Republican congressman and staffer for the select committee. Witnessing what happened that day made it quite clear this was one of the most important stories of our time. 

It all could have been so much more violent. The bombs placed on Capitol Hill did not go off. Police engaged in hours of hand-to-hand combat, and even though both sides of the fighting were armed, the day ended with only one person shot. Those officers aren’t the only ones who resisted the assault. Around the country and in Washington a handful of officials refused to give in to pressure from Trump and his allies to toss the election results aside. Despite the horrifying violence in the cradle of our democracy, we were relatively lucky on Jan. 6, but there is a real risk in counting on similar good fortune in the future. The violent and authoritarian possibilities created by MAGA conspiracy culture have been laid bare. And, as this series has noted, that movement is not going away. 

Helping to lead the reporting team along with our editors David Kurtz, John Light, and Josh Marshall has been a true honor. The impact of TPM’s “The Meadows Texts” series has been clear. Our stories were covered on television and by major magazines. Reporters expanded on our work with additional analysis. Local news outlets around the country also pressed the various members of Congress named in these stories about their parts in the plotting. And on Thursday, a bipartisan group of over 30 former House members sent a letter calling for an investigation from the Office of Congressional Ethics because, “We now know, for example, that sitting lawmakers corresponded and met with White House officials and allies to plot various prongs of the campaign, including to advocate that the president declare martial law.” The story even transcended the political world and penetrated pop culture. 

Through all of this, the most important impact was the support we received from TPM readers. Our subscribers have enabled us to put together a team that is capable of a large, complex undertaking like this one. It won’t be the last one and we hope you will join TPM and help us continue this work. 

“The Meadows Texts” did not just involve written stories. As we sought to inform the public about the contents of these messages and the coordination of the election challenge, our tech and design team — Derick Dirmaier, Christine Frapech, Jacob Harris, and Matt Wozniak — worked to create solutions that allowed us to publish Meadows’ messages as they might have appeared in your phone. 

Experiencing these texts in their natural form — typos and all — is crucial to appreciating just how disturbing they were. The various conspiracies and anti-democratic schemes were thrown out with a carelessness and utter lack of intellectual rigor. This was a coup attempt that sought to evade checks, balances, and spellcheck. 

The TPM spirit has always been able to draw humor from even the darkest moments. We aim to provide clear-eyed original reporting on extremist threats that also appreciates the absurdity inherent in the American fringe. But make no mistake, this was all deadly serious. Inside Meadows’ phone we saw a plot against our democracy. We can’t look away.