A man who allegedly attempted to break into the FBI’s field office in Cincinnati is dead after a lengthy standoff with law enforcement Thursday.
Continue reading “Man Who Allegedly Attempted To Break Into Cincinnati FBI Building Dead After Standoff”Unfolding #2
We’re awaiting a statement from AG Merrick Garland currently scheduled for 2:30 p.m. eastern. Presumably this is about the incident in Cincinnati though officially there’s no word on the subject. But conceivably there will be some reference to the search at Mar-a-Lago if today’s incident appears tied to the Monday search.
Again, this is just speculation: there’s no word about what it’s about.
Late Update: CNN reports that this will be about the Mar-a-Lago search.
Graham Bails On Scheduled Fulton County Court Appearance
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Wednesday did not show up for his scheduled appearance at the Fulton County courthouse, following an agreement he reached with the county district attorney, according to a local CBS affiliate.
Continue reading “Graham Bails On Scheduled Fulton County Court Appearance”Unfolding: Incident at Cincinnati FBI Field Office
At 9 a.m. this morning an armed man entered the FBI field office in Cincinnati and tried to shoot his way past security. An exchange of gunfire of some sort ensued. The man retreated and then drove off. This led to a chase and finally a standoff with the armed man at which there were more exchanges of gunfire — apparently in a cornfield. That standoff apparently continues, after more exchanges of gunfire. Thus far there are no reports of injuries. There are unconfirmed repots that assailant was wearing body armor and had a nail gun in addition to an AR-15 style rifle.
From the Twitter account of the Cincinnati FBI field office …
At approximately 9 AM this morning an armed subject attempted to breach the Visitor Screening Facility at #FBI Cincinnati. After an alarm and a response by FBI special agents, the subject fled north onto Interstate 71.
Appears to be a fairly large lockdown in the surrounding area.
More details here from TPM team.
This post will be updated with new information.
Antifa Hannity Declares His ‘Love’ For FBI Has Been ‘Destroyed’
Fox News personality Sean Hannity suddenly thinks that the FBI sucks, actually, after the FBI executed a raid on ex-President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort earlier this week.
Continue reading “Antifa Hannity Declares His ‘Love’ For FBI Has Been ‘Destroyed’”Judge Who Signed FBI MAL Warrant Faces Threats And Pro-Trump Media Attacks
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Almost Unsurprising
Far-right Trump supporters online have been bombarding Bruce Reinhart, the federal magistrate who reportedly signed the search warrant for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, and his family with anti-Semitic threats.
- Several extremists have even posted what they believe to be Reinhart’s address, phone numbers, and names of his family, Vice found.
- Fox News and other right-wing media have been smearing Reinhart as an anti-Trump hack and, uh, lover of Golden Oreos.
Trump Paranoid Someone’s Snitching On Him
The ex-president is anxious that there’s a “rat” in his inner circle feeding intel on him to the feds and that people, including Republicans visiting his clubs, are wearing a wire around him, according to Rolling Stone.
- Trump has been privately expressing his fears since May, even before the Mar-a-Lago raid on Monday, per Rolling Stone.
- Trump’s also reportedly worried that his phones are tapped “by Biden,” in his own words.
- But the former president apparently isn’t wrong to be freaking out about a potential mole: Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal report that the FBI was tipped off about the classified documents Trump had stashed at Mar-a-Lago, leading to the raid.
- Key analysis: “Citizen Trump may have broken a law that President Trump made a felony” – The Washington Post
Georgia DA Zeroes In On Graham’s Coordination With Trump
As Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) fights a Georgia grand jury subpoena, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office has indicated in court that it’s looking to dig into whatever coordinated effort the GOP senator may have had with Trump’s 2020 campaign in trying to overturn the election results in Georgia.
Trump Takes The Fifth
The ex-president has made it clear that he was going to keep trying to stonewall New York Attorney General Letitia James’ (D) civil probe into the Trump Organization by invoking the Fifth Amendment in his deposition yesterday.
- From about 9:30 a.m. ET to about 3 p.m., Trump’s only response was “same answer” to James’ questions, his lawyer told the New York Times.
- Trump hinted at potentially invoking the Fifth Amendment in the flood of other investigations he’s dealing with, stating that he plans to “utilize” the Constitution “to the fullest extent to defend myself against this malicious attack by this administration, this Attorney General’s Office, and all other attacks on my family, my business, and our Country.”
- But Trump’s eldest children, Ivanka and Don Jr., reportedly didn’t plead the Fifth in the depositions they had with James in recent weeks.
Michigan AG Hopeful Bragged About Breaking Into Voting Equipment
Matthew DePerno, the Trump-backed candidate for Michigan attorney general, boasted during several podcast interviews throughout the spring last year that he and his motley crew of election “investigators” had gotten access to a voting tabulator. Like, just openly bragged about it.
- “We got access to a tabulator, and we were able to simulate elections,” DePerno said during one interview in May last year.
- DePerno was allegedly at the center of a plot to seize and break into several counties’ voting machines, according to Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D), whose office is investigating the breaches (Nessel herself seeks to recuse herself from the case since DePerno will likely be her rival in the November elections).
Must Read
“Two Indiana officers wanted to keep a man from running for office. They arrested him.” – The Washington Post
“‘Chaos and Confusion’ in States Where Abortion Is On Again, Off Again” – The New York Times
Indiana Congresswoman’s Funeral Is Today
The public funeral service for Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-IN), who was killed in a car crash last week, will be held today at 11 a.m. ET at Granger Community Church in Mishawaka, Indiana.
GOP Wisconsin Gubernatorial Nom Deletes Trump Endorsement For Two Seconds
Tim Michels, the Republican nominee for Wisconsin governor, quietly scrubbed Trump’s endorsement from his campaign website sometime after winning his primary race on Tuesday:
…aaaaand tacked it back up there about a half hour after the quiet scrub got called out by the NYT reporter:
Dr. Oz, Pennsylvania’s favorite New Jerseyan Senate candidate, similarly wiped the Trump sludge off his campaign, and say what you will about Oz cynically running for Senate in a state he has no non-academic ties to because he knows he likely won’t win his own state, at least Oz isn’t too chicken to stick to keeping the loyalty-demanding Trump at a hilarious arm’s length.
Jesse Watters Is Weirdly Horny About FBI Raid
Fox News host Jesse Watters won’t stop serving one very specific, very thirsty take on the FBI raiding Mar-a-Lago:
A Dog Bassoon
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A Lot Happening
A new report says that yesterday and today a lot of Jan. 6th-involved Republicans in the Pennsylvania state legislature got visits or subpoenas from the FBI. The issue seems to be the fake electors scheme and people who either worked with or had knowledge of the actions of federal Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA).
FBI Seizure Of Scott Perry’s Phone Is Connected To Probe Of Eastman And Clark
The FBI’s seizure of Rep. Scott Perry’s (R-PA) phone on Tuesday was reportedly in connection with a federal investigation into attempts by several allies of former President Trump to subvert the 2020 election results, two people familiar with the matter told the New York Times.
Continue reading “FBI Seizure Of Scott Perry’s Phone Is Connected To Probe Of Eastman And Clark”Where Things Stand: Trump Shares Video With QAnon Song, Conspiracy Theorists See Writing On The Wall
A few hours after the FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort Monday night, the former president shared what appeared to be a campaign-style video on his official Truth Social page. You know, the place where he has to post all his stream-of-conscious screeds now that he’s been booted from normal social media for inciting violence and trying to do a coup.
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: Trump Shares Video With QAnon Song, Conspiracy Theorists See Writing On The Wall”Senate Committee Chair Grills DHS IG Over Failure To Notify Congress of Missing Texts Scandal
The unfolding saga of the missing January 6 texts has led the chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs to issue letters laying into several agency heads over how this could have happened.
On Wednesday, Senator Gary Peters (D-MI) sent four letters to top agency officials demanding more details on how the Secret Service went about deleting Trump administration text messages.
The most pointed was targeted at Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari, who has attracted particular scrutiny since it emerged that he waited months to alert Congress about the missing texts.
Senator Peters requests in the letter that the inspector general “clarify troubling allegations” that “contradict” the information that Cuffari had originally given Congress.
On July 13, Cuffari sent House and Senate committee chairpeople, including Senator Peters, a letter admitting that the Secret Service had erased text messages “after OIG requested records of electronic communications from the USSS.” He also blamed an internal legal review for the hold-up in alerting Congress.
However, the Project on Government Oversight reported last month that the Secret Service confirmed to Cuffari’s office that the texts were lost back in February.
Peters accused Cuffari or his leadership team of taking steps “that appear to be in direct conflict with necessary efforts to identify any wrongdoing and recover missing information” related to the Capitol riot.
He also pointed out that Cuffari’s letter didn’t disclose that messages from former high-ranking DHS officials, including former DHS Secretary Chad Wolf and former Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli, had also been deleted after Jan. 6.
“These are serious allegations and diverge from the information that you previously provided me and my team,” the senator wrote.
As a result, Senator Peters is requesting that the inspector general share “a complete accounting of actions planned and taken by” his office to clear up any inconsistencies in his report. Peters demanded that he confirm the date when his office first learned that the texts were deleted, detail attempts to preserve the text messages or retrieve them, and explain whether he alerted DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that the texts were deleted, as, Peters notes, is “required under the Inspector General Act of 1978.”
The senator also addressed letters requesting information to Mayorkas, USSS Director James Murray, and Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III.
The Defense Department similarly wiped the phone records of former high-ranking officials from that time period, CNN reported last week, including those of former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller and former Chief of Staff Kash Patel.
“DOD and Army conveyed to Plaintiff that when an employee separates from DOD or Army, he or she turns in the government-issued phone, and the phone is wiped,” lawyers for the DOD and Army said in a March 10 court filing, part of a lawsuit brought by good government group American Oversight, which was seeking the records.
The letters to Mayorkas and Austin similarly request that the agency leaders clarify how much they knew about when and how the texts were deleted, who they notified, and what they did when they learned of the erasures, among other demands.
The letter to Murray, however, goes a little more in-depth: In it, Senator Peters asks whether the Secret Service had any policies in place for data retention as dictated by federal rules.
He notes National Archives and Records Administration guidance which states that “electronic messages created or received in the course of agency business are Federal records.”
“Text messages are included in this description,” he writes.