A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the latest Jan. 6 hearing and the Senate gun deal.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
Notes
Point 1: If you’re watching the hearings today, consider and remember this: Let’s give these guys credit. They’re conservatives. Trump appointees. But they held the line. They refused to play ball under a lot of pressure. But authorizing law enforcement investigations of palpably absurd stories is itself really, really bad. That’s the basis of the great majority of law enforcement corruption: standing up bogus investigations to impugn the reputations or otherwise hurt people. That’s really bad on many, many fronts. In the situation in which these guys found themselves I think there’s a good argument that they went with the least bad option. But that option is itself really, really bad.
Point 2: One of the things we’re seeing today is this effort to stock new unknown loyalists into the executive departments after it was already clear the President had lost and that it was a lame duck administration. We’ve known a lot of this story. But we found out significantly more today. The only time this happens in normal situations is that you sometimes have caretaker appointees come in because the top appointee leaves before the President’s last day in office. Sometimes it’s simply to burnish someones future resume. They can say they were “acting such and such” for a brief time. Not great maybe but essentially no harm. But it doesn’t work like this. When they were already only in a caretaker role they were restocking the departments to further the coup.
But here’s another point. It wasn’t only at DOJ. There was something very similar happening at the Pentagon. Those new appointees don’t seem to have played direct roles in the coup as it played, though I think that’s still an open question. But it sure seemed like they might at the time. At the end of the day coups almost always come down to control of the armed forces.
Breyer Makes Plain The Lunacy Of Cherry-Picking Historical Evidence To Determine Constitutional Rights
Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, slapped down New York’s 100-year-old concealed carry licensing scheme Thursday on the grounds that it has no historical analogue.
Continue reading “Breyer Makes Plain The Lunacy Of Cherry-Picking Historical Evidence To Determine Constitutional Rights”Feds Search Home Of Trump DOJ Flunkie Jeff Clark
Federal agents searched the home of former Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark on Wednesday, bringing the focus of federal law enforcement squarely onto a high-ranking official who tried to help former President Donald Trump stay in office after losing the 2020 election.
Continue reading “Feds Search Home Of Trump DOJ Flunkie Jeff Clark”Alito The Troll Makes His Return
A striking component of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft overturning abortion rights, besides its country-changing thrust, was its tone.
Continue reading “Alito The Troll Makes His Return”Breaking
ABC is reporting that federal agents searched former Trump DOJ official Jeffrey Clark’s home yesterday morning.
SCOTUS Strikes Down New York Gun Control Law, Expanding Gun Rights In Wake Of Mass Shootings
The Supreme Court Thursday struck down a New York gun law requiring that license applicants show “proper cause” to have a concealed weapon.
Continue reading “SCOTUS Strikes Down New York Gun Control Law, Expanding Gun Rights In Wake Of Mass Shootings”FBI Seizes Nevada GOP Chair’s Phone In Escalation Of Fake Trump Elector Probe
The FBI seized Nevada Republican Party chair Michael McDonald’s phone on Wednesday after executing a search warrant as part of the federal investigation into ex-President Donald Trump’s fake elector scheme, according to local news outlet 8 News Now.
Continue reading “FBI Seizes Nevada GOP Chair’s Phone In Escalation Of Fake Trump Elector Probe”Betrayed Brooks Now Willing To Testify In Front Of Jan. 6 Panel
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Time For Payback
One day after losing his bid for Alabama Senate, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), still licking his wounds over Trump’s endorsement snub, told CNN on Wednesday that he’s now open to testifying in front of the House Jan. 6 Committee, which had announced a subpoena for him last month.
- Brooks said he has a “basic requirement,” however: That his testimony be public so people get the whole thing, not just “bits and pieces dribbled out.”
- Committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) told CNN that the panel has “redone” Brooks’ subpoena, which hasn’t been served to the GOP congressman yet because he was out campaigning (RIP).
- Brooks declared earlier on Wednesday that he was retiring from politics — and took a shot at Trump. According to Brooks, the former president was “the big loser” in the Alabama GOP Senate primary runoff because he’s not “a man of his word,” has “no loyalty” and won’t take action unless it “enhances his wallet or his ego.”
FBI Seizes Nevada GOP Chair’s Phone In Fake Elector Probe
The FBI executed a search warrant on Nevada Republican Party chair Michael McDonald and seized his phone on Wednesday as part of the federal investigation into Trump’s fake elector scheme, according to local news outlet 8 News Now.
- The House Jan. 6 Committee subpoenaed McDonald in January.
- The FBI also issued a search warrant for Nevada GOP secretary James DeGraffenreid (one of the signatories of the bogus paperwork for the sham Trump electors), but agents reportedly couldn’t find him.
DOJ Ramps Up Fake Elector Probe With More Subpoenas
The Justice Department has begun issuing subpoenas to people who agreed to participate in Trump’s bogus elector plot, according to the Washington Post and the New York Times.
- People who reportedly got subpoenaed:
- Georgia GOP chair David Shafer, who served as one of the fake electors
- A Georgia lawyer named Brad Carver who was a fake elector
- Thomas Lane, a Trump campaign official who worked in Arizona and New Mexico
- Shawn Flynn, a Trump campaign official in Michigan
Jan. 6 Panel, Round Five
The House Jan. 6 Committee’s holding its fifth hearing today at 3:00 p.m. ET.
- What it’s focusing on: Trump’s efforts to weaponize the Justice Department to both give cover to his fake election fraud narrative with bogus investigations and to steal the election itself with the Jeffrey Clark scheme. This is the hearing that got postponed last week.
- Who we’re hearing from:
- Ex-Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen
- Ex-Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue
- Steven Engel, the former assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel
- This is the last hearing of this month, according to committee chair Benny Thompson (D-MS). The next one will be held sometime in July, date TBD.
Top Jan. 6 Panel Investigator Leaves Early
Ex-federal prosecutor John F. Wood, one of the House Jan. 6 Committee’s senior investigators, confirmed on Wednesday that he’s leaving the panel at the end of the week, sooner than expected. The departure comes as Wood faces calls back home in Missouri to run for U.S. Senate as an independent as someone who puts “country over party” by working for the Jan. 6 panel (Wood has long worked for Republicans and conservative judges, including Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas).
Uvalde Schools Police Chief Put On Leave
The schools superintendent in Uvalde, Texas announced on Wednesday that Pete Arredondo, the embattled Uvalde schools police chief, had been placed on administrative leave amid investigations into his astonishingly feeble response to the mass shooting.
Who Stops A ‘Bad Guy With A Gun?’
This analysis by the New York Times blows a pretty big hole into the gun lobby’s (conveniently profitable) argument that the only way to stop mass shootings is for the “good guys” to have guns of their own:
And this is what happened during the Uvalde elementary school shooting when there actually was a good guy with a gun:
Dr. Oz Quietly Squeegees Trump Off His Campaign
With an eye on the general election, GOP Pennsylvania Senate hopeful Dr. Mehmet Oz has been quietly painting over Trump’s face on his campaign lately, Axios notes.
- Oz’s website and social media platforms, which all previously flaunted the ex-president’s endorsement, have been de-Trump’d: The banners bragging about the endorsement are gone, the candidate hasn’t tweeted about the ex-president since the May 17 primary, his Twitter bio no longer brags that he’s a “Trump Endorsed Candidate”–and (possibly as the biggest sting), Oz hasn’t posted on Trump’s fake Twitter at all since he won the primary.
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How Trump Tried To Hijack The DOJ Before January 6
It all came down to a showdown in the Oval Office on the evening of Jan. 3, 2021.
Continue reading “How Trump Tried To Hijack The DOJ Before January 6”