Then-President Donald Trump and his cronies were made fully aware in advance that their sustained campaign to steal the 2020 election could lead to violence on the day the election results were to be certified on Jan. 6, according to House Jan. 6 Committee vice chair Liz Cheney (R-WY).
Continue reading “Trump Was Repeatedly Warned His Attacks On 2020 Election Results Could Spark Violence On Jan. 6, Cheney Says”Trump’s White House Call Logs Have 7-Hour Gap On Jan. 6
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Nothing Suspicious Here!
The White House records of Trump’s calls on Jan. 6 don’t include any calls the president made or received from 11:17 a.m. to 6:54 p.m. that day, according to the Washington Post and CBS News, which obtained the records. The call logs were turned over to the Jan. 6 committee by the National Archives. Key excerpts from the story:
- “The lack of an official White House notation of any calls placed to or by Trump for 457 minutes on Jan. 6, 2021 … means the committee has no record of his phone conversations as his supporters descended on the Capitol, battled overwhelmed police and forcibly entered the building, prompting lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence to flee for safety.”
- “The House panel is now investigating whether Trump communicated that day through backchannels, phones of aides or personal disposable phones, known as ‘burner phones,’ according to two people with knowledge of the probe …”
- “In a statement Monday night, Trump said, ‘I have no idea what a burner phone is, to the best of my knowledge I have never even heard the term.'”
- “The documents obtained by the committee show Trump having several previously unreported exchanges on Jan. 6, including brief calls with [Steve] Bannon and personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani that morning, before Trump had a final call with Pence, in which the vice president told him he was not going to block Congress from formalizing Biden’s victory.”
Jan. 6 Panel Tells Garland To Do His Job As It Approves New Contempt Charges
The House Jan. 6 Committee voted to recommend criminal contempt charges for former Trump advisers Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino on Monday night. The recommendation will now go to the House for a full vote, where it’ll likely pass and go to the Justice Department, which has done … not very much at all with the contempt recommendation it already got for ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
- Members of the committee called on Attorney General Merrick Garland multiple times on Monday night to, you know, actually do something about Meadows. After all, evidence so far shows that he was significantly more involved in the events of Jan. 6 than Steve Bannon, whom the DOJ has charged with contempt.
- The stakes in the panel’s investigation are getting higher every day: A judge had ruled earlier on Monday that Trump had likely committed felony obstruction of Congress when he and his then-legal adviser John Eastman plotted to have Vice President Mike Pence throw out Biden electors in the 2020 election certification process.
Judge Orders Trump Org To Comply With Subpoena By End Of April
The Trump Organization has until April 29 to comply with the New York attorney general’s subpoena in her fraud investigation, a New York state judge ruled on Monday. The subpoena in question was issued over two years ago, and “I think we can all agree we want this to end at some point for numerous reasons,” the judge said.
DeSantis Signs ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill Into Law
Surrounded by young children as props, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Monday signed the Parental Rights in Education bill, aka the legislation that bans classroom discussion about LGBTQ+ topics in kindergarten through third grade, or in any grade if it’s “in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.”
- DeSantis, in his sustained war on the LGBTQ+ community, dialed the theater up a notch last week when he put out a functionally meaningless “proclamation” declaring that the runner-up in a NCAA women’s swimming championship was the “rightful winner” after transgender swimmer Lia Thomas won the competition.
Clarence Thomas Returns To Work Remotely
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas participated in oral hearings remotely on Monday, his first day back after a nearly week-long stay at the hospital brought on by an infection.
- The justice missed three days of arguments last week before he was discharged from the hospital on Friday morning.
- No word yet on whether he plans to recuse himself from cases about the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 Capitol attack amid the neon signs of his wife’s involvement in MAGALand’s attempted election steal.
Must Read
“‘Designed to End Protesting’: Louisiana Supreme Court Makes Protesters Guilty by Association” – Bolts Magazine
Nebraska GOPer Walks Back Rant About Kids Transing Themselves Into Cats And Using Litter Boxes In School
Nebraska state Sen. Bruce Bostelman (R) backpedaled on Monday after he gave this batshit floor speech earlier claiming that students were identifying as cats (and “furries”) and demanding that they be allowed to use litter boxes:
(This whole thing is beyond cursed, but I’m just dying at “How is this sanitary?” being his first question here.)
- Bostelman later acknowledged on Monday that the fake rumor (which has been spreading for a while now, believe it or not) isn’t true. “It was just something I felt that if this really was happening, we needed to address it and address it quickly,” he said. (Excellent point, it would be indeed concerning if this fake thing that never happened happened!).
- On the other hand, Bostelman’s actually not wrong in that that some schools are equipping classrooms with cat litter. It’s not for indulging in the fantasies of these mythical trans cat kids, though. It’s there in case students need to use the bathroom during a lockdown in a school shooting.
Kushner To Speak To Jan. 6 Panel
Former White House adviser Jared Kushner is expected to sit down for a voluntary interview with the House Jan. 6 Committee as soon as this Thursday, according to ABC News.
Late Rep. Don Young To Lie In State
Rep. Don Young (R-AK), who passed away on March 18 at 88 years old, will lie in state in National Statuary Hall in the Capitol today.
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Ummm … This Seems Big
I’m trying to make sense of how big a deal this is, how new this is and frankly just what to make of it. I was even put slightly on my guard since the reporting is in part from Bob Woodward and it is so reminiscent of the notorious 18 minute gap in Watergate tape recordings. But what the Post and CBS News report this morning is that in the records turned over to the January 6th committee there is a roughly eight hour gap in the record of the President’s actions and calls that maps almost exactly to the period of violent insurrection on Capitol Hill.
Continue reading “Ummm … This Seems Big”Liveblog: What Will Become Of The Ginni Thomas Allegations?
Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, secretly encouraged Donald Trump’s chief of staff to help Trump steal a second term in office. “Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down,” Ginni Thomas texted Mark Meadows, the Washington Post first reported.
Questions about Ginni Thomas’ activism and what it says about Clarence Thomas’ own views go back years. Now, they’re a leading story.
In 20 Minutes, A Microcosm Of The Jackson Hearings
Your briefing on developments in the Supreme Court confirmation battle.
The Senate Judiciary Committee met in executive session Monday to “consider” a slate of nominations including Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s. The real vote will happen next week after Republicans requested a delay, so Monday’s session involved brief comments from senators with promises that they’ll elaborate further at the vote.
Continue reading “In 20 Minutes, A Microcosm Of The Jackson Hearings”Where Things Stand: Probably Better To Have No Agenda Than Allow Rick Scott To Do … Whatever It Is He’s Doing
I am of course just speculating, but that ^ might be Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) current internal debate after Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-FL) flailing around on Fox News this weekend.
As head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Scott put out an “11-Point Plan to Rescue America” last month to attempt to give Republicans some sort of safe-space to coalesce around heading into the 2022 Midterms — as the party seemingly does not have a broader legislative agenda, beyond letting the right-wing media rile the base into a frenzy over faux culture wars.
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: Probably Better To Have No Agenda Than Allow Rick Scott To Do … Whatever It Is He’s Doing”Peace Talks
A new article (sub req) in the FT says that Russia and Ukraine are discussing a ceasefire agreement in which Ukraine would agree not to join NATO but also get NATO-like security guarantees from major European powers and the U.S. Ukraine would also be free to join the EU. This essentially amounts to armed neutrality and likely an agreement not to host foreign troops on its territory. A key element appears to be an agreement to leave the question of the territories Russia held as of February 24th as a matter to be discussed in subsequent negotiations. So an agreement to disagree for the time being essentially.
The unknown in these negotiations and the reported draft agreements they are working on is that no one on the Ukrainian side — and I suspect in the U.S. as well — is clear at all about whether Russia is actually seriously considering these potential agreements or simply using them to stall for time or keep the Western powers from imposing more sanctions.
‘Nobody Will Save You’: One Refugee’s Account Of Escaping Mariupol
Svetlana Nikolaevna was trying desperately to get out of Mariupol.
The city was burning, and Russian troops were closing in. People told dark jokes about Russian troops praying at a nearby cathedral, as shells continued to fly into high-rises, seemingly at random.
Continue reading “‘Nobody Will Save You’: One Refugee’s Account Of Escaping Mariupol”A Warning for All Goliaths, Not Just Russia
Michael Kofman is one of the most important Twitter follows for understanding the Russia-Ukraine war. This morning he has a short thread about Russia’s dismal military performance in Ukraine. While he says he has no doubt the U.S. military would greatly outperform the Russian military, he sees the reaction to those Russian failures as an example that “we may be psychologically unprepared for war with [a] determined opponent that has some parity of capability.”
In other words, when you have a real army on the other side, lots of things can go wrong. The U.S. military has had lots of experience over the last two decades in counter-insurgency conflict, against very lethal and determined enemies. But when it comes to invasions, air combat, armor and the like the U.S. has not faced a peer or near-peer in a very, very long time. The military has an adage that “no plan survives first contact with the enemy.” But if the enemy is weak enough — in terms of technology, training, logistics, firepower — your plan probably can survive first contact and maybe most of the whole engagement.
But there’s a related but distinct issue that keeps coming back to me as I watch this war unfold.
Continue reading “A Warning for All Goliaths, Not Just Russia”Which Is The Weakest Link?
For many Atlanticists in Europe and the United States there is a deep belief that the horror of the invasion of Ukraine — a conflict with a still very uncertain outcome — has nonetheless revitalized not only NATO but a sense of unity and purpose among the world’s civic democracies. I agree with this. Increasingly over the last decade the forces of revanchist authoritarianism have been on the march while those of civic democracy have been mired in internal division and generally unaware of or indifferent to the fact that a conflict is even afoot. And yet the same conflict is underway or continues within the United States itself. It’s quite possible that the economic clout and military might of the United States, around which the resistance to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine revolves, could be absent from the field in less than three years.
Continue reading “Which Is The Weakest Link?”