I wanted to flag an emerging issue in the Jan 6th investigations. It’s been alluded to in various articles describing the Ginni Thomas text revelations. But it’s worth drawing out a bit more explicitly. There has apparently been some level of rift in the Jan 6th committee about whether to call Ginni Thomas to testify and how much to pursue the obvious questions that arise about the role of her husband Justice Thomas. According to this Times article, Rep. Liz Cheney had resisted calling Ginni Thomas but has apparently dropped her objection after the revelations. In the words of this Times account, Cheney has “wanted to avoid any aggressive effort that, in her view, could unfairly target Justice Thomas, the senior member of the Supreme Court.”

This extended passage from the same article provides more context …

TPM Reader ES flags for our attention this paywalled article in Le Parisien. In addition to the paywall issue, ES is a native French speaker. So his characterization will be much closer to the mark than anything I’d be able to cobble together through Google translate …

Hey so I found this in the French press (it’s unfortunately paywalled).

In a nutshell it’s an insider account of Macron’s regular phone calls with Putin. The really juicy part, which gives a window on what’s going on is this: apparently during these discussions Putin goes on what sounds like lengthy rants about Russia’s history (“c’est interminable” says one source).

To my slight surprise, the Ginni Thomas story — the texts about her involvement in the January 6th conspiracy — appears to be escalating rapidly. Politico’s Playbook is in such a case a good barometer. A couple days ago I felt I was pushing the envelope by saying Justice Thomas should recuse himself from any Jan. 6th or Trump election (past or future elections) related cases. Over the last 36 hours, though, calls for this are not only coming from standby legal ethics experts but from a number of conservative legal types who have in the past been either indifferent to or protective of Ginni Thomas’s fairly open involvement in GOP partisan politics. (Justice Thomas was already the sole dissent in a case that could quite likely have involved — though in the event it apparently did not — communications from his wife to other participants in the Jan. 6th conspiracy.) Now the Jan. 6th committee seems prepped to ask her to testify and, if she doesn’t agree, subpoena her, though here there appears to be a division centering around Liz Cheney.

From TPM Reader PC …

The remarkable thing about the change in Russian messaging about their objectives is the threat it poses to Putin’s regime survival.

Even before the military changed their public tune, on March 16 Lavrov described ceasefire negotiations as being “close to agreement” on terms that were basically: give up Donbass and Crimea (no clarity on borders, or the potential land bridge between them) and give up NATO membership (no clarity on EU membership, just “neutrality”).

From what I can tell, the more serious-minded military analysts and Ukraine experts are this afternoon trying to make sense of just what this afternoon’s Russian military briefing means. Is this just chatter along the lines of claims of a soon to be announced ceasefire or is this really the signal that the Russian leadership is looking for an offramp from this strategic catastrophe entirely of its own making? I don’t think anyone quite knows what to make of it yet. The claims of ‘this is what we meant to do all along’ are absurd on their face. And yet, they’re the most plausible and possibly even the most predictable path to a face-saving exit. In fact, we shouldn’t have to wait long to find out. If this signals a true pivot in Russian policy and war aims we should see movements on the ground in fairly short order.

But one really has to question whether this pivot is even possible. And by possible I mean is it in any way a plausible path to the end of the conflict on any terms?

TPM Reader PT tries to puzzle out what the people in charge of the Russian military are thinking …

After reading your posts on the latest proclamations from Russia’s General Staff, I find myself scratching my head (figuratively) and muttering, “I don’t get it” (also figuratively).

Specifically, I don’t see how these comments set the conditions for an end to the war on terms other than an abject Russian retreat.