Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richardson
Noble_Incubus said:I thought this belonged here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R6Ks3BnFymQ
Yep. loved that interview and am so happy that Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed.
Heather Cox Richardson is an amazing historian. Thanks for sharing.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R6Ks3BnFymQ
Yep. loved that interview and am so happy that Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed.
Heather Cox Richardson is an amazing historian. Thanks for sharing.
Another great video was published yesterday. It gives us non-Americans a great insight into American history, politics and culture.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ehHSmoSqjxY
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ehHSmoSqjxY
Noble_Incubus said:Another great video was published yesterday. It gives us non-Americans a great insight into American history, politics and culture.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ehHSmoSqjxY
Thank goodness for that. In democracy, a reasoned argument based in fact is very powerful. The current issue is what some individuals consider 'fact'.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ehHSmoSqjxY
Thank goodness for that. In democracy, a reasoned argument based in fact is very powerful. The current issue is what some individuals consider 'fact'.
April 23, 2022
Heather Cox Richardson
Apr 24
Late last night, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol filed a motion asking a judge to put an end to the attempts of Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows to stonewall the committee. Meadows has tried to avoid talking to the committee or providing it with documents, using a number of different arguments that essentially try to establish that the U.S. president cannot be held accountable by Congress. The committee’s motion carefully explains why those arguments are wrong.
To support their belief that the Congress has the right and responsibility to investigate the circumstances of the January 6 insurrection—a correct understanding of our governmental system, in my view—the committee gave the judge almost 250 pages of evidence.
Included was some of the material I’ve been waiting for: a list of members of Congress who participated in planning to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
We have heard a lot about independent lawyers and members of the executive branch who were willing to try to keep Trump in office. We have also heard about people at the state level. But while there has been plenty of speculation about what members of Congress were involved, we had little to go on.
We knew that both former energy secretary Rick Perry of Texas and Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) had texted with Meadows about possible avenues for overturning the election. We knew that Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) had recorded videos before the insurrection that suggested they supported it. We had an odd statement from Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on January 5 saying that he, not then–vice president Mike Pence, would count the certified electoral ballots the next day. We had Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) allegedly saying to Jordan on January 6, “Get away from me. You f**ing did this.”
But the January 6th committee has just given us a bigger—although not the whole, yet—picture.
In last night’s filed motion was part of the testimony to the committee from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former special assistant to the president and the chief of staff. When asked which members of Congress were involved in calls about overturning the election—including calls saying such efforts were illegal—Hutchinson named Representatives Greene, Jordan, Boebert, Scott Perry (R-PA), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Mo Brooks (R-AL), Jody Hice (R-GA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and Debbie Lesko (R-AZ).
The heart of this group was the “Freedom Caucus,” which was organized in 2015 to move the Republican Party farther to the right. Its first chair was Jim Jordan; its second was Mark Meadows. Its third was Andy Biggs. Mick Mulvaney, who would go on to Trump’s White House, and Ron DeSantis, who is now governor of Florida, were key organizers.
Let’s be clear: the people working to keep Trump in office by overturning the will of the people were trying to destroy our democracy. Not one of them, or any of those who plotted with them, called out the illegal attempt to destroy our government.
To what end did they seek to overthrow our democracy?
The current Republican Party has two wings: one eager to get rid of any regulation of business, and one that wants to get rid of the civil rights protections that the Supreme Court and Congress began to put into place in the 1950s. Business regulation is actually quite popular in the U.S., so to build a political following, in the 1980s, leaders of the anti-regulation wing of the Republican Party promised racists and the religious right that they would stomp out the civil rights legislation that since the 1950s has tried to make all Americans equal before the law.
But even this marriage has not been enough to win elections, since most Americans like business regulation and the protection of things like the right to use birth control. So, to put its vision into place, the Republican Party has now abandoned democracy. Its leaders have concluded that any Democratic victory is illegitimate, even if voters have clearly chosen a Democrat, as they did with Biden in 2020, by more than 7 million votes.
Former speechwriter for George W. Bush David Frum wrote in 2018: "If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” And here we are.
As if to illustrate this point, news broke today that a North Carolina official threatened to fire an elections official unless she gave him access to the county’s vote tabulators. The news agency Reuters noted that this threat was only one of more than 900 instances of intimidation of election officials in what has become commonplace after the 2020 election.
It appears that elected officials of the Republican Party are willing to overturn a legitimate Democratic victory in order to guarantee that only a Republican can hold office. That means a one-party state, which will be overseen by a single, powerful individual. And the last 59 days in Ukraine have illustrated exactly what that kind of a system means.
Standing against that authoritarianism, Democratic president Joe Biden is trying to reassure Americans that democracy works. He insisted on using the government to support ordinary Americans rather than the wealthy, and in his first year in office, poverty in the United States declined, with lower-income Americans gaining more than at any time since the “War on Poverty” in the 1960s. Lower-income workers have more job opportunities than they have had for 30 years, and they are making more money. They have on average 50% more money in the bank than they did when the pandemic hit.
Biden’s insistence on investing in Americans meant that by the end of his first year, the U.S. had created 6.6 million jobs, the strongest record of any president since record keeping began in 1939. By the beginning of April, the economy had added 7.9 million jobs, and unemployment was close to a 50-year low at 3.6%. Meanwhile, the deficit is dropping: we should carve $1.3 trillion off it this year.
Biden’s deliberate reshaping of the American government to work for ordinary Americans again, regulating business and using the federal government to enforce equal rights, so threatens modern Republicans that they are willing to destroy our country rather than allow voters to keep people like Biden in power.
I do not believe that a majority of Americans want a dictatorship in which a favored few become billionaires while the rest of us live without the civil rights that have been our norm since the 1950s, and no voting rights to enable us to change our lot.
Tonight, news broke that Democrats in Utah have voted to back Independent candidate Evan McMullin for senator rather than run their own candidate. McMullin is trying to unseat Republican Senator Mike Lee, whose texts to Meadows as they conspired to overturn the election have lately drawn headlines. Democrats are gambling that there are enough Democrats, Independents, and anti-Trump Republicans in Utah to send Lee packing.
—
Notes Below:
Heather Cox Richardson
Apr 24
Late last night, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol filed a motion asking a judge to put an end to the attempts of Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows to stonewall the committee. Meadows has tried to avoid talking to the committee or providing it with documents, using a number of different arguments that essentially try to establish that the U.S. president cannot be held accountable by Congress. The committee’s motion carefully explains why those arguments are wrong.
To support their belief that the Congress has the right and responsibility to investigate the circumstances of the January 6 insurrection—a correct understanding of our governmental system, in my view—the committee gave the judge almost 250 pages of evidence.
Included was some of the material I’ve been waiting for: a list of members of Congress who participated in planning to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
We have heard a lot about independent lawyers and members of the executive branch who were willing to try to keep Trump in office. We have also heard about people at the state level. But while there has been plenty of speculation about what members of Congress were involved, we had little to go on.
We knew that both former energy secretary Rick Perry of Texas and Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) had texted with Meadows about possible avenues for overturning the election. We knew that Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) had recorded videos before the insurrection that suggested they supported it. We had an odd statement from Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on January 5 saying that he, not then–vice president Mike Pence, would count the certified electoral ballots the next day. We had Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) allegedly saying to Jordan on January 6, “Get away from me. You f**ing did this.”
But the January 6th committee has just given us a bigger—although not the whole, yet—picture.
In last night’s filed motion was part of the testimony to the committee from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former special assistant to the president and the chief of staff. When asked which members of Congress were involved in calls about overturning the election—including calls saying such efforts were illegal—Hutchinson named Representatives Greene, Jordan, Boebert, Scott Perry (R-PA), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Mo Brooks (R-AL), Jody Hice (R-GA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and Debbie Lesko (R-AZ).
The heart of this group was the “Freedom Caucus,” which was organized in 2015 to move the Republican Party farther to the right. Its first chair was Jim Jordan; its second was Mark Meadows. Its third was Andy Biggs. Mick Mulvaney, who would go on to Trump’s White House, and Ron DeSantis, who is now governor of Florida, were key organizers.
Let’s be clear: the people working to keep Trump in office by overturning the will of the people were trying to destroy our democracy. Not one of them, or any of those who plotted with them, called out the illegal attempt to destroy our government.
To what end did they seek to overthrow our democracy?
The current Republican Party has two wings: one eager to get rid of any regulation of business, and one that wants to get rid of the civil rights protections that the Supreme Court and Congress began to put into place in the 1950s. Business regulation is actually quite popular in the U.S., so to build a political following, in the 1980s, leaders of the anti-regulation wing of the Republican Party promised racists and the religious right that they would stomp out the civil rights legislation that since the 1950s has tried to make all Americans equal before the law.
But even this marriage has not been enough to win elections, since most Americans like business regulation and the protection of things like the right to use birth control. So, to put its vision into place, the Republican Party has now abandoned democracy. Its leaders have concluded that any Democratic victory is illegitimate, even if voters have clearly chosen a Democrat, as they did with Biden in 2020, by more than 7 million votes.
Former speechwriter for George W. Bush David Frum wrote in 2018: "If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” And here we are.
As if to illustrate this point, news broke today that a North Carolina official threatened to fire an elections official unless she gave him access to the county’s vote tabulators. The news agency Reuters noted that this threat was only one of more than 900 instances of intimidation of election officials in what has become commonplace after the 2020 election.
It appears that elected officials of the Republican Party are willing to overturn a legitimate Democratic victory in order to guarantee that only a Republican can hold office. That means a one-party state, which will be overseen by a single, powerful individual. And the last 59 days in Ukraine have illustrated exactly what that kind of a system means.
Standing against that authoritarianism, Democratic president Joe Biden is trying to reassure Americans that democracy works. He insisted on using the government to support ordinary Americans rather than the wealthy, and in his first year in office, poverty in the United States declined, with lower-income Americans gaining more than at any time since the “War on Poverty” in the 1960s. Lower-income workers have more job opportunities than they have had for 30 years, and they are making more money. They have on average 50% more money in the bank than they did when the pandemic hit.
Biden’s insistence on investing in Americans meant that by the end of his first year, the U.S. had created 6.6 million jobs, the strongest record of any president since record keeping began in 1939. By the beginning of April, the economy had added 7.9 million jobs, and unemployment was close to a 50-year low at 3.6%. Meanwhile, the deficit is dropping: we should carve $1.3 trillion off it this year.
Biden’s deliberate reshaping of the American government to work for ordinary Americans again, regulating business and using the federal government to enforce equal rights, so threatens modern Republicans that they are willing to destroy our country rather than allow voters to keep people like Biden in power.
I do not believe that a majority of Americans want a dictatorship in which a favored few become billionaires while the rest of us live without the civil rights that have been our norm since the 1950s, and no voting rights to enable us to change our lot.
Tonight, news broke that Democrats in Utah have voted to back Independent candidate Evan McMullin for senator rather than run their own candidate. McMullin is trying to unseat Republican Senator Mike Lee, whose texts to Meadows as they conspired to overturn the election have lately drawn headlines. Democrats are gambling that there are enough Democrats, Independents, and anti-Trump Republicans in Utah to send Lee packing.
—
Notes Below:
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/563127-cheney-told-jim-jordan-you-f-ing-did-this-during-jan-6-riot/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2021/12/17/jan-6-committee-reportedly-believes-rick-perry-wrote-text-encouraging-meadows-to-work-to-alter-electoral-college-vote/
https://january6th.house.gov/sites/democrats.january6th.house.gov/files/20220422%20Motion%20for%20Summary%20Judgment.pdf
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/lower-income-americans-gains-biden-20220421.html
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/04/business/joe-biden-jobs-record/index.html
https://lasvegassun.com/news/2020/oct/13/gop-has-given-up-on-democracy/
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2022-04-01/bidens-deceptively-strong-economy
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-local-election-chief-threatened-by-republican-leader-seeking-illegal-2022-04-23/
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/04/politics/biden-popular-vote-margin-7-million/index.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2021/12/17/jan-6-committee-reportedly-believes-rick-perry-wrote-text-encouraging-meadows-to-work-to-alter-electoral-college-vote/
https://january6th.house.gov/sites/democrats.january6th.house.gov/files/20220422%20Motion%20for%20Summary%20Judgment.pdf
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/lower-income-americans-gains-biden-20220421.html
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/04/business/joe-biden-jobs-record/index.html
https://lasvegassun.com/news/2020/oct/13/gop-has-given-up-on-democracy/
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2022-04-01/bidens-deceptively-strong-economy
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-local-election-chief-threatened-by-republican-leader-seeking-illegal-2022-04-23/
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/04/politics/biden-popular-vote-margin-7-million/index.html
This is the kind of bullshit witnessed before relocating out of the deep south. If it's ONE thing that repulses me to my core and tests my ability to remain grounded, it's white supremacy. If you look back on some of the most horrific incidences in history, i.e. - the Holocaust, it stems from that very mindset of superiority.
Heather Cox Richardson is an amazing historian who presents the damn facts. And while this thread may have been de-prioritized, it will not remain silent. Because freedom from those who would attempt to silence it ( probably a middle-aged white man ).
~
On this day in 1954, the Supreme Court handed down the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision, which declared the segregation of public schools unconstitutional.
Today, President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden traveled to Buffalo, New York, where ten Americans were murdered and three wounded at a grocery store by a white supremacist on Saturday.
Biden named and described the victims, ten of whom were Black: a baker, a public school teacher, an election worker, a church deacon, a retired police officer, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers. “Individual lives of love, service, and community that speaks to the bigger story of who we are as Americans,” Biden said. We’re a “great nation because we’re a good people.”
Evil will not win in America, Biden promised. “Hate will not prevail. And white supremacy will not have the last word.”
“What happened here is simple and straightforward,” Biden said, “Domestic terrorism. Violence inflicted in the service of hate and a vicious thirst for power that defines one group of people being inherently inferior to any other group. A hate that through the media and politics, the Internet, has radicalized angry, alienated, lost, and isolated individuals into falsely believing that they will be replaced—that’s the word, “replaced”—by the “other”—by people who don’t look like them and who are therefore, in a perverse ideology that they possess and [are] being fed, lesser beings.”
Biden called on “all Americans to reject [that] lie.” He condemned “those who spread the lie for power, political gain, and for profit.” “[T]he ideology of white supremacy has no place in America,” he said. “Silence is complicity.”
“We have to refuse to live in a country where fear and lies are packaged for power and for profit.
“We must all enlist in this great cause of America.
“This is work that requires all of us—presidents and politicians, commentators, citizens. None of us can stay in the sidelines. We have to resolve here in Buffalo that from…this tragedy…will come hope and light and life. It has to. And on our watch, the sacred cause of America will never bow, never break, never bend. And the America we love—the one we love—will endure.”
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who represents Buffalo, today wrote a letter to Rupert Murdoch, chair of the Fox Corporation, along with another three of the corporation’s leaders, to urge them to stop “the reckless amplification of the so-called ‘Great Replacement’ theory on your network’s broadcasts.” He noted that people who watch the Fox News Channel are nearly three times more likely to believe in the replacement myth than those who watch other networks. He pointed out “the central role these themes have played in your network’s programming in recent years,” especially on Tucker Carlson’s show. He wrote: “I implore you to immediately cease all dissemination of false white nationalist, far-right conspiracy theories on your network.”
New York representative Elise Stefanik, the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, who paid for ads pushing the replacement myth, today said: “It is not the time to politicize this tragedy. We mourn together as a nation.” Other Republicans insisted they did not know what the Great Replacement Theory is, although a number of them are on video articulating it.
Interviewed by Silvia Foster-Frau of the Washington Post, Buffalo resident James Baldwin dismissed the notion that it was the devil who inspired the Buffalo shooter. “That’s not the devil,” he said. “That’s America. They made him, they brought him up, they put him there.”
There was other big news today. Glenn Thrush and Luke Broadwater of the New York Times reported that on April 20, attorneys in the Department of Justice (DOJ) wrote to the lead investigator for the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, Timothy J. Heaphy, to ask if the committee would share transcripts from some of their interviews. Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division Kenneth A. Polite Jr. and U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew M. Graves told Heaphy that some of the transcripts might “contain information relevant to a criminal investigation we are conducting.”
The House committee is trying to figure out exactly what happened on January 6 and in the weeks around it. It is not conducting a criminal investigation. That ground is the turf of the Department of Justice, which has so far brought indictments against at least 828 people, more than 280 of whom have pleaded guilty. The four defendants who had a jury trial were each convicted on all counts. One defendant was acquitted by a Trump-appointed judge, who agreed with the defendant's statement that he had not seen a police line and had possibly been waved into the building. (Video shows the defendant was not screaming or attacking anyone inside the building).
The request indicates that the Department of Justice is looking broadly at the period around January 6. It also suggests that the committee has covered a lot of ground very quickly and that its information might be of use to the Justice Department.
The committee will not simply hand over their material. Congress is part of the legislative branch of government, and the Department of Justice is part of the executive branch, so there is the issue of the separation of powers to deal with. A source told Thrush and Broadwater that the committee and the Justice Department are negotiating. The Justice Department wants the transcripts; the committee wants any relevant evidence the Justice Department has.
Legal analyst Glenn Kirschner tweeted: “Whether this was always the DOJ plan (& whether the J6 committee knew it or not), important info has been developed by the J6 panel that would not have been developed had the witnesses been subpoenaed to the grand jury (as they would have pled the 5th).” He added: “If the J6 committee investigation HAD taken a back seat to a DOJ grand jury investigation, we would go years w/out knowing what any of the 1000+ witness[es] had said. But now, we’ll have a front row seat to it all beginning June 9 AND all of those transcripts can be used in the GJ!”
Continued below:
Heather Cox Richardson is an amazing historian who presents the damn facts. And while this thread may have been de-prioritized, it will not remain silent. Because freedom from those who would attempt to silence it ( probably a middle-aged white man ).
~
On this day in 1954, the Supreme Court handed down the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision, which declared the segregation of public schools unconstitutional.
Today, President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden traveled to Buffalo, New York, where ten Americans were murdered and three wounded at a grocery store by a white supremacist on Saturday.
Biden named and described the victims, ten of whom were Black: a baker, a public school teacher, an election worker, a church deacon, a retired police officer, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers. “Individual lives of love, service, and community that speaks to the bigger story of who we are as Americans,” Biden said. We’re a “great nation because we’re a good people.”
Evil will not win in America, Biden promised. “Hate will not prevail. And white supremacy will not have the last word.”
“What happened here is simple and straightforward,” Biden said, “Domestic terrorism. Violence inflicted in the service of hate and a vicious thirst for power that defines one group of people being inherently inferior to any other group. A hate that through the media and politics, the Internet, has radicalized angry, alienated, lost, and isolated individuals into falsely believing that they will be replaced—that’s the word, “replaced”—by the “other”—by people who don’t look like them and who are therefore, in a perverse ideology that they possess and [are] being fed, lesser beings.”
Biden called on “all Americans to reject [that] lie.” He condemned “those who spread the lie for power, political gain, and for profit.” “[T]he ideology of white supremacy has no place in America,” he said. “Silence is complicity.”
“We have to refuse to live in a country where fear and lies are packaged for power and for profit.
“We must all enlist in this great cause of America.
“This is work that requires all of us—presidents and politicians, commentators, citizens. None of us can stay in the sidelines. We have to resolve here in Buffalo that from…this tragedy…will come hope and light and life. It has to. And on our watch, the sacred cause of America will never bow, never break, never bend. And the America we love—the one we love—will endure.”
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who represents Buffalo, today wrote a letter to Rupert Murdoch, chair of the Fox Corporation, along with another three of the corporation’s leaders, to urge them to stop “the reckless amplification of the so-called ‘Great Replacement’ theory on your network’s broadcasts.” He noted that people who watch the Fox News Channel are nearly three times more likely to believe in the replacement myth than those who watch other networks. He pointed out “the central role these themes have played in your network’s programming in recent years,” especially on Tucker Carlson’s show. He wrote: “I implore you to immediately cease all dissemination of false white nationalist, far-right conspiracy theories on your network.”
New York representative Elise Stefanik, the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, who paid for ads pushing the replacement myth, today said: “It is not the time to politicize this tragedy. We mourn together as a nation.” Other Republicans insisted they did not know what the Great Replacement Theory is, although a number of them are on video articulating it.
Interviewed by Silvia Foster-Frau of the Washington Post, Buffalo resident James Baldwin dismissed the notion that it was the devil who inspired the Buffalo shooter. “That’s not the devil,” he said. “That’s America. They made him, they brought him up, they put him there.”
There was other big news today. Glenn Thrush and Luke Broadwater of the New York Times reported that on April 20, attorneys in the Department of Justice (DOJ) wrote to the lead investigator for the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, Timothy J. Heaphy, to ask if the committee would share transcripts from some of their interviews. Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division Kenneth A. Polite Jr. and U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew M. Graves told Heaphy that some of the transcripts might “contain information relevant to a criminal investigation we are conducting.”
The House committee is trying to figure out exactly what happened on January 6 and in the weeks around it. It is not conducting a criminal investigation. That ground is the turf of the Department of Justice, which has so far brought indictments against at least 828 people, more than 280 of whom have pleaded guilty. The four defendants who had a jury trial were each convicted on all counts. One defendant was acquitted by a Trump-appointed judge, who agreed with the defendant's statement that he had not seen a police line and had possibly been waved into the building. (Video shows the defendant was not screaming or attacking anyone inside the building).
The request indicates that the Department of Justice is looking broadly at the period around January 6. It also suggests that the committee has covered a lot of ground very quickly and that its information might be of use to the Justice Department.
The committee will not simply hand over their material. Congress is part of the legislative branch of government, and the Department of Justice is part of the executive branch, so there is the issue of the separation of powers to deal with. A source told Thrush and Broadwater that the committee and the Justice Department are negotiating. The Justice Department wants the transcripts; the committee wants any relevant evidence the Justice Department has.
Legal analyst Glenn Kirschner tweeted: “Whether this was always the DOJ plan (& whether the J6 committee knew it or not), important info has been developed by the J6 panel that would not have been developed had the witnesses been subpoenaed to the grand jury (as they would have pled the 5th).” He added: “If the J6 committee investigation HAD taken a back seat to a DOJ grand jury investigation, we would go years w/out knowing what any of the 1000+ witness[es] had said. But now, we’ll have a front row seat to it all beginning June 9 AND all of those transcripts can be used in the GJ!”
Continued below:
Hugo Lowell, who is a congressional reporter for The Guardian, tweeted tonight that Stephanie Grisham, a former Trump aide, will be back in front of the January 6th committee tomorrow. The committee is bringing former witnesses back in to confirm evidence and details.
The committee will begin to hold its public hearings on June 9.
There are other legal cases in the news today, too, having to do with foreign influence during the Trump administration. The Department of Justice filed a civil enforcement action to force Stephen A. Wynn to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) as a foreign agent working for China. The Justice Department says that from at least June 2017 through at least August 2017, Wynn lobbied Trump and members of his administration to force out of the U.S. a Chinese national who was here for political asylum. Such a case is so exceedingly rare that the Department of Justice said it had not brought such a case in more than 30 years. Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen said, “Where a foreign government uses an American as its agent to influence policy decisions in the United States, FARA gives the American people a right to know.”
During this period, Wynn was one of four Republican National Committee finance chairs; the other three were Elliott Broidy, Michael Cohen, and Louis DeJoy. In 2020, Broidy pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate foreign lobbying laws; he worked to win benefits for Chinese and Malaysian interests from the Trump administration. Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight counts of campaign finance violations, tax fraud, and bank fraud. Louis DeJoy was appointed in May 2020 to head the United States Postal Service, where he made changes that appeared to be attempts to influence the 2020 election. Broidy recruited Wynn to work for China, thinking that Wynn’s work with the RNC, his business experience in China, and his friendship with Trump “would be helpful in getting access to Trump Administration officials.”
FARA scholar Carrie Levine tweeted: “So, to recap, DOJ is alleging that Wynn was contacting Trump administration officials to advocate for China while serving as RNC finance chair.”
In another case, a superseding indictment filed today in New York federal court accuses Trump’s good friend Thomas Barrack of accepting a pledge of $374 million from the United Arab Emirates while he was also illegally lobbying the administration for the UAE.
Today, in the wake of the Buffalo shooting, Miles Taylor—a member of Trump’s administration who warned anonymously of how dangerous Trump was—announced he was leaving the Republican Party and called on others to do the same. “In the wake of the mass shooting in Buffalo on Saturday,” he wrote, “it’s become glaringly obvious that my party no longer represents conservative values but in fact poses a threat to them—and to America.”
—
Notes below:
https://www.insider.com/all-the-us-capitol-pro-trump-riot-arrests-charges-names-2021-1
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/jan-6-rioters-stormed-capitol-gladiator-caveman-costumes-sentenced-pri-rcna27727
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/judge-acquits-federal-defense-contractor-jan-6-charges-rcna23245
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/matthew-martin-january-6-defendant-not-guilty/
Twitter avatar for @hugolowell
Hugo Lowell
@hugolowell
New: Former Trump aide Stephanie Grisham is testifying to the Jan. 6 committee again tomorrow, per sources familiar. The panel has started reaching back out to a number of top witnesses to confirm evidence and details, sources say.
May 18th 2022
1,365 Retweets6,298 Likes
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-compel-us-businessperson-register-under-foreign-agents-registration
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/us/politics/elliott-broidy-foreign-lobbying.html
Twitter avatar for @glennkirschner2
Glenn Kirschner
@glennkirschner2
Whether this was always the DOJ plan (& whether the J6 committee knew it or not), important info has been developed by the J6 panel that would not have been developed had the witnesses been subpoenaed to the grand jury (as they would have pled the 5th).
Justice Dept. Is Said to Request Transcripts From Jan. 6 Committee
The committee has interviewed more than 1,000 people so far, and the transcripts could be used as evidence in potential criminal cases or to pursue new leads.
nytimes.com
May 17th 2022
1,274 Retweets4,000 Likes
https://www.democrats.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/schumer_letter_to_murdoch_517.22.pdf
Twitter avatar for @briantylercohen
Brian Tyler Cohen
@briantylercohen
Elise Stefanik (who paid for ads promoting replacement theory) on the Buffalo shooting (in which the shooter invoked replacement theory): "It is not the time to politicize this tragedy. We mourn together as a nation.”
May 17th 2022
1,096 Retweets4,771 Likes
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/trump-friend-barrack-sought-millions-uae-investments-lobbying-uaes-beh-rcna29306
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/17/trump-fundraiser-barrack-sought-uae-investment-while-lobbying-for-country-prosecutors-say.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/us/politics/jan-6-committee-transcripts.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/17/buffalo-tops-shooting-neighborhood/
Twitter avatar for @glennkirschner2
Glenn Kirschner
@glennkirschner2
If the J6 committee investigation HAD taken a back seat to a DOJ grand jury investigation, we would go years w/out knowing what any of the 1000+ witness had said. But now, we’ll have a front row seat to it all beginning June 9 AND all of those transcripts can be used in the GJ!
May 17th 2022
1,930 Retweets7,045 Likes
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/buffalo-shooting-replacement-theory-trump-gop-stefanik-rcna29266
Twitter avatar for @levinecarrie
Carrie Levine
@levinecarrie
Wow. DOJ filed a civil enforcement action against businessman and former RNC finance chair Steve Wynn, seeking to compel him to register as a foreign agent under FARA because he lobbied the Trump admin on behalf of China.
justice.gov/opa/pr/justice…
May 17th 2022
1,060 Retweets2,941 Likes
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/05/17/remarks-by-president-biden-and-first-lady-biden-honoring-the-lives-lost-in-buffalo-new-york-and-calling-on-all-americans-to-condemn-white-supremacy/
The committee will begin to hold its public hearings on June 9.
There are other legal cases in the news today, too, having to do with foreign influence during the Trump administration. The Department of Justice filed a civil enforcement action to force Stephen A. Wynn to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) as a foreign agent working for China. The Justice Department says that from at least June 2017 through at least August 2017, Wynn lobbied Trump and members of his administration to force out of the U.S. a Chinese national who was here for political asylum. Such a case is so exceedingly rare that the Department of Justice said it had not brought such a case in more than 30 years. Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen said, “Where a foreign government uses an American as its agent to influence policy decisions in the United States, FARA gives the American people a right to know.”
During this period, Wynn was one of four Republican National Committee finance chairs; the other three were Elliott Broidy, Michael Cohen, and Louis DeJoy. In 2020, Broidy pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate foreign lobbying laws; he worked to win benefits for Chinese and Malaysian interests from the Trump administration. Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight counts of campaign finance violations, tax fraud, and bank fraud. Louis DeJoy was appointed in May 2020 to head the United States Postal Service, where he made changes that appeared to be attempts to influence the 2020 election. Broidy recruited Wynn to work for China, thinking that Wynn’s work with the RNC, his business experience in China, and his friendship with Trump “would be helpful in getting access to Trump Administration officials.”
FARA scholar Carrie Levine tweeted: “So, to recap, DOJ is alleging that Wynn was contacting Trump administration officials to advocate for China while serving as RNC finance chair.”
In another case, a superseding indictment filed today in New York federal court accuses Trump’s good friend Thomas Barrack of accepting a pledge of $374 million from the United Arab Emirates while he was also illegally lobbying the administration for the UAE.
Today, in the wake of the Buffalo shooting, Miles Taylor—a member of Trump’s administration who warned anonymously of how dangerous Trump was—announced he was leaving the Republican Party and called on others to do the same. “In the wake of the mass shooting in Buffalo on Saturday,” he wrote, “it’s become glaringly obvious that my party no longer represents conservative values but in fact poses a threat to them—and to America.”
—
Notes below:
https://www.insider.com/all-the-us-capitol-pro-trump-riot-arrests-charges-names-2021-1
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/jan-6-rioters-stormed-capitol-gladiator-caveman-costumes-sentenced-pri-rcna27727
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/judge-acquits-federal-defense-contractor-jan-6-charges-rcna23245
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/matthew-martin-january-6-defendant-not-guilty/
Twitter avatar for @hugolowell
Hugo Lowell
@hugolowell
New: Former Trump aide Stephanie Grisham is testifying to the Jan. 6 committee again tomorrow, per sources familiar. The panel has started reaching back out to a number of top witnesses to confirm evidence and details, sources say.
May 18th 2022
1,365 Retweets6,298 Likes
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-compel-us-businessperson-register-under-foreign-agents-registration
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/us/politics/elliott-broidy-foreign-lobbying.html
Twitter avatar for @glennkirschner2
Glenn Kirschner
@glennkirschner2
Whether this was always the DOJ plan (& whether the J6 committee knew it or not), important info has been developed by the J6 panel that would not have been developed had the witnesses been subpoenaed to the grand jury (as they would have pled the 5th).
Justice Dept. Is Said to Request Transcripts From Jan. 6 Committee
The committee has interviewed more than 1,000 people so far, and the transcripts could be used as evidence in potential criminal cases or to pursue new leads.
nytimes.com
May 17th 2022
1,274 Retweets4,000 Likes
https://www.democrats.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/schumer_letter_to_murdoch_517.22.pdf
Twitter avatar for @briantylercohen
Brian Tyler Cohen
@briantylercohen
Elise Stefanik (who paid for ads promoting replacement theory) on the Buffalo shooting (in which the shooter invoked replacement theory): "It is not the time to politicize this tragedy. We mourn together as a nation.”
May 17th 2022
1,096 Retweets4,771 Likes
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/trump-friend-barrack-sought-millions-uae-investments-lobbying-uaes-beh-rcna29306
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/17/trump-fundraiser-barrack-sought-uae-investment-while-lobbying-for-country-prosecutors-say.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/us/politics/jan-6-committee-transcripts.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/17/buffalo-tops-shooting-neighborhood/
Twitter avatar for @glennkirschner2
Glenn Kirschner
@glennkirschner2
If the J6 committee investigation HAD taken a back seat to a DOJ grand jury investigation, we would go years w/out knowing what any of the 1000+ witness had said. But now, we’ll have a front row seat to it all beginning June 9 AND all of those transcripts can be used in the GJ!
May 17th 2022
1,930 Retweets7,045 Likes
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/buffalo-shooting-replacement-theory-trump-gop-stefanik-rcna29266
Twitter avatar for @levinecarrie
Carrie Levine
@levinecarrie
Wow. DOJ filed a civil enforcement action against businessman and former RNC finance chair Steve Wynn, seeking to compel him to register as a foreign agent under FARA because he lobbied the Trump admin on behalf of China.
justice.gov/opa/pr/justice…
May 17th 2022
1,060 Retweets2,941 Likes
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/05/17/remarks-by-president-biden-and-first-lady-biden-honoring-the-lives-lost-in-buffalo-new-york-and-calling-on-all-americans-to-condemn-white-supremacy/
