Call Logs Underscore Trump’s Efforts to Sway Lawmakers on Jan. 6
Luke Broadwater and Maggie Haberman – March 30, 2022
Peter Navarro, former trade advisor to the White House, speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Oct. 30, 2020. (Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times).
WASHINGTON — As part of his frenzied attempt to cling to power, President Donald Trump reached out repeatedly to members of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, both before and during the siege of the Capitol, according to White House call logs and evidence gathered by the House committee investigating the attack.
The logs, reported earlier by The Washington Post and CBS and authenticated by The New York Times, indicated that Trump had called Republican members of Congress, including Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, as he sought to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes from several states.
But the logs also have a large gap with no record of calls by Trump from critical hours when investigators know that he was making them. The call logs were among documents turned over by the National Archives to the House committee examining the attack last year on the Capitol.
The New York Times reported last month that the committee had discovered gaps in official White House telephone logs from the day of the riot. The Washington Post and CBS reported Tuesday that a gap in the phone logs amounted to 7 hours and 37 minutes, including the period when the building was being assaulted.
Investigators have not uncovered evidence that any of the call logs were tampered with or deleted. It is well known that Trump routinely used his personal cellphone, and those of his aides, to talk with other aides, congressional allies and outside confidants, bypassing the normal channels of presidential communication and possibly explaining why the calls were not logged.
The logs appear to have captured calls that were routed through the White House switchboard. Three former officials who worked under Trump said that he mostly used the switchboard operator for outgoing calls when he was in the residence. He would occasionally use it from the Oval Office, the former officials said, but more often he would make calls through the assistants sitting outside the office, as well as from his cellphone or an aide’s cellphone. The assistants were supposed to keep records of the calls, but officials said the record keeping was not thorough.
People trying to reach Trump sometimes called the cellphone of Dan Scavino, former deputy chief of staff and omnipresent aide, one of the former officials said. (The House committee investigating the attack recommended Monday evening that Scavino be charged with criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with a subpoena from the panel.)
But the call logs nevertheless show how personally involved Trump was in his last-ditch attempt to stay in office.
One of the calls made by Trump on Jan. 6, 2021 — at 9:16 a.m. — was to McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican, who refused to go along with Trump’s pressure campaign. Trump checked with the White House switchboard operator at 10:40 a.m. to make sure a message had been left for McConnell.
McConnell declined to return the president’s calls, he told reporters Tuesday.
“The last time I spoke to the president was the day after the Electoral College declared President Biden the winner,” McConnell said. “I publicly congratulated President Biden on his victory and received a phone call after that from President Trump and that’s the last time we’ve spoke.”
The logs also show Trump reached out on the morning of Jan. 6 to Jordan, who had been among members of Congress organizing objections to Joe Biden’s election on the House floor.
The logs show Trump and Jordan spoke from 9:24 a.m. to 9:34 a.m. Jordan has acknowledged speaking with Trump on Jan. 6, although he has said he cannot remember how many times they spoke that day or when the calls occurred.
Trump called Hawley at 9:39 a.m., and Hawley returned his phone call. A spokesperson for Hawley said Tuesday that the two men did not connect and did not speak until March. Hawley had been the first senator to announce he would object to Biden’s victory, and continued his objections even after rioters stormed the building and other senators backed off the plan.
The logs also show that Trump spoke from 11:04 a.m. to 11:06 a.m. with former Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., who had recently lost his reelection campaign to Sen. Jon Ossoff.
A spokesperson for Sen. Bill Hagerty, R- Tenn., confirmed he had called Trump on Jan. 6 but said they did not connect. Hagerty declined to comment.
Despite the lack of call records from the White House, the committee has learned that Trump spoke on the phone with other Republican lawmakers on the morning of Jan. 6.
For instance, Trump mistakenly called the phone of Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, thinking it was the number of Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. Lee then passed the phone to Tuberville, who said he had spoken to Trump for less than 10 minutes as rioters were breaking into the building.
The president also fielded a call from Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the top House Republican, who told Trump that people were breaking into his office on Capitol Hill.
During that call, Trump was said to have sided with the rioters, telling the top House Republicans that members of the mob who had stormed the Capitol were “more upset about the election than you are.”
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, was also calling lawmakers that day and continued to do so even after rioters laid siege to the building. In an evening phone call, he made clear that the effort to fight the result of the election was still alive even after the riot.
“Sen. Tuberville, or I should say Coach Tuberville, this is Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer,” Giuliani said in a voicemail message intended for Tuberville, but mistakenly left on Lee’s phone. “I’m calling you because I want to discuss with you how they’re trying to rush this hearing and how we need you, our Republican friends, to try to just slow it down.”
The news of the call logs came the same day that the White House said Biden would not extend executive privilege to cover any testimony to the committee by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, who worked as his advisers.
“The president has spoken to the fact that Jan. 6 was one of the darkest days in our country’s history, and that we must have a full accounting of what happened to ensure that it never occurs again,” said White House spokesperson Kate Bedingfield. “And he’s been quite clear that they posed a unique threat to our democracy and that the constitutional protections of executive privilege should not be used to shield, from Congress or the public, information about an attack on the Constitution itself.”
Kushner is scheduled to testify before the committee this week, while Ivanka Trump has been negotiating the terms of her potential cooperation.
Some Ukrainians believe Russia is targeting landmarks to erase country from the map
Conor Devlin – March 28, 2022
Kharkiv’s Fine Arts Museum was locked up tight and the workers had gone. It was after midnight on March 3, a week after the Russian army had invaded Ukraine. The two-story museum, with its 25,000 works of art, had seen no damage.
That changed in an instant. A Russian shell exploded nearby, shaking the building and shattering all its windows. Fortunately, the museum’s director, Myzgina Valentyna, and her staff had taken down the art and moved it to a secure location.
Kharkiv’s 17th century Holy Dormition Cathedral was not so lucky. A day before the museum was hit, Russian forces shelled the cathedral as residents hid inside. While no civilians were injured, the attack destroyed the church’s stained-glass windows and badly damaged some decorations.
Valentyna told NBC News the museum cannot be repaired right now. “The situation in the city is very, very difficult,” she said.
Image: Building of the Fine Art Museum damaged by shelling in Kharkiv (Oleksandr Lapshyn / Reuters)
Ukraine is home to seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and since the Russians launched their invasion, at least 39 landmarks across the country have been damaged, looted or reduced to ruins, according to the Transatlantic Dialogue Center, a Ukrainian political nonprofit based in Kyiv. On March 23, Mariupol’s city council confirmed via Telegram that the Russian military destroyed the city’s Arkhip Kuindzhi Art Museum, housing over 2,000 exhibits and an extensive collection of works by prominent Ukrainian artists. The fate of the artwork remains unclear.
Targeting historic monuments and cultural heritage sites is a war crime under international law, according to The Hague Convention of 1954. But that all seems to be part of Russia’s plan, some cultural authorities say. “They just want to erase from the map Ukraine — our heritage, our history, our identity and Ukraine as an independent state,” said Iryna Podolyak, Ukraine’s former vice minister of culture, who said Russia’s military seems to be targeting cultural heritage sites in addition to houses, hospitals and schools.
Fire trucks near the Dormition Cathedral after shelling by Russian forces of Constitution Square in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on March 2, 2022. (Sergey Bobok / AFP – Getty Images)
Collateral or intentional damage?
Russia’s military tactics have made it harder to determine whether landmarks are being specifically targeted or whether damage is a byproduct of attacks on the civilian population. Russian forces have shelled nonmilitary areas from long distances in an attempt to demoralize Ukraine and drive civilians out of cities.
Russia has framed the invasion as a rescue of ethnic Russians and a purge of “Nazi” elements from a territory where it has blood and family ties.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told U.N. diplomats via video message on March 1 that “as President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly emphasized, we treat the Ukrainian people, their language and traditions with unfailing respect.”
But on Feb. 21, Putin said in a speech, “There is no nationhood in Ukraine. … Contemporary Ukraine was completely created by Russia … by Soviet Russia.”
Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, a professor in Jewish studies at Northwestern University, believes the damage is both collateral and intentional, but “is more likely to be called deliberate destruction.” He notes that Russian authorities have been confiscating textbooks on Ukrainian history from libraries in occupied areas and burning them.
“Putin is absolutely confident, as many Russian bureaucrats [were] in the 1860s,” said Petrovsky-Shtern, “that Ukrainian language doesn’t exist, that Ukrainian people do not exist, that Ukraine is a nonentity and can never be sovereign because there is no such country as Ukraine.”
By leveling the country’s landmarks, some experts argue, Putin will try to redefine Ukraine’s history and culture as Russian. “If we are speaking about Russian politics, during the last few years, we could say that the Russian president and government says there is no Ukrainian culture and everybody is all Russian,” said Igor Kozhan, director general of the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum in Lviv.
Monument of city founder Duke de Richelieu is seen covered with sand bags for protection in Odessa (Liashonok Nina / Reuters)
This reappropriation is part of Putin’s justification for his war of choice, a belief that Ukrainian cultural experts assert is pure fiction. “It is just the imagination of a sick person,” said Podolyak.
Ukrainians have also hurled the Nazi charge right back at the Russians, as they did Saturday after Russia allegedly damaged an important reminder of genocide. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense tweeted on March 26 that the Russians had “fired on and damaged” the Holocaust Memorial at Drobitsky Yar, site of a German massacre of approximately 15,000 Jewish civilians during World War II. “The Nazis have returned,” said the tweet. “Exactly 80 years later.”
Protecting landmarks
As Ukraine’s museums, monuments and heritage sites come under siege, Ukrainians are banding together to protect their landmarks. Peter Voitsekhovsky, an analyst at the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation, a nonprofit, said residents in Odesa had piled sandbags around the city’s famed 19th century Opera House and the iconic statue of Odesa’s founder, the Duke of Richelieu. Voitsekhovsky said that for Odesans, the Richelieu statue holds the same significance as the Statue of Liberty does for Americans. “With Ukraine’s rich history, there are so many places that are symbols for the soul of the nation,” he added. “But you cannot cover the whole country with all its temples, monuments and churches with sandbags.”
In Lviv, a city in western Ukraine that dates to 1237 and is a UNESCO world Heritage site, workers have covered historic statues in protective materials, installed metal sheets over the stained-glass windows in the town’s Latin Cathedral and removed religious icons from the churches. As the Russian army smashed across the border on Feb. 24, Igor Kozhan’s staff sprang into action, securing the windows, strengthening the walls and transporting the National Museum’s collection to a safe place.
Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum (Bernat Armangue / AP file)
Kozhan also helped draw plans to move the collection out of Ukraine to museums in Western Europe as needed. But he believes “the Russian army won’t be shown on our city streets.”
One of the most important heritage sites in all of Ukraine is St. Sophia’s Cathedral in Kyiv. Over 1,000 years old, this gold-domed church was once the center of Ukrainian Orthodox Christianity and is home to a spectacular collection of frescoes, icons and mosaics. But one mosaic stands out. It depicts the Virgin Mary on a gold background with her hands raised toward the sky.
Yuri Shevchuk, a lecturer of Ukrainian at Columbia University, explained that Ukrainians refer to this mosaic as the “Indestructible Wall.” Local legend says that as long as this wall remains standing, Ukraine will never perish.
Virginia Thomas with her husband, Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas (left)
The wife of a US Supreme Court judge repeatedly pressed Trump White House staff to overturn the 2020 presidential election, US media has reported.
Virginia Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, reportedly sent 29 text messages to former adviser Mark Meadows, urging him not to concede.
Ms Thomas called Joe Biden’s victory “the greatest heist of our history”.
The texts are among 2,320 messages Mr Meadows provided to a committee investigating the US Capitol riot.
In the text messages, seen by CBS News and The Washington Post, she urged Mr Meadows, who was Donald Trump’s chief of staff, to “make a plan” in a bid to save his presidency.
“Do not concede. It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back”, she wrote on 6 November. It is unclear if Mr Meadows responded.
Ms Thomas also appeared to push QAnon conspiracy theories and urged Mr Meadows to appoint Sidney Powell, a conspiracy theorist and lawyer, to head up Mr Trump’s legal team.
“Sounds like Sidney and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud,” Ms Thomas wrote. “Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.”
Mr Meadows told Ms Thomas that he intended to “stand firm” and said that he “will fight until there is no fight left”.
The Trump campaign later distanced itself from Ms Powell, after she made dramatic claims of voter fraud, without providing any evidence, at several media events.
Virginia Thomas – who goes by Ginni – is a prominent Republican fundraiser. She was formerly associated with the Tea Party wing of the party, a hard-line conservative movement to which Mr Meadows was also affiliated during his time in the House of Representatives.
She has been married to conservative-leaning Justice Clarence Thomas for 35 years, and has insisted her activist work has no influence on her husband’s work with the Supreme Court.
Clarence Thomas is the longest-serving member of the US Supreme Court, having served since 1991, and is currently in hospital with “flu-like” symptoms.
Since the Covid pandemic began, however, Mr Thomas has become more vocal and participates in most oral arguments.
In February 2021 the Supreme Court rejected Donald Trump’s challenges to the elections result, however Mr Thomas dissented from the decision, calling it “baffling”.
Wife’s texts leave Justice Thomas in a difficult position
The revelation of Ginni Thomas’s conspiracy-minded text messages have prompted critics on the left to call for Clarence Thomas to be impeached and removed from his lifetime seat on the Supreme Court.
They point to his lone dissent from the Supreme Court decision ordering the release of White House documents to the congressional committee investigating the 6 January Capitol attack as evidence that he was secretly protecting his wife, who was closely involved in efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s election defeat.
Mr Thomas’s defenders counter that he should not be held responsible for the activities of his spouse and, in any regard, there are no ethical rules that apply to high court justices.
The impeachment process for Supreme Court justices is the same as those for US presidents – a majority vote in the House of Representatives and two-thirds to convict and remove in the US Senate. That’s an unreachable bar given the current partisan divide of the latter chamber.
In fact, only one US Supreme Court justice has been impeached by the House in US history. Samuel Chase was accused of political bias and misdeeds in 1804. He was acquitted in the Senate by a comfortable margin.
Related:
Good Morning America
Ginni Thomas urged White House chief of staff to challenge election results, text messages show
Benjamin Siegel, Katherine Faulders, Joanthan Karl and Devin Dwyer
March 25, 2022
In the fall of 2020, after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the presidential election, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, repeatedly urged White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to attempt to overturn the election results, according to text messages obtained by congressional investigators.
“Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!” Thomas wrote to Meadows on Nov. 10 after the election was officially called for Biden. “You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”
Sources familiar with the text messages, which were obtained by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, confirmed their authenticity to ABC News. The content of the messages was first reported by The Washington Post and CBS News.
Meadows, who did not respond to all of Thomas’ missives, texted in late November that Trump’s challenge of the election results was “a fight of good versus evil.”
“Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs,” he wrote. “Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues. I have staked my career on it. Well at least my time in DC on it.”
“Thank you!! Needed that! This plus a conversation with my best friend just now … I will try to keep holding on. America is worth it,” Thomas replied.
PHOTO:In this Oct. 21, 2020 file photo White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows talks to reporters at the White House in Washington, D.C. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images, FILE)
The messages — more than two dozen between Thomas and Meadows in November of 2020, and one from Jan. 10 — were among the thousands of pages of text messages, emails and documents Meadows voluntarily turned over to the committee last year, before he reversed course and decided not to cooperate with the inquiry.
Thomas did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News. A spokesman for the committee declined to comment on the messages or their contents.
Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, told the Washington Free Beacon in March that she and her husband don’t talk to each other about their work.
“Like so many married couples, we share many of the same ideals, principles, and aspirations for America,” Thomas told the conservative news outlet. “But we have our own separate careers, and our own ideas and opinions too. Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me, and I don’t involve him in my work.”
PHOTO: Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas sits with his wife and Virginia Thomas while he waits to speak at the Heritage Foundation, Oct. 21, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images, FILE)
Thomas said that she attended the “Stop the Steal” rally outside the White House on Jan. 6, but left early because it was cold. She said she had no role in planning the event.
Regarding the attack on the Capitol, Thomas told the Free Beacon she was “disappointed and frustrated that there was violence that happened following a peaceful gathering.”
Ethics experts have raised questions about Thomas’ work on major issues that come before the Supreme Court, on which her husband sits.
In January, the court declined to block the Jan. 6 committee from obtaining Trump White House records over the objection of only one justice: Clarence Thomas.
“There were some eyebrows raised when Justice Thomas was that lone vote,” said Kate Shaw, ABC News Supreme Court analyst and Cardozo Law professor. “But he did not explain himself, so we don’t actually know why he wished to take up the case.”
There are no explicit ethics guidelines that govern the activities of a justice’s spouse, experts say, but there are rules about justices avoiding conflicts of interest. Federal law requires that federal judges recuse themselves from cases whenever their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”
Only one of the nine justices dissented: Clarence Thomas.
At the time, Thomas provided no explanation for why he would have approved Trump’s request — a standard omission when the top court addresses emergency motions.
The Washington Post reported that in a message from November 6, 2020, Ginni Thomas told Meadows not to concede the election, saying “it takes time for the army who is gathering for his back.” In a message November 10, 2020, Ginni Thomas declared Biden’s win “the greatest Heist of our History.”
In total, Ginni Thomas and Meadows exchanged 29 texts from November 2020 to January 2021, the outlet reported, all of which are now part of the trove of evidence the January 6 panel is investigating.
Meadows and Ginni Thomas didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider.
CNN reported Thursday that the committee obtained the texts from Meadows. The former Trump official is believed to have turned over thousands of text messages before he stopped cooperating with the House panel late last year.
Ahead of the Supreme Court’s order on Trump’s White House documents, Meadows filed a supporting brief in favor of blocking the release of documents.
Ginni Thomas has come under scrutiny in recent months over her conservative advocacy given her husband’s position on the nation’s highest court. Earlier this month, she acknowledged attending the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Capitol attack but said she got cold and left before Trump spoke.
She also denied having ties to the organizers of the rally after several news outlets reported that she was connected to January 6 rally organizers and served on the board of a conservative group that promoted overturning the 2020 election results.
Ginni Thomas has long been an active participant in partisan politics. In a recent interview with the Washington Free Beacon, she said she and her husband had their “own separate careers, and our own ideas and opinions too.”
“Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me, and I don’t involve him in my work,” she said.
No one seems to know why your President wants to invade your sovereign neighbor to the West. Maybe Russia has run out of riches Vlad and his buddies can siphon off and send over to Democratic nations to be laundered.
Reports are that Vladimir Putin is one of the richest Kleptocrats in the world, with between $85 and $100 billion in net worth. That’s quite an accomplishment on a reported government salary of about $250,000 a year, even after a 20 year run as Pillager in Chief.
Although that seems like more than enough money for any one person to squander for at least a couple of hundred lifetimes, some people are just not satisfied with any amount of wealth. We have someone in America who’s exactly like that, and is a matter of fact one of Vlad’s best buds.
America’s deposed ex-president, Donald J. Moneybags, has been bragging about his worth, for as long as he’s foisted his material ego on the American public, even before the Apprentice T.V. show. But news flash, the Donald’s accounting firm Mazars USA just trimmed his sales and his purported net worth, claiming that the last decade of financial statements they prepared were, not surprisingly, unreliable. His accountants rude awakening probably had something to do with the investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James and a hearing this week in a Manhattan court.
A.G. James is investigating whether Trump or the Trump Organization falsified asset values to obtain loans, to bamboozle investors, and to pay lower taxes.
During the hearing, state Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron ordered Trump, his daughter Ivanka Trump and son Donald Trump Jr. to comply with the A.G’s subpoenas and to testify under oath about the Trump organization’s business practices.
Engoron stated in the ruling, that when a state Attorney General investigates a “business entity, uncovers copious evidence of possible financial fraud, and wants to question, under oath, several of the entities’ principals, including its namesake,” they have a right and a duty to do so. Apparently Mazars sees the writing on the wall, has unceremoniously kicked trump to the curb and is going into full self preservation mode.
Maybe Vlad Putin is just a school-yard bully who wants to beat up on the neighborhood weakling and take his lunch money, because well, he just can.
Vlad Farkus
Vlad’s Cousin Skut Farkus
This reminds me of the movie “Christmas Story”, in which Ralphie and his school-mates Flick and Schwartz are tormented by the neighborhood bullies Scut Farkus and Grover Dill.
Scut Farkus and Grover Dill waylay Ralphie and his friends on their way home from school
Ralphie, his little brother and school-mates are confronted by Farkus
Ralphie and his mates are terrified of the bullies.
But Ralphie eventually decides he’s taken the bullying and a beating once too often. He finally snaps and beats up Farkus, giving him a black eye and a bloody nose. The Ukrainian people might have reached that same juncture, living under the thumb of their Russian bully.
Ralphie surprises even himself when he stands up to Farkus.
America, NATO and the European Union have emphatically stated that should Putin invade their sovereign neighbor, they will help Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his country men and women, give Putin and his 190,000 lackeys two nasty public black eyes and a world-wide size financial bloody nose. Those threatened sanction have as yet not dissuaded Putin from his military buildup but may still avert a war that no one can win.
Vlad, er Scut will rue the day they pick on the weakling.
It’s hard to discern what goes through the head of a megalomaniac like Putin. The world has been under assault from the coronavirus pandemic for more that two years, almost a million Americans have perished and more that 6 million world-wide, but Putin has decided this is a perfect time to start World War III. The civilized world wonders what kind of a human being is this.
We’re trying to dissect the addled mine of our own egomaniac ex president Donald J. Trump. After losing handily to Joe Biden in 2020, and in spite of more than 60 U.S. courts (including our Supreme Court) having ruled against his efforts to challenge that fair election, he conspired to illegally overturn the election by inciting an insurrection, by firing-up his MAGA storm-troopers to attack our Nations Capitol, assault it’s defenders and hang his own vice president.
And trump’s lackeys in the U.S. Congress still fawn over him with unwavering devotion.
We must apologize to the Russian people for not doing a better job of prosecuting their Kleptocrats who violate international money laundering laws, but it’s not for the lack of trying. Unfortunately there are some business and political leaders in our country who flaunt those laws and hinder the prosecution of those criminals enterprises.
I believe the primary reason Putin has decided now is the time to invade the Ukraine, is because their burgeoning Democratic Westward leanings are a threat to his tight grip on his Russian monopoly and money train. If the Russian populace can sort through the propaganda maze enough to see what life could be under a more Democratic governance, we might witness another Russian revolution.
We understand it won’t be easy. Putin holds ultimate control over your elections and the media. When Putin is routinely reelected with more than 90% of the vote, it’s virtually impossible for any opposition candidates to win anything. And anyone who stands up to Putin ends up in prison, in a hospital or in a cemetery. We understand that once the right to vote is usurped and the ability to protest against an Autocratic government or criticize a tyrannical despot is stifled, it may be impossible to regain any slim thread of democratic choice.
That’s why our Democratic Party, some true Republicans and those bracing the pillars of our democracy and democratic institutions, are staunchly defending American’s ability to vote and our ability to fairly count those votes. Unfortunately, trump’s Grand Old Party has relinquished constitutional and conservative Democratic principles to an Autocratic self serving cult leader who demands slavish allegiance. The right to vote in America is under assault in dozens of states and endorsed by most of the cowardly republi-cons in Congress.
We know one thing for sure, if trump would have prevailed over Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, Vlad and his 150,000 – 190,000 storm troopers would have already set up camp in Kiev, already begun rounding up opposition leaders, religious leaders and activists who preach Democracy. They would have already begun pillaging Ukraine’s wealth and national treasures, quickly transferred most of it westward for safekeeping and extinguished all civil opposition and inclination towards Democracy.
But in spite of Putin’s stranglehold over every aspect of your society, we know the Russian people are capable of courageous opposition.
Putin blamed the 200,000 protestors who flooded the streets of Moscow in 2014 on Hillary Clinton, but a thirst for Democracy was the real impetus.
Anti-Putin Protests
Britannica: Silencing critics and actions in the West
“On February 27, 2015, opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was gunned down within sight of the Kremlin, just days after he had spoken out against Russian intervention in Ukraine. Nemtsov was only the latest Putin critic to be assassinated or to die under suspicious circumstances. In January 2016 a British public inquiry officially implicated Putin in the 2006 murder of former Federal Security Service (FSB; the successor to the KGB) officer Alexander Litvinenko. Litvinenko, who had spoken out against Russian government ties to organized crime both before and after his defection to the United Kingdom, was poisoned with polonium-210 while drinking tea in a London hotel bar. Britain ordered the extradition of the two men accused of carrying out the assassination, but both denied involvement and one—Andrey Lugovoy—had since been elected to the Duma and enjoyed parliamentary immunity from prosecution.”
Flowers, condolence messages, and a memorial photograph marking the spot in Moscow’s Red Square where Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was assassinated on February 27, 2015. Ivan Sekretarev/AP Images
In January 2021, protests against Putin took place across Russia for imprisoning Alexei Navalny. Navalny, 44 year-old lawyer and anti-corruption campaigner who has dedicated himself to toppling Putin’s reign of terror, has stood fast in spite of being intimidated, poisoned, doused with dye and jailed. Navalny has accused the Russian president of using state cash to enrich himself and his family, including building a £1billion palace at Gelendzhik on the Black Sea.
Russian police are arresting protesters demanding the release of top Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Credit: AP:Associated Press
The Sun reported in January 2021: “The Kremlin has denied being “afraid” of Navalny and his pro-democracy campaigners but are concerned to act tough to prevent mass support growing for a Ukrainian-style revolution.”
Alexei Navalny and his Supporters
Navalny’s eye will take months to recover after surgery
Alexei Navalny Poisoned
What does Russia represent? How do the Russian people want to be viewed by the entire civilized world.
The latest intelligence reports released by the White House yesterday claim that Putin fully intends to invade their sovereign peaceful neighbor Ukraine and then target activists, journalists, religious leaders and others for extermination or prison camps. This sounds exactly like Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Is this what the Russian people want to be remembered for in history? Hitler’s plan for world domination caused between 20 and 27 million Soviet Union citizens to perish in WW II, from all war related causes, a terrible toll. Where does Putin’s plans for empire stop?
In the U.S. and most of the West, Russia is viewed as a tyrannical Kleptocracy who’s despots stalk and murder civil activists around the world, who imprisons peaceful protestors, and as an international bully who infiltrates and overthrows democratic nations, who engages in cyber warfare in Democratic countries, including meddling in our own democratic elections. Russia represents a failed nation, with an economy less that half of our state of California, less than Italy, a much smaller country. What does Russia manufacture, besides weapons of war? What does Russia export except fossil fuels that pollute the world and contribute to global warming. It seems like the only other things Russia exports is pain, grief, terror and doped athletes, including a talented and tragic 15 year old Olympic skater who probably had no say on what went into her body.
Putin couldn’t care less for anyone or anything but himself and his own ego. Is he attacking his countries own enormous social, civil and financial problems? No, he’s attacking a peaceful neighbor.
We had our own Putinesque Kleptocratic leader who couldn’t care less for his country, its Constitution, it’s laws and institutions, it’s reputation around the world or it’s people. Trump’s “I alone can fix it” motto was as hollow as his promises to MAGA. His main goal was enriching himself and his family.
America came to its senses and kicked it’s Autocratic want-a-be bully to the curb in 2020. He’s not quite gone yet but our Democratic institutions and courts are working around the clock on that. The Republican enablers in our Congress are in full defense mode behind trump’s assault on our Democracy but we have an election this year and another in 2024, so maybe the less radical right trump sycophants will take note of Putin’s Russia death wish and vote for more Democracy minded candidates.
Trump’s MAGA faithful cry “Freedom” at every turn, but they have no idea what real freedom is until they live under a despot like Putin, Hitler or trump. These self-serving Autocrats steal your voice, your vote, your opinion, your thoughts, your humanity and your treasures and wealth.
What a large majority of America’s voters are wondering is, how much better off our country, the world and even the Russian people would be if Hillary Clinton had been elected instead of Donald Trump. Can we even count the ways? A few jump off the page of history; our withdrawal from The Iran Nuclear Treaty and their renewed race for nuclear weapons, ditto The Paris Accord and worsening global warming, and just as important, the assent of Autocratic governments and sympathizers who disdain Democracy, free choice and a real authentic “Freedom.” And Trump’s admiration for Putin only encouraged his expansionist ambitions of Russian empire.
To all the Democratic leaning Russians, activists and empathetic citizens, it’s obvious Putin listens to no one but himself, not his flunkies, his neighbors, the European Union, NATO, the United Nations and especially not the United States, but maybe he’ll listen to the Russian people. He’s amassed almost 200,000 soldiers on your far Western border, more than half of his entire army. This would be an extremely opportunistic time for the Russian people to engage in civil disobedience and peaceful protests. Save the Ukrainian people from a catastrophic invasion, blood bath and refugee crisis. Ukrainians, especially the younger generations dream of a more equitable and Democratic future. Save your Ukrainian brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles and cousins from a more tragic history. And save your own soldiers from coming home in body-bags. Stand up to Putin and change the direction of your Nation, civil society and economic well being. Save the Ukrainians, the Russian people and the entire world from Putin’s diabolical plans of empire.
I did a 2 1/2 year U.S. Army tour in Germany during the height of the early 60’s cold war. I was a Sergeant stationed in a nuclear artillery unit as a communications section chief. We had our nuclear missiles aimed at the Soviets and they had theirs aimed at us. We were on high alert 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. I sometimes feel like I went to sleep almost 60 years ago, just woke up and nothing has changed with Russia; a once great nation with a back-ward looking leader stuck in the 19th century.
I remember one night out with friends; I guess we had too much to drink and I got lost driving. We ended up near the East German border. The thing I remember most vividly was the darkness; very few lights were visible on the East German side. Bleak would be an understatement.
We have too many people in our own country who want to turn off the lights on America’s Democratic experiment; many of them are republi-cons in the U.S. Congress. Courageous American’s will not let them succeed.
The world is wondering what he’s thinking, or if he’s thinking?
Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin on Saturday, February 19 alongside his ally, Belarusian president Lukashenko watched the Russian military perform nuclear drills, while the U.S. announced that Russian forces were ‘poised to strike’ Ukraine. The nuclear bomb drills were carried out simultaneously from the sea, land and the air.
I’m surprised Putin didn’t use a big fat Sharpie to sign the documents and then show it to the cameras, like Trump’s televised spectacles.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin signed decrees to recognize independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk. Moscow ordered troops into these areas on Monday, escalating the prospect of outright war between Russia and Ukraine.Alexei Nikolsky/TASS via Getty Images
Note to Mr. Putin: Your false flag operations in Eastern Ukraine aren’t fooling anyone; hopefully the Russian people can see through your propaganda.
Starting a war under false pretenses never turns out well; we proved that by invading Iraq and are still paying the costs and consequences.
And you Mr. Putin should have learned that in Afghanistan; the beginning of the downfall of the Soviet Empire.
You claim the West is against the Russian people, so you believe you alone must reconstitute the Soviet empire in order to save it from the dust bin of history. That’s nonsense. Were against your reckless assault and invasion of sovereign Democratic nations and your disregard of human misery and death.
You want to go down in history as the great leader who brought Russia back from the dead, but the only thing you’ll accomplish is to strengthen the EU, NATO and the worlds resolve in Defending Democracy. You will live in infamy as a radical lunatic who started a needless war and destroyed his country.
Russia are you listening; America are you listening?
How Russian Hackers Helped Expose the Right-Wing Dark Money Corrupting Our Courts
Sheldon Whitehouse – November 16, 2021
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/Photos Getty Images
A piece of news that came out on the same day that the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case—at the center of what the NRA has bluntly termed the Republican justices’ “project” to overturn gun safety— revealed how deep the rot goes.
The news came from Russian hackers on the dark web. According to reporting by The Trace, the hackers unearthed a document suggesting that the NRA paid a lawyer more than $500,000 to advocate on its behalf through “the Independence Institute.” This included filing pro-gun rights “friend of the court,” or amicus, briefs in Supreme Court cases—including the one heard earlier this month—brought by the NRA’s New York affiliate. None of these payments were disclosed to the court or the public. In essence, the NRA cloned itself to amplify its voice before the court.
The justices say their rules guard against this kind of mischief, but this incident is far from isolated. As House Courts Subcommittee Chairman Hank Johnson and I have pointed out repeatedly, and as I recently detailed for the Yale Law Journal, the court’s rules only require the most immediate expenses involved in producing an amicus brief to be disclosed—little more than the cost of printing the brief for submission. A dark-money group or big industry front, such as the NRA, can hide behind a cloak of anonymity and multiply its voice to the court many times over. In the court’s most recent decision in favor of these dark-money groups, at least 100 Koch-funded dark-money groups filed briefs supporting the plaintiff—a dark-money organization that is itself a major part of this Koch network.
A problem on their own, flotillas of anonymous amicus briefs are only eddies atop a much larger and more dangerous problem beneath the water. Wealthy right-wing donors have for years funded and coordinated a massive dark-money operation to secure through our federal judiciary what they cannot accomplish through democratic elections. With the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo at the heart of this operation, they funneled over $400 million through a network of front groups to guide hand-picked judicial nominees onto the federal courts, including Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. (The NRA alone spent $1 million on ads supporting Kavanaugh’s confirmation, saying Kavanaugh was selected “to break the tie” on guns-rights cases.) With their judges confirmed, the right-wing donors fund lawsuits to advance their radical agenda through the courts. And finally, as this NRA incident shows, they anonymously fund flotillas of amicus briefs to support their arguments and signal how the judges should vote.
This scheme delivers results. The Roberts Court has issued more than 80 partisan decisions delivering clear wins to big Republican donor interests. In the past two years alone, the Supreme Court further eroded protections against discriminatory voter suppression laws; carved out a novel constitutional protection for dark money; used religious liberty as a cudgel to invalidate public health laws protecting against a deadly pandemic; and, most recently, used its “shadow docket” to nullify the constitutional right to an abortion in Texas, at least temporarily. The scheme’s donors got everything they paid for, and more.
In the same 2019 Supreme Court case in which the NRA apparently funded one of the amicus briefs, several Senate colleagues and I filed our own brief urging the court to assert its independence from the scheme. We warned that the American people were not fools and were starting to take notice of the court’s obedience to corporate, polluter, and partisan donor interests’ marching orders.
What did the court do in response? It marched on as its credibility tumbled. It delivered win after win for donors. Meanwhile, polls showed a steady decline in the public’s faith in the court. Despite justices’ publicity campaign to convince us otherwise, more than 60 percent of Americans now believe that the justices’ votes are influenced more by politics than the law.
The 80-to-zero record isn’t easily rectified, but there are steps that the court and judiciary could take to heal itself. Greater transparency can ensure that groups like the NRA can’t leverage their wealth to mislead judges and the public. Stronger ethics requirements for federal judges and a code of ethics for the Supreme Court can head off conflicts of interest. Reporting gifts and hospitality received by justices can restore the public’s confidence. These are measures the courts could put in place tomorrow.
Congress has a role to play, too. Bills like my DISCLOSE Act would shed a light on those who seek to corrupt our democracy with endless amounts of dark money. There are bipartisan proposals to require judges to abide by the same ethical standards as the other two branches of government. And I am working closely with Hank Johnson to strengthen the amicus disclosure requirements that the NRA exploited.
It’s never a good look when Americans must rely on Russian hackers to see who’s influencing our Supreme Court. Nor is it sustainable for a growing majority of Americans to believe politics, not the law, guides the court’s decisions. The solution is a blend of transparency and accountability for the Supreme Court—a solution we must enact swiftly.
Granderson: You can’t be a Republican by today’s standards if you won’t go along with the ‘Big Lie’
LZGranderson –November 3, 2021
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), who voted to impeach Donald Trump, announced Friday that he will not seek reelection in 2022. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades / Associated Press)
I first met Rep. Adam Kinzinger nearly 10 years ago at a time in which he was a rising star within the Republican Party. Not only was he in his early 30s and a natural on television, he went into the House with a good deal of gravitas, having served in the Air Force in both Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.
Over the years, we’ve discussed his views on social issues as well as his thoughts about President Obama’s military strategy. Sometimes I would agree with him, sometimes I would not. But regardless of whether we saw eye to eye on the topic, I always knew where he stood. That’s not to say Kinzinger didn’t play politics. You don’t get to serve six terms in Congress without your share of vague answers and long walks along the party line. But his core principles never changed — he is conservative on gun control, immigration and abortion.
He’s just no longer a Republican.
At least not by today’s standards.
Last week, he became the second Republican House member who voted to impeach President Trump to announce he was not seeking reelection in 2022. He joins Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (R-Ohio), a former college football and NFL star who also came into office with some cachet, only to see it evaporate as his party fell into Trumpism. In response to the Kinzinger news, Trump issued a statement that read in part: “2 down, 8 to go!”
It was like watching Thanos collect another infinity stone during “Avengers: Endgame.”
Consider this: The polling analysis website FiveThirtyEight has Kinzinger voting in support of Trump’s policies more than 90% of the time. He won the Republican primary in 2018 with 68% of the vote and went unopposed in the primary in 2020 and won the general election with more than 64% of the vote. Kinzinger even voted against the first impeachment in 2019. None of that seems to matter. He along with Gonzalez, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and a handful of others now find themselves out of favor with the party because they wouldn’t go along with Trump’s Big Lie.
Talk about what have you done for me lately.
“The Republican establishment now — whether it’s the [National Republican Congressional Committee], whether it’s Kevin McCarthy — have held onto Donald Trump,” Kinzinger said to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. “They have continued to breathe life into him, and so actually, it’s not really handing a win as much to Donald Trump as it is to the cancerous kind of lie and conspiracy — not just wing anymore — but mainstream argument of the Republican Party.”
Kinzinger was supported by the tea party insurgency that fueled the Republican landslide in the 2010 midterm election; it helped him defeat another Republican in the GOP primary in 2012. Those days of being a GOP darling are over.
“It’s not on Liz Cheney and I to save the Republican Party,” Kinzinger said. “It’s on the 190 Republicans who haven’t said a dang word about it, and they put their head in the sand and hope somebody else comes along and does something.”
Yeah, but what exactly?
There hasn’t been a consequential third-party candidate since Ross Perot received 19% of the popular vote in 1992. And while political analysts disproved the theory that Perot cost George H.W. Bush reelection, the truth remains that those 20 million votes Perot received did not go to Bush or Bill Clinton. Given the thin margin of victory in states such as Arizona and Georgia, how comfortable would Kinzinger be as a third-party candidate if his presence opens the door to a second Trump term?
And given Trump’s intense support among the GOP base — and continuing efforts by Republicans to sabotage voting laws — can anyone be sure that Trump won’t secure a second term, even without a third-party spoiler?
This is what makes Kinzinger’s departure so noteworthy. Over the course of one term, he went from rock star to GOP pariah all because he wouldn’t toss his core conservative values off a cliff.
In 2011, Kinzinger was listed on Time magazine’s “40 Under 40” list of future national leaders in American politics. Ten years later, Kinzinger is fulfilling that promise albeit not in the fashion he or the editors of the magazine imagined.
Kinzinger has said this is the end of his career in the House but not in politics. That could mean he’s eyeing a run for an Illinois Senate seat; both are currently held by Democrats. Sen. Richard J. Durbin will be close to 80 when he seeks reelection in 2026. But it’s doubtful Kinzinger will wait that long. Sen. Tammy Duckworth is up for reelection in 2022, but Kinzinger will have a hard time making it through the Republican primary with Trump still hanging over his shoulders.
Perhaps the governor’s office? Maybe president? Whatever Kinzinger decides to do next, one thing is crystal clear: Democrats won’t be his only opponents and facts won’t be much of an ally.
Comparing January 6 to a terrorist attack, former lawmakers – including Republicans – say Congress must investigate Trump’s role
Charles Davis – October 29, 2021
Violent Trump supporters try to break through a police barrier at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Photo by /John Minchillo/ AP
The legal brief, filed in federal court in Washington, DC, is signed by 22 Republicans.
It argues Congress has a right to see Trump’s presidential records related to January 6.
The documents are being sought by the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.
Former President Donald Trump’s campaign to undermine confidence in the 2020 election unfolded “like a fever dream in James Madison’s restless imagination,” testing American democracy like no other previous US president, argues a legal brief filed this week by a bipartisan group of 66 retired members of Congress.
The filing, first reported by The Washington Post, comes as part of a lawsuit initiated by Trump that seeks to block congressional investigators from obtaining White House documents that could expose the former president’s role in the January 6 insurrection. Trump’s lawyers have argued such documents are protected by “executive privilege” and outside of Congress’ legislative mandate.
But the former lawmakers, including 22 Republicans, say that argument does not hold up – and that the extraordinary nature of the US Capitol riot, not a request for presidential records, is the actual threat to the US Constitution and the separation of powers.
“The once unimaginable problem here, of course, is that a sitting president and his aides personally orchestrated a multifaceted assault on the peaceful transition of presidential power,” the brief states, “and neither Congress nor the public more broadly yet knows the full range of means deployed or considered and discarded.”
What is publicly known, however, is that “Trump played an outsized – and likely central – role in orchestrating the events that led to the January 6th attack,” the lawmakers argue, likening it to a thwarted terrorist plot.
“If traitors bent on disrupting and damaging our government were to meticulously plan and nearly succeed in flying a jumbo jet into the White House, we would not expect Congress to implement stronger safeguards without the opportunity to investigate the attackers,” the brief states.
Tom Coleman, a former Republican member of Congress from Missouri, told the Post that it was vital that Trump’s lawsuit be defeated. “If Congress fails to win this case,” he said, “then you might as well pack up Congress and let them go home because this is fundamental to our checks and balances and the rule of law in this country.”
‘This stuff won’t go away’: PFAS chemicals contaminate Wisconsin’s waterways and soil
Tom Perkins October 22, 2021
Last year, residents in Campbell, Wisconsin, a four-square-mile island city in the Mississippi River, learned disturbing news: toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” used in firefighting foam at a neighboring airport had probably been contaminating their private wells for decades.
As state and local leaders search for a solution, residents now use bottled water for drinking, cooking and brushing their teeth. Yet the situation represents more than an enormous inconvenience. Some strongly suspect that the seemingly high rate of cancer, Crohn’s disease and other serious ailments that have plagued the island’s residents stem from the dangerous chemicals.
“It’s emotionally draining,” said Campbell town supervisor Lee Donahue. “People are angry that it happened, they’re angry that they had no control over it, and they’re angry that their well is contaminated for no fault of their own.”
Campbell isn’t alone. Across the US similar stories of water contaminated with PFAS are emerging.
PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of chemicals used across dozens of industries to make products water, stain and heat resistant. They’re called “forever chemicals” because they don’t naturally break down, and they persist in the environment and accumulate in humans’ and animals’ bodies. The compounds are linked to cancer, decreased immunity, thyroid problems, birth defects, kidney disease, liver problems and a range of other serious diseases.
Between July and October, officials in nearby Eau Claire in Wisconsin shut down half its 16 municipal wells over PFAS contamination, and across the state PFAS have poisoned drinking water supplies, surface water in lakes and streams, air, soil and wildlife like deer and fish that are eaten by the state’s residents.
As municipalities and residents wrestle with the water crisis, the state’s Republican-controlled legislature has killed legislation and blocked funding meant to address the problem, which is likely much larger than currently known: only about 2% of the state’s utilities have tested for the chemicals, and those that have check for no more than 30 of the approximately 9,000 PFAS compounds that exist.
“We’ve had difficulty just testing water to get a handle on the scale and scope of PFAS contamination,” said Scott Laesar, water program director with the Clean Wisconsin advocacy group. “We are asking for some really basic information about what’s in people’s water, and if we can’t even get that, then we’re in a difficult spot.”
Wisconsin’s troubles aren’t unique. States around the US are contending with similar difficulties, as increased testing has revealed that drinking water supplies for more than 100 million people are contaminated with PFAS, and the Environmental Protection Agency recently revealed 120,000 sites across the country that may expose people to the chemicals.
A sign warns anglers not to eat fish from the Huron River because of high levels of PFAS contamination. Photograph: Jim West/Alamy
The compounds’ ubiquity makes it difficult to determine sources of contamination, but Wisconsin airports and military bases that use PFAS-laden firefighting foam have often been identified as the culprit, including in Eau Claire, Madison, Milwaukee and Campbell.
The state’s combined groundwater standard for six types of PFAS is 20 parts per trillion (ppt), and the chemicals were detected at levels up to 70 ppt Eau Claire. Madison, a city of more than 250,000 and Wisconsin’s capital, found PFAS in all of its 16 drinking water wells in May 2020, but only at levels that exceeded health standards in one of them, which had been shut down months before.
Meanwhile, the lakes and streams around Madison are contaminated at startling levels. Officials have recorded counts for multiple compounds as high as 102,000 ppt, and levels in fish from nearby Lake Monona reached 180,000 ppt. Wisconsin department of natural resources signs posted along the region’s riverbanks warn residents against eating fish.
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Cities like Milwaukee that draw drinking water from Lake Michigan on the state’s east side face less of a threat because the chemicals are diluted by the large body of water, but many private well owners who aren’t connected to municipal systems have recorded dangerous levels.
In Marinette, just north of Green Bay along Lake Michigan, a massive 10-sq-mile PFAS plume grew from a firefighting foam testing ground owned by manufacturer Tyco Fire Products. The plume hasn’t contaminated the municipal system at high levels, but levels in nearby private wells have reached 254,000 ppt, and alderman Doug Oitzinger said rates of thyroid disease and testicular cancer in young men in the region are “off the charts”. The plume has contaminated the city’s sewage sludge, which now has to be shipped to a specialized facility in Oregon.
PFAS chemicals, including from firefighting foam, contaminates waterways throughout the US. Photograph: Jake May/AP
“This stuff is in the groundwater and won’t go away,” Oitzinger said.
Polluting the lake still has wider consequences. PFAS have been found in a range of Great Lakes fish, and the DNR issued an advisory to limit the consumption of rainbow smelt.
Though residents across the political spectrum are being exposed and PFAS legislation has had at least some bipartisan support, Wisconsin’s Republican leadership last session killed the Clear Act, which would have established drinking water standards and funded cleanup, among other measures. The bill is once again stalled in the Republican-controlled legislature. Democratic governor Tony Evers’ last budget proposed $22m for statewide PFAS testing and cleanup, but that money was stripped away. The state legislature is expected to kill new limits on PFAS being developed by the DNR.
In Campbell, town officials are demanding that the Federal Aviation Administration stop using firefighting foam with PFAS, as is now required by law, but the airport continues using it, town supervisor Donahue said. The city of La Crosse, which owns the airport, has sued PFAS manufacturers for allegedly hiding the foam’s danger.
The cleanup effort is also meeting resistance from an unlikely source – water utilities, which say they don’t have money to filter the chemicals. Meanwhile, one of the few actions taken by the DNR that would require testing and cleanup faces a legal challenge from the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce trade group, which represents some of the state’s PFAS polluters. Should the case go to the state’s supreme court, it will be heard by a pro-business, Republican-controlled judge panel.
“We have an industry that would rather not know what’s out there and is engaged in a pretty cynical effort to maintain the status quo,” Laeser said. “This legislature has had numerous opportunities to invest in addressing PFAS and they have elected not to do so.”
‘There have to be consequences:’ Judge ups sentences for U.S. Capitol rioters
Jan Wolfe and Mark Hosenball October 13, 2021
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal judge in Washington has repeatedly sentenced people who stormed the U.S. Capitol to more prison time than prosecutors sought, saying that even people who were not violent should face consequences for joining the unprecedented assault.
In the past week, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has imposed sentences ranging from 14 to 45 days on four people who pleaded guilty to unlawful parading and picketing inside the Capitol building on Jan. 6 — a misdemeanor offense.
“There have to be consequences for participating in an attempted violent overthrow of the government, beyond sitting at home,” Chutkan said at one of the hearings.
More than 650 people have been charged with joining the Jan. 6 violence, when supporters of Republican Donald Trump fought with police, smashed windows and charged through the building in an attempt to overturn his election defeat. So far, more than 100 people have pleaded guilty, and at least 17 of those defendants have been sentenced.
Four people died on the day of the violence, one shot dead by police and the other three of natural causes. A Capitol Police officer who had been attacked by protesters died the following day. Four police officers who took part in the defense of the Capitol later took their own lives. More than 100 police officers were injured.
On Wednesday, Chutkan sentenced two cousins who breached the Capitol and took selfies while doing so to 45 days in jail.
Prosecutors had asked Chutkan to sentence each of the defendants — Robert Bauer of Kentucky, and Edward Hemenway of Virginia — to 30 days in prison.
A day earlier, Chutkan sentenced an unrelated defendant, Dona Sue Bissey of Indiana, to two weeks of incarceration.
Prosecutors recommended Bissey, 52, serve probation, citing her early acceptance of responsibility and cooperation with law enforcement.
Bissey’s friend, Anna Morgan-Lloyd, avoided jail time after pleading guilty to the same crime, receiving a sentence of three years of probation from a different judge in June.
Chutkan, a former public defender appointed to the federal judiciary by former President Barack Obama, last week sentenced another defendant who admitted to the misdemeanor charge, Matthew Mazzocco, to 45 days in prison.
That court hearing marked the first time that one of the judges overseeing the hundreds of Jan. 6 prosecutions imposed a sentence that was harsher than what the government asked for.
Chutkan is not the first judge to second-guess the Justice Department’s handling of the Jan. 6 prosecutions.
Beryl Howell, the chief judge of the federal court in Washington, has suggested prosecutors were being too lenient in allowing some defendants to plead guilty to misdemeanor offenses.
At a hearing in August, Howell said even defendants facing low-level offenses played a role in “terrorizing members of Congress” on Jan 6.
During a plea hearing, the judge asked: “Does the government, in agreeing to the petty offense in this case, have any concern about deterrence?”
So far, no judge has rejected a plea deal offered by prosecutors in a Jan. 6 case.
Almost all of the defendants to be sentenced so far pleaded guilty to non-violent misdemeanors. The Justice Department has signaled that it plans to seek much stiffer penalties for felonies.
In the case of Florida man Paul Hodgkins, who pleaded guilty to one felony count of obstruction of an official proceeding, the Justice Department requested an 18 month sentence. U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss went lighter on Hodgkins, sentencing him to eight months.
(Reporting by Jan Wolfe and Mark Hosenball; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)
