1st bill out of new GOP-majority House would cut $71 billion from IRS, cost $114 billion
Peter Weber, Senior editor – January 9, 2023
Kevin McCarthy Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
House Republicans passed their first bill of the 118th Congress on Monday night, voting along party lines to cut $71 billion from the IRS. The legislation will not be taken up by the Democratic-controlled Senate, and President Biden said Monday he would veto the cuts if they somehow arrived at his desk. Before the vote, the Congressional Budget Office said the legislation would increase the federal deficit by $114 billion over the next 10 years.
Democrats approved $80 million in IRS funding in the Inflation Reduction Act last year. The IRS says the money will be used to hire 87,000 new employees over the next 10 years, upgrade the agency’s antiquated technology, and beef up enforcement of tax laws on taxpayers earning more than $400,000 a year. Many of the 87,000 new IRS workers will be in customer service, to answer taxpayer questions, the Biden administration says, and others would replace the 50,0000 IRS agents expected to quit or retire in the coming years.
House Republicans promised to prioritize cutting those funds, arguing they will be used to harass middle class taxpayers and “create a ‘shadow army’ to shake down small businesses with assault rifles,” The New York Times reports. “Our very first bill will repeal the funding for 87,000 new IRS agents,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Saturday morning, shortly after being elected speaker on the 15th ballot. “You see, we believe government should be to help you, not go after you.”
Former IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, a Republican appointed by former President Donald Trump, said last November that the new investments in his understaffed agency would make it “even less likely for honest taxpayers to hear from the IRS or receive an audit letter.” Treasury Department spokeswoman Ashley Schapitl said Monday that “the IRS audits nearly 80 percent fewer millionaires than a decade ago,” and the House bill “would deny the agency much-needed resources to hire top talent to go after the $163 billion in taxes avoided by the top 1 percent annually.”
“The only way that House Republicans could make it any more obvious that they’re doing a favor for wealthy tax cheats is by coming out and saying it in exactly those words,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. “This bill is going nowhere in the Senate.”
The in-your-face activism comes in the wake of stinging criticism of Thomas’ high-profile support of extremist right-wing politics even as her husband continues to rule in support of some of the same issues, raising serious conflict-of-interest concerns.
“Conservative organizations and the millions of grassroots conservatives … are united in our support of the 20 courageous members of Congress seeking to change the status quo in Washington,” said an open letter published Wednesday by the Conservative Action Project organization and signed by Thomas and about 70 other right-wing activists and organization officials.
“We stand behind them and beside them in their courageous efforts to find a Speaker of the House who will represent the interests of conservatives,” the letter added.
Most of the 20 “courageous” lawmakers, as they’re referred to in the letter, who have voted against McCarthy in his repeated bids to become speaker had denied the results of the 2020 presidential election, despite no evidence of their claims of widespread voter fraud.
Thomas backed the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionists, even though she testified to members of the House select committee investigating the U.S. Capitol riot that she had no evidence of election fraud.
Text messages previously released by the committee revealed how Ginni Thomas relentlessly pushed Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to do what he could to subvert the 2020 election results and keep Trump in power.
Thomas was joined in signing the letter by Cleta Mitchell, the controversial attorney who was on the phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffesnperger after the 2020 election when the then-president demanded that Raffensperger “find” just enough votes to change his loss to Joe Biden into a victory. That phone call is now at the center of a Georgia grand jury investigation.
Mitchell plotted with the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council to challenge the election in the event Trump lost months before a single vote was cast. Lisa Nelson, the CEO of ALEC, announced to members in early 2020 that the organization had been working with Mitchell on “action items that legislators can take to question the validity” of the election, according to a recording obtained by the watchdog group Documented.
Thomas has been the target of stinging criticism for her role in extremist right-wing politics even as her husband rules on issues dear to her heart.
Supreme Court justices were divided over 2020 election issues but ultimately refused to accept Trump’s claims of election rigging. Clarence Thomas, however, stood out for emphasizing ballot fraud in sympathy with those who, like his wife, refused to accept the results.
Norman Orenstein, emeritus scholar of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, has called it a massive “scandal” that Clarence Thomas continues to rule on issues his “radical insurrectionist” wife is involved in.
“The wife of a Supreme Court justice is a radical insurrectionist. Her husband has refused to recuse himself from any of the cases in which she has been deeply and actively involved. This is a scandal of immense proportions.”
As for McCarthy, the House adjourned until Friday after he lost an 11th vote to become speaker.
EXPLAINER: Capitol riot investigation growing 2 years later
Michael Kunzelman – January 5, 2023
Violent insurrectionists loyal to President Donald Trump try to break through a police barrier on Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)Violent insurrectionists loyal to President Donald Trump, storm the Capitol, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)U.S. Capitol Police hold rioters at gun-point near the House Chamber inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File) Violent insurrectionists loyal to President Donald Trump try to break through a police barrier Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File) Police with guns drawn watch as rioters try to break into the House Chamber at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)People shelter in the House gallery as rioters try to break into the House Chamber at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
The largest investigation in the Justice Department’s history keeps growing two years after a violent mob of supporters of then-President Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol and challenged the foundations of American democracy.
More than 930 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the siege on Jan. 6, 2021, and the tally increases by the week. Hundreds more people remain at large on the second anniversary of the unprecedented assault that was fueled by lies that the 2020 election was stolen.
A surplus of self-incriminating videos and social media posts has made it difficult for riot suspects to present viable defenses. Federal prosecutors have a near-perfect trial record, securing a conviction in all but one case.
The cases have clogged Washington’s federal court, a building less than a mile from the Capitol. Virtually every weekday, judges are sentencing rioters or accepting their guilty pleas while carving out room on their dockets for trials. Already scheduled for this year are trials for about 140 riot defendants.
At least 538 cases, more than half of those brought so far, have been resolved through guilty pleas, trials, dismissals or the defendant’s death, according to an Associated Press review of court records. That leaves approximately 400 unresolved cases at the outset of 2023.
The Jan. 6 attack as an “assault on our democracy,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
“And we remain committed to doing everything in our power to prevent this from ever happening again,” he said in a statement Wednesday.
A look at where the prosecutions stand:
HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE BEEN CHARGED?
The number of defendants charged with Jan. 6-related federal crimes is approaching 1,000. They range from misdemeanor charges against people who entered the Capitol but did not engage in any violence to seditious conspiracy charges against members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys extremist groups accused of violently plotting to stop the transfer of presidential power.
More than 100 police officers were injured at the Capitol. More than 280 defendants have been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement officers on Jan. 6, according to the Justice Department. The FBI is posting videos and photos of violent, destructive rioters in seeking the public’s help in identifying other culprits.
Investigators have used facial recognition software, license plate readers and other high-tech tools to track down some suspects. Networks of online sleuths have helped the FBI identify rioters based on digital clues.
Authorities have shared a staggering amount of evidence with defense lawyers — more than nine terabytes of information that would take over 100 days to view. The shared files include thousands of hours of surveillance footage from the Capitol and hundreds of hours of bodycam videos from police officers who tried to hold off the mob.
HOW MANY HAVE PLEADED GUILTY?
Nearly 500 people have pleaded guilty to riot-related charges, typically hoping that cooperating could lead to a lighter punishment.
About three-quarters of them pleaded guilty to misdemeanors in which the maximum sentence was either six months or one year behind bars. More than 100 of them have pleaded guilty to felony charges punishable by longer prison terms.
The first person to plead guilty to a Jan. 6-related crime was Jon Ryan Schaffer, an Indiana musician who joined the Oath Keepers. Schaffer was one of at least eight Oath Keepers who pleaded guilty before the group’s founder, Stewart Rhodes, and other members went to trial on seditious conspiracy charges.
The Justice Department also cut plea deals with several Proud Boys members, securing their cooperation to build a case against former national leader Enrique Tarrio and other top members of the group. A New York man, Matthew Greene, was the first Proud Boys member to plead guilty to conspiring with others to stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote.
HOW MANY HAVE GONE TO TRIAL?
Dozens of riot defendants have elected to let juries or judges decide their fates. For the most part, they haven’t fared well at trial.
The Justice Department notched a high-stakes victory in November when a jury convicted Rhodes, the Oath Keepers’ founder, and a Florida chapter leader of seditious conspiracy. It was the first seditious conspiracy conviction at trial in decades. Jurors acquitted three other Oath Keepers associates of the Civil War-era charge, but convicted them of other felony offenses.
The next major milestone is the sedition trial of Tarrio and four other members of the Proud Boys. Jury selection in the trial of the far-right extremist group started last month.
Those defenses fell flat. Jurors unanimously convicted all three men of every charge in their respective indictments.
Federal juries have convicted at least 22 people of Jan. 6 charges. Judges have convicted an additional 24 riot defendants after hearing and deciding cases without a jury.
Only one person, New Mexico resident Matthew Martin, has been acquitted of all charges after a trial. After hearing testimony without a jury, U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden concluded that it was reasonable for Martin to believe that outnumbered police officers allowed him and others to enter the Capitol through the Rotunda doors on Jan. 6.
HOW MANY HAVE BEEN SENTENCED?
At least 362 riot defendants were sentenced by the end of 2022. Roughly 200 of them have received terms of imprisonment ranging from seven days to 10 years. Prosecutors had recommended a jail or prison sentence in approximately 300 of those 362 cases.
Retired New York Police Department Officer Thomas Webster has received the longest prison sentence. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who sentenced Webster to a decade in prison, also presided over the first Oath Keepers sedition trial and will sentence Rhodes and Rhodes’ convicted associates.
Webster is one of 34 riot defendants who has received a prison sentence of at least three years. More than half of them, including Webster, assaulted police officers at the Capitol.
The riot resulted in more than $2.7 million in damage. So far, judges have ordered roughly 350 convicted rioters to collectively pay nearly $280,00 in restitution. More than 100 rioters have been ordered to pay over $241,000 in total fines.
Judges also have ordered dozens of rioters to serve terms of home detention ranging from two weeks to one year — usually instead of jail time — and to collectively perform more than 14,000 hours of community service.
Incoming Iowa attorney general Brenna Bird tells 19 staffers to resign
Jared Strong/Capital Dispatch – January3, 2023
The incoming, newly elected Iowa attorney general has asked for the resignations of 19 current staffers, including many in leadership positions but also some longtime staff attorneys, according to Lynn Hicks, a spokesperson for the office who was among those asked to resign.
Brenna Bird, a Republican county attorney who defeated longtime Attorney General Tom Miller, a Democrat, in the November election, requested the resignations on Dec. 22, according to letters obtained by Iowa Capital Dispatch.
“We appreciate your past service to the State of Iowa,” wrote Sam Langholz, whom Bird has selected as her chief deputy when she takes control of the office next week. “But the people of Iowa have elected a new attorney general. To best serve them — and to do the things she told Iowans she would do — the Attorney General-Elect is realigning the office and building a new team that matches her vision for the office.”
Bird pledged during her election campaign to more vigorously defend laws enacted by the Republican-controlled Legislature and to challenge policies enacted by President Joe Biden, a Democrat.
Langholz, former senior counsel for Gov. Kim Reynolds, has worked for the attorney general’s office for about two years and has helped defend against challenges to the governor’s policies and administrative actions.
His letter to 19 of his colleagues asked that their resignations be effective at 8:30 a.m. Jan. 3, at the latest.
“We are timing this transition date and time so that you will receive holiday pay on January 2, regular pay for 30 minutes on January 3, and your normal health insurance coverage for the month of January,” Langholz wrote.
He said the notices of resignation were due on Dec. 28 — six days after the letters were sent.
Hicks, who is Miller’s chief of staff, is among at least 10 who have acquiesced to the requests or had already planned to resign, according to copies of the resignation letters and other information he provided to Capital Dispatch with the consent of the employees. He identified a total of 13 of those asked to resign.
The 19 employees represent less than 10% of the total staff, which has about 150 assistant attorneys general and more than 200 people total, according to state salary records.
Replacing top staffers is common when someone new is elected to a statewide executive position, especially when they are tied to a different political party. However, the letters also targeted attorneys more closely involved in litigating cases, several of whom have been with the office for more than two decades.
“It has been my great honor serving the people of the state of Iowa — particularly the most vulnerable amongst us including older Iowans, veterans, and other at-risk individuals — and am disappointed that I was asked to resign,” wrote Chantelle Smith, an assistant attorney general whose focus is elder abuse and who has been employed by the office since about 2000, according to state records.
Hicks said others who were asked to resign include:
Nathan Blake, the chief deputy attorney general.
Jessica Whitney, the deputy attorney general for public protection and the director of the office’s Consumer Protection Division.
Matt Gannon, the first assistant attorney general, who wrote in his resignation letter: “I wish you success. I have my doubts.”
Chandlor Collins, director of the Human Services Division.
Emily Willits, director of the Licensing and Administrative Law Division.
Sandi Tibbetts Murphy, director of the Crime Victim Assistance Division who wrote in her resignation letter: “It has been a singular honor to serve the people of Iowa, and specifically victims of crime, as part of this Division and I hope that its groundbreaking and pivotal work continues unabated.” Bird has said she might overhaul the division, given her experience prosecuting crimes and interacting with victims of those crimes.
Heather Adams, an assistant attorney general who specializes in licensing and administrative law and public health who had worked for the office since 1994. She told Capital Dispatch: “I do not know why I was asked to resign. I, too, was deeply disappointed to be asked to submit my resignation. I have faithfully served the office, the public, and my public health clients for nearly 30 years — in a nonpartisan manner.”
Mari Culver, an assistant attorney general who specializes in consumer protection. She is the spouse of former Iowa Gov. Chet Culver, a Democrat.
Ashlee Kieler, a communications specialist who had already submitted her resignation.
Ellen Ramsey-Kacena, an assistant attorney general who specializes in human services and family law.
Donn Stanley, an assistant attorney general who specializes in consumer protection. Stanley has worked for the office for about two decades and previously held leadership roles. He also took a leave of absence from the office to be campaign manager for Gov. Culver in 2010.
Sharon Wegner, an assistant attorney general in the Special Litigation Division.
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, who took office Tuesday.
Langholz noted that Miller also installed his “own team” to lead the office after he was first elected in 1978, based on media accounts at the time, and that the number of requested resignations are less than 8% of the total staff. They are at-will employees and “can be terminated at any time and for any lawful reason,” Langholz said.
“To implement her vision for the office, the Attorney General-elect will build a new team that shares her goals and values,” according to a prepared statement Langholz provided. “The Attorney General-elect appreciates the service to Iowa from the individuals leaving the office.”
Jared Kushner blocked Biden’s access to COVID-19 planning in the final days of the Trump era, former aide says
Joshua Zitser – December 30, 2022
Jared Kushner blocked Biden’s access to COVID-19 planning in the final days of the Trump era, former aide says
Jared Kushner denied Biden’s team access to COVID-19 plans in late 2020, a former aide said.
Kushner said Biden’s team should “absolutely not” be looped in, claimed Alyssa Farah Griffin.
She made the claim in a newly released transcript of her interview with the Jan. 6 House panel.
Jared Kushner ordered that the incoming Biden administration be excluded from COVID-19 planning in the aftermath of the 2020 election, a former aide said.
Alyssa Farah Griffin made the claim in an interview with the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot, according to a newly released transcript.
Farah Griffin told the panel that Kushner shot down the a suggestion to include President Joe Biden’s transition team in planning discussions after the election had been called for Biden, per the transcript.
At the time, Trump was angrily refusing to concede defeat, and hyping his baseless theory that the election had been stolen. Though he left office in January 2021, he continues to claim he won the 2020 vote.
In the transcript, Farah Griffin described former COVID Task Force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx asking whether they should be “looping” the incoming Biden transition in.
“Jared just said, ‘Absolutely not,'” Farah Griffin told the panel. “And then we just moved on.”
Farah Griffin’s allegation, which was first reported by The Independent, is the first to directly put blame for the stonewalling on Kushner.
Biden officials complained at the time that the Trump administration was refusing them access to COVID-19 data in the weeks after the election.
Former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told “Fox News Sunday” on November 15, 2020, that the Trump administration had stonewalled crucial COVID-19 data and plans.
Biden also said that week that Trump officials were harming the US by denying them access, per The New York Times.
“If we have to wait until January 20 to start that planning, it puts us behind,” Biden told reporters, referring to the date of his inauguration. “More people may die if we don’t coordinate.”
In the same speech, Biden pressed the Trump administration to provide more details about the allocation of COVID-19 vaccinations. “The sooner we have access to the administration’s distribution plan, the sooner this transition would be smoothly moved forward,” Biden said, per Politico.
Home Depot’s 93-year-old cofounder who said ‘nobody works’ anymore because of ‘socialism’ has donated $64 million to elect Trump and the Republican party over the years
Kelsey Vlamis,Madison Hall – December 29, 2022
Richard Drew / AP Images
Bernie Marcus, the billionaire cofounder of Home Depot, said Thursday “nobody works” anymore.
Marcus said he believed if he founded Home Depot today it wouldn’t be as successful.
Marcus donated millions to Trump in 2016 and 2020, and more to other Republicans over the years.
A billionaire cofounder of Home Depot who said “nobody works” has donated nearly $64 million to political causes over the years, including the campaigns of former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Sen. John McCain, according to data from the Federal Election Commission.
“‘Just give it to me. Send me money. I don’t want to work — I’m too lazy, I’m too fat, I’m too stupid,'” he said, adding that he thinks if he founded Home Depot today it may not have been as successful.
Home Depot today is worth $321 billion and has around 2,300 stores in North America. As for the current US unemployment rate, it’s at 3.7%, the lowest in decades, despite the hiring challenges some businesses are still experiencing.
Marcus, who cofounded Home Depot in 1978, has become a mega-donor to the GOP over the years, supporting Trump’s presidential campaigns in both 2016 and 2020. His public support for Trump sparked calls to boycott Home Depot, prompting the company to distance from him.
In a statement provided to Insider, a spokesperson for Home Depot said: “Our co-founder Bernie Marcus left The Home Depot more than 20 years ago, and his views do not represent the company.”
But going back to at least 1978, Marcus has donated a total of $63,801,322 to political campaigns and PACs, FEC data obtained by Insider showed.
Many of the donations went to directly supporting Republican candidates, including the presidential campaigns of Trump, McCain, Sen. Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and Sen. Mitt Romney, among others.
Some of Marcus’s largest individual donations have gone to conservative super PACS that directly supported Trump.
In 2020, he made two separate donations of $5 million each to the Preserve America PAC, a single-candidate PAC that supports Trump.
In 2016, Marcus made two donations, one for $3 million and one for $2 million, to Rebuilding America Now, a super PAC established to support Trump’s first campaign. He also gave another $2 million to Making America Number 1, a pro-Trump PAC.
Between 2015 and 2022, Marcus donated more than $15 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, a PAC dedicated to helping Republicans gain a majority in the Senate, and more than $5 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund.
Marcus has also donated extensively to House and Senate races, contributing to a long list of Republican lawmakers that includes Sens. Tom Cotton, Mike Lee, Chuck Grassley, Mitch McConnell, and Tim Scott, as well as Reps. Kevin McCarthy and Liz Cheney.
Marcus in 2022 also donated to Herschel Walker, the failed Senate candidate from Georgia, and Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who has been accused of impeding his own party’s agenda.
Marcus and his wife, Billi, have also pledged to give away most of their estimated $8.9 billion fortune. In 2010, they signed The Giving Pledge, a commitment to donate most of their wealth to charitable causes.
What about my right to live without violence? Supreme Court decisions on guns harm survivors.
Richard Alba – December 27, 2022
I have lived since the age of 2 with the damage inflicted by a gun death.
My father was killed while serving in the U.S. military in late 1945 by another soldier test firing his souvenir Luger in a barracks. I can still feel the powerful reverberations of that shot. It immediately threw the life of what remained of my family onto a much more difficult trajectory – less upwardly mobile, much less happy – than it had been on before.
My mother, though she remarried for a time and bore additional children, never knew sustained contentment and took her own life at the age of 60, three decades later. I struggled through an emotionally fraught childhood into a prickly young adulthood. Only years of psychological therapy and finally finding love in my 30s made it possible for me to break with my anger and melancholy.
The 1939 wedding photo of Richard and Mary Alba. Sgt. Alba died in 1945. He was shot by a soldier test firing a gun in the barracks.
This personal background gives me an unusually intense interest in the current rash of American mass shootings and its relation to our Constitution, as interpreted by a conservative Supreme Court. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there were 609 mass shootings (those with four or more victims) by Thanksgiving this year, though last year’s record of 690 looks safe.
There’s a simple explanation for this level of violence: The American rate of gun ownership is exceptional because of the Second Amendment. That part of the Bill of Rights has made it difficult for government to limit gun ownership and even now to restrict concealed arms in public places.
Right to guns vs. right to live free of gun violence
Recent Supreme Court decisions have torqued that difficulty. The District of Columbia v. Heller decision of 2008 established for the first time an individual right to gun ownership and invalidated a widespread previous understanding that the Second Amendment referred to a collective “right of the people,” organized in a “well regulated Militia.”
Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion offers a tutorial on the conservative doctrine of originalism, as he strove to demonstrate the general acceptance in the 18th and 19th centuries of the principle that guns are necessary for individual self-defense.
But there is a glaring lack of balance in the opinion because Scalia, while admitting limits on Second Amendment rights in the abstract, provides no systematic reasoning or principles that might help us establish where the individual’s right to gun ownership ends and the right of the community to live without the constant threat of gun violence begins.
Recent Supreme Court decisions have hampered government efforts to limit gun ownership and restrict concealed arms in public places.
It then opines, “The exercise of other constitutional rights does not require individuals to demonstrate to government officers some special need (as the New York law did).” Ergo, Second Amendment rights should not require it, either.
One would hope that the average law student could spot the flaw in this reasoning: For when the right of speech is abused, an injured party can seek redress in the courts. But what redress is open to the person shot dead or grievously wounded by a gunman?
This distinction makes evident why government and the public have compelling interests in the exercise of Second Amendment rights that they do not for other rights.
It matters that guns are more deadly
Gun rights pose a severe test for the idea of originalism because of the enormous technological advance of weapons since the 18th century. Today’s semi-automatic firearms bear almost no resemblance to the muskets and rifles of the 18th century, which had to be reloaded after a single shot. Can originalism logically justify the right to own a weapon that could not be conceived when the Constitution was written?
In a recent speech, Justice Samuel Alito declared that the court’s decision extending the anti-discrimination provision in civil rights legislation to sexual orientation and gender was wrongly decided. His originalist reasoning: “It is inconceivable that either Congress or voters in 1964 understood discrimination because of sex to mean discrimination because of sexual orientation, much less gender identity.”
It seems highly doubtful that the Second Amendment as now understood can survive the Alito test. Can anyone seriously maintain that the Founders, whose knowledge of guns was limited to single-shot weapons, would have sanctioned constitutionally the widespread keeping and bearing of modern arms of war, which can tear the human body apart in seconds? Can anyone really believe that they would have intended such sanction for these weapons if given the knowledge that they are being used regularly to massacre American schoolchildren?
When is a society civilized?
The damage of gun violence is a spreading blight on American society. It affects not only the victims themselves but also their survivors, who must live with emotional loss and psychic trauma indefinitely.
In refusing to consider how to balance the Second Amendment’s right to gun ownership with the right of other citizens to live without the constant threat posed by ubiquitous weaponry, the court is contributing to the deterioration of the United States as a civilized society.
In common understanding, a society is civilized when citizens can go unarmed about their daily business without fear of violence. Today, pedestrians in many parts of the United States have to fear that the person walking by may be armed, and that the police can do nothing to protect them until he or she pulls out the weapon and starts shooting.
And then it is too late, as so many recent mass shootings instruct us.
Richard Alba is a distinguished professor of sociology at The Graduate Center at the City University of New York.
Richard Alba is a distinguished professor of sociology emeritus at The Graduate Center, CUNY.
Older and unappreciated: Workers over 50 face a rough time on the job
Katrin Park – December 26, 2022
Forget the Great Resignation. The shakeup of Generation Z workers, seeking fulfillment and treating their jobs like a game of musical chairs, will sort itself out over time. They have their whole lives ahead of them to find something that fits.
The larger crisis is what to do with all the older-than-50 workers searching for gainful employment. This is one of the worst times to be a worker in the twilight of a career. Only half of Americans are steadily employed throughout their 50s. Last year, more than a quarter of workers ages 55 to 59 were out of the workforce, which meant that they didn’t have jobs to retire from.
Across the globe, full-time, stable employment that culminated in pensions has become a relic of the pre-pandemic past. In the United States, an increasing number of workers can’t afford to retire, not with inflation and uncertain retirement savings. Now, a worker must wait to age 70 to collect maximum Social Security benefits, and Congress is expected to discuss raising the age for Social Security eligibility next year.
Multiple factors create challenges for older workers
The disappearance of stable employment with a living wage and benefits – once the driver of upward mobility – has added to growing inequality. Global crises like COVID-19, changing business models and emerging technologies have led to the rise of low-quality, temporary jobs.
If workers have physically demanding jobs such as in retail or hospitality, poor health can force them to drop out. Many workers in their 50s also have caregiving responsibilities for older generations, which temporary gigs don’t accommodate. And of course there’s ageism.
A Brookings Institution report found a strong relationship between holding steady employment in one’s 50s and working in their 60s and beyond. So interventions to support older workers must start earlier on, even in one’s 40s. This can be done by improving the quality of low-wage jobs – including through higher minimum wages, greater work schedule flexibility and paid leave – to reduce turnover. That will help people work longer.
Likewise for firms, this is an opportunity to avoid productivity losses in the long run by maintaining a stable workforce. Firms that rely on disproportionately large numbers of hourly workers tend to have higher turnover rates. They are also less likely to invest in employee training and technologies.
Assisting older workers with developing skills that are in demand can help them get jobs again and meet businesses’ needs.
Such efforts are vital to maintain Social Security benefits, projected to be cut by more than 20% come 2034 unless Congress and the president intervene. Without action, monthly benefits would shrink by hundreds of dollars on average, and anyone 55 or younger would never get a full benefit.
And yet, unemployment statistics tend to leave out 50-something workers who are forced into early retirement. That happens because they are not part of the prime-age workforce, and they haven’t yet reached the benchmark ages associated with retirement, according to Beth Truesdale, a sociologist and author of the Brookings paper. Labor force policy and retirement policy should be considered as one system but are not, and these workers fall through the gap.
It’s a gap that’ll only get wider and harder to fill with the passage of time.
Which is alarming, given that an aging population, not a growing one, is the ticking time bomb.
The global population has just hit the 8 billion milestone, with life expectancy soaring and fertility rates dropping. Across the world, people 75 and older are the fastest-growing group in the labor force. Today, 40 million Americans are 65 and older, a figure expected to double over the next 40 years.
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Not preparing for this inescapable demographic shift will result in a shrinking workforce that struggles to support a ballooning number of “retirees.”
To be sure, improving the working conditions of low-wage jobs or training programs alone will not solve the myriad challenges older workers face. Age discrimination persists.
Katrin Park is a freelance writer and a former director of communications with the International Food Policy Research Institute.
Unfortunately, among the more than 40 million Americans 50 and older in the labor force, according to a 2018 analysis by ProPublica and the Urban Institute, half of them are likely to be laid off or forced into retirement regardless of income, education level or geography.
Without stronger legal protection for older workers and changing business models so they value work experience as a competitive advantage necessary for greater productivity, older workers will face fewer opportunities, resulting in higher rates of poverty in old age.
The disappearance of 50-something workers should factor more prominently in future of work debates. Even if all the quirks of Gen Z work habits were resolved tomorrow, a massive demographic work crisis still looms.
This editorial is the sixth in a series, “The Danger Within,” urging readers to understand the danger of extremist violence and possible solutions. Read more about the series in a note from Kathleen Kingsbury, the Times Opinion editor.
Whoever shot the small steel ball through the front window of the Brewmaster’s Taproom in Renton, Wash., this month wasn’t taking chances. The person wore a mask and removed the front and rear license plates of a silver Chevrolet Cruze. The police still have no leads.
The bar’s owner, Marley Rall, thought the motivation seemed clear: The attack followed social media posts from conservatives angry about the bar’s Drag Queen Storytime and Bingo, slated for the following weekend.
The Taproom sits in a two-story office park a 15-minute drive from downtown Seattle. It has a little outside patio and about two dozen local craft beers on tap. Dogs are welcome. A sign on the door reads: “I don’t drink beer with racists. #blacklivesmatter.” Now there’s also a note with an arrow pointing to the hole in the window reading: “What intolerance looks like.”
Over the past two years, criticism of the bar’s long-running monthly Drag Queen Storytime had been limited to nasty voice mail messages and emails. But talk on right-wing message boards has turned much darker, Ms. Rall said. One post this month about the Taproom event read: “Drag Queen Storytime Protest. STOP Grooming Kids! Bring signs, bullhorns, noisemakers.”
Ms. Rall knew how protests like this could escalate. There was an incident in 2019 at a library drag queen story hour about 10 minutes from the bar, where members of the Proud Boys and other paramilitary groups got into a shouting match with supporters of the event.
Was the shot at the Taproom a warning? She had no way to know, so she kept the event on the calendar.
Sitting in a corner of the Taproom a few hours before her story time was set to begin, Sylvia O’Stayformore said she didn’t care if the Proud Boys showed up to an event that was aimed at teaching children empathy. Protesters or not, she had a show to put on. “I’d never be intimidated by all this,” she said.
On Monday, protesters vandalized the home of a gay New York City councilor with homophobic graffiti and attacked one of his neighbors in protest of drag queen story hours held at libraries.
The protests use the language of right-wing media, where demonizing gay and transgender people is profitable and popular. Tucker Carlson, a Fox News host who rails against transgender people and the medical facilities that serve them, has the highest-rated prime-time cable news program in the country. Twitter personalities with millions of followers flag drag events and spread anti-trans rhetoric that can result in in-person demonstrations or threats. Facebook pages of activist groups can mobilize demonstrators with ease.
Some Republican lawmakers are using the power of the state in service of the same cause. Several states are trying to restrict or ban public drag shows altogether, amid a record number of anti-L.G.B.T.Q. bills introduced this year. Republican politicians also used a barrage of lies about trans people in their campaign ads during the midterm elections, funded to the tune of at least $50 million, according to a report released in October from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.
This campaign isn’t happening in a vacuum. Levels of political violence are on the rise across the country, and while some of it comes from the left, a majority comes from the right, where violent rhetoric that spurs actual violence is routine and escalating. At anti-L.G.B.T.Q. events, sign-waving protesters are increasingly joined by members of the street-fighting Proud Boys and other right-wing paramilitary groups. Their presence increases the risk of such encounters turning violent.
In a series of editorials, this board has argued for a concerted national effort against political violence. It would require cracking down on paramilitary groups, tracking extremists in law enforcement, creating a healthier culture around guns and urging the Republican Party to push fringe ideas to the fringes. Every American citizen has a part to play, and the most important thing we all can do is to demand that in every community, we treat our neighbors — and their civil liberties and human rights — with respect.
One way to do that is to call out and reject the dehumanizing language that has become so pervasive in online discussions, and in real life, about particular groups of people. Calling L.G.B.T.Q. people pedophiles is an old tactic, and it makes ignoring or excusing any violence that may come their way easier. While direct calls for violence are beyond the pale for most Republican politicians, and the causes of specific violent acts are not easily traced, calling transgender people pedophiles or “groomers” is increasingly common and usually goes unchallenged.
Marco Rubio, a Republican senator from Florida, released a TV ad recently in which he said: “The radical left will destroy America if we don’t stop them. They indoctrinate children and try to turn boys into girls.” A conservative activist group recently ran ads in several states, including one that said, “Transgenderism is killing kids.” This year, as Florida lawmakers debated the so-called Don’t Say Gay bill, a spokeswoman for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida posted on Twitter: “If you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children. Silence is complicity.”
The silence from a great majority of Republicans on the demonization of, and lies about, trans people has indeed meant complicity — complicity in what experts call stochastic terrorism, in which vicious rhetoric increases the likelihood of random violence against the people who are the subject of the abusive language and threats.
Drag queen story hours aren’t the only current target for right-wing extremists. On Aug. 30, an operator at Boston Children’s Hospital, a pioneer in providing gender-affirming care, answered the telephone at about 7:45 p.m. and received a disturbing threat. “There is a bomb on the way to the hospital,” the caller said. “You better evacuate everyone, you sickos.” It was the first of seven bomb threats the hospital received over several months. The most recent came on Dec. 14.
After extremists posted online the address of a physician who works with trans children at the hospital, the doctor had to flee the home. “These have been some of the hardest months of my life,” the doctor said.
Around the country, at least 24 hospitals or medical facilities in 21 states have been harassed or threatened in the wake of right-wing media attacks, according to a tally this month by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. To protect their employees, some hospitals are stripping information about the transgender services they provide from their websites. The messages that appear to trigger these attacks are often outlandish lies about what care these medical facilities actually provide. As a result, many hospitals feel they have no choice but to protect their staff, even if it means making the care they provide less visible. Removal of official information creates a risk that more disinformation could fill the void.
Given the transnational nature of extremism, these threats can come from anywhere. The F.B.I. arrested three people in connection with the various threats against Boston doctors. One person lived in Massachusetts, another in Texas and the third in Canada.
Data collected by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, which tracks political violence, puts the harassment of hospitals into a wider, troubling context. Acts of political violence against the entire L.G.B.T.Q. community have more than tripled since 2021; anti-L.G.B.T.Q. demonstrations have more than doubled in the same period. And the nature of the intimidation is changing: Protesters dressed as civilians have been replaced by men in body armor and fatigues; signs have been replaced by semiautomatic rifles.
Even dictionary publishers have become targets. This year, a California man was arrested for threatening to shoot up and bomb the offices of Merriam-Webster because he was angry about its definitions related to gender identity.
Publix heiress Julie Fancelli was prepared to contribute as much as $3 million to a rally on Jan. 6, 2021 that organizers were calling the “Million MAGA March,” according to interview transcripts.
John Matze, a co-founder and former CEO of the alternative social media platform Parler, faced questioning by the committee on the platform’s efforts to moderate violent rhetoric before and after the Jan. 6, 2021 riot.
Nick Fuentes’ lawyer told the panel in February that Fuentes had been notified he was “a subject and possibly a target” of an investigation by the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
The latest on the report and the files:
Cassidy Hutchinson felt inspired to testify after reading book on Watergate
After transcripts of Cassidy Hutchinson’s initial testimony to the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack, in which she answered “I don’t recall” to several of the committee’s questions, she said she felt an internal dilemma.
She ordered two copies of a book detailing the Watergate scandal and the involvement of Alexander Butterfield, deputy assistant to former President Richard Nixon. Butterfield delivered blockbuster testimony to the Senate Watergate committee at the time, revealing the White House’s taping system.
After she read the book, Hutchinson said she found inspiration in Butterfield. “And I wasn’t by no means trying to compare what I knew to what Butterfield knew at all.” Hutchinson said.
“And it was after I read this I was like, if I’m going to pass the mirror test for the rest of my life, I need to try to fix some of this,” Hutchinson told the committee.
– Ken Tran
Cassidy Hutchinson scheduled an interview with the committee without lawyer’s knowledge
After her first interview with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, Cassidy Hutchinson said she felt guilty and thought she had more information to offer to the committee, but with “Trump world” attorney Stefan Passantino serving as her lawyer, she didn’t know how to schedule another interview without him knowing.
Hutchinson sought advice from another former White House aide, Alyssa Farah Griffin. The two decided on a plan for Farah Griffin to serve as a backchannel to the committee and provide them information on what to ask Hutchinson – without Passantino’s knowledge.
“I think that I can do this as long as like the committee thinks that they can really keep this low key and low profile and not let Stefan know that I’m back channeling for this interview,” Hutchinson told Farah Griffin, to which she agreed.
The committee’s request for another interview caught Passantino off guard and he was “genuinely shocked,” Hutchinson said. During breaks in the interview, Passantino asked Hutchinson, “How do they have all of this? How do they know that you know all of this?”
– Ken Tran
‘He knows you’re loyal’: Meadows aide called Jan. 6 witness Cassidy Hutchinson ahead of testimony
The night before Cassidy Hutchinson was set to testify for a second time before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack, she received a phone call from a top aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
Ben Williamson, formerly a senior adviser to Meadows and deputy assistant to former President Donald Trump, told Hutchinson that Meadows asked him to pass along a message.
“Mark wants me to let you know that he knows you’re loyal and he knows you’ll do the right thing tomorrow and that you’re going to protect him and the boss. You know, he knows that we’re all on the same team and we’re all a family. Let me know how it goes.”
The exchange was previously reported, though the caller was unnamed.
The call “sparked an anxiety thought” that Meadows perceived her as disloyal, Hutchinson told the committee. She said that after her deposition, Williamson called her again on Signal but she did not pick up.
– Ella Lee
Cassidy Hutchinson felt ‘target on my back’ about misleading committee
Cassidy Hutchinson said her final break with “Trump world” lawyer Stefan Passantino came June 9, when she sent him an email discontinuing their relationship and switched lawyers to Bill Jordan and Jody Hunt.
Hutchinson said she felt uncomfortable through three interviews answering committee questions about Trump’s clash with the Secret Service with “I don’t recall,” when she did recall. When asked to return for another interview, Hutchinson said she “knew that there would be a target on my back with this,” she said.
“I followed his bad legal advice; I took his bad legal advice. I will own that,” Hutchinson said. “But my character and my integrity mean more to me than anything.”
– Bart Jansen
Cassidy Hutchinson said Trump tried to ‘wrap his hands around’ his Secret Service agent’s neck but she was advised not to tell the committee about it
Former White House official Cassidy Hutchinson told the Jan. 6 committee how White House security chief Anthony Ornato told her after Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021 rally on the Ellipse that Trump had “tried to wrap his hands around Bobby’s neck and strangle him because he wouldn’t take him to the Capitol.” She was referring to Trump’s main Secret Service agent, Bobby Engel, who was in the presidential limousine with him when the president was told the Secret Service thought it was too dangerous to drive him to the Capitol to accompany an angry mob he had sent there during his fiery speech that morning.
Her closed-door testimony on Sept. 14 goes beyond her bombshell public testimony weeks earlier, when she said Trump lunged at the agent and tried to redirect the steering wheel. She also testified that when she recounted this to defense lawyer Stefan Passantino, whom she later fired and accused of trying to silence her, he said, “No, no, no, no, no. We don’t want to go there. We don’t want to talk about that.”
Passantino, who has denied wrongdoing, also told her to say she didn’t recall entire incidents even if she recalled a lot of detail, Hutchinson testified – including pardons sought by Trump associates and suspicious interactions between GOP lawmakers and her former boss, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, in the run-up to the attack on the Capitol. When she expressed worry that she’d be perjuring herself if she claimed not to recall such details, Passantino told her, “‘I don’t recall’ is the best answer to any of that,” Hutchinson testified.
– Josh Meyer
Kevin McCarthy, John Ratcliffe expressed concerns over Mark Meadows as advisor to Trump
Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy both expressed concerns over White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ advisory role to Trump in the lead up to the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack, according to former top Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.
Ratcliffe told Hutchinson he had conversations with Trump where he went back and forth between accepting his loss and then denying the results of the election. “I’m just a little worried that Mark’s not giving him good advice,” Ratcliffe told Hutchinson.
McCarthy echoed similar sentiments in his own conversations with Hutchinson, telling her, “I talk to the president sometimes, and he admits he lost the election, but then he’ll immediately say he didn’t lose and there’s actually a way that he’s going to stay in office.”
“I can only imagine that’s coming from Mark. Mark’s lying to him, Cassidy,” McCarthy said.
– Ken Tran
Publix supermarket heiress pledged up to $3M for ‘Million MAGA March’ on Jan. 6
Publix heiress Julie Fancelli was prepared to contribute as much as $3 million to a rally on Jan. 6, 2021 that organizers were calling the “Million MAGA March,” according to interview transcripts released Wednesday by the House committee investigating the Capitol riot.
Trump fundraiser Caroline Wren sent her a proposal roughly two weeks earlier and within days, Wren texted a colleague to report that she was at Fancelli’s house and had secured the money.
“Guess what the budget is she just gave me for our bus project?” she wrote, according to texts described by investigators. “$3 million…”
The colleague, Trump aide Taylor Budowich, replied with “lol”s, and “probably could do it for that,” before remarking, “rich people are so odd.”
Fancelli did not answers investigators’ questions about the exchange or many others, pleading the Fifth Amendment. She did tell investigators she never intended to fund anything but a peaceful rally.
– Donovan Slack
Cassidy Hutchinson feared ‘Trump world’ lawyers would try to silence her about what she knew about Jan. 6
Former top Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the Jan. 6 committee that she was desperate to raise money for her own defense about any potential role in the alleged Trump insurrection plot because she feared she was being railroaded into accepting “Trump world” lawyers who would protect the former president’s interests at the expense of her own.
Hutchinson, who later fired her Trump-affiliated counsel Stefan Passantino and delivered bombshell live testimony at a Jan. 6 committee hearing, told committee members on Sept. 14 she interviewed dozens of independent lawyers after being subpoenaed but couldn’t afford the required legal retainers of $125,000 or more. In desperation, she testified, Hutchinson drove from Washington to New Jersey and “begged” her father for financial assistance, saying, “You have no idea what they are going to do to me if I have to get an attorney with Trump world.”
Later, Hutchinson testified, her fears intensified when former Trump associates steered her to Passantino, the former top ethics lawyer in the Trump White House, and he told her not to print out her calendars or try to remember key dates and conversations. “Look, we want to get you in, get you out,” Hutchinson quoted Passantino as saying. “We’re going to downplay your role. You were a secretary. … But the less you remember, the better.” Passantino has denied any wrongdoing and said he did his best to represent Hutchinson.
– Josh Meyer
‘The president could have tried to strangle you’: Cassidy Hutchinson recalls conversation with Anthony Ornato
A few months after she left the White House, Cassidy Hutchinson, top aide to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, said she reached out to Anthony Ornato, former White House deputy chief of operations, after having “a really hard day.”
“I remember waking up that morning and just feeling like this heaviness with everything that happened in that period,” she said according to a transcript of the testimony. “And I knew that Tony (Ornato) would be somebody that I could talk to because Tony and I did confide in each other about a lot of things working at the White House.”
After assuring each other about how they shouldn’t blame themselves about the “movements in the Capitol,” Hutchinson recalled how Ornato had ended the call with a reference about Trump trying to grab the steering wheel of his car to force the motorcade to go to the U.S. Capitol. She had previously testified that Trump had tried to “lunge” toward the chief of his security detail Robert Engel’s “clavicles.”
“It could be worse. The President could have tried to strangle you,” Hutchinson recalled Ornato as saying.“I remember just laughing and being like, “That’s true. At least he didn’t try that,” she said.
– Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy
Mark Meadows met with National Archives in December 2020 to discuss transition
Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows met with the chief U.S. archivist in December 2020 without former President Donald Trump’s knowledge to discuss Trump’s presidential library and the document-retention protocol for the administration’s end, according to a transcript of testimony from Jan. 6 committee witness Cassidy Hutchinson.
According to Hutchinson, Meadows said Trump was left in the dark on the Dec. 9, 2020 meeting because the former president didn’t want his staff to begin working on a “post-election period” yet. Asked whether he agreed with Trump’s thinking, Meadows quipped “Well, I had the meeting, didn’t I?,” Hutchinson said.
“I understood that comment to mean that Mr. Meadows knew it was the right thing to do, to begin having meetings discussing an end of the Trump administration, but also that he needed to keep also trying to balance the interests and ensure that the President wasn’t going to get angry at him,” Hutchinson told the panel. “He was sort of trying to do this a little bit more quietly.”
The FBI uncovered classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, earlier this year, which is a subject of a special counsel investigation concerning the former president.
Legislative recommendations are expected to aim at preventing another attack. The committee already endorsed an overhaul of the 1887 Electoral Count Act, which Congress will be voting on this week as part of a spending package.
Five House Republicans including Jordan released a rival report Wednesday blaming Democratic congressional leaders and law enforcement for failing to protect the Capitol.
Former Parler CEO grilled on content moderation by panel
John Matze, a co-founder and former CEO of the alternative social media platform Parler, faced questioning by the committee investigating the Capitol attack on the platform’s efforts to moderate violent rhetoric before and after the Jan. 6, 2021 riot.
In a May interview, Matze was asked when aggressive language on the platform went from protected speech to unprotected speech worthy of investigation by law enforcement. He primarily pleaded the Fifth Amendment to questions asked by the committee.
Questions asked by the committee indicated Parler employees were aware the events of Jan. 6, 2021 could turn violent. One employee sent a Parler post, not detailed in the interview, to the FBI along with the message, “More where this came from. Concerned about Wednesday.”
The committee also asked Matze questions about the presence of extremist groups like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Three Percenters on the social media platform, which he declined to answer.
– Ella Lee
Jan. 6 committee told DOJ to prosecute Trump
The committee on Monday recommended the Justice Department charge Trump with four crimes: inciting the insurrection, obstruction of Congress, conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to make false statements.
The committee also recommended Ethics Committee investigations of four House Republicans for defying subpoenas: Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.
Jan. 6 committee witnesses sidestepped questions on fake elector scheme
Questions about a plot to use slates of fake electors in battleground states to overturn the 2020 election were sidestepped under questioning by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack.
Nevada GOP chair Michael McDonald and national committeeman Jim DeGraffenreid, in February testimony before the committee, pleaded the Fifth Amendment hundreds of times in their interviews with the panel, refusing to answer questions over whether they signed fake certificates pledging Nevada electoral votes to former President Donald Trump.
In one set of questions not answered, a committee investigator asked McDonald about a Nov. 4 text message to an individual named Steve suggesting McDonald was in direct contact with the then-president.
“Was on the phone to President, Mark Meadows, Giuliani, and they want full attack mode,” the text read, suggesting McDonald would participate in a “war room meeting” shortly after with the three.
Two Michiganders – Kathy Berden, a GOP national committeewoman, and Mayra Rodriguez – also declined to answer most substantive questions from the committee about a plot to subvert the election results.
– Ella Lee
Jeffrey Clark: Jan. 6 investigation ‘political,’ not ‘legislative’
Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official who drafted a letter for Trump’s attorney general to send urging state officials to review their 2020 election results for fraud, refused to answer substantive questions from the committee. But that didn’t stop him from giving lawmakers a piece of his mind.
“I think that this is exclusively a political inquiry, not a legislative one,” Clark told the panel at his second deposition Feb. 2. “It also has, I think, pretenses and an underlying purpose of invading the executive sphere, in terms of law enforcement.”
His lawyer, Harry MacDougald, told the panel Clark received a call threatening to chop him into pieces in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. MacDougald said lawmakers should be embarrassed for implying Clark is guilty of crimes such as treason because he refused to testify.
“My point is that this whole process has gone off the rails,” MacDougald said. “People have lost their minds.”
– Bart Jansen
Nick Fuentes ‘subject and possibly a target’ of criminal investigation: lawyer
Nick Fuentes of Berwyn, Illinois, founder of the America First Foundation advocating American nationalism, Christianity and traditionalism, was among dozens of witnesses who declined to answer substantive questions from the committee under his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
His lawyer, Tom Durkin, told the panel at his Feb. 16 deposition that Fuentes had been notified he was “a subject and possibly a target” of an investigation by the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
Fuentes hosts a streaming show on the internet and is a white nationalist, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremists. He recently dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
Thompson expressed confidence in the special counsel, Jack Smith, to investigate who organized and financed the Capitol attack beyond the hundreds of rioters who have already been charged. But the committee interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses and is in the midst of sharing those transcripts with the department.
“There were people that we deposed that Justice had not deposed,” Thompson said. “There were electors in various states that Justice couldn’t find. We found them.”
– Bart Jansen
Jan. 6 committee posts files on 34 witnesses who were interviewed
The committee posted files Wednesday on 34 witnesses interviewed during the investigation, an initial signal of how much information the panel will be passing along to the Justice Department for its criminal investigation.
But the release was scant so far. Thirteen of the files, dealing with people such as Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis and broadcaster Alex Jones, remain sealed.
Witnesses in the rest, such as Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, Trump lawyer John Eastman and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, refused to answer substantive questions by invoking their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
– Bart Jansen
Chapman School of Law professor John Eastman testifies on Capitol Hill in 2017. Eastman was also a former lawyer for former President Donald Trump.
Watchdog predicts more Jan. 6 ‘bombshells’
One government watchdog expects the final report – expected to run as long as 800 pages or more – will help fill in blanks that remain, even after nearly a dozen committee hearings.
Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, wrote in an NBC op-ed on Wednesday the report would included “hundreds of pages packed with evidence, witness statements and bombshells.”
But he argued nothing will be as important as the conclusion announced Monday that Trump, “as a matter of law, incited an insurrection against the authority of the U.S. government.”
Trump tried to contact a witness after a June hearing, committee members have said. Some of Trump’s fundraising proceeds went to pay lawyers for witnesses, one witness was offered a job but it was rescinded.
“The witness believed this was an effort to prevent her testimony,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said Monday.
Still, witness tampering was not among the charges the committee recommended to prosecutors but full details remain elusive.
– Donovan Slack
Did Trump loyalist Hope Hicks incriminate the former president?
“I was becoming increasingly concerned that we were damaging his legacy,” Hicks said.
She is among more than 1,000 witnesses who cooperated with the investigation while about 30 people refused to answer questions under their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Transcripts for Hicks and other witnesses will be released after the final report and could shed more light on the investigation.
“Next to Dan Scavino, she was Trump’s most trusted aide and one of the only people he listened to,” said Stephanie Grisham, a Trump White House press secretary. “Her constant proximity to the president makes her not just valuable as a witness, but vital.”
Findings accused Democratic leaders of seeking to avoid “optics” of a large police presence at the Capitol after Black Lives Matter protests the previous year. Capitol Police lacked training and equipment to deal with a riotous mob, according to the report, which echoed findings of an earlier Senate report.
The GOP lawmakers who wrote the rebuttal are Jordan and Reps. Jim Banks of Indiana, Rodney Davis of Illinois, Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota and Troy Nehls of Texas. The five were nominated to serve on the committee, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Calif., rejected Banks and Jordan, and the others withdrew.
– Bart Jansen
Jan. 6 committee released an executive summary of the report Monday
The House panel on Monday released a 160-plus page executive summary of the report and showed video testimony of some of the approximately 1,000 witnesses it has interviewed during the course of its 18-month investigation.
And it voted to forward to the Justice Department its recommendations that former President Donald Trump be charged with four criminal violations stemming from his effort to overturn the 2020 election results and set loose a mob of his supporters on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when lawmakers were certifying the electoral results showing that Trump had lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
“I expect our final work will be filed with the clerk of the House and made public later this week,” Thompson said Monday. “Beyond that release, the select committee intends to make public the bulk of its non-sensitive records before the end of the year.”
“The transcripts and documents will allow the American people to see for themselves the body of evidence we’ve gathered and continue to explore the information that has led us to our conclusions,” Thompson said.
– Josh Meyer and Bart Jansen
Jan. 6 committee members list: Who is on the House panel?
