3 Likes
Buzzfeed is on it…More less redacted 302s from Mueller Report
3 Likes
Another deep piece by Jane Meyer/The New Yorker on who is suppporting The Big Lie.
4 Likes
3 Likes
Sadly it was reveal that another police officer committed suicide (4th) within the last month.
3 Likes
Former Acting Attorney General Testifies About Trump’s Efforts to Subvert Election
The testimony highlights the former president’s desire to batter the Justice Department into advancing his personal agenda.
3 Likes
Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) on Sunday said what was going on at the Department of Justice under former President Trump was “frightening,” after listening to hours of testimony from the former administration’s acting attorney general as the panel investigates election interference.
2 Likes
The Arizona “audit” finally seems to be wrapping up. Prepare for a blizzard of disinformation.
Fittingly, the proceedings are ending with an investigation of a bizarre Trump conspiracy theory.
Cyber Ninjas — the company running the GOP’s so-called “audit” of the 2020 election results in Maricopa County, Arizona — is expected to finally release a report summarizing its findings sometime in the next few weeks. But if past is precedent, the document will likely leave people in a fog of confusion.
That’s because the “audit,” which began in April at the behest of the state’s GOP-controlled Senate and is being paid for by a variety of far-right, pro-Trump sources, was never intended to be a good-faith investigation of election practices. On the contrary, it’s always been about bolstering Donald Trump’s lies about the election with false and misleading claims, then using them as a pretext to impose new voting restrictions aimed at giving Republicans an edge in future elections, including a possible Trump 2024 presidential run.
Inevitably, that means Cyber Ninjas will make claims just plausible enough to get credulous coverage from pro-Trump media, even if the claims can’t withstand scrutiny from impartial fact-checkers. Those claims can then be amplified by elected Republicans who won’t let facts get in the way of their narrative. Consider the dynamic at work in Tucker Carlson’s recent attempts to blame the FBI for the January 6 insurrection — a claim that was quickly debunked but was nonetheless touted by members of Congress like Marjorie Taylor Green and Matt Gaetz.
Comments made last month by Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, gave up the game. During a briefing that took place after most “audit” operations were completed, Logan, who is running the Maricopa County operation even though last winter he posted conspiracy theories about the election being stolen from Trump, claimed, “We have 74,243 mail-in ballots where there is no clear record of them being sent.” That’s a big-if-true allegation that would constitute significant evidence of malfeasance of the sort Trump claimed enabled Joe Biden to beat him in Arizona and other states.
But within days of Logan making those comments, CNN published a lengthy fact-check with a straightforward explanation for the 74,000-plus ballots Logan mentioned. It turns out Logan either didn’t understand or was intentionally trying to mislead people about the fact that the “submitted-ballots list” he cited included ballots cast via in-person early voting as well as by mail. In short, when you understand what the number is actually supposed to represent, it’s not the case that there was a significant number of unexplainable votes.
On Twitter, Arizona elections analyst Garrett Archer broke down what Logan missed and described the CEO’s conspiracy-mongering about the ballots as either “grossly negligent” or “deliberately misleading.” But as the old saying goes, a lie travels halfway around the world while the truth is lacing up its boots.
As CNN detailed, even though the claim that tens of thousands of mail-in ballots appeared out of nowhere is false, prominent Republicans ranging from Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) to Trump himself made hay out of it, with Trump claiming it’s evidence of “magically appearing ballots.”
And that wasn’t even the only false claim Logan made during that briefing. He also lied about Maricopa County’s signature verification processes. But for Logan and company, the truth or falsity of claims is unimportant compared to their usefulness in advancing a narrative about Democratic cheating.
The partisan “audit” is actually a transparent fishing expedition
As my colleague Ian Millhiser detailed in May, Trump supporters haven’t been shy about framing the proceedings in Arizona as the first step in discrediting the 2020 election as part of a half-baked effort to reinstate Trump and other Republicans who lost in 2020.
Pro-Trump outlets like One America News Network (OAN) and Newsmax feature breathless coverage of how, in Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward’s words, this audit will be “the first domino that will fall and then other states will look into irregularities, abnormalities, mistakes and potentially outright fraud that happened.” Trump himself touts the audit, claiming that Democrats are trying to stop it because “ it won’t be good for the Dems .”
The real purpose of the audit, in other words, appears to be feeding Trump’s big lie — the false idea that the 2020 election results are fraudulent.
Let’s take a moment to consider what we already know about the 2020 presidential election in Arizona, which Biden won by 10,457 votes over Trump, and in Maricopa County, the most populous county in the state, which Biden won by just over 45,000 votes.
The Maricopa County result has already been audited four times, with each of them confirming Biden’s margin there. Republicans ranging from Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey to the four on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors (only one Democrat sits on it) to federal officials from Trump’s own administration have affirmed that no funny business took place. A study published by the Associated Press last month found that “Arizona county election officials have identified fewer than 200 cases of potential voter fraud out of more than 3 million ballots cast in last year’s presidential election, further discrediting former President Donald Trump’s claims of a stolen election as his allies continue a disputed ballot review in the state’s most populous county.”
Simply put, not only is there no evidence of widespread election fraud, everything we know points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that Biden’s victory was the result of a free and fair process.
Nonetheless, the Maricopa County “audit” includes a full hand recount of ballots. Cyber Ninjas has been criticized for its sloppy recount procedures — at one point, counters were spotted marking ballots with blue pens even though that sort of ink can affect how they’re read by machines — and the results haven’t been released yet. But there are indications Cyber Ninjas is spending just as much time trying to chase down wild conspiracies as it is taking yet another look at ballot tabulations that have already been confirmed time and time again.
For instance, Cyber Ninjas used UV lights to examine ballots for reasons that remain unclear but may have something to do with their efforts to substantiate a conspiracy theory that bamboo fibers in ballots could serve as proof some were smuggled from Asia.
Then Republicans in the Arizona state senate subpoenaed the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and Dominion Voting Systems, demanding they turn over routers used in the election. (They refused.) This interest in routers appears to be connected to a conspiracy theory pushed by My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell that Trump alluded to during a speech in Arizona on July 24.
In a statement explaining why the board won’t comply with the subpoenas, Jack Sellers, the Republican chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, said it’s already been established that voting machines weren’t tampered with.
“For months, the Senate’s audit team has had access to the items they need to confirm Maricopa County’s tabulators were not connected to the internet and thus were not hacked during the November General Election,” Sellers said. “The certified auditors hired by the County needed just two weeks with the machines and logs that we turned over to the Senate to make such a determination. They have what they need.”
What’s happening in Arizona is best understood as a disinformation campaign
As clownish and rife with conflicts of interest as it has been — one of the “auditors” was a former Republican state representative who lost his seat in 2020 — the proceedings in Arizona illustrate how Republicans are sowing doubt about America’s elections to advance their political interests.
As Jane Mayer explained for the New Yorker, the “audit” can’t be understood on its own — it’s part of a national effort “fed by sophisticated, well-funded national organizations whose boards of directors include some of the country’s wealthiest and highest-profile conservatives”:
One of the movement’s leaders is the Heritage Foundation, the prominent conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. It has been working with the American Legislative Exchange Council (alec)—a corporate-funded nonprofit that generates model laws for state legislators—on ways to impose new voting restrictions. Among those deep in the fight is Leonard Leo, a chairman of the Federalist Society, the legal organization known for its decades-long campaign to fill the courts with conservative judges. In February, 2020, the Judicial Education Project, a group tied to Leo, quietly rebranded itself as the Honest Elections Project, which subsequently filed briefs at the Supreme Court, and in numerous states, opposing mail-in ballots and other reforms that have made it easier for people to vote.
Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania — another state Biden won — recently expressed interest in a similarly partisan, privately funded “audit” of the 2020 results. Republicans in Texas and Georgia have gone a step further and adopted new legislation aimed at curtailing mail voting and enabling Republicans to take control of elections boards in blue cities, respectively. Arizona Republicans, meanwhile, didn’t wait for the “audit” to conclude to pass a new law restricting mail voting.
These measures are potential solutions to the problem of losing elections, not to the problem of fraud. And since fraud is so exceedingly rare not only in Arizona but nationally — the Washington Post reported in May that there was one case of fraud prosecuted for every 10 million votes last year — Republicans invested in convincing people it’s actually a real problem are increasingly resorting to conspiracy theories about bamboo fibers and hacked routers.
So when the Arizona “audit” report finally drops, know in advance it’ll almost certainly contain flimsy claims of fraud and nods to wild conspiracy theories. Fact-checkers will just as surely get busy debunking it, but in the increasingly shameless environment of Trump’s Republican Party, their findings will either be ignored or summarily dismissed as the product of media outlets that were in on the plot.
3 Likes
A burst of new disclosures exposing the extraordinary efforts by ex-President Donald Trump to steal power after his election defeat constitute a grave warning about the future and his potential bid to recapture the White House.
3 Likes
This lawsuit may penetrate the far right and could have teeth.
Dominion Voting Systems sued Newsmax, One America News Network (OANN) and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne Tuesday for defamation after the far-right networks and businessman spread conspiracy theories about the election involving the company’s voting machines, the latest in a series of billion-dollar lawsuits Dominion has filed in the wake of the 2020 election.
OANN and Newsmax “helped create and cultivate an alternate reality where up is down, pigs have wings, and Dominion engaged in a colossal fraud to steal the presidency from Donald Trump by rigging the vote,” Dominion alleged in its lawsuits against the two networks, also suing OAN anchors Chanel Rion and Christina Bobb.
The voting machine company alleged the far-right networks “manufactured, endorsed, repeated, and broadcast a series of verifiably false yet devastating lies” about Dominion and its machines despite knowing the claims were false, including by “broadcasting and promoting” interviews with far-right figures Dominion has already sued like far-right attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani and MyPillowCEO Mike Lindell.
Newsmax—which unlike OANN and Byrne was sued in Delaware state court instead of federal court—“created an entire brand out of defaming Dominion,” the company alleged, pointing to anchor Greg Kelly’s segment “Democracy or Dominion,” while OANN similarly aired election fraud documentaries by Lindell and began a line of programming named “Dominion-izing the Vote.”
Byrne, the former Overstock CEO who has more recently become known for spreading election conspiracy theories, “manufactured and promoted fake evidence to convince the world that the 2020 election had been stolen” including through Dominion voting machines, Dominion alleged.
Byrne “bankrolled and promoted…facially implausible conspiracy theorists”—including Russell Ramsland and Arizona election audit leader Doug Logan—who have “manufacture[d]” lies involving Dominion voting machines, the company alleged, noting former President Donald Trump’s advisors cut off Byrne’s access to Trump over his false claims.
The ex-Overstock chief “is far too intelligent to buy the nonsense he has been selling to the American public,” Dominion alleges, claiming Byrne stands to profit from Dominion’s failure after investing millions in blockchain voting technology “which can succeed only if voters and elected officials reject the auditable paper-based voting systems” Dominion uses.
Big Number
$1.6 billion. That’s approximately how much Dominion is asking for in damages from Byrne, Newsmax and OANN—more than the $1.3 billion figure the voting machine company has asked from Powell, Giuliani and Lindell, and the same figure they’ve asked from Fox News.
Crucial Quote
“The defendants in today’s filings recklessly disregarded the truth when they spread lies in November and continue to do so today. We are filing these three cases today because the defendants named show no remorse, nor any sign they intend to stop spreading disinformation,” Dominion CEO John Poulos said in a statement Tuesday. “We have no choice but to seek to hold those responsible to account.”
Chief Critics
Newsmax said in a statement to Forbes Tuesday that while it “has not reviewed the Dominion filing, in its coverage of the 2020 Presidential elections, Newsmax simply reported on allegations made by well-known public figures,” calling the lawsuit “a clear attempt to squelch such reporting and undermine a free press.” In a statement reported by Talking Points Memo, Byrne said Dominion was filing its lawsuit “as a distraction” from the Arizona election audit and Lindell’s “cyber symposium” on purported election fraud this week. OANN has not yet responded to a request for comment.
Key Background
Dominion’s lawsuits Tuesday are the fifth, sixth and seventh the voting machine company has filed, after the conspiracy theory involving the company’s voting machines took hold on the far-right in the wake of the election. The company has also filed lawsuits against Powell, Giuliani, Lindell and MyPillow and Fox News. The OANN and Newsmax lawsuits come after the far-right networks had previously attempted to evade legal action from Dominion by distancing themselves from comments made by far-right figures on their networks—namely Lindell. OANN broadcast Lindell’s documentary Absolute Proof but aired an onscreen statement saying it does not “adopt or endorse” Lindell’s claims about Dominion, while Newsmax cut Lindell off mid-interview when he brought up the Dominion conspiracy in February. Dominion attorney Stephen Shackelford told reporters Tuesday those efforts amounted to an “admission” of guilt by the networks, but were not extensive enough to sufficiently retract their previous allegations about the company. Newsmax also previously settled a separate lawsuit brought by Dominion executive Eric Coomer and acknowledged in a statement its claims about Coomer and Dominion were false.
What To Watch For
The new Dominion complaints come as a federal judge in Washington, D.C., is expected to soon rule on whether the company’s lawsuits against Powell, Giuliani and Lindell can move forward, after a hearing was held in June on the Trump allies’ motions to dismiss. Fox News has also moved to dismiss the lawsuit against the network, but that litigation is playing out separately in state court. Shackelford told reporters Tuesday the company may also still file additional litigation against those who spread the conspiracy theory, saying Dominion is “still exploring options” on how to hold others accountable and is “continuing to take an evidence-based look at everyone” who has perpetuated the fraud allegations.
Tangent
Byrne stepped down from Overstock in August 2019, citing “certain governmental matters” after claiming he was a federal informant in the investigation of accused Russian spy Maria Butina, with whom he had an affair. “My presence may affect and complicate all manner of business relationships,” Byrne wrote in his resignation letter. Forbes reported in 2019 Byrne had also unsuccessfully funneled more than $200 million of Overstock’s money into blockchain technology since 2014, angering shareholders as $1.6 billion of the company’s market capitalization was erased between 2018 and Byrne’s exit from the company. Since resigning from Overstock, Byrne has become a major figure in far-right Trumpworld, promoting conspiracy theories and serving as one of the chief funding sources for the Arizona audit with his group the America Project.
3 Likes
The Trump tax breaks for the ultra wealthy help all of the political campaigns and the pocketbooks of those who donate. Goes without saying that this administration was about grift and self-serving.
In November 2017, with the administration of President Donald Trump rushing to get a massive tax overhaul through Congress, Sen. Ron Johnson stunned his colleagues by announcing he would vote “no.”
Making the rounds on cable TV, the Wisconsin Republican became the first GOP senator to declare his opposition, spooking Senate leaders who were pushing to quickly pass the tax bill with their thin majority. “If they can pass it without me, let them,” Johnson declared.
Johnson’s demand was simple: In exchange for his vote, the bill must sweeten the tax break for a class of companies that are known as pass-throughs, since profits pass through to their owners. Johnson praised such companies as “engines of innovation.” Behind the scenes, the senator pressed top Treasury Department officials on the issue, emails and the officials’ calendars show.
Within two weeks, Johnson’s ultimatum produced results. Trump personally called the senator to beg for his support, and the bill’s authors fattened the tax cut for these businesses. Johnson flipped to a “yes” and claimed credit for the change. The bill passed.
The Trump administration championed the pass-through provision as tax relief for “small businesses.”
Confidential tax records, however, reveal that Johnson’s last-minute maneuver benefited two families more than almost any others in the country — both worth billions and both among the senator’s biggest donors.
Dick and Liz Uihlein of packaging giant Uline, along with roofing magnate Diane Hendricks, together had contributed around $20 million to groups backing Johnson’s 2016 reelection campaign.
The expanded tax break Johnson muscled through netted them $215 million in deductions in 2018 alone, drastically reducing the income they owed taxes on. At that rate, the cut could deliver more than half a billion in tax savings for Hendricks and the Uihleins over its eight-year life.
But the tax break did more than just give a lucrative, and legal, perk to Johnson’s donors. In the first year after Trump signed the legislation, just 82 ultrawealthy households collectively walked away with more than $1 billion in total savings, an analysis of confidential tax records shows. Republican and Democratic tycoons alike saw their tax bills chopped by tens of millions, among them: media magnate and former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg; the Bechtel family, owners of the engineering firm that bears their name; and the heirs of the late Houston pipeline billionaire Dan Duncan.
Usually the scale of the riches doled out by opaque tax legislation — and the beneficiaries — remain shielded from the public. But ProPublica has obtained a trove of IRS records covering thousands of the wealthiest Americans. The records have enabled reporters this year to explore the diverse menu of options the tax code affords the ultrawealthy to avoid paying taxes.
The drafting of the Trump law offers a unique opportunity to examine how the billionaire class is able to shape the code to its advantage, building in new ways to sidestep taxes.
3 Likes
New book coming out on Sept 21st by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa called “Peril” about the final days of Trump administration, beginning of Biden’s and the Jan 6th insurrection. Should be a super researched book, and will expose a bunch of new angles.
CNN —
First it was “Fear,” then it was “Rage,” now it is “Peril.” That is the title of the highly-anticipated third book about President Trump from legendary journalist Bob Woodward, this time written with co-author Robert Costa, a Washington Post national political reporter.
“Peril” is scheduled for release on September 21, and will closely examine the tumultuous time spanning the November 2020 election, the January 6 insurrection, and President Biden’s inauguration. According to details exclusively obtained by CNN, the book will reveal how the transition period was “far more than just a domestic political crisis” and “one of the most dangerous periods in American history.”
The book will be published by Simon & Schuster, which published Woodward’s first two bestselling books on Trump.
According to sources familiar with the book, Woodward and Costa interviewed more than 200 insiders for “Peril,” resulting in more than 6,000 pages of transcripts. CNN obtained the book’s jacket, which says it “takes readers deep inside the Trump White House, the Biden White House, the 2020 campaign, and the Pentagon and Congress, with eyewitness accounts of what really happened.”
Woodward and Costa obtained “never-before-seen material from secret orders, transcripts of confidential calls, diaries, emails, meeting notes and other personal and government records,” sources familiar with the book told CNN.
“Peril” also goes behind the scenes during the earliest days of the Biden administration, just weeks after the attack at the Capitol and as the coronavirus pandemic continued to rage throughout the country. The book’s title comes from a line in Biden’s inaugural address, according to sources familiar with the book.
“Over the centuries through storm and strife, in peace and in war, we have come so far. But we still have far to go. We will press forward with speed and urgency, for we have much to do in this winter of peril and possibility,” Biden said on the steps of the Capitol on January 20.
Woodward is known for his bombshell reporting, with explosive details in his 2020 book “Rage” that revealed Trump understood how contagious and deadly the Covid-19 virus was long before the American people were made aware.
Woodward’s first book on Trump, 2018’s “Fear,” detailed the extraordinary measures taken by top officials and White House aides to prevent what they saw as a president “unhinged” and unable to control his own impulses.
The book jacket for “Peril” also includes an intriguing quote about Trump’s presidential ambitions for 2024.
“He had an army. An army for Trump. He wants that back,” Brad Parscale, Trump’s former campaign manager, said privately in July 2021. “I don’t think he sees it as a comeback. He sees it as vengeance.”
4 Likes
This is an old article that has new meaning with the debacle in Afghanistan.
Trump admin broke law with visa delays for Afghans, Iraqis who worked for U.S., judge rules
Calling the government’s arguments “untenable,” the court ordered the Trump admin to produce a plan in 30 days on how to fix the visa application problem.
A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration violated the law by failing to promptly resolve visa applications for thousands of Afghans and Iraqis who worked for American troops and diplomats, and ordered the government to fix the delays.
U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan of Washington, D.C., said the government offered no convincing explanation why it has failed to abide by 2013 legislation requiring authorities to deliver a decision on visa applications for Afghans and Iraqis within nine months. Instead, many applicants — who risked their lives working for U.S. troops or other government agencies — have had to wait for several years to get an answer on their visa requests, the court said in the ruling handed down on Friday.
“This ruling could finally bring relief to these men and women and their families who have been waiting in fear for far too long,” said Deepa Alagesan of the International Refugee Assistance Project, one of the lawyers who argued the case.
“They served bravely in support of our missions abroad, and we promised them a pathway to safety in return. This ruling ensures that we keep our promise,” Alagesan said.
Calling the government’s arguments “untenable,” the court ordered the Trump administration to produce a plan within 30 days on how it plans to remedy the problem with the visa applications.
A State Department official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said, “We are aware of the court’s decision and are reviewing with our colleagues at the U.S. Department of Justice.”
The ruling against the administration came as the White House weighs how many refugees — including former Iraqi interpreters — to admit to the U.S. in the next fiscal year starting in October. The Pentagon has argued against further reducing refugee admissions that are already at historic lows, and cited the plight of Iraqis who worked with U.S. soldiers and diplomats at great personal risk.
The Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program was set up to help Iraqis and Afghans who worked for U.S. troops or diplomats to resettle in the U.S. But the program has been plagued by delays in both Republican and Democratic administrations. Frustrated lawmakers introduced a law in 2013 ordering the State Department and other agencies to process visa applications within nine months and to report back to Congress on any reason for delay.
“It is clear that Congress did not intend to give Defendants (U.S. government) an unbounded, open-ended timeframe in which to adjudicate SIV applications,” the federal judge said in her ruling.
Administration lawyers had argued in court that evaluating visa applications was a complex task and officials had to weigh the need to safeguard national security and not only the deadline imposed by Congress.
But Judge Chutkan dismissed the administration’s argument, saying the law adopted by Congress recognized the complexity of the process and that it allowed for exceptions in cases deemed to pose a “high risk.”
The judge wrote that “the fact that the adjudication process is a complex one does not excuse delays of such magnitude, because Congress explicitly referenced that complexity in the 9-month provision.”
Documents revealed during the course of the case showed virtually all SIV applicants have faced delays beyond the nine-month limit for an answer on their visas and that an applicant can expect about a four-year wait.
The class action suit was filed last year by a group of five unnamed Afghans and Iraqis against Secretary of State Michael Pompeo as well as officials leading the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The plaintiffs had said they were forced to flee their homes and faced death threats from militants due to their work with the U.S. government.
Ryan Crocker, a retired senior diplomat and former ambassador to both Afghanistan and Iraq, filed a brief in support of the Iraqi and Afghan plaintiffs, saying failure to resolve visa applications damaged the country’s national security interests.
“The perception that our country cannot or will not honor its promises to those who have risked literally everything to help our soldiers and diplomats is by itself an irreparable harm to our operational capacities,” Crocker wrote. “Moreover, those perceptions have already become a propaganda tool that will certainly risk diminishing our ability to recruit allies in future conflicts.”
The number of SIV visas being issued has declined under the Trump administration, and refugee advocates believe it’s a result of wider restrictions on immigration and refugee admissions.
After 2014, Iraqis could no longer qualify for the SIV program and now have to apply as refugees. Last year, the U.S. government only admitted two former Iraqi interpreters, despite a backlog of tens of thousands, NBC News previously reported.
Members of Congress have accused the administration of rebuffing requests for information on why applicants are in limbo, and several lawmakers have raised questions about the case of one Afghan interpreter, Muhammad Kamran, who has been denied a visa despite facing death threats.
Another 2019 story that proves the point:
2 Likes
Insurrection Part 2 seems to be gearing up with aid from the movie Patton…
3 Likes
Federal judge rejects Trump-era permits for major Alaska oil project
Wednesday’s decision is a setback for ConocoPhillips’s Willow project, which aims to produce more than 100,000 barrels a day on the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/08/18/biden-climate-willow-project/
3 Likes
Capitol Riot Charges Against an Infowars Host Could Spell Trouble for Alex Jones
Owen Shroyer is charged with entering a restricted area on January 6. He was with Jones at the time.
Watch out, Alex Jones. The Justice Department on Friday evening charged Owen Shroyer, who hosts a show on Infowars, the conspiracy theory fueled website run by Jones, with disorderly conduct and entering a restricted area of Capitol grounds on January 6.
On the air Friday evening, Shoryer said he will turn himself in Monday. “I plan on declaring innocence of these charges because I am,” he said.
More than 600 people have been charged with taking part in the January 6 attack. Shroyer is now one of just a few who did not enter the Capitol building itself. (The charges against Shoryer are misdemeanors.)
A federal complaint against Shroyer says that he entered restricted areas outside—and it notes he was with Jones at the time. The complaint includes images of Shroyer in restricted areas, along with Jones. The images include one picture of Shroyer, near Jones, at the top of the stairs on the east side of the Capitol. This came after the crowd had pushed past police officers guarding the area.
Jones, a conspiracy theorist once fined for claiming the 2012 Newtown attack was a hoax, echoed Donald Trump’s false claims about election fraud prior to January. Jones also helped pay for the rally immediately preceding the riot, pledging $50,000 of his own money and arranging for an heiress to the Publix Super Markets Inc. chain, Julie Jenkins Fancelli, to provide $300,000, the Wall Street Journal reported in February.
The charges against Shroyer do not mean that Jones will necessarily face charges. The complaint against Shroyer notes that he entered a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department after he was arrested for disrupting a House Judiciary Committee hearing December 2019. Shroyer’s violation of that agreement probably made feds more likely to charge him with his actions on January 6.
Still, the complaint indicates that Jones broke a law that Shroyer is now charged with breaking.
4 Likes
The Supreme Court’s stunning, radical immigration decision, explained
The Court’s decision on Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy upends decades of precedent warning that judges shouldn’t mess with foreign affairs.
The Supreme Court handed down an order Tuesday evening that makes no sense.
It is not at all clear what the Biden administration is supposed to do in order to comply with the Court’s decision in Biden v. Texas . That decision suggests that the Department of Homeland Security committed some legal violation when it rescinded a Trump-era immigration policy, but it does not identify what that violation is. And it forces the administration to engage in sensitive negotiations with at least one foreign government without specifying what it needs to secure in those negotiations.
One of the most foundational principles of court decisions involving foreign policy is that judges should be extraordinarily reluctant to mess around with foreign affairs. The decision in Texas defies this principle, fundamentally reshaping the balance of power between judges and elected officials in the process.
The central issue in Texas is the Biden administration’s decision to terminate former President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which required many asylum seekers arriving at the United States’ southern border to stay in Mexico while they awaited a hearing on their asylum claim. Although the policy was formally ended under Biden, it hasn’t been in effect since March 2020, when the federal government imposed heightened restrictions on border crossings due to Covid-19.
Nevertheless, a Trump-appointed federal judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, ordered the Biden administration to reinstate the policy, and he gave the administration exactly one week to do so. The Supreme Court’s order effectively requires the administration to comply with Kacsmaryk’s order, at least for now, with one vague and confusing modification.
Technically, this case is still on appeal. The Biden administration requested a stay of Kacsmaryk’s order while its appeal is pending. But the administration is now under an immediate obligation to comply with that order.
And the Supreme Court’s decision to deny the stay bodes very ill for the ultimate outcome of that appeal. The Court did not disclose every justice’s vote, but liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan did disclose that they dissent.
The Biden administration can’t possibly know how to comply with this order
Kacsmaryk’s opinion, it should be noted, was dead wrong. It effectively claimed that a 1996 law required the federal government to implement the Remain in Mexico policy permanently. That policy didn’t even exist until 2019, so the upshot of Kacsmaryk’s opinion is that the government violated the law for nearly a quarter-century and no one noticed.
The Supreme Court does not go that far. Instead, it suggests that the Biden administration did not adequately explain why it chose to end the Remain in Mexico policy. In theory, that’s a solvable problem. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas could comply with the Supreme Court’s decision by issuing a new memo providing a more fleshed-out explanation.
Except that the Supreme Court does not even offer a hint as to why it deemed the Biden administration’s original explanation insufficient. Here is the entire text of the Court’s order:
And so, without an explanation as to how it could comply with the conservative justices’ understanding of the law, the administration is left with two untenable choices. The first is that it can try to guess what, exactly, the justices want them to say in a new memo explaining its policy. The second is to make what could be a futile effort to reinstate Trump’s policy.
It should go without saying that Mexico is likely to have strong opinions about this abrupt policy shift. The original Remain in Mexico policy came about only after the United States secured Mexico’s cooperation, and it is unlikely that the United States could successfully reimplement this policy without Mexico’s permission.
So one of the upshots of the Supreme Court’s order is that the administration must now go, hat in hand, to the Mexican government and beg them to cooperate again.
For decades, the Supreme Court warned the judiciary to avoid “unwarranted judicial interference in the conduct of foreign policy.” Judges, the Court explained in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. (2013), should be “particularly wary of impinging on the discretion of the Legislative and Executive Branches in managing foreign affairs.”
Apparently that’s all out the window now: Unless the Biden administration can figure out what it needs to put in a new memo explaining its policy, it must reopen diplomatic negotiations with Mexico (and possibly with Central American nations whose citizens are seeking asylum in the United States) in order to reinstate a policy that it does not agree with, and that it believes, in Mayorkas’s words, will leave untold numbers of immigrants without “stable access to housing, income, and safety.”
The one mitigating factor is that the Court also left in place an appeals court decision holding that the administration will not violate the court order against it so long as it tries in “good faith” to reinstate the Trump-era policy. But this “good faith” requirement raises more questions than it answers.
As the Court held in Schmidt v. Lessard (1974), because “an injunctive order prohibits conduct under threat of judicial punishment, basic fairness requires that those enjoined receive explicit notice of precisely what conduct is outlawed.” But the court order against the Biden administration doesn’t provide any such notice.
Suppose, for example, that Mexico agrees to work with the United States to reinstate Trump’s policy, but only if the United States agrees to turn over its entire supply of Covid-19 vaccines. Or only if the United States agrees to fork over a trillion dollars. Or only if the United States agrees to execute a US resident who is despised by the Mexican government.
If the Biden administration refuses such demands, has it acted in good faith? Who knows? The Court hasn’t told us. And Judge Kacsmaryk now has the power to hold the Biden administration in contempt if he determines that they haven’t acted in good faith.
The decision upends the balance of power between the elected branches and the judiciary. It gives a right-wing judge extraordinary power to supervise sensitive diplomatic negotiations. And it most likely forces the administration to open negotiations with Mexico, while the Mexican government knows full well that the administration can’t walk away from those negotiations without risking a contempt order.
With this order, Republican-appointed judges are claiming the power to direct US foreign policy — and don’t even feel obligated to explain themselves.
3 Likes
So much irresponsibility here…
3 Likes
Former President Donald Trump’s political operation reported paying more than $4.3 million to people and firms that organized the Jan. 6 rally since the start of the 2020 election. However, questions remain about the full extent of the Trump campaign’s involvement in the “Save America” rally on the day of the Capitol attack as a House select committee’s sweeping requests attempt to shine some light on that day’s events.
On Friday, the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol sent letters requesting information from 15 social media companies. On Aug. 25, the select committee sent requests to federal agencies for records related to the riot.
The letters ask agencies from the National Archives and Records Administration to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice to expedite the gathering of the records, asking for information within two-weeks.
The House subpoena names Caroline Wren, a veteran GOP fundraiser who received at least $170,000 from the Trump political operation as the campaign’s national finance consultant with the joint fundraising committee. Wren was listed as a “VIP Advisor” on the permit granted by the National Park Service for the Jan. 6 rally.
Megan Powers, one of two operations managers listed on the rally permit, is not listed in the House request but was paid around $300,000 as the Trump campaign’s director of operations. And Make America Great Again PAC paid around $20,000 more to Powers for “recount administrative consulting” in 2021.
None of the other former Trump campaign officials listed on the permit for the rally on Jan. 6 are listed in the initial requests.
The House select committee did request records related to Women for Trump initiative co-chair Gina Loudon, who spoke at the rally. The committee also requested records related to Amy Kremer, who notably co-founded Women for America First, the 501©(4) nonprofit “dark money” group that submitted the rally’s permit records to the National Park Service.
The select committee also requested letters related to Dustin Stockton, a co-organizer of the rally. Stockton was also a spokesperson for WeBuildtheWall when former White House strategist Steve Bannon and three others affiliated with the dark money group were charged with fraud related to the online fundraising effort. Stockton was not charged and records related to Bannon were requested by the House select committee.
Stockton and Kremer told ProPublica that they felt they needed to “urgently warn the White House of the possible danger” posed by the rally. They initially took their concerns to Katrina Pierson, a former Trump campaign spokesperson who reportedly served as a liaison between the White House and rally organizers, but after “feeling that they weren’t gaining enough traction” Stockton claims she and Kremer agreed to call White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. However, Kremer denies that she spoke with Meadows or any other White House official about Jan. 6 concerns.
Records requested by the House select committee could shine light on claims about those encounters as well as other outstanding questions about the extent of the Trump campaign’s involvement.
But since Trump’s campaign and joint fundraising committee funneled millions of dollars through layers of opaque firms and shell companies where the ultimate payee is hidden, the public may never know the full extent of the Trump campaign’s payments to organizers involved in the protests.
3 Likes