#house select committee

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Nine people died as a result of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection that Republicans pretend was a "normal tourist visit." Four rioters and five police officers lost their lives during the attack or in its immediate aftermath, in ways that likely would not have happened but for the Capitol riot. This death toll is rarely discussed in the media coverage of the attack, likely because journalists don't want to argue with gaslighting fascists who want to get into bad faith debates about whether the assault "caused" the heart attacks and suicides that took lives. But there is one death that no one can deny was due to Jan. 6: That of Ashli Babbitt, the QAnon-believing insurrectionist who was shot by a Capitol police officer as she attempted to lead a charge of rioters to run down fleeing members of Congress.

Instead of erasing her death in their efforts to pretend the riot was "peaceful," Donald Trump and his goons have turned the 36-year-old conspiracy theorist into a MAGA martyr. As with much of Trump's campaign antics, it calls back to the tactics of the Nazis, who turned a murdered scumbag named Horst Wessel into a fallen fascist hero honored in iconography and song. Babbitt is even easier to prop up as a sympathetic figure, she was both pretty and female.

Trump in particular likes to get maudlin, calling Babbitt an "innocent, wonderful, incredible woman." He also spent months demonizing the Capitol police officer, Michael Byrd, who was forced to shoot Babbitt that day. (Byrd's actions have been exonerated through multiple investigations, though anyone who has seen the footage of the shooting can see he had no choice.) Trump has suggested Byrd should face extra-legal execution, complaining, "if that were on the other side, the person that did the shooting would be strung up and hung." It's language that should remind us that his "bloodbath" talk is both serious and literal.

So really, it should be bigger news that recently released testimony from a White House valet shows that Trump's reaction when told about Babbitt's death was utter indifference. It's buried in a New York Times report on this recently released transcript of an interview the anonymous valet did with the House committee investigating Jan. 6. The Times reporters are more focused on the valet's recollections of how Trump told his vice president, Mike Pence, that it would be "a political career killer" if Pence refused to steal the election for him. In passing, however, they also mention Trump did not care about Babbitt's killing — and the timeline suggests he understood perfectly well at the time that Babbitt was to blame for her own death.

As the transcript shows, the investigator asked the valet about a note that was given to Trump, shortly after the shooting, informing him that "1X civilian gunshot wound to chest at door of House Chamber." The valet affirmed that he saw Trump with the note, and that they also knew of the killing because it was being reported on cable news, which Trump was watching avidly throughout the riot.

"But there was no, like, reaction" to the news, the valet explained. Trump said nothing. But shortly after being informed, he did send out a tweet telling the insurrectionists "to remain peaceful, no violence," and to "[r]espect the law and our great men and women in blue."

Everyone understands — and understood at the time — that the tweet was just a CYA measure from Trump, who stubbornly refused for hours to ask the rioters to chill out, despite drinking in all the violent images on TV. But that he issued it after being told a supporter of his was shot makes it all the more clear that his main focus at the time was disavowing responsibility for the violence he fomented.

That Trump did not actually care about Babbitt's death, outside of fears that it made him look bad, is not a surprise to most Salon readers, journalists, or anyone who is honest about Trump's utter lack of morality. Perhaps this is why this revelation isn't getting more press attention. There's a tendency in the jaded press to assume "everyone" knows that Trump has never in his life cared about anyone but himself. But not all voters know that Trump is for-real sociopathic, and they may be surprised to find he reacted to a deluded woman dying for him like normal people react to stepping on an ant.

But this should be a huge story. Trump is making his phony concern about the fates of the January 6 insurrectionists the centerpiece of his campaign. He opens his rallies with elaborate ceremonies to honor the rioters, characterizes them as "hostages" and "unbelievable patriots," and promises pardons for people convicted of assaulting police and seditious conspiracy. He pretends to care about these people to valorize his selfish efforts to overthrow democracy. His feigned love of them is also about keeping up morale among the nastier members of the MAGA movement because Trump unsubtly expects them to use violence on his behalf again.

Trump's exploitation of Babbitt's is also part of a larger habit of faking outrage over imaginary threats to innocent white womanhood from dark-skinned men. Trump loves to brag that "I protect women," which is a lie like most words that come out of his face. But he definitely likes to share his elaborate fantasies of men of color raping and killing white women. That goes back to his 2015 campaign kickoff when he said Mexicans were "rapists." He has falsely declared that, because of immigration, "women are raped at levels that nobody has ever seen before." He's recently been hyping the murder of Laken Riley, a Georgia woman who was allegedly killed by an undocumented immigrant.

Trump's lurid obsession with violence against women is dishonest on two levels. First, he's lying about the racial dynamics of gendered violence. Most men who sexually abuse, beat or kill women target those they know, and who are usually of the same race. It's not the dark-skinned strangers lurking in bushes of Trump's imagination. Trump knows this personally, as nearly all the over two dozen women who have come out with stories of being sexually abused by him are white women who met him through normal work and social situations.

Thus, Trump not only doesn't care about violence against women, he's a big fan of it. He bragged about sexually assaulting women on the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape. A New York jury found he did sexually assault journalist E. Jean Carroll in the 90s. He's repeatedly used the word "fortunately" when asked if he thinks rich men have the privilege of sexually assaulting whomever they wish. Over and over, Trump goes out of his way to defend other men who are accused of sexual harassment or abuse.

Babbitt's death is an outlier in the sense that she was the person at fault and gender had nothing to do with it. Still, Trump talks about her with the same tones of fake outrage he brings when exploiting the deaths and rapes of genuine victims. Pretending to suddenly care about violence against women when it suits his political needs is doubly gross, given Trump's otherwise lengthy record of cheerleading for gendered violence. But the mainstream media tends to avoid contrasting his pretend views on this issue with the substantial real-world evidence that he has no problem with violence against women.

The Babbitt case is especially egregious because, ultimately, her death is his fault. If Trump hadn't spun up ordinary people with lies about a "stolen" election, she wouldn't have been in the Capitol, foolishly dying for a man who does not care about her. That he's now using her corpse as a campaign prop is disgusting. Most MAGA voters will refuse to see this, of course, or make false claims that "all" politicians do it. But if they knew how little he cared, maybe a few would wake up and see that Trump would happily let them all die for him.

#us politics #news #salon #2024 #jan 6 insurrection #donald trump #conservatives #gop #republicans #ashli babbitt #fascisim #new york times #Michael Byrd #mike pence #house select committee #violence against women #e. jean carroll #laken riley #op eds

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

#us politics #2022 #twitter #tweet #rep. jamie raskin #rep. alexandria ocasio cortez #rep. matt gaetz #rep. marjorie taylor greene #trump administration #donald trump #presidential pardon #pardons #patriot takes #capitol riot #capitol protests #capitol riot investigation #house select committee

[factcheckdotorg]

#donald trump #january 6th #house select committee

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 6, 2022

Heather Cox Richardson

Today, President Joe Biden traveled to Arizona to highlight how the CHIPS & Science Act is bringing innovation and jobs to the country. He visited a facility that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is building north of Phoenix, where he met with chief executive officers from several companies and with lawmakers. TSMC has recently committed to investing $40 billion in Arizona to produce advanced semiconductors, the very sort of investment the CHIPS & Science Act was designed to attract.

Biden noted that this investment will bring more than 10,000 construction jobs and 10,000 jobs in high tech, and he emphasized that the Democrats’ investment in the nation’s economy is paying off. The country has added jobs in every month of Biden’s administration—10.5 million of them—and exports are up, helping the economy to grow at 2.9% last quarter. And Walmart’s chief executive officer yesterday said that prices are coming down for toys, clothing, and sports equipment, while the chief executive officer of Kroger says prices for fresh food products are also easing.

But, Biden said, he is “most excited” about the fact that “people are starting to feel a sense of optimism as they see the impact of the achievements in their own lives. It’s going to accelerate in months ahead, and it’s part of the broad story about the economy we’re building that works for everyone: one… that positions Americans to win the economic competition of the 21st century.”

​​“Where is it written that America can’t lead the world once again in manufacturing?” Biden said. “We’re proving it can.”

Biden has apparently tried to undercut the radical right by ignoring its demands and demonstrating an America in which everyone works together to solve our biggest problems. His trip to Arizona was in keeping with that program, with White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre telling reporters that his trip was about “the American manufacturing boom we’re seeing all across the country thanks to, again, his economic policies… [and] in large part thanks to the CHIPS and Science Act the President signed into law—and a historic—let’s not forget—a bipartisan piece of legislation.”

But reporters immediately asked if President Biden would visit the border in Arizona, bowing to a right-wing talking point. Jean-Pierre responded that Biden would not engage in a political “stunt,” as the Republicans have been doing, and was instead going to Arizona “to talk about an important initiative that’s going to change Americans’ lives, specifically in Arizona.”

The follow-up? “If the President is not going to make time to visit the border during [this] trip…, will he do it… in the new year?”

The news from the right-wing faction in the nation often seems to steal the oxygen from the sober, stable politicians trying to address real issues and doing so with more than a little success.

Today, fewer eyes were on the $40 billion investment in Arizona than were on the verdict in the trial of the Trump Organization and the Trump Payroll Corporation. Late this afternoon, the jury found the two entities guilty on all counts for a range of crimes surrounding the company’s payments to its senior employees through apartments, school tuition, cars, and so on, to avoid taxes. The company was charged with scheming to defraud, criminal tax fraud, falsifying business records, and conspiracy. The key witness was Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty to tax fraud, grand larceny, and conspiracy last August and received a reduced sentence in exchange for testifying against the company (but not against former president Trump or members of his family).  

Trump promptly issued a statement. He blamed everything on Weisselberg and promised to appeal.

House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) told reporters today the committee will make criminal referrals to the Department of Justice. Those referrals, a source told Sara Murray, Annie Grayer, and Zachary Cohen of CNN, “will be focused on the main organizers and leaders of the attacks.” The Department of Justice is engaged in its own investigation, of course, but such a referral places a marker from a bipartisan group of lawmakers—many of whom are lawyers—indicating that they believe crimes have been committed.

Special counsel Jack Smith is now in charge of investigating the events surrounding January 6 as well as Trump’s theft of government documents, and news broke today that on November 22, just two days after he began work, he sent grand-jury subpoenas to officials in Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin, asking for all communications officials had with Trump, his campaign, or many individuals associated with the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.  

Meanwhile, the Biden-Harris administration continues to govern. Tomorrow, Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff will convene a roundtable discussion with leaders from 13 Jewish groups from across the country to discuss the rise in antisemitism. Mr. Emhoff is the first Jewish individual married to a president or a vice president, and he has called out the escalating antisemitism as the former president elevates white supremacists.

“I do not see this just as a Jewish issue,” Emhoff said. “This is an issue for all of us. Because we’ve seen this before. This is how it started 70 years ago. So I don’t want it to feel normal. I don’t want people to think, ‘Well it’s just words, it’s just Kanye.’ No. This matters.”

And finally, tonight, as I finished up this letter, the news networks called the Georgia Senate runoff race for Democratic senator Raphael Warnock, giving the Democrats a 51–49 majority in the Senate. This means that the Democrats will have the power to issue subpoenas without getting Republicans to sign on to them. Greg Sargent of the Washington Post pointed out a few weeks ago that Democrats could use this power to demonstrate what actual congressional oversight should look like, compared to House Republicans’ threatened investigation of Hunter Biden, perhaps drowning out the Republicans’ tactic of endless “investigations” to tarnish their opponents.

After the results came out, Vox senior correspondent Ian Millhiser tweeted: “Huh, so Democrats managed to pick up a Senate seat in a cycle where they should have been crushed. Consider the possibility that Joe Biden is very good at his job.”

—

Notes:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2022/12/06/press-gaggle-by-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-and-national-economic-council-director-brian-deese-en-route-phoenix-arizona/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/12/06/remarks-by-president-biden-at-an-international-brotherhood-of-electrical-workers-phone-bank-2/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2022/12/05/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-december-5-2022/

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2022/12/06/president-biden-in-arizona-live-updates-at-semiconductor-plant/69703569007/

Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 @RonFilipkowskiTrump issues a statement reacting to the verdict, blaming everything on Allen Weisselberg https://t.co/KJ9sVlp0i0

11:39 PM ∙ Dec 6, 20229,871Likes1,557Retweets

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/06/politics/january-6-committee-criminal-referrals/index.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/walmart-prices-falling-for-toys-sporting-goods-ceo-says-rcna60388

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/06/trump-organization-guilty-tax-fraud/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/06/jack-smith-trump-communications-subpoenas/

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/05/politics/doug-emhoff-antisemitism-summit-white-house/index.html

Ian Millhiser @imillhiserHuh, so Democrats managed to pick up a Senate seat in a cycle where they should have been crushed. Consider the possibility that Joe Biden is very good at his job.

2:49 AM ∙ Dec 7, 20221,762Likes270Retweets

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/trump-kevin-mccarthy-gop-investigations-raphael-warnock/

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American #Biden-Harris Administration #Democratic governance #Warnock #political #jobs #House Select Committee #January 6 Commission

[jkanelis]

Here comes the report

Here comes the report

I already have marked down — in a manner of speaking — the date in which the House 1/6 select committee is set to reveal its findings into the insurrection, the attack on our government and whether the Donald J. Trump did what many millions of us know he did. Which is that he incited the assault intending to stop the transition of power to the Joe Biden presidential administration. Committee…

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#1/6 #2020 election #Capitol Hill #House select committee #insurrection

[reportwire]

House Committee Reveals More of Arizona’s Role in January 6 Attack on Capitol

House Committee Reveals More of Arizona’s Role in January 6 Attack on Capitol

Familiar names and faces continue to pop up in public hearings of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, as federal prosecutors continue to slowly peel the curtain back on Arizona’s integral role in the unrest. On Tuesday, in the seventh public hearing, U.S. Representative Stephanie Murphy, a Florida Democrat, revealed new information about the…

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#Ali Alexander #Andy Biggs #capitol attack #cassidy hutchinson #David Schweikert #debbie lesko #House Select Committee #insurrection #January 6 #January 6 committee #Kelli Ward #Michael Ward #Rusty Bowers #Stephanie Murphy #Stop the Steal

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Nick Visser at HuffPost:

Former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) urged the Supreme Court to reject former President Donald Trump’s claims of absolute immunity from prosecution when it hears arguments on the matter Thursday, saying his efforts to delay and dodge standing trial risk breaking American institutions of law and order.

Cheney, who served on the House select committee investigating the origins of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, wrote an op-ed published in The New York Times on Sunday. In the piece, she said the Supreme Court should quickly rule against Trump’s efforts to see the federal indictment for his role in the insurrection tossed out. The former president has argued he should be immune from prosecution for anything he did while in office, a broad interpretation that would also imperil the cases against him in Georgia and Florida. “As a criminal defendant, Mr. Trump has long had access to federal grand jury material relating to his Jan. 6 indictment and to all the testimony obtained by our select committee,” Cheney wrote in the op-ed. “He knows what all these witnesses have said under oath and understands the risks he faces at trial.” “That’s why he is doing everything possible to try to delay his Jan. 6 federal criminal trial until after the November election,” she added. The lawmaker stressed the work of the Jan. 6 House select committee, which released in 2022 a scathing report of Trump’s behavior, relied on testimony from dozens of Republicans who worked in the White House.

Former Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-WY) wrote a scathing op-ed in the New York Times urging SCOTUS to reject Donald Trump's delay tactics in the presidential immunity case Trump v. United States.

#Liz Cheney #OpEds #Opinion #The New York Times #Donald Trump #Total Immunity #Trump Indictment III #House Select Committee on the Capitol Insurrection #Trump v. United States

[tomorrowusa]

Cassidy Hutchinson spoke with Rachel Maddow in her first live interview since her testimony before the House January 6th Committee. In case you missed her testimony on 22 June 2022, it is still available here.

She was an assistant to Trump's Chief of Staff Mark Meadows who has since been indicted for election fraud in Georgia.

Ms. Hutchinson spoke about the current mindset of the GOP and also described the less than professional behavior of other Trump White House staffers as well as some GOP members of Congress including Matt Gaetz.

One phrase she used in the interview was: "Mr Trump's attempt to overthrow the government to stay in power"

Her book "Enough" has just been published.

#cassidy hutchinson #trump white house #select committee to investigate the january 6th attack on the us capitol #us house of representatives #trump's attempted coup #assault on the us capitol by pro-trump terrorists #donald trump #mark meadows #matt gaetz #Youtube

[panicinthestudio]

‘Enraging’: How The Willful Blindness Of ‘Team Normal’ Enabled Trump’s Coup, July 13, 2022

Chris Hayes: Trump was not shy about the fact that he would never accept an election loss. And just because some people, like Pat Cipollone, lied to themselves and collaborated with this monstrous sociopath who almost ended American democracy, that does not mean that it was a hard thing to see.

MSNBC

#Chris Hayes #January 6 #House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack #Donald Trump #Pat Cipollone #Mark Meadows #politics #USA #enabling #complicity #MSNBC #Sidney Powell #Rudy Giuliani #Bill Stepien #William Barr #Michael Flynn #John Eastman #US Department of Justice

[whats-in-a-sentence]

Sir William Molesworth, chair of the House of Commons Select Committee on Transportation, Tom Ullathorne seriously:

Are unnatural crimes common in country districts amongst the convicts?

—I believe that where they do exist on farms, it is where a number of them are brought together on the large farms.

That they are not common amongst the shepherds, who are separated?

—I do not think they are so common amongst the shepherds as they are amongst a much more dissolute set, the stock-men.

Are they common amongst these stock-men?

—I believe that there is a great deal of that kind of crime amongst the stock-men.

Is it supposed that they have introduced those crimes amongst the natives?

—Yes.

"Killing for Country: A Family History" - David Marr

#book quotes #killing for country #david marr #nonfiction #william ullathorne #william molesworth #house of commons #select committee on transportation #taken seriously #questions #crime #convicts #shepherds #stockmen

[rjmbaboonbooks]

Daily Comic Journal: February 11, 2022: "Hopefully This Will Lead To Justice Prevailing."

It’s hard to believe that the attack on the Capital happened over a year ago, yet we’re just now seeing some sort of justice action taking place. Yes, there have been many arrests and many people who stormed, broke into, brutalized police, trashed, vandalized and threatened lives have gone to jail. But those who put all of it in motion, who lied to set off the attack, are far from paying for…

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#1/6/21 #Coffee #Drawing Comics #Eating Dinner #Insurrection #Listening To TV #News Casts #The House Select Committee #Watching Television

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

For all the talk of the “Twitter Files,” as we’ve detailed, they’ve mostly been, at best, misleading, and frequently actively wrong. One of the big reveals, we were told, was that the Files were going to expose the political machinations of how Twitter banned former President Trump. And, indeed, Bari Weiss’s “Part Five” of the Twitter Files, back in mid-December, purported to reveal the big secret reckoning. But if you haven’t heard much about it since then, it’s because… they were a complete flop when it came to anything of interest. Basically, it was exactly what some of us said the day it happened: a difficult decision with a number of competing factors going into it. One that could have gone either way, but recognizing the gravity of what happened on January 6th, and the genuine concern that Trump would continue to whip his fans into an insurrectionist frenzy, one that you can see a reasonable argument for making.

And while Musk (falsely) insisted that the big reveal was that Trump didn’t actually violate Twitter’s policies, that’s also a misreading of what happened. What we’ve learned is that Trump and other Republican leaders were actually given special treatment over the years, because they tended to violate policies way more often than Democrats. But, knowing that Republicans would flop to the ground and fake injury any time they were faced with even having to take the slightest bit of responsibility for violating policies, all the big social media platforms went above and beyond to better protect the high profile accounts of Republican rule breakers.

And while many people tried to paint the decision to finally ban Trump as some sort of “proof” that the company leadership was a bunch of left-leaning censors, the reality seemed to be quite different. Even Weiss’ big reveal was simply that there was strong and heated internal debate about what to do, with many employees (mostly not directly engaged in content moderation issues) calling for the company to ban him, while executives and trust & safety folks questioning whether or not that would be appropriate.

Right at the end of last year, though, as the House Select Committee investigated January 6th was wrapping up, some of the details of what they discovered about Twitter’s debate was leaked to Rolling Stone, and presents an even more detailed picture of how the company strongly resisted calls to ban Trump.

"In the draft summary, written by the Committee’s 'purple' or social media team, staffers were more pointed about what they saw as the failures of big social media companies.

‘The sheer scale of Republican post-election rage paralyzed decisionmakers at Twitter and Facebook, who feared political reprisals if they took strong action,’ the summary concluded."

The report shows that, again contrary to the public narrative pushed by Musk and friends, Twitter’s leadership wasn’t as deeply engaged in the various political happenings:

"And even days after the insurrection, former Twitter employees told the Committee that executives were still slow to recognize the risk Trump could pose in inciting future violence. After Trump tweeted that he would not attend Joe Biden’s inauguration, Safety Team employees testified that they saw ‘the exact same rhetoric and the exact same language that had led up to January 6th popping underneath’ his tweets, leading to fears of another act of mass violence."

Some of the people who worked on that social media report, separately wrote an article for Tech Policy Press, talking about some of what they saw, which didn’t make it into any public report. They note that their research debunked the widely held notion that the social media companies acted with their bottom line in mind in refusing to limit disinformation, and again found that fear of angering Republicans was a key motivating factor:

"At the outset of the investigation, we believed we might find evidence that large platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube resisted taking proactive steps to limit the spread of violent and misleading content during the election out of concern for their profit margins. These large platforms ultimately derive revenue from keeping users engaged with their respective services so that they can show those users more advertisements. Analysts have argued that this business model rewards and incentivizes divisive, negative, misleading, and sometimes hateful or violent content. It would make sense, then, that platforms had reason to pull punches out of concern for their bottom line.

While it is possible this is true more generally, our investigation found little direct evidence for this motivation in the context of the 2020 election. Advocates for bold action within these companies – such as Facebook’s ‘break glass’ measures or Twitter’s policies for handling implicit incitement to violence – were more likely to meet resistance for political reasons than explicitly financial ones."

As the report’s researchers found, Twitter was extremely resistant to putting in place policies that might make Republicans mad:

"For example, after President Trump told the Proud Boys to ‘stand back and stand by’ during the first presidential debate in 2020, implicit and explicit calls for violence spread across Twitter. Former members of Twitter’s Trust and Safety team told the Select Committee that a draft policy to address such coded language was blocked by then-Vice President for Trust & Safety Del Harvey because she believed some of the more implicit phrases, like ‘locked and loaded,’ could refer to self-defense. The phrase was much discussed in internal policy debates, but it was not chosen out of thin air – it was frequently invoked following the shooting by Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha the previous summer. But the fact it appeared in only a small fraction of the hundreds of tweets used to inform the policy led staff to the conclusion that Harvey’s decision was meant to avoid a controversial crackdown on violent speech among right-wing users. Ironically, elements of this policy were later used to guide the removal of a crescendo of violent tweets during the January 6th attack when the Trust & Safety team was forced to act without leadership from their manager, whose directive to them was, according to one witness, to ‘stop the insurrection.’"

The authors noted, explicitly, that people reading the Twitter Files to say that Twitter was controlled by a bunch of coastal liberals trying to silence conservatives have it quite backwards:

"One clear conclusion from our investigation is that proponents of the recently released ‘Twitter Files,’ who claim that platform suspensions of the former President are evidence of anti-conservative bias, have it completely backward. Platforms did not hold Trump to a higher standard by removing his account after January 6th. Rather, for years they wrote rules to avoid holding him and his supporters accountable; it took an attempted coup d’état for them to change course. Evidence and testimony provided by members of Twitter’s Trust & Safety team make clear that those arguing Trump was held to an unfair double standard are willfully neglecting or overlooking the significance of January 6th in the context of his ban from major platforms. In the words of one Twitter employee who came forward to the Committee, if Trump had been ‘any other user on Twitter, he would have been permanently suspended a very long time ago.’"

None of this should be a surprise to anyone who has been reading Techdirt throughout all of this. For years, we’ve pointed out that the whining from “conservatives” that social media was biased against them was nothing more than an attempt to “work the refs” and basically lean on the decision makers to make sure the opposite was true. It was designed to make sure that the trust & safety teams at these companies were so frightened about the potential for politicians and the media to make a big deal out of any decision that it effectively gave them free rein to ignore the rules and push the boundaries, and the companies (beyond just Twitter) were too scared of the potential reaction to react.

This is especially ironic, given all the nonsense we’re hearing now about how the FBI was supposedly “censoring” people via Twitter. The truth is that it was actually Republican politicians, media, and influencers who scared Twitter away from taking actions against rule violators who were deemed to be prominent conservatives.

#us politics #news #techdirt #2023 #donald trump #twitter #censorship #twitter files #Bari Weiss #elon musk #Republicans #conservatives #gop #Democrats #liberals #capitol riot investigation #house select committee #Rolling Stone #Tech Policy Press #Facebook #youtube #Trust & Safety team #FBI

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

#us politics #twitter #tweet #2022 #rep. alexandria ocasio cortez #rep. lauren boebert #rep. marjorie taylor greene #insurrection #capitol riot #capitol protests #capitol riot investigation #house select committee #house speaker nancy pelosi #rep. nancy pelosi

[richdadpoor]

Website for Donald Trump's Legal Defense Fund Is Hacked

Screenshot: Lucas Ropek/Patriot Legal Defense Fund The website for former President Donald Trump’s legal defense fund appears to have been hacked and defaced over the weekend. As of the writing of this blog, the defacement is still live on the site and has not been taken down. The Patriot Legal Defense Fund is a fundraising effort launched approximately a week ago by high-level members of the…

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#Donald Trump #Gizmodo #In American television #Public hearings of the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Steve Brodner

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 18, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 19, 2024

I will not spend the rest of 2024 focusing on Trump and the chaos in the Republican Party, but today it has been impossible to look away.

In Trump’s election interference trial in Manhattan, Judge Juan Merchan this morning dismissed one of the selected jurors after she expressed concern for her anonymity and thus for her safety. All of the reporters in the courtroom have shared so much information about the jurors that they seemed at risk of being identified, but Fox News Channel host Jesse Watters not only ran a video segment about a juror, he suggested she was “concerning.” Trump shared the video on social media.

The juror told the judge that so much information about her had become public that her friends and family had begun to ask her if she was one of the jurors. Legal analyst Joyce White Vance noted jurors’ fear for their safety was a concern normally seen only “in a case involving violent organized crime.”

Nonetheless, by the end of the day, twelve people had been chosen to serve as jurors. Tomorrow the process will continue in order to find six alternate jurors. 

It is a courtesy for the two sides at a trial to share with each other the names of their next witnesses so the other team can prepare for them. Today the prosecution declined to provide the names of their first three witnesses to the defense lawyers out of concern that Trump would broadcast them on social media. “Mr. Trump has been tweeting about the witnesses. We’re not telling them who the witnesses are,” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said. 

Merchan said he “can’t blame them.” Trump’s defense attorney Todd Blanche offered to "commit to the court and the [prosecution] that President Trump will not [post] about any witness" on social media. "I don't think you can make that representation," Merchan said, in a recognition that Trump cannot be trusted, even by his own lawyers.

An article in the New York Times today confirmed that the trial will give Trump plenty of publicity, but not the kind that he prefers. Lawyer Norman L. Eisen walked through questions about what a prison sentence for Trump could look like.

Trump’s popular image is taking a hit in other ways, as well. Zac Anderson and Erin Mansfield of USA Today reported that Trump is funneling money from his campaign fundraising directly into his businesses. According to a new report filed with the Federal Election Commission, in February and March the campaign wrote checks totaling $411,287 to Mar-a-Lago and in March a check for $62,337 to Trump National Doral Miami.

Experts say it is legal for candidates to pay their own businesses for services used by the campaign so long as they pay fair market value. At the same time, they note that since Trump appears to be desperate for money, “it looks bad.”

Astonishingly, Trump’s trial was not the biggest domestic story today. Republicans in Congress were in chaos as members of the extremist Freedom Caucus worked to derail the national security supplemental bills that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has introduced in place of the Senate bill, although they track that bill closely. 

The House Rules Committee spent the day debating the foreign aid package, which appropriates aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan separately. The Israel bill also contains $9.1 billion in humanitarian aid for Gaza and other countries. A fourth bill focuses on forcing the Chinese owners of TikTok to sell the company, as well as on imposing sanctions on Russia and Iran. 

At stake in the House Rules Committee was Johnson’s plan to allow the House to debate and vote on each measure separately, and then recombine them all into a single measure if they all pass. This would allow extremist Republicans to vote against aid to Ukraine, while still tying the pieces all together to send to the Senate. As Robert Jimison outlined in the New York Times, this complicated plan meant that the Rules Committee vote to allow such a maneuver was crucial to the bill’s passage.

The extremist House Republicans were adamantly opposed to the plan because of their staunch opposition to aid for Ukraine. They wrote in a memo on Wednesday: “This tactic allows Johnson to pass priorities favored by President Biden, the swamp and the Ukraine war machine with a supermajority of House members, leaving conservatives out to dry.”

Extremists Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) vowed to throw House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) out of the speakership, but Democrats Tom Suozzi of New York and Jared Moskowitz of Florida have said they would vote to keep him in his seat, thereby defanging the attack on his leadership.

So the extremists instead tried to load the measures up with amendments prohibiting funds from being used for abortion, removing humanitarian aid for Gaza, opposing a two-state solution to the Hamas-Israel war, calling for a wall at the southern border of the U.S., defunding the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and so on.

Greene was especially active in opposition to aid to Ukraine. She tried to amend the bill to direct the president to withdraw the U.S. from NATO and demanded that any members of Congress voting for aid to Ukraine be conscripted into the Ukraine army as well as have their salaries taken to offset funding. She wanted to stop funding until Ukraine “turns over all information related to Hunter Biden and Burisma,” and to require Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to resign. More curiously, she suggested amending the Ukraine bill so that funding would require “restrictions on ethnic minorities’, including Hungarians in Transcarpathia, right to use their native languages in schools are lifted.” This language echoes a very specific piece of Russian propaganda.

Finally, Moskowitz proposed “that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene…should be appointed as Vladimir Putin’s Special Envoy to the United States Congress.” 

Many congress members have left Washington, D.C., since Friday was to be the first day of a planned recess. This meant the partisan majority on the floor fluctuated. Olivia Beavers of Politico reported that that instability made Freedom Caucus members nervous enough to put together a Floor Action Response Team (FART—I am not making this up) to make sure other Republicans didn’t limit the power of the extremists when they were off the floor.

The name of their response team seems likely to be their way to signal their disrespect for the entire Congress. Their fellow Republicans are returning the heat. Today Mike Turner (R-OH) referred to the extremists as the Bully Caucus on MSNBC and said, “We need to get back to professionalism, we need to get back to governing, we need to get back to legislating.” Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) told Juliegrace Brufke of Axios:  "The vast majority of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives...are sick and tired of having people who...constantly blackmail the speaker of the House.”

Another Republican representative, Jake LaTurner of Kansas, announced today he will not run for reelection. He joins more than 20 other Republican representatives heading for the exits.

After all the drama, the House Rules Committee voted 6–3 tonight to advance the foreign aid package to the House floor. Three Republicans voted nay. While it is customary for the opposition party to vote against advancing bills out of the committee, the Democrats broke with tradition and voted in favor.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From an American #Heather Cox Richardson #USHouse of Representatives #MAGA republicans #Moscow Republicans #Putin Caucus #House rules Committee #Moscow Mike Johnson #Trump Legal Jeopardy #jury selection

[garyrevel]

Gary Revel interview 411 with Sharon Kay - Gary is interviewed about his work as a Special Investigator, investigating the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy.

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