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US Monthly Headline News June 2022 - Page 3
By Melissa Quinn, Kathryn Watson, Caitlin Yilek, Caroline Linton

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol in Tuesday's hearing detailed the threats made to state lawmakers and election officials and workers in Arizona and Georgia, as President Donald Trump and his allies tried to get them to overturn the election results in their states.  The committee sought on Tuesday to bring to light the severity of the threat to democracy in the days and weeks after the election, given the enormous and persistent pressure by the president and by Rudy Giuliani on officials and ordinary Americans to promote the "big lie" that Trump had won the election. The ability of these Americans to withstand that pressure came at a great personal cost. "Our democracy held because courageous people like you heard today put their oath to the constitution above their loyalty to one man," Committee member Rep. Adam Schiff said.
By Brad Reed | Raw Story

While former President Donald Trump has so far escaped legal charges for his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, legal experts Norm Eisen and Fred Wertheimer say there is no way that Trump should be able to escape prosecution for his infamous call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Writing at NBC News, the two attorneys argue that the Raffensperger call should be the "smoking gun" that leads to criminal charges against the twice-impeached former president. In particular, they zero in on Trump's declaration to Raffensperger that "I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state." "When Trump asked Raffensperger to 'find' a specified number of new votes, he was asking him to rig the result," they write. "He did this with no concern about the truth and in the face of an initial vote count and two recounts that had already taken place — with all three showing Biden the winner." They also note that Trump issued threats to Raffensperger by telling him he was potentially committing a "criminal offense" by not sounding the alarm on the purported fraud that cost Trump a win in Georgia. "That's a big risk to you," Trump told Raffensperger. Eisen and Wertheimer say that these actions could violate two state laws: "solicitation to commit election fraud (violating Ga. Code Ann. § 21-2-604(a)) and intentional interference with performance of election duties (Ga. Code Ann. § 21-2-597)."
Martin Pengelly in New York

In powerful and emotional testimony about the sinister results of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, a mother and daughter who were Georgia elections workers described how Trump and his allies upended their lives, fueling harassment and racist threats by claiming they were involved in voter fraud. Testifying to the January 6 committee in Washington, Shaye Moss said she received “a lot of threats. Wishing death upon me. Telling me that I’ll be in jail with my mother and saying things like, ‘Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.’” That was a reference to lynching, the violent extra-judicial fate of thousands of Black men in the American south. Moss also said her grandmother’s home had been threatened by Trump supporters seeking to make “citizen’s arrests” of the two poll workers. No Democratic presidential candidate had won Georgia since 1992 but Joe Biden beat Trump by just under 12,000 votes, a result confirmed by recounts.
By Travis Gettys | Raw Story

Donald Trump has been venting his frustrations about the televised House select committee hearings to anyone who will listen at his Bedminster golf club, according to a new report. The twice-impeached former president is furious that he doesn't have any supporters on the panel, and he blames House minority leader Kevin McCarthy's decision to boycott after House speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected the two GOP lawmakers he chose, and he is exasperated that he doesn't have a window into their findings so he can preemptively respond to testimony, reported CNN on Tuesday. "Unfortunately, a bad decision was made," Trump told conservative talk radio host Wayne Allyn Root. "This committee was a bad decision, not to have representation on that committee. That was a very, very foolish decision because you know, they try and pretend like they're legit, and only when you get into the inner workings you say, 'what kind of a thing is this? it's just a one-sided witch hunt.'" "We have no representation on this panel," he added. "We should certainly have some Republicans, real Republicans ... We have nobody on that panel who can fight back. In a way, the Republicans should be ashamed of themselves."
By Sarah K. Burris | Raw Story

Testifying before the House Select Committee on Tuesday, Wandrea "Shaye" Moss answered questions on the fourth day of public hearings around former President Donald Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election. After the testimony, a CNN panel confessed that it was emotional for them. "How anybody could hear what happened to these two women and think that lies were no big deal or were perfectly appropriate, is beyond me," said Jake Tapper.
Opinion by WyoFile

Mike Lindell is not the purveyor of election integrity truth. Lindell, peddler of pillows and promises, traveled to Wyoming in late May to speak in conjunction with a political rally. While here, he took it upon himself to allege publicly that widespread election fraud occurred in our fair state. He went on to declare that anyone who does not agree with him is a traitor to our country.  
Brian Melley

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — Jurors at a civil trial found Tuesday that Bill Cosby sexually abused a 16-year-old girl at the Playboy Mansion in 1975. The Los Angeles County jury delivered the verdict in favor of Judy Huth, who is now 64, and awarded her $500,000. Jurors found that Cosby intentionally caused harmful sexual contact with Huth, that he reasonably believed she was under 18, and that his conduct was driven by unnatural or abnormal sexual interest in a minor. The jurors’ decision is a major legal defeat for the 84-year-old entertainer once hailed as America’s dad. It comes nearly a year after his Pennsylvania criminal conviction for sexual assault was thrown out and he was freed from prison. Huth’s lawsuit was one of the last remaining legal claims against him after his insurer settled many others against his will. Cosby did not attend the trial or testify in person, but short clips from 2015 video deposition were played for jurors, in which he denied any sexual contact with Huth. He continues to deny the allegation through his attorney and publicist.
By Sarah K. Burris | Raw Story

The House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on Congress and the plot to overthrow the 2020 election is set to meet again on Tuesday for a public hearing at 1 p.m. EST. Speaking about the issues the committee will deal with, CNN legal expert Elie Honig noted that thus far, Americans have seen the way in which former President Donald Trump pressured Mike Pence and "weaponized the Justice Department." On Tuesday, Honig noted that the committee will show, among other things, how Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to magically "find" 11,780 votes so he could win the 2020 election. "I think what we will see on Tuesday, the most audacious of all those efforts to get state officials to hand him their electoral votes," said Honig. "The Constitution tells us state legislatures do have the right to decide how they'll award their electoral votes, but the problem is they decided that many, many years ago, whoever wins the popular vote in the state gets all the electoral votes and Donald Trump quite aggressively thinks he can pick up the phone, call state officials and get them to flip that and hand him the electoral votes. And to the credit of those state-level officials, many Republicans, they said, no, that would violate the Constitution, violate our oaths. It would violate the law. Ultimately, this scheme really backfired and self-destructed in remarkable fashion."
By Sarah K. Burris | Raw Story

Speaking over the weekend, House Select Committee member Rep. Adam Schiff (R-IL) cited "seditious conspiracy" as a charge for former President Donald Trump. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) made the same comment when the first hearing unfolded and she made a detailed opening statement. Among the things she promised, she said, that the committee will detail "plots to commit seditious conspiracy on January 6th." Since then, MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace explained, Cheney has made it clear that she, "has made abundantly clear there's one person on trial and his name is Donald Trump, and in the court of public opinion, Liz Cheney has accused Donald Trump of obstruction an official proceeding ... there are fraud allegations being levied against him in the court of public opinion by this congressional committee."
By Donnell Alexander | Raw Story

The opening minutes of Erika Alexander and Whitney Dow’s new documentaryThe Big Payback features the imagery staples of forehead furrowing, heart rate-raising cinema about crimes against Black Americans: Kidnapped Africans sardined onto Westbound ships. Slaves, in sepia tone and surrounded by white slaveholders, building America’s wealth. In short, The Big Payback, which premiered on June 11 at The Tribeca Film Festival, starts with the history that The Right—among others—doesn’t want you to know, in part because even reasonably imagining what happened to slaves and their offspring pains one’s soul. “By the time the slaves were emancipated,” says author Ta-Nehesi Coates at a Congressional hearing on HR 40, the reparations bill that’s languished in committee since its 1989 introduction. “They comprised the largest single asset in America — $360 billion 1860 dollars, more than all the other assets, combined.” One Illinois organizer says, “There is no amount of money that can pay for what we’ve endured” and another person adds, “You can’t pay my grandfather back, he’s dead.” A seasoned viewer senses what kind of film experience they’re in for.
By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON, June 16 (Reuters) - Former President Donald Trump pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, to overturn his 2020 election defeat despite being told repeatedly Pence had no authority to do so, aides to Pence told the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol on Thursday. Members of the Democratic-led House of Representatives select committee said Trump continued his pressure campaign even though he knew a violent mob of his supporters was threatening the Capitol as Pence and lawmakers met to formally certify President Joe Biden's victory in the November 2020 election. The nine-member committee has used the first three of at least six public hearings expected this month to build a case that Trump's efforts to overturn his defeat amounted to illegal conduct, far beyond normal politics. "Mike Pence said no. He resisted the pressure. He knew it was illegal. He knew it was wrong," Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson, the committee's chairperson, said. "That courage put him in tremendous danger."
By Robert Costa, Caroline Linton

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has new emails that show that Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, corresponded with Trump-allied lawyer John Eastman, two sources said Wednesday. The committee is mulling what to do about the emails, two people familiar with the documents told CBS News. The news was first reported by The Washington Post. The House Jan. 6 committee is expected in Thursday's hearing to explore Eastman's role to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally reject electors and replace them with alternate ones. The theory floated by Eastman and others was that Republicans in seven states would submit alternate slates of electors on Jan. 6, 2021, when Congress met to certify the Electoral College votes. Last week, a federal judge ordered Eastman to turn over 159 documents to the House select committee that he had attempted to withhold, claiming executive privilege.
Anna Lynn Winfrey, The Pueblo Chieftain

Only 13 days before Colorado's primary election, Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert is fending off fresh attacks on her character. Boebert is accused of having had two abortions and working as an escort when she was a young adult by American Muckrackers, the same political action committee that targeted incendiary North Carolina Congressman Madison Cawthorn over alleged misconduct.
Ken Martin

Walt Disney Co. has pushed back its announced move of employees to Florida from California by three years. The decision comes as the entertainment company is embroiled in a dispute with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over the state’s controversial Parental Rights in Education law. The law bans instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. Opponents have referred to it as the "Don't Say Gay" law, claiming it is anti-LGBTQ. The relocation of some employees to Florida is in connection to the completion of the company’s new campus in the Orlando community of Lake Nona, a spokesperson told the Los Angeles Times. The company in July 2021 said it planned to move some 2,000 staffers to central Florida to take advantage of some $570 million in tax breaks. The move was expected to take 18 months. That has been pushed back to an anticipated opening date of 2026.
insider@insider.com (Cheryl Teh)

At a Wednesday media appearance in Washington, DC, Trump ally and adviser Steve Bannon claimed without basis that the MAGA movement will take over the US and rule for a hundred years. Bannon addressed the media on June 15 outside the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse after a three-hour court hearing, during which Bannon attempted to get the criminal contempt of Congress charges against him dropped. Judge Carl Nichols rejected Bannon's challenge, greenlighting the trial against the former Trump adviser. Bannon will be tried on July 18 on two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to sit for a sworn deposition or give records to the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot. On Wednesday, Bannon claimed without substantiation that the US will soon see a "populist uprising" of "Hispanics, African Americans, and working class people," and that MAGA-linked candidates will clinch government positions at the state and federal level. "We're winning everywhere, we're gonna get 55 to 60% of the Hispanic vote this November, we're gonna get 50% of the African American male vote this November," Bannon said. He added that he thought the MAGA movement will win an "80 to 100 seat pickup in the House of Representatives."
by Nicole Carr

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. This story and accompanying videos were co-published by ProPublica and FRONTLINE as part of an ongoing collaboration. In April of 2021, Cecelia Lewis had just returned to Maryland from a house-hunting trip in Georgia when she received the first red flag about her new job. The trip itself had gone well. Lewis and her husband had settled on a rental home in Woodstock, a small city with a charming downtown and a regular presence on best places to live lists. It was a short drive to her soon-to-be office at the Cherokee County School District and less than a half hour to her husband’s new corporate assignment. While the north Georgia county was new to the couple, the Atlanta area was not. They’d visited several times in recent years to see their son, who attended Georgia Tech.
By Sarah K. Burris | Raw Story

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In a conversation with Raw Story, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) referenced the video the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack produced Wednesday showing Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) giving a Capitol tour to a large group of individuals. The tour took place the day before the attack. "The committee is in possession of a video of one of the tourists who also was clearly part of the MAGA crowd on Jan. 6," Raskin explained. "He was calling out the names of Democratic members of Congress: Schumer, Pelosi, Nadler and AOC. And he had a huge reaction, we captured on video, with a fellow MAGA protester, in which that MAGA protester showed off how he converted his American flag into a weapon." For over a year, Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) has maintained she witnessed Republicans giving tours in the Capitol at a time that the building was closed to all tours due to the pandemic. When a member asked the Capitol Police how Loudermilk was able to get around that rule, the member was told that because it was approved by the official, the police had no power to do anything.
by Joan McCarter, Daily Kos Staff

Sens. Bernie Sanders and Lindsey Graham held a debate about the economy Monday at the the Edward M. Kennedy Institute in Massachusetts, aired on Fox Nation. The event was supposed to be some kind of kumbaya bipartisan thing, bringing the two sides together for a discussion about the economy. Sanders, an independent from Vermont, gave a full-throated defense of the vision progressives have for America: a public health care system, a living wage, and tax fairness. Graham, a South Carolina Republican, reiterated his party’s dream of ending Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. “In the United States, Lindsey, we spend twice as much per capita on health care compared to the people of any other country, while major countries like Canada, the U.K., Germany manage to supply health care to all their people,” Sanders said. “Why is that?” he asked rhetorically. “Because they’re not having insurance companies ripping off the system.”
aharoun@insider.com (Azmi Haroun,Charles R. Davis)

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis could be the GOP's natural successor to former President Donald Trump as a 2024 presidential candidate, and he doesn't come with Trump's drama, an expert on authoritarianism told Insider. Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a historian at New York University, and the author of the book, "Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present." She has studied the backsliding of democracy, from the US to Russia, and elsewhere. In a wide-ranging interview, she told Insider that in light of the January 6 hearings, Trump might have to be prosecuted in order to save American democracy ahead of the 2024 election. In that context, she said that DeSantis could take his place as a populist nominee. "What we do find in history is prosecution, in the longer term, is one of the only things that deflates these guys' personality cults, because those cults are founded on the idea that they are invincible, they are infallible," Ben-Ghiat said. "Now, if that does happen to Trump — DeSantis has already absorbed all the lessons of Trump."
Robert Costa

Retired federal Judge J. Michael Luttig, a staunch conservative long admired by many Republicans, will testify before the House's Jan. 6 committee on Thursday with an urgent and stark message for the panel about former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election: "America's democracy was almost stolen from her." Luttig will also likely state that the Republican National Committee is wrong to have referred to some of the events of Jan. 6, 2021 as "legitimate political discourse" and warn fellow conservatives to not ignore the gravity of what Trump did as he scrambled to hold onto the presidency that day. The retired judge's planned remarks were confirmed to CBS News by two people familiar with his expected testimony who were not authorized to discuss details of the hearing. He will also reveal how he advised then-Vice President Mike Pence to resist Trump's pleas for Pence to block the congressional certification of Joe Biden's election victory.
By Travis Gettys | Raw Story

Steve Bannon is trying to keep at least one conversation with Donald Trump shielded from the House select committee. The one-time White House strategist wants to claim executive privilege to avoid testifying before the panel that's investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, and his attorney David Schoen referred twice to the conversation as he tries to avoid prosecution for contempt of Congress, reported The Daily Beast. “He’s a former senior adviser who the president then calls in,” Schoen said in court Wednesday. Bannon's attorneys are arguing that executive privilege extends to former presidents, and they're arguing that his interactions with then-president Trump even though he did not serve in the government at that point. Federal prosecutor Amanda Vaughn accused Bannon's attorneys of "cherry-picking" from portions of Justice Department memos on executive privilege in an effort to get a “free pass to commit crime," and she said the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel had never issued any opinion that would allow him to refuse to turn over documents of his communications with the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers or members of Congress on Jan. 5, 2021.
Travis Gettys

Right-wing extremists charged in the U.S. Capitol riot threatened to "gas" lawmakers in tunnels where Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) led a tour the previous day. The Georgia Republican led a group of 15 individuals later identified by police as constituents on a tour of the Capitol complex, where one participant took photos of hallways, staircases and tunnels, and that same man was shown on video from Jan. 6 shouting threats against individual Democratic lawmakers. “We’re coming to take you out and pull you out by your hairs," the man says, referring to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). "When I get done with you, you’re going to need a shine on top of that bald head." Conspiracy charges filed shortly after the riot showed a group of three Oath Keepers were particularly interested in lawmakers' movements in the tunnels underneath the Capitol complex, and one of them, Thomas Edward Caldwell, allegedly received a Facebook message about them.
By Travis Gettys | Raw Story

Two of the white nationalists arrested after traveling to Idaho in a U-Haul truck have ties to a right-wing former state legislator from Washington. Mishael and Josiah Buster, two brothers from Spokane, were among 31 members of Patriot Front who traveled from various states to Coeur d’Alene, where police said they intended to provoke a violent clash during a LGBTQ+ pride event -- which also drew an alternative "prayer walk" organized by former state Rep. Matt Shea, reported The Spokesman-Review.
By Brad Reed | Raw Story

A man who went on a tour of the Capitol with Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) on January 5th, 2021 was caught on camera outside the Capitol the next day threatening lawmakers. Punchbowl News reports that the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riots "has video of this person taking part in the Loudermilk tour on Jan. 5, as well as documentary footage of the same man outside the Capitol on Jan. 6." The person in question, who has not been identified, has interviewed with the Jan. 6 Committee and has not been charged with any wrongdoing related to the riots. Additionally, Capitol Police said this week they have no evidence that Loudermilk was leading a reconnaissance tour of would-be rioters to show them the layout of the building.
By Bob Brigham | Raw Story

Donald Trump may be in legal jeopardy after Monday's public hearing by the House Select Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Anderson Cooper interviewed CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin and David Cay Johnston, who teaches tax law at Syracuse University. "Small-dollar donors use scarce disposable income to support candidates and causes of their choosing to make their voices heard. Those donors deserve the truth about what those funds will be used for. Throughout the committee's investigation, we found evidence that the Trump campaign and its surrogates mislead donors as to where their funds would go and what they would be used for," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) at the hearing. "Not only was there the big lie, there was the big ripoff. Donors deserve to know where their funds are really going. They deserve better than what President Trump and his team did, Mr. Chairman," Lofgren added. On Tuesday, The New York Times reported on the select committee's investigation into whether Trump has "criminal exposure" over the scandal.
The American Muckrakers PAC has just dropped an explosive press release about Lauren Boebert alleging that she once served as an unlicensed escort for a member of the Koch family, who she met Sen. Ted Cruz through, and even got two abortions during her career in sex work. While there’s obviously nothing wrong with sex work and being a sex worker, there is a huge problem with her hypocritical rhetoric surrounding abortions and sex work in general. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks.
By Travis Gettys | Raw Story

Congressional Republicans have released evidence from Capitol police about a U.S. Capitol tour led by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA). The Georgia Republican brought a group of 12 constituents that inexplicably grew to 15 people into the Capitol complex the day before the Jan. 6 insurrection, but Capitol police chief J. Thomas Manger said an investigation did not reveal any suspicious behavior by the group.
By Holly Yan, CNN

(CNN) When "a little army" of men with shields and other riot gear was spotted near a Pride parade in Idaho on Saturday, authorities soon linked the men to a relatively new White nationalist group and charged them with conspiracy to riot. "It is clear to us based on the gear that the individuals had with them, the stuff they had in their possession, the U-Haul with them along with paperwork that was seized from them, that they came to riot downtown," Coeur d'Alene Police Chief Lee White said. Among those arrested was Thomas Ryan Rousseau -- the leader of Patriot Front, the sheriff's office said. In total, 31 people from at least 12 states were arrested and charged with conspiracy to riot. All have been released on bond. Most of the men arrested had logos on their hats "consistent with the Patriot Front group," and some had other clothing associated with the White supremacist group, White said. Here's what we know about Patriot Front -- and what makes it different from other groups:
Christopher Wilson·Senior Writer

The committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot said that former President Donald Trump’s campaign fundraised off of baseless allegations of election fraud but spent very little of the money on legal action. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said Monday morning that the House select committee would show “that the Trump campaign used these false claims of election fraud to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from supporters who were told their donations were for the legal fight in the courts. But the Trump campaign didn’t use the money for that. The ‘big lie’ was also a big rip-off.” “We’ll present evidence that Mr. Trump’s claims of election fraud were false, that he and his closest advisers knew those claims were false but they continued to peddle them anyway right up until the moments before a mob of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol,” she said.
S.V. Date

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump knew his “big lie” that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from him was, in fact, a big lie, according to testimony the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol laid out at the public hearing Monday morning. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, the California Democrat handling much of Monday’s questioning of witnesses, said the testimony of Trump’s own aides was clear. “On election night, he claimed even before the votes were counted that his loss was because of fraud,” she said. “Mr. Trump’s election fraud claims were false. Mr. Trump’s closest advisers knew it. Mr. Trump knew it.” Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, who had been scheduled to testify in person Monday, withdrew at the last minute when his wife went into labor and Stepien went to join her. In a video clip of Stepien’s taped deposition, Stepien said he and other top campaign aides recommended that Trump say that “votes were still being counted, that it was too early to tell, it was too early to call the race.”
They may call themselves Christians but they are not Christian in anyway shape or form.

kbalevic@insider.com (Katie Balevic)

Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert received cheers and applause when quipped that she prays for President Joe Biden's demise while speaking at a Christian event. Boebert made the comments during a weekend event called the Family Camp Meeting at Charis Christian Center in Colorado Springs, which included a series of pastors and speakers "who have proven God's Word," according to the center's website. A video of Boebert making the comment has circulated on social media. "I do want you to know that I pray for our President. Psalm 109:8 says, 'May his days be few and another take his office.' Hallelujah! Glory to God," Boebert said with a laugh as the crowd clapped and cheered.
We now know Trump expressed support for hanging Pence and did little to stop the violence — actions that suggest some very dark historical parallels.
By Zack Beauchamp

Amid the many extraordinary revelations at the January 6 committee’s first primetime hearing Thursday, one stood out for its sheer depravity: that during the assault, when rioters chanted “hang Mike Pence” in the halls of the Capitol, President Donald Trump suggested that the mob really ought to execute his vice president. “Maybe our supporters have the right idea,” he said, per a committee source. “[Mike Pence] deserves it.” Endorsing violence is hardly new for Trump; it’s something he’s done repeatedly, often in an allegedly joking tone. But the reported comment from January 6 is qualitatively worse given the context: coming both amid an actual violent attack he helped stoke and one he did little to halt. The committee found that the president took no steps to defend the Capitol building, failing to call in the National Guard, or even speak to his secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security. While he was de facto permitting the mob’s rampage, he was privately cheering the most violent stated objective of people he acknowledged as “our supporters.”
By Andy Rose, CNN

(CNN) Idaho police officers on Saturday arrested 31 people who are believed to be affiliated with the White nationalist group called Patriot Front, after they were seen gathering near a Pride parade in the city of Coeur d'Alene, police said. "It is clear to us based on the gear that the individuals had with them, the stuff they had in their possession, the U-Haul with them along with paperwork that was seized from them, that they came to riot downtown," Coeur d'Alene Police Chief Lee White said during a news conference. The FBI is assisting local police in its investigation, according to FBI Public Affairs Specialist Sandra Yi Barker. Barker said Coeur d'Alene police are the lead law enforcement agency investigating the situation.
Group of 31 men had shields, riot gear and smoke grenade, officials say
Graeme Massie Los Angeles

A truck full of masked men from the Patriot Front extremist group were arrested near an Idaho city’s Pride in the Park event, police say. Law enforcement stopped a U-haul truck in downtown Coeur d’Alene on Saturday afternoon and detained 31 people, all wearing the same outfit, who were inside, according to KREM2. The men inside the U-haul were all dressed the same in khakis, blue shirts, beige hats and a white cloth covering their faces. Officers cuffed them with zip ties, put them in police vans and took them away from the scene. Police said the men had shields, shin guards, riot gear and a smoke grenade with them when they made a traffic stop. “They came to riot downtown,” the city’s police chief Lee White told a press conference on Saturday. The group’s members were charged with conspiracy to riot, a misdemeanor charge, and police said they had an “operations plan” with them.
A coup was attempted and our capitol was sacked but Fox News downplays the significance of Jan. 6.

Emma Kinery

(Bloomberg) -- While the US watched new, bloody footage of the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, Fox News hosts disputed the significance of the deadly assault that left one protester dead and more than 100 law enforcement officers injured. Fox News was the sole major network that did not carry the prime-time Jan. 6 committee hearings live Thursday night. Host Tucker Carlson began his program referring to the deadly insurrection as “an outbreak in mob violence, a forgettably minor one.” Carlson and Sean Hannity both anchored their respective programs uninterrupted for the full hearing. The network did not break for a commercial for more than two and a half hours as the hearings aired. Meanwhile, even the January 6th Committee took a short break midway through. Frequently throughout the night, Fox News showed a live video feed from the Capitol hearing room without audio as the hosts and their guests criticized the proceedings as a sham. The network did not show the much-discussed footage from the day. “This is the only hour on American television that is not broadcasting unfiltered propaganda into the homes of unsuspecting viewers,” Carlson said.
Tommy Christopher

Comic and pundit Bill Maher lost patience with Kellyanne Conway during a heated discussion of the Jan. 6 hearing, exclaiming that former President Donald Trump is “a criminal who doesn’t abide by American democracy!” On Friday night’s edition of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the host was joined by Conway and Josh Barro, and spent an excruciating 12 minutes or so trying to keep Conway on track as she relentlessly tried to change the subject from Thursday’s bombshell primetime Jan. 6 hearing to President Joe Biden‘s political woes. When Barro and Maher tried to discuss the hearing as a precursor to a Justice Department criminal case, Conway pushed back, then tried to change the subject again. Maher lost it:
Opinion by Bill Press, Tribune Content Agency

We’ve never seen anything like this week’s first public hearing of the House Select Committee on January 6. By any standards, it was a blockbuster event: The first House committee hearing produced like a Hollywood action movie. The first House committee hearing aired live in primetime, not only on cable news, but by all three major broadcast networks. And the first House committee investigating, not just some legislative proposal, but an attempt to overthrow the U.S. government. After a year of hard work, interviewing over 1,000 witnesses and scouring 450,000 pages of documents, the committee clearly had one goal for this public hearing. It didn’t have to show us there was a violent assault on the Capitol on January 6 where property was destroyed, five police officers were killed, and lawmakers, including the vice president, had to run for their lives. We knew all of that.
Opinion by Michael Daly

Hours before the House Jan. 6 committee commenced its televised hearings into the violent lawlessness by Trump supporters at the Capitol, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy sought to blame the Democrats for the violent lawlessness surging across the county. “As Democrats in Washington abuse their power to attack their political opponents, they are ignoring America’s crime crisis,” he tweeted. “The Democrat Party is for lawlessness and the breakdown of society. While they defund the police, violent crime is skyrocketing in our communities. Enough is enough.” McCarthy posted a collection of video clips of violent crimes in New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Los Angeles. “Violent crime is skyrocketing,” the accompanying text repeats. But McCarthy said nothing about Bakersfield, the California city where he was born and which he now represents in congress. The murder rate there in 2021 was 11.91 per 100,000, more than double the murder rate in New York City (5.55) and Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco (5.6). The murder rate for Los Angeles is 6.74, also considerably lower than McCarthy’s hometown. To be fair, Bakersfield’s murder rate is about two thirds of New Orleans’ (30.67) and around half that that of Philadelphia’s (22.47). But it is still markedly above that of a great majority of American cities.
Fox News caught downplaying the Trump coup attempt and the sacking on our capitol.

by Philip Bump

Fox News didn’t need to announce that it wasn’t going to cover Thursday night’s prime-time hearing from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The network has been all-but-completely ignoring the subject for 17 months; skipping this hearing was a continuation of a pattern, not a break from one. But it nonetheless announced that coverage would be shunted to Fox Business and the network’s streaming platform, and it shrugged at the various scoldings that followed. When 8 p.m. Eastern rolled around, though, it became clear that the network wasn’t simply going to not cover the hearing. Instead, it began more than two hours of commercial-free rebuttal. It didn’t simply cover other things, it focused almost entirely on the hearing as though it was former president Donald Trump’s defense team — without, of course, showing its audience the prosecution’s case. Part of that was probably timing. The hearing began just as Tucker Carlson’s show kicked off, and few people in America have been more energetically engaged than Carlson in casting the Jan. 6 riot as not worthy of discussion. Or as largely innocuous, save for some vandalism. Or maybe it’s a government false flag aimed at casting Republicans as racists or something. Rhetorical consistency is not Carlson’s strength, but that is happily for him not a limitation for his job.
Matt Shuham

The Jan. 6 Committee kicked off a string of hearings Thursday night with an intense focus on the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, two right-wing extremist groups that the committee appears prepared to tie to the official Trump effort to overturn the election. Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) told CNN after the hearing that the body would call witnesses that can describe conversations between the groups and people in Trump’s orbit. “Obviously, you’ll have to go through the hearings, but we have a number of witnesses who have come forward that people have not talked to before, that will document a lot was going on in the Trump orbit while all of this was occurring,” Thompson said. The committee made clear that it viewed the Trumpian conspiracy to overturn the election as a months-long plot, and it applied the same logic to Trump’s relationship to these right-wing extremist groups, featuring testimony from a member of the Proud Boys saying Trump’s presidential debate command to them to “stand back and stand by” — all the way back in September 2020 — boosted membership “exponentially.”
By David Shepardson and Mike Stone

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Biden administration will scrap a paint scheme for Air Force One proposed by former President Donald Trump, after the Air Force determined the design would create too much heat for the presidential aircraft, a U.S. official said on Friday. The current exterior color scheme on the presidential aircraft, known as Air Force One when the president is on board, is white with two shades of blue and dates back to President John F. Kennedy's administration. Trump, who left office in January 2021, wanted to change it to red, white and blue. "The Trump paint scheme is not being considered because it could drive additional engineering, time and cost," an administration official said on condition of anonymity.
Fox News caught downplaying the Trump coup attempt and the sacking on our capitol.

Jeremy Barr, Elahe Izadi, Sarah Ellison, Paul Farhi

There was a striking and somber uniformity across most major television channels Thursday night, as broadcast networks abandoned their usual sitcoms and dramas to stand alongside cable news channels to provide live coverage of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. With one key exception. ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN and MSNBC were among the networks that carried two full hours of the hearing — an event they largely let unfurl on its own, with few interruptions or enhancements, waiting until the end for their anchors and guests to offer solemn commentary. “This was horrible,” said CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell, after a Capitol Police officer described slipping in an injured colleague’s blood and being knocked unconscious. “So many big bombshell scoops,” said CNN’s Jake Tapper. Fox News, though, stuck to its regular block of conservative opinion shows — frequently showing a live glimpse of the proceedings on Capitol Hill but pointedly omitting the accompanying audio, while its hosts and guests criticized the committee floridly. “The dullest, the most boring, there’s absolutely nothing new, multi-hour Democratic fundraiser masquerading as a Jan. 6 hearing,” Fox host Sean Hannity declared.
Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic

There were so many surreal moments during the initial House Select Committee hearings investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection Thursday night that it’s hard to pick just one. But not impossible. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC covered the hearing live. As well they should — this is by any reasonable definition news. And what transpired made it even more important to cover.

Fox News stuck with Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham
But there’s more to it than that. Fox News didn’t just stick with its prime-time lineup of Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. Instead, it sought to actively undermine the hearings. “The whole thing is insulting,” Carlson said at the beginning of his show. “In fact, it’s deranged. And we’re not playing along. This is the only hour on an American news channel that will not be carrying their propaganda live. They are lying and we are not going to help them do it.” And just how devoted were they to undermining the validity of the hearings for its partisan audience? Fox News ran Carlson’s and Hannity's shows without commercials. That amounts to an investment in discrediting the hearings. The chyron running beneath his show read, “The January 6th ‘show trial’ is underway.”
By Bob Brigham | Raw Story

The House Select Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol played a video clip of former White House senior advisor Ivanka Trump in the first half an hour of Thursday prime-time televised hearings. The older daughter of former President Donald Trump said in her taped deposition that she agreed with Bill Barr that there was not widespread voter fraud. The committee had early played a clip of Barr's interview where he described the unfounded allegations of voter fraud as "bullsh*t." "I have been telling everyone who would listen all week long that we would hear from Ivanka early, but I didn’t think it would be this early!" said legal expert Norm Eisen from CNN's green room. "Committee is going right for the jugular. Good," he continued. "Any trial lawyer worse their salt will tell ya— grabs jury from minute 1 & don’t let go."
Amber Phillips

The congressional Jan. 6 committee held its first prime-time hearing Thursday night about the attack on the Capitol and the events leading up to it. Here are six takeaways from the first of June’s hearing, after nearly a year of investigation.

1. The committee holds Trump responsible for the attack
“President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.” That is the top Republican on the committee (and one of only two who agreed to participate with Democrats), Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) directly laying the blame for the violence on Trump. “[W]hen a president fails to take the steps necessary to preserve our union or worse causes a constitutional crisis,” she said, “we’re at a moment of maximum danger for our republic.” Cheney said that over the next month, the committee will present evidence that Trump made not a single call to the Department of Defense or other national security agencies during the attack. The committee played testimony from Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saying that it was Vice President Mike Pence who made those calls.
By Bob Brigham | Raw Story

CNN continues to air new audio that has never before been broadcast publicly on the eve of the first prime-time hearing by the House Select Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol. The network has been playing audio obtained by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns while researching their book This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future. First they released audio by Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) warning Republicans needed a "safety plan" because MAGA supporters of Donald Trump would "go nuts" if the GOP failed to overturn the 2020 election.
By Bob Brigham | Raw Story

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee complained about a "media spectacle" after seeing a press seating chart for Thursday's prime-time public hearings by the House Select Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Ashley Oliver of Breitbart News posted what she said is a seating chart of hearings taking place in the circular rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building.
By JIM MUSTIAN and JAKE BLEIBERG, Associated Press

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department is opening a “pattern-or-practice” investigation into the Louisiana State Police amid mounting evidence that the agency has looked the other way in the face of beatings of mostly Black men, including the deadly 2019 arrest of Ronald Greene. The federal action, which officials familiar with the matter told The Associated Press will be announced later Thursday, comes more than three years after white troopers were captured on long-withheld body-camera video beating, stunning and dragging Greene on a rural roadside near Monroe. Despite lengthy, ongoing federal and state investigations into a death that troopers initially blamed on a car crash, no one has yet been charged. An AP investigation found Greene’s arrest was among at least a dozen cases over the past decade in which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers said the beatings were countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.
By Matthew Chapman | Raw Story

On Wednesday, The Daily Beast reported that even if President Donald Trump is never indicted or convicted over the revelations from the January 6 Committee, it could still provide fodder for civil liability that could be used to bankrupt the former president under a mountain of litigation. "While it’s doubtful the hearings will meet the sky-high expectations of those who believed the committee would expose open-and-shut wrongdoing from some of the nation’s top officials, the prime-time hearings will deliver one thing: evidence for many of the lawsuits seeking to make former President Donald Trump and other election denialists actually pay for the violence," reported Jose Pagliery. "'What the committee can't do is hold people accountable. But that’s where criminal prosecutions and civil litigation comes in,' said Edward G. Caspar, an attorney representing injured and traumatized Capitol Police officers who are suing Trump after the violence insurrection." As the report noted, the committee will be revealing a treasure trove of information for anyone who wants to pursue Trump civilly.
Erik Larson

(Bloomberg) -- A lawyer who advised Donald Trump on his elaborate plan to stay in power after losing the 2020 presidential election was ordered to hand over 159 more documents to House investigators, including sensitive records tied to “potential crimes.” The ruling late Tuesday by a federal judge in California comes as the committee probing the January 2021 assault on the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters prepares to hold its first public hearing on Thursday. John Eastman, the former dean of Chapman University’s law school, had sued the panel to challenge a subpoena, arguing his records were protected by attorney-client and work product privilege. Most of the 159 documents covered by the ruling have no such privilege, US District Judge David O. Carter ruled. One email that is covered by privilege must be turned over anyway because it relates to possible crimes, the judge said. In the email, dated Dec. 22, 2020, an unspecified attorney advises Trump’s legal team “to avoid the courts,” according to the ruling. The email concluded that suing to prevent Joe Biden’s victory from being certified could backfire if a judge were to rule that then-Vice President Mike Pence was required by law to do so, the judge said.
bmetzger@insider.com (Bryan Metzger)

Long-time Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward said on Tuesday that he plans to release a new audiobook based on 9 hours of a never-before-heard interviews with former President Donald Trump. "I'm going through, now, nine hours of Trump interviews I did, that were not published, we're going to put out an audio book, Simon & Schuster, of 9 hours of Trump that we have never heard before," Woodward said on MSNBC's Morning Joe. "You see who this man is, what he cares about, the self-focus, the absence of being concerned about the people out there," he also said. "This is while he was president in 2020. All this, it is an amazing portrait of a man." Woodward noted the forthcoming audiobook in an interview focused primarily on upcoming hearings scheduled by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, the first of which will take place on Thursday.
by Kirk Swearingen

In Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Masque of the Red Death," attendees of a festive ball held during a mysterious pestilence meet their doom. If one were "reporting" it today (say, for McSweeney's), the lede might be something like: "Prince Prospero's recent masked ball, hosted in his locked-down palace during these ongoing Plague-times, reportedly has led to the hideous, writhing deaths of all in attendance." Modern-day versions of Poe's story (first published in Graham's Magazine in 1842, as "The Mask of the Red Death: A Fantasy") could be any of the multitude of political super-spreader events we've seen in the past couple years, from Donald Trump's Rose Garden celebration of Amy Coney Barrett's Supreme Court nomination to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's infamous parties during COVID lockdowns (for which he just survived a no-confidence vote by his own party) to the White House Correspondents Dinner in April, where attendees showed proof of vaccination and were tested but did not wear masks.
Carly Wanna

(Bloomberg) -- Fox News won’t show continuous live coverage of Thursday’s first televised hearing into the deadly attack on the US Capitol, putting the conservative news outlet at odds with its competitors. Fox News said on Monday it will cover the hearings that begin at 8 p.m. New York time “as news warrants” on its flagship news channel. Fox News will offer special coverage beginning at 11 p.m., after its regular schedule of primetime shows by hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. Live coverage will be relegated to other platforms like the Fox News website, Fox News Audio and Fox Business Network. Rival networks plan to interrupt their primetime lineups for the hearings. CBS and ABC will air the proceedings live, according to network representatives. NBC will offer live coverage on its cable news channel, MSNBC, and its streaming service, Peacock, and special coverage on its network channel.
By Joan Biskupic and Chandelis Duster, CNN

(CNN) An armed man was arrested near Brett Kavanaugh's Maryland home after making threats against the Supreme Court justice, according to a court spokesperson. The man was arrested at about 1:50 a.m. ET Wednesday, the spokesperson said. He was transported to Montgomery County Police 2nd District. There has been a rise in threats against the court amid the national abortion rights debate and protests that have taken place across the US. The Department of Homeland Security issued a memo last month warning law enforcement that there are potential threats to members of the Supreme Court after a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked.
Zac Anderson

Gov. Ron DeSantis' press secretary registered as a foreign agent Monday because of her work between 2018 and 2020 for the former president of Georgia, a former Soviet republic. Christina Pushaw submitted her registration to the U.S. Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. She reported receiving $25,000 in compensation from Mikheil Saakashvili, who was president of Georgia between 2004 and 2013. "I advised Mikheil Saakashvili on international communications and media, including assistance with television appearances, op/eds, and outreach to policymakers," Pushaw wrote in her FARA registration. "I worked under the supervision of Saakashvili during this period. As stated previously, my work for Saakashvili consisted of monitoring the Georgian political environment for him and assisting in his international profile."
Zac Anderson USA TODAY NETWORK - Florida

A casino mogul who contributed $100,000 to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ reelection campaign is being accused by the U.S. Justice Department of acting as an unregistered foreign agent for China and lobbying former President Donald Trump on the country’s behalf. Billionaire casino company founder Steve Wynn was sued by the federal government Tuesday in an attempt to compel him to register as a foreign agent. In a press release, the Justice Department alleges that between June and August of 2017, Wynn contacted Trump and his administration officials to relay China’s request to “cancel the visa or otherwise remove from the United States a Chinese businessperson” who had sought asylum in the United States. Wynn was acting at the request of a Chinese official, Sun Lijun, according to the Justice Department. Wynn spoke to Trump during dinner and over the phone about expelling the Chinese businessperson from the United States.
By David Edwards | Raw Story

Former Attorney General Eric Holder warned on Monday that the United States is "slipping into" a "political apartheid system" because conservatives have greater influence than their numbers would suggest. During an interview with Washington Post Live, Holder said he was concerned that gerrymandering allows politicians to pick their voters instead of voters making the choice. "We are in danger of slipping into what I would call a political apartheid system, where a minority of the people in this country will have disproportionate amounts of power," Holders said, "and be able to put in place things that are not supported by the majority."
Jake Lahut

On Monday and Tuesday, Fox News ran a series of segments on what they described as the "largest-ever migrant caravan" gathering in Mexico, often citing an estimate that the group could swell to over 15,000. The network would present the basics, though sometimes omitting or brushing over key context — particularly the entirely legal asylum process and the involvement of nonprofit organizations — as a group of some 11,000 people primarily from Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba have gathered along the Mexico-Guatemala border in recent days. Framing the migration as something the American public will have to "pay for," as "Fox and Friends" co-host Ainsley Earhardt did Tuesday morning, has little to do with the specifics of seeking asylum and more closely resembles what was briefly a fixture on the network back in 2018. Ever since then, migrant caravans have repeatedly returned to the network as a topic that has not received the same intensity of attention outside of the conservative media ecosystem.
By Matthew Chapman | Raw Story

On Monday, the Justice Department announced that former Rep. Michael "Ozzie" Myers (D-PA) has pleaded guilty to several election crimes, including "conspiracy to deprive voters of civil rights, bribery, obstruction of justice, falsification of voting records, and conspiring to illegally vote in a federal election." This comes after he was implicated in a criminal scheme to stuff primary ballot boxes for various Democratic candidates from 2014 to 2018 — and paid off a local elections judge to do it. "Specifically, Myers admitted in court to bribing the Judge of Elections for the 39th Ward, 36th Division in South Philadelphia, Domenick J. Demuro, in a fraudulent scheme over several years," said the DOJ's statement. "Demuro, who was charged separately and pleaded guilty in May 2020, was responsible for overseeing the entire election process and all voter activities of his Division in accord with federal and state election laws." "Myers admitted to bribing Demuro to illegally add votes for certain candidates of their mutual political party in primary elections," said the report. "Some of these candidates were individuals running for judicial office whose campaigns had hired Myers, and others were candidates for various federal, state, and local elective offices that Myers favored for a variety of reasons. Myers would solicit payments from his clients in the form of cash or checks as 'consulting fees,' and then use portions of these funds to pay Demuro and others to tamper with election results." These "fees" ranged from $300 to $5,000 a pop.
Igor Derysh

Investigations by Michigan authorities have uncovered 11 attempts to breach voting systems by supporters of former President Donald Trump, including one by an unidentified "third party" that seized vote-counting machines for weeks. State police documents obtained by Reuters reveal a widening investigation into Trump supporters' efforts to prove his baseless claims of widespread fraud even after a Republican-led legislative committee and numerous audits found no evidence. State police have obtained warrants to seize voting equipment and records in at least three towns and one county in the last six weeks as the probe heats up. Authorities have uncovered 11 incidents in which Trump supporters "gained or attempted to gain unauthorized access to voting equipment," according to the report. That brings the nationwide total of breach attempts to at least 17 after Reuters previously identified six others in four other states. In one case in Roscommon County, a Richfield Township official admitted that he gave two vote-counting machines to an unauthorized and unidentified "third party," who held on to the machines for several weeks early last year.
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