It’s as if the Senate GOP and House GOP were two different political parties. Wednesday, President Biden travels to Kentucky and Ohio with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) – yes, the Senate minority leader – to tout the bipartisan infrastructure plan. Biden and McConnell are to be joined by another mixed couple; Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Democratic Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, according to The Hill

They will tout Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill and its $1 billion earmarked for replacement of the Brent Spencer bridge connecting Cincinnati with Covington, Kentucky.

Nikki Haley, the former Republican governor of South Carolina, and ambassador to the United Nations under President Trump has derided all this bipartisan comity as a “publicity stunt.” (Perhaps she might consider dropping her likely bid for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination for a House seat for South Carolina?)

Those in the barely-kicking “traditional” branch of the Republican Party will recall the relationship between President Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neill.

--TL

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) long had been gunning to be the replacement for outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and to that end he pivoted suddenly, in late January 2021 as a critic of former President Trump’s call-to-insurrection on the 6^thto making a “pilgrimage to the holy shrine of the golden commode in Florida,” as Esquire’s Charlie Pierce described it.

McCarthy’s deference to Donald J. Trump over the last 23 months should have placed him in sufficiently good standing with MAGA House Republicans to easily win the House speaker’s gavel in time to stand alongside Vice President Kamala Harris for President Biden’s next State of the Union Address.

And it did, kind of, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) joining Rep. Elise Stefanik [whom McCarthy, as House minority leader in ’21 appointed to replace then-Rep. Liz Cheney as chairwoman of the House Republican Conference] as staunch MAGA-leaning supporters of the representative of California’s 20^th.

From the MAGA-right, McCarthy also can count on Rep. Jim Jordan (OH) (see center column) and incoming New York Rep. George Santos, who traded a vote for the would-be-speaker in exchange for being sworn in despite potential legal trouble over lies he allegedly told during his campaign.

But three other staunch MAGA Republicans, Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Matt Gaetz of Florida led a never-McCarthy coalition Tuesday, following an 11^th hour meeting in which they demanded the speaker-in-waiting make House priorities a balanced budget, a Texas-delegation developed U.S. Border plan and term limits for House members. Oh, and they also wanted to reinstate the “motion to vacate,” the House rule that a single member could move to replace the House speaker at any time, which Pelosi had rescinded when she took the gavel.

Gaetz told reporters Tuesday, “I don’t care” if Jeffries wins the speakership, referring to House Minority Leader Hakim Jeffries and unanimous support from his party’s members. 

Regarding MTG’s split from the MAGA group, “As a result of her alliance with McCarthy, Greene has found herself at odds with her former soulmates,” Charlie Sykes writes in The Bulwark. The takeaway from this jagged split is that the GOP is in disarray far more than the perennially disorganized “big tent” Democratic Party … possibly a sign of an improved GOP to come for never-Trump conservatives like Sykes.

--TL

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

By Ken Zino

As the Department of Justice weighs whether to indict Donald J. Trump for his role in the January 6^th Capitol insurrection, it is moving ahead by bringing others to account for domestic terrorism. A Michigan man was sentenced this week to 16 years in prison, followed by five years of supervised release, for conspiracy to kidnap the governor of Michigan, and conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction against persons or property. A jury in an earlier trial was unable to reach a verdict. In my view, things have changed significantly in many people’s minds about the Big Lie and the associated, often violent, assaults against institutions and people as the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^th Attack on the United States Capitol presented its devastating case of what went on and who was part of it. National security also is a critical issue in Trump’s case.

Adam Fox, 39, of Wyoming, Michigan, and co-conspirator Barry Croft Jr., 47, of Bear, Delaware, were convicted by a federal jury last August after an 11-day retrial. Based on court documents and evidence presented at trial, Fox and Croft intended to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer from her vacation cottage in Northern Michigan and use the destructive devices to facilitate their plot by harming and hindering the governor’s security detail and any responding law enforcement officers. 

“They specifically explored placing a bomb under an interstate overpass near a pedestrian boardwalk. Croft was also convicted of possessing an improvised explosive device, which was a commercial firework refashioned with shrapnel to serve as a hand-grenade,” the U.S. Department of Justice said. 

“Mr. Fox, and his confederate Mr. Croft, were convicted by a jury of masterminding a plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan and to use weapons of mass destruction against responding law enforcement,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “Today’s sentence reflects the Department of Justice’s unwavering commitment to protecting our elected officials, law enforcement officers, and dedicated public servants from criminal threats and violence -- and to holding the perpetrators of such acts fully accountable under the law.”

Fox is the third to be sentenced of four conspirators convicted in the plot. Croft was sentenced to more than 19 years. Co-defendant Ty Garbin, 27, of Hartland, Michigan, pleaded guilty in January 2021 and initially received a sentence of 75 months in prison. The district court later reduced to a term of 30 months, or two and a half years in prison, after fully considering his cooperation at both trials. Kaleb Franks, 28, of Waterford, Michigan, received a term of four years in prison after pleading guilty and testifying at both trials. Co-defendants Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta were acquitted at the first trial in August 2022.

DOJ noted that the FBI’s Detroit Field Office investigated the case with “valuable assistance” provided by the FBI’s Baltimore Field Office and the Joint Terrorism Task Force, including Michigan State Police and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Michigan charged the case and conducted the trials, with “valuable assistance provided by the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section.”

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

By Stephen Macaulay

“LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”

That was one of the tweets then-president Donald Trump put out on April 19, 2020. The so-called liberation was his response to the actions that had been taken by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

You remember, the thing that was just going to “disappear.” That’s what many people said. Many, many people. Not as many as the more than one-million people who died in the U.S. from COVID. But many. That’s what they say.

On April 30 armed protestors entered the state capitol in Michigan.

Which leads one to wonder: What did they plan to shoot? Even if there happened to be some deer wandering through the halls of the building, the firearm hunting season doesn’t start in Michigan until mid-November. And one would imagine that assault weapons aren’t the sort of thing that would be particularly good for the subsequent venison even if there was some poaching going on.

(Oddly enough, the carrying of firearms in the state capitol is legal.)

There had been nearly 4,000 deaths from COVID by that time in Michigan. So presumably the governor along with medical experts figured that this wasn’t a cold and flu season on steroids and something needed to be done to try to reduce the number of deaths.

And some Michiganders became angry.

And the president of the United States — let me repeat that: The president of the United States — put out a tweet that declared that the state needed to be liberated from the person he referred to as “that woman from Michigan.”

He was downplaying COVID. He made it seem, while speaking in public (Bob Woodward was to let us know what Trump thought in private), that COVID was not a problem. For governors like Whitmer who were taking action (think about this: there were 1,083 traffic fatalities in Michigan in 2020 — for the whole year — and there were nearly 4,000 deaths by the end of April), that wasn’t a good thing.

So a group of people who banded together under the title the “Wolverine Watchmen” put together a plan in June that included kidnapping Whitmer from her vacation home in northern Michigan. And they trained to do it.

Oh, and the plan included things like execution and blowing things and people up.

As my colleague Ken Zino over on the left side of this page explains, members of the Watchmen have been arrested, tried and convicted. One of the men got 16 years. The prosecutors wanted life. The judge said of that penalty, “It’s too much. Something less than life gets the job done in this case.”

According to the Michigan Dept. of Corrections, the recidivism rate in the state is 23.6%.

Militia groups in Michigan and other states are not a new phenomenon. They are not something that was created by Trump. But they certainly did get support from the man, something that should be absolutely unthinkable, but he did it in public, for all to read or hear (“Stand back and stand by”).

It is all too easy to blame Trump for this sort of behavior. But perhaps even more culpable are Republican leaders who neither then nor now have made a full-throated support of law and order, something that the party once thought was important. 

More than 140 law enforcement personnel were injured — some very seriously — on January 6. Officer Brian Sicknick died on January 7. Four officers committed suicide subsequent to the attack from the people Trump described as “very special.”

Where is the outrage from Republicans? 

That is the question that needs to be considered.

Children learn the difference between right and wrong. Did Republican leaders forget 

that lesson or is it simply inconvenient for them?

Conservatives Ready to Take Back the GOP?

Are traditional conservatives ready to take back the GOP? 

Do the stiff prison sentences of two men convicted of federal charges for the attempted kidnapping of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) indicate that both parties are about to come together and fight domestic terrorism? [Read contributing pundit Ken Zino’s left-column on the news story.]

The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^th Attack on the United States Capitol has released additional transcripts of witness testimony. While some House Republicans, including would-be Speaker Kevin McCarthy, have threatened to investigate the investigators of the 1/6 committee as the GOP takes its thin majority in the 118^th Congress, it would be convenient for the party to move on and let the Justice Department do its thing.

Speaking of the would-be speaker, how badly does he need to seat the veracity-challenged incoming Rep. George Santos (R-NY) in order to clinch the 218 votes necessary to become Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) replacement? 

All these questions and more are open for your comments, whether you lean right (please check the comment box this column) or left (please go to the left column to add comments). Alternatively, you may email your comments to editors@thehustings.newsand please indicate your political leaning in the subject box.

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By Ken Zino 

The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol alleges that four criminal statutes were defied by Trump. The committee unanimously voted to refer the former president for prosecution to the Justice Department. Among their charges is aiding an insurrection -- an effort to hold Trump directly accountable for his supporters who stormed the Capitol. 

“In structuring our investigation and hearings, we began with President Trump’s contentions that the election was stolen and took testimony from nearly all of the president’s principal advisors on this topic. We focused on the rulings of more than 60 federal and state courts rejecting President Trump’s and his supporters’ efforts to reverse the electoral outcome”, the committee said in the executive summary.

“Despite the rulings of these courts, we understood that millions of Americans still lack the information necessary to understand and evaluate what President Trump has told them about the election. For that reason, our hearings featured a number of members of President Trump’s inner circle refuting his fraud claims and testifying that the election was not in fact stolen.”… Even key individuals … ultimately admitted that they lacked actual evidence sufficient to change the election result, and they admitted that what they were attempting was unlawful,” the committee said. 

This Begs Questions

The biggest one: “Is the Justice Department Properly Named?” The answer to that lies in the future – maybe distant at DOJ’s pace -- when it acts or refuses to act on an overwhelming body of evidence that Trump is a criminal. Given the devastating case the 1/6 committee assembled means the given name “Justice” is in doubt in my mind.

How about the “Ethics Committee” of Congress?

The 1/6 committee subpoenaed several members, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Reps. Jim Jordan, Scott Perry, and Andy Biggs to obtain information related to the investigation. 

The Committee noted “Representative McCarthy privately confided in colleagues that President Trump accepted some responsibility for the attack on the Capitol…

…“Jordan was a significant player in President Trump’s efforts. He  participated in numerous post-election meetings in which senior White House officials,  Rudolph Giuliani, and others, discussed strategies for challenging the election, chief among  them claims that the election had been tainted by fraud.”…

“Rep. Perry was also involved in early post-election messaging strategy. Both Reps. Jordan and Perry were involved in discussions with White House officials about Vice President Pence’s role on January 6th as early as November 2020…

“Rep. Biggs was involved in numerous elements of President Trump’s efforts to contest the election results … Biggs texted Mark Meadows, urging him to ‘encourage the state legislatures to appoint fake electors … Rep. Biggs told Meadows not to let President Trump concede his loss. Between then (December 2020) and January 6^th … Biggs coordinated with Arizona State Rep. Mark Finchem to gather signatures from Arizona lawmakers endorsing  fake Trump electors. He also contacted fake Trump electors … seeking evidence related to voter fraud …

“To date, none of the subpoenaed members has complied with either voluntary or  compulsory requests for participation” the 1/6 committee said. “The rules of the House of Representatives make clear that their willful noncompliance violates multiple standards of conduct and subjects them to discipline. Willful non-compliance with compulsory congressional committee subpoenas by House members violates the spirit and letter of House Rule XXIII, Clause 1, which requires House members to conduct themselves “at all times in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House.” As a previous version of the House Ethics Manual explained, this catchall provision encompasses “flagrant’ violations of the law that reflect on ‘Congress as a whole,’ and that might otherwise go unpunished,” the committee said.

Well, awaiting action if any by the alleged Ethics Committee means it is only a temporary moniker to me. Is it really worthy of the name? 

I’m hoping that the Institutions guarding our Democracy are called what they really are. 

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What's Next?

Just in time before the Democratic Party hands over a thin majority of the House of Representatives to the Republican Party’s thin majority in the 118^th Congress, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^th Attack on the United States Capitol has issued four criminal referrals to the Justice Department. 

It is now in the hands of the DOJ’s special counsel, Jack Smith, appointed in November. Smith already has subpoenaed state and local officials in Georgia, New Mexico, Nevada, Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the seven states targeted by ex-President Trump’s allies in their attempt to overturn President Biden’s victory. Oh, and, there’s also that issue of confidential government documents seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago by the FBI on the special counsel’s plate. 

So, happy 2023. Where do you think this is going? Enter your thoughts in the Comment section below or in the right column if more appropriate, or email editors@thehustings.news.

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By Stephen Macaulay

Let’s review:

• “Beginning election night and continuing through January 6^th and thereafter, Donald Trump purposely disseminated false allegations of fraud related to the 2020 Presidential election in order to aid his effort to overturn the election and for purposes of soliciting contributions. . . .
• “. . . Donald Trump refused to accept the lawful result of the 2020 election. Rather than honor his constitutional obligation to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,’ President Trump instead plotted to overturn the election outcome.
• “. . . Donald Trump corruptly pressured Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count electoral votes during Congress’s joint session on January 6th.
• “Donald Trump sought to corrupt the U.S. Department of Justice. . . .
• “. . . Donald Trump unlawfully pressured State officials and legislators to change the results of the election in their States.
• “Donald Trump oversaw an effort to obtain and transmit false electoral certificates to Congress and the National Archives.
• “Donald Trump pressured Members of Congress to object to valid slates of electors from several States.
• “Donald Trump purposely verified false information filed in Federal court.
• “. . . Donald Trump summoned tens of thousands of supporters to Washington for January 6^th. . . . Donald Trump instructed them to march to the Capitol on January 6^th  to ‘take back’ their country.
• “Knowing that a violent attack on the Capitol was underway and knowing that his words would incite further violence, Donald Trump purposely sent a social media message publicly condemning Vice President Pence. . . .
• “. . . Donald Trump refused repeated requests over a multiple hour period that he instruct his violent supporters to disperse and leave the Capitol, and instead watched the violent attack unfold on television. . . .
• “Each of these actions by Donald Trump was taken in support of a multi-part conspiracy to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 Presidential election.”

Those are just highlights of what the January 6 Committee identified.

Consider this: last week Donald Trump said he was going to be making a “major announcement.” The former president of the United States announced what amount to digital playing cards. The images of the overweight, 76-year-old with a bad combover, were of him as a superhero, astronaut, fighter pilot. Is this guy 76 or 6?

That NFT folly goes a long way to explaining the man’s behavior before, during and after January 6.

He lost. He denied it. He was told he lost. He denied it. And the responsible people said that he was wrong. And so he tried to tear the whole thing down.

Have you visited a kindergarten classroom. . . ?

The NFTs sold out. The people who bought them and who weren’t being ironic are, like Trump, not to be convinced that he isn’t some sort of buff superhero, physical reality notwithstanding.

They are not going to be convinced otherwise.

He may be convinced otherwise should the Justice Department act on the January 6 Committee referrals.

He probably wouldn’t look as much an action-hero in an orange jumpsuit.

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Pence: Don't Charge Trump

The Justice Department should not bring charges against ex-President Trump related to the January 6^th attack on the U.S. Capitol – the one where rioters chanted “hang Mike Pence” when he refused to deny the Electoral College Count – ex-Vice President Mike Pence said on Fox News.

“Congress has no formal role in Justice Department decisions and they can make recommendations today,” Pence told America’s Newsroom. Though Pence, whose book So Help Me God was released in November, has not announced a bid for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, yet, he is considered a likely candidate and currently runs a distant third in Republican polls behind Trump – who has announced – and first-place Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who also has not announced, yet.

What do you think of Pence’s comments? Hit the Comment box in this column or if more appropriate, the one in the left column, or email editors@thehustings.news.

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