(TUE 6/21/22)

Tune in your favorite news outlet (so long as it’s not Fox) 1 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday for the House 1/6 committee’s Hearings Part IV and see Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) explain how and why he did not ‘find’ the 11,780 votes necessary to turn over his state’s 16 electors to Donald J. Trump. 

Our democracy for a MAGA hat … Committee member Adam Schiff (D-CA) told the Los Angeles Times he will show evidence Tuesday that ex-President Trump’s then-chief of staff, Mark Meadows, wanted to send autographed “Make America Great Again” hats to people conducting an audit of the presidential election results in Georgia.

•••

Fascism of MAGA … In case the Texas GOP platform unveiled at its convention last weekend wasn’t a sufficiently scary warning about looming authoritarianism, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) told ABC News This Week host George Stephanopoulos that his wife received a death threat in the mail. “I’m not worried personally,” said one of the two Republicans on the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection. “It threatens to execute me as well as my wife and my 5-year-old child.”

•••

Greitens’ ‘RINO hunting’ video de-Facebooked … Facebook has removed an ad from GOP Missouri senate candidate Eric Greitens in which he appears with a gun alongside other men in combat gear and says, “we’re goin’ RINO hunting.” The former Navy Seal concludes his campaign commercial with, “Join the MAGA crowd  -- get a RINO hunting license.” Twitter has let the ad remain, but with a warning, according to Forbes. 

Wonder whether an Elon Musk-owned Twitter would remove that warning. 

Greitens is running for retiring Republican Sen. Roy Blunt’s seat. Missouri’s primary is August 2.

•••

Gun legislation … The bi-partisan group of senators led by Chris Murphy (D-CT) and John Cornyn (R-TX) working on gun legislation is expected to file legislative text today, already two days later than hoped for, according to Punchbowl News. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) hopes to begin the process by the end of the day so the full Senate can vote on the bill before leaving for recess next week.

Federal gas tax holiday? … President Biden says he will decide by the end of the week whether to temporarily lift the 18.4-cents per-gallon federal gas tax as the price-per-gallon hovers around $5 per gallon. But such relief would face a vote in Congress, where it already faces opposition. 

•••

Primaries today … A Senate runoff race in Alabama, Republican runoffs in Georgia and House primaries in Virginia.

--Todd Lassa

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(MON 6/20/22)

Oh, do tell … Ginni Thomas, who apparently does not discuss such matters with her husband and “close friend” Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, “can’t wait to clear up misconceptions,” with the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection, which last Thursday announced it was planning to seek her testimony. “I look forward to talking to them,” the Murdoch-owned tabloid New York Post reports, quoting an interview Thomas gave with the considerably further-right Daily Caller. 

But first, up next: Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who fended off then-President Trump’s efforts to get him to find 11,780 votes in order to overturn the state’s Electoral College votes from Joe Biden, is scheduled to appear in the fourth hearing of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection, CNN reports. Raffensperger’s deputy, Gabriel Sterling, also is scheduled to appear in the hearings, which begin 1 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday, June 21. 

A second hearing this week is scheduled for Thursday, June 23, again beginning at 1 p.m. Eastern time.

Meanwhile, in trade relations: Trump administration trade advisor Peter Navarro pleaded not guilty last Friday to two counts of contempt of Congress related to the January 6 insurrection (per Reuters). Navarro had “entirely ignored” a February subpoena by the House Select committee demanding he provide documents and appear for a deposition.

•••

Texas GOP pounds a nail into our democracy’s coffin … Holding its first in-person convention since 2018, Texas Republicans approved a measure that President Biden “was not legitimately elected,” The Texas Tribune reports. Its 5,100 delegates and alternatives also voted to rebuke Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) for taking part in bi-partisan gun regulation talks and voted on a platform that declares homosexuality “an abnormal lifestyle choice” and says Texas school children must “learn about the humanity of the unborn child.”

Meanwhile, in Colombia: Conversely, conservative presidential candidate Rodolfo Hernåndez had this to say when Gustavo Petro was declared the first left-wing candidate – ever – to win an election for leadership of the country: “Colombians, today the majority of citizens have chosen the other candidate. As I said during the campaign, I accept the results of the election.” That, Mr. Trump, is how it’s done in a free country. Petro, a former rebel and longtime senator, took more than 50% in Sunday’s election to Hernåndez’s 42%, The New York Times reports. 

--Todd Lassa

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

By Todd Lassa

Attorney John Eastman (at left, in photo above), purveyor of the debunked theory then-Vice President Mike Pence had the power to reject, or at least delay, certification of Electoral College ballots on January 6, after the coup attempt sought a presidential pardon from Donald J. Trump through his then-personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. Trump did not grant one to Eastman, who after all was no longer useful to him.

As late as 11:44 p.m. Eastern time January 6, 2021, after the vice president had survived four hours in a secured room with rioters just 40 feet away outside, Eastman emailed the vice president’s counsel, Greg Jacob, arguing now that “precedent has been set … I implore you to consider one more minor violation” and suspend the vote count by 10 days in order for five to seven of the states to reconsider their electors. Pence by now already was proceeding with the count. 

The vice president earlier in the day had declined a Secret Service plan to drive himself and his staff out of the Capitol grounds to safety, despite the chants of “hang Mike Pence.” Member of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) referred to testimony from an informant of the extremist group that the “Proud Boys would have killed Mike Pence given a chance” and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) along with him.

Let’s start at the beginning of the 1/6 panel’s third public hearing, Thursday afternoon. Jacob testified that the first time he spoke with Pence about the 12^th Amendment governing the Electoral College was “around December 7” 2020. In that conversation, Pence recalled that one of his first memories as a Congress member was in 2001, when Vice President Al Gore rejected calls from fellow Democrats to challenge the Electoral College vote to certify George W. Bush as winner – over himself -- of the 2000 election. 

“We concluded that what you have is a sentence in the Constitution that is inartfully drafted,” Jacob told the panel, referring to the basis for Eastman’s scheme. 

But the panel’s other in-person witness, retired federal judge Michael Luttig told the House Select committee that had Pence obeyed Trump’s order to reject or stop the electoral vote it "would have plunged America into what I believe would have been tantamount to a revolution … which in my view would have been the first Constitutional crisis since the founding of the republic.”

Eastman had drafted a letter to President Trump before the election in October that Trump could use wording in the 12^thAmendment to overturn the results, but on January 5, in a meeting with Jacob, Eastman agreed that such an attempt would be overturned, 9-0 by the Supreme Court. 

On the following January 4, Trump, Eastman, Pence, Jacob and the vice president’s chief of staff, Marc Short, met in the Oval Office where Eastman outlined two paths he saw to overturning the November election:

•Reject the electoral votes outright, or ...

•Suspend the January 6 electoral vote count for 10 days during which five to seven state legislatures re-examine their election results. 

“The vice president never budged in his initial position” that he did not have any such authority, Jacob said. 

But the next day, Eastman took a meeting with Jacob “to request that you reject the electors in the disputed states.” Eastman was pushing the second scenario, the 10-day delay, Jacob said. 

Trump began his pressure campaign on Pence with an early morning January 6 tweet; “Come through for us and send it back to the states,” and another at 8:17 a.m. that the vice president “could send it back to the states and we win…” Early drafts of Trump’s speech at his Elipse rally that morning made no mention of Pence, Aguilar said, but before the crowd that was about to head to the Capitol he reiterated his demand Pence reject the electoral count.  

A 2:24 p.m. Trump tweeted: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what needed to be done to preserve our Country (sic)or Constitution.” 

“Immediately after” that tweet, Aguilar said, “crowds outside and inside the Capitol surged.” At 4:19 p.m., with rioters within 40 feet of the office where Pence was being protected, Trump asked the rioters in a tweet to leave the Capitol.

Today’s Twitterverse is split between admiration for Pence and criticism that he has not appeared before the 1/6 panel in person. 

At the conclusion of Thursday’s hearing, Luttig, the highly regarded conservative retired judge again warned that “if the former president or his anointed successor” were to lose the 2024 election, “they would attempt to overturn that 2024 election in the same way they attempted to overturn the 2020 election but would succeed. I don’t speak these words lightly.”

Aguilar concluded saying that Trump put party “ahead of the country.”

But the ranking Republican on the 1/6 panel, Liz Cheney of Wyoming more accurately identified Trump’s priorities: “An honorable man, a man who loved his country more than himself, would have conceded.”

(FRI 6/17/22)

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

(THU 6/16/22)

Hearing III begins 1 p.m. Thursday … The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection holds its third public hearing at 1 p.m., featuring a look at emails between Donald J. Trump attorney John Eastman and Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and of a documentary video showing Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) giving a January 5 tour of the Capitol. One man in that January 5 tour (picture, above) was caught on video participating in the Capitol siege January 6. 

The 1/6 panel will center on former Vice President Mike Pence’s pushback on Trump’s demands he certify the Electoral College votes for the former president instead of Joe Biden. Thursday’s witnesses are Pence attorney Greg Jacob, and attorney and former federal judge Michael Luttig, whom Eastman once clerked for, and who tweeted numerous times January 5, 2021, that the Constitution does not give the vice president authority to alter or change the vote. 

Fun fact: It’s the eve of the 50^th anniversary of the Watergate break-in.

•••

Palin’s return to politics … Sarah Palin, who stepped down as Alaska’s governor in 2009, about half a year after she and Republican presidential candidate John McCain lost to Obama-Biden, leads the top-four primary in a special election for her state’s single House seat, the AP reports. Donald J. Trump-backed Palin is ahead of moderate GOP businessman Nick Begich, scion of a prominent Alaska Democratic political family. Begich was challenging Republican Rep. Don Young before he died in March. Young had been in office since 1973.

Palin got 28.3% of the vote to Begich’s 19.3%. Independent Al Gross takes third with 12.8%. The fourth position hasn’t been determined, with Democrat Mary Peltola at 8.7% leading Republican Tara Sweeney at 5.5%. More than four dozen candidates were running for the four runoff positions, and Palin’s lead does not necessarily give her an advantage over the other three candidates in the ranked-choice special election August 16, according to Axios.

•••

Fed hikes interest rates by 0.75 point … The Federal Reserve hiked interest rates by 0.75 point Wednesday, the largest increase since 1994, The Wall Street Journal reports. Analysts were bracing for an 0.5-point increase to tamp down the heated economy and an 8.6% inflation rate that defied expectations by failing to decrease in May. The Fed signaled it would continue lifting rates at such a pace this year until inflation begins to decline.

Upshot: While economists worry the Fed’s aggressive anti-inflation measures will force a recession, PRI’s Marketplace notes the increase to 1.75% from 1.5% puts it where it was just before the pandemic.

•••

Biden sends $1 billion more to Ukraine … President Biden announced the U.S. will send an additional $1 billion “security assistance package” of artillery, coastal defense weapons and ammunitions to Ukraine to help fight off Russian forces, which are making gains in the invaded country’s eastern region. The U.S. also will send $225 million worth of drinking water, medical supplies, food and shelter (per The Hill).

--Edited by Todd Lassa and Nic Woods

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(WED 6/15/22) Loudermilk Video Released

Photo: “During the tour, the man took photos of hallways, tunnels, and staircases within the Capitol complex.” – Caption in video of Rep. Barry Loudermilk’s January 5 Capitol tour.

Let’s go to the tapes … The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol has released documentary footage showing a man who took part in a tour of the Capitol with Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) on January 5, 2021, and then on January 6 was filmed yelling threats at Congress members, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), The Hill reports.

View the entire 2-minute, 47-second video on Twitter @January6thCmte. 

The man in question has been interviewed by the committee, Punchbowl News reported earlier in a scoop about the footage, and it doesn’t appear he has been charged with any wrongdoing. 

Our take: As with everything else the 1/6 panel has made public so far, it’s not likely to move Loudermilk or Trump’s still-loyal supporters.

•••

Tuesday’s primaries … Rep. Tom Rice (R-SC), one of 10 Republican congressmembers who voted in favor of Donald J. Trump’s second impeachment has said “it would be a badge of honor” to lose the GOP primary to a Trump-backed candidate, NPR’s Morning Edition notes. And so, Rice gets his badge, having lost to South Carolina state legislator and Trump endorsee Russell Fry, 51.1% to 24.6% (all figures per Ballotpedia).

As if the Democratic primary in South Carolina’s Senate race matters, three candidates were in a close race as of Wednesday morning, with Krystle Matthews leading at 34.4%, Catherine Fleming Bruce at 34.2% and Angela Geter at 31.5%.

Conversely: Freshman Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who has openly criticized Trump, though she did not vote for his second impeachment, beat Trump-backed challenger Katie Arrington, 53.3% to 45%. 

Nevada: “President Trump Endorses Adam Laxalt for U.S. Senate!” Yes, that’s the one-term president who insists he’s still president endorsing the son of the former U.S. senator from New Mexico, and a moderate Republican, Pete Domenici – complete with requisite superfluous exclamation mark. Laxalt beat Sam Brown for the GOP nomination, 57.5% to 34.1% and will take on the incumbent Democratic senator, Catherine Cortez Masto, in November. 

Republicans believe this is one of the key races they can win in the midterms to retake control of the Senate. 

North Dakota: Incumbent John Hoeven easily defeated Riley Kuntz, 78.5% to 20.8%, for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. In the Democratic primary, Katrina Christianson took 76.2% of the vote to Michael Steele’s (no, not the former GOP chairman/current MSNBC pundit) 23.8%.

Texas: It’s lobbying firm 1, Democrats -1. On April 1, four-term Democratic Rep. Filemon Vela resigned from Congress to become a lobbyist for a top Washington firm, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, weeks after he announced he would not run again this November. Republican Mayra Flores, 51.0%, beat Democrat Dan Sanchez, 43.3%, for the seat in a special election. The House count is now 220 Democrats to 210 Republicans.

Note: “Trump” appears nowhere on Flores’ website homepage, but a tweet there from Elon Musk says she is the first Republican he has ever voted for. Flores’ victory is the latest sign of a shift by Hispanic and Latino voters to the GOP.

•••

Pro-authoritarian candidates … account for an overwhelming portion of GOP midterm candidates who have won primaries held through the end of May, The Washington Post reported in exclusive analysis Tuesday. The newspaper’s report says “at least 108 candidates” for Congress or statewide office nominated or chosen in conventions have repeated former President Trump’s Big Lie that but not for voter fraud he won re-election in 2020. On top of that, at least 149 candidates out of more than 170 races campaigned on a platform of tightening voting rules or more strictly enforcing existing laws, WaPo continues. 

The Republican candidates, nominees plus those facing runoffs, are running for the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives, governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and secretary of state. WaPo singles out Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, who was on Capitol Hill January 6, 2021, and “has asserted that the Republican-controlled legislature should have the right to take control of the all-important choice over which presidential electors to send to Washington.”

Note: This essentially affirms the Trump wing of the GOP, which still appears to be the majority of the Republican Party, as pro-authoritarian, willing to overturn popular vote in a state to assure its candidates win. Primaries that The Washington Posthas surveyed so far all occurred before the House Select committee on January 6 began its public hearings, and it promises to survey subsequent primaries through the season, but we don’t expect much of a change in this attitude.

--Edited by Todd Lassa and Nic Woods

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

By Todd Lassa

UPDATE -- The U.S. House Select Committee Investigation of the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol has postponed Wednesday's public hearing without giving a reason, NPR reports. The panel will reconvene as scheduled at 10 a.m. Thursday.

The lesson from Day Two of the House Select Committee’s public hearings of its investigation of the January 6 Capitol insurrection is that if you can convince enough followers about something like the Big Lie, you can make money off it. Or as committee member Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) put it; “Not only was there the Big Lie, there was the big ripoff.”

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), the panel’s vice-chair, quoted “one conservative editorial board” as writing, “Mr. Trump betrayed his supporters on January 6 and he is still doing it.”

In his live testimony, Chris Stirewalt, former politics editor for Fox News described how an exclusive formula for calling each state’s election results gave his cable network an edge in calling Arizona for Biden ahead of other networks – which led to his being fired for it. 

Bill Stepien, Trump’s chief political advisor for the 2020 election, was excused from live testimony because his pregnant wife was in labor Monday morning. As part of a large inner-circle of the 45^th president who tried to tell him there was no credible evidence of results-changing voter fraud, Stepien described in videotaped testimony how “there was a surprise in the call” for Arizona by Fox News by “most everybody” in the room watching the returns from the White House that night. 

Stepien tried to get Donald J. Trump and the rest of the group to agree not to call the election for either candidate that Tuesday night, as results would be counted for days. But Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, arrived at the White House later election night, “apparently inebriated,” and tried to talk the president and his advisors to reject that idea as “being weak.” 

Stepien’s group became known as “Team Normal” while Giuliani and his circle were known as “Team Crazy,” according to Lofgren. (Much of Team Crazy’s early tactics focused on falsely accusing Dominion Voting Systems of fraud.)

The next day, Trump told a group of supporters in a nationally televised meeting “We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.”

“Mr. Stepien, after the votes were counted, who won the election?” Lofgren asked in a video clip.

“Uh, Joseph Robinet Biden Jr., of the great state of Delaware.”

Asked by Lofgren to explain “Red Mirage,” ex-Fox News’ Stirewalt said it is the foundation of the Big Lie in that it is predicated on statistics that show Democrats use mail-in and absentee ballots far more than Republicans, and those ballots are only counted after election-day ballots. 

“You expect to see Republicans with a lead (early on) but it’s not really a lead,” Stirewalt explained. “When you put a jigsaw puzzle together you see the same image – it doesn’t matter which pieces you put together first.”

The panel relied heavily once again on former Attorney General William Barr. (It doesn’t hurt he was seen as a fierce Trump loyalist after his “handling” of the Mueller Report.) 

“Right out of the box on election night Trump claimed that there was major fraud,” he said, and it “seemed to be based” on a lot of Democratic votes coming in late, particularly from big cities in the states that mattered. 

Lofgren launched into more video, including recordings of former Trump attorney Sidney Powell, and of Giuliani on Fox News describing hundreds of thousands of ballots in garbage trucks being dumped into vote counts. 

Barr said of Trump; “He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff. (There) wasn’t any interest in what the actual facts were.” Challenging states’ results was not the pervue of the Justice Department, Barr noted, but rather up to his campaign’s attorneys. And the 1/6 panel reiterated the results of 62 such cases the Trump campaign brought in nine states plus the District of Columbia, with 22 Republican-appointed judges, 10 by Trump, plus all three of his Supreme Court nominees, who rejected fraud claims. Of those, Trump scored 61 losses and one win.

And yet, Trump established the Official Election Defense Fund, which the 1/6 panel, questioning numerous ex-Trump officials and advisors concludes does not exist, according to Lofgren, though it has raised $250 million, nearly $100 million of it in the first week after the election. Trump’s Save America PAC created November 9, 2020, has paid $1 million of its donations to Mark Meadows’ Conservative Partnership Institute, $1 million to the America First Policy Institute, $204,857 to the Trump Hotel Collection and $5 million to Event Strategies Inc. according to the 1/6 panel.

(TUE 6/14/22)

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COMMENT: editors@thehustings.news

Pictured: House Select Committee vice-chair Liz Cheney (R-WY)

1/6 hearings continue in earnest … Twenty million television viewers watched last Thursday’s House Select Committee public hearings on the January 6 Capitol insurrection, according to the Nielsen ratings organization. No doubt fewer people will watch when the hearings resume Monday at 10 a.m. Eastern (and again on Wednesday and Thursday). But most of those viewers will be watching replays of highlights along with analysis prime time Monday on all the major cable news networks and ABC, CBS and NBC and not on Fox News. 

That’s a substantial number (The New York Times notes that “nearly” 13 million people watched the peak of Game 1 of the NBA championship series between the Golden State Warriors and the Boston Celtics, again per Nielsen). 

It would be smart money to bet that much of that small but vocal minority who don’t see a violent attack on the Capitol in the videos presented Thursday and who don’t think former President Trump was so determined to hold onto power that he incited said attack will be part of the follow-up audience. 

After Thursday’s hearings, The Hustings posted a poll on Twitter, asking followers whether they were a.) Making a case against Trump; or b.) Waste of time. We got just 254 votes, but admit we suffered a glitch in the timing between the poll and its paid (to Twitter) promotion. Select tweets in response to the poll are here, in the left and right columns. 

The results?

•74.4% said the House Select Committee is making a case against Trump.

•25.6% said the public hearings were a waste of time.

•••

Gun legislation ‘progress’… Gun control advocates who emerged after Sandy Hook and the Stoneman Douglas High School shootings will not see much in the “compromise” legislation being negotiated by 10 Republican and 10 Democratic senators. As-yet unwritten legislation “increases needed mental health resources, improves school safety and support for students, and helps ensure dangerous criminals and those who are adjudicated as mentally ill can’t purchase weapons,” according to a statement by the 20 senators (per Roll Call). 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is enthusiastic. The deal “could get a quick vote,” he said. Well in time for the midterms.

--Todd Lassa

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news