“The House select committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Monday night voted unanimously to hold Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, in criminal contempt for defying a subpoena,” the Washington Post reports.
Are they offering a bounty? Just asking for a friend. . .
December 13, 2021 Heather Cox Richardson Dec 14 Tonight, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol held a televised hearing to vote on whether to hold Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena. Their answer was yes, unanimously, by a vote of 9–0. More, even than that, though, was that in order to justify their votes they dropped some details about what happened on January 6.
What they revealed was eye-popping.
All members of the committee spoke tonight, underscoring the importance of the moment.
Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) grabbed the headlines, though, as she read text messages Meadows received on January 6. They included texts from lawmakers to Meadows begging Trump to call off the rioters, making it crystal clear that those closest to him understood that those attacking the Capitol would respond to his orders. Dozens of texts urged the president to act to stop the protesters: “Someone is going to get killed.” “POTUS needs to calm this sh*t down.”
Those writing the texts to Meadows about the president also included his son Donald Trump, Jr. (why was he communicating with his father through Meadows?), and Fox News Channel personalities Laura Ingraham, Brian Kilmeade, and Sean Hannity, revealing how dangerously intertwined the right-wing media system is with Republican lawmakers. “This is hurting all of us,” Ingraham wrote to Meadows during the insurrection.
Cheney said: “These texts leave no doubt: the White House knew exactly what was happening at the Capitol. Members of Congress, the press, and others wrote to Mark Meadows as the attack was underway.”
And yet, Trump remained unmoved for 187 minutes while our Capitol was under attack and lawmakers hid from the mob. As Cheney said: “Hours passed without necessary action by the president. These non privileged texts are further evidence of President Trump's supreme dereliction of duty during those 187 minutes.”
Cheney took the fight directly to Trump with her accusation of “dereliction of duty.” The Capitol was under attack, and the one person who everyone believed could stop the attack, the commander-in-chief, refused to. A number of lawmakers tossed the term “dereliction of duty” around immediately after the insurrection, but it has faded from conversation as Republicans have lined up again behind the former president. It is, though, an offense under the U.S. military code, and therefore is something that people understand is serious.
Cheney was more specific in another accusation of criminal behavior. After establishing that many lawmakers and media personalities begged then-president Trump to call off the rioters, she asked: "Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress’s proceedings?"
What Cheney did tonight was courageous. She put herself on the line in the struggle to hold Trump and his loyalists accountable. As other lawmakers claim to be afraid to stand up to Trump out of fear for their safety, she has made herself a key target of the Trump loyalists in order to defend our democracy.
But that was not all that happened in the hearing.
To underscore that the material Meadows handed over was not privileged, Representative Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) explained that Meadows conducted business on a personal cell phone and over personal email accounts, as well as over Signal, a secure messaging system that encrypts messages so they cannot be unlocked by anyone but the receiver.
The committee members also increased pressure on those continuing to protect the former president.
Republicans are elitists. They are persuaded that a better class of people should be in charge of the country. However, the designation of such people is not achieved by fiat. The theory of the unitary executive does not imbue the head of state with wisdom akin to the supposedly miracular infusion of wisdom into the Pope. Trump has demonstrated that in spades. The question now is what to do about him. Shall the Republican party cede power to its members or simply give up the ghost? The reason I say that is because, in Georgia, fact is that in the November ballotting, over twenty-two thousand voters skipped the presidential box and over sicty-two thousand voted for the Libertarian party candidate. In addition, David Perdue, the Senate incumbent who had to participate in a run-off with Osoff, received more votes in November than Donald Trump. The voters spoke and they did not elect Doug Collins, who had championed Trump in the first impeachment proceeding, either. So, the kerfuffle over eleven thousand votes is nothing but a distraction to disguise that he got trounced. We do not know the identity of the twenty=two thousand who failed to vote for president, but I'd sort of guess they were not Democrats.
Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) revealed other messages, from unnamed lawmakers, expressing sympathy for the insurrection. One lawmaker texted Meadows: “On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all.” A message from a lawmaker the next day read. “Yesterday was a terrible day. We tried everything we could in our objection to the 6 states. I’m sorry nothing worked.”
This evening, Thompson told reporters that “the information we received has been quite revealing about members of Congress involved in the activities of January 6th as well as staff.” He said the names of the lawmakers involved in the events of that day will come out. One of those involved is almost certainly Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), who has been evasive about when and how many times he talked to Trump on January 6, although says with certainty he did.
Rolling Stone reported tonight that two people who helped to organize the January 6 rally at the Ellipse are saying they will cooperate with the committee fully. Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lawrence, who have both been subpoenaed by the committee, are longtime activists who tended to operate on the margins of established politics.
CNN business journalist Brian Stelter noted that right-wing media channels—including the Fox News Channel, Newsmax, and One America News—did not cover the January 6 committee hearing at all tonight. Hannity, though, did interview Meadows, opening his show by telling viewers: “The hyperpartisan predetermined-outcome anti-Trump January 6 committee just voted 9 to 0 to hold Mark Meadows in contempt for refusing to comply with their orders.” He went on to ask Meadows why Congress is not investigating what Hannity painted as the terrible riots in the summer of 2020.
Their discomfort might reflect, in part, that they, too, were implicated in the events of January 6. After begging Trump to call off his supporters during the insurrection, the same personalities went in front of their audiences on camera and lied that Trump had nothing to do with the insurrection. Ingraham, for example, blamed Antifa for the attack on the Capitol, suggested the riot was staged by provocateurs, and suggested there were just three dozen people.
The suggestion that Antifa was the real culprit on January 6 might or might not have been related to the plan suggested yesterday that Trump had expected counter-protesters and had been prepared to use the ensuing violence as a pretext to declare martial law. At 5:25 p.m. on January 5, Trump tweeted: “Antifa is a Terrorist Organization, stay out of Washington. Law enforcement is watching you very closely!”
Just three days ago, on Friday, December 10, Ingraham interviewed Trump, who told her he wasn’t involved in the rioting on January 6 and that his words that day “were extremely calming.”
The resolution to hold Meadows in contempt will go to the full House tomorrow.
Well, the dereliction of duty will enabled the injured, at a minimum, to sue Trump as an individual. The question now is how the press can be separated from their fixation on Trump as a source of revenue. It's a tough row to hoe because the press has been a nefarious force for about a century and a half. The New York Times should not be forgiven for Iraq.
Daniel Goldman: “Meadows was clearly on his way to full cooperation by turning over loads of documents. But then something happened before testimony. One new fact: the Committee subpoenaed his cellphone metadata, which would show the date and time of his calls. He stopped cooperating. What’s in those phone records?”
Daily Beast: Meadows personal cell is becoming a personal hell.
Apparently, the former member of Congress has not caught on that the public information requirements in the executive branch are ever more stringent that in the legislative branch. Perhaps he did not understand that the reason Hillary Clinton was not sanctioned for using a server at home was because she turned over all work-related documents to the archivist. The legislators get away with using off-site phone banks to solicit contributions because they make their own rules and have no executive powers. The rules are different for the executive branch. That "powers" is a euphemism seems not to have registered either. Members of the executive have duties and obligations and the powers to carry those out. That's all, folks.
This worries me a bit, as my immune system's Achilles heel is my T-cells. The ONLY thing found after extensive testing that contributes to be being so susceptible to shingles is that I tend to have a low T-cell count. As a result, I have a low-normal immune system. That means that if I get sick (with most anything) it can pull my immune system down and I get shingles.
Ever wonder how biologists can get up close and personal with a bird's nest without impacting their safety?
Manomet's #shorebird researchers include nest success studies as part of their annual #Arctic fieldwork, learning more about parents' nesting behavior and the threats they face during the breeding season. In order to cause as little disruption to a nest site as possible, researchers set up cameras to monitor predation, incubation, and other important factors that contribute to whether or not a nest will be successful (hatch offspring).
But, can setting up a camera actually attract unwanted attention from predators or other threats? Stephen Brown, VP of Science, and Shiloh Schulte, Senior Shorebird Scientist, recently collaborated with lead author Rebecca McGuire from the Wildlife Conservation Society, along with partners at the USFWS Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Environment and Climate Change, to find out if cameras have unintended consequences when used for field research.
"Minimizing disruption is of the utmost importance when going into fragile habitat like shorebirds' Arctic nesting grounds," says Brown. "Through this study, we found that cameras had no measurable effect on nest success when used appropriately, making them a safe and accurate method of gathering data on nest sites that we wouldn't be able to collect otherwise."
“The House select committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Monday night voted unanimously to hold Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, in criminal contempt for defying a subpoena,” the Washington Post reports.
ReplyDeleteAre they offering a bounty? Just asking for a friend. . .
👍
DeleteHas he gone missing?
Darned if I know.
DeleteAnne Sacoolas to face UK court over death of Harry Dunn— or maybe not. [Click]
ReplyDeleteUS air force discharges 27 service members for refusing Covid vaccine [Click]
ReplyDelete👍
Delete
ReplyDeleteDecember 13, 2021
Heather Cox Richardson Dec 14
Tonight, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol held a televised hearing to vote on whether to hold Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena. Their answer was yes, unanimously, by a vote of 9–0. More, even than that, though, was that in order to justify their votes they dropped some details about what happened on January 6.
What they revealed was eye-popping.
All members of the committee spoke tonight, underscoring the importance of the moment.
Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) grabbed the headlines, though, as she read text messages Meadows received on January 6. They included texts from lawmakers to Meadows begging Trump to call off the rioters, making it crystal clear that those closest to him understood that those attacking the Capitol would respond to his orders. Dozens of texts urged the president to act to stop the protesters: “Someone is going to get killed.” “POTUS needs to calm this sh*t down.”
Those writing the texts to Meadows about the president also included his son Donald Trump, Jr. (why was he communicating with his father through Meadows?), and Fox News Channel personalities Laura Ingraham, Brian Kilmeade, and Sean Hannity, revealing how dangerously intertwined the right-wing media system is with Republican lawmakers. “This is hurting all of us,” Ingraham wrote to Meadows during the insurrection.
Cheney said: “These texts leave no doubt: the White House knew exactly what was happening at the Capitol. Members of Congress, the press, and others wrote to Mark Meadows as the attack was underway.”
And yet, Trump remained unmoved for 187 minutes while our Capitol was under attack and lawmakers hid from the mob. As Cheney said: “Hours passed without necessary action by the president. These non privileged texts are further evidence of President Trump's supreme dereliction of duty during those 187 minutes.”
Cheney took the fight directly to Trump with her accusation of “dereliction of duty.” The Capitol was under attack, and the one person who everyone believed could stop the attack, the commander-in-chief, refused to. A number of lawmakers tossed the term “dereliction of duty” around immediately after the insurrection, but it has faded from conversation as Republicans have lined up again behind the former president. It is, though, an offense under the U.S. military code, and therefore is something that people understand is serious.
Cheney was more specific in another accusation of criminal behavior. After establishing that many lawmakers and media personalities begged then-president Trump to call off the rioters, she asked: "Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress’s proceedings?"
What Cheney did tonight was courageous. She put herself on the line in the struggle to hold Trump and his loyalists accountable. As other lawmakers claim to be afraid to stand up to Trump out of fear for their safety, she has made herself a key target of the Trump loyalists in order to defend our democracy.
But that was not all that happened in the hearing.
To underscore that the material Meadows handed over was not privileged, Representative Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) explained that Meadows conducted business on a personal cell phone and over personal email accounts, as well as over Signal, a secure messaging system that encrypts messages so they cannot be unlocked by anyone but the receiver.
The committee members also increased pressure on those continuing to protect the former president.
Republicans are elitists. They are persuaded that a better class of people should be in charge of the country. However, the designation of such people is not achieved by fiat. The theory of the unitary executive does not imbue the head of state with wisdom akin to the supposedly miracular infusion of wisdom into the Pope.
DeleteTrump has demonstrated that in spades. The question now is what to do about him. Shall the Republican party cede power to its members or simply give up the ghost?
The reason I say that is because, in Georgia, fact is that in the November ballotting, over twenty-two thousand voters skipped the presidential box and over sicty-two thousand voted for the Libertarian party candidate. In addition, David Perdue, the Senate incumbent who had to participate in a run-off with Osoff, received more votes in November than Donald Trump. The voters spoke and they did not elect Doug Collins, who had championed Trump in the first impeachment proceeding, either.
So, the kerfuffle over eleven thousand votes is nothing but a distraction to disguise that he got trounced. We do not know the identity of the twenty=two thousand who failed to vote for president, but I'd sort of guess they were not Democrats.
--co continued
ReplyDeleteRepresentative Adam Schiff (D-CA) revealed other messages, from unnamed lawmakers, expressing sympathy for the insurrection. One lawmaker texted Meadows: “On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all.” A message from a lawmaker the next day read. “Yesterday was a terrible day. We tried everything we could in our objection to the 6 states. I’m sorry nothing worked.”
This evening, Thompson told reporters that “the information we received has been quite revealing about members of Congress involved in the activities of January 6th as well as staff.” He said the names of the lawmakers involved in the events of that day will come out. One of those involved is almost certainly Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), who has been evasive about when and how many times he talked to Trump on January 6, although says with certainty he did.
Rolling Stone reported tonight that two people who helped to organize the January 6 rally at the Ellipse are saying they will cooperate with the committee fully. Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lawrence, who have both been subpoenaed by the committee, are longtime activists who tended to operate on the margins of established politics.
CNN business journalist Brian Stelter noted that right-wing media channels—including the Fox News Channel, Newsmax, and One America News—did not cover the January 6 committee hearing at all tonight. Hannity, though, did interview Meadows, opening his show by telling viewers: “The hyperpartisan predetermined-outcome anti-Trump January 6 committee just voted 9 to 0 to hold Mark Meadows in contempt for refusing to comply with their orders.” He went on to ask Meadows why Congress is not investigating what Hannity painted as the terrible riots in the summer of 2020.
Their discomfort might reflect, in part, that they, too, were implicated in the events of January 6. After begging Trump to call off his supporters during the insurrection, the same personalities went in front of their audiences on camera and lied that Trump had nothing to do with the insurrection. Ingraham, for example, blamed Antifa for the attack on the Capitol, suggested the riot was staged by provocateurs, and suggested there were just three dozen people.
The suggestion that Antifa was the real culprit on January 6 might or might not have been related to the plan suggested yesterday that Trump had expected counter-protesters and had been prepared to use the ensuing violence as a pretext to declare martial law. At 5:25 p.m. on January 5, Trump tweeted: “Antifa is a Terrorist Organization, stay out of Washington. Law enforcement is watching you very closely!”
Just three days ago, on Friday, December 10, Ingraham interviewed Trump, who told her he wasn’t involved in the rioting on January 6 and that his words that day “were extremely calming.”
The resolution to hold Meadows in contempt will go to the full House tomorrow.
--
I am so deeply grateful to the Committee. Wish I’d known it was being televised; I would have watched.
DeleteAuntie Faw was probably sleeping under a bridge.
DeleteWell, the dereliction of duty will enabled the injured, at a minimum, to sue Trump as an individual.
DeleteThe question now is how the press can be separated from their fixation on Trump as a source of revenue. It's a tough row to hoe because the press has been a nefarious force for about a century and a half. The New York Times should not be forgiven for Iraq.
Perjury of oath is also a prosecutable offense.
DeleteHaiti fuel tanker blast kills dozens in Cap-Haïtien
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-59650802
It’s a tragedy of poor and desperate people.
“Haiti is experiencing a severe fuel shortage as powerful gangs have seized control of much of the fuel distribution around the country.”
Via politicalwire.com:
ReplyDeleteDaniel Goldman: “Meadows was clearly on his way to full cooperation by turning over loads of documents. But then something happened before testimony. One new fact: the Committee subpoenaed his cellphone metadata, which would show the date and time of his calls. He stopped cooperating. What’s in those phone records?”
Daily Beast: Meadows personal cell is becoming a personal hell.
Apparently, the former member of Congress has not caught on that the public information requirements in the executive branch are ever more stringent that in the legislative branch. Perhaps he did not understand that the reason Hillary Clinton was not sanctioned for using a server at home was because she turned over all work-related documents to the archivist.
DeleteThe legislators get away with using off-site phone banks to solicit contributions because they make their own rules and have no executive powers. The rules are different for the executive branch. That "powers" is a euphemism seems not to have registered either. Members of the executive have duties and obligations and the powers to carry those out. That's all, folks.
California issues universal indoor mask mandate as COVID-19 cases rise [Click]
ReplyDeleteWhy Were Trump Allies Begging Him To Call Off The Capitol Attack If Antifa Did It?! [Click] Some choice juxtapositions. . .
ReplyDeleteT Cells Might Be Our Bodies’ Best Shot Against Omicron [Click] “The new variant may undermine some vaccine-derived defenses. But the immune system’s best assassins are likely to hold the line.”
ReplyDeleteThis worries me a bit, as my immune system's Achilles heel is my T-cells. The ONLY thing found after extensive testing that contributes to be being so susceptible to shingles is that I tend to have a low T-cell count. As a result, I have a low-normal immune system. That means that if I get sick (with most anything) it can pull my immune system down and I get shingles.
DeleteWell, forewarned is forearmed. And there is this:
DeletePfizer says pill is effective in protecting against severe disease from Covid [Click] Sounds like it might get emergency FDA authorization.
Bugs across globe are evolving to eat plastic, study finds [Click]
ReplyDeleteKentucky candle factory bosses threatened to fire those who fled tornado, say workers [Click]
ReplyDeleteEver wonder how biologists can get up close and personal with a bird's nest without impacting their safety?
ReplyDeleteManomet's #shorebird researchers include nest success studies as part of their annual #Arctic fieldwork, learning more about parents' nesting behavior and the threats they face during the breeding season. In order to cause as little disruption to a nest site as possible, researchers set up cameras to monitor predation, incubation, and other important factors that contribute to whether or not a nest will be successful (hatch offspring).
But, can setting up a camera actually attract unwanted attention from predators or other threats? Stephen Brown, VP of Science, and Shiloh Schulte, Senior Shorebird Scientist, recently collaborated with lead author Rebecca McGuire from the Wildlife Conservation Society, along with partners at the USFWS Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Environment and Climate Change, to find out if cameras have unintended consequences when used for field research.
"Minimizing disruption is of the utmost importance when going into fragile habitat like shorebirds' Arctic nesting grounds," says Brown. "Through this study, we found that cameras had no measurable effect on nest success when used appropriately, making them a safe and accurate method of gathering data on nest sites that we wouldn't be able to collect otherwise."
Read the full study just released this month in Ibis - international journal of avian science here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ibi.13000
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ibi.13000
Dark Matter Galaxy Anomaly Is Not What We Initially Thought [Click] Oh, darn!
ReplyDeleteTrump’s longtime accountant testifies to N.Y. grand jury in criminal probe [Click]
ReplyDeleteTrump suffers big court loss in his bid to keep his tax records secret [Click]
ReplyDeleteNo luck seeing Comet Leonard this evening. The part of the sky where it is supposed to be (between Venus and the horizon) is obscured by clouds.
ReplyDeleteHeavy rain and snow pummel California after a season of historic wildfires [Click] Here the rain was light but steady all day long, but the sky began to clear in the evening.
ReplyDelete