Mediaboss Marketing

WASHINGTON -- The House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol is racing against a political clock to get to the bottom of what happened that day, and in the lead-up to the attack.

While two Republicans sit on the nine-member panel, it's a committee created by a Democratic-controlled House that GOP leadership has tried to discredit. One of those Republican panelists, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, is facing a primary challenger backed by former President Donald Trump. The other, Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, is not running for reelection. And the January 6 committee itself is likely to be disbanded if Republicans win back the House in November, CNN reported.

A reminder: A net gain of five seats is not the same thing as winning five seats. A party needs at least 218 seats to win control of the House. While Republicans are trying to flip seats this year, so are the Democrats -- so any GOP wins will have to be offset by any losses they incur.

That said, losses are not a huge concern for Republicans right now. Given the historical trends working in their favor and the fact that President Joe Biden's approval rating is 40% in the latest CNN average of national polls, the national environment seems to be working in their favor. And the uptick in retirement announcements by several longtime Democratic incumbents in recent months is a telling sign they weren't looking forward to serving in the minority.

SEE ALSO | Republican donors line up behind US Rep. Liz Cheney: 'We are moving beyond Donald Trump'

But it's not all bad news for Democrats. The House map is not as favorable to Republicans as the majority party feared it could have been. The once-a-decade redistricting process is nearly complete (except for a handful of states), which has resulted in new congressional lines that Democrats think give them a shot at holding their majority.

Overall, the biggest takeaway from redistricting is that the number of competitive House seats has shrunk, which means that in most states, primaries -- rather than general election contests -- will be the main event.

Several states are hosting member-on-member primaries, in which two incumbents are running in the same district, either because their state lost a seat in redistricting or they were drawn into the same seat for partisan reasons. While those races can provide plenty of intraparty drama -- and in some cases, a test of Trump's enduring influence over the GOP -- they're mostly not expected to have any effect on the general election. In West Virginia, for example, two Republican incumbents -- one who objected to certifying the 2020 presidential election and one who did not -- are facing off in a heavily Republican district. Regardless of who wins the May primary, the seat is highly unlikely to fall into Democratic hands in November.

Some states hold open primaries -- in which candidates from all parties run on the same primary ballot with the top two or four candidates advancing to the general election. One of those states is Alaska, where former governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin is running in a special election for the state's at-large seat left vacant by the death last month of Republican Rep. Don Young. Barring any primary surprises, Republicans are expected to hold this seat.

Just 61 House races (out of 435) are currently rated as competitive by Inside Elections. Of those, only 16 are rated as Toss-up races -- seven seats held by Republicans, eight held by Democrats and one new seat in Colorado.

A smaller landscape of competitive races means Republicans will be reaching deeper into Democratic territory to look for pickup opportunities. On Wednesday, for example, the National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm of the House GOP, expanded its list of targets to 72 Democratic-held or newly created seats, including districts that now-President Joe Biden carried by double digits in 2020. Of course, these target lists evolve over time and don't necessarily reflect where money ends up getting spent.

But the majority of the NRCC's targets are seats that Biden won. That goes to show just how few "crossover" districts -- those that voted one way for president but backed a US House representative of a different party -- are left for Republicans to try to flip.

Increasingly nationalized and partisan elections have done away with the likes of former Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, a Democrat whose district voted for Trump by the biggest margin -- 30 points -- in 2016. But after narrowly holding on to his sprawling, rural district in 2018, the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee went down in 2020.

RELATED | Former Donald Trump advisers Dan Scavino, Peter Navarro face contempt vote from Jan. 6 committee

Republicans were encouraged by their gains with Hispanic voters in 2020 and hope that trend continues this year, especially in places such as Texas' Rio Grande Valley, where several House seats are in play.

They're also hoping they may be able to make a play for some of the traditionally GOP-leaning suburban districts that moved away from them during the Trump era.

Democratic retirements have also set up a few enticing pickup opportunities for Republicans. Retiring Illinois Rep. Cheri Bustos, the former chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has often touted her success in a Trump-voting district. Pennsylvania Rep. Conor Lamb, who is running for Senate, talks up his record of winning in Trump country. But both are leaving behind seats that will see competitive races, according to Inside Elections.

House Democrats' top defensive holds are incumbents the DCCC calls "Frontline" members. Many of these incumbents have had tough races before, and some of their districts became more favorable in redistricting, although perhaps not enough to ensure a comfortable reelection in a difficult national environment.

Golden, a two-term incumbent from Maine, for example, has a history of overperforming the top of the ticket. His district's White working-class voters twice backed Trump, while Golden won reelection in 2020 by 6 points. But even if he's bucked the national Democratic Party on certain major votes in Washington, he's still in for a tough race, potentially facing off against a better-funded and more organized opponent than he did two years ago. Former GOP Rep. Bruce Poliquin, whom Golden unseated in 2018 under Maine's ranked-choice voting system, is running again. Inside Elections rates the race a Toss-up.

Many of the DCCC's Frontliners who won in 2018 -- when Democrats flipped the House during Trump's presidency -- are used to raising huge sums of money. They set new quarterly records for hauls in the millions that put even some Senate candidates to shame. But not all Democrats who potentially face competitive races this year after redistricting are accustomed to that level of campaigning. Two longtime incumbents, Reps. Sanford Bishop of Georgia and Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, haven't faced competitive elections in years.

SEE ALSO | Wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas says she attended pro-Trump Jan. 6 rally

Democrats believe they can remain competitive in the suburbs, which soured on Republicans under Trump. Still, Trump is not in office or on the ballot, which will be a test of whether Democrats can sustain base voter enthusiasm without him.

Democrats are also eyeing pickup opportunities, especially in GOP-held seats that Biden won. That includes a handful of districts in California and New York, although there's new uncertainty over the district lines in the Empire State after a judge blocked the Democratic-drawn map on Thursday.

And even if Trump isn't on the ballot this year, he's proving he still wants to be a force in GOP politics. For Democrats, that's good news if he helps drive GOP candidates to the right in getting through primaries for competitive seats. In Michigan, for example, he's backing a primary challenger to freshman Rep. Peter Meijer, who voted to impeach Trump, in a district that could be harder for Republicans to hold without the incumbent.

The video in the player above is from a previous report.

(The-CNN-Wire & 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.)

View post:
2022 midterms: Future of Jan 6 committee investigation into Donald Trump supporters' 2021 insurrection hangs on midterm elections - WLS-TV

A recent report claims that President Joe Biden has told multiple people that he wants his predecessor Donald Trump to be prosecuted.

The New York Times reported this leak on Saturday, and it comes as Democrats in Washington ramp up pressure on the Justice Department to take action against Trump and his close allies as retaliation for events at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The Times said that Merrick Garland, the current US attorney general, has been taking a deliberate approach that has come to frustrate Democratic allies of the White House and, at times, President Biden himself during his ongoing investigation into the January 6 incident.

As recently as last year, Mr. Biden confided to his inner circle that he believed former President Donald J. Trump was a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted, the Times said.

Reportedly, the president is frustrated with the attorney generals slow-and-steady approach and wants him to expedite the January 6 prosecutions.

While the president has never communicated his frustrations directly to Mr. Garland, he has said privately that he wanted Mr. Garland to act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6, the Times said.

However, it remains unclear just what Trump would be prosecuted for doing.

The United States House Select Committee that is charged with investigating the January 6 incident says that its investigators have reason to believe that Trump and his associates broke multiple laws in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, the Washington Examiner reported.

In a legal brief filed in early March, the committee suggested that it had evidence showing that Trump may have engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States, illegally impeding Congresss counting of electoral votes, and lying to the public.

The committee said that Trump and his allies engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the US by interfering with the election certification process, disseminating false information about election fraud, and pressuring state officials to alter state election results and federal officials to assist in that effort; common law fraud in the nations capital city involving the false representation of fact; and, Trumps alleged endeavor to hinder the congressional certification of the 2020 election.

Despite this, the Times said, There is no indication that federal prosecutors are close to charging the former President.

Visit link:
Joe Biden allegedly wants the DOJ to prosecute Donald Trump - TheBlaze

Its widely known that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is a shameless opportunist. But could he be even more shameless and opportunistic than we believed?

Potentially yes, according to a report from The Washington Post published this week detailing just how closely Cruz worked with then-President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election results. Reporter Michael Kranish also revealed that Cruz has known Trumps attorney John Eastman who authored legal memos he hoped would be used to deny the certification of the election for decades. That raises questions over whether Cruz coordinated directly with the White House on legal strategy designed to undermine the election.

Cruz's barefaced opportunism is a window into the partys embrace of authoritarianism.

As a result of conspiring with Trump, Cruz lost allies and friends. But today, even as more evidence emerges tying him to Trumps Big Lie, he is far from a GOP pariah. Still, one of the most prominent lawmakers in the party, Cruz is openly eyeing another presidential run. His barefaced opportunism is a window into the partys embrace of authoritarianism.

According to the Post, Cruz and Trump began working on plans to undermine the election two days after Election Day, to the surprise of many of Cruzs aides. Cruz spoke to Trump directly on the phone, acted as a Trump surrogate spreading 2020 disinformation on Fox News and pitched himself as a legal asset because of his experience working with George W. Bushs campaign during the recount of the Florida vote in 2000. Among other things, Cruz agreed to represent Pennsylvania Republicans attempt to block certification of their states presidential results before the Supreme Court. (The Supreme Court didnt end up taking the case.) And as Cruz backed a lawsuit arguing that Texas had the authority to throw out election results in several other battleground states, some of his advisers worried he was turning his back on his conservative federalist principles.

But perhaps the most shocking possibility raised by the Posts reporting is the implication raised by Cruz and Eastmans friendship. Cruz and Eastman met while clerking for then-U.S. Appeals Court Judge J. Michael Luttig nearly 30 years ago. Cruzs plan calling for the Senate to delay the certification of the 2020 election results seemed to be running on a parallel track to Eastmans legal memo.

When asked if he and Eastman had been in contact about challenging the election, Cruz issued a cagey statement that did not rule out the possibility. Sen. Cruz has been friends with John Eastman since they clerked together in 1995, a Cruz spokesperson told the Post. To the best of his recollection, he did not read the Eastman memo until months after January 6, when it was publicly reported. And when Eastman was asked by the Jan. 6 congressional committee about his communication with Cruz, he invoked the Fifth Amendment.

Cruzs ideological commitments have long been secondary to his political ambition. While the Texas senator paints himself as a pure ideologue, he has abandoned and changed his positions on issues like immigration, foreign policy and surveillance out of concern that they could harm his presidential prospects. 0ne of Trumps fiercest critics during the 2016 primary season, Cruz refused to endorse Trumps nomination at the Republican convention, to boos from the crowd. But he has since become not just a staunch but an effective Trump ally.

Cruz's eagerness to shift positions based on how the wind is blowing extends to Jan. 6 itself. On that day, Cruz questioned the legitimacy of the election on the Senate floor. The very next day, Cruz tried to disassociate himself from Trump, sensing that perhaps his efforts to challenge the election had backfired. "I think, yesterday in particular, the president's language and rhetoric crossed the line and it was reckless," Cruz told a reporter on Jan. 7, with an entirely straight face. "I disagree with it, and I have disagreed with the president's language and rhetoric for the last four years."

Of course since then, Trump, other GOP politicians and right-wing media have successfully downplayed the events of Jan. 6, and once again changed the calculus for Cruz. Consider the way he groveled before Fox News Tucker Carlson in January after taking heat from Trumps base for describing the Jan. 6 riot as a terrorist attack. Cruz quickly apologized and called his own comments sloppy and dumb in a bid to ensure he remained likable to the right-wing populist crowd.

The main point here is not to indict Cruz. Here we have a politician obsessed with keeping his finger on the pulse of the party, who felt that his own presidential prospects would be enriched by trying to overturn an election. More important than Cruz as a self-aggrandizer is Cruz as a signpost of the direction of the party. Cruz is a consummate follower of trends and he's continually shown us that the Republican Party is sliding rapidly toward outright disdain for democracy.

Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MSNBC Daily. Previously, he worked at Vox, HuffPost and Politico, and he has also been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation and elsewhere.

See the original post here:
Ted Cruz's ties to Trump on Jan. 6 are worse than we thought - MSNBC

Updated at 5:45 p.m. ET on March 29, 2022.

At noon on January 6, 2021, then-President Donald Trump spoke to supporters at a rally near the White House. Journalists often quote his incendiary language from the speech: Fight like hell; We will not take it anymore. But Trump also laid out a precise plan of action for the crowd:

If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the No. 1, or certainly one of the top, constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it

States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President [Mike] Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people.

Trump told the crowd how they could force Pence to act on Trumps plan.

After this, were going to walk downand Ill be there with youwere going to walk down, were going to walk down.

Anyone you want, but I think right here, were going to walk down to the Capitol, and were going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and -women, and were probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.

Because youll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.

Trump promised the crowd that if they did as he urgedif they marched on Congress, if they showed strengththey could force a change of the election result.

David Frum: Dont let anyone normalize January 6

About 45 minutes before Trump delivered this speech, he made his last call for nearly eight hours on the White House phone system. From 11:17 a.m. until almost 7 p.m., Trump made all of his phone calls on a nongovernment phone.

We know the president spoke by phone during that gap. As the crowd came crashing toward the office of the Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy, McCarthy called the president to demand he stop the violence. Trump instead excused it. Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are. Witnesses reported seeing the president on the phone many other times during the day.

As president, Trump often avoided using official lines. He used multiple phones of his own. He borrowed phones from other people.

Trump did not grab phones at random. He thought tactically about which phone to use. When the Stormy Daniels story broke, in 2018, Trump tried to place a call to Melania Trump on one of his own phones. She recognized the number and refused to answer the call. So Trump borrowed a phone from a Secret Service agent whose number would not be recognized. The first lady picked up.

Trumps phone choices were powerfully intentional. What was he intending on January 6? The answer is obvious: concealment. But concealment of what?

Trumps actions that day were not secret. They all happened in full public view. He incited a crowd to attack Congress in order to overturn by violence his election defeat. He refused to act to protect Congress and the Constitution when the attack began, and for a long time afterward. When he finally did act, he did so ineffectively: a tweet at 2:38 p.m. faintly suggesting that the crowd be more peaceful, another at 3:13 saying so more emphaticallyall following a tweet at 2:24 p.m. once again condemning Pence for not indulging the fantasy that his vice president could overturn the election for him.

Trump did not order the National Guard to the Capitol until past 3:30. He did not release a video statement against the violence until past 4 p.m.

From the January/February 2022 issue: Trumps next coup has already begun

Trump encouraged the violence and welcomed it in real time. The whole world saw that.

But the world does not know everything about January 6not yet, anywayand Trumps phone behavior may suggest the answer to the most important remaining questions:

Trumps phone choices sought to conceal the answers to those questions. Why? One of the pivotal moments during the Watergate scandal of 1972 was the revelation that President Richard Nixons secretary had erased 18 and a half crucial minutes of a tape recorded three days after the break-in. The erasure suggested consciousness of guilt by the president, and helped end his presidency.

Trumps 7.5-hour gap likewise suggests consciousness of something. And it sure smells like guilt.

This article previously misstated the time that Donald Trump sent a tweet condemning Mike Pence.

See original here:
What Is Trump Hiding About His Phone Records? - The Atlantic

For nearly a month, Vladimir Putin has delivered a daily masterclass in incompetence and brutality. The ex-KGB spymaster and world-class kleptocrat was the guy Donald Trump wanted to be. Just weeks ago, the former president lavished praise on his idol and derided Nato as not so smart.

Hows that working out, Donald?

The world cheers for Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Ukraine, his besieged country. Russias economy is on its knees, its stock market shuttered, its shelves bare. The rouble is worth less than a penny. The west is not as decadent or as flaccid as the tyrant-in-the-Kremlin and President Bone-Spurs bet.

With impeccable timing, Marie Yovanovitch delivers Lessons from the Edge, her memoir. The author is the former US ambassador to Ukraine who Trump fired during his attempt to withhold aid to Kyiv in return for political dirt, an effort that got him impeached. For the first time.

Yovanovitch tells a story of an immigrants success. But, of course, her short but momentous stint in the last administration receives particular attention.

On the page, Yovanovitch berates Trump for his obsequiousness to Putin, which she says was a frequent and continuing cause for concern among the diplomatic corps. Trump, she writes, saw Ukraine as a loser country, smaller and weaker than Russia. If only thousands of dead Russian troops could talk.

Trump was commander-in-chief but according to Yovanovitch, he didnt exactly have the best handle on where his soldiers were deployed.

At an Oval Office meeting in 2017 with Petro Poroshenko, then president of Ukraine, Trump asked HR McMaster, his national security adviser, if US troops were deployed in Donbas in eastern Ukraine, territory now invoked by Putin as grounds for his invasion.

An affirmative answer to that question would have meant that the United States was in a shooting war with Russia, Yovanovitch writes.

In the moment, she says, she also pondered if it was better to interpret Trumps question as suggesting that the commander-in-chief thought it possible that US troops were fighting Russia-led forces, or instead as an indicator that the president wasnt clear which country was on the other side of the war against Ukraine.

Let that sink in. And remember this. According to Mary Trump, the former presidents niece, Trump mocked his father as he succumbed to Alzheimers.

Yovanovitchs parents fled the Nazis, then the Soviets. She was born in Canada and her family moved to the US when she was three. Later she received an offer from Smith, an all-womens school in Massachusetts, but opted for Princeton. It had gone co-ed less than a decade earlier but Yovanovitch counted on it being more fun.

In her memoir, she devotes particular attention to snubs and put-downs endured on account of gender. One of her professors, a European history specialist, announced that he opposed women being admitted. After that, Yovanovitch stayed silent during discussion. It was only after she received an A, she writes, that the professor noticed her and made sure to include her. She really had something to say.

Lessons from the Edge also recalls a sex discrimination lawsuit brought in 1976 by Alison Palmer, a retired foreign service officer, against the US Department of State. The case was settled, but only in 1989 and with an acknowledgment of past wrongs by the department.

State had disproportionately given men the good assignments, Palmer said. Yovanovitch writes: I felt and still feel tremendous gratitude to [her] for fighting for me and so many other women.

Yovanovitch would serve in Moscow and as US ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Ukraine. She worked with political appointees and careerists. She offers particular praise for Republicans of an earlier, saner era.

She lauds George Shultz, Ronald Reagans secretary of state, for professionalism and commitment to country. Shultz reminded new ambassadors that my country meant the US, not their place of posting. He also viewed diplomacy as a constant effort, as opposed to a spasmodic intervention.

Yovanovitch also singles out James Baker, secretary of state to George HW Bush, for helping the president forge a coalition to win the Gulf war.

Department folks found him cold and aloof, Yovanovitch recalls. But it was clear immediately that he was a master of diplomacy.

Baker showed flashes of idealism. The US stood for something. As younger men, both Shultz and Baker were marines.

In marked contrast, Yovanovitch gives the Trump administration a thumping. She brands Rex Tillersons 14-month tenure as secretary of state as near-disastrous. As for Tillersons successor, Mike Pompeo, Yovanovitch lambasts his faux swagger and his refusal to defend her when she came under attack from Trump and his minions.

Amid Trumps first impeachment, over Ukraine, Yovanovitch testified: The policy process is visibly unravelling the state department is being hollowed out.

Loyalty to subordinates was not Pompeos thing or Trumps. Lick whats above you, kick whats below you that was more their mantra. True to form, in 2020 Pompeo screamed at a reporter: Do you think Americans give a fuck about Ukraine?

Two years later, they do. At the same time, Pompeo nurses presidential ambitions. Good luck with that.

Yovanovitch rightly places part of the blame for Putins invasion on Trump.

He saw Ukraine as a pawn that could be bullied into doing his bidding, she said in a recent interview. I think that made a huge impact on Zelenskiy and I think that Putin and other bad actors around the world saw that our president was acting in his own personal interests.

What comes next for the US, Ukraine and Russia? Pressure mounts on the Biden administration to do more for Ukraine at the risk of nuclear conflict. Congressional Republicans vote against aid to Zelenskiy but demand a more robust US response.

Recently, Trump admitted that he was surprised by Putins special military operation. He thought he was negotiating, he said. A very stable genius, indeed.

Read more:
Lessons from the Edge review: Marie Yovanovitch roasts Trump on Putin and Ukraine - The Guardian