Talk about dragging something out

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

About damned time

Of course it doesn't mean they'll do anything about him.

Priorities

I don't understand.  They got their SCOTUS and their anti-abortion laws.  What are they voting for now?

We have simply got to figure out why they keep voting Republican.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Jan 6 Final Hearing

As expected, the Committee has made criminal referrals to the DOJ in its final hearing on the January 6 capitol attack.

The referrals, unlike the committee’s contempt of Congress recommendations, do not need the approval of the full House. Like the contempt referrals, they cannot force prosecutors to charge or even start an investigation against anyone. Publicly known subpoenas and witness appearances, though, suggest that Trump and anyone else likely to be referred by the committee are already under active criminal investigation.

[...]

The committee’s last act is likely to be the release of its final report this week, possibly on Wednesday. It plans to release an executive summary of the report Monday, following the hearing.

   MSN

Four criminal referral counts against "Trump and others."

The House Jan. 6 committee has decided to recommend the Justice Department pursue criminal charges against former President Donald Trump, including obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiring to make false statements, and insurrection.

  MSNBC

A live-blog report is at that MSNBC link.

The Committee also made referrals to the House Ethics Committee of Jim Jordan, Scott Perry, Andy Biggs, and Kevin McCarthy for refusing to comply with subpoenas. I don't think there's enough time for that committee to do anything, however, as the Republicans take over the House on January 3, and I expect them to dismiss the referrals.

John Eastman, Trump's skeezy lawyer, was criminally referred to the DOJ for obstruction of an official government proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States. I don't know yet, but I think Jeffrey Clark may be referred for some of the crimes as well. The hearing did not give names other than Trump. They merely said, "and others."

The new evidence offered in this last hearing consisted of a couple of clips of Trump adviser Hope Hicks testifying before the committee. Her testimony came after the last hearing in October (seems like so much longer ago), as I'm sure she decided it was time to come clean before ending up in the grinder herself. She - or at least her attorneys - can read handwriting on the wall. All they showed us, however, was that she claims she tried to convince Trump before January 6 to put out word the people coming to the capitol should remain peaceful. At least she said she told then-Trump attorney Eric Herschmann, and he said he'd already tried and Trump refused.

Live updates as the hearing was happening can also be read here at NBC News. 

The 154-page (includes 50 pages of footnotes) executive summary was out ahead of the hearing.

The one thing I feel fairly certain about is action by the DOJ on the count of inciting or assisting an insurrection, since they've already tried and convicted people on the charge of seditious conspiracy to overthrow the government and of obstructing an official proceeding, and Trump very obviously incited AND assisted (if only by refusing to do anything about it).  And, incidentally, that is the provision of the Constitution that prevents someone from holding office if found guilty.

That's what makes me think it's the one charge the DOJ will take up, assuming people would be willing to prevent him from holding office even if they're not willing to send him to jail.  I don't think this country is ready (or maybe ever will be) to send a president to jail.  That would be like admitting we're no better than a third world country.  And, by God, we're THE USA!

Kind of cool that the room in which they held the hearing was recently renamed...

I wonder if the asshole Republicans will try to change that when they take over the House in January.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  And so begins the riling up of "his" people again.

The Meadows texts

TPM published a trove of texts across a series of articles that then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows exchanged between the 2020 election and Biden’s inauguration with prominent Republicans, including 34 members of Congress.

  Aaron Rupar

Ten more than worked with a German Nazi in a coup attempt during WWII.

Headline-grabbing new revelations include Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) suggesting Republican state legislatures in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin just “intervene and declare Trump winner,” as well as Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) pushing Meadows on January 17 (just three days before Biden’s inauguration) to have Trump invoke “Marshall Law.”

(Norman’s misspelling of “martial” was the same as Marjorie Taylor Greene’s in another nakedly pro-coup text Meadows received that same day.)

These people represent in Congress. Who said Republicans aren't sending their best?

Following are comments by Hunter Walker, the TPM reporter writing the series about Meadows' texts.

I think the number one thing is just how alarming it is to see these things coming out of the phones of members of Congress and people who aren’t in Congress but are high-ranking associates of the then-president of the United States.

This is not just about political disagreements. We’re talking about violent rhetoric — fighting, kicking ass. The lack of basic information literacy — you’re seeing members of Congress treat YouTube videos from foreign countries as if they’re gospel.

[...]

You’re seeing people unspool. In some cases, the messages are thousands of words long, which is not normal. They have no editing. They have completely unhinged conspiracy theories. The thread that goes through it is it’s all in service of this authoritarian goal, which is completely disregarding a democratic election.

[...]

Nearly 20 percent of these messages are coming from members of Congress, and really all of those people just got a promotion in terms of Republicans taking over the majority [in the House].

[...]

I also think there’s a lot in the media about the MAGA wing versus the institutional Republican Party, and these messages really give the lie to that. This is the institutional Republican Party.

And, from the Talking Points Memo article itself:

The texts are part of a trove Meadows turned over to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack that was obtained by TPM. For more information about the story behind the text log and our procedures for publishing the messages, read the introduction to this series. Meadows’ exchanges shed new light on the extent of congressional involvement in Trump’s efforts to spread baseless conspiracy theories about his defeat and his attempts to reverse it. The messages document the role members played in the campaign to subvert the election as it was conceived, built, and reached its violent climax on Jan. 6, 2021. The texts are rife with links to far-right websites, questionable legal theories, violent rhetoric, and advocacy for authoritarian power grabs.

[...]

Reached via cell phone on Monday morning, [Ralph\ Norman asked TPM for a chance to review his messages before commenting.

“It’s been two years,” Norman said. “Send that text to me and I’ll take a look at it.”

TPM forwarded Norman a copy of the message calling for “Marshall Law!!” We did not receive any further response from the congressman.

[...]

Meadows received at least 364 messages from Republican members of Congress who discussed attempts to reverse the election results with him. He sent at least 95 messages of his own.

[...]

The members who messaged Meadows about challenging the election included some of the highest-profile figures on the right flank in Congress, such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), all of whom are identified as playing leading roles in the effort to undo Trump’s defeat.

One message that was dated Dec. 30, 2020 and was identified as coming from Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller described Brooks as a “ringleader” of the effort to block the electoral certification.

[...]

Meadows’ messages also provide an indication of the support the election objection received from right-wing dark money groups. The text log shows how the Republican efforts to fight the electoral certification at the Capitol became more organized and gained steam in the days after Biden’s victory. On Nov. 9, Edward Corrigan, the president and CEO of the Conservative Partnership Institute, wrote Meadows to say Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) would be holding a meeting about legal strategies with his colleagues at the organization’s Capitol Hill townhouse.

“Mike Lee has about a dozen Senators coming over to CPI tonight and they wanted to hear from a legal expert on what’s going on with the campaign,” Corrigan wrote.

[...]

CPI, which would go on to employ Meadows after Trump left office, is a dark money group that has been described by NPR as “among the most powerful messaging forces in the MAGA universe.”

[...]

CPI was not the only conservative dark money group that aided the push to overturn the election. On Dec. 2, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) wrote Meadows and indicated he was participating in Georgia rallies organized by Club For Growth.

[...]

While some of the more than 450 texts that Republican members of Congress exchanged with Meadows indicate they were disturbed by the violence of Jan. 6, the messages also show in colorful detail how the same members of Congress played a direct role in ratcheting up opposition to the election result and in stoking Trump’s baseless claims of fraud. (Officials at every level of government including Republicans and members of the Trump administration have confirmed there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election.)

  TPM

The 34:
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ)
Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA)
Rep. Billy Long (R-MO)
Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH)
Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX)
Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX)
Rep. Mark Green (R-TN)
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX)
Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC)
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ)
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC)
Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX)
Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA)
Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC)
Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN)
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH)
Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC)
Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA)
Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA)
Rep. Rick Allen (R-GA)
Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-OH)
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL)
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA)
Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA)
Rep. Barry Moore (R-AL)
Rep. Fred Keller (R-PA)
Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC)
Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA)
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT)
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY)
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI)
Sen. David Perdue (R-GA)
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND)

UPDATE:  The 36

In an open letter first shared with The Hill, the group — which includes 36 former House members from both parties — is calling on sitting lawmakers in the lower chamber to “demand that the Office of Congressional Ethics thoroughly investigate” members linked to the Capitol riot. If necessary, the ex-lawmakers write, they also want the House to “exercise its disciplinary functions.”

“As is now clear, January 6th was only one event among many that together constituted an extraordinary campaign to overturn an election,” the letter reads. “The scale and audacity of the campaign is profoundly troubling.”

“Among the most alarming findings is that various members of Congress participated in it,” the former lawmakers added.

[...]

“We now know, for example, that sitting lawmakers corresponded and met with White House officials and allies to plot various prongs of the campaign, including to advocate that the president declare martial law; that states submit false certificates of electoral votes to Congress; that the vice president, in contravention of his constitutional duties, interfere with the counting of electoral votes; and that federal law enforcement authorities be enlisted to interfere with the election; among other startling facts. We also now know that various sitting lawmakers sought presidential pardons,” the letter reads.

At its hearing in June, the Jan. 6 select committee named six House Republican lawmakers who requested pardons or contacted officials regarding pardons after voting to overturn election results in states the day of the riot: Reps. Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Mo Brooks (Ala.), Louie Gohmert (Texas), Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Scott Perry (Pa.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.).

[...]


The signatories of the letter are former Reps. John Barrow (D-Ga.), Steve Bartlett (R-Texas), Robert E. Bauman (R-Md.), Bruce Braley (D-Iowa), Lois Capps (D-Calif.), Russ Carnahan (D-Mo.), M. Robert Carr (D-Mich.), Rod Chandler (R-Wash.), Tom Coleman (R-Mo.), Mickey Edwards (R-Okla.), David F. Emery (R-Maine), Wayne Gilchrest (R-Md.), Paul Hodes (D-N.H.), Elizabeth Holtzman (D-N.Y.), Bob Inglis (R-S.C.), Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), Mary Jo Kilroy (D-Ohio), Mike Kopetski (D-Ore.), Larry LaRocco (D-Idaho), John LeBoutillier (R-N.Y.), Mel Levine (D-Calif.), Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), Matthew F. McHugh (D-N.Y.), Glenn Nye (D-Va.), Thomas Perriello (D-Va.), Reid Ribble (R-Wis.), Scott Rigell (R-Va.), Claudine Schneider (R-R.I.), Philip Sharp (D-Ind.), Peter Smith (R-Vt.), Alan Steelman (R-Texas), Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), Peter G. Torkildsen (R-Mass.), David Trott (R-Mich.), James T. Walsh (R-N.Y.) and Joe Walsh (R-Ill.).
  

UPDATE:

Ocasio-Cortez under House Ethics Committee investigation

The committee did not specify what exactly it was probing regarding the congresswoman and noted that its statement “does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred.”

  The Hill

Well, obviously, announcing an ethics violation investigation is going to make most people believe a violation has very likely occurred.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

House Ethics Committee to investigate Gaetz

The House Ethics Committee announced Friday it has launched an investigation into alleged misconduct by U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz following a recent flurry of accusations against the Florida congressman, including illegal drug use and sexual misconduct.

"The Committee is aware of public allegations that Representative Matt Gaetz may have engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift, in violation of House Rules, laws, or other standards of conduct," the panel's chairman, Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., and ranking member, Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Ind., said in a joint written statement.

The statement noted that the existence of the investigation "does not indicate that any violation has occurred."

  NPR

They took their sweet time to open an investigation.

Speaking of Devin Nunes

Recently, several members and staffers on the House Intelligence Committee, which [was] investigating Russia’s role in the Presidential election, visited the National Security Agency, in Fort Meade, Maryland. Inside the enormous black glass headquarters of America’s largest spy agency, the congressmen and their aides were shown a binder of two to three dozen pages of highly classified intercepts, mostly transcripts of conversations between foreign government officials that took place during the Presidential transition.

[...]

What the intercepts all had in common is that the people being spied on made references to Donald Trump or to Trump officials. That wasn’t even clear, though, from reading the transcripts. The names of any Americans were concealed, or “masked,” the intelligence community’s term for redacting references to Americans who are not the legal targets of surveillance when such intelligence reports are distributed to policy makers.

The binder of secret documents is at the center of the bizarre scandal created by what may be the most reckless lie President Trump has ever told.

  New Yorker

And his middle name is reckless.

On March 4th, he tweeted, “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” The White House made several efforts to justify Trump’s claim, including using Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, as a conduit for the documents, which allegedly offered some substantiation. A former Nunes staffer now working for the White House dug up the transcripts and shared them with Nunes. As Bloomberg View reported, earlier this month, Susan Rice, Obama’s national-security adviser, had used a process that allowed her to request that the masked names be revealed to her. Rice had to log her unmasking requests on a White House computer, which is how Trump’s aides knew about them. Nunes and the White House presented this as a major scandal.

It is now clear that the scandal was not Rice’s normal review of the intelligence reports but the coördinated effort between the Trump Administration and Nunes to sift through classified information and computer logs that recorded Rice’s unmasking requests, and then leak a highly misleading characterization of those documents, all in an apparent effort to turn Rice, a longtime target of Republicans, into the face of alleged spying against Trump.

[...]

I spoke to two intelligence sources, one who read the entire binder of intercepts and one who was briefed on their contents. “There’s absolutely nothing there,” one source said. The Trump names remain masked in the documents, and Rice would not have been able to know in all cases that she was asking the N.S.A. to unmask the names of Trump officials.

Nunes is being investigated by the House Ethics Committee because, in talking about the documents, he may have leaked classified information. But this is like getting Al Capone for tax evasion. The bigger scandal is the coördinated effort to use the American intelligence services to manufacture an excuse for Trump’s original tweet.

[...]

They put out an all-points bulletin”—a call to sift through intelligence reports—“and said, ‘We need to find something that justifies the President’s crazy tweet about surveillance at Trump Tower.’ And I’m telling you there is no way you get that from those transcripts, which are about as plain vanilla as can be.”

[...]

The law governing the N.S.A.’s collection of the content of communications of foreign targets is up for renewal this summer. Known as Section 702, part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, it is perhaps the most important intelligence tool that America’s spy agencies have to gather information about potential terrorist attacks and about the intentions of regimes around the world.

Or, alternately, from the point of view of an American citizen who expects privacy, a tool for the government - advertently or inadvertently - to collect information on innocent Americans.

“Section 702 of FISA allows warrantless searches on Americans. That’s unconstitutional & must be changed,” Representative Ted Lieu, the Democrat from California, tweeted last month, during the controversy.

[...]

Some American intelligence officials are now concerned that Trump and Nunes’s wild claims about intercepts and Rice have made Section 702 look like a rogue program that can be easily abused for political purposes. The intelligence source said, “In defense of the President, Devin Nunes and some other partisans have created a huge political problem by casting doubt, in the service of Donald Trump, on these intercepts.”

[...]

“They manufactured a scandal to distract from a serious investigation,” Eric Swalwell, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, who would not comment on the N.S.A. documents, said. “And the collateral damage is the public confidence in our intelligence community when we need to count on them now more than ever. Considering the threats we are facing right now from North Korea and ISIS, it’s a pretty dangerous time to undermine the I.C.’s credibility to make a five-yard sack in the Russia investigation.”

[...]

The fake scandal created by Trump and Nunes is not over yet. The first name on the Republican list [of requested witnesses for the Intel Committee's impeachment hearings was] Susan Rice.

Well, they didn't get her.  They'll just have to wait until the Senate impeachment trial.

D.C. in a nutshell

Representative Patrick Meehan, a Pennsylvania Republican who has taken a leading role in fighting sexual harassment in Congress, used thousands of dollars in taxpayer money to settle his own misconduct complaint after a former aide accused him last year of making unwanted romantic overtures to her, according to several people familiar with the settlement.

[...]

Mr. Meehan professed his romantic desires for her — first in person, and then in a handwritten letter — and he grew hostile when she did not reciprocate, the people familiar with her time in the office said.

Life in the office became untenable, so she initiated the complaint process, started working from home and ultimately left the job. She later reached a confidential agreement with Mr. Meehan’s office that included a settlement for an undisclosed amount to be paid from Mr. Meehan’s congressional office fund.

[...]

Mr. Meehan called on the former aide to waive the confidentiality agreement in the settlement “to ensure a full and open airing of all the facts.” Mr. Elizandro did not respond to follow-up questions about why Mr. Meehan had agreed to the settlement and the confidentiality provision if the allegations were false.

[...]

The exact amount of the settlement could not be determined, partly because Mr. Meehan’s office paid it from a congressional office fund that allows such payments to be disguised as salary and reported months after they were made. But people familiar with the payout said it was thousands of dollars.

[...]

Mr. Meehan’s case sheds new light on secretive congressional processes for handling such complaints, which advocates say are slanted to favor abusers, allowing them to use the vast resources of the federal government to intimidate, isolate and silence their victims.

  NYT

But, here's the fun, very D.C. part: Meehan's on the House Ethics Committee.

After this article was published online, AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, said that Mr. Meehan was being removed immediately from the House Ethics Committee, where he has helped investigate sexual misconduct claims, and that the panel would investigate the allegations against him. In addition, Mr. Ryan told Mr. Meehan that he should repay the taxpayer funds, Ms. Strong said.

[...]

Under federal law, accusers must undergo a confidential process in which co-workers who might be able to provide corroborating evidence are excluded. They often must wait about three months before filing an official complaint, yet they must initiate the process no later than 180 days after the offending behavior. Once the process is initiated, accusers must submit to up to 30 days of counseling and complete another 30 days of mediation.

While the perpetrator, if he is a congressman, goes merrily about his business?

Several of those interviewed traced the woman’s difficulties in Mr. Meehan’s office to 2016, when a senior male member of the office staff professed his romantic attraction to the woman. She reported the advance to Mr. Meehan, and the senior employee left his job after reaching an agreement with Mr. Meehan, according to a person with direct knowledge of the episode who worked in the office. Not long after, Mr. Meehan signaled his own romantic desires to the woman.

[...]

The handling of that complaint — which included an aggressive pushback by representatives from Mr. Meehan’s office and congressional lawyers, who suggested she had misinterpreted the congressman’s behavior — demoralized the aide. It led to her estrangement from her colleagues, and isolation from friends, family and her boyfriend, according to the people in whom she confided. It set her back financially and professionally, as she continued to pay legal costs associated with the complaint even after leaving her job in Mr. Meehan’s office and struggling to find a new one. She moved back in with her parents and ultimately decided to start a new life abroad.

[...]

Mr. Meehan’s accuser paid her own lawyers’ fees, and the settlement she reached was not enough to cover her legal and living expenses while she was out of work, according to a person with whom she discussed her finances.

What's the real story behind Trey Gowdy's Ethics resignation?

South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy resigned his membership on the House Committee on Ethics to concentrate on his other legislative duties.

  Daily Caller

Why does this make me immediately think he has an ethics problem?

His new position as Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee prompted the resignation, according to a letter Gowdy sent to House Majority Leader Rep. Paul Ryan.

[...]

“When I became Chairperson of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform I knew I would not be able to keep all other committee assignments to include Judiciary, Intelligence and Ethics. Four committee assignments, including a Chairmanship, is a challenging workload,” he added.

So why accept another assignment? Or why wait until now to resign from one?

His tenure in Congress has been a rocky one. Gowdy, who was elected during the Tea Party wave of 2010, used $150,000 in taxpayer dollars to settle with a former aide who alleged he was fired for not focusing his investigative work on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Gowdy, a Tea Party Republican, spent two years and $7 million investigating Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as the chairman of the United States House Select Committee on Benghazi. In June of last year, the hyper-partisan endeavor found “no new evidence of culpability or wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton in the 2012 attacks in Libya that left four Americans dead."

  NCRM

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Breaking development in Nunes case

The US House Ethics Committee has cleared Representative Devin Nunes (R-California) on a complaint that he leaked classified information. The surprise decision paves the way for the firebrand lawmaker to reassume chairing a House intelligence panel.

  RT

Of course they did!

Nunes has long denied the allegations of leaking classified information and said in April that he would step aside only until the investigation into his statements concluded. Representative Michael Conway (R-Texas) has led the intelligence committee's investigation into alleged Russian meddling in Nunes’ absence.

[...]

The ethics committee said Thursday in a brief statement that it determined the Republican congressman did not disclose classified information in March, when he made a surprise announcement about the US government picking up information about President Donald Trump’s transition team during a surveillance sweep.

But what about his meeting with Erik Prince before Prince's testimony? Is that also ethical?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.