Month: December 2021

Categories
Capitol Insurrection Congress

The January 6 Committee Is Closing In On Kevin McCarthy

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is now firmly in the crosshairs of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Capitol insurrection, according to a report from ABC News.

McCarthy is being asked to sit for a voluntary interview with the committee:

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the chairman of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, invited House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., on Wednesday to sit for an interview with investigators.

“If he has information he wants to share with us, and is willing to voluntarily come in, I’m not taking the invitation off the table,” Thompson said in a phone interview with ABC News.

Earlier this week, McCarthy was asked if he would agree to cooperate with the Jan. 6 committee, to which he replied:

“I don’t have anything to add. I have been very public, but I wouldn’t hide from anything.”

That led Chairman Thompson to note:

“If Leader McCarthy has nothing to hide, he can voluntarily come before the committee.”

However, Thompson also made it clear that he may send a formal request to McCarthy for him to appear before the panel. If McCarthy refuses, he could be subpoenaed, which would be problematic for the California Republican, who would be facing a criminal referral to the Justice Department if he ignores a subpoena.

McCarthy has admitted that he spoke with former President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, as CNN reported in February:

In an expletive-laced phone call with House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy while the US Capitol was under attack, then-President Donald Trump said the rioters cared more about the election results than McCarthy did.

“Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,” Trump said, according to lawmakers who were briefed on the call afterward by McCarthy.

McCarthy insisted that the rioters were Trump’s supporters and begged Trump to call them off.

Trump’s comment set off what Republican lawmakers familiar with the call described as a shouting match between the two men. A furious McCarthy told the then-President the rioters were breaking into his office through the windows, and asked Trump, “Who the f–k do you think you are talking to?” according to a Republican lawmaker familiar with the call.

The Jan. 6 committee has formally requested interviews with two members of Congress so far: Reps. Scott Perry, (R-PA) and Jim Jordan, (R-OH). Both have said they will not agree to be interviewed.

Categories
Elections WTF?!

Verizon Bans Mike Lindell From Sending His Lies Via Text Message – Endless Whining Ensues

Poor Mike Lindell. His conspiracy theories and lies are blowing up in his face and now he’s losing the ability to grift money from the brainless hordes of MAGA faithful who believed his assurances that failed, one-term former President Donald Trump would be reinstated by now.

On Wednesday, Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, revealed that Verizon has banned him from sending out his text messages in which he spreads his bullshit and begs for donations to get Trump back in office.

Broadcasting on his FrankSpeech platform, Lindell had this to say:

“If you haven’t been getting text marketing or any texts from FrankSpeech and you’re wondering why that you’ve been taken off a list. No, it’s just because Verizon has stopped us from doing our text marketing. Just another big platform that went — I don’t know — that went south on us, that went left on us. They left us.”

Of course they left him! Verizon doesn’t want to be associated with a con man who’s trying to make a buck by feeding misinformation to morons.

Lindell also said that he and his legal team had just completed revisions to his “Supreme Court case.” That’s the very same case he said would be accepted by the high court back in November. It wasn’t because not a single state attorney general agreed to be a part of the case:

“The changes have been made and they’re going out this week to the AGs and we’ll get the ones that want to sign.”

They didn’t sign before, but he thinks they will now. That’s the very definition of clueless.

Earlier in the day, Lindell appeared on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast and predicted the Supreme Court would agree to hear his revised lawsuit with a 9-0 ruling:

“The evidence that’s there now would overturn and bring down everything.”

What’s going to be interesting to see is what Lindell says when 2021 becomes 2022, the Supreme Court doesn’t hear his lawsuit, and he’s stuck with egg on his face. Maybe he can lay down on one of his shitty, overpriced pillows and hibernate for a few decades.

Categories
GOP Voting Rights WTF?!

Greene: Anyone Who Moves From A Blue State To A Red One Shouldn’t Be Allowed To Vote

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is now saying the quiet part out loud when it comes to voter suppression.

No longer content to try and deny the right to vote to people of color or those who live in economically-depressed areas of the country, Greene is calling for red states to deny the right to vote to anyone who moves from a blue state.

 

Newsweek reports on Greene’s absurd proposal:

If red states and blue states were to “divorce” each other, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene called it possible that people who move from a Democratic state to a Republican state would be barred from voting for a temporary “cooling off” period.

California’s seen an influx in people moving out of the state and many have opted to go to Texas and Florida, where residents can get more bang for their buck. However, some, including Greene, have complained that those who are leaving California are bringing their political beliefs with them and potentially shifting the political landscape.

On Wednesday, the Georgia congresswoman posted on Twitter that “brainwashed people” who move from California and New York need a “cooling-off period.” Her comment was in response to a Twitter user who wrote he supports discriminating against Democratic transplants, including restricting their ability to vote for a period of time. He also wrote that they should have to “pay a tax for their sins.”

Greene’s suggestion was immediately slammed as the words of a traitor by Rep. Reuben Gallego:

Others then joined the debate on social media:

https://twitter.com/rewegreatyet/status/1476227470353387521?s=20

Hey, Marj: How about we put everyone who played any role in the January 6 insurrection (i.e. Donald Trump, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, YOU) in prison for about 20 years and never let them cast a ballot again?

 

Categories
Capitol Insurrection Congress Crime GOP

Republicans Panic As 1/6 Committee Says It Expects To Have Interim Report By Summer

The House Select Committee on the January 6 Capitol insurrection plans to release an interim report on their findings by as soon as next summer, according to a senior aide who spoke with the Washington Post.

The Post reports:

“We want to tell it from start to finish over a series of weeks, where we can bring out the best witnesses in a way that makes the most sense. Our legacy piece and final product will be the select committee’s report.”

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who serves on the 1/6 committee, told CNN:

“I think we will want to for the hearings tell the whole story. Security at the Capitol, the intelligence leading up to the attacks, lack of intelligence, the role of social media, the former President’s role, the role of those around him, and tell it in an era fashion so the public knows exactly what’s going on.”

The next step in the hearings will be ones open to the public, which could be incredibly damaging for Republicans in the leadup to the 2022 midterm elections. The GOP is hoping to take control of the House and Senate, but revelations from the Jan. 6 committee could make voters less willing to cast a ballot for members of the party if they were involved in the attack on the Capitol.

Failed, one-term former President Donald Trump is said to be on the verge of a “meltdown” as he contemplates being referred to the Justice Department for his role in the Capitol riots, with Hugo Lowell of The Guardian noting:

“It’s increasingly becoming more likely because they are looking at criminal referrals for the former president. They’re still looking at Bannon and they’re still looking at Giuliani and [John] Eastman. These are the guys at the Willard that Trump called up on Jan. 5 and sought advice. There were multiple war rooms. There is one with Eastman, Giuliani, and Bannon and there was a separate one is where people like [Michael] Flynn and Roger Stone and Alex Jones. There was, like, a massive operation happening at the Willard.”

Lowell then added this regarding Trump:

“They spoke to [Mark] Meadows, he ultimately decided not to cooperate, and he did provide a trove of documents and communication and text messages which we have only seen a sliver of, and those are already quite damming, and Trump is in a bit of a meltdown, from what we understand, down in Mar-A-Lago.”

Categories
Capitol Insurrection Crime Donald Trump Justice Department

Former Senator Lays Out How Merrick Garland Can Get A Grand Jury To Indict Trump For Jan. 6

With each day, we get more evidence and information that points directly to former President Donald Trump’s complicity in the January 6 Capitol insurrection.

But a larger question remains: Will Trump be referred for criminal charges by the Jan. 6 committee, and if so, what will the Justice Department under Attorney General Merrick Garland do with such a referral?

Former Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill (D), who worked for years as a prosecutor before she ran for office, laid out a road map for Garland and the DOJ when it comes to indicting Trump, explaining what she thinks the AG should do regarding the ex-president.

During an appearance on MSNBC Monday, McCaskill told host Nicolle Wallace that federal prosecutors should walk a grand jury through Trump’s inaction for over three hours as he watched the rioting take place at the Capitol:

“We can go through and we can put the images at a specific time. And we can then fill in the text messages, the phone calls that were flooding the White House saying, get him to call them off. Now, what was he watching on TV at those moments? He was watching windows being broken. He was watching police officers being stabbed with flag poles. He was watching people hang from the balcony in the Senate. He was watching people carry around government property proudly like trophies in the capital. And, frankly, he was watching a confrontation at the door of the House where someone was killed.”

McCaskill added:

“Give me those facts. Give me those timelines, and give me a jury. I’m just telling you, any responsible leader would want to end the violence, not provoke it. That’s what he did that day, and that’s what this committee is going to layout. And that’s where Merrick Garland is either going to rise to the occasion or go down in infamy as one of the worst attorney generals in this country’s history.”

The case against Donald Trump, members of his administration, and some members of Congress could not possibly be more damning. If AG Garland doesn’t pursue criminal charges against each and every person who played a role in the Capitol insurrection, we can expect it to happen again.