“The historic criminal referral the House Jan. 6 committee issued urging the Justice Department to pursue charges against President Donald Trump is unlikely to sway many minds among prosecutors already pursuing multiple investigations,“ Politico reports.
“Prosecutors are more interested in the thousands of pages of witness statements and other records gathered by the House panel over the past 15 months.”
January 6 Committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said that he has “no doubt” the Department of Justice will charge former President Trump once it evaluates the evidence compiled by the panel, Axios reports.
Said Thompson: “I have no doubt that once the investigation proceeds and is concluded, if the evidence is as we presented it, I’m convinced the Justice Department will charge former President Trump. No one — including a former president — is above the law.”
Politico: “In total, the committee grilled nearly every member of Trump’s inner circle. Some key witnesses pleaded their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination or invoked privileges the committee was unable to pierce. But others, like former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, provided extraordinary evidence of Trump’s scheme to stay in power.”
Hope Hicks testified to the January 6 Committee that Donald Trump believed his legacy depended on overturning the 2020 election and remaining in office.
Hicks recounted what Trump told her: “Nobody will care about my legacy if I lose. So, that won’t matter. The only thing that matters is winning.”
The Secret Service seized 269 knives and 242 canisters of pepper spray from Trump supporters to see Donald Trump speak in the hours before the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Semafor reports.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said Monday he believes Donald Trump is “at his lowest point ever,” as the House Jan. 6 committee wrapped up its investigation into what Hogan described as “one of the darkest days in American history,” the AP reports.
David Frum: “Show Trump a line, and he’ll cross it. That was his record as president, down to his last days in office, when he absconded with boxes of government materials as though they were his private property. Trump has already announced a run for president in 2024. Whatever happens with that run, his likeliest Republican rivals are studying his methods, considering which to emulate and which to discard. The incitement of violence by the head of the government is not an infraction that can be dismissed and forgiven by any political system that hopes to stay constitutional.”
“For six years, the job of upholding the rule of law against Donald Trump has been passed from one unwilling set of hands to the next. Now the job has returned to where it started. There is nobody else to pass it to. The recommendation has arrived. The time for justice has come.”
“Elon Musk’s Twitter fingers must have been stiff on Monday morning, because more than six hours after users voted for him to resign as CEO, the notorious tweeter still had not made any public statement,” the Daily Beast reports.
NBC News: “A theme in the document is that the committee believes numerous figures close to former President Donald Trump were being less than candid during their testimony, either through evasions or claims that they couldn’t remember the answers to questions. In some cases, the committee said the purported memory lapses were not credible and appeared to be an attempt to conceal information.”
“The committee says Trump’s daughter and White House adviser Ivanka Trump ‘acknowledged’ to them that she had agreed with Attorney General William Barr that there wasn’t evidence of election-altering fraud, that Trump pressured Vice President Mike Pence over his powers on the morning of Jan. 6, and that the president watched the Capitol violence on television in real time.”
“Congress has never recommended that a former U.S. president be charged with a crime before. But former President Donald Trump just shattered that historical precedent,” Vice News reports.
The January 6 Committee unanimously referred four criminal charges to the Department of Justice against former President Donald Trump:
Referrals are also made against attorney John Eastman for the first two charges.
Referrals are also made against four Republican congressman — Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Scot Perry and Andy Biggs — for sanctions by the House Ethics Committee for denying subpoenas.
“Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
— Donald Trump, on Twitter two years ago today.
“The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol will hold its last public meeting on Monday afternoon, ending an 18-month investigation with the approval of its final report and a vote on issuing criminal and ethics referrals against former President Donald Trump and his top allies,” the New York Times reports.
“During a business meeting at 1 p.m., the committee is expected to discuss some of the findings in its final report and recommendations for legislative changes.”
Kyle Cheney: “There’s going to be a lot of stupid commentary today. The referrals aren’t the big story. DOJ doesn’t care about the prosecutorial judgment of 9 members of Congress. They care about evidence — some of which you will see today, much of which you won’t.”
Leave your reactions in the comments.
New York Times: “Elon Musk’s chaotic tenure running Twitter has already drawn scrutiny from an array of international government officials, who have professed concern about his changes to content moderation, including the suspension of several journalists, and new restrictions on promoting rival social networks.”
“Now, DealBook is first to report, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, is taking aim at an issue with more serious potential legal consequences: whether Mr. Musk has created a series of conflicts of interest with and misappropriation of resources from Tesla, the electric carmaker he also runs.”
Rolling Stone: “More than seven months after ABC producer James Gordon Meek was the subject of a dramatic Federal Bureau of Investigation raid, an indictment is being prepared by the Department of Justice to present to a grand jury.”
Associated Press: “Biden is condemning growing antisemitism in remarks for a Hanukkah reception at the White House that will include a menorah lighting and blessing. The Democratic president will tell guests at the Monday night event that silence is complicity, according to White House officials, and will add that it’s imperative that hate, violence and antisemitism are condemned.”
“Elon Musk and allies are building a new anti-left media ecosystem almost overnight,” Axios reports.
“It’s as if the New York Times editorial page suddenly flipped to the right. With the reins in Musk’s hands, the right is gaining power in online spaces the left once dominated.”
The Washington Post reports that high-profile Republicans gained tens of thousands of followers in the weeks after Musk acquired Twitter, while their Democratic counterparts lost followers.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.