Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 193
The Magnificent Seven
“To ICE, get the fuck out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety, and you are doing exactly the opposite.”
— Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, quoted by the Minnesota Star Tribune.
“Five years ago, Pamela Hemphill forcibly entered the Capitol as part of an angry mob of protesters who, convinced of President Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen, stormed the building on Jan. 6, 2021, in a violent effort to stop Congress from certifying his defeat,” the New York Times reports.
“On Tuesday, Ms. Hemphill, a retired addiction counselor from Idaho, entered the building again, this time to offer an emotional apology.”
Said Hemphill: “Thank you for having me back to the Capitol today. I am deeply grateful for this chance to try to make amends.”
“As many in Washington were easing into the new year, there was a flurry of activity last week in the prosecution of Brian Cole Jr. — the man accused of planting pipe bombs outside the DNC and RNC headquarters the night before Jan. 6, 2021. The Justice Department obtained an indictment from a grand jury and, following a court hearing, persuaded a judge to keep Cole detained pending trial,” Politico reports.
“But there may be a serious problem on the horizon: Trump may have pardoned Cole last year as part of the sweeping clemency that he gave to Jan. 6 offenders on his first day back in office.”
New York Times: “The pardon proclamation saved them, opening prison doors and ending all of the criminal prosecutions related to the Capitol attack. Even more, it gave a presidential stamp of approval to their inverted vision of Jan. 6, 2021: that those who assaulted the police and vandalized the historic building that day were victims, and those who spent the next four years using the criminal justice system to hold them accountable were villains.”
“But nearly a year after Mr. Trump’s sweeping proclamation asserted that he had cleared the way for ‘a process of national reconciliation,’ many recipients of his clemency remain consumed by conspiracy theories, angry at the Trump administration for not validating their insistence that the Capitol attack was a deep-state setup and haunted by problems from both before and after the riot.”
“Deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, made their first U.S. court appearance Monday after being captured by American forces to face charges related to cocaine trafficking,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Through a translator in court, Maduro declared his innocence and said he is still the president of Venezuela. Flores also pleaded not guilty.”
“President Trump’s first year back in office turned the world of white-collar enforcement upside down,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The Justice Department, focused on White House priorities such as immigration enforcement and violent crime, has stepped back from the kinds of complicated investigations into foreign bribery, money laundering and public corruption that former department leaders often cited among their greatest successes.”
“Along with that shift, administration officials have undone a number of notable Biden-era white-collar prosecutions. In some, the department dropped charges against executives that were pending. In others, Trump has used the pardon power to forgive a string of top company officials charged with or convicted of crimes related to their businesses.”
A man was taken into custody after allegedly damaging the Ohio home of Vice President JD Vance, the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, are expected to be arraigned at the U.S. district court in Manhattan at noon Monday on charges that they enriched themselves through drug trafficking,” the Washington Post reports.
Playbook: “Maduro and his wife will be hauled before 92-year-old Judge Alvin Hellerstein at noon for the start of an epic, likely yearslong prosecution through the U.S. federal court system following their stunning capture and arrest by U.S. forces. It’s hard to conceive of a more rapid fall from grace for a man who as recently as last Friday night was still the all-powerful, untouchable leader of an oil-rich nation.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi said Saturday that Venezuela’s leader Nicolás Maduro has been charged with drug trafficking and “will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts,” Politico reports.
Wired: “Privacy may be dead, but civilians are turning conventional wisdom on its head by surveilling the cops as much as the cops surveil them.”
“The Virginia man arrested this month on charges of placing two pipe bombs in Washington on the night before a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has given a detailed confession,” the New York Times reports.
“Brian J. Cole Jr., felt he needed to ‘speak up’ after he began to suspect that the 2020 election, in which President Trump was defeated, had been ‘tampered with.’”
Axios: DNC, RNC pipe bomb suspect told FBI “something just snapped.”
Bloomberg Businessweek: “Donald Trump’s pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, toppled the capstone of one of the most ambitious narcotics investigations in the history of the Department of Justice.”
The Guardian: “In the shifting political climate of the second Trump administration, where the FBI has openly rerouted resources away from investigations of far-right extremists, the Base appears free to organize and prepare for their stated objective of fomenting an armed insurgency against the US government.”
“Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan was found guilty of a felony count of obstructing federal agents seeking to make an immigration arrest outside her courtroom, a precedent-setting case that has been closely watched nationally and drawn passionate protests,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
“The case thrust Dugan, a judge for nine years, into the center of the clash between the judiciary and the Trump administration over its crackdown on illegal immigration.”
Australia’s prime minister said the gunmen behind the mass shooting at a Jewish celebration in Sydney on Sunday were motivated by “Islamic State ideology,” the New York Times reports.
“A federal judge ruled Friday that the Justice Department unlawfully accessed evidence central to its case against former FBI director James Comey, delivering what could be a death blow to President Donald Trump’s efforts to reindict one of his most prominent perceived rivals,” the Washington Post reports.
“President Trump’s pledge to pardon Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk convicted of tampering with voting machines, touched off a furious new battle on Friday over the fate of perhaps the last high-profile 2020 election denier still behind bars,” the New York Times reports.
“Democratic leaders in Colorado dismissed the pardon as an empty attempt to bully a Democratic state into freeing one of the president’s political allies. They argued that Mr. Trump had no legal power to overturn Ms. Peters’ conviction in state court.”
“For a second time in a week, a federal grand jury in Virginia has refused to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James for alleged mortgage fraud, again rejecting the Department of Justice’s attempt to refile the case after a federal judge dismissed an earlier case based on the unlawful appointment of the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia,” ABC News reports.
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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