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Coinbase to lay off 18 percent of staff amid ‘crypto winter’

Coinbase will lay off 18 percent of its workforce amid plummeting cryptocurrency prices and a global economic slowdown, the company announced Tuesday. 

CEO Brian Armstrong told employees in a memo that the crypto exchange needs to keep costs down to survive a bear market, which requires a “different mindset” to navigate. 

“We appear to be entering a recession after a 10+ year economic boom,” he wrote. “A recession could lead to another crypto winter, and could last for an extended period. In past crypto winters, trading revenue (our largest revenue source) has declined significantly.”

The announcement comes after cryptocurrencies took a beating to start the week. Bitcoin has plunged nearly 20 percent, a nosedive that was spurred by crypto lender Celsius Network’s decision to prevent users from pulling funds due to “extreme market conditions.” 

The total crypto market cap has lost $2 trillion in value in less than a year and recently dropped below $1 trillion for the first time since early 2021. 

Rising interest rates and red-hot inflation appear to be driving investors away from risky assets like crypto, and investor confidence in digital currencies waned after several stablecoins lost their 1-to-1 peg with the U.S. dollar last month. 

Armstrong told employees in the memo that Coinbase grew too quickly, noting that its workforce expanded by roughly 200 percent since the beginning of 2021. 

“While we tried our best to get this just right, in this case it is now clear to me that we over-hired,” he wrote. 

Last month, Coinbase said that it would freeze hiring and pull job offers to individuals who had already accepted a job at the exchange.

Experts believe that more trouble is ahead for crypto firms if prices continue to fall. On Saturday,  Crypto.com announced that it would lay off 5 percent of its workforce due to a “market downturn.” Earlier this month, crypto exchange Gemini announced plans to lay off 10 percent of its workforce due to the “crypto winter.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Heard will stand by Depp testimony ‘to my dying day’

Amber Heard says she’ll forever stand by the abuse allegations she made against Johnny Depp during his defamation trial against her.

“To my dying day, [I] will stand by every word of my testimony,” Heard said in an interview with Savannah Guthrie that aired on NBC’s “The Today Show” on Tuesday.

The sitdown came more than a week after a Virginia jury handed “Pirates of the Caribbean” star Depp a big win in court, awarding him $15 million in damages. The jury found that a Washington Post op-ed penned by Heard in 2018, which focused on sexual violence, ruined her ex-husband’s career. Heard was awarded $2 million as part of a countersuit.

Asked by Guthrie if the verdict had sunk in with her, the “Aquaman” actor replied, “How could it?”

“It’s surreal and difficult,” the 36-year-old performer continued. “In part, yes, this has been a long time coming.”

“This was the most humiliating and horrible thing I’ve ever been through. I’ve never felt more removed from my own humanity. I felt less than human,” Heard said.

Heard also countered one of Depp’s lawyers, who in a closing statement called her testimony during the trial the “performance of a lifetime.”

“Says the lawyer for the man who convinced the world he had scissors for fingers,” Heard exclaimed of the “Edward Scissorhands” star. “I’m the performer? I had listened to weeks of testimony insinuating that or saying quite directly I’m a terrible actress. So I’m a bit confused how I could be both.”

Heard had testified that 59-year-old Depp had physically and sexually abused her throughout much of their relationship, claiming that she masked bruises on her face with makeup. 

Depp denied Heard’s accusations, claiming in court that she was the one who mentally and physically abused him throughout the course of their 15-month marriage.

When Guthrie remarked that many courtroom viewers or casual observers of the trial might be “disgusted by the whole thing” and lack sympathy for both her and Depp, Heard agreed.

“Absolutely. I would not blame the average person for looking at this and how it’s been covered and not think that it is Hollywood brats at their worst,” Heard said.

“But what people don’t understand is it’s actually so much bigger than that. This is not only about our First Amendment right to speak.”

Describing her relationship with Depp as “ugly” and “very toxic,” Heard told Guthrie, “We were awful to each other. I made a lot of mistakes.”

“But I’ve always told the truth,” she said.

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First-time homebuyers, these are the cities for you: report

(NEXSTAR) — Home prices have been hot across the U.S. recently, largely postponing the dreams of potential first-time homebuyers. While navigating and affording the housing market seems challenging nationwide, a new report found there are some cities that offer more hope for first-time homebuyers.

In its recent analysis, SmartAsset compared 181 of the largest cities in the U.S. based on four factors: favorability, affordability, livability, and employment. Data for each was collected from the Census Bureau, the FBI, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Redfin.

Of the cities within the report, Newark, New Jersey was ranked as the worst for first-time homebuyers. Two other Garden State cities – Jersey City and Paterson – also landed in the bottom portion of SmartAsset’s rankings. Metro areas throughout New York and California joined New Jersey on the lower third of the list.

The best city for first-time homebuyers? Bellevue, Washington, according to SmartAsset. Found across Lake Washington from Seattle, Bellevue was determined to have one of the lowest unemployment rates of the 181 cities evaluated, and has seen one of the largest five-year increases in income. The city jumped from No. 14 on SmartAsset’s 2021 list.

Below are the top 10 cities for first-time homebuyers:

1. Bellevue, Washington
2. Virginia Beach, Virginia
3. Omaha, Nebraska
4. Olathe, Kansas
5. Nashville, Tennessee
6. Grand Rapids, Michigan
7. Sunnyvale, California
8. Lincoln, Nebraska
9. Denton, Texas
10. Huntsville, Alabama

Multiple cities from California – 22 to be exact – comprise the majority of the worst cities for first-time buyers. Florida was second-worst with five earning a rank of 121st or worst.

Other notably large cities were among the bottom third, including Chicago, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Houston, Anchorage, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Kansas City, and St. Louis.

To view the full list, click here.

If you’re looking for an affordable place to buy a home, you’ll want to look at areas that are more rural and without large metro areas, a recent report from Realtor.com suggests. West Virginia was found to have the most affordable housing market in the nation, followed by Ohio and Arkansas.

Nationally, housing costs are still climbing. The government’s shelter index, which includes rents, hotel rates and a measure of what it costs to own a home, increased 5.5% in the past year, the most since 1991.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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GOP former members of Congress urge lawmakers to pass federal LGBTQ+ nondiscrimination legislation

Eleven Republican former members of Congress have called for the immediate passage of federal LGBTQ+ nondiscrimination protections in a letter sent Tuesday to House and Senate leadership, responding to a tidal wave of state bills introduced this year that target the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans.

“Without a doubt, bipartisan passage of federal legislation to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) Americans will help Congress meet the demands of this moment,” the former Congresspeople wrote in the letter addressed to Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D) and Kevin McCarthy (R) and Sens. Chuck Schumer (D) and Mitch McConnell (R).

In just the first six months of the year, hundreds of bills seeking to restrict the rights of LGBTQ+ people, particularly transgender and nonbinary youth, have been introduced in state legislatures nationwide. Several have already become law.

In March, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed into law a measure that prevents public school educators from addressing sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom, telling parents during a signing ceremony that the “gender-bread man” had invaded Florida schools to promote “woke gender ideology” and “indoctrinate” children.

America is changing faster than ever! Add Changing America to your Facebook or Twitter feed to stay on top of the news.

In Alabama, a first-of-its-kind felony ban on gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary minors took effect in early May. A federal judge partially blocked its enforcement soon after, but school officials under the law are still required to inform parents if their children come out as transgender.

Ten states this year have passed laws barring transgender athletes from competing on sports teams that match their gender identity. More than a dozen other states are looking to follow.

“There’s never been a more urgent, more critical time for Congress to act,” former Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, one of the letter’s signatories and chair of the group Conservatives Against Discrimination, told Changing America. In the absence of federal legislation, LGBTQ+ Americans are unfairly existing under a “patchwork” of state-by-state protections, she said, and rights that are guaranteed in one state are unprotected in another.

“That’s why you need federal bipartisan protections, like those that are guaranteed under the Equality Act,” Ros-Lehtinen said, referring to the federal nondiscrimination law passed last year by the House of Representatives. The measure remains stalled in the Senate, where its fate is still uncertain.

The letter to Congress does not mention any specific piece of legislation, but urges lawmakers to come together to pass legislation that protects all Americans from discrimination “no matter their gender identity or who they love.”

“As we know, it’s hard to get something to pass,” Ros-Lehtinen said, “but what a great opportunity for Republicans to come to the table and advocate for what is really a conservative value: freedom for all. That’s a bedrock principle of the Republican party.”

Ros-Lehtinen, along with fellow signatories Reps. Chris Shays (R-CT) and Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), had at one time supported anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, voting in 1996 to pass the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defined marriage for federal purposes as a union between one man and one woman. Two decades later, she co-sponsored legislation to repeal it. 

Last year, her son, Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen – a transgender man – was selected to lead the National Center for Transgender Equality, a nonprofit advocating on behalf of transgender Americans.

Ros-Lehtinen told Changing America that the Republican party is much more accepting than a vocal minority is making it out to be, and she has “a lot of faith in our GOP.”

“It seems that there’s a lot of Republicans who have these views that seem a little extreme, but I don’t think that’s an accurate picture,” she said. “For every naysayer, there’s someone who’s espousing a more inclusive, more positive message in our political party. Hope is not lost.”

Reps. Susan Brooks (R-IN), Barbara Comstock (R-VA), Carlos Curbelo (R-FL), Charlie Dent (R-PA), Bob Dold (R-IL), Jim Greenwood (R-PA) Steve Gunderson (R-WI) and Claudine Schneider (R-RI) also signed the letter to Congress.

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Kamala Harris should challenge Trump to a debate

Over the past few weeks, two issues have emerged that Vice President Kamala Harris is well-equipped to address: abortion and gun rights. The leaked Supreme Court draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning Roe v. Wade has generated a political firestorm. A Marist poll finds 64 percent oppose reversing Roe, and 49 percent say that outcome would make them “more likely” to vote in the upcoming midterm elections.

The school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two teachers dead has caused voters to shout, “Do Something!” Polls show 88 percent support background checks; 84 percent approve prohibiting selling firearms to anyone labeled dangerous by a mental health provider; 79 percent would ban gun purchases to those on the federal no-fly or watch lists; and 67 percent want an assault weapons ban to become law.

Harris is well-positioned to address these issues. Anticipating the Supreme Court ruling on Roe, an outraged Harris told supporters of the pro-abortion rights Emily’s List, “How dare they tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her own body.” As a former district attorney and state attorney general who sometimes referred to herself as the “top cop,” Harris described having “looked at the autopsy photographs. . .[and] seen with my own two eyes what a bullet can do to the human body.” Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher advises Democrats to make the midterms about “the angry mom” by focusing on abortion and gun violence. No one can do that better than Harris.

There has been a great deal of Washington chatter as to Harris’s weakened political position. But her standing within the Democratic Party is much stronger than the punditry suggests. If President Biden declines to seek a second term, Harris is well-positioned to win the 2024 Democratic nomination. Among African American voters, the most powerful bloc within the Democratic Party, 53 percent back Harris should Biden decline to run. Her nearest competitor is Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who received 13 percent. Belcher says of Harris, “I am amazed at how she’s running away from the field with African American voters this early on.” Surveys of all Democratic primary voters put Harris in the dominant position.

Yet history and polling strongly suggest that Democratic prospects in the upcoming elections are bleak. Today, the two-point Republican lead in the generic congressional ballot is the best the party has seen since 1938. Moreover, an ABC News/Ipsos poll finds a 20-point gap between Republicans and Democrats in their enthusiasm to cast a ballot. With numbers like these, Democrats are poised for what Barack Obama once called a “shellacking.”

The prospect of a devastating Democratic defeat comes at a perilous moment. As the Jan. 6 committee has reported, the conspiracy to overthrow the United States government is, in the words of Chairman Benny Thompson (D-Miss.), “not over.” Former President Trump, the leader of that conspiracy, has transformed the Republican Party in his image. The Republican National Committee has dutifully followed Trump’s lead, even calling the Jan. 6 insurrection “legitimate political discourse.” Each time Donald Trump has been counted out, he has bounced back. Today, 60 percent of Republicans say the party should follow Trump’s lead, and he is poised to win the Republican nomination in 2024.

Faced with these extraordinary circumstances, Democrats must take risks. One risk worth taking is having Harris challenge Trump to a joint television appearance. If Trump were to agree, this made-for-television moment would play to Harris’s strengths. In the Senate, Harris excelled at grilling hostile witnesses. One of her most memorable exchanges occurred when she quizzed an irate and stammering Attorney General William Barr for eight minutes over his handling of the Mueller investigation. That encounter went viral.

There is a precedent for such a debate. In 1993, Al Gore appeared with Ross Perot on CNN’s “Larry King Live” for a 90-minute discussion about whether the North American Free Trade Agreement should be ratified. Before accepting, Perot taunted President Clinton for “sending somebody else to do the dirty work.” Perot’s belief that he would easily prevail caused him to accept. But like Harris, Gore excelled in the rhetorical back-and-forth, and polling showed a convincing win: 64 percent said Gore “sounded more responsible”; 60 percent thought he “communicated better with you”; 56 percent said he was “more believable”; and 51 percent concluded Gore “did the best job.” Perot emerged diminished, and in 1996 his support fell from 19 percent four years before to just 8 percent. Both Perot and Trump were presidential candidates with outsized egos, and a joint Harris-Trump appearance could weaken Trump in the same manner it did Perot.

When fidelity to the Constitution is on the line, Democrats must take risks. Back when Gore issued his debate challenge to Perot, then-Rep. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.) acknowledged, “When you’re behind, you roll the dice.” Today, the stakes are far higher. Biden and Harris are the last persons standing able to defend our constitutional democracy. Republicans are running candidates for state and local offices who want to seize power to determine future elections. Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-Wyo.) message to Republicans, “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor remains,” is likely to be remembered by historians. But until then we are, as Bob Woodward and Robert Costa write, a nation in peril. Any chance to weaken Donald Trump should be seized. Harris can do that. A Harris-Trump debate is worth the gamble.

John Kenneth White is a professor of politics at the Catholic University of America. His latest book is “What Happened to the Republican Party?”

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White House confirms Biden to meet Saudi crown prince in Middle East

President Biden will visit Saudi Arabia in July on a trip that will include a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a senior administration official told reporters Monday night.

The announcement that the president would meet Mohammed had been expected for weeks and has drawn scrutiny from human rights advocates and tacit approval from Democratic allies in Congress.

The meeting is part of a wider trip to the Middle East, between July 13 and 16, where the president will also travel to Israel and the West Bank before flying to Jeddah for the meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

The senior official said that Biden’s meeting with the crown prince will take place as part of engagement with “over a dozen leaders,” to include Saudi King Salman, the official leader of the Kingdom. 

The president’s face-to-face with Mohammed marks a stark reversal from Biden’s promise on the campaign trail to make the Kingdom a “pariah” and vowed to make them “pay the price” over the gruesome killing of the dissident Saudi writer and Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. 

Biden approved the release of a U.S. intelligence report concluding that Mohammed had approved a plot to “capture or kill” Khashoggi – who was lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul where he was killed and dismembered. The president imposed bans on dozens of Saudi officials for the writer’s death.

The senior official on Monday night said that while the administration sought accountability for Khashoggi’s death, it did not seek to “rupture” relations with the Kingdom completely. The official called the crown prince “critical” to extending a ceasefire agreement until at least August in Yemen’s catastrophic seven-year civil war. 

“While we recalibrate relations, we’re not seeking to rupture relations, because Saudi Arabia has been a strategic partner of the United States for eight decades,” the official said, and added that the administration’s strategy is to raise human rights issues “behind closed doors.”

“Human rights is always a part of the conversation… A lot of these conversations, we do hold them behind closed doors, and we think engagement – and that is the best way to get results,” the official said. 

The administration is also intent on working with Saudi Arabia to push back on Iran, which has accelerated activity necessary to build a nuclear weapon while supporting proxy fighting forces that have hit Gulf countries and U.S. military bases in the region with missiles. 

Biden’s meeting with Gulf leaders in Jeddah and his trip to Israel, comes in the wake of a resolution passed by member states of the IAEA last week, the international nuclear watchdog, criticizing Iran for its nuclear activities. 

“While there’s a great deal of work to do, this historic visit to the Middle East comes against that larger backdrop, both globally and in the Middle East region itself,” the official said referring to the IAEA vote itself.

Biden’s trip to Israel will be his first visit to the country as president where the official said the president will reaffirm America’s “ironclad” commitment to Israel’s security.

The president will also seek to build on rapprochement between Jerusalem and its Arab and Gulf neighbors through the Abraham Accords, the Trump-era agreement that established ties between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. 

Biden will also travel to the West Bank to visit with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian leaders, the official said, and reaffirm the U.S. commitment to a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians, 

They will also “discuss the ways in which we might rekindle a new political horizon that can ensure equal measures of freedom, security, prosperity, and dignity to Israelis and Palestinians alike,” the official said.

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Press: How McCarthy blew it on Jan. 6

Aside from Fox News, there’s been almost universal praise in the media for the work of the Jan. 6 select committee. And rightfully so. Its first public hearing, on June 9, was a real tour de force. It was a compelling, made-for-television portrayal of the violent assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — and a powerful indictment of former President Trump, the man at the heart of it all.   

Most importantly, it was done with utmost gravity. No grandstanding. No playing for the camera. Just the indisputable facts, backed up by testimony from leaders of Trump’s own White House: After lying about election fraud for months, the outgoing president summoned his supporters to Washington, in an apparent attempt to stage a coup against the United States government.  

Monday’s second hearing, though less sensational, was equally powerful, with top Republican aides testifying that Trump knew he’d lost the election but lied about it anyway. He spread the lie among state legislatures in attempts to reverse the electoral vote count — and used the lie to raise millions of dollars from loyal but clueless supporters.  

Again, there are plenty of kudos for what a great job the Jan. 6 committee is doing. Unfortunately, there’s too little attention paid thus far to what a pathetic job House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House Republicans have done responding to the events of Jan. 6. From Day 1, it’s been a series of embarrassing mistakes.  

At first, in a rare moment of truth-telling, McCarthy said Trump was responsible for what happened on Jan. 6, “no ifs, ands or buts.” In a leaked audio recording, he said, “Nobody can defend that, and nobody should defend it.” That didn’t last long. After rushing to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Trump’s ring, McCarthy 180’d back to defending Trump, and has been doing so ever since.  

McCarthy’s next big mistake was refusing to agree to a bipartisan commission to investigate Jan. 6. Such a commission would have had an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, with equal authority to subpoena and interrogate witnesses. It would have joined the prestigious ranks of the Warren, Kerner, and 9/11 commissions. But McCarthy, ever fearful of offending Trump, dismissed the Jan. 6 insurrection as not worth an investigation — thereby handing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) the opportunity to create the House select committee.  

Next, McCarthy tried to sabotage the committee by appointing Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Jim Banks (R-Ind.), both of whom were actively involved in Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. Again, McCarthy was outplayed by Pelosi, who rejected Banks and Jordan and offered committee seats to Republican Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.).  

Then McCarthy and House Republicans proceeded to undermine the Jan. 6 committee in a series of arguments that border on the absurd: that what happened on Jan. 6 was “no big deal”; that it was nothing more than a typical tourist visit; that it was another Democratic “witch hunt” against Trump; that it was all Pelosi’s fault; or, most despicable of all, that the blame lies with Capitol police officers, five of whom died following Jan. 6. Some even called the rioters who trashed the Capitol “patriots.”  

And that’s McCarthy’s shockingly inept response to the worst attack on our Capitol since the British burned the Capitol in 1814 and the most serious threat to our democracy since the Civil War. If I were a Republican, I’d sue McCarthy for malpractice.  

In the end, Cheney summed it up best. In a blistering statement that should be etched over the door to McCarthy’s office, she warned: “There will come a time when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”  

Press is host of “The Bill Press Pod.” He is the author of “From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.”  

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Sanders says he would support Biden reelection bid

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said on Monday that he would support a reelection bid by President Biden if he decides to run for another term, comments that come one day after progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) declined to say whether she would endorse a Biden campaign in 2024.

Asked if he would support the president in 2024, the Vermont senator told CNN it is “a little too early,” before adding “I think Biden will probably run again, and if he runs again, I will support him.”

Sanders, who ran for the White House against Biden in 2020, also said he would not mount a primary challenge if Biden is running. 

The White House reiterated on Monday that Biden is planning to run in 2024.

“To be clear, as the President has said repeatedly, he plans to run in 2024,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tweeted.

The tweet came after Ocasio-Cortez would not say on Sunday if she would back Biden in the next upcoming presidential election if he were to run.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” the New York Democrat said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“But I think if the president has a vision, and that’s something certainly we’re all willing to entertain and examine when the time comes.”

A Morning Consult poll released last week showed 39 percent of Americans approved of his job as president, compared to 42 percent the month prior. 

The president has also been juggling a handful of domestic and international issues, including high inflation, the ongoing Russian invasion in Ukraine and a slew of shootings across the country.

The Hill has reached out to Sanders’s office for further comment.

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The tale of two seditions: Justice and House disagree over Trump’s Jan. 6 role

Manifestly, the House Jan. 6 Committee is trying to build a criminal case against Donald Trump based on the Capitol riot of 2021 and the events leading up to it. This is one of the main reasons the committee, whose members were hand-picked by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a rabid anti-Trumper, is laser-focused on seditious conspiracy.

That is the charge of levying war against the United States and forcibly opposing the government. The committee has made much of the fact that Justice Department prosecutors have brought seditious conspiracy cases against two loosely-knit organizations commonly referred to as right-wing militia groups, the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.

But here is what the committee won’t tell you, and what it is concealing by its show-trial rules, which permit no cross-examination and no mainstream Republican membership on the panel. (The nine-member committee’s two Republicans were recruited by Pelosi, over the objection of House GOP leadership, because of their unabashed contempt for Trump.)

There is a fundamental contradiction between the committee’s sedition theory and the theory being pursued by the Justice Department in its sedition cases. Specifically, to the committee, Trump is the root of all evil, and the militia groups were acting at his direction. To the prosecutors, by contrast, Trump has virtually nothing to do with the seditious conspiracy cases they have filed — cases in which he is neither charged as defendant nor named as an unindicted co-conspirator.

The reason for this contradiction is obvious — or at least it would be, if the committee probe were a true fact-finding investigation and not an anti-Trump infomercial.

As a federal prosecutor in the early-to-mid-’90s, I tried the last major, successful seditious conspiracy case in the United States — against anti-American jihadists who, in 1993, bombed the World Trade Center and were thwarted while plotting to bomb other New York City landmarks.

Based on that experience, I have argued that the Justice Department should not have invoked the sedition statute, which was first enacted during the Civil War. We never have had a seditious conspiracy case in which defendants could claim credibly that they were acting at the behest of the President of the United States — the commander in chief — when they took forcible action.

The fact that Trump’s “Stop The Steal” pretensions were baseless did not stop the militia groups from believing them. In a sedition case, it is their intent and motive that matter. In their minds, the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys were not levying war against the U.S. or taking up arms against the government. They were attempting to protect the U.S. and its government from saboteurs who were bent on stealing the presidential election from Trump. They were convinced by his incessant claims that he was the rightful victor.

To be clear, I am not saying the militias are innocent of all crimes. There are plenty of charges that could and should be brought against them, such as obstructing congressional proceedings and assaulting federal officers. That would give them decades of potential imprisonment. I am just saying that seditious conspiracy is the wrong charge.

To try to get around this problem, the Justice Department has adopted the fiction that Trump barely has anything to do with Jan. 6. Basically, prosecutors portray him as just a pretext for aggression against the Capitol that the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys would have carried out anyway. Prosecutors are stressing that the defendants forcibly attacked the government but are unrealistically pretending that they were not catalyzed by the president — the chief executive of government.

By contrast, the committee more accurately contends that Trump’s “Stop The Steal” rhetoric incited the militias. This completely contradicts the Justice Department’s sedition theory. 

Yet, the committee has a problem, too. It lacks evidence that Trump truly intended to stoke a violent attack, rather than merely ratchet up pressure on Vice President Mike Pence and Congress not to count electoral votes of states he was contesting. Moreover, the committee apparently lacks evidence that Trump coordinated with the militias, willfully directing them to execute a violent attack.

Sedition makes for powerful political rhetoric, but in court you need proof. Sure, the Justice Department has managed to pressure some militia members to plead guilty, but that does not mean prosecutors would win their seditious conspiracy case if it is challenged aggressively, as some of the charged defendants are likely to do.

Meanwhile, the Jan. 6 committee is touting the Justice Department’s cases and hoping no one notices that (a) the Justice Department is running away from the committee’s claim that Trump is the instigator, and (b) the Justice Department is doing that because there is no proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump knowingly conspired with the militias.

What Trump did was reprehensible. There are many reasons to condemn it. That does not make him, or anyone else, guilty of seditious conspiracy.

Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, a contributing editor at National Review, a Fox News contributor and the author of several books, including “Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad.” Follow him on Twitter @AndrewCMcCarthy.

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