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After years of fighting for them, Democrats may release Trump tax return information

Democrats on the chief tax-writing committee in the House could vote on Tuesday to release tax return information on Donald Trump after winning a prolonged legal battle against the former president in the final weeks of Democratic control of the lower chamber.

The Ways and Means Committee announced a meeting for Tuesday afternoon on “documents protected under Internal Revenue Code section 6103,” the rule under which Democrats were able to obtain Trump’s tax records from the Treasury for years 2015 to 2020.

A vote at that meeting to issue a report to the wider Congress involving Trump’s tax information could open a new chapter in the saga of Trump’s tax returns, which were a source of great frustration for Democrats during Trump’s presidency after he broke with decades of presidential precedent by not sharing them upon entering office. It could also help to close the book on the matter once and for all.

Congressional experts say the contents of such a report to Congress could vary.

“Does that report have all the information that the Ways and Means Committee obtained? Does it have part of the information, perhaps in summary form?” Steve Rosenthal, an analyst with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said in an interview. “Or perhaps [it just has] a conclusion saying the Ways and Means Committee reviewed these tax returns and there’s nothing to worry about. It could be a very short report including summary documents.”

But a veritable canon of investigative reporting on Trump’s personal finances going back years has set high expectations for a big reveal.

In 2020, the New York Times reported that Trump paid only $750 in federal income tax in 2016 and that he’d paid “no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years – largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.”

In 2016, the paper reported that Trump incurred a $916 million loss on his 1995 tax return, theoretically allowing him to avoid income tax for nearly 20 years.

“To generate the $916 million of losses, Trump used other people’s money without ever repaying his borrowings or reversing his tax deductions, as the law requires. And the IRS apparently never challenged,” Rosenthal wrote online on Monday.

There’s doubt about whether the documents provided to House Democrats go back far enough to be able to give a full picture of Trump’s financial history and corroborate so much bombshell reporting.

“It could be a case of too little too late,” Rosenthal said. “I expect very little, without a fuller probe.”

Political strategists say Democrats should be seizing the opportunity to focus on transparency issues around Trump’s business dealings, especially after one of Trump’s main businesses was convicted of tax fraud earlier in December and as the high-profile Jan. 6 Committee considers its own set of criminal referrals against the former president.

“This is not old news. Donald Trump is once again a candidate for president in 2024 in the Republican primary. So this is news you can use, not old news to lose,” Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright said in an interview. 

“This should spark conversations and is going to spark conversations and should give some people some real cause to think, especially depending upon what’s in [the report],” he added.

Republicans said over the weekend that releasing Trump’s tax returns would set a new and damaging precedent.

“Ways and Means Democrats are unleashing a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond President Trump, and jeopardizes the privacy of every American,” Ways and Means Republican leader Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said in a statement on Saturday.

“Going forward, partisans in Congress have nearly unlimited power to target political enemies by obtaining and making public their private tax returns to embarrass and destroy them. This is not limited to public officials, but can target private citizens, business and labor leaders, and Supreme Court justices,” he said.

But after the midterm elections, which saw many of Trump’s chosen candidates lose and his clout within the Republican party come into question, the disclosure of the former president’s tax returns may not represent the huge threat to Republicans that it did in years past.

Rather, Republicans’ vociferous disapproval may be paving the way for their own set of investigations that could result in their own preferred tax disclosures once they take over the House in January.

“If you step back, maybe Trump doesn’t even run for office again. So why would the Republicans care?” Steve Rosenthal said. “Ways and Means Republicans could come out and say, ‘You guys started it. This is both-sides-ism.’ And so they’re going to ask for the tax return information on Hunter Biden and Joe Biden and whoever else they want to embarrass.”

Accusations of political retaliation through U.S. tax administration are nothing new.

Recently, the specialized audits of two top former FBI officials who became political foes of Trump over the investigation into his ties with Russia set off alarm bells for Democrats before the Treasury Inspector General cleared the IRS of wrongdoing.

Likewise, Republicans accused the IRS of targeting the tax-exempt status of conservative political groups during the Obama administration.

Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee could also decide not to release anything substantive in their potential report to Congress.

In that case, the Finance Committee in the Senate, which will stay under Democratic control come January, may take up the investigation.

Senate Finance Committee chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) expressed interest in continuing the investigation after the Department of Justice sided with the Ways and Means Committee in 2021, arguing the committee had a right to see Trump’s tax returns.

“The Justice Department confirms that Secretary Mnuchin acted outside the law in refusing to respond to a congressional request for Donald Trump’s tax returns,” Wyden said in a 2021 statement, referring to Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. “In light of this decision, I will consult with the Ways and Means Committee and consider the Finance Committee’s next steps.”

Ways and Means Democrats have been seeking Trump’s tax returns since winning the House in 2018, saying they needed them from the IRS to perform oversight of the federal presidential audit program.

“The IRS has a policy of auditing the tax returns of all sitting presidents and vice presidents,” Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) said in 2019. “We must obtain President Trump’s tax returns and review whether the IRS is carrying out its responsibilities.”

Whatever the scale of the disclosures on Trump’s personal tax returns, experts say his case is indicative of a broader set of problems with the U.S. tax system and how its complexities allow it to be exploited in bad faith.

“For our voluntary tax system to remain stable, we count on taxpayers not to play ‘hide-the-ball,’ or as Trump fashions it, to treat taxes as a sport. Trump once said that’s the way he looks at it,” Steve Rosenthal said. “The system will collapse if taxpayers game it and are successful.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Arizona judge dismisses most of Kari Lake's lawsuit challenging election results

An Arizona judge has dismissed most of Kari Lake’s election lawsuit contesting the victory of her opponent, Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs (D), after Lake for weeks seized on unproven voter fraud allegations.

Lake had asked the judge to set aside Hobbs’s certified victory based on 10 counts, alleging election officials in Maricopa County — which comprises most of the state’s population — committed misconduct and tabulated hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson on Monday evening dismissed eight of the 10 counts, ruling that they did not fall under the proper criteria to bring election challenges under Arizona law, even if true, so they did not merit further consideration.

But Thompson allowed a trial to move forward on two other counts that he said, if proven, could state a claim under the statute governing election challenges: alleged intentional interference by election officials affecting Maricopa County ballot printers and chain of custody violations.

Lake, an ally of former President Trump who promoted unfounded claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election and declined to commit to accepting this year’s results prior to Election Day, must now prove those two allegations in a trial scheduled for later this week.

Since the midterms, Lake has railed against Maricopa County officials and Hobbs, calling the election “botched” and a “sham” as she vowed to appeal her case to the Supreme Court if necessary.

Maricopa County as well as Hobbs, in both her capacities as secretary of state and a gubernatorial candidate, dispute Lake’s claims and had asked the judge to dismiss all 10 counts.

Hobbs and the county in asking for the complete dismissal argued that many of Lake’s allegations were based on procedures put in place well before last month’s election, saying those claims had to be brought before Election Day.

They also contend that the Lake campaign’s arguments are also unfounded and would fail on their merits in trial.

“If there’s anything rotten in Arizona, it is what this contest represents,” an attorney for Hobbs said at the hearing. “For the past several years, our democracy and its basic guiding principles have been under sustained assault from candidates who just cannot or will not accept the fact that they lost. The judiciary has served as a bulwark against these efforts to undo our democratic system from within.”

Maricopa County, which spans the Phoenix area, has become an epicenter of voter disenfranchisement allegations after some of the county’s Election Day vote centers experienced printer malfunctions.

Election officials insist affected voters could have used one of multiple backup options, but Lake, noting that Election Day voters in Arizona favor Republicans, claimed that election officials had intentionally sabotaged her victory and their backup options still disenfranchised voters.

“Plaintiff must show at trial that the [Election Day] printer malfunctions were intentional, and directed to affect the results of the election, and that such actions did actually affect the outcome,” the judge said of the first remaining count in Monday’s order.

For the other remaining count, Lake claims that more than 300,000 Maricopa County ballots did not have proper chain of custody paperwork.

The county disputes that claim, arguing that Lake does not understand the various forms of paperwork and indicating Maricopa has all necessary documentation on file.

Lake’s campaign in court filings had also promoted an array of other allegations dismissed by the judge, including that some mail ballots were tabulated despite mismatched signatures.

Lake had also taken aim at the Arizona secretary of state’s office, which Hobbs leads, for flagging multiple tweets containing falsehoods about the Arizona’s elections. Twitter ultimately decided to remove those tweets.

“This case is also about a secret censorship operation set up by the government that would make Orwell blush,” Lake’s attorney said during a Monday hearing, referring to George Orwell, who wrote the “1984” dystopian novel.

Lake is one of multiple GOP nominees to challenge the results of their election.

Judges have dismissed separate election contests filed by a state senator who contested Hobbs’s gubernatorial win, and another filed by defeated Arizona secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem (R), who challenged his Democratic rival’s victory.

Arizona Republican attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh, who trails his Democratic opponent by just 511 votes out of 2.5 million ballots ahead of an automatic recount, has also contested his race’s results.

A state judge in Arizona’s Mohave County similarly heard arguments about a dismissal motion in that case on Monday, but Hamadeh’s contest, which was joined by the Republican National Committee, remains ongoing.

Source: TEST FEED1

Jan. 6 committee goes out swinging 

The House committee investigating last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol is going out with guns blazing, using its final appearance on the public stage to recommend severe criminal charges against former President Trump and accuse four sitting GOP lawmakers — including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) — of ethical lapses for their refusal to cooperate with the probe.

In their 10th public forum, panel members on Monday laid out the final findings of their marathon probe, which center on charges that Trump orchestrated a coup to remain in power despite his 2020 election defeat. 

In the process, they also launched their most aggressive foray against Trump since the probe began 18 months ago, accusing the former president of inciting an insurrection, among other crimes, and advising the Justice Department to investigate the charges further — an undertaking the department has already begun.

“Today, beyond our findings, we will also show that evidence we’ve gathered points to further action beyond the power of this committee or the Congress to help ensure accountability under law — accountability that can only be found in the criminal justice system,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the select committee, said at the outset of Monday’s meeting.

From a practical standpoint, the referrals are largely symbolic. The committee has no powers of prosecution, and the Justice Department is under no obligation to weigh the recommendations, let alone act on them. 

Yet from a political perspective, the referrals are a remarkable escalation in advancing the investigators’ overarching case that Trump not only summoned supporters to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, to protest the results of the 2020 presidential contest, but also encouraged an armed crowd to march on the Capitol, then sat idle while the mob stormed into the building in a failed attempt to reverse Trump’s election defeat.

“This was an utter moral failure — and a clear dereliction of duty,” said Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), the vice chairwoman of the select committee and one of just two Republicans on the nine-member panel. 

“No man who would behave that way at that moment in time can ever serve in any position of authority in our nation again,” she continued. “He is unfit for any office.”

The committee’s move to endorse criminal charges marked something of a change of heart for Thompson, the chairman, who had said in June that the select committee was merely an investigative body — one that lacks the authority to make such recommendations.

Since then, however, the panel has heard damning testimony from a long list of eyewitnesses to the events surrounding the Capitol attack, including former Trump officials who were in the West Wing that day. And as the evidence piled up, the resistance to criminal referrals on the select committee seemed to erode, although not without some friction among members of the panel. 

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), another panel member, identified the “two poles” driving that internal discussion: There were members opposed to any criminal referrals, he said, and “those on the other end who said we should refer every single offense that we saw, of any type, no matter how central.”

“We ended up in the middle, with the idea that we should focus on the central actors with the major offenses,” Raskin told reporters after Monday’s forum. “And that’s what you heard today.”

The explicit criminal referrals target only two figures: Trump and John Eastman, a conservative lawyer and informal Trump adviser who was the architect of the legal scaffolding on which the “stop the steal” movement rested. The committee accused both men of obstructing an official proceeding, namely the transfer of power from one administration to the next, and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government. 

Investigators also accused Trump of two additional crimes: inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6 and conspiracy to make false statements, referring to the campaign to seat a false slate of electors to back Trump even in certain states he lost. 

Noticeably absent from the referral list were a number of close Trump allies who have been scrutinized by the select committee throughout the investigation, including Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former personal lawyer; Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff; and Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official sympathetic to the “stop the steal” movement. Heading into Jan. 6, Trump wanted to install Clark at the top of the agency, where he might have abetted efforts to keep the former president in power.

Raskin suggested there were several reasons for those omissions, including a lack of consensus among the investigators, a dearth of evidence to advance specific criminal charges and an absence of cooperation among certain witnesses. The panel is hoping the Justice Department picks up where the select committee — which sunsets at the end of this Congress — left off.

“You’ll see that when you read the report that there are lots of other people named as actors. But we were stymied by virtue of the fact that not everybody would testify, lots of people took the Fifth Amendment. So with respect to other particular actors, like Clark or Giuliani, we just can’t say because we don’t have quite enough evidence,” he said. “That’s going to be up to the Department of Justice to determine.”

The committee also took aim at four sitting GOP lawmakers — McCarthy and Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio), Scott Perry (Pa.) and Andy Biggs (Ariz.) — who had both supported Trump’s false claims of a “stolen” election and had a unique window into the events on and around Jan. 6. All four had been issued subpoenas to testify before the committee, and all four refused. 

In its final response, the investigators referred those lawmakers to the House Ethics Committee, though it’s unclear if that panel — which is split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans — will take up the issue when Republicans take over control of the House next year. 

Republicans are already hammering those referrals as a political attack orchestrated by a select committee, initiated by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), that’s been stacked from the start with Trump critics. 

“This referral is their final political stunt,” Biggs said in a statement. 

Trump’s critics countered that ignoring a congressional subpoena without some form of punishment — even for sitting members of Congress — would set a dangerous example and undermine the effectiveness of Congress as an oversight body. 

“It demands a complete investigation, and there should be something that reflects the punishment,” said Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), who is not a member of the Jan. 6 committee but was on hand to witness the final meeting of the panel.

“They have set a diabolical precedent,” she added.

A bulk of Monday’s forum was spent summarizing previous evidence and testimony indicating that Trump sought to remain in power at all costs. Yet the panel has also been conducting depositions and accepting new evidence in the three months since its last public hearing, in September, and Monday’s forum featured some new details from those depositions, including new testimony from Hope Hicks, a former Trump adviser, who told investigators that there was no evidence of mass voter fraud in 2020. 

“I was becoming increasingly concerned that we were damaging his legacy,” she said. 

Trump responded that winning was more important, she said. 

While Monday’s meeting marked the final public forum for the nine-member committee, it’s not the panel’s final word. That will come on Wednesday, when the committee unveils its concluding report, which is expected to comprise eight chapters, each one focused on a prominent facet of the planning, orchestration and response to the Jan. 6 rampage at the Capitol.

Thompson said other materials gathered during the course of the panel’s investigation — “the bulk of its nonsensitive documents” — would be released before the end of the year. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Trump responds to Jan. 6 criminal referrals: 'It strengthens me' 

Former President Trump on Monday responded to the Jan. 6 committee’s decision to urge the Justice Department to prosecute him and some of his associates over their involvement in the Capitol riot and efforts to overturn the 2020 election, saying the move makes him “stronger.”  

“These folks don’t get it that when they come after me, people who love freedom rally around me.  It strengthens me. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger,” Trump said on his Truth Social social media platform.

In its final public meeting hours earlier, the Jan. 6 panel unveiled criminal referrals recommending that the DOJ prosecute Trump on charges of inciting an insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement and obstruction of an official proceeding. 

“The Fake charges made by the highly partisan Unselect Committee of January 6th have already been submitted, prosecuted, and tried in the form of Impeachment Hoax # 2. I WON convincingly. Double Jeopardy anyone!” Trump wrote hours after the panel’s recommendations were formally made.

Trump, who last month announced another run for the White House in 2024, painted the probes as an effort to undercut his campaign. The insurrection charge could bar Trump from running for elected office again.

“The people understand that the Democratic Bureau of Investigation, the DBI, are out to keep me from running for president because they know I’ll win and that this whole business of prosecuting me is just like impeachment was — a partisan attempt to sideline me and the Republican Party,” Trump said. 

At the meeting, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who is leaving Congress after she lost her primary election to a Trump-backed candidate, said Trump is “unfit for any office.” 

The former president also rebuffed the panel’s determination of his 187 minutes of inaction between the start of the riot and Trump’s video message urging the rioters to “go home.” Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) on Monday called it an “extreme dereliction of duty,” with other lawmakers calling Trump’s inaction one of the panel’s most shameful findings.

The Jan. 6 panel will release a much-anticipated report on its findings on Wednesday before it is dissolved in the next Congress.

Source: TEST FEED1

McConnell on Jan. 6 criminal referral of Trump: 'Entire nation knows who is responsible for that day'

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday issued a terse response to the House Select Jan. 6 Committee’s decision to refer criminal charges against former President Trump to the Department of Justice.  

“The entire nation knows who is responsible for that day. Beyond that, I don’t have any immediate observations,” McConnell said in a statement reacting to the House panel voting to refer four criminal charges against Trump to prosecutors in connection to his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

The committee, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, recommended the Justice Department investigate Trump for inciting insurrection, obstructing an official proceeding, conspiring to defraud the United States and conspiring to make a false statement.  

The panel also recommended a formal ethics investigation of the role House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and several allies — Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) — played on Jan. 6 and in the days before.

McConnell’s statement responding to the action on the other side of the Capitol was bolder than those from some members of his leadership team.

Retiring Senate Republican Policy Committee Chairman Roy Blunt (Mo.) said he “had no idea” of the details of the referral.  

Incoming Senate GOP Conference Vice Chairwoman Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said “I never heard of Congress instructing [the Justice Department] in that way.”

She said the committee’s work was “obviously politicized.”  

McConnell denounced Trump on the Senate floor in February 2021 after the former president was acquitted on the impeachment charge of inciting an insurrection.  

“There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day,” McConnell said, after voting to acquit the president on the technical grounds that he no longer held office.  

Since then, McConnell has regularly declined to comment when asked what responsibility Trump bore for spreading the unsubstantiated belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.  

Source: TEST FEED1

Supreme Court puts brakes on Title 42's expiration  

The Supreme Court on Monday temporarily halted the expiration of Title 42, a Trump-era immigration policy that allows border officials to turn away asylum seekers due to concerns about public health. 

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts granted an administrative stay to temporarily pause the rollback, keeping Title 42 active past the initial expiration date of Dec. 21, pending another order from the Court.    

A federal judge had struck the immigration policy down last month and set it on the path toward expiration, but a group of 19 GOP state attorneys general petitioned to let Title 42 stand as states grapple with immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border.   

Roberts in Monday’s filing ordered the Biden administration to respond on the matter by 5 p.m. EST on Tuesday.  

“Earlier today, I filed a motion before SCOTUS asking to halt the Biden’s scrapping of Title 42. Just now, SCOTUS returned a decision in our favor. The fight to keep Title 42 in place continues,” said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Twitter after the announcement.

The border city of El Paso, Texas, declared a state of emergency as an influx of migrants surged into shelters just days ahead of the expected Title 42 end date.  

“Texas and other states are insisting that the Court leave Title 42 in place. Today’s order is a step in that direction. This helps prevent illegal immigration,” wrote Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Twitter.  

This story was updated at 6:10 p.m.

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McConnell: Omnibus boosts defense spending, cuts nondefense spending 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday touted the year-end deal on an omnibus spending package as a victory for Republicans because it will boost defense spending above the rate of inflation and increase nondefense spending at a lower rate than inflation, effectively resulting in a cut.  

McConnell cast the result as the mirror image of what President Biden requested when he sent his budget request to Congress. 

“The administration wanted to cut funding for our armed forces after inflation while massively increasing spending on nondefense. Republicans have taken the president’s bizarre position and flipped it on its head,” he said on the Senate floor.  

McConnell said the bill, which will be released to the public on Monday afternoon, “provides a substantial real-dollar increase to the defense baseline and a substantial real-dollar cut to the nondefense, non-veterans baseline.” 

Republican sources say the boost in defense-related spending compared to what they’re calling the “real-dollar cut” to nondefense spending is more dramatic when the generous increase in spending on military veterans, which is classified on the nondefense side of the spending ledger, is factored in.  

McConnell also highlighted the fact that the omnibus is expected to exclude what he called “left-wing goodies,” such as the Safe Banking Act, which would prohibit federal regulators from penalizing financial institutions that do business with legitimate cannabis-related businesses.  

“The bipartisan bill that our colleagues have negotiated equips our armed forces with the resources they need while cutting nondefense, non-veterans spending in real dollars,” he said. “This is a strong outcome for Republicans, and much more importantly, it’s the outcome that our nation’s security.”  

The consumer price index, which measures inflation, rose by 7.1 percent over the past 12 months, which by McConnell’s account means the omnibus will increase defense spending by more than 7.1 percent while increasing nondefense spending by a smaller percentage.  

Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) expressed disappointment on Monday afternoon that nondefense social spending programs will receive a smaller increase than defense programs but he noted that Democrats didn’t have much leverage to insist on parity.  

McConnell is “in a bargaining position,” Durbin said, and “taking advantage of his leverage.”  

“I don’t like it but we’re in a pretty desperate situation,” Durbin added, referring to the Democrats’ loss of the House majority in the midterm elections. 

Democrats were eager to strike a deal with McConnell and Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, before Republicans take control of the House in January.  

Source: TEST FEED1

Five takeaways as Jan. 6 panel criminally refers Trump

The House select committee on Jan. 6 delivered its final big public moment on Monday, with a meeting outlining its conclusions and recapping some of its most important revelations. 

The committee had been set up in June 2021, less than six months after one of the darkest days in modern American history. It came into existence amid opposition from GOP leadership. Only two Republicans, Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) — both strong critics of former President Trump — took seats on the panel. 

But the duo gave the committee at least some semblance of bipartisanship. The public hearings that began in June this year attracted big TV audiences and produced a blizzard of headlines. 

Here are the main takeaways from the committee’s Monday event. 

The panel accused Trump of four crimes 

The big question that had hung over the committee’s work — would it formally assert that Trump should be criminally prosecuted? — was answered with an emphatic yes. 

The committee in the end decided to make criminal referrals of Trump to the Department of Justice on four separate charges. 

They are: obstruction of an official proceeding; conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to make a false statement; and inciting, assisting or giving comfort to an insurrection. 

The referrals were laid out from the dais by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.). 

Referring to the fourth charge, pertaining to insurrection, Raskin said: “It is a grave federal offense, anchored in the Constitution itself, which … uses participation in insurrection by office holders as automatic grounds for disqualification from ever holding public office again, at the federal or state level.” 

The implication for Trump, already a declared candidate for the presidency in 2024, could hardly be clearer. 

It bears emphasizing that criminal referrals carry no legal force and do not obligate Attorney General Merrick Garland to indict Trump on any such charges.  

Furthermore, the Justice Department has already been conducting its own investigation — an effort that is now helmed by special counsel Jack Smith. 

Still, Monday marks the first time in American history that a congressional panel has criminally referred a former president. That, in itself, ups the momentum behind the idea of criminal charges against Trump. 

“I’m convinced the Justice Department will charge former President Trump,” committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) told CNN. “No one, including a former president, is above the law.” 

The panel, mindful of the drama of the moment, left the approval of the referrals to the final minutes of its hearing. 

Those referrals were unanimously approved, with each member separately announcing her or his assent.  

The committee adjourned immediately afterward. 

The panel has Kevin McCarthy and three other GOP House members in its sights 

The panel’s decision to refer Trump for possible prosecution was not, in the end, a big surprise. Sources close to the committee had telegraphed such a move beforehand. 

More startling was a separate but related decision to ask the House Ethics Committee to investigate four Republican members of Congress. 

The members in the committee’s sights include Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the current House minority leader who aims to become Speaker when the new Congress convenes on Jan. 3.  

The other members are Trump uber-loyalists: Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Scott Perry (R-Pa.). 

At issue was the refusal of these members to cooperate with the committee even when subpoenaed to do so. 

A lengthy document sent by the committee to the media included the accusation that the quartet had shown “willful noncompliance” that the panel contended “violates multiple standards of conduct and subjects them to discipline.” 

Ultimately, however, serious action from the Ethics Committee seems unlikely. The committee’s membership is always divided evenly between the two major parties. But its chair comes from the party that holds the House majority.

Current Chair Susan Wild (D-Pa.) will therefore give up her gavel come January. It seems highly implausible that a GOP-led panel will investigate four Republicans, including the man who will more likely than not be Speaker by then. 

A reminder of the panel’s most dramatic moments 

The hearing had another purpose beyond referrals. It acted as a platform to sum up the panel’s work and refresh the public’s memory of its earlier “greatest hits.” 

Monday’s meeting was relatively brief — under 100 minutes in total — but offered an array of video clips from earlier hearings. 

That meant a fresh reminder to the public about Trump’s call to officials in Georgia seeking to overturn the election results in that state; mother-and-daughter election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss detailing the harassment they faced; former Attorney General William Barr calling Trump’s claims of election fraud “bullshit”; and Cassidy Hutchinson’s recollection of then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows allegedly saying Trump believed Vice President Mike Pence deserved the death threats coming his way on Jan. 6.

Those moments — and there were plenty of others — were dramatic enough when they first emerged. Played in quick succession, as they were on Monday, they had a renewed and cumulative force. 

A surprise Hope Hicks cameo — with new evidence 

Monday’s meeting had one important new element — video testimony from Hope Hicks, the former White House communications director and longtime Trump confidant. 

The footage from Hicks provided two compelling moments. 

One came when she mentioned she had become concerned about damage to Trump’s legacy, apparently amid his false claims of election fraud. 

But, she testified, in response Trump said “something along the lines of, ‘Nobody will care about my legacy if I lose. So that won’t matter. The only thing that matters is winning.’” 

In a separate clip, Hicks said that she had told White House lawyer Eric Herschmann in advance of Jan. 6 that she believed it was “important that the president put out some kind of message in advance” encouraging protesters to be peaceful. 

She said that Herschmann replied that he had delivered a similar message to Trump — “and that he had refused.” 

Those details may not be make-or-break moments when it comes to possible criminal prosecutions, but they added new texture to a grim picture — and new evidence about Trump’s intentions. 

But what’s the bottom line? 

Several committee members have emphasized that they believe themselves to be working in part for history’s sake.  

Providing the fullest possible record of the events around Jan. 6, they suggested, was more important than any partisan political gain.

The evidence of immediate political impact is indeed scarce. 

Trump’s poll ratings moved only very slightly during the earlier, more dramatic hearings — and there is no reason to suppose they will shift more dramatically now.  

Cheney was defeated in a primary landslide by a pro-Trump challenger. Kinzinger opted to retire from Congress. It’s possible to argue the panel’s work fed into voters’ concerns about GOP extremism in the midterm elections, but the line of causation seems shaky at best. 

Trump, predictably, has blasted back at the panel. He referred to its members as “Thugs and Scoundrels” in a Sunday post on Truth Social and called on “Republicans and Patriots all over the land” to oppose them. 

But even if the politics don’t change, the panel’s work has clearly added to the historical record. 

Given the referrals, the story is not over yet. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Jan. 6 committee launches ethics complaint against McCarthy, other GOP lawmakers

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol escalated its clash with Republican lawmakers on Monday, recommending a formal ethics inquiry into House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and other top allies of former President Trump for their refusal to cooperate with the probe.

The recommendations to the House Ethics Committee mark a milder step than the criminal referrals to the Justice Department that the select committee made Monday against Trump and several members of the former president’s inner circle for their role in the Capitol riot. 

But as a political matter, the ethics complaints will shine a bright light on the actions of McCarthy and three other prominent House Republicans — Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio), Scott Perry (Pa.) and Andy Biggs (Ariz.) — in the lead-up to and the aftermath of the attack. Those actions ranged from attending Jan. 6 planning meetings with Trump at the White House, as Jordan had done, to having conversations with the then-president in the midst of the riot, as McCarthy had done. 

The committee had initially requested that those four lawmakers, among others, appear voluntarily before the panel. When the Republicans refused, the panel issued subpoenas for their testimony in May, almost a year into the sweeping investigation into Trump’s efforts to remain in power after his 2020 defeat. 

None of them complied with the inquest, arguing the select committee was, from the start, a political witch hunt orchestrated by Trump’s adversaries — most notably Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — to damage Trump’s chances of winning another term in the White House. Heightening those accusations, Trump last month announced his entrance into the 2024 presidential race.

During Monday’s gathering on Capitol Hill, the last in a long series of public forums to air its findings, the select committee argued that ignoring congressional subpoenas — even for sitting lawmakers — sets a dangerous precedent that will hobble Congress’s powers to function effectively as an oversight body.

It’s unclear if the Ethics panel will launch an investigation based on the select committee’s new recommendations. Unlike most other standing committees, membership on the Ethics panel is evenly divided between the parties. And the committee strives — at least rhetorically — to avoid the divisive partisan politicking that practically defines some of the other panels. 

Yet with just weeks left in the 117th Congress, there’s a small and closing window for the committee to launch any new probes while Democrats are still in the House majority. And it’s unlikely that a GOP-led Ethics panel would take the remarkable step of investigating the role of sitting Republicans in an event as polarizing as the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. 

Indeed, in a sign of how partisan Jan. 6 has become, McCarthy — who is vying to become Speaker next year and has outsize influence over committee chair spots — is vowing to investigate the Jan. 6 investigation as a first order of business in the new Congress.  

Heading into Monday’s forum, panel members seemed resigned to the idea that they had little recourse against McCarthy and the other Republicans who refused to cooperate in the short window before the panel sunsets.

“We don’t have a lot of time right now,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), one of the two Republicans on the select committee, told reporters last week. “That’s the reality of where we’re at.”

By their own telling, each of the Republicans has information pertaining to the Jan. 6 attack that is relevant to the investigation. 

McCarthy had called Trump from the Capitol amid the attack, urging the president to call off his supporters, and he later went to the House floor to say Trump bore responsibility for the rampage. But despite initially supporting an outside investigation into the riot, McCarthy reversed course after Trump opposed the idea. 

Jordan, another close Trump ally, was among the most vocal proponents of Congress’s effort to overturn Trump’s defeat in certain closely contested states. He’d attended a meeting at the White House in late December of 2020, just weeks before Jan. 6, to help plan the Republicans’ strategy for blocking Congress’s vote to formalize President Biden’s victory. And he was on a conference call on Jan. 2, 2021, for the same purpose. Jordan also spoke with Trump more than once on Jan. 6. 

Perry, who rose in prominence as a staunch Trump defender during the former president’s first impeachment, has caught the attention of Jan. 6 investigators for his role in pushing Trump to install Jeffrey Clark as head of the Justice Department after the election. Clark was sympathetic to Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign, and Republicans saw him as an ally in the effort to use the Justice Department to keep Trump in office. 

Biggs, a former head of the far-right Freedom Caucus, had been a part of a campaign led by Arizona state lawmakers to seat a slate of alternative electors who would side with Trump despite his loss in the Grand Canyon State.  

A fifth GOP lawmaker, Rep. Mo Brooks (Ala.), had also been a target of investigators for his coordination with the Trump White House leading up to Jan. 6 as well as his combative speech on the Ellipse that morning, when Brooks, clad in body armor, urged the crowd to “start taking down names and kicking ass.” 

Brooks, who lost a bid for Alabama Senate this year, is not returning to Capitol Hill next year, and the Jan. 6 committee did not include him on its list of ethics referrals.

Source: TEST FEED1

Jan. 6 committee unveils criminal referrals against Trump

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol unveiled criminal referrals on Monday targeting former President Trump, recommending that the Department of Justice investigate the ex-president for inciting an insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement, and obstruction of an official proceeding.

The referrals mark the culmination of the committee’s 18-month probe of the Jan. 6 attack and the role Trump played before, during and after the riot. They are a crescendo in the panel’s central case that Trump was at the center of a conspiracy to keep himself in power.

Investigators on the committee said they decided on criminal referrals against Trump based on sufficient evidence showing that he violated various statutes: “Incite,” “Assist” or “Aid and Comfort” an Insurrection; Obstruction of an Official Proceeding; Conspiracy to Defraud the United States; Conspiracy to Make a False Statement; and Other Conspiracy Statutes.

The recommendations themselves, however, are largely symbolic, as the Department of Justice is not required to look into referrals from congressional committees. They also come as the agency is conducting its own, separate investigation into the Capitol riot, which was recently put under the purview of an independent special counsel.

But the referrals nonetheless mark a significant escalation in the political fight between the committee and Trump, especially as the former president wages his third bid for the White House.

The Justice Department will now have to decide whether it wants to pursue any prosecution based on the panel’s recommendations. It is unclear how the agency will proceed.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the panel, said he believes evidence exists for Trump to be prosecuted.

“I think that the evidence is there that Donald Trump committed criminal offenses in connection with his efforts to overturn the election,” Schiff, a former prosecutor, told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “And viewing it as a former prosecutor, I think there’s sufficient evidence to charge the president.”

Source: TEST FEED1