House Democrats know that even the most damning findings from their probe into the Capitol attack may not save their majority in November. They’re still pleading with voters to pay attention.
Ahead of their prime-time hearing into the deadly Jan. 6 riot this week, Democrats have the steep challenge of convincing a disillusioned American electorate to tune into their hourslong presentation about something that happened more than 500 days ago. Most voters saw the violent siege by Donald Trump supporters play out far away from their homes, and the threat it presented to democracy seems abstract — particularly since it ultimately failed to keep Joe Biden from the White House.
All of which lends an air of fatalism to Democrats' approach to the hearings. They readily acknowledge the election less six months away will be determined far more by voters' economic worries than last year’s riot. Even so, the party is using the likely diminishing days of its majority for what members call a history-book moment, aiming to reshape public perception of the GOP faction that enabled Trump's effort to subvert the democratic process as the former president appears on the verge of another run.
Members across the caucus, including dozens who were trapped in the chamber during last January’s attack, insist that the fate of democracy is at stake. Even Democrats’ most vulnerable members say the party has no choice but to make their case to the public.
But first they have to break through with voters, many of whom have been largely tuning out the sprawling investigation into the day that a mob overran the Capitol.
“These hearings are a big deal. I think the American people, if they tune in, will understand that,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), who was just feet away from rioters as they nearly broke into the House floor on Jan. 6, 2021. “I think this is about saving our democracy, quite frankly.”
Democrats will attempt to pierce many voters’ malaise on the subject with a carefully choreographed narrative: never-before-seen video footage, text messages, testimony from Trump’s inner circle. Many of them see it as compelling enough to sow doubt in the future of the GOP, from Trump on down to the elected Republicans who have stood by him. House GOP leaders have decried the inquiry as a politicized sham, while some of their own members still refuse to say Biden fairly won the election.
But the effects of the Democrats’ narrative might not show right away, and they know it; many privately say they don’t see the hearings dramatically reversing the headwinds against them in November.
Showing voters how much of the Jan. 6 violence was the fault of Trump and his GOP backers, however, gives Democrats an opening to talk about the risks of reelevating the former president as he mulls a 2024 campaign.
“I think that that’s a longer road,” said Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), when asked about how the select panel's findings could impact a future Trump’s run for the White House.
There's still immense value, she added, in bringing about “more honest conversations ... about what happened that day, what the record was, what the record was of the commander in chief, and why his government was under attack — and he did nothing.”
Polling shows that public belief that Trump had a clear role in the attack has been fading since January 2021, except among the Democrats’ most ardent supporters. One-third of Americans now believe Trump bears no responsibility for the attack, according to a Pew Research poll in January, up from one-quarter of people surveyed a year earlier.
With their new evidence, Democrats hope they can convince people otherwise.
“It could be a good, jarring moment for the nation,” said Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-Ill.), as he crossed his fingers. “My hope is that the hearings will reveal, in a succinct way, the danger that the country faced, and continues to face should that type of speech and action continue as we approach the next presidential election.”
Privately, many Democrats believe their presentation will be the most potent if they can prove that the threat remains ongoing — such as the groups of Republicans still actively planning to contest future elections.
The bulk of the hearings will be, of course, about the day itself.
The nine-member select panel will distill its year-long investigation — including hundreds of hours of video, testimony from dozens of witnesses, and tens of thousands of pages of documents — into made-for-TV moments.
They believe they have created a clear, compelling narrative that shows the lessons learned from both Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia election interference probe and Trump's Ukraine-focused impeachment trial: In both previous instances, many Democrats felt their party fell flat as they sought to make a public case against the president.
This time, though, there will be fewer lawyers with complex timelines and a thicket of classified documents. Plus, the committee itself will have no partisan sniping. One of the Republicans on the panel, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), is a dedicated Trump critic and a major asset to Democrats.
“They don’t have a prosecutorial function,” said Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), summing up the panel's role. “I don’t think their objective is to persuade anybody. We’ve gotten to the point where we think we can argue facts. This is about revealing and sharing with the American people what they have collected.”
One select committee aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal plans, said that Thursday's first hearing would focus on “connecting the dots.”
“A lot of this has been reported and bits and pieces have been shared, but our aim is to sort of tie all that together in a comprehensive narrative, and to show how it’s a pattern that started before the election and went all the way through Jan. 6,” the aide added.
That could help Democrats reinforce contrasts as they brace for a potential walloping this November, reminding voters what’s at stake if they lose control of Congress, let alone the White House in two years.
While the insurrection may not be at the top of voters’ minds now or even this November, Democrats say reminding people about it — and presenting the full story for the first time — will stoke anger that could leave a lasting impression.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said he sees the hearings as both an exercise in persuasion as well as a reminder of why the threat isn’t over: “It’s a warning ... I think the American public is going to see, there was in fact a conspiracy.”
That is, of course, if they decide to watch.
Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.), whose district backed Trump in both 2016 and 2020, said the interest in his own district is mixed.
“People who read POLITICO in my district will be watching. Most people, though, are just concerned on keeping shelter over their heads and doing the best for their families,” Cartwright said.
“I’m all in favor of knowledge, learning and awareness,” he added. “I don't think I’ll be spending much of my time persuading people to watch these hearings. Either they will or they won’t.”
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack will soon hold its first primetime hearing on efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump World is still figuring out what to do about it.
Coordination remains underway between aides to former President Donald Trump, GOP allies on Capitol Hill, and the Republican National Committee. But aides in those circles say that with the Jan. 6 committee having not yet revealed its witness list or the content to be unveiled, their actual plans for pushback remain TBD.
Allies say they expect Trump to weigh in on the hearings, but they don’t know if he will call into radio or TV shows or post to his social media site, Truth Social. The two Republican members on the committee who could theoretically provide insight — Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — have both been ostracized by the party.
The absence of a game plan isn’t causing stress, at least overtly. The hope is that Republicans on the Hill, particularly Trump loyalists like Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), will play the role of Trump’s public defenders. But while the House GOP will be engaged in responding to the hearings, the Senate side is likely to lay low.
Among Trump allies, there is also a sense that the public’s opinions on Jan. 6 are already baked in place and that even expertly produced hearings won’t materially change that. Underscoring that nonchalance, a person familiar with coordination between Trump and Hill Republicans said that the Republican National Committee hadn’t been very involved until recently.
“They saw this as people don’t care about it and aren’t paying attention and there are bigger problems,” the person said. “If nothing else in an election year this [Jan. 6] committee has united every Republican faction with an illegitimate committee and bureaucratic and government overreach at a time when many member constituencies are suffering.”
As a tactical matter, Trump and his allies are prepared to dismiss any new finding as a political distraction — not tied to the real concerns of voters. Steven Cheung, a former Trump campaign official and Republican campaign strategist, said Republicans have aligned on that messaging already.
“It’s important to highlight that it’s been a year-and-a-half since Jan 6 happened and look where we’re at. High inflation rates. High gas prices. A lot of crime happening,” said Cheung. “These are things people are focused on, and we’re going to spend the entire month in primetime television on Jan 6. What’s the purpose of it?”
Those downplaying the significance of the hearings have interests in doing so. The RNC, for starters, is currently in a legal battle with the committee over records held by Salesforce, a company that handles the RNC’s data and digital operations. The committee is trying to glean information about how RNC messaging and fundraising emails may have pushed falsehoods about the election.
“The RNC plans on aggressively responding to the partisan attacks and political theater the Democrats are engaging in with Nancy Pelosi’s illegitimate January 6 Committee,” RNC spokesperson Emma Vaughn said in a statement.
Elsewhere, other Trump-allied institutions are not taking a casual approach. While Fox News has decided not to air the hearings in their entirety, the network was expected to bring on Trump-defending guests to rebut the news. Several of the network’s evening broadcasters, like hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, have had their personal texts to Trump officials revealed as part of the committee’s investigative work.
Chris Ruddy, CEO of the conservative leaning Newsmax, said the network plans to air the first hour in full and then will decide how much of the rest of the hearings to broadcast.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser, plans to have Stefanik and Harriet Hageman, the Wyoming primary challenger to Cheney, among others on his “War Room” show Thursday. While they will focus on the hearings, among other things, he insisted there was a general lack of excitement.
“There’s no electricity, no buzz, no real anticipation,” said Bannon, who was criminally charged with contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the select committee and is expected to go to trial next month. “It’s not even the A or B blocks [today] on MSNBC.”
And the Conservative Political Action Coalition, led by Trump-ally Matt Schlapp, will launch a website to publish documents and their own arguments. Schalpp said “dozens” of people will be working in a war room to respond to the hearings.
“We’re in a position of having to see what propaganda is out first, then us having to respond to it,” Schlapp said of the committee. “We’re aware of the seriousness of these charges and no one is taking this lightly in terms of the historic importance and of the American people understanding how outrageous and unconstitutional it is in an effort to mitigate [Democratic] losses in November.”
The committee, through carefully produced hearings, plans to present the initial summary of its findings about “the coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and prevent the transfer of power.” So far, little information about witnesses and potential bombshells has been released or leaked to the press.
On Thursday night, the committee is expected to focus on how the far right neo-Fascist group Proud Boys helped coordinate violence on Jan. 6. The committee will hear from Nick Quested — a British documentarian who followed the Proud Boys around Jan. 6 — and Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards, one of the first officers injured in the attack. They will be the first in-person witnesses to appear before the committee as part of six Watergate-style hearings. In addition, the committee plans to air footage and recorded interviews with people including Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Gregory Jacob, a top adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence, is also expected to appear in person under subpoena next week.
One reason that Trump allies aren’t fretting about the absence of a detailed game plan for Thursday is that they and Republicans have grown accustomed to these types of scenarios. The former president and his inner circle went through two impeachment trials and three high-profile Supreme Court hearings, along with testimony from former special counsel Robert Mueller before the House Judiciary and House Intelligence committees.
Those trials and hearings required weeks of preparation inside the Trump White House and created a general frenzy among GOP communications staffers on Capitol Hill. But there is a been-there-done-that mentality now in Trump land. The day before the Jan. 6 committee hearings, the RNC had yet to circulate talking points to surrogates.
The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Daniel Donner, and Carolyn Fiddler, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
●MS-03, MS-04: Two Mississippi Republicans―3rd District Rep. Michael Guest and 4th District Rep. Steven Palazzo―posted surprisingly weak showings in Tuesday’s primaries, and they each are in for a tough fight going into June 28 runoffs in their safely red constituencies.
Guest appeared secure before the votes started coming in, but with 45,000 ballots tabulated as of Wednesday morning, he trails his unheralded intra-party rival, Navy veteran Michael Cassidy, 48-47; another challenger named Thomas Griffin is taking the remaining 5%. A second round of voting would take place if neither Cassidy nor Guest earned a majority of the vote, though the Associated Press has not yet projected a runoff. Palazzo, however, is definitely going to be fighting it out on June 28, as he’s taking just 32% of the vote. The AP hasn’t called the second runoff spot, but Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell posts a 25-22 edge over banker Clay Wagner with 51,000 votes in.
Guest, a self-described “conservative Christian leader” and former district attorney, has almost entirely been a reliable Trumpist during his two terms representing the 3rd District, an east central Mississippi seat that’s also home to many of Jackson’s suburbs. The congressman, though, risked MAGA outrage last year when he became one of the 35 Republicans to vote in favor of a Jan. 6 commission last year, something that Cassidy zeroed in on.
However, while Cassidy worked hard to court more far-right outrage by pledging, as he puts it on his website, to “hold the Establishment's feet to the fire on numerous America First issues, including election integrity and the removal of all COVID mandates and restrictions,” he didn’t look like much of a threat for almost the entire campaign. Cassidy raised a mere $32,000 from donors through late May, though he also threw down $230,000 of his own cash.
Guest himself didn’t appear at all worried, and no outside groups got involved to aid either him or Cassidy. The congressman, though, seemed to acknowledge on election night that he’d run a complacent campaign, arguing, “I think people are confused about who we are and what we stand for. We’ve allowed our opponent to define that.” Guest continued, “So if this does go to a runoff, then we are going to make sure that people of the 3rd District know who we are, they know our conservative values, and when they have the chance to go back to the polls, we hope that we’re going to be able to better convince people that we are the right person to represent our state in Washington D.C.”
Palazzo, by contrast, was in more obvious danger in the neighboring 4th District along the Gulf Coast, though it was still startling to see him perform so poorly. The incumbent is the subject of a long-running ethics investigation into charges that he illegally used campaign funds for personal purposes, and he attracted six different intra-party opponents.
There have been no public developments about the probe in over a year, however, so it was unclear if this matter would end up hurting Palazzo with voters. His many challengers seemed to think he had even bigger vulnerabilities, because they largely focused on portraying the six-term incumbent as uninterested in doing his job. That’s not a new criticism, as Palazzo, writes Mississippi Today’s Adam Ganucheau, “notoriously holds few public events since he was first elected to Congress in 2010.”
However, the congressman gave his critics more fodder this year when he abruptly canceled a campaign forum for what his staff said were “meetings dealing with national security.” Hours later, Palazzo posted a picture on Facebook of himself and his son at a restaurant in Mississippi; “It is unclear,” Ganucheau writes, “if national security was among the topics Palazzo discussed with his college-aged son over dinner.”
Palazzo’s rivals took him to task for missing multiple candidate events and casting numerous proxy votes that didn’t require him to be in D.C. (Palazzo previously filed a lawsuit trying to end those proxy vote rules that were set up early in the pandemic.) Ezell himself went after Palazzo’s absenteeism by holding an “I’ll Show Up” tour of the district, arguing, “South Mississippi needs a Congressman who will show up, speak up and stand up for our conservative values—every day.”
Like Guest, though, Palazzo didn’t seem to have any idea how much trouble he was in for much of the campaign, and he hadn’t even run any TV ads going into the final month of the contest. Indeed, Ganucheau wrote in early May, “One month from Election Day, it’s difficult to see signs he’s actually running.” Palazzo now has just three weeks to put together a viable campaign to turn his underwhelming 32% of the vote into the majority he needs to secure renomination.
More primaries also took place Tuesday in California, Iowa, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota. You can find the results at the links for each state; we’ll have a comprehensive rundown in our next Digest.
Redistricting
●LA Redistricting: A federal court in Louisiana has struck down the state's new Republican-drawn congressional map, ruling that lawmakers' failure to create a second district where Black voters can elect their preferred candidate violates the Voting Rights Act. Judge Shelly Dick ordered the legislature to pass a remedial plan by June 20, and to that end, Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards has called a special session for June 15. But Republicans have already appealed the decision, and the arch-conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is likely to block it, much as the Supreme Court did with a very similar case out of Alabama earlier this year.
Senate
●AK-Sen: Candidate filing closed June 1 for Alaska's Aug. 16 top-four primaries, and the state has a list of contenders available here. The four candidates who take the most votes, regardless of party, will face off in an instant-runoff general election on Nov. 8.
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who has long had an uneasy relationship with state and national conservatives, faces eight Republicans, three Democrats, and eight independent or third-party foes in August. The only opponent who has attracted much attention, though, is former state cabinet official Kelly Tshibaka, a Republican hardliner who has Trump's endorsement. The most prominent Democrat is arguably Pat Chesbro, a Matanuska-Susitna Borough Planning Commission member and former high school principal who badly lost a 2014 race for state Senate.
●AL-Sen: Politico reports that the Club for Growth's Conservative Outsiders PAC is spending $800,000 on what reporter Natalie Allison characterizes as the Club's "final" buy in support of Rep. Mo Brooks for the June 21 GOP runoff. The spot comes days after the Club reportedly cut $500,000 in ad time meant to help Brooks.
The narrator argues that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's allies are attacking the congressman because they "prefer a lobbyist" like his opponent, former Business Council of Alabama head Katie Britt, over a "proven conservative" like Brooks. The voiceover continues, "Britt ran a special interest group that worked with D.C. lobbyists backing amnesty for over 1 million illegal immigrants. And, Britt's group opposed making it harder for businesses to hire illegals."
●AZ-Sen: The Republican firm Data Orbital, polling the August GOP primary on behalf of an unidentified client, finds wealthy businessman Jim Lamon edging out Attorney General Mark Brnovich 20-18, with former Thiel Capital chief operating officer Blake Masters at 15%. Trump endorsed Masters on Thursday, which happened to be the second day that this three-day poll was in the field.
●PA-Sen: Democratic nominee John Fetterman has been off the campaign trail since he suffered a stroke on May 13, and his wife told CNN Monday, "I think he deserves a month break to come back as strong as ever." However, when Giselle Fetterman was asked if the candidate would be back in July, she responded, "Maybe. I think so. That's my hope."
That same day, John Fetterman's campaign began its first general election ads with a $250,000 buy on Fox News, which is usually not a venue where Democrats like to promote themselves. Unsurprisingly, though, the spots (here and here) focus on the lieutenant governor's blue collar image while highlighting him as an untraditional politician: In one commercial filmed before his health emergency, the 6 '9 tattooed candidate tells the audience, "I do not look like a typical politician. I don't even look like a typical person."
Democrats have a competitive nomination contest to take on Sen. Ron Johnson, a far-right Republican who represents one of the swingiest of swing states. Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who would be Wisconsin's first Black senator, has led in every primary poll that's been released and recently picked up an endorsement from the prominent union AFSCME Council 32.
The field also includes Milwaukee Bucks executive Alex Lasry, who recently released an internal showing him only narrowly behind Barnes, and state Treasurer Sarah Godlewski. Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson and nonprofit head Steven Olikara are also in, but they've each struggled in the polls and with fundraising. Two others, Milwaukee Alderwoman Chantia Lewis and administrator of Wisconsin Emergency Management Darrell Williams, announced last year but never filed to run.
Governors
●AK-Gov: GOP Gov. Mike Dunleavy is going up against four Republicans, four unaffiliated contenders, and one Democrat, former state Rep. Les Gara. The prominent challenger in this lot is former Gov. Bill Walker, an independent who was elected to his only term in 2014 with Democratic support but abandoned his re-election campaign four years later in an unsuccessful attempt to stop Dunleavy from winning. The incumbent also faces intra-party opposition from state Rep. Christopher Kurka and Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Charlie Pierce, who are each positioning themselves to the right of the ardently conservative governor.
●AZ-Gov: The Republican pollster Data Orbital's newest look at the August GOP primary shows former TV news anchor Kari Lake with a small 27-23 edge over Board of Regents member Karrin Taylor Robson, with former Rep. Matt Salmon well behind with 12%. While no other firm has released numbers showing things this close, Data Orbital finds Lake's lead expanding to 35-21 once respondents are informed she's Trump's choice. Still, even if those numbers are on target, it hardly guarantees that Lake only has room to grow as more voters learn about the Trump endorsement.
Georgia Republican David Perdue found that out the hard way after a December survey from Insider Advantage showed his 41-22 primary deficit against Gov. Brian Kemp transforming into a 34-34 tie after the pollster followed up, "As you may have heard, President Trump is planning to endorse David Perdue in the Republican Primary for Governor. Knowing this information, how would you vote?" Perdue spent the next months doing everything he possibly could to let the base know he was Trump's guy, but primary voters ended up rewarding him with a landslide 74-22 defeat.
Robson, like Kemp, is doing what she can to make sure this primary turns into anything other than a choice between a Trump-backed candidate and everyone else, and she's turning to former Gov. Jan Brewer to make her case that Lake isn't actually a loyal conservative. Brewer, who left office in 2015, begins a new ad for Robson by recounting her battles with the Obama administration over immigration before a picture flashes by of Lake with Obama. The former governor tells the audience, "Kari Lake? She donated to Obama and published a radical plan that even the liberal Arizona Republic called 'mass amnesty.'" Brewer spends the rest of the spot touting Robson as "a fighter, like me."
●GA-Gov: Republican Gov. Brian Kemp uses his opening general election commercial to attack Democrat Stacey Abrams for labeling Georgia the "worst state in the country to live" because of its poor rankings in mental health, maternal mortality, and incarceration rates. Kemp's narrator, unsurprisingly, leaves out exactly why Abrams is so unhappy with the status quo, as well as her argument that "Georgia is capable of greatness. We just need greatness to be in our governor's office," and instead dismisses her with a "Bless her heart." The spot goes on to praise Kemp for having "reopened Georgia first" and for cutting taxes to "deal with Biden's inflation."
●KS-Gov: State Sen. Dennis Pyle, a conservative hardliner who recently left the GOP to become an independent, announced Tuesday that he would challenge Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly without a party affiliation, a move that could ease Kelly’s path to victory against Republican Attorney General Derek Schmidt. Pyle, who needs to turn in 5,000 valid signatures by Aug. 1 in order to qualify for the general election ballot, explained his decision in a statement arguing, “Due to the continual gross negligence in protecting and assisting citizens, my family and I have decided it is in the best interest of our state that I pursue running for Governor to enact solutions to stop the hardship of Kansans.”
Pyle himself has made a name for himself for trying to make it more difficult to vote in Kansas and for trying to hobble the state government’s response to COVID, but Republicans quickly sought to portray him as anything but a right-winger. Schmidt, who faces no serious opposition in the Republican primary, labeled Pyle a “fake conservative.” Kansans for Life also blasted the new candidate for “playing games with the lives of preborn babies and their mothers,” a reference to his missed vote for a proposed anti-abortion constitutional amendment (Pyle says he was absent for personal reasons).
Pyle himself has come into conflict numerous times with his now-former party’s leadership long before this. In 2010, he tried to ride the tea party wave to D.C. by challenging Rep. Lynn Jenkins for renomination in the 2nd Congressional District, but he lost 57-43. (He also took fifth in the 2018 primary to replace the retiring Jenkins.) Pyle this year opposed the legislature’s successful drive to pass a new congressional gerrymander, which resulted in him losing most of his committee assignments.
●KY-Gov: State Rep. Savannah Maddox announced Tuesday that she was joining next year's Republican primary to take on Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. Maddox, who once labeled Beshear's pandemic health measures "tyranny," is a close ally of 4th District Rep. Thomas Massie, and the duo last month backed three successful primary challenges against Maddox's colleagues. The state representative launched her campaign for governor this week by framing the nomination contest as between "moderate Republicans" and "an authentic conservative who has a proven track record of fighting every day for our freedoms."
●WI-Gov: Four notable Republicans are competing to take on Democratic incumbent Tony Evers in what will be one of the most competitive governor contests in the nation.
The early frontrunner was former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, who has the backing of her old boss, former Gov. Scott Walker, but she may be in for a tougher nomination battle than she expected. A mid-May survey from Public Policy Polling showed her narrowly trailing wealthy businessman Tim Michels, who badly lost the 2004 Senate race to Democratic incumbent Russ Feingold, 27-26, and Trump has since endorsed Michels. The field also includes businessman Kevin Nicholson, a former College Democrats of America president who lost a competitive 2018 Senate GOP primary, and state Rep. Timothy Ramthun, an ardent Big Lie proponent, though PPP showed them each badly lagging.
P.S. Amusingly, while Michels launched his bid for governor in late April by pledging, "I will never ask anyone for a donation," the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Daniel Bice notes that Michels almost immediately began … asking people for donations. Michels this week also argued he'd remained a Wisconsinite despite owning multi-million dollar homes in Connecticut and New York, where his three children graduated high school, insisting, "I'm not going to apologize for my success."
Both former state Rep. Andrew Halcro, who is a Republican-turned-independent, and Emil Notti, a Democrat who narrowly lost to Young in 1973, pledged to only run for the remainder of Young's term, and they kept that promise by not filing on June 1. North Pole City Council member Santa Claus, a self-described "independent, progressive, democratic socialist" who previously had his name changed from Thomas O'Connor, also will not be continuing on.
Altogether, 31 candidates are campaigning for a seat in the next Congress. The regular top-four primary will take place Aug. 16, which is the same day as the special general election for the final months of Young's term.
●FL-15, FL-14: The August Republican primary for the new 15th District got smaller this week when former Rep. Dennis Ross and wealthy businessman Jerry Torres each dropped out. Ross, who unexpectedly retired in 2018 from a previous version of the 15th, said that he was abandoning his comeback bid because of "limited resources." By contrast Torres, who pledged to self-fund up to $15 million, announced that he would run instead against Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor in the 14th District even though, at 59-40 Biden, it's far tougher turf than the 51-48 Trump constituency he had been seeking.
●FL-27, FL-Gov: Democratic state Sen. Annette Taddeo announced on Monday that she'd drop her bid for governor and would instead seek to run against freshman GOP Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar in south Florida's 27th Congressional District. Republicans made this seat several points redder in redistricting, shifting it from a 51-48 win for Joe Biden to a 50-49 margin for Donald Trump, but it remains one that Democrats are eager to target.
Last year, Taddeo had entered the gubernatorial primary behind two much better-known opponents, Rep. Charlie Crist and state Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, and failed to gain any traction, with every recent poll showing her in the low single digits. But by switching races, Taddeo brings a high profile to a contest for a swingy seat that Democrat Donna Shalala picked up in 2018 but lost two years later.
After several unsuccessful bids for office, Taddeo flipped a Republican seat in the state Senate in an attention-grabbing 2017 special election, a perch that means she represents about a quarter of the congressional district she's now running for. The Colombia-born Taddeo also gives Democrats, who've lost serious ground with Hispanic voters in the region, the chance to put forward a Spanish-speaking Latina candidate.
First, though, Taddeo faces a matchup in the Aug. 23 primary with Miami City Commissioner Ken Russell, a one-time professional yo-yo player who reiterated his commitment to the race after Taddeo's entry. But Taddeo immediately hoovered up a series of major endorsements, with Shalala (who herself had still been considering a bid), Crist, and a couple of nearby congresswomen, Lois Frankel and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, all giving her their backing.
The final name on that list represents quite the irony. In 2008, when Taddeo first ran for the House against Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Shalala's predecessor), Wasserman Schultz infamously refused to endorse Taddeo despite the fact that she was co-chair of the DCCC's Red to Blue program—the Democrats' campaign arm devoted to flipping Republican seats. Wasserman Schultz's absurd excuse that she couldn't get involved because of her supposed friendship with Ros-Lehtinen sparked immense outrage online and among Florida Democrats (we covered the scandal extensively at our predecessor site, the Swing State Project here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), but she never budged and Taddeo went on to lose 58-42.
Wasserman Schultz remains in office but her career has soured badly: She was greeted with widespread hostility when she floated the possibility of a Senate bid in 2015, and a year later, she was forced to resign as DNC chair after hackers released emails stolen from the committee. Taddeo, by contrast, is being hailed as a strong recruit at a time when Democrats could very much use one.
●IL-15: Mary Miller is going up with an attack ad against fellow Republican Rep. Rodney Davis weeks after the better-funded Davis went on the offensive himself. Miller's narrator labels her colleague a "RINO" on guns before the ad makes use of old footage of Davis saying, "That's why the red flag law is so important and should be put on the floor." The second half of the spot reminds the audience that Trump is in Miller's corner in the June 28 primary and that she's "A-rated by the NRA, unlike Rodney Davis."
●MO-04: Gov. Mike Parson has endorsed cattle farmer Kalena Bruce in the packed August Republican primary for this safely red seat, a contest that has lacked an obvious frontrunner. Parson, who now resides in the 4th District thanks to the new congressional map, explained he was taking sides because of his longtime friendship with Bruce's parents, saying, "I am going to return those favors at times like this."
●NY-17: State Sen. Alessandra Biaggi on Tuesday unveiled an endorsement from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the prominent national progressive who represents the 14th District, for her August primary campaign against DCCC chair Sean Patrick Maloney.
AOC last month took Maloney to task for choosing to campaign for the new 17th District rather than the 18th, a more competitive seat that contains most of his current turf, a decision that threatened to instigate a primary battle against Rep. Mondaire Jones. Jones ultimately decided to run for the 10th, but Biaggi herself highlighted Maloney’s move when she launched her own campaign against him days later.
●SC-07: With a week to go before the Republican primary, Rep. Tom Rice’s allies at Grand Strand Pee Dee PAC, which so far is responsible for all of the $260,000 in outside spending here, are doing everything they can to portray Trump-endorsed state Rep. Russell Fry as a secret liberal. Its commercial does not mention Rice, who is one of the 10 House Republicans who voted for impeachment, or any of the other challengers hoping to force the incumbent into a June 24 runoff.
The minute-long spot begins by faulting Fry for supporting gas and car sales taxes as well as the “largest tax increase in South Carolina history” before it attacks him for not stopping America from turning into a conservative nightmare. The narrator argues that Fry “hasn’t done enough to protect our borders,” “has done little to push back against woke radical left ideas like critical race theory,” and “hasn't done enough to keep these dangerous ideologies from poisoning the minds of our kids,” though the ad never actually goes into detail on what exactly the state representative should be doing.
●TX-34 (special): House Majority PAC is spending $110,000 on a Spanish-language ad campaign against Republican Mayra Flores, which makes this the first TV ad on the Democratic side for the June 14 all-party primary. The commercial ties Flores to the Jan. 6 attack, arguing, “Mayra supported the conspirators and conspiracy theories that were part of the armed attack on Jan. 6, leaving 150 police officers injured and 5 dead, all thanks to criminals who promote the same lawlessness that Mayra Flores supports.”
●VA-07: The NRA has endorsed state Sen. Bryce Reeves ahead of next week’s Republican nomination contest to take on Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger. The organization itself has dramatically diminished in recent years and it rarely spends much in primaries, but its stamp of approval can still give Republican office seekers a boost with conservatives.
●WI-01: The new congressional map adopted by the state Supreme Court shrunk Donald Trump's margin of victory in this southeastern Wisconsin district from 54-45 to 50-48, but Republican incumbent Bryan Steil still doesn't look vulnerable this year. Businesswoman Ann Roe, who is the only Democrat who appears to have filed, ended March with only $80,000 on-hand. Still, even if Steil skates by this time, he could be in for a much tougher race in a better political climate for Democrats.
●WI-03: Longtime Rep. Ron Kind is retiring from a southwestern Wisconsin district that, just like the constituency it replaces, would have supported Trump 51-47, and at least four fellow Democrats have filed to succeed him. Kind is backing state Sen. Brad Pfaff, who is his former chief of staff. Two other Democratic contenders, former CIA officer Deb McGrath and businesswoman Rebecca Cooke, also brought in a notable amount of money through the end of March.
●MD-AG: OpinionWorks, working on behalf of the Baltimore Sun and the University of Baltimore, finds Rep. Anthony Brown beating former Judge Katie Curran O’Malley 42-29 in the July 19 Democratic primary for attorney general.
●WI-AG: Three Republicans are competing to take on Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul. The most full-throated election denier is Karen Mueller, who founded a conservative legal organization and has declared that “the 2020 presidential election results must be decertified to restore the integrity and transparency of Wisconsin’s future elections.” Former state Rep. Adam Jarchow and Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney, writes NBC, “haven’t denied the results of the 2020 election.”
Ad Roundup
Dollar amounts reflect the reported size of ad buys and may be larger.
Former Vice President Mike Pence will not be present when the House Jan. 6 committee holds a prime-time hearing on Thursday, but he will be a central figure as the panel makes its first presentation to the public of what unfolded before and during the riot at the Capitol.
Pence has not directly cooperated with the committee, but some of his former aides have. In recent months, a steady stream of new details has come out about Pence’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, and he has publicly rebuked former President Trump for saying the election was stolen.
“I anticipate that we will hear about Mike Pence on Thursday night. You can’t tell the story without him,” said Norm Eisen, who served as special counsel to Democrats during Trump’s first impeachment.
Pence’s role in certifying the Electoral College results on Jan. 6, 2021, hours after hundreds of pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol, has only become more of a flashpoint in the investigation of the day’s events and in Republican politics more broadly.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the House panel investigating Jan. 6, has emphasized the significance of Pence refusing to leave the Capitol as rioters were inside the building, suggesting to do so would have given an opening for Trump’s allies to follow through on their plan in Pence’s absence.
The New York Times reported late last month that at least one witness indicated to the committee that Trump reacted approvingly to chants calling for Pence to be hanged.
And the Times also reported in recent days that Pence’s former chief of staff Marc Short alerted Secret Service the day before the insurrection to warn of the potential security risks to Pence should Trump publicly turn on his vice president.
The committee is likely to make the threat to Pence a central part of its presentation to the public as it seeks to capture public attention and lay out the gravity of the situation.
The Washington Post reported that Michael Luttig, a conservative lawyer who advised Pence on handling his duties on Jan. 6, as well as former Pence aides Marc Short and Greg Jacob are among those expected to appear as witnesses during Thursday’s prime-time hearings.
Eisen said showing how Pence rejected some of the legal arguments concocted by Trump’s advisers would help rebuff GOP attempts to brush off the committee’s findings as partisan.
“So, the other way that Pence comes in is as a dose of reality in response to these lunatic legal theories that were circulating. So that’s an important part of the narrative,” Eisen said.
Pence himself has grown increasingly willing to break with Trump over the events of Jan. 6 in particular as he charts his own post-White House path.
The former vice president repeatedly referred to Jan. 6 as a “dark day” in history and spoke about upholding his constitutional duty in remarks to various conservative groups after leaving office.
As Trump continued to make debunked claims that the 2020 election was rigged, Pence went a step further. In February, Pence explicitly said Trump was wrong to suggest he could overturn the result of the presidential election.
“Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election. And Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024,” Pence said at the time.
Still, Pence has personally kept the Jan. 6 committee at arm’s length in public.
In October, Pence suggested the media was focusing on the riot so extensively to distract from the Biden administration’s difficulties with the Afghanistan withdrawal and other domestic issues.
And while former aides like Short and Keith Kellogg have testified before the panel behind closed doors, Pence himself has yet to come before the committee.
A Pence spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment, including on whether there had been any communication between Pence and the committee.
“We have wanted to make sure that we get as much information as possible from as many material witnesses as possible,” Raskin said Monday during a Washington Post Live event when asked about the prospect of Pence testifying.
“We want to figure out exactly what happened. And Vice President Pence was obviously the object of this political onslaught on Jan. 6, so we need to fill in the details as much as possible about what happened there.”
Asked if Pence’s life was in danger on Jan. 6, Raskin urged the public to tune in on Thursday night.
“Watch the hearings,” Raskin said. “The hearings will tell a story about what took place on that day.”
The biggest moment of the Jan. 6 House Select Committee’s existence is about to arrive.
On Thursday evening, the panel will hold the first of its televised hearings. The event will take place in prime time and be broadcast by almost every major network and news channel.
For some, it will be the most dramatic congressional investigation since the Watergate hearings a half-century ago.
Others — committed supporters of former President Trump, in particular — will likely tune out the hearings.
Here are five big questions that have yet to be answered.
What will we learn that’s new about Trump?
Democrats are promising explosive revelations about the former president’s role in fomenting the attack on the Capitol.
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) on Tuesday promised in a CNN interview, “We’re going to see how much Trump was involved. Trump ran this show. He ran it from the time he lost the election in November, and he did it with his son, or sons, and all of his henchmen up there.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the committee, told The Washington Post in a Monday interview that the panel had “found evidence about a lot more than incitement here.”
Raskin added, “I think that Donald Trump and the White House were at the center of these events. That’s the only way of really making sense of them all.”
Ironically, the main difficulty Democrats may face in making the case against Trump is the vast amount that is already known.
Trump was, after all, impeached by the House only one week after the insurrection, becoming the only president in history to be impeached on two separate occasions.
At a rally at the Ellipse near the White House, immediately before the assault on the Capitol, he told supporters, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” And he also told them that President Biden, if certified as the election’s winner, would be an illegitimate president.
There have also been subsequent media leaks about other things the panel may have uncovered — including, recently, the suggestion that Trump was sympathetic to the demands of some of his supporters to “hang Mike Pence,” then the sitting vice president.
There could be more shocking evidence to come. But the knowledge already in existence sets a high bar.
Can the panel incriminate the Republican Party more broadly?
The committee famously features just two Republicans — Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), who serves as vice chair, and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) — both of whom are vigorous Trump critics.
That leaves the wider GOP in the panel’s crosshairs, especially if it can pin culpability for specific misdeeds on other members of the party.
No fewer than 147 Republican members of Congress voted to invalidate the election results in some shape or form on the evening of the insurrection, with debris still littering the Capitol’s hallways.
Yet, at that time, senior members of the GOP were willing to acknowledge Trump’s culpability.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in February 2021 said on the Senate floor that Trump was “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.” In a recorded call with colleagues later obtained by two reporters for The New York Times, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) called Trump’s actions “atrocious and totally wrong.”
But McConnell voted to acquit Trump on the impeachment charge in the Senate and McCarthy made his peace much more publicly, traveling to Mar-a-Lago to meet Trump. Last week, Trump endorsed McCarthy for reelection to the House.
The GOP would far rather talk about the issues bedeviling Biden than Jan. 6.
But if the committee can make a compelling case with fresh and additional evidence, Republicans may have little choice.
Can the Democrats put on a show?
For good or for bad, the theater of politics matters.
So, one question will be how compelling Democrats can make the hearings.
The first hearing is likely to be the most important of all, much as the first presidential debate in a series tends also to be the most vital.
All three major broadcast networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, have said they will shelve their regular programming and replace it with live coverage of the Thursday hearing. So too have CNN and MSNBC. Controversially, Fox News will not air the hearing live, instead confining such coverage to Fox Business.
Conservatives have taken umbrage at the decision by the committee to turn to a former president of ABC News, James Goldston, to help make Thursday’s presentation as compelling as possible.
Axios, which first reported Goldston’s involvement, wrote that he was “busily producing” the hearing “as if it were a blockbuster investigative special.”
We’re about to see the results.
Do the hearings change the political agenda?
There is little doubt that Thursday’s hearing will eclipse almost all the political news out of Washington. For that night at least, it will be the only show in town.
But how long will that effect last?
Trump allies have promised “counterprogramming” to push back on the narrative being advanced by the committee.
House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) is kicking off that effort Wednesday, at a morning news conference with House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and ardent Trump allies Reps. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
Stefanik told Fox News that she and her colleagues were “pushing back against lame-duck Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi’s sham political witch hunt.”
More broadly, the White House has spent months on the defensive, embattled by a host of problems including inflation, high gas prices, an infant formula shortage and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The hearings will give Democrats a chance to put the GOP on the back foot — but for how long?
Can the panel shift public opinion?
Politically, this is the biggest question of all.
Many independent experts, and even some liberals, aren’t at all sure the answer is yes.
For all kinds of reasons, opinions around Jan. 6 have calcified.
While Democrats see Trump’s culpability as self-evident, many Republicans seem willing to dismiss anything the panel uncovers.
Meanwhile, a politically segmented media environment combines with the bias-reinforcing dynamics of social media to deepen those divisions.
That doesn’t mean the committee is wasting its time. New evidence regarding Jan. 6 is important by its nature.
The House committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection will start holding public hearings Thursday, looking to draw national attention to witness testimony and evidence gathered during nearly a year of investigating.
The committee is made up of nine House members — seven Democrats and two Republicans. It formed last summer, about six months after the U.S. Capitol riot, to investigate the attack and events and communications around it.
After an attempt to form a bipartisan commission with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) failed, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) moved forward in appointing the entire committee.
Here are the members serving on the House Jan. 6 committee and some of their comments on the panel's work thus far.
Bennie Thompson
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) serves as chairman of the committee. Thompson has led the committee since its inception. He has said there is “no question” that the Jan. 6 insurrection was a premeditated attack based on the evidence the committee has received.
He has called his role leading the committee “ironic” given his background as a Black man from “one of the most racist states.”
Liz Cheney
Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) serves as the vice chairwoman and is one of two Republican members on the committee. Thompson said in September that her appointment underscores the “bipartisan nature” of the committee’s work.
But Cheney has faced sharp criticism as a result of her decision to participate in the committee’s investigation and her rebukes of former President Trump’s claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election. House Republicans voted to remove Cheney as conference chairwoman last May, and she is now facing a Trump-endorsed challenger for her primary in August.
Cheney said last month hat Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election results is a "threat we have never faced before."
Adam Kinzinger
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), the other Republican serving on the committee, has also faced pushback after he voted to impeach Trump for his role in inciting the Capitol insurrection and joined the Jan. 6 committee. Kinzinger announced in October that he would not seek reelection to his seat, ending a 12-year career in the House. He has remained one of the most vocal GOP critics of Trump.
Kinzinger was not originally a member of the committee, but Pelosi appointed him after McCarthy pulled his picks from consideration.
McCarthy denied blaming Trump for the insurrection immediately following the attack, but tapes later revealed that he did, which Kinzinger said showed that Republican leaders think their voters are “dumb.”
Pete Aguilar
Rep. Pete Aguilar (Calif.), the vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, argued in March in favor of the Justice Department bringing contempt charges against witnesses who have refused to cooperate despite subpoenas from the committee.
The Justice Department has brought charges for contempt of Congress against former Trump strategist Stephen Bannon and former trade adviser Peter Navarro but has not charged his former chief of staff Mark Meadows or Dan Scavino, his former deputy chief of staff for communications, who have also been subpoenaed by the committee.
Zoe Lofgren
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the House Administration Committee, said in March on PBS’s “NewsHour” that what unfolded during the riot was a more serious threat to American democracy than Watergate. In April, she said the members of the House Jan. 6 committee are “not afraid” to release any information or call any witness to testify.
The committee has issued subpoenas for a range of witnesses, including Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr. who spoke at the Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse near the White House. Multiple family members have voluntarily cooperated, including the former president's daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner.
The committee has not said who will testify during its upcoming slate of eight hearings.
Elaine Luria
Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) said in an interview in late March that Kushner’s interview with the committee was “really valuable” to the investigation.
Luria also called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to act on the contempt charges the committee has recommended.
“Attorney General Garland, do your job so we can do ours,” she said at a meeting where the committee forwarded its recommendation for charges against Scavino and Navarro.
Stephanie Murphy
Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) said in February that the committee needs to be aware of the impact its actions could have moving forward.
“The people who were involved were at all levels of government — local, state and federal — and the unprecedented nature of the event has led us to be very careful about how we proceed in the investigation because we are setting precedents,” Murphy told The Hill at the time.
“But we will be thorough in how we get all the information,” she added.
Jamie Raskin
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who led the House impeachment case against Trump in January, has been vocal about the Jan. 6 committee’s findings and what the American people will learn from the public hearings.
He said Monday that the committee members have found evidence on Trump that is “a lot more than incitement.” Trump was impeached following the insurrection for incitement, but the Senate did not reach the requisite two-thirds majority vote needed to convict him.
Raskin told Washington Post Live on Tuesday that the hearing this week will “tell a story of a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election.”
Adam Schiff
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) emphasized on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the hearing this week will be the first time there will be a “comprehensive narrative” on the events surrounding the insurrection.
He said “a number of bombshells” have already been released during the committee’s investigation but that there is more to be revealed. Schiff is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which was at the center of the investigation in Trump's first impeachment for allegedly soliciting foreign help in an election.
It’s not really a huge surprise that Fox News is declining to air the public hearings of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. I mean, what did we expect?
The conservative media outlet made the announcement Monday, stating that its hosts will “cover the hearings as news warrants.” Shannon Bream, Fox News’ chief legal correspondent, will anchor a two-hour live special on the hearings, and anchors from Fox Business (the lower-rated network) Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum will host live continuous coverage, The Hill reports.
There are numerous reasons one can point to for why Fox won’t air the coverage, starting with the fact that the constant stream of bullshit from off-the-rails GOP faves Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham garners the network millions of eyes nightly. The loss of revenue is probably a consideration since the network has spent every second since Jan. 6 assuring its viewers that the entire event was a tourist trip and the investigating committee is a witch hunt.
But another important reason is the direct involvement of many of Fox News’ biggest players on Jan. 6 itself—the day a bunch of white supremacists and QAnon-ers stormed the Capitol, cheered on by Trump and assured by Fox News that the election had been stolen.
As we reported in January, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, and Jeanine Pirro, to name a few, were on the Oval Office’s speed dial, and on Jan. 6, Ingraham, Brian Kilmeade, and Hannity all texted Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, in the hopes of getting him to intervene during the insurrection.
“Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home,” Ingraham wrote, per The Washington Post. “This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”
Kilmeade urged Meadows to get Trump “on TV” and stop the terrorists, and Hannity begged Meadows to demand Trump “make a statement” and “ask people to leave the Capitol.”
According to CNN, one of the last texts on the chain of the 2,319 texts to and from Meadows starting from Election Day 2020 to President Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration was from Hannity.
The Fox News host shared the video of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell denouncing Trump from the Senate floor, saying the insurrectionists were “provoked by the President and other powerful people.” Hannity’s text read: “Well this is as bad as this can get.”
Hannity has been remarkably comfortable appearing in public with former President Donald Trump for years. He appeared on stage with Trump during a midterm election rally in Missouri in 2018, where he had the audacity to call the assembled media covering the event “fake news,” just as he’s referred to the five Democrats and two Republicans on the select committee continuously as “fake,” The New York Times reports.
But Trump ignored his buddies at Fox News and elsewhere and allowed the riot to explode, resulting in the deaths of five police officers who served at the Capitol. Fox News has mostly refused to acknowledge or cover what happened on Jan. 6.
Philip Bump, a national correspondent with The Washington Post, compared coverage of Jan. 6 by Fox News with its competitors MSNBC and CNN to find that on average, Fox rarely mentioned it at all—less than 1% during any 15-second segments in a week. They also rarely, if ever, mentioned the House select committee, the riot at the Capitol, the Proud Boys, the bogus GOP electors, and certainly not text messages from Meadows.
Bump also sites Fox’s coverage of Trump's impeachments. During impeachment hearing number one, the networks aired it without sound, allowing its hosts to babble on about it audibly. And during impeachment hearing number two, “the network cut away at key points,” Bump writes.
At least one Republican lawmaker has spoken up about Fox News’ cowardly decision not to air the hearings. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois wrote on Twitter, “If you work for Fox News and want to maintain your credibility as a journalist, now is a good time to speak out, or quit. Enough is enough.”
If you work for @FoxNews and want to maintain your credibility as a journalist, now is a good time to speak out, or quit. Enough is enough. https://t.co/zASss6kWUA
— Adam Kinzinger🇺🇦🇺🇸✌️ (@AdamKinzinger) June 7, 2022
A new report indicates that the Biden administration has increased the number of illegal immigrant flights into New York, with an additional airport being utilized to handle the overflow in an effort to avoid images getting out to the public.
Republican gubernatorial hopeful Rob Astorino posted a video on Sunday purportedly showing more “migrant flights from the southern border” arriving at Stewart International Airport in Orange County.
A reporter shared the video and captioned it with a disclaimer stating “officials say flights are legal under U.S. immigration law.”
EXCLUSIVE*** New video shows the Biden administration’s secret migrant flights from the southern border are now also regularly landing at Stewart International Airport in Orange County (NY). Kathy Hochul does nothing and we the citizens pay all the bills. pic.twitter.com/fUdJhUBLNL
The Political Insider reported earlier this year on video footage originally released by Astorino, which he obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, showing illegal immigrants being flown by federal contractors into an airport in New York in the dead of night.
The video shows federal contractors explaining to a police officer in charge of security at the facility that the illegal immigrant flights, which have reportedly been conducted at the Westchester County Airport since August, are to be “on the down-low.”
“The government is betraying the American people,” one contractor can be heard telling a police officer.
EXCLUSIVE FOOTAGE: Government contractors admit to flying illegal immigrants to smaller airports to keep the flights on the “down low” and hidden from the public. pic.twitter.com/BXA0NHr6Ue
The New York Post’s Miranda Devine now reports that the Biden administration “has upped the frequency of its secret flights on an industrial scale” and are now utilizing a second airport location in New Windsor.
Referencing Astorino’s latest video, she explains that “migrant flights into New York have ratcheted up in recent weeks to almost one per night.”
Devine adds that “a new airport is being utilized to handle the overflow, in an apparent bid by the administration to avoid images of border chaos before the November midterm elections.”
Column’s up: The Biden administration turbo-charges its secret migrant flights from the southern border into Westchester County airport. Now there are so many illegal migrants they’re sending the overflow to a Hudson Valley airport https://t.co/xKVRzShXsp
Initial reports on the flights into New York airports in the dead of night led Representative Claudia Tenney (R-NY) to call for President Biden’s impeachment.
“This is a complete, aggravated dereliction of duty, which is why … I called for Joe Biden to be impeached and removed,” she demanded in an appearance on “Fox and Friends.”
“His primary obligation as the commander-in-chief and president of the United States is to enforce our laws, to live up to his oath, to enforce our border security and to tell the truth to the American people,” she added.
President Biden should resign or face removal by impeachment for this repeated and aggravated violation of his oath of office to protect the American homeland and its citizens. https://t.co/WRju67z7Pz
The videos show migrants being flown into the airports in the middle of the night and then shipped out on charter buses.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, responding to reports of the flights in October said, “It is our legal responsibility to safely care for unaccompanied children until they can be swiftly reunited with a parent or a vetted sponsor.”
She also pretended there was no meaning behind the late-night hours these flights are being conducted.
Fact-checkers say that Biden “secretly flying illegal immigrants” is all just a misunderstanding.
According to Politifact, such charter flights are mostly “unaccompanied minors” and admits that the flights “are not publicized and sometimes are done in the middle of the night to protect the confidentiality of those being transported and to guard against anyone who would interfere with the flights.”
Further, flights occurred under the Trump and Obama administrations.
DOOCY TIME (from earlier — wasn’t at my desk when it aired): “Why is the administration flying thousands of migrants from the border to FL & NY in the middle of the night?”
Psaki: “Well I’m not sure that it’s in the middle of the night, but let me tell you what’s happening[.]” pic.twitter.com/HOjgU5fbho
The Jan. 6 committee has obtained huge amounts of information from sources high and low to piece together a clearer understanding of what happened when the U.S. Capitol came under siege by a mob of former President Donald Trump’s supporters and members of neofascist extremist groups.
This week when the committee resumes its public hearings—the debut hearing was held in July 2021—investigators are expected to unveil their findings and argue that the evidence obtained through more than 1,000 interviews and sourced from more than 125,000 pages of records, indicates that the twice-impeached former president possibly broke the law when he deployed a scheme aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 election.
During the 11-month investigation, subpoenas from the probe have flowed steadily. The public hearings will lay out the story and the key individuals at focus. The committee will issue its final report in September. In the meantime, to guide those following the probe, the following is a comprehensive guide to who’s who at the center of the Jan. 6 investigation.
The next hearing is scheduled for June 13 at 10 a.m. Additional hearings are expected on June 15 at 10 a.m. and June 16 at 1 p.m. A time for the June 21 hearing has not yet been confirmed as of Thursday, June 9. A final presentation is anticipated on June 23 and that hearing will be in primetime at 8 PM.
Daily Kos will offer up-to-the-minute coverage of each hearing on its front page, as well as on Twitter. The hearings will be broadcast and carried live on most major networks except for Fox News. The select committee is also expected to stream the hearings on its website, here.
Trump speaks at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, delivering remarks that Congress found to be incitement of an insurrection. Trump was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives one week after the attack. The U.S. Senate voted to acquit Trump instead, falling just 10 votes short.
The following guide includes a variety of Trump White House and administration officials, strategists, advisers and lawyers and others, including those in Vice President Mike Pence’s office. They orbited Trump or figured prominently in the select committe’s investigation. Each section provides some context behind subpoenas and requests. Links embedded throughout will take you to related reporting here at Daily Kos and elsewhere.
Mark Meadows,former White House chief of staff to former President Donald Trump
Mark Meadows
Just a week before the select committee begins its hearings in Washington, the Department of Justice announced it would not pursue criminal contempt charges against Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows.
Meadows was first subpoenaed by the committee on Sept. 23. He refused to cooperate initially and would not provide information relevant to the former president’s push to appoint bogus electors nor would he share correspondence related to engagement with Trump’s attorneys leading those efforts in the public eye.
Meadows did an about face, however, and began cooperating in part before he then stopped again. This prompted the committee to hold him in contempt of Congress. That vote was unanimous and when passed to the full House, the House found him in contempt 222-208. The referral went to the DOJ and after several months of quiet from Attorney General Merrick Garland, the department announced it declined to pursue charges in June 2022.
Meadows remitted 9,000 pages of records, mainly emails, and texts, according to Jan. 6 committee chair Bennie Thompson. As chief of staff, he was in Trump’s vicinity on Jan. 6 and bore witness to Trump’s conduct before, during, and after the attack. Testimony obtained by the committee has indicated Meadows was also privy to meetings or conversations where the impending rally was discussed.
Text messages revealed Meadows spoke to Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham on Jan. 6. He fielded a battery of incoming messages where the commentators begged him to get Trump on television and ask people to leave.
Among those records were non-privileged texts illuminating Meadows’ correspondence with lawmakers like Rep. Jim Jordan who, among others, pushed for the appointment of unsanctioned electors for Trump. Jordan said the messages were forwards of information from the former inspector general of the Pentagon Joseph Schmitz.
Other messages sent to Meadows came from Ginni Thomas, the right-wing activist wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She pushed wild conspiracies about the election, shared her disdain and distrust of Pence after he wouldn’t go along with the plot to overthrow the federal government and called for Trump’s “Kraken” attorney Sidney Powell to lead the fraud charges in court.
Meadows sued the committee to stop a subpoena to Verizon for his cell phone records.
2021 campaign finance reports note that Trump’s onetime political action committee, Save America PAC, has poured $1 million into the Conservative Partnership Institute, a right-wing nonprofit group that lists Meadows as a senior partner. The Federal Election Commission report notes the donation was made on July 26, just a few weeks after the Jan. 6 committee was officially approved by the full House of Representatives.
The former congressman is also under investigation for voter fraud in the State of North Carolina. He was removed from voter rolls in there in April after reports emerged suggesting he did not live at the North Carolina residence where he was registered to vote.
John Eastman, attorney, adviser to former President Donald Trump
John Eastman, left, with Rudy Giuliani, right, on Jan. 6.
John Eastman was first subpoenaed by the committee on Oct. 8 after a memo he authored emerged laying out a six-point plan to have then-Vice President Mike Pence stop or delay the outcome of the 2020 election. Eastman met with Trump repeatedly before Jan. 6 and delivered an address from the Ellipse just before the riots exploded. He was joined on stage by Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Eastman began prolifically sharing Trump’s bogus election fraud claims mere days from the 2020 election. He shared the disinformation with Georgia state senators and even went so far as to urge them to directly appoint electors. He was at the Willard Hotel “war room” on Jan. 6 with Steve Bannon and was in contact with Pence’s counsel, Greg Jacob, about his strategies to manipulate the election.
A tug-of-war in court between Eastman and the committe has resulted in thousands of pages of his communications from his tenure at Chapman University being remitted to investigators, fleshing out previously unknown details about Trump’s overt role in the events around Jan. 6. It started in February, the Trump stalwart was ordered to produce those university records specific to Jan. 4 through Jan. 7, 2021. He was directed to provide detailed explanations for his privilege assertions and disclose the nature of any attorney-client relationship he might cite to mask those documents.
It was Eastman’s decision to invoke his Fifth Amendment right after receiving his October subpoena that prompted the committee to work around him and pursue the university emails. Eastman first unsuccessfully sued the committee and Verizon in December.
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney
Rudy Giuliani
The former New York City mayor, personal attorney to Trump and leader of Trump’s “alternate elector” gambit, Rudy Giuliani first received a subpoena from the committee on Jan. 18. Investigators premised their demands on Giuliani’s very public promotion of Trump’s disinformation campaign about election fraud in 2020 and his insistence that Dominion Voting Systems machines were rigged.
He finally testified before the committee in May and spent a reported nine hours under questioning. Court records produced by Trump’s adviser John Eastman in a separate legal matter also exposed a memo sent to Giuliani by Kenneth Chesebro, another member of Trump’s legal team and purveyor of bunk election fraud claims.
Per protocols excellently explained by CBS News, Chesebro essentially pitched what he believed was a loophole in procedural rules that would allow for disruption or delay. This memo also went to John Eastman before Jan. 6 though Eastman has denied being involved with its drafting.
As for Giuliani, he focused on officials in key battleground states and was present at all if not most meetings where administration officials and fellow attorneys and advisers discussed the seizure of voting machines. He even went so far as to ask the Department of Homeland Security if he could legally seize machines. The official dismissed the request promptly.
His reach extended into Congress, too. Text messages, for example, from Dec. 31, 2020, show Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia asking Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows to arrange another meeting between her and Giuliani.
An aide to Trump, Cassidy Hutchinson, testified to members of the select committee that she told both Giuliani and Meadows their alternate elector bid wouldn’t work.
Nonetheless, on the day of what would be the insurrection, Giuliani told a mob of Trump’s supporters gathered at the Ellipse they would have “trial by combat” if necessary to determine the election results.
Jeffrey Clark, former assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice Civil Division appointed by Trump
Jeffrey Clark.
The committee subpoenaed Clark on Oct. 13 and in short order, entered into a battle with the former Trump official over claims to executive privilege. Lawmakers rejected that argument as spurious since Trump earlier this year declined to assert privilege over materials requested by the committee from Clark.
A Senate Judiciary Committee report released last year revealed emails and other correspondence from Clark to fellow Department of Justice officials where he angled to have then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen removed so Trump could install him in Rosen’s place.
The push was part of a larger scheme that began when Clark pushed Rosen and Rosen’s deputy, Richard Donoghue, to inform swing state legislatures they should appoint new electors and reject certified votes. That plot unfolded well after courts had rejected Trump’s claims of election fraud almost 60 times.
Clark appeared for a closed-door deposition with the committee on Nov. 5 but was uncooperative and eventually walked out without returning. He was held on contempt by the panel in December but a full vote by the House wasn’t held. Clark eventually announced he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right and then sat for deposition for a swift one hour and 40 minutes. He refused to answer over 100 questions posed to him. Committee member Rep. Zoe Lofgren called the exchange with Clark “very disappointing.”
Daniel Scavino, former White House deputy chief of staff for communications
Dan Scavino.
Scavino was subpoenaed by the committee in September. His failure to cooperate with the probe earned him a criminal contempt of congress referral from the committee in March and by April, the full House of Representatives voted in favor of sending the referral to the DOJ. The DOJ declined to prosecute in June. Scavino’s attorney maintained that that the former Trump administration official worked with the committee in good faith.
Scavino’s relationship stretches back nearly a decade with the former president and he is among Trump’s chief allies. Scavino served him at various points over the years including as a digital strategy director and overseer of Trump’s presence on social media platforms like Twitter.
The committee sought materials from Scavino relevant to Trump’s “videotaping and tweeting message on Jan. 6.” They argue he was intimately familiar with what occurred during meetings where the president and other administration officials hashed out ways to stop the certification of the election.
White House call logs obtained by the probe show that Trump tried to call Scavino the night of the attack. Scavino reportedly kept at least two phones during his time at the White House. The National Archives confirmed in February that Trump destroyed numerous presidential records while in office, often leaving it to staff to tape some of the records back together.
Scavino, as Trump’s aide and with an office just near the Oval, was often a reported workaround for Trump to avoid using official White House telephones, relying instead on Scavino’s mobile among others.
He sued Verizon on Jan. 5, 2022 to stop a transfer of phone records to the committee. He did this under some subterfuge initially filing the request as an anonymous plaintiff. While it was his right to do so, such shrouding can only be done with a judge’s approval. The judge denied the request and unmasked Scavino weeks later, ordering him to file his request to block the committee from his phone records publicly.
Stephen Miller, former senior adviser to Trump
Stephen Miller.
Stephen Miller, Trump’s senior adviser and architect of the Trump administration's inhumane immigration policies, received a subpoena from the committee on Nov. 9. He finally testified before the committee virtually in April and for more than eight hours.
Miller’s public statements first piqued the committee’s interest. He vowed “alternate electors” would keep Trump in power in an interview with Fox News in late 2020. Those alternate electors sent bogus slates from battleground states to the National Archives for certification on Dec. 14, 2020. The Archives rejected them because those who had signed were not recognized by their respective state officials as certified electors.
Miller also helped write the speech that would be delivered from the Ellipse on Jan. 6. He was at the White House on the morning of Jan. 6 and accompanied Trump on their short trip to ‘Stop the Steal’ rally.
During his deposition in April, it was widely reported that Miller fielded questions about the language in the speech, namely how Trump often referred to “we” in his remarks, including those times when he told the crowd gathered at the Ellipse that “we are going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue” and “we are going to the Capitol.” Miller allegedly defended the language by saying it was political rhetoric.
Stephen Miller says Trump electors will be voting and sending results to Congress. (They'll be worthless because they won't have the seals of the state Secretaries of State, though) pic.twitter.com/B9pKXqYGIa
Jason Miller, former senior adviser to Trump’s 2020 campaign
Jason Miller.
Jason Miller, a longtime Trump confidante, was subpoenaed by the committee on Nov. 8 and along with Bannon and others, was reportedly at the meeting at the Willard Hotel on Jan. 5.. Much of those activities, the committee has learned, were overseen by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Long before that November, however, Miller routinely crowed about Democrats stealing the election, lawmakers wrote in their notice to Miller. That message, they added, was of course directly echoed by the mob that breached the Capitol in its attempt to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power. Prior to the attack, Miller also took frequent opportunities to hold press conferences propagating Trump’s lies about the election, and legislators on the committee believe the campaign adviser was a facilitator of the pressure strategy on then-Vice President Pence or was, at the very least, attuned to the scheme’s details.
The committee postponed his deposition on Dec. 9 after he finally began cooperating with investigators. He also appeared to lose favor with Trump ally Roger Stone following his cooperation with the investigation. In a message on the right-wing social media platform Gab posted on Jan. 22, Stone lashed out at Miller.
“You can always tell when Jason Miller of Gettr is lying—his lips are moving. in the 40 years, I have been in American politics I have never met a bigger more despicable piece of shit. I got him his job with Donald Trump in 2016,” Stone said.
According to court records, in testimony this February, Miller disclosed to investigators that he and other aides, like Matt Oczkowski told Trump in “blunt” terms he lost the election. That nevertheless stopped Trump from seeking “to use the Vice President to manipulate the results in his favor,” Miller said.
Other text messages obtained by the committee in June showed Miller trying to shape the narrative for Meadows and Scavino as the mob was raging, however:
”Call me crazy, but ideas for two tweets from POTUS: 1) Bad apples, likely ANTIFA or other crazed leftists, infiltrated today's peaceful protest over the fraudulent vote count. Violence is never acceptable! MAGA supporters embrace our police and the rule of law and should leave the Capitol now! 2) The fake news media who encouraged this summer's violent and radical riots are now trying to blame peaceful and innocent MAGA supporters for violent actions. This isn't who we are! Our people should head home and let the criminals suffer the consequences!
Just after 10 p.m. that night, Miller gave Meadows, Scavino and Jared Kushner an approved statement from Trump that would be released as soon as Congress finished counting the votes.
In the text, Miller wrote: “Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out, I have always said we would continue our fight to ensure that only legal votes were counted. Nevertheless, there will be an orderly transition on January 20th. While this represents the end of the greatest first term in presidential history, it's only the beginning of our fight to Make America Great Again.”
Former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany pictured left, former aide to President Donald Trump Cassidy Hutchinson, right
A special assistantto Trump for legislative affairs and onetime aide to chief of staff Mark Meadows, was first subpoeaned in November. Hutchinson is expected to testify during the select committee’s public hearings. Hutchinson was in the White House with Trump on Jan. 6 and traveled with him to the Ellipse for the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally.
She also joined Meadows for a Dec. 30 trip to Georgia for an election audit there.
Before the hearings went public, Hutchinson told members of the committee that she raised concerns about the propriety of the former president’s bid to submit “alternate electors” to Congress on Jan. 6. Hutchinson also told lawmakers that Trumps’ chief of staff was alerted to threats of violence looming over the Capitol before Congress was slated to meet. And disturbingly, Hutchinson also testified that she watched as Meadows burned papers in his possession following a meeting with Rep. Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican who was actively promoting Trump's baseless election fraud theories.
And perhaps most critically, Hutchinson also revealed to investigators that she heard Trump “complain” that Vice President Mike Pence “was being whisked to safety” as the president’s supporters mobbed the Capitol and clashed with outnumbered police.
From The New York Times:
Mr. Meadows, according to an account provided to the House committee investigating Jan. 6, then told the colleagues that Mr. Trump had said something to the effect of, maybe Mr. Pence should be hanged.
Keith Kellogg, national security adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence
Keith Kellogg.
Once the national security adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence, now-retired U.S. Army General Keith Kellogg was subpoenaed by on Nov. 23. Lawmakers sought information from Kellogg regarding his participation in at least one meeting with Trump and Trump’s attorney Pat Cipollone as the attack was unfolding. He was also reportedly part of multiple conversations where Trump insisted Pence not certify the election.
Kellogg met with Trump before the president delivered his remarks at the Ellipse. When the violence began to erupt at the Capitol while they were in the White House, Kellogg told investigators during his closed-door deposition in December that he urged Trump to deliver a message to his supporters that would end the chaos.
His deposition corroborated public reporting that it was Ivanka Trump, the ex-president’s daughter and adviser, who was called upon repeatedly to soothe Trump during the riots and attempt to persuade him to issue a call for peace.
Kellogg may end up testifying during the public hearings.
Marc Short, senior aide to former Vice President Mike Pence
Thetop aide to Pence expected to testify during public hearings spent most of Jan. 6 at the former vice president’s side. He cooperated with the committee after a subpoena was issued in December. The former Pence staffer has been forthcoming with investigators and has providing several key records. Last year, it was confirmed that it was Short who gave investigators a copy of a memo written by John McEntee offering a bunk legal strategy for Pence to stop the certification. Short was also in the Oval Office on Jan. 4 during a meeting with John Eastman and Trump where Trump discussed how to get Pence on board with overturning the election. According to AP, “As Pence’s top aide, Short was also present for several White House meetings ahead of the insurrection. At one point, Trump banned Short from the White House grounds because he objected to the pressure on Pence to reject the legitimate election results.” Short has said publicly that it was “bad advisers who were basically snake-oil salesman” that gave Trump the idea to have Pence intervene. “But our office researched that and recognized that was never an option,” he said. Short also warned a Secret Service agent on Jan. 5 that he was concerned about Pence’s safety.
John McEntee, former bag man turned White House personnel director
John McEntee, pictured left.
The committee issued its subpoena to John McEntee on Nov. 9. McEntee’s ascent into Trump’s world happened fast. He started out as Trump’s bag man, but his dogged defense of the president was quickly parlayed into an opportunity where he would serve in a far more powerful role.
McEntee was tapped by Trump to serve as the director of the White House personnel office, making him a key arbiter in deciding who was hired or fired across the administration.
A memo made public in November illuminated the role McEntee played in having Defense Secretary Mark Esper removed, a maneuver that ultimately opened the door for Clark to try his power grab at the Department of Justice. That memo was turned over to the committee by Marc Short, Pence’s former chief of staff when Short testified before the committee for several hours.
McEntee was reportedly in the room with Trump, Pence, Giuliani, and Trump campaign lawyer Justin Clark when the men hashed out a plan to conduct an audit of votes in Georgia. He was also with Trump when Trump traveled to the Ellipse and while he delivered his inflammatory speech at the ‘Stop the Steal ‘rally that day.
Extremists, allies and ‘friends’
Steve Bannon, former White House strategist
Steve Bannon.
Steve Bannon, a right-wing extremist and conspiracy peddler, is currently awaiting trial after pleading not guilty to two counts of contempt of Congress filed against him in November.
Investigators hit Bannon with a subpoena on Sept. 23, and the Trump stalwart stonewalled the committee on both its record request and a request for deposition. He surrendered himself to authorities in Washington, D.C. after the Department of Justice indicted him.
Bannon was not officially in Trump’s employ at the time of the assault; he left the administration in 2017. Bannon was, however, at Trump’s alleged “command center” on Jan. 5.
A “war room” at the Willard Hotel—just a block from the White House—was often populated by Trump’s lawyers and advisers. Investigators say plans to subvert the election were hatched there and that Bannon was present on Jan. 5 when guests discussed a strategy to have members of Congress block the certification of election results the next day.
Bannon was often in Trump’s ear, allegedly urging the president as early as Nov. 30 “to plan for and focus his efforts on Jan. 6,” his subpoena noted.
Bannon has since spent time boasting on his podcast about Trump’s non-existent victory. He’s railed against the Jan. 6 probe. continues to promote election fraud allegations and threatened to take over the nation’s election apparatus.
Just a few days before the first anniversary of the attack, Bannon lashed out at GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy on his podcast. McCarthy, Bannon said, refused to “counterprogram” events on Capitol Hill that solemnly commemorated the anniversary. He suggested Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida ought to take up the mantle for Trump where McCarthy would not.
McCarthy, Bannon said, is “controlled opposition” and when the “right leadership” is in place, Bannon suggested the GOP’s ‘Make America Great Again’ wing could rule for “100 years.”
Roger Stone, longtime Trump ally and GOP operative
Roger Stone
A long-time operative for the Republican Party and self-described “dirty trickster,” Roger Stone was hit with a subpoena from the select committee on Nov. 22. Prior to the Capitol attack, Stone spoke publicly in support of Trump’s claims of election fraud and funneled cash for “private security” at events in Washington held on Jan. 5 and 6. Though he once solicited donations on a ‘Stop the Steal’ official website, he removed the link after the attack, according to Mother Jones.
A month before the insurrection, Stone appeared at various events including one rally in D.C. heavily attended by Proud Boys and Oath Keepers on Dec. 12. He urged the president’s supporters to “fight until the bitter end” to stop Biden from taking office. For his remarks at an event in D.C. on Jan. 5, he had a security detail comprised of Oath Keepers. One of the men in his detail, Robert Minuta, has been indicted on charges related to the breach.
Stone has said that he was invited to lead a march to the Capitol on Jan. 6 but told press he declined the opportunity. He was also slated to speak at an event at the Ellipse that day hosted by Women for America First.
Upon receipt of a subpoena, Stone informed the committee on Dec. 7 that he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right. Through attorney Grant Smith, he wrote: “Given that the Select Committee's demand for documents is overbroad, overreaching, and far too wide-ranging to be deemed anything other than a fishing expedition, Mr. Stone has a constitutional right to decline to respond.”
Stone’ eventually appeared for deposition on Dec. 17 and as planned, invoked his Fifth Amendment to all questions. He also denied, despite the existence of widespread reporting and video footage, that he was in Washington before and on Jan. 6.
Stone insists Pence and his advisors undermined Trump from the very beginning of his time in office.
Meanwhile, reports on Stone’s recent stream of income have revealed that he has been accepting tens of thousands of dollars around the same time he has thrown endorsements behind pro-Trump anti-Jan. 6 committee Republicans like Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz.
In May, the New York Times reported that it obtained access to a chat log entitled “Friends of Stone,” or Friends of Roger Stone, with Stone’s picture affixed at the top of the chat. Many members in the group chat are also facing charges tied to Jan. 6 attack including Elmer Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers now facing seditious conspiracy charges and Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, also facing obstruction and conspiracy charges.
Other members in the group chat were identified as individuals who organized anti-vaccine rallies to be held at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Jason Sullivan, a former aide to Stone, was also a member of the group chat. Just before the insurrection, on Dec. 30, Sullivan hosted a conference call where he encouraged supporters to “descend on the Capitol” and vowed that Trump would impose some form of martial law.
Investigator Jamie Raskin has described Stone as the “nexus” between Trump and his “street fighters.”
Oath Keepers and Proud Boys
Elmer Stewart Rhodes, leader of the extremist network known as the Oath Keepers
The committee was particularly keen to learn more about events that extremists attended in 2020 including Covid lockdown protests or racial justice protests. For right-wing extremists, those events may have served as “proving grounds” for the insurrection.
One Oath Keeper who was with Rhodes on Jan. 6 and ultimately charged alongside him, entered a guilty plea this year, telling prosecutors he was committed to protecting Trump by force on Jan. 6 and that he was part of a quick force reaction team that was equipped with weapons and stationed at a nearby hotel in northern Virginia.
The Oath Keepers defendant Joshua James said he and others were prepared to:
Similar scenarios have played out for Tarrio and his Proud Boys. The Miami, Florida resident entered a not guilty plea, maintaining he was not involved in any effort to overturn the election or obstruct congressional proceedings.
Tarrio once proclaimed on social media, “Make no mistake" and "We did this," when the events of Jan. 6 were active. In the document found after his arrest, one section dubbed "Storm the Winter Palace" described plans to gather recruiters and use hypemen to get inside restricted government buildings. The plans would use ‘covert sleepers’ would could arrange appointments with government or officials in advance of an occupation or attack so they could spend a day gathering reconnaissance.
Both Rhodes and Tarrio are detained and expected to go to trial this summer and early fall.
Others targeted by the committee for records and deposition included Nick Fuentes, described by the Anti-Defamation League as a white supremacist and leader of the xenophobic America First/Groyper movement. Hereceived a subpoena on Jan. 19. The committee pointed to his many public statements urging the destruction of the GOP if the election results were not overturned. He also reportedly accepted $250,000 in Bitcoin for funds from a French computer programmer that may have been used to support the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement. The FBI is scrutinizing that funding.
Patrick Casey, another leader in the America First/Groyper movement, was also subpoenaed on Jan. 19 and like Fuentes, he was vocal about his support of movements to overturn the election for several weeks before Jan. 6. On Jan. 5 he shared logistics for how to get into D.C. on social media and as the attack kicked off, he posted to Telegram “It’s happening.” He also reportedly received $25,000 in Bitcoin from the same programmer that may have sent funding to Fuentes. Casey and Fuentes used to be close but have reportedly fallen out with each other in the wake of the insurrection. Casey told investigators he would not cooperate voluntarily before the subpoena was issued.
Ali Alexander’s Stop the Steal LLC, was also hit with an subpoena independent of the one he received personally.
Michael Flynn, former national security adviser, and Trump’s personal assistant
Michael Flynn
Subpoenaed on Nov. 8, Flynn came under the committee’s purview after it was reported that he attended a Dec. 18 meeting in the Oval Office where discussions of how to seize voting machines abounded. That same meeting also featured suggestions to Trump that he declare a national emergency or invoke emergency powers, like martial law, to “rerun” the election.
In February, leaked emails went public showing how Flynn and retired Army Colonel Phil Waldron—days before that meeting with Trump—workshopped a draft executive order aimed at seizing voting machines.
Flynn was pardoned by Trump last December after being charged with lying to federal investigators about his contact with Russian officials. He was scheduled for deposition with the committee in early December and was granted a brief delay. A spokesperson said Flynn had agreed to “engage” with investigators but talks temporarily fell apart. He finally appeared in March for a closed-door deposition but invoked his Fifth Amendment.
This June, the Los Angeles Times obtained a draft letter and series of leaked emails that appeared to be the “first iteration” of the draft order to seize voting machines. In this draft, it was recommended that armed private contractors be used to seize voting machines. it granted authority to three third-party companies to seize the data at will and with the assistance of U.S. Marshals if needed, since “hostile conditions” were expected.
That letter was sent via email by Jim Penrose and Doug Logan of Cyber Ninjas, the same company that conducted the audit for Trump in Maricopa County, Arizona. The email exchange also featured correspondence with Lin Wood, the conservative trial lawyer who failed to successfully challenge election results in Georgia. Wood often had Flynn over at his Tomotely Plantation estate along with Sidney Powell, former CEO for Overstock Patrick Byrne, Logan and Penrose. Penrose reportedly met with John Eastman and Trump on Jan. 5 to finalize details of the overthrow strategy.
A federal judge on Dec. 21 scrapped a lawsuit against the committee from Flynn. The ex-national security official sought a temporary restraining order against investigators but a judge found that because he was unable to prove that even so much as attempted to comply with the probe, he could not prove he was being injured by the demand.
Bernard Kerik, former New York Police Department police commissioner
Bernard Kerik
The former commissioner for the New York Police Department and longtime ally of Rudy Giuliani, Bernard Kerik, was subpoenaed by the select committee on Nov. 8. Kerik, who served three years in prison for tax fraud and was sentenced in 2010, was pardoned by Trump for those crimes. According to investigators, Kerik was a close associate of the former president and attended meetings at the Willard Hotel, including on Jan. 5, where the committee says the election subversion scheme was coordinated. Investigators claim Kerrik paid for and reserved the “war room” at the Willard and other hotels where the Trump allies could meet.
The committee claims Kerik was in cahoots with Giuliani since Nov. 5, 2020, to promote bogus election fraud theories though Kerik has publicly denied the allegations. In November, after word of the subpoena broke, he issued a letter to the committee saying he would cooperate with the probe but he also demanded an apology in the same breath.
In Dec. 31, as noted in this interview, Kerik finally handed over a privilege log to the committee. It featured a list of documents that the former police commissioner was unwilling to provide freely. He said the records were to be protected under executive privilege.
One of those documents was entitled, “Draft letter from POTUS to seize evidence in the interest of national security for the 2020 election.”
Kerik’s attorney told reporters that the document was created one day before Trump met with former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Giuliani. The group discussed how to seize voting machines and election equipment in states Trump was losing to Biden.
Kerik, upon sitting for deposition in January, told the committee it was onetime U.S. Army Colonel Phil Waldron who dreamed up the idea to seize voting machines. The draft executive order would have permitted 60 days for the Defense Secretary to assess so-called irregularities in the 2020 election. Its deadline would have fallen after President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, however.
Waldron previously told The Washington Post that he met with Trump up to 10 times to discuss ways to replace electors in “states where fraud occurred” and that he circulated proposals that outlined ways the National Guard or U.S. marshals could be used to “secure” ballots.
Ali Alexander, right-wing extremist activist, ‘Stop the Steal’ rally organizer
Ali Alexander (screenshot of YouTube feed published by The Intercept).
Ali Alexander is a walking, talking ball of contradictions and conflations. The select committee issued a subpoena to Ali Alexander on Oct. 7 and laid out a litany of requests it had for him regarding records related to his role in organizing “Stop the Steal” rallies, including the one outside of the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Alexander once openly stated on Periscope that Rep. Mo Brooks, an Alabama Republican, helped him organize the insurrection. He also fingered Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs of Arizona for their involvement in those December 2020 clips and has said that he had contact with the lawmakers in a lawsuit he filed against the committee.
“We four schemed up of putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting so that who we couldn’t lobby, we could change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud roar from outside,” Alexander said in a now-deleted livestream.
But when Alexander finally sat for deposition with the committee on Dec. 9, he denied the lawmakers’ involvement. According to CNN, following his closed-door deposition, he said: “There's this conspiracy theory ... that me and members of Congress worked to jeopardize the safety of their colleagues. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Alexander also said that the evidence he has provided thus far “actually exonerates those members” and himself.
This March, Rep. Mo Brooks attempted to memory hole his promotion of Trump’s election fraud lies, and Alexander came out swinging against the congressman.
“You betrayed our election integrity movement. We’re done here. You’ve been rejected by #StopTheSteal and now Trump. Tell your staff never to come for me again,” Alexander wrote on Gab.
When 2022 first got underway, CNN uncovered more Periscope videos including one livestream from Dec. 23, 2020, dubbed “JAN6” where Alexander said he called on the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to provide security for the rally at the Ellipse. Less than a week later, on Dec. 29, 2020, in another livestream Alexander said it again.
“My team will find you a room. I talked tonight to the Proud Boys to make sure that they were all covered,” Alexander said.
Alexander’s attorney defended the remarks in the videos, saying that the 'Stop the Steal’ rally organizer was just making “colorful remarks” and “exaggerations during playful livestreams contextualizing his intentions.”
Nonetheless, Alexander’s attorney conceded that his client helped members of the extremist groups find “new housing, and the Oath Keepers did provide security for several clients,” CNN reported.
Alexander appeared for his deposition on Capitol Hill with his lawyer Joseph McBride and conspiracy theorist Jacob Wohl.
Alexander led a rally 24 hours before the Capitol attack at Freedom Plaza with the Eighty Percent Coalition. He whipped people into a chant of “victory or death.”
Alexander sued the committee in mid-December in an attempt to block telephone carrier Verizon from providing his call logs to investigators. Alexander also named Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in the lawsuit. An online stream he posted this January featured Alexander delivering a minutes-long rant expressing how he worked “behind the scenes” for weeks on something that could “help over 100 million people” when cooperating with investigators.
Alexander received a subpoena from a federal grand jury this April and said that he was taking a “cooperative posture” with the DOJ’s probe into Jan. 6. Alexander has said that he was in frequent contact with Roger Stone and that the two discussed logistics around Jan. 6 often.
Alex Jones, right-wing personality and conspiracy theorist
Alex Jones, addressing Trump’s supporters on Jan. 6.
Conspiracy theory and smut peddler Alex Jones was subpoenaed by the committee on Nov. 22. Investigators say Jones worked closely with members of Women for America First to organize rallies on Jan. 6. The right-wing talk show host reportedly told those same organizers that he was responsible for facilitating contributions for the rally from Publix supermarket heiress Julie Fancelli. The committee said that Jones helped secure $650,000 from Fancelli.
Jones allegedly tried to nab a speaking spot with Trump on Jan. 6 but was denied by fellow organizers. When that happened, he instead spoke on Jan. 5 at Freedom Plaza at the invitation of the Eighty Percent Coalition and its head sponsor Cindy Chafian. Though he never had his moment at the Ellipse with Trump on Jan. 6, Jones did march alongside right-wing extremists and ‘Stop the Steal’ founder Ali Alexander.
Before the attack, Jones spent hours broadcasting Trump’s election fraud claims and made statements implying he knew what might be coming when Congress met to certify the electoral votes.
“This is the most important call to action on domestic soil since Paul Revere and his ride in 1776,” Jones told listeners of his podcast, InfoWars, on Dec. 19.
The committee noted in its subpoena to Jones that when he arrived at the Capitol, he told people to gather on the east side of the complex to hear Trump speak. That location directly coincided with a site that Ali Alexander’s ‘Stop the Steal’ organization had reserved with its permit for a rally using the name “One Nation Under God.”
Jones sued the committee on Dec. 20 claiming it did not have authority to subpoena his correspondence with the White House, lawmakers, or other campaign officials. He insisted many of the records sought after by the committee were protected under the First Amendment because he deems himself a journalist. Jones indicated in that lawsuit he intended to invoke his Fifth Amendment right if forced to testify at deposition and that was exactly what he did during his appearance on Jan. 25.
While he would not answer questions in the formal setting, Jones took to his podcast right after to breathlessly describe the experience, a decision that could have negative repercussions according to experts. Then in April, Jones’ attorney, Norm Pattis, announced that the bombast was trying to negotiate an immunity deal with the Justice Department to discuss Jan. 6. Jones denied any criminal wrongdoing.
Sean Hannity, Fox Newshost
Fox News host Sean Hannity on a giant screen displayed at a Trump rally in Michigan in October 2021.
The commentator was not officially subpoenaed by the committee, but members did request that he voluntarily comply. The committee argued Hannity had factual information that could illuminate Trump’s thinking and conduct before, during, and after the attack on the Capitol.
Text messages shared with former chief of staff Mark Meadows and lawmakers like Rep. Jim Jordan suggest Hannity felt Trump’s subversion efforts were practically doomed. Nevertheless, the committee was careful to narrow its request to Hannity for messages that were only sent over a period of roughly a month. That maneuver anticipated a First Amendment challenge in response from the Fox host.
After the request, Hannity hosted Trump on his show. In January he allowed the former president to continue making baseless election fraud claims without fact check. He sat back as Trump said, more than a year since the attack, that those in the crowd offered “a lot of love there” and that they were “great people.”
Hannity, according to a mid-riot text message sent to Mark Meadows on Jan. 6 once wrote: “Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol.”
In another text message sent to Meadows on Jan. 19, 2021, Hannity sent a link to the following video of then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, saying from the floor that the mob on Jan. 6 was provoked by Trump and “other powerful people.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says Capitol insurrectionists were "provoked by the president and other powerful people." pic.twitter.com/6kqSlAJHky
“Well, this is as bad as it can get,” Hannity wrote.
The Trump family
Ivanka Trump
The former president’s daughter and senior adviser was requested to comply voluntarily with the investigation into the Capitol attack on Jan. 20. She appeared in April. The letter first came after Pence’s ex-national security adviser Keith Kellogg testified behind closed doors that it was he and Ivanka Trump who witnessed her father’s phone call to Pence on Jan. 6.
As Trump reportedly leaned on Pence to go along with the subversion strategy, Kellogg’s deposition transcript shows Ivanka turned to Kellogg and remarked: “Mike Pence is a good man.”
The committee reportedly asked Ivanka to testify about any actions Trump may have taken to direct Pence to violate the Constitution. Pleading from Kellogg and other officials to Trump that he make an announcement calling for peace went ignored. Kellogg felt she was one of the only people who could garner a response from the president. Kellogg testified that Ivanka made multiple attempts to soothe her father.
During public hearings, the committee is expected to play portions of Ivanka Trump's recorded testimony before the committee.
Her husband and Donald Trump’s onetime adviser, Jared Kushner, also cooperated with the select committee. He was deposed for six hours.
Jared Kushner
Donald Trump Jr. met with the committee in May voluntarily. He did not invoke his Fifth Amendment. Text messages secured by the committee showed a panicked Trump Jr. on Jan. 6. Details and more inside his interview linked below:
Eric Trump was not subpoenaed by the committee, but investigators did pursue his phone records successfully. Before the public hearings, it was never clearly established whether or not Eric Trump met with investigators.
Donald Trump Jr.
The lawmakers
Kevin McCarthy, U.S. House GOP Leader
Kevin McCarthy
The leader of the House GOP, Kevin McCarthy spoke to Trump on Jan. 6 according to his own statements. But when the committee submitted a voluntary request for his records and deposition, the lawmaker refused to cooperate. When they issued a subpoena, he met them with the same reply.
In stark contrast to his public acknowledgment of conversations, there have been questions raised over omissions in the White House call logs. While the Capitol was under siege, McCarthy said he spoke to Trump and Trump rebuffed his pleas for help. Trump told McCarthy it was “antifa” that had breached the building. McCarthy pushed back, saying it was the president’s supporters.
McCarthy said last year that Trump responded: “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”
This May, an audio recording of McCarthy emerged where the House leader weighed whether to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office two days after the Capitol assault. Another recording featured McCarthy calling for Trump’s resignation. On Jan. 13, the House voted 232-197 to approve a resolution to activate the amendment.
McCarthy, instead, called for censure instead of impeachment through the 25th Amendment. Then, from the floor of the House, McCarthy denounced Trump:
“The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding,” McCarthy said on Jan. 13, 2021.
The audio recordings were only made public after reports without them first surfaced and McCarthy denied their existence. It did nothing to slow down the former president’s support of McCarthy; Trump endorsed him for his upcoming run at Speaker of the House in the coming midterms.
Today, McCarthy maintains the committee is purely politically motivated and illegitimate. When he rejected the subpoena in May, he, like Rep. Jim Jordan, made a list of demands and argued at length that the committee fails to have the authority to conduct its review.
Multiple federal courts have rejected this premise and historically, McCarthy has dodged questions from reporters, even running away from one during an exchange in February after the Republican National Committee agreed to censure the probe’s only Republican members: Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.
I tried to ask @GOPLeader about the RNC’s resolution describing Jan. 6 as “legitimate political discourse” He told me to make an appointment with his office… insisting it’s “not good” to answer questions in hallways. pic.twitter.com/yaL8opl6Pf
McCarthy defended the RNC’s language in the censure, saying that the “legitimate political discourse” was a reference to those RNC officials subpoenaed by the committee for information about alternate elector activities.
“Anybody who broke in and caused damage, that was not called for. Those people, we've said from the very beginning, should be in jail,” McCarthy once told CNN.
The RNC tried to walk back its statement, saying that the “legitimate political discourse” was a reference to all those legislators who objected to certification on Jan. 6.
Rep. Jim Jordan, U.S. Representative for Ohio
Jordan was the second lawmaker to receive a request from the Jan. 6 committee to voluntarily comply. He later received an official subpoena. Investigators say Jordan had at least one “and possibly multiple” exchanges with Trump on the day of the attack. His testimony could provide valuable insight into Trump’s thoughts and conduct while rioters were actively breaching the Capitol and viciously beating police defending the complex.
Jordan is one of several Republican lawmakers who took meetings with the president in December 2020 to discuss election fraud allegations and other plans to object to the election certification on Jan. 6.
On Dec. 21, a full week after the Electoral College had certified the election for Joe Biden, Hice announced the impending meeting on Twitter.
Big meeting today with @realDonaldTrump, @VP, the President's legal team, @freedomcaucus and other Members of Congress. I will lead an objection to Georgia's electors on Jan 6. The courts refuse to hear the President's legal case. We're going to make sure the People can!
Lawmakers attending those meetings included Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, and Jody Hice of Georgia.
As for Jordan, after he received the “friendly subpoena” from the committee, he appeared on Fox News and suggested investigators were in cahoots against him after a portion of a text message he sent to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows went public.
Jordan sent a message to Meadows stating: “On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all the electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all.”
The full text continued: “In accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence. ‘No legislative act,’ wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78, ‘contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.’ The court in Hubbard v. Lowe reinforced this truth: ‘That an unconstitutional statute is not a law at all is a proposition no longer open to discussion.’ 226 F. 135, 137 (SDNY 1915), appeal dismissed, 242 U.S. 654 (1916).”
As for the Ohio lawmaker, Jordan’s dodging has continued unabated since July whenhe was first asked whether he would answer questions about his communications with Trump if ever called upon.
He said:
Jim Jordan in July when I asked if he'd be willing to talk to the select committee if they asked him to testify about his conversations with Trump. "Yeah, I've got nothing to hide." pic.twitter.com/oyvCgGrcQ2
Other text messages provided to the committee by Meadows before he abruptly stopped cooperation also showed Fox News host Sean Hannity writing to Jordan and Meadows about concerns over Trump’s strategy and state of mind before the Capitol assault.
Jordan was a huge proponent of Trump’s election lies and Hannity, at one point, felt the need to tell Jordan on Jan. 10 nearly a week after the attack:
“Guys, we have a clear path to land the plane in 9 days. He can’t mention the election again. Ever. I did not have a good call with him today. And worse, I’m not sure what is left to do or say and I don’t like not knowing if it's truly understood. Ideas?”
White House call logs obtained by the committee in February confirmed what Jordan has been unable or unwilling to confirm for months: He did speak to Trump on Jan. 6.
But at least one company—Verizon—did disclose that the request was made and disclosed that to several figures who saw their metadata targeted by the committee.
The company had to disclose that information so the individuals subpoenaed would have a chance to contest the matter.
Rep. Scott Perry, a U.S. Representative for Pennsylvania
Rep. Scott Perry, R-PA.
Rep. Scott Perry received a letter on Dec. 20 requesting his “voluntary cooperation” with the committee. Perry was the first lawmaker to come into the select committee’s purview though the request was not part of a formal subpoena.
On Dec. 21, Perry said that he would not cooperate with the voluntary request.
(1/2) I stand with immense respect for our Constitution, the Rule of Law, and the Americans I represent who know that this entity is illegitimate, and not duly constituted under the rules of the US House of Representatives.
An official subpoena was issued to Perry and four other Republican lawmakers in May. Perry again refused to cooperate. A former aide to Trump, Cassidy Hutchinson, told members of the Jan. 6 committee that Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows allegedly burned papers in his office after a meeting with Perry just after the 2020 election.
Court records also revealed a text message from Perry to Meadows that appeared to show Perry taking efforts to hide his communication with Meadows by moving it over to an encrypted chat app known as Signal. Perry also serves as head of the staunchly pro-Trump House Freedom Caucus.
A Dec. 2020 text message unearthed in court records was sent to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows by Rep. Scott Perry.
Rep. Mo Brooks, U.S. Representative for Alabama
Rep. Mo Brooks, R-AL
Brooks was subpoenaed by the committee in May after repeated requests for his voluntary cooperation. Investigators wanted to question Brooks about a number of issues given his outsized presence in the events leading up to and on Jan. 6. The Alabama Republican took the stage at the rally on Jan. 6, before the Capitol was totally overwhelmed.
He called on the crowd to “fight like hell.”
Brooks effectively earned that spot on stage after making no fewer than five speeches from the House floor promoting Trump’s baseless claims. He scapegoated “illegal aliens” as perpetrators of fraud and objected when it was time for Congress to certify the Electoral College results on Jan. 6. His social media presence was littered with election disinformation, as this field guide written up by Daily Kos shows.
Biggs was subpoenaed by the committee in May and rejected the demand swiftly. The former leader of the House Freedom Caucus was a vocal opponent to the select committee’s formation; an unsurprising development given his devotion to Trump since before Trump’s first impeachment. In the run-up to the November election, Biggs blasted dog whistles and echoed Trump’s claims of election fraud spurred by Democrats or by way of immigrants he regularly demonized.
Investigators wished to interview Biggs about reported meetings the held with ‘Stop the Steal’ organizer Ali Alexander and others. Notably, Alexander gave Biggs credit for the success of the movement, per The Washington Post.
There are also questions for Biggs about alleged pardons that he sought for “activities taken in connection” with Trump’s effort to overturn the election.
Rep. Ronny Jackson, U.S. Representative for Texas
Rep. Ronny Jackson
Rep. Jackson’s cooperation was requested in May. The select committee was particularly interested in Jackson’s possible ties to members of the extremist Oath Keepers group, including its leader, Elmer Rhodes. Rhodes mentioned Jackson in one of his encrypted chats and said that Jackson had “critical data to protect” in the run-up to Jan. 6.
Critically, the @January6thCmte also calls on Rep. Ronny Jackson to answer questions about why the extremist Oath Keepers, including leader Elmer Rhodes, discussed him in their encrypted chat and their efforts to protect him because he had "critical data to protect" pic.twitter.com/xqMuzD4Xj9
The @January6thCmte asks Rep. Ronny Jackson: - Why would Oath Keepers have an interest in his location? - Why would they want to provide a security detail? - Who did Jackson speak to by phone? Cmte notes OKers & Proud Boys had contact w/a # of people Jackson also had contact with pic.twitter.com/NlXUZvZLT6
Rep. Barry Loudermilk, U.S. Representative for Georgia
The Georgia Republican was not asked to appear under the force of subpoena, but investigators on the committee did request that he voluntarily cooperate and provide information about alleged tours he provided of the U.S. Capitol on the eve of the insurrection.
Loudermilk has denied any wrongdoing but his accounting of reported tours in the Capitol has shifted over time. Where first he claimed that no tours were given, he later shifted to saying that he gave a tour to a constituent family with children. This was despite the active Covid-19 restrictions in place barring visitors and tourists at that time. He’s also denied that anyone on a tour with him was wearing a red baseball cap but he back-pedaled once the committee came calling. Now there were a few people “wearing red baseball caps.”
Loudermilk voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election and he offered a fierce defense of Trump during his first impeachment for obstruction of congress and abuse of power. This reporter covered Loudermilk’s remarks during the impeachment in 2019 for Courthouse News Service:
Sidney Powell secured her place in history over the course of the 2020 election as one of Trump’s most vocal proponents pushing election disinformation. The former federal prosecutor was slapped with a subpoena on Jan. 18. The committee pointed to Powell’s promotion of disinformation about the election and her repeated urging to Trump that he seize voting machines as a basis for the demand.
Powell asked to meet with Pence while he was in Colorado in late December so she could discuss her baseless allegations about rigged machines. It never happened, according to The New York Times.
Powell’s full-throated support of election fraud prompted Dominion Voting Systems and voting machine maker Smartmatic to sue her for defamation. She’s faced professional sanctions as well. But for all of her blowhard rhetoric during the election about a “Kraken” case that would upend America’s world as it knew it, Powell’s defense in the defamation case was that “reasonable people would not accept such statements [about dysfunctional machines] as fact” but they would take her rhetoric to mean that it was up to courts to decide. Powell further justified her conduct with another argument: Even if election fraud did not occur, the very appearance of it would absolve any legal contentions against her.
Powell’s fundraising efforts for the 2020 election through her group Defending the Republic are currently under investigation in a separate probe led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C. That probe is over a year old. She has been producing records for that investigation on a “rolling basis” as well according to her lawyer Howard Kleinhendler. Powell, to be clear, has not been charged with a crime in that case,
Powell cooperated with the Jan. 6 committee and has emphasized through her attorney that she thinks her conversations with Trump are protected under attorney-client privilege, though the ex-president never paid her for her legal services. Her attorney told CNN in January Powell “never worked as a lawyer for the former president personally or for the Trump campaign.”
Jenna Ellis was plucked from the sidelines to serve as Trump’s senior legal adviser after the former president saw her on television promoting baseless conspiracy theories about the outcome of the 2020 election. Ellis was subpoenaed by the committee on Jan. 18.
Investigators are interested in two memos Ellis circulated in December 2020 and Jan. 2021 advancing the thin legal argument that Pence could simply refuse to consider electors during the count on Jan. 6. The Dec. 31 memo went to Trump's office and proposed that Pence could simply decline to open state certificates on Jan. 6 if he believed there was cause to think they were bogus. The second memo from Jan. 5, 2021, delved slightly deeper. This went to Trump attorney Jay Sekulow.
States would have to stop or delay certification, the memo suggested, because the first state to object on Jan. 6, Arizona, had not met the criteria for state electors. Further, Ellis argued that the Electoral Count Act is unconstitutional. Ellis has defended the documents saying they were mere explorations of legal theory and that she “at no time” advocated for Pence to stop or delay the results of the 2020 election.
In March, the committee announced that it issued six subpoenas to a handful of the former president’s most loyal attorneys. Their loyalty, of course, hinged on their promotion in court—and in the press—of his false claims of fraud in the 2020 election. The panel wants each witness to produce records and depositions about their efforts to promote those claims and in some cases, more information about how they interacted with state officials to advance Trump's agenda.
In the group, there was a subpoena for Cleta Mitchell, the prominent conservative attorney and activist who mostly worked in the background of Trump’s bid to retake the White House. She made some media appearances, however, and in them, claimed to have come to Trump’s campaign as a “volunteer” to litigate his claims of election fraud. She could not escape attention when The Washington Post published Trump’s call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 3, 2021.
Mitchell insisted there was fraud and that voting machines were rigged. Her exposure led to a public resignation from her partnership at a D.C. law firm. The firm said it was her political closeness to Trump that concerned them despite her claims of being canceled “by leftist groups.”
Mitchell now sits on the advisory board for the Election Assistance Commission, the only agency in the federal government that has authority over elections. Emails revealed in court records this May showed Mitchell engaging with John Eastman on multiple occasions. Eastman, the emails showed, was not even privately convinced of the fraud he purported publicly. But he continued to pump the false statements anyway.
Attorney Kurt Olsen’s correspondence with officials at the Department of Justice about “last-minute changes” to election laws ahead of Jan. 6 raised the panel’s curiosity. He was the driving force, allegedly, behind an effort to oust uncooperative DOJ officials at Trump’s behest and evidence already collected by the committee has pointed to his role in writing a draft executive order directing the DOJ to “take voter action” to alter the 2020 election outcome.
Olsen allegedly had multiple calls with Trump on Jan. 6, too. He sued the committee in March, arguing that the subpoena was invalid and that it unfairly prejudiced Trump
Boston-based attorney Kenneth Chesebro’s promotion of the “alternate electors” scheme led by Giuliani and his hand in writing a memo that proposed alternative deadlines for electoral certification were the focus of his subpoena. That memo was sent to James Troupis, Trump’s lead campaign attorney in Wisconsin. They brought their claims of fraud to the Supreme Court and the high court denied the lawsuit.
Former Kansas Attorney General Phillip Kline—whose law license is indefinitely suspended— was subpoenaed in March. Kline promoted Trump’s election fraud scheme in several states and organized a conference call with over 300 state legislators to discuss the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement. Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and then-trade adviser Peter Navarro were on the call as well.
Lawyer and lobbyist Katherine Friesswas subpoenaed too. Politico detailed her role in the drafting of an executive order that would have directed federal agencies to seize voting machines from local election officials by citing Trump’s specious fraud claims. Bernie Kerik told reporters that Friess arranged interviews, prepared documents, reviewed affidavits, and was instrumental in coordinating meetings between core advisers and the president.
The “alternate electors”
Kelli Ward and her husband, Michael Ward, in 2018.
The electors affixed their signatures to electoral certificates for Trump though they were unrecognized under state law when they met to draw up the documents on the same day the Electoral College convened to ratify Biden’s victory.
So-called “alternate electors” held meetings and often broadcast them on social media. They elected chairpersons, and appointed secretaries. These efforts were reportedly led or overseen by Rudy Giuliani.
The rival slates were a key component of the Trump White House’s push to stop or delay the certification on Jan. 6. The strategy was to have the Trump certifications ready and waiting should courts rule in favor of lawsuits brought by the former president alleging widespread fraud. Notably, there was an attempt by some who breached the Capitol to locate the authentic electoral ballot boxes on Jan. 6 with the real certificates inside. If those boxes were unable to be located, an opening would have almost certainly been created for Trump’s allies to cry fraud and use the alternate slates.
By the time the “alternate electors” met in December, Trump had lost dozens of lawsuits. They sent their certificates to the National Archives but the records were rejected. Since the electors were unsanctioned, the Archives deemed the certificates “unofficial.” Under the Electoral Count Act, such submissions are forbidden.
Shafer is the chair of the Georgia Republican Party. Kathy Berden and Michael McDonald serve as the chairs of the Michigan and Nevada Republican Party, respectively.
Ward’s T-Mobile phone records were subpoenaed by investigators along with records from Mole Medical Services, a company owned by Ward and her husband. Both are osteopaths and in a lawsuit attempting to bar the committee’s review, they argued that disclosing metadata would violate the privacy rights of “an unknown but quantifiable number of individuals.”
As for Mastriano: the Pennsylvania State Senator was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 but never inside the building. He witnessed police and “agitators” scrapping, he has said. He also took photos with pro-Trump former state legislator Rick Saccone. Saccone spent Jan. 6 celebrating the storming of the Capitol on social media. Campaign finance records show Mastriano’s campaign made three payments over six days for buses headed into D.C. on Jan. 6.
Mastriano has not been charged with any wrongdoing and he’s been insistent that he was against the rioting. Investigators want Mastriano to testify about the alternate elector scheme as well as the role he played in allegedly arranging an event in Phoenix with Trump’s lawyers on Nov. 30, 2021.
Witnesses overheard Mastriano say that voter systems had been “hacked” as he left that meeting.
Arizona legislator Mark Finchem, who said he came to Washington on Jan. 6 so he could give Pence an “evidence book and letter” about fraud in his state and call for a delay of the certification, was in reported talks with leaders of the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement about the rally at the Ellipse. The former chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party, Laura Cox, was subpoenaed in February. Cox hosted an online live event on Zoom and Facebook in December 2020 where Trump’s attorney and alleged ringleader of the alternate elector scheme Rudy Giuliani was featured. Cox has denied any wrongdoing.
In late May, a federal grand jury issued subpoenas to individuals who led the alternate elector scheme like Giuliani, Eastman, and others.
Additional key White House, administration, and campaign officials
Several others in Trump’s administration and campaign were called up by the committee either through a formal subpoena or through a request to comply voluntarily. Some of the key targets included:
Kimberly Guilfoyle
Guilfoyle helped fundraise and organize the rally at the Ellipse and initially sat for a voluntary interview with the committee but chaos ensued. Guilfoyle bowed out when realizing she would have to offer testimony to the committee with members present, not just panel attorneys. She eventually sat again, but this time under force of subpoena. Lawmakers sought her records and testimony related to the alleged raising of $3 million for the Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse.
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Kayleigh McEnany, former White House press secretary
The White House press secretary who promoted Trump’s lies about the 2020 election routinely from the White House press briefing room, accompanied Trump to the Ellipse on Jan. 6. She allegedly watched the attack unfold with him or nearby. McEnany’s sat for questioning by the committee on Jan. 12. By Feb. 1, it was reported that it was McEnany who was responsible for turning over a series of text messages to investigators showing Fox News host Sean Hannity peppering the press secretary with advice. “No more stolen election talk,” and “Yes, impeachment and the 25th Amendment are real and many people will quit,” he wrote to McEnany. She responded, “Love that. Thank you. That is the playbook. I will help reinforce...”
Boris Epshteyn, senior White House aide
Epshteyn was subpoenaed on Jan. 18. The senior White House aide had a call with Trump on the morning of Jan. 6 to discuss possible ways to delay or stop the counting of electoral votes. Epshteyn also “regularly attended” meetings at the Trump admin’s “war room” at the Willard Hotel. During an appearance on CNN on Jan. 22, Epshteyn acknowledged that he was “part of the process to make sure there were alternate electors” for Trump submitted to Congress. Epshteyn has continued to promote claims that Trump won the 2020 election.
Days before the select committee’s hearing, emails obtained by The Washington Post showed how on Dec. 13, 2021, one day before the Electoral College safe harbor deadline, Trump’s electors in Georgia were told to keep their plans to submit their bunk slates veiled in total secrecy. A Justice Department inquiry into alternate electors has named Epshteyn and others in its quest for records.
Nicholas Luna, personal assistant to Trump
Trump’s personal assistant or ”body man” was reportedly in the Oval Office on Jan. 6 when Trump was on a call with Pence, in which he pressured Pence not to certify the results of the 2020 election. Luna reportedly entered the Oval on Jan. 6 before his speech, handing Trump a note letting him know he was ready to go on. Luna reportedly heard Trump yell at Pence, “You’re going to wimp out!” Luna was deposed on March 21 after a brief delay and has reportedly been cooperating with the committee and submitting to document requests. Notably, Luna was not an official White House staffer on Jan. 6 but when he was at a meeting in December with Trump and Pence, investigators allege that he was privy to talks between his superiors about seizing voting machines by way of declaring a national emergency.
Kashyap Patel, former chief of staff to then-acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller
Kashyap “Kash” Patel.
Kash Patel was subpoenaed by the committee on Sept. 23. Patel slid into the Defense Department role after Trump canned Defense Secretary Mark Esper and put Chris Miller in Esper’s place. Patel made for a good yes-man and rose quickly to the White House as a result. Once a senior congressional aide to Trump ally Rep. Devin Nunes, Patel joined the Trump administration in 2019 as a staffer on the National Security Council.
The Washington Post reported in April that Patel was the subject of an inquiry by the Department of Justice due to a complaint filed earlier in the year by an unidentified intelligence agency suggesting Patel “repeatedly pressed intelligence agencies to release secrets that, in his view, showed that the president was being persecuted unfairly by critics.”
Patel has records that investigators believe show how the White House prepared for and responded to the Capitol attack with Defense Department and White House officials. There are also documents sought relating to Patel’s “personal involvement” in disrupting the peaceful transfer of power, the committee says.
Kash met with the committee on Dec. 9, according to CNN reporters who were staked out in the Capitol. He appeared with his attorney and was carrying a bevy of documents. In a statement on Dec. 9, Patel said he was answering the committee’s questions to the best of his ability.
Patel appeared on the Fox News podcast The Kitchen Table shortly after his appearance and spoke with hosts about “fighting the deep state.”
Robert “Bobby” Peede Jr., the former deputy assistantto Trump, was subpoenaed on Dec. 9. Investigators say Peede met with Trump in his private dining room just off the Oval Office on Jan. 4 to discuss the impending rally on Jan. 6 and its speakers. Katrina Pierson was also reportedly at this meeting.
Max Miller, another aidefor Trump was with Peede and Trump during a Jan. 4 meeting where the Jan. 6 ‘Stop the Steal’ rally was discussed with Katrina Pierson. Miller was subpoenaed on Dec. 9. Miller received Trump’s full-throated endorsement for his congressional run in December.
Brian Jack, director of political affairs for Trump reportedly contacted several members of Congress on Trump’s behalf, asking them to speak at the Ellipse about so-called fraud in the 2020 election. One of those lawmakers, according to the committee, was Rep. Mo Brooks, an Alabama Republican who told reporters he was wearing body armor to the rally on Jan. 6 at the Ellipse because he was warned that violence was imminent.
Christopher Liddell, White House deputy chief of staff in the White House on Jan. 6; investigators believe his role as Meadows’ deputy meant he was privy to conversations involving state officials in Georgia, discussions of election fraud lawsuits, and correspondence with Jan. 6 rally organizers, the Department of Justice, and others. Investigators say Liddell tried to resign during the attack but was coaxed out of that decision. On Feb. 11, Liddell did not comment on reports that the transition process from Trump to Biden was particularly arduous.
Ben Williamson, a deputy assistant to Trump and senior adviser to Meadows, has records similar to that of Liddell’s. Williamson was also allegedly contacted by White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah during the siege, who urged him, to no avail, to have Trump issue a statement condemning the violence.
Molly Michael, a special assistantto Trump and Oval Office operations coordinator, forwarded emails on Dec. 14 to then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, with the subject line including “FROM POTUS,” that laid out talking points on bogus forensic information alleging fraud in Michigan. Similar emails went out on Dec. 29 to the U.S. solicitor general, urging the Department of Justice to file a lawsuit at the Supreme Court that requested the election be overturned.
Taylor Budowich, Trump’s current primary political spokesperson and communications director for Trump’s Save America PAC, allegedly solicited and then directed a nonprofit organization to donate $200,000 from an undisclosed source to pay for its ad campaign promoting election falsehoods. Budowich sued the Committee in late December in a bid to stop investigators from reviewing his financial records. But on Jan. 20, a judge ruled against Budowich, saying his financial records should not be returned to him after JP Morgan Chase handed them off to the committee.
Katrina Pierson, a former Trump campaign official that helped organize the Women for American First rally at the Ellipse and on Jan. 6 urged the crowd before the attack started to “fight much harder” to “stop the steal.” She also reportedly participated in a Jan. 4 meeting with Trump in the Oval Office where she assured him there would be another rally on Jan. 5 where “people like Ali Alexander and Roger Stone could speak.” Stone has said Pierson was “deeply involved” in the attack.
William Stepien, Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign manager, promoted false claims about voting machines despite internal campaign memos determining those claims were false. Stepien has since signed onto advise Ohio Republican Mike Gibbon’s senate campaign.
Angela McCallum, the national executive assistant to Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, spread false information about voter fraud on Trump’s behalf and encouraged, unconstitutionally, state electors to appoint alternate slates and send competing votes to Congress; she also left a voicemail for an election official in Michigan saying Trump was counting on the unidentified representative.
Kenneth Klukowski, senior counselto Jeffrey Clark. Investigators say he and Clark worked on the letter for Georgia state and election officials and that he met with Clark before a meeting where Clark proposed Jeffrey Rosen’s removal at Trump’s behest.
Andy Surabian, a Republican strategist and adviser to Donald Trump Jr., the committee contends that Surabian was privy to planning or coordination efforts for the rally on Jan. 6 and that he had contact with multiple people who led the organization of the rally including Donald Trump Jr., Kimberly Guilfoyle, fundraiser Caroline Wren and Julie Fancelli who flooded the Trump reelection campaign with cash.
Arthur Schwartz, like Surabian, is a Republican strategist and adviser to Donald Trump Jr. and the committee subpoenaed Schwartz for information related to the planning of the rally.
Ross Worthington, former White House and campaign aide, helped former President Donald Trump write the speech that he delivered from the Ellipse on Jan. 6. Investigators want Worthington to provide further information about Trump’s state of mind and conduct ahead of the speech and have inquired about why Trump littered his remarks with claims of election fraud.
Christina Bobb, an anchor at the pro-Trump right-wing propaganda network One America News Network, was subpoenaed in March as investigators sought more information about her role in advancing the “alternate elector scheme” and specifically, how she assisted Giuliani. Bobb was also in the “war room” at the Willard Hotel on Jan. 6.
Jan. 6 rally organizers
A lengthy list of rally organizers has come under scrutiny. They include but are not limited to:
Dustin Stockton, a ‘Stop the Steal’ rally organizer who investigators say raised the alarm to Mark Meadows that the Jan. 6 event could be unsafe. Stockton was revealed in mid-December as the source for an October Rolling Stone piece where it was alleged that several members of congress were intimately involved in a scheme to overturn the election results. Stockton and his fiancee Jennifer Lynn Lawrence said in an interview with Rolling Stone published Dec. 13 that they were going to cooperate with the committee in full and begin naming names.
Jennifer Lynn Lawrence, along with her fiance Dustin Stockton, assisted Women for America First with its rallies after the November election and right through to the rally on Jan. 6.
Caroline Wren, described as “VIP Adviser” on the WFAF permit for Jan. 6; believed to be in regular contact with Mark Meadows about election certification, allegedly parked dark money funds with the Republican Attorneys General Association, the young Republican hub Turning Point, and the Tea Party Express
Cynthia Chafian, who submitted the first permit application for WFAF'’s Jan. 6 rally, founder of the Eighty Percent Coalition
Maggie Mulvaney, was listed as “VIP Lead” on a permit application filed by WFAF
Justin Caporale, of Event Strategies, Inc.—which received over $2 million in payments from the Trump campaign—was listed as a point of contact and project manager for WFAF rally on Jan. 6
Lyndon Brentnall was listed as an on-site supervisor for Jan. 6 rally permits
Nathan Martinwas listed on a permit for the “One Nation Under God” rally on Jan. 6; Martin allegedly failed to disclose that he was also associated with the ‘Stop the Steal’ event and reportedly told U.S Capitol Police that he was not associated with ‘Stop the Steal’
Tim Unesof Event Strategies, Inc., was listed as a “Stage Manager” on permit paperwork filed by WFAF for Jan. 6.
Megan Powers of MPowers Consulting LLC was listed on permit paperwork for WFAF as “Operations Manager for Scheduling and Guidance”
Hannah Salem of Salem Strategies LLC was listed on permit paperwork for WFAF as “Operations Manager for Logistics and Communications”
Bryan Lewis, records have shown, obtained a permit for a rally on Jan. 6 that expressly urged Congress to nullify electoral votes and make illegal changes to voting rules during the election
Ed Martin helped organize the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement and was directly involved in coordinating the “Wild Protest” event planned for Jan. 6. Investigators say he also paid for vendors associated with that event.
Kimberly Fletcher, head of Moms for America, a pro-Trump group, coordinated a Jan. 5 rally at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. The group was also identified as a participant in the rally on Jan. 6. Documents obtained by the committee reportedly show Fletcher’s group was in contact with ‘Stop the Steal’ leader Ali Alexander
‘Friendly’ compliance highlights
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger served as a witness in the committee’s probe. Raffensperger was not formally subpoenaed but said in August that he would cooperate with any inquiries. The state official came into the spotlight during the 2020 election after Trump called him and pressured him to "find” 11,000 votes for his campaign. Chair Thompson recently called his cooperation as a witness “crucial” to their probe. Raffensperger has since been testifying to a grand jury about the alternate elector scheme.
Though he has not been publicly subpoenaed by the committee, Chris Krebs, once a senior Trump administration official for cybersecurity, reportedly sat down for questions on Dec. 9. Trump fired Krebs after the election and after Krebs stood vehemently against Trump’s claims of election fraud. The committee requested information about Krebs’ termination this August when it sent a request to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Stephanie Grisham, former White House press secretary and chief of staff to former First Lady Melania Trump, voluntarily sat for a deposition in early January and informed that committee that Trump had “secret meetings” in the White House residence in the days just before the Capitol attack. Grisham reportedly told investigators that Mark Meadows helped coordinate the clandestine gatherings.
Big tech requests and demands
Over a dozen social media/technology companies received informal demands for information last summer. The committee was primarily interested in learning how misinformation, like claims of widespread fraud in 2020, was allowed to spread on the respective sites.
There was voluntary compliance from several of the companies noticed in August but the biggest hitters like Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Reddit failed to respond “adequately,” according to Jan. 6 committee chair Bennie Thompson. That prompted formal subpoenas to be submitted to those four entities this January.
Beyond Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Reddit, informal demands initially went to:
In court, the committee aggressively pursued the phone records of more than 100 figures related to the Jan. 6. attack. The requests started to flow last August when telecommunications companies like Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and U.S. Celluar were asked to preserve phone records from a host of Republican lawmakers like Kevin McCarthy as well as Trump administration officials and Jan. 6 rally organizers. The data requested would not reveal the content of calls or text messages but would help investigators piece together the dates and times that calls were made and for how long calls lasted.
Many sued to stop the review. Rally organizers Unes, Mulvaney, Powers, and Caporalesued the Jan. 6th Committee in federal court arguing the request for their cell phone data was a breach of their constitutional right to privacy and private communications. They sat for lengthy depositions and otherwise cooperated with the committee in November, however.
Alex Jonessued investigators in December, trying to keep the probe away from his phone data. He amended the complaint to include Timothy Enlow, the security operations manager for Free Speech Systems, a media entity owned by Jones, in February after it was revealed to Jones that the committee had served Enlow’s provider.
Mark Meadows and John Eastman sued to keep phone records hidden as did onetime Trump White House adviser Sebastian Gorka. The committee demanded Verizon hand over his records in December. Election disinformation purveyor and Trump ally My Pillow CEO Mike Lindellsued the committee in January to stop a subpoena served on his telephone provider.
Cleta Mitchell, a right-wing activist and longtime conservative attorney who once represented the National Rifle Association, has sued the committee to stop the review of her phone records. Mitchell was on the call with Trump when he pressured Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to alter election results in 2020. Notably, McClatchy reported that Mitchell expressed concern in 2018 that the NRA and Russia coordinated to funnel cash into Trump’s first presidential bid. Mitchell denied the allegations but cooperated with legislators. The committee subpoenaed her in March.
Stephen Miller sued the committee in March in hopes of stopping investigators from reviewing his phone’s metadata. The reason for his request? It would violate his mother’s privacy since he remains on her family cell phone plan.
For a minute-by-minute breakdown of Jan. 6, 2021, check out the tick-tock outline available here.
A comprehensive guide to social media posts from legislators about Jan. 6 before, during, and after the attack was first compiled by Rep. Zoe Lofgren last year. A digestible recap with source documents is available here.
The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Daniel Donner, and Carolyn Fiddler, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
●Primary Night: The Gregs of Rath: After a brief break, the primary season continues Tuesday with contests in California, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota. As always, we've put together our preview of what to watch starting at 8 PM ET when the first polls close. You'll also want to bookmark our primary calendar, which includes the dates for primaries in all 50 states.
Democrats are going on the offensive in several California contests to try to help weaker Republicans pass more formidable opponents in the top-two primary. One of Team Blue's biggest targets is Rep. David Valadao, who was one of 10 Republicans to vote to impeach Donald Trump last year and now faces two intra-party foes in the Central Valley-based 22nd District.
House Majority PAC has dropped $280,000 to boost one of them, former Fresno City Councilman Chris Mathys, by ostensibly attacking him as "100% pro-Trump and proud," while also promoting Democratic Assemblyman Rudy Salas. Valadao's allies at the Congressional Leadership Fund, though, aren't sitting idly by, as they've deployed a larger $790,000 on messaging hoping to puncture Mathys by labeling him "soft on crime, dangerously liberal."
Orange County Democrat Asif Mahmood is trying a similar maneuver against Republican Rep. Young Kim over in the 40th District by airing ads to boost Mission Viejo Councilman Greg Raths, a Republican who has a terrible record in local congressional races. That's also prompted a furious backlash from the CLF, which is spending $880,000 to stop Raths from advancing. But there's been no such outside intervention to the south in the 49th District, where Democratic Rep. Mike Levin is taking action to make sure his GOP foe is Oceanside City Councilman Christopher Rodriguez rather than 2020 rival Brian Maryott.
That's not all that's on tap. We'll be watching GOP primary contests in Mississippi and South Dakota, where Reps. Steven Palazzo and Dusty Johnson face potentially serious intra-party challenges. Both parties will also be picking their nominees for hotly contested general election contests, as well as in safe House seats. You can find more on all these races, as well as the other big elections on Tuesday's ballot, in our preview.
Election Night
●California: While the Golden State's many competitive House top-two primaries will take center-stage on Tuesday, we also have several major local races to watch. Unless otherwise noted, all of these races are officially nonpartisan primaries where candidates need to win a majority of the vote in order to avoid a Nov. 8 general election.
We'll begin in the open seat race for mayor of Los Angeles, a contest that's largely been defined by a $34 million spending spree by billionaire developer Rick Caruso. However, while some progressives have feared that the Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat's offensive could allow him to win outright, a recent poll from UC Berkeley for the Los Angeles Times shows Democratic Rep. Karen Bass in first with 38%. That survey has Caruso not far behind with 32%, while City Councilman Kevin de León, who ran for Senate in 2018 as a progressive Democrat, lags in third with just 6%.
Over to the north there's a competitive contest to succeed termed-out San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo in a Silicon Valley community where the major fault lines are usually between business-aligned politicians like Liccardo and candidates closer to labor. The top fundraiser has been Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez, a longtime union ally who unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2006 and now enjoys the backing of PACs funded by labor, police unions, and even the San Francisco 49ers. Another prominent contender is Councilmember Matt Mahan, who is supported by Liccardo's PAC even though the mayor himself has yet to endorse. The field also includes two other council members, the labor-aligned Raul Peralez and the business-allied Dev Davis, but they have not received any outside aid. San Jose voters Tuesday will also decide on Measure B, which would move mayoral contests to presidential years starting in 2024.
There are also several competitive district attorney races to watch, including in San Jose's Santa Clara County. Three-term incumbent Jeff Rosen is arguing he's made needed criminal justice reforms, but public defender Sajid Khan is campaigning as the "true, real progressive DA" he says the community lacks. The contest also includes former prosecutor Daniel Chung, a self-described "moderate" who has a terrible relationship with his one-time boss Rosen. Over in Orange County, Republican District Attorney Todd Spitzer is hoping that multiple scandals won't prevent him from scoring an outright win against Democrat Peter Hardin and two other opponents.
San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin has a tough race of his own as he tries to turn back a recall campaign, and several polls find voters ready to eject the criminal justice reformer. If a majority vote yes on the recall question, which is identified as Proposition H, Mayor London Breed would appoint a new district attorney until a special election is held this November. However, SF voters will also be presented with Proposition C, which would prevent Breed's pick from running in that contest and make it extremely difficult to get recall questions on future ballots.
Back in Southern California we'll also be watching the race for Los Angeles County sheriff, where conservative Democratic incumbent Alex Villanueva is trying to win a majority of the vote against eight foes. Bolts Magazine has details on several more law enforcement contests across California as well.
Finally, we also have the special general election to succeed Republican Devin Nunes, who has amazingly not yet been fired as head of Trump's disastrous social media project, in the existing version of the 22nd Congressional District, a Central Valley seat Trump carried 52-46. The first round took place in April and saw former Assembly Republican leader Connie Conway lead Democrat Lourin Hubbard, who is an official at the California Department of Water Resources, 35-19 in all-party primary where Republican candidates outpaced Democrats 66-34. Neither Conway nor Hubbard are seeking a full term anywhere this year.
Senate
●AL-Sen: While Rep. Mo Brooks surprised plenty of observers two weeks ago by advancing to the June 21 runoff with former Business Council of Alabama head Katie Britt, his allies at the Club for Growth aren't acting at all confident about his chances of actually winning round two. Politico reports that the Club on Thursday canceled more than $500,000 in advertising time meant to benefit Brooks, who trailed Britt 45-29 on May 24.
The congressman got some more disappointing news the following day when Army veteran Mike Durant, who took third with 23%, announced that he wouldn't support or even vote for either Britt or Brooks. While Durant claimed hours before polls closed on May 24 that he'd endorse Brooks over Britt, he now says, "Mo Brooks has been in politics for 40 years, and all he does is run his mouth." Durant also had harsh words for the frontrunner, arguing, "Katie Britt doesn't deserve to be a senator."
●CO-Sen: Wealthy businessman Joe O'Dea has publicized a survey from Public Opinion Strategies that gives him a 38-14 lead over state Rep. Ron Hanks in the June 28 Republican primary to face Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet. O'Dea has also announced that he's spending $325,000 on a TV and radio campaign against Hanks, who ended March with all of $16,000 in the bank.
●MO-Sen: While state Attorney General Eric Schmitt's allies at Save Missouri Values PAC have largely focused on attacking disgraced former Gov. Eric Greitens ahead of the August GOP primary, the super PAC is now spending $510,000 on an offensive against a third candidate, Rep. Vicky Hartzler. The spot argues that Hartzler "voted to give amnesty to over 1.8 million illegal immigrants, and she even voted to use our tax dollars to fund lawyers for illegals who invaded our country."
While several Republicans initially showed interest in taking on incumbent Laura Kelly, who is is the only Democratic governor up for re-election this year in a state that Donald Trump carried, Attorney General Derek Schmidt has essentially had the field to himself ever since former Gov. Jeff Colyer dropped out in August. The RGA isn’t waiting for Schmidt to vanquish his little-known primary foe, as it’s already running a commercial promoting him as an alternative to Kelly.
●MA-Gov: Attorney General Maura Healey won Saturday's Democratic Party convention with 71% of the delegates, while the balance went to state Sen. Sonia Chang-Díaz. Chang-Díaz took considerably more than the 15% she needed in order to secure a spot on the September primary ballot for governor, but she faces a wide polling and financial deficit.
●MD-Gov: The first independent poll of the July 19 Democratic primary comes from OpinionWorks on behalf of the University of Baltimore and the Baltimore Sun, and it finds state Comptroller Peter Franchot in the lead with 20%. Author Wes Moore is close behind with 15%, while former DNC chair Tom Perez and former Prince George's County Executive Rushern Baker take 12% and 7%, respectively; a 31% plurality remains undecided.
While former U.S. Secretary of Education John King snagged just 4%, here, though, his own numbers show him in far better shape. He released an internal from 2020 Insight last month that showed Franchot at 17% as King and Moore took 16%; Perez took the same 12% that OpinionWorks gave him, while 27% were undecided.
OpinionWorks also gives us a rare look at the GOP primary and has former state Commerce Secretary Kelly Schulz, who is backed by termed-out Gov. Larry Hogan, beating Trump-endorsed Del. Dan Cox 27-21; wealthy perennial candidate Robin Ficker is a distant third with 5%, while a hefty 42% of respondents didn't choose a candidate.
●MI-Gov: The Michigan Supreme Court on Friday ruled against former Detroit police Chief James Craig and wealthy businessman Perry Johnson's attempts to get on the August Republican primary ballot after state election authorities disqualified them for fraudulent voter petition signatures, but neither of them is giving up hope of still capturing the GOP nod.
Craig acknowledged last month that he would consider a write-in campaign if his legal challenge failed, and he said Sunday on Fox, "It's not over. We are going to be evaluating next steps." While Craig doesn't appear to have addressed the possibility of a write-in campaign since the state's highest court gave him the thumbs down, he responded in the affirmative when asked, "Are they trying to steal your election?" Johnson, for his part, asked a federal judge the following day to halt the printing of primary ballots.
●NY-Gov: Last week was the deadline for independent candidates to turn in the 45,000 signatures they'd need to make the November ballot, and disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo did not submit any petitions.
●KS-03: Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids faces a rematch with former state GOP chair Amanda Adkins, who faces only minor opposition for renomination. Davids beat Adkins 54-44 in 2020 as Joe Biden pulled off an identical win in her suburban Kansas City seat, but Republican legislators passed a new gerrymander this year that slashes Biden’s margin to 51-47.
●MI-10: Former Macomb County Judge Carl Marlinga has dropped an internal from Target Insyght that shows him leading two-time GOP Senate nominee John James 44-40 in a general election contest in this swing seat, which is similar to the 48-45 edge he posted in January. The firm also gives Marlinga a 40-16 advantage over Warren Council member Angela Rogensues in the August Democratic primary.
●NC-13: The DCCC has released an in-house survey that shows Democrat Wiley Nickel with a 45-43 advantage over Republican Bo Hines. This poll was conducted May 18-19, which was immediately after both men won their respective May 17 primaries in this competitive district in Raleigh's southern suburbs; it's also the first we've seen from this contest.
●NV-01: Former 4th District Rep. Cresent Hardy startled observers when he filed to take on Democratic incumbent Dina Titus right before filing closed March 18, but the Republican still doesn't appear to have gotten around to cluing in donors about his latest comeback attempt. Hardy, mystifyingly, waited until April 15 to even open a new fundraising account with the FEC, and he proceeded to haul in all of $9,000 through May 25 without spending a penny of it.
Hardy faces intra-party opposition next Tuesday from conservative activist David Brog, Army veteran Mark Robertson, and former Trump campaign staffer Carolina Serrano, all of whom we can accurately say spent infinitely more than him. Titus herself is going up against activist Amy Vilela, who took third place with 9% in the 2018 primary for the 4th District.
●NY-19 (special), NY-23 (special): Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul has officially set Aug. 23 special elections to succeed Democrat Antonio Delgado and Republican Tom Reed in the existing versions of the 19th and 23rd Congressional Districts, respectively. Both races will coincide with the primaries for the new congressional and state Senate districts. The 19th supported Biden 50-48, while the 23rd went for Trump 55-43.
●NY-23: Developer Carl Paladino launched his bid over the weekend to succeed retiring Republican Rep. Chris Jacobs, and the 2010 GOP gubernatorial nominee immediately picked up an endorsement from the House’s third-ranking Republican, 21st District Rep. Elise Stefanik. Paladino won’t have a glide path to the nomination, though, as state party chair Nick Langworthy reportedly will also enter the August primary ahead of Friday’s filing deadline. Trump would have carried this seat in southwestern upstate New York 58-40.
Langworthy hasn’t said anything publicly about his plans, but Tompkins County Legislator Mike Sigler has abandoned his own nascent campaign to support him. Paladino himself told the Buffalo News he tried to deter the chair from running, but added, “He's all about himself and is using party resources to pass petitions so he can go down to Washington and act like a big shot.”
Both Paladino and Langworthy have longtime ties to Trump, and the two even made an unsuccessful attempt to recruit him to run for governor in 2014. Paladino was all-in for Trump’s White House bid in 2016, and he even dubbed none other than Stefanik a “fraud” for refusing to endorse the frontrunner. (Stefanik has since very much reinvented herself as an ardent Trumpist.) Langworthy himself also was all-in for Trump well before the rest of the GOP establishment fell into line.
Trump’s transition committee condemned Paladino in late 2016 after the then-Buffalo School Board member said he wanted Barack Obama to “catch[] mad cow disease” and for Michelle Obama to “return to being male” and be “let loose” in Zimbabwe; Trump and Paladino, though, have predictably remained buds. Langworthy, for his part, reportedly had Trump’s support in his successful bid to become state party chair.
●OH-01: Democrat Greg Landsman has publicized a mid-May internal from Impact Research that shows him deadlocked 47-47 against Republican incumbent Steve Chabot. This is the first survey we've seen of the general election for a Cincinnati-based seat that would have supported Joe Biden 53-45.
●TN-05: On Friday night, a state judge ordered music video producer Robby Starbuck back onto the August Republican primary ballot, though the Tennessee Journal predicted, "An appeal appears all but certain." Party leaders ejected Starbuck and two others in April for not meeting the party's definition of a "bona fide" Republican, but the judge ruled that the GOP's decision was invalid because it violated state open meeting law. The deadline to finalize the ballot is Friday.
●TX-15: Army veteran Ruben Ramirez announced Monday that he would seek a recount for the May 24 Democratic runoff, a decision he made shortly after the state party's canvas found that he still trailed businesswoman Michelle Vallejo by 30 votes. The eventual nominee will go up against 2020 Republican nominee Monica De La Cruz, who won the Republican primary outright in March, in a Rio Grande Valley seat that Trump would have taken 51-48.
●TX-28: Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar's lead over progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros increased from 177 votes immediately following their runoff two weeks ago to 281 with the final county-by-county canvass of votes that concluded on Friday. Cuellar again declared victory, but Cisneros said on Monday that she would seek a recount.
●TX-34 (special): The Texas Tribune reports that Republican Maya Flores and her outside group allies have spent close to $1 million on TV ahead of the June 14 all-party primary for this 52-48 Biden seat. By contrast, Democrat Dan Sanchez and the DCCC are spending $100,000 on a joint digital buy, but they don't appear to be on TV yet. One other Democrat and Republican are also on the ballot, which could keep either Flores or Sanchez from winning the majority they'd need to avert a runoff.
Sullivan, who sports an endorsement from 6th District Rep. Seth Moulton, is adopting a similar argument against Galvin this time. The challenger used her convention speech to argue, "Despite record voter turnout in 2020, hear me on this, voters from some of our most vulnerable communities still saw the lowest voter turnout across Massachusetts, leaving behind far too many voices. I'm talking about the voices of Black, Indigenous, Latinx and AAPI folks."
Galvin, though, insisted his presence was more vital than ever, saying, "I am now the senior Democratic election official in the United States and I intend to use that role to make sure that we're able to make sure that citizens throughout our country have the opportunity to vote."
