How many calories are in your Champagne? The label may soon tell you.

Producers of most wine, beer and spirits have never been required to fully disclose on the bottle or can what’s in their products. But that may soon change as the federal government finally responded to a 20-year effort by public interest groups to require more detailed labeling.

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau — the agency that regulates labeling in much of the alcohol industry — issued a letter in mid-November outlining plans to set rules for mandatory labeling of nutrition, allergen and ingredient information for beer, wine and spirits by the end of 2023.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group that first petitioned for the enhanced and mandatory labels in 2003, is lauding the move as an increasingly health-conscious public demands more information on what it consumes. But the plan to establish rules for alcohol labels is already stirring up pressure from the industry, which fears overly prescriptive requirements could be onerous, particularly for smaller breweries, distilleries and winemakers, even though some producers already voluntarily include certain information.

“There's obviously a large consumer interest in this information, and the industry which was, you know, very strongly opposed to this in 2003 has sort of come around a bit,” said Matt Simon, associate director of litigation for CSPI.

The move would apply transparency to a full range of alcoholic beverages, potentially changing how people buy and consume most beer, wine and liquor. It would also have significant consequences for an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars, forcing global companies to invest heavily to comply with the new requirements that go beyond listing alcohol by volume and other limited information.

Alcohol manufacturers managed to escape detailed labeling requirements for years when previous administrations did not act on the initial petition because the issue lacked political salience and divided the industry. Although the government initiated a rulemaking process in 2005, it never finalized rules beyond guidelines for voluntary labeling.

Many expected the administration to act after it released a report in February on competition in the alcohol industry, which indicated that regulatory proposals on allergen, nutrition and ingredient labeling “could serve public health and foster competition by providing information to consumers.”

The report — and President Joe Biden’s 2021 executive order on competition — made clear that this administration was prioritizing alcohol, and labeling would be a big part of that. Upping the ante, CSPI and other consumer groups sued the government to act on their petition in October.

“Because of the history in this matter, where sometimes things were proposed and they were never finalized, we do want to use this litigation to try and work with the TTB on getting a commitment to noticing the rulemaking in a time that would be mutually acceptable,” said Lisa Mankofsky, director of litigation for CSPI.

The move toward mandatory labeling also comes as the market for alcohol shifted dramatically during the pandemic. States loosened regulations and normalized to-go cocktails. That shift also corresponded to increased alcohol-related deaths.

The three labeling rules will be subject to public comment and will focus on nutrition and alcohol content; allergens; and ingredients, respectively. The TTB, which regulates labeling for malted beverages like beer as well as alcohol greater than 7 percent by volume, did not respond to a request for comment on future labeling rulemaking.

“We’re not trying to obfuscate but I think we definitely want it to be based on accuracy and that’s something we’d like to see clarification on [when the rules are proposed],” said Michael Kaiser, vice president of Wine America, a trade group.

Winemakers often use additives in the production process, such as egg whites or fish bladders, and health advocates want those ingredients disclosed. But Kaiser explained that those additions are undetectable in the final product and won’t trigger an allergic response.

In spirits, a similar process occurs.

“The distillation process itself transforms the raw materials used to make a spirits product in such a way that many of the ingredients, proteins, peptides or fragments, for example, are not carried over into the distillate,” explained Lisa Hawkins, senior vice president at the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, a trade group. “Labeling for ingredients that went through the distillation process and are no longer present in the final product might introduce consumer confusion, rather than mitigate it.”

As consumer habits and tastes changed, some big industry players have seen the writing on the wall.

Six years ago, the Beer Institute, the trade group for the beer industry’s biggest players, adopted a voluntary disclosure policy asking its members to include more information about ingredients and nutrition, either through a label or online. According to a recent survey, “95 percent of the beer volume” sold by large brands including Anheuser-Busch and Molson Coors Beverage Company now includes such information on “products, packaging or websites.”

"The beer industry already offers more information to consumers than any other alcohol category and we are proud to have paved the way for greater nutritional transparency,” said Jeff Guittard, senior manager of communications at the Beer Institute.

After the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health, the Distilled Spirits Council announced that their board members–including brands like Bacardi and Diageo–would voluntarily include nutrition and serving information on a new label.

But advocates say it’s not enough. For one, they say, it’s voluntary.

“They often make the disclosure very small and hard to read, as opposed to what the petition requests, which is, you can think of it, almost as a graphic box. And then they also don't include ingredient information,” said Mankofsky.

For ease and appearance, trade groups representing nearly every alcoholic beverage raised the idea of QR codes on alcohol labels that would link to the required information, rather than a large nutrition facts panel modeled on food nutrition labeling. To industry, the nutrition panel would be more expensive and harder to implement. It also would be especially burdensome for smaller alcohol makers, experts said.

In many ways, the popularity of White Claw and other hard seltzers paved the way. In previous decades, many alcohol makers staunchly opposed similar labeling, even as nutrition and other kinds of consumer transparency initiatives gained a foothold. But roughly 10 years ago, the hard cider market took off. Most hard ciders and hard seltzers are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, which already requires nutrition labeling.

Nevertheless, the industry remains reluctant to fully embrace the labeling advocates are calling for, especially for smaller alcohol makers.

Marc Sorini, general counsel of the Brewers Association, which represents independent craft brewers, said that his group is still “exploring exactly where our position will be” given that the rules are not public yet.

“There has to be some flexibility in it for small batch products,” he said. “The TTB tends to be pretty sensitive to this.”

For example, brewers that release a seasonal brew–such as a Christmas Ale or Oktoberfest – may have a slightly different formulation each year but use the same spices. If that brewery had to seek government approval every year–conducting rigorous testing and meeting tight requirements–that “will be a hardship for small brewers and for big brewers that make one-off small batches,” Sorini said.

Even as the industry has come around to disclosing more product information, it wants plenty of time to put them in place.

“We’ve seen in the past where new labeling requirements have been required within a month of their announcement and that’s not feasible,” said Michelle McGrath, executive director of the American Cider Association. “There needs to be a long road for implementation whatever the solution.”

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/iDTNw5I
via IFTTT

Read More

Benedict XVI, first pope to resign in 600 years, dies at 95

VATICAN CITY — Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the shy German theologian who tried to reawaken Christianity in a secularized Europe but will forever be remembered as the first pontiff in 600 years to resign from the job, died Saturday. He was 95.

Pope Francis will celebrate his funeral Mass in St. Peter’s Square on Thursday, an unprecedented event in which a current pope will celebrate the funeral of a former one.

Benedict stunned the world on Feb. 11, 2013, when he announced, in his typical, soft-spoken Latin, that he no longer had the strength to run the 1.2 billion-strong Catholic Church that he had steered for eight years through scandal and indifference.

His dramatic decision paved the way for the conclave that elected Francis as his successor. The two popes then lived side-by-side in the Vatican gardens, an unprecedented arrangement that set the stage for future “popes emeritus” to do the same.

A statement from Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni on Saturday morning said that: “With sorrow I inform you that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died today at 9:34 in the Mater Ecclesia Monastery in the Vatican. Further information will be released as soon as possible.”

The Vatican said Benedict’s remains would be on public display in St. Peter’s Basilica starting Monday for the faithful to pay their final respects. Benedict’s request was that his funeral would be celebrated solemnly but with “simplicity,” Bruni told reporters.

He added that Benedict, whose health had deteriorated over Christmas, had received the sacrament of the anointing of the sick on Wednesday, after his daily Mass, in the presence of his his longtime secretary and the consecrated women who tend to his household.

The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had never wanted to be pope, planning at age 78 to spend his final years writing in the “peace and quiet” of his native Bavaria.

Instead, he was forced to follow the footsteps of the beloved St. John Paul II and run the church through the fallout of the clerical sex abuse scandal and then a second scandal that erupted when his own butler stole his personal papers and gave them to a journalist.

Being elected pope, he once said, felt like a “guillotine” had come down on him.

Nevertheless, he set about the job with a single-minded vision to rekindle the faith in a world that, he frequently lamented, seemed to think it could do without God.

IIn vast areas of the world today, there is a strange forgetfulness of God,” he told 1 million young people gathered on a vast field for his first foreign trip as pope, to World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany, in 2005. “It seems as if everything would be just the same even without him.”

With some decisive, often controversial moves, he tried to remind Europe of its Christian heritage. And he set the Catholic Church on a conservative, tradition-minded path that often alienated progressives. He relaxed the restrictions on celebrating the old Latin Mass and launched a crackdown on American nuns, insisting that the church stay true to its doctrine and traditions in the face of a changing world. It was a path that in many ways was reversed by his successor, Francis, whose mercy-over-morals priorities alienated the traditionalists who had been so indulged by Benedict.

Benedict’s style couldn’t have been more different from that of John Paul or Francis. No globe-trotting media darling or populist, Benedict was a teacher, theologian and academic to the core: quiet and pensive with a fierce mind. He spoke in paragraphs, not soundbites. He had a weakness for orange Fanta as well as his beloved library; when he was elected pope, he had his entire study moved — as is — from his apartment just outside the Vatican walls into the Apostolic Palace. The books followed him to his retirement home.

“In them are all my advisers,” he said of his books in the 2010 book-length interview “Light of the World.” “I know every nook and cranny, and everything has its history.”

It was Benedict’s devotion to history and tradition that endeared him to members of the traditionalist wing of the Catholic Church. For them, Benedict remained even in retirement a beacon of nostalgia for the orthodoxy and Latin Mass of their youth — and the pope they much preferred over Francis.

In time, this group of arch-conservatives, whose complaints were amplified by sympathetic U.S.-based conservative Catholic media, would become a key source of opposition to Francis who responded to what he said were threats of division by reimposing the restrictions on the old Latin Mass that Benedict had loosened.

Like his predecessor John Paul, Benedict made reaching out to Jews a hallmark of his papacy. His first official act as pope was a letter to Rome’s Jewish community and he became the second pope in history, after John Paul, to enter a synagogue.

In his 2011 book, “Jesus of Nazareth,” Benedict made a sweeping exoneration of the Jewish people for the death of Christ, explaining biblically and theologically why there was no basis in Scripture for the argument that the Jewish people as a whole were responsible for Jesus’ death.

"It’s very clear Benedict is a true friend of the Jewish people,” said Rabbi David Rosen, who heads the interreligious relations office for the American Jewish Committee, at the time of Benedict’s retirement.

Yet Benedict also offended some Jews who were incensed at his constant defense of and promotion toward sainthood of Pope Pius XII, the World War II-era pope accused by some of having failed to sufficiently denounce the Holocaust. And they harshly criticized Benedict when he removed the excommunication of a traditionalist British bishop who had denied the Holocaust.

Benedict’s relations with the Muslim world were also a mixed bag. He riled Muslims with a speech in September 2006 — five years after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States — in which he quoted a Byzantine emperor who characterized some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as “evil and inhuman,” particularly his command to spread the faith “by the sword.”

A subsequent comment after the massacre of Christians in Egypt led the Al Azhar center in Cairo, the seat of Sunni Muslim learning, to suspend ties with the Vatican, which were only restored under Francis.

The Vatican under Benedict suffered notorious PR gaffes, and sometimes Benedict himself was to blame. He enraged the United Nations and several European governments in 2009 when, en route to Africa, he told reporters that the AIDS problem couldn’t be resolved by distributing condoms.

“On the contrary, it increases the problem,” Benedict said. A year later, he issued a revision saying that if a male prostitute were to use a condom to avoid passing HIV to his partner, he might be taking a first step toward a more responsible sexuality.

But Benedict’s legacy was irreversibly colored by the global eruption in 2010 of the sex abuse scandal, even though as a cardinal he was responsible for turning the Vatican around on the issue.

Documents revealed that the Vatican knew very well of the problem yet turned a blind eye for decades, at times rebuffing bishops who tried to do the right thing.

Benedict had firsthand knowledge of the scope of the problem, since his old office — the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which he had headed since 1982 — was responsible for dealing with abuse cases.

In fact, it was he who, before becoming pope, took the then-revolutionary decision in 2001 to assume responsibility for processing those cases after he realized bishops around the world weren’t punishing abusers but were just moving them from parish to parish where they could rape again.

And once he became pope, Benedict essentially reversed his beloved predecessor, John Paul, by taking action against the 20th century’s most notorious pedophile priest, the Rev. Marcial Maciel. Benedict took over Maciel’s Legionaries of Christ, a conservative religious order held up as a model of orthodoxy by John Paul, after it was revealed that Maciel sexually abused seminarians and fathered at least three children.

In retirement, Benedict was faulted by an independent report for his handling of four priests while he was bishop of Munich; he denied any personal wrongdoing but apologized for any “grievous faults.”

As soon as the abuse scandal calmed down for Benedict, another one erupted.

In October 2012, Benedict’s former butler, Paolo Gabriele, was convicted of aggravated theft after Vatican police found a huge stash of papal documents in his apartment. Gabriele told Vatican investigators he gave the documents to Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi because he thought the pope wasn’t being informed of the “evil and corruption” in the Vatican and that exposing it publicly would put the church on the right track.

Once the “Vatileaks” scandal was resolved, including with a papal pardon of Gabriele, Benedict felt free to take the extraordinary decision that he had hinted at previously: He announced that he would resign rather than die in office as all his predecessors had done for almost six centuries.

“After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths due to an advanced age are no longer suited” to the demands of being the pope, he told cardinals.

He made his last public appearances in February 2013 and then boarded a helicopter to the papal summer retreat at Castel Gandolfo, to sit out the conclave in private. Benedict then largely kept to his word that he would live a life of prayer in retirement, emerging only occasionally from his converted monastery for special events and writing occasional book prefaces and messages.

Usually they were innocuous, but one 2020 book — in which Benedict defended the celibate priesthood at a time when Francis was considering an exception — sparked demands for future “popes emeritus” to keep quiet.

Despite his very different style and priorities, Francis frequently said that having Benedict in the Vatican was like having a “wise grandfather” living at home.

Benedict was often misunderstood: Nicknamed “God’s Rottweiler” by the unsympathetic media, he was actually a very sweet and fiercely smart academic who devoted his life to serving the church he loved.

“Thank you for having given us the luminous example of the simple and humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord,” Benedict’s longtime deputy, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, told him in one of his final public events as pope.

Benedict inherited the seemingly impossible task of following in the footsteps of John Paul when he was elected the 265th leader of the Church on April 19, 2005. He was the oldest pope elected in 275 years and the first German in nearly 1,000 years.

Born April 16, 1927, in Marktl Am Inn, in Bavaria, Benedict wrote in his memoirs of being enlisted in the Nazi youth movement against his will in 1941, when he was 14 and membership was compulsory. He deserted the German army in April 1945, the waning days of the war.

Benedict was ordained, along with his brother, Georg, in 1951. After spending several years teaching theology in Germany, he was appointed bishop of Munich in 1977 and elevated to cardinal three months later by Pope Paul VI.

His brother Georg was a frequent visitor to the papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo until he died in 2020. His sister died years previously. His “papal family” consisted of Monsignor Georg Gaenswein, his longtime private secretary who was always by his side, another secretary and consecrated women who tended to the papal apartment.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/7i2MDhu
via IFTTT

Read More

Barbara Walters, a superstar and pioneer in TV news, dies

NEW YORK — Barbara Walters, a pioneer as TV news’ first woman superstar, has died, according to ABC News. She was 93.

Her cause of death was not immediately known. Other details, such as where she died, were not immediately released.

Walters made headlines in 1976 as the first female network news anchor, with an unprecedented $1 million annual salary.

During more than three decades at ABC, and before that at NBC, Walters’ exclusive interviews with the famous and powerful brought her celebrity status that ranked with theirs.

Her drive was legendary as she competed for each big “get” in a world jammed with more and more rivals, including female journalists who had followed on the trail that she blazed.

As a highly successful side venture, she created and appeared on a daytime ABC talk show, “The View.” In May 2014, she taped her final appearance on “The View” to mark the end of her career on television, but she hosted occasional specials after that.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/dynxme7
via IFTTT

Read More

Suspect in deaths of Idaho students arrested in Pennsylvania

Authorities in Pennsylvania arrested a suspect in the killings of four University of Idaho students who were found stabbed to death in their beds more than a month ago, authorities said Friday.

The killings initially mystified law enforcement and shook the small town of Moscow, Idaho, a farming community of about 25,000 people that had not had a murder for five years. Fears of a repeat attack prompted nearly half of the University of Idaho’s over 11,000 students to leave the city and switch to online classes.

Bryan Christopher Kohberger, 28, was arrested early Friday morning by the Pennsylvania State Police at a home in Chestnuthill Township, authorities said. He is being held for extradition to Idaho on a warrant for first degree murder, according to arrest paperwork filed in Monroe County Court. More details are expected at a press conference later today, and an extradition hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.

Kohberger graduated from Northampton Community College in Pennsylvania with an associate of arts degree in psychology in 2018, said college spokesperson Mia Rossi-Marino.

A Ph.D. student by the same name is listed in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Washington State University, which is a short drive across the state line from the University of Idaho. Messages seeking more information were left for officials at WSU. DeSales University in Pennsylvania confirmed that a student by that name received a bachelor’s degree in 2020 and completed graduate studies in June 2022.

The Idaho students — Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin — were stabbed to death at a rental home near campus sometime in the early morning hours of Nov. 13. Investigators were unable to name a suspect or locate a murder weapon for weeks.

But the case broke open after law enforcement asked the public for help finding a white Hyundai Elantra sedan seen near the home around the time of the killings. The Moscow Police Department made the request Dec. 7, and by the next day had to direct tips to a special FBI call center because so many were coming in. By mid-December, investigators were working through nearly 12,000 tips and had identified more than 22,000 vehicles matching that make and model.

Goncalves, 21, of Rathdrum, Idaho; Mogen, 21, of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Kernodle, 20, of Post Falls, Idaho; and Chapin, 20, of Conway, Washington, were members of the university’s Greek system and close friends. Mogen, Goncalves and Kernodle lived in the three-story rental home with two other roommates. Kernodle and Chapin were dating and he was visiting the house that night.

Autopsies showed all four were likely asleep when they were attacked. Some had defensive wounds and each was stabbed multiple times. There was no sign of sexual assault, police said.

Police said Thursday the rental home would be cleared of “potential biohazards and other harmful substances” to collect evidence starting Friday morning. It was unclear how long the work would take, but a news release said the house would be returned to the property manager upon completion.

Shanon Gray, an attorney representing Goncalves’s father, Steve Goncalves, said law enforcement officials called the family last night to let them know about the arrest, but gave no additional information about how or why they believe he might be connected to the murders.

“Obviously they’re relieved that someone has been arrested,” Gray said. “You guys know about as much as we do right now.”

Ben Roberts, a graduate student in the criminology and criminal justice department at WSU, described Kohberger as confident and outgoing, but said it seemed like “he was always looking for a way to fit in.”

“It’s pretty out of left field,” he said of the news Friday. “I had honestly just pegged him as being super awkward.”

Roberts started the program in August — along with Kohberger, he said — and had several courses with him. He described Kohberger as wanting to appear academic.

“One thing he would always do, almost without fail, was find the most complicated way to explain something,” he said. “He had to make sure you knew that he knew it.”

The case also enticed online sleuths who speculated about potential suspects and motives. In the early days of the investigation, police released relatively few details publicly. Safety concerns also had the university hiring an additional security firm to escort students across campus and the Idaho State Police sending troopers to help patrol the city’s streets.

Kohberger was arrested in Monroe County, located in eastern Pennsylvania in the Pocono Mountains. The county seat, Stroudsburg, is about 100 miles (161 kilometers) north of Philadelphia.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/Gr6KbQD
via IFTTT

Read More

Biden pardons 6 convicted of murder, drug, alcohol crimes

President Joe Biden has pardoned six people who have served out sentences after convictions on a murder charge and drug- and alcohol-related crimes, including an 80-year-old woman convicted of killing her abusive husband about a half-century ago and a man who pleaded guilty to using a telephone for a cocaine transaction in the 1970s.

The pardons, announced Friday, mean the criminal record of the crimes is now purged. They come a few months after the Democratic president pardoned thousands of people convicted of “simple possession” of marijuana under federal law. He also pardoned three people earlier this year and has commuted the sentences of 75 others.

Biden’s stance on low-level crimes, particularly low-level drug possession, and how those crimes can impact families and communities for decades to come has evolved over his 50 years in public service. In the 1990s, he supported crime legislation that increased arrest and incarceration rates for drug crimes, particularly for Black and Latino people. Biden has said people are right to question his stance on the bill, but he also has encouraged them to look at what he’s doing now on crime.

The pardons were announced while the president was spending time with his family on St. Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The White House said those pardoned are people who went on to serve their communities. It said the pardons reflect Biden’s view people deserve a second chance.

Those granted pardons are:

— Beverly Ann Ibn-Tamas, 80, of Columbus, Ohio. At age 33, Ibn-Tamas was convicted of killing her husband. She testified that her husband beat her, verbally abused her and threatened her. She told jurors that she shot him moments after he had assaulted her, while she was pregnant. The judge refused to allow expert testimony on battered woman syndrome, a psychological condition that can develop among victims of domestic violence. Ibn-Tamas got one to five years of incarceration with credit for time served. Her appeal was among the first by someone with battered woman syndrome, and her case has been studied by academics.

— Charles Byrnes-Jackson, 77, of Swansea, South Carolina. Byrnes-Jackson pleaded guilty to possession and sale of spirits without tax stamps when he was 18, and it involved a single illegal whiskey transaction. He tried to enlist in the Marines but was rejected because of the conviction.

— John Dix Nock III, 72, of St. Augustine, Florida. Nock pleaded guilty to using his property as a grow-house for marijuana 27 years ago. He didn’t cultivate the plants, but he got six months of community confinement. He now operates a general contracting business.

— Gary Parks Davis, 66, of Yuma, Arizona. When Davis was 22, he admitted using a telephone for a cocaine transaction. He served a six-month sentence on nights and weekends in a county jail and completed probation in 1981. After the offense, the White House says, Davis earned a college degree and worked steadily, including owning a landscaping business and managing construction projects. He has volunteered at his children’s high school and in his community.

— Edward Lincoln De Coito III, 50, of Dublin, California. De Coito pleaded guilty at age 23 to being involved in a marijuana trafficking conspiracy. He was released from prison in December 2000 after serving nearly two years. Before the offense, De Coito had served honorably in the U.S. Army and the Army Reserves and had received numerous awards.

— Vincente Ray Flores, 37, of Winters, California. As a 19-year-old, Flores consumed ecstasy and alcohol while serving in the Air Force, later pleading guilty at a special court-martial. He was sentenced to four months of confinement, loss of $2,800 in pay and a reduction in rank. Flores participated in a six-month rehab program that gives select enlisted offenders a chance to return to duty after therapy and education. His reduction in rank was amended, and he remains on active duty, earning medals and other awards for his service.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/SVBitlw
via IFTTT

Read More

Ethics questions on fundraiser, expenses and more: Where George Santos' many scandals stand

Every day brings Rep.-elect George Santos closer to his official Congressional swearing in. Every day also seemingly reveals further problems for the scandal-plagued New York Republican.

The unraveling of Santos’ campaign narrative started with a New York Times exposéon Dec. 19 that called into question claims he’d made about attending Baruch College, working at Goldman Sachs and saving thousands of dogs and cats for an animal rescue charity.

Here’s a recap of the additional dizzying developments since Monday, when the New York Republican first addressed fabrications about his resume, dismissing them as mere embellishments.

Selling access to his swearing-in

For between $100 and $500, Santos said donors could get a bus trip to Washington, lunch, a swearing-in ceremony and a campaign-led tour of the “Capitol grounds.” The invitation, first reported by CNN Thursday, launched a fresh round of questions about Santos’ ethics.

Campaign finance experts at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center said it wasn’t immediately clear that the offer was a violation, since the invitation didn’t explicitly say the money paid was for a tour. Additionally, the tour offer was for the “Capitol grounds,” not the Capitol building itself or its office buildings, which could be a reference to the outdoor public space around the Capitol rather than private areas. Santos could run afoul of ethics rules barring the use of official resources for campaigns, however, if he explicitly held tours or meetings with donors in congressional buildings.

Congress’ ethics watchdog recently knocked outgoing Rep. Kai Kahele (D-Hawaii), for example, for campaign social media posts from the Capitol and House office buildings. If Santos is inviting donors to the official swearing-in ceremony, it could violate those same rules. It’s an unusual move either way – lawmakers each receive a few invites to the swearing in ceremony that they typically give to family or close friends.

Key Republican congressman predicts ethics probe

Kentucky Rep. James Comer, the top Republican on the Oversight Committee, said on Fox News Thursday night that he's “pretty confident” the House Ethics Committee will investigate Santos. He also called the member-elect's resume fabrications “a disgrace, he’s lied to the voters.”

House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, who is facing a rebellion among some conservatives that complicates his bid for the House speakership, as well as other conference leaders have remained silent about Santos’ admitted fabrications.

Eye-popping expenditures

Santos is also drawing scrutiny for a series of questionable expenditures made by his campaign. The campaign spent $11,000 to rent a suburban house in Huntington, Long Island, claiming it was lodging for staff, the New York Times reported — but neighbors said Santos himself was seen living there. It’s illegal for a candidate to spend campaign funds on their own personal expenses.

The campaign also spent more than $40,000 on air travel, according to the Times — a figure far beyond what is typically spent during a local congressional campaign. Another $30,000 was spent on hotels across the country and $14,000 on car services. Dozens of expenditures by the campaign were listed in disclosure forms at $199.99, just below the $200 threshold where receipts are required.

Santos attorney Joe Murray told the Times that some campaign money was spent “unwisely” by a firm that has since been fired, but that all the expenditures were legal.

Press secretary resigns

In a sign Santos' standing is growing increasingly shaky, his campaign press secretary resigned Thursday, POLITICO first reported. The press secretary, Gabby Lipsky, had been expected to join the congressman-elect’s staff in D.C. before she stepped down, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Democratic congressman introduces the “SANTOS Act”

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-Bronx) announced Thursday night he is introducing legislation that would require candidates for federal office to disclose their employment, educational and military history under oath. False statements would be punishable as perjury.

“I find it outrageous that a fraudulent candidate like George Santos can lie to voters about his qualifications, about his employment and educational background,” Torres said in an interview. “It would enable voters to compare what a candidate has said under oath, versus what a candidate has said on the campaign trail.”

He’s dubbing the bill the Stop Another Non-Truthful Office Seeker, or SANTOS Act. It's unclear if the bill would go anywhere with the House GOP days from taking the majority.

Torres said his bill would focus specifically on verifiable educational, employment and military history — steering clear of questions like personal identity, where answers are more subjective. Santos has also been called out for lying about being Jewish. “There’s not a First Amendment right to perjure yourself,” Torres said.

Questions about his mother’s death

Santos is also facing questions about statements he made about the death of his mother, after journalist Yashar Ali unearthed tweets he posted with potentially contradictory accounts of her demise.

In 2021, Santos tweeted, “9/11 claimed my mothers life.” In a separate 2021 post, however, he placed her death in 2016, writing: “December 23rd this year marks 5 years I lost my best friend and mentor. Mom you will live forever in my heart.” An obituary confirms she died in 2016.

Santos’ campaign website says that his mother, who was working in the World Trade Center’s South Tower on Sept. 11, survived the attacks but “passed away a few years later when she lost her battle to cancer.”

Many 9/11 survivors developed cancer and other illnesses related to their exposure to toxins from the terrorist attack, but Santos has not clarified whether her illness was linked to the attack and groups that track survivors have no record of her ever filing for a related compensation award or lawsuit, according to Rolling Stone.

Three new probes

Multiple law enforcement agencies are looking into Santos’ actions. Federal prosecutors at the U.S. attorney's office for the Eastern District of New York are reviewing public campaign filings amid questions about the source of the politician’s wealth, ABC News first reported.

The Nassau County district attorney announced an investigation Wednesday to determine if any of his fabrications amount to a crime.

New York state Attorney General Tish James’ office has also said it is looking into a number of issues related to Santos’ conduct.

A spokesperson for Santos did not return a message seeking comment.

Olivia Beavers contributed to this report.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/OvNA5GW
via IFTTT

Read More

The Looming GOP Crisis Over Ukraine

The most revealing Trump comment this month wasn’t about his legal jeopardy, his taxes or even the get-yours-now NFTs he began hawking ahead of the holidays for a cool $99 each.

In fact, the comment wasn’t even made by Donald Trump himself.

“Zelensky is basically an ungrateful international welfare queen,” Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son, said on Twitter shortly before the Ukrainian president traveled to Washington.

Like much from his social media oeuvre, Trump the younger was thirsting for clicks and attention (mission accomplished!). Yet his attack, wrapped with a dog whistle-shaped bow for his fellow conservatives, represented more of a substantive critique on a signal foreign policy issue than his dad has ventured in recent weeks.

More significantly, the invective, from a dedicated troll who’s obsessive about properly channeling the right’s id, was a reminder of the churning debate within the Republican Party — one the party’s putative presidential frontrunner is effectively sitting out but that’s only intensifying.

After six years of defeat and coming on two decades since one of their standard-bearers claimed the popular vote, the GOP is in the midst of an identity crisis.

It must grapple with whether it’s going to retain the Reagan-shaped form most of its elites prefer, a light touch on the market and firm hand abroad, or shift to better reflect an increasingly working-class coalition with no doctrinal allegiance to the free markets and free people Gospel of Paul (Gigot). Or, the more likely outcome: try to forge a hybrid between the two approaches while emphasizing issues of tribal consensus — confronting the left at home and the Chinese abroad — and hope the Democrats put forward a weak nominee.

“A lot of people, I think, tried to put off this policy debate for years now by saying, ‘Well this is all just a question about Trump,’ and it’s like, ‘Oh no it’s not, no it’s not,’” Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told me. “He got elected president because he appealed to our new coalition and tapped into it but it’s well beyond any one guy, not to take anything from him.”

Hawley is perhaps the party’s leading exponent of realigning toward what he calls cultural conservatism and economic and foreign policy nationalism. Few Republican lawmakers are more eager than Hawley to transition away from the libertarian-and-interventionist approach favored by so many Republican donors and their allies in the Senate and on the Gigot-led Wall Street Journal editorial page.

However, Hawley has also been an unwavering, to a fault, Trump ally, is up for re-election in ever-reddening Missouri in 2024 and has no appetite to trigger the former president.

So he won’t quite say this: The quicker Trump fades as a political force the sooner the party’s reckoning may come.

As long as Trump dominates the GOP, the conversation will center around his persona — and all attendant scandals — rather than any policy deliberations.

This is more than a little ironic, of course. The former president’s triumph in the 2016 Republican primaries, his nationalist rhetoric ever since and the string of electoral losses he’s overseen culminating last month have led to this moment of crisis and fostered the permission structure for a debate about what it means to be a Republican.

Yet, as the GOP defeats have mounted and Trump’s interests have turned to legal survival and money-making, it’s increasingly clear that he was more symptom and accelerant of the change taking place in his adopted party than the leader of a newly-imagined, majority coalition. (There’s also the fact that Trump’s actual interests run more to golf and watching television than movement-building.)

“What voters want persistently they’re going to get and our voters have been trying to send a message as it relates to our economic and foreign policy and I think you’re going to see that reflected increasingly over time,” said Hawley, arguing that the working-class voters who today elect Republicans like him are “in the driver’s seat.”

Now the question is where they, or the traditionalists attempting to keep a hand on the wheel, will steer the party.

The pre-Trump Republicans aren’t going away quietly.

In preparation for the coming debate, an influential coterie of defense hawks, led by a group called the Vandenberg Coalition, commissioned an extensive survey earlier this month testing voter opinion on foreign policy issues.

I obtained a series of slides from the not-yet-released survey, conducted by the Republican polling firm Public Opinion Strategies.

“Republicans remain much more hawkish than Democrats on some of the big national security issues,” said Carrie Filipetti, who runs the non-partisan Vandenberg Coalition. Filipetti noted that the group’s research found Trump voters far more supportive than Biden backers of increased defense spending to confront China, uneasiness with the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal and a willingness to use force to prevent a nuclear Iran.

When it comes to the most serious, ongoing foreign policy issue confronting the West, though, she delicately conceded that GOP voters have less appetite for sending additional money and weaponry to Ukraine.

“Our polling suggests Ukraine hawks in both parties are going to have to emphasize oversight and accountability to bring a Republican House along in the new Congress,” Filipetti said.

Part of the right’s split-opinion on foreign policy issues can be chalked up to the predictable partisanship of a polarized age — 82 percent of Trump voters in the survey disapproved of President Biden’s handling of Ukraine. “Kamala and Pelosi hold a Ukrainian flag up in the well of the House and no wonder,” fumed one Republican hawk in explaining to me about how Democrats are not helping his cause.

There’s more at work than mere tribalism, though.

While there’s still a latent disdain toward Russia among many older Republicans, that enmity is not shared across the party’s rank-and-file.

For one, Rupert Murdoch’s influential media empire is divided. His print properties in the U.S. are largely supportive of Ukraine while Fox News, with its broader reach, deploys a pair of primetime anchors in Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham who are deeply uneasy about American efforts to bolster its defenses.

Other influential figures with the grassroots right, including Charlie Kirk and his youth-oriented Turning Point USA, are equally disdainful of sending more money and materiel to Kyiv.

“We shouldn’t underestimate the appeal of the Trumpy side here among younger conservative types,” said William Kristol, the neoconservative writer and former Republican, pointing to their ascent over six years. “What’s so distressing on Ukraine is that Trump is not driving the opposition, it’s the grassroots.”

To catch a glimpse at where the GOP’s new guard is on the issue, examine the response to Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell when he posted a picture of himself standing with Zelenskyy in the Capitol and proclaimed that supporting Ukraine is both “morally right” and “a direct investment in cold, hard, American interests.”

“McConnell keeps spiking the football,” Ingraham responded. “I think he enjoyed the ’22 elections more than Biden.”

This is all to say that when the younger Trump belittles Zelenskyy it’s because there’s a receptive audience for such ridicule among the very online right.

What gives the new guard hope is that some in Congress are clearly getting the message.

Trumpeting the combined opposition among Senate and House Republicans to the just-passed omnibus spending bill, Representative Chip Roy (R-Tex.) said it was a “pretty damn big deal” that 229 of 263 Republicans between the two chambers would vote against a measure full of both earmarks and the sort of defense spending hikes that once would have been impossible for Republicans to resist.

“We’re getting a little bit of religion,” said Roy.

Hawley is more cautious in his optimism, in part because Senate Republicans are more reflective of a Bush-era party, as was made clear by the lack of support in their ranks for the rail workers earlier this month.

“Why would we ever be on the side of the suits rather than on the sides of these folks who are our people?” Hawley wondered about his caucus’ unwillingness to sweeten the contract of the rail workers unions who nearly went on strike.

Still, even the glacial Senate is changing, in part because of retirements and succession. Seven of the 11 Senate Republicans who opposed a supplemental Ukraine aid bill last spring were elected in the two previous election cycles. (Look no further than the votes of Tennesseans Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, who replaced, respectively, Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander, both committed internationalists.)

Hawley received another reinforcement this election from Ohio, where J.D. Vance was elected to succeed Sen. Rob Portman, a consummate establishmentarian.

Hawley said he had already started talking to Vance, whom he called “a fellow traveler,” about how they could push the party and said confidently there would be more than 11 no votes the next time a Ukrainian aid bill comes before the Senate.

The question at hand, though, is far bigger than the war in Europe. There’s what Republicans should stand for on trade, immigration and the role of government broadly in the economy.

National security, however, had long been the adhesive that held together an at-times unwieldy conservative coalition. The threat of communism unified Republicans through the Cold War and after 9/11 Islamic terrorism sustained that unity across factional lines. Then came Iraq.

The GOP’s Ukraine divide is so resonant because it’s here and now and because it neatly cleaves much of the party’s old and new guard. But it also cuts deeply because it represents a stand-in for the internal party debate that never took place over the Iraq war, the long shadow of which still stretches over the GOP nearly 20 years after American invasion.

“There are many folks in elected office who don’t really want to reckon with foreign policy failures and in some cases outright lies to the American people — that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that turns out that was a lie,” Hawley told me, adding that “we’re going to have to” come to terms with this history.

That is, to put it mildly, of little interest to most Republican officials, who’d like to get on with the business of rebuilding the party, defeating Democrats and reclaiming the presidency.

And many of these Republicans think there’s an obvious way to do that.

“The two wings [of the GOP] are close enough on China that this can be emphasized,” said Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.), adding that the border and a potential recession on Biden’s watch will also unify Republicans. That trio of issues, Cassidy said, “can paper over other differences.”

More quietly, for now, other traditionalist Republicans have the same solution to their internal divide that they have for everything else the ails the party: Ron DeSantis.

While he may come off as a Trumpist in style, plugged-in hawks and doves alike in the party are convinced he tends to be more of an interventionist. The hawks take reassurance from those surrounding DeSantis and the doves, well, they’ve simply read his first book.

“Dreams From Our Founding Fathers,” is a riposte to Barack Obama, and not because he was too willing to project American force abroad.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/8yIePC1
via IFTTT

Read More

Sarah Huckabee Sanders picks Florida official to ‘transform’ Arkansas education

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Arkansas Gov.-elect Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Thursday chose one of Florida’s top education officials — Senior Chancellor Jacob Oliva — to lead schooling efforts in her state.

By nominating Oliva, Sanders is attempting to bring in a Florida leader who in recent years played a key role in carrying out the education agenda of GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Sanders, in announcing the move, touted that experience under Florida’s Republican governor, which spanned fighting against schools implementing Covid-19 restrictions and carrying out conservative legislation like the parental rights law, labeled “Don’t Say Gay” by opponents, that restricts lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity.

“He is a leader who has proven himself in the fight to empower parents and implement bold education reforms under Governor [DeSantis] and we are ready to transform Arkansas education,” Sanders wrote in a tweet Thursday.

Oliva carries years of education experience at both the state and local level.

Since 2017, Oliva has been senior chancellor at Florida’s Department of Education, a position in charge of public schools, school safety, early learning and school choice. He remained in this role throughout the governorship of DeSantis and major events such as the 2018 Parkland school shooting, the effects of which are still lingering in Florida schools.

Oliva recently has helped Florida carry out some controversial laws like “Don’t Say Gay” as state education leaders press schools over possible LGBTQ policies they say could infringe on the rights of parents. He also earlier this year applied to become the superintendent of schools in Miami-Dade County.

Before his tenure at the Florida Department of Education, Oliva began his career teaching elementary school and rose through the leadership ranks to principal at two schools in Flagler County. Oliva later went on to lead Flager County’s schools as superintendent for four years until joining the state education agency.

State lawmakers in Arkansas on Thursday endorsed Sander’s push to hire Oliva, with some calling it a “home run” and a move that will “place Educational Freedom back at the forefront.”

Officials with the Florida Department of Education on Thursday thanked Oliva for his service.

“For the last five years, Senior Chancellor Oliva has been a dedicated member of the Florida Department of Education’s leadership team, including serving as interim education commissioner, and his work has helped launch Florida as the Education State,” the agency said in a statement.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/DihCIvm
via IFTTT

Read More

Belarus blames Ukraine for downed missile as Kyiv suggests Russian ‘provocation’

Minsk summoned Kyiv’s ambassador over the incident, which happened amid a major Russian assault on Ukraine.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/qFC3M6E
via IFTTT

Read More

GOP attacks Dems' probe of Trump's tax returns on eve of their release

A day before former President Donald Trump’s tax returns see the light of day, Republicans made a last-minute push to discredit the investigation, saying Democrats cherry-picked information from IRS documents to spin a false narrative.

The preemptive strike underlined the political stakes involved in the release of the information — which Trump kept hidden during his 2016 campaign and during his four years in office — as the real estate mogul plots a possible comeback in 2024.

GOP aides told reporters Thursday that Democrats planned to withhold 1,100 electronic files on the audits of Trump that were used as the basis of a report released last week describing how Trump’s returns weren’t selected for audit during the first two years of his presidency. The IRS has a policy of auditing all presidents.

“We were a bit surprised when the materials did not contain the audit materials,” a GOP aide said of the documents to be sent to the House on Friday and released. “So you only have the majority’s interpretation of them. They selected limited pieces of audit materials; they didn’t provide very many source documents that would allow you to evaluate for yourself whether their interpretations are fair.”

The GOP aides said they expect the documents to include six years of individual returns jointly filed by Trump and his wife, Melania, in addition to the forms for several business entities that Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal (D-Mass.) zeroed in on for scrutiny. The aides also expect a report from the Democratic majority; another, shorter process report from Democrats; and dissenting views from Republicans.

The materials will also include a transcript of the closed-door meeting that occurred last week in which the Ways and Means Committee deliberated on whether to make Trump's returns public — a process that one GOP aide called “a total mess.”

A Democratic spokesperson said Republicans reviewed all the files in the Ways and Means report in just nine hours. GOP tax writers had access to the same files Democrats had but never requested that additional information, such as the audit materials, be included in Friday's release

“The Committee’s investigation exposed the truth and the facts are simple. The IRS failed to audit the former President under the mandatory audit program, and only began once Chairman Neal got involved,” a spokesperson for committee Democrats said.

Neal obtained the returns after a long legal battle that culminated in a Supreme Court decision in November that ended Trump's effort to keep them shielded. Trump had challenged Neal's ability to demand the returns under a little-used law that allows the heads of Congress' tax writing committees to examine anyone's private tax information.

Republicans have long called the Democrats' effort a sham that threatens to set off a tit-for-tat of congressional majorities releasing the tax information of political foes.

Democrats counter that their investigation is larger than Trump and is really about accountability for the country’s most powerful person. The IRS presidential audit program is broken, Democrats say, and Trump’s taxes contain several red flags involving questionable business losses, among other things.

The GOP aides told reporters the Democrats' initial report didn’t reflect an understanding of how audits of people with complex taxes work. They also noted that Trump consented to extend the three-year legal limit for auditing filed returns.

“No real surprises for those who know how these systems and processes work,” a GOP aide said of the audits. “I saw nothing here that was out of the ordinary.”

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/29/gop-attacks-dems-probe-of-trumps-tax-returns-00075808
via IFTTT

Read More

How Musk’s Twitter takeover is playing out worldwide

Digital rights campaigners, human rights activists and fact-checkers from Argentina to Iraq are confused, worried and angry about what’s happening at the social network.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/dZq5tJb
via IFTTT

Read More

Justice Department files suit against one of largest drug distributors in U.S.

The Justice Department on Thursday filed a civil lawsuit against AmerisourceBergen Corp., one of the largest drug distributors in the country, alleging that it failed to report “at least hundreds of thousands” suspicious opioid orders to the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Under the Controlled Substances Act, pharmaceutical distributors must monitor the orders they receive for controlled substances, and are required to flag any they deem suspicious to the DEA. According to the filing, AmerisourceBergen repeatedly failed to do so since 2014, despite being made aware of significant “red flags” at pharmacies across the country.

“In the midst of a catastrophic opioid epidemic AmerisourceBergen allegedly altered its internal systems in a way that reduced the number of orders that would be flagged as suspicious. And even up to the orders that AmerisourceBergen identified as suspicious, the company routinely failed to report those suspicious orders,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said during a call with members of the media on Thursday. “In short, the government’s complaint alleges that for years AmerisourceBergen prioritized profits over its legal obligations and over Americans’ well-being.”

According to the Justice Department, AmerisourceBergen knew that drugs sent to two pharmacies in Florida and West Virginia “were likely being sold in parking lots for cash” — knowledge that was described by an AmerisourceBergen employee as “the reddest of red flags,” U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Philip Sellinger told reporters.

In New Jersey, the company knowingly sent drugs to a pharmacy that has pleaded guilty to “unlawfully selling controlled substances,” as well as one where the pharmacist in charge has been indicted on charges of drug diversion, according to prosecutors. And in Colorado, AmerisourceBergen supplied a pharmacy where it had identified 11 patients as potential “drug addicts” with illegitimate prescriptions; two of those patients later died of overdoses, according to the Justice Department.

AmerisourceBergen contends that the suit focuses too heavily on these five pharmacies, which it alleges were “cherry picked” out of tens of thousands it works with.

“Even in these five hand selected examples presented by the DOJ, AmerisourceBergen verified DEA registration and State Board of Pharmacy licenses before filling any orders, conducted extensive due diligence into these customers, reported every sale of every controlled substances to the DEA, and reported suspicious orders of controlled substances to the DEA for every one of these pharmacies — hundreds of suspicious orders in total,” Lauren Esposito, a spokesperson for AmerisourceBergen, said in a statement. “With the vast quantity of information that AmerisourceBergen shared directly with the DEA with regards to these five pharmacies, the DEA still did not feel the need to take swift action itself — in fact, AmerisourceBergen terminated relationships with four of them before DEA ever took any enforcement action while two of the five pharmacies maintain their DEA controlled substance registration to this day.”

If found liable, AmerisourceBergen could face substantial civil penalties “potentially totaling billions of dollars,” Gupta said. Already, the company has had to pay billions for its role in fueling the opioid epidemic. AmerisourceBergen paid $6.1 billion to settle thousands of lawsuits in February, and was one of three companies named in a $400 million settlement paid to the state of West Virginia in August.

U.S. Attorney’s offices for the District of New Jersey, the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the District of Colorado and the Eastern District of New York all assisted in preparing the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

The suit comes as the opioid crisis continues to roil the country. In 2021, more than 107,000 people died from overdoses in the U.S. — over 71,000 of those from synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new data showing a drop in life expectancy in the U.S. last year, a shift that health experts attribute to the combined effects of the opioid epidemic and the Covid-19 pandemic.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/jiRz5u7
via IFTTT

Read More

Transcript tales: Notable moments from Jan. 6 panel interviews

It’s the final week before a new House GOP majority disbands the Jan. 6 select committee, and its members are using it to dump their thousands of pages of raw evidence into the public domain.

The panel has released transcripts of more than 100 witness interviews — still just a tenth of its total collection — with more dropping daily and shedding new light on the extraordinary effort by former President Donald Trump and his enablers to subvert the 2020 election.

We’ve been combing through the transcripts for new details that weren’t previously aired during the committee’s widely watched public hearings or in its voluminous final report released last week. Here are some of the highlights:

New details on Meadows’ handling of documents

POLITICO first broke the news that Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, told the select committee her then-boss sometimes burned documents in his office fireplace during the weeks leading up to Jan. 6 — including at times after meeting with Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.). Hutchinson’s transcripts offer new details about what she says she witnessed.

It wasn’t just once, Hutchinson recalled. She saw Meadows burn papers after Perry’s visits “between two and four times.” Those meetings, she said, were about “election issues.”

Hutchinson also provided a lengthy description of a bizarre episode in which House Intelligence Committee Republican staffers trucked cartloads of documents to the White House and reviewed them in Meadows’ office for potential release. The timing and description of the episode tracks closely with Trump’s effort to declassify and expose records related to the FBI’s investigation of his campaign’s contacts with Russia, which Trump has long derided as a “witch hunt.”

The former Meadows aide described the unusual way the document review proceeded, noting that the files were brought to the White House from the Capitol and that Meadows kept the original documents in an office safe, closely guarding them and keeping their origins secret. Eventually, he would produce at least eight copies of the documents, with varying degrees of redaction, intending to supply at least two of them to conservative media allies.

Hutchinson noted that one set of documents was meant for House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy — but that the California Republican told her he wanted nothing to do with them. She said based on that conversation, she opted not to offer a set to Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell.

Transcripts also revealed Meadows’ Secret Service code name: “Leverage.”

25th Amendment talk

The select committee has released transcripts from several members of Trump’s Cabinet, mostly detailing the days immediately following the attack on Jan. 6, 2021. Most notable was the interview with former Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, who discussed efforts to persuade Trump or his allies to convene a Cabinet meeting in order to take potential steps to limit Trump’s actions in the final days of his administration. Scalia said he had spoken to other Cabinet members about what to do in the aftermath of the attack.

The panel spoke with Elaine Chao, Trump’s Transportation secretary and wife to McConnell, who resigned immediately after Jan. 6 and took a more muted view of the post-attack discussions. She said she didn’t recall her conversation with Scalia, but she agreed that Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 contributed to her decision to resign.

“I wish that he had acted differently,” Chao said of Trump.

There was little serious consideration of the 25th Amendment, according to the transcripts. Marc Short, former Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, told the panel why: Any genuine effort would take weeks, well beyond the end of Trump’s term, given that the procedure gives the president a chance to appeal.

Short said he received a call from Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to discuss the potential invocation of the 25th Amendment, but he said he refused to connect the call to Pence because Short viewed it as a purely political move.

Hutchinson also said she received calls from members of Congress for status updates on discussions on invoking the 25th Amendment. Among those who reached out, she said, were Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), McCarthy and Reps. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) and Mike Johnson (R-La.).

Attorney-client relationships

Trump attorney Sidney Powell, who was a link between the president and some of his fringiest outside advisers, told the select committee that she had attorney-client relationships with four members of Congress over election-related matters. The four: Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas).

Trump allies feared legal repercussions for declaring themselves true electors

Federal prosecutors are eyeing the decisions of pro-Trump Republican activists in seven Biden-won states to design certificates that claimed they were the state’s duly qualified presidential electors. That false electors scheme was a central element of Trump’s bid to remain in power. But in two states — Pennsylvania and New Mexico — the electors insisted that the documents they signed included a caveat: Their status as true electors hinged on whether court rulings affected the outcome of the election.

That caveat may have saved them the legal scrutiny that’s been applied in other states. And now, thanks to the interview of former Trump campaign official Mike Roman, it’s clear why it happened.

Committee staffers read an email from Trump campaign attorney Kenneth Chesebro noting that in a conference call with Pennsylvania’s pro-Trump elector nominees, a concern was raised about the potential for legal exposure if they signed documents without any qualifiers. Chesebro apparently suggested using the caveat in other states as well, but only New Mexico followed suit.

Mundane moments as the Capitol assault began

The select committee transcripts are littered with personal stories about where witnesses were the moment rioters bashed their way into the Capitol. Two from Pence’s top aides stand out. His chief counsel, Greg Jacob, described being at the Capitol refectory on the first floor of the Senate, grabbing a coffee, when a nearby window was smashed in by a rioter with a police shield. That turned out to be Dominic Pezzola, a Proud Boy and the very first rioter to breach the building.

“There was no security that I could see down there, and the glass had shattered just down the hall from where we are, probably 60 feet away,” Jacob recalled.

Jacob said he quickly tapped out an email to attorney John Eastman — an architect of Trump’s last-ditch bid to stay in power — with whom he’d been feuding throughout the day. Jacob told the committee that to get back to Pence, who by then had left the Senate floor, he followed the military aide with the so-called nuclear football, a briefcase with the nuclear codes, convinced that she would be permitted to get close to the vice president.

Short recalled a similar experience, except he was one floor lower than Jacob, getting lunch from the Senate carryout.

“You’re in line waiting for a cheeseburger when all hell breaks loose,” a committee staffer noted during Short’s interview.

Short said he sprinted back to Pence’s location as rioters began to enter the building. “I never got my cheeseburger,” he noted.

The most hostile Jan. 6 interview

Rep.-elect Max Miller’s (R-Ohio) interview with the Jan. 6 select committee was notable if only for the outright hostility he and his lawyer displayed for the panel.

Even other witnesses who had little regard for the committee largely played nice in their interviews. But Miller and his attorney repeatedly derided the panel’s investigators, objected to even basic, foundational questions and openly attacked the committee as an illegitimate “show” rather than a serious probe.

“It’s a simple question,” an unidentified committee interviewer said, at one point, after Miller’s attorney objected to a question about how often Miller interacted with Trump during the months before Jan. 6. “No one is trying to do a perjury trap.”

Later, Miller’s attorney Larry Zukerman attacked the committee investigator for “putting on a show for the congresswoman and the congressman” — a reference to Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), who had dialed into the call.

“You know, this is all pomp and circumstance here that will eventually lead to nothing,” Zukerman said.

Eventually, the repeated insults provoke Kinzinger to chime in, accusing Miller’s attorney of being the one trying to “put on a show.” He then inadvertently referred to the committee as “the prosecution,” prompting a sharp response from Miller, who said he viewed Cheney’s presence in the interview as “trying to intimidate me because I knocked your buddy off the block” — a reference to his primary victory over Cheney ally Anthony Gonzalez earlier this year.

Fuentes was eyed by criminal investigators

Nick Fuentes made headlines when Trump hosted him as a dinner guest in November, but the select committee had long eyed him as figure of interest for the role his “Groyper” movement played in the attack on the Capitol. Groypers are the followers of the white nationalist Fuentes, and several of them have been charged for playing leading roles on Jan. 6.Fuentes didn’t go into the Capitol but was outside as rioters clashed with police, and he later described the scene as “awesome.”

In his February deposition, Fuentes pleaded the Fifth, and his attorney informed the select committee that the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. had labeled him a “subject and possibly a target” of an ongoing criminal probe.

Dan Quayle, the conscience

The former vice president was more ubiquitous than previously known in his effort to advise figures around Trump about how to handle his efforts to subvert the election.

Quayle, notably, advised Pence not to attempt to overturn the election results on Jan. 6 and rather to perform the traditional, constitutionally required task of counting electoral votes certified by the states. But in a transcript of Trump national security adviser Robert O’Brien’s interview, Quayle emerged yet again. He was among the voices, O’Brien noted, telling him not to resign, as Republican mainstays fretted about potential chaos in the closing days of Trump’s administration.

Drama among the organizers of the Jan. 6 rally

The select committee transcripts lay bare the open hostility between different factions of Trump’s “Stop the Steal” allies.

Kimberly Guilfoyle was feuding with GOP fundraiser Caroline Wren. White House adviser Max Miller said Katrina Pierson exaggerated her influence. Pierson advised Trump to keep “psychos” off the rally stage, saying he shouldn’t give speaking slots to Roger Stone, Alex Jones and Michael Flynn.

“You’re done for life with me because I won’t pay you a $60,000 speaking fee for an event you aren’t speaking at?” Wren said to Guilfoyle, per select committee records. “That’s fucking insane.”

Deals to shield evidence from DOJ

The Jan. 6 select committee indicated in numerous interviews with defendants — some awaiting sentencing for storming the Capitol — that it had agreed not to share any evidence it obtained during its interview with the Justice Department, unless that evidence described additional crimes or the committee suspected perjury.

Those promises at least partially explain the panel’s fraught relationship with the Justice Department that became a theme throughout the latter half of its investigation, with the department repeatedly trying to obtain witness transcripts, only to be rebuffed by the panel until mid-December.

Lofgren beefs with Tarrio

When Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio submitted to a deposition — just weeks before he was charged for his role in the events of Jan. 6 — Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) used the moment to pop in for a quick confrontation.

She pointed to something called “Tarrio’s Telegram,” in which Tarrio printed a picture of Lofgren with a caption that apparently called her the c-word, saying she was “blind in one eye.”

“I’m wondering what you meant by that,” she asked Tarrio.

Tarrio said he didn’t recall posting the item. Lofgren then left the deposition as quickly as she arrived.

The issue popped up again, when a committee staffer squarely asked Tarrio whether he called Lofgren the c-word, prompting his lawyer, Dan Hull, to pop in and question the relevance of the questioning.

“That’s a word that’s been around since the 1300s in London. It’s not a particularly nice word for a lot of people, but —”

“You know the history of that word?” a committee staffer replied.

“Unfortunately, I do,” Hull said.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/28/transcript-jan-6-panel-interviews-00075698
via IFTTT

Read More