Senate page     Dec. 26

Senate map
Previous | Next

New polls:  
Dem pickups: PA
GOP pickups: (None)

Takeaways from the Select Committee's Final Report

The Select Committee's report has been out now for a few days, so there are plenty of takeaway pieces from different media outlets. Let's take a look at some of them.

Vox PBS CNN Politico The Washington Post AP

Interestingly, we have been unable to find and "takeaway" pieces from Fox News, Breitbart, or other right-wing outlets. We guess they are slow readers or were too busy decorating their holiday trees.

The PBS story summarizes a detailed list of actions and inactions of Trump's misconduct, many of them illegal:

Naturally, Trump reacted to the final report. How could he not? It recommended that he be prosecuted for four felonies and be barred from ever again holding public office. He responded by posting a video to his social media platform saying that the Committee is deceiving the American people with lies. He also rebutted the Committee's observation that he did nothing for 187 minutes during the riot. He said that he sent out two tweets telling the rioters to support the Capitol police and remain peaceful. One might argue that his oath to see that the laws are faithfully executed requires a bit more than sending out two tweets in the middle of a riot. For example, during the Whiskey Rebellion, George Washington actually sent out five tweets telling the crowd to calm down, and then headed to the airport so he could talk to the rioters in person. That's what leadership looks like.

What Trump did not mention is that prior to those two tweets he sent out a tweet saying that Mike Pence didn't have the courage to protect the country. He also lied about the situation in other tweets. The report addressed the "good" tweets and said they had no effect on the rioters.

In addition to defending himself on the strength of two tweets, Trump whined that the Committee didn't conclude that the election was a corrupt disaster. Possibly because the Committee didn't think it was. (V)

Who Pleaded the Fifth Amendment?

Donald Trump famously once said that only criminals plead the Fifth Amendment when testifying. Well, if that is true, the Select Committee called on at least 32 criminals to testify because that is the number of people already known to have pleaded the Fifth during their testimony. Here is the (initial) list:

During a deposition in August, Trump himself took the Fifth over 400 times. In a criminal trial, the prosecution is not allowed to tell the jury that the defendant pleaded the Fifth earlier. However, in a civil trial, that information can be used against the defendant. (V)

Trump's Tax Returns Are Full of Red Flags

Donald Trump's tax returns are extremely complicated since he owns over 500 entities personally and all of the profits and losses of all of them show up on his personal tax returns. No member of Congress could possibly understand what he did and whether it was legal or not. Well, OK, maybe Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Steven Palazzo (R-MS), Tom Rice (R-SC), Brad Sherman (D-CA), Victoria Spartz (R-IN) and Tom Suozzi (D-NY), since they used to be CPAs. But not the other members. Fortunately, Congress possesses a secret weapon: the Joint Committee on Taxation. It is a nonpartisan agency that advises Congress on tax issues and is staffed with people who actually understand the tax laws. It would be nice if the people who wrote the tax laws actually understood what they were doing, but such is not the case.

For the last few weeks, the JCT has had Donald Trump's past 6 years; worth of tax returns and has been studying them intensely. They have already flagged five items that IRS really needs to examine very closely, as follows:

And these are only the most obvious red flags. Knowing that Trump pushes the envelope on everything, the JCT (and certainly the IRS) should assign experts to go over every line on Trump's recent tax returns and demand proof for every questionable item. (V)

Five Signs That Biden Is Going to Run Again

The only person who knows (maybe) for sure whether Joe Biden is going to run for reelection is... Joe Biden, although Jill Biden is probably a close second. Bettors at PaddyPower put the chance of a run at 71%. But there are tea leaves to read that could give important clues, like these:

So although most Democratic voters don't want Biden to run, it appears that he is going to give it his best. Almost no one wants Biden vs. Trump again, but that is a real possibility. On the other hand, Biden vs. DeSantis seems increasingly likely due to Trump's many legal (and possibly tax) issues. As an aside, bettors at PaddyPower put the chance of DeSantis as the GOP nominee at 55% and of Trump at 31%. Mike Pence and Nikki Haley are at 6%. Gov. Doug Ducey (R-AZ) is at 4%. Sens. Tim Scott (R-SC) and Josh Hawley are at 2%, as are Mike Pompeo and Jeb! Despite the little bubble about Scott as the nominee, being tied with Jeb! at 2% is not good sign. The good news is that Ivanka (0.7%) is ahead of Ye (0.5%). (V)

What's an Abortion?

If a doctor takes a 6-month-old fetus out of a woman's womb during a D&C, that is clearly an abortion. But does taking a pill that causes a pregnancy not to happen an abortion? The words matter since almost half the states have banned most, if not, all, abortions. So what is an abortion? Dictionary.com says it is "the removal of an embryo or fetus from the uterus in order to end a pregnancy." So what's an embryo? The same source calls it "the young of a viviparous animal, especially of a mammal, in the early stages of development within the womb, in humans up to the end of the second month."

Clear? Not really. At least not to the FDA. It has decided that a "morning after pill," including the popular "Plan B One-step," does not cause an abortion. It has now produced wording to be inserted into the leaflets in the packages that say the medication "works before release of an egg from the ovary." It also says that the pill "will not work if you're already pregnant."

The consequence of this ruling is that states that ban abortion will not be able be able to ban the sale of Plan B and similar products because officially they do not cause abortions. At least not under laws banning abortions. A state could pass a law banning the sale of drugs that influence when eggs are released by ovaries, but this quickly runs into banning many birth control pills, pills used in IVF treatments, and more. Whether a state can ban an approved prescription drug or an approved over-the-counter drug opens a whole new can of worms.

Some pharmacists have refused to dispense Plan B on the grounds that abortions violate their religion. Can they continue to refuse to dispense Plan B if the FDA now says it does not cause an abortion? Can a pharmacist make up his own personal definition of abortion? Chief Justice John Roberts, get ready. It will be on your plate before long. (V)

Abbott Strikes Back

Govs. Greg Abbott (R-TX) and Ron DeSantis (F-FL) seem to be engaging in a proxy battle about who can ship more migrants north. Until this past weekend, Ron DeSantis had the upper hand with his planeload of migrants to Martha's Vineyard. Now Abbott has sent three busloads of migrants to D.C. and had them dropped off at One Naval Observatory (the vice president's official residence) on a below-freezing Christmas Eve. An act of Christian charity? We don't know. And unfortunately, the staff theologian forgot that it is unwise to drink eggnog and sacramental wine within a few hours of each other. After all, there may be the blood of Christ, but there ain't no nog of Christ. In any event, a local aid organization brought the migrants to a D.C. church.

Is this a sign that Abbott plans to challenge DeSantis for the Republican nomination in 2024 and feels he needs to out-macho DeSantis? We don't know. Dropping 100+ people out in the freezing cold on Christmas Eve, probably on false pretenses, sounds venal to us, but venal is the secret sauce that many Republican voters lap up with glee. Abbott has been complaining about the administration's failure to secure the border for years. This stunt was just designed to be more dramatic than DeSantis flying migrants from Texas to Massachusetts (with a very short stopover in Florida to make it seem legal). At least Abbott used buses instead of a plane, which saved Texas taxpayers some money, although he missed the opportunity to vastly overpay a Republican donor who owns a charter air company, as did DeSantis.

Maybe Abbott's move was an attempt to bring attention to the potential expiration of Title 42, a Trump-era policy of sending all migrants back to Mexico regardless of their claims of asylum. The Supreme Court put the expiration on hold temporarily, so maybe this is some kind of coded message to the Court to make the hold permanent.

While this may help Abbott pick off some Republicans who currently support DeSantis, one poll shows that only one-third of Americans support this kind of publicity stunt. Maybe Abbott is thinking that first he has to get the nomination, so his general-election strategy will have to wait until that happens. (V)

John Eastman and Clarence Thomas Go Back 40 Years Together

In July 2021, dozens of Justice Clarence Thomas' former clerks gathered at a fancy resort in West Virginia for a reunion with the justice. In one photo of the event, standing next to the Justice's wife Ginni Thomas, was John Eastman, one of the masterminds of Donald Trump's fake elector scheme. And indeed, Eastman clerked for Thomas in 1996. Did he get his legal theories on the Electoral College from Thomas? Interesting question.

Clearly some of the other clerks were discomfited by Eastman's presence at the weekend retreat. But it has been reported that the relationship between Eastman and Thomas goes back before Eastman's clerkship and even before Thomas ascended to the Supreme Court in 1991.

In the 1980s, the two worked in the Reagan administration and knew each other there. They explored writings and legal theories that later informed their views on the Constitution. In those years, both were influenced by the Claremont Institute, which holds that people's fundamental rights come from God or nature, and not from government or written documents like the Constitution. These views have now become ascendant in right-wing legal circles.

In the lead-up to the coup attempt, Eastman concocted a scheme in which the state legislatures could toss out their states' respective laws about how electoral votes were to be determined and send in their own slates of electors, presumably in consultation with God.

Legal experts agree that Eastman and Thomas share a similar worldview. Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig, who has known Eastman since teaching him law at the University of Chicago 30 years ago, said: "They both look at the law in the same way. The fact that John writes it might well be a signal that Thomas would view it in the same way." While the previous election didn't end up in the Supreme Court, a related case, Harper v. Moore, is up before the Court this term. In its ruling, the Court will have to decide if legislatures are free to ignore state laws and just send in a slate of electors they like. That is actually pretty close to what Eastman wanted. So we may find out an indirect way by June how Thomas would have ruled had Eastman gotten his way and Arizona, Georgia, and other states had indeed submitted multiple slates of electors. (V)

Lake Lost the Rest of Her Case as Well

Losing Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (R) filed a lawsuit to try to get her loss overturned or have a new election. Her main argument was "I don't like losing." We noted last week that the judge threw eight of her 10 claims out without even hearing them since that were so absurd. For the other two, he was willing to bring them to trial.

The trial lasted 2 days and is now over. The judge asked for evidence that Maricopa County messed up the election. There were some problems with a few printers, but no voter was denied the chance to vote as a result and all votes were ultimately counted. Several witnesses testified that a small number of printed ballot images were 5% too small and that could happen only if the settings were intentionally wrong. County officials vigorously denied that. It is possible that heat from the printers caused the malfunctions, but that is still under investigation.

Lake's lawyers called on Richard Baris, of the conservative firm Big Data Poll, to discuss the exit polling he did. He said the errors were big enough to change the results. The lawyer for defendant and governor-elect Katie Hobbs (D) noted that FiveThirtyEight bans Big Data Poll because it doesn't believe their polls. We're jealous. We also ban them. They could have cited us, too.

In any event, the judge was not impressed by Lake's case and ruled in favor of Hobbs on Saturday.

Meanwhile, on Friday, in a different case, a different judge ruled against Arizona AG candidate Abe Hamadeh (R), who is trailing Kristin Mayes (D) by 511 votes out of 2.5 million. State law requires a recount in such cases, but it is not complete yet. So it seems the new Republican strategy of "always claim victory and sue if you lose" doesn't seem to be convincing the judges. (V)

Santos Voters Don't Care

We have written about Rep.-elect George Santos (R-NY) here and here. To summarize these items, Santos lied about his education, his job history, his grandparents, and just about everything else in his background. He invented a complete life that he never lived. General speaking, lying in public is not a crime, except in some specific cases such as falsely representing products, but usually not when you are the product. Still, Santos has taken the art of lying to new heights, constructing an entire C.V. where just about every line is false.

Politico was curious about how voters in Santos' district feel about their new all-fake representative, so they sent a couple of reporters over there to talk to some of them. The district covers the northern half of Long Island, from Great Neck to Smithtown. It was represented by Democrat Tom Suozzi until he resigned to run for governor. The PVI is D+2.

What the reporters found is that among some people in the district, the dislike of Democrats is so strong that they would rather have a fabulist representing them than a Democrat. One woman in Glen Cove, who preferred to remain anonymous, said she was more wary of the Democrats than of Santos. She said: "Truthfully, I don't trust the Democrats on anything they say. I see it on the TV and I turn it off." Billionaire John Catsimatidis, who lives in the district, said that Santos is no different than Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who exaggerated his military service record when he ran for the Senate in 2010. Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman (R) said he would withhold judgment. The Democrats the reporters spoke to were furious, but that was to be expected.

For Democrats who can't understand how stupid the voters can be, imagine the situation were reversed. The Democrat was a pathological liar who invented an education background and career out of whole cloth, but on the issues was a generic Democrat. And the opponent was Kari Lake, who has a sterling career that she has presented honestly. Which one would you vote for? (V)

Trumpworld Is Like the Mafia

Ruth Marcus has a column in The Washington Post that is as sad as it is revealing. It discusses the plight of Cassidy Hutchinson, once an aide to Mark Meadows and later a star witness at the Select Committee hearings. She is in her mid-20s and out of work since Trump left office. When the Committee decided it wanted to hear from her because she was at the center of the storm and saw everything first hand, she tried to find a lawyer to help her. She found one, but he wanted a $150,000 retainer—money she didn't have. So she turned to Trumpworld for help. Sure enough, she soon got a call from Stefan Passantino, who worked in the White House Counsel's office during Trump's presidency. He was willing to help. When she asked who would pay the bills, the response was "we have you taken care of." So not only would some unnamed person pay her legal bills without her knowing who it was (a violation of legal ethics), but she was promised a good job in Trumpworld later. She was in her mid 20s, unemployed, frightened, and didn't know what to do.

Hutchinson called her mother and said: "They will ruin my life, Mom, if I do anything they don't want me to do." At first she went along with Passantino because she was scared and didn't know what else to do. Passantino coached her. He didn't tell her to lie but he did tell her to answer most questions with: "I don't recall." He said that is not perjury. Actually, if you do remember—and she remembered most of the things she was asked about vividly—it is perjury. She was hesitant to go along with this, but was still scared. They practiced preparing for the deposition and Passantino kept telling her "No no no no. We don't want to go there." Passantino kept emphasizing that Hutchinson's task was to protect Trump at all costs. In effect, he was Trump's lawyer, not hers. It was a horrible time for a young woman who was in way over her head and was afraid that "once you are looped in, especially financially, with them, there is no turning back. It is like working with the Mafia."

In the end, Hutchinson decided that she couldn't look herself in the mirror if she did what Trumpworld wanted, so she fired Passantino and told the Committee the full truth. Now he has a problem, not her.

Above we have an item about who pleaded the Fifth Amendment. After reading this (or better yet, Marcus' entire column), you might have a better idea of why so many people did that. (V)

A December to Rhymember, Part XIV: Rebel without a Clue

Reader J.D.M. in Cottonwood Shores, TX brings to our attention the fact that The Hill is now running holiday-themed political poetry. Hm. Wonder where they might have gotten that idea from?

In any case, let's do some insurrection-related pieces. To start, a pair of haikus from E.B. in Seattle, WA:

Dear Leader suffer'd
From electile dysfunction
"A steal!" said his id

He tweeted "Be wild!"
"Hang Pence!' Then insurrection
Orange jumpsuits await

And a limerick from S.B. in Natick, MA:

So the Hearing has reached its conclusion,
(The insurrection one, not the collusion)
To no one's surprise,
They said, "Lock up those guys."
In other news, now we've got fusion.

Another, from K.J.O. in Brookdale, NJ:

To democracy he brought insurrection
His crimes did not escape our detection
The jury will see
His future will be
In an orange suit to match his complexion

And finally, a song parody from G.W. in London, England, UK:

Constantly lying about stolen elections
Whilst a blind eye is turned to fascist insurrections
Voter restrictions and gerrymand'rings
These are a few of the GOP's favorite things

Denying trans rights (because ladies are ladies)
Then forcing women to keep rapists' babies
Thoughts and prayers offered after shootings
These are a few of the GOP's favorite things.

Dog-whistle politics, dinners with racists
QAnon nonsense for folks at their basest
D.C. pizza parlors and paedophile rings
These are a few of the GOP's favorite things

When reality bites
When the truth stings
When the facts look bad
I simply believe what they say on Fox News
And I then I don't feel so sad.

We foresee more song parodies tomorrow. Here is the address if you are so inclined. (Z)


Previous | Next


Back to the main page