By Daniel Wiessner (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate narrowly confirmed President Joe Biden's nominee to the agency that enforces workplace bias laws, giving Democrats a majority on the five-member panel that would allow it to enforce pro-worker polices backed by his administration. The Democrat-led Senate voted 49-47 along party lines on Thursday to confirm civil rights lawyer Kolpana Kotagal, a partner at prominent plaintiffs' law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, to a vacancy on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The EEOC has had a Democratic chair, Charlotte Burrows, since ear...
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) pushed for answers from the FBI about unverified raw intelligence suggesting President Joe Biden "collaborated" with foreign entities.
During an interview with Fox News host Sandra Smith on Thursday, Graham could not confirm the existence of tapes of Biden, which were said to be revealed in a tip by an FBI informant.
"Well, so quite clearly what you're telling us is we learned that this form 1023 it did contain information about the president himself," Smith offered.
"I don't know if it's true or not," Graham replied, "but I know the FBI was informed by somebody on their payroll, a confidential informant, that they hired, they had reason to believe that a Burisma official was talking about recordings with Joe Biden and Hunter Biden about business deals in Ukraine as an insurance policy."
"What the hell happened to that allegation?" he asked. "I'm not going to stop till I get an answer of what did they find."
"I don't even know where they are," Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) recently said. "Now, maybe they don't exist. But how will I know until the FBI tells us, are they showing us their work?"
Rep. James Comer (R-KY) also had his doubts about the tapes.
"We don't know if they're legit or not, but we know that the foreign national claims he has them," he told Newsmax.
The Justice Department declared this week that Donald Trump wasn't acting as president when he was accused of sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll, saying that the Westfall Act – which would protect a president from prosecution - did not apply.
That ruling is not good news for Trump as he faces criminal cases, reported Slate Thursday.
When Carroll first sued Trump, the DOJ fought the case in court, claiming that the act meant the president couldn't be sued. Understandably, it led to further delays, putting Carroll's initial defamation lawsuit on hold for two years as the argument worked its way through the courts. Trump has also claimed the case should be dismissed because he's being persecuted as a white, male, Christian.
Carroll then sued a second time, claim Trump defamed her on his social media site after he left office. In that case, Trump was no longer serving as president, so the presidential protection matter was moot. That second trial ultimately found that Trump was liable and awarded Carroll $5 million.
Some legal experts have argued that the second trial effectively decided the first since it found that Trump was responsible for the sexual abuse of Carroll and, as such, calling her a liar was defamation. But the case is still moving forward with proceedings and $10 million sought in damages. The trial for that case will begin Jan. 15, 2024.
Writing for Slate, Dennis Aftergut, the former Chief Assistant City Attorney in San Francisco, explained, "Critically, in Carroll’s case, if the government were to be substituted for Trump under the Westfall Act — as [Attorney General Merrick] Garland originally requested — her action would be over because the federal government can’t be sued for torts like defamation."
And he said the decision that the Westfall Act does not apply could have significant repercussions on any trial involving attempts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, currently being considered by a Grand Jury convened by Fulton County District Attorny Fani Willis.
"Here’s where Garland’s new decision comes in," Aftergut explained. "If Trump is indicted in Georgia and he removes the case to federal court, a judicial decision about whether to return the case to state court in Atlanta will turn on a legal issue similar to the one the attorney general just resolved against Trump: Was Trump acting as president or as an individual seeking reelection when, in December 2020 and January 2021, he pressured Georgia officials to reverse Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state?"
"These were not protected presidential actions," argued Aftergut. "Although Carroll’s allegations and those that Trump acted unlawfully in Georgia are unrelated, Garland’s decision in her case that a president can be acting outside the scope of his official duties while in office strengthens" the Fulton case.
After taking the global economy hostage to secure painful cuts to aid programs and other federal spending, House Republicans are proposing a pay raise for themselves and other members of Congress for the coming fiscal year.
Roll Call reported Thursday that under spending legislation approved by the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee last month, members of Congress "would stand to receive a 4.6%, or $8,000, pay increase" in 2024. Most members of Congress currently make an annual salary of $174,000, putting them in the top 10% of U.S. earners.
"Lawmakers last received a cost-of-living increase in 2009," the outlet noted, "but House Republicans left out the traditional language blocking a cost-of-living increase for members from this year's Legislative Branch bill."
House Legislative Branch Appropriations Chairman Mark Amodei (R-Nev.) told Roll Call that it is "not exactly greedy" to pursue a pay raise for lawmakers after more than a decade of no cost-of-living increase, but he acknowledged the optics are horrible.
"The policy supports, hey, once every twelve years, you can have a cost-of-living increase," Amodei said. "But the politics is—you know how that will go."
Colin Seeberger, senior communications adviser at the Center for American Progress Action, urged congressional Democrats to "raise hell over this."
"This is outrageous," Seeberger wrote on Twitter. "House Republicans are moving to give themselves a raise while taking an ax to education, health, and other essential programs that help grow the economy by growing the middle class."
One Democrat, Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.), slammed House Republicans for "trying to give themselves a raise while working families struggle to make ends meet."
"That's not what our constituents want—and certainly not what members of Congress need," Craig added.
But Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the former House majority leader, expressed support for a raise, telling Roll Call that "precluding members from a COLA adjustment simply decreases their salary every year," which he said "doesn't make any sense."
The Republican-led push for a congressional pay increase comes just weeks after GOP leaders negotiated a debt ceiling agreement with President Joe Biden that imposes new work requirements on older recipients of federal food aid, a change that experts say is likely to strip benefits from around 750,000 low-income people.
Congressional Republicans are also pushing for even steeper cuts to federal spending than were agreed upon in the debt ceiling deal, threatening a government shutdown.
Meanwhile, the House GOP is working to pass legislation that would hand the top 1% of U.S. earners $28 billion in tax cuts next year.
Arizona attorney general Kris Mayes has assigned a team of criminal prosecutors to investigate Republican efforts to overturn Donald Trump's election loss in the state.
Two sources told the Washington Post the Democratic attorney general assigned the case in May to prosecutors who are looking into attempts to subvert the election by signing and transmitting paperwork that falsely declared Trump the winner, and investigators have requested records and other evidence from local officials.
“This is something we’re not going to go into thinking, ‘Maybe we’ll get a conviction,’ or ‘Maybe we have a pretty good chance,’” said Dan Barr, Mayes’s chief deputy. “This has to be ironclad shut.”
Barr said that the case remained in a "fact-gathering phase," but the sources told the Post a prosecutor has also asked about evidence collected by the Department of Justice and Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney Fani Willis in similar investigations.
Mayes campaigned last year on a pledge to investigate the 22 Republicans, including state party chair Kelli Ward, who signed documents claiming to be electors chosen by the state for Trump in the Electoral College, although he got fewer votes than Joe Biden.
“There has to be a deterrent to this happening again,” she said. “We can’t have this occurring again in Arizona — or in the country.”
Geraldo Rivera told "The View" that he has a theory for how to make Donald Trump go away: President Joe Biden should pardon him with the agreement that he wouldn't run in 2024.
It isn't something that went over well with the audience, which booed the idea.
The question about it came from co-host Joy Behar, who asked why she thinks Trump would ever agree to something like that. "He's never going to go away," she said.
"Well, he's already been impeached a couple of times," said Rivera. "I want, you know, him to move on in his life. He had a pretty good presidency. I know a lot of people don't want to admit that, but I think he had a pretty good presidency."
The majority of America disagrees with the assessment as evidenced by the 2020 election.
Behar noted that to be pardoned, Trump would have to admit to his guilt and admit he's a criminal.
"You know what I want, I want him to cop to the fact that he broke the law, that he did things," said Goldberg.
"I don't think that would happen," said Rivera.
"Well, I don't think — that's why I don't think he should get pardoned because someone who doesn't —" Goldberg said as the audience broke in with applause
"I remember a guy who could have fired me on Celebrity Apprentice and didn't," said Rivera.
"This is the country we're talking about!" exclaimed Behar.
During another conversation about former Fox host Tucker Carlson, Rivera said that he had a charismatic presentation and was No. 1 on the network for a reason.
"Then he drifted into this murky area where — swampy area — where, you know, these conspiracy theories — and it's not just Jan. 6th, a whole bunch of different mucky kind of conspiracies," said Rivera. "Will he still have that influence? Fox is a tremendous platform, and once you lose that platform, you're kind of screaming in the wilderness and competing with a lot of other people who have podcasts and so forth. So will he be the same character? I don't know. Will he, you know — when he was on Fox, he was saying he was going to be a candidate for the Republican nomination. That's clearly not going to happen."
Carlson, among other things, produced a weeks worth of heavily edited security footage from inside the Capitol to claim that Jan. 6 didn't actually happen or that it wasn't as serious as it was being made out to be. Speaker Kevin McCarthy gave him the videos, but has refused to allow the public access to them or any legitimate journalists the ability to see them.
Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel got called out for spreading 2020 election conspiracies more than two years after Donald Trump's loss.
CNN teased an upcoming interview with McDaniel where Chris Wallace asked when she stopped being an "election denier," and Washington Post columnist Philip Bump said it's clear that she still casts doubt on President Joe Biden's electoral win.
“I think saying that there were problems with 2020 is very real. I don’t think that’s election denying,” McDaniel told Wallace. “I’m from Wayne County [Michigan]. We had a woman send a note saying I’m being told to backdate ballots. We had to look into that. That’s deeply concerning. When you have friends who are poll-watching and being kicked out, that’s deeply concerning. We have every right to look at that.”
McDaniel, when pressed, conceded that Biden is the president, but she insisted there had been "lots of problems" with that election and so she didn't think "he won it fair."
"This is where a lot of Republicans have landed," Bump wrote. "All of that hunting for fraud has resulted in a tacit admission that there isn’t demonstrable evidence of explicit fraud, so, disinterested in accepting the easy answer — Biden got more votes than the deeply unpopular and polarizing incumbent, Donald Trump — they invent nebulous excuses for the loss."
"It was Hunter Biden’s laptop! It was the media! It was Mark Zuckerberg!" he added. "This argument is great for skeptics because it just vaguely blames the people they already hate for making Trump lose without having to actually offer hard evidence of it."
Like most Republicans involved in politics, McDaniel doesn't want to risk Trump's ire or turn the GOP base against her, and Bump notes that blaming fraud for elections losses is preferable to blaming herself, if she wants to keep her job, but that still corrodes faith in democracy and weakens its foundation.
"External observers won’t have much difficulty seeing the problem here, of course," Bump wrote. "Establishing a system in which any loss can easily be framed as illegitimate means establishing a system in which no loss is accepted as valid. It means institutionalizing the idea that elections are inaccurate gauges of public opinion and, therefore, that the winners of those elections have no mandate to serve."
"The small plastic baggie with a powdered substance — which was found in a storage cubby at the White House on a Sunday evening earlier this month — was subjected to advanced testing and examined at two different federal labs but no usable fingerprints or DNA were detected, the officials said," NBC News' report stated.
Special counsel Jack Smith may be prepared to bring charges against Donald Trump in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection, according to a panel of legal experts, and they believe the case would be strong.
The panel -- Norman L. Eisen, Noah Bookbinder, Donald Ayer, Joshua Stanton, E. Danya Perry, Debra Perlin and Kayvan Farchadi -- assembled a model prosecution memo for Just Security to assess the federal charges Smith might potentially bring against the twice-impeached, twice-indicted former president, and they concluded the evidence meets Department of Justice standards for prosecution.
"Our memo follows a common DOJ practice," the authors wrote. "Prior to indicting a case, federal prosecutors prepare a pros memo that lays out admissible evidence, possible charges, and legal issues. This document provides a basis for prosecutors handling the case and their supervisors to assess whether the case meets the standard set forth in the Principles of Federal Prosecution, which permit charges only when there is “evidence sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction.”
"Here, we conclude there likely is sufficient evidence to obtain and sustain a conviction of Trump for his three-step plan to overturn the election," they added.
Trump worked with his lawyers to overturn an election he knew he had lost, which they said constitutes a conspiracy to defraud the U.S. in the administration of elections, and after those schemes failed they tried to obstruct an official proceeding by attempting to block certification of Joe Biden's win or delay the electoral count -- but then-vice president Mike Pence refused to act on that plan.
"When Pence refused, Trump went to his last resort: triggering an insurrection in the hope that it would throw Congress off course, delaying the transfer of power for the first time in American history," the authors wrote. "This implicated statutes such as 18 U.S.C. § 2383, which prohibits inciting an insurrection and giving aid or comfort to insurrectionists."
That law is rarely charged and would require extreme caution by the DOJ, the legal experts said, but they believe, as did the House Select Committee, there is sufficient evidence to charge Trump under that statute.
"We cannot with certainty say when any charges will be filed, but there is reason to anticipate it could be as soon as this summer," they wrote. "Smith is as aware as anyone of the political calendar. The primary season is already commencing and will take off in earnest after Labor Day. That favors an indictment this summer, as is also suggested by news reports that Smith did not permit witnesses scheduled for June 2023 grand jury testimony to delay their appearances."
An indictment this summer would also allow a trial to commence before the July 2024 Republican National Convention, and the legal experts believe Smith might want to bring charges before Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis potentially indicts Trump in Georgia.
"Willis ... has been overseeing a special grand jury investigation of Trump’s attempt to interfere with the 2020 election in Georgia, has announced her intention to make charging decisions in that case between the middle of July and September 1, with a narrower window expected in mid-August," the authors wrote. "Smith may wish to file charges before Willis does, since by doing so he can make his theory of the case public, minimizing the risk of a conflicting Fulton County indictment that could complicate the federal case."
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) on Thursday torched his Republican colleagues on the House Oversight Committee for potentially letting themselves be used by an alleged agent for the Chinese government.
While appearing on CNN, Raskin said that House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and his colleagues were all too willing to believe allegations leveled by Gal Luft, the man who was indicted last year for being an unregistered agent for China among other crimes.
"They are out there playing spy-versus-spy with these people who are basically using the Oversight Committee of the United States House of Representatives as a dupe," Raskin charged of Republicans' interactions with Luft. "This guy is in hiding. He is a fugitive and he is using his ability to wow the members of the majority of the Oversight Committee to wrap himself in some kind of legitimacy or authority."
Raskin then compared Luft to another man who attained prominence within the Republican Party by telling them false claims that they wanted to believe were true.
"It's kind of like with what George Santos did with the Republican Party," he said. "They are attracting con men."
Raskin was then asked if Luft's claims about President Joe Biden taking bribes for foreign governments could still be credible, and he cast doubt on the proposition.
"He has been indicted for making false statements," said Raskin. "This is the person we are going to rely on?"
CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams on Thursday said that it appears that special counsel Jack Smith is leaving no stone unturned in his probe of Trump's efforts to illegally remain in power after losing the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.
In particular, Williams argued that Smith's thoroughness can be evidenced by his recent interview with Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, which suggests that the special counsel has not been limiting his probe to just one or two swing states.
"They have spoken to people in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and now Michigan," said Williams. "What I am seeing is a pretty broad national conspiracy touching on any aspect of election meddling or election interference. They could be building one massive case, the mother of all election conspiracy cases, that could be charged in any one jurisdiction bringing in evidence of all the others... it's pretty vast!"
Olivia Troye, a former national security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, said that Smith's latest interviews appear to show that his investigation is nearing its conclusion and that charging decisions could be made soon.
"I think they're getting close to wrapping it up, hopefully," she said. "I think they need to move forward. I think they're now talking to people who are really there at the front lines of it from 2020, being bullied and intimidated by these individuals."
WASHINGTON — Since December, when the U.S. House’s Jan. 6 select committee released its damning final report, its chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), has attempted to resume his usual low profile.
But in an exclusive interview this week with Raw Story, the quiet-tempered lawmaker said his special committee “forced” the Department of Justice to finally investigate the role then-President Donald Trump and his closest associates played in fomenting the failed insurrection.
“The work of the committee kind of forced DOJ to get engaged, because a lot of what we did we passed on to them,” Thompson told Raw Story just outside the Capitol on a muggy summer day.
Thompson — with a scraggly gray beard and the unhurried gait of a 75-year-old Southern gentleman — walks alone these days. Gone is his security detail and phalanx of staffers. No more idling SUV ready to whisk him away at a moment’s notice. The gaggle of Capitol Hill reporters that used to flock about him now professionally-stalks Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), George Santos (R-NY) or the other GOP political flavors of the week.
U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who served as chairman of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Everything changed when Republicans took over control of the House at the start of this 118th Congress.
Instead of investigating those who stormed the Capitol, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) introduced a censure resolution against Thompson last month, which – after more than 30 days of being public now – has only garnered one cosponsor, Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC).
Greene and Gaetz also held a hearing into the J6 attack where the FBI, DOJ and Capitol Police were portrayed as guilty or culpable parties. The hearing took place at the very moment federal officials were arranging Trump in Miami on 37 felony charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified and other sensitive government documents.
“They're trying to normalize the abnormal,” Thompson said. “And so if that's how they see democracy at working, then that's who they are.”
Thompson told Raw Story his committee’s work speaks for itself — no matter how much Republicans try and rewrite history.
“The notion that somehow you can change the material facts in this situation, is just not the way it is,” Thompson said. “So I thought they would really legislate, come with their agenda, but their whole agenda is to undo everything that Democrats did. You gotta be in favor of something. It's like, okay, what are you gonna do? Wait until one of your wild cards say something stupid again?”
Thompson says he is proud the Jan. 6 special committee’s work is now being used by prosecutors who are convening a special grand jury in Fulton County, Ga., to investigate whether Trump attempted to illegally affect the outcome of the state’s 2020 presidential vote. The Jan. 6 committee, Thompson added, laid out an airtight case in its 800-plus page final report.
“There's no question in my mind, he knew everything that was going on. There was nothing that went on in Georgia that Donald Trump didn't know,” Thompson says.
Thompson says Georgia is key to it all, because of the recording of Trump’s call where he allegedly pressured Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to overturn the will of his people and fraudulently tilt the election against Democrat Joe Biden, who narrowly won the state.
"I just want to find 11,780 votes,” Trump said on the Georgia call.
“He got caught,” Thompson said.
“How’d he get caught? What’s the smoking gun?” Raw Story asked.
“The Raffensperger call. And now I think there’s a couple calls out in Arizona,” Thompson said, referring to a newly revealed attempt by Trump to seemingly pressure then-Gov. Doug Ducey to overturn election results in Arizona, which Biden also won.
While Thompson thinks the Georgia case is airtight, he says that doesn’t mean it’s a lock.
“I would say based on the fact that, [Trump’s] role talking to the Georgia secretary of state, him having other people serving as his surrogates go talk to people, him promoting the electors who were not duly elected — all that is part of his orchestration,” Thompson said. “Now how the district attorney presents that [evidence] and on what charges?”
Thompson is the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee where he’s been busy this year defending Biden from attacks over his handling of security on the southern border.
Thompson doesn’t hold press conferences and generally remains silent these days. He points back to the Jan. 6 committee’s body of work and findings.
“Under no circumstances can anybody say, ‘No, we’re gonna erase it, because what you saw with your own eyes, wasn’t what you saw.’ So the work on the committee was tremendous,” Thompson told Raw Story. “Not only did we save our democracy, but in the long run, I think we strengthened it.”
Russia responded to NATO vows of support for Ukraine with air strikes and nuclear saber-rattling on Thursday, as US President Joe Biden prepared to meet Nordic leaders unsettled by Moscow's war.
Biden was visiting newest NATO member Finland a day after a summit in Vilnius in which the Western military alliance pledged its backing for Kyiv but failed to offer it a timeline for membership.
Moscow's riposte came in the form of its latest aerial assault on Ukraine, with Kyiv saying early Thursday it had destroyed 20 Russian attack drones and two cruise missiles.
At least four people were wounded in the capital, where most of the Iranian-made drones were destroyed, Kyiv's mayor said.
In a sign of its anger at Western backing for Kyiv, Moscow said it would regard F-16 fighter jets sent to Ukraine as a "nuclear" threat because of their capacity to carry atomic bombs.
"Russia cannot ignore the ability of these aircraft to carry nuclear weapons. No amount of assurances will help here," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted as saying by the Russian foreign ministry.
The Netherlands and Denmark are leading a plan to train Ukrainian pilots on using the US-made aircraft as part of an 11-nation coalition, after Washington authorized the move.
Russia has repeatedly engaged in nuclear rhetoric since its February 2022 invasion of its pro-Western neighbor Ukraine.
- 'Will not waver' -
The US president arrived in Helsinki for a Nordic victory lap after G7 powers vowed to back Ukraine for as long as it takes to beat Russia.
Biden will meet with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto, whose country shares a 1,300 kilometer (800-mile) border with Russia and which ended its historic military non-alignment following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
Besides Niinisto and the Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, Biden will meet Sweden's Ulf Kristersson, Norway's Jonas Gahr Store, Denmark's Mette Frederiksen and Iceland's Katrin Jakobsdottir.
The topic of the discussions is cooperation between the Nordic countries and the United States on security, environmental and technology issues.
Biden will be the first US president to visit Helsinki since Donald Trump's summit five years ago with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But the trip comes after NATO leaders dashed Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky's hopes for a clear timeline to join the military alliance, saying they would offer an invite only when "conditions are met".
Instead, G7 nations later offered Ukraine a package of long-term security commitments, involving bilateral deals between Kyiv and the world's richest nations.
"We will not waver," US President Joe Biden said in a speech in Vilnius aimed at showing resolve to Putin after meeting Zelensky at the NATO summit.
"Putin still doubts our staying power. He's still making a bad bet that the conviction and the unity among the United States and our allies and partners will break down."
- 'Complicated' -
Zelensky insisted the promises amounted to a "significant security victory" but did not disguise the fact that he would have preferred a timetable for Ukraine to become its 32nd member after the war is over.
On the sidelines of the NATO summit, Australia pledged to send an additional fleet of 30 armored Bushmaster infantry vehicles at a cost of $67 million.
But on Thursday, Australia's defense minister cast doubt over a proposal to bolster Ukraine's military with retired fighter jets, saying Kyiv's request for extra air power posed a "complicated question".
In Kyiv, recently-supplied Western weapon systems were insufficient to cover the whole country, the spokesman for Ukraine's air forces Yuriy Ignat said after the overnight strikes.
"We do not have means to destroy ballistic missiles," Ignat told national television on Thursday morning.
Ukraine's air force said it was still seeking information on the "consequences" of an Iskander-M ballistic missile launch by Russia from occupied Crimea.
U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who served as chairman of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Drew Angerer/Getty Images