By Steve Holland, Ted Hesson and Dave Graham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States plans to accept up to 30,000 migrants per month from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela under a program paired with expulsions of people from those countries caught at the U.S.-Mexico border, U.S. and Mexican officials said.
The expanded humanitarian program would build on a policy launched in October that allowed thousands of Venezuelans to enter by air if they applied from abroad and could demonstrate they had a U.S. sponsor, two U.S. and one Mexican official said on Wednesday.
The details on the planned program come as U.S. President Joe Biden plans to give a border security-themed speech on Thursday and intends to visit the U.S.-Mexico border next week, addressing an issue that has challenged the Democratic president during his first two years in office.
The two U.S. officials expected the new policies to be rolled out on Thursday but the White House did not respond to a request for comment seeking official confirmation.
Biden told reporters at the White House on Wednesday after a visit to Kentucky that he wants to see "peace and security" at the border. He said earlier in the day that he intended to visit the southwest border but that details were still being finalized.
"I'm going to see what's going on," Biden said of the border trip. "I'm going to be making a speech tomorrow on border security, and you'll hear more about it tomorrow."
Biden did not reply when asked which city he planned to visit although the news website Axios later reported he would visit El Paso, Texas, a border city that declared a state of emergency in December amid high levels of migrant arrivals.
Biden is scheduled to travel to Mexico City on Jan. 9 and 10 for the North American Leaders' Summit, where he will meet with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Biden, who took office in January 2021, has struggled operationally and politically with record numbers of migrants caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, and migration is expected to be on the agenda at the meeting.
Republicans have criticized what they say are lenient border security policies, while Biden officials say they are trying to create a more orderly and humane system.
Reuters reported last week that the Biden administration is planning to use pandemic-era restrictions to expel many Cuban, Nicaraguan and Haitian migrants caught at the southwest border back to Mexico, while simultaneously allowing some to enter the United States by air on humanitarian grounds.
Migrant advocates and some Democrats have pushed back on expanding the expulsions, saying the restrictions block migrants from exercising their right to apply for asylum and expose them to risky situations in Mexico.
(Reporting by Steve Holland in Hebron, Kentucky, Trevor Hunnicutt, Andrea Shalal and Ted Hesson in Washington, and Dave Graham in Mexico City; Editing by Mary Milliken, Josie Kao, Aurora Ellis and Christian Schmollinger)
By Andrea Shalal and Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department filed a brief with the Supreme Court late on Wednesday defending President Joe Biden's plan to cancel billions of dollars in federal student loans, arguing that two cases lacked standing to challenge the debt relief.
Biden in August said the U.S. government would forgive up to $10,000 in student loan debt for borrowers making less than $125,000 a year, or $250,000 for married couples. Students who received Pell Grants to benefit lower-income college students would have up to $20,000 of their debt canceled under the plan.
Biden's centerpiece plan, which makes good his 2020 campaign pledge to help debt-strapped younger Americans, has been put on ice by two legal challenges - one from six mostly Republican-led states who say the Biden administration overstepped its authority, and a separate Texas-based case that argues the public should have been allowed to comment.
The Biden administration estimates that up to 40 million people are eligible for the relief, giving them resources to buy a car or a home or start a family. Republicans insist the plan, estimated to cost about $400 billion, will fuel inflation, which hit 9% last summer but has eased somewhat since then.
Biden in November said he was confident the plan is legal, and extended COVID-era temporary relief for borrowers until August, providing time for the court cases to be resolved.
In its brief, the Justice Department said Education Secretary Miguel Cardona had clear authority to provide debt relief to borrowers under the Higher Education Relief Opportunities (HEROES) Act of 2003. Sources familiar with the filing said the act was also used by the former Trump administration.
The HEROES Act gave the secretary of education the authority to make changes to any provision of applicable student aid program laws after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to alleviate hardships caused by national emergencies.
"We remain confident in our legal authority to adopt this program," Cardona said in a statement. "We are unapologetically committed to helping borrowers recover from the pandemic."
One of the sources said the legal arguments were "very strong ... and should prevail before the court."
Delinquency and default rates would spike above pre-pandemic levels without relief for lower-income borrowers, the brief said. Householders were also facing "acute inflationary pressures," one of the sources said.
The brief rejected Missouri's ability to challenge the ruling on behalf of the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (MOHELA), since it is entirely separate from the state and any harm to it would not damage the state.
One of the sources said MOHELA had publicly distanced itself from the lawsuit and expressed its independence from the state.
The Justice Department also rejected the argument of two borrowers in a separate Texas lawsuit, who said they could challenge the plan because the Education Department had not allowed public comment before finalizing it. The brief said, the HEROES Act expressly exempted the department from notice and comment procedures.
The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has fast-tracked both cases for oral arguments in late February or early March, with a ruling due by the end of June.
Over 16 million borrowers have already been approved for debt relief and millions more have applied. Nearly 90% of the benefits will go to out-of-school borrowers making less than $75,000 a year, according to the White House.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Michael Perry and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
President Joe Biden on Wednesday called opposition Republicans' struggle to select a speaker for their majority in the US House of Representatives "embarrassing."
Speaking to reporters before a trip to Kentucky, Biden said the "rest of the world" is watching the situation in Congress but said he remained focused on "getting things done."
On Wednesday, The New York Times profiled the 20 Republican members of Congress who blocked GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from the necessary 218 votes to be elected Speaker of the House — the first time this has happened in a new Congress in 100 years — and found some similarities between a lot of them.
The lawmakers who blocked McCarthy are: Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Dan Bishop, (R-NC), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Michael Cloud (R-TX), Andrew Clyde (R-GA), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Bob Good (R-VA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Andy Harris (R-MD), Mary Miller (R-IL), Ralph Norman (R-SC), Scott Perry (R-PA), Matt Rosendale (R-MT), Chip Roy (R-TX), Byron Donalds (R-FL), Josh Brecheen (R-OK), Eli Crane (R-AZ), Andy Ogles (R-TN), Anna Paulina Luna, R-FL), and Keith Self (R-TX).
Many of the lawmakers are holding McCarthy hostage in exchange for various demands on rule changes to give them more power and weaken the Speakership. Some, like Gaetz, have said they won't vote for him under any circumstances, no matter what he offers.
"More than half of the lawmakers who voted against Mr. McCarthy explicitly denied the results of the 2020 election, compared with about 15 percent of the 222 total members in the Republican caucus, according to a New York Times analysis. These Republicans said that the election had been stolen or rigged — or that Donald J. Trump was the rightful winner — even though Joe Biden earned seven million more votes and 74 more electors than Mr. Trump," noted the report. Furthermore, 15 of them voted to deny certifying at least one state in 2020 — and fully 19 of 20 are members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, although this is a minority of the 54 members of that group.
IN OTHER NEWS: Republicans slammed for anger over George Santos' lies while giving Trump a pass
The House is expected to reconvene later today to try again to elect a Speaker. McCarthy has vowed to stay in the race, and still has the backing of former President Donald Trump — who also ironically endorsed 17 of the 20 lawmakers blocking McCarthy.
If McCarthy cannot break the impasse, it is unclear what will happen next. Republicans could try to introduce an alternative, like McCarthy's second-in-command Steve Scalise, and retired Rep. Fred Upton is reportedly open to the idea of running for Speaker from outside the House — which is allowed under the Constitution — with a bipartisan mix of Democratic and Republican support, in exchange for giving Democrats some power sharing.
Joe Biden has yet to formally announce his re-election bid, but a trip to Kentucky on Wednesday will neatly encapsulate the expected pitch: a Democratic president building bridges -- literal and figurative -- at a time when Republicans can't even agree among themselves.
Biden will cut a relatively serene figure when he flies into Covington, Kentucky, leaving behind the mess of a right-wing rebellion in Republican ranks as the opposition party takes over the House of Representatives and struggles to agree on a speaker.
The Democrat is not just visiting enemy political territory. He will be spending the day with the most senior Republican senator, Mitch McConnell -- a gesture near unheard of in today's super-partisan Washington politics.
The reason for their get-together has the kind of symbolism that would not look out of place in a political love story: celebrating the $1.6 billion replacement of the Brent Spence Bridge -- funded in a historic infrastructure spending package that passed with rare Republican support.
McConnell is despised by more liberal Democrats, but his work in getting those Republican votes to join the other side in the Senate showed that bipartisanship is not entirely dead.
And that is fuel for Biden's message that as a veteran former senator and natural centrist he remains the right leader for a country driven to extremes by Donald Trump and his current congressional acolytes.
That message got Biden elected in 2020 and will be at the center of a re-election campaign if he does run -- something he is widely expected to announce in the coming weeks.
Asked about the Kentucky trip, Biden played down the aspect of his frenemy relationship with McConnell.
"Everybody is talking about how significant it is. It has nothing to do about our relationship," Biden said this week.
He is well aware, though, of the power in reaching out publicly to someone he has debated across the aisle over a decades-long career. As he said at another event they both attended in February, "Mitch, I don't want to hurt your reputation, but we really are friends."
As for the bridge, that and other big projects sprouting around the country thanks to the infrastructure package, will be exhibit number one in the expected re-election effort.
Biden wants Americans to see him as a president who gets things done.
"It's a giant bridge, man. It's a lot of money," he said, when asked why he was visiting Covington.
And bridges, of course, cross divides.
"When we think about infrastructure, it is connecting communities," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
"He was clear on the campaign trail that... he's willing to work with Republicans who are willing to continue to deliver for the American people," she said. "It can highlight that we do big, profound things for the country when we work together."
According to the Washington Post's fact checker Glenn Kessler, Donald Trump continued insistence that he was blocked from having 10,000 troops on hand on Jan 6 was thoroughly debunked in the House select committee's final report on the Trump-led insurrection.
But that hasn't kept the former president from repeating it over and over again as a "truth" on his Truth Social platform.
As recently as Dec. 22, the former president raged, "The highly partisan Unselect Committee Report purposely fails to mention the failure of Pelosi to heed my recommendation for troops to be used in D.C.”
According to Kessler, Trump's assertion is flat-out false.
"The committee said that when he referenced so many troops, it was not because he wanted to protect the Capitol. He 'floated the idea of having 10,000 National Guardsmen deployed to protect him and his supporters from any supposed threats by left-wing counterprotesters,' the report said."
Kessler added that the report notes "Trump asked 'in passing' about preparations for Jan. 6, when electoral votes certifying Joe Biden as the new president would be counted in Congress, the report says. Before the vote, Trump planned a speech to supporters on the National Mall," before adding that Gen. Mark A. Milley told investigators, "Never once did I hear the president relative to the 6th specify the number of troops, 10,000 or any other number, for that matter,=."
The Wapo Report added, "In 2021, Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows told Fox News that 'as many as 10,000 National Guard troops were told to be on the ready by the secretary of defense. That was a direct order from President Trump.' But [acting Defense Secretary Christopher] Miller told investigators that statement was false, adding, 'I was surprised by seeing that publicly.' (Meadows did not agree to be interviewed by the Jan. 6 Committee.)"
You can read more here.
Washington (AFP) - The new US Congress was thrown into chaos on its first day Tuesday as rebel right-wing Republicans moved to block party favorite Kevin McCarthy from becoming speaker of the House of Representatives.
The California congressman needed a simple majority to be elected as Washington's top legislator, who presides over House business and is second in line to the presidency.
But Republicans failed to elect a speaker in the opening two rounds of voting for the first time in a century, after nail-biting ballots that earned blanket coverage across US television networks.
Rather than celebrating their new control of the House, the party instead faces a drawn-out fight to elect a speaker that could further deepen internal divisions -- and put McCarthy’s political career on the line.
The 57-year-old needed 218 votes in the lower chamber, which flipped to a narrow 222-212 Republican majority after last year's midterm elections.
But he failed to bring into line the party rebels, including several high-profile allies of former president Donald Trump, and he was shocked by 19 "no" votes from his own side in both rounds.
His performance was so weak that he lost out by 203 votes to 212 to the Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries in both ballots -- although there was little doubt a Republican would ultimately claim the speaker's gavel.
"McCarthy has lost two ballots already. It's time to move on," tweeted one of his most vocal critics, Arizona's Andy Biggs, who secured 10 votes of his own in the first round.
McCarthy has long coveted the role, having withdrawn from the race in 2015 amid a number of blunders and a right-wing revolt.
This time he was once again tripped up by far-right rebels, despite bowing to their calls to push aggressive investigations of Democrats including President Joe Biden after taking over the House.
Scott Perry, a leader of the rebels, said "if McCarthy had fought nearly as hard to defeat the failed, toxic policies of the Biden administration as he has for himself, he would be speaker of the House right now."
The last time it took more than one round of voting to pick a speaker at the start of a new Congress was a century ago, in 1923.
McCarthy -- who is trying to avoid small cliques wandering off the floor to hold their own negotiations -- can keep members in the room and voting for as long as he has support from the majority of the full House.
Some lawmakers and staffers backing McCarthy had said he should bow out if unable to secure the gavel in the second round, US media reported.
The House can now move to further ballots until someone emerges with a majority, but it can also adjourn for the day, if a majority of lawmakers agree.
Any lawmaker can strictly offer a resolution to transform the contest to a secret ballot -- or alter the threshold by which a speaker is chosen -- although these options aren't seen as realistic.
One roadblock to McCarthy's anointment was the perception by some on his party's far right that he is insufficiently loyal to Trump, the Republican former president and 2024 election candidate.
No credible Republican alternative had emerged by round two, although the most obvious would be incoming House majority leader Steve Scalise, a McCarthyite who has nevertheless been clear that he has ambitions of his own.
The "Never Kevin" crowd are likely to see Scalise as more of the same, however.
McCarthy, who defied a subpoena from the House panel probing the 2021 assault on the Capitol, promised them investigations of Biden's family and administration, as well as of the FBI and CIA.
But the more he is seen as giving in to the right, the more likely he is to alienate moderates, sparking open war between Senate and House Republicans, where there is already little love lost.
It wasn't all doom and gloom for the Republicans in Congress.
The Senate also convened for its new term Tuesday, with Mitch McConnell, who heads the Republican minority, breaking the record for the longest-serving Senate leader.
On CNN Tuesday, Capitol Hill reporter Melanie Zanona reported that Republican lawmakers are enraged over the chaos surrounding GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy's vote for Speaker — and so are their donors.
This comes as a bloc of five far-right insurgents in the House Republican caucus have stood as a group, along with several others, to deny McCarthy (R-CA) enough votes — the first time since 1923 that the House failed to elect a Speaker on the first ballot.
"What are you hearing?" said anchor Jake Tapper.
"As this vote has been dragging on, the anger and frustration inside the GOP is really growing," said Zanona. "I talked to one GOP lawmaker who supports McCarthy, and they're hearing from GOP donors and constituents back home that the party looks, quote, 'stupid' for not being able to elect a Speaker and talked to another Republican who said he's also pro-McCarthy and predicted after three or four ballots there's going to be pressure for Republicans to either adjourn the proceedings and try to regroup, or try to figure out some sort of Plan B strategy on the floor."
IN OTHER NEWS: Trump launches fresh round of attacks on Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman: 'Now it gets really bad'
Even though Republicans had been expecting the vote would fail, continued Zanona, "they are still in disbelief and they are just furious that all of this drama is overshadowing their new majority."
"I talked to a third Republican who said, 'They are embarrassing the whole team. We should form a Parking Lot Committee and put them on it,'" said Zanona. "So clearly the anger is palpable, and I do expect there to be retribution for McCarthy's opponents whenever they finally settle all of this."
Watch video below or at this link.
Melanie Zanona says Republican donors are enraged over McCarthy chaos www.youtube.com
Washington and Seoul are planning an "effective coordinated" response if North Korea uses nuclear weapons, the White House warned on Tuesday.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and US President Joe Biden have "tasked their teams to plan for an effective coordinated response to a range of scenarios, including nuclear use by North Korea," a spokesman for the National Security Council at the White House said.
The NSC spoke out after confusion emerged in media reports about the allies' response to nuclear sabre rattling from Pyongyang.
On Monday, Biden had said "no" when asked if joint nuclear exercises were a possibility, seemingly contradicting earlier comments from Yoon.
The NSC spokesman clarified that joint exercises were not an option because South Korea does not have its own nuclear weapons.
However, "the United States is fully committed to our alliance... and providing extended deterrence through the full range of US defense capabilities," the spokesman said.
In Seoul, Yoon's office said in a statement that the allies are "in talks over information-sharing, joint planning and the joint implementation plans that follow with regard to the operation of US nuclear assets to respond to North Korea's nuclear weapons."
Some interpreted earlier Yoon comments in a newspaper interview as indicating more elaborate joint nuclear exercises.
In an interview with the Chosun Ilbo newspaper published Monday, Yoon said the United States' existing "nuclear umbrella" and "extended deterrence" were no longer enough to reassure South Koreans.
"The nuclear weapons belong to the United States, but the planning, information sharing, exercises and training must be done jointly by South Korea and the United States," Yoon said, adding that the US was "quite positive" about the idea.
However, a senior US administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that there was no confusion over the extent of allied coordination.
Because North Korea's "actions and statements have caused increasing concern," the United States and South Korea "are working together to strengthen extended deterrence, including eventually through table-top exercises that will explore our joint response to a range of scenarios, including nuclear use," the official said.
"This is consistent with President Yoon’s comment that the United States and the ROK (South Korea) will expand planning, information sharing, exercises, and training," the official said.
Tensions are high after the North's leader Kim Jong Un called for an "exponential" increase in his country's nuclear arsenal and new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) to counter what it termed US and South Korean hostility.
In 2022, the North conducted sanctions-defying weapons tests nearly every month, including firing its most advanced ICBM ever.
Under the hawkish Yoon, South Korea has beefed up joint military drills with the United States, which had been scaled back during the pandemic or paused for a bout of ill-fated diplomacy with the North under his predecessor.
The official Pentagon position on response to a North Korean nuclear attack is emphatic.
"Any nuclear attack by North Korea against the United States or its Allies and partners is unacceptable and will result in the end of that regime. There is no scenario in which the Kim regime could employ nuclear weapons and survive," the US defense department says.
Six years of Donald Trump’s tax returns were released by a House committee on Friday after a years-long legal battle by the former president to keep them sealed. Early revelations include the finding that Trump paid just $750 in federal income tax during his first year in office in 2017, and he paid no tax in 2020. The newly released tax records give a long-overdue glimpse of Trump’s personal and business finances, which he refused to disclose during the 2016 presidential election, breaking with decades of precedent. Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter David Cay Johnston, who has covered Trump for decades, says the new documents show “absolutely brazen” tax fraud. “Donald Trump has been a criminal his whole life,” says Johnston.
"Brazen": David Cay Johnston on How Trump's Tax Returns Show He Defrauded U.S. & Enriched Himself www.youtube.com
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
After years of legal battles between former President Donald Trump and Congress, the House Ways and Means Committee released six years of Trump’s tax returns Friday, including thousands of documents from the years he ran for president and was in office. The records reveal Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes during his first year in office in 2017. In his last year in office, 2020, he paid no federal taxes. They also showed the tax law Trump signed in late 2017 opened new opportunities for him, and disclosed income from a wide range of foreign countries, including Canada, Panama, the Caribbean island of Saint Martin, the Philippines, United Arab Emirates, China and Britain. Trump responded to the release in a video statement.
DONALD TRUMP: These tax returns contain relatively little information and not information that almost anybody would understand. They’re extremely complex. The radical Democrats’ behavior is a shame upon the U.S. Congress.
AMY GOODMAN: In fact, our next guest says the tax returns show Trump took tax losses he knew were fraudulent and that Trump knowingly committed brazen tax fraud. David Cay Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, co-founder of DCReport, his most recent book titled The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family, also wrote Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich — and Cheat Everybody Else.
David, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. Talk about what you found most significant, what you were most surprised by in these latest tax releases.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, that Donald used a number of legal devices to reduce taxes is no surprise. But he did something absolutely brazen. And that requires we go back to 1984. That was the year Trump Tower was selling apartments like crazy and his first casino opened. So he had Amazons of cash flowing into his pockets. He filed a tax return that included something called a Schedule C. That’s what freelancers use. It’s what I use for my book writing business. And on it, he showed no revenue but over $600,000 of expenses. Auditors from the City of New York and the state of New York spotted that, disallowed it. Trump demanded trials. He lost both. The judges wrote scathing opinions about what he was doing.
So, what turns up in these six years of tax returns? Well, he filed 65 of Schedule Cs. Twenty-six of them had zero revenue and hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses. There were a handful of others where the income and the expenses, exactly to the dollar, equaled out, which is impossible to believe is anything but manipulation. For those 26 returns, where he was on notice that it’s illegal to create a fictitious business and take deductions, he could easily be prosecuted, either by the federal government or Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, for cheating on state taxes the same way. And that, I think, is the most brazen thing in there.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, David Cay Johnston, for those people who are not familiar with these Schedule Cs, what are the IRS regulations about being able to have a business that has no income but has all kinds of expenses? And how long can that go on before the IRS normally has a red flag to go after you?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: You can start up a business and have expenses to start up, but you have to show that you were attempting to make a profit. If you go on for five years, the IRS will almost always declare that this is a hobby, and the taxpayers aren’t going to subsidize your hobby. But that Trump did 26 of these shows how determined he was to thumb his nose at the law.
And Trump has always done this. I mean, I’ve known Donald now for almost 35 years, and he’s always thumbing his nose at the law when he gets caught, as he has repeatedly in various civil and regulatory actions and some court cases, like where he cheated illegal immigrants, as he called them, who were brought into the country to work for him. He always somehow says, “Oh, no, this is a great victory for me. You don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s too complicated.” Nonsense. Donald Trump has been a criminal his whole life. He’s just very good at evading law enforcement.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And unlike, let’s say, a reporter like Maggie Haberman, whose recent book on Trump has gotten a lot of attention as a new expert on Trump, there are people like you and, of course, the late great Wayne Barrett who have been tracking — who were tracking Trump over decades. This whole issue of him actually during the six years of his running for president and being president actually having net losses, could you talk about that?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, Donald reported net losses. We should think about that the way we talk about crime, reported crime. We don’t know the real level of that. So, Donald reported massive losses, so big that he had $150-some million of positive income — wages, capital gains, dividends, interest and pensions, $150 million-plus — but his tax returns show negative income of about $53 million. That’s a $200 million swing.
A lot of that was accomplished through laws that — a law that Donald Trump lobbied for in 1992 that allows real estate people, people who are big real estate investors — not mom-and-pop “I own one rental unit” people, but big real estate investors — to live pretty much tax-free, if their only income is from real estate and the rest of their income is modest.
Donald — I’ve been told by a number of retired IRS agents who have reached out to me that they’ve gone over the returns, and their fundamental conclusion — and these are people who don’t know each other; they know me — they all said the same thing: A lot of the numbers on the tax returns appear to be just made up. Of course, who ever heard of Donald just making something up?
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to 2016, one of these key presidential debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, with this exchange about Trump’s taxes.
HILLARY CLINTON: So you’ve got to ask yourself: Why won’t he release his tax returns? And I think there may be a couple of reasons. First, maybe he’s not as rich as he says he is. Second, maybe he’s not as charitable as he claims to be. Third, we don’t know all of his business dealings, but we have been told through investigative reporting that he owes about $650 million to Wall Street and foreign banks. Or maybe he doesn’t want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he’s paid nothing in federal taxes, because the only years that anybody’s ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn’t pay any federal income tax. So —
DONALD TRUMP: That makes me smart.
AMY GOODMAN: “That makes me smart,” Donald Trump said in the background. And then, four years later, in the presidential debate with Joe Biden, with moderator Chris Wallace.
CHRIS WALLACE: I know that you pay a lot of other taxes, but I’m asking you the specific question: Is it true that you paid $750 in federal income taxes each of those two years?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I’ve paid millions of dollars in taxes, millions of dollars of income tax. And let me just tell you, there was a story in one of the papers, I paid —
JOE BIDEN: Show us your tax returns.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I paid $38 million one year. I paid $27 million one year.
JOE BIDEN: Show us your tax returns.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I went — you’ll see it as soon as it’s finished. You’ll see it. You know, if you want to do, go to the board of elections. There’s a 118-page or so report that says everything I have, every bank I have, I’m totally underleveraged, because the assets are extremely good. And we have a very — we have a — I built a great company.
CHRIS WALLACE: Sir, I’m asking you a specific question, which is —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But let me tell you.
CHRIS WALLACE: I understand all of that.
JOE BIDEN: Release your tax returns.
CHRIS WALLACE: I understand all that. I’m asking —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But let me —
CHRIS WALLACE: No, Mr. President.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Go ahead.
CHRIS WALLACE: I’m asking you a question. Will you tell us how much you paid in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Millions of dollars.
CHRIS WALLACE: You paid millions of dollars.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Millions of dollars, yes.
CHRIS WALLACE: So, not $750.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Millions of dollars. And you’ll get to see it. And you’ll get to see it.
JOE BIDEN: When?
AMY GOODMAN: When will we get to see it? Well, we just got to see it, in 2022, at the end of the year. I wanted to ask you to respond to these, David Cay Johnston, to your allegation that just shows he committed tax fraud, which would mean he should end up in prison, and then, maybe he’s talking about the millions of dollars he paid in taxes not to the U.S. government, but to governments around the world.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Yeah. The tax returns, Amy, show that Donald paid more taxes, income taxes, to foreign governments than to the United States. And Donald’s foreign entanglements as president should concern us a lot. You’ll recall in the 2016 campaign he said, you know, “The Saudis buy lots of apartments from me. They pay big prices. Why shouldn’t I like them? I like them.” That tells you that he’s influenced by people putting money in his pocket. And the president of the United States should not be. He should be insulated from that.
Everything you heard Donald say during the two debates, with Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, was basically nonsense. In the case of paying taxes, there’s a tiny sliver of truth, because he paid overseas. The rest of it is absolute nonsense. And he knew it was absolute nonsense. But understand, Donald has no problem with lying through his teeth. He’s lied under oath in judicial proceedings. Donald essentially believes that whatever he says makes it so. So he just makes stuff up.
AMY GOODMAN: What about breaking the law?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, why didn’t auditors catch Donald Trump is a very good question. First of all, Congress has given the IRS for two decades — more than two decades — extra money to pursue the working poor and make sure they don’t cheat on their taxes. But at the top, the Republicans have ordered the cuts of audits of corporations and wealthy people. Almost 25,000 families make $10 million a year or more. In the most recent year we have data, 66 audits were closed. That’s nothing. That’s a fraction of 1% of those families.
Secondly, Donald knows that so long as he has loss carry-forwards — that is a tax deduction he couldn’t use this year, but he can use in future years — an auditor assigned to his tax return would quickly conclude that even if he found a whole bunch of bogus material, he’d still owe no taxes. So the IRS practice is generally to close such a file and move on to one that’s easier and will produce immediate revenue. We need to change that. I’ve asked the IRS and members of Congress now for decades to conduct a detailed study of people who report negative incomes, not once in a while because a business fails, but year after year after year, which is what Trump does. I think we’d discover —
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, David —
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: — some shocking things about our tax system. Yes, Juan.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: David, I’d like to ask you, in terms of this — going back to the Schedule C issue that you mentioned, you highlighted, in one piece you wrote about it, you said that you thought that this was the easiest case to make in terms of a potential criminal activity. Why is that? And why would a jury be more likely to find someone guilty just on the Schedule C violations than on the more complex legal issues that arise when you study Trump’s filings in depth?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Yeah. Juan, first of all, that’s not the most important case to bring. The most important case are the human intelligence documents he stole and took to Mar-a-Lago.
But on the tax front, creating a fictitious business and taking tax deductions for it is a plain and simple thing ordinary people can understand. Many of the things Donald Trump has done with his taxes are esoteric. It took me years and years and years to learn how the tax system really works. We pay tax lawyers tremendous amounts of money, because our tax code, unnecessarily, is ridiculously complicated and involves very complex concepts involving accounting and depreciation and recognition of income and all sorts of terms that I’m sure most people watching are going, “What?” But this is simple and easy to prove. And remember, Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA, got 17 felony convictions on 17 charges against the Trump Organization and a subsidiary company, both 100% owned by Donald Trump, for much smaller tax fraud involving freebies that were untaxed to executives — cars, apartments, things like that.
Showing to people, “Here’s the tax return. There’s no evidence of a business that existed. He took these deductions. There’s no evidence of documentation, receipts and invoices and things that show actual business,” people will grasp that, I believe. And it would not — I think it would take a prosecutor at most three days to present the case.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, why was only one IRS agent charged with investigating and reviewing Donald Trump’s taxes when he was president? The significance of that kind of review not having happened, even though it’s the law, David?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Right. Presidential tax returns and vice-presidential returns are supposed to be audited. Biden and Kamala Harris have been audited. Obama and Biden were audited. Donald Trump appointed the Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, and he appointed Charles Rettig, who until recently was the IRS commissioner. And while they say they had no idea that these audits weren’t being done, they’re responsible. Doesn’t matter if you didn’t know. The question is “Why didn’t you know?”
Assigning a single IRS agent to something this complex and refusing him access to specialists — the IRS employs specialists —
AMY GOODMAN: We have 10 seconds.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: — in everything, in all sorts of things — shows you that this is the lawlessness of the Trump administration. They were lawless.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, David Cay Johnston, we thank you so much for big with us, twice Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, co-founder of DCReport — he is passing the baton and stepping down from that — author of The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family and many more books, including Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich — and Cheat Everybody Else. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
Kevin McCarthy may yet survive his challenge for becoming House speaker, a title he's coveted for years, but conservative Charlie Sykes said he may never recover from his political wounds.
The right-wing flank of the House Republican caucus is demanding more power to hold over the next speaker's head, and McCarthy and anyone else who wins Tuesday's vote will hold a weak grip over a thin majority whose "vicious infighting" has spilled into public view since the midterm elections, Sykes wrote in his latest column for The Bulwark.
"Today was supposed to be the GOP’s celebration of the Red Wave, a moment of triumph and anticipation," Sykes wrote. "Instead, we are likely to get a sh*tshow for the ages from an unruly, dysfunctional political party that is obviously not all that interested in governing."
McCarthy seems likely to fall short of the 218 votes he needs on the first ballot, sending the vote to multiple ballots for the first time in a century, and he faces two less-than-appealing options.
IN OTHER NEWS: Anti-Trump GOP senator blisters 'nut jobs' and 'screamers' as he heads into retirement
"By the end of what promises to be a very long day Kevin McCarthy will either (1) be narrowly elected with the votes of fabulist and accused felon George Santos, conspiracist MTG, and a handful of dissidents who hate his guts, or (2) he’s going to have to move his stuff out of the Speaker’s Office a day after prematurely moving it in," Sykes wrote. "So, it will be a fitting culmination of McCarthy’s years-long campaign of self-humiliation."
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich to warn that "chaos" was likely to ensue if McCarthy didn't make the cut, but Sykes thinks the damage has already been done.
"It’s chaos either way, isn’t it?" Sykes wrote. "McCarthy is a hollow man and a weak leader, and his caucus is now in the process of testing just how weak he is. One of the most powerful speakers in House history is about to be replaced by one of the puniest."
The final report of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol heavily focuses on Donald Trump’s role as a driver of events that day.
But evidence reviewed by staff investigators points to a coordinated effort by high-level Trump allies that directed the activities of the militant groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys that stormed the Capitol.
Testimony by Kellye SoRelle, a former prosecutor from Texas who is associated with the Oath Keepers, to the January 6th Committee illuminates the role of the “Friends of Stone” Signal chat in coordinating activities of militant groups tasked with providing security at Stop the Steal rallies, who then participated in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6.
SoRelle, who sat for deposition over the course of more than nine hours spread over two days last April, told investigators she believes she was added to the “Friends of Stone” chat in early November 2020 by Jason Sullivan, a digital media strategist who had worked on the Trump campaign for Roger Stone during the 2016 election. Stone is a longtime Trump confidant and the namesake of the Signal chat.
Sullivan is a relatively obscure figure in the sprawling investigation into the effort to overturn the 2020 election, which unfolded through a series of dramatic hearings held by the January 6th Committee last summer. His name doesn’t appear in the committee’s 845-page final report, although he was deposed last August. But SoRelle’s testimony indicates that Sullivan acted as a convener, helping to bridge the efforts of high-level Trump allies like Stone, his one-time mentor, and the militant groups.
SoRelle is currently under indictment for conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds and obstruction of justice for her role in the Jan. 6 attack.
SoRelle told the committee that while she was in Detroit volunteering to investigate election irregularities around the time of the Nov. 3, 2020 election, Sullivan contacted her to ask her to follow up on specific investigative leads in Michigan. SoRelle said that the basis for her belief that Sullivan added her to the chat is due to the fact that she received an invitation to join shortly after speaking with him.
“And I end up basically on the phone with Jason Sullivan,” SoRelle said. “Then I get added to this Friends of Stone stuff at this point. And I really have no relationship with any of them, other than they’re just trying to, like — they’re basically — because I’m on the ground, they’re trying to incorporate me in the loop, so to speak.”
Sullivan invoked his Fifth Amendment privileges based on a good-faith belief that telling the truth might expose him to criminal prosecution when asked by the committee who enlisted him to track election activities in Michigan, and who put him in contact with SoRelle. During his deposition, an investigator told Sullivan that committee staff understood that Sullivan was the administrator of the “Friends of Stone” chat. Sullivan again invoked the Fifth Amendment.
SoRelle had gotten involved with the Oath Keepers in the spring of 2020 through the anti-lockdown protests in Texas, and members of the far-right group went to Detroit to provide security for her while she was investigating election issues. SoRelle told the committee that by the time she joined “Friends of Stone,” around Nov. 10, Oath Keepers founder and executive director Stewart Rhodes was already a member of the chat. SoRelle said she believes that InfoWars host Alex Jones brought Rhodes into Stone’s circle. (In a statement provided to Raw Story in September 2022, Stone’s attorney said that “Stone has never met, talked to, or otherwise interacted with Mr. Rhodes.”)
Sullivan invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to questions about whether he ever came into contact with the Oath Keepers and about whether he was aware of Stone having a relationship with Rhodes from the January 6th Committee.
SoRelle told the committee that she perceived the “Friends of Stone” chat as a hub for coordinating the Stop the Steal rallies, as well as collecting “data” on election irregularities. The roster of members of the “Friends of Stone” chat also included Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio, who is currently on trial for seditious conspiracy for his role in the Jan. 6 attack.
Sullivan remained behind the scenes throughout the series of rallies in state capitols and Washington, DC leading up to the Jan. 6 attack. But on Dec. 30 he appeared on a conference call that included members of 1st Amendment Praetorian and QAnon followers. During that call, which was recorded by a woman named Staci Burk, Sullivan called on Trump supporters to “descend on the Capitol,” while indicating he was aware of plans by militant groups to prevent Joe Biden from taking office as president.
“There’s dates floating around for some of the people in the militia, okay?” Sullivan told participants on the call, as previously reported by Raw Story. “They will not allow Biden to go into the White House. That’s a fact. I’m not part of that. I don’t applaud that. I don’t endorse it. I don’t encourage it. But I do have my ear to the railroad. We have all the real-time social media intelligence you could imagine.
“And I don’t see any other way around it,” Sullivan continued. “Because, first of all, they’re not going to allow any election fraud to take place. It’s not gonna happen. Biden will never be in that White House. That’s my promise to each and every one of you.”
Sullivan again pleaded the Fifth Amendment when asked by the committee what he meant by “descend on the Capitol” and whether he was referring to the Oath Keepers when he mentioned “the militia.” Sullivan told the committee he didn’t recall who invited him to speak on the conference call.
Sullivan testified that he had expected “peaceful protests” at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and was surprised by the violence that day.
“I think it’s appalling what took place, you know,” Sullivan testified, when asked by the committee how he felt about Jan. 6. “Some of these Proud Boy folks I think were nefarious. I think some of these Oath Keeper folks were nefarious.”
Stone has attempted to distance himself from Sullivan. In an April 2022 letter shared with the press, Stone’s lawyer threatened Sullivan with legal action if he did not stop publicly representing himself as “Roger Stone’s senior social media advisor,” while acknowledging that Sullivan worked for Stone’s consulting business for 30 days in 2016. Sullivan told the committee during his deposition last August that he "was engaged by Roger Stone's super PAC for social media listening and consulting."
In his letter, attorney Grant Smith also accused Sullivan of leaking his own appearance before a grand jury as a witness against Stone in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.
SoRelle told the January 6th Committee during her April 2022 deposition that Sullivan told her during their conversation in November 2020 that “Stone was mad at him over” his grand jury testimony.
“But he tells me that he’s basically trying to make amends with Roger Stone during that time,” SoRelle added.
SoRelle’s testimony received a brief spotlight during the sixth televised hearing of the January 6th Committee in July 2022 when the committee showed a video clip of her identifying Stone and Jones, along with organizer Ali Alexander, as the leaders of the “Stop the Steal” rallies.
“Those are the ones that became, like, the center point for everything,” SoRelle said.
Asked about “Friends of Stone” last July, Stone’s attorney told Raw Story: “Mr. Stone was included in the chat group by whoever established it at the time. Mr. Stone did not participate in any discussions in the chat and has no recollection of ever posting anything in the chat.”
But the final report of the January 6th Committee indicates that two days after the 2020 election, Stone sent out a text, reading: “We provide information several times a day. So please monitor the FOS feed so you can act in a timely fashion.”
Grant Smith, Stone’s attorney, said in an email to Raw Story on Monday that his client was not available for comment.
The brief snippet of SoRelle’s testimony included in the televised hearing last July has overshadowed her more detailed explanation to committee investigators about how the “Friends of Stone” chat served as a hub for organizing the election denial rallies leading up to Jan. 6. Immediately after confirming Stone, Jones and Alexander’s central roles in the campaign, SoRelle told investigators about her interactions with 1st Amendment Praetorian, a security group that worked under retired Lt. General Michael Flynn.
“They’re the ones orchestrating the majority of it,” SoRelle testified. Asked to elaborate, SoRelle told the committee: “So, the meetings that the Oath Keepers end up having, they’re the ones coordinating — they’re in the group chats with those particular groups.”
SoRelle confirmed in her testimony that 1st Amendment Praetorian, better known by its initials 1AP, helped delegate responsibility among the militant groups for providing security to influencers during the rallies.
“And from what you remember, 1AP played somewhat of a planning role, along with Mr. Alexander, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Stone, about where to send people for Stop the Steal rallies after the election?” one of the investigators asked.
“Correct,” SoRelle said.
Robert Patrick Lewis declined to answer a question from the committee about whether he coordinated with Rhodes or the Oath Keepers, invoking his Fifth Amendment privilege to avoid giving testimony that could potentially incriminate himself during his deposition last April.
SoRelle testified that 1AP’s role became apparent to her when the Oath Keepers went to Atlanta to provide security for a rally that featured Alexander, Jones and prominent white nationalist Nick Fuentes at the Georgia state capitol. SoRelle testified that when they arrived in Atlanta, 1AP leaders Robert Patrick Lewis and Geoffrey Flohr — whom she referenced by his nickname “Yoda” — along with Alexander, summoned Rhodes to a meeting at a hotel.
“And so, he was like, ‘Hey, we need to go over to this hotel, and I’m going to, you know, chat with these guys,’” SoRelle testified. “And he’s telling me it’s Rob Lewis and Yoda and Ali Alexander and that they’re coordinating just basically where all the rallies are going to be and trying to figure out schedules and stuff.”
Describing the scene in a “lobby area” on an upper floor of the hotel, SoRelle said, “It’s just, like, a giant open area. And, anyway, they brought beer and stuff, and we’re all just kind of hanging out and chatting and stuff like that.”
Following the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, SoRelle told the committee that Rhodes conferred with a member of 1AP who joined them for dinner at Olive Garden, although she could not identify the member by name.
SoRelle testified that Tim Enloe, Jones’ security guard, asked Rhodes to provide a security detail to Fuentes, and Rhodes refused. The dustup exposed a tension between what SoRelle described as “the conservative/libertarian” and “fascist/crazy” camps in the Stop the Steal coalition. As SoRelle described it, Rhodes and Fuentes got into an argument at a restaurant area near the Georgia state capitol about white supremacy and why the Oath Keepers refused to work with Fuentes. SoRelle said Rhodes walked off while Fuentes was “talking crap,” and she turned around and gave him the middle finger. Fuentes’ Groyper followers filmed SoRelle and made her gesture into a meme.
The committee report has identified Trump’s tweet in the early-morning hours of Dec. 19, 2020, in which the president tweeted, “Be there, will be wild,” as the singular, galvanizing event leading to the Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse, which then set the stage for thousands of Trump supporters to overrun the Capitol.
The report emphasized the effect of Trump’s tweet by highlighting a Facebook message sent by Florida Oath Keepers leader Kelly Meggs on Dec. 22.
“Trump said it’s gonna be wild!” wrote Meggs, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy alongside Rhodes last month. “It’s gonna be wild! He wants us to make it WILD that’s what he’s saying. He called us to the Capitol and wants us to make it wild! Sir Yes Sir! Gentlemen we are heading to DC pack your s***!”
Asked about the Dec. 19 tweet, SoRelle argued that it wasn’t only Trump’s call that mobilized the Oath Keepers to begin planning for Jan. 6; the set of relationships that had grown out of the “Friends of Stone” chats provided an infrastructure for delegating responsibility and a division of labor.
“Then it would have been whenever they started coordinating through Ali Alexander,” SoRelle told the committee, in response to a question about when the Oath Keepers started planning for Jan. 6.
“That’s what I’m saying,” she said. “It wasn’t based on President Trump. Everything was done off of the coordination that was being sent out. Like, ‘Here’s our next rally. What’s the next plan? Like, can you do security for this? Here’s the events that we’re planning.’”
On Tuesday, NPR Pittsburgh reported on how the House January 6 Select Committee, set to officially dissolve today, zoomed in on two key Pennsylvania Republicans as central to the plot to overturn the results of the election: Rep. Scott Perry, and state Sen. Doug Mastriano.
"The committee said midstate Rep. Scott Perry and State Sen. Doug Mastriano — who would later win the Republican nomination for governor — worked to keep Trump in power after his loss to Joe Biden," reported Robby Brod. "Throughout the year, as they ran for office amid Justice Department and congressional inquiries about the insurrection, their efforts to help Trump overturn the election were repeatedly in the news."
Perry's involvement has been widely reported. He connected Trump with Jeffrey Clark, who went on to become a key insurgent at the Justice Department trying to push law enforcement officials to pressure states not to certify their results — a plan that was only thwarted when huge numbers of DOJ lawyers threatened to resign. Perry was also in contact with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and pushed him to demand an investigation into various conspiracy theories like "Italygate," which claimed Italian satellites were used to remotely hack U.S. voting machines in 2020.
Mastriano, meanwhile, provided for Rudy Giuliani's baseless "fraud" hearing in Pennsylvania, went on to provide funding and buses for Trump's "Stop the Steal" rally, and was even at the Capitol complex during the riot, where he went past police barricades. He later lied that he had never done so.
"No fraud was detected during multiple audits of Pennsylvania’s 2020 election results," said the report. "The committee recommended Perry face sanctions from the House Ethics Committee for failing to respond to a subpoena requesting his testimony. Perry and Mastriano’s connections to the January 6th Capitol attack were called 'particularly notable,' adding that further investigation was needed to get the full scope of their involvement with Trump’s plan to stay in power."
Perry was re-elected to Congress in this year's midterms. Mastriano, however, lost by 15 points to Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who will now serve as Pennsylvania's governor.
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