All posts tagged "Bennie Thompson"

WASHINGTON — Some Americans digging out from ferocious winter storms are more concerned about Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents abusing power than with their own plight, a senior member of Congress said.

“In my district, you know, we had a bad ice storm,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) told Raw Story on the Capitol steps on a sunny if frigid Tuesday.

“As I talk to local officials about getting the utilities back on and making sure there's warming centers available and all that, in the midst of that, they talk about ICE. ‘What y'all gonna do about ICE?’” ...

WASHINGTON – Dismissing President Donald Trump’s claim that preemptive pardons Joe Biden gave members of the House January 6 committee are invalid if Biden used an autopen to sign them, the senior Democrat who chaired that panel and received such a pardon doubted whether Trump himself signed all pardons he gave supporters who carried out the Capitol attack.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) told Raw Story: “Ask him! Did he sign all 1,500 pardons?”

Trump and Republican allies claim aides to Biden used an autopen to sign documents as the then president was too old and infirm to wield a pen himself....

Julie Farnam, who supervised intelligence gathering for the U.S. Capitol Police at the time of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, has received a subpoena to appear for a deposition by a Republican-controlled House subcommittee investigating security failures that day.

“We are investigating the alleged failures within USCP IICD leading up to January 6 to assess what legislative reforms, if any, are needed,” Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), chair of the House Administration Oversight Subcommittee, told Farnam in a letter that she received late Friday.

The subpoena sets up a confrontation between two pivotal — if somewhat under-the-radar — figures in the Jan. 6 attack saga, which three-and-a-half years on remains an unresolved matter for many Americans. ...

The National Football League — by far the richest sports league in the world — paid for several U.S. House of Representatives aides to attend last month’s NFL Draft.

The catch?

The aides allowed top NFL officials lobby them on issues of significant financial and political importance to the league....

WASHINGTON – This week’s indictment and arraignment of former President Donald Trump was something some lawmakers trapped in the U.S. House Gallery on Jan. 6, 2021 didn’t expect to see, but there were no celebrations when the moments arrived. A part of them still mourns.

The first thought to flash through many minds wasn’t of Trump arrested, it was flashbacks of themselves and others facing likely injury and potential death — “hang Mike Pence” still rings in many ears.

January 6 and being trapped in the Gallery with my colleagues, worrying about my staff and all of the staff inside the Capitol and around the campus. It truly, it all came flooding back to me,” Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) told Raw Story the night the indictment was announced....

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....