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Pence Under Pressure: Federal Probe Orders Jan. 6 Testimony, Bipartisan Lawmakers Seek Access To Classified Docs
- New York Times: Pence Must Testify to Jan. 6 Grand Jury, Judge Rules: A federal judge has ordered former Vice President Mike Pence to appear in front of a grand jury investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, largely sweeping aside two separate legal efforts by Mr. Pence and Mr. Trump to limit his testimony, according to two people familiar with the matter. The twin rulings on Monday, by Judge James E. Boasberg in Federal District Court in Washington, were the latest setbacks to bids by Mr. Trump’s legal team to limit the scope of questions that prosecutors can ask witnesses close to him in separate investigations into his efforts to maintain his grip on power after his election defeat and into his handling of classified documents after he left office.
- CNN: Mike Pence must testify about conversations he had with Donald Trump leading up to January 6, judge rules: A federal judge has decided that former Vice President Mike Pence must testify to a grand jury about conversations he had with Donald Trump leading up to January 6, 2021, according to multiple sources familiar with a recent federal court ruling. But the judge said – in a ruling that remains under seal – that Pence can still decline to answer questions related to his actions on January 6 itself, when he was serving as president of the Senate for the certification of the 2020 presidential election, according to one of the sources. The ruling from chief judge James Boasberg of the US District Court in Washington, DC, adds to more than a dozen wins for special counsel Jack Smith forcing witnesses to testify to the grand jury, and is unusual in that it delves into the powers of the vice presidency as well as separation of powers. Pence still has the ability to appeal.
- The Hill: Pence open to lawmakers seeing classified documents found at his home: Former Vice President Pence said he would not mind lawmakers having access to the classified documents that were found at his Indiana home earlier this year, as a bipartisan group of senators have lobbied federal investigators to let them review the material. “I would have no objection whatsoever to (Sen. Mark Warner) seeing the documents,” Pence said in an interview with Newsmax on Tuesday. “I’d be very happy to cooperate with any further inquiry from members of the Senate.” Warner, a Virginia Democrat, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) have led a push to get federal investigators to allow members of the Senate Intelligence Committee to review the classified documents taken from Pence, former President Trump and President Biden from his time as vice president.
Trump’s Incendiary Rhetoric Threatens Prosecutors, Fuels Violence, and Undermines Democracy
- The Guardian: Trump’s verbal assaults pose risks to prosecutors and could fuel violence: In his blitz to deter and obfuscate two of the criminal investigations, Trump has resorted to verbal assaults on two Black district attorneys in Manhattan and Georgia, calling them “racist.” Now Trump’s incendiary attacks against the federal and state inquiries are prompting warnings that he could be fueling violence, as he did on January 6, with bogus claims that the 2020 was stolen from him and a mob of his backers attacked the Capitol, leading to at least five deaths. “Trump’s incendiary rhetoric, amplified through his social media postings and his high-decibel fear-mongering in Texas, pose clear physical dangers to prosecutors and investigators,” said the former acting chief of the fraud section at the justice department, Paul Pelletier. “With Trump’s actions in promoting the January 6 insurrection serving as a cautionary tale, the potential for violent reactions to any of his charges cannot be understated.”
- CNN: Inside the backchannel communications keeping Donald Trump in the loop on Republican investigations: Donald Trump continues to wield enormous power on Capitol Hill as House Republicans seek to curry favor with the former president, pursuing his fixations through their investigations and routinely updating him and his closest advisers on their progress. A number of top House GOP lawmakers have disclosed in recent days their efforts to keep the former president informed on the pace and substance of their investigations. Lines of communication appear to go both ways. Not only are Trump, his aides and close allies regularly apprised of Republicans’ committee work, they also at times exert influence over it, multiple people familiar with the talks tell CNN. The constant, and sometimes direct, communication between Trump and the committees has emerged as a crucial method for Trump to shape Republicans’ priorities in their newly-won House majority. It also underscores the extraordinary sway an ex-president still holds over his party’s lawmakers and the deference many still afford him.
- Washington Post: Donald Trump does not understand democracy: For decades, Donald Trump’s only boss was Donald Trump. As head of the Trump Organization, the real estate magnate did what he wanted with near-total impunity, hemmed in only by (surprisingly malleable) legal or contractual constraints and by his thirst for media attention. He was, in geopolitical terms, an autocrat. He was an all-powerful leader who spent years convincing himself and the world that the company he inherited from his father was something he’d been granted on merit. He was active in politics only in the way that many wealthy people are. What Trump wasn’t was a champion of American democracy. There’s no indication he held even a minor curiosity about the country’s history, even telling talk show host Stephen Colbert at one point that he didn’t know what the stripes on the U.S. flag represented. Patriotism is a core part of Trump’s politics, but it manifests only in a superficial, America-is-the-best sense.
In The States
NORTH CAROLINA: Two county officials removed from state elections board after they refused to certify 2022 results
- Associated Press: N.C. board removes election officials who refused to certify: North Carolina’s state elections board on Tuesday removed two local election officials who had refused to certify their county’s 2022 results after officials determined they violated state law. The state board voted unanimously to dismiss Surry County elections secretary Jerry Forestieri and board member Timothy DeHaan in one of the strongest disciplinary actions taken against local officials across the U.S. who have delayed or refused to certify election results. Controversies over election certification have roiled mostly rural counties across the country as conspiracy theories about voting machines have spread widely among conservatives. Forestieri and DeHaan had questioned the legitimacy of state election law and court decisions disallowing photo ID checks and voter residency challenges. They falsely claimed in a letter that the vote was “illegal” and “very uncertain.”
- WHGB: North Carolina Supreme Court reconsiders earlier ruling on voter ID amendment: Second verse, same as the first: Exactly 24 hours after the North Carolina Supreme Court conducted a rare rehearing on a decision about redistricting, justices did it again – this time reconsidering a judgment on a voter ID amendment to the North Carolina Constitution – in a hearing that sounded a lot like the first. This was about the court’s decision in December to uphold the finding of a lower court in Holmes v. Moore that struck down the law that led to a constitutional amendment voters passed in 2018. Like the redistricting decision reheard on Wednesday, this also was on a 4-3 vote along party lines – Democrats for and Republicans against. Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Eden) had responded to the decision by promising to pass a new law through the General Assembly, but after the court’s partisan control swung on Jan. 1 – to a 5-2 majority of Republicans for the first time in history – he and House Speaker Tim Moore (R-Cleveland) seized the moment – as they had on redistricting – and asked for a rehearing based on errors made by the court and “judicial activism.”
PENNSYLVANIA: Republicans in Congress hold hearing about 2022 elections in Luzerne County
- Roll Call: House panel hears complaints about Pennsylvania election: Republicans in Congress are demanding to know how a shortage of paper ballots in Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County on Election Day 2022 affected thousands of voters. “Nearly one-third of precincts ran out of paper,” Wisconsin Republican Rep. Bryan Steil, chairman of the House Administration Committee, said during a hearing on the topic Tuesday. “This resulted in voters being turned away from the polls and being denied their right to vote.” Steil and other Republicans said they view the Election Day blunders as examples of voter suppression. Among those speaking at the hearing was Jim Bognet, a Republican who lost the 2020 and 2022 elections to Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright in Pennsylvania’s 8th District, a battleground in the northeastern part of the state that was carried by Donald Trump in 2020. “The Luzerne County administration has done everything in their power to deny responsibility and evade accountability,” Bognet told the committee. “We must restore faith in fair elections for voters in both parties. I believe this can only be done through [a] thorough congressional investigation.”
TEXAS: State Republicans pushing to leave ERIC, with no viable alternatives
- Texas Tribune: Texas may be about to scrap a voting security system it can’t replace: With some Texas Republicans pushing the state to abandon one its best tools for preventing voter fraud — a coalition of states that share voting roll data to weed out duplicate and suspicious registrations — the secretary of state’s office is trying to discern if it can build a replacement. The Texas Tribune thanks its sponsors. Become one. But the effort could easily stall or take years, experts say. Similar efforts in other states over the past two decades have not worked, or have been shut down, because they lacked bipartisan support from multiple states and access to the kind of national data that produces accurate cross-state voter list matching — all of which the Electronic Information Registration Center, or ERIC,spent years developing. The push to have Texas become the latest state to withdraw from ERIC, a long-standing effort by nearly 30 states, is rooted in a yearlong misinformation campaign that spread through right-wing media platforms and advocacy groups.
GEORGIA: GOP fights to ban nonprofit funding to support election systems in Democratic strongholds
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Ban on outside ‘Zuckerbucks’ election funding clears Georgia House: The Georgia House voted late Monday to prohibit donations to county election offices, a Republican response to outside money that flowed primarily to Democratic areas. The bill passed the state House along party lines 100-69, and it will head to Gov. Brian Kemp for his signature if the state Senate agrees before the General Assembly adjourns for the year Wednesday. The Senate previously passed a similar version of the measure. Limiting nonprofit donations became a priority among Republicans and conservative groups after DeKalb County received a $2 million grant in January from the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, a project of the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which was funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The money was designated for the county election office’s operating budget and office facility upgrades, but skeptics of “Zuckerbucks” say funding from nonprofits could influence the outcome of elections. No statewide elections are scheduled this year. “Election grants are not the problem. There’s simply no evidence of it,” said state Rep. Saira Draper, a Democrat from Atlanta. “The real problem is cutting off lifelines to our chronically underfunded elections offices.”
What Experts Are Saying
Joyce Vance, former US attorney (MSNBC Video): “Even if Pence and perhaps Trump pursue an appeal, it looks like the die is cast here and he will end up having to testify.” MSNBC’s 11th Hour Tweet
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, historian at New York University: “Now, as he faces multiple criminal and civil investigations, Trump and his MAGA allies are involved in a massive effort to shift the narrative about Jan. 6, making its violence into patriotic self-defense. The Waco rally may be seen in this frame.” Lucid
Steven Levitsky, political scientist at Harvard University: “In particular, the radicalization of the Republican Party continues, and some of our country’s very old institutions, which are very, very counter-majoritarian, much more counter-majoritarian than other established democracies in the world, are protecting and empowering what is essentially an authoritarian minority party. So the threat of another round of democratic crisis continues to be pretty high.” Harvard Crimson
Headlines
The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections
New York Times: Republicans Face Setbacks in Push to Tighten Voting Laws on College Campuses
The Hill: GOP’s Trump critics fear party isn’t ready to move on
Trump Investigations
Politico: Most Americans think criminal charges should disqualify Trump from running again, poll shows
CNN: Trump appeals court ruling lifting executive privilege shield for former aides
Washington Post: Sean Hannity’s attempt to coach Trump backfires — again
New York Times: Trump Says the Justice System Has Been Weaponized. He Would Know
MSNBC: Poll shows wide support in U.S. for Trump criminal investigations
Washington Post: N.Y. grand jury likely on hiatus in Trump hush money case until late April
Courthouse News Service: Former Trump aide ordered to turn over White House emails
January 6 And The 2020 Election
CNN: Fox News CEO said correspondent’s fact-check of Trump’s election lies was ‘bad for business,’ new emails show
Roll Call: Loudermilk’s first move on Jan. 6 is to clear himself
CBS: FBI informant testifies for defense in Jan. 6 Proud Boys trial
The Hill: Trump says he feels like Elvis after Jan. 6 choir song hits number one on the charts
NBC 4 Greenville: South Carolina man seen on video during Jan. 6 attack using ‘bear mace’ on police, officials say
News 7 Watertown: Watertown woman found guilty in Jan. 6 Capitol breach
Austin American-Statesman: Austin man Geoffrey Shough sentenced to six months in prison for Jan. 6 involvement
Washington Post: A new lens into Maria Bartiromo’s embrace of 2020 conspiracy theories
Opinion
New York Times: Trump’s Legal Jeopardy and America’s Political Crossroads
Washington Post: Donald Trump is promising the apocalypse
In the States
ABC News 5 Cleveland: Ohio voter photo ID rules causing confusion
CBS News 8 Las Vegas: Nevada Gov. Lombardo proposes voter ID, Election Day mail-in deadline
Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville continues settlement negotiations in redistricting case, appeals costs rise
