<Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) was among the Republicans who talked big on Jan. 6, 2021 — but behind closed doors he was visibly afraid, according to Liz Cheney's new book.

In "Oath and Honor," former Rep. Cheney (R-WY) describes Gosar as standing at the podium speaking when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was rushed out of the chamber. Quickly, others in the House leadership were escorted out. Gosar was left standing at the podium, dumbstruck.

“Once we conquer the Hill — Donald Trump is returned to being the president," Gosar had said earlier to a cheering crowd.

But as the attackers began banging on the doors of the House Chamber and Capitol Police instructed lawmakers to put on their gas masks, Gosar seemed paralyzed with fear, Cheney said.

"I had not been aware that there were gas masks under the seats in the House chamber," writes Cheney in her book. "I reached under my seat and pulled out a black pouch. Inside the pouch was a box that contained another bag. I tore open the bag and took out the rescue hood inside.

"I looked up to see Gosar, still standing in front of the podium where he’d been delivering remarks. Now he was afraid, and fumbling with his gas mask."

“How do you open this?” Cheney recalled the far-right lawmaker repeating over and over.

She grabbed the pouch, opened it, and handed it back to him.

Less than an hour before, Gosar had been repeating "all kinds of unproven allegations, none of which had gone anywhere in the Arizona lawsuits." He promoted the conspiracy theory that 400,000 ballots had been "altered" or "switched" from Trump to Joe Biden.

"If Gosar really believed there was enough fraud in the Arizona election to overturn it and throw out millions of votes, I wondered how he could have voted — as he did less than 72 hours earlier — to recognize his own victory and officially seat himself," Cheney writes.

Gosar was later named by "Stop the Steal" group leader Ali Alexander as being among the four lawmakers "who came up with a January 6 event. It was to build momentum and pressure."

“I’m considered the most dangerous man in Congress,” Gosar bragged to an Arizona Trump rally crowd.

But according to Cheney, that confidence quickly disappeared on Jan. 6.>

<The car wreck that has become Ron “Don’t Say Gay” DeSantis’ presidential campaign keeps piling up. The latest casualty is a secretive, pro-DeSantis blog that’s said to be calling it quits after launching just last year.

The Florida Standard, a self-proclaimed “content and reporting machine rooted in truth, deep policy fluency and a commitment to an informed public”, reportedly just fired its entire staff mere weeks before Christmas, a month and a half before Iowa’s primary in January, and just a few months before Florida’s primary in March.

The site, which began in 2022 and is led by 26-year-old influencer Will Witt, is expected to shut down entirely before the end of 2023.

Per The Floridian:

According to sources with ties to Gov. DeSantis’s Executive Office and with knowledge about the workings of the media outlet—which in the past has been spoon-fed exclusives for publication and was granted two rare interviews with Gov. DeSantis—The Standard will be closing down operations on or around December 13…

…The sources, who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity, said that the Governor’s office propped up the website and was giving it direction through several members of DeSantis’s presidential campaign and official office.

Contrary to what DeSantis’s political world spins, there are leaks within the official office and the campaign.

DeSantis’s controversial Rapid Response staffer Christina Pushaw, who recently poked fun at former President Donald Trump at the expense of a Holocaust survivor, is alleged to have confirmed her involvement with the outlet to one of her close friends.

In addition to propping up the gay-hating governor and his extreme right-wing agenda, Witt’s site frequently publishes salacious, often misleading headlines and articles attacking the LGBTQ+ community.

Aside from running The Florida Standard into the ground, Witt likes to spend his free time spreading hate and intolerance on Instagram, where he has somehow managed to accumulate over 500K followers.

Here’s a video he posted on Thanksgiving blasting the Macy’s parade for being too inclusive of LBGTQ+ people.

It’s unclear exactly why Witt’s site is shuttering its doors so abruptly, but we’re guessing it could have something to do with the fact that he’s obnoxious, it can’t attract any serious writers or advertisers, and, oh yeah, DeSantis’ presidential campaign is in the toilet.

Despite just wrapping up a 99-stop tour in Iowa, a new Americans for Prosperity poll still finds him trailing Donald Trump by double digits in the Hawkeye State. He’s also fallen behind Nicki [sic] Haley, who’s now polling at 17%, compared to his 16%.

What were takeaways of DeSantis vs. Newsom debate?

To make matters worse, last month his biggest donor, the space-exploring real estate baron Robert Bigelow, announced he was ditching DeSantis for Trump, and last week, Never Back Down, the super PAC bolstering his hopeless White House effort, canned three of its most senior staffers–Director of Operations Matt Palmisano, Communications Director Erin Perrine, and interim CEO Kristin Davison, who only had the job for nine days before getting the boot.

Per CNN:

The sudden departures sent shockwaves throughout DeSantis’ political operation, from Tallahassee to Des Moines. Some people intimately involved in the effort to elect DeSantis learned of the dismissals the night they happened. A source inside the super PAC told CNN the changes as a whole were distracting and said they came as a surprise to people at Never Back Down.

One of the dismissed operatives had appeared that day at a super PAC event in Sioux City, Iowa, that featured DeSantis.

Though it’s pretty obvious to just about everyone that DeSantis’ path to victory is, well, nonexistent, he appears hellbent on staying in the race until every last super PAC, donor, and activist blog has either been shut down, run off, or abandoned him.>

<A judge's ruling that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection against the U.S is a "deadly serious" problem for the former president, a law professor has told Newsweek.

Appeals by both sides of a Trump ballot dispute are to go before the Colorado Supreme Court for oral arguments on Wednesday. The former president is appealing Judge Sarah Wallace's insurrectionist ruling, while his opponents are appealing Wallace's decision to keep Trump on the Colorado ballot for the 2024 presidential election.

The Colorado case, which was taken by a group of voters assisted by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, is viewed as a test case for a wider Trump disqualification campaign in other states. The former president denies any wrongdoing and has repeatedly said that the investigation is part of a wider political witch hunt. Newsweek has emailed Trump's attorney John Lauro for comment on Tuesday.

The plaintiffs say that Trump is ineligible to be a candidate in the next presidential election because his role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol disqualifies him under a clause in the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment. This prohibits any person who "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" from running for federal office.

On November 17, Wallace found that, as president, Trump was not "an officer of the United States" as defined by the 14th Amendment and could therefore could not be disqualified. However, the judge concluded Trump's "conduct and words were the factual cause of, and a substantial contributing factor" to the attack on the Capitol. Wallace found that Trump "engaged in an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021 through incitement."

Andrea Katz, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, told Newsweek that Wallace's insurrectionist ruling is "deadly serious" for Trump, as it leaves a judicial record for any other court, such as the Colorado Supreme Court.

Those courts could then say that Trump's witnesses are irrelevant to the insurrectionist finding, Katz said, adding that she was surprised by Wallace's "president is not an officer" conclusion.

Historically, Congress referred to the president as an "officer" during the debates over the 14th Amendment, and the whole point of the insurrection clause was " to prevent Confederate rebels from holding federal office", Katz added.

She also said the U.S. Supreme Court recently held in Lucia vs. SEC that a federal officer is one who holds a "continuing" position established by law, and who "exercises significant authority pursuant to the laws of the United States."

Peter Shane, New York University constitutional law professor, told Newsweek that it's not unusual for cases to be "incomplete wins or losses for both sides."

"The odd thing about the lower court opinion is that Trump 'won' on the easier issue for the plaintiffs. The argument that the president should not be deemed an officer of the United States makes no sense," Shane said.

"Where you might expect a court to hesitate would be in the determination whether Trump's acts counted as engaging in insurrection against the Constitution. I think the lower court was correct, and its findings of fact will be hard to overturn."

However, Shane said "the political implications of keeping Trump off the ballot are so daunting."

More than a dozen attorneys general from Republican-controlled states have filed briefs in the case.

A group of 19 Republican-leaning states, led by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, urged the court to follow the example of other states, including Minnesota and Michigan, and reject the plaintiffs' arguments.

"The 14th Amendment entrusts Insurrection Clause questions to Congress—not state officials or state courts," state online news outline Colorado Newsline quotes his November 29 brief as stating. "Allowing each state and its courts to determine eligibility using malleable standards would create an unworkable patchwork of eligibility requirements for President," Rokita wrote.>

<FBI agents searching the home of Sen. Bob Menendez found at least four gold bars that investigators tied to a New Jersey businessman who is one of the senator's co-defendants in a federal bribery case, according to records obtained by NBC.

Photos of the alleged gold bars found in Menendez's Clifton, New Jersey, home were included this year in a bribery indictment against him and four co-defendants. Now, an NBC New York investigation revealed Monday that serial numbers of the four gold bars in the bribery indictment appear to be exact matches to four of the 22 gold bars that businessman Fred Daibes reported as stolen in 2013.

All the gold bars, along with $500,000, were eventually recovered and returned to Daibes after he reported the armed robbery ten years ago, which led to the arrest of four individuals, NBC reported. The outlet cited police and prosecutor records out of New Jersey's Bergen County.

The USA TODAY Network has reached out to obtain copies of the documents.

Senator accused of bribery, acting as foreign agent

Menendez, New Jersey’s senior senator, has become embroiled in a number of scandals that have led to two federal indictments.

Most recently, a superseding indictment filed in October by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York accused Menendez, his wife Nadine Arslanian Menendez and businessman Wael Hana of together conspiring for the senator to act as a foreign agent to benefit Egypt.

Menendez plead not guilty last month to those charges, which allege that he acted as a foreign agent from January 2018 through at least June 2022 for the Egyptian government and Egyptian officials, even as he sat as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

At the time of the indictment, the senator, his wife and Hana — along with Daibes and and businessman Jose Uribe — had already been facing charges for allegedly participating in a bribery scheme. That original indictment, filed in September, accused Menendez and his wife of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from the businessmen in exchange for helping to enrich them and keep them out of trouble.

All four of Menendez's co-defendants have entered not guilty pleas.

Menendez stepped down as the Foreign Relations Committee chair after the most recent indictment was filed amid calls for his resignation.

Gold bars in Menendez's home have serial numbers matching Daibes' stolen property

Daibes, a millionaire developer, told police in November 2013 that he had been held at gunpoint in his Edgewater penthouse and tied to a chair as thieves made off with his cash, gold and jewelry, NBC reported.

The four suspects were soon caught and later pleaded guilty during court proceedings that Daibes attended. On Dec. 13, 2013, Daibes signed documents certifying the gold bars – each with their own serial number – and other stolen items belonged to him, NBC reported.

“They’re all stamped," Daibes said of the gold bars, according to NBC, which cited a 2014 transcript made by prosecutors and police. "You’ll never see two stamped the same way.”

Daibes’ signature and initials appear on the evidence log, which included each specific gold bar with its corresponding serial number, according to NBC.

A decade later, the FBI found four of those gold bars with those tell-tale serial numbers in the Clifton, New Jersey, home of Menendez and his wife, Nadine.>

<Special Counsel Jack Smith plans to introduce as evidence election fraud claims former President Donald Trump made during his successful 2016 campaign, new court filings show.

Smith filed Tuesday a disclosure notice detailing historic evidence the lead prosecutor plans to introduce in the Washington D.C. federal court case against Trump, court records show.

"These statements sowed mistrust in the results of the presidential election and laid the foundation for the defendant’s criminal efforts," Smith argues. "In addition to this intrinsic evidence of false statements about the election, the Government will offer evidence reflecting the defendant’s historical record of making such claims."

“The defendant’s false claims about the 2012 and 2016 elections are admissible because they demonstrate the defendant’s common plan of falsely blaming fraud for election results he does not like,” Smith writes, “as well as his motive, intent, and plan to obstruct the certification of the 2020 election results and illegitimately retain power.”

Smith cites a tweet written by Trump on Oct. 17, 2016, one week after the Washington Post published the damning “grab them by the p----” video experts believed at the time would torpedo his campaign.

“Of course there is large scale fraud happening on and before election day,” Trump wrote, according to the filing. “Why do Republican leaders deny what is going on? So naive!”

That same month, at a presidential debate moderated by Fox News’ Chris Wallace, Trump was asked if he would accept the election results. Smith seeks to submit Trump's response.

“There is a tradition in this country — in fact, one of the prides of this country — is the peaceful transition of power and that no matter how hard-fought a campaign is, that at the end of the campaign the loser concedes to the winner,” Wallace said.

“Not saying that you’re necessarily going to be the loser or the winner, but that the loser concedes to the winner and that the country comes together in part for the good of the country. Are you saying you’re not prepared now to commit to that principle?”

“What I’m saying is that I will tell you at the time,” Trump replied. “I’ll keep you in suspense. OK?”

His opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was quick to chime in, the transcript shows.

“Let me respond to that, because that’s horrifying,” Clinton said. “You know, every time Donald thinks things are not going in his direction, he claims whatever it is, is rigged against him.”

Smith also plans to include voter fraud claims from 2012, when former President Barack Obama defeated his conservative challenger, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), and a disturbing media interview in September 2020 when a journalist once again asked Trump if he would commit himself to the peaceful transition of power.

“Well, we’re going to have to see what happens,” Trump replied, according to the filing. “There won’t be a transfer, frankly; there’ll be a continuation. The ballots are out of control. You know it.”

Smith is leading the charge in two of four criminal cases against the former president in Washington D.C., where he stands accused of conspiring to defraud the U.S., and Florida, where Trump stands accused of corruptly concealing a document or record. He has pleaded not guilty in both cases.

In his Tuesday filing, the prosecutor argues Trump's election fraud comments prove motive and intent to overturn the election he lost to President Joe Biden.

“The defendant’s false claims about the 2012 and 2016 elections are admissible because they demonstrate the defendant’s common plan of falsely blaming fraud for election results he does not like,” Smith writes, “as well as his motive, intent, and plan to obstruct the certification of the 2020 election results and illegitimately retain power.”>

<Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis recommended Florida eliminate more than 1,000 state jobs in a spending proposal released Tuesday that cuts the current budget by more [sic] $4.6 billion while maintaining popular sales tax holidays.

DeSantis is calling for a $114.4 billion budget. Unlike most years, the presidential candidate announced his budget far from the state Capitol in a news conference held at a charter school on Marco Island in southwest Florida.

Instead of detailing what jobs he wants cut, DeSantis spent more time highlighting past achievements and lamenting the decision to exclude the undefeated Florida State University Seminoles from the college football championship playoff.

DeSantis said he is asking for $1 million to let FSU sue the College Football Playoff committee even though the championship will be decided months before a budget is approved.

“My first-grader, my fifth-grader and my preschooler ... they are all 'noles and they are big-time fans and they do the tomahawk chop and they were not happy,” DeSantis said. “We are going to set aside $1 million and let the chips fall where they may.”

DeSantis is also recommending more than $1 billion in tax cuts, including a repeat of sales tax holidays for school and hurricane supplies and for recreation activities.

DeSantis' recommendation is simply a suggestion to the Legislature, which will begin its annual session next month. Once the Legislature agrees on a spending plan, DeSantis will have power to veto individual items.>

<As part of special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal case related to Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat, the former president’s legal team came up with a provocative defense.

The Republican’s post-election actions “are within the ambit of his office, and he is absolutely immune from prosecution,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in a court filing last month. They added that his efforts to claim illegitimate power were at “the heart of his official responsibilities as President.”

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan considered the claim, and as my MSNBC colleague Clarissa-Jan Lim explained, the judge was clearly unimpressed.

“Whatever immunities a sitting President may enjoy, the United States has only one Chief Executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass,” Chutkan wrote. “Former Presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability.”

Indeed, the jurist was unrestrained in her categorical rejection of Team Trump’s argument that he enjoyed absolute “The Constitution’s text, structure, and history do not support that contention,” Chutkan wrote in her opinion. “No court — or any other branch of government — has ever accepted it. And this court will not so hold.”

She added, “It is well established that the First Amendment does not protect speech that is used as an instrument of a crime, and consequently the Indictment — which charges Defendant with, among other things, making statements in furtherance of a crime — does not violate Defendant’s First Amendment rights.” Chutkan concluded, “Defendant’s four-year service as Commander in Chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens.”

This came just hours after a federal appeals court also rejected an “absolute immunity” claim from Team Trump in response to civil claims filed against the Republican by police officers injured during the Jan. 6 attack.

It took a few days, but late yesterday afternoon, the former president turned to his social media platform to share his reactions to the courts’ opinions:

“Judge says Trump does not have absolute immunity. This Radical Left ideology is a threat to the Presidency. It means that Crooked Joe Biden can be held personally liable for his Open Border Policy, and all of his other mistakes and decisions that are destroying our Nation!”

So, a few things.

First, there’s nothing “radical” or even liberal about the idea that presidents lack “absolute” immunity. Second, the incumbent Democratic president isn’t “crooked”; the border isn’t “open”; and the United States isn’t being “destroyed.”

But I’m also struck by the fact that Trump’s missive suggested that he doesn’t quite understand the basics of what’s unfolding.

The Republican’s argument is that there’s no real difference between policy disagreements, legal liabilities, and alleged crimes. Courts have now ruled that Trump can be held accountable in court for allegedly crossing legal lines, which in his mind means Biden can also be held accountable in court for pursuing a governing agenda that some on the right don’t like.

Either the former president’s lawyers haven’t explained what happened last week, or they did explain it and he didn’t understand the tutorial.>

<House Judiciary Republicans are accusing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) of “colluding” with the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, saying she asked the panel to share evidence with her — evidently making a similar request to one long ago made by the Justice Department.

The accusation comes after Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) kicked off a probe determined to find any coordination among the suite of prosecutors investigating former President Trump — conduct not addressed in his Tuesday letter.

Citing excerpts of a letter between Willis and former Jan. 6 committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), Jordan’s letter says Willis asked for “records that may be relevant to our criminal investigation.”

“Specifically, you asked Rep. Thompson for access to records [including] but … not limited to recordings and transcripts of witness interviews and depositions, electronic and print records of communications, and records of travel,’” Jordan recapped.

In a letter to Willis inquiring about the correspondence, Jordan makes clear his committee is unaware “what records, if any, you obtained from your coordination with the partisan January 6 Select Committee.”

Still, he asks Willis as well as Thompson to turn over all their communications as well as any documents that were shared. A second letter to Thompson asks for more information, including a list of anyone the Jan. 6 committee deposed and a list of anyone with whom the committee shared transcripts or video recordings of the depositions.

The letter to Thompson, also signed by House Administration Committee Chair Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), comes after the Georgia lawmaker accused Thompson of failing to transfer all records.

“I have received Mr. Loudermilk’s letter, which, like his previous correspondence, contains significant factual errors. As I have said time and again, the Select Committee archived its official records in accordance with House rules. Only the Committee on House Administration is in possession of these records and Mr. Loudermilk is fully aware of this,” Thompsom said in a statement.

While Jordan highlights the contact between the two entities, it was clear while the committee was conducting its work that it had at least faced outreach from the Justice Department, which asked the Jan. 6 panel to share transcripts of some of its witness interviews.

Thompson initially rebuffed the request to share the panel’s work with the Department of Justice, though it ultimately shared some records months later while also sharing publicly the bulk of its transcripts and records as the committee dissolved.

Willis’s office did not respond to a request for comment but has engaged in a series of letters with Jordan bluntly telling him to stop interfering with her investigation into Trump and mirroring his own accusations by saying he was improperly inserting politics into her investigation by requesting information during an ongoing probe.>

<chrisowen: I horde fag puck its wobble q Qxd7 abridge light ebb;

<House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan has been accused of launching an investigation into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis based on information that has been public for a year.

The Ohio Republican Representative has written a letter to the Georgia prosecutor who indicted Donald Trump and 18 others in her 2020 election interference case. He accused her office of having "coordinated its politically motivated prosecutions" with the now-defunct House Select Committee which investigated the January 6 attack.

Jordan, a staunch ally of the former president, said Willis' office sought records from the January 6 committee as part of her investigation. Jordan said she had sent a letter to the panel's chairman, Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson, seeking access to recordings, transcripts and other communications and documents obtained by the Democrat-majority panel during its probe into the 2021 Capitol riot.

Echoing rhetoric from Trump that the criminal investigations into the former president are politically motivated, Jordan requested that the Fulton County District Attorney's Office hand over all documents and communications with the January 6 Committee by December 19. Willis' office has been contacted for comment via email.

"To the extent that your politically motivated prosecutions are now relying in any way on records obtained from the partisan January 6 Select Committee, it only reinforces concerns about your commitment to due process and whether you have fulfilled your obligations to properly disclose this material," Jordan wrote.

Jordan's letter states that the Judiciary Committee is unaware of "what records, if any," Willis' office obtained from the January 6 committee. Reporters and legal experts have noted that Willis' office obtaining information from the January 6 committee is already public record, and was mentioned in the House Select Committee's 845-page report which was released in December 2022.

"It's not unusual or improper for law enforcement to request docs from other government bodies," Anna Bower, a legal fellow and courts correspondent for Lawfare, posted on X, formerly Twitter while sharing Jordan's letter.

"It's been publicly known for a while now that Willis received some information from J6C directly. I mean, it's literally in the report. There's no gotcha here."

Bower is referring to a section in the January 6 report titled "The Committee's Concerns Regarding Possible Obstruction of its Investigation," which notes that both the Department of Justice and the Fulton County District Attorney's Office "obtained information" relevant to allegations that people tried to obstruct the panel's probe, including from the Committee directly.

Discussing Jordan's letter, Politico's senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney said: "You don't have to be a fan of Fani Willis' investigation to find it bizarre that the entire basis of this 'coordination' claim is that Willis made a routine request to the Jan. 6 committee to see their records (and we don't even know if the committee responded)."

In response, the X account of the House Judiciary Committee posted: "To say this is a 'routine' request is completely inaccurate and shows a lack of knowledge for how Congress historically works."

Reacting to the criticism, a spokesperson for Jordan's office told Newsweek that the documents and communications that the Ohio congressman is seeking from Willis' office "have not been made public."

It is unlikely that Willis' office will comply with Jordan's demands. After she brought charges against Trump and others in her election interference probe in August, Jordan wrote to Willis demanding information regarding her probe against the former president. In a September letter, Willis told Jordan there is "no justification in the Constitution for Congress to interfere with a state criminal matter, as you attempt to do."

Elsewhere, Thompson called out Georgia Rep. Barry Loudermilk, a subcommittee chair on the House Committee on Administration, after the Republican wrote a letter asking the former January 6 committee chairman to hand over any documents relating to Willis' request for information.

"I have received Mr. Loudermilk's letter, which, like his previous correspondence, contains significant factual errors," Thompson said in a statement.

"As I have said time and again, the Select Committee archived its official records in accordance with House rules. Only the Committee on House Administration is in possession of these records and Mr. Loudermilk is fully aware of this.">

Willis to Jordan: get shtupped, biyatch!!

<When he was mayor of Kansas City, Mo., Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II faced a choice. As pastor of one of the city’s largest congregations, he had helped lead opposition to the legalization of riverboat gambling. It passed anyway, and some expected Cleaver would use his new office to protect the downtown waterfront from the kind of sinful business that any good Christian would find repugnant.

They were wrong. Cleaver refused to get involved. “I was not elected as the Methodist mayor. I was elected as the mayor of our largest city, and I’m not going to try to convert people to Methodism,” the Democrat explained.

Before Mike Johnson was speaker of the House, he faced a similar moral dilemma. In his hometown of Shreveport, La., a strip club was set to open, the kind of sinful business that any good Christian would find repugnant. A coalition of neighbors thought Johnson, then a young attorney just a few years out of law school, might help them fight it.

They were right. Johnson stayed up all night preparing to present arguments for why the city council should revoke the club’s permit, according to The Washington Post. And when those fell short, he continued to press the issue.

Confronted with forks on the path of righteousness, these two deeply devout Christians went opposite ways. And today they follow those paths in Congress.

Cleaver and other religious Democrats on Capitol Hill say they are no less immersed in scripture than Johnson, who when asked to describe his worldview, replied “go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it.”

Rather, they say fundamental differences — both theological and constitutional — lead them to political positions far removed from the new Republican speaker’s.

Judge not

Rep. Hillary Scholten has picked up and read her Bible countless times. Before she was elected to Congress, she served as a deacon at her local Christian Reformed church.

During a floor speech this year in support of abortion rights, Scholten quoted Jeremiah 1:5, “I knew you before I formed you, and I placed you in your mother’s womb,” emphasizing that it says “mother’s womb,” and not “the government’s womb or the speaker’s womb.”

It’s a passage most people cite to make the opposite case, to argue that life begins at conception, so abortion is murder. It’s that kind of hermeneutical disagreement, Scholten said, that makes her unwilling to codify her religious views into law.

“Many Christians can read the same passage and have different viewpoints on how this should be implemented in terms of public policy,” the Michigan Democrat told Roll Call. “That’s why we don’t have laws according to the Christian Bible.”

A longtime advocate for a strict separation of church and state, Cleaver said he refrains from quoting scripture to sway someone to adopt his own viewpoints. “But internally, I would say, ‘Defend the meek and the fatherless and the poor and the oppressed,’ which comes from the 82nd Psalm,” he said. “I’m not using a religious billy club on others. … I impose my faith on me.”

Rep. Greg Landsman wears his Jewish faith on his sleeve — or, more accurately, under it: He has a tattoo that quotes Micah 6:8 in Hebrew on his shoulder. “I am a person of tremendous faith. I can’t remember a day where I didn’t believe in God in my core; God was always there,” the Ohio Democrat said.

While Cleaver and Scholten declined to question Johnson’s understanding of the Bible, Landsman, who has a master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School, had no such qualms. “I’ve studied the Bible and know it well, and based on what he has done and said, I am not convinced he’s done the same,” he said. “I use my faith to connect to people and find common humanity and do good work. Based on what I have seen so far, that is not how he uses his faith. He uses his faith to separate folks, and to decide that some folks are good, and some folks are bad.”

While he hasn’t embraced the title himself, Johnson has been described as a Christian nationalist, someone who believes America is a Christian nation at its core and its laws should reflect that. He has argued that the United States was explicitly founded on Judeo-Christian principles and that individual’s rights are granted by God, not the Constitution, citing the preamble of the Declaration of Independence — what he calls the nation’s “birth certificate” — that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.".....>

<.....That idea couldn’t be farther from the truth, Cleaver said. “For people who say ‘This is a Christian nation,’ I would argue on the facts, not my personal beliefs. And the facts are that the government of the United States, the founders of the United States, actually never embraced Christian religion as our national faith,” he said, adding that the Constitution explicitly prohibits religious tests to hold office.

Johnson has also argued repeatedly that Christianity is besieged in modern day America, a notion Cleaver scoffed at (“Oh, I didn’t know it was under attack,” he said) but Scholten shares some sympathy with.

“I think we are experiencing an environment right now where all religions feel under attack, and individuals do not have the freedom to talk openly about their religion, to express their religion. We’ve seen dangerous rises in Islamophobia and antisemitism recently. We do see declining participation in Christian churches right now,” Scholten said.

But, she noted, that fear to discuss faith openly is partly a reaction to rising religious zealotry. “It’s not too far-fetched to say that we have created a culture where one particular view of religion has to be right and the other has to be wrong,” she said.

Scholten also agrees with Johnson that “far too many Americans” believe incorrectly that the First Amendment prevents discussing faith in the public sphere: “That is not what the First Amendment says.”

“But what the First Amendment does call on us to do as legislators is to ensure the United States is not favoring one religion over another,” she added. “We get into dangerous territory not when we talk about who we are as people of faith, but when we [say] we’re going to legislate our faith on everyone else.”

Those sentiments suggest the fundamental divide between Johnson and religious Democrats is constitutional, not theological, said Michele Margolis, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the interplay between religion and politics.

“The key differences are maybe not their own religious views and what their ideal world would look like, but their recognition of what America is,” Margolis said. “Is America a Christian nation? … Or is America a melting pot democracy where, even if there is a majority [religion], that doesn’t mean [it] should be creeping into policy?”

Bad company corrupts

There’s no question that America has grown less religious, and less Christian, in recent decades. Membership in a house of worship among U.S. adults hovered around 70 percent until 2000 before falling below 50 percent in 2020, according to Gallup polls, while the percentage of Americans with no express religious preference has jumped from 8 percent to 21 percent. Nearly two-thirds of Americans now say a belief in God isn’t necessary to be moral.

America remains a uniquely religious nation, Margolis noted, far more so than other advanced industrial nations, a fact some sociologists have attributed to the free and competitive market of faiths protected by the First Amendment.

“But this feeling of relative decline is real,” Margolis said. “So even if, in absolute terms, they’re still a politically and socially powerful group, if that level has dropped over time, people feel that immensely.”

Some, like Johnson, have blamed American’s declining religiosity on the corruption of public morality — pointing to licentious pop culture and permissive sexual mores — and called for a governmental response in the form of conservative policies, like banning gay marriage.

But partisanship is also a factor driving Americans to leave or change their churches, said Margolis. “People are making religious choices — in part, not exclusively — to be aligned with their political identity,” Margolis said. “Whether they’re Republican, whether they’re Democrat … they feel like they don’t have a home in a religious community on account of the kind of political-religious ties that seem to be present.”

In researching her book, “From Politics to the Pews,” Margolis said she visited religious communities across the South. She spoke to one pastor in Alabama who said he avoided making any explicit mention of politics. But one Sunday, he was preaching the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus taught his disciples the Beatitudes (e.g., “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth”).

“And he then got complaints from people saying, ‘I don’t want to hear this liberal propaganda,’” Margolis said. “There’s so much choice in the religious marketplace that no one needs to stay in a religious community that they feel uncomfortable. They can create an echo chamber; they can create a silo. None of us like having the feeling of cognitive dissonance.”....>

<....Similar anecdotes aren’t hard to find. In a recent essay, The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta described being confronted in church — the same church his father had led as its pastor for decades, where he had literally grown up — for reporting unfavorably on Donald Trump. It was at his father’s funeral. “One man questioned whether I was truly a Christian,” he wrote. “Another asked if I was still on ‘the right side.’ All while Dad was in a box a hundred feet away.”

Jimmy Carter was the first Southern Baptist elected to the White House, riding a wave of evangelical support in 1976, but he left the denomination in 2000 in protest over its “rigid” views on gender inequality.

Both Johnson and his predecessor as speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, describe themselves as Southern Baptists. While we tend to think of religion as an immovable rock, unwavering and unchanging over the years, congregations have always been shaped by the winds of social change, said Margolis.

The Southern Baptist Convention provides one example. The group splintered off from the Triennial Convention in 1845, after church leaders ruled that enslavers could no longer serve as missionaries. The Southern Baptist Convention later apologized for its role in perpetuating slavery and Jim Crow and acknowledged its opposition to the civil rights movement, when some individual congregations voted to ban Black parishioners.

In 1971, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution calling on its members to “work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion when there was… carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.” The church continued to support limited access to abortion throughout the 1970s, before things began to shift.

Born in 1972, a year before Roe v. Wade, Johnson has described abortion as a “holocaust.”

Southern Baptists like Johnson were once, like Cleaver, quite wary of mixing government and religion. Evangelicals went from mostly avoiding electoral politics to forming deep connections to the conservative movement in the second half of the 20th century. Historians like Randall Balmer and Rick Perlstein have argued that opposition to efforts to integrate the South gave rise to the religious right, partly as the federal government questioned the tax-exempt status of church-affiliated private schools that excluded Black students.

More recently, questions about sanctifying gay marriages or consecrating gay ministers have driven splits in the Anglican and Methodist churches.

It’s a recognition of how religious practices can ebb and flow over time, and how the holy can disagree on the Bible’s meaning, that drives his theological humility, Cleaver said.

“God does answer prayers, but I’m always cautious because … sometimes, he sounds just like me,” Cleaver said. “That’s the danger of Christianity in our country right now.”>

<The Teflon Don should sweat Nevada's grand jury indictments of six suspected bogus Trump electors.

That's the thinking by CNN reporter Jamie Gangel, who appeared on "The Situation Room" to weigh in on the case where Nevada Republican Party Chair Michael McDonald and Clark County Republican Chair Jesse Law, who had just announced his candidacy for Nevada State Assembly, were charged.

"You never know with Trump what really worries him, but let's put it this way: they should worry him," she said. "Even though he is not named in this case the way he was in Georgia, additional charges conceivably could be brought."

Aside from racking up another potential indictment, she thinks Trump needs to be eyeing this case because it is relying on testimony by his former attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who is one of his co-defendants in the Fulton County RICO statute case blaming the 45th president and 18 others for cooking up a scheme to flip the 2020 election loss to favor him.

"But I think there's another reason for him to worry: Kenneth Chesebro is a critical witness and he's been going state to state giving evidence," she adds.

Chesebro served as Trump's attorney and is accused of orchestrating his campaign's 2020 fake electors plot.

In late 2020, it was Chesebro who penned memos strategizing how the pro-Trump electors could achieve certification to favor Trump in their respective states.

One memo suggested Chesebro was well aware he was promoting a “controversial strategy” that wouldn't likely hold up if it were brought before the Supreme Court.

Chesebro took a plea deal in Fulton County Georgia for the 2020 election subversion case.

By doing so he admitted to conspiring with Trump to prop up faux electors in numerous states.

Gangel asked: "So, what does this mean in the federal case with Jack Smith where Trump is the one named person?"

The former president has pleaded not guilty.

So far, he's facing 91 felony counts in four criminal cases stretching from Washington, New York, Florida, and Georgia.

If convicted, Trump could be sentenced to years in prison.>

<Time magazine declared Taylor Swift as 2023's person of the year on Wednesday, and accompanied the announcement with a rare interview from the artist in which she reflected on the year of her career that truly put her on top of the world. Unsurprisingly, right-wing commentators took the opportunity to interpret Swift's well-earned success to launch into a conspiracy theory bender.

Swift, who has publicly aligned herself with the pro-choice movement and declared her opposition to former President Donald Trump, has become the ire of a vocal group of conservatives hell-bent on the bizarre notion that the singer is a political weapon aimed at the upcoming presidential election.

End of Wokeness, a far-right account with nearly 2 million followers, credited Swift with having enough rizz to convince a "cult-like following" to "drink poisoned Kool Aid for her." In the same post, the account prophesied that the singer-songwriter's next step would be "Politics," adding, "If you don't think the regime has plans to weaponize her just in time for 2024, you clearly have not been paying attention."

Echoing the far-right fear-mongering, former Trump immigration adviser Stephen Miller tweeted, "What's happening with Taylor Swift is not organic."

As Trump surrogates stumbled over themselves to chime in, Jack Posobiec, a well-known alt-right troll whom Trump has retweeted, piped, "The Taylor Swift girlboss psyop has been fully activated." Posobiec also took a lame jab at Travis Kelce. "From her hand-selected vaccine shill boyfriend to her D*** lifestyle to her upcoming 2024 voter operation for Democrats on abortion rights It's all coming" he bemoaned.

Jeffrey Clark, the former Trump DOJ official criminally-charged in Georgia in connection with efforts to overturn the 2020 election, reposted Posobiec's comment along with his own vision for the future. "This is what happens when we cede culture to the Left. Brainless youth raising themselves on Taylor Swift's saccharine bland music and that washing over into the serious world of politics," he wrote. "If we reach the point where Dwayne The Rock Johnson and Taylor Swift run for office together we will have truly reached full-on Idiocracy where Mike Judge imagined ‘President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho,'" he added.

Right wing commentators previously lost it over Swift's colossal success, taking time out of their very busy days to give sage insight into her relationship with the Chiefs tight end after their relationship went public in September.>

<The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Muldrow v. St. Louis on Wednesday. The case asks whether a Missouri police sergeant was the victim of sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when she was involuntarily transferred from an intelligence role to a patrol position because her supervisor preferred a man for her job.

Title VII only bars employment decisions as illegally discriminatory if those decision cause a significant disadvantage for the employee. Though an employee may prefer one role over another, that preference is not quite the same thing as a “disadvantage” for civil rights purposes.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit made up of U.S. Circuit Judges James B. Loken, a George H.W. Bush appointee, Bobby Shepherd, a George W. Bush appointee, and David Stras, a Donald Trump appointee, sided with the police department.

Jatonya Muldrow, a sergeant with the St. Louis Police Department, filed a lawsuit against the department, alleging that she was the victim of sex discrimination because she was involuntarily transferred from her position in the department’s Intelligence Division to a patrol position because her supervisor wanted to hire a man for her job.

While at the Intelligence Division, Muldrow worked on public corruption and human trafficking cases, served as head of the Gun Crimes Intelligence Unit, and oversaw the Gang Unit. She worked Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. or 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Muldrow was also deputized as a Task Force Officer by the FBI for its Human Trafficking Unit, which meant she had the same privileges as other FBI agents, including access to FBI field offices and databases, the opportunity to work in plainclothes, access to an unmarked FBI vehicle, authority to conduct human trafficking-related investigations outside of the St. Louis city limits, and the opportunity to earn up to $17,500 in annual overtime pay.

In 2017, Muldrow’s new supervisor made multiple personnel changes which included reassigning Muldrow to the Fifth District where she became responsible for administrative and supervisory duties of patrol officers, arrests, and reported crimes. In her new role, Muldrow was required to work a rotating schedule that included weekends, wear a police uniform and drive a marked police vehicle, and work within a controlled patrol area. She earned the same salary, but was no longer eligible for the FBI’s overtime pay. However, other overtime opportunities were available to her.

Under Title VII, it is illegal for an employer to “fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment,” because of protected characteristics such as race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

Loken wrote for the panel of the Eighth Circuit and said that Muldrow’s deposition testimony that the work at her new position “was more administrative and less prestigious than that of the Intelligence Division” was not persuasive without more evidence. Loken noted that Muldrow only spent eight months in the Fifth District, and the brief reassignment “did not harm her future career prospects.” The appellate court upheld the trial court’s ruling that the defendant police department was entitled to summary judgment in its favor.

On appeal, the justices are not considering whether Muldrow was actually fired because she is a woman, as that would be a matter for the finder of fact to decide after hearing evidence at trial. Rather, they are reviewing the summary judgment ruling to decide whether, as a matter of law, Title VII considers a transfer to be the kind of adverse employment action that would give rise to a civil claim if it were done on the basis of a protected characteristic such as sex.

During over 90 minutes of oral argument, the justices spent the bulk of argument time devoted to the question of whether Title VII requires an articulable injury or whether discrimination — that is, the disparate treating of a particular group — is an injury in itself.

Some of the conservative justices seemed quite opposed to any rule that a simple difference in treatment should be actionable on its own without a more concrete injury — rather an inconsistent position set against the Court’s recent ruling in the affirmative action admissions cases.....>

<.....Last June, the Supreme Court held that affirmative action policies in college admissions constituted illegal race-based discrimination. Although the disparate treatment may have been carried out in an effort to foster diversity, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” said Chief Justice John Roberts.

Logically in line with that ruling, attorney Brian Wolfeman argued for Muldrow that treating someone “differently” is the same as treating someone “disadvantageously” when person is a protected class, because discrimination itself is injurious.

Some of the justices, however, seemed unconvinced that disparate treatment in the employment context was as problematic as disparate treatment in an affirmative action context.

Roberts tossed out a hypothetical involving coworkers of different sexes being placed in offices painted different colors or with different views.

Justice Samuel Alito said that although disparate treatment on the basis of a protected characteristic is “wrong,” that some sort of minimum threshold requirement for court action could be appropriate.

Without such a threshold, Alito said, the door would be open for employees to sue under Title VII for if a boss were to regularly ask one coworker, but not another, whether they had a nice weekend. The justice said that the case was not about whether there are “benign” forms of discrimination, but rather, whether discrimination with only “de minimus [sic]” effects really belongs in federal court.

Alito said a second time, “all discrimination is morally wrong.”

Justice Elena Kagan, however, challenged Alito’s blanket statement asking if there were not some differences and distinctions in treatment that could make those with protected characteristics better off.

During his colloquy with Assistant to the Solicitor General Aimee Brown (who supported Muldrow’s petition on behalf of the Biden administration), Alito raised concerns about overrunning federal court dockets with hundreds of discrimination claims over what he called “trivial disparate treatment.” Alito said his concern was not about what’s “moral and immoral,” but rather, about “what belongs in federal court,” and about the desire to permit federal judges some discretion to dismiss trivial cases at an early stage in litigation.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who had slammed the Court’s affirmative action decision as being “without any basis in law, history, logic, or justice,” and grounded in “let-them-eat-cake obliviousness,” asked about the need and usefulness of any requirement that there be a threshold injury. Jackson asked whether the nature and extent of a victim’s injury could not be more appropriately addressed at the damages phase of a lawsuit — rather than as an element of the claim. In such a framework, a victim of so-called “de minimus [sic]” discrimination would still have a legal claim, but would be awarded minimal damages.

Jackson also argued that “every defendant” would argue that because a person passed over on the basis of a protected characteristic “went on to do great things,” that the person had not been harmed at all.

Justice Clarence Thomas, long a fierce opponent of affirmative action, asked about a hypothetical police department that decided it had a legitimate need to transfer Black or Hispanic officers to a certain precinct.

“So simply making the selection or the transfer based on race or sex in and itself becomes actionable?” Thomas asked Brown.

When attorney Robert Loeb argued on behalf of the police department, Justice Sonia Sotomayor brought the questioning around to the practical impact of the discrimination at hand.

“I have a very hard time understanding how a court could ever see that switching someone’s schedules isn’t enough of an injury,” Sotomayor said.

In March 2021, Muldrow was charged by local authorities with misdemeanor witness tampering after being accused of attempting to dissuade another officer from reporting a sexual assault that allegedly occurred in 2009. Prosecutors alleged that Muldrow characterized the reported assault as “just a misunderstanding.”

Ultimately, police determined that there had been no credible allegation of sexual assault and the related misdemeanor charges against Muldrow were dismissed because prosecutors filed them one day after the statute of limitations had expired.>

<In a keynote speech to a gathering of Christian nationalist lawmakers Tuesday night, House Speaker Mike Johnson compared himself to Moses, leading the GOP conference - and America - through the parted waters of the Red Sea.

Johnson addressed the National Association of Christian Lawmakers at the group's award gala at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. Perhaps unaware that the event was being recorded for the NACL Facebook page, Johnson told the crowd: "I'll tell you a secret, since media is not here." ("Thank you for not allowing the media in," Johnson added, alleging that journalists have been taking his comments "out of context" with "great joy for the last few weeks.")

Johnson then revealed that - in the lead up to the "tumult" of Kevin McCarthy losing his gavel and the chaotic GOP process of selecting new Speaker - he had been speaking directly to God. "Look, I'm a Southern Baptist, I don't wanna get too spooky on you," he said, provoking some laughter from the attendees. "But, you know, the Lord speaks to your heart."

The message he received from God, Johnson said, was to prepare for a "Red Sea moment" - both for the Republican conference "and in the country at large." Johnson said found the directive confusing but he continued to seek the counsel of God.

"The Lord began to wake me up, through this three-week process, in the middle of night to speak to me," Johnson insisted. "Now at the time," he continued, "I assumed the Lord is going to choose a new Moses." But because of his own lesser rank among the GOP's leadership, Johnson said, he believed the heavenly message to be: "You're gonna allow me to be Aaron to Moses," citing the role of the Old Testament prophet's brother and biblical sidekick.

But then Johnson watched as candidate after candidate failed to generate the necessary Republican support to win the Speakership. "Ultimately 13 people ran for the post. And the Lord kept telling me to, ‘Wait, wait, wait,'" Johnson recalled. "So I waited, I waited. And then at the end … the Lord said, ‘Now step forward.'" Johnson regaled the audience with his surprise to be tapped as the Moses figure: "Me?" Johnson said. "I'm supposed to be Aaron." But that was not the message, Johnson insisted, recalling: "‘No,' the Lord said, ‘Step forward.'"

Johnson's speech to the National Association of Christian Lawmakers - a group that seeks to enact its anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ "biblical worldview" into law - is just the latest evidence that the politician who is now second in line for the presidency views himself as on a divine mission. Rolling Stone previously reported on Johnson's exhortations to save a "depraved" America from God's wrath and vengeance.

Johnson told the NACL crowd that his "core conviction" that "God wants us to seek Him for the path through the roiling sea." The Speaker then underscored his pessimism about the state of the nation, asserting that America is facing the "greatest collection of challenges since maybe World War II, maybe the Civil War."

America, Johnson insisted, is "engaged in a battle between worldviews" and "a great struggle for the future of the Republic." The specifics of that struggle remained unspoken. But the NACL mission, according to materials promoting the gala, includes: "abolishing abortion"; restoring "traditional marriage between one man and one woman"; and "exposing the ungodly effort to undermine our culture by Leftists,". Johnson added that he believed far-right Christians will prevail: "We should not be daunted. In the face of these challenges. Our hope is in the Lord, our hope, and our trust is in God."

At the gala, Johnson was awarded with NACL's "American Patriot Award for Christian Honor and Courage." It was bestowed to recognize what the group's leader, former Arkansas state Rep. Jason Rappert, described as Johnson's "statesmanship, bold Christian leadership, and faithful service to our Lord Jesus Christ.">

<By now it should be clear that Federal Judge Aileen Cannon is doing all in her power to help Donald Trump in the criminal prosecution against him in the Mar-A-Lago document case. This has mostly taken the form of her issuing paperless orders delaying court deadlines, nonsensically striking documents filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith, and making an utter mess of her docket that will be hard to untangle anytime soon. What she has not done, however, is issue any substantive orders that Special Counsel Jack Smith could immediately appeal to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals to have her reversed, as she was in 2022 in two scathing orders.

This may be about to change.

Donald Trump just filed a motion before Judge Aileen Cannon to request his lawyers participate in the CIPA Section 4 ex parte proceedings before her that the government requested.

CIPA stands for the Classified Information Procedure Act. CIPA is a law that provides limitations and restrictions on how classified documents are handled in criminal cases that involve classified documents. The law around CIPA Section 4 is very well established and non-controversial. It allows the government to have a hearing with a federal judge alone — without the defendant or the defendant’s lawyers present — to allow the federal judge to make a ruling if certain classified documents are so sensitive that the government is allowed to withhold those documents from discovery in the case and use a summary or other form of substitution in place of the classified document(s). It would make no sense for the criminal defendant or his lawyer to be allowed at the CIPA section 4 hearing because the entire purpose of the hearing is for the judge to decide if certain documents are so sensitive that the defendant and defendant’s counsel should not gain any access to the underlying documents as a matter of national security.

Donald Trump is now requesting the unprecedented relief in his latest motion that his lawyers be allowed to participate in the CIPA Section 4 hearing before Judge Cannon and review the documents to challenge the government’s attempt to withhold the classified documents from discovery. Trump is also requesting that Judge Cannon order Jack Smith to file redacted filings about the highly sensitive classified information, which the public could potentially gain access to.

For any other judge, Trump’s request would not just be rejected but it would be laughed out of court. But let’s face it, we are talking about Judge Cannon here, the same judge who, back in 2022, unlawfully asserted “equitable jurisdiction” over the search warrant executed at Mar-A-Lago and became the first judge in American history to make such a ruling before getting reversed in two brutal orders by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

So instead of just letting Judge Cannon continue to make nonsensical paperless orders keeping the case in a state of judicial purgatory to help him, Trump has now forced Judge Cannon’s hand to make a ruling on his CIPA Section 4 request.

If history repeats itself, Judge Cannon will make the clearly unlawful and erroneous ruling to help Trump and permit Trump’s lawyers to participate in the CIPA Section 4 hearing. That’s when Special Counsel Jack Smith can finally file his appeal to the Eleventh Circuit.

In that appeal, Jack Smith can not only bring up Judge Cannon’s clearly unlawful CIPA Section 4 ruling, but he will almost certainly be able to bring up her other nonsensical paperless orders regarding CIPA like her refusal to set other key CIPA deadlines.

Donald Trump could have just left Judge Cannon alone as she sought to avoid making any appealable orders to help him, but he couldn’t help himself, and has now forced her hand.

Now that the ball is in Cannon’s court, expect her to fumble.>

<Conservatives turned on Mike Johnson after he confirmed that tapes to be released publicly of the Capitol riot would blur the faces of some of those involved.

Johnson has faced increasing pressure to make good on his November 17 pledge to release the complete archive of footage recorded when supporters of then-President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, to protest the results of the 2020 election. The House speaker, a Louisiana Republican, also pledged to release the footage while campaigning for the speakership in October.

While he released an initial 90 hours of footage that day, shared by the Committee on House Administration, two weeks later no further footage has been released. While the Associated Press said the rest of the footage was expected over the coming months, The Hill reported it had been expected that it would be released on November 20.

On Tuesday, Johnson told reporters at a news conference that that he is going through a methodical process of releasing the material.

"As you know, we have to blur some of the faces of persons who participated in the events of that day because we don't want them to be retaliated against and be charged by the DOJ," Johnson said.

"That's a slow process to get it done, we're working steadily on it. We've hired additional personnel to do that and all of those tapes ultimately will be out so everybody can see them and draw their own conclusions."

In a statement previously emailed to Newsweek, Raj Shah, deputy chief of staff for communications for Johnson, said: "Faces are to be blurred from public viewing room footage to prevent all forms of retaliation against private citizens from any non-governmental actors. The Department of Justice already has access to raw footage from January 6, 2021."

Reacting to the conference, conservatives suggested Johnson was trying to blur out the faces of federal agents involved in the riot. While a conspiracy theory since the events has circulated speculating that FBI agents were involved in the riots, there is no evidence to support such a claim.

One person posted on X, formerly Twitter: "This is 100% to blur out all the feds. Like the FBI doesn't have copies of these. What a ridiculous lie."

"We already know what is going on here," opined another. "Protecting the feds."

"It's because they are feds," said a third.

Meanwhile, Democrats were also angered by the news - but because they thought Johnson was protecting people involved in the riots who should be charged for criminality.

Sean Casten, an Illinois Democratic representative, said: "There is no public safety or policy argument to publicly release information about Capitol security protocols.

"It is also telling that the so-called 'law and order' party is unwilling to publicly identify people caught in the act of committing this particular crime."

X user BrooklynDad_Defiant, a Democrat with over a million followers, wrote: "Weird how MAGA Mike Johnson released ALL that footage to prove how innocent and tame the January 6th participants were, but blurred their faces so we couldn't see how innocently they bashed cops with fire extinguishers and flagpoles."

Newsweek has contacted representatives for Johnson by email to comment on this story.

Johnson has previously announced his plan to blur the faces of individuals involved.

He said the video would be processed to blur the faces of individuals "to avoid any persons from being targeted for retaliation of any kind." He added that an estimated 5 percent of the footage will not be publicly released as it "may involve sensitive security information related to the building architecture."

MAGA Republicans have long called for the release of the footage, claiming it will prove the riot was not violent. However, Democratic politicians dispute that narrative. More than 1,000 people have been charged over their alleged roles in the incident.

In August, Trump was indicted on four felony charges for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the runup to the Capitol riot: conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and continues to deny any wrongdoing.>

<[Event "Cambridge Chess Classic"] [Site "Cambridge Mass"]
[Date "1985.10.05"]
[EventDate "1985"]
[Round "1"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Hertan, Charles"]
[Black "Shaw, Alan"]
[ECO "E15"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]
[Source "Shaw"]

<[Event "Bulger Memorial"] [Site "Boston Mass"]
[Date "1985.01.12"]
[EventDate "1985"]
[Round "1"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Wolff, Patrick"]
[Black "Shaw, Alan"]
[ECO "C05"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "Bulger Memorial"] [Site "Boston Mass"]
[Date "1985.01.12"]
[EventDate "1985"]
[Round "2"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Shaw, Alan"]
[Black "Curdo, John"]
[ECO "C64"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]