Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has an article this morning detailing some of the allegations of the January 6^th panel that Donald Trump knew he lost the 2020 presidential election and decided to pursue false claims that the election was rigged.  It includes citations and quotes from Trump insiders such as Attorney General William P. Barr, White House counsel Pat A. Cipollone, and Richard P. Donoghue, a former top Justice Department official.  The article comments that:

“Mr. Trump emerges as a man unable — or unwilling — to listen to his advisers even as they explain to him that he has lost the election, and his multiple and varied claims to the contrary are not grounded in fact.

At one point, Mr. Trump did not seem to care whether there was any evidence to support his claims of election fraud, and questioned why he should not push for even more extreme steps, such as replacing the acting attorney general, to challenge his loss.”

The entire article is below.  It provides details that the January 6^th Panel had not previously made publc.

Tony

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The New York Times

Panel Suggests Trump Knew He Lost the Election, Eyeing Criminal Case

By Luke Broadwater and Alan Feuer

March 4, 2021

WASHINGTON — Shortly after the 2020 election, as ballots were still being counted, the top data expert in President Donald J. Trump’s re-election campaign told him bluntly that he was going to lose.

In the weeks that followed, as Mr. Trump continued to insist that he had won, a senior Justice Department official told him repeatedly that his claims of widespread voting fraud were meritless, ultimately warning him that they would “hurt the country.”

Those concerns were echoed by the top White House lawyer, who told the president that he would be entering into a “murder-suicide pact” if he continued to pursue extreme plans to try to invalidate the results of the 2020 election.

Yet Mr. Trump — time and again — discounted the facts, the data and many of his own advisers as he continued to promote the lie of a stolen election, according to hundreds of pages of exhibits, interview transcripts and email correspondence assembled by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack for a legal filing released late Wednesday.

In laying out the account, the panel revealed the basis of what its investigators believe could be a criminal case against Mr. Trump. At its core is the argument that, in repeatedly rejecting the truth that he had lost the 2020 election — including the assertions of his own campaign aides, White House lawyers, two successive attorneys general and federal investigators — Mr. Trump was not just being stubborn or ignorant about his defeat, he was knowingly perpetrating a fraud on the United States.

It is a bold claim that could be difficult to back up in court, but in making it, the House committee has compiled an elaborate narrative of Mr. Trump’s extraordinary efforts to cling to power.

In it, Mr. Trump emerges as a man unable — or unwilling — to listen to his advisers even as they explain to him that he has lost the election, and his multiple and varied claims to the contrary are not grounded in fact.

At one point, Mr. Trump did not seem to care whether there was any evidence to support his claims of election fraud, and questioned why he should not push for even more extreme steps, such as replacing the acting attorney general, to challenge his loss.

“The president said something to the effect of: ‘What do I have to lose? If I do this, what do I have to lose?’” Richard P. Donoghue, a former top Justice Department official, told the committee in an interview. “And I said: ‘Mr. President, you have a great deal to lose. Is this really how you want your administration to end? You’re going hurt the country.’”

Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel, also tried to get Mr. Trump to stop pursuing baseless claims of fraud. He pushed back against a plan from a rogue Justice Department lawyer, Jeffrey Clark, who wanted to distribute official letters to multiple state legislatures falsely alerting them that the election may have been stolen and urging them to reconsider certified election results.

“That letter that this guy wants to send — that letter is a murder-suicide pact,” Mr. Cipollone told Mr. Trump, according to Mr. Donoghue. “It’s going to damage everyone who touches it. And we should have nothing to do with that letter. I don’t ever want to see that letter again.”

The account is part of a court filing in a civil case in California, in which the committee’s lawyers for the first time laid out their theory of a potential criminal case against the former president. They said they had evidence demonstrating that Mr. Trump, the lawyer John Eastman and other allies could be charged with obstructing an official proceeding of Congress, conspiracy to defraud the American people and common law fraud.

The committee’s filing shows how some of Mr. Trump’s aides and advisers repeatedly — and passionately — tried to get him to back down from his various false claims and plans to try to stay in power.

It started almost immediately after the polls closed in November 2020, when members of Mr. Trump’s campaign data team began trying to break through to the president to impress upon him that he had been defeated.

During a conversation in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump’s lead campaign data guru “delivered to the president in pretty blunt terms that he was going to lose,” Jason Miller, another top campaign aide, told the panel. The president said he disagreed with the data expert’s analysis, Mr. Miller said, because he thought he could win in court.

Mr. Miller also told the committee that he agreed with Attorney General William P. Barr’s analysis that there had not been widespread fraud in the election, and “said that to the president on multiple occasions,” the panel wrote in its filing.

In the chaotic postelection period, Mr. Trump’s legal team set up a hotline for fraud allegations and was flooded with unverified accounts from people across the country who claimed they had evidence. A Postal Service truck driver from Pennsylvania asserted without evidence that his 18-wheeler had been filled with phony ballots. Republican voters in Arizona complained that some of their ballots had not been counted because they used Sharpie pens that could not be read by voting machines.

Mr. Trump appeared to be aware of many of these reports, and would speak about them often with aides and officials, raising various theories about voting fraud even as they debunked them one by one.

“When you gave him a very direct answer on one of them, he wouldn’t fight us on it,” Mr. Donoghue, the Justice Department official, told the committee. “But he would move to another allegation.”

Mr. Donoghue recalled, for instance, how he told Mr. Trump that Justice Department investigators had looked into, and ultimately discounted, a claim that election officials in Atlanta had wheeled a suitcase full of phony ballots into their counting room on Election Day.

Instead of accepting Mr. Donoghue’s account, Mr. Trump abruptly switched subjects and asked about “double voting” and “dead people” voting, then moved on to a completely different claim about how, he said, “Indians are getting paid” to vote on Native American reservations.

After Mr. Donoghue sought to knock down those complaints as well, he told the committee, Mr. Trump changed topics again and wondered aloud why his numerous legal challenges to the election had not worked.

Jeffrey A. Rosen, another top Justice Department lawyer who became the acting attorney general after Mr. Barr left the agency, fielded this question, according to Mr. Donoghue’s account, telling the president that he was “free to bring lawsuits,” but that the department could not be involved.

Even though none of Mr. Trump’s persistent claims about election fraud turned out to be true, prosecutors will most likely have to grapple with the question of his state of mind at the time — specifically, the issue of whether he believed the claims were true, said Alan Rozenshtein, a former Justice Department official who teaches at the University of Minnesota Law School.

“To the extent that prosecutors have to show intent, Trump’s delusion makes that harder,” Mr. Rozenshtein said. “A finder of fact could conclude that Trump is so uniquely narcissistic and self-absorbed that he actually thought the election had been stolen.”

Throughout December, Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue repeatedly informed Mr. Trump that both his specific and general claims of fraud were false.

At a White House meeting on Dec. 15, 2020, Mr. Trump was told that “people are telling you things that are not right,” the committee said. Mr. Donoghue personally informed Mr. Trump during a Dec. 27 phone call “in very clear terms” that the Justice Department had done “dozens of investigations, hundreds of interviews,” had looked at “Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada” and concluded that “the major allegations are not supported by the evidence.”

The panel also found evidence that some of the allies most deeply involved in Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss were aware that their endeavor lacked legal merit.

Mr. Eastman, the conservative lawyer who advised Mr. Trump that Vice President Mike Pence could throw out electoral votes from states he had lost, conceded during a conversation with Mr. Pence’s top lawyer, Greg Jacob, that his arguments carried no legal weight and would fail before the Supreme Court.

A rejection of electors by the vice president would be a “relatively minor violation” of federal law, Mr. Eastman acknowledged, agreeing with Mr. Jacob’s assessment that even the most conservative justices would reject it.

“If this case got to the Supreme Court, we’d lose 9-0, wouldn’t we?” Mr. Jacob recalled telling Mr. Eastman, according to his interview with the committee. “And he started out at 7 to 2. And I said, ‘Who are the two?’ And he said, ‘Well, I think maybe Clarence Thomas.’ And I said: ‘Really? Clarence Thomas?’ And so we went through a few Thomas opinions and, finally, he acknowledged, ‘Yeah, all right, it would be 9-0.’”

The committee recently received documents from the National Archives that showed some of Mr. Trump’s activities on Jan. 6. Among them were a morning meeting that included his eldest son’s fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle — who has turned over 110 pages of documents to the committee and was issued a subpoena on Thursday — a call with former Senator Kelly Loeffler, Republican of Georgia, and a call with Mr. Pence as he tried to persuade the vice president to go along with his plans.

As the mob attacked the Capitol, Mr. Eastman and Mr. Jacob exchanged a series of emails.

“Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege,” Mr. Jacob wrote at 12:14 p.m., shortly after pro-Trump rioters began attacking the complex, chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”

“It was gravely, gravely irresponsible for you to entice the president with an academic theory that had no legal viability,” Mr. Jacob wrote in a subsequent email.

More than 150 police officers would be injured during the mob violence that would cost several people their lives.

At 4:45 p.m., with the Capitol still under attack, Mr. Eastman wrote to Mr. Jacob, “When this is over, we should have a good bottle of wine at a nice dinner someplace.”

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday, the City University of New York (CUNY) and Amazon announced a partnership where Amazon employees will have access to education at eight colleges to further their career opportunities. Through Amazon’s Career Choice program, the company will provide an annual benefit to cover tuition and select fees for all qualifying hourly employees accepted into participating CUNY schools in New York.  As described in an announcement from CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez.

“Education can unlock opportunity and prosperity for New Yorkers, no matter what background or zip code. We must continue to invest in community colleges, workforce development, and opportunities for career training,” said New York Governor Kathy Hochul. “This collaboration with CUNY will provide greater access to education and opportunity, and complement our efforts to grow our economy and expand workforce development across the state.”

“We cannot be a prosperous city without the collaboration of private partners to help create efficient educational and career pipelines,” said New York City Mayor Eric Adams. “This is what I call ‘Get Stuff Done’ and I’m grateful Amazon is working with the city to launch this joint educational partnership. Thanks to the collaboration between CUNY’s Career Success Initiatives and Amazon’s Career Choice, thousands of New Yorkers will gain access to an Associate or Bachelor’s degree and training to further their careers.”

Starting with an initial focus on Associate and Bachelor’s degrees, the initiative is open to any major of study at any of the participating eight CUNY colleges in all five New York City boroughs. CUNY’s partnership, the first for Amazon in New York State, is part of a national commitment by Amazon to provide educational and upskilling opportunities to more than 750,000 hourly employees at four national and more than 140 local universities and colleges.

“This important partnership is a powerful example of how the private sector can join forces with the City University of New York to advance workers’ education, promote economic mobility and help rebuild New York City’s post-pandemic economy all at the same time,” said CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez. “We thank Amazon for its commitment to higher education for its employees and look forward to working with them while expanding CUNY’s role as one of the nation’s premiere engines of economic opportunity.”

Through this collaboration, New York City-based Amazon workers will have access to over 500 Associate and Bachelor’s degree programs offered online or in-person, including in-demand fields such as technology, healthcare, and green energy.

This initial cohort of CUNY colleges represent a footprint in each borough to provide locations in physical proximity to Amazon worksites. The eight colleges are Bronx Community College, Borough of Manhattan Community College, the City College of New York, the College of Staten Island, the CUNY School of Professional Studies, Kingsborough Community College, LaGuardia Community College and Queens College.

Following today’s announcement, Career Choice now works with more than 180 education providers to deliver education to employees.

“Working at Amazon has made me realize how important data can be to a business’ success,” said Afor Ukoha, an employee at Amazon’s fulfillment center in Staten Island, New York. “I enjoy solving problems and have a background in computers, so the Career Choice program supports me in expanding my skillset in something I am passionate about. With Amazon’s help, I am able to receive my education for free, while also working with my schedule to make sure I can still work.”

Career training is just one of the industry-leading benefits that Amazon offers to its team. In addition, Amazon pays employees an average starting wage of $18 per hour, which is more than double the federal minimum wage, and provides comprehensive health benefits, paid time off, up to 20 weeks fully paid parental leave, and additional benefits for employees and their families.

“At Amazon, we’re committed to empowering our employees by providing them access to the education and training they need to grow their careers, whether that’s with us or elsewhere,” said Carley Graham Garcia, Head of Community Affairs at Amazon in New York. “We’re thrilled today to be partnering with CUNY on our Career Choice program to give our employees access to pursue the education path that fits their passions. Whether employees are looking to finish their Bachelor’s degree at CUNY or build on their foundational skills of English proficiency or GED preparation with our national partners, we’re prepared to meet our employees wherever they are on their educational journey.”

With Career Choice, Amazon works to make it easy for employees to advance their education—even building classrooms on-site in many of its buildings. Employees can take classes online, in-person at a local university, or on-site in one of the over 110 Career Choice classrooms located in fulfillment centers in 37 states. Since launching in 2012, Career Choice has helped provide education for more than 50,000 employees. As of this announcement, Amazon’s Career Choice program works with more than 180 education providers across the U.S., which along with colleges and universities includes partners providing industry certifications, English language proficiency, high school completion programs, and college preparatory courses. Career Choice is one of nine free skills training and education programs that Amazon offers to its employees as part of its Upskilling 2025 pledge.

Additional partners include Southern New Hampshire University, Colorado State University – Global, Western Governors University, and National University. Amazon will also partner with with GEDWorks and Smart Horizons to provide employees with free high school completion and GED preparation, Voxy EnGen and goFLUENT to provide English language proficiency training, and Outlier to provide college preparation courses.

To learn more about Career Choice, visit: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/workplace/career-choice

We welcome Amazon and its employees to CUNY!

Tony

Fiona Hill testifying in an impeachment hearing of Donald Trump. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo

Dear Commons Community,

Politico has made available an extensive interview conducted by Maura Reynolds with Fiona Hill, quite possibly one of the most knowledgeable Russian experts in the country.  A transcript of the interview can be found here. The introduction is below.

The entire piece is well worth a read!

Tony

Politico

Maura Reynolds

February 28th

Dear Commons Community,

Dear Commons Community,

Dear Commons Community,

I watched Joe Biden deliver his State of the Union Address last night (see video above) and most of the  high points where in the first 15-20 minutes when he talked about the situation in Ukraine.  It was a pleasure to see that throughout this part of the address that there was clear partisanship support for him as most members (Republicans and Democrats) of the House and Senate stood and clapped.

The most touching moment of his address was when he hailed the heroism of the Ukrainian resistance and introduced Oksana Markarova, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, who was joined by Jill Biden in the first lady’s box holding a small Ukrainian flag.  In a show of bipartisan solidarity, just about everybody in the entire chamber, some of them wearing blue and yellow and many of them waving Ukrainian flags, leapt to their feet in an ovation to her and her country that lasted several minutes.  Ms. Markova put her hands on her heart and said thank you several times.  There were tears in her eyes!

Mr. Biden also announced that he would ban Russian planes from American airspace and agreed with foreign counterparts to release a cumulative 60 million barrels of oil from their strategic petroleum reserves to try to curtail gasoline price increases stemming from the war.  

He said Mr. Putin and his cronies should not go unpunished. “Throughout our history, we’ve learned this lesson — when dictators do not pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos,” Mr. Biden said. “They keep moving. And the costs, the threats to America, and America to the world, keeps rising.”

Mr. Biden directly threatened the moneyed moguls who prop up Mr. Putin while keeping their money and enjoying life in the West. “Tonight, I say to the Russian oligarchs and the corrupt leaders who bilked billions of dollars off this violent regime: No more,” he said, adding, “We’re joining with European allies to find and seize their yachts, their luxury apartments, their private jets.”

For the remainder of his address, Biden focused on domestic issues.  However, he offered few  new initiatives other than promising to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate fraud involving pandemic relief funds.

I rated the Address an A for the first part and a B/C for the remainder.

Tony

John Bolton pushes back on Newsmax host: "[Trump] barely knew where Ukraine was…It's just not accurate to say that Trump's behavior somehow deterred the Russians" pic.twitter.com/ICRmmeJ8C3

— Jason S. Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) March 1, 2022

Dear Commons Community,

Former President Donald Trump’s grasp on the geography of Russia wasn’t exactly first class, according to his former national security adviser John Bolton.

Trump “barely knew where Ukraine was” and once asked if Finland was part of Russia, Bolton told Newsmax host Rob Schmitt yesterday (see video clip above) .

Bolton recalled Trump’s stunning lack of knowledge while countering Schmitt’s claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin did not invade Ukraine during Trump’s presidency because Trump took a “very tough stance” on the country.

“There is something to be said, though, about the simple fact that there was not aggression during the four years,” Schmitt told Bolton. “I mean, you were part of that administration as well and there was not aggression from Russia, and they waited him out, it seems, and made a move.”

Trump “did not” take a tough stance on Russia, responded Bolton.

The Trump White House had sanctioned Russia, he continued, but “in almost every case” the restrictions were imposed “with Trump complaining about it, saying we were being too hard.”

“The fact is that he barely knew where Ukraine was. He once asked John Kelly, his second chief of staff, if Finland were a part of Russia,” Bolton added. “It is just not accurate to say that Trump’s behavior somehow deterred the Russians. I think the evidence is that Russia didn’t feel that their military was ready.”

Too bad Bolton didn’t speak our more when he was Trump’s adviser!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

An Idaho House panel yesterday rejected legislation that opponents said would have harmed education by transferring more than $1 billion dollars of public money to private and religious schools.

Backers had said the measure would have improved Idaho education through competition.

But it was too much of a change for a majority of members of the House Education Committee, who voted 8-7 to kill the measure that would have allowed qualifying families to get $6,000 per student from the state private school tuition or private tutoring.

Backers had framed the measure as a parental-choice bill to give parents the option to to send kids to private school using money from what the bill dubbed the “Hope and Opportunity Scholarship Program.”

Supporters said parents paid taxes into the system and therefore should be able to participate in a program to get money from the state to send their kids to a private school.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“This is taxpayer funded,” said Republican Rep. Dorothy Moon, one of the bill’s sponsors. “This is their money. Everybody keeps saying the school district’s money. No, it’s our money.”

But opponents said the measure would have degraded public education and violated the Idaho Constitution, which requires a uniform system of public free public education.

“What we would be doing here would be unconstitutional,” said Republican Rep. Gary Marshall, a retired teacher. “We’re clearly crossing that line.”

Some bill backers agreed with that assessment, but also said they disagreed with the Idaho Constitution and supported the measure anyway.

“This is an amendment that we should remove from our constitution,” said Republican Rep. Judy Boyle. “It is a terrible thing, I think. It’s biased. It’s unfair, and we never should have had to put it in in the beginning.”

Republican Rep. Julie Yamamoto, a retired teacher who voted to kill the bill, said that the way to change the Idaho Constitution isn’t by passing an unconstitutional bill, but by passing a measure with two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate and then getting a simple majority of Idaho voters in a general election.

“I told people in my community that I would be a principle-centered representative, and my principles say I don’t go against the state constitution,” she said.

Besides arguing over the bill’s constitutionality, lawmakers also took issue with the proposed cost. Moon and Republican Rep. Gayann DeMordaunt, another of the bill’s sponsors, said in the bill’s fiscal note that in the first year it would have cost about $13 million.

But Democratic Rep. Steve Berch said that was a low-ball number and that under the bill’s guidelines, more than 200,000 Idaho students would qualify at a cost to taxpayers of about $1.2 billion.

“This is not a school-choice bill. This is a who-pays-for-someone-else’s-school-choice bill,” Berch said. “This (bill) becomes the gateway for those who hope to create the opportunity of privatizing education.”

Backers referenced a similar program in Arizona for comparison. But that program has a much more restrictive policy on who qualifies. The proposed bill in Idaho was based on national criteria for a school lunch program, which Berch said made 68% of Idaho students eligible to get money to attend a private or religious school.

Some lawmakers representing rural areas opposed the plan because they said it shortchanged rural areas with no private schools. Most of Idaho’s 121 private schools are in more urban areas.

Republican Rep. Ryan Kerby said he couldn’t support the bill because it included religious private schools. He said his primary concern was that such schools would be pressured to water down their curriculum on such things as gender issues and marriage beliefs if they wanted to take part in the program and get taxpayer money that had been provided to parents for tuition payments.

“There’s going to be pressure on the schools to change,” he said, noting he started working in education in the 1970s at a private Christian school. “I think we’re going to lose, potentially, the purity of doctrine in our Catholic and our Christian schools.”

Good move by the Idaho House Education Committee.  But note that the 8-7 vote was very narrow!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Former Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie blasted Donald Trump’s praise of the Russian invasion of Ukraine last week, saying history was watching despite the former president’s repeated comments about Vladimir Putin being a “genius” who had been “smart” about the ruthless assault.

“How can anyone with any understanding of the world call Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine ‘genius’ and ‘very savvy’ as we watch him unite the rest of the world against Russia in nearly an instant?” Christie asked yesterday on Twitter. He went on to say that Putin has two choices now: an “unwinnable occupation of Ukraine” or a “humiliating retreat.”

“Yeah, that’s ‘genius’ and ‘very savvy’ alright,” Christie wrote.

His comments, a direct attack on Trump, came after the former president dubbed Putin’s initial description of his invading Russian forces as peacekeepers a “genius” move. Meanwhile, most of rest of the world was condemning the Kremlin’s actions.

Trump defended those remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference this past weekend, saying that, although the attack was “appalling,” Putin was “smart” and the “real problem is that our leaders are dumb.”

His statements about an invading world leader are remarkable even for Trump, who was known for his fondness of Putin during his four years in the White House, going so far as to ask Russia to hack his 2016 Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, to gain access to her emails.

Christie has it right.  Trump has no understanding of the world.  He operates strictly on what might be beneficial for Donald!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

In a new paper, Gregory Paul, an independent paleontologist, argues that Tyrannosaurus rex is not one but three species. The premise, put forth in his paper highlights an assortment of tensions in dinosaur paleontology, including how subjective the naming of species can be. As reported by The New York Times.

“Tyrannosaurus rex is the most iconic dinosaur. Its skeletons hold pride of place in museums around the world, and sell for millions of dollars at auction — and a bounty of relatively complete specimens have made it the most thoroughly studied dinosaur in the world.

But in a new paper published yesterday in Evolutionary Biology, three researchers argue that the animal we currently call Tyrannosaurus rex should actually be split into three separate species, with T. rex being joined by two cousins they name Tyrannosaurus imperator, or the emperor, and Tyrannosaurus regina, the queen.

“This paper is likely to rock the paleo community, and the public that is so used to good old T. rex,” said Gregory Paul, an independent paleontologist and paleoartist and author on the paper.

Tyrannosaur experts largely disagree. Thomas Carr, a paleontologist at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wis., calls the evidence for multiple species “vanishingly weak.” Another paleontologist removed himself as an author of the paper before it moved to publication. And curators at museums with Tyrannosaurus specimens that would be affected by these reclassifications say they aren’t going to rename anything based on the proposal.

But even if children’s imaginations never end up filled with the sharp teeth and tiny arms of three types of Tyrannosaurus, the premise put forward by Mr. Paul and his colleagues highlights an assortment of tensions in dinosaur paleontology. One is that naming dinosaur species is a subjective process, and each new species description is more of an argument than a declaration. Some researchers think that the idea of multiple Tyrannosaurus species has merit but say that splitting apart a species as famous and well-studied as Tyrannosaurus rex requires a high standard of evidence.

Whether Mr. Paul is ultimately proved right, he wouldn’t be the first researcher unaffiliated with formal institutions to shake up a consensus in the field — or the first to potentially “bite off more than he can chew.”

Tony