New Mexico county commissioner who spoke about storming Capitol arrested

Katie Porter is off the House Financial Services Committee. We’re all worse off for it.

As criminal cases stemming from the Washington riot move through the US legal system, a “Trump-made-me-do-it” defence has started to emerge.

> In court papers and interviews, at least four pro-Trump rioters have said they joined the march that spiraled into violence in part because the president encouraged them to do so.

> At the very least, the emergence of a “Trump-made-me-do-it” defence could serve to undercut the baseless narrative by some of the president’s congressional allies and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who have sought to push the story that outside agitators or disloyal servants were responsible for the Capitol attack.

trump-made-me-vote-for-him

Barr told Trump that theories about stolen election were 'bullshit':

> "Why would you say such a thing? You must hate Trump. There’s no other reason for it. You must hate Trump,” the president asserted while speaking in the third person, according to Axios.

(sorry, I didn't realise I was in the wrong room)

Trump preparing another 100 pardons, commutations before leaving office: reports

COVID-19: Partygoers claimed they had not heard of the pandemic - as police reveal breaches over the weekend

> Police shut down a party in Basingstoke, Hampshire, on Saturday but were told the hosts were "unaware of the global pandemic, as they never watch the news".

You gotta be deliberately ignorant to not know about the pandemic at this point: no TV news, no radio news, no newspapers, no internet, no social contact and no relatives

Holy crap

This must be illegal

@Nzall Yeah they're obviously lying

@Wipqozn I think it is

I can understand "We didn't know about the new restrictions". b ut "We didn't know about this global pandemic" is just completely absurd.

@Nzall don't worry, it's probably a federal crime, so Trump will just pardon himself! THE SYSTEM WORKS!

@Wipqozn No, paying someone to lobby for your political position isn't considered illegal in the way that directly paying for some particular executive or judicial decision is. You pay your lawyer to speak for you in court. You pay your lobbyist to speak for you in government. Don't get me started.

Often they're purchasing hired attorneys in either case. Yes, it feels wrong. But it's hard to find a statutory infraction here.

We saw Congressman Boebert taking people for a tour sometime after January 3rd and before the 6th. ... It’s pretty clear that … she’s not on the home team,” Cohen said. “She was with the visitors.”

@tchrist But to stick with your analogy, having your lobbyist explicitly pay a member of congress to get them to vote your way on an issue is very much illegal. This is paying your lawyer to effectively bribe a Trump ally for an implicit quid pro quo.

@MBraedley It's stupidly easy to make it hard to trace this sort of thing. Prosecutors need hard proof before they can bring a case to trial.

@tchrist Doesn't change the fact that this is corrupt behaviour.

Also, if you moral compass is guided by what's provably illegal, then you certainly can't act as a moral beacon.

Not that it has never been done. But my purely personal and therefore perhaps figmentational self-delusion is that it is seldom brought to justice compare with how often I nightmarishly fantasize it happens. I don't know how to evidence-test these suspicions, which may spring more from my own constructed universe than the universe of fact. But I cannot know.

Influence peddling has always been profitable.

@MBraedley No, not mine. But Hercules never cleaned out the Augean stables of K Street, nor Christ its moneylenders, and I do not know how now to ever excise the endemic rot.

I just know it stinks.

Even this particular aspect is no more than one small vein of infectious pus among a labyrinthine network of undemocratic financial drivers underlying the entire political system. It's all about money. Period.

Parler moved to Russia. Which means it's going to be a hell of a lot harder to spy on it

And especially to track the movements of white insurrectionists

oh wait

I'm actually switching things around

it's actually significantly easier apparently, because it means the CIA and NSA can now get involved too

Pentagon deploys hundreds of active-duty troops for inauguration security. Those aren't National Guard.

@Nzall Not surprising by the Russia move. Seemed like one of the more likely spots.

@Nzall fits perfectly to the people Foamy was complaining about