The Jan. 6 select committee is preparing to vote on urging the Justice Department to pursue at least three criminal charges against former President Donald Trump, including insurrection.
The report that the select panel is expected to consider on Monday afternoon, described to POLITICO by two people familiar with its contents, reflects some recommendations from a subcommittee that evaluated potential criminal referrals. Among the charges that subcommittee proposes for Trump: 18 U.S.C. 2383, insurrection; 18 U.S.C. 1512(c), obstruction of an official proceeding; and 18 U.S.C. 371, conspiracy to defraud the United States government.
It’s unclear whether the select committee’s final report will recommend additional charges for Trump beyond the three described to POLITICO, or whether it will urge other criminal charges for other players in Trump’s bid to subvert his 2020 loss. The document, according to the people familiar, includes an extensive justification for the recommended charges.
To justify incitement of insurrection, the report references U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta’s February ruling saying Trump’s language plausibly incited violence on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters besieged the Capitol in a bid to disrupt congressional certification of his loss to Joe Biden. The report also cites the Senate’s 57 votes in last year’s impeachment trial, Trump’s second, to convict him on an “incitement of insurrection” charge passed by the House.
The select panel’s report also notes that, in order to violate the insurrection statute, Trump did not need an express agreement with rioters — but rather, simply needed to provide “aid or comfort” to them... (our emphasis)
Must-see t.v starts today at 1PM.
“We’re having more vaccine because of this, which is great,” DeSantis said of a federal program shipping shots to pharmacies in February 2021.
But this past week, DeSantis threw himself into misleadingly disparaging the vaccines, convening skeptics to buck guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and seeking to investigate vaccine makers for fraud.
“These companies have made a fortune off this federal government imposing or at least attempting to impose mandates, and a lot of false statements,” DeSantis said at the roundtable event on Wednesday. “I think people want the truth and I think people want accountability, so you need to have a thorough investigation into what’s happened with these shots.”
A review of DeSantis’s public positions on the vaccines shows a full reversal that has unfolded gradually since 2021, seizing on the shots’ waning efficacy against new virus variants and portraying evolving scientific advice as deliberate deceit... (our emphasis)
That's one dangerous demagogue.
As the 2022 World Cup wraps up, there is an overarching takeaway: Holding it in Qatar was a huge mistake. FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, had numerous chances to take a stand for basic human dignities. It didn’t. The result has been a World Cup of human rights horrors.
Awarding this major event to Qatar in 2010 was suspect from the start given that homosexuality is illegal there, women have almost no rights and are subject to a “male guardianship law,” and the nation’s long record of human rights abuses. Even former FIFA president Sepp Blatter, who presided over the selection, has admitted that “it was a bad choice.”
The stadiums and surrounding infrastructure for the event were built with abusive labor practices and cost thousands of lives, according to the Guardian and Human Rights Watch. Qatar bribed soccer officials to get the World Cup and then bribed government officials to look the other way. As the games began, the Qatari government censored how people dressed. Fans who wore or carried gay pride symbols, women’s rights slogans or anything else the government didn’t like were detained or banned from entering. Foreign journalists were instructed to stick to sports in their reporting. And Qatar changed the rules at the last minute to ban alcohol from stadiums...
FIFA is one of the most corrupt organizations on Earth, arguably THE MOST corrupt sports organization. That Qatar was awarded this event is largely a product of that corruption, to FIFA's placing profit and payoffs over ethics and human rights.
