THE MAGA-MAN DONALD TRUMP

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REUTERS

"Trump ally Jim Jordan draws eye of U.S. House's Capitol riot probe"


By Jan Wolfe

December 22, 2021

WASHINGTON, Dec 22 (Reuters) - The congressional committee probing the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday requested an interview with ardent Donald Trump supporter Jim Jordan, the second sitting U.S. representative drawn into the probe.

The House of Representatives Select Committee on Jan. 6 asked Jordan, a Republican, to disclose conversations he had with the former president on the day that Trump's supporters attacked the Capitol, trying to stop Congress from formally certifying Democrat Joe Biden's presidential election victory.


Jordan's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Select Committee is trying to establish who communicated with Trump while thousands of his supporters attacked police, smashing windows and sending members of Congress and then-Vice President Mike Pence running for their lives.

"Despite the urgent requests that the President speak and instruct the rioters to leave, President Trump did not make such a statement for multiple hours," said Representative Bennie Thompson, the committee's chairman, in the letter making the request.

The request comes two days after a similar one to Republican Representative Scott Perry.

Perry said on Tuesday he would not respond to the queries, and a committee spokesman suggested it would consider issuing a subpoena.


Multiple people close to Trump, including conservative media hosts, urged him during the riot to make a televised speech telling his supporters to stop the attack.

Trump waited hours before releasing a prerecorded message.

House Republicans earlier this year nominated Jordan to sit on the committee probing the riot, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected the choice, citing his support of Trump's false claims of election fraud.

Two Republicans, Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, sit on the committee probing the riot.

The committee has issued more than 50 subpoenas and heard from more than 300 witnesses in its investigation of the attack.

Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Scott Malone and Peter Cooney

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-hou ... 021-12-22/
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Re: THE MAGA-MAN DONALD TRUMP

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REUTERS

"White House says it is 'grateful' Trump got, promoted COVID-19 booster shot"


By Moira Warburton

DECEMBER 23, 2021

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House is grateful that former U.S. President Donald Trump received and promoted getting the COVID-19 vaccine booster shot, press secretary Jen Psaki said on Thursday.

The Republican former president recently said in an interview that he received a booster shot, and called the COVID-19 vaccines “one of the greatest achievements of mankind.”


“The ones that get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don’t take the vaccine,” Trump said in an interview with conservative commentator Candace Owens.

“If you take the vaccine, you’re protected.”

“We’re grateful that the former president got the booster, and we’re also grateful that he made clear in a recent interview that they work and they’re safe,” Psaki told reporters in a briefing on Thursday.

Just 62% of Americans are fully vaccinated, one of the lowest rates among rich nations, thanks in part to a Republican-led pushback against Democratic President Joe Biden’s year-long vaccination campaign.

Trump revealed on Sunday during an interview with former Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly that he received a booster shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, triggering jeers and hectoring from the live audience.

Public support of boosters represents a change in tone for Trump, who said in September that he likely would not get one.

More than 800,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, the most of any nation.

The vast majority of deaths this year have been among the unvaccinated.

Reporting by Moira Warburton in Washington; Editing by Mark Porter, Heather Timmons, Jonathan Oatis and Dan Grebler

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKBN2J21NY
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Re: THE MAGA-MAN DONALD TRUMP

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THE WASHINGTON POST

"Poll shows Democrats want to replace Biden on the ballot in 2024. A look at why."


By Aaron Blake, Senior reporter

November 1, 2021 at 2:26 p.m. EDT

For all the talk about how President Biden’s poll numbers have taken a turn for the worse in recent months, it’s worth emphasizing just how much those numbers remain in the neighborhood of the new political normal.

Biden’s average approval rating stands at about 43 percent, which is a number Donald Trump didn’t reach for the vast majority of his presidency.

George W. Bush spent most of his second term below 40 percent, and Barack Obama was in the 40s for most of his tenure.

That said, however much Biden remains politically viable, there is often a difference between approval and a belief that the politician is the best option.

And a poll from Marist College shows a significant disconnect on that front when it comes to Biden and the Democratic Party.


The NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist poll shows Democrats approve of Biden 85 percent to 10 percent — the kind of partisan loyalty we’ve come to expect from such polls, even when a president’s fortunes are down.

But the poll also asked a telling question about just how much Democrats would like to see Biden run again in 2024.

When asked whether “Democrats have a better chance of winning the presidency in 2024 if Joe Biden is the party’s nominee, or if someone else is the party’s nominee,” Democrats are split 41 percent to 41 percent.

When you include Democratic-leaning independents, the question actually cuts against Biden, with 36 percent saying he is the best option and 44 percent preferring “someone else.”


Twenty percent are unsure.

That’s only a little more than one-third of the voters Biden would rely upon in 2024 saying they prefer to have him on the ballot again.

It’s a reality of political polling that the grass is greener on the other side.

People responding to such questions are invited to consider their ideal, hypothetical candidate as a replacement for Biden — not the kind of actual, very-human candidate who would run in his place (warts and all).

And as The Post’s David Weigel notes, it’s also quite possible that many Democrats assumed Biden was a one-term proposition in the first place, given his age.

That said, it’s pretty remarkable how much Democrats would like to turn the page on an incumbent president in 2024.

Only about half of Democrats who like the job Biden is doing also say he’s preferable to that hypothetical “someone else.”


And the GOP side is very notably reversed, with 50 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents saying Trump gives them a better chance, versus 35 percent who say someone else would.

Part of that would seem to owe to affection for Trump.

A strong majority of Republicans like Trump.

But the question is also a pragmatic one.

It’s not about whether you think the guy would be the best president for your side; it’s about whether you think he would have the best chance of winning for your side.

Despite Trump being a historically unpopular president and having very recently proved his electoral limitations in 2020, Republicans still prefer (or at least say they prefer) to roll the dice on him.

You can call that blind loyalty, but the fact that Biden doesn’t command as much loyalty on this question is significant, given that he’s the guy who just won less than a year ago.

It’s difficult to find an analog for a political party saying, preemptively, that it would prefer to replace a president with a new nominee in the following election.

In 2010, shortly before Democrats lost big in the election that year, Gallup gave Democrats a choice in a rematch between incumbent Obama and Hillary Clinton as their 2012 nominee.

They still picked Obama 52 percent to 37 percent.

There have been times when we’ve seen it not with incumbent presidents but with emerging nominees.

When Trump was the presumptive GOP nominee in the summer of 2016, for instance, a poll still showed that Republicans preferred “someone else” to him, by 52 percent to 45 percent.

About the best comparison is the last time we had a serious primary challenge to a sitting president.

Before Ted Kennedy launched a campaign against Jimmy Carter in 1979, a New York Times-CBS News poll showed that just 23 percent of voters favored Carter in such a matchup.

Six in 10 preferred either Kennedy (52 percent) or then-California Gov. Jerry Brown (8 percent).

Carter still won the primary against Kennedy — rather easily — but lost to Ronald Reagan in 1980.

We also shouldn’t necessarily interpret this as an appetite for a primary challenge should Biden choose to run again.

For one, he is pretty broadly acceptable to Democrats, even if they don’t necessarily see him as their best hope.

And partisans will know that splintering the party in a primary against an incumbent president could hurt the party in the general election.

There’s a reason that rarely happens, and you can bet the national Democratic Party would do plenty to prevent it if it were rearing its head in 2024.

And indeed, it’s hardly a foregone conclusion that Biden runs again.

When his luck was down in the 2020 primaries, a report indicated he had floated a one-term pledge.

(Biden HQ denied this.)

He is also already the oldest person to win a presidential election, at 77, and he would be close to 82 at the time of the next vote — more than eight years older than the oldest president to win reelection.

We shouldn’t discount how much age might factor into whether people want him to run again.

Polls of old politicians tend to skew in favor of “someone else,” even if people aren’t necessarily pushing hard for someone else.

A case in point: A recent poll showed two-thirds of Iowans preferred “someone else” to 88-year-old Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) in 2022, but he still leads in his reelection bid.

(This poll, though, was about who would be best for the job, rather than who could win, and the partisanship of red Iowa comes into play with Grassley actually running.)

But whatever the factors involved here — and however realistic it would be that someone would step forward to run against Biden and actually garner significant support — it’s not a vote of confidence from his fellow partisans.

It suggests there are indeed reservations about Biden’s political future, for whatever reasons.

And when given the option to say that without necessarily saying “we don’t like the guy,” plenty of his supporters are willing to say it.

Aaron Blake is senior political reporter, writing for The Fix. A Minnesota native, he has also written about politics for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and The Hill newspaper.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... -look-why/
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Re: THE MAGA-MAN DONALD TRUMP

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THE HILL

"More voters would pick Trump over Biden if election were held today: poll"


BY TAL AXELROD

12/06/21 05:45 PM EST

More voters would back former President Trump than President Biden in a hypothetical match-up if the 2024 election were held today, according to a new Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey released exclusively to The Hill.

Forty-eight percent of voters in the survey said they would back Trump, compared with 45 percent for Biden.

Another 8 percent were unsure.

The results were evenly split at 46 percent among women, while men backed Trump by a margin of 50 percent to 43 percent.

Biden won urban voters by 20 percentage points and suburban voters by 4 percentage points, but Trump romped among rural voters by 33 percentage points.

The poll comes as Biden plays defense on a slate of issues, including inflation, stubbornly high rates of coronavirus infections and the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Democrats have sought to rebut criticism by highlighting rising job growth and an intense vaccination push while arguing Republicans are downplaying the need for Americans to get inoculated.

Should Trump run, he would likely skate to the 2024 GOP nomination, according to the poll.

Trump holds a gargantuan lead over any other potential GOP contender.

Sixty-seven percent of Republican voters would back the former president, with former Vice President Mike Pence coming in second with 9 percent and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis coming in third with 8 percent.

The poll is largely in line with other surveys that have suggested Trump is a shoo-in for the Republican nomination if he wages a third White House bid in 2024.

“The collapse of Biden has led to a surge for President Trump on all fronts both in the GOP primary and in a potential general election,” said pollster Mark Penn.

Biden defeated Trump by about 7 million votes in 2020, or roughly 4 percentage points.

He won largely because of narrow victories in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all of which Trump had taken in 2016.

The Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey of 1,989 registered voters was conducted from Nov. 30 through Dec. 2.

It is a collaboration of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and the Harris Poll.

The survey is an online sample drawn from the Harris Panel and weighted to reflect known demographics.

As a representative online sample, it does not report a probability confidence interval.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5 ... today-poll
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Re: THE MAGA-MAN DONALD TRUMP

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FORBES

"More Voters Want Trump To Run In 2024 Than Biden, Poll Suggests"


Nicholas Reimann, Forbes Staff

Updated Dec 15, 2021

TOPLINE:

Americans don't seem to like the idea of another term for President Joe Biden, according to a Morning Consult/Politico poll released Wednesday, with more voters saying they'd like to see former President Donald Trump run in 2024 than Biden, in a troubling sign for the sitting president as his approval ratings continue to sink.

KEY FACTS

* The poll found only 18% of 1,998 registered voters surveyed December 11-13 believe Biden should “definitely” run, joined by 16% who said he should “probably” run.

* When it came to Trump, 25% of voters said he should definitely run and another 14% said he should probably run.

* There's a large enthusiasm gap between the two and their bases, with only 35% of Democrats believing Biden should definitely run, compared with 49% of Republicans who definitely want Trump to run.

* Trump also has an enthusiasm lead among independents—18% said they definitely want him to run, but only 8% said that of Biden.

SURPRISING FACT

More voters might want Trump in the race than Biden, but most don’t want to see either candidate on the 2024 ballot.

According to the poll, 56% of voters say Trump should either probably or definitely not run in 2024, while 58% say Biden should not run.

KEY BACKGROUND

Biden held mostly positive approval ratings until around the time the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan in August and the country quickly fell under Taliban control.

His approval ratings have continued to decline over the past few months amid a historic spike in inflation and slow movement on signature pieces of legislation, like the Build Back Better social spending package.

According to the poll, 62% of registered voters believe the Biden Administration’s policies are at least somewhat to blame for the rise in inflation, with 42% saying the polices are “very responsible.”

Even a large chunk of Democrats, 40%, think Biden's policies are at least partly to blame for inflation, according to the poll.


WHAT TO WATCH FOR

The White House has already said Biden, 79, plans to run for reelection in 2024.

Trump has made no such announcement, but he’s widely believed to be building toward another campaign and maintains extremely high approval ratings among Republicans.

In the coming months, the Trump Media and Technology Group plans to launch a social media network called TRUTH Social.

Trump will use the website, in part, to try to regain a social media presence, which was once one of his strengths.

The former president was banned from every major platform after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

CONTRA

Biden’s approval ratings are higher at this point in his presidency than Trump’s were.

According to a FiveThirtyEight polling average, Biden holds a 43.2% approval rating, but Trump at this point in his presidency had an approval rating of 36.4%.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasre ... 076c2a1c42
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Re: THE MAGA-MAN DONALD TRUMP

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NEWSWEEK

"Over Half of Americans Say They Don't Want to See Trump or Biden Run Again in 2024: Poll"


BY MATTHEW IMPELLI ON 12/17/21 AT 11:30 AM EST

Over half of Americans say they don't want to see either former President Donald Trump or President Joe Biden run again in 2024, according to a new poll.

The poll, which was conducted by Echelon Insights, found that 55 percent of respondents don't want Trump to seek the presidency that year, and 54 percent said the same for Biden.


Asked about Trump running again, 39 percent of respondents said they were in favor, while 34 percent said they'd like to see Biden run again in 2024, the poll found.

In November, White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about Biden's plans to run for a second term and responded, "That's his intention."

While Trump has yet to officially announce a bid for the White House, he has suggested he plans to do so on numerous occasions.

During a recent interview with former European Parliament member Nigel Farage, Trump was asked if he was considering another run.

"If you love the country, you have no choice," the former president said.

In April, Trump told Fox Business News' Maria Bartiromo that he was "100 percent" considering another run for the presidency, adding that he thinks he will "be very successful."

A poll conducted earlier this month by USA Today/Suffolk University found similar results, with a majority of respondents saying they don't want Biden or Trump running in the next presidential election.

Sixty-four percent of respondents said they were opposed to Biden running again, while 29 percent said they were in favor.

Fifty-eight percent said they don't want Trump to run again, while 36 percent said the opposite.


The Echelon Insights poll also asked respondents who they would vote for in primary races if Biden and Trump don't run again in 2024.

In a Republican primary, the poll found Florida Governor Ron DeSantis leading all candidates, with 30 percent saying they'd vote for him.

Behind DeSantis was former Vice President Mike Pence, who received 12 percent, while Donald Trump Jr. and Texas Senator Ted Cruz both received 8 percent.

In a Democratic primary, 33 percent said they'd vote for Vice President Kamala Harris if Biden doesn't run.

Fourteen percent favored Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and 8 percent went with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.

If Biden and Trump decide to run again in 2024, the poll found 47 percent siding with the president and 44 percent supporting his predecessor.

The Echelon Insights poll surveyed 1,020 registered voters from December 9 to 13.

https://www.newsweek.com/over-half-amer ... ll-1660580
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Re: THE MAGA-MAN DONALD TRUMP

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Yahoo News

"Poll: Just 1 in 4 Americans want Biden or Trump to run again in 2024"


Andrew Romano·West Coast Correspondent

December 17, 2021

Eager for a change after years of conflict and upheaval, most Americans do not want either Donald Trump or Joe Biden to run for president again in 2024, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.

The survey of 1,558 U.S. adults, which was conducted from Dec. 9 to 13, found that just 22 percent want Biden to launch another White House bid.


A mere 27 percent want Trump to try for a second term.

Nearly six in 10 — an unusually robust consensus at a time of deep political divisions — say they’re opposed to a Trump campaign (59 percent) or a Biden campaign (57 percent) in 2024.

The rest — 14 percent in Trump’s case, 22 percent in Biden’s — say they’re not sure.

These results are particularly striking because they reveal relatively high levels of apathy across the political spectrum toward both men, who remain their respective parties’ likeliest 2024 nominees.

Both, for instance, find even less enthusiasm for their nascent reelection efforts among independents — the voters most inclined to swing from candidate to candidate — than among Americans as a whole.

Just 14 percent of independents want Biden to run again; only 23 percent want Trump to.

Trump’s support among Republicans is stronger than Biden’s among Democrats, but it’s hardly universal.

Nearly a quarter (23 percent) of those who voted for Trump in 2020 don’t even want to see him on the ballot again in 2024.

It’s the sitting president, however, who is struggling the most with his own voters — which is no surprise given that he remains the center of attention while America continues to face new COVID variants, inflation and rising violent crime.

Overall, just 41 percent of Americans now approve of how Biden is handling his job; 53 percent disapprove.

That’s Biden’s poorest rating in any Yahoo News/YouGov survey to date.

Perhaps as a result, just 38 percent of 2020 Biden voters say they want him to run for reelection.

A full 30 percent say he should step aside.


Those numbers are a little more favorable among Democrats as a whole: 43 percent and 28 percent, respectively.

But they’re still fairly soft.

To be sure, nearly all Democrats say they would vote for Biden if he ran again.

When offered a choice between Biden and Trump, registered voters chose Biden by a 6-point margin: 47 percent to 41 percent.

That’s slightly higher than Biden’s 4-point advantage on Yahoo News/YouGov surveys conducted in late October and early November.

A full 90 percent of registered Democratic voters would cast their ballots for Biden in such a scenario — even more than the share of registered Republican voters who would vote for Trump (84 percent).

Yet the desire for an alternative — especially among Democrats — resurfaces when voters are allowed a third choice: “Someone else.”

Here, a full 21 percent of registered voters opt for this other unnamed candidate, with Biden shedding about twice as much support (13 percentage points) as Trump (6 percentage points).

This pattern persists when voters are asked about hypothetical matchups for each party’s 2024 presidential nomination.

Pro-Trump sentiment among Republicans and GOP-leaning independents is by no means unanimous: Only about half (53 percent) prefer him as the nominee, while nearly a third (30 percent) favor “someone else.”

And when matched against possible opponents, Trump’s support falls even further (to 44 percent).

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, meanwhile, now earns nearly a quarter of the GOP primary vote (23 percent), up from 13 percent in August.

Back then, Trump was in a far more commanding position, with 58 percent support.

Yet again, Biden looks even weaker.

Just one month ago, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents were about evenly divided over whether they preferred Biden (38 percent) or someone else (41 percent) as the party’s 2024 nominee.

Now fewer say Biden (32 percent), and more say they’re not sure (27 percent, up from 21 percent previously).


Biden’s backing then plummets again (to just 20 percent) when he’s matched against a hypothetical field of potential Democratic alternatives, with double-digit support for Kamala Harris (13 percent), Elizabeth Warren (11 percent), Bernie Sanders (10 percent) and Pete Buttigieg (10 percent).

Meanwhile, nearly a quarter (24 percent) say they’re not sure whom they prefer for the 2024 nomination.

_____________

The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,558 U.S. adults interviewed online from Dec. 9 to 13. This sample was weighted according to gender, age, race and education based on the American Community Survey, conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, as well as 2020 presidential vote (or non-vote) and voter registration status. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. adults. The margin of error is approximately 2.7 percent.

https://news.yahoo.com/poll-just-1-in-4 ... 41237.html
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CNN

"January 6 committee ramps up efforts to uncover funding behind Capitol riot"


By Katelyn Polantz and Mary Kay Mallonee, CNN

25 DECEMBER 2021

A new court challenge is revealing how the January 6 House select committee is demanding bank records, providing a new window into its effort to understand what propelled the violence that day.

The previously undisclosed records request, revealed in a new lawsuit, is the first confirmed subpoena issued by the committee for information directly from a bank.

The committee, which has moved aggressively in recent weeks, is using its subpoena power to follow the money surrounding the pro-Donald Trump rallies leading up to the insurrection.

Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich disclosed in a lawsuit Friday night that the committee had demanded financial records, prompting him to sue in an effort to prevent the committee from obtaining them.

The bank, JP Morgan, was planning to oblige, giving him a deadline of 5 p.m. ET on Christmas Eve to show he legally blocked the subpoena, according to a letter the bank sent to him that he included in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit also discloses that Budowich has already supplied the committee with more than 1,700 pages of documents and provided about four hours of testimony.

It's not presently known if the bank has already turned over the financial records, since Budowich's lawsuit against the committee and the bank attempting to block the subpoena is already later than the deadline.

The federal court in DC has not responded to his filings as of Saturday morning and his lawsuit may be a Hail Mary pass unlikely to succeed because of both the timing and federal appeals court rulings in the past.

"December 24th is federal holiday."

"The federal courts are closed."

"The Capitol is closed."

"National banks are closed," Budowich's lawyers wrote to the court on Friday, asking for emergency help.

"Mr. Budowich's counsel immediately reached out to JPMorgan to seek an extension."

"JPMorgan refused."

"Mr. Budowich reached out to counsel for the Select Committee for an extension."

"The Select Committee refused."

The disclosures in the lawsuit mark what seem to be notable progress by the House in its pursuit of information and could signal a wider ongoing end-of-year effort by investigators to sweep in records from third parties, such as banks, that could help it understand the organization of rallies in Washington, DC, that catalyzed the insurrection.

Efforts to uncover financing tied to riot

CNN reported in October that the committee had set its sights on learning about the financing associated with January 6, including how organizers and vendors were paid, and how two rallies were funded.

Sources told CNN at the time that investigators wanted to know if any funding came from domestic extremists or foreign sources.

The committee has divided its work into at least five teams, each with its own color designation.

The "green" team is tasked with tracking the money.

Another witness in the House probe, "Stop the Steal" organizer Ali Alexander, previously speculated in his own court action against a phone records subpoena from the House Committee that the congressional investigation was pursing financial records directly from banks.

Alexander did not show any proof he knew the committee had sought such information.

He, too, had turned over records he had to the committee and sat for a deposition.

Budowich's lawsuit, which seeks emergency help from the court, argues that the House committee and its pursuit of records are illegitimate, though the federal appeals court in Washington already upheld the House Select Committee's work.

He also says the subpoena to his bank hurts his First Amendment rights and financial privacy because of the short window he had to respond after learning of the subpoena.

Courts have repeatedly endorsed the House subpoenaing financial information from third parties like banks -- even Trump's -- as it pursues possible legislation.

Nine other ongoing lawsuits are also challenging the House Select Committee's requests for information, and Trump this week asked the Supreme Court to review his own case about records from his White House.

Rally organizers a key focus of probe

Budowich was a senior adviser for the Trump 2020 campaign, specifically working with Donald Trump Jr. and his girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle.

He is a longtime right-wing political operative, working as senior communications adviser for Ron DeSantis during his successful campaign for governor of Florida in 2018 and once served as executive director of the Tea Party Express.

Budowich's lawsuit comes after the committee last month subpoenaed him and other Trump allies involved in planning "Stop the Steal" rallies, including at the Ellipse in Washington before the US Capitol attack.

Budowich claimed the documents that he already provided "were sufficient to identify all account transactions for the time period December 19, 2020 to January 31, 2021 in connection with the Ellipse Rally."

"The Select Committee wrongly seeks to compel Mr. Budowich's financial institution to provide private banking information to the Select Committee that it lacks the lawful authority to seek and to obtain," the suit said.

In its subpoena letter, the committee said Budowich "reportedly solicited a 501c(4) organization to conduct a social media and radio advertising campaign encouraging attendance at the January 6th Ellipse rally and advancing unsupported claims about the result of the election."

The committee cited information on file with the panel to claim that Budowich directed approximately $200,000 from a source or sources to the 501(c)(4) that was "not disclosed to the organization to pay for the advertising campaign."

This story has been updated to include additional reporting and background information.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... d=msedgntp
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THE GUARDIAN

"Capitol panel to investigate Trump call to Willard hotel in hours before attack"


Hugo Lowell in Washington

27 DECEMBER 2021

Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack, has said the panel will open an inquiry into Donald Trump’s phone call seeking to stop Joe Biden’s certification from taking place on 6 January hours before the insurrection.

The chairman said the select committee intended to scrutinize the phone call – revealed last month by the Guardian – should they prevail in their legal effort to obtain Trump White House records over the former president’s objections of executive privilege.

“That’s right,” Thompson said when asked by the Guardian whether the select committee would look into Trump’s phone call, and suggested House investigators had already started to consider ways to investigate Trump’s demand that Biden not be certified as president on 6 January.

Thompson said the select committee could not ask the National Archives for records about specific calls, but noted “if we say we want all White House calls made on January 5 and 6, if he made it on a White House phone, then obviously we would look at it there.”

The Guardian reported last month that Trump, according to multiple sources, called lieutenants based at the Willard hotel in Washington DC from the White House in the late hours of 5 January and sought ways to stop Biden’s certification from taking place on 6 January.

Trump first told the lieutenants his vice-president, Mike Pence, was reluctant to go along with the plan to commandeer his ceremonial role at the joint session of Congress in a way that would allow Trump to retain the presidency for a second term, the sources said.

But as Trump relayed to them the situation with Pence, the sources said, on at least one call, he pressed his lieutenants about how to stop Biden’s certification from taking place on 6 January in a scheme to get alternate slates of electors for Trump sent to Congress.

The former president’s remarks came as part of wider discussions he had with the lieutenants at the Willard – a team led by Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn and Trump strategist Steve Bannon – about delaying the certification, the sources said.

House investigators in recent months have pursued an initial in into Trump’s contacts with lieutenants at the Willard, issuing a flurry of subpoenas compelling documents and testimony to crucial witnesses, including Bannon and Eastman.

But Thompson said that the select committee would now also investigate both the contents of Trump’s phone calls to the Willard and the White House’s potential involvement, in a move certain to intensify the pressure on the former president’s inner circle.

“If we get the information that we requested,” Thompson said of the select committee’s demands for records from the Trump White House and Trump aides, “those calls potentially will be reflected to the Willard hotel and whomever.”

A spokesperson for the select committee declined to comment about what else such a line of inquiry might involve.

But a subpoena to Giuliani, the lead Trump lawyer at the Willard, is understood to be in the offing, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The Guardian reported that the night before the Capitol attack, Trump called the lawyers and non-lawyers at the Willard separately, because Giuliani did not want to have non-lawyers participate on sensitive calls and jeopardize claims to attorney-client privilege.

It was not clear whether Giulaini might invoke attorney-client privilege as a way to escape cooperating with the investigation in the event of a subpoena, but Congressman Jamie Raskin, a member of the select committee, noted the protection does not confer broad immunity.

“The attorney-client privilege does not operate to shield participants in a crime from an investigation into a crime,” Raskin said.

“If it did, then all you would have to do to rob a bank is bring a lawyer with you, and be asking for advice along the way.”

The Guardian also reported Trump made several calls the day before the Capitol attack from both the White House residence, his preferred place to work, as well as the West Wing, but it was not certain from which location he phoned his top lieutenants at the Willard.

The distinction is significant as phone calls placed from the White House residence, even from a landline desk phone, are not automatically memorialized in records sent to the National Archives after the end of an administration.

That means even if the select committee succeeds in its litigation to pry free Trump’s call detail records from the National Archives, without testimony from people with knowledge of what was said, House investigators might only learn the target and time of the calls.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... d=msedgntp
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REUTERS

"U.S. House panel eyes interim report by summer 2022 on Jan. 6 attack"


By Jan Wolfe

DECEMBER 28, 2021

(Reuters) - The congressional committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is aiming to release an interim report in the summer of 2022 and a final report in the fall, a source familiar with the investigation said on Tuesday.

The timetable, first reported by the Washington Post, would allow the committee to release findings before the November 2022 congressional elections.


Republicans, who generally oppose the Select Committee’s work, are currently favored to reclaim control of the U.S. House of Representatives in that election, which would allow them to end the panel’s work.

The House’s Jan. 6 Select Committee is investigating the causes of the attack, including former President Donald Trump’s actions and his efforts to change the results of the election.

Trump told the crowd of supporters he would never concede the Nov. 3 election and urged them to “fight like hell” before they went to the Capitol, where lawmakers were preparing to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.

The committee has issued more than 50 subpoenas and heard from more than 300 witnesses in its investigation of the attack.

The panel has been working mostly behind closed doors, but its leaders have said they plan to hold public hearings in the months ahead.

Four people died on the day of the riot, and one Capitol police officer died the next day of injuries sustained while defending Congress.

Hundreds of police were injured during the multi-hour onslaught by Trump supporters, and four officers have since taken their own lives.

More than 700 people have been arrested in connection with the assault on the Capitol.

Reporting by Jan Wolfe in Boston; Editing by Mark Porter

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKBN2J712D
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