Today Is The Seventh Anniversary Of The Secret Trade That Put Trump In the White House

Today Is The Seventh Anniversary Of The Secret Trade That Put Trump In the White House

How Sen. Ted Cruz and The Federalist Society Used the Shaping of the Supreme Court as the Price for Trump to get the GOP machinery behind him in 2016

Vicky Ward Investigates

Sep 23

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Seven years ago, on this date, a backroom trade occurred that would shift the future of the Presidency, the Republican party - and the Supreme Court, to where it all is today. Remarkably, very few people in the media paid much heed at the time.

Donald Trump, then the Republican nominee for President, who lacked the support of the financial and ideological center of his party, had been struggling in the polls against Hillary Clinton.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R. Tx) who’d come second in the Republican race, and who did have the support of the GOP establishment, had refused to endorse Trump at the Republican Convention.

Cruz’s chief worry, shared by the Federalist Society (Fed Soc), the conservative lawyers’ club he’d joined at Harvard Law School, was that Trump didn’t really care about the Supreme Court. The fear was that in Trump-fashion, were he elected President, he might nominate a bunch of cronies to the Court, who had not been groomed by the GOP establishment (aka Fed Soc). A guy atop Fed Soc called Leonard Leo and Sen. Cruz, were adamant that a list hand-picked by Leo was exclusively what Trump must select from. The greatest urgency was in the vacancy created by the death of Antonin Scalia. The Holy Grail for a new Conservative court would be something Cruz and Leo, both staunch Catholics, had long talked about: repealing Roe v. Wade.

And, under pressure in the polls, on this date seven years ago, Trump (or Trump’s campaign staff) agreed to do a deal. He announced he’d choose his next Justice exclusively from a list given to him by the Federalist Society. And, in return Sen. Cruz endorsed Trump on Facebook.

It was a Friday, a slow news day.

And, at the time few people reported on the import of what was happening.

But it WAS important. It led to a handpicked new Supreme Court - and the repeal of Roe V Wade.

As you’ll hear in my new Audible podcast series, Pipeline to Power, the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell absolutely understood the bigger ramifications.

Without Cruz and the Republican financial machinery, Trump did not stand much chance of winning the Presidency.

Here’s a transcript of a snippet of the audio around this:

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So, it’s now spring of the 2016 election year. The senate is stacked. Garland is off the table. Leonard Leo’s campaign engine is ready to hit go. They just need the right president - to nominate the right justice.

SOT TRUMP MAGA we will make america great again

So when Donald Trump started pulling ahead in the Republican primaries - all eyes were on him. The most unlikely presidential candidate the GOP has possibly ever had. Someone with no fixed ideology - other than an absolutely unwavering belief in himself and his invincibility.

SOT TRUMP (54:25): I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger.

Back at the Federalist Society, there was concern. Trump was unpredictable. And Steve Calabresi told us that some people feared that Trump would pick his friends for the bench.

Steve Calabresi: A lot of very undesirable people like Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie and that guy Corey Lewandowski. And, you know, some of the really seedy characters who hang Trump hung around with.

But not for the first time the Fed Soc network proved invaluable, in fact, unbeatable. Its influence and network turned out to be something Trump literally could not afford to ignore.

Don McGahn[1], Trump’s campaign council,[2] had been a Federalist Society member since his law school days. Here’s Lee Liberman Otis.

Lee: My understanding of what happened is that Don McGahn who was council to Trump's, presidential election effort, you know, called Jonathan Bunch, who was working with Leonard on, uh, on, on, uh, on various, uh, uh, things and was in particular in charge of the, you know, an effort to bring attention to state court, uh, activity, um, called on Jonathan and said, um, uh, uh, you know, do you have any suggestions for us, for the Supreme court?

Mcgahn met with Leonard Leo at McGahn’s offices at the law firm Jones Day in Washington, DC.[3] Leo gave him a list of 11 names of approved possibilities for the Supreme Court[4]. The media interpreted Trump’s move as a political message to conservatives.

CNN report on list:

(00:00 - 00:34) " look the reason Donald trump is putting these names out here I think is to send a signal to the rest of the party that they don't necessarily need to worry about him not being as conservative as they would like as they would like on some of these issues, especially at a time when he’s trying to rally the party behind him"

In May, Trump released the list of names[5]. Leonard Leo’s decades-long handiwork - was now in broad daylight on national television[6].

TRUMP SOT to Breitbart: you saw the 11 names I gave, and we're gonna have great judges, conservative, all picked by Federalist Society.

But Trump didn’t say he would pick exclusively from that list to replace Scalia. He just said that he liked “those kind of nominees.”

FedSoc didn’t trust Trump.

But Fortunately they had leverage.

Even after Trump became the Republican nominee. Because Senator Ted Cruz, a Fed Soc member, had come in second in the primaries - and he refused to endorse Trump[7]. Trump knew that he was vulnerable without the support of the mainstream Republicans.

So, with six weeks to go before the election, Senator Cruz proposed a trade.

In his book, Senator Cruz writes: “The price of my endorsement was explicit. I wanted a clear, unequivocal commitment that he would nominate Scalia’s replacement from a specified list, and ONLY from that list."[8]

Trump, in turn, would get Cruz’s supporters to get behind him..

On September the 23rd, Trump announced an updated Fed Soc approved list of possible Supreme Court justices. Critically - he said that he would ONLY go off of that list to replace Scalia[9].

Within minutes Ted Cruz endorsed Trump on Facebook.

NOW, the GOP machinery clicked in behind Trump.

Here’s Senator Mitch McConnell:

(SOT) Mitch McConnell to Kentucky FedSoc: (15:30) “The establishment of the list reassured a lot of skeptical Republicans, on the inside, and then by the fall on the outside and became the single biggest issue… to bringing our side in line along him and allowed him in part to win the election.”

In fact, no one I’ve spoken to believes Trump could have won the election without it.

 

FOCUS: Dahlia Lithwick | Why the Jan. 6 Committee Let Ginni and Clarence Thomas Off the Hook

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FOCUS: Dahlia Lithwick | Why the Jan. 6 Committee Let Ginni and Clarence Thomas Off the Hook
Dahlia Lithwick, Slate
Lithwick writes: "In thinking about the vast ethical sucking noise that's consumed virtually all of the federal government, it's easy to feel hopeless as 2022 grinds to an end. Donald Trump's taxes, years ahead dedicated to Benghazi-style hearings, Supreme Court justices partying with election deniers—Bah, humbug, rinse, repeat." 

When you’re a justice, they let you do it.

In thinking about the vast ethical sucking noise that’s consumed virtually all of the federal government, it’s easy to feel hopeless as 2022 grinds to an end. Donald Trump’s taxes, years ahead dedicated to Benghazi-style hearings, Supreme Court justices partying with election deniers—Bah, humbug, rinse, repeat.

That’s why the criminal referrals lobbed at Trump this week from the Jan. 6 committee are heartening and tangible. The committee’s decision to state that Trump and his most lawless supporters have committed actual crimes laid down a powerful historical marker and put important pressure on the Justice Department for future accountability.

And yet, there is something that feels entirely unsatisfying about celebrating this as a landmark win. Two years after we watched the crime happen in plain sight, and the criminals fêted and enriched, we now see criminal charges humbly suggested, for a handful of people?

It’s OK to be frustrated at the limits of the executive summary of the committee’s final report. The report itself remains forthcoming. But just for starters, Monday’s release failed to take seriously the spectacular failures of law enforcement and intelligence agencies; the limited efficacy of ethics referrals for GOP House members who failed to comply with subpoenas; and the culpability of so very many Republicans who have aided and abetted Trump’s big lie for two straight years.

For its own obvious reasons, the committee opted to focus its gaze on Donald Trump and the weirdest weirdos in his orbit, thus sparing some of the worst denialists, liars, and insurrectionists in the GOP from the prospect of serious accountability. But Trump himself was already slipping from “hot” to “not” at meteoric speeds, which is perhaps why the focus on the former (or—as the panel sordidly referred to him Monday—the “ex”) president seems so painfully narrow.

It’s at least possible to surmise that the biggest winners after the committee finished its superb work would be Ron DeSantis, the Murdochs, Liz Cheney, and all those advocating that the GOP dump Donald in favor of literally anyone who can push wildly conservative outcomes without the added peril of his bottomless unhinged-ness. By that token, Monday was a very good day for the GOP, as measured by the opening of yet another offramp for anyone still in search of an offramp.

Consider that Ginni Thomas was nowhere mentioned in the executive summary—nor, aside from an opinion citation, was her husband, the sitting Supreme Court justice who will not recuse himself from cases that involve the Jan. 6 attempted insurrection in which his wife had both participated in the efforts and a vested interest in the outcome. Given the committee’s deference to the Thomases throughout its hearings, no surprises there. But it is still disappointing, for those of us who bought into the idea that the committee could restore some real idea of justice across government.

Instead, no matter what they may tell you about the rule of law and the need for consequences and accountability, absolutely nobody in the GOP as it is currently constituted has any interest in stopping the goose that has laid the conservative legal establishment’s golden egg. Love him or hate him, Thomas has been the single most effective jurist in modern history, and even those conservatives who deplore Trump’s incitement and violence and threats will gleefully turn a blind eye to Thomas’ ethical lapses if it means securing enduring wins on abortion, guns, massive deregulation, and ascendant corporate power. Virtually nobody who is winning at the Supreme Court in a decades-long conservative legal project aimed at dismantling environmental protections, subverting minority voting rights, and imposing theocratic supremacy is going to take seriously the myriad ethical conflicts and structural failings that plague the current court. Better to keep pretending that Donald Trump is the problem than concede that the problem is actually that both Trump and the Thomases operate as if the law is for the little people, and the law lets them.

Clarence and Ginni Thomas were ultimately untouchable for the Jan. 6 investigators for the same reason they are untouchable for purposes of Supreme Court ethics reform: When you’re a justice, they let you do it. And when you are delivering long-sought victories, even ethical Never Trumpers like Liz Cheney will let you do whatever it takes to deliver the goods.

I’ve been struck that in recent reporting on ethical lapses at the high court, conservative legal enthusiasts have begun to advance the claim that there is no need for binding ethics rules because conservative triumphs are so plainly and self-evidently correct that there can be no other outcome. Here’s a version of that argument applied to Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society assisting Kellyanne Conway in selling her polling business while she was lobbying the Trump White House in its judicial selections: “It seems bizarre to think that any possible lobbying by Kellyanne Conway would have added to the force of [the court’s] commitment or to the influence that Mitch McConnell and Don McGahn had already wielded,” said Ed Whelan, a former clerk to Antonin Scalia. And here’s Mark Paoletta, the former Clarence Thomas clerk who worked on Thomas’ Senate confirmation and who now represents Ginni Thomas in Jan. 6 matters testifying in opposition to Supreme Court ethics reform earlier this month: His argument was that a campaign in which big donors forked over cash to the Supreme Court Historical Society in order to put pressure on justices to overturn Roe v. Wade was not an ethics problem at all. Why was that? Because pushing Alito, Thomas, or Scalia rightward was laughable, you see, since their opposition to Roe was already known. They’re so conservative, it’s not possible to corrupt them with money.

Wait. So the justices who swore at their confirmation hearings that Roe was binding precedent were in truth so in the tank for overturning Roe that no amount of pressure to do so would have made a difference? Since everyone knew that overturning Roe was why they were appointed? Got it. No wonder Supreme Court ethics reform is a dumb idea. If a code of ethical conduct isn’t necessary because conservative legal thinkers are impervious to influence and bribes from those with whom they are in lockstep, there’s no need for any limits on who they party with or travel with or accept gifts from. Of course at that point, we should probably stop characterizing the place as a “court.”

In thinking about the ethical emptiness that’s swallowing all three branches of our federal government, I’ve been revisiting the speech that Rep. Gerald Ford, then House minority leader and future president of the United States, gave when he attempted unsuccessfully to impeach Justice William O. Douglas, in 1970. While Ford’s efforts to impeach the wild man that was Douglas failed, and are largely derided as motivated by political partisanship and score settling, the text of his speech is illuminating.

Douglas, to be sure, was a piece of work. According to one book review by Jeffrey Rosen:

His neglected children found him “scary” and noted that he spoke to them only when “press photographers wanted a picture.” They also resented his treatment of their mother, his first wife, whom he threw over after 28 years of marriage for a series of younger women. He left his third wife for a high school student who had asked him to sponsor her senior thesis, and then divorced her after 24 months for a college student whom he had met while she was a waitress in a cocktail lounge. He kept a room at the University Club, to which his messenger would drive Supreme Court secretaries who caught his fancy. In his sixties, he routinely invited flight attendants to visit him at the Court, where he would lunge at them in his chambers.

Most of Ford’s speech was devoted to the proposition that Justice Douglas was a dirty, dirty boy, who wrote for dirty, dirty magazines and dabbled in some kind of “international gambling fraternity,” and palled around with dubious sorts of former casino owners and “young hothead revolutionaries.” It’s mostly very silly. But it’s pretty striking that in 1970, a purely partisan witch hunt against a liberal jurist for alleged pornographic violations was taken more seriously by Congress as an ethics scandal than one involving a Supreme Court justice whose wife was involved with an attempt to subvert a presidential election.

Republicans, for all their past sins, did in relatively recent history say that there were lines that people in power could not cross. As a result of the conduct of Ford’s immediate White House predecessor, many voted to say that orchestrating and covering up the Watergate break-in crossed a line. With Ford’s crusade against Douglas, a justice’s alleged sexual impropriety had crossed a line. Today’s GOP—be it at the Supreme Court or in Congress or in the White House—proved once again this week (and in the months and years preceding it) that there are no real lines between its dreams and its victories. Judicial corruption, a violent coup attempt—whatever. For every working Republican power player, including the two Republican members of the Jan. 6 Committee, accountability stops at the courthouse door.

Pay very close attention as you read the final report, to where the bipartisanship around the Jan. 6 Committee recommendation begins and ends. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have done yeoman’s work to shore up the rule of law and accountability for Donald Trump and the worst of his confederates. But the work will also provide a pretty flawless map to which legal and ethical lapses are disqualifying and which are tacitly encouraged. One branch of government is checked and the other is given a pass. It’s clear that whatever part law enforcement, House Republicans, MAGA election deniers still in office, and particularly any Supreme Court justice or their spouse may have played in an attack on the republic in 2021 will be forgiven and forgotten. They’re still all on one team, and—law and ethics notwithstanding—that team is all in on winning the fights that really matter.

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Meet Marc Short, the Former Koch Exec Who Has Now Testified Before a Grand Jury Investigating the January 6 Attack

 

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Meet Marc Short, the Former Koch Exec Who Has Now Testified Before a Grand Jury Investigating the January 6 Attack

Fox News Host John Roberts Interviews Marc Short

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 27, 2022 ~

Mainstream media has been abuzz over the past two days that Marc Short, the Chief of Staff to former Vice President Mike Pence, has testified under subpoena before a grand jury convened by the U.S. Department of Justice, which has now broadened its investigation of the January 6 attack on the Capitol to the masterminds. But is that really the headline?

We think the real headline is that Marc Short was previously an executive at the fossil fuels conglomerate Koch Industries, a private company run by billionaire Charles Koch who has been setting up political front groups for four decades. Short went on to become President of a Koch-related dark money group called Freedom Partners from 2011 to 2016. Freedom Partners plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into political operations in an effort to put fossil fuel friendly pawns in Congress and the White House.

Freedom Partners has shuttered its stealthy operations but when we looked at its Board of Directors in 2018, all but one of its 9-member Board was a current or former Koch company employee. The Board Chair at that time was Mark Holden, who served in the dual capacity as General Counsel of Koch Industries.

Dozens of individuals connected to Koch and/or Freedom Partners took up key positions in the Trump administration. That includes the 12 Jones Day lawyers who took their place in the Trump administration on his very first day in office. Jones Day had been outside counsel to Koch Industries. According to Public Citizen, two of the main hires from Jones Day, White House Counsel Don McGahn and Ann Donaldson, Chief of Staff to McGahn, both previously represented Freedom Partners.

Freedom Partners was not bashful about conveying its demands to Trump. And Marc Short served in the role of Director of Legislative Affairs for Trump (before becoming Chief of Staff to Mike Pence) to move that agenda along. According to a formal memo from Freedom Partners, it was demanding withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord, massive tax cuts for corporations, and the gutting of federal regulations. Trump complied with those demands.

Freedom Partners was organized as a 501(c)(6) tax exempt organization. As such, it did not have to reveal its dark money donors to the public. Its Vice President, Nathan Nascimento, was a registered Federal lobbyist for issues near and dear to the fossil fuels industry. It had an affiliated Super Pac, Freedom Partners Action Fund, which also did not have to reveal its donors. Charles Koch and his trust donated at least $14 million to the Super Pac since 2014 according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The Super Pac ran TV attack ads against Democrats in election years. Time Magazine’s Philip Elliott reported in January 2017 that “In seven of the eight up-for-grabs U.S. Senate races last year, the Koch-backed candidate won. In all, Koch-backed candidates at all levels of races prevailed 96% of the time—a record any outside group would covet.”

After leaving the Trump administration, Mike Pence and Marc Short established their own dark money group, Advancing American Freedom. It was launched on April 7, 2021. This spring, Advancing American Freedom launched a $10 million ad campaign targeting 16 Democrats whom it apparently felt were not adequately on board the fossil fuels bandwagon or were too supportive of climate change science. In a statement announcing the big ad buy, Pence said he wanted the Biden administration to restart the Keystone Pipeline and restore oil and natural gas leases – presumably he meant on federal land.

On June 22, Pence appeared on the Kudlow Show on Fox Business, where he said his goals were to “unleash American energy; open up federal lands to permitting; open up the Alaskan National Wildlife region; begin again Keystone Pipeline; begin to develop the infrastructure necessary to move energy…”

Likewise, Marc Short has shilled for the fossil fuels industry on Fox News. Advancing American Freedom has a link to that video here.

The Ohio Attorney General’s registry for nonprofits lists the business address of Advancing American Freedom as 47 South Pennsylvania Street, Suite 201, Indianapolis IN 46204. That’s the same Suite number and street address as M/O Strategies, whose President is Marty Obst (M/O). The website for M/O Strategies indicates that Obst “currently serves as Senior Political Advisor to Vice President Mike Pence as well as Chairman of the Vice President’s operation of the Trump-Pence re-election campaign. You can read his full bio here.

Obst’s bio also indicates that his firm “provides strategic and grassroots advisory services to over two dozen major corporations, coalitions and associations.” We emailed him yesterday, asking if his clients include fossil fuel companies or related groups. He declined to answer our email.

The Vice President of M/O Strategies is Danielle Cleveland, whose bio indicates that “Most recently, she served as Deputy Executive Director of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA).” RAGA’s dark money arm, the Rule of Law Defense Fund, was one of the “Coalition Partners” that turned out the hordes of people at the Capitol on January 6. According to IRS filings made by RAGA, it has received $511,400 from Koch Industries and a subsidiary since 2014. (See our in-depth report: The Money Trail to the Siege at the Capitol Leads to Charles Koch and Koch Industries.)

Let’s hope that the U.S. Department of Justice peels this onion all the way to its corrupt core – the unbridled Koch money machine — something that the January 6 House Select Committee has yet to do. As we wrote on July 1:

Imagine a country that allows a private fossil fuels conglomerate (or its billionaire boss, Charles Koch, the 17th richest person in the world according to Forbes) to get away with the following:

Meet secretly with big political donors twice a year to plot a coordinated strategy to put their chosen people in public office;

Meet at his private club with a sitting Supreme Court justice who will then rule on key legislation that benefits his interests;

Fund an organization that then sluices money to the wife of the Supreme Court Justice;

Run a highly sophisticated voter registration database, data mining and get-out-the-vote operation called i360, in order to pack Congress with people who will pursue an antiregulatory agenda;

Install dozens of its lawyers and operatives into the highest offices of the federal government;

Run a sprawling, opaque trading operation that could potentially be raising the prices of the fossil fuel products it sells via the futures market;

Continue to operate major factories in Russia, ignoring sanctions and a murderous regime waging an unprovoked war on Ukraine, until a pressure campaign forced it to say it will look for an exit strategy;

Fund a sprawling network of taxpayer-subsidized front groups to deny climate change and foment hate;

Provide funding to groups involved in sending a mob to attack the seat of government of its own home country on January 6;

Fund groups that use dark money and propaganda to put lifetime justices on the highest court to pass legislation friendly to the fossil fuels conglomerate.

If this sounds like some kind of dystopian novel, welcome to the United States of Koch, circa 2022.

Related Article:

The Glue that Connects Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, Ginni Thomas, and the Guy Who Was Air-Dropped into the DOJ, Is Charles Koch’s Money

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RSN: FOCUS: Bess Levin | Surprise: Mitch Mcconnell Vows to Never Let Democrats Add a Justice to the Supreme Court Again

 

 

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FOCUS: Bess Levin | Surprise: Mitch McConnell Vows to Never Let Democrats Add a Justice to the Supreme Court Again

Bess Levin, Vanity Fair
Levin writes: "At least the world's most shameless hack is honest?" 

hy do people run for office? For some, it’s to make a better world for their children. For others, it’s a passion for government. For Mitch McConnell, it’s to fuck over Democrats at every possible opportunity, his neck pouch quivering with joy as he shreds small “d” democracy over and over and over again.

Obviously, one of McConnell’s favorite ways to screw not just his colleagues on the other side of the aisle but the millions of Americans who voted for them is by denying the other party the ability to add justices to the Supreme Court, based on made-up logic he literally pulls out of his ass as it suits him. In 2016, of course, he spent nearly an entire year blocking Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, claiming that presidents aren’t allowed to put someone on the court in an election year and that he had to delay the confirmation so the voters could decide. (They did, and it was in 2012 when they decided they wanted Obama to be president again.)

Fast-forward four years later, though, and with just weeks to go until the 2020 election, McConnell didn’t just ram through Amy Coney Barrett‘s confirmation, he announced he would do so basically before Ruth Bader Ginsburg‘s body was cold. The night RBG died, McConnell, the most shameless man to ever live, released a statement saying that he would move quickly to confirm Trump’s nominee, rewriting the completely arbitrary rule he invented to block Obama’s replacement for Antonin Scalia. And to lay the hackery on extra thick, he cast his absurd reversal as a fulfillment of a promise to the American people. “In the last midterm election before Justice Scalia’s death in 2016,” McConnell said, “Americans elected a Republican Senate majority because we pledged to check and balance the last days of a lame-duck president’s term. We kept our promise. Since the 1880s, no Senate has confirmed an opposite-party president’s Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year. By contrast, Americans reelected our majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018 because we pledged to work with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary. Once again, we will keep our promise.” Then he went on to clear the way for a woman who thinks there are some instances when abortion should be punishable by death to be confirmed to a lifetime appointment on the highest court in the land with the election less than 2 months away.

At this point, you could reasonably assume that with Joe Biden in power, McConnell would once again revert to his position that presidents can’t seat someone on the court within an election year. And of course, he has. But he’s also amended the policy to basically state that he’ll never let a Democratic president get a justice on the Supreme Court again so long as he’s in power, even if said president has nearly two years left on his term.

McConnell wasn’t asked about confirming a Democratic nominee in 2021 or 2022 because he is not actually the majority leader at the moment, but it’s pretty clear if he was he’d come up with—and implement—some kind of rule saying that only Republicans can add justices to court. Which is obviously insane and corrupt and shameless but hey, that’s Mitch, the guy who said last month that he is “100%” focused on blocking Biden‘s agenda, up to and including all the parts that might actually help Americans. Which would explain why many people are openly begging for Justice Stephen Breyer, 81, to retire. Asked about the situation on Sunday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told CNN, “You know, it’s something I think about, but I would probably lean towards yes.… I would give more thought to it, but I’m inclined to say yes.” She did not add, “Because Biden needs to get a liberal on the court before that old crone from Kentucky can snatch the seat out of Democrats’ fingers,” but presumably she was thinking it.

P.S. Trump’s Justice Department spied on White House employees too

It wasn’t just his congressional nemeses and enemies in the press. Per The New York Times:

The Justice Department subpoenaed Apple for information in February 2018 about an account that belonged to Donald F. McGahn II, President Donald J. Trump’s White House counsel at the time, and barred the company from telling him about it, according to two people briefed on the matter. Apple told Mr. McGahn about the subpoena last month, said one of the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. Mr. McGahn’s wife also received a similar notice from Apple, the person said.

It is not clear what FBI agents were investigating, whether Mr. McGahn was their specific focus, or whether he was swept up in a larger net because he had communicated with someone who was under scrutiny. As the top lawyer for the 2016 Trump campaign and then the White House counsel, Mr. McGahn was in contact with numerous people who may have drawn attention either as part of the Russia investigation or a later leak inquiry. Still, the disclosure that agents had collected data of a sitting White House counsel, which they kept secret for years, is extraordinary.

While we don’t know exactly what the DOJ was looking for, as the Times notes, we do know things were tense between Trump and McGahn around the time the department went after the White House counsel’s records. A month prior, per the Times, Trump had “tried to persuade Mr. McGahn to make a statement falsely denying” that he’d been asked to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, as press reports had indicated. Trump is said to have told aides that McGahn was a “liar” and a “leaker,” according to former Trump administration officials. And it seems he decided to use the power of the DOJ to go after him!

Area senator temporarily blocked from spreading bullshit medical advice

Ron Johnson knows what we’re talking about:

YouTube suspended GOP senator Ron Johnson’s account on Friday after he posted comments regarding dubious treatments for COVID-19. “We removed the video in accordance with our COVID-19 medical misinformation policies, which don’t allow content that encourages people to use hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin to treat or prevent the virus,” a YouTube spokesperson said in a statement to CNN.... For months Johnson—who tested positive for coronavirus last fall—has spread anti-vaccine misinformation and downplayed the urgency of vaccinating all Americans against COVID-19, putting the controversial Wisconsin Republican at odds with public health guidance aimed at easing the ongoing pandemic. The two-term senator, who’s facing reelection next year, has also downplayed the seriousness of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

YouTube doesn’t allow medical misinformation about COVID-19, including anything that recommends use of ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19, according to the company. In July of 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration revoked an emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine to treat COVID-19. The agency now says hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine have not been shown to be safe and effective for treating or preventing COVID-19.

Hydroxychloroquine, of course, was one of Dr. Donald Trump’s big recommendations to the public, second only to his suggestion that they shoot up household cleaner, leading the manufacturer of Lysol to issue a statement saying that “under no circumstance” should disinfectant be injected into one’s body.

In an extremely huffy statement, Johnson told CNN that YouTube has “decided there is only one medical viewpoint allowed and it is the viewpoint dictated by government agencies. YouTube’s ongoing COVID censorship proves they have accumulated too much unaccountable power. Big Tech and mainstream media believe they are smarter than medical doctors who have devoted their lives to science and use their skills to save lives.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene is sorry about that stuff she said about Jews

Just kidding, she’s sorry she’s getting backlash over it, and is hoping this stunt field trip to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum helps:

Freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene paid a visit to the Holocaust museum on Monday in a bid to defuse the controversy over her comments comparing vaccine and mask requirements to Nazi Germany.... Greene’s museum visit comes as one Jewish House Democrat, Illinois rep. Brad Schneider, prepares to introduce a censure resolution condemning Greene’s latest comments on the Holocaust. Some Democrats are already privately discussing censure as a potential response to a group of Republican lawmakers pushing a censure resolution against one of their caucus members, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), for her recent remarks on Israel.

Last month Greene claimed that “any rational Jewish person” thinks mask mandates are as bad as the Holocaust. She’s also previously blamed California wildfires on Jewish space lasers.

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