The Commentariat -- October 23, 2021

Late Morning Update:

Jacqueline Alemany, et al., of the Washington Post: "They called it the 'command center,' a set of rooms and suites in the posh Willard hotel a block from the White House where some of ... Donald Trump's most loyal lieutenants were working day and night with one goal in mind: overturning the results of the 2020 election.... The activities at the Willard that week add to an emerging picture of a less visible effort, mapped out in memos by a conservative pro-Trump legal scholar and pursued by a team of presidential advisers and lawyers seeking to pull off what they claim was a legal strategy to reinstate Trump for a second term. They were led by Trump's personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani. Former chief White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon was an occasional presence as the effort's senior political adviser. Former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik was there as an investigator. Also present was John Eastman, the scholar, who outlined scenarios for denying Biden the presidency in an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 4 with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence."

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AP: "China on Friday said there is 'no room' for compromise or concessions over the issue of Taiwan, following a comment by U.S. President Joe Biden that the U.S. is committed to defending the island if it is attacked. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin reasserted China's longstanding claim that the island is its territory at a daily briefing after Biden made his comment a day before at a forum hosted by CNN. China has recently upped its threat to bring Taiwan under its control by force if necessary by flying warplanes near the island and rehearsing beach landings.... Biden's comments on Thursday were viewed as stretching the 'strategic ambiguity' Washington has maintained over how it would respond to an assault on the self-governing island republic.... In his comments, Biden said the U.S. did not want a new Cold War but expressed concern about whether China was 'going to engage in activities that will put them in a position where they may make a serious mistake.'" (Also linked yesterday.)

Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Biden on Friday named Neera Tanden, a longtime Democratic insider in Washington, to be White House staff secretary, moving her into a little-known but influential West Wing post after failing earlier this year to install her as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. For the last several months, Ms. Tanden has been a senior adviser to the president, working quietly behind the scenes to build support among interest groups for his social spending agenda and overseeing a government reform agenda with officials at the budget office." CNN's report is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday launched a new Justice Department initiative aimed at combating discriminatory lending policies among banks, saying the practice harms minority communities and contributes to the racial wealth gap. In an address to staff, Garland cited the history of banks denying loans to Black borrowers during the Great Depression -- a tactic known as redlining -- and warned that such practices remain widespread more than 90 years later. He said the department would, in conjunction with other federal agencies, mount the federal government's 'most aggressive and coordinated effort' to root out and punish those who violate federal laws that prohibit such practices.:

** Katelyn Polantz, et al., of CNN: "The House select committee investigating the US Capitol insurrection is planning for former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark to testify next Friday -- teeing him up to be the first Trump administration official to comply with a subpoena for an interview with the panel, two sources ... told CNN. Clark's testimony could be a major step forward for Democrats as they attempt to determine what ... Donald Trump, Republican members of Congress and his advisers did and said behind closed doors about overturning the results of the 2020 election before January 6. CNN has also learned that Alyssa Farah, former director of strategic communications in the Trump White House and assistant to the president, has voluntarily met with Republicans on the House select committee and provided information in several meetings...."

Marshall Cohen & Holmes Lybrand of CNN: "A federal judge said Friday that defiant US Capitol rioters, who are still defending their role in the January 6 insurrection, are fueling threats against judges from people who falsely believe the 2020 election was stolen from ... Donald Trump. 'It bothers me that she would try to associate herself with that type of violence... and then she goes on television on two occasions and is proud of what she did, and says she would do it again,' district Judge Reggie Walton said at a hearing for Capitol riot defendant Lori Vinson. 'I know that these types of comments have an impact,' Walton added. 'As judges, we're getting all kinds of threats and hostile phone calls when we have these (January 6) cases before us, because there are unfortunately other people out there who buy in on this proposition, even though there was no proof, that somehow the election was fraudulent.' These comments came at a sentencing hearing for Vinson and her husband, Thomas Vinson. Walton gave them each five years of probation and a $5,000 fine -- the maximum allowed, and the largest for a Capitol rioter so far. Prosecutors asked for a month in jail for Lori and house arrest for Thomas."

Madeleine May of Vice: "On December 5..., Donald Trump singled ... out [Richard Barron, elections director of Georgia's Fulton County,] at a rally in Valdosta, Georgia. He showed a video of Barron to the hundreds of attendees, and voiced conspiracies about voter fraud in Georgia. 'So, if you just take the crime of what those Democratic workers were doing,' said Trump, 'that's ten times more than I need to win the state.'... Barron [and] his entire election staff became a target [of dozens of threatening voicemails].... 'My staff is almost exclusively African American, and they started receiving calls laced with racial slurs.' Physical threats began as well.... [People were surveilling the elections facility, taking photos of individuals & of license plates.] Officials across the United States experienced physical stalking, explicitly violent phone calls, racial slurs, home surveillance, bomb scares, and threats of mass shootings.... In election hotspots like Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, many of these threats came directly after Trump mentioned election workers (like Barron) at events and in tweets.... For some officials in Georgia and Pennsylvania, the threats have continued for nearly a year. And now, many of these officials want to quit."

Colin Moynihan of the New York Times: "On Friday, in Federal District Court in Manhattan, [Lev] Parnas and an associate, Andrey Kukushkin, were convicted on all counts [brought for campaign finance crimes]. [His associate Igor] Fruman and a fourth defendant, David Correia, had pleaded guilty previously.... [Mr.] Parnas and his business partner, [Mr.] Fruman, had climbed to prominent places in the orbit of ... Donald J. Trump when they were arrested at Dulles International Airport near Washington in 2019 while holding one-way tickets to Frankfurt. The two Soviet-born businessmen were accused of funneling a Russian tycoon's money into American political campaigns. But in the two years that followed, Mr. Parnas's role in events connected to Mr. Trump's first impeachment slowly emerged. He acknowledged participating in an effort by Rudolph W. Giuliani to pressure Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe Biden, who was then a leading Democratic presidential candidate. Even as Mr. Parnas's profile grew, though, the campaign finance charges against him loomed.... Speaking outside the courtroom after the verdict was announced, Mr. Parnas’s lawyer, Joseph A. Bondy, said his client planned to appeal and seek to have the conviction vacated." Thanks to P.D. Pepe for the link. An AP story is here.

Katie Lillis of CNN: "Michael Ellis, who was installed as the top lawyer at the National Security Agency during ... Donald Trump's final days in office, was appropriately sidelined the day after his arrival at the agency based on a pair of security incidents that took place in early 2021, the Defense Department inspector general found in a report released on Thursday. The investigation also found that the Pentagon's selection of Ellis for the role was appropriate and carried out without political influence. The two security incidents took place after Ellis' hiring in the fall of 2020, but before he started work on January 19, according to the report. NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone placed him on administrative leave on January 20, the day President Joe Biden was inaugurated." MB: Read on. Ellis's actions sound remarkably careless/suspicious to me. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court on Friday said it will consider legal arguments over the Texas abortion law that is the nation's most restrictive on Nov. 1, and that the law will remain in effect. The court granted an expedited review of what is called S. B. 8, which the Biden administration in a filing Friday said 'has virtually eliminated abortion in Texas after six weeks of pregnancy.'... The court said it will consider the law's unique enforcement policy, which authorizes individual citizens to sue anyone who helps a woman obtain an abortion after cardiac activity is noted in the embryo, usually about six weeks. The court did not accept a request from Texas specifically to reconsider Roe and Casey.... Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the lone dissenter in the order." MB: Just put those unwanted pregnancies on holds, Texas gals. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Ryan Mac & Sheera Frenkel of the New York Times: "Facebook has publicly blamed the proliferation of election falsehoods on ... Donald J. Trump and other social platforms.... But the company documents show the degree to which Facebook knew of extremist movements and groups on its site that were trying to polarize American voters before the election. The documents also give new detail on how aware company researchers were after the election of the flow of misinformation that posited votes had been manipulated against Mr. Trump.... What was unmistakable was that Facebook's own employees believed the social network could have done more, according to the documents.... Disclosures from [Facebook whistleblower Frances] Haugen, who plans to appear at a hearing in Britain's Parliament on Monday, have resurfaced questions about what role Facebook played in the events leading up to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot." The article gives some preliminary hints of how large a role Facebook content played in the insurrection. ~~~

~~~ Craig Timberg, et al., of the Washington Post: "... in the days after the 2020 presidential election..., many who had worked on the election, exhausted from months of unrelenting toil, took leaves of absence or moved on to other jobs. Facebook rolled back many of the dozens of election-season measures that it had used to suppress hateful, deceptive content. A ban the company had imposed on the original Stop the Steal group stopped short of addressing dozens of look-alikes that popped up in what an internal Facebook after-action report called 'coordinated' and 'meteoric' growth. Meanwhile, the company's Civic Integrity team was largely disbanded by a management that had grown weary of the team's criticisms of the company.... [On January 6,] measures of online mayhem surged alarmingly on Facebook, with user reports of 'false news' hitting nearly 40,000 per hour, an internal report that day showed. On Facebook-owned Instagram, the account reported most often for inciting violence was @realdonaldtrump -- the president's official account, the report showed. Facebook has never publicly disclosed what it knows about how its platforms, including Instagram and WhatsApp, helped fuel that day's mayhem." Emphasis added. CNN's report is here. ~~~

~~~ Brandy Zadrozny of NBC News: "In the summer of 2019, a new Facebook user named Carol Smith ... describ[ed] herself as a politically conservative mother from Wilmington, North Carolina. Smith's account indicated an interest in politics, parenting, and Christianity, and followed a few of her favorite brands, including Fox News and ... Donald Trump. Though Smith had never expressed interest in conspiracy theories, in just two days Facebook was recommending she join groups dedicated to QAnon.... Smith didn't follow the recommended QAnon groups, but whatever algorithm Facebook was using to determine how she should engage with the platform pushed ahead just the same. Within one week, Smith's feed was full of groups and pages that had violated Facebook's own rules, including those against hate speech and disinformation. Smith wasn't a real person. A researcher employed by Facebook invented the account, along with those of other fictitious 'test users' in 2019 and 2020, as part of an experiment in studying the platform's role in misinforming and polarizing users through its recommendations systems. That researcher said Smith's Facebook experience was 'a barrage of extreme, conspiratorial, and graphic content." The NYT story linked above also outlines the finding for the "Carol Smith" account. ~~~

~~~ Craig Timberg of the Washington Post: "A new whistleblower affidavit submitted by a former Facebook employee Friday alleges that the company prizes growth and profits over combating hate speech, misinformation and other threats to the public, according to a copy of the document obtained by The Washington Post. The whistleblower's allegations, which were declared under penalty of perjury..., echoed many of those made by Frances Haugen, another former Facebook employee whose scathing testimony before Congress this month intensified bipartisan calls for federal action against the company. Haugen, like the new whistleblower, also made allegations to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees publicly traded companies.... The SEC affidavit goes on to allege that Facebook officials routinely undermined efforts to fight misinformation, hate speech and other problematic content out of fear of angering ... Donald Trump and his political allies, or out of concern about potentially dampening the user growth key to Facebook's multi-billion-dollar profits."

Dan Milmo of the Guardian: "Twitter has admitted it amplifies more tweets from rightwing politicians and news outlets than content from leftwing sources. The social media platform examined tweets from elected officials in seven countries -- the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Spain and Japan. It also studied whether political content from news organisations was amplified on Twitter, focusing primarily on US news sources such as Fox News, the New York Times and BuzzFeed.... The research found that in six out of seven countries, apart from Germany, tweets from rightwing politicians received more amplification from the algorithm than those from the left; right-leaning news organisations were more amplified than those on the left; and generally politicians' tweets were more amplified by an algorithmic timeline than by the chronological timeline."

Eileen Sullivan & Miriam Jordan of the New York Times: "A record 1.7 million migrants from around the world, many of them fleeing pandemic-ravaged countries, were encountered trying to enter the United States illegally in the last 12 months, capping a year of chaos at the southern border, which has emerged as one of the most formidable challenges for the Biden administration. It was the highest number of illegal crossings recorded since at least 1960, when the government first began tracking such entries. The number was similarly high for the 2000 fiscal year, when border agents caught 1.6 million people, according to government data."

Beyond the Beltway

Nevada. Amy Wang of the Washington Post: "... a few days after Election Day..., [Donald Kirk Hartle, a] Las Vegas man, was telling a local news station that someone had stolen his late wife's mail-in ballot and returned it to Clark County election officials, according to Nevada's online ballot tracker. 'That is pretty sickening to me, to be honest with you,' Hartle said in an interview then with KLAS 8 News Now.... On Thursday, the Nevada attorney general's office announced it had filed two charges of voter fraud against Hartle, alleging that he forged his late wife's name to vote with her ballot.... The claims by Hartle, a registered Republican, spread quickly in conservative circles, jumping from local outlets to Fox News's Tucker Carlson, who used it to bolster Trump supporters' assertions that widespread voter fraud could have swayed the 2020 election results."

New Mexico. Simon Romero, et al., of the New York Times follow up on the shooting death of Halyna Hutchins on a film set by actor-producer Alec Baldwin: "The plot of the film Mr. Baldwin was shooting, 'Rust,' hinges on an accidental killing and its aftermath.... An assistant director grabbed one of three prop guns that the film's armorer had set up outside on a gray cart, handed it to Mr. Baldwin, and, according to an affidavit signed by Detective Joel Cano of the Santa Fe County sheriff's office, yelled 'Cold Gun!' -- which was supposed to indicate that the gun did not have any live rounds in it.... Several members of the crew walked off the set earlier this week over working conditions, according to several people familiar with the shoot.... On film sets, the safety protocols for using guns are well established and straightforward...." See also related stories in yesterday's News Ledes.

Comments

[P.D. Pepe]

Eric Swalwell shares chilling voicemail sent to him by a Tucker fan. You get to hear the actual voicemail which is as raw as it can get –-the vitriol is so intense, the language used, so vile, that it almost becomes comic. The other video is from MSNBC's Nicole Wallace talking to Eric who tells us how he has asked Tucker repeatedly not to tell lies about him which energizes the nut cases that listen to Tuckums.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/eric-swalwell-tucker-carlson-voicemail_n_6173aeb9e4b066de4f62b0a1

This reminds me of the video that Richard Dawkins made called "Love Letters" where he sits in a bathrobe by a roaring fire and reads letters from those who want to "cut out your hoary ball fucking ass, you sick mother fucker...."
And its one thing to send stupid, profane messages but when the person behind the message threatens to kill you and your family then we are in a totally different ball park.

[P.D. Pepe]

THE DEPLORABLES:

Chris Hayes exposes the cruelty at the core of the GOP. I think he hits the ball ––continuing with the metaphor above––right out of the park.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/chris-hayes-vice-signaling-republicans_n_6173b836e4b066de4f62b569

[Ken Winkes]

Guess Eastman wasn't really at the Willard either...

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-s-coup-lawyer-eastman-disavows-infamous-memo-124420677917

How could all those libs be so wrong?

[Jeanne]

Just listened. That filth directed at a member of Congress or any liberal, egged on by The Worst Person in our world and his followers, is breathtaking. They are not crazy—it is deliberate vicious fascist activity. As PD says, we are living so far beyond the quaint “basket of deplorables” mentioned back in days of yore. These are precisely the people liberals are trying to help with money and programs and health care. I wonder why we bother…