Daily Archives: December 29, 2021

Trump at the Turnberry golf course.AP Photo/Scott Heppell

Trump's Scottish golf resorts have claimed millions in pandemic support from the UK government.

Both Trump Turnberry and Trump International Scotland recorded losses in the millions in 2020.

Company accounts signed by Eric Trump cite Brexit as a contributing factor to the resorts' struggles.

Former President Donald Trump's Scottish golf resorts have claimed more than $4 million in UK emergency money as the struggling businesses furloughed hundreds of staff members amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Newly published company accounts for the two international resorts revealed the Trump Turnberry in Ayrshire and Trump International Scotland near Aberdeenshire cut 273 jobs in 2020, while also claiming $3.7 million in furlough support.

Trump relinquished control of both resorts to his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump shortly before he was inaugurated as president in 2017 but kept financial interest in the businesses, both of which are owned by the holding company Golf Recreation Scotland Ltd.

Additional government data reviewed by The Guardian shows both resorts made further financial claims this year as the UK government's emergency job-retention program persisted.

The BBC was the first to report the resorts' additional 2021 claims, which are reportedly worth between $698,000 and $1.7 million, adding to a total between $4.4 million and $5.5 million in furlough support over two years. The new figures have not been included in the Trump companies' most recent accounts, according to The Guardian.

Trump Turnberry recorded a loss of more than $4 million in 2020 while the Aberdeenshire resort reported a loss of $1.7 million. Filings for both resorts cited the government lockdown, which required the businesses to be closed for multiple months in 2020 and into 2021, as reasons for significant staff losses.

But the accounts filed by Golf Recreation Scotland Ltd. and signed by its director, Eric Trump, also cited Brexit as a contributing factor to the resorts' failing finances, according to The Independent.

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"Brexit has also impacted our business as supply chains have been impacted by availability of drivers and staff, reducing deliveries and availability of certain product lines," the accounts state, according to The Independent.

The documents go on to say increased prices due to freight and import-duty charges after the Brexit vote, as well as a reduced staff availability because of wage inflation, have negatively affected the resorts.

During his presidential campaign and into his presidency, Trump was a vocal supporter of Brexit, which saw a 2016 referendum vote for withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union in 2016. The former president nicknamed himself "Mr. Brexit" in a 2016 tweet and celebrated the Brits, who he said "took back their country" at an appearance in Turnberry in 2016.

The company accounts, filed earlier this month, also suggested that both golf resorts owe additional money to Trump himself in loans from the former president's personal funds and the holding company to Turnberry and Trump International Scotland, totaling more than $158 million, according to The Guardian.

A representative for the Trump Organization did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, nor did a spokesperson with Trump Turnberry or Trump International Scotland.

Trump opened the Aberdeenshire location in 2012 and bought the Turnberry resort in 2014. The former president is said to be particularly proud of his mother's Scottish heritage.

Last month, a group of human-rights lawyers lost their bid to force the Scottish government to investigate how Trump paid for his two golf courses in the country. The advocacy group Avaaz brought the case after the Scottish government declined to investigate an unexplained-wealth order against Trump.

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Donald Trump's struggling Scottish golf courses have ...

Donald Trump has claimed 5,000 dead people voted in 2020 in Georgia, a state he lost to Joe Biden on his way to national defeat.

He was off by 4,996.

As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on Monday, state officials have confirmed four cases of dead people voting.

All involved family members submitting votes for the deceased, cases in which the state has the power to levy fines.

In one case detailed by the paper, a widow submitted an absentee ballot for her husband after he died in September, two months before polling day.

An attorney for the 74-year-old woman reportedly told officials her husband was going to vote Republican, and she said, Well, Im going to cancel your ballot because Im voting Democrat. It was kind of a joke between them. She received the absentee ballot and carried out his wishes.

She now realises that was not the thing to do.

Even if Trumps claim about dead voters were true, it would not have saved him from being the first Republican to lose Georgia since 1992. Biden won the state by nearly 12,000 votes. Nor could Georgia alone have overturned Trumps electoral college defeat, by 306-232.

But Trump included his claim in a notorious call in which he pushed the Georgia secretary of state, Republican Brad Raffensperger, to find enough votes to give him victory.

Dead people, Trump said. So dead people voted, and I think the number is close to 5,000 people. And they went to obituaries. They went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number, and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters.

He also claimed that a tremendous number of dead people voted in Michigan, adding: I think it was 18,000. Some unbelievably high number, much higher than yours, you were in the 4-5,000 category.

Referring to a claim of upward of 5,000 dead voters he said was presented to Georgia officials, Raffensperger, said: The actual number were two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted. So thats wrong.

Trump insisted: In one state, we have a tremendous amount of dead people. So I dont know Im sure we do in Georgia, too. Im sure we do in Georgia, too.

Trumps chief of staff, Mark Meadows, told Raffensperger: You say they were only two dead people who would vote. I can promise you there are more than that.

Raffensperger refused to help Trump, prompting threats to his safety. But the call also placed Trump in legal jeopardy, as a district attorney investigates whether he broke electoral law.

The call was part of scattershot attempts to overturn a defeat Trump insists in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary was the result of electoral fraud.

A few days after the call, on 6 January, Trump told supporters in Washington to fight like hell in his cause. Rioters then attacked the US Capitol, seeking to stop certification of Bidens win, in some cases seeking to capture or kill officials including Trumps vice-president, Mike Pence.

Five people died.

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Trump claims 5,000 dead people voted in Georgia but the real number is four - The Guardian

After Donald Trump was forced from the major social-media platforms for violating their terms of service, the Associated Press reported in March he would soon launch his own site. Jason Miller told Fox News at the time that the former president was poised to "completely redefine the game" with his new tech initiative.

It was against this backdrop that Fox News reported in May that Trump and his team had launched a new "communications platform," powered by a "digital ecosystem." The phrases wildly oversold what was actually a rudimentary blog, utilizing technology that's existed for many years.

A month after its launch, the website was permanently scrapped due to lack of reader interest. The game had not been "completely redefined."

Apparently undeterred, the Republican and his team made a related announcement the week before Halloween, launching the Trump Media & Technology Group, which apparently has multimedia ambitions it says it intends to compete with both Twitter and Netflix and even hired a high-profile CEO: Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said he'd resign as a Republican congressman to lead the nascent company.

And while that's certainly of interest, what makes this story amazing is what we're learning about the behind-the-scenes financing of the initiative. The New York Times published this report the week after the company's launch.

[The former president] agreed to merge his social media venture with whats known as a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. The result is that Mr. Trump largely shut out of the mainstream financial industry because of his history of bankruptcies and loan defaults secured nearly $300 million in funding for his new business. To get his deal done, Mr. Trump ventured into an unregulated and sometimes shadowy corner of Wall Street, working with an unlikely cast of characters....

That cast includes a small Chinese investment firm with a curious record. (This may seem a little convoluted at first, but be patient, because this is going somewhere.)

A few years ago, for example, the firm helped create a company called Atlas Technology International, and it claimed in its Securities and Exchange Committee filing to be a company that made cupcakes. Soon after, Atlas filed a new annual report, saying it had made the transition from cupcakes to touch-screen devices, which was a bit odd.

The same folks behind that operation a Chinese firm called Arc Capital said they also ran a smart-phone sales company in south Florida, which did not appear to have ever sold anything to anyone at any time. They also claimed to have a drone software company, which somehow existed without any employees.

The SEC took a closer look and came to the conclusion that these companies were, for all intents and purposes, fake which is a problem, because in the United States, fake companies are not supposed to be publicly traded.

The SEC intervened and took the unusual step of issuing a "stop order," preventing the companies from selling public shares.

And now, as The Washington Post reported, these same guys in Shanghai have partnered with the former American president and the Trump Media & Technology Group.

A Chinese firm helping former president Donald Trump take his new media company public has been the target of investigations by federal securities regulators, who say the firm misrepresented shell companies with no products and few employees as ambitious, growing enterprises, documents and interviews show. Arc Capital, an investment advisory firm based in Shanghai, has repeatedly helped create or finance companies with little or no revenue, no customers and office locations that point to P.O. boxes, according to a Washington Post review of regulatory and court filings.

It's quite a marriage, isn't it? On the one hand, there's Trump, who's been accused of running fraudulent operations such as Trump University and the Trump Foundation, while on the other hand, there's a Chinese firm that's also been accused of launching highly dubious operations.

Keep in mind, the Trump Media & Technology Group, launched to great fanfare in October, does not appear to exist in any meaningful way, at least not yet. It has no products, no customers, and no sources of revenue. A securities lawyer told the Post, in reference to the partnership between the the former president's operation and Arc Capital, Theres a shell company basically merging with another shell company."

Nevertheless, the Republican's friends in Shanghai are raising hundreds of millions of dollars from the public that will ostensibly go towards Trump's media company that, again, still doesn't exist.

All of this has recently drawn the interest of investigators at the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), which typically investigates things like insider trading.

So, let's recap. Trump, who spent his White House term boasting about getting tough with China, has partnered with a dubious firm in Shanghai, which doesn't have any offices in the United States, but which is nevertheless financing his first and for now, largely aspirational post-presidency business venture. All of this is now facing federal investigations, in part because of the Chinese firm's history of fake businesses.

I can appreciate why expectations surrounding the former president are low, but this is farcical.

Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics."

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Why the controversy surrounding Trump's media venture matters - MSNBC

Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack, has said the panel will open an inquiry into Donald Trumps phone call seeking to stop Joe Bidens 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 presidents objections of executive privilege.

Thats right, Thompson said when asked by the Guardian whether the select committee would look into Trumps phone call, and suggested House investigators had already started to consider ways to investigate Trumps 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 Bidens 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 Bidens certification from taking place on 6 January in a scheme to get alternate slates of electors for Trump sent to Congress.

The former presidents 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 investigation into Trumps 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 Trumps phone calls to the Willard and the White Houses potential involvement, in a move certain to intensify the pressure on the former presidents inner circle.

If we get the information that we requested, Thompson said of the select committees 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 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 Trumps 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.

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Capitol panel to investigate Trump call to Willard hotel in hours before attack - The Guardian

Expectation is growing that Donald Trump might face charges for trying to obstruct Congress from certifying Joe Bidens election this year as a House panel collects more evidence into the 6 January attack on the Capitol, former prosecutors and other experts say.

Speculation about possible charges against the former US president has been heightened by a recent rhetorical bombshell from Republican representative and 6 January panel vice-chair Liz Cheney suggesting the House panel is looking at whether Trump broke a law that bars obstruction of official proceedings.

Former prosecutors say if the panel finds new evidence about Trumps role interfering with Congress job to certify Bidens election, that could help buttress a potential case by the Department of Justice.

In varying ways, Cheneys comments have been echoed by two other members of the House select committee, Republican Adam Kinzinger and Democrat Jamie Raskin, spurring talk of how an obstruction statute could apply to Trump, which would entail the panel making a criminal referral of evidence for the justice department to investigate, say DoJ veterans.

Cheneys remarks raising the specter of criminal charges against Trump came twice earlier this month at hearings of the committee. Experts believe the charges could be well founded given Trumps actions on 6 January, including incendiary remarks to a rally before the Capitol attack and failure to act for hours to stop the riot, say former justice department officials.

Based on what is already in the public domain, there is powerful evidence that numerous people, in and out of government, attempted to obstruct and did obstruct, at least for a while an official proceeding i.e., the certification of the Presidential election, said former DOJ inspector general and former prosecutor Michael Bromwich in a statement to the Guardian. That is a crime.

Although a House panel referral of obstruction by Trump would not force DOJ to open a criminal case against him, it could help provide more evidence for one, and build pressure on the justice department to move forward, say former prosecutors.

Attorneygeneral Merrick Garland has declined to say so far whether his department may be investigating Trump and his top allies already for their roles in the Capitol assault.

The panel has amassed significant evidence, including more than 30,000 records and interviews with more than 300 people, among whom were some key White House staff.

The evidence against Trump himself could include his actions at the Stop the Steal rally not far from the White House, where he urged backers to march to the Capitol and fight like hell [or] youre not going to have a country any more. Trump then resisted multiple pleas for hours from Republicans and others to urge his violent supporters to stop the attack.

Recent rulings by Trump-appointed district court judges have supported using the obstruction statute, which federal prosecutors have cited in about 200 cases involving rioters charged by DOJ for their roles in the Capitol assault that injured about 140 police officers and left five dead.

Still, experts note that the House panels mission has been to assemble a comprehensive report of what took place on 6 January and work on legislation to avoid such assaults on democracy. They caution that any criminal referral to DOJ documenting Trumps obstruction of Congress will take time and more evidence to help bolster a DOJ investigation.

Some DOJ veterans say that any referral to DOJ by the House panel for a criminal case against Trump and perhaps top allies such as ex chief of staff Mark Meadows, whom the House last week cited for criminal contempt for refusing to be deposed might also include Trumps aggressive pressuring of federal and state officials before 6 January to block Bidens win with baseless charges of fraud.

Bromwich stressed that the evidence is steadily accumulating that would prove obstruction beyond a reasonable doubt. The ultimate question is who the defendants would be in such an obstruction case. Evidence is growing that, as a matter of law and fact, that could include Trump, Meadows and other members of Trumps inner circle.

Cheney teed up the issue about Trumps potential culpability first at a House panel hearing last week, when she urged that Meadows be held in contempt for refusing to be deposed, and then hit Trump with a rhetorical bombshell.

We know hours passed with no action by the president to defend the Congress of the United States from an assault while we were counting electoral votes, Cheney said.

Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress official proceeding to count electoral votes?

Cheneys comments about Trump were very precise, including language from the criminal obstruction statute, and she stated that her question is a key one for the panels legislative tasks.

Raskin too has told Politico that the issue of whether Trump broke the law by obstructing an official proceeding is clearly one of the things on the mind of some of the members of the committee.

The possibility of obstruction charges is legally valid, said Paul Rosenzweig, a former DOJ prosecutor who worked on Ken Starrs team during the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton, noting that two district judges appointed by Trump have recently said that the statute covers the efforts on January 6 to stop the electoral count.

For instance, Judge Dabney Friedrich in a recent opinion rejected the claim by some defendants who were challenging the DOJ view that the 6 January meeting of Congress fit the legal definition of an official proceeding.

Rosenzweig posited that given Trumps various attempts before 6 January to undermine the election results, a broader conspiracy case may be another option for prosecutors to pursue. Should DOJ look at broader conspiracy charges, Trumps persistent pressures on acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and his top deputy for help blocking Bidens victory wouldprobably be relevant, say ex-prosecutors.

On one call on 27 December 2020, Trump pressed Rosen and his deputy to falsely state the election illegal and corrupt despite the fact that the DOJ had not found any evidence of widespread voter fraud.

Paul Pelletier, a former acting chief of the fraud section at DOJ, said that Cheneys statements were carefully crafted and obviously based upon evidence the committee had seen. Should Congress ultimately refer the case to DOJ for investigation and prosecution, the DOJs investigation would not be limited to a single obstruction charge, but would more likely investigate broader conspiracy charges potentially involving Trump and other key loyalists.

The panel has accelerated its pace recently by sending out dozens of subpoenas for documents and depositions, some to close Trump aides. Meadows has become a central focus of the inquiry, in part over tweets he received on and near the insurrection that are among approximately 9,000 documents he gave the panel, much to Trumps chagrin.

As Trumps efforts to thwart the panel from moving forward have had limited success, he has relied on sending out splenetic email attacks, including one last month that read: The Unselect Committee itself is Rigged, stacked with Never Trumpers, Republican enemies, and two disgraced RINOs, Cheney and Kinzinger, who couldnt get elected dog catcher in their districts.

Despite Trumps angry attacks on the panel, some ex-prosecutors say that prosecuting Trump if enough evidence is found to merit charges is important for the health of American democracy.

Former Georgia US attorney Michael J Moore told the Guardian: I hate to think of a legal system that would allow the most powerful person in the country to go unchallenged when he has abdicated his highest priority, that being to keep our citizens safe. Trumps conduct that day was not unlike a mob boss.

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Trump could face charges for trying to obstruct certification of election, legal experts say - The Guardian

There is a scene in the latest remake of Godzilla where Ishiro Serizawa, played by Ken Watanabe, is standing on a shoreline staring out at the sea. He is surrounded by bustling soldiers. Behind him, two giant MUTO creatures are beating the living hell out of San Francisco. Somewhere in the distance, a huge bulge of ocean approaches at dizzying speed: The King of the Monsters is coming. The commanding general asks if there is any hope that Godzilla can defeat the menace shredding the city. The arrogance of men is thinking nature is in our control and not the other way around, replies Serizawa. Let them fight.

This is how Im feeling about Donald Trump and his buddies within the Proud Boys these days.

The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol building is not Trumps only problem on that particular front; six Capitol police officers are suing him for sparking the Capitol riot, during which they were viciously assaulted, and recent court papers filed by Trumps defense team indicate they plan to lay responsibility for the whole thing at the feet of the Proud Boys and other right-wing groups.

Former President Donald Trump is seeking dismissal of a suit accusing him of sparking the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, reports Bloomberg News, arguing that speakers at political rallies dont have a legally enforceable duty of care to adversaries or others who might find themselves in the path of impassioned supporters. Trump, sued in August by eight Capitol Police officers who claim they were assaulted that day, argued in a court filing that the lawsuit should be tossed out because Trump isnt vicariously liable for the actions of people who heard him speak at a Stop the Steal rally before the siege.

It aint Stand back and stand by, thats for sure. Trump and his newest band of legal superchamps seem to be arguing that he can, in fact, yell Fire! in a crowded theater, and if you get your face stepped on by someone fleeing the room, well, thats your problem. This is far less theoretical than that old legal saw. With these filings, Trump is handing the bag directly over to groups, including the Proud Boys, which have been his staunchest and most menacing allies.

This appears to be yet another crossroads moment featuring Trump trying to put some wind between himself and the hardest of his hardcore allies. This split with the Proud Boys is nothing less than cold-blooded political calculus seen in hundreds of courtrooms a day: It was them, Your Honor, not me, and under the bus they go (the standard-issue fate of nearly everyone foolish enough to hitch their wagon to his star).

Last week, it was Trump parting ways with the anti-vax brigades, a move that went over with them about as well as a pole-vaulting sack of cement. Sitting for an interview with right-wing commentator Candace Owens, Trump pushed back hard on her suggestion that the vaccines were somehow flawed or dangerous. Oh no, the vaccines work, he replied, but some people arent the ones. The ones who get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that dont take the vaccine. But its still their choice. And if you take the vaccine, youre protected. Look, the results of the vaccine are very good, and if you do get it, its a very minor form. People arent dying when they take the vaccine.

Vile conspiracy monger Alex Jones immediately spoke for many within the anti-vax brigades in a scathing Christmas Day message. But now that you know that [Anthony] Fauci signed you onto a fraud, you must extricate yourself from this lie, or you will be forever known as the M.V.V.P., the Most Valuable Vaccine Pusher, and the name Trump will be associated with pure evil, ranted Jones. Do not go down history as Josef Mengele 2.0. Your legacy will be that of a monster. Your legacy will be that of a eugenicist. Your legacy will be that of a child killer, using medical tyranny.

Meanwhile, the House 1/6 committee prepares to move into a more public phase of operation, sweeping in new testimony and evidence left and right, while Trumps efforts to stop them have finally reached the Supreme Court. This is a perilous moment fraught with uncertainty: Yes, the 6-3 conservative bent of the court, including three justices he personally nominated, would seem to be a safe harbor for the embattled former president. Yet that same court had a number of opportunities to involve themselves in Trumps favor during the post-election chaos, and they very deliberately wanted no part of it. There is no way to tell where they will come down on this.

Donald Trump seems to be running out of friends at an accelerating rate, and it is his own behavior that is creating the distance. Its a strange decision tree hes climbing, and puts one in mind of the old saying: What do you call a leader with no followers? Just a guy taking a walk.

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Donald Trump Has Spent the Last Two Weeks Offending His Closest Allies - Truthout

In this daily series, Newsweek explores the steps that led to the January 6 Capitol Riot.

On December 27, the last Sunday of 2020, the news media struggled to offer any happy news in a year dominated by COVID and then by Donald Trump's post-election dissension.

COVID cases reached 80 million worldwide and over the weekend, the United States reached a grim indicator: 1 in 1,000 Americans had died in the pandemic. Los Angeles County alone was experiencing one COVID death every ten minutes.

On Sunday, Dr. Anthony Fauci expressed concern that the state of the pandemic might get worse in the coming weeks. "... [T]he reason I'm concerned and my colleagues in public health are concerned also is that we very well might see a post-seasonal, in the sense of Christmas, New Year's, surge ... a surge upon a surge, because, if you look at the slope, the incline of cases that we have experienced as we have gone into the late fall and soon-to-be-early winter, it is really quite troubling."

"We are really at a very critical point," Fauci said.

Then there was the Christmas morning bombing in Nashville, still raw in people's minds, a reminder that nothing stopped for the pandemic. Though terrorism was being downplayed, analysts latched onto other implications. "I think this is a wake-up call and a warning for all of us about how vulnerable our infrastructure is," former FBI assistant director Frank Figliuzzi told CBS' Face the Nation. "We've concentrated, post 9/11 on ... getting our hands around all the chemical companies, mass orders of precursors for known explosives," he said, calling on shop owners and companies to be even more vigilant.

"[T]he notion of a copycat seeing what's happened in Nashville and trying to do this themselves is very real," he said.

"We haven't really been talking about infrastructure in this country in the context of individuals trying to conduct attacks of harm against," former homeland security Assistant Secretary Elizabeth Neumann told ABC's This Week, "but it's just a stark reminder that it is extremely vulnerable and we're overdue for some pretty significant investments."

On NBC's Meet the Press, there was no talk of Nashville, or COVID: the entire show was devoted to Joe Biden and what kind of president he would be. The closest the program got was in asking two governors about the difficult time and being targeted by COVID protestors. Gov. Mike Dewine of Ohio said: "I think it's understandable that people are upset. It's nine months into this. People are tired of it, so I get it."

Trump's "final days in office are shaping up to be the most volatile and unpredictable of a presidency defined by its volatility and unpredictability," said Jonathan Karl on ABC's This Week.

ABC had Maryland Republican Governor Larry Hogan on, Karl asking him if he was concerned about the damage Donald Trump could do in his last 24 days in office. Hogan cited Trump's delay in signing the COVID stimulus bill into law, his vetoing of the defense authorization bill. "Millions of people are going to suffer," Hogan said. "The Paycheck Protection Plan ran out in July. Unemployment benefits are about to run out tomorrow. And we've got to get this done."

Asked about Trump's call for a last-ditch fight on January 6, Hogan reassured viewers that Joe Biden was going to be sworn in on January 20. "There is a lot of disinformation out there," Hogan said. "Everybody wants every single legal vote to be counted. We want the election to be fair and proper."

"I'm hopeful that the vice president [Mike Pence] understands that [January 6 is a purely ceremonial job] and will execute his constitutional duties on January 6th," former Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie told ABC. "There may be some, some histrionics that go along with it, in the end I'm confident that the Congress will confirm what the American people did on Election Day, which was to elect Joe Biden the next president of the United States."

Not one of the dominant Sunday morning news shows mentioned the protests brewing or the likelihood of violence.

"See you in Washington, D.C., on January 6th. Don't miss it," Donald Trump tweeted on Sunday.

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Though Obsessed with Donald Trump, the Media Was Blind to Brewing Threat of Violence - Newsweek

(John Locher | AP) In this Feb. 19, 2020, file photo former U.S. Sen. Harry Reid listens during an interview in Las Vegas. Reid died Tuesday at age 82. In one of his final extended interviews in 2021, Harry Reid talked with The Salt Lake Tribune about the Capitol siege, fringe groups, Mitt Romney, Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

| Dec. 29, 2021, 2:10 a.m.

| Updated: 3:23 p.m.

Former Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, who rose to Senate majority leader to become the highest-ranking elected Latter-day Saint in U.S. history, died Tuesday at age 82.

In one of his final extended interviews, the Democrat appeared on The Salt Lake Tribunes Mormon Land podcast after the Capitol siege.

During it, he discussed the pain he felt seeing the place he labored for 34 years years being ransacked; the need for top leaders in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to warn members to beware of aligning with fringe groups and causes; his reconciliation with Sen. Mitt Romney after the 2012 presidential election; his affection for President Joe Biden the nicest guy in the world, he said and his disdain for his predecessor.

Donald Trump will go down ... as the worst president in the history of the country. And that says a lot because weve had some pretty bad ones, Reid said. ... So good riddance.

Listen to the podcast here.

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Hear what Harry Reid said about Capitol siege, Trump, Biden, Romney in one of his final interviews - Salt Lake Tribune

In his nine months in office, Attorney General Merrick Garland has done a great deal to restore integrity and evenhanded enforcement of the law to an agency that was badly misused for political reasons under his predecessor. But his place in history will be assessed based on the challenges that confronted him. And the overriding test that he and the rest of the government face is the threat to our democracy from people bent on destroying it.

Mr. Garlands success depends on ensuring that the rule of law endures. That means dissuading future coup plotters by holding the leaders of the insurrection fully accountable for their attempt to overthrow the government. But he cannot do so without a robust criminal investigation of those at the top, from the people who planned, assisted or funded the attempt to overturn the Electoral College vote to those who organized or encouraged the mob attack on the Capitol. To begin with, he might focus on Mark Meadows, Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and even Donald Trump all of whom were involved, in one way or another, in the events leading up to the attack.

Almost a year after the insurrection, we have yet to see any clear indicators that such an investigation is underway, raising the alarming possibility that the Biden Justice Department may never bring charges against those ultimately responsible for the attack.

While the department has filed charges against more than 700 people who participated in the violence, limiting the investigation to these foot soldiers would be a grave mistake: As Joanne Freeman, a Yale historian, wrote this month about the insurrection, Accountability the belief that political power holders are responsible for their actions and that blatant violations will be addressed is the lifeblood of democracy. Without it, there can be no trust in government, and without trust, democratic governments have little power.

The legal path to investigate the leaders of the coup attempt is clear. The criminal code prohibits inciting an insurrection or giving aid or comfort to those who do, as well as conspiracy to forcibly prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any law of the United States. The code also makes it a crime to corruptly impede any official proceeding or deprive citizens of their constitutional right to vote.

Based purely on what we know today from news reports and the steady stream of revelations coming from the House select committee looking into the attack, the attorney general has a powerful justification for a robust and forceful investigation into the former president and his inner circle. As White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows was intimately involved in the effort to overturn the election. He traveled to Georgia last December, where he apparently laid the groundwork for the phone call in which the president pressured Georgias secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to find 11,780 votes. Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio reportedly promoted a scheme to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to reject duly certified Joe Biden electors. And from their war room at the Willard Hotel, several members of the presidents inner circle hatched the legal strategy to overturn the results of the election.

Mr. Trump himself sat back for three hours while his chief of staff was barraged with messages from members of Congress and Fox News hosts pleading with him to have the president call off the armed mob whose violent passion he had inflamed. That evidence, on its own, may not be enough to convict Mr. Trump, but it is certainly enough to require a criminal investigation.

And yet there are no signs, at least in media reports, that the attorney general is building a case against these individuals no interviews with top administration officials, no reports of attempts to persuade the foot soldiers to turn on the people who incited them to violence. By this point in the Russia investigation, the special counsel Robert Mueller had indicted Paul Manafort and Rick Gates and secured the cooperation of George Papadopoulos after charging him with lying to the F.B.I. The media was reporting that the special counsels team had conducted or scheduled interviews with Mr. Trumps aides Stephen Miller and Mr. Bannon, as well as Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Of course, there is no way to know for sure whether Mr. Garlands Department of Justice is investigating the leaders of the attack behind closed doors. Justice Department policy does not permit announcing investigations, absent exceptional circumstances. Mr. Garland, unlike his predecessor William Barr, plays by the book, keeping quiet about investigations until charges are filed. But the first of the rioters to plead guilty began cooperating with the Justice Department back in April. If prosecutors have been using their cooperation to investigate the top officials and operatives responsible for the siege of the Capitol and our democracy, there would likely be significant confirmation in the media by now.

It is possible that the department is deferring the decision about starting a full-blown investigative effort pending further work by the House select committee. It is even conceivable that the department is waiting for the committees final report so that federal prosecutors can review the documents, interviews and recommendations amassed by House investigators and can consider any potential referrals for criminal prosecution.

But such an approach would come at a very high cost. In the prosecution business, interviews need to happen as soon as possible after the events in question, to prevent both forgetfulness and witness coordination to conceal the truth. A comprehensive Department of Justice investigation of the leadership is now more urgently needed than ever.

It is also imperative that Mr. Trump be included on the list of those being investigated. The media has widely reported his role in many of the relevant events, and there is no persuasive reason to exclude him.

First, he has no claim to constitutional immunity from prosecution. The Department of Justices Office of Legal Counsel has recognized such immunity only for sitting presidents because a criminal trial would prevent them from discharging the duties of their office. Mr. Trump no longer has those duties to discharge.

Nor is exclusion of the former president remotely justified by the precedent President Gerald Ford set in pardoning Richard Nixon to help the country heal from Watergate. Even our proud tradition of not mimicking banana republics by allowing political winners to retaliate against losers must give way in the wake of violence perpetrated to thwart the peaceful transition of power. Refusing to at least investigate those who plot to end democracy and who would remain engaged in efforts to do so would be beyond foolhardy.

Furthermore, the pending state and local investigations in New York and Atlanta will never be able to provide the kind of accountability the nation clearly needs. The New York case, which revolves around tax fraud, has nothing to do with the attack on our government. The Atlanta district attorney appears to be investigating Mr. Trumps now infamous call to Mr. Raffensperger. But that is just one chapter of the wrongdoing that led up to the attack on the Capitol.

Significantly, even if the Atlanta district attorney is able to convict Mr. Meadows and Mr. Trump for interfering in Georgias election, they could still run for office again. Only convicting them for participating in an insurrection would permanently disqualify them from office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

Some have expressed pessimism that the Department of Justice would be able to convict Mr. Trump. His guilt would ultimately be for a jury to decide, and some jurors might believe he deluded himself into believing his own big lie and thus genuinely thought he was saving, rather than sabotaging, the election. But concerns about a conviction are no reason to refrain from an investigation. If anything, a federal criminal investigation could unearth even more evidence and provide a firmer basis for deciding whether to indict.

To decline from the outset to investigate would be appeasement, pure and simple, and appeasing bullies and wrongdoers only encourages more of the same. Without forceful action to hold the wrongdoers to account, we will likely not resist what some retired generals see as a march to another insurrection in 2024 if Mr. Trump or another demagogue runs and loses.

Mr. Garland has long been a highly principled public servant focused on doing the right thing. But only by holding the leaders of the Jan. 6 insurrection all of them to account can he secure the future and teach the next generation that no one is above the law. If he has not done so already, we implore the attorney general to step up to that task.

Laurence H. Tribe (@tribelaw) is a university professor emeritus at Harvard Law School. Donald Ayer (@DonaldAyer6) was a U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration and deputy attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration. Dennis Aftergut (@dennisaftergut) is a former assistant U.S. attorney.

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Opinion | Will Donald Trump Get Away With Inciting an Insurrection? - The New York Times