The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection is now in possession of White House records that provide new details about a phone call Donald Trump made to Republican Rep. Jim Jordan on January 6, 2021 — as the investigation drills down on the former President’s communications that day and questions have long swirled around calls between him and lawmakers.
Two sources who have reviewed the call records tell CNN that Trump spoke on the phone at the White House residence with Jordan for 10 minutes on the morning of January 6. That afternoon, Jordan took to the House floor to object to the certification of President Joe Biden’s Electoral College win, and pro-Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol.
A key focus of the committee’s investigation has been on the runup to the insurrection and the myriad ways Trump and his allies, including those in Congress, tried to overturn the election results. The new details about the morning phone call come as the committee is debating whether to move forward with a subpoena for Jordan after he refused to voluntarily appear for an interview.
Since Jordan acknowledged last summer that he spoke to Trump on the phone that day, the Ohio Republican and Trump loyalist has waived off questions about it or been inconsistent in his answers.
When asked on Friday about the White House records, Jordan told CNN that he had multiple calls with Trump on January 6 but could only confirm that he spoke with Trump after he left the House floor and did not remember whether they spoke that morning.
“I talked to the President a number of times that day, but I don’t remember the times,” Jordan said.
A spokeswoman for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
One entry in the White House records shows a request from Trump to get Jordan on the phone from the White House residence on the morning of January 6. A second entry shows that the length of the call was 10 minutes.
These call logs are among the documents the National Archives turned over to the House select committee investigating the riot after Trump last month lost his bid at the Supreme Court to keep them secret. The records have been crucial for congressional investigators as they try to build a complete narrative of what happened that day, and the call logs help to deepen that understanding.
Records show Trump did not leave the White House until 11:40 a.m. ET on January 6, 2021, to give a speech to thousands of his supporters gathered at the Ellipse. According to footage of House proceedings that day, Jordan spoke on the floor for five minutes starting at 1:32 p.m. ET during the debate over whether to reject Biden’s electors from Arizona.
Jordan later spoke to request a roll call vote on the Arizona challenge at 10:27 p.m. when lawmakers returned to the chamber after being evacuated as rioters interrupted the congressional proceedings.
On Friday, Jordan said, “I don’t recall,” when asked specifically if he spoke with Trump in the morning before the violence started. “I know I talked to him after we left off the floor,” adding that he did not remember how long his calls with the former President lasted that day.
Jordan’s previous recollections of his conversations with Trump on January 6 have been inconsistent.
At a House Rules Committee hearing in October, Chairman Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts, specifically asked Jordan when he spoke with Trump that day.
“I talked to the President after the attack,” Jordan said at the time.
When McGovern pressed Jordan again and asked him to confirm that the call did not occur before or during the attack, Jordan replied: “Right. And I’ve been clear about that.”
Months earlier, in July, he told a local reporter he could not recall when he spoke to Trump or how many times they talked.
“Uh, I’d have to go — I spoke with him that day after. I think after?” he told the Spectrum News TV channel in Ohio. “I don’t know if I spoke with him in the morning or not. I just don’t know. I’d have to go back. I mean I don’t know when those conversations happened. But what I know is that I spoke with him all the time.”
In the committee’s letter to Jordan seeking a voluntary interview, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the panel, said investigators specifically wanted to ask Jordan about his communications with the former President.
“We understand that you had at least one and possibly multiple communications with President Trump on January 6th,” Thompson wrote in December. “We would like to discuss each such communication with you in detail.”
The committee also wants to speak with Jordan about meetings he had with White House officials and Trump in the months between the 2020 presidential election in November and the January 6 attack about “strategies for overturning the results of the 2020 election.”
The message, which Jordan forwarded to Meadows on January 5, outlined a legal theory that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to stand in the way of the certification of the 2020 election. The text message is just one example of how Jordan provided a megaphone to the narrative that the election had been stolen from Trump.
The panel’s letter to Jordan also sought to learn more about any communications he had with Trump’s allies, legal team and staffers about potential organizing, planning or strategizing around January 6.
When Jordan indicated earlier this month that he doesn’t plan to cooperate and dismissed the committee’s investigation as illegitimate, a spokesperson for the panel said that Jordan is a “material witness” because he has admitted to speaking directly with Trump on January 6.
The spokesperson also suggested, without evidence, that Trump and his team are the reason Jordan is not cooperating.
“Mr. Jordan has previously said that he would cooperate with the committee’s investigation, but it now appears that the Trump team has persuaded him to try to hide the facts and circumstances of January 6th,” the spokesperson said.
Jordan was originally selected by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to be one of five GOP members serving on the committee back in July. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected McCarthy’s selection of Jordan, along with GOP Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, because she said their appointments could impact the “integrity of the investigation.”
The committee has long viewed Jordan as a top target for its investigation. In August, Jordan was among a group of Republican lawmakers whose phone records the committee asked various companies to preserve. At the time, Jordan warned about the precedent the panel would be setting if it went after sitting members of Congress.
The committee is still weighing whether it will take the next step and issue Jordan a subpoena, a move it is also considering with McCarthy and GOP Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.
The panel met on Thursday to discuss their options but did not settle on next steps when it comes to efforts to get their fellow lawmakers to cooperate. Chairman Thompson acknowledged on Thursday that it’s a complicated issue.
“You know, you have to respect this institution,” he told CNN. “You know, we have to see whether or not it’s ever been done before. If it had, on what authorities. So, we just want to be right. And if we are not in good standing with it, then I mean, we probably won’t do it.”
Judge J. Michelle Childs, who was nominated by President Barack Obama to the U.S. District Court, listens during her nomination hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, April 16, 2010.
At the moment, South Carolina District Court Judge J. Michelle Childs is the only person confirmed by the Biden administration to be under consideration for the soon-to-be-vacant Supreme Court seat. A favored pick of fellow South Carolinians Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), the highest-ranking Black leader in Congress, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Childs’s work during her time as an attorney has recently come under scrutiny, as she defended employers against racial and gender discrimination allegations while working as a partner at the anti-union South Carolina law firm Nexsen Pruet.
Childs’s track record as a district court judge, a post she has held since 2010, has received less inspection. On numerous occasions, Childs issued such punitive decisions on criminal justice issues that those rulings were eventually overturned on appeal by higher courts. Throughout the 2010s, a period where criminal justice reform was increasingly prioritized for activists and Democratic politicians alike, Childs ruled against both plaintiffs and defendants who alleged everything from excessive force by prison guards to ineffective legal counsel to sentencing errors.
In March 2016, an inmate named Lewis Duckett sued the South Carolina Department of Corrections’ dietitian, alleging that the food he was forced to eat while in prison was so lacking in nutrients and vitamins that the state’s corrections facility where he was incarcerated was violating his Eighth Amendment right to avoid cruel and unusual punishment. Childs dismissed the case. Just one month later, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals overruled Childs’s decision, allowing for further proceedings.
In 2017, inmate Benjamin Heyward brought a civil rights action against prison guard Audrey Price, alleging use of excessive force after Price pepper-sprayed him in the face in the course of an argument that arose over a request Heyward made for some cleaning solvent to tidy his cell. As a result of the macing, Heyward reported that his eyes were swollen for three days. He suffered chest pain for five days, and had persistent headache symptoms for a week.
Judge Childs ruled against Heyward, claiming he was unable to prove use of excessive force. But eight months later, the Fourth Circuit ruled that Judge Childs had wrongly rejected Heyward’s excessive-force claim based on an “arbitrary quantity of injury,” and reversed her decision to grant the officer a summary judgment.
Childs’s rulings weren’t confined to inmates alleging abuse and mistreatment in South Carolina’s prisons. She also, on multiple occasions, ruled against incarcerated people who alleged that they were wrongly or excessively sentenced, only to have those decisions reversed later or overturned by the circuit courts.
In 2017, Judge Childs dismissed a motion brought by Gerald Decosta Whaley, who had been sentenced in 2014 to 262 months in prison, followed by five years of supervised release, for selling marijuana, cocaine, and ecstasy with his brother. In 2015, Whaley argued that his lawyer had failed to provide him adequate legal counsel by not filing a direct appeal, and filed a motion to vacate or correct his sentence.
Childs dismissed Whaley’s petition without even granting him an evidentiary hearing, a decision that the Fourth Circuit found particularly objectionable. Less than a year later, that court reversed Judge Childs’s decision, finding in fact that Whaley “informed his counsel at sentencing that Whaley wished to file a direct appeal, but that counsel failed to file one.” In dismissing this motion without so much as a hearing, Judge Childs had “abused [her] discretion,” the court found.
Again in 2017, Judge Childs ruled against an inmate claiming to have been wrongly sentenced. In 2014, Jesse James Quarles pled guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm. Three years later, he was given an elevated sentence of 180 months on the grounds that he was a “career criminal,” thanks to three prior burglary convictions.
Before that sentence was handed down, Quarles filed a motion claiming that he had been improperly charged as a career criminal, citing changes in U.S. law that had since reclassified burglary as nonviolent felony, a change that would have reduced his sentence substantially. In November 2017, Judge Childs dismissed Quarles’s motion, and upheld his 180 months.
Just a month later, before a higher court could act, Judge Childs reversed her own ruling, admitting that Quarles did not have the requisite three felonies needed to be classified as a career criminal.
Judge Childs’s repeated opposition to leniency in sentencing and alleged abuse cases brought by prisoners is notable in its own right; that she made those decisions on such dubious grounds that they were routinely overturned by higher courts indicates a commitment to tough-on-crime rulings beyond the letter of procedure.
Given the salience of criminal justice reform to Democratic politicians nationwide, it’s hard to reconcile a judge with such a record on criminal justice issues serving as the Supreme Court nominee of the Biden administration. Despite thus far refusing to legalize marijuana, the White House has restarted pattern-or-practice investigations into police departments, and has continued to talk up the importance of criminal justice reform.
Rep. Clyburn has been Childs’s loudest supporter among Democrats. In response to a question about Childs’s rulings, a Clyburn spokesperson said, “The insinuation that Jim Clyburn would support a nominee to the Supreme Court with the intent to undermine criminal justice reform is so preposterous that it discredits the integrity of this entire report.”
Throughout 2020’s campaign cycle, the Biden-Harris pairing went to great lengths to assure voters that criminal justice issues were a top concern for them, and that both of them had disavowed their own tough-on-crime pasts and the Democratic Party’s notorious Crime Bill of the 1990s.
It’s difficult to imagine someone with a record like Judge Childs’s winning votes from criminal justice advocates like Sen. Cory Booker, or even Dick Durbin, both of whom sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee and have claimed that these issues are particularly important for them. Childs’s record, meanwhile, is not shared by other front-runners: Ketanji Brown Jackson, for instance, was a former public defender and sentencing commission vice chair.
Pamela Moses was sentenced to six years in prison for trying to register despite a felony conviction but officials admitted making a series of mistakes
People arrive to vote early in the general election in Memphis, Tennessee. Photograph: Karen Focht/Zuma Wire/Rex/Shutterstock
Hello Fight to Vote readers,
For the last few months, I’ve been following the case of Pamela Moses, a 44-year-old activist in Memphis who was convicted in November for trying to register to vote while she was ineligible. On Monday, Moses, who is Black, was sentenced to six years and one day in prison.
To my eye, the case is far more complex than it seems.
Amy Weirich, the local prosecutor, has trumpeted both the conviction and the sentence in press releases. She has highlighted that Moses has an extensive criminal record, and she told a straightforward story about Moses’ voting crime. In 2015, Moses pleaded guilty to perjury and tampering with evidence in connection to allegations that she stalked and harassed a local judge. Tampering with evidence is one of a handful of felonies that causes someone to permanently lose their voting rights in Tennessee. Nonetheless, Moses, still on probation, knowingly tried to register to vote in 2019.
The case caught my attention for a few reasons. First, it is rare to see a prosecutor bring criminal charges against someone for election crimes, and I was curious whether this was a bona fide case of fraud or of someone who had made a mistake. Second, there has been growing awareness of racial disparities in punishments for election-related crimes. Black people such as Crystal Mason and Hervis Rogers have faced years in prison for making mistakes about their voting eligibility. White voters have received much lighter sentences for election-related crimes.
Weirich’s office did not respond to interview requests, but the more I looked into Moses’ case, the more I realized the case wasn’t straightforward at all. Behind the scenes, Tennessee officials conceded that they had made a series of mistakes concerning Moses’ voting eligibility.
The US state that fought back after Republicans tried to rig its elections
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In 2015, when Moses pleaded guilty to her felony, she says no one told her she couldn’t vote. “They never mentioned anything about voting. They never mentioned anything about not voting, being able to vote … none of that,” Moses told me last year. (She added she hadn’t discussed the case with her two sons, 24 and 13, but described it as “traumatic”.)
At the time, election officials should have removed her from the rolls, but the court never sent election officials in Memphis the documents they needed to do so, according to a letter from an election official I obtained.
Moses didn’t know anything was amiss until 2019, when she launched a long-shot mayoral campaign. Election officials said she couldn’t appear on the ballot because of her felony. When they began to look into her eligibility, they also realized she had never been taken off the voter rolls. Moses went to court and asked a judge to clarify whether she was still on probation, and the court confirmed that she was. What happened next is at the crux of the case against her.
Moses did not believe the judge had correctly calculated her sentence. So she went to the local probation office and asked an officer to figure it out. An officer filled out and signed a certificate confirming her probation had ended. In Tennessee, people with felony convictions who want to vote need that document from a correction official. Moses submitted it to local election officials along with a voter registration form.
But the day afterwards, an official at the corrections department wrote an email to election officials saying a probation officer had made an “error” on Moses’ certificate. Moses was still serving an active felony sentence, they wrote, and was not eligible to vote. The department offered no explanation for the mistake.
Such errors are actually fairly common in Tennessee, where the voting rules are extremely confusing for people with felonies, Blair Bowie, an attorney at the Campaign Legal Center, told me. A 2017 study found that about 8% of the certificates submitted were rejected because the voters remained ineligible. Bowie said she was unaware of any voter in the state ever facing criminal charges for submitting a certificate but later turning out to be ineligible to vote.
During Moses’ trial, prosecutors argued that she knew she was ineligible to vote when she submitted the certificate. They pointed to the fact that she submitted it even though a judge had recently told her she was ineligible.
“Even knowing that order denied her expiration of sentence, Pamela Moses submitted that form with her application for voter registration and signed an oath as to the accuracy of the information submitted,” prosecutors wrote in their request for an indictment. “Pamela Moses knowingly made or consented to a false entry on her permanent registration.”
“You tricked the probation department into giving you documents saying you were off probation,” the judge sentencing her said last week.
“That seems absurd to me on its face,” said Bowie, who is involved in a challenge to Tennessee’s process for restoring voting rights. “The instructions on the certificate of restoration form are very clear to the probation officer or the clerk. They say you will check these records and you will sign off on this based on what the records say.
“They’re saying that she tricked the probation officer into filling out this form for her. That creates a really scary prospect for people who think they’re being wrongly told they’re not eligible.”
Moses is currently in custody and an appeal is expected. But the case highlights the byzantine maze that people with felony convictions have to go through to figure out if they can vote. And it shows the harsh consequences prosecutors can bring if people with felony convictions make a mistake.
Today’s “The Daily” treats inflation as entirely a natural consequence of stimulus checks, etc – rather than a choice by corps with record profits. @mikiebarb@RBReich: “Slowing the economy will hurt the most vulnerable… reduce corporate market power.”https://t.co/Gq4HtzeEOi
Conservatives want to cancel non-white humanity. Conservatives want to cancel elections. Conservatives want to cancel the separation of church and state.
GOP: gaslight, obstruct, project
NEWS: The Jan. 6 select committee has subpoenaed for the phone records of Arizona GOP chair KELLI WARD and her husband Michael.
Both signed false Electoral College certificates and sued Pence as part of pressure campaign.
The above is about politicians in Kentucky trying to shield / block reports of bad actions done by cops and other political groups from the public and to make it easier for utilities to raise rates on customers with less input. Just jack prices for profit.
This is disgusting persecution of a woman who served her time. There is no justification for any of this. https://t.co/eGc9GBIcGU
You will typically get far less jail time, if any, by participating in an armed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol than you will by registering to vote after you were informed you were allowed.
No grey area here. Simply a black and white issue.
If this six year old could stand the discomfort of walking through crowds of shouting angry people screaming obscenities and throwing things at her, knowing that if they were allowed they would hurt her, then white six year olds can learn of her, what she did, and why.
"It's okay to murder children if you think they're bad" is incredibly immoral and evil. ffs. https://t.co/qqKFHsvBSd
What crimes! Oh the made up ones in Rudy’s mind? The right wing fever dream of Hunter being the worst being on earth? Oh Hunter used drugs. Have they seen the videos of Donnie Jr? He is clearly tanked up off his ass on something. The right did not care about Donnie Jr illegally hunting animals in other countries, they did not mind Ivanka getting an unheard of number of trademarks from China in a short time frame when China wanted things from tRump, they don’t mention that Jared couldn’t get a security clearance because he was such a risk but tRump gave him one anyway. Hunter Biden is an adult, he is not in the WH, he is on the WH payroll, he is not an unofficial advisor to the president. But the right needs desperately to find something to hit Joe Biden with, so they reach for the personal struggles of his son. Great people.
The right wing is preoccupied with crime as it again causes fear. Be afraid, be very afraid is the mantra of the misleading right wing media. Fact is urban crime is down, rural crime is up, and all crime is still far below historical levels. What is the rights solution to crime. Not to see what causes crime and fix it, nope. The right wants more militarized police officers to aggressively occupy the lower incomes and non-white people. They want more people in for profit prisons to do slave labor for the corporations. They want to cut any government assistance programs that would help curb crime such as after school programs and to cut any diversionary programs that help rehabilitate people as that might cost the wealthy a few bucks in taxes. And they blame democrats even though that is not the truth because they want the white people to be afraid and misinformed so they vote Republican.
The consequences seem to be causing Putin to have some second and third thoughts on invading. I wouldn’t mock Biden too hard on that front. He is pulling the world along with idea of sanctions if Putin invades. As for the minor incursions that was because there are already small groups of Russian military in the Donetsk. Biden did not want the misleading right wing media opinion hosts such as Hannity to use that to push the US into actions that would be premature. There are some Republicans wanting Biden to sanction and move aggressively against Putin now such as Lindsey Graham because that would force Putin to act and we would have the war Graham’s donors want.
The consequences seem to be causing Putin to have some second and third thoughts on invading. I wouldn’t mock Biden too hard on that front. He is pulling the world along with idea of sanctions if Putin invades.
Josiah Kenyon after his arrest, left, and during the Capitol riot.
An accused Capitol rioter got into a tense exchange with a federal judge during a status conference in his case on Thursday afternoon.
The incident began when Josiah Kenyon asked U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols for permission to speak during the hearing, according to a report from Politico’s Kyle Cheney.
After Nichols warned that Kenyon might want to consult with his attorney first, Kenyon shot back: “I have a high enough IQ range to not screw up there, boss.”
Kenyon then proceeded to ask Nichols to “acknowledge that he had a right to defend himself if prison guards in DC tried to assault him,” Cheney reported.
“I’m not making any finding one way or another about that,” Nichols responded.
“Okey-doke,” Kenyon said.
Finally, at the end of the hearing, Nichols asked Kenyon if he had any other issues to raise.
“My wife and children homeless on the street. Have a wonderful day,” Kenyon told the judge.
Kenyon is accused of assaulting police with several objects — including a table leg with a protruding nail — during the Jan. 6 insurrection. According to the Department of Justice, Kenyon wore a Jack Skellington costume, based on a character from the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas, to the Capitol.
He was arrested in December after authorities found him hiding out in a travel trailer with a cache of weapons. Kenyon and his wife, Elizabeth, reportedly were charged with child endangerment after being found in the unheated trailer in the Nevada foothills.
The NAACP is sending a strong message to people of color traveling through Missouri: Go at your own risk.
The organization is circulating a travel advisory after the state passed a law that Missouri’s NAACP conference says allows for legal discrimination. The warning cites several discriminatory incidents in Missouri, included as examples of “looming danger” in the state.
The NAACP says this is the first travel advisory ever issued by the organization, at the state or national level. The Missouri conference initially published the advisory in June, and it was recognized nationally at the NAACP’s annual convention last week.
“Individuals traveling in the state are advised to travel with extreme CAUTION,” the advisory warns. “Race, gender and color based crimes have a long history in Missouri.”
Why now?
The advisory was issued after Senate Bill 43 – which makes it more difficult for employees to prove their protected class, like race or gender, directly led to unlawful discrimination – passed through the Missouri Legislature in June. Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens signed it into law soon after.
Greitens and other supporters of the bill have said it puts Missouri’s standards for lawsuits in line with other states.
But that’s not how the NAACP sees it. The Missouri NAACP State Conference called the legislation a “Jim Crow Bill.”
“This does not follow the morals of Missouri,” Conference President Rod Chapel Jr. told CNN. “I hate to see Missouri get dragged down deep past the notion of treating people with dignity.”
There have been other instances of discrimination in the state that could have elicited an advisory before this, several of which are listed in the warning. Among them are racist incidents reported at the University of Missouri that prompted protests across campus in 2015, as well as the state attorney general’s annual report that found black drivers were stopped by police at a rate 75% higher than white drivers.
Chapel said he met with Greitens about the Senate bill several times. After the bill passed, he said they had a “fair and frank discussion” about what the legislation would do. At a later meeting, Chapel said he brought several faith leaders in the community to talk with the governor about theology and morality.
“Ultimately, none of that worked,” Chapel said.
The governor’s office did not comment on the advisory, but acknowledged that Greitens met with “passionate advocates on both sides” of the bill.
The Missouri Division of Tourism has not responded to multiple requests for comment.
What does it mean?
The advisory doesn’t tell people to not go to Missouri. Rather, the NAACP wants minority travelers to be aware of what it says are potential risks.
“People should tell their relatives if they have to travel through the state, they need to be aware,” Chapel said. “They should have bail money, you never know.”
In the advisory, the NAACP urges individuals to “warn your families, co-workers and anyone visiting Missouri to beware of the safety concerns with travel in Missouri.” These concerns, the organization writes, could include unnecessary search and seizures and potential arrest.
Traditionally, travel advisories are released ahead of severe weather or political disruptions. The State Department publishes international travel warnings and alerts for countries with ongoing violence, frequent terrorist attacks or increased health risks, to name a few.
The ACLU has issued travel advisories similar to the NAACP’s in the past: one for Arizona in 2010, and one in Texas earlier this year. Both advisories were circulated after state laws passed allowing law enforcement officers to question a person’s immigration status.
What will it take for the advisory to be lifted?
After SB43 passed through the Legislature, the initial travel advisory was supposed to last until August 28, when the bill would potentially go into effect.
That changed when Greitens signed it into law.
“We see this travel advisory remaining in effect for the foreseeable future,” Chapel said.
He wants to see several changes in the state before the advisory is lifted, starting with the repeal of the law that prompted the advisory in the first place.
Chapel also said there should be a plan in place on how the state is going to address people of color being stopped by police at a disproportionate rate. He also wants to see a change in how Missouri prosecutors handle hate crimes.
“We need to have some basic ground rules for how human beings treat each other,” Chapel said.
After an Independence police officer was killed in a shootout in September, Missouri state law enforcement initially refused routine federal assistance in tracing the murder weapon. The same month, a Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper released a federal fugitive after a traffic stop.
The incidents are described in a blistering court brief filed Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Justice outlining the consequences of the Second Amendment Preservation Act, a new state law that prohibits Missouri police officers from helping enforce certain federal gun laws. The document paints a stark portrait of how SAPA, also known as House Bill 85, has disrupted cooperation between federal, state and local law enforcement.
The DOJ says the Missouri state crime lab, operated by the Highway Patrol, is refusing to process evidence that would help federal firearms prosecutions. The Missouri Information and Analysis Center, also under the Highway Patrol, no longer cooperates with federal agencies investigating federal firearms offenses. And the Highway Patrol, along with many other agencies, have suspended joint efforts to enforce federal firearms laws.
The DOJ brief comes in an ongoing lawsuit challenging SAPA, filed by St. Louis City, St. Louis County and Jackson County. A Cole County court this year upheld the law, a decision being appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court.
“The United States has an exceedingly strong interest in this suit because H.B. 85 poses a clear and substantial threat to public safety. Since taking effect, the law has already seriously impaired the federal government’s ability to combat violent crime in Missouri,” the brief says.
SAPA declares “invalid” many federal gun regulations that don’t have an equivalent in Missouri law. These include statutes covering weapons registration and tracking, and possession of firearms by some domestic violence offenders.
Local departments are barred from enforcing them, or risk being sued for $50,000 by private citizens who believe their Second Amendment rights have been violated. Police are also prohibited from giving “material aid and support” to federal agents and prosecutors in enforcing those “invalid” laws against “law-abiding citizens” — defined as those who Missouri law permits to have a gun.
Federal and local law enforcement officials have previously warned SAPA would harm their ability to investigate federal firearms crimes in Missouri. The DOJ, Democrats and other critics of the law, signed in June by Republican Gov. Mike Parson, have argued for months it’s blatantly unconstitutional.
The brief appears to include the most extreme examples to date of the measure’s toll on law enforcement. It says the law “is not only damaging valuable institutional relationships for enforcing firearms laws, but also increasing dangers in the field across a broad array of law enforcement operations.”
DOJ says a Highway Patrol trooper in September released a federal fugitive back into the community rather than risk liability for the state agency. The brief provides no additional details, including the location of the incident or what the fugitive was wanted for.
SAPA also initially hampered the investigation into the shooting of an Independence police officer in September, according to the DOJ. Officer Blaize Madrid-Evans was killed on Sept. 15 during an exchange of gun fire with a man sought for violating parole on a firearm conviction. The suspect, identified by authorities as Cody L. Harrison, died at the scene.
“Later the same month, after an Independence police officer was killed during a shootout with a burglary suspect, state law enforcement initially declined routinely provided federal assistance in tracing the murder weapon,” the brief says.
The DOJ provides no additional information about the circumstances of the refusal or how or why it was reversed. A Highway Patrol spokesman declined to comment, citing pending litigation. A spokeswoman for Parson didn’t immediately comment.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s office, which is representing the state in the challenge to SAPA, hasn’t yet filed a brief in the appeal’s case.
A week after Madrid-Evans’ death, Parson expressed an openness to amending the law. Speaking to reporters after a police officers’ memorial prayer breakfast in St. Charles, the former sheriff described SAPA as intended as a political statement.
“You’re going to have to work with federal partners,” Parson said, according to KFVS. “And you’re going to have to work with other agencies. And we’ve got to make sure that can happen.”
One of the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Eric Burlison, a Battlefield Republican who is running for Congress, and its other sponsor, Rep. Jered Taylor of Republic, have called the reactions of Missouri police, such as their withdrawal from federal partnerships, unnecessary. Taylor told “60 Minutes” in a story that aired In November that he is “not willing to even consider [changes to the law] at this point.”
In an October letter to Republican leaders, the Missouri Police Chiefs Association wrote that the law’s “wording and structure have caused confusion and potentially unintended legal implications.”
The MPCA has proposed specifying that the law would only apply to new federal gun restrictions approved after this past August, and that it doesn’t apply to suspects whom police encounter committing a crime.
It has also proposed clarifying which weapons-related federal crimes local police are allowed to help enforce. The current law allows them to help enforce gun restrictions that are similar to those in Missouri law, as long as those charges are “merely ancillary” to another criminal charge — wording that police groups have called vague.
Republicans would have you believe they are ‘tough’ on terror. They are, in fact, not tough.
Trump released over 5000 Taliban fighters, deserted our Kurdish allies, and abandoned American military bases, weaponry, and equipment to hostile foreign interests.
US Conservatives and Russians are both trying to dismantle American democracy
Lindsey went all in for Trump and Brett Kavanaugh. Non-stop bad faith. Never forget.
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” – Frédéric Bastiat
Thinking things through isn’t their strong suit
Pass this on to your ‘both sides’ Putinists.
So… 250k gives you the *option* to *purchase* a 2 night stay at Mar-a-Lago.
The desperation runs from the right wing media to find anything to pin on Biden is driving them crazy. They think centralist Joe is following socialist Sanders. Have you seen the things Biden endorses right wing people, he is not being led by Sanders anywhere.
The right wing wants to paint Dr. Fauci as lying to the people. Why? Because their Doctors that push Ivermectin and other things that doesn’t work on Covid are lying or crazy. The head doctor of frontline doctors Stella Immanuel has often claimed that gynecological problems like cysts and endometriosis are in fact caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches. She alleges alien DNA is currently used in medical treatments, and that scientists are cooking up a vaccine to prevent people from being religious. She is a pediatrician not a virologist or immunologist. But they believe her over a Immunologist because she says crazy shit they also believe.
At CNN, they hold their own accountable, while at Fox, they give them bonuses and promotions. Somehow because the CEO was having an affair with a vice-president executive in the company and did not report it he felt because he broke the rules he enforces he should resign, and did. Fox did not have anyone in high position that had the same integrity. But that some how makes CNN sinking? Get real.
While she was wrong in what she said I don’t think there was any malicious intent. I think she was trying to express a point about inhumanity and was not fully versed in the mentality of the Nazis. She apologized with a real apology, not some fake one that put the blame on the victim.
So these people believe infecting others and being 97 times more likely to die from the virus is freedom? What about their responsibilities to their fellow humans? I guess it is freedom to not care for others or how what you do effects them. Seems pretty selfish to me, and if that has been the principle we wouldn’t have had a nation, fought a war to end slavery, joined a war to fight fascism, and so much more that takes the idea that doing something for the good of others even if it costs you personally is worth while.
There is no war on police. There is a war on bad actions by police. There can be no defending police that shoot unarmed people, that torture and beat black people for no reason, police that kill believing they are entitle to do so. There is a movement to adjust the duties and role of police to end militarized policing and return policing to community based serve and protect. It really is that simple. There is no reason to have the police act as an occupying army.
Nice cartoon, but late to the game. See the rate of inflation has slowed. Food prices are stabilized or coming down. The Fed and most economists think that inflation was caused by Covid resulting having to shut down the economy and then the fantastic reopening of everything. Like trying to run a whole swimming pool through a small funnel. But sadly many corporations took advantage and engaged in price gouging also.
Debts and Deficits only seem to matter when Democrats are in the White House. Get the corporations and all the rich to pay their FAIR share. That stop in the 1970s. The lower and middle class can’t make up for that crap. Debts and deficits matter if payments can’t be made on them. The U.S. economy has been growing during my lifetime and it hasn’t been an issue.
Scottie's Playtime 