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The most frustrating thing about Smith's report is that the facts were known: Trump planned in advance to use false claims of voter fraud to challenge a loss, his words incited J6 violence, he supported rioters, calling them things like "patriots," & Americans, nonetheless, reelected him.
— Joyce White Vance (@joycewhitevance.bsky.social) 2025-01-14T13:58:22.972Z
New York Times:
Special Counsel Report Says Trump Would Have Been Convicted in Election Case
The report, which said the special counsel’s office stood “fully behind” the merits of the prosecution, amounted to an extraordinary rebuke of the president-elect.
The report amounted to an extraordinary rebuke of a president-elect, capping a momentous legal saga that saw the man now poised to regain the powers of the nation’s highest office charged with crimes that struck at the heart of American democracy. And although Mr. Smith resigned as special counsel late last week, his recounting of the case also served as a reminder of the vast array of evidence and detailed accounting of Mr. Trump’s actions that he had marshaled.
In his report, Mr. Smith took Mr. Trump to task not only for his efforts to reverse the results of a free and fair election, but also for consistently encouraging “violence against his perceived opponents” throughout the chaotic weeks between Election Day and Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, injuring more than 140 police officers.
Mr. Smith laid the attack on the Capitol squarely at Mr. Trump’s feet, quoting from the evidence in several criminal cases of people charged with taking part in the riot who made clear that they believed they were acting on Mr. Trump’s behalf.
Jane Mayer/The New Yorker:
The Pressure Campaign to Get Pete Hegseth Confirmed as Defense Secretary
Supporters of Donald Trump’s nominee have intimidated potential witnesses and suppressed the F.B.I. background check of the former Fox News host in the run-up to his Senate hearing.
Outside the public eye, Hegseth’s fixers have used questionable tactics against his opponents. Last week, the private employment records of a former employee of Hegseth’s who was a potential witness against him were leaked to the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative Web site, which published them in an apparent effort to undermine her. The Free Beacon’s chief financial supporter is Paul Singer, a New York hedge-fund billionaire who was also a major supporter of Vets for Freedom, a nonprofit that nearly went bankrupt under Hegseth in 2008, as NBC recently reported. The Free Beacon didn’t disclose its past ties to Hegseth. Instead, it publicly outed the previously anonymous witness, who had sought whistle-blower protection from the Senate Armed Services Committee. The same day, another version of the piece about the witness, along with her photograph, appeared in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post.
Jill Lawrence/The Bulwark:
Goodbye, Good Governance. Hello, Insane Promises.
The Biden interregnum closes. Trumpian chaos returns.
To be fair, Trump will be America’s first felon-in-chief, which is quite an achievement. Yet Biden has made history of his own: The economy added jobs every full month that he was in office, the first time that’s happened since the government began collecting data in 1939. “Zero months with job losses,” said his press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre.
Which man’s precedent had more impact on people’s lives? Biden’s, hands-down, and in a good way.
Which one was more compelling as reality TV? Trump’s—if you like your entertainment contentious and tawdry, with subplots about hush money, business fraud, and possibly determinative interference in an election over eight years ago.
David Allen Green/Financial Times:
The coming battle between social media and the stateBehind the alignment of X and Meta with Trump is a cold business logic — and a position of weakness rather than strength
Those following the relationship between Big Tech and public policy can get distracted — and exhausted — by the constant rush of events on 24-hour media and the loud personalities. As Madness sang in “Our House”: there’s always something happening, and it’s usually quite loud.It is more difficult to take a step back and to analyse situations both in terms of tactics and strategy of the companies and the authorities involved. Impulsive figures such as Elon Musk, the owner of X (previously Twitter), and inconsistent decision makers such as Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, can misdirect us from what their companies are rationally seeking to achieve.And there have been a couple of events that indicate that such companies are not as strong and powerful as their cheerleaders and critics seem to believe. Indeed, the providers of American social media platforms are weak in the face of a particular obstacle. For it is weakness, and not strength, that explains their recent behaviour.
One example here is how X and other business interests directed by Musk went through the motions of opposing the order of the Brazilian Supreme Court to take down offending material, only to capitulate and to perform the obligations imposed by the Brazilian judicial system and local law. X huffed and puffed, but the only house that was blown down was its own. This corporate weakness in the face of determined state action should not be surprising. In any ultimate battle, the state will prevail over a corporation for the simple reason that a corporation as a legal person only has legal existence and entitlements to the extent set out by legislation. Those who control the law can, if they want, control and tame any corporate in their jurisdiction.
Harold Meyerson/The American Prospect:
Labor’s Prodigal Son Returns
SEIU rejoins the AFL-CIO, even as arresting labor’s decline remains a daunting challenge.
By reaffiliating, the Service Employees are boosting the Federation’s joint membership to more than 14 million. It’s also tilting that combined membership a bit, both demographically and politically. SEIU is a highly diverse union, whose members include hundreds of thousands of home health care workers, hospital support staffers, and janitors—groups that are disproportionately female, immigrant, and racially diverse. At a time when the working-class vote has been trending toward Trump, SEIU’s members are probably among the least likely to be moving in that direction. They stand in political counterpoint to more male-dominated working-class unions like the Teamsters (who are not in the AFL-CIO) and the building trades (who are). They will likely stiffen the Federation’s spine, to whatever degree it needs stiffening, in opposing the mass deportations that Trump has promised.
Today’s non-sequitur: since I know you were all wondering, the Ides of January was Monday, the 13th. It’s the 15th in March, May, July and October.
Cliff Schecter: