notable wrinkle in fight over printing a 2nd set of ballots in Wisconsin in the hopes of adding more names: the Justice Dept tends to move into such cases to ensure military voters have ballots 45 days prior to the election
The Justice Dept happens to be sitting this one out
Here is a long list on the Justice Department’s website of similar situation where there’s been aggressive intervention in the past: justice.gov/crt/cases-rais… More than one of these cases was In Wisconsin
For an administration that professes to be very concerned about voting issues, the Justice Department under Trump—and particularly heading into this election—has been extremely inactive on a range of voting rights cases and potential action, as compared to past practices
So all together, what’s happening in Wisconsin is that GOP lawyers are working to add Kanye West and Howie Hawkins to the ballots in a crucial, likely narrow margin state, in effort that would increase confusion & invalid rates for mail-in votes—and the Trump DOJ is looking away
AG Bill Barr said 2 weeks ago that he was concerned about the very problem of thousands of false ballots being sent to US voters—what might now happen in WI—but said he thought foreign countries would do it.
"What are you basing that on?" @wolfblitzer asked.
"Logic,” he said.
Not like Barr has taken a laissez-faire approach to other issues where the Justice Department is potentially intersected with the election: he fired the US attorney in Manhattan and has now reportedly been putting pressure on the Durham investigation to move ahead of Nov 3
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Russian state media announces that convicted Russian spy Maria Butina, now member of the Duma, is asking Putin to fast track Russian citizenship for Tara Reade, the woman whose accusation of sexual assault rocked the Biden campaign in 2020 - and who's now already in Russia
Reade had previously been a contributor to RT, also a Russian state media outlet, and Russia had tried to get her to be a witness on its behalf to bring Ukraine conspiracy theories to the UN Security Council semafor.com/article/12/22/…
Before going public with her accusation, Reade had published a number of pro-Putin/Russia items on her blog. She later said they were "creative writing."
On the anniversary of Jan. 6, Trump’s acting defense secretary Christopher Miller is putting out an excerpt of his forthcoming book, in which he both downplays the riot and attacks the leaders of Congress for asking for his help quelling it. (1/x)
Miller writes Pelosi&McConnell “cowering like frightened children for all the world to see.Do I blame a bunch of geriatrics for acting like a bunch of geriatrics? Of course not. But do I judge them for it? You’re damned right”
In fact, they were evacuated. (2/x)
Miller writes that as Pelosi asked him to call in the National Guard, Pelosi was “incoherent shrieking” and “in a state of total nuclear meltdown.”
There is video of this call, which was shown at a Jan 6 Cmte hearing, which does not show what Miller claims. (3/x)
NEW - dozens of Republicans who last year voted against the bipartisan infrastructure bill, calling it "socialist," "radical spending," spent the past few months quietly lobbying the administration for money out of that bill to come home to them cnn.com/2022/10/07/pol…
Among those who wrote to the Transportation Department asking for money they voted against: Tom Emmer, the head of the House Republicans' campaign arm, who called the bill a "socialist wish list."
Here's Emmer's letter asking for money to go to Minnesota:
In public, Sen. Tuberville said the infrastructure law was “using fuzzy math and IOU’s to hide the real cost." Here's his letter appealling to Buttigieg “as a former mayor, you understand better than anyone the time and money that goes into applying for highly competitive grants"
Joe Manchin at the White House, pen from the Inflation Reduction Act in his pocket, says he named the bill that because “tell me another time that we paid down the debt, provided more energy, lowered the prices at the pump, lowered the prices at home”
“In any other time,” Manchin says, “this would have been a bipartisan bill.”
“Politics, they are what they are, but I truly believe I’ve never seen a more balanced bill,” Manchin says, adding that he was compelled by seeing other countries make big climate moves.
Says kept talks secret b/c “I didn’t want anyone to get disappointed again, I really didn’t”
Former presidents do sometimes meet with current foreign leaders, but when they do, they usually keep the meetings informal. This one was made to look, at least, like a bilateral meeting.
Orban is in Texas to address the CPAC right wing conference. A long time aide of his quit last week because of a speech the aide called a “pure Nazi text” which included an apparent joke about gas chambers in the Holocaust cnn.com/2022/07/27/eur…