👀 Hutchinson recounts a bizarre episode in whith House Intelligence Committee Republicans, including Rep. Devin Nunes and staffers, carted over classified documents to the WH for Meadows and Pat Cipollone to review.
CHENEY remarks that this is pretty unusual for House Republicans to truck classified docs to the White House when they have their own SCIF.
What did Meadows do with the documents? He made a bunch of copies and kept some to give out to people in the "private sector," Hutchinson says. While it's not entirely clear what these are, this is consistent with Russia docs Trump attempted to declassify.
MOST NOTABLY: Hutchinson said Meadows wanted GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy to have a set of the records.
MORE: Hutchinson said that Meadows was extremely secretive about the original HPSCI copy of the documents in his office, which she says he kept in a safe and didn't want others to know about. january6th.house.gov/sites/democrat…
HUTCHINSON said she recalled some conversations among Trump and GOP members of Congress about QAnon, the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys ahead of Jan. 6.
Here's Hutchinson talking about Matt Gaetz's bid for a pardon, which she said began in early December 2020.
HUTCHINSON said that several GOP lawmakers reached out to her after Jan. 6 w/ question sabout White House's preparedness for the 25th amendment discussion. She name: Markwayne Mullin, Roy Blunt, Mike Johnson and GOP Leader McCarthy as people she talked about it with.
House admin staff director Jamie FLEET — a top adviser to Speaker Pelosi — told the select committee in an interview that he and his staff began preparing for GOP objections to the election over the summer of 2020 — because they read Trump's tea leaves.
FLEET says he never conveyed directly to Speaker Pelosi the security briefings from Capitol Police and the sergeant at arms because they were assured the professionals had it in hand.
Max MILLER’s attorney got particularly hostile with the select committee over what appeared to be pretty basic foundational questions.
The hostility actually got worse from there, prompting Kinzinger to jump in and accidentally refer to the committee as "the prosecution," which didn't help.
Miller accused Cheney of trying to intimidate him because "I knocked your buddy" — Anthony Gonzalez — "off the block."
Max Miller notes he advised Trump not to let Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman or Sidney Powell speak at his Jan. 6 rally. He also recommended that Mike Flynn not be permitted to speak. But Trump didn't take that advice for Rudy/Eastman.
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HAPPENING NOW: Minnesota v. Noem hearing is underway before Judge Menendez, who will weigh whether to order an end to Operation Metro Surge. AG Keith Ellison is at counsel table for the state.
Lawyer for the state, Lindsey Middlecamp, begins by demanding immediate end to "unlawful and unchecked invasion" by federal agents. She cites the Alex Pretti killing and says things are escalating, not improving.
Middlecamp says AG Bondi's letter to the state amounted to a "ransom note" and that messages from her and President Trump amounted to an unconstitutional attempt to coerce the state to change its policies.
Minnesota courts have been inundated with these cases since the beginning of Operation Metro Surge last month. Here's a ruling by Judge Bryan from yesterday, freeing a man who as detained after living in the US for 20 years with no criminal record. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
Here's another ruling in Minnesota, also yesterday, releasing a man who was forcefully detained by ICE despite having *active* refugee status. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
HAPPENING NOW; Judge Young is picking up where he left off in his remarkable opinion describing an unconstitutional scheme to arrest/deport pro-Palestinian activists in violation of their constitutional rights:
"There was no policy here. What happened here is an unconstitutional conspiracy to pick off certain people, to twist the laws."
"Two cabinet secretaries conspired ... they intentionally, knowing what they were doing, counseled by professionals who cautioned them, nevertheless went ahead to pick off these people with the intention that your clients would be chilled. And did so rather effectively, by the way."
YOUNG: "The big problem in this case is that the cabinet secretaries and ostensibly the president of the United States are not honoring the First Amendment."
YOUNG, speaking of Secretary Rubio and Secretary Noem: "These cabinet secretaries have failed in their duty to uphold the constitution."
HAPPENING NOW: In federal court in MN, DOJ is struggling to articulate why a person following an ICE vehicle — so long as they are obeying traffic laws — can be stopped for "reasonable suspicion" of a crime.
Judge Menendez sharply questioning that contention.
Judge Menendez has not tipped her hand entirely yet but she seems concerned that DOJ provided no firsthand evidence to counter the specific, evidence-backed claims by protesters that they were arrested / seized in retaliation for First Amendment speech.
Under questioning from Menendez, DOJ struggling again to articulate why ICE officers can draw guns on drivers who are following them, so long as those drivers are not breaking traffic laws or posing any other articulable threat.
BREAKING: A day after the Minneapolis shooting, Secretary Noem quietly signed a new policy barring congressional visits to ICE facilities without a week's advance notice.
MORE: DOJ says the batch of 1 million documents it recently unearthed appear to be largely duplicative "but nonetheless still need to undergo a process of processing and deduplication." storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
NEW: DOJ says it's barely scratched the surface of the massive trove of Epstein Files, with millions of documents still being reviewed for release even with hundreds of lawyers working on it full-time.