Thread on today’s scoop: Five days before Donald Trump became president in January 2017, men carried over 200 pounds of cash out of a state-run bank in Cairo. The discovery matched U.S. intel that Egyptian president el-Sisi had sought to give Trump money to win the White House. But the hard-fought discovery by Special Counsel Robert Mueller went nowhere. When the case was turned back over to DOJ, Trump appointees - Atty Gen Bill Barr and US Atty Jessie Liu — questioned if there was sufficient evidence to justify looking to see if the money went to Trump

Incredible: Tony Ornato, Trump's WH deputy Chief of Staff (a former Secret Service official) knew almost 3 hours before the attack on the Capitol that the crowd at Trump’s speech had knives, guns, bear spray, body armor and flag polls with spears attached. washingtonpost.com/national-secur… People weren’t coming in close to the stage because Secret Service was taking away weapons at magnetometers. Trump wanted more people allowed in close to the stage and said “Take the f’ing mags away,” he didn't think they were there to hurt him, testifies Cassidy Hutchinson.

Update: The hack of the Christian fundraising website, GiveSendGo, has not deterred donors (but perhaps emboldened them) to continue using the site to send money to organizers of the Canadian trucker convoys. Donations are up $1.2 million since the site came back online yesterday Threading a couple notes here from an intv w/ GiveSendGo co-founder Jacob Wells. The attack of the site during the Superbowl allowed an intruder to gain access to the spreadsheet used to keep a running tally of donations. That tally has for days showed one mega donation of $215K.

Please spare a few minutes today to start reading The Attack, The Washington Post’s investigative series about the causes, costs and aftermath of Jan. 6. I think you will find it is unlike any other newspaper story you have ever read. wapo.st/theattack There had been a lot of great reporting about that day, but @mateagold saw huge questions left unanswered in May when Congress failed to seat a bipartisan commission, as it had after 9/11. The Post set out to investigate, assigning 25 reporters to write The Jan. 6 Report.

January 6, 2021:

Starting a thread here, the security situation in and around the U.S. Capitol has become dangerous as pro-Trump supporters seek to disrupt the certification of Biden's victory: Live updates here: washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/…

https://twitter.com/GerryConnolly/status/1346904291781586947

Couple things about the debate Tuesday: To outsiders and journalists, it looked and felt like a bubble. Reporters had to arrive early, get swabbed and were fitted with bracelets showing they were negative. @ShawnBoburg @jdawsey1 @agearan @AnnieLinskey
washingtonpost.com/investigations… But in reality, there were two sets of rules. It wasn’t, as Chris Wallace suggested today, that Trump arrived late and so was on the honor system. In fact, candidates, their families, their guests and WH staff were all on the honor system.

NEW: How Trump amassed a red-state army in the nation’s capital – and could do so again. In June, the president used an obscure law to summon guardsmen to D.C. to confront protesters. It secretly cleaved state militias along party lines, The Post found washingtonpost.com/investigations… Internal Guard documents and interviews show red states jumped to fulfill the president’s request, sending armed troops, while blue states objected. In the end, 98 percent of the soldiers who arrived in D.C. came from Republican-led states.

NEW: USPS chief Louis DeJoy’s rise in GOP was fueled by donations from his company's workers who were later reimbursed through bonuses, former employees say – an arrangement that would be unlawful. w/ @AmyEGardner, @jonswaine and WaPo team. washingtonpost.com/investigations… “Louis was a national fundraiser for the Republican Party. He asked employees for money. We gave him the money, and then he reciprocated by giving us big bonuses,” said David Young, DeJoy’s longtime director of human resources, who had access to payroll records.

After Robert Kadlec became Trump’s top official for public health emergencies, he celebrated at the Willard with cigars & executives of Emergent BioSolutions, the company making billions off the US filling its strategic stockpile w/ vaccines for bioweapons wapo.st/30UlxkK None of what Emergent was selling -- antidotes for smallpox, anthrax and other vaccines -- turned out to be what the U.S. needed to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. And that’s why @robertoharrow, @jonswaine and I have been looking at the recent success of this company:

A week ago this evening, one of the most violent scenes ever caught on camera unfolded outside The White House. Thousands of mostly peaceful protesters were pushed, gassed and shot at. Please watch our reconstruction of a defining hour Trump’s presidency:
washingtonpost.com/investigations… Among our findings: Although President Trump, Attorney General Barr and federal law enforcement agencies have denied that tear gas or chemical agents were used against protesters. The Post found city streets were swept the night before, and new CS canisters were found after.

Wow, stockpile numbers that House Oversight and @RepMaloney have pried out of FEMA are damning for nation's capital: D.C. has received 1/2 of 1% of its requested N95s, and zero goggles, zero test kits and zero ventilators ... DC working to buy elsewhere. oversight.house.gov/news/press-rel… Maryland has received 26% of its requested N95s, and 70% of its requested ventilators. Note, Md. had also requested 15,000 body bags.

Who is paying President Trump’s legal bills for impeachment? Short answer: The RNC has set aside millions, report @amarimow @bethreinhard @jdawsey1 & @jonswaine. But who is profiting? Exhibit A: Jay Sekulow and lawyers connected to his Christian nonprofits washingtonpost.com/local/legal-is… Half of the attorneys listed on Trump’s trial memorandum filed with the Senate are affiliated with Sekulow’s American Center for Law and Justice, including his son.

The rush impeachment transcriptions provide a bit of humor that Amb. Gordon Sondland might even appreciate. But there has been a serious development regarding his role: House Dems have made clear they no longer believe his famed ‘no quid pro quo’ call with Trump actually happened Sondland's description of the purported Sept. 9 call has been widely cited by Trump as exonerating, and his attorneys have cited it four times in their brief filed in the Senate. whitehouse.gov/wp-content/upl…

NEW: The former Marine who suggested he was tracking a US ambassador disliked by Trump was involuntarily committed last year, 9 days after bowling at the WH. He’s also subject to a restraining order for stalking a woman at Trump’s hotel. w/ @bethreinhard washingtonpost.com/investigations… And that really just scratches the surface with Robert F. Hyde. He displayed the pattern of unstable behavior last year even as he repeatedly gained access to Trump and members of the first family.

The Gordon Sondland Story (threaded)
Prologue: “..the lengths to which he would go to impress Trump - and to advance the president’s agenda in Ukraine - have made him a central figure in the impeachment..” By changing his story, we now know less about how far Sondland really went Act 1: The son of Holocaust survivors, who founded boutique hotels with a Syrian immigrant, sets aside his moderate views and social convictions. He gives a million dollars to Trump, hoping to live out his dream of becoming a U.S. ambassador.
washingtonpost.com/investigations…

Big WashPost investigative story: the Catholic Church has a secret spigot of oil money in W. Va, and a bishop there has tapped millions, paying US and Vatican cardinals, and young priests he’s accused of mistreating. @mboorstein @ShawnBoburg @robertoharrow washingtonpost.com/investigations… The money trail - 565 checks - reveals a network of mob-like patronage to influential clerics.

Nine hours after Ethiopia's overnight press conference, the report on the 2nd fatal crash of the Boeing 737 Max is public here. I'll thread highlights here: washingtonpost.com/context/ethiop…. washingtonpost.com/world/africa/e… Clearly, the Angle of Attack sensor was feeding bad info to the anti-stall system. 74.5 degrees!

NEW: A document given to Brazilian aviation regulators in 2017 shows Boeing recommended pilot training for the anti-stall system that may be behind two fatal airline crashes in five months. The FAA did not mandate training on the system. w/ @ByMarinaLopes
washingtonpost.com/investigations… So, based on the Boeing documents, Brazil required airlines to teach pilots how to disengage the anti-stall system, while pilots in the US and around the world relying on the FAA standards were not.