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US Monthly Headline News June 2022 - Page 4
By Melanie Zanona, CNN

(CNN) GOP Rep. Liz Cheney delivered a searing rebuke of former President Donald Trump and GOP leaders at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Wednesday night, recounting some of the damning details that the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, has uncovered thus far and praising the bravery of witnesses -- particularly the young female aides -- who have come forward to aid its investigation. "We are confronting a domestic threat that we have never faced before -- and that is a former President who is attempting to unravel the foundations of our constitutional Republic," said Cheney, the vice chair of the House committee. "And he is aided by Republican leaders and elected officials who have made themselves willing hostages to this dangerous and irrational man." The congresswoman's blistering critique of Trump comes as the former President is reportedly weighing the launch of another presidential bid, potentially before the midterms. Cheney, a Wyoming Republican facing a Trump-backed primary challenger later this summer, acknowledged that it would certainly be an "easier path" to just look away. But she also said everyone has a responsibility to confront the threat to democracy that is posed by Trump.
By Richard Cowan and Moira Warburton

WASHINGTON, June 28 (Reuters) - Donald Trump tried to grab the steering wheel of his presidential limousine on Jan. 6, 2021, when his security detail declined to take him to the U.S. Capitol where his supporters were rioting, a former aide testified on Tuesday. The then-president dismissed concerns that some supporters gathered for his fiery speech outside the White House that day carried AR-15-style rifles, instead asking security to stop screening attendees with metal-detecting magnetometers so the crowd would look larger, the aide testified. "Take the effing mags away; they're not here to hurt me," Cassidy Hutchinson, who was a top aide to Trump's then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, quoted Trump as saying that morning. Hutchinson, in testimony on the sixth day of House of Representatives hearings into the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol assault by Trump's followers, said the conversation was relayed to her by Tony Ornato, a senior Secret Service official who was Trump's deputy chief of staff for operations.
By David Edwards | Raw Story

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) this week demanded prosecutions because people are purportedly attacking and mocking her "using Bible verses." On Monday, Greene invited right-wing OAN correspondent John Hines to interview her about the defacement of an anti-transgender sign posted outside her congressional office. The lawmaker stood next to the sign reading "There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE" and complained that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) refused to provide additional security.
Michelle Goldberg / The New York Times

Ifelt a nauseating dread as the Jan. 6 hearings approached, fearing that all they would do is demonstrate Donald Trump’s impunity. With Trump, the question has never been whether he’s committed outrageous misdeeds, but whether those misdeeds can be made to matter. Over and over again, the answer to that question has been no. It might still be no. But the hearings are having more of an impact than I expected. The decision by the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, to keep pro-Trump Republicans off the Jan. 6 committee has eliminated the back-and-forth bloviating that typically plagues congressional inquiries, allowing investigators to present their findings with the narrative cohesion of a good true-crime series. Trump, who understands television, appears to be aware of how bad the hearings are for him. The Washington Post reported that he’s watching all of them and is furious at McCarthy for not putting anyone on the dais to defend him.
Drew Harwell

Former president Donald Trump’s supporters online sought to undercut stunning testimony Tuesday to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, seeking to belittle Cassidy Hutchinson’s claims that she was told Trump had lunged for the steering wheel of his vehicle and attempted to throttle a member of his security detail when they refused to take him to the Capitol as rioters were besieging the building. In sworn testimony, Hutchinson said she heard of the physical altercation from Tony Ornato, a Secret Service agent who served as the White House deputy chief of staff for operations. She said he told the story in front of Bobby Engel, the head of Trump’s security detail, who Trump reportedly lunged at during the altercation. Neither man has testified. “I’m the f-ing president,” she said Ornato quoted the president shouting as they drove him to the White House and away from the Capitol. Trump supporters quickly snapped back online that they’d found an obvious sign she was lying: The presidential limousine, known as “the Beast,” is so heavily fortified that they argued it would be “physically impossible” for Trump to cross from the back cabin to the driver’s seat. But Trump was not riding in the limousine that day; videos show he actually rode in a Secret Service SUV, where the seats are closer together.
Courtland Milloy

At a speaking engagement last month, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas shed light on who he is. During his last year at Yale Law School, he recalled, he was having difficulty finding a job and someone was giving him grief about it — being a “jerk,” as he put it. So, Thomas had to put those concerns to rest. “I said, ‘You will always remember me. I am the termite in your basement. … I will be there,” Thomas recalled. “They can go and have spring break, they can go backpack in Europe,” Thomas said. “I am that termite, working away.” His story drew a mix of soft gasps and uncertain laughter among the assembled guests at the Old Parkland Conference in Dallas on May 13. Thomas was no stranger to the group. The occasion was a reprisal of the old Fairmont Conference for Black conservatives, organized by economist Thomas Sowell, that had been held in San Francisco in 1980. Thomas, then an aide to Sen. John Danforth (R-Mo.) had attended. He’d been interviewed by journalist Juan Williams, a Washington Post op-ed columnist at the time. The column caught the eye of the incoming Reagan administration, on the lookout for right-thinking Blacks to run interference on controversial racial policies.
ABC News

The House Jan. 6 committee's surprise hearing on Tuesday featured highly-anticipated and explosive testimony from someone who was inside the White House both as the Capitol attack unfolded and in the days before. Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top adviser to then-President Donald Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows, spent some two hours divulging details about what went on behind-the-scenes leading up to, during and after the attack. Committee members and even some former Trump staffers hailed the 25-year-old for showing the courage to deliver her testimony publicly. Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said members felt it important to offer her "firsthand" accounts "immediately." "It hasn't always been easy to get that information, because the same people who drove the former president's pressure campaign to overturn the election are now trying to cover up the truth about Jan. 6," Thompson said. "But thanks to the courage of certain individuals, the truth won't be buried. The American people won't be left in the dark." With Hutchinson's testimony, Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., argued that Trump and Meadows were well aware of the potential for violence at the Capitol last year yet ultimately dismissed the warnings. Trump even demanded to be taken to the Capitol alongside his supporters, Hutchinson said, despite concerns of legality and security from his team.
Ian Millhiser

The Supreme Court handed down a brief order Tuesday evening that effectively reinstates racially gerrymandered congressional maps in the state of Louisiana, at least for the 2022 election. Under these maps, Black voters will control just one of Louisiana’s six congressional seats, despite the fact that African Americans make up nearly a third of the state’s population. Thus, the Court’s decision in Ardoin v. Robinson means that Black people will have half as much congressional representation as they would enjoy under maps where Black voters have as much opportunity to elect their own preferred candidate as white people in Louisiana. A federal trial court, applying longstanding Supreme Court precedents holding that the Voting Rights Act does not permit such racial gerrymanders, issued a preliminary injunction temporarily striking down the Louisiana maps and ordering the state legislature to draw new ones that include two Black-majority districts. Notably, a very conservative panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit denied the state’s request to stay the trial court’s decision — a sign that Louisiana’s maps were such a clear violation of the Voting Rights Act that even one of the most conservative appeals courts in the country could not find a good reason to disturb the trial court’s decision.
Bart Jansen, Erin Mansfield, Joey Garrison, David Jackson, Katherine Swartz, Dylan Wells and Merdie Nzanga, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – The House committee investigating the Capitol attack Jan. 6, 2021, is holding an abruptly scheduled hearing Tuesday with testimony from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson and "recently obtained evidence."

Trump reacts: Within the first half of her testimony, Trump reacted to Hutchinson on his Truth Social website. "I hardly know who this person, Cassidy Hutchinson, is, other than I heard very negative things about her," Trump said in a post.

'Mike deserves that': Hutchinson said she overheard Trump, Mark Meadows and Trump lawyers in the White House discuss the chants of “Hang Mike Pence” as rioters attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6. Meadows told White House attorney Pat Cipollone, who urged action, that Trump "thinks Mike deserves that. He doesn't think they're doing anything wrong."

Barr spurs Trump to throw his lunch. Furious after Attorney General Bill Barr announced in December 2020 he found no evidence of widespread voter fraud to the Associated Press, Trump threw his lunch against the wall, according to Hutchinson.
By Tom Boggioni | Raw Story

Appearing on CNN's "New Day" on Monday morning, NYU School of Law professor Ryan Goodman laughed at the prospect of Donald Trump's lawyers going into court and defending their client of election tampering charges by claiming he believed he won. Speaking with hosts Brianna Keilar and John Berman, Goodman -- who co-authored a piece in the Washington Post on the same subject \-- explained that the former president's lawyers would get laughed out of court if they attempted that defense. "There's a crime in which it would matter, but there are other core crimes that it doesn't," the legal expert explained. "So let's just take, for example, the 800 people, over 800 people who have been charged with the insurrection or engaging in the riot. it doesn't matter that they think Trump won and I would assume a great majority of them do. It's about their other forms of intent. for example, if Trump engaged in intimidation or threatened officials in order to try to overturn the election, that's what they need to prove this they don't need to prove whether or not he thought he won." "So, for example, if they say, well, you threatened the Georgia secretary of state, defense counsel can't stand up in court and say, 'yes, that's because he thought he won!'" he laughed. "That's the crime; that's part of the problem for him."
By Travis Gettys | Raw Story

The pardon request submitted by Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) contains language that could be used to prove corrupt intent in a criminal proceeding. The Alabama Republican sought a pardon from Donald Trump in a Jan. 11, 2021, email obtained by the Guardian that shows his request for all-purpose, preemptive pardons for lawmakers who objected to the certification of Joe Biden's election win just hours after the insurrection. At least a half dozen Republican lawmakers asked for pardons immediately after the Capitol riot after Trump “hinted at a blanket pardon for the Jan. 6 thing for anybody,” according to testimony from former White House presidential personnel director John McEntee. Brooks refers to a Texas lawsuit that put pressure on vice president Mike Pence to halt or stop certification, which the select committee has argued violated the Electoral Count Act of 1887, and to objections filed in Arizona and Pennsylvania. Objections filed in those two states came after the Capitol attack, and when viewed alongside efforts by Trump attorney to push senators to continue objecting to Biden's certification suggests additional corrupt intent.
Molly Beck and Lawrence Andrea, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

WASHINGTON – After initially claiming to be "basically unaware" of an effort by his staff to get fake presidential elector documents to Vice President Mike Pence, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson said Thursday he coordinated with a Wisconsin attorney to pass along such information and alleged a Pennsylvania congressman brought slates of fake electors to his office — a claim that was immediately disputed. Evidence presented this week by the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol showed Johnson's chief of staff tried to deliver the two states' lists of fake presidential electors for former President Donald Trump to Pence on the morning of the U.S. Capitol insurrection but was rebuffed by Pence's aide. Johnson initially told reporters last week he did not know where the documents came from and that his staff sought to forward it to Pence.
Nicholas Slayton

United States Army Private Ethan Melzer pleaded guilty this week to charges that he intended to murder members of his unit as part of a terrorist attack by a far-right extremist group. He made the plea on Friday, June 24. Melzer served with the Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade. He faces up to 45 years in prison for the charges. “As he admitted in court today, Ethan Melzer attempted to orchestrate a murderous ambush on his own unit by unlawfully disclosing its location, strength, and armaments to a neo-Nazi, anarchist, white supremacist group,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement on the plea deal. “The defendant believed he could force the U.S. into prolonged armed conflict while causing the deaths of as many soldiers as possible. Melzer’s traitorous conduct was a betrayal of his storied unit and nothing short of an attack against the most essential American values.”
S.V. Date

WASHINGTON — Weeks of sustained, high-profile discussion about Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow democracy may not change the minds of his devoted followers, but they could well thwart Trump’s efforts to delegitimize criminal charges that prosecutors might wind up filing against him. “I think people were prepared for this to be like the Trump impeachments,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican consultant who before the hearings began was skeptical they would have much effect. “But it isn’t. It’s incredibly well executed.” That statistic, though, pushed frequently by the former president and his allies, is missing the broader effect the hearings are having on the national conversation, Trump critics said. And even though the vast majority of the information the committee is detailing has already been reported in news accounts, having it come from videotaped clips of Trump’s own aides or in sworn testimony from the chandeliered, high-ceilinged Cannon Caucus Room appears to be carrying considerably more weight.
Paul Livengood, WFAA Staff

One day after the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, which gave constitutional abortion rights to women for more than 50 years, a Texas senator is now going viral online for comparing it to another landmark ruling that was overruled related to racial segregation. Sen. John Cornyn responded to a tweet by former president Barack Obama that denounced the Roe v. Wade decision. Cornyn's tweet said "Now do Plessy vs Ferguson/Brown vs Board of Education." That tweet quickly went viral online, with most speculating the Texas senator was suggesting SCOTUS reverse the Board v. Board of Education decision, including Texas Democratic congressman Joaquin Castro. Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark SCOTUS decision in 1954 – which partially overruled its 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson – declaring that the "separate but equal" notion was unconstitutional for American public schools and educational facilities. WFAA reached out to Sen. Cornyn's office about the tweet, and a spokesperson directed us to this follow up tweet, which said, "Thank goodness some SCOTUS precedents are overruled."
By Tom Boggioni | Raw Story

According to a report from Politico’s Meredith McGraw and Matt Dixon, key Republican donors are growing increasingly put off by what is being described as the “exhausting circus” that surrounds Donald Trump due to his efforts to remain a viable GOP candidate in 2024. As the report notes, the revelations by the Jan 6th committee investigating the Capitol insurrection that forced lawmakers from both sides of the aisle to flee for their lives is taking a toll not only on the former president's already tattered reputation but also of big money Republican Party donors who are starting to look for other candidates to invest in. As the Politico report states, conservative voters are, for the most part, still enamored by Trump but “elements of the voters, donors and activists that make the three pillars of the party are exhausted too, they say. And they’re growing less willing to let the baggage of the Trump years complicate the future.” GOP donor Dan Eberhart explained that “Trump fatigue” is a real thing.
Everything was going right for Republicans in the midterm campaign. Then the Supreme Court decision came down.
By David Siders

Republicans finally got the Roe v. Wade decision they wanted, and in public, they are delighted. More quietly, however, according to interviews with more than a dozen Republican strategists and party officials, they just didn’t want it to come right now — not during a midterm election campaign in which nearly everything had been going right for the GOP. “This is not a conversation we want to have,” said John Thomas, a Republican strategist who works on House campaigns across the country. “We want to have a conversation about the economy. We want to have a conversation about Joe Biden, about pretty much anything else besides Roe … This is a losing issue for Republicans.” The decision, issued Friday, was a landmark victory for conservatives who have held up overturning Roe as an ambition of near-biblical significance, fundraising, organizing and legislating off opposition to abortion rights for nearly half a century.
By Sarah D. Wire Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Then-President Trump nearly replaced the head of the Department of Justice with a supporter of his fraud theories after the acting attorney general refused to comply with his persistent demands to falsely claim there was evidence of malfeasance in the 2020 election, the House panel investigating the Capitol insurrection detailed in its hearing Thursday. Using testimony from three former top Justice Department officials, the committee laid out Trump’s unremitting pressure on department leaders as he demanded they lend credence to his unsubstantiated claims of fraud in order to subvert the will of voters and keep him in office. “He hoped that law enforcement officials would give the appearance of legitimacy to his lies so he and his allies had some veneer of credibility when they told the country that the election was stolen,” said the panel’s chair, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.).
Dan Mangan, Kevin Breuninger

The Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision on Friday overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that established the constitutional right to abortion in the U.S. in 1973. The court’s controversial but expected ruling gives individual states the power to set their own abortion laws without concern of running afoul of Roe, which for nearly half a century had permitted abortions during the first two trimesters of pregnancy. Almost half the states are expected to outlaw or severely restrict abortion as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision. Other states plan to maintain more liberal rules governing the termination of pregnancies. “The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives,” a syllabus of the opinion said. Justice Samuel Alito, as expected, wrote the majority opinion that tossed out Roe. He was joined in that judgment by the five other conservatives on the high court, including Chief Justice John Roberts.
Bombshell revelation comes during fifth public congressional hearing into the events surrounding the Capitol riot
Andrew Feinberg

Representatives Mo Brooks, Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs, Louie Gohmert and Scott Perry were among the Republican members of Congress who asked President Donald Trump to insulate them from future prosecutions by granting them presidential pardons in the days immediately following the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January last year. Their names were revealed by the House January 6 select committee hearing on Thursday that focused on Mr Trump’s efforts to pressure the Department of Justice to assist in his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. Illinois representative Adam Kinzinger, the Republican select committee member who led the hearing, suggested that seeking pardons implied that his colleagues may have at least suspected they may later face prosecution. “All I know is if you’re innocent, you’re probably not gonna go out and seek a pardon,” he said. The select committee played videotaped excerpts from depositions of former Trump White House staffers, who described the Republican members’ efforts to obtain clemency after Mr Trump’s scheme led to an attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.
“He didn’t do his job. He left them in there,” a Robb Elementary School parent said of the Uvalde school district police chief's failure to prevent the massacre of 21 people.
By Alicia Victoria Lozano

UVALDE, Texas — A month after a gunman walked unobstructed into a Texas elementary school and killed 21 people, grief has given way to anger as an investigation reveals that the mass tragedy at Robb Elementary School could have been prevented or at the very least minimized. Parents want to know why Salvador Ramos was able to walk into the school without encountering a locked door and why police waited more than an hour to engage the shooter. Residents want to know why he was able to obtain a powerful assault weapon so soon after turning 18 and whether more could have been done to flag him as a potential threat. Four weeks later, more questions than answers plague Uvalde, lingering over the tight-knit community like a heavy blanket with little room to breathe. People struggle to mourn because they are too busy seeking accountability from their leaders. “We elected them and we can take that away,” resident Kim Hammond said Wednesday night at a community meeting. “Let’s show them sons of b--- this is the last time this is going to happen.”
Maggie Haberman, Michael S. Schmidt and Alan Feuer

At least half a dozen Republican members of Congress sought pre-emptive pardons from President Donald J. Trump as he fought to remain in office after his defeat in the 2020 election, witnesses have told the House Jan. 6 committee, the panel disclosed on Thursday. Mr. Trump “had hinted at a blanket pardon for the Jan. 6 thing for anybody,” Mr. Trump’s former head of presidential personnel, Johnny McEntee, testified. Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, appeared to ask for a broad pardon, not limited to his role in Mr. Trump’s effort to reverse the outcome of the election. Mr. Gaetz even invoked the pardoned former President Richard M. Nixon as he did so, Eric Herschmann, a White House lawyer for Mr. Trump, testified. “He mentioned Nixon, and I said, ‘Nixon’s pardon was never nearly that broad,’” Mr. Herschmann recounted. Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama sent an email seeking a pre-emptive pardon for all 147 members of Congress who objected to the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s Electoral College win.
By Melissa Quinn

Washington — The Senate late Thursday voted 65 to 33 to pass the bipartisan gun control bill, the most significant legislation addressing guns in nearly 30 years. Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who led the negotiations along with Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, said on the Senate floor Thursday that the legislation "responds" to the  shootings last month at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, and at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas — that left a combined 31 people dead, including 19 children – in a "positive and an affirmative way." "I don't believe in doing nothing in the face of what we saw in Uvalde and we've seen in far too many communities," Cornyn said. "Doing nothing is an abdication of our responsibility as representatives of the American people here in the United States Senate."
Celina Tebor, Thao Nguyen, Maria Aguilar | USA TODAY

In one of the most consequential rulings on gun control in over a decade, the Supreme Court struck down a New York law Thursday requiring state residents to have "proper cause" to carry a handgun. Supporters of the Second Amendment have lauded the decision, while gun control advocates say it jeopardizes public health. The now-unconstitutional law, part of a larger array of New York gun restrictions highlighted as some of the toughest in the nation, mandated that those applying to carry a concealed handgun provide a reason why they need the weapon, which officials then approve or deny. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul swiftly denounced the ruling, saying the Supreme Court "recklessly" struck down the law at "a moment of national reckoning on gun violence." The case has been closely watched in New York, coming on the heels of a mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket in May where an 18-year-old killed 10 people and injured three others in what authorities called a racially-motivated killing. Less than two weeks later, the attack was followed by a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, which left 19 children and two adults dead.
By Marshall Cohen, Jeremy Herb and Zachary Cohen, CNN

(CNN) The January 6 select committee's latest public hearing on Thursday shed considerable new light on former President Donald Trump's attempts to weaponize the Justice Department in the final months of his term as part of his plot to overturn the 2020 election and stay in power. The hearing kicked off mere hours after federal investigators raided the home of Jeffrey Clark, who was one of the key Justice Department figures who was involved in Trump's schemes. He has denied any wrongdoing related to January 6. Three Trump appointees testified in-person on Thursday, joining a growing list of Republicans who have gone under oath to provide damning information about Trump's post-election shenanigans. The witnesses were former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, his deputy Richard Donoghue, and Steven Engel, who led the department's Office of Legal Counsel. Here are takeaways from Thursday's hearing.

Select committee has the goods on GOP congressional pardons
Thursday's hearing underscored the role that Trump's Republican allies in Congress played in furthering his efforts to try to overturn the election -- and how many of them sought pardons after January 6.
Former DOJ officials described how they resisted Trump's relentless pressure.
By Libby Cathey and Alexandra Hutzler

Thursday's hearing of the Jan. 6 committee focused on the pressure then-President Donald Trump and his allies put on the Justice Department to help overturn the 2020 election.
By Melissa Quinn

Washington — The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a New York law that placed strict restrictions on carrying concealed firearms in public for self defense, finding its requirement that applicants seeking a concealed carry license demonstrate a special need for self-defense is unconstitutional. In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision upholding New York's 108-year-old law limiting who can obtain a license to carry a concealed handgun in public. Proponents of the measure warned that a ruling from the high court invalidating it could threaten gun restrictions in several states and lead to more firearms on city streets. Justice Clarence Thomas delivered the majority opinion for the ideologically divided court, writing that New York's "proper-cause requirement" prevented law-abiding citizens from exercising their Second Amendment right, and its licensing regime is unconstitutional.
By Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter

(CNN) While Justice Clarence Thomas spent 63 pages in a 6-3 majority opinion Thursday painstakingly explaining the court's reasons for striking down a New York conceal carry gun law and changing the way judges will analyze a host of other gun regulations going forward, his colleague Samuel Alito took a different tack. In a sparse but relentlessly caustic concurring opinion, the conservative Alito criticized his liberal colleagues for their dissent, blasting them for attempting to "obscure" the specific question the court had decided, and for referencing the recent mass shootings that have shocked the nation. The fact that Alito, who joined Thomas' opinion in full, chose to also strike out alone against the dissenters highlights the current tension on the court triggered by a blockbuster docket and the unprecedented leak of a draft majority opinion in May overturning Roe v. Wade. Alito authored that draft opinion, which if it stands, will likely trigger an angry dissent from the liberal justices. The abortion opinion could come as early as Friday.
Erik Larson and Michael Leonard

(Bloomberg) -- Fox News’s parent company can be sued by a voting-machine maker because Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch may have acted with “actual malice” in directing the network to broadcast conspiracy theories alleging the 2020 presidential election was rigged against Donald Trump. Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis on Tuesday denied Fox Corp.’s motion to dismiss the suit, saying Dominion Voting Systems had shown that the Murdochs may have been on notice that the conspiracy theory that rigged voting machines tilted the vote was false but let Fox News broadcast it anyway. Dominion cited in its suit a report that Rupert Murdoch spoke with Trump a few days after the election “and informed him that he had lost,” the judge noted. “These allegations support a reasonable inference that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch either knew Dominion had not manipulated the election or at least recklessly disregarded the truth when they allegedly caused Fox News to propagate its claims about Dominion,” said Davis, who previously allowed Dominion’s claim against the conservative news network to proceed. Fox’s press representatives didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment. The company has previously argued that its reporting is protected by the First Amendment.
Ron Dicker

Far-right pot-stirrer Newt Gingrich mocked Vice President Kamala Harris’ qualifications to be president on Fox News Tuesday. The former House speaker, a guest on “Jesse Watters Primetime,” launched a dismissive, demeaning and somewhat racist broadside against the veep, frequently mentioned as a possible Democratic successor to President Joe Biden. Gingrich attacked her intelligence and called her a prospect “crazy enough to satisfy the left” who checks the box of “being a woman of color.”
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