The Hill’s Morning Report — Can the Jan. 6 panel connect the dots?

by Alexis Simendinger and Al Weaver - 07/11/22 6:26 AM ET

File - The dais is prepared ahead of the start of the hearing as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol continues to present its findings at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, June 16, 2022. — Susan Walsh/Associated Press
File – The dais is prepared ahead of the start of the hearing as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol continues to present its findings at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, June 16, 2022.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol will turn its focus this week toward far-right extremists and the role they played in the fatal event as the panel moves closer to deposing a key witness in the lead-up to the riot.

Investigators are set to examine the ties between nationalist groups that helped to incite the crowd on Jan. 6 and allies of former President Trump and the White House. The committee has foreshadowed the potential links between the former administration and groups, including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.

“We are going to be connecting the dots during these hearings between these groups and those who are trying to — in government circles — to overturn the election,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a committee member, told CNN on Sunday. “So we do think that this story is unfolding in a way that is very serious and quite credible.”

Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) are expected to lead the questioning on Tuesday afternoon.

As The Hill’s Rebecca Beitsch and Mike Lillis write, the nexus between those in the White House who attempted to overturn the election (John Eastman, Mark Meadows, etc.) and nationalists who gathered in Washington to fight on Trump’s behalf is a complex one. The probe has yet to demonstrate any direct connections between the two groups.

“We will lay out the body of evidence that we have that talks about how the president’s tweet on the wee hours of Dec. 19 of ‘Be there, be wild,’ was a siren call to these folks,” Murphy told “Meet the Press.” “And we’ll talk in detail about what that caused them to do, how that caused them to organize, as well as who else was amplifying that message.”

It is also expected that testimony on Friday by former White House counsel Pat Cipollone will factor in during hearings this week. According to Murphy, Cipollone provided “relevant information about what was happening in the White House,” though he did claim executive privilege in some areas of the conversation.

“I think we still got a lot of relevant information from him,” Murphy said, teasing that his testimony will likely be featured on Tuesday. “I imagine that you will be hearing things from Mr. Cipollone but also from others that were in the White House” (The Hill).

The Hill: Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) says Cipollone didn’t contradict “what anybody said” in testimony.

Adding a bit of spice to the week for the panel, Stephen Bannon — who has been one of the most steadfast opponents of its work and has remained defiant despite being subpoenaed — finally gave in and said on Saturday that he is prepared to testify publicly. Bannon’s move comes after Trump dropped his claim of executive privilege over his testimony, clearing the way for the former White House chief strategist and top Trump ally to speak to the committee.

As The New York Times notes, Trump has become increasingly frustrated that one of his top attack dogs has not yet appeared before the panel while former Trump staffers have done so, painting a picture of a White House in complete dysfunction leading up to Jan. 6.

“We have wanted him to testify,” Lofgren said, adding that she expects his initial appearance will likely have to be behind closed doors. “I expect that we will be hearing from him, and there are many questions we have for him” (The New York Times).

The committee will also hold a second public hearing on Thursday night in primetime that is expected to provide a fresh batch of information about what was going on inside the White House on Jan. 6.

Related Articles

▪ The Washington Post: Bannon, dangling possible testimony, brings new focus to Jan. 6 role.

▪ Politico: Meet the key players in the next Jan. 6 hearings.

▪ The New York Times: Why the Jan. 6 committee rushed Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony.

▪ The Hill: Jan. 6 documentarian says Trump family didn’t feel culpability for Capitol riot.

▪ NBC News: House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and two other members are probing for details in an effort to bolster data privacy for abortion seekers as more states ban the procedure. The lawmakers suggested that profiteers in states that reward citizens who enforce the bans could target people seeking abortion care “by purchasing location data from data brokers.”

▪ Niall Stanage: The Memo: Five things to know about the Georgia probe into Trump and his allies.

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LEADING THE DAY

➤ CONGRESS

The midterm elections may seem a long way off — four months — but to Senate Democrats, four weeks is the timetable in mind beginning this week. That’s how long Congress has before a scheduled monthlong August break, after which openings to pass parts of Biden’s long-stalled domestic agenda all but disappear as campaign schedules take over. If Democrats want to present persuasive legislative accomplishments to restless, cranky voters, time is short.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), whose office said on Sunday that he tested positive for COVID-19 with mild symptoms (CNN), has been signaling he will try move a long-delayed budget reconciliation bill before the August recess that will include prescription drug reform, tax increases on wealth pass-through income earners and extend the solvency of Medicare, The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is expected to support such provisions, but a big question is whether he will agree to proposed tax reform changes bucked by businesses and ambitious approaches to climate change that might not sit well with voters in a coal state.

As lawmakers return to the Capitol for the first time since the Supreme Court overturned Roe, the House plans this week to tee up legislation that would protect women who live in states that ban or restrict pregnancy terminations so they could lawfully seek reproductive health services in states that allow abortions. A second bill updates the proposed Women’s Health Protection Act, which would codify abortion rights into law and expand on Roe’s protections. The House adopted the measure last fall. Both House measures face high hurdles in the Senate (The Hill).

Democrats are trying to remain on track to move a bipartisan bill targeted at boosting competitiveness with China, which top Republicans are threatening to block (The Wall Street Journal).

On Sunday, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, speaking to ABC’s “This Week,” accused Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) of standing in the way of the CHIPS Act, aimed at supporting domestic production of semiconductor chips to reduce U.S. supply reliance on China. “He’s playing politics with our national security, and it’s time for Congress to do its job,” she said.

She said the Kentucky Republican set up an ill-timed “false choice” by threatening to block legislation that includes more than $50 billion to subsidize semiconductor chip manufacturing in the United States. “That has to pass,” Raimondo said. “It has to pass now. Not in six months from now” (Bloomberg Law).

Bloomberg analysis/The Washington Post: Chipmakers and Congress play a $52 billion game of chicken.

The Hill: Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said on Sunday during a Fox News interview that it is “not realistic” to consider impeaching Justice Clarence Thomas for alleged political conflicts of interest as well as those of his wife, Ginni Thomas, a conservative activist who lobbied Trump’s top aides before Jan. 6, 2021, in support of a false narrative that the presidential election was stolen. “If this court is going to be credible, it has to be as apolitical as possible,” Durbin said.

➤ ADMINISTRATION

President Biden on Wednesday begins the first Middle East trip of his presidency, traveling over three days to Israel, Palestinian territories and Saudi Arabia.

The president is expected to focus on Israel’s ties with Arab countries and an emerging Arab-Israeli military partnership to combat threats from Iran. He ends the trip in Saudi Arabia. The West wants the Saudis to pump more oil to respond to a growing global energy crisis set off by the war in Ukraine, although Biden denies that petroleum is a focus of his itinerary (The New York Times).

Axios: Biden will announce $100 million in aid to Palestinian hospitals and visit Augusta Victoria Hospital during his trip.

Biden’s trip, his first to the Middle East in six years, aims to showcase the administration’s approach to the region, but some experts suggest the president’s policies are reminiscent of those pursued by the Trump administration, report The Hill’s Laura Kelly and Morgan Chalfant.

U.S.-Mexico: President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is scheduled to visit Washington on Tuesday to meet with Biden, a month after snubbing an invitation to the Summit of the Americas held in Los Angeles (The Associated Press).

Tariffs: On Sunday, Biden told reporters he and top advisers are having “further discussions” about whether to lift tariffs on China that were put in place under his predecessor. Raimondo on Sunday said the president’s decision is expected “shortly.”

Abortion: The president on Sunday said he has asked his advisers to explore a proposal by some Democrats that he use his executive authority to declare a public health emergency to expand abortion access after the Supreme Court’s ruling. Specifically, Biden said he has tasked his team with advising whether he has such authority and, if so, what ramifications a declaration could trigger. He is pushing Congress to codify Roe v. Wade into law, he reiterated. It is a remote option in the current Senate (The Hill).

Climate change: Some environmental advocates question whether the administration is dooming U.S. efforts to fight climate change following the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that went against the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory sway under the Clean Air Act (The Hill).

West Wing: Vice President Harris’s chief of staff Lorraine Voles is working closely with Biden senior advisers, while Harris now meets regularly with chief of staff Ron Klain and has seized the opportunity to leap to the forefront this summer on guns and abortion (NBC News).

IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES

➤ POLITICS

It’s taken some time, but Democrats have taken strides to present a unified front.

With the midterm elections looming and after the bruising intraparty battles of the past year, Democrats of all stripes are trying to put their disagreements aside as they push to minimize their losses in the House and keep hold of the Senate in November.

As The Hill’s Hanna Trudo details, Democrats have instead been left to watch the president’s low poll numbers and a disastrous national climate redefine the terms of the discourse. At this point, they have bigger fish to fry.

“It’s not about progressive or moderate at this point,” said Bill Neidhardt, a former spokesman for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) “It’s about action vs. inaction.”

“Voters aren’t looking at ideology. They are looking at who the hell will actually do something about all of this. Inflation. Abortion rights. Mass shootings,” he said. “You name it.”

However, a mini-rupture emerged on Saturday when Bedingfield, the outgoing White House communications director, told The Washington Post that Biden’s goal in responding to the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade is “not to satisfy some activists who have been consistently out of step with the mainstream of the Democratic Party.”

The Hill: With Bedingfield’s exit from the White House later this month, how is the president’s team recalibrating messaging strategy and personnel?

Bedingfield’s comment angered a number of progressive activists who grew exasperated with what they perceived as a delayed response by the White House to the decision.

▪ The Hill: Former Biden campaign official “took offense” to White House statement on abortion action.

▪ Max Greenwood, The Hill: This Florida House race is giving Democrats hope in a brutal year.

▪ The New York Times: Poll: Democrats sour on Biden, citing age and economy.

On the 2022 scene, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said on Sunday that he doesn’t believe there are a requisite number of Democrats out there who can save Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-Wyo.) reelection efforts.

“Wyoming politics is very personal. It’s face to face. It’s town to town,” Barrasso said. “The travel that I have done around the state, I think she has a lot of work to do if she hopes to win the primary.”

“There’s really not that many Democrats out there,” Barrasso told “Fox News Sunday.” “Even the chairman of the Democratic Party said there are not enough Democrats to do that.”

The comment comes after Cheney’s campaign distributed literature to Democrats in the state instructing them how they can change their party affiliation in order to vote for her against Harriet Hageman, the Trump-endorsed candidate. The primary is set for Aug. 16 (The Hill).

▪ The Associated Press: How a crowded GOP field could help Trump in 2024 campaign.

▪ The Hill: Why outrage politics has such a grip on American life.

📝 Introducing NotedDC, The Hill’s curated commentary on the beat of the Beltway. Click here to subscribe to our latest newsletter.

OPINION

■ Why I’m going to Saudi Arabia, by President Biden, opinion contributor, The Washington Post. https://wapo.st/3RnMUeT

■ Biden’s Middle East trip is fraught with risk and opportunity, by Robert Burgess,Bloomberg Opinion. https://bloom.bg/3OWlb3q

WHERE AND WHEN

The House will meet at 2:30 p.m.

The Senate convenes at 3 p.m. to resume consideration of the nomination of Ashish Vazirani to be a deputy under secretary of Defense.

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 9 a.m. Biden hosts a South Lawn event along with the vice president at 11 a.m. to commemorate passage of the Safer Communities (gun safety) Act. The president and Harris at 5 p.m. will receive a NASA briefing to preview images from space to be unveiled publicly on Tuesday made possible by the James Webb Space Telescope (see details about NASA’s Tuesday event at the end of the newsletter).

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who departed Bangkok on Sunday, is in Tokyo to pay respects early today after Friday’s assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. He meetswith Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and will also see employees from the U.S. Embassy.

The White House press briefing is scheduled at 3:45 p.m.

🖥 Hill.TV’s “Rising” program features news and interviews at http://digital-staging.thehill.com/hilltv, on YouTube and on Facebook at 10:30 a.m. ET. Also, check out the “Rising” podcast here.

ELSEWHERE

➤ INTERNATIONAL

In the United Kingdom, nine candidates have thus far launched campaigns to replace outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who resigned last week (Reuters). The Conservative Party process begins in earnest today, and the goal is to winnow a list of candidates through secret balloting to a pair of choices and then put those names to a vote among approximately 200,000 members. It’s a procedure that could take until the end of the summer (The New York Times and Forbes).

In Japan on Sunday, a parliamentary election proved victorious for the country’s governing party and its coalition partner, possibly propelled by sympathy votes in the wake of Friday’s assassination of Abe (The Associated Press). One repercussion after Abe’s murder is a focus in Japan on handmade guns, used by the 41-year-old suspect arrested at the scene of the public slaying, in a nation where possession of guns is tightly restricted (The Associated Press).

In Sri Lanka, troubles continued to consume the country as opposition figures were unable to decide on who should replace its sitting leaders as protesters remain in place at the residences of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, both of whom have promised to resign. The nation has been mired in deep economic woes, leading to the latest actions by leaders until an all-party government is decided upon (The Associated Press).

In Ukraine, Russian forces on Monday are pounding the city of Kharkiv (The Associated Press). … Anxiety is high among grain farmers as harvest season begins (The Associated Press). … Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is planning a Cabinet shake-up to reduce government waste (Bloomberg News). … Ukraine tells residents to leave occupied parts of the country in the south to prepare for a counterattack against Russia (Reuters).

➤ PANDEMIC & POX

Headlines bounce from state to state with reports of confirmed cases of monkeypox (Kansas over the weekend was a new example). Global transmission of the disease has gained increasingly urgent attention inside the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as among infectious disease specialists who can test for the infection and administer effective antiviral treatments and vaccines. Scientists worry monkeypox could become a pandemic and necessitates more intensive testing, tracking and public information.

At least 767 cases of monkeypox were reported in the United States as of July 8, but because getting an early test can be a challenge for patients, it is unlikely that the number reflects the full extent of the outbreak. Cases so far have been more common among gay and bisexual men, but anyone, including children, can be infected with monkeypox through close personal contact, clothing and even exposed bedding (Slate).

The Associated Press: New coronavirus mutant raises concerns in India and beyond.

Total U.S. coronavirus deaths reported as of this morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (trackers all vary slightly): 1,020,861. Current average U.S. COVID-19 daily deaths are 277, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As of today, 77.5 percent of the U.S. population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 66.3 percent is “fully vaccinated,” according to the Bloomberg News global vaccine tracker and the government’s definition. The percentage of Americans who have received third or booster doses is 31.6.

➤ LAW & JUSTICE

Women of color, including incarcerated women, could be disproportionately affected by new state bans and restrictions on abortion as well as the legal enforcement of those laws in the near future (The Hill). … In Texas, a pregnant woman ticketed on June 29 for not having two or more passengers in her car in an HOV lane is challenging the discrepancy in court, seeking to recognize her fetus as a person, a concept not recognized in the Texas Transportation Code but recognized in its penal code (The Washington Post).

➤ SPORTS

🎾 Novak Djokovic took home his seventh Wimbledon singles title on Sunday by defeatingAustralian ace machine Nick Kyrgios in four sets, climbing into second place in all-time Grand Slam titles. Djokovic lost the first set but rebounded 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 7-6, moving him past Roger Federer on the Grand Slam titles list with 21 and putting him one behind Rafael Nadal. Djokovic in September will be barred from entering the United States to compete in the U.S. Open because he insists on remaining unvaccinated against COVID-19 (ESPN).

THE CLOSER

And finally … On Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. ET with a livestream presentation, NASA will release a collection of impressive deep-space photos sent back to Earth from the James Webb Space Telescope, which was launched in December, The New York Times reports. Biden will get a special preview today. The images are not the first seen; there have been NASA teases along the way (check out a slideshow HERE at Space.com).

The pictures, intended to wow the public (displayed from the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.), were cherry-picked by a small team of astronomers and science outreach experts to show off the capability of the new telescope and NASA’s $10 billion project. The release will be followed by a scientific seminar and a rush of professional astronomers to their computers to begin taking and analyzing their own data from scientific observations that began in June, the Times reports.

The pictures, Times reporter Dennis Overbye adds, offer a sightseeing tour of the universe painted in colors no human eye has seen — the invisible rays of infrared or heat radiation. Infrared rays are blocked by the atmosphere and can only be studied out in space. Among other things, they can penetrate the clouds of dust that encase the cosmic nurseries where stars are born, turning them into transparent bubbles that show the baby stars nesting inside.

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