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Blinken’s Talks in Bangkok to Focus on Myanmar

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Bangkok, where Myanmar is expected to feature prominently in meetings Sunday with Thailand’s leaders.

The main topic of their discussions will likely be the crisis in Myanmar, said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Kritenbrink, adding the U.S. would continue to “condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the Burmese military regime’s brutal actions since the coup d’état, the killing of nearly 2,000 people and displacing more than 700,000 others.” Myanmar is also known as Burma.

Blinken is to meet with Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai. Expanding health and climate cooperation are also on the agenda, as is next year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation annual meeting, which the U.S. will host, according to the State Department.

The State Department announced Sunday that Blinken will travel to Tokyo on Monday to offer condolences to the Japanese people on the death of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and to meet with senior Japanese officials.

Blinken arrived in Thailand a few days after his Chinese counterpart, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who was on his own tour of Southeast Asia. Over the weekend, Wang visited Myanmar, his first visit to the country since the military seized power last year.

Blinken and Wang met Saturday at the G-20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, and spoke for several hours.

The top U.S. diplomat told his Chinese counterpart during those meetings that China’s support for Russia’s war in Ukraine is complicating U.S.-Chinese relations at a time when they are already beset by rifts and enmity over numerous other issues.

Wang blamed the U.S. for the downturn in relations and said American policy has been derailed by what he called a misperception of China as a threat.

“Many people believe that the United States is suffering from a China-phobia,” the Chinese foreign minister said, according to a Chinese statement. “If such threat-expansion is allowed to grow, U.S. policy toward China will be a dead end with no way out.”

Blinken said he conveyed “the deep concerns of the United States regarding Beijing’s increasingly provocative rhetoric and activity toward Taiwan.”

Blinken also noted he addressed U.S. concerns over Beijing’s use of the strategic South China Sea, the repression of freedom in Hong Kong, forced labor, the treatment of ethnic and religious minorities in Tibet, and the genocide in Xinjiang.

Additionally, the U.S. secretary of state said that he and Wang discussed ways in which there could be more cooperation between the two countries in areas such as climate crisis, food security, global health and counternarcotics.

For his part, Wang said China and the United States need to work together to ensure that their relationship will continue to move forward along the right track.

Blinken’s meeting with the Chinese foreign minister was their first in-person since the chief U.S. diplomat unveiled the Biden administration’s strategy to outcompete the rival superpower. In his remarks at the time, Blinken said the U.S. was not seeking to decouple from China and the relationship between the world’s two largest economies was not a zero-sum game.

On Friday, the G-20 talks were dominated by discussion of the war in Ukraine and its impact on energy and food supplies.

Indonesia, as the meeting’s host country, called on ministers to “find a way forward” in discussing the war and its impact on rising food and energy prices.

“It is our responsibility to end the war sooner rather than later and settle our differences at the negotiating table, not at the battlefield,” Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said at the opening of the meeting, invoking the U.N. Charter to urge multilateralism and trust.

Foreign ministers shared concerns about getting grain shipments out of Ukraine and avoiding devastating food shortages in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere. But talks were marked by sharp tension: Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov sat at the same table but did not speak directly.
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No Saudi-Israel Normalization While Biden Visits, but It’s Getting Closer

In a visit to Saudi Arabia, Israel and the West Bank next week, President Joe Biden is expected to nudge Riyadh toward diplomatic normalization with Israel. This would be a huge expansion of the Abraham Accords, the Trump-era Middle East peace plan. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
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Former Trump White House Counsel Meets With January 6 Panel

Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone met for a private interview with the January 6 committee for about eight hours Friday regarding his role in trying to prevent then-President Donald Trump from challenging the 2020 presidential election and joining the violent mob that laid siege to the Capitol.

Cipollone, once a staunch presidential confidant who had defended Trump during his first impeachment trial, had been reluctant to appear formally for an on-record interview. Like other former White House officials, it is possible he claimed his counsel to the Republican president as privileged information he was unwilling to share with the committee.

It remained unclear after he left Capitol Hill Friday afternoon whether he had remained within those parameters during the hourslong interview.

Cipollone has been a sought-after witness after bombshell testimony revealed his apparently desperate and last-ditch efforts to prevent Trump’s actions. The panel was told he had warned that the defeated president would be charged with “every crime imaginable” if he went to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, trying to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election. Cipollone was subpoenaed for his testimony.

The panel said Cipollone was “uniquely positioned to testify” in a letter accompanying the subpoena issued last week.

“Mr. Cipollone repeatedly raised legal and other concerns about President Trump’s activities on January 6th and in the days that preceded,” Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat, said in a statement. “While the Select Committee appreciates Mr. Cipollone’s earlier informal engagement with our investigation, the committee needs to hear from him on the record, as other former White House counsels have done in other congressional investigations.”

Cipollone’s central role came into focus during a surprise committee hearing last week, when former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson described his repeated efforts to stop Trump from joining the mob at the Capitol.

Hutchinson said Cipollone urged her to persuade her boss, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, not to let Trump go to the Capitol.

Hutchinson testified that she had been told Trump was irate when he was ultimately prevented by his security team from going to the Capitol that day.

On the Sunday before the January 6 attack, Cipollone was also part of a key meeting with Justice Department officials at the White House who threatened to resign if Trump went ahead with plans to install a new acting attorney general who would pursue his false claims of voter fraud.

One witness testified to the committee that during that meeting, Cipollone referred to a proposed letter making false claims about voter fraud as a “murder-suicide pact.”

Cipollone and his attorney, Michael Purpura, who also worked at the Trump White House, did not respond to requests for comment.

Earlier this week, Trump responded to news of Cipollone’s cooperation on his social media platform, Truth Social, calling it bad for the country.
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Native American News Roundup, July 3 – 9, 2022

Here is a summary of Native American-related news around the U.S. this week:

Cherokee veteran receives highest military honor

President Joe Biden awarded Cherokee Nation citizen Dwight Birdwell America’s highest military decoration during a White House ceremony Tuesday. Birdwell, 74, was awarded the Medal of Honor for extraordinary heroism during the Tet Offensive, a series of shock and awe attacks by North Vietnamese forces in January 1968.

“I’m grateful for all you have given our country and that at long last your story is being honored as it should have been always,” Biden told Birdwell (see video below), noting that Native Americans serve in U.S. armed forces at a higher percentage rate than “any other cohort.”

More than 42,000 Native Americans and Alaska Natives served in the Vietnam War, 90% of them voluntarily. Two-hundred-twenty-six lost their lives.

Nevada county removes barriers to Shoshone vote

Native Americans face a number of obstacles to participating in national elections, including access to polling sites and language access for those who aren’t proficient in English. Nye County, Nevada, this week became the first county in America to provide Shoshone language assistance to Native American voters — in this case, the Duckwater Shoshone Tribe of the Duckwater Reservation. The 1975 Voting Rights Act requires certain states and local governments to provide voter registration forms, ballots and other election materials where 5% or more of eligible voters are “minority language speakers.” U.S. Census data from 2021 show the tribe now meets that standard. Nye County first in nation to offer voting in Shoshone language

Blackfeet tribe using dogs to nose out disease

Researchers on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana are running a yearlong study to see whether dogs can be trained to sniff out chronic wasting disease (CWD) and other toxins in wild game and plants that are consumed or used in traditional cultural practices. While CWD hasn’t infected humans yet, scientists worry about the health risk of eating or handling infected wild game such as deer, moose or elk.

Dogs could help sniff out chronic wasting disease on a reservation in Montana

Works by ‘father of modern Native art’ on display

New Yorker magazine this week highlights the art of Oscar Howe (Mazuha Hokshina, or Trader Boy), a Yanktonai Dakota artist from the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota (1915-1983), whose work merged traditional tribal art with contemporary abstract styles and earned him regard as the father of the Native American fine art movement. His work is on display until September 11, 2022, at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian in New York; the exhibition will be on view at the Portland Art Museum, October 29, 2022–May 14, 2023, and at the South Dakota Art Museum at South Dakota State University, June 10, 2023–September 17, 2023.

A Frequently Misunderstood American Master

Google honors noted Native comedian

Google Doodle this week marked what would have been the 71st birthday of Charlie Hill, the first Native American comedian to appear on U.S. national television. A citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, Howe used humor to shed light on many of the grim realities of the Native American experience, poking fun at stereotypes about Natives and non-Natives.

Hill’s portrait/Doodle is the work of Alanah Astehtsi Otsistohkwa (Morningstar) Jewell, a French-Haudenosaunee artist from the Oneida Nation of the Thames in Ontario, Canada.

Charlie Hill’s 71st Birthday

 
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Biden Seeks to Balance Interests, Ideology in Mideast Trip

In his visit to the Middle East next week, President Joe Biden is set to push for Israel’s deeper integration in the region and urge Gulf countries to pump more oil to alleviate pressure on the global energy market. Observers will watch how Biden balances these U.S. interests with American values of human rights, in light of the killings of journalists Jamal Khashoggi and Shereen Abu Akleh. VOA White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has the story.
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Liz Cheney: If Warranted, Justice Department Should Not Hesitate to Prosecute Trump Over US Capitol Riot

One of the key lawmakers investigating the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol last year says that if the Justice Department concludes that former President Donald Trump fomented the mayhem to block Congress from certifying his 2020 reelection loss — it should not hesitate to prosecute him.

Congresswoman Liz Cheney, the vice chairperson on the panel investigating the insurrection and a vocal anti-Trump Republican, acknowledged to ABC News that the prosecution of a former U.S. president would be unprecedented and “difficult” for an already politically divided country.

But the Wyoming Republican said that not prosecuting Trump, if it were warranted, would be a “much graver constitutional threat” for the United States. Trump, a Republican, lost to Democrat Joe Biden, but to this day claims that vote-counting irregularities cost him a second four-year term in the White House.  

In an interview last Wednesday that was broadcast Sunday on the “This Week” show, Cheney said that “if a president can engage in these kinds of activities, and the majority of the president’s party looks away; or we as a country decide we’re not actually going to take our constitutional obligations seriously, I think that’s a much, a much more serious threat” than prosecuting him.

“I really believe we have to make these decisions, as difficult as it is, apart from politics. We really have to think about these from the perspective of: What does it mean for the country?” she said.

“There’s no question that he engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors. I think there’s no question that it’s the most serious betrayal of his oath of office of any president in the history of the nation. It’s the most dangerous behavior of any president in the history of the nation,” she said.

Asked whether the committee could make a referral to the Justice Department for prosecution of Trump and others, Cheney said, “Yes,” while adding that the Justice Department “doesn’t have to wait” for the panel to act. She said the committee could issue “more than one criminal referral,” including for possible witness tampering by former Trump aides trying to influence witnesses to stay loyal to Trump as he weighs a campaign to try to reclaim the presidency in the 2024 election.

The Justice Department is in the midst of an ongoing wide-ranging investigation of the riot but has not said it is specifically targeting Trump.

Cheney offered her thoughts a day after she led two hours of questioning Tuesday of Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide to Trump’s last White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows.

Hutchinson, 25, gave an explosive behind-the-scenes account of Meadows’s and Trump’s actions before and during the January 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol by about 2,000 Trump supporters.

She told lawmakers how Trump became angrier and more volatile as the reality of his election loss set in and he realized that despite his private and public entreaties, former Vice President Mike Pence would not agree to upend the election outcome and send the results in several key states Trump narrowly lost back to their state legislatures so they would name electors supporting Trump to replace those legitimately chosen to vote for Biden in the Electoral College.

She testified that Trump was told ahead of a rally near the White House before the riot at the Capitol unfolded that some of his supporters were armed and equipped with body armor and yet urged them to “fight like hell” to upend the election outcome.

She said that a Meadows aide told her that Trump was angered that his Secret Service security detail would not drive him to the Capitol where his supporters were massing before storming into the Capitol. In one moment disputed by the Secret Service, Hutchinson said Trump tried to grab the steering wheel from a security agent and demanded he be driven to the Capitol.

As some of the rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” — she said Meadows told her that Trump approved of the sentiment, saying his No.2 in command deserved to be hanged. Some unknown Trump supporters had erected a gallows on the National Mall within eyesight of the Capitol.  

Trump has worked to disparage Hutchinson’s testimony, posting on social media that “I hardly know who this person … is, other than I heard very negative things about her.”

“She is bad news!” he added.

In the ABC interview, Cheney said she was “absolutely confident” about Hutchinson’s testimony, saying, “She’s an incredibly brave young woman.”In the United States, presidents are effectively chosen in separate elections in each of the 50 states, not through the national popular vote. Each state’s number of electoral votes is dependent on its population, with the biggest states holding the most sway. The rioters who stormed the Capitol tried to keep lawmakers from certifying Biden’s eventual 306-232 victory in the Electoral College.     

At the heart of Trump’s effort to stay in power was an audacious plan espoused by a key Trump lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and conservative lawyer John Eastman, to get legislatures in states Trump narrowly lost to appoint new electors supporting him to replace the official ones favoring Biden. 

While the House committee cannot bring criminal charges, the Department of Justice is closely monitoring the hearings to determine whether anyone, Trump included, should be charged with illegally trying to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.  

No U.S. president has ever been charged with a criminal offense after leaving office.

Trump has often derided the nine-member House of Representatives panel investigating the riot at the Capitol and attacked its witnesses who have painted a highly unfavorable account of his postelection pressure campaign to stay in office against repeated findings of his own key aides, including former Attorney General William Barr, that there was no evidence of fraud sufficient to overturn the election outcome.

The investigative panel is comprised of seven Democrats, Cheney and another vocal Republican critic of Trump, Congressman Adam Kinzinger.  

Cheney said, “I think you will continue to see in the coming days and weeks additional detail about the president’s activities and behavior” on January 6 last year.  

In one of the hearings set for later this month, the committee is exploring how Trump watched the riot unfold on television for more than three hours while rejecting pleas from aides and his elder daughter, Ivanka, a White House adviser to him, to publicly urge to rioters to leave the Capitol.

More than 800 of them have been arrested and more than 300 have pleaded guilty to an array of criminal charges or been convicted at trials and handed prison terms of a few weeks to more than four years.
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Congressional Candidate: US Hasn’t Done Enough to Prevent War in Ukraine

Ukrainian-born Karina Lipsman is running for a seat in the US House. VOA’s Yurii Mamon has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.
Camera: Kostiantyn Golubchyk
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High Court Marshal Seeks Enforcement of Anti-Picketing Laws

The marshal of the U.S. Supreme Court has asked Maryland and Virginia officials to enforce laws she says prohibit picketing outside the homes of the justices who live in the two states.

“For weeks on end, large groups of protesters chanting slogans, using bullhorns, and banging drums have picketed Justices’ homes,” Marshal Gail Curley wrote in the Friday letters to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and two local elected officials.

Curley wrote that Virginia and Maryland laws and a Montgomery County, Maryland, ordinance prohibit picketing at justices’ homes, and she asked the officials to direct police to enforce those provisions.

Justices’ homes have been the target of abortion rights protests since May, when a leaked draft opinion suggested the court was poised to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion nationwide.

The protests and threatening activities have “increased since May,” Curley wrote in a letter, and have continued since the court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade was issued last week.

“Earlier this week, for example, 75 protesters loudly picketed at one Justice’s home in Montgomery County for 20-30 minutes in the evening, then proceeded to picket at another Justice’s home for 30 minutes, where the crowd grew to 100, and finally returned to the first Justice’s home to picket for another 20 minutes,” Curley wrote in her letter to Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich. “This is exactly the kind of conduct that the Maryland and Montgomery County laws prohibit.”

In her letter to Jeffrey McKay, chairman of the Fairfax County board of supervisors, she said one recent protest outside an unspecified justice’s home involved dozens of people chanting, “no privacy for us, no peace for you!”

The letters from Curley were dated Friday and shared with reporters by a spokesperson for the Supreme Court on Saturday.

Curley’s request came about a month after a California man was found with a gun, knife and pepper spray near the Maryland home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh after telling police he was planning to kill the justice. The man, Nicholas John Roske, 26, of Simi Valley, Calif., has been charged with attempting to murder a justice of the United States and has pleaded not guilty.

Youngkin and Hogan, both Republicans, have both previously expressed concerns about the protests. In May, they sent a joint letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland asking for federal law enforcement resources to keep the justices safe and enforce a federal law they said prohibits picketing with the intent to influence a judge.

Hogan spokesperson Michael Ricci said in a statement Saturday that the governor had directed state police to “further review enforcement options that respect the First Amendment and the Constitution.” He also said that “had the marshal taken time to explore the matter,” she would have learned that the constitutionality of the Maryland statute she cited has been questioned by the state Attorney General’s Office.

Elrich said he had no recording of having received the letter addressed to him and questioned why it was released to the press. He said he would review it and was willing to discuss it with Curley but defended the job Montgomery County Police have done so far.

“In Montgomery County we are following the law that provides security and respects the First Amendment rights of protestors. That is what we do, regardless of the subject of the protests,” he said.

Youngkin spokesperson Christian Martinez said the Virginia governor welcomed the marshal’s request and said Youngkin had made the same request of McKay in recent weeks.

“The Governor remains in regular contact with the justices themselves and holds their safety as an utmost priority. He is in contact with state and local officials on the Marshal’s request for assistance and will continue to engage on the issue of the Justice’s safety,” Martinez said.

Youngkin in May pushed for a security perimeter around the homes of justices living in Fairfax County, but McKay rebuffed that request, saying it would infringe on First Amendment protest rights. Youngkin also attempted to create a new felony penalty for certain actions during demonstrations aimed at judges or other officers of a court, which state lawmakers rejected.

A spokesperson for McKay said he was working on a response to the letter.
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US Capitol Riot Panel Hints at Criminal Referrals for Witness Tampering 

Lawmakers investigating the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol last year are signaling they could send referrals to the Justice Department for prosecution of illegal tampering with witnesses who have testified to the panel.

Representative Liz Cheney, vice chairperson of the House of Representatives investigative panel, displayed Tuesday two messages from notes sent to hearing witnesses saying that former President Donald Trump was keeping a close eye on the hearings and was counting on continued loyalty. The senders of the notes weren’t identified.

The panel is probing how the insurrection unfolded and Trump’s role in trying to upend his 2020 reelection defeat.

Cheney’s disclosure of the notes came after two hours of explosive testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, the former top assistant to Mark Meadows, who was Trump’s last White House chief of staff.

Hutchinson described in detail how Trump became angry and volatile in the last weeks of his presidency as the reality of his loss to Democrat Joe Biden sank in and his own associates dismissed his repeated claims that he had been cheated out of reelection.

CNN quoted unidentified sources Thursday saying Hutchinson was one of the witnesses who had been contacted by someone attempting to influence her testimony.

In an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” show Thursday, Cheney said the attempted influencing of witnesses is “very serious. It really goes to the heart of our legal system. And it’s something the committee will certainly be reviewing.”

She added, “It gives us a real insight into how people around the former president are operating, into the extent to which they believe that they can affect the testimony of witnesses before the committee. And it’s something we take very seriously, and it’s something that people should be aware of. It’s a very serious issue, and I would imagine the Department of Justice would be very interested in, and would take that very seriously, as well.”

At Tuesday’s hearing, Cheney did not say which of the committee’s witnesses had been contacted but displayed two text messages on a large television screen.

One said, “What they said to me is as long as I continue to be a team player, they know I’m on the team, I’m doing the right thing, I’m protecting who I need to protect, you know, I’ll continue to stay in good graces in Trump World.”

“And they have reminded me a couple of times that Trump does read transcripts and just to keep that in mind as I proceed through my depositions and interviews with the committee,” that witness continued.

In another example, a second witness said, “[A person] let me know you have your deposition tomorrow. He wants me to let you know that he’s thinking about you. He knows you’re loyal, and you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.”

Representative Zoe Lofgren, another member of the investigative panel, told CNN, “It’s a concern, and anyone who is trying to dissuade or tamper with witnesses should be on notice that that’s a crime, and we are perfectly prepared to provide any evidence we have to the proper authorities.”

A third committee member, Representative Jamie Raskin, said after the hearing, “It’s a crime to tamper with witnesses. It’s a form of obstructing justice. The committee won’t tolerate it. And we haven’t had a chance to fully investigate or fully discuss it, but it’s something we want to look into.”
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Native Americans Bristle at Suggestions They Offer Abortions on Tribal Land

Shortly after the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion to end women’s constitutional right to abortion, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt appeared on Fox News suggesting Native American tribes in his state, looking to get around Oklahoma’s tough new abortion ban, might “set up abortion on demand” on any of the 39 Indian reservations in that state.

“You know, the tribes in Oklahoma are super liberal,” Stitt said, “They go to Washington, D.C. They talk to President (Joe) Biden at the White House. They kind of adopt those strategies.”

The U.S. government recognizes tribes as sovereign nations, and as such, have the right to pass their own laws regulating abortion on tribal land, subject to certain limitations.

Stitt’s comments set off wide speculation in the press and in social media about whether abortion seekers could turn to Indian tribes for abortion services in states where the procedure is or soon will be banned now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned.

Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have called on the White House to open up federal land and resources to provide reproductive health services. Neither lawmaker referenced Indian reservations, nor have tribes suggested any interest in opening abortion havens.

“It’s been journalists. It’s been activists looking for some sort of a solution,” said Stacy Leeds, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma and a law professor at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law in Arizona. “And now in the last couple of days, it has started to escalate, with politicians almost warning tribes that they better not do this.”

Tuesday, the White House ruled out the possibility of using federal lands for abortion services.

But that hasn’t stopped the conversation in social media.

It is a conversation, however, that most Native Americans find problematic, if not downright offensive.

“Any time there’s a call for tribes to do something that is not originating in their own thought processes, it very much just reeks of further colonization,” said Leeds. “You know, the outsider trying to tell a local tribal government what their law and policy ought to be.”

Native Americans find the conversation particularly upsetting given a well-documented history of sexual violence against Indigenous women that ranged from rape and trafficking to forced sterilizations in the 1970s.

“And you also have this history of the wholesale removal of Native children away from their families and communities to boarding schools or being adopted out to other communities. It’s just traumatic for a lot of people,” Leeds said.

In its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the Supreme Court decriminalized abortion, but that didn’t guarantee all women had access. The 1976 Hyde Amendment, which was amended several times in later years, prohibits federal money being used to pay for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or endangerment to the woman’s life. The Indian Health Service relies on federal funds and is the only health care provider available for many Native communities.

To look to tribes for abortion services is to assume Native Americans are a left-leaning monolith, Leeds said.

“Politically, (Native) people are all over the place. You know, it’s a large leap to just automatically presume that everybody would want this,” she said. “And a lot of tribal spiritual traditions hold life as sacred from beginning to the end.”

In 2010, for example, the Navajo Nation Supreme Court ruled on a case involving the death of an unborn fetus in a highway collision, saying, “We take judicial notice that the child, even the unborn child, occupies a space in Navajo culture that can best be described as holy or sacred, although neither of these words convey the child’s status accurately. The child is awę́ę́ t’áá’íídą́ą́’hiną́, alive at conception, and develops perfectly in the care of the mother.”

Native Americans have been given few opportunities to voice their opinions on abortion. One exception is a 2020 study by the Southwest Women’s Law Center and the nonprofit Forward Together that surveyed Native American women on and off reservations in New Mexico — a state where abortions remain legal and available, even after the recent Supreme Court ruling.

When asked whether they would support or oppose a law that would criminalize doctors performing abortions, 45% of respondents said they would oppose it; 25% said they would support it, and 27% said they did not have a strong opinion one way or the other.

“Most of the Native women who are speaking out nationally are upset about the Supreme Court’s latest decision,” Leeds said. “But I don’t see any of them advocating that their communities then become the saviors of everyone else’s communities.”

Tribes are sovereign nations and have the right to pass their own laws regulating abortion on tribal land territories. But criminal jurisdiction in Indian Country is complex; whether tribal governments, state governments or the federal government has jurisdiction depends on the nature of the crime, the identity of the perpetrator and victim, and where the crime takes place.

In theory, tribes could perform abortions, said Leeds, but only in tribally funded facilities on Native patients by Native practitioners. Anyone else could be subject to state or federal law.

“And that’s the galling piece of this whole conversation,” Leeds said. “You want tribes to take this risk for you that might negatively impact their whole world indefinitely? People just don’t understand what they are truly asking.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Oklahoma will be allowed to prosecute non-Native Americans for crimes committed on reservations when the victim is Native, a decision that cuts back on the court’s 2020 ruling that a large chunk of eastern Oklahoma — about 43% of the state — remains an Indian reservation.

Stitt celebrated the decision.

“Today, our efforts proved worthwhile, and the court upheld that Indian country is part of a state, not separate from it,” Stitt said.

Oklahoma in May passed the Nation’s toughest abortion ban. Wednesday’s ruling reduces the likelihood of any tribal abortion haven in that state.
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Jackson to be Sworn in as Breyer Retires From Supreme Court

Nearly three months after she won confirmation to the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson is officially becoming a justice.

Jackson, 51, will be sworn as the court’s 116th justice Thursday, just as the man she is replacing, Justice Stephen Breyer, retires.

The judicial pas de deux is set to take place at noon, the moment Breyer said in a letter to President Joe Biden on Wednesday that his retirement will take effect after nearly 28 years on the nation’s highest court.

The court is expected to issue its final opinions earlier Thursday in a momentous and rancorous term that included overturning Roe v. Wade’s guarantee of the right to an abortion. The remaining cases are a challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate climate-warming emissions from power plants, and Biden’s bid to end the Trump-era “remain in Mexico” asylum program.

In a ceremony the court said it will stream live on its website, Jackson will recite two oaths required of Supreme Court justices, one administered by Breyer and the other by Chief Justice John Roberts.

Jackson, a federal judge since 2013, will be the first Black woman to serve as a justice. She will be joining three women, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett — the first time four women will serve together on the nine-member court.

Biden nominated Jackson in February, a month after Breyer, 83, announced he would retire at the end of the court’s term, assuming his successor had been confirmed. Breyer’s earlier-than-usual announcement and the condition he attached was a recognition of the Democrats’ tenuous hold on the Senate in an era of hyper-partisanship, especially surrounding federal judgeships.

The Senate confirmed Jackson’s nomination in early April, by a 53-47 mostly party-line vote that included support from three Republicans.

She has been in a sort of judicial limbo ever since, remaining a judge on the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., but not hearing any cases. Biden elevated her to that court from the district judgeship to which she was appointed by President Barack Obama.

Jackson will be able to begin work immediately, but the court will have just finished the bulk of its work until the fall, apart from emergency appeals that occasionally arise. That will give her time to settle in and familiarize herself with the roughly two dozen cases the court already has agreed to hear starting in October as well as hundreds of appeals that will pile up over the summer.
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January 6 Panel Subpoenas Former White House Counsel

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection issued a subpoena Wednesday to former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who is said to have stridently warned against former President Donald Trump’s efforts to try to overturn his election loss.

It’s the first public step the committee has taken since receiving the public testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, the onetime junior aide who accused Trump of knowing his supporters were armed on Jan. 6 and demanding that he be taken to the U.S. Capitol that day.

Cipollone, who was Trump’s top White House lawyer, is said to have raised concerns about the former president’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat and at one point threatened to resign. The committee said he could have information about several efforts by Trump allies to subvert the Electoral College, from organizing so-called alternate electors in states Biden won to trying to appoint as attorney general a loyalist who pushed false theories of voter fraud.

Cipollone has been placed in key moments after the election by Hutchinson as well as by former Justice Department lawyers who appeared for a hearing the week before.

Hutchinson said Cipollone warned before Jan. 6 that there would be “serious legal concerns” if Trump went to the Capitol with the protesters expected to rally outside.

The morning of Jan. 6, she testified, Cipollone restated his concerns that if Trump did go to the Capitol to try to intervene in the certification of the election, “we’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable.”

And as the insurrection went on, she says she heard Meadows tell Cipollone that Trump was sympathetic to rioters wanting to hang then-Vice President Mike Pence.

“You heard it,” Meadows told Cipollone, in her recollection. “He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.”

Reps. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat, and Liz Cheney, a Republican, the chairman and vice chairman of the committee, said in their letter to Cipollone that while he had given the committee an “informal interview” on April 13, his refusal to provide on-the-record testimony made their subpoena necessary.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican who sits on the committee, said last week that Cipollone told the committee he tried to intervene when he heard Trump was being advised by Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who wanted to push false claims of voter fraud. Federal agents recently seized Clark’s cell phone and conducted a search of his Virginia home.

Clark had drafted a letter for key swing states that was never sent but would have falsely claimed the department had discovered troubling irregularities in the election. Cipollone was quoted by one witness as having told Trump the letter was a “murder-suicide pact.”
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Trump Fought Secret Service to Join Capitol Rioters, White House Aide Testifies

New details on Trump’s encouragement of January 6 rioters
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First Post-Roe Primaries Put Abortion at Center of Key Races

The midterm primary season entered a new, more volatile phase on Tuesday as voters participate in the first elections since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision revoking a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion jolted the nation’s politics.

In Colorado’s Republican U.S. Senate primary, voters are choosing between businessman Joe O’Dea and state Rep. Ron Hanks. O’Dea backs a ban on late-term abortions but is otherwise the rare Republican who supports most abortion rights. Hanks backs a ban on the procedure in all cases.

Meanwhile, in the Republican race for governor in Illinois, Darren Bailey, a farmer and state senator endorsed by former President Donald Trump over the weekend, wants to end the state’s right to abortion except for instances in which the mother’s life is in danger. He doesn’t support exceptions for rape or incest. His opponent, Richard Irvin, the first Black mayor of Aurora, has said he would allow abortions in instances of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is at risk.

Both races are unfolding in states where abortion remains legal. Democrats have sought to elevate both Hanks and Bailey, betting that they have a better chance of winning the fall campaign if they’re competing against Republicans they could portray as extreme. In Colorado, Democrats have spent more than $2 million boosting Hanks’ candidacy. In Illinois, the sums have been vastly higher, with Democrats spending at least $16 million against Irvin and to boost Bailey as the nominee against Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

The strategy carries risks, especially if the magnitude of the GOP’s expected gains this fall becomes so significant that Democrats lose in states such as Illinois and Colorado, which have become strongholds for the party. But at a moment when Democrats are confronting voter frustration over inflation and rising gas prices, the focus on abortion may be their best hope.

“It’s a very inviting target, to go after a Republican candidate whose position is no exceptions,” said Dick Wadhams, a former chairman of the Colorado GOP who has worked for anti-abortion candidates in the past. “I do think the repeal of Roe v Wade may embolden more candidates to go in that direction.”

“A lot of opportunity, but a lot of peril”

Beyond Colorado and Illinois, elections are being held in Oklahoma, Utah, New York, Nebraska, Mississippi and South Carolina. Tuesday marks the final round of multi-state primary nights until August, when closely watched races for governor and U.S. Senate will unfold in Arizona, Wisconsin, Florida, Missouri and other states

And while Tuesday’s primaries are the first to happen in a post-Roe landscape, they will offer further insight into the resonance of Trump’s election lies among GOP voters.

In Oklahoma, one of the nation’s most conservative senators, James Lankford, won his primary challenge from evangelical pastor Jackson Lahmeyer, amid conservative anger that Lankford hasn’t supported Trump’s election claims.

In Utah, two Republican critics of Trump are targeting Sen. Mike Lee, accusing the two-term senator of being too preoccupied with winning the former president’s favor and helping him try to overturn the 2020 presidential election. In Mississippi, Rep. Michael Guest, a Republican who bucked Trump to vote for an independent Jan. 6 commission, faces a challenge from Michael Cassidy, a former Navy pilot.

Also in Colorado, indicted county clerk Tina Peters, who has been barred by a judge from overseeing elections in her home county in the western part of the state, is running for the GOP nomination for the state’s top elections post by contending she’s being prosecuted for uncovering a grand conspiracy to steal the 2020 election from Trump. She faces Pam Anderson, a former county clerk and critic of Trump’s election lies, for the nomination to challenge Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold in November.

Republicans worry that Peters, who is being prosecuted by a Republican district attorney for her role in a security breach in her county’s election system, would drag down the entire ticket if she becomes the nominee. The GOP has lost almost every statewide race since 2014 but hopes public disenchantment with President Joe Biden gives them an opening.

“There’s a lot of peril on June 28 for Republicans,” Wadhams said. “A lot of opportunity, but a lot of peril as well.”

Other GOP opportunities in the state come in the newly created congressional swing seat north of Denver, where four Republican candidates are competing to face state Rep. Yadira Caraveo, the only Democrat running in the primary. Heidi Ganahl, the lone statewide elected Republican as a member of the University of Colorado’s board of regents, faces Greg Lopez, a former mayor in suburban Denver, in the contest for the GOP nomination to face Democratic Gov. Jared Polis.

Also in Colorado, firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert faces moderate state Sen. Don Coram in the Republican primary in the western part of the state. In Colorado Springs, Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn, who faces regular primary challenges, this time is fighting back state Rep. Dave Williams, who failed to get the phrase “Let’s Go Brandon,” code for an obscenity against President Joe Biden, added to his official name on the ballot.

Voter seeks candidate who shares “our values”

Other than the governor’s race primary, Illinois also features two, rare incumbent vs. incumbent congressional primaries as a result of House districts being redrawn during last year’s redistricting. Democratic Reps. Sean Casten and Marie Newman will compete in a Chicago-area seat. And GOP Rep. Rodney Davis, one of the last moderates in the Republican caucus, faces Trump-backed Rep. Mary Miller, who at a rally with the former president this weekend described the Supreme Court decision as “a victory for white life.” A spokesman said she meant to say “right to life.”

In the smaller towns of Illinois, conservative voters were hankering for a change. Toni Block, 80, of McHenry, about 45 miles northwest of Chicago, voted for Bailey in the gubernatorial primary.

“He’s got all the good things that we need to get back to,” Block said. “Not only is he a Trump supporter, he has our values.”

In New York, Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, who became the state’s chief executive last fall when Andrew Cuomo resigned during a sexual harassment scandal, is fighting off primary challenges from the left and center. New York City’s elected public advocate, Jumaane Williams, contends Hochul hasn’t been active enough on progressive issues while Long Island Rep. Tom Suozzi blasts her for being too liberal on crime.

On the Republican side, Rep. Lee Zeldin is the frontrunner in a crowded gubernatorial primary field that includes Andrew Giuliani, the son of former New York mayor and Trump confidant Rudolph Giuliani. Trump has not made an endorsement in the race.
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Former White House Aide: Trump Angry, Volatile as 2020 Defeat Became Obvious

Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told U.S. lawmakers Tuesday that then-President Donald Trump became increasingly angry and volatile about his 2020 reelection loss, testifying that he agreed with rioters at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 last year when they called for the hanging of then-Vice President Mike Pence for refusing to block the election outcome.

Hutchinson said that as some of the thousands of Trump supporters at the Capitol chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” Trump told her boss, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, “Mike deserves it.”

She quoted Meadows as saying that Trump “doesn’t think (the anti-Pence protesters were) doing anything wrong.”

Trump supporters had erected a gallows on the National Mall within eyesight of the Capitol, although Pence’s security detail rushed him to safety as the mayhem raged. Some rioters came within about 12 meters of reaching him.

Later, Trump tweeted that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage” to block Congress from certifying that Democrat Joe Biden had defeated Trump in the 2020 election. But it was not until more than an hour later that Trump finally told his supporters in a video message to leave the Capitol, after earlier ignoring pleas from family members, including his daughter Ivanka, a White House aide, and other advisers to publicly call off the riot.

WATCH THE HEARING:

Hutchinson, who worked in an office just steps from Trump’s Oval Office, said she learned from Anthony Ornato, a Meadows aide responsible for coordinating Trump’s security detail, that the then-president, after a rally near the White House before the mayhem at the Capitol, attempted to grab the wheel of his limousine from a Secret Service agent and demanded to go to the Capitol to join his supporters.

Trump had told thousands of supporters at the rally that he would join them in walking to the Capitol, but his security detail had determined it was too dangerous and instead drove him back to the White House.

Hutchinson said she was told by Ornato that, once in the limousine, Trump was “under the impression … he thought they were going to the Capitol” and was “very, very angry” when he realized they were not.

“I’m the ‘effing’ president, take me to the Capitol,” Trump demanded, according to Ornato’s recounting of the incident to Hutchinson.

She testified that Ornato told her Trump grabbed the steering wheel but was pushed away by his chief security agent, Bobby Engel.

“Sir, you need to take your hand off of the steering wheel, we’re going back to the West Wing, we’re not going to the Capitol,” Hutchinson said, quoting Ornato’s retelling of what Engel told Trump.

“Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge toward Engel and when Mr. Ornato recounted the story to me, he motioned to his clavicles,” Hutchinson testified.

Earlier that day, according to Hutchinson, Trump had been informed that many of the supporters whom he was urging to march to the Capitol were armed and equipped with body armor. Hutchinson said the president was angered that the Secret Service was using magnetometers to check for weapons at the entrance to the rally and confiscating those it found. Trump reportedly said he wasn’t in any danger and complained that keeping people out of the rally made the crowd look smaller.

More than a month before, on Dec. 1, 2020, then Attorney General William Barr, the country’s top law enforcement official, had told the Associated Press that Justice Department investigators had not found evidence of election fraud sufficient to overturn Biden’s victory. Trump lost more than five dozen election lawsuits claiming fraud.

Hutchinson said Trump was furious when told of Barr’s remark to the AP reporter. She learned of his anger when she encountered a White House valet cleaning Trump’s private dining room next to the Oval Office.

Trump, she said, had thrown his lunch against a wall, shattering a plate and splattering ketchup on the wall.

Hutchinson said that both Meadows and a Trump attorney, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, sought pardons for their roles in trying to keep Trump in power.

But Trump, while pardoning other aides for their possible crimes before leaving office, did not act on the requests from Meadows or Giuliani, nor on similar demands from a half-dozen Republican congressmen Hutchinson said had requested pardons.

Hutchinson’s testimony came in the House of Representatives committee’s sixth hearing this month, with two more set for mid-July.

One of those hearings is set to detail the involvement of right-wing extremists in the insurrection at the Capitol and the other to explore what Trump was doing at the White House as he watched the riot unfold on television for more than three hours, ignoring all entreaties to tell the rioters to leave the Capitol.

Previously, an array of witnesses, in taped testimony and in person before the panel, have described how Trump and his allies sought to pressure Pence, the Justice Department and state officials to upend the congressional certification of the election results on January 6, 2021.

At the rally before the insurrection at the Capitol, Trump urged his supporters to “fight like hell” to block congressional approval of Biden’s victory.

About 2,000 of Trump’s supporters stormed past law enforcement officials into the Capitol, ransacking congressional offices, vandalizing the building and scuffling with police. More than 800 have subsequently been charged with offenses and more than 300 have pleaded guilty or been convicted in trials. Sentences have ranged from a few weeks in prison to more than four years.

In the United States, presidents are effectively chosen in separate elections in each of the 50 states, not through the national popular vote. Each state’s number of electoral votes is dependent on its population, with the biggest states holding the most sway. The rioters who stormed the Capitol tried to keep lawmakers from certifying Biden’s eventual 306-232 victory in the Electoral College.

At the heart of Trump’s effort to stay in power was an audacious plan espoused by Giuliani and conservative lawyer John Eastman to get legislatures in states Trump narrowly lost to appoint new electors supporting him to replace the official ones favoring Biden.

While the House committee cannot bring criminal charges, the Department of Justice is closely monitoring the hearings to determine whether anyone, Trump included, should be charged with illegally trying to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Last week, FBI agents raided the Washington-area home of a former assistant attorney general, Jeffrey Clark, who wanted Trump to name him attorney general in the last month of his presidency so he could advance Trump’s erroneous claims of vote fraud, which were at odds with Barr’s conclusion.

Trump appeared willing to make the Clark appointment but backed off when top Justice Department officials said Clark, an environmental lawyer, was not qualified to be the country’s top law enforcement official and threatened to quit en masse if he were named.

In addition, FBI agents, in a separate encounter in the southwestern state of New Mexico, seized the cell phone of Eastman.

A prosecutor in Atlanta, the capital of the state of Georgia, has convened a grand jury to probe Trump’s effort to overturn the vote in that state. Trump asked the state’s top election official, Brad Raffensperger, to find him 11,780 votes — one more than Biden defeated him by — out of 5 million ballots.

The investigative panel has heard testimony that key Trump aides told him he had lost the election and that there were minimal voting irregularities, not enough to overturn Biden’s Electoral College victory.

In addition, Trump was told it would be illegal for Pence to unilaterally block Biden’s victory as Pence presided over the congressional Electoral College vote count. Trump privately and publicly demanded the vice president block certification of Biden’s victory and to this day contends he was cheated out of another White House term.
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Former White House Aide to Testify About 2021 US Capitol Riot

The congressional panel investigating the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol last year is set to hear testimony Tuesday from Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, who was privy to key White House conversations as Trump sought to upend his 2020 election loss.

Watch the hearing live:

Hutchinson’s testimony is shrouded in secrecy and was hastily scheduled Monday, with the House of Representatives panel declining to identify her publicly and saying only that a surprise hearing would be held “to present recently obtained evidence.”

Multiple U.S. news outlets identified her as the new public witness, although the panel has previously shown snippets of her videotaped testimony from three private depositions she gave to the committee’s investigators.

In one brief segment, she testified that a half dozen Republican congressmen sought pardons against possible criminal prosecution from Trump before he left office. All had played roles in promoting his debunked claims that vote-counting fraud had cheated him out of a second term in the White House. Trump pardoned a handful of political aides as left office but not the House Republicans.

The investigative panel, after five hearings earlier this month, had previously said its next public hearings would not be held until mid-July. One of those hearings is set to detail the involvement of right-wing extremists in the insurrection at the Capitol and the other to explore what Trump was doing at the White House as he watched the riot unfold on television for more than three hours, ignoring entreaties from family members and associates to tell the rioters to leave the Capitol.

Previously, an array of witnesses, in taped testimony and in person before the panel, have described how Trump and his allies sought to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence, the Justice Department and state officials to upend the congressional certification of the election results on January 6, 2021.

Trump staged a rally near the White House shortly before the mayhem at the Capitol, urging his supporters to “fight like hell” to block congressional approval of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.

About 2,000 of Trump’s supporters stormed past law enforcement officials into the Capitol, ransacking congressional offices, vandalizing the building and scuffling with police. More than 800 have subsequently been charged with offenses and more than 300 have pleaded guilty or been convicted in trials. Sentences have ranged from a few weeks in prison to more than four years.

Some of the rioters shouted, “Hang Mike Pence!” in protest of the former vice president’s refusal to block certification of the election results in several states Trump narrowly lost. Trump wanted the official results sent back to those states so state legislators could then name electors supporting Trump rather than Biden.

During one of the hearings last week, the committee played a video clip of Hutchinson testifying that Meadows and a Trump attorney, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, held conversations about putting together fake slates of electors supporting Trump, part of the former president’s broad effort to change the election outcome.

News outlets have also reported that during one of her interviews with the committee, Hutchinson said Trump had approved of the “hang Mike Pence” chants from the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol and was dismayed that Pence’s security detail had rushed him to safety as the rioters came within 40 feet (12 meters) of reaching him. Trump supporters erected a gallows on the National Mall within view of the Capitol.

In the United States, presidents are effectively chosen in separate elections in each of the 50 states, not through the national popular vote. Each state’s number of electoral votes is dependent on its population, with the biggest states holding the most sway. The rioters who stormed the Capitol tried to keep lawmakers from certifying Biden’s eventual 306-232 victory in the Electoral College.

While the House committee cannot bring criminal charges, the Department of Justice is closely monitoring the hearings to determine whether anyone, Trump included, should be charged with illegally trying to reverse the outcome.

Last week, FBI agents raided the suburban Virginia home of a former assistant attorney general, Jeffrey Clark, who wanted Trump to name him attorney general in the last month of his presidency so he could advance Trump’s erroneous claims of vote fraud.

Trump appeared willing to make the appointment but backed off when top Justice Department officials said Clark, an environmental lawyer, was not qualified to be the country’s top law enforcement official and threatened to quit en masse if he were named.

In addition, FBI agents, in a separate encounter in the southwestern state of New Mexico, seized the cell phone of conservative lawyer John Eastman, a Trump supporter who pushed for the plan to name bogus electors supporting Trump in the states where Trump narrowly lost the vote counts.

A prosecutor in Atlanta, the capital of the state of Georgia, has convened a grand jury to probe Trump’s effort to overturn the vote in that state. Trump asked the state’s top election official, Brad Raffensperger, to find him 11,780 votes — one more than Biden defeated him by — out of 5 million ballots.

The investigative panel has heard testimony that key Trump aides told him he had lost the election and that there were minimal voting irregularities, not enough to overturn Biden’s Electoral College victory.

In addition, Trump was told it would be illegal for Pence to unilaterally block Biden’s victory as Pence presided over the congressional Electoral College vote count, as Trump privately and publicly implored the vice president to do.
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Native News Roundup, June 19-25

Here is a summary of Native American-related news around the U.S. this week:

Mohegan chief announced as new US treasurer

For the first time in U.S. history, a Native American’s signature will appear on all U.S. currency: U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced the new U.S. treasurer: Marilynn “Lynn” Malerba, the lifetime chief of the Mohegan Tribe in Connecticut.

As treasurer, Malerba will oversee the U.S. Mint, the Bureau of Printing and Engraving and the storage of about $270 billion worth of gold at Fort Knox.

“With this announcement, we are making an even deeper commitment to Indian Country,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said during a visit to the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, home of the Sicangu Lakota.

In her first official visit to Indian Country, Yellen also announced the establishment of a new Office of Tribal and Native Affairs that will coordinate the Treasury Department’s relations with tribes across the nation.

Treasury Applauds Appointment of Chief Lynn Malerba as Treasurer of the United States

Utah tribes to co-manage Bears Ears National Monument

Federal officials and leaders of five tribal nations — Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service and the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, and the Pueblo of Zuni — on June 21 signed a joint government agreement, formally reestablishing the Bears Ears Commission, which will oversee land management of the 5,500-square-kilometer (2,125-square-mile) Bears Ears National Monument.

“Today, instead of being removed from a landscape to make way for a public park, we are being invited back to our ancestral homelands to help repair them and plan for a resilient future,” said Carleton Bowekaty, Bears Ears Commission co-chair and lieutenant governor of Zuni Pueblo. “What can be a better avenue of restorative justice than giving Tribes the opportunity to participate in the management of lands their ancestors were removed from?”

In 2021, President Joe Biden restored two sprawling national monuments in southern Utah — Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante — reversing a decision by President Donald Trump that opened up Bears Ears for mining and other development.

BLM, Forest Service and Five Tribes of the Bears Ears Commission Commit to Historic Co-Management of Bears Ears National Monument

New California law honors tribal naming traditions

California Governor Gavin Newsom Wednesday signed a bill giving Native American families more time to register the births of their babies. Previously, families had 10 days to register with the state health department. But many Native families in California, as elsewhere, wait until the 10th day to name babies as part of a traditional ceremony.

Gavin Newsom Signs Jim Wood Bill Extending Birth Registration Deadline

Native pro cyclist sets alpine record

Neilson Powless, a member of the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin, on June 19 became the highest-ranked American in the pro-cycling world rankings after finishing fourth in the Tour de Suisse, a grueling nine-day, 1,300-kilometer staged race through the Swiss Alps.

See his remarks at the finish line, below.

The Tour de Suisse is considered the warm-up to the Tour de France, just a few weeks away. In 2020, Powless made headlines by becoming the first Native North American to ride in the Tour de France; he has not yet confirmed whether he’ll be on the starting list for this year’s event, which begins July 1.

Neilson Powless, Oneida, Becomes Highest Ranked American in the World of Pro-Cycling

 
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Jan. 6 Investigators: Trump Pressured Department of Justice to Overturn 2020 Election

In the fifth public hearing this month examining the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, congressional investigators detailed how former President Donald Trump pressured the nation’s highest law enforcement officials to declare the 2020 election results invalid. As VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, those fraudulent election claims were also pushed by Republican members of Congress who later sought pardons.
Producer: Katherine Gypson
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US Senate Approves Bipartisan Gun Violence Bill

The Senate easily approved a bipartisan gun violence bill Thursday that seemed unthinkable a month ago, setting up final approval of what will be Congress’ most far-reaching response in decades to the nation’s run of brutal mass shootings.

After years of futile Democratic efforts to curb firearms, 15 Republicans joined with them as both sides decided inaction was untenable after last month’s rampages in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas. It took weeks of closed-door talks but senators emerged with a compromise embodying incremental but impactful movement to curb bloodshed that has come to regularly shock — yet no longer surprise — the nation.

The $13 billion measure would toughen background checks for the youngest gun buyers, keep firearms from more domestic violence offenders and help states put in place red flag laws that make it easier for authorities to take weapons from people adjudged dangerous. It would also fund local programs for school safety, mental health and violence prevention.

“Families in Uvalde and Buffalo, and too many tragic shootings before, have demanded action. And tonight, we acted,” President Joe Biden said after passage. He said the House should send it to him quickly, adding, “Kids in schools and communities will be safer because of it.”

The election-year package fell far short of more robust gun restrictions Democrats have sought and Republicans have thwarted for years, including bans on the assault-type weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines used in the slayings in Buffalo and Uvalde. Yet the accord let leaders of both parties declare victory and demonstrate to voters that they know how to compromise and make government work, while also leaving room for each side to appeal to its core supporters.

“This is not a cure-all for the all the ways gun violence affects our nation,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., whose party has made gun restrictions a goal for decades. “But it is a long overdue step in the right direction.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in a nod to the Second Amendment right to bear arms that drives many conservative voters, said “the American people want their constitutional rights protected and their kids to be safe in school.” He said “they want both of those things at once, and that is just what the bill before the Senate will have accomplished.”

The day proved bittersweet for advocates of curtailing gun violence. Underscoring the enduring potency of conservative cIout, the right-leaning Supreme Court issued a decision expanding the right of Americans to carry arms in public by striking down a New York law requiring people to prove a need for carrying a weapon before they get a license to do so.

McConnell hailed the justices’ decision and Senate passage of the guns bill as “complementary victories that will make our country freer and safer at the same time.”

The Senate vote on final passage was 65-33. A cluster of House Democrats who watched the vote in the chamber’s rear included Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Ga., whose 17-year-old son was shot to death in 2012 by a man complaining his music was too loud.

In the key roll call hours earlier, senators voted 65-34 to end a filibuster by conservative GOP senators. That was five more than the 60-vote threshold needed. The House planned to vote Friday and approval seemed certain.

On both votes, 15 Senate Republicans joined all 50 Democrats, including their two allied independents, in backing the legislation.

Yet the votes highlighted the risks Republicans face by defying the party’s pro-gun voters and firearms groups like the National Rifle Association. Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Todd Young of Indiana were the only two of the 15 up for reelection this fall. Of the rest, four are retiring and eight don’t face voters until 2026.

Tellingly, GOP senators voting “no” included potential 2024 presidential contenders like Ted Cruz of Texas, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Tim Scott of South Carolina. Some of the party’s most conservative members voted “no” as well, including Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah.

Cruz said the legislation would “disarm law-abiding citizens rather than take serious measures to protect our children.”

John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, hailed senators who supported the measure for “coming together and putting the safety of the American people ahead of gun lobby priorities.”

While the Senate measure was a clear breakthrough, the outlook for continued congressional movement on gun curbs is dim.

Less than one-third of the Senate’s 50 GOP senators backed the measure and solid Republican opposition is certain in the House. Top House Republicans urged a “no” vote in an email from the No. 2 GOP leader, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, that called the bill “an effort to slowly chip away at law-abiding citizens’ 2nd Amendment rights.”

Both chambers — now narrowly controlled by Democrats — could well be run by the GOP after November’s midterm elections.

Senate action came one month after a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers in Uvalde. Just days before that, a white man was accused of being motivated by racism as he allegedly killed 10 Black grocery shoppers in Buffalo. Both shooters were 18 years old, a youthful profile shared by many mass shooters, and the close timing of the two slaughters and victims with whom many could identify stirred a demand by voters for action, lawmakers of both parties said.

The talks were led by Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Thom Tillis, R-N.C. Murphy represented Newtown, Connecticut, when an assailant killed 20 students and six staffers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, while Cornyn has been involved in past gun talks following mass shootings in his state and is close to McConnell.

Murphy said the measure would save thousands of lives and was a chance to “prove to a weary American public that democracy is not so broken that it is unable to rise to the moment.”

“I don’t believe in doing nothing in the face of what we saw in Uvalde” and elsewhere, Cornyn said.

The bill would make the local juvenile records of people age 18-20 available during required federal background checks when they attempt to buy guns. Those examinations, currently limited to three days, would last up to a maximum of 10 days to give federal and local officials time to search records.

People convicted of domestic abuse who are current or former romantic partners of the victim would be prohibited from acquiring firearms, closing the so-called “boyfriend loophole.”

That ban currently only applies to people married to, living with or who have had children with the victim. The compromise bill would extend that to those considered to have had “a continuing serious relationship.”

There would be money to help states enforce red flag laws and for other states without them that for violence prevention programs. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have such laws.

The measure expands the use of background checks by rewriting the definition of the federally licensed gun dealers required to conduct them. Penalties for gun trafficking are strengthened, billions of dollars are provided for behavioral health clinics and school mental health programs and there’s money for school safety initiatives, though not for personnel to use a “dangerous weapon.”
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Witnesses Detail Trump Bid to Pressure Justice Department 

The congressional panel investigating the 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol heard testimony Thursday that former President Donald Trump pushed Justice Department officials to investigate voter fraud allegations even though he had been assured there were no widespread irregularities that would upend his reelection defeat.

The panel focused its questions on the efforts of Jeffrey Clark, a former assistant attorney general specializing in environmental law, to be named attorney general in the last month of Trump’s presidency so he could pursue claims that Trump had been cheated out of a second four-year term. Such claims have been found to have no merit; state and federal judges have dismissed more than 60 lawsuits presented by Trump and his allies challenging election results.

Clark repeatedly pushed other Justice Department officials to investigate election fraud claims and to press some states to decertify their election results showing Democrat Joe Biden had defeated Trump.

But as Clark lobbied Trump to be named to head the Justice Department, other top agency officials told Trump that Clark was unqualified to lead the department, according to Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republican members of Congress on the investigative committee.

Ultimately, after other Justice Department officials threatened to resign immediately if Trump named Clark as their boss, Trump dropped the plan to promote Clark.

Clark’s home searched

Early Wednesday, FBI agents conducted a predawn search at Clark’s house in suburban Virginia outside Washington. Russ Vought, president of the Center for Renewing America, where Clark now works, said in a statement that the searchers forced Clark to stand outside “in the streets in his pajamas, and took his electronic devices.” Unnamed sources told The New York Times that the search was linked to the Justice Department’s investigation of efforts to reverse Trump’s 2020 election loss.

As the hearing started, House Select Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson said Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department were “a brazen attempt” to “help legitimize his lies” that he had been cheated out of winning in November 2020.

Thursday’s hearing was the fifth this month as the investigative panel explores Trump’s role in fomenting the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, where lawmakers had gathered to certify Biden’s presidential victory in the Electoral College.

About 2,000 Trump supporters, urged by Trump at a rally shortly beforehand to “fight like hell,” stormed into the Capitol past law enforcement officials, scuffling with police, vandalizing the building and ransacking congressional offices.

More than 800 of the protesters have been charged with an array of offenses, with 300 of them pleading guilty or being convicted at trials and imprisoned for terms ranging from a few weeks to more than four years.

Trump has derided the investigative panel, comprising seven Democrats and two anti-Trump Republicans, saying its presentation is biased against him. He continues to contend that he was cheated out of another term in the White House.

More evidence, more hearings

The investigative panel’s hearings were originally set to end with Thursday’s session, but with the panel collecting more and more evidence, it is now planning at least two more public hearings in July before releasing its findings in late summer.

One of the July hearings is expected to explore how right-wing groups adopted Trump’s erroneous election fraud claims to help plan the rampage at the Capitol, while the other hearing will touch on what Trump was doing at the White House for more than three hours while the rioters took over much of the Capitol.

Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin, a committee member, told reporters earlier this week, “We are picking up new evidence on a daily basis with enormous velocity, and so we’re constantly incorporating and including the new information that’s coming out.”

“There is evidence coming in from diverse sources now,” he said, “and I think that people have seen that we’re running a serious investigation that is bipartisan in nature, that is focused just on getting the facts of what happened, and a lot of people are coming forward now with information.”

Some key officials in the Trump administration have cooperated with the committee’s investigation. But others have balked, repeatedly invoking their constitutional right against self-incrimination and refusing to answer questions about Trump’s actions and their own in the post-election period and on January 6. Two former Trump advisers, Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, refused to cooperate and were indicted on contempt-of-Congress charges.

Electoral College count

At the center of Trump’s post-election efforts was a campaign to overturn the vote counts in states where he lost or to have fake electors supporting Trump named in states where Biden narrowly won.

In the United States, presidents are effectively chosen in separate elections in each of the 50 states, not through the national popular vote. Each state’s number of electoral votes depends upon its population, with the biggest states holding the most sway. The rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6 tried to keep lawmakers from certifying Biden’s eventual 306-232 victory in the Electoral College.

While the House committee cannot bring criminal charges, the Justice Department is closely monitoring the hearings to determine whether anyone, Trump included, should be charged with illegally trying to reverse the election outcome.

A prosecutor in Atlanta, the capital of the state of Georgia, has convened a grand jury investigation of Trump’s actions to overturn the vote in that state. Trump asked the state’s top election official, Brad Raffensperger, to find him 11,780 votes — one more than Biden defeated him by — out of 5 million ballots.

The investigative panel has heard testimony that key Trump aides told him he had lost the election and that there were a minimal number of voting irregularities, not enough to overturn Biden’s Electoral College victory.

In addition, Trump was told it would be illegal for then-Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally block Biden’s victory as he presided over the congressional Electoral College vote count, as Trump privately and publicly implored Pence to do.
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New Witnesses to Detail How Trump Pushed Justice Department to Probe 2020 Election Fraud Claims

The congressional panel investigating the causes of last year’s Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol is hearing testimony Thursday about how former President Donald Trump pushed Justice Department officials to investigate allegations of fraud in the 2020 election that he hoped would upend his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

House Select Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson said the panel would examine Trump’s “attempt to corrupt the country’s top law enforcement body,” much as state officials in Arizona and Georgia testified Tuesday that Trump unsuccessfully sought to get them to appoint bogus electors to help him stay in office for another four years or overturn votes showing Biden had defeated him.

In part, the Thursday hearing is expected to focus on the alleged efforts of Jeffrey Clark, a former assistant attorney general, to repeatedly push Justice Department officials to investigate election fraud claims and to force some states to “decertify” their election results showing Biden had won.

Associates say Trump considered naming Clark attorney general over acting attorney general Jeff Rosen, who, like his predecessor, former attorney general William Barr, said there was no evidence of fraud substantial enough to overturn Biden’s victory.

In a short video clip shown at the end of Tuesday’s hearing, Richard Donoghue, who served as acting U.S. deputy attorney general from December 2020 to January 2021, said he would have immediately quit if Trump had named Clark attorney general in the waning weeks of his administration.

Thursday’s hearing is the fifth this month as the investigative panel explores Trump’s role in fomenting the attack on the Capitol as lawmakers gathered to certify Biden’s presidential victory in the Electoral College.

About 2,000 Trump supporters, urged by Trump at a rally shortly beforehand to “fight like hell,” stormed into the Capitol past law enforcement officials, scuffling with police, vandalizing the building and ransacking congressional offices.

More than 800 of the protesters have been charged with an array of offenses, with 300 of them already pleading guilty or convicted at trials and imprisoned for terms ranging from a few weeks to more than four years.

Trump has derided the investigative panel, comprised of seven Democrats and two anti-Trump Republicans, saying its presentation is biased against him. To this day, he has claimed erroneously that he was cheated out of another term in the White House.

The investigative panel’s hearings were set to end with Thursday’s session. The committee is set to release its findings in late summer.

But Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin, a committee member, told reporters, “We are picking up new evidence on a daily basis with enormous velocity, and so we’re constantly incorporating and including the new information that’s coming out.”

“There is evidence coming in from diverse sources now,” he said, “and I think that people have seen that we’re running a serious investigation that is bipartisan in nature, that is focused just on getting the facts of what happened, and a lot of people are coming forward now with information.”

Some key officials in the Trump administration have cooperated with the committee’s investigation. But others have balked, repeatedly invoking their constitutional right against self-incrimination and refusing to answer questions about Trump’s actions and their own in the post-election period and on Jan. 6. Two former Trump advisers, Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, refused to cooperate and were indicted on contempt of Congress charges.

Republican Representative Liz Cheney, the panel’s vice chair, called on Pat Cipollone, Trump’s former White House counsel, to answer more questions than he already has.

At the center of Trump’s post-election efforts was an audacious scheme to overturn the vote counts in states where Trump lost or to have fake electors supporting Trump named in states where Biden narrowly defeated him.

In the United States, presidents are effectively chosen in separate elections in each of the 50 states, not through the national popular vote. Each state’s number of electoral votes is dependent on its population, with the biggest states holding the most sway. The rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 tried to keep lawmakers from certifying Biden’s eventual 306-232 victory in the Electoral College.

While the House committee cannot bring criminal charges, the Department of Justice is closely monitoring the hearings to determine whether anyone, Trump included, should be charged with illegally trying to reverse the election outcome.

A prosecutor in Atlanta, the capital of Georgia, has convened a grand jury investigation to probe Trump’s actions to overturn the vote in that state. Trump asked the state’s top election official, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” him 11,780 votes — one more than Biden defeated him by — out of 5 million ballots.

The investigative panel has already heard testimony that key Trump aides told him he had lost the election and that there were a minimal number of voting irregularities, not enough to overturn Biden’s Electoral College victory.

In addition, Trump was told it would be illegal for then-Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally block Biden’s victory as he presided over the congressional Electoral College vote count, as Trump privately and publicly implored Pence to do.
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Biden Seeks Gas Tax Relief Amid War-Amplified Price Hikes

The war in Ukraine is causing disruptions around the world, from what President Joe Biden terms a “Putin price hike” for American petroleum consumers to an impending global food crisis. On Wednesday, Biden said he was taking steps to try to offset the effects, something he said he’ll be focusing on ahead of two key summits and a Mideast trip. Anita Powell reports from the White House.
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House January 6th Committee to Hold Next Public Hearing

The House of Representatives committee investigating the January 6 , 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol will hold its next hearing Tuesday. The committee has sought to make its case against former President Donald Trump, saying his baseless and repeated claims of a stolen election incited his followers to violence. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports,
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Trump Calls Hearings into January 6 Attack a ‘Theatrical Production’

Former U.S. President Donald Trump Friday sharply criticized the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, in his first appearance since the committee began its public hearings.

Speaking to a gathering of religious conservatives in Nashville, Tennessee, Trump said, “Let’s be clear, this is not a congressional investigation — this horrible situation that’s wasting everyone’s time.”

“This is a theatrical production of partisan political fiction that’s getting these terrible, terrible ratings and they’re going crazy,” he added.

The hearings have laid out how the attack on the Capitol occurred and Trump’s role in it by inviting his supporters to come to Washington and “fight like hell” to keep him in office.

In the latest day of hearings, on Thursday, witnesses presented testimony that Trump repeatedly pressured then-Vice President Mike Pence to thwart Congress from certifying that Democrat Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, even after being repeatedly advised that it was illegal to do so.

Pence was presiding over Congress as lawmakers were in the initial stages of the state-by-state count of Electoral College votes to verify Biden’s victory when about 2,000 Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to disrupt the proceeding.

Trump, in private and publicly at a rally near the White House just before Congress convened, implored Pence to reject the electoral count from states where Biden narrowly won and send the results back to the states so that Republican-controlled legislatures could order another election or submit the names of Trump electors to replace those favoring Biden.

Pence, a Trump loyalist during their four years in the White House, refused Trump’s demands, saying his role was limited by the Constitution to simply open the envelopes containing the Electoral College vote counts from each state.

Trump criticized Pence again on Friday for failing to stop the vote certification, saying, “Mike Pence had a chance to be great. He had a chance to be, frankly, historic.”

However, he said, “Mike did not have the courage to act.”

The House committee investigating the attack showed a brief video clip Thursday of Marc Short, who served as Pence’s chief of staff, saying that Pence told Trump “many times” that he did not have the authority to overturn the Biden victory.

Pence counsel Greg Jacob described to the committee how a conservative Trump lawyer, John Eastman, tried to convince Pence that he had the legal authority to unilaterally upend the election. But Jacob said Eastman eventually conceded that the  Supreme Court would likely unanimously reject his legal theory.

Earlier this week, the House panel showed videotaped testimony from numerous White House and political aides saying they told Trump on election night to hold off on declaring victory, advice he ignored when he declared victory in the early hours of Nov. 4, 2020.

Former Attorney General William Barr and numerous aides have told the committee that in the weeks between the election and the insurrection, they told Trump his election fraud claims were baseless and that he had lost the election.

Trump continued to assert Friday that he won the 2020 election and insisted that he did nothing wrong after the vote.

He hinted that he would again run for president, asking the cheering crowd “Would anybody like me to run for president?”

On Monday, Trump issued a 12-page statement calling the Jan. 6 investigation an attempt by Democrats to prevent him from running again for president in 2024.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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US County That Alleged Vote Machine Fraud Certifies Election Results

A Republican-controlled county commission in New Mexico that refused to recognize election returns this month after citing unfounded conspiracy theories about voting machines bowed to legal pressure on Friday and certified the results. 

Otero County commissioners voted 2-1 to certify the county’s June 7 primary election results, but only after the New Mexico Supreme Court ordered them to do so and after threats of legal action by the state’s Democratic attorney general. 

The commissioner who still voted against certifying the results, Couy Griffin, did so hours after being sentenced for breaching the U.S. Capitol during the January 6, 2021, riot. 

Griffin, an election-fraud conspiracist and founder of “Cowboys for Trump,” avoided jail time, was fined $3,000 and was given one year of supervised release with the requirement that he complete 60 hours of community service. 

Election falsehoods

Former Republican President Donald Trump has continued to push falsehoods that Democratic President Joe Biden stole the 2020 election. Many Republicans believe Trump even after revelations in a congressional hearing this month that the former president’s own daughter and other close allies rejected the falsehoods. 

There are fears of more election turmoil ahead because of the hold that unfounded conspiracy theories about voting machines and vote counts now have on many Republican lawmakers and grassroots Republican voters. 

Otero County’s initial move not to certify its votes comes ahead of the November midterm elections that will decide control of the U.S. Congress, with both chambers now narrowly held by Democrats, as well as the 2024 presidential election, in which Trump has indicated he could seek a second White House term. 

U.S. Representative Adam Kinzinger, one of 10 House of Representatives Republicans who voted to impeach Trump on a charge of inciting the deadly January 6 attack, said Otero’s initial refusal to certify was a worrying harbinger of election turmoil ahead. 

“Wake up America and GOP, this will destroy us,” Kinzinger, a member of the congressional commission investigating the January 6 attack, tweeted on Wednesday. 

New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, who had previously said the county commission was acting illegally, expressed relief that the elections results had been certified. 

“The voters of Otero County and the candidates who duly won their primaries can now rest assured that their voices have been heard and the general election can proceed as planned,” Toulouse Oliver said in a statement. 
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Trump Directed $250 Million in Donations to Leadership PAC 

Former U.S. President Donald Trump raised $250 million in donations in the weeks after the November 2020 presidential election for an organization ostensibly intended to fund court challenges in support of his false claims that the election was fraudulent. Instead, he directed that money to an unrelated political action committee, or PAC, according to congressional investigators.

In its second hearing about its findings, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol made the case that the former president knew that he had lost the election but continued raising money from his supporters by sending out appeals for donations to an Election Defense Fund.

The committee played recordings of depositions given by former employees of Trump’s campaign, one of whom said, “I don’t believe there is actually a fund called the Election Defense Fund.”

Another former Trump campaign staffer said the fund was simply a “marketing tactic.”

Money went to leadership PAC

The committee said some of the money Trump’s campaign raised in the weeks after the election went to paying down campaign debt and into the coffers of the Republican National Committee. A large amount also went to a new leadership PAC called Save America, which was formed three days after the election.

Under law, politicians with leadership PACs have broad latitude to spend the money they collect as they see fit.

Created in the 1970s, leadership PACs were originally intended to let political candidates raise money that they could use to support other candidates and political causes. But according to Robert Maguire, research director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), vagueness in the law has meant the PACs are often used for other causes.

“What they’ve become, in many cases, are essentially slush funds,” Maguire told VOA.

“We’ve had problems for years with members of Congress using leadership PAC money to pay for luxury hotel stays, private jet flights, rounds of golf and exclusive membership-only golf courses,” he said, all within the bounds of the law.

Spending connected to Trump allies

Amanda Wick, a senior investigative counsel with the Jan. 6 committee, said in a recorded statement that the new PAC “made millions of dollars of contributions to pro-Trump organizations.”

She said they included a $1 million contribution to the Conservative Partnership Institute, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ charitable foundation; $1 million to the America First Policy Institute, an organization employing “several former Trump administration officials”; $204,857 to the Trump Hotel Collection, and more than $5 million to Event Strategies Inc., the organization that managed Trump’s rally on the morning of Jan. 6.

“Throughout the committee’s investigation, we found evidence that the Trump campaign and its surrogates misled donors as to where their funds would go and what they would be used for,” said Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren, who serves on the committee.

Calling the contributions a “big rip-off,” Lofgren added, “Donors deserve to know where their funds are really going. They deserve better than what President Trump and his team did.”

Unethical but not illegal

Campaign finance experts say Trump’s solicitation of funds for a nonexistent Election Defense Fund, and subsequent direction of that money to his leadership PAC was unethical, but probably stopped short of outright illegality.

“There’s certainly a long list of examples of politicians and political committees stretching the truth or using inflammatory messaging in order to raise money,” campaign finance expert Brendan Fischer told VOA. “But I think what the Trump campaign was doing in the wake of the 2020 election brought it to another level.”

Fischer, an attorney and the deputy executive director at Documented, an investigative watchdog group, said donors were told their money was going to support a legal challenge.

“But in reality, the money raised went towards paying down the Trump campaign’s debt, funding the Republican Party and financing Trump’s newly created PAC, Save America. So, it was extremely messy. It went beyond the typical tenor of misleading fundraising appeals into something close to outright fraud.”

Maguire of CREW said there were “very clear” ethical problems with how Trump raised the money. But he said the fundraising effort was probably legal.

“These kinds of statements and fundraising appeals are pretty well lawyered,” he said, noting that the appeals appeared to contain fine print that left the Trump campaign the leeway to use the money as it saw fit.

Other groups focused on the ethical problems with Trump’s approach.

“It was grift, pure and simple, but on a massive scale,” said Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, in a prepared statement. “Donald Trump was not content to just ignore the will of the American people and attempt to steal the 2020 election in a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy. He was determined to make a lot of money doing it.”

Trump comments

Trump did not comment on the $250 million the committee claims he raised after the election. But he issued a 12-page statement June 13 criticizing the committee, which he characterized as a “Kangaroo Court.”

“Seventeen months after the events of January 6th, Democrats are unable to offer solutions,” he wrote. “They are desperate to change the narrative of a failing nation, without even making mention of the havoc and death caused by the Radical Left just months earlier. Make no mistake, they control the government. They own this disaster. They are hoping that these hearings will somehow alter their failing prospects.”
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