The Full Belmonte, 2/6/2022
“WASHINGTON — Senior Biden administration officials told lawmakers this past week that they believed the Russian military had assembled 70 percent of the forces it would need to mount a full invasion of Ukraine, painting the most ominous picture yet of the options that Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, has created for himself in recent weeks.
During six hours of closed meetings with House and Senate lawmakers on Thursday, the officials warned that if Mr. Putin chose the most aggressive of his options, he could quickly surround or capture Kyiv, the capital, and remove the country’s democratically elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky. They also warned that the invasion could prompt an enormous refugee crisis on the European continent, sending millions fleeing.
The officials stressed that U.S. intelligence analysts still did not assess that Mr. Putin had made a final decision to invade. But satellite imagery, communications among Russian forces and images of Russian equipment on the move show that he has assembled everything he would need to undertake what the officials said would constitute the largest military operation on land in Europe since 1945.
They also warned of enormous possible human costs if Mr. Putin went ahead with a full invasion, including the potential deaths of 25,000 to 50,000 civilians, 5,000 to 25,000 members of the Ukrainian military and 3,000 to 10,000 members of the Russian military. The invasion, they said, could also result in one million to five million refugees, with many of them pouring into Poland.” Read more at New York Times
“A senior Russian diplomat dismissed new U.S. military and intelligence assessments — which estimated Russia could seize Kyiv in days and leave up to 50,000 civilians killed or wounded — as alarmist and as unlikely as an attack by Washington on London.
‘Madness and scaremongering continues. ... what if we would say that US could seize London in a week and cause 300K civilian deaths?’ Russia’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Dmitry Polyanskiy, tweeted Sunday.
And parliamentary deputy Artem Turov, a member of President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, accused the United States of disseminating fake information and of "doing everything possible to fan a new conflict.”
The updated U.S. military and intelligence assessments briefed to lawmakers and European partners over the past several days were U.S. officials’ bleakest assessment yet of the deteriorating security situation in Ukraine. They came as the Biden administration was also warning that Moscow was considering filming a fake attack against Russian territory or Russian-speaking people by Ukrainian forces as a pretext to invade its neighbor — a claim the Kremlin has strenuously denied.” Read more at Washington Post
“The House select committee scrutinizing the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol is borrowing techniques from federal prosecutions, employing aggressive tactics typically used against mobsters and terrorists as it seeks to break through stonewalling from former President Donald J. Trump and his allies and develop evidence that could prompt a criminal case.
In what its members see as the best opportunity to hold Mr. Trump and his team accountable, the committee — which has no authority to pursue criminal charges — is using what powers it has in expansive ways in hopes of pressuring Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to use the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute them.
The panel’s investigation is being run by a former U.S. attorney, and the top investigator brought in to focus on Mr. Trump’s inner circle is also a former U.S. attorney. The panel has hired more than a dozen other former federal prosecutors.
The committee has interviewed more than 475 witnesses and issued more than 100 subpoenas, including broad ones to banks as well as telecommunications and social media companies. Some of the subpoenas have swept up the personal data of Trump family members and allies, local politicians and at least one member of Congress, Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio. Though no subpoena has been issued for Mr. Jordan, his text messages and calls have shown up in communications with Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, and in a call with Mr. Trump on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021….
The committee’s aggressive approach carries with it another obvious risk: that it could fail to turn up compelling new information about Mr. Trump’s efforts to hold onto power after his defeat or to make a persuasive case for a Justice Department prosecution. Mr. Trump survived years of scrutiny by the special counsel in the Russia investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, and two impeachments. Despite a swirl of new investigations since he left office, the former president remains the dominant force in Republican politics.
The committee has no law enforcement role, and its stated goal is to write a comprehensive report and propose recommendations, including for legislation, to try to make sure the events of Jan. 6 are never repeated.” Read more at New York Times
“President Donald Trump tore up briefings and schedules, articles and letters, memos both sensitive and mundane.
He ripped paper into quarters with two big, clean strokes — or occasionally more vigorously, into smaller scraps.
He left the detritus on his desk in the Oval Office, in the trash can of his private West Wing study and on the floor aboard Air Force One, among many other places.
And he did it all in violation of the Presidential Records Act, despite being urged by at least two chiefs of staff and the White House counsel to follow the law on preserving documents.
‘It is absolutely a violation of the act,’ said Courtney Chartier, president of the Society of American Archivists. ‘There is no ignorance of these laws. There are White House manuals about the maintenance of these records.’
Although glimpses of Trump’s penchant for ripping were reported earlier in his presidency — by Politico in 2018 — the House select committee’s investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection has shined a new spotlight on the practice. The Washington Post reported that some of the White House records the National Archives and Records Administration turned over to the committee appeared to have been torn apart and then taped back together.
Interviews with 11 former Trump staffers, associates and others familiar with the habit reveal that Trump’s shredding of paper was far more widespread and indiscriminate than previously known and — despite multiple admonishments — extended throughout his presidency, resulting in special practices to deal with the torn fragments. Most of these people spoke on the condition of anonymity to share candid details of a problematic practice.
The ripping was so relentless that Trump’s team implemented protocols to try to ensure that he was abiding by the Presidential Records Act. Typically, aides from either the Office of the Staff Secretary or the Oval Office Operations team would come in behind Trump to retrieve the piles of torn paper he left in his wake, according to one person familiar with the routine. Then, staffers from the White House Office of Records Management were generally responsible for jigsawing the documents back together, using clear tape.
The Presidential Records Act requires that the White House preserve all written communication related to a president’s official duties — memos, letters, notes, emails, faxes and other material — and turn it over to the National Archives.
Some records sent to Jan. 6 were torn up, taped back together — mirroring a Trump habit
Typically, the White House records office makes decisions on archival vs. non-archival materials, according to an Archives official. The Presidential Records Act lays out a process allowing a president to dispose of records only after obtaining the assent of records officials.
It is unclear how many records were lost or permanently destroyed through Trump’s ripping routine, as well as what consequences, if any, he might face. Hundreds of documents, if not more, were likely torn up, those familiar with the practice say.
‘It is against the law, but the problem is that the Presidential Records Act, as written, does not have any real enforcement mechanism,’ said James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association. ‘It’s that sort of thing where there’s a law, but who has the authority to enforce the law, and the existing law is toothless.’
One person familiar with the National Archives process said that staff there were stunned at how many papers they received from the Trump administration that were ripped, and described it internally as ‘unprecedented.’…
‘He didn’t want a record of anything,’ a former senior Trump official said. ‘He never stopped ripping things up. Do you really think Trump is going to care about the records act? Come on.’
Problems with records preservation persisted throughout Trump’s term and became particularly acute at the time of the transition to the Biden administration.
Other administrations have also run afoul of the Presidential Records Act. White House aides in both Democratic and Republican administrations, for example, have long used personal devices to text with reporters as well as other staff, rather than government-issued devices, while others have been caught using personal email for official work.” Read more at Washington Post
“On the eve of the 70th anniversary of her accession to the British throne, Queen Elizabeth II issued a message of gratitude to her people and to her family, and said for the first time that her ‘sincere wish’ is that Duchess Camilla of Cornwall will be known as ‘Queen Consort’ when Prince Charles succeeds her.
‘And when, in the fullness of time, my son Charles becomes King, I know you will give him and his wife Camilla the same support that you have given me; and it is my sincere wish that, when that time comes, Camilla will be known as Queen Consort as she continues her own loyal service,’ her message read, according to the statement issued by Buckingham Palace Saturday evening.
The news immediately rocketed around the United Kingdom, almost overshadowing the moving message she issued, reiterating her 1947 vow at age 21 to devote herself to her people.
By backing Queen Camilla, the monarch ensured she had a significant role in shaping the future of the monarchy and a smooth transition once she's gone.
‘This is the most extraordinary message. The queen is ensuring the transition, when it comes, to her son as king is as seamless and trouble-free as possible,’’ former BBC royal correspondent Peter Hunt told the Press Association. ‘She’s future-proofing an institution she’s served for 70 years. And for Camilla, the journey from being the third person in a marriage to queen-in-waiting is complete.’” Read more at USA Today
“The Justice Department has sought phone and email records of a defense attorney who represented Stephen K. Bannon, the former adviser to President Donald Trump, in his dealings with a House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riots and his subsequent indictment for contempt of Congress, his defense said.
Bannon’s team decried the collection of Robert J. Costello’s records, saying it may have violated attorney-client privilege, a bedrock principle of U.S. legal practice that says a lawyer must keep confidential what they are told by their clients.
Bannon’s defense team made the new disclosures in a 19-page motion filed Friday night, suggesting it was outrageous for Bannon’s Washington-based FBI and U.S. prosecution team to have sought records of his lawyer’s communications in a misdemeanor contempt case for a period when he was in talks with both the House committee and prosecutors. The House committee referred Bannon for prosecution in October after he refused to appear pursuant to a Sept. 23 subpoena, and he was charged by indictment on Nov. 12.” Read more at Washington Post
Andre Locke, father of Amir Locke, speaking about his son during the protest on Saturday.Credit...Aaron Nesheim for The New York Times
“MINNEAPOLIS — Chanting the name of Amir Locke, a large crowd of protesters marched in frigid weather in downtown Minneapolis on Saturday to voice exasperation and anger over the conduct of law enforcement officers, nearly two years after the murder of George Floyd.
Mr. Locke, 22, was fatally shot in an early morning raid at an apartment complex on Wednesday when a SWAT team for the Minneapolis Police Department carried out a search warrant involving a homicide for the police in nearby St. Paul.
Mr. Locke was not named as a suspect in the warrant, according to authorities. Nor was he a resident of the apartment, according to Jeff Storms, a lawyer representing Mr. Locke’s family, who said that Mr. Locke was staying there with a cousin.
‘Say his name!’ shouted protesters, who, marching together, spanned more than one city block as they walked to the police station in the First Precinct. Some carried signs that read ‘Justice for Amir Locke and All Stolen Lives” and “Stop the War on Black America!’” Read more at New York Times
Joe Rogan introduces fighters during the UFC 269 ceremonial weigh-in at MGM Grand Garden Arena on Dec. 10 in Las Vegas. (Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)
“Joe Rogan apologized Saturday for the many previous instances in which the host used the n-word on his Spotify podcast.
Rogan, already under fire in recent weeks after medical professionals and musicians decried him for helping spread misinformation on the coronavirus, posted a video on Instagram to address what he described as ‘the most regretful and shameful thing that I’ve ever had to talk about publicly.’
Rogan made the apology in response to a compilation video shared widely on social media this past week showing various moments over 12 years in which Rogan said the n-word on his show. The video was posted by singer India.Arie, who recently removed her catalogue from Spotify in response to Rogan’s ‘language around race.’
While Rogan argued that the clips were taken out of context, the comedian acknowledged that the video looked ‘horrible, even to me.’ In a caption accompanying the video, Rogan wrote that there was ‘a lot of s--- from the old episodes of the podcast that I wish I hadn’t said, or had said differently.’” Read more at Washington Post
“WASHINGTON — One Navy SEAL candidate died and a second was in the hospital after falling ill just hours after they successfully completed the grueling Hell Week test that ends the first phase of assessment and selection for Navy commandos, the Navy said Saturday.
The Navy said both were rushed to the hospital in California. The Navy said neither one had experienced an accident or unusual incident during the five-and-a-half-day Hell Week.
The test is part of the SEALs BUD/S class, which involves basic underwater demolition, survival and other combat tactics. It comes in the fourth week as SEAL candidates are being assessed and hoping to be selected for training within the Naval Special Warfare Basic Training Command.
One of the candidates died at Sharp Coronado Hospital in Coronado, California, on Friday. The other was in stable condition at Naval Medical Center San Diego.” Read more at USA Today
“A memoir by the former defense secretary, Mark T. Esper, about his tenure in the Trump administration will be published with ‘minimal redactions’ after he sued the agency he once led because it wanted to block information in the manuscript, his lawyer said on Friday.
The announcement brought an end to a battle between Mr. Esper and the Defense Department over what material was considered classified and therefore could not be included in his book, titled ‘A Sacred Oath,’ which is set to be published in May.
Mr. Esper, who was fired by former President Donald J. Trump shortly after he lost re-election in the 2020 race, sued the Department of Defense in November, accusing agency officials of improperly blocking parts of his book ‘under the guise of classification.’
Mr. Esper’s lawyer, Mark S. Zaid, said in a statement on Friday that they had dropped the lawsuit after the Pentagon reversed its decisions about an ‘overwhelming majority’ of the portions of the book that it had earlier said were classified.” Read more at New York Times
“An armed man broke into the Colorado ranch of the former Democratic presidential candidate Michael R. Bloomberg and kidnapped a housekeeper, asking her for the whereabouts of Mr. Bloomberg’s two adult daughters, the authorities said in court documents filed this week.
The man, Joseph Beecher, 48, faces state and federal charges including kidnapping after he was accused of ramming his pickup truck through the main gate of the Westlands Ranch in Rio Blanco County on Wednesday. Mr. Bloomberg and his family were not present at the ranch at the time, officials said.
But Mr. Beecher told the female housekeeper that he had hoped to ‘make an international scene’ with Mr. Bloomberg, who was the mayor of New York City from 2002 to 2013, or with his daughters, before kidnapping the worker at gunpoint, according to court filings.
She was forced to drive Mr. Beecher in a pickup truck about 230 miles east, to the Denver area, and later to a town near the southern border of Wyoming, before the authorities tracked them both to a motel there early Thursday, officials said. The woman, identified as a supervising housekeeper at the ranch, was found unharmed.” Read more at New York Times
“A school board outside Denver voted to fire the district’s superintendent Friday night in a controversial move that came amid accusations that the newly elected conservative majority had violated state open-meeting laws.
The Douglas County, Colo., school board voted 4 to 3 in a special meeting Friday night to fire Corey Wise without cause, dismissing the superintendent with two years left in his contract. Wise, voted in by the board last April, supported policies on in-school masking and equity that were overturned in the months since by four conservatives who campaigned against critical race theory and other diversity initiatives and were elected to the board….
The vote followed allegations from the board’s liberal minority that the conservative members made an ultimatum in secret to Wise for him to resign or be fired through a vote — actions that would violate Colorado’s open-meeting laws. The allegations sparked outrage in the community and resulted in one of the Denver area’s largest school systems to close Thursday as 1,000 teachers, district staffers and parents protested the board in support of Wise. It also underscored mounting tensions in schools around the nation over divisive issues that have come into sharp relief amid the nation’s reckoning on race relations and pandemic policies.
The uproar from teachers and others in Douglas County did not change the opinions of the four conservative school board members Friday….
The move in Douglas County comes months after conservative candidates nationwide scored significant victories in school board elections. While issues regarding gender and the pandemic were key topics in those races, much of the attention from conservatives was directed toward critical race theory, an academic framework for examining the way laws and policies perpetuate systemic racism. Though critical race theory is not taught in any K-12 systems, the intellectual movement became a contentious culture war in which conservatives nationwide pushed back against racial equity initiatives by schools, including teaching about racism in American history. Initiatives focused on racial equity were turbocharged in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in 2020.
Conservative school board wins may deliver chilling effect on racial equity efforts
Douglas County is seen as a stronghold for conservatives, having supported Donald Trump in the presidential elections. The school board race in the county drew so much attention that the conservatives were featured on Fox News in the run-up to the election. All four members of the ‘Kids First’ group won, tipping the school board majority to the right.
The school board’s new majority made its presence known early on when the conservatives voted in December — amid surging coronavirus cases due to the omicron variant — to immediately drop the district’s mask mandate to help prevent the spread of coronavirus in its schools. After Peterson appeared in a covid-related video with county leaders and released a joint statement without consulting other board members, Ray filed complaints against the board president last month, according to Colorado Public Radio.
Then, on Jan. 25, the conservative majority voted to change an equity policy that was adopted last year, which called for hiring a more diverse workforce and evaluating the curriculum. Conservative members said there were “legitimate questions” raised by parents and district employees regarding the “feelings of shame and guilt” generated by the initiative.
Meek said she and her fellow liberal board members learned on Jan. 28 that Peterson and Williams, and potentially other conservative members, allegedly met privately with Wise, a 25-year district employee. They allegedly gave the superintendent an ultimatum to resign by Tuesday at midnight or be fired through a school board vote….
At a Zoom meeting on Monday that was open to the public, Hanson, Meek and Ray shared the allegations to roughly 1,300 people on the call. The liberal minority claimed their school board colleagues had violated Colorado’s open-meeting laws. In addition to informing all members, state law requires all meetings discussing public business with three or more school board officials present be open to the public, according to the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition.” Read more at Washington Post
“ZHANGJIAKOU, China – Zoi Sadowski-Synnott had barely rode out of a gold-medal winning run before her fellow medalists piled on her, tackling the New Zealander and embracing her.
American Julia Marino and Australian Tess Coady hugged her as they screamed and cheered, as much as for Sadowski-Synnott’s final run as for what these women had just shown for their sport. The trio of 20-somethings took the Beijing podium here, giving women’s slopestyle snowboarding the Olympics showcase it finally deserved.
Four years after shifting winds and poor conditions overshadowed the Olympic final in Pyeongchang, the young riders here showed what’s really going on in their sport – progression and change that is seeing women land tricks they hadn’t thought possible until recently.
‘That was the finals we’ve been deserving for the last eight years,’ said Coady, 21, who claimed bronze. ‘Snowboarding has come so far. It was so disappointing at the last Games that no one got to showcase that. … It was so sick to show that to the world because we didn’t get the opportunity last time. It kind of looked like no one had done anything for four years last time.’
Sadowski-Synnott won New Zealand’s first ever Winter Olympics gold medal. Coupled with big air bronze from 2018, the 20-year-old has half of her country’s medals in its history. Her win marked the first time since the event was added in 2014 that an American hadn’t topped the podium, with the U.S. men and women sweeping the past two Olympic competitions.
Marino, meanwhile, took silver to win her first Olympic medal and the first for Team USA in these Games. She finished 11th four years ago.” Read more at USA Today
“Todd Gitlin, whose immersion in the student rebellions of the 1960s laid the foundation for his later work as a writer, a cultural historian and both a voice and a critic of the left, died on Saturday in Pittsfield, Mass. He was 79.
His stepdaughter, Shoshana Haulley, who confirmed the death, said he suffered cardiac arrest on Dec. 31 while staying at his home in Hillsdale, N.Y., and had been hospitalized in nearby Pittsfield ever since. He also had a home in Manhattan.
Dr. Gitlin personified the cultural and political ambitions of the ’60s, with a continuous readiness to confront orthodoxies of whatever stripe. He was a president of Students for a Democratic Society, the national flagship student organization that called for constructive social change, whose ranks swelled with protesters against the war in Vietnam and then collapsed into factionalism. At S.D.S., he assisted in organizing the first national demonstration against the war and helped lead the first protests in the United States against apartheid in South Africa.
He later became a chronicler of the decade. He was sometimes a caustic commenter on the left and its tactics, which opened him up to harsh judgments by erstwhile kindred spirits.
Dr. Gitlin spent his entire adult life as an academic, practicing his commitment to social change through teaching and writing. He considered himself first and foremost a writer; in an interview, Harvey Molotch, a sociologist and longtime colleague from the 1960s, called him ‘a contemplative activist,’ one who ‘searched for ways to integrate the urgent needs of everyday life with larger political and social goals.’
By late 2021, for example, Dr. Gitlin’s activism had taken the form of organizing a group of ideologically disparate writers and activists to oppose continuing efforts by Republicans, under the sway of former President Donald J. Trump, to undermine free and fair elections.
‘Todd was sui generis,’ the historian David Nasaw said in an interview. ‘I don’t know any other old S.D.S. guys who would define themselves not only as teachers and scholars but as activists and organizers.’
From his perches at the University of California at Berkeley, New York University and Columbia, Dr. Gitlin produced poetry, novels, memoirs, cultural histories, media analyses, essays, opinion pieces and journal articles. His work appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, The New Republic, The New York Observer, Dissent and The New York Review of Books.
Calling himself ‘a not very private intellectual,’ he wrote nearly 20 books over half a century, many of them with sociopolitical themes. His first was ‘Uptown: Poor Whites in Chicago’ (1970), written with Nanci Hollander, his first wife; one of his more recent was ‘Occupy Nation: The Roots, the Spirit and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street (2012).
His best-known book was ‘The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage’(1987), a firsthand account, part history and part autobiography, of the rise and fall of the left during that decade of upheaval. The leftists who held sway, he said in the book, were never prepared to govern. ‘Often,’ he wrote, ‘I’m glad we’re in no position to take power: If we did, the only honorable sequel would be abdication.’
As time went on, he continued to write from a progressive perspective but became increasingly critical of his own cohort. In ‘The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars’ (1995), he said the left had become distracted by identity politics, multiculturalism and political correctness when it should have been focused on issues like economic justice.” Read more at New York Times