Tag Archives: January

Science

Astronomers Found a Crater From The Mystery Rocket That Smashed Into The Moon

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The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) – NASA’s eye-in-the-sky in orbit around the Moon – has found the crash site of the mystery rocket booster that slammed into the far side of the Moon back on 4 March 2022.

 

The LRO images, taken May 25th, revealed not just a single crater, but a double crater formed by the rocket’s impact, posing a new mystery for astronomers to unravel.

Why a double crater? While somewhat unusual – none of the Apollo S-IVBs that hit the Moon created double craters – they’re not impossible to create, especially if an object hits at a low angle. But that doesn’t seem to be the case here.

Astronomer Bill Gray, who first discovered the object and predicted its lunar demise back in January, explains that the booster “came in at about 15 degrees from vertical. So that’s not the explanation for this one.”

The impact site consists of an 18-meter-wide eastern crater superimposed on a 16-meter-wide western crater. Mark Robinson, Principal Investigator of the LRO Camera team, proposes that this double crater formation might result from an object with distinct, large masses at each end.

Before (2022-02-28) and after image (2022-05-21) of the Moon. (NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)

“Typically a spent rocket has mass concentrated at the motor end; the rest of the rocket stage mainly consists of an empty fuel tank. Since the origin of the rocket body remains uncertain, the double nature of the crater may help to indicate its identity,” he said.

So what is it?

 

It’s a long story. The unidentified rocket first came to astronomers’ attention earlier this year when it was identified as a SpaceX upper stage, which had launched NASA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) to the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange Point in 2015.

Gray, who designs software that tracks space debris, was alerted to the object when his software pinged an error. He told The Washington Post on January 26 that “my software complained because it couldn’t project the orbit past March 4, and it couldn’t do it because the rocket had hit the Moon.”

Gray spread the word, and the story made the rounds in late January – but a few weeks later, he received an email from Jon Giorgini at the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL).

Giorgini pointed out that DSCOVR’s trajectory shouldn’t have taken the booster anywhere near the Moon. In an effort to reconcile the conflicting trajectories, Gray began to dig back into his data, where he discovered that he had misidentified the DSCOVR booster way back in 2015.

SpaceX wasn’t the culprit after all. But there was definitely still an object hurtling towards the Moon. So what was it?

 

A bit of detective work led Gray to determine it was actually the upper stage of China’s Chang’e 5-T1 mission, a 2014 technology demonstration mission that lay the groundwork for Chang’e 5, which successfully returned a lunar sample to Earth in 2020 (incidentally, China recently announced it would follow up this sample return mission with a more ambitious Mars sample return project later this decade). 

Jonathan McDowell offered some corroborating evidence that seemed to bolster this new theory for the object’s identity.

The mystery was solved.

Except, days later, China’s Foreign Minister claimed it was not their booster: it had deorbited and crashed into the ocean shortly after launch.

As it stands now, Gray remains convinced it was the Change 5-T1 booster that hit the Moon, proposing that the Foreign Minister made an honest mistake, confusing Chang’e 5-T1 with the similarly named Chang’e 5 (whose booster did indeed sink into the ocean).

As for the new double crater on the Moon, the fact that the LRO team was able to find the impact site so quickly is an impressive feat in itself. It was discovered mere months after impact, with a little help from Gray and JPL, who each independently narrowed the search area down to a few dozen kilometers.

For comparison, The Apollo 16 S-IVB impact site took more than six years of careful searching to find.

Bill Gray’s account of the booster identification saga is here, as well as his take on the double crater impact. The LRO images can be found here.

This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.

 



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Business

Employees Scrambled to Keep Robinhood Afloat in January 2021 Meme-Stock Frenzy, House Report Finds

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Robinhood Markets struggled to handle huge volumes of stock trading and sparred with its principal customer, market maker Citadel Securities, during the week in January 2021 when meme stocks exploded, according to a report from the Democratic staff of the House Financial Services Committee.

The committee held hearings in February 2021, questioning the chief executives of Robinhood and Citadel Securities, as well as meme-stock hero Keith Gill and Gabe Plotkin, the hedge-fund manager who lost billions betting against GameStop and other hot stocks. The staff reviewed tens of thousands of pages of internal documents, including pointed communications inside and between the companies.

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Technology

Apple’s AR/VR headset will arrive in January 2023, analyst projects

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Enlarge / An early augmented reality demo by Apple, using a smartphone instead of a headset.

Tech industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has offered the most specific prediction about a release date for an Apple augmented reality/virtual reality headset yet: January 2023.

Kuo has often made accurate, informed predictions about Apple’s plans in the past, based partly on information from sources in the company’s supply chain. On Thursday, he published a lengthy analysis of the VR headset industry and predicted that Apple’s device will “likely” arrive in January.

Kuo called the headset “the most complicated product Apple has ever designed,” noting that many current Apple suppliers are involved in the supply chain for the product. He also supported other recent leaks and speculation that the upcoming headset will not be exclusively or primarily focused on augmented reality (which places virtual options in real-world space) rather than virtual reality (which immerses the wearer in an entirely virtual space).

Kuo echoed other recent reports and noted that the device would support “video see-thru,” and allow for switching between modes. Thus, he predicted the headset would be a boon for the immersive game industry.

The analysis was not exclusively about Apple’s headsets and covered other parts of the VR/AR industry. It pointed out several weaknesses in the mixed reality business at Meta (which owns Oculus headsets, as well as Facebook and Instagram). He wrote that Meta is slowing down its investment, creating an opportunity for upcoming competitors like Apple. He further suggested that Meta’s practice of selling VR headsets at a loss is unsustainable, a fact that could contribute to Apple’s opportunity.

Reports from Bloomberg and other reliable sources have already claimed that Apple is in the late stages of testing and preparing the device, naming a broader 2023 release window.

Additionally, earlier this week Apple CEO Tim Cook stoked the flames of speculation about an AR/VR headset in an interview with China Daily USA:

I am incredibly excited about AR as you might know. And the critical thing to any technology, including AR, is putting humanity at the center of it… But I think we’re still in the very early innings of how this technology will evolve. I couldn’t be more excited about the opportunities we’ve seen in this space, and sort of stay tuned and you’ll see what we have to offer.

A series of insider stories from The Information last month painted a picture of the device’s development, saying it has gone through several evolutions as Apple leadership has debated internally about the best path forward. According to the reporting, a standalone, portable concept that uses some variant of Apple’s recently shipped M2 chip has won over a more powerful device that would have required a base station.



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US

5 takeaways from the fifth day of January 6 hearings

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The hearing kicked off mere hours after federal investigators raided the home of Jeffrey Clark, who was one of the key Justice Department figures who was involved in Trump’s schemes. He has denied any wrongdoing related to January 6.

Here are takeaways from Thursday’s hearing.

Thursday’s hearing underscored the role that Trump’s Republican allies in Congress played in furthering his efforts to try to overturn the election — and how many of them sought pardons after January 6.

The House select committee in particular zeroed in on the efforts of Rep. Scott Perry, the Pennsylvania Republican who connected Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark to the White House in December 2020.

CNN has previously reported on the role that Perry played, and the committee in court filings released text messages Perry exchanged with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about Clark.

“He wanted Mr. Clark — Mr. Jeff Clark to take over the Department of Justice,” Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Meadows aide, said about Perry in a clip of her deposition that was played at Thursday’s hearing.

The committee also unveiled new details about Republican members of Congress seeking pardons after January 6, including Perry and Reps. Mo Brooks of Alabama and Matt Gaetz of Florida.

“President Trump asked me to send you this letter. This letter is also pursuant to a request from Matt Gaetz,” said an email Brooks sent to the White House in January 2021, according to the committee. “As such, I recommend that president give general (all purpose) pardons to the following groups of people.”

The email included a group of the names of “every congressman and senator who voted to reject the electoral college vote submissions of Arizona and Pennsylvania.”

Thursday’s hearing was led by Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who has largely been ostracized by the Republican conference for his role on the January 6 committee.

“My colleagues up here also take an oath. Some of them failed to uphold theirs and instead chose to spread the big lie,” Kinzinger said before discussing pardons.

Kinzinger is retiring at the end of his term.

Inside a December 2020 Oval Office meeting

The hearing brought to life a high-stakes Oval Office meeting in December 2020, where Trump considered firing the acting attorney general and installing Clark, who was willing to use the powers of federal law enforcement to encourage state lawmakers to overturn Trump’s loss.
Going into these summer hearings, we already knew a lot about the meeting. But on Thursday, for the first time, we heard live testimony from some of the Justice Department officials who were in the room, including Rosen, the then-acting attorney general. (He survived the meeting, after Trump was told that there would be mass resignations at the Justice Department if he replaced Rosen with Clark.)

Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann said Clark was repeatedly “clobbered over the head” during the meeting. He told the committee that he called Clark a “f—ing a–hole” and said his plans would’ve been illegal. He also said Clark’s plan to send letters to battleground states was “nuts.”

In videotaped testimony that was played Thursday, Donoghue said he eviscerated Clark’s credentials during the meeting, explaining that Clark was woefully underqualified to serve as attorney general.

“You’re an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office, and we’ll call you when there’s an oil spill,” Donoghue said in the deposition, describing what he told Clark at the White House meeting.

Donoghue said then-White House Counsel Pat Cipollone called Clark’s plan a “murder-suicide pact.”

Donoghue himself described Clark’s plan as “impossible” and “absurd.”

“It’s never going to happen,” Donoghue said of the plan. “And it’s going to fail.”

Thanks to the pushback from Rosen, Donoghue, Herschmann, Cipollone, and perhaps others, Trump didn’t follow through with his plan, which would’ve put the country in uncharted waters, and would have increased the chances of Trump successfully pulling off his coup attempt.

Italian satellites and seizing voting machines: White House pushes conspiracy theory

The three witnesses who testified Thursday made clear that Trump had attempted to use all the levers of the federal government to help validate his claim that the election was stolen and ultimately overturn the legitimate outcome in the lead-up to January 6.

They described how top officials at the highest levels of government had been pushed to investigate conspiracy theories that originated from fringe corners of the internet as Trump sought to validate what were ultimately baseless claims about widespread voter fraud.

Then-Secretary of Defense Chris Miller even contacted a counterpart in Rome, at the White House’s request, to investigate a conspiracy theory that Italian satellites had changed votes from Trump to Joe Biden.

The conspiracy theory, which CNN has previously reported was among those that then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows pushed top national security officials to investigate, was characterized as “pure insanity” by former Justice Department official Richard Donoghue, who was also asked to look into the claim.

The former Justice Department officials also detailed how Trump himself had urged them and senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security to seize voting machines from state governments in pursuit of the same — all without cause for taking such an unprecedented step.

“Why don’t you guys just seize machines?” Trump said during a White House meeting in late December 2020, according to testimony from Donoghue.

Using the Justice Department, or any other federal agency, to seize voting machines would have been an unprecedented step but Trump made clear that he wanted his allies to pursue it as an option.

“Get Ken Cuccinelli on the phone,” Trump yelled to his secretary after Justice Department officials told him that DHS had expertise in voting machines and determined there was nothing to warrant seizing them, according to Rosen.

Rosen confirmed Thursday he had never told Trump that DHS could seize voting machines. CNN has previously reported that Trump pushed the Justice Department and DHS to seize voting machines.

CNN has also previously reported that Trump allies had drafted executive orders that would have had the military and DHS seize voting machines had they been signed by Trump — but they ultimately were not.

A toned-down hearing featured vivid description of Trump’s pressure campaign

Thursday’s proceedings featured testimony from three lawyers who described behind-the-scenes happenings at the Justice Department and White House. It was a departure from Tuesday’s and earlier hearings, which featured emotional testimony from election workers, and included jarring video montages of the carnage at the Capitol.

But even if there weren’t rhetorical fireworks, the substance of the testimony was essential to understanding the breadth of Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election. The former Justice Department officials described what they saw and heard as Trump tried to enlist them to help him stay in power — and how he tried to oust them when they refused to do his bidding.

The material was dense at times. The witnesses reconstructed White House meetings and phone calls with Trump. They were asked to dissect their handwritten notes of some of these interactions — which is something you more often see at criminal trials, and less commonly at a congressional hearing.

Still, the witnesses’ steady testimony shed new light on events that we’ve known about for more than a year. And the entire hearing evoked memories of the Nixon era, because it was all about how a sitting president tried to weaponize the powers of federal law enforcement to help his political campaign.

Shocking raid of Clark home preceded hearing

The raid by federal investigators of Clark’s northern Virginia home preceded the revelations of Clark’s 2020 actions at the hearing. Lawmakers were caught off guard, but for the first time in a while, it seemed like federal investigators may have been heeding their public calls to finally take some action.

The raid occurred on Wednesday but was reported on Thursday morning. It’s unclear which government entity was behind the raid, and it’s not publicly known what triggered the search of his home, or what investigators were looking for.

Even with these unanswered questions, it’s significant that federal investigators took such an overt step — raiding Clark’s home — against one of the most prominent figures in Trump’s post-elections schemes.

The committee was hoping to turn Clark into a household name Thursday, by eliciting testimony from top Justice Department officials about how he tried to abuse law enforcement powers to help Trump overturn the 2020 results in states that he lost. With the raid, it looks like the committee got its wish.

This story has been updated with additional developments Thursday.

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US

Rusty Bowers: Arizona House speaker, who resisted Trump pressure campaign, testifying at January 6 hearing Tuesday

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Bowers will join Georgia’s election officials — Brad Raffensperger and Gabe Sterling — who will be part of a panel before the January 6 committee detailing Trump’s campaign to force states to overturn their certified election results.
Bowers, who supported Trump’s reelection bid in 2020, refused to bow to intimidation and attempts to get him to back efforts in the legislature to decertify Biden’s victory in Arizona.
He previously described how Trump and the then-President’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani called him after the 2020 election to convince him to somehow involve the legislature in the state’s certification process before sending its presidential electors to Congress.

This past year, Bowers also shot down some of his fellow Arizona Republicans’ more extreme election ideas, including a resolution of mostly debunked claims of fraud that called for the election results to be set aside in three Arizona counties.

In February, the Republican speaker used a parliamentary maneuver to effectively doom a GOP bill which would have overhauled elections in Arizona, including by giving the state legislature the power to reject election results it didn’t like.

Tuesday’s hearing will be the fourth this month for the January 6 committee.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, later confirmed CNN’s reporting about Bowers testifying during an interview with CNN’s Jim Acosta on “Newsroom.”

“That’s my understanding,” Lofgren said, adding she wanted to hear “the truth” from those testifying.

“These individuals are Republicans. They voted for Trump. They are, you know, supported him,” she said. “But they wouldn’t do illegal things that he asked them to do. So we expect to hear in some detail about the pressure that was placed on them and why they were true to the law instead of the pressure.”

Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State, resisted Trump’s efforts during an infamous January 2021 phone call to pressure him to “find” the votes necessary for the then-President to win Georgia. Last month, he fended off a Trump-backed primary foe as he seeks a second term in office.

Sterling, Raffensperger’s deputy, publicly pleaded in December 2020 for Trump to denounce the harassment and threats officials and election workers had faced.

This story has been updated with additional background information.

CNN’s Veronica Stracqualursi and Sarah Fortinsky contributed to this report.

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US

Couy Griffin: New Mexico county commissioner who refuses to certify recent election results sentenced for role in January 6 attack

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He was sentenced to 14 days with time served, fined $3,000 and given one year supervised release with the requirement that he complete 60 hours of community service.

Griffin was videotaped at the Capitol saying he “has Mike Pence in our prayers” and hoped that Pence would “do the right thing” and argued during his trial that he was peaceful on January 6 and even calmed a group of rioters by leading them in prayer.

Griffin, an Otero county commissioner, is still relentlessly pushing claims of election fraud, going as far as refusing to certify the recent primary results in his county, which the Justice Department cited to bolster its argument that Griffin should spend several months in jail.

Along with two other GOP commissioners, Griffin declined to certify the results of the June 7 primary, pointing to a mistrust of Dominion voting machines — a false conspiracy theory popularized by former President Donald Trump’s legal team over the 2020 election. Friday was the deadline for New Mexico counties to certify the results of the June 7 primary election.

Friday evening, the Otero County Commission voted 2-1 to certify the results, with Griffin voting “no.”

Griffin called in to the meeting and said his “gut feeling and intuition” told him to oppose the move. He also railed against what he called the “overreach of the state government.”

The commissioners’ defiance had raised alarms among voting rights advocates, who are concerned that the conspiracy theories about voting machines and elections are taking root in pockets of the country and fear that the Otero flareup could serve as a preview of future election disruptions in this year’s midterm elections.

New Mexico’s Democratic Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver this week asked the state attorney general to investigate the Otero commissioners over several recent actions, including votes initiated by Griffin to remove ballot drop boxes and discontinue the use of Dominion vote-tallying machines before November’s election.

After a somewhat continuous bench trial in March, Griffin was found guilty of trespassing on US Capitol grounds during the riot by federal Judge Trevor McFadden.

The ex-pastor, conspiracy theory peddler, and former cowboy Disney performer asked for two months probation, claiming that he had already incurred harsh punishments like being held in jail for several weeks after being arrested when he returned to DC on January 17, 2021. Griffin told his colleagues on the county commission that he would return for Joe Biden’s inauguration with his revolver and rifle.

Griffin not only talked about bringing guns to the Capitol after January 6 but also spread wild false conspiracy theories about the riot, including suggesting that the riot could have been instigated by law enforcement.

McFadden found his comments “disturbing” and said that they “suggest a disdain” for US laws.

“You’ve taken an oath to uphold the Constitution,” McFadden said Friday, adding that instead he undermined the peaceful transition of power.

McFadden also said that it was “preposterous” for Griffin to claim he didn’t know he was not allowed on Capitol grounds that day.

“I watched the evidence here…you clambered over walls,” McFadden said, “You knew you shouldn’t be there.”

McFadden added that Griffin was “not being” punished for his claims of voter fraud. The judge noted that some national politicians make claims of significant voter fraud in past elections and “they were mistaken as you are.”

Rioter who witnessed Ashli Babbitt shooting sentenced

Thomas Baranyi, a January 6 defendant who witnessed Babbitt’s shooting and was sentenced on Friday, expressed remorse for his participation in the Capitol riot and not doing more to help Babbitt.

DC District Judge James Boasberg sentenced Baranyi to 90 days in prison. Baranyi pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge in February.

“I really wish I paid more attention because I tried to get to the front to tell people to back up,” Baranyi, who was near Babbitt when she was shot outside the Speaker’s Lobby, said during his sentencing hearing on Friday.

Baranyi said that Babbitt “tried to climb through. She wasn’t listening and there were guns drawn.” A US Capitol Police investigation found in August 2021 that the officer who shot Babbitt did so “lawfully and within Department policy.”

“The worst part would be after the fact when I could have done anything, render any kind of aid, I just took out my phone and recorded it,” Baranyi told Judge Boasberg, describing his lack of help as “not just humiliating, it’s a personal failure.”

He added that since the Capitol riot he has received “first responder training” so that if he’s ever in a similar situation he can “match the moment” and “won’t falter.”

Boasberg also sentenced Baranyi to a year of supervised release, a $500 restitution payment, and 60 hours of community service.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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US

Donald Trump is raging on Truth Social and demanding ‘equal time’ on national TV amid the January 6 committee’s primetime hearings

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Former President Donald Trump threw a tantrum on Truth Social about not being given “equal time” on TV.Chet Strange/Getty Images

  • Donald Trump complained about not being given “equal time” to air his baseless voter fraud claims.

  • “I DEMAND EQUAL TIME!!!” the former president wrote in a post on Truth Social.

  • Days earlier, Trump released a 12-page statement slamming the January 6 panel’s investigation.

Former President Donald Trump raged on Truth Social on Thursday, demanding equal airtime on national TV amid the January 6 committee’s primetime hearings.

Trump made a post on his social media platform hours before the committee’s third hearing on Thursday, claiming that the lack of airtime was unfair to him.

“The Fake News Networks are perpetuating lies, falsehoods, and Russia, Russia, Russia type disinformation (same sick people, here we go again!) by allowing the low rated but nevertheless one sided and slanderous Unselect Committee hearings to go endlessly and aimlessly on (and on and on!),” Trump wrote.

“It is a one sided, highly partisan Witch Hunt, the likes of which has never been seen in Congress before. Therefore, I am hereby demanding EQUAL TIME to spell out the massive Voter Fraud & Dem Security Breach!” Trump added, once again parroting his own groundless claims of voter fraud.

The former president then followed up with another post, this time in all caps, reading: “I DEMAND EQUAL TIME!!!”

This week, Trump released a 12-page statement bashing the January 6 investigation. In that statement, he claimed without substantiation that the January 6 panel investigating the riot was out to stop him from running for president again in 2024.

Many US television networks have been airing the January 6 hearings during primetime slots. The committee held the third of its six public hearings on Thursday afternoon, outlining how the Trump camp pressured former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election.

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US

January 6 panel sends request to Ginni Thomas after she says she looks ‘forward to talking’

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Thomas, a conservative activist and the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, appears open to speaking with the committee, telling conservative outlet The Daily Caller that she “can’t wait to clear up misconceptions.”

“I look forward to talking to them,” she said in the interview published Thursday.

The panel’s request follows revelations late Wednesday that the committee is in possession of email correspondence between Thomas and conservative attorney John Eastman, according to a source familiar with the committee.

The source who spoke with CNN would not provide details on the emails’ contents or say if they were direct messages between the two or part of a larger group correspondence. A separate source said the emails were part of a tranche of messages provided to the committee after a federal judge ruled that Eastman’s correspondence was pertinent to the committee’s work investigating former President Donald Trump and efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the months leading up to January 6, 2021.

Thomas has received criticism over her political activism and involvement in efforts to push claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. She previously admitted that she had attended the rally that preceded the violent attack on the US Capitol on January 6, but left early. Some progressives and some legal ethics experts see her activism as a conflict of interest for her husband, who serves on the nation’s highest court.

Previously revealed text messages between Thomas and then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, obtained by the committee, showed that Thomas regularly checked in with Meadows to encourage him to push claims of voter fraud and work to prevent the election from being certified.

Thomas has repeatedly said that her political activism has nothing to do with her husband’s work on the Supreme Court. Justice Thomas has participated in Supreme Court cases related to 2020 election controversies and has refused to recuse himself from related cases.
Eastman on Thursday “categorically” denied that he had discussions with Thomas and her husband about “any matters pending or likely to come before the Court.” “We have never engaged in such discussions, would not engage in such discussions, and did not do so in December 2020 or anytime else,” he wrote in part in a post on his Substack.
He suggested that a recently reported email he sent in December 2020, in which he stated that he understood there to be “a heated fight underway” at the Supreme Court, had been prompted by a report from an outlet called Vision Times.

Thompson on Thursday dismissed Justice Department complaints that the House committee release all of its transcripts to help with the department’s investigation, saying it would turn over transcripts to the department “in due time.”

“We are not going to stop what we are doing to share the information that we’ve gotten so far with the Department of Justice. We have to do our work,” he said.

Asked if the panel would be doing so by the end of the week, the congressman responded “No,” but added, “That does not mean that we are not going to cooperate.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, a member of the committee, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “The Lead” Thursday evening that part of the issue is the breadth of what the Justice Department is requesting.

“I’ve been involved in several high-profile investigations, I’ve never seen the Justice Department say, ‘Give us all your files,’ ” the California Democrat said. “I think the challenge is the breadth of their request, but we’re going to work through it and make sure they get what they need.”

“We’re working with them to make sure they get what they need, consistent with our own investigative needs,” Schiff said. “We want them to be successful. We want them to bring to justice anyone who broke the law, and we’re confident we will be able to help them pursue any of the lawbreakers involved.”

This story has been updated with further developments Thursday.

CNN’s Manu Raju, Lauren Koenig, Morgan Rimmer and Annie Grayer contributed to this report.

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US

Pro-Trump Turning Point group paid Guilfoyle’s $60,000 January 6 speaking fee, sources tell CNN

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The payment to Guilfoyle was disclosed Monday by Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, who told CNN’s Jake Tapper that the House select committee investigating the January 6 riot at the US Capitol has evidence that former President Donald Trump’s family members personally benefited from money raised based on Trump’s false election claims.

Lofgren spoke after the committee’s hearing on Monday highlighted $250 million raised by the Save America PAC and Trump campaign. But those entities did not pay Guilfoyle’s fee, the people familiar with the payment told CNN. The payment came from Turning Point Action, an affiliate of Turning Point USA, the youth organization started by Charlie Kirk, who is a close friend of Trump Jr.

On Tuesday, Lofgren defended her previous comments about Guilfoyle’s fee during an interview with Wolf Blitzer, saying she didn’t think she mischaracterized the payment since it came from part of the network connected to Trump.

“The question is, are Trump individuals benefiting from this whole enterprise of raising money around the so-called stop the steal,” Lofgren told Blitzer. “And the answer is yes.”

Neither Guilfoyle nor her attorney responded to requests for comment. Turning Point declined to comment.

During Monday’s hearing the committee showed a video presentation from a senior investigator to lay out how Trump used the false claims of election fraud to raise the $250 million from donors. According to the investigator, the fundraising emails indicated the money would go toward an election defense fund, but the investigator said most of the money was routed to Save America, a pro-Trump PAC.

Lofgren appeared on CNN soon after that presentation and disclosed the payment to Guilfoyle as an example of “grift.” Tapper asked whether the committee has found “evidence that Trump and his family ‘personally benefited’ from donations.”

“For example, we know that Guilfoyle was paid for the introduction she gave at the speech on January 6. She received compensation for that,” Lofgren said. “I’m not saying it’s a crime, but I’m saying it’s grift.”

Chairman Bennie Thompson was asked by CNN late Monday to clarify if Guilfoyle was paid with “Stop the Steal” funds.

“I did not say that,” Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, told CNN, adding: “It was strictly paid out of expenditures that came from people who came to the Stop the Steal rally.”

Thompson noted that the payment was still something the public, including Trump supporters, was not aware of at the time of the speech.

“First of all, we think the majority of the public would be concerned that if the girlfriend of Donald Trump (Jr.) made $60,000 for a few minutes speech, that they had no idea. She had to get paid to speak at something everybody else was coming to because they thought it was the right thing to do,” he said.

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct the name of the organization that paid Guilfoyle for her January 6, 2021 speech.

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US

Capitol Police say ‘there is no evidence’ of reconnaissance tour by GOP lawmaker before January 6

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The House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, raised the issue publicly in a letter last month asking Loudermilk to explain the purpose of his January 5 meeting with a group of constituents. Days after the attack, some Democrats began accusing Republicans of providing tours to individuals who later went on to storm the Capitol.

“There is no evidence that Representative Loudermilk entered the U.S. Capitol with this group on January 5, 2021,” Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger wrote in a letter on Monday to Rep. Rodney Davis, the top Republican on the House Administration Committee. “We train our officers on being alert for people conducting surveillance or reconnaissance, and we do not consider any of the activities we observed as suspicious.”

The Capitol Police review was done at the urging of Davis. The police review of security video from January 5, 2021, comes after the House select committee raised concerns about Loudermilk hosting visitors in his office that day and requested that he voluntarily answer questions.

Manger said the video shows Loudermilk with “a group of approximately 12 people which later grew to 15 people” walking through the Capitol office buildings on January 5. It also states that the group of visitors did not “appear in any tunnels that would lead them to the US Capitol.”

House Republicans suggested they may release video they believe exonerates Loudermilk of any insinuation that he led a so-called “reconnaissance” tour the night before the January 6 riot.

The House select committee declined to comment on Manger’s letter.

The letter the committee sent to Loudermilk last month indicated the panel has reviewed evidence that “directly contradicts” previous claims by Republican lawmakers who said security footage from the days before January 6 shows there were “no tours, no large groups, no one with MAGA hats on” at the US Capitol complex.

“Based on our review of evidence in the Select Committee’s possession, we believe you have information regarding a tour you led through parts of the Capitol complex on January 5, 2021,” Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, and Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming, wrote at the time.

Loudermilk and Davis issued a joint statement responding to the committee’s initial letter, pushing back on any allegation of “reconnaissance” tours on January 5 and calling for Capitol Police to release the footage.

“A constituent family with young children meeting with their Member of Congress in the House Office Buildings is not a suspicious group or ‘reconnaissance tour.’ The family never entered the Capitol building,” they wrote at the time.

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