We didn't learn much. But we learned a little. And the evidence, as discussed on today's BradCast, suggests there is much more to come. [Audio link to full report follows this summary.]

On Monday, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ordered the partial release of the final report by the Special Purpose Grand Jury convened by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis last year. She is probing whether or not Donald Trump and his allies unlawfully pressured Georgia officials to change the 2020 Presidential election results to declare him the winner, despite his having lost to Joe Biden by about 12,000 votes.

Today, about five pages from that report were released, including its introduction, conclusion, and one section finding that "A majority of the grand jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it."

After hearing "evidence from or involving 75 witnesses during the course" of their investigation, the 26-member panel (including three alternates) went on to recommend "the District Attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling." They also determined "by a unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election."

The portions of their report released on Thursday did not include any specific names, however, out of concern by both Willis and McBurney, of "fairness" to any potential future defendants. During the hearing on whether to release the report partially, in full, or at all, back on January 24, Willis asked McBurney to temporarily withhold the report "in the interest of justice and the rights of, not the state, but others," as she explained that charging "decisions are imminent."

Based on court documents, witness statements and other information, the Special Grand Jury, which completed its work in December, was believed to be examining phone calls made by Trump and others to Georgia officials, such as the notorious one from January 2, 2021, in which Trump was famously heard threatened the state's Secretary of State and instructed him to "find" enough votes to flip the election from Biden to himself; the state's 16 fake Republican electors who falsely declared themselves "duly elected and qualified"; false allegations of fraud presented to state lawmakers by Rudy Giuliani and others; Attempts to pressure election workers into falsely confessing to fraud; and the unlawful, secret duplication of voting system software by GOP operatives in rural Coffee County, among other things.

We're joined today for insight and analysis by KEITH BARBER, attorney and legal commentator formerly known as "KeithDB" at Daily Kos, who now writes at Medium. He explains that it was actually remarks from Judge McBurney on Monday, when ordering the partial release of the Special Grand Jury report, that leads him to believe the panel's full report recommends indictment of our disgraced former President.

"The biggest hint that it likely includes Trump is in the judge's decision ordering the release. In that decision," Barber explains, "the judge expressed special concern for the due process rights of potential defendants who did nothave an opportunity to testify before the grand jury. And, as we know, a whole lot of people testified, including Rudy Giuliani, Lindsey Graham, and many more. The one who did not have an opportunity to testify, who was never asked to, is Donald Trump."

In fact, as Washington Post observes, "At least 18 people have been notified that they are targets of the election interference investigation, according to court documents and statements from their attorneys." Giuliani has said he is one of them. The 16 fake electors were reportedly told the same. Who might the 18th be? Well, while Trump's legal team in Georgia stated that their client was never invited to testify, they refused to comment when asked if he'd been given notice by Willis that he's a target.

Another curious point we also discuss is that, despite Judge McBurney describing the full report as including "a roster of who should (or should not) be indicted, and for what, in relation to the conduct (and aftermath) of the 2020 general election in Georgia," the report's conclusion is on a page that is numbered as "9". Barber observes that a separate Special Grand Jury Report from 2012 [PDF], out of the state's DeKalb County, recommended charges for just one person. But that report was 83 pages in length. What does that mean? We discuss.

One potential explanation for the apparently short report from Fulton County, as I note, is that those that the Grand Jury recommendations for indictment may be listed in an Appendix to their report, which may come on pages numbered after the report's "conclusion" section.

We read those tea leaves and many others today, including why Willis' "imminent" charging decisions may be taking a while to become indictments. We also discuss the delightfully fascinating data point that Georgia's state Constitution bars the Governor (currently, Republican Brian Kemp) from issuing pardons. Only a state commission appointed by the Governor may do so, but only after the perpetrator in question has completed their sentence. Given that Willis may be working toward invoking the state's expansive racketeering statutes in this case --- which can add many years to state sentences when defendants are found to have participated in a conspiracy --- that could result in very long, unpardonable prison sentences for Trump, Giuliani, the fake electors (which included both GA's current Lt. Governor and the state's Republican Party chair) among others.

Also today, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report on back-to-back disasters in New Zealand; more bad news for Antarctica's melting glaciers; and the bizarre flip of a switch that seems to have happened on Fox 'News' and (naturally) among Republicans regarding the horrific toxic chemical train derailment and explosion that happened about two weeks ago in East Palestine, Ohio.

Suddenly, they care about the health of nearby residents? The lack of regulations for the rail industry? (Which Trump rolled back after new rail safety rules were enacted by Obama, by the way.) They suddenly give a damn about the EPA not acting aggressively enough? Really? Well, not really, as we discuss before finishing off today with a few wise words on all of this from Trae Crowder, the Tennessee-born political comedian known as "the liberal redneck"...

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As we've advised many times on The BradCast, accountability takes a while. Particularly when you're talking about criminal accountability for a President of the United States for the first time ever. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

We're joined today, for the first time in several months, by perhaps the one person who may know nearly as much (and, in some cases, even more) about the many criminal cases against Donald Trump than the many prosecutors currently considering indictments against him for those crimes.

Longtime, independent national security and accountability journalist MARCY WHEELER of Emptywheel.net joins us for the full hour today. There is now just too much going on all at once in the various federal investigations being overseen by Special Counsel Jack Smith (not to mention the several criminal and civil probes underway in Georgia and New York), to fit into a single segment.

We dive into details with Wheeler on both the probe of Trump's hundreds of stolen, classified documents recovered by the FBI last year at Mar-a-Lago, and the ongoing investigation of the broad conspiracy surrounding the Trump-incited January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol (and his many other attempts to steal the 2020 election.)

Among the many points and questions discussed with Wheeler on today's show...

ON SPECIAL COUNSEL JACK SMITH:

• Where is he? Literally. And why are there no known new photos or videos of him Special Counseling?
• And what, if anything, does his incredibly low profile tell us about the work that he is doing?

ON THE TRUMP STOLEN DOCUMENTS PROBE:

• What does this week's news that Smith is hoping to pierce the attorney-client privilege by invoking the crime-fraud exception to force federal grand jury testimony from Trump attorneys like Evan Corcoran actually mean? And, is it true, as the New York Times reported on Tuesday, that Smith's motion to do so is "an aggressive new dimension to the inquiry"?
• What exactly is the crime being investigated that Smith contends took place between Corcoran and Trump that would nullify the attorney-client privilege?
• What do we need to know about this past weekend's startling news that Team Trump has now turned over still more classified documents and that some of them were reportedly scanned onto a laptop computer (and thumb drive) said to belong to a Trump aide at his main fundraising PAC?
• Why weren't those documents found at Mar-a-Lago during the FBI's very thorough search last August?
• Should we be concerned that more classified documents are out in the wild after being digitized and shared with others?
• Where are the dozens of documents that were previously in the now-empty classified document folders recovered by the FBI last August? And, is Trump's claim that he kept empty classified document folders as trophy keepsakes even plausible?
• Does the discovery and quick return of a handful of classified and other Presidential records found by aides at the offices and residences of Joe Biden and Mike Pence make any difference in a potential decision to charge Trump for having stolen thousands of documents and then lying about them to federal officials?

ON THE JANUARY 6 CONSPIRACY PROBE:

• Mike Pence has now been subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury investigating the January 6 attack. He says he will challenge the subpoena based on the Constitution's "speech or debate" clause that, he claims, prevents him --- as President of the Senate on January 6 --- from having to answer questions by the Executive Branch. That, after Pence previously refused to testify to the House J6 Committee on the basis of separation of powers and Executive privilege.
• Many are describing Pence's defense "novel", but Wheeler (and I) recall when the previous Republican Vice President, Dick Cheney, hoping to also have it both ways, attempted to play the exact same hand to avoid testifying to both the Legislative and Executive branches during the George W. Bush era.
• In any event, will Pence's ploy work? And, if so, will it prevent Smith from being able to bring indictments?
• How do the recent guilty verdicts for Seditious Conspiracy, in the trials of a number of rightwing Oath Keepers militia members (and the ongoing trial of racist Proud Boys members), affect potential indictments of the former President?
• Is it likely that the DoJ will simply take the "Al Capone tax evasion" route by charging Trump with a simpler crime, such as wire fraud, based on his fundraising scheme that raked in some $250 million after the 2020 election for an "official election defense fund" that didn't actually exist?
• And, by the way, can a former President --- with a 24/7 Secret Service detail and all of that --- actually be sent to prison in the event he ever actually is indicted, convicted and sentenced?

As you can tell, just a few things to discuss with Wheeler today. And, as usual, she offers a ton of important, smart and keenly-informed insight!...

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In the first 43 days of 2023, there were 67 mass shootings. This is America. What, if anything, are we ever gonna do about it? Welcome to today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among the many stories covered today...

• Three students were killed, five were in critical condition at Michigan State University's East Lansing campus as we went to air today, following yet another mass shooting massacre on Monday night. "Run, Hide, Fight" was the message texted to students by MSU at 8:31pm, as gun fire broke out. That might as well be the national anthem for a generation of students who grew up in the wake of the demise of the federal Assault Weapons Ban. It was allowed to expire in 2004 by George W. Bush and every terrorist-supporting Congressional Republican who, since then, has refused to renew it. They have chosen to place support for their donors in the deadly gun industry over the lives of tens of thousands of Americans killed by guns each and every year since. Horrifically, some of the students victimized by Monday's shooting at MSU had also lived through another mass shooting at their high school back in 2021.

• The author of the now-sunsetted 1994 federal Assault Weapons Ban, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), announced today that she will not be seeking reelection next year. The news was not a surprise. Three Democratic House members --- Katie Porter, Adam Schiff and Barbara Lee --- have already announced or made clear their intentions to run for the 89-year old Senator's seat next year. Feinstein's political career was formed, in no small part, out of gun violence after she personally attempted to save the life of Harvey Milk after the assassination of the San Francisco City Supervisor and then-Mayor George Moscone. She was elected to replace Moscone as Mayor and eventually became California's first female Senator. Today we share just one of the petty, ironic, patronizing attacks against her on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 1993 --- by a later-discredited Republican Senator --- during her successful campaign to pass the landmark gun safety legislation.

• Former South Carolina Governor and Donald Trump's U.N. Ambassador Nikky Haley released a video on Tuesday declaring her intention to run for the 2024 Republican Presidential nomination. In it, she claims, "I don't put up with bullies". But her history as a 2016 Trump critic --- of his lying, support for the KKK and more --- before then choosing to become his U.N. Ambassador and sing his praises for years thereafter, suggests otherwise. That said, Trump, for reasons we explain today, is delighted to have her in the race.

• A lot of horrible stuff came out of Donald Trump's endless lies about voter fraud and his evidence-free claims that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen from him when, in fact, he was actually trying to steal the election from Joe Biden and the American people. There was his deadly 1/6/21 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, followed by a host of newly restrictive voting laws adopted by Republican-controlled states, using his false claims of fraud as cover for new means of voter suppression. But, in a (very) few cases, some GOPers have figured out that the computer voting systems and tabulators their party has supported for years, actually make it more difficult, if not impossible, for Americans to oversee the results of their own elections. Last month, a court in rural Cleburne County, Arkansas mandated a change from computer tabulated elections to hand-marked and hand-counted paper ballots. The group who pushed the measure hopes to do the same in the state's 74 other counties. At the same time, the County Clerk in Nye County, Nevada --- which moved last year to a hand-count protocol as a parallel tally to its computer tabulation --- says that the hand-counts by some 200 volunteers in the rural county were ultimately more accurate than the computer tallies. (Just as we've been trying to tell ya for about 20 years now.)

• Also, some important news was broken by the Washington Post over the weekend. But it was largely buried by the media's over-inflated panic about "balloons". As it turns out, Donald Trump's campaign paid some $600,000 to a research group in late 2020 for a study on that year's election results. Specifically, the firm was tasked to ferret out any possible evidence of fraud in six key swing-states that might have swung the election from Trump to Biden. As one of those familiar with the study explained to WaPo: "They looked at everything: change of addresses, illegal immigrants, ballot harvesting, people voting twice, machines being tampered with, ballots that were sent to vacant addresses that were returned and voted. Literally anything you could think of. Voter turnout anomalies, date of birth anomalies, whether dead people voted. If there was anything under the sun that could be thought of, they looked at it." But the results of the study were never released. Why? Because the well-paid researchers were unable to find any evidence that the election was stolen, fraudulent or even in error in anyway. The results were given to Trump, however, in December of 2020. Nonetheless, days later, on January 6, 2021, he continued his lies anyway, leading directly to the deadly insurrection at the Capitol, for which he has yet to be held to account in any way.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with the wildly under-reported news of the chemical train derailment, fire and controlled release of toxic chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio last week; After ExxonMobil declared record profits last year, they have signaled their intent this year to do away with their algae biofuel research scam they've been green-washing their company with for years now; And some seemingly good news for EVs following Sunday's Super Bowl...

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As noted at the top of today's BradCast, I thought when the Trump Era ended, there wouldn't be quite as much of a fire-hose of news coming in over weekends. Silly me. Perhaps my mistake was in somehow thinking the Trump Era had ended. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

In any event, among the many stories covered on today's show before we opened up our lines to listener calls on all of them...

• Hey, that was some Super Bowl, eh?

• Over the weekend a total of three "unidentified aerial objects" were shot down by the U.S. military over North America by President Biden. One off the frozen coast of Alaska, one over Canada (shot down at their urging), and another in Michigan over Lake Huron. None of the objects, according to U.S. officials, were similar to the much larger spy balloon from China recently shot down off the coast of South Carolina. So, what were they exactly? And should anybody really be concerned about it? We discuss.

• In far more important news, there was also another flurry of activity over the weekend regarding the discovery of mishandled classified documents. It began on Friday, when a consensual FBI search of former Vice President Mike Pence's home in Indiana turned up another classified document. But that story only served to district from the hugely important news that not only were more classified and stolen documents found in Donald Trump's possession (where well over 300 such documents, including thousands of pages marked classified, have been found to date), but in this case, at least one classified document was discovered to have been digitized onto a notebook computer and a thumb drive. Even more disturbing: the notebook on which the document was found wasn't even at Mar-a-Lago. It was, reportedly, in the possession of a still-unnamed aide working for Trump's main fundraising arm, the Save America PAC. If the documents stolen by the disgraced former President were electronically scanned, as appears to be the case, and copied to thumb drives and computers, that opens up a whole new potentially very troubling ball of wax in Special Counsel Jack Smith's ongoing criminal investigation into the documents recovered at Mar-a-Lago. It was also reported, as part of the weekend news flurry on this, that Trump received yet another subpoena for those newly discovered documents last month and that two more of his attorneys testified in January before Smith's federal grand jury.

• On Monday, a judge in Atlanta announced that parts of a recently written Special Grand Jury report --- including what he described as "a roster of who should (or should not) be indicted, and for what, in relation to the conduct (and aftermath) of the 2020 general election in Georgia" --- will be released to the public this week. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said in his 8-page order [PDF] today that the introduction and conclusion of the report, as well as one section on witnesses believed to have lied to the Special Grand Jury, will be released on Thursday. None of the sections to be released this week, according to McBurney, include names of those who could soon be indicted. The report was created by the Special Grand Jury convened by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. She had sought their advice on whether to bring charges against the former President and other co-conspirators in his attempt to strong-arm Georgia officials into stealing the 2020 Presidential election. At a hearing three weeks ago, she explained that her office opposed the release of the report at this time out of concern for fairness to those who may soon be indicted. She said at the time that charging decisions were "imminent". Presumably, they still are.

• Finally, some of very good and/or interesting callers ring in today on all of the above and more!

Please tune in for today's lively and, hopefully, both entertaining and informative program!...

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The long-awaited GOP-led House hearings are now getting under way in full. And, as we've previously predicted, they ain't going well...for the Republicans. Also on today's BradCast, a few critical (and good news) updates to several stories we've covered in the recent past, as well as some encouraging breaking news on the worsening woes of our failed former President. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

Among the stories covered on today's show...

• A few weeks back, longtime Congressional ethics expert Craig Holman of Public Citizen joined us to explain the House GOP's attempt, buried in their new rules package adopted at the beginning of the new session last month, to kill the independent Office of Congressional Ethics. That is the very effective body that runs real investigations into Congressional members' crimes and ethics lapses, by way of contrast with the House Ethics Committee which, as Holman told us at the time, is "literally designed to sweep ethics matters under the rug." The new House rules were cleverly crafted by Republicans to cripple the OCE --- along with any real probes of folks like George Santos or Kevin McCarthy and the several other GOP members who defied Congressional subpoenas last year. But, at the last second this week, House Dem Leader Hakeem Jeffries appears to have saved the day --- and the OCE --- with some very quick work to thwart the GOP scheme to kill this critical agency.

• In another good news update today to yet another story we've been covering in recent weeks, the long and confusing battle over majority control of the Pennsylvania state House is now all but settled with the election of all three Democrats in three different Special Elections held on Tuesday to fill three vacancies in the chamber. That means that Dems will now have full control of the House in the Keystone State for the first time in over a decade. Critically, they will now be able to thwart the effort by the previously GOP-controlled legislature's plan to adopt a state Constitutional amendment that would declare there is no right to an abortion in the state.

• And, in still more good news on reproductive freedoms and the importance of elections, last November, Democrats won a trifecta in the great state of Minnesota, as they gained majority control of both chambers in the state legislature and control of the Governor's mansion. They have now begun to move a huge number of long-overdue progressive priorities forward. Last week, they adopted a statute to protect reproductive freedoms in the state --- the first state to do so after last summer's SCOTUS reversal of Roe v. Wade --- and, this week, Gov. Tim Walz signed a measure that mandate MN's move to 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040! (And there is much more to come. Elections matter!)

• Next, it's on to the ridiculous hearing held on Wednesday in the newly GOP-controlled Oversight Committee in the U.S. House. The long-awaited hearing, featuring a panel of witnesses who formerly worked at Twitter, was meant to examine alleged federal government censorship on the social media site. Specifically, a two-day pause on the broad sharing of a questionable New York Post article in early October 2020 on a laptop purportedly abandoned by Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden. The hearing did not go well for the Republicans. As it turns out (and as we've told you previously), there is no actual evidence of the FBI or any other government agency, censoring the laptop story --- or any other --- at the social media network, even though Republicans are now pretending that the FBI (Trump's FBI, by the way!) somehow used Twitter to rig the 2020 election for Biden. If all of that sounds ridiculous, it's because it is. We share several clips today from the hearing, which failed to reveal evidence that Biden or the Democrats or the FBI or the "deep state" violated the First Amendment in somehow censoring --- or trying to censor --- Twitter. But, you know who did? Yup, Donald Trump and his White House, as revealed by Democrats and the former Twitter employees who testified at Wednesday's sort of hilariously failed hearing.

• Also today, Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report with details on environmental elements of Biden's Tuesday State of the Union address; new evidence of more lies and war profiteering by BP; a foiled neo-Nazi attack on the power grid in Baltimore; and more on that great news about the clean energy mandate (as noted above) out of MN.

• Finally, some breaking news as today's show wraps up: former Vice President Mike Pence has reportedly been subpoenaed by Jack Smith's federal Special Counsel probe of Donald Trump's attempt to steal the 2020 Presidential election. That, according to ABC News, which broke the story first, suggests "a major escalation of Smith's probe"...

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Breaking news today and a weekend full of otherwise dumb news resulted in a bit of a hodge-podge on today's BradCast. I hope you'll enjoy it anyway! [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among the many stories covered on today's program...

• Rescue efforts continue in the aftermath of Sunday's horrific, pre-dawn, 7.8 magnitude earthquake --- and several huge aftershocks --- in Southern Turkey and Northern Syria. As we went to air, the death toll from both countries was more than 3,400. That tragic number is likely to continue to rise.

• American Republicans are, no doubt, breathing easier today following the great Chinese Spy Balloon Crisis that gripped them with fear and threatened their very lives and those of their families for several days since last week. On Saturday, the U.S. military shot down the high altitude balloon off the coast of South Carolina and have been collecting its remnants for study. Thankfully, nobody was hurt throughout this days long national nightmare, and the Dept. of Defense suggests the U.S. gained more from the exercise, on balance, than China did. The DoD claims our borders were similarly breached by Chinese spy balloons three times during the Trump Administration. Despite fevered demands from some on the Right, neither President Biden nor Vice President Harris resigned in shame amid "the catastrophic Chinese Spy Balloon spectacle [that] clearly threatened American families" from coast to coast.

• Great news for the wealthy! Thanks to campaign finance legislation adopted during the George W. Bush era in 2002, and huge inflation numbers in 2022, the amount of money that can now be donated to a single candidate for a single election has been increased from $2,900 to $3,300. The amount that can be given to national party committees, according to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) has increased from $36,500 to $41,300 per year. And the amount allowed for payoffs to special national party committees, such as for national party conventions, has spiked from $109,500 to $123,900. Of course, those limits also apply to poor and working-class people instead. So, it's all totally fair and just some good ol' American "free speech" at work!

• After declining to support Donald Trump's two Presidential runs in 2016 and 2020, the Koch Network is getting back in the game, vowing to oppose Trump this year by declaring their support for one non-Trump Republican by summer's end. We'll see if they have any better luck this year than their similar losing strategy back in 2016.

• Despite conceding that Trump lost the 2020 election in Wisconsin, according to an audio recording obtained by AP, his campaign team in the Badger State vowed to help "fan the flame" of phony fraud as early as two days after Biden's win there.

• Love him (or his policies) or hate him (or his policies), Joe Biden has accomplished more in the first two years of his Presidency than perhaps any other American President in history going back to at least FDR. Nonetheless, just one day before his second official State of the Union address on Tuesday, new polling out today from Washington Post and ABC News finds that 62% of Americans believe Biden has accomplished "not very much" or "little or nothing" in the first two years of his term. That may be an extraordinary failure by Democrats and the White House to get the word out about their own accomplishments. But the greatest indictment here should be for the corporate mainstream media whose only actual (Constitutionally-protected) job is to inform the public and educate the American electorate! Clearly, they have failed. Again. We discuss.

• Finally, callers ring in today mostly on the topic of Biden's accomplishments or --- as several incorrectly see it --- lack thereof...

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We've got another grab-bag for you on today's BradCast, from the new challenges faced by corporate media during a U.S. House controlled by GOP liars, to more evidence of the former guy's weaponization of the federal government, to still more voter fraud by wealthy white people in Florida.

Among the stories covered on today's program...

• NBC's Chuck Todd, the usually milquetoast host of Meet the Press, actually stood up to a few lies by accomplished GOP liar Rep. Jim Jordan on Sunday. That is never easy, given the flurry of lies the Ohio Congressman is capable of spewing at light speed. But Todd, who traditionally allows rightwingers to get away with all manner of BS with little if any response at all, did an impressive job this week --- at least for a few minutes --- in calling out several of Jordan's patently false assertions attempting to equate Donald Trump's theft of hundreds of classified documents and refusal, for more than a year, to return them to the federal government, with the discovery by Joe Biden's attorneys of a few dozen such documents from during his Vice Presidency found stored by aides at his former office at the Penn Center and his home in Wilmington, Delaware. We share the tale of the tape.

• Jordan now serves as Chair of the House Judiciary Committee and its silly, newly formed select Subcommittee on "the Weaponization of the Federal Government". The new panel is meant to promote all sorts of QAnon and Fox "News" fantasies and victimization porn about the FBI and DoJ somehow having it out for Republicans. Or something. They will pretend to expose false claims such as the FBI paying millions of dollars to Twitter to censor and ban rightwingers during the Trump years. Or something. Will Democrats and our corporate media be up to the task of countering their nonsense over the next two years?

• If you're looking for actual "weaponization of the federal government", however, look no further than what the disgraced former President did with his appointment of DoJ weaponizer-in-chief Bill Barr as Attorney General. Late last week, the New York Times published a jaw-dropping exclusive on Barr's failed attempt at revealing "deep state liberals" at the FBI and DoJ with the appointment of John Durham as Special Counsel to "investigate the investigators" of Russia's well-documented plot to interfere in the 2016 election. After four years, Barr and Durham have found none of the corruption that Trump and Barr pretended was there. But they did, apparently, find evidence of financial crimes by Donald Trump that, until the Times report just last week, remained their own little secret. Paging Jack Smith.

• Speaking of lies propagated by rightwingers and the corporate media, you may recall that, during the runup to the 2022 midterms, allegations of rampant, out-of-control crime in big "blue" state cities was all the rage. Trouble is, that was mostly lies as well. Now, a new analysis puts some meat on those bones and dispels another longtime rightwing myth. As it turns out, murder rates in "red" states not only far exceed "blue" states, but that has been the case since at least 2000, according to evidence documented by the new report.

• Speaking of elections, yet another wealthy white vote fraudster has been arrested for double-voting during the 2020 election in Ron DeSantis' GOP enclave known as The Villages in Florida. He is the fourth, to date. And you won't believe how easy the penalty was for this guy who, like the others, purposely voted twice. Especially as compared to the people of color who were rounded up at gun point by DeSantis' new "Election Crimes and Security" police force just before last year's elections. Those rounded up and tossed in jail by the GOP Governor and Presidential hopeful's personal police squad were former felons who had apparently been allowed by the state to vote two years earlier, despite a loophole in a new law that bars some former felons from being allowed to vote. They had no idea they were voting unlawfully, unlike the white criminals in The Villages who got off with (less than) a slap on the wrist.

• And speaking of GOP election liars, Kari Lake, 2022's failed, Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate in Arizona who lost by 17,000 votes but is still pretending she won, may now be facing legal issues of her own. According to a complaint filed by the state's newly elected Sec. of State Adrian Fontes (D), in a letter sent to the state's newly elected Attorney General Kris Mayes (D), Lake violated state law by publishing the signatures of several voters on Twitter last week. Fontes is seeking a criminal investigation.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as New Zealand is swamped by stunning, record rainfall; a new study finds building solar and wind projects is now cheaper than using existing coal-fired power plants; Tax payers in Pennsylvania are now on the hook for the clean up of thousands of recently discovered abandoned oil and gas wells; and the Biden Administration reverses a Trump scheme in Minnesota in order to protect a vast wilderness from toxic mining for the next 20 years...

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We're still fighting for accountability after all these years on The BradCast. So why should today be any different? [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

We kick off today's program with a word or two on our 19th Anniversary of independent investigative journalism, blogging, broadcast, muckraking and trouble-making as we now officially enter our 20th(!) year of doing so at The BRAD BLOG! While I had some thoughts on all of that this morning at the blog, one point of particular pride remains the ongoing billion-dollar lawsuits by voting machine companies against Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell (as well as Fox "News" and a bunch of their on-air hosts.) The reason for the pride is that no small part of the false claims made against Dominion and Smartmatic after the 2020 election by Trump's huckster attorneys spring directly from inaccurate interpretations of accurately reported exclusives at The BRAD BLOG many years ago, particularly in regard to American voting systems and Hugo Chavez.

By the time those defamation suits come to an expensive end, however, it's likely that both Powell and Giuliani will have been disbarred wherever they are currently still licensed to practice law. Just last month, for example, Rudy faced a hearing before the D.C. Bar Association where he is likely to be disbarred for the phony lawsuits he (and Powell) filed on Trump's behalf, falsely claiming fraud following the 2020 election.

Donald Trump's lawyers --- there are lots of them --- have been getting sanctioned in state and federal courts left and right over the past couple of years. But none, to my knowledge, have yet to be disbarred. That could be changing soon for both Giuliani and Powell. And, finally, as of last week, for John Eastman. He's the main attorney behind Trump's failed effort to have Vice President Mike Pence steal the election for him during the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021, when Joe Biden's Electoral College victory was finally certified after the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Late last week, the State Bar of California announced that Eastman is being charged with "multiple disciplinary counts." He faces 11 charges arising from allegations that he "engaged in a course of conduct to plan, promote, and assist then-President Trump in executing a strategy, unsupported by facts or law, to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by obstructing the count of electoral votes of certain states." The Office of the State Bar's Chief Trial Counsel says he will seek disbarment of Eastman before the State Bar Court. This is serious stuff for an attorney.

We're joined today by former Utah Asst. Attorney General and former University of Utah associate law professor, MICHAEL TETER, who now serves as Managing Director for The 65 Project. The group, named for the approximately 65 failed lawsuits Team Trump filed after the 2020 election, describes its work as "a bipartisan effort to protect democracy...by holding accountable Big Lie Lawyers who bring fraudulent and malicious lawsuits to overturn legitimate election results, and by working with bar associations to deter future abuses by establishing clear standards for conduct that punish lies about the conduct or results of elections."

The group has filed ethics complaints against loads of scammy Trump attorneys across the country and, as Teter explains today, against elected officials who are also licensed attorneys, like Sen. Ted Cruz and Attorney General Ken Paxton, both of Texas, for their fraudulent legal efforts to steal the 2020 election for Trump and rob millions of Americans of their perfectly legal votes.

"It's a solid case," Teter tells me today, regarding the CA State Bar's case against Eastman. "There are no disputes about the facts, quite frankly. Everything that John Eastman was doing and engaging in in 2020 and early 2021 has been well-documented. Those efforts clearly violate the rules of professional conduct that every lawyer swears to abide by. There are no 'slam dunks' in this world, but I think this is a very strong case and the bar wouldn't have brought it forward if it didn't think so, as well."

We discuss how rare cases like these are --- or used to be --- and how much State Bars really aren't prepared for cases like these. It's one of the reasons, Teter explains, that it has taken so long to bring many of these Trump attorneys before the Bar.

"The disciplinary processes set up in the states are not set up in a way to protect democracy or protect the abuse of the legal system" the way Team Trump has abused it. Usually, he says, they examine one page complaints, where an attorney has overcharged a client or something. "The bars need to adjust their thinking and their approaches to make sure they are protecting democracy."

Teter argues that most of the cases brought by Trump and his attorneys after the 2020 election were never meant to win. They were simply meant to allow members of Congress and others to argue that the 2020 results were in dispute. "They knew they didn't have the law or the facts. They were using the court system as a political tool, as part of their propaganda."

"So when they lost these lawsuits it didn't create any disincentive to continue. They got out of them what they wanted," Teter explains. "These bar associations are not used to lawyers using the legal system in this way and they need to get caught up. They need to start thinking about the abuse of the legal system, the abuse of law licenses in this way."

We've got a lot to discuss today with Teter, including the remarkable number of Trump attorneys now facing court sanctions, disciplinary charges and potential disbarment. That, he says, has at least made it more and more difficult for Trump --- and his acolytes like failed 2022 Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake in Arizona --- to find lawyers willing to represent them.

"MAGA has a new meaning now," Teter quips, "which is Making Attorneys Get Attorneys."

And finally today, as we're on the Trump Accountability beat again (was there ever a time when we weren't?), potentially good news out of New York today, where the Times reports that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has begun presenting evidence to a grand jury seeking criminal charges against Trump himself, related to his hush money payoffs to porn star Stormy Daniels in the run up to the 2016 Presidential election...

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On today's BradCast we focus on two different rightwing scammers: The Heritage Foundation and George Santos. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

The Heritage Foundation's decades-long effort to suppress the vote received a multi-million dollar boost following the 2020 election. Also, there is some new news today on what appears to be a fairly huge campaign finance violation by newly-elected Republican pathological liar, Rep. George Santos. But is it possible that Santos' scam is larger than anybody seems to yet appreciate?

We're joined today to discuss both scammers by BRENDAN FISCHER, one of the nation's foremost campaign finance experts who now serves as Deputy Executive Director for Documented, an investigative watchdog and journalism organization.

For some time, Fischer's group has been digging into and exposing the multi-state, multi-million dollar campaign by the rightwing Heritage Foundation's political action offshoot, Heritage Action. The "dark money" group has been pushing new voter suppression bills through swing-state legislatures with copy and paste "model legislation" in the wake of false claims of fraud in the 2020 Presidential election. Their work is often disguised --- as Executive Director Jessica Anderson was caught boasting to donors about in a 2021 video tape --- to have that "grassroots, ya know, from the bottom-up type of vibe."

Documented recently unearthed Heritage's four-page "Election Integrity Plan" [PDF] from 2021. It details the effort to push restrictions on voting through state legislatures after "in some cases, we actually draft" the bills for them, as Anderson, a former Trump official, is seen bragging to donors on that tape.

"Iowa's the first state that we got to work in," she explains, "and we did it quickly and we did it quietly. Honestly? Nobody noticed!" Anderson also cites "eight key provisions" the group supposedly was able to get into Georgia's controversial 2021 voter suppression measure, SB202, which was quickly signed into law --- supposedly at Heritage's urging --- by Gov. Brian Kemp.

IA and GA were two of "19 states [that] passed 34 laws restricting access to voting" in 2021, according to the Brennan Center for Justice that year, more than in any year since they began tracking such legislation in 2011.

Earlier this month, in addition to obtaining and publishing Heritage Action's "Election Integrity Plan", Fischer joined with Ed Pilkington at The Guardian to detail the organization's previously-unreported tax filings from 2021 [PDF], detailing more than $5 million in outside lobbying services in at least 24 states. That, after spending $0 on outside lobbying the previous year. The anti-democracy "dark money" outfit also spent more than $6 million on contractors for "marketing and advertising" in 2021, a substantial increase from the year before. The expenditures including more than a million dollars spent in support of GA's bill alone. In all, as Fischer and Pilkington report, Heritage's "Election Integrity Plan" earmarked at least $24 million to push these measures in at least eight swing-states over the past two years.

In addition to efforts to adopt restrictions on voting in the states, Heritage also worked to block legislation that would protect voting rights at the federal level. "The millions of dollars that Heritage Action spent in 2021 included substantial expenditures to pressure [Senators Joe] Manchin and [Kyrsten] Sinema in order to not reform the filibuster and thwart democracy reform legislation," Fischer tells me today.

"In West Virginia, in particular, they also did it with drummed-up fake grassroots activity," he explains. "Heritage Action and other groups organized buses to bus activists from out of state to West Virginia for a rally that was intended to 'save the filibuster' and protest Manchin's potential openness to changing the filibuster rules." It worked. Manchin and Sinema refused to reform the Senate's anti-democratic filibuster rule to pass the landmark Freedom to Vote Act in 2021. That measure would have been the most comprehensive voting rights and campaign finance reform measure since the 1960s. And, yes, as Fischer notes, the bill would have also "ended dark money!"

We've got a lot more to discuss along those lines with Fischer today. But, as long as he was here, there was an unrelated matter I wanted to get his thoughts on.

On Tuesday night, newly elected Republican Congressman and unrepentant liar George Santos amended several of his campaign finance disclosure documents. Santos had previously claimed in FEC disclosures that he had loaned his own campaign some $700,000. That was already suspicious, given that two years earlier, Santos claimed to have been making about $50,000/year. But, as The Daily Beast's Roger Sollenberger noticed on Tuesday, his amended forms now claim the funds did not come from him personally --- though they don't explain where the money actually did come from. Any campaign donation that large from someone other than the candidate would be an unlawful contribution.

While the Santos campaign seems to be admitting to what Josh Marshall characterizes as "major crimes" in their new filings, I have a different, completely ridiculous, couldn't-possible-be-true theory to ask Fischer about today: Is it possible that nobody actually gave $700,000 to Santos' campaign? That it was a paper claim only? There was no such loans at all?

Of course, that seems absurd, but this is George Santos we're talking about. More to the point, it should be noted that last year Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) successfully won a case at the corrupt U.S. Supreme Court which held that personal loans made to campaigns by candidates could actually be paid back after the election, in unlimited amounts, by anyone else. Lobbyists, etc. Is it even possible that Santos could have claimed to have made those personal loans to his campaign but that no money was actually ever given to his campaign at all? Allowing him to be "repaid" later by others after the election? It would certainly be a swell way for a wayward conman like Santos to make a cool $700,000, no?

I pose the question about this to Fischer with the full expectation that I'll be told there's no way something like that could have happened without it being discovered by officials long ago. Tune in to hear his response...

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Some tea leaf reading was necessary on today's BradCast, but it's our consensus that the news out of a hearing today at the Fulton County, Georgia Superior Court is encouraging. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

BUT FIRST TODAY, maddeningly, we've got to run through the litany of mass shooting over just the past 24 hours or so, following the horrific massacre over the weekend at a dance hall in Monterey Park, near Los Angeles. Since covering that shooting which resulted in 11 dead and 9 injured on yesterday's program, the massacres --- most apparently carried out with semi-automatic weapons and extended magazines that allow at least 30 rounds to be fired in seconds --- have continued. Two more in California. Another in Iowa. Another in Washington state. Republicans continue to send their thoughts and prayers. Democrats continue to try and actually do something about the epidemic.

AND SPEAKING OF EPIDEMICS, apparently the mishandling of classified documents by former Vice Presidents is a bit of an epidemic. Today, it was Mike Pence's turn to announce that his attorneys found "a small number of documents bearing classified markings" stored at his new palatial home in Indiana. While CNN's report compares the situation to Joe Biden's in paragraph 3, one must read all the way to paragraph 13 before the former President is mentioned.

You may remember him. He's the one who, literally, stole hundreds of classified documents comprising thousands of pages, on purpose, when he left the White House. He then repeatedly refused to return them to federal government officials (to whom he lied) for more than a year, despite the government begging him to return them and being forced to subpoena them, before finally taking them by force via a federal search warrant finding probable cause that multiple crimes were under way by the former President.

Once again, we've got to provide appropriate context to the story today since corporate media continues to fail to do so. In brief, the Pence and Biden cases are ones in which they discovered they had several documents they shouldn't have had in their possession, likely stored there by aides without their knowledge. After discovering them, the former Veeps then notified authorities and returned the documents. That, of course, is nothing like the felony crimes that Donald Trump pulled off and, apparently, continues to pull off even today, with dozens of classified documents still known to be missing.

Our friend Marcy Wheeler, investigative national security journalist, provided a handy chart today to help a few of our failed corporate media friends out when attempting to report on these apparently totally confusing matters...

NEXT, we move to the fascinating --- and encouraging, we think --- hearing at Fulton County Superior Court today. Two weeks ago, a Special Process Grand Jury convened by Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis completed its work and was dissolved. After eight months of investigation and some 75 interviews with subpoenaed witness, the panel completed a report and submitted it to Willis and Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney. While Special Process Grand Juries in GA, unlike regular Grand Juries, are not empaneled to issue indictments, they may recommend such indictments in their final report.

The panel has been investigating efforts by Trump and his supporters after the 2020 Presidential election to strong-arm state officials into stealing results on his behalf after he narrowly lost in the Peach State. The probe was kicked off by Willis shortly after the release of Trump's infamous, January 2, 2021 phone call to GA Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger, asking him to "find" 11,870 votes "one more than we have" to steal the election for Trump and threatening the Secretary with legal action if he failed to do so.

In addition to that, the Special Grand Jury is believed to have been investigating calls made by other Trump allies to state officials; false allegations of election fraud proffered to state legislators; attempts to threaten and pressure poll workers into falsely confessing to fraud; the 16 Georgia Republicans who falsely claimed to be "duly elected and qualified" electors; the abrupt resignation of Trump's U.S. Attorney in Atlanta; and the unlawful breach and duplication of voting system software and data in rural Coffee County (as originally reported in detail on this program.)

Nobody other than Willis and McBurney (and the Special Grand Jurors) know what is in their report, but the panel requested that it be made public. Today's hearing in Atlanta was convened to determine if that would happen in full immediately, in part immediately, or not at all until sometime in the future. Willis and her office argued against immediate public disclosure of report, offering some tasty morsels as to why.

"We think, for future defendants to be treated fairly, it's not appropriate at this time to have this report released," Willis told the Judge. "At this time, in the interest of justice and the rights of, not the state, but others, we are asking that the report not be released because you, having seeing that report... [pause]...decisions are imminent."

What does that mean exactly? We discuss. Along with the counter arguments from an attorney representing media outlets such as the Atlanta Journal Constitution, New York Times and Wall Street Journal who argued today for the immediate public disclosure of the Special Grand Jury report. "We believe the report should be released now and in its entirety," argued the media intervenors' attorney, Tom Clyde. The question is difficult, given the rarity of Special Process Grand Juries in GA and the extraordinary circumstances of what they've been investigation. Judge McBurney is now considering his options. Willis is free to move ahead with indictments at any time, no matter what is ultimately decided about the report.

FINALLY TODAY, Desi Doyen has our latest Green News Report, with news on California's recently disastrous string of punishing storms; a new report on whether off-shore wind power is killing whales off the U.S. northeast coast; the high cost of weather disasters in the U.S. in 2022; and some good news for manatees off the coast of Florida...

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"Everything Donald does is transactional," Mary Trump, a licensed psychologist and niece of the disgraced former President has explained.

A scathing federal court decision late last week, awarding nearly one million dollars in sanctions against Don the Con and his attorney in response to just one of his many recent frivolous lawsuits against perceived political enemies, underscores Mary's point. It also details how, since leaving office, 2020's biggest loser has engaged in and continues to engage in a litigation grift.

The withering 46-page order [PDF] handed down last Thursday by U.S. District Court Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks in Donald J. Trump v. Hillary Clinton, et al. does more than explain why the veteran federal jurist awarded an eye-popping $937,989 in attorney's fee sanctions against the former President and his New Jersey lawyer, Alina Habba. The erudite legal ruling also contained an in-depth discussion of more than a half-dozen other deceptive and frivolous lawsuits that this "predator" and "successful sociopath" filed against those he has long hoped to paint as enemies since leaving office.

In an attempt at reversing his more than 7 million vote loss at the polls, Trump and his allies filed and lost 61 out of 62 post-election lawsuits. The cases were so devoid of merit, so replete with deceptive allegations, that many of the former President's attorneys were later confronted with ethics complaints and sanctions ranging from fines, to censure and even disbarment.

In the aftermath of that debacle, a normal, non-sociopathic person would have slunk off towards oblivion, tail between his/her legs. Not The Donald.

From a "transactional" perspective, those 61 "losing" cases were a smashing success. They provided the failed President an opportunity to rake-in $250 million from his gullible "base".

But, along with imposing nearly $1 million in attorney's fees sanctions --- including almost $172,000 that Trump will now have to pay out to perhaps his greatest perceived personal nemesis, Hillary Clinton --- Judge Middlebrooks expressed the need to remediate the harm caused to the 31 named Defendants, whom he regarded as the victims of an "abusive" and "completely frivolous" complaint. His Honor eviscerated Trump's lawsuit as one "that should never have been filed"; a lawsuit that was drafted only "to advance a political narrative; not to address legal harm caused by any Defendant." The veteran and very able jurist also expressed a hope that the eye-popping amount of court sanctions might act as a deterrent.

Nonetheless, as long as Trump's litigation fundraising continues to rake-in enormous sums, it's unlikely that anything short of criminal prosecution for some of his many alleged crimes will ultimately accomplish that worthy goal. Maybe...

Today's BradCast --- from questions about classified Presidential documents to this week's hand-count of 2020 ballots in a swing-state county --- is ultimately about transparency and sunshine as the best disinfectants when it comes to politics and the necessity of public oversight for the health of American democracy. Even when it may seem annoying to some at first blush.

Much of the corporate media has been doing a fairly lousy job of allowing disingenuous rightwing opportunists to turn the recent reported discoveries of some classified documents said to have been found in old boxes at a Joe Biden office and one of residents into the very same thing that Donald Trump is facing potential felony charges for. In his case, any charges will most likely come in response to blatant disregard for the rule of law and the continuing-to-this-day obstruction of justice in his case of thousands of pages of stolen classified documents.

There is little comparison between the two matters, but the comparisons are being made anyway. Sometimes helpfully, sometimes lazily and destructively. In any event, Robert Hur, a former U.S. Attorney appointed by Donald Trump was designated on Thursday by Biden's Attorney General Merrick Garland to serve as Special Counsel in the matter of the Biden documents. That is a good thing, as it will ultimately serve to either expose crimes (unlikely, based on the currently known evidence, but always a good thing if there are any actual crimes) or end with a report from the Special Counsel finding no violations of the law by the President. A normal, non-Special Counsel probe by DoJ would end in either indictments or no comment, allowing false claims to be made forever.

I suspect many Dems will be annoyed by the appointment of a Special Counsel in the Biden case. But it is ultimately be better than the alternative. Transparency, sunshine and independent oversight are always good things.

In a similar vein, the second major story we focus on today involves a hand-count of hand-marked paper ballots from the 2020 Presidential election taking place this week in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania. It's a county where Trump won by more than 40 points in both 2016 and 2020, but where many Republicans have been conned into believing there was some sort of fraud that decreased Trump's win from 44.2 points over Hillary Clinton in 2016 to "only" 41.4 points over Biden in 2020.

There is zero evidence of fraud or programming error or mistally of any kind, but local Republicans --- hoaxed by opportunistic national liars --- have collected thousands of signatures to demand a public hand count. The County's of Board of Supervisors ultimately agreed late last year to allow one.

Some of the few covering the count at all in the national media this week have been snarky, snide or dismissive (MSNBC's Alex Wagner, for example, and the very computer voting and tabulation friendly media outlet VoteBeat). But, as it turns out, the count appears to be going smoothly, is reportedly confirming the original results, and was largely completed in just three days rather than the three weeks VoteBeat had suggested it might take, as they offered readers false and misleading claims about hand-counting. (They believe computers are more reliable for that sort of thing, even though the only way to know if computers have tallied paper ballots accurately is to...hand count them.)

But whether there is legitimate cause to be concerned about the results of a Presidential election two years ago in a far-right leaning swing-state county, and while even a hand-count is unlikely to persuade the most brain-poisoned of Republicans, public oversight of vote counting is ultimately a very good thing for democracy. In fact, in all of my years on this beat, I am convinced it is the only thing that can keep it viable and continuing here in the U.S. As you may have noticed, for good reasons and bad, confidence in democracy and election results have taken quite a beating in this country in recent years. That is good for nobody other than the charlatans and autocrats. Public oversight of election results, on the other hand, particularly if they confirm the original counts, can only help to shore up confidence by the electorate. Democracy needs that to thrive and survive

Once again, sunshine, transparency and oversight to the rescue...whether some may be annoyed by it or not.

Finally, we finish out today with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, including some disturbing new climate data from NOAA and the latest dumb pretend freak-out by Fox "News"...

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It's our first call-in show of the new year on today's BradCast, but we've got a lot of news to get to as well first. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among the bevy of stuff covered on today's program...

• Thousands in California face mandatory evacuations due to flooding and possible mudslides, with emergency declarations by the state's Governor and President Biden for more than a dozen counties. Some 8 inches of rain drenched some areas over the past 12 hours. A line of repeated deluges are expected to slam the otherwise drought-stricken state over the next week or more.

• Over the weekend, thousands stormed government buildings in Brazil in a January 6, MAGA-style insurrection in support of former President Jair Bolsonaro who recently lost his election to former Brazilian President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known simply as "Lula" by his countrymen). Bolsonaro has taken refuge near Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago in Florida, as nearly 1,500 of his supporters were rounded up and arrested after Sunday's attempted coup. Democratic leadership in the White House and Congress condemned the attempt to undermine the peaceful transfer of power in Brazil. Republican leadership had yet to say a word as of airtime today.

• Speaking of Republican "leadership", GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy gave away the store to his farther right wing late on Friday to finally win the House Speakership after an embarrassing 15 rounds of voting. But at what cost? We discuss a number of his concessions, what they are likely to mean for McCarthy and his party, and for the rest of us going forward, with nation's debt ceiling and much more hanging in the balance. McCarthy's late night victory on Friday, January 6th 2023 (and into the early Saturday morning hours) came two years to the day after the Trump-incited insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. It also came on the evening after Republicans failed to turn out for the second-year anniversary memorial, recognition event on the Capitol steps for 140 law enforcement officials who were injured or died during and after the Republican riot. During McCarthy's acceptance speech as Speaker, he also vowed to defund federal law enforcement. His GOP colleagues cheered in response.

• As the 118th Congress finally got under way on Monday, Republicans are expected to use their very slim majority to investigate Joe Biden's family and the so-called "weaponization of the federal government" against Twitter and other social media outlets...ironically enough, from during the time that Trump controlled the FBI. As explained on today's show today briefly (and I suspect we'll have to offer more details in the weeks and months ahead), claims being made by the liars on the Right (and a few misled and/or confused folks on the Left, sadly) that "Twitter was paid to practice censorship by the government and ban people the government did not like," is evidence-free nonsense. But you'll be hearing a lot of those false claims, as based on the so-called "Twitter Files" they misleadingly cite as evidence. That, even though the files in question, at least to date, reveal nothing of the sort.

• Relatedly, at least one of the far-right Freedom Caucus Members, its chair, Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), hopes to sit on a new Congressional Committee to investigate the federal investigators probing Donald Trump's many crimes related to his attempt to steal the 2020 Presidential election and his theft of classified White House documents. That, even though Perry has had his phone confiscated as evidence by the FBI and faces potential criminal charges for his role in the J6 insurrection. He sees no conflict of interest in sitting on that Congressional panel.

• In Michigan on Friday, Attorney General Dana Nessel, tired of waiting for the Feds to act, has announced plans to reopen her own investigation into the fake electors plot in her state after referring the matter to the U.S. Dept. of Justice one year ago.

• And in Georgia, the Special Grand Jury convened by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has now wrapped up its work. According to a state judge, they have delivered their report on who, if anyone, should be indicted in the broad conspiracy led by Donald Trump and many of his top supporters to strong-arm state officials into overturning the election he lost there in 2020. Special Grand Juries in the state may not issue not issue indictments. So Willis must now decide if she wishes to seek indictments from a regular grand jury, and the judge overseeing the matter must decide if the Special Grand Jury's report should be publicly released, as they have requested.

• Finally, callers ring in on all of the above and more for the first time since the turn of the new year!...

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It's January 6 again, so our "weird annual tradition," as our guest describes it today, continues on The BradCast. Sadly, so does the GOP's continuing threat to American democracy, two years after the deadly assault at the U.S. Capitol. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

First up, it is also Day 4 of the House Republicans' failures to select a Speaker. There were some breakthroughs for GOP leader Kevin McCarthy on Friday, however, after 13 unsuccessful ballots (for the first time in 134 years). His desperation to give away pretty much everything in exchange for winning the weakest Speakership in history earned him another 15 votes or so from his GOP opponents. And, with that, he was finally able to get more votes than Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries. Nonetheless, he was still shy of a majority as we went to air today. So, the "Never Kevins" are still winning the day and the 118th Congress is still unable to get underway.

As one Democratic member, elected last November for a third term, noted about his time, so far, in Congress: "1st term started with a GOP-led govt shutdown. 2nd term started with a deadly insurrection incited by the former Republican president. And my 3rd term has yet to begin due to @HouseGOP’s failure to elect a speaker. Notice a pattern?"

All of this on the second anniversary of the deadly, Donald Trump-incited insurrection at the U.S. Capitol back in 2021, as one of his last, desperate, failed attempts to steal the Presidency from the American people.

A memorial was held by House Democrats outside the Capitol today, in remembrance of those law enforcement officials who lost their lives while, and just after, defending it on January 6, 2021. We observed no Republicans at the ceremony.

At the White House, President Biden marked the occasion by awarding 14 individuals with the Presidential Citizens Medal. The awardees including three law enforcement officials who lost their lives and five who were critically injured that day. Also, a collection of bipartisan election officials, poll workers and others who defended the 2020 election at great personal threat, after being personally targeted by the former President of the United States and his supporters were honored as well. We share an excerpt from Biden's remarks today on the need to continue defending democracy and recognizing those who "stand watch" over it.

Finally, our "weird annual tradition" of visiting with the author and longtime Philadelphia Inquirer national columnist WILL BUNCH on January 6 continues today. He was with us on the program as the Capitol was under attack back in 2021, initially to talk about a different insurrection of sorts by Republicans at the state Senate in Pennsylvania.

Today was the third January 6 in a row he was able to be with us, and we focused today on the still-missing accountability for the ringleaders of the 1/6/21 attack, and on his latest column tying together that assault on democracy with this past week's GOP chaos and failure to select a Speaker in the U.S. House. They are all, it seems, of a piece, suggests Bunch, noting "the irony of this going on during the January 6 anniversary."

"No matter what sound minds want to get done, this band of obstructionists is in control," he argues. Citing them as "the spoiled children of Trumpism," Bunch says, "I would call them nihilists. They really believe in nothing other than their own air time, raising their own profile."

"Everybody in this [GOP House] leadership group voted to throw out people's votes in the 2020 election," Bunch, a resident of Pennsylvania, whose vote they tried to steal from him on January 6, 2021, notes. And it's not only those who tried to undermine democracy two years ago who have still failed to be held accountable. "The five freshmen who voted against McCarthy all ran as Trumpified election deniers."

"I mean, is it against the law to overthrow the government or not?," Bunch quips today, only somewhat rhetorically.

"The common thread is minority rule," he goes on to observe. "They believe they have some kind of divine right. It's really linked to these hierarchies of American life --- white supremacy, or white privilege, the patriarchy and other things. Running for office as the protectors of that. You're not going to do anything affirmatively to help people. You're just going to stop these people you see as destroyers of your way of life, your culture. It doesn't matter who gets the most votes, because the culture is more important than democracy. I think that motivates these people."

We discuss all of that and much more, as both Bunch and I share our frustration and hope that those who created all of these messes may finally face accountability some day soon...

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The violence was no accident. It was not a peaceful protest that spun out of control. Instead, as Rep. Elizabeth Cheney (R-WY) observed, in explaining her Jan. 11, 2021 vote to impeach, a then "President of the United States summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame for this attack." It was, by the former President's deliberate design, a violent insurrection.

In its Executive Summary [PDF] released last week, the bipartisan House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol amplified its referral to the U.S. Department of Justice for potential prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump et al. under provisions of 18 U.S.C. §2383 - Rebellion or Insurrection, which expressly applies to anyone who "incites" an insurrection.

"A Federal Court", the Committee observed, "has already concluded that President Trump's statements during his Ellipse speech were "plausibly words of incitement not protected by the First Amendment."

Those "words", uttered by the then President on January 6, 2021 at what was billed as a "Stop the Steal Rally" at the Ellipse near the White House, included 22 occasions in which Trump urged his supporters to "fight". He told them: "We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." Trump offered those words to an angry, armed mob gathered in D.C. that morning after his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, at the same rally, called for "trial by combat."

While not mentioned in the Committee report's Executive Summary, the video recordings of the rally reflect that, as the former President was speaking, the crowd chanted: "Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!"

Trump knew those he'd summoned to Washington D.C. on Jan. 6 were both armed and dangerous. According to Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to then Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and one of the J6 Committee's star witnesses, Trump became irate when "thousands would not pass through the magnetometers" at the rally site, which had been erected by the Secret Service for his protection. She testified that the former President said: "I don't F'ing care that they have weapons. They're not here to hurt me."

Given the totality of the evidence assembled by the Committee over the past 18 months, detailing Trump's multifaceted effort to overturn and steal the election from the American people in order to retain the Presidency, a prosecutor would be well positioned to argue that, when Trump directed thousands of angry and armed supporters to move to the Capitol, he was extolling them to essentially carry out a violent coup and that the words uttered at the Ellipse were, indeed, "incitement" within the meaning of the Insurrection statute.

Indeed, his reported irate antics in response to his Secret Service detail's refusal to permit him to accompany the mob at the Capitol, suggests that the former President saw his own role as that of an insurrectionist Commander in Chief --- someone who could direct the actions of an armed mob that included members of extremist militias clad in tactical gear.

As defined by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), however, speech is prohibited only where it is (1) "directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action", and (2) "likely to incite or produce such action." [Emphasis added.]

That definition provides room for Trump's legal counsel to argue the former President merely told the crowd to "go to the Capitol"; that it wasn't an incitement to "imminent" violence.

However, that plausible defense evaporated on Jan. 6, 2021 at 2:24 p.m. when Trump tweeted...