Trump rejects request to testify at Senate impeachment trial; House strips Rep. Greene of her committee assignments

Dominion Voting Systems has asked Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Parler to preserve posts related to its defamation claims against individuals and entities that accused the company of rigging the 2020 presidential election.

Dominion has sued attorney Sidney Powell, who made fantastical claims about Dominion’s role in an international scheme to steal the election from former president Donald Trump, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, a lawyer for Trump. The company is seeking more than $1.3 billion from each of them, and its lawyers have said they intend to file more lawsuits.

In their letters to the tech companies sent Feb. 3, Dominion’s lawyers wrote that social media users played a key role in spreading disinformation about the company, and that the recent deplatforming of Parler — and the recent suspensions of the YouTube, Facebook and Twitter accounts responsible for amplifying election-fraud falsehoods — had rendered key evidence unavailable.

Dominion asked the social media companies to preserve posts, messages and documents from key accounts, including from those associated with Powell, Giuliani, Trump, the Trump campaign and media companies including Fox News, Newsmax and One America News.

The company also asked Twitter to remove posts that falsely claimed that Dominion was somehow involved in the recent military coup in Myanmar amid allegations that the election results there were corrupted by voter fraud.

“An alarmingly high number of tweets claim, without basis, that Dominion was behind the coup in Myanmar,” Dominion’s lawyers wrote. “To avoid doubt, Dominion had absolutely no involvement whatsoever in Myanmar in any capacity. Neither Dominion’s machines nor its software had any role in Myanmar’s elections or the ongoing political unrest there.”

None of the companies immediately responded when asked whether they would comply with Dominion’s request.

Greene lost her committee seats in a bipartisan vote in which 11 of her Republican colleagues joined every Democrat to strip her of those assignments.

After an emotionally charged debate highlighting Greene’s past endorsements of dangerous conspiracies and rhetoric, the House voted 230 to 199 to punish her by diluting her influence in Congress.

Only three of the 11 Republicans who voted with Democrats to remove Greene from the committees also supported the article of impeachment against former president Donald Trump last month. They are Reps. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), Fred Upton (Mich.) and John Katko (N.Y.)

The other eight are Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Carlos A. Gimenez (Fla.), Chris Jacobs (N.Y.), Young Kim (Calif.), Nicole Malliotakis (N.Y.), Maria Elvira Salazar (Fla.), Christopher H. Smith (N.J.) and Mario Diaz-Balart (Fla.)

Many of them are from Florida or the New York metro area, two places particularly struck by tragedies — the Parkland school shooting and the 9/11 terrorist attacks — about which Greene spread vicious conspiracies.

Noticeably missing from the list of Republicans who backed punishing Greene was House Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney (Wyo.) who drew the ire of many Republicans for supporting Trump’s impeachment and nearly lost her leadership role over it.

In a statement after the vote, Cheney disavowed Greene’s past remarks, but like many other Republicans argued that her opposition was one of procedure and precedent.

“Republicans are not the party of QAnon conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, Holocaust deniers, or Neo-Nazis. These views are evil. Representative Greene has espoused opinions that have no place in our public discourse,” Cheney said in her statement. “It is our responsibility as Republicans to address these issues inside our own conference. Speaker Pelosi and the Democrat majority have no business determining which Republicans sit on committees. This vote today sets a dangerous precedent for this institution that Democrats may regret when Republicans regain the majority.”

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) delivered an impassioned floor speech Thursday night in which he urged Republicans to take a stand against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s actions — including not only her embrace of the QAnon extremist ideology, but also her implicit threats of violence against Democratic House members.

Hoyer opened his remarks by declaring, “None of us should take any pleasure in what we must do today. But to do nothing would be an abdication of our moral responsibility to our colleagues, to the House, to our values, to the truth and to our country.”

He then slowly paced the floor of the House, holding above his head a large poster board bearing an image Greene posted on her Facebook page last year.

The post included the caption, “Squad’s Worst Nightmare.” It featured an image of Greene holding an assault rifle. Next to her were images of the three liberal congresswomen of color who comprise “The Squad”: Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.).

“I urge my colleagues to look at this image,” Hoyer said.

His voice rose as he described the image, noting that two of the three Democratic lawmakers are mothers, while the third “has come to this body asking for more housing for people, for more health care for people, for more income for people. How awful.”

“And they’re not ‘The Squad,’ ” Hoyer said. “They’re Ilhan. They’re Alexandria. They’re Rashida. They are people. They’re our colleagues. … And this is an AR-15 in the hands of Ms. Greene. This was on Facebook just a few months ago.”

Hoyer noted that Republicans previously precluded former congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) “from going on committees for much less.” In 2019, Republicans voted to remove King from his committee assignments after he questioned why the terms “white nationalist” and “white supremacist” had become offensive language.

In his floor speech, Hoyer urged Republicans to “look at that image and tell me what message you think it sends.”

“AR-15. ‘Squad’s Worst Nightmare,’ ” he said. “Is that what it was intended to do — that each one of these ladies would have a nightmare about somebody with a gun? An AR-15 can carry up to a clip of 60 bullets.”

He concluded by quoting the words of a half-dozen Senate Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who have condemned Greene’s actions.

“What does your conscience tell you to do? … My colleagues across the aisle have an opportunity today to reclaim their party from the dangerous cancer of QAnon and violent conspiracy theories that promote — and have demonstrably resulted in — sedition and insurrection,” Hoyer said.

The Biden White House withdrew more than 30 nominations Trump sent to the Senate, many in the final weeks of his presidency, including several judges, ambassadorships and a spot on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

It’s not unusual for a new administration to withdraw nominations made by a predecessor that haven’t yet been confirmed by the Senate.

Among the notable withdraws is Judy Shelton, a Trump economic adviser, who was appointed to the Federal Reserve in July 2019. Shelton is a critic of the Federal Reserve, as Trump was, and faced opposition from Democrats, some Republicans and a number of prominent economists. She ultimately could not garner enough support to be confirmed.

Biden also withdrew Trump’s nominations for U.S. ambassadors to the Bahamas and Singapore.

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) on Thursday released a pointed five-minute video directed at leading members of the Nebraska Republican Party, on the heels of reports that the party planned to censure Sasse for his criticism and condemnation of Trump.

Sasse is one of a handful of Republican senators who has spoken out against the former president and who has tied Trump’s rhetoric and actions to the violent siege of the U.S. Capitol that took place Jan. 6. He is also one of the few GOP senators who supported moving forward with Trump’s impeachment trial.

Because of this, the Nebraska Republican Party’s State Central Committee has drafted a lengthy resolution of censure against Sasse and plans to formally censure the senator at its Feb. 13 meeting, according to News Channel Nebraska.

In his video Thursday, Sasse addressed committee members as “a friend and fellow Republican” but also said he wouldn’t try to talk them out of another censure. The senator said he had already angered the party in 2016, 2019 and 2020 when he refused to help Trump’s election efforts.

“Now, many of you are hacked off that I condemned his lies that led to a riot,” Sasse said. “Let’s be clear: The anger in this state party has never been about me violating principle or abandoning conservative policy. I’m one of the most conservative voters in the Senate. The anger’s always been simply about me not bending the knee to … one guy.”

President Biden on Thursday said he plans to sign an executive order to rebuild the United States’ refugee resettlement program “to help meet the unprecedented global need” after four years of rollbacks under former president Donald Trump.

“It’s going to take time to rebuild what has been so badly damaged,” Biden said during a speech at the State Department.

The United States admitted 11,814 refugees between Oct. 1, 2019, and Sept. 30, 2020 — lower than any other year since the start of the refugee program decades ago, and barely 14 percent of the number admitted in the last year of the Obama administration. Some states last year counted their newly arrived refugees in the single digits.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday that the Biden administration is looking into whether it can use executive authority to cancel some portion of the $1.6 trillion in federal student loans owed by 43 million Americans.

“The President continues to support the cancelling of student debt to bring relief to students and families,” Psaki said in a tweet. “Our team is reviewing whether there are any steps he can take through executive action and he would welcome the opportunity to sign a bill sent to him by Congress.”

This is the first time the administration has publicly signaled a willingness to consider executive action to forgive student loans. Biden said canceling at least $10,000 in education debt would be a part of his economic recovery plan after his election in November. Liberal consumer groups were disappointed when the policy was excluded from the president’s sweeping $1.9 trillion rescue package and pressured him to use his administrative authority.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy again defended Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene against Democrats’ effort to have her removed from her committee assignments, claiming falsely that she had apologized for her past rhetoric and accusing Democrats of hypocrisy and a “partisan power grab.”

Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), who kicked off the House debate on Greene, argued that taking a stand against the Georgia Republican was taking a stand against hate.

“Conspiracy theories and hate are malignant. They do not fade away. We must stand up to them and say enough,” Deutch said. “Ms. Greene has promised that she will never apologize.”

McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Greene had apologized, but that was during a closed meeting with Republicans and reportedly an apology for the trouble she had caused them. She has yet to apologize publicly.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) made this point, calling Greene’s alleged remorse a “deathbed, mild walk-back of a couple of wild conspiracy theories.”

“There was no apology for the hurt and harm caused, and she did not express regret for the stalking of a teenage mass-shooting victim, nor for life-threatening statements she made or promoted against the leader of this House and so much more,” Wasserman Schultz said.

“Denying her a seat at committee tables where fact-based policies will be debated and crafted is an appropriate punishment and restraint of her influence,” she said.

It was no coincidence that Deutch and Wasserman Schultz, who represent areas of South Florida, were the first Democrats to speak during the debate. Greene had called the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., a staged event and had accosted David Hogg, a student at the school who has become a gun-control activist, while he was lobbying lawmakers for stricter firearm laws.

McCarthy urged Democrats to rethink their effort to kick Greene off her committees, warning that Republicans would do the same to Democrats the next time the GOP was in power.

“You’ll regret this, and you may regret this a lot sooner than you think,” he said. “If that’s the new standard, if people are held to what they said prior to even being in this House, if a majority party gets to decide who sits on what other committees, I hope you keep that standard because we have a long list.”