Post Politics Now With new evidence coming in, Jan. 6 panel to continue hearings in July

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) faces a barrage of questions now that the Jan. 6 committee disclosed during its latest hearing that his chief of staff tried to present a slate of fake electors to then-Vice President Mike Pence the day he was set to certify the 2020 election.

This is the same senator who, weeks before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, held a hearing on election fraud to legitimize Trump’s false allegations of voting irregularities. Four days before the attack on the Capitol, Johnson signed a statement with nine other Republican senators that they intended to object to certifying Biden’s electors and demand “an emergency 10-day audit of the election.”

This is also the same senator who spread false information about the coronavirus, was accused of racism for saying he would have been concerned had Black Lives Matter protesters flooded the Capitol on Jan. 6 instead of mostly White Trump supporters, and is under fire for using taxpayer funds for airfare between Washington and his Florida vacation home.

But the latest revelations raise new questions about the Wisconsin Republican’s role in a deliberate and coordinated plan to block Biden’s win and give Trump the presidency, Colby Itkowitz reports. Johnson is, by the way, up for reelection this year:

Some Democrats and political experts say this latest revelation of direct communication in the form of text messages between Johnson and Pence staff on Jan. 6 could sway voters in a battleground state where elections are won by a slim margin.

“What happened in the last 24 hours is different. It’s one thing to articulate off-the-wall political positions, it’s another thing to possibly have assisted in a coup attempt,” said Kenneth R. Mayer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Johnson’s possible Democratic opponents — the Wisconsin primary is in August — immediately attacked him, arguing that the texts provide tangible evidence to voters that Johnson was part of an attempt to nullify the votes of thousands of Wisconsinites. A poll released Wednesday by Marquette Law School but conducted before the latest revelations found Johnson trailing three of his four potential opponents by single digits.

Read more about Johnson’s connection to Jan. 6 here.

Sarah Palin emerged from a crowded ranked-choice primary this month, finishing at the top by claiming about 27 percent of the vote, per unofficial results set to be certified this weekend.

But as Emily Davies writes, that may not be enough to get her elected to fill the seat of Rep. Don Young (R), who died in March.

Palin is now the top target of her rivals in the next stage of the special race to take Alaska’s sole House seat. As Emily writes, voters in the state are eager to elect a representative who is willing to buck party lines and work across the aisle. That sentiment could pose a challenge for Palin, a combative conservative, as she gears up for a ranked-choice general election that experts said might benefit candidates with broad appeal.

Palin will face two other candidates — a third one dropped out — on Aug. 16. All have tried to distinguish themselves from her by focusing on their pragmatism and ability to find middle ground.

Meanwhile, Palin has spent the later part of her political career characterizing politics in Washington as “war for the solvency, the sovereignty of the United States of America” and urged Republican leaders to “get on offense.” In her first television interview after announcing her run for Congress, she called Democrats on Capitol Hill “pretty wacko.”

Voters told Emily they have come to know Palin for her “hard right-wing speech” and as a “mouthpiece” for the most extreme bloc of the GOP.

While that may work in other states, it may not be the right formula in Alaska.

Read more about Palin’s uphill climb here.

The Justice Department wants a federal judge to investigate whether there is a financial relationship between members of the right-wing group the Oath Keepers and a nonprofit group run by Sidney Powell, one of Donald Trump’s former attorneys.

The Oath Keepers were among the extremist groups that attempted to stop the certification of President Biden’s 2020 victory on Jan. 6, 2021.

“The government is … protecting the record by involving the Court in the process of addressing a potential conflict before it undermines a proceeding and a defendant’s right to competent and conflict-free representation,” Justice Department prosecutors wrote to a trial judge Wednesday, Rachel Weiner and Spencer S. Hsu report.

The unusual request follows media reports that Powell’s nonprofit organization, Defending the Republic, has used some of the millions of dollars it has raised through spreading conspiracy theories about the 2020 election to pay legal fees for Oath Keepers members facing trial. According to BuzzFeed and Mother Jones articles cited in the filing, four defendants — including Stewart Rhodes, who founded the self-styled militia group — have taken funds from Powell’s organization.

All four are accused of obstructing Congress’s counting of electoral college votes on Jan. 6, 2021; Rhodes and two others are accused of engaging in a seditious conspiracy against the United States.

The prosecutors asked the trial judge to ensure that counsel is complying with legal ethics that bar outside funding for legal defense unless the client gives informed consent. The rules prohibit attorneys from sharing confidential client information with outsiders except under certain circumstances.

Read more about this Justice Department concern here.

A reporter asked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Wednesday whether he was afraid his National Rifle Association rating would drop if he voted for a bipartisan deal on gun control.

“What I’m mainly concerned about is dealing with the issues that have been brought to the fore by these mass shootings, which are directly related to school safety and mental health,” McConnell replied. “I think Senator Cornyn and his team have put together a bill that addresses the problem.”

Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.) led the Republican side in conversations with Democrats about gun control, collaborating with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) in shepherding a bill that on Tuesday night advanced through the Senate 64 to 34. The bill would toughen federal gun laws and provide billions of dollars to prevent future mass shootings.

The 80-page bill is expected to be passed into law in the coming weeks. McConnell backed it immediately after the text was released, while the NRA came out in opposition to it, saying it “falls short at every level.”

Cornyn has acknowledged that the compromise is likely to leave those on both extremes of the gun-control debate dissatisfied, but he said the time had come for lawmakers to heed the public’s calls for action.

“We know there’s no such thing as a perfect piece of legislation,” he said. “But we have to try, and I believe this bill is a step in the right direction.”

Former president Donald Trump also made his feelings clear Wednesday, saying in a post shared on his social media site Truth Social that the measure “will go down in history as the first step in the movement to TAKE YOUR GUNS AWAY.”

The Justice Department on Wednesday expanded its probe of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, with federal agents serving subpoenas to people in at least two states, Spencer S. Hsu, Josh Dawsey and Devlin Barrett report.

The move appeared to highlight the department’s widening probe of how political activists supporting then-President Donald Trump tried to use invalid electors to thwart Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.

Per our colleagues:

FBI officials confirmed to The Washington Post that agents conducted court-authorized law enforcement activity Wednesday morning at two locations — one the address of Brad Carver, a Georgia lawyer who allegedly signed a document claiming to be a Trump elector, and another at the Virginia home of Thomas Lane, who worked on the Trump campaign’s efforts in Arizona and New Mexico. The FBI officials did not identify the people associated with those addresses, but public records list each of the locations as the home addresses of the men.

The precise nature of the information being sought by the Justice Department wasn’t immediately clear; however, Arizona and Georgia officials testified Tuesday to a House panel probing the Jan. 6 attacks about attempts by Trump and his inner circle of advisers to try to reverse Biden’s electoral college victories in those states.

Previously, officials said that the Justice Department and the FBI are examining the issue of false electors. Until now, those efforts appeared to primarily involve talking to people in Republican circles who knew of the scheme and objected; the subpoenas issued Wednesday suggest that the Justice Department is now moving to question at least some of those who allegedly agreed to pursue the effort.

Read more about these new subpoenas here.

The House select committee tasked with investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection has modified its hearing schedule because of new evidence it uncovered.

The committee’s next hearing is scheduled for Thursday at 3 p.m. and will focus on Trump and his allies’ efforts to pressure Justice Department officials into helping them overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The committee has said that, in light of the new evidence it has obtained since the hearings started, it needs more time to go through it all, per our colleague Jacqueline Alemany. This includes footage from documentarian Alex Holder, who followed Trump before the attack, emails and records from the National Archives, ongoing interviews and depositions, and information left on investigators’ tip line.

After that, the panel will not convene a hearing again until July, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), who heads the committee, told reporters Wednesday, per Politico.

“Rather than present hearings that have not been the quality of the hearings in the past, we’ve made a decision to just move into sometime in July,” Thompson said Wednesday.

President Biden on Wednesday called on Congress to suspend the federal gas tax for three months.

Doing so, the president said, would ease prices at the pump for Americans in a “busy summer season.” The move would remove an 18-cent tax on gas nationwide, money that is used to fund roads and highways. Biden, however, said he is asking for the pause “without affecting the highway trust fund.”

“With tax revenues up this year, and our deficit down over $1.6 trillion this year alone, we’ll still be able to fix our highways and bring down prices of gas,” the president said.

Biden also called on oil companies to “pass this along” and make sure consumers can feel the drop in prices.

“There’s no time now for profiteering,” he said.

The president also called on states to either suspend their state gas taxes or “find other ways to deliver some relief.”

State gas taxes, he said, average 30 cents per gallon. A handful of states already have suspended these taxes, including Connecticut and New York.

Biden dismissed critiques by Republicans who he said claim the country is not producing enough oil and that his administration is limiting production, saying the country is producing record levels of oil.

The bottom line, Biden said, is that the rise in oil prices is to be blamed on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He said his critics aren’t taking that into account.

“All those Republicans in Congress criticizing me today for high gas prices, in America, are you now saying we were wrong to support Ukraine?” Biden said. “Are you saying we were wrong to stand up to Putin? Are you saying that we would rather have lower gas prices in America and Putin’s iron fist in Europe?”

A year ago, when a shortage of computer chips wreaked havoc across the U.S. economy, the Senate passed a rare bipartisan measure to spend $52 billion subsidizing the production of these small but vital pieces of technology.

It seemed like an easy legislative priority for both parties.

But the funding hasn’t been signed into law yet, Jeanne Whalen and Marianna Sotomayor report.

It took the House until February to agree to the subsidies. Since then, the process of combining the House and Senate bills has been bogged down over disputes about elements of the legislation unrelated to chips, including climate provisions and trade with China. Myriad other issues, including military aid for Ukraine and gasoline price inflation, have also distracted lawmakers.

House and Senate leadership met Tuesday to try to hammer out an agreement, given the urgency for chips across the nation.

While they did not emerge with a deal on what to include in the final bill, they agreed that they must act quickly to prevent chip manufacturers from bypassing the United States and investing overseas, according to a person familiar with the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.

House Democrats are eager to pass the legislation because many members, including the most vulnerable representing swing districts, believe it would help them argue that the party is fighting inflation and the supply chain problems driving it.

Read more about the shortage — and what Congress is attempting to do to curb it — here.