Post Politics Now Obama headed back to Georgia to campaign with Warnock

Wrapping up closing arguments Monday, lawyers for three of five Oath Keepers associates charged with seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot accused federal prosecutors of manipulating evidence by omitting key messages and overstating their involvement in the attack.

Per Tom Jackman and Spencer S. Hsu:

Prosecutors countered by urging jurors to convict Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and four co-defendants, citing “overwhelming” evidence “right in front of your eyes.”

“Make no mistake, he [Rhodes] wanted to start a civil war,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey S. Nestler said. “They wanted to attack what they saw as an illegitimate government. Their own statements prove the government’s case.”

U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta submitted the case to the jury after eight weeks of trial, 46 witnesses and hundreds of exhibits. The jury is set to begin deliberations at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, take off the rest of Thanksgiving week if no verdict is reached, and resume deliberations next week.

Defense attorney Bradford Geyer cast client Kenneth Harrelson as a follower, not a leader, on Jan. 6. The jury did not see Harrelson’s communications — not because he deleted them, as prosecutors alleged, but because he didn’t participate in planning, Geyer argued.

... Geyer and Jonathan Crisp, the attorney for defendant Jessica Watkins, criticized how prosecutors presented videos and evidence, calling it “government manipulation or deception.” He noted that prosecutors showed group chat discussions on the Signal app, used by Rhodes and many other members before and during Jan. 6, but omitted certain posts and wrongly implied Watkins responded to messages she did not answer.

Read more on these cases here.

The president and first lady celebrated Thanksgiving with military families in North Carolina on Monday.

“You are literally, not figuratively, the greatest fighting force, the best fighting force in the history of the world,” Biden said. “You really are incredible group of women and men. And again, I want to thank the spouses as well, because they put up with an awful lot of years because of your service. And a lot of those empty chairs. … There’s been an empty chair back at your home with your parents looking at that chair, wondering, ‘Are you all right?’, especially if you’re deployed.”

A Justice Department office ruled that Capitol Police officer Howard Liebengood — who killed himself days after encountering rioters during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — died in the line of duty, according to his family and authorities.

As Peter Hermann reports, the designation from the Justice Department’s Public Safety Officers’ Benefits Program means Liebengood’s family will receive a lump-sum payment. The precise amount was not immediately clear, but it will be in line with what relatives of other federal law enforcement officers killed while performing their duties have received.

Representative-elect Maxwell A. Frost (D-Fla.) and Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) each said in separate interviews that published Monday that they’ll support President Biden’s potential 2024 bid even though he wasn’t their first choice for a candidate in 2020.

Frost, who will be a member of the CPC when he joins Congress in January, told NBC News that he’s been pleasantly surprised by Biden’s performance. The first member of Gen Z in Congress was asked whether he feels as though Biden, who turned 80 on Sunday, is the right person to represent America’s youngest generations.

A federal jury in Washington said Monday that it could not unanimously agree on whether a Pennsylvania woman aided in the theft of a laptop computer from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) office during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but the panel convicted her of six other offenses related to the riot, including two felonies.

As Paul Duggan reports, jurors, deliberating for the equivalent of three full days in the case of Riley J. Williams, said they also could not reach a unanimous verdict on whether Williams committed the felony of obstructing an official government proceeding, the charge she faced that carried the most potential jail time. The charge of aiding and abetting the laptop theft was a misdemeanor.

Two Arizona counties have delayed canvassing of the November election results, postponements that earned praise from state Republican Party leader Kelli Ward and allies of Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for governor who last week was projected to lose her race to Democrat Katie Hobbs.

The counties are required to formally accept the results no later than Nov. 28. Hobbs, the state’s secretary of state, told The Washington Post last week her office is prepared to go to court if jurisdictions do not fulfill their legal obligations.

Georgia GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker debuted a new ad Monday, targeting voters before the state’s Dec. 6 runoff election. In it, former college athlete Riley Gaines complains about having to compete against swimmer Lia Thomas in the NCAA national championship, where the two tied for fifth place. Gaines describes Thomas, a trans woman, as “a biological male” and criticizes Walker’s opponent, Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.), as having “voted to let” Thomas’s participation “happen.”

This is not a new message from the GOP’s Walker, nor is Gaines’s endorsement. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution covered Walker’s anti-trans message in September, something that the paper explained was seen by Walker’s campaign as “a way to energize socially conservative voters — particularly women — who are uniquely motivated by the issue.”

First lady Jill Biden received this year’s White House tree on Monday afternoon, accompanied by her grandson Beau.

The tree, a concolor fir, is 18½ feet tall and was grown at Evergreen Acres Christmas Tree Farm in Auburn, Pa.

“I love the tree,” Biden told reporters. She was joined at the White House by members of the Shealer family, who grew the tree in Pennsylvania. Paul Shealer said the tree was planted 20 years ago.

Grandson Beau wanted to feel the fur of the horses, so the first lady walked him up to Ben and Winston to say hello.

Biden called Colorado’s governor following the deadly shooting in his state. Per the White House, the president spoke to Gov. Jared Polis (D) Monday about the shooting that left five dead at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs. He also spoke to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) about the winter storm that dumped record snowfall on western New York.