TV News LIES

Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) was elected assistant minority leader on Thursday, the No. 4 position in House Democratic leadership, after Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) dropped his unexpected challenge.

Why it matters: Cicilline's surprise announcement on Wednesday that he was taking on Clyburn came amid grumbling from some younger members about the 82-year-old Democratic whip's decision to stay in leadership.

• Cicilline, the chair of the LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus, argued for LGBTQ+ representation in leadership, citing a recent shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs.

What we're hearing: Cicilline, in a speech to the caucus on Thursday, laid out what he would have run on before endorsing Clyburn to applause from his colleagues, according to members in the room.

• Cicilline also said he got to sit down with Democratic leadership and was assured there will be LGBTQ+ representation in leadership – though it's not yet clear what form that will take.

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Closing arguments at the Trump Organization’s criminal tax fraud trial got off to a rocky start Thursday as a lawyer for the company was caught showing jurors portions of witness testimony that had previously been stricken from the official court record.

Prosecutors objected to the display about an hour into lawyer Susan Necheles’ presentation. The judge, Juan Manuel Merchan, admonished Necheles and halted arguments so she could remove any other precluded testimony from a slideshow she was showing to jurors.

Necheles said she didn’t intend to show any testimony that had been stricken as a result of a sustained objection. Merchan noted that the objections themselves had been removed from the excerpts Necheles showed, but not the objectionable testimony.

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A congressional subcommittee issued its final report Thursday about financial fraud supercharged by online lending during the pandemic, which alleged executives and their families enriched themselves through government relief programs.

Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, focused much of the 130-page report on Womply and Blueacorn, both of which emerged as major players that fused tech and financing to speed up lending through the government’s Paycheck Protection Program.

Womply had no lending experience before COVID-19 and Blueacorn did not exist, yet together the companies captured more than $3 billion in fees – eclipsing their direct competitors.

The startups are not banks but worked as middlemen, marketing to struggling businesses and quickly approving loans with partner banks, backed by the Small Business Administration. The companies make their money through a government-paid fee for facilitating the loans.

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Two former senior US diplomats have made a highly unusual call for the Biden administration to cut weapons supplies to Israel if the incoming far-right government uses them to annex Palestinian land, expel Arabs or finally kill off the diminishing possibility of a Palestinian state.

Daniel Kurtzer, a former US ambassador to Israel under George W Bush, and Aaron David Miller, a US Middle East peace negotiator during several administrations, have called for what they described as an “unprecedented and controversial” break from America’s largely unconditional military and diplomatic support for Israel if “the most extreme government in the history of the state” pursues the stated aims of some of its members.

The pair warn that these could include “efforts to change the status of the West Bank”, in effect a warning against partial or wholesale annexation of Palestinian land to Israel. They also warned against increased use of force against Arabs in the occupied territories and Israel by incoming ministers who have espoused openly racist views, escalating settlement construction, and moves “to build infrastructure for settlers that is designed to foreclose the possibility of a two-state solution”.

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The seditious conspiracy convictions of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and another leader in the far-right extremist group show that jurors are willing to hold accountable not just the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but those who schemed to subvert the 2020 election.

Tuesday’s verdict, while not a total win for the Justice Department, gives momentum to investigators just as the newly named special counsel ramps up his probe into key aspects of the insurrection fueled by President Donald Trump’s lies of a stolen election.

As Democrats call for charges to be brought against Trump and the House committee investigating the insurrection weighs making a criminal referral to the Justice Department, the Oath Keepers verdict may embolden investigators to build cases against other major players behind the push to keep Trump in power.