Trump asks Supreme Court to block release of records from Jan. 6
WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump turned to the Supreme Court on Thursday in a last-ditch effort to keep documents away from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol led by his supporters.
Trump’s attorneys asked the Supreme Court to reverse lower court rulings against the former president, who has fought to block the records even after President Joe Biden waived executive privilege over them. The federal appeals court in Washington previously ruled the committee had a “uniquely vital interest” in the documents and Trump had “provided no basis” for it to override Biden and Congress.
The records include presidential diaries, visitor logs, speech drafts, handwritten notes “concerning the events of January 6” from the files of former chief of staff Mark Meadows, and “a draft Executive Order on the topic of election integrity,” according to a previous court filing from the National Archives.
Trump’s filing came on the day that an administrative injunction issued by the appeals court was set to otherwise expire. That injunction, preventing the release of records, will remain in place for now. Lawyers for the House committee asked the Supreme Court later Thursday to expedite its processes and consider the case as soon as mid-January.
“The Select Committee needs the requested documents now to help shape the direction of the investigation and allow the Select Committee to timely recommend remedial legislation,” lawyers for the committee wrote.
Repeating arguments they made before lower courts, Trump’s attorneys wrote Thursday that the case concerned all future occupants of the White House.
Former presidents had “a clear right to protect their confidential records from premature dissemination,” Trump’s lawyers said.
The House committee has said the records are vital to its investigation into the run-up to the deadly insurrection aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Belarus crackdown: Belarusian authorities labeled the local service of the U.S.funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty extremist, launched a criminal probe against one of its journalists and arrested another one Thursday.
It was the latest move in a monthslong, multi-pronged crackdown on the country’s independent media.
Belarus’ Interior Ministry added the outlet, known in the country as Radio Svaboda (Radio Freedom), and its journalists to the government registry of extremist organizations. Earlier this month, a court in the Belarusian capital Minsk ruled to designate the social media pages of Radio Svaboda as extremist.
Journalists and members of the public in Belarus may face up to seven years in prison for disseminating content produced by “extremist” outlets.
‘Unabomber’ moved: The man known as the “Unabomber” has been transferred to a federal prison medical facility in North Carolina after spending the past two decades in a federal Supermax prison in Colorado for a series of bombings targeting scientists.
Theodore “Ted”
Kaczynski, 79, was moved to the FMC Butner medical center in North Carolina on Dec. 14, according to bureau spokesperson Donald Murphy.
Murphy declined to disclose any details of Kaczynski’s medical condition or the reason for his transfer.
Kaczynski is serving life without the possibility of parole following his 1996 arrest at the primitive cabin where he was living in western Montana. He pleaded guilty to setting 16 explosions that killed three people and injured 23 others in various parts of the country between 1978 and 1995.
The Federal Medical Center Butner offers medical services for prisoners including oncology, surgery, neurodiagnostics and dialysis, according to the Bureau of Prisons. It opened an advanced care unit and a hospice unit in 2010.
Military discharges: The Marine Corps discharged 66 Marines in the past week for
refusing to get the coronavirus vaccine as mandated by the military, outpacing the other services at discipline related to the shots.
The latest Corps actions, which came as COVID19 cases surged across the country as a result of the omicron variant, brought the total number of Marines booted out of the service for vaccine refusal to 169.
The Marine Corps has been the most aggressive in discharging troops who refuse the vaccine. And it also has denied all religious requests for vaccine exemptions that have been processed. As of Thursday, 3,080 of the 3,192 requests received — or more than 96% — have been processed and rejected.
The Marine vaccination rate is the lowest among the military services. The Army, Navy and Air Force all have nearly or more than 98% who have gotten at least one shot.
Monument removed: A monument at a Hong Kong
university that was the bestknown public remembrance of the Tiananmen Square massacre on Chinese soil was removed early Thursday, wiping out the city’s last place of public commemoration of the bloody crackdown.
The 26-foot-tall Pillar of Shame, which depicts 50 torn and twisted bodies piled on top of each other, was made by Danish sculptor Jens Galschioet to symbolize the lives lost during the military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.
Each year on June 4, members of the now-defunct student union would wash the statue to commemorate the massacre.
The city, together with Macao, were the only places on Chinese soil where commemorations of the crackdown were allowed.
NYC bash still on: Revelers will still ring in the new year in New York’s Times Square
next week, there just won’t be as many of them as usual under new restrictions announced Thursday as the city grapples with a spike in COVID-19 cases.
Viewing areas that normally accommodate about 58,000 people will be limited to about 15,000 to allow for more distancing, and everyone in attendance must show proof of vaccination and wear a mask, Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a news release announcing the changes.
The added precautions for New Year’s Eve in Times Square were spurred by the rapid spread of the omicron variant in the Big Apple, where lines for testing have snaked around blocks in recent days.
On Wednesday, the city set yet another one-day testing record with 22,808 new cases, though a true comparison with the number of cases during the initial COVID-19 surge in spring 2020 is impossible because tests were very limited at the time.