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 Senator Joan Lovely, State Representative Sally Kerans and Chairman of Danvers Diversity Committee Dutroche Djoko present Dr. Charles Desmond with a Senate and Representative Citation in honor of his being awarded the Drum Major for Justice Award.

The House Ways and Means Committee has released copies six-years worth of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns, a week after releasing an extensive report that said the Internal Revenue Service failed to properly audit Trump while he was in office.

The public release of Trump’s tax returns – spanning the years 2015 through 2020 – comes after a protracted legal battle with Democrats that ultimately ended at the Supreme Court. Trump refused to voluntarily make them public as presidents before him have done.

The Democratic senator won his re-election bid against Walker, the scandal-plagued, Trump-backed political neophyte.

Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock has defeated Republican Herschel Walker in his bid for re-election, NBC News has projected. The victory earns a six-year term for Warnock, grants Democrats a 51-49 edge in the Senate, and brings an end to Walker’s tortured run for office.

Ahead of Tuesday’s runoff, Warnock’s campaign relied on an extensive get-out-the-vote effort involving activist groups and more than 900 staffers — hundreds more than they had on staff ahead of the general election in November. 

Warnock, Georgia’s first Black senator, largely let Walker’s often incoherent words speak for themselves, a strategy that in the end benefited him greatly. Walker’s rambling speeches became prime campaign material for Warnock and his surrogates.

Warnock 51.4% – Walker 48.8%

Following months of debate, the Jan. 6 committee has made four criminal referrals to the Justice Department related to Donald Trump and his team

The January 6 committee used its final public meeting Monday to summarize its 17-month investigation with a simple closing statement: All roads lead to Donald Trump.

Members focused on how the former president’s direct involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 election makes him responsible for the violence that unfolded at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and unfit to hold future office.

The committee laid out the case for both the public and the Justice Department that there’s evidence to pursue criminal charges against Trump on multiple criminal statutes, including:

• obstructing an official proceeding
• defrauding the United States
• making false statements
• assisting or aiding an insurrection.

The committee released an executive summary of its report on Monday, and it plans to release the full report on Wednesday, as well as transcripts of committee interviews.

Here are takeaways from the committee’s final public meeting:

1. Committee refers Trump to DOJ

For months, the committee went back-and-forth over whether it would refer Trump to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. 

On Monday, the committee didn’t equivocate.

The committee referred Trump to DOJ on at least four criminal charges, while saying in its executive summary it had evidence of possible charges of conspiring to injure or impede an officer and seditious conspiracy. 

In practice, the referral is effectively a symbolic measure. It does not require the Justice Department to act, and regardless, Attorney General Merrick Garland has already appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, to take on two probes related to Trump, including the January 6 investigation.

But the formal criminal referrals and the unveiling of its report this week underscore how much the January 6 committee dug up and revealed Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the lead-up to January 6. Now the ball is in the Justice Department’s court.

Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said that he has “every confidence that the work of this committee will help provide a road map to justice, and that the agencies and institutions responsible for ensuring justice under the law will use the information we’ve provided to aid in their work.”

2. All roads lead to Trump

Committee members repeatedly pointed to Trump’s personal involvement in nearly every part of the broader plot to overturn the 2020 election and focused squarely on his role in the violence that unfolded on January 6.

Monday’s presentation was a compelling closing salvo for the committee, which said Trump sought to break “the foundation of American democracy.”

“Donald Trump broke that faith. He lost the 2020 election and knew it. But he chose to try to stay in office through a multi-part scheme to overturn the results and block the transfer of power,” Thompson said. “In the end, he summoned a mob to Washington, and knowing they were armed and angry, pointed them at the Capitol and told them to ‘fight like hell.’ There’s no doubt about this.”

Specifically, the panel said Trump “oversaw” the legally dubious effort to put forward fake slates of electors in seven states he lost, arguing that the evidence shows he actively worked to “transmit false Electoral College ballots to Congress and the National Archives” despite concerns among his lawyers that doing so could be unlawful.

Members stressed that Trump knew the election was not stolen but continued to push baseless claims about widespread voter fraud in an effort to upend Joe Biden’s legitimate victory.

3. A Team Effort

As today’s proceedings made clear, the bulk of the focus was on the former president and what Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin described as the “more than sufficient evidence” to refer the matter to federal prosecutors. But the committee also made clear that, as far as congressional investigators are concerned, Trump isn’t the only one who broke the law.

There were, for example, multiple references to attorney John Eastman. An executive summary of the Jan. 6 committee’s report also added, “Kenneth Chesebro was a central player in the scheme to submit fake electors to the Congress and the National Archives,” though Chesebro’s name did not come up during today’s presentation on Capitol Hill.

Similarly, the summary points to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Rudy Giuliani as also allegedly having conspired to defraud the United States.

4. A bipartisan, if one-sided, endeavor

Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona – one of the four subpoenaed GOP lawmakers that the panel referred to the House Ethics Committee on Monday – tweeted before the hearing that the committee was a “partisan sham.” Rep. Troy Nehls, a Texas Republican who boycotted the committee, called it a “partisan witch hunt.” 

But the panel is, in fact, bipartisan.

It’s important to remember how this all started. While there was partisan squabbling over which Republicans would be allowed to serve on the panel, House Democrats were willing to give committee slots to GOP lawmakers who had literally voted to overturn the 2020 results. Instead, Republicans boycotted.

But two Republicans volunteered to join the panel: Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who was the No. 3 House Republican at the time, and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a six-term lawmaker who was a rising star in the party. They both brought GOP staff members along with them who worked for the committee. 

To be sure, Cheney and Kinzinger are outliers in their conference because they are anti-Trump. And that is the core of Trump’s critiques of the committee – that it is stacked with Trump haters. Still, even if they oppose Trump, Cheney and Kinzinger are still deeply conservative Republicans. Neither is returning to Congress next year – Kinzinger is retiring and Cheney lost her primary this summer. 

During Monday’s hearing, Kinzinger described how his House GOP colleagues were complicit in Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. He highlighted evidence that Trump wanted top Justice Department officials to “put the facade of legitimacy” on his voter fraud claims so “Republican congressmen … can distort and destroy and create doubt” about the 2020 election results.

No matter what Trump and his allies say, Democrats will forever be able to accurately assert that the panel’s findings, conclusions, its final report and its criminal referrals are bipartisan.

5. What’s next

he end is near, for the committee at least.

Thompson said the committee’s full report will come out later this week. This will be a historical document that will be studied for generations. Never before has a sitting president tried to steal a second term.

Additional “transcripts and documents” will be released before the end of the year, Thompson said.

The sheer volume of this material can’t be overstated. The panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, likely generating tens of thousands of pages of transcripts. Many of these interviews were filmed, which means the panel has hundreds of hours of footage that it might release very soon.

These upcoming releases will provide fodder to Trump’s critics. But it will also grant a key demand from some of Trump’s allies – that the panel disclose the full context of its interviews. (Up until this point, the panel has been very selective about which snippets of witness interviews got played at public hearings.)

The current Congress ends on January 3, 2023, and that’s when the committee will cease to exist. But the Justice Department investigation, overseen by special counsel Smith, continues. 

Of the committee’s nine members, four won’t be returning to Congress. Besides Cheney and Kinzinger, Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy of Florida is retiring, while Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia was one of the handful of House Democratic incumbents who lost their seats in the 2022 midterms last month.

6. No congressional committee has ever formally recommended federal criminal charges against a former American president. That’s precisely what happened this afternoon

excepts from CNN and MSNBC 12/19/202

Hakeem Jeffries, 52, was elected to leadership Wednesday alongside Reps. Katherine Clark, 59, and Pete Aguilar, 43, as the party’s new top three.

House Democrats chose caucus chair Hakeem Jeffries of New York to succeed Nancy Pelosi as leader of the Democrats in the chamber next year, a historic move that will make him the first Black person to lead one of the two major parties in either chamber of Congress.

Jeffries ran unopposed as leader, with Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark, current assistant speaker, running as whip and California Rep. Peter Aguilar, previously vice chair of the caucus, and was expected to win the spot to lead the House Democratic caucus.

At 52, Jeffries will represent a generational change from the current triumvirate of House Democratic leaders, who are three decades older than him. He became the chairman of the Democratic caucus in 2019, making him the youngest member serving in leadership.

His rise in leadership comes after Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn announced they would be stepping down from their current leadership positions. Clyburn is expected to become assistant leader in the new Congress.

Pelosi – who was designated “Speaker Emerita” in a unanimous vote by the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee Tuesday night – blessed the new trio of leaders expected to succeed them in a statement when she announced she would step down and return to being a rank-and-file member in the new Congress.

“A new day is dawning — and I am confident that these new leaders will capably lead our Caucus and the Congress,” Pelosi said.

Following a legendary run, Nancy Pelosi agrees to pass the torch.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but lawmakers and leaders with records like Nancy Pelosi’s tend to have buildings named after them.

Nancy Pelosi, the first female speaker of the House, who helped shape many of the most consequential laws of the early 21st century, said Thursday that she will step down after two decades as the Democratic Party’s leader in the chamber. “With great confidence in our caucus I will not seek re-election to Democratic leadership in the next Congress,” Pelosi said in a speech on the House floor.

The Democratic lawmaker is not resigning. Pelosi, who was easily re-elected last week, explained in her remarks that she will remain in Congress as a Democratic member representing San Francisco.

It was Pelosi who helped pass the Recovery Act that ended the Great Recession. It was Pelosi who ensured the Affordable Care Act became law. It was Pelosi whose record includes historic legislative victories on civil rights, Wall Street reforms, student loans, Covid relief, climate change, infrastructure and prescription medications.

President Joe Biden issued a written statement this afternoon, saying, “History will note she is the most consequential Speaker of the House of Representatives in our history.” There is no reason to consider that hyperbolic in the slightest.

Postscript: During her floor remarks today, Pelosi said she’s “enjoyed working with three presidents” as speaker, before referencing accomplishments from the Bush, Obama and Biden eras.

Left unsaid was the fact that Pelosi served as speaker under four presidents, not three

Democrats kept control of the Senate on Saturday, repelling Republican efforts to retake the chamber and making it harder for them to thwart President Biden’s agenda. The fate of the House was still uncertain as the GOP struggled to pull together a slim majority there.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s victory in Nevada gave Democrats the 50 seats they needed to keep the Senate. Her win reflects the surprising strength of Democrats across the US this election year. Seeking reelection in an economically challenged state that has some of the highest gas prices in the nation, Cortez Masto was considered the Senate’s most vulnerable member, adding to the frustration of Republicans who were confident she could be defeated.

“We got a lot done and we’ll do a lot more for the American people,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Saturday night. “The American people rejected — soundly rejected — the anti-democratic, authoritarian, nasty and divisive direction the MAGA Republicans wanted to take our country.”

With the results in Nevada now decided, Georgia is the only state where both parties are still competing for a Senate seat. Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock faces GOP challenger Herschel Walker in a Dec. 6 runoff. Alaska’s Senate race has advanced to ranked choice voting, though the seat will stay in Republican hands.