“ICYMI: Seven Senate Democrats have requested an ethics investigation into Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Senator Josh Hawley’s (R-MO) role in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Read the full complaint filed with the Senate Committee on Ethics here.”  —Democracy Docket

View the complaint here.

The decline of Fox News has been sharp and precipitous.  The network, which enjoyed a long run as the top cable news network for more than a decade, is now routinely #3 in the nightly ratings, both “in demo” and with the general audience.

Before the November 3rd election, Fox News was attracting 4.5-6 million viewers–on occasion, more–across its three-hour prime time lineup of hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.  Now, 2 1⁄2 months later, it’s getting its collective butt kicked nightly by both CNN and MSNBC, with Fox News’s Big 3 barely able to hit 3 million viewers, and only one, Carlson, exceeding that, according to AdWeek.  

The decline started immediately after election was called for Joe Biden on November 6th, but to be accurate, all three networks saw a decline as people turned to different networks due to campaign fatigue.  

Since then, however, MSNBC and CNN have not just rebounded, but accelerated.  MSNBC ratings are up 20% meeting or exceeding pre-election ratings.  CNN’s ratings in primetime have shot up 50%.  On most nights, Anderson Cooper is challenging Rachel Maddow for nightly viewership honors.  Tucker Carlson, the one time king of prime time cable news, is wallowing in fifth or six place behind Chris Cuomo, Don Lemon and Lawrence O’Donnell.  

“Senator Schumer says Impeachment Trial will begin the week of Feb. 8. House impeachment managers will come read the article of impeachment to the Senate on Monday at 7 p.m.” CBS News Senior White House Correspondent Ed O’Keefe reports.

KRTK: “Police say they caught a man who tried to steal an ambulance. The heist came to an end after he was seen ordering food at a southwest Houston Jack in the Box drive-thru. It happened in the 6100 block of Ludington Drive Thursday night. According to the Houston Police Department, the ambulance was stolen while HFD first responders were out on a service call at a nearby apartment complex. Police say the man jumped in the ambulance and drove off. ‘Officers tracked the ambulance to a fast food outlet where the driver was at the drive up ordering food with emergency lights’ read a tweet posted by HPD.”

Three of the grand jury members who heard the case made by prosecutors regarding police officers’ actions in the raid that led to the homicide of Breonna Taylor have called for the impeachment of Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, the Louisville Courier Journal reports.

The three jurors, whose names were not released to maintain the anonymity of the grand jury, claim that Cameron breached his duties by misrepresenting grand jury proceedings to the public.

“The Grand Jurors did not choose this battle,” stated Kevin Glogower, the attorney for the three grand jurors. “This battle chose them. …These are randomly selected citizens who were compelled to sit on a grand jury and were terribly misused by the most powerful law enforcement official in Kentucky. It is truly a testament to the Kentucky Constitution that they are able to be here today and to expose injustice and demand public accountability.”

“[Eric Munchel’s lawyer] Alpert claims that her client Munchel told authorities that it was his mother’s idea to enter the Capitol and that he followed her to ‘keep an eye on her.’ The FBI agent agrees”  – Adam Klasfeld of Law and Crime

According to the Wall Street Journal, nearly 200 members of the National Guard who were deployed to Washington, DC in the run-up to the inauguration of President Joe Biden have tested positive for the coronavirus.

More than 25,000 Guard members from all 50 states, three territories and the District of Columbia were deployed around DC as a show of force in the wake of a domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol on January 6th to stop the certification of Electoral College votes.

The Guard stayed in cramped quarters, at first sleeping on the floors in the Capitol complex.  Photos of the troops show many wearing masks, although there were some exceptions.  The National Guard stated that wearing a mask was a requirement while in public. 

The re-election campaign for Donald Trump played a far bigger role than previously disclosed in the organization of the January 6th in Washington, DC than was previously disclosed, information from the Center for Responsive Politics reports.

The Trump campaign paid at least $2.7 million to groups that organized the rally that led to Trump-supporting domestic terrorists to attack the Capitol to undermine the certification of Electoral College votes.  Such connections will make it difficult for Trump to claim that he did not understand the audience that was invited to attend the rally, which included white supremacists, QAnon conspiracy groups and violent alt-right factions–and therefore throw into doubt any claim by Trump that the ensuing Capitol attack was unforeseeable.

Maggie Mulvaney, whose LinkedIn profile says her current position is Trump campaign’s director of finance operations and manager of external affairs and who is the niece of former Trump staffer Mick Mulvaney, and Megan Powers, who was the Trump campaign’s director of operations until December, were two of the people who signed off on the rally permit application.

Reuters: “A federal judge in Ohio ordered that Oath Keepers member Donovan Crowl be detained pending trial, after prosecutors charged him with conspiring with other members to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. ‘The charges against the defendant are very serious,’ said Sharon Ovington, a Magistrate Judge in the Southern District of Ohio. ‘The government alleges that he conspired with others in advance to forcibly storm the United States Capitol.’ Crowl is a self-employed carpenter in Champaign County, Ohio and a veteran of the Persian Gulf War. Prosecutors said he does not have a stable address at the moment. He and his associates Thomas Caldwell and Jessica Watkins are the first suspects to be charged with plotting to take over the U.S. Capitol, in an effort to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election over former President Donald Trump.”

You actually can impeach a former President, FWIW

— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) December 4, 2019

“The U.S. Senate Finance Committee on Friday unanimously approved Janet Yellen’s nomination as the first woman Treasury secretary, indicating that she will easily win full Senate approval, but Republicans called for her to work with them in developing economic policies. Yellen’s nomination was approved 26-0 in the evenly split committee, with concerns expressed by Republicans about President Joe Biden’s ambitious plans for massive coronavirus relief spending, infrastructure investment and tax hikes failing to sway them against the former Federal Reserve chair” – Reuters.

Axios: “The lobbying firm run by Trump ally Matt Schlapp brought in $750,000 in the final two weeks of 2020 from a former top Trump fundraiser and convicted fraudster who retained Schlapp to lobby – unsuccessfully – for a presidential pardon. The substantial sum that the former fundraiser, Georgia’s Parker ‘Pete’ Petit, paid to Schlapp’s Cove Strategies shows how valuable connections to Donald Trump were in his final days in office for wealthy felons seeking clemency from the outgoing president. Lobbying disclosure records filed on Thursday said Schlapp, a close informal Trump adviser, worked on a ‘request for a pardon and other public policy issues relating to criminal justice.’ The disclosure filing, which covered the last two weeks of 2020, said that Schlapp had contacted just one government office on Petit’s behalf: the Executive Office of the President.”

“Petit was not on the list of the nearly 150 pardons and commutations that the White House released during Trump’s final days in office. Schlapp didn’t respond to inquiries about the other policy work he reported performing on the account. Petit, a former Atlanta health care executive, co-chaired the Trump campaign’s 2016 fundraising operation in Georgia. A federal court convicted him of securities fraud in November. The charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.”

“That’s not real.  That picture isn’t real.  I thought we were a nation that cares about the facts,” Fox News personality Harris Faulkner whined about an illustrated metaphor on the cover of Time magazine conveying the mess President Joe Biden inherited from his predecessor.

https://youtu.be/1VQQF3j1-A8

Because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut, John Lolos pushed his luck just a little too far after participating in the domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol January 6th, as journalist Seamus Hughes reports.

After boarding a Delta Airlines flight at Reagan National Airport to return home on January 8th, Lolos decided to abuse his fellow passengers by repeated yelling “Trump 2020!” while the plane sat on the tarmac.  Wisely, the flight crew decided to return to the gate and disembark the unruly passenger, where he was escorted up the jetway and to the gate to wait for a later flight.

Washington Airport Authority Police officer, identified only by his last name Braddock, escorted Lolas to the gate of his new flight and watched him, scrolling through his Instagram account to pass the time.  Officer Braddock came across a video of insurrectionists storming the Capitol, and recognized Lolos as one of the people in the video, yelling, “We did it, yeah!” and waving a Trump 2020 “Keep America Great” flag.  Braddock confirmed Lolos’s identify because he was wearing the same clothes from January 6th.

Daily Beast: “Among the MAGA flags and ‘Stop the Steal’ signs that festooned the sea of rioters who invaded the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 was the abundant stamp of another conspiracy movement – QAnon – that nursed the election-fraud lies that fueled the crowd. Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) was already struck at how the Capitol attack demonstrated the growing influence of conspiracy theories like QAnon – a wide-ranging set of unfounded beliefs encompassing election lies and fantasies of depravity by those in power – which drove adherents to a violent plot to keep Donald Trump in power by any means necessary.”

“Then came the report that at least 22 current or former members of the U.S. military or law enforcement were found to have been at or near the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, according to a Jan. 15 review by the Associated Press, with more reportedly under investigation by federal officials. A former Pentagon official, Murphy quickly drew up a bill designed to block QAnon believers, and other conspiracy followers, from obtaining the security clearances required to access classified federal government information. ‘What we discovered was that there was a shocking number of people involved in that insurrection who seemingly live normal lives, working in government and law enforcement and the military,’ Murphy told The Daily Beast. ‘It’s really dangerous for individuals who hold these types of views to receive a security clearance and access to classified information… if any Americans participated in the Capitol attack, or if they subscribe to these dangerous anti-government views of QAnon, then they have no business being entrusted with our nation’s secrets.’ Murphy’s bill, one of the first legislative efforts crafted in response to the terror on display two weeks ago, is a sign of how sharply the policy agenda of Congress and President Joe Biden in the coming weeks and months has shifted with respect to right-wing extremism.”

New York State is on the verge of running out of coronavirus vaccines by the end of the day Friday, forcing health care providers to cancel appointments for first-time recipients and making them consider dipping into 300,000 doses set aside for patients expecting the second shot, WABC ABC-7 News reports.

Fifteen vaccination hubs in New York City will remain closed through Sunday, with others cutting back on appointments.  The shortage of vaccines could jeopardize plans to fully reopen schools in the city by September.

The shortage of doses puts public health officials in a quandary, making them choose between using reserve doses to give to first-time recipients and hoping new doses become available in the next two weeks, or holding them to finish the treatment for those already inoculated.

Hank Aaron, the home run champion of Major League Baseball in the pre-steroid era, has died in Atlanta at the age of 86.  Aaron slammed 755 home runs over a 21 season career.

Aaron played briefly in the Negro Leagues for the Indianapolis Clowns before joining the then-Boston Braves organizations of Major League Baseball in 1951.  After three minor league seasons, he got the call to join big-league Braves team, who had moved to Milwaukee, in March 1954.

Aaron became a respected leader in the league and in the public, fighting for civil rights and player worker rights.  As he approached the career home run record held by Babe Ruth, Aaron was deluged with racist hate mail, a fact buried at the time by the league.  During the offseason of 1973-74, when he was one home run away from tying Ruth, Aaron received multiple death threats.