Wall Street Journal: “Shortly after becoming the first president in U.S. history to be impeached twice, President Trump summoned political advisers and demanded to know more about the 10 Republicans who had voted against him. Mr. Trump, who had feared an even larger number of defections, wanted to know who the lawmakers were and whether he had ever done anything for them, according to people familiar with the meeting. He also inquired who might run against them when they face re-election in two years, the people said.”

“The president has grown increasingly concerned with defections against him within his own party, aides say. Now, he must plot his defense in a second Senate trial that will hinge on his level of GOP support, with far fewer legal and political allies than the last time he was impeached. Mr. Trump has called several Republicans on Capitol Hill in recent days to seek their advice on who he should recruit, as the personal attorneys who defended him last time and White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, have made clear to associates they don’t intend to serve on his team, according to people familiar with the discussions. Advisers have urged the president not to tap Rudy Giuliani, his personal attorney who – to the chagrin of several Trump advisers – led the campaign to overturn the results of the election, telling Mr. Trump that he needs a sophisticated attorney who can stick to the facts. Some advisers have discussed John Eastman, a conservative constitutional law professor who was one of the few legal experts who told Mr. Trump that Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to block certain electors from being counted on Jan. 6, as a possible defense attorney, according to a person familiar with the conversations.”

“An Associated Press investigation has revealed what witnesses say led up to a shooting last month near the Iowa Capitol by a white military veteran that left a 15-year-old Black girl wounded. Michael McKinney, 25, is charged with attempted murder for firing his gun into a car carrying four Black teenagers, all aged 16 or under, during a tense confrontation at a Trump rally Dec. 6 in Des Moines.”

“McKinney, who was heavily armed and wearing body armor, told police he shot in self-defense. A resident of tiny St. Charles, McKinney has posted on Facebook in support of the far-right Proud Boys and against Black Lives Matter. In a news release detailing McKinney’s arrest, the state police described an afternoon shooting at a parking lot and didn’t mention the Trump car rally or the race of those involved. A city police spokesman said initial reports indicated the shooting was traffic-related. Division of Criminal Investigation spokesman Mitch Mortvedt said the agency released the immediate facts and circumstances as required” – Des Moines Register.

Daily Beast: “In the final week of his presidency, Donald Trump met in the Oval Office on Friday afternoon with Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO and a personal friend of the president’s who presented Trump with six pages of documents, loaded with unproven conspiracy theories, that he told him proved that China and other countries helped steal the 2020 election for Joe Biden. Lindell says that after a ‘five-to-ten minute meeting’ in the Oval, Trump asked someone to take the MyPillow inventor to a different room to show his documents to ‘the lawyers,’ and then asked for staff to bring Lindell back afterwards. Following a roughly two-hour wait, according to Lindell, he finally met with White House attorneys who dismissed his claims but said they would ‘look into it.’ He was then not allowed to see the president again on Friday. The Daily Beast could not confirm with other sources if the people Lindell met with were attorneys or other White House staff.”

“In the brief meeting, Lindell, a staunch Trump ally (who has also been a major financial backer of several legal efforts and rallies to try to nullify the 2020 election outcome) told the president, ‘Mr. President, this is real, you really won by at least 10 million votes.’ Lindell said Trump replied by saying, ‘Well, yeah, we all know there was fraud, Mike.’ Then, Lindell added, ‘He was upset to hear that this was happening to all the people who backed him for all these four years. He said, ‘Can you believe how they’re treating us out there?’’ Asked about other things the president told him during the meeting, Lindell simply described the rest of the conversation as mostly ‘generic.'”

Discussing some of the great minds who have advised presidents in the past, MSNBC’s Brian Williams mentioned one name that would have to be added today:

https://youtu.be/DoGMTOKM9fs

“Lindell.  That would be Mike Lindell, the conspiracy theorist who makes pillows filled with chopped up foam.  His commercials air on Fox News every few minutes.  That qualifies him for statesman status in the Trump White House.”

Trump supporters who wanted to intimidate Alaska lawmakers in the state capital on Sunday with a show of force by an armed mob made a slight mistake when they told people to meet at Anchorage’s Dimond Mall, not at the Dimond Courthouse, located across the street from the state capitol building.

The problem?  The Dimond Courthouse is in Juneau, not Anchorage.  And Juneau is 600 miles (as the bird flies) from Anchorage.  Given Alaska’s jagged geography, that’s about a 20 hour drive.

According to the Anchorage Daily News,  the management at the Dimond Mall caught wind of the armed protest at the mall–albeit in error–and will close on Sunday, the day of the scheduled event.

After posing with his feet propped up on the Speaker of the House’s desk, Richard Barnett thought he was on top of the world.

And then the Feds knocked on his door.

Now, Richard Barnett will get to spend at least three more nights in jail after his January 8th arrest.  Barnett was granted bail by an Arkansas federal judge, with restrictions such as a stay-at-home order and an ankle monitor, but prosecutors successful argued that he should not be released until DC prosecutors have an opportunity to appeal, which will not happen until Monday.  A DC District Court judge sided with prosecutors and issued an emergency stay, so Barnett will spend the weekend in the pokey.

A 12-page Capitol Police intelligence report written three days before the coup attempt on the Capitol said that the government complex could be the target of an attack after Donald Trump’s January 6th rally, the Washington Post reports in an exclusive.

The existence of the report will further call into question the decisions of Capitol Police commanders, Homeland Security officials, Defense Department leaders and others responsible for the protection of the Capitol, the Vice President and the members of Congress.

Since the January 6th attack, which left five people dead, numerous reports of prior warnings from local and federal law enforcement officials have left people wondering why the Capitol was so understaffed and why National Guard units were not activated to protect the people and property.

Axios: “CIA Director Gina Haspel threatened to resign in early December after President Trump cooked up a hasty plan to install loyalist Kash Patel, a former aide to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), as her deputy, according to three senior administration officials with direct knowledge of the matter. The revelation stunned national security officials and almost blew up the leadership of the world’s most powerful spy agency. Only a series of coincidences – and last minute interventions from Vice President Mike Pence and White House counsel Pat Cipollone – stopped it.”

• Hearing Republicans appeal for unity during the House impeachment debate makes me wonder how they rectify that Democrats should “unify” with Trump supporters who attempted a violent coup to undermine the Constitution.  I, for one, have no interest in unifying with insurrectionists.
• Amazing statistic:  45% of Trump’s senior staff positions in the White House (not the Cabinet) had three or more people in them in Trump’s single term in office, according to Brookings.  In all, Trump’s staff had a 92% rate for the top 65 positions.  Only five original staff members stayed with the administration all four years; two of them were family members Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.  That’s an astounding turnover rate.  
• Trump had six communications directors and six deputy national security advisors in 48 months.  On average, those positions turned over faster than a full-term pregnancy.  
• How will we, as a country, survive without a pillow manufacturer as a presidential policy advisor?

Real brave of him to do it five days early.

Me too, I didn’t give any Capitol tours to anyone last week. https://t.co/044N61afFe

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) January 16, 2021

New York Times: “Prosecutors in Georgia appear increasingly likely to open a criminal investigation of President Trump over his attempts to overturn the results of the state’s 2020 election, an inquiry into offenses that would be beyond his federal pardon power. The new Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, is already weighing whether to proceed, and among the options she is considering is the hiring of a special assistant from outside to oversee the investigation, according to people familiar with her office’s deliberations. At the same time, David Worley, the lone Democrat on Georgia’s five-member election board, said this week that he would ask the board to make a referral to the Fulton County district attorney by next month. Among the matters he will ask prosecutors to investigate is a phone call Mr. Trump made in which he pressured Georgia’s secretary of state to overturn the state’s election results.”

“Jeff DiSantis, a district attorney spokesman, said the office had not taken any action to hire outside counsel and declined to comment further on the case. Some veteran Georgia prosecutors saw said they believed Mr. Trump had clearly violated state law. ‘If you took the fact out that he is the president of the United States and look at the conduct of the call, it tracks the communication you might see in any drug case or organized crime case,’ said Michael J. Moore, the former US attorney for the Middle District of Georgia. ‘It’s full of threatening undertone and strong-arm tactics.'”

Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman would receive the Congressional Gold Medal for luring some of the domestic terrorists who attacked the Capitol last week away from the Senate chamber under a bill introduced by three members of Congress, ABC News reports.

Goodman confronted a mob of insurrectionists as they roamed the halls of the Capitol.  As they climbed stairs that lead to the Senate lobby, Goodman taunted the person in front of the group by poking him in the chest, coaxing him and the following group of lemmings to follow him.

After glancing down the hallway to make sure the hallway was clear–reportedly seconds after Vice President Mike Pence left the Senate chamber–Goodman led the group in the opposite direction, where other officers were located.

Three days before Season 46 of the hit C-SPAN comedy/drama White House premieres with its first ever Black female in the role of Vice President, another similarly groundbreaking recasting occurs on the DC Comics Universe’s Batwoman as Black actress Javica Leslie takes over for Ruby Rose.

Rose, who quit the show after she was injured while filming a stunt scene, played Bruce Wayne’s lesbian Jewish cousin Kate Kane, who I’m going to guess was a tribute to Batman creator Bob Kane, who was also Jewish (all the best superheroes were created by members of the Tribe) and sexually attracted to women. Anyway, rather than recast the Kate Kane role, the producers decided to have another lesbian female character, Javica Leslie’s Ryan Wilder, take up the bat-cape and kick some ass in Gotham City. Season 2 of Batwoman premieres Sunday night on The CW and hopefully HBO Max on the same night. Might be a nice distraction from all the real world drama.

With domestic terrorists threatening further violence in the run-up to the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, the Texas government has closed the state capitol building and increased security on its grounds in Austin, the Dallas Morning News reports.

“The Texas Department of Public Safety is aware of armed protests planned at the Texas State Capitol this week and violent extremists who may seek to exploit constitutionally protected events to conduct criminal acts,” DPS Director Steven McCraw said in the statement. “As a result, DPS has deployed additional personnel and resources to the Capitol and are working closely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Austin Police Department to monitor events and enforce the rule of law.”

“Editors and reporters at the staunchly pro-Trump conservative outlet Breitbart News privately clashed over whether President Donald Trump was to blame for last week’s deadly Capitol riot, according to internal messages reviewed by The Daily Beast. ‘I am just not feeling charitable AT ALL,’ international news editor Frances Martel posted to Slack the morning after the rioting that left five people dead, including a police officer. ‘Destroy Trump.’ Martel lamented that Trump’s support for the MAGA mob had undone a decade’s worth of conservative politics, leaving the Republican Party ‘in shambles’ and dimming the right-wing movement’s prospects. ‘He set us back like 10 years,’ Martel wrote. ‘We have worked so hard to promote our values, values that made him president when he hawked them, and now he does this, leaving everything in shambles? Nah, destroy him. Let it be a lesson to every other populist.'”

“”Breitbart, like other outlets closely tied to Trump, has shied away from ever directly criticizing him, especially for his election-fraud lies and heated rhetoric leading up to the deadly riot. But the internal chat messages demonstrate that anger over the outgoing president’s role in inciting the MAGA mob has reached even the Trumpiest strongholds of right-wing media. ‘I do blame Trump for all of this,’ wrote senior editor-at-large Rebecca Mansour at one point, before referring to rioter Ashli Babbitt, a QAnon supporter who was fatally shot by Capitol police as she attempted to break into the Speaker’s Lobby. ‘Her death is on him as far I’m concerned'” – Daily Beast.

The oldest living Marine, Dorothy Schmidt Cole, who joined the Marine Corps after the attack on Pearl Harbor, has died of heart attack at the age of 107, the Associated Press reports.

After being rejected by the Navy because of 4’11” height, Cole joined the Marine Corps when Franklin Roosevelt formed the Women’s Auxiliary for each of the armed services.  Cole wanted to be a pilot, and learned how to fly prior to entering the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, but the Marines made her a typist.

Her husband, Wiley, was in the Navy and deployed in the Pacific during the war.  When he returned, they moved to San Francisco and worked at the Ames Research Center.  They had one child, Beth Kluttz, who was with her mother when she passed.  Wiley died in 1955.

Business Insider: “The dating app Bumble temporarily suspended its political filter in the US after multiple people tweeted about using it to find conservatives who took part in last week’s Capitol insurrection and turn them into law-enforcement authorities. On January 7, a day after the pro-Trump riot, Alia Awadallah, a woman in Washington, DC, tweeted: ‘There are DOZENS of men on DC dating apps right now who were clearly here for the insurrection attempt.’ ‘Some say it directly, others are obvious from MAGA clothing, location tags, etc. Is that info useful at all for law enforcement?’ When someone later sent her the FBI tips website, Awadallah said she had submitted some evidence. Since the attack on the Capitol, the FBI has been asking the public for ‘tips and digital media depicting rioting and violence’ in and around the complex on January 6. As of this Wednesday, just over 100 people have been arrested.”

“Another Twitter user, Allison Norris, responded to Awadallah saying that she knew of someone who had changed her Bumble profile to conservative in order to find Republicans who took part in the storming of the Capitol. ‘She’s matching with the MAGA bros and they’re bragging and sending her pics and videos of them in the Capitol. She’s sending the to the FBI,’ Norris said. Norris’ tweet was liked more than 27,000 times as of Friday morning, with John Sipher, a former CIA spy, commenting: ‘Well played.’ Another person responded: ‘Get in girls. We’re going hunting.'”

Politico: “President Donald Trump is considering granting a pardon to Steve Bannon, his former White House chief strategist and top campaign aide, who was charged with swindling donors to a private crowdsourcing effort to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The potential pardon would follow a wave of reprieves the president has recently granted to political allies who have been convicted, charged or reportedly under federal investigation. Two additional batches of pardons are expected – one on Friday night and one Wednesday morning before Joe Biden is sworn into office, according to one of the people.”

President-elect Joe Biden announced that he will elevate the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to a Cabinet-level agency, signaling a major shift in priorities from the Trump Administration, the Washington Post reports.

The Biden transition team said that Eric Lander, a mathematician and geneticist who helped map the human genome, will be the person to occupy that seat in the new administration.

In other science-related appointments, Biden said MIT Vice President of Research Maria Zuber, a planetary scientist who lead efforts to map the surfaces of the moon and Mars, and Nobel laureate Francis Arnold, a pioneer in synthesizing artificial proteins, to head the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.