An FBI official on Wednesday testified at a Senate hearing that she has no knowledge of any guns being recovered from suspects who were arrested during the Jan. 6 Capitolbreach.
When asked by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) about whether firearms were recovered or if any suspect was charged with firearms offenses, FBI counterterrorism official Jill Sanborn responded: “To my knowledge, none.”
But in the hearing, Sanborn also said that before the Jan. 6 incident, “We knew they would be armed, we had intelligence that they would be coming to DC, but we did not have intelligence that they would be breaching the Capitol.”
“I believe that the only shots that were fired were the ones that resulted in the death of the lady,” Sanborn also testified, referring to the officer-involved shooting of Ashli Babbit.
Johnson previously told news outlets that the term “armed insurrection” used by some Democratic officials, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and mainstream news outlets is incorrect as no guns were recovered.
hroughout his presidential campaign and continuing since taking the White House, Joe Biden has promised a transparent approach to press and public relations. Yet in recent weeks, his administration has closed off — at least for now — several key avenues via which the press and public have for years gained a modicum of transparency, accessibility and accountability from the White House.
These moves to curb press and public access come as President Joe Biden himself has at times appeared to be struggling with the public demands of his job.
Notably, the White House has said that while it will divulge records of individuals who physically visit the White House, it will not be sharing virtual visitor logs. The Biden administration has relied heavily on virtual meetings out of concerns that COVID-19 might spread in face-to-face gatherings.
An unnamed White House official told Politico this week that the administration's refusal to release virtual meeting logs was in line with "the same way that previous administrations didn't release phone logs."
Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki this week acerbically dismissed a reporter's query into the administration's lack of transparency on the issue.
"[Biden is] meeting with members of the Senate virtually today," she said. "There, I've released it for you. What else would you like to know?"
The White House has also shut down its comment line by which American citizens can call in to leave comments for the executive branch. A recording claims that the comment office is "temporarily closed" and urges callers to visit the White House's contact page instead.
The Biden administration has also removed the popular "We the People" petitioning platform originally started by President Barack Obama and continued through the Trump administration. As late as Jan. 18 of this year, the program was still active, yet now any attempt to reach the older URL simply reroutes users to the White House's main page.
Gone, also, are White House tours, which the administration claims have been "suspended until further notice." As late as mid-December, the Trump administration was still encouraging Americans to schedule tours through their congressional representatives.
Biden struggles with public demands of presidency
The rollback of public access comes amid the first six weeks of the Biden administration during which Biden himself has, at times, seemed to struggle with the rigorous schedule and public appearances demanded of modern U.S. presidents.
A CNN report last month stated that the president regularly returns to his private residence at 7:00 p.m. each day and is "more of an early-to-bed type" than both Obama and Trump. Biden has thus far failed to host a single West Wing news conference, though the White House hosts daily news briefings.
The president became well-known over the course of his presidential campaign for having difficulties speaking publicly, so much so that the New York Times in 2019 ran a feature report on his struggles to give public addresses. A fifty-year veteran of Washington politics, Biden has logged hundreds and hundreds of hours of public speaking, where he has been known to make gaffes on occasion, such as his remark in 2007 that then-presidential candidate Barack Obama was "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean."
His latest struggles, meanwhile, often appear less gaffe-like and more fundamental, such as at a recent Pentagon appearance when he struggled with teleprompter-fed words such as "Tuskegee," "because of," "defeated" and "dishonor."
At other times, the president has appeared to momentarily forget critical facts, as he did in a recent CNN town hall at which he incorrectly claimed that the U.S. "didn't have" a vaccine when Biden assumed the presidency. Biden himself had received a shot of the vaccine a month prior to taking the oath of office.
At a speech in Houston last week, meanwhile, the president stumbled through a series of mistakenly pronounced names, referring to Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee as "Shirley" and referring to Rep. Lizzie Pannill Fletcher as "Lizzie Pannilli.
"What am I doing here?" the president said at one point. "I'm going to lose track here."
President Joe Biden’s 81 million voters don’t seem to be showing up at the polls.
According to a Tuesday Rasmussen Reports poll taken from approximately 10,000 likely voters, the newly elected president clocked in at just 50 percent approval and 47 percent disapproval following his first month in office. This number is in contrast to former President Donald Trump’s first-month approval rating of 52 percent.
According to the Washington Examiner, during Trump’s presidency, 44 percent of similar poll respondents believed the country was heading in the right direction while 50 percent believed the opposite.
Under Biden, though, just 37 percent of respondents believe the country is heading the right way while a whopping 57 percent believe the country is heading the wrong way.
Rasmussen Reports also compiled an approval index, which is the difference between the president’s strong approval and strong disapproval ratings.
“Thirty-four percent (34%) of voters strongly approved of Biden’s job performance in February, while 39% strongly disapproved,” Rasmussen found, according to the Examiner.
“This gives him his first full-month Presidential Approval Index rating of -5. When Trump first took office in January 2017, he earned a full-month Approval Index rating of -4 after his first full month. During his final full month in office, his Approval Index rating was -8.”
The specter of the US letting in vast numbers of illegal migrants is explainable in one of two ways: it’s either incomprehensible hubris or rank stupidity. Either way, the program promises to end badly.
Winston Churchill once famously quipped that “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing – after they’ve exhausted all other possibilities.” That witticism still applies today, as, confronted with the specter of millions of illegal migrants pouring into their country, Americans once again find themselves struggling to do the “right thing.”
Observing the situation from the outside, the “right thing” seems fairly straightforward: the US government should, without any partisan brinkmanship in the matter, fortify its national borders to ensure that illegal migrants cannot enter the country. This is not rocket science. The construction of borders between countries is nothing more than fundamental national security protocol, time-tested by hundreds of other sovereign states over the centuries. In fact, without physical borders, the entire concept of “nationhood” becomes almost meaningless. Yet when Donald Trump attempted to build his dream wall (“with a big beautiful door in the middle for legal arrivals,” he explained to no avail), he was accused of being a racist and “locking children in cages.”
Thus, one of Joe Biden’s very first acts as president was to halt construction of Trump’s signature project, and the one most responsible for getting the maverick of Manhattan into the White House.
“It is a waste of money that diverts attention from genuine threats to our homeland security,” Biden declared in an executive order. “My administration is committed to ensuring that the United States has a comprehensive and humane immigration system that operates consistently with our nation’s values.”
Biden has sent to Congress for ratification the so-called US Citizens Act of 2021, which, if passed, would put some 11 million illegal migrants on the path to citizenship.
hroughout his campaign, President Joe Biden spent as little time in the public view as possible for a presidential candidate. Over a month into his tenure as president, he is continuing the same strategy.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked Monday if Biden would hold his first solo news conference soon, and she said no plans have been made for the event.
It is rather concerning that the leader of the free world seems to have no interest in formally addressing the American public. It is also a stark contrast to his predecessor.
As most people know, former President Donald Trump is not afraid of the spotlight. To that end, he held his first solo news conference on Feb. 16, 2017, less than a month after his inauguration, according to NBC News.
“We have made incredible progress,” he said at that presser. “I don’t think there’s ever been a president elected who in this short period of time has done what we’ve done.”
Americans probably disagreed about whether or not that was true, but it was at least a reassuring statement from a new president that the country was in a good place. We have not seen any such reassurance from Biden.
During his campaign, Biden’s staffers assured Americans that his relative silence was part of his strategy. They even attempted to paint him as a sort of hero for staying home during the pandemic.
Is President Biden's team shielding him from a news conference?
Here’s how Politico reporters Christopher Cadelago and Marc Caputo described it in a Sept. 25 piece:
“To Biden’s camp, it’s a continuation of the discredited criticism that the shelter-in-place phase of Biden’s campaign would hurt him and help Trump after the pandemic first hit. (Trump needled him endlessly for being ‘sleepy’ and staying in his basement, but Biden’s team has chuckled as he maintained his polling lead). A Biden adviser said it’s fine to let Trump hold big, dangerous rallies during a pandemic.”
The wording of that last sentence pretty clearly implies that Trump was the “bad guy” for actually campaigning, and Biden was the smart one for doing absolutely nothing.
It seems more likely that the real reason Biden has been hesitant to face reporters and the American public is because his team wants to keep him from saying something foolish. There are a couple reasons why this is the more likely scenario.
First, there are plenty of ways Biden could have safely addressed the public both then and now. He could have done interviews from his basement via video calls, but he instead chose to call a “lid” for many of the days leading up to the election.
Similarly, he could hold a socially distanced news conference at the White House now, just as many other politicians have done. Instead, he lets Psaki face reporters for him while he stays out of sight.
The second piece of evidence indicating that Biden’s team may be afraid of what blunders he will make in a solo news conference is his past performance. After constantly receiving criticism in regards to his cognitive capabilities during the campaign, Biden has not demonstrated any improvement since taking office.
On Friday, Biden spoke in Houston at a vaccination facility. He’d barely even started the speech before he started fumbling through the list of names he was supposed to mention, eventually questioning, “What am I doing here?”
The evidence indicates that Biden is increasingly unable to speak without becoming confused and disoriented. That is not a great quality for the leader of any country, especially the great United States, to have.
Most likely, Biden’s team knows how bad it looks when he cannot get through a simple speech. As such, they want to keep him out of situations where he faces reporters as much as they possibly can.
Any American who is paying attention should be at least a bit concerned about the cognitive state of our president.
ALBANY, N.Y. — A former aide to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo who has accused the governor of sexual harassment said on Monday that the governor “has refused to acknowledge or take responsibility for his predatory behavior” and encouraged other women with similar experiences to step forward.
The aide, Charlotte Bennett, said in a statement on Monday that Mr. Cuomo’s response to her claims, and that of another former aide, Lindsey Boylan, indicated that he did not actually want the truth of his actions to be reported.
“As we know, abusers — particularly those with tremendous amounts of power — are often repeat offenders who engage in manipulative tactics to diminish allegations, blame victims, deny wrongdoing and escape consequences,” Ms. Bennett said. “It took the governor 24 hours and significant backlash to allow for a truly independent investigation. These are not the actions of someone who simply feels misunderstood; they are the actions of an individual who wields his power to avoid justice.”
