January 6 Insurrectionists Take Trump Pardons to Horrifying Level

Recently released January 6, 2021 insurrectionists are trying to argue that their presidential pardons should apply to separate crimes they were charged with while they were being investigated for storming the Capitol, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Edward Kelley, who was pardoned after assaulting police at the Capitol, is also hoping to overturn a conviction for conspiring to murder FBI agents who investigated him, forming a “kill list.” He allegedly planned to use drones to bomb the FBI’s Knoxville, Tennessee, branch, and thinks that conviction should be thrown out.

“In this instance, there can be no dispute that Kelley’s case in this court is related to the events of January 6th and is covered by the President’s executive action,” his lawyer Mark Brown wrote in a motion on January 27.

Fellow rioter Andrew Taake, who served six months in prison for spraying officers at the Capitol with bear spray, was released from prison on January 27 even though he still had outstanding charges for solicitation of a minor in 2016. It took Houston police more than a week to track him down.

The lawyer for David Daniel, who is facing child pornography charges, stated that “pretty much all” of the evidence of his client’s pornography crimes stemmed from Daniel’s house being raided due to his January 6 involvement, which, the attorney argues, means those charges should be null and void since he was pardoned for his actions on January 6 four years ago.

“Anything that flowed from that case, given the pardon, should be excluded and inadmissible at trial,” Daniel’s lawyer William Terpening told the Journal.

This is a frightening line of argument—a literal get-out-of-jail-free card for dangerous, vindictive people who already got one from President Trump. Time will only tell how their unearned reintegration into society will impact the country if their requests are granted

Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan is desperate for the Department of Justice to scrape up some reason he can go after Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for making people aware of their rights.

During an appearance on Fox News last week, Homan suggested that Ocasio-Cortez might be in trouble over a webinar she’d held about immigrants’ legal rights when dealing with ICE.

“At what level is that impedement? Is that impedement? I’m not an attorney, I’m not a prosecutor. Is that impedement?” Homan asked, sounding increasingly untethered.

“Is that impeding our law enforcement efforts? And if so, what are we going to do about it? Is she crossing the line? So, I’m working with the Department of Justice and finding out. Where is that line that they cross? So, maybe AOC’s gonna be in trouble now,” Homan said.

Ocasio-Cortez dismissed Homan’s prattling. “‘MaYbe shE’s goiNg to be in TroUble nOw,’” she wrote in a post mocking him on X. “Maybe he can learn to read. The Constitution would be a good place to start.”

In a statement, Homan insisted he had actually read the U.S. Constitution, in which case, he must be simply choosing to ignore it.

There is no legal problem with informing individuals of their rights, like the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, or the right to refuse ICE entry without a warrant signed by a judge. Still, the border czar doubled down on his comments when pressed on his threats against the New York congresswoman during CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.

“Are you suggesting that she should be prosecuted?” asked CNN host Dana Bash.

“I’m suggesting that I would ask the Department of Justice, where’s that line on impediment, right? That’s a broad statute. So I know impeding, or someone stopping in front of me and putting their hands on my chest that you’re not coming in here to arrest that guy, that’s clearly impeding. But at what line—where’s the line on impeding?” Homan said.

“I’m asking the Department of Justice, who are the prosecutors and decide who they prosecute, and what the standards of that prosecution is. I simply says [sic], at what point is that impeding? Because you can call it ‘Know Your Rights’ all you want. We all know the bottom line is, the bottom line is how they evade law enforcement. Don’t open your door. Don’t answer questions.”

Unfortunately for Homan, and his plan to enact inhumane mass deportations, both of those methods are entirely legal.

During another appearance on Fox News Monday, Homan repeated his assertion that Ocasio-Cortez was trying to teach undocumented immigrants to “evade” ICE, and said that he’d request the DOJ let him know whether she’d crossed the “line.” Rather than requesting that she be investigated, it seemed that Homan was desperate for them to conjure some evidence that she had violated the law. Spoiler alert: She hadn’t.

In a rather pointless, sycophantic move, a New York member of Congress wants to make Donald Trump’s birthday a national holiday.

Republican Representative Claudia Tenney introduced the “Trump’s Birthday and Flag Day Holiday Establishment Act” Friday, hoping to designate the president’s June 14 birthday as a new federal holiday.

“Just as George Washington’s Birthday is codified as a federal holiday, this bill will add Trump’s Birthday to this list, recognizing him as the founder of America’s Golden Age,” Tenney said in a press release.

“By designating Trump’s Birthday and Flag Day as a federal holiday, we can ensure President Trump’s contributions to American greatness and the importance of the American Flag are forever enshrined into law,” the release states.

June 14 is already commemorated as Flag Day in the United States, signifying the date in 1777 when the Continental Congress decided how the country’s flag would look. But, it is not an official federal holiday, and Tenney seems to see an opportunity to curry favor with the present based on the fact that it coincides with Trump’s day of birth in 1946. (Trump’s birthday is also five days before Juneteenth, which commemorates the official end of slavery and which Biden made a federal holiday in 2021.)

Why is Tenney prioritizing this blatant attempt of brown-nosery instead of more pressing issues for her constituents, such as Trump’s game of chicken with Canada? Her upstate New York district includes areas right on the Canadian border, and tariffs could have drastic effects on those regions and on the state overall. Not to mention the lack of congressional oversight over Trump and Elon Musk’s overhaul of the federal government.

Congress hasn’t passed much legislation since Trump was sworn in as president last month, aside from an extreme immigration bill, even though Republicans control both the Senate and the House, and they are currently struggling through agreeing on a budget bill. Will passing vapid bills such as Tenney’s be what constitutes actual business for Republicans in Congress?

Self-professed free speech crusader Elon Musk seems to be trying to censor users on his own platform.

Matt Binder of Disruptionist reports that the billionaire DOGE head has blocked Signal links from appearing on X, citing researchers from cybersecurity company Mysk, who noticed the issue on Sunday and reached out to Binder through direct messages. Signal is a popular messaging app that encrypts texts between users, often allowing them to talk about sensitive topics that could otherwise be surveilled or intercepted.

“Elon Musk’s X appears to be blocking links to directly contact users on Signal,” Binder wrote on X. “Signal, the encrypted messaging app, has recently become a major tool for government workers looking to blow the whistle on DOGE.” Journalists are also using Signal to solicit tips from unhappy federal workers.

If a user on X tries to access a previously posted Signal link, they are shown a page warning them that they are visiting an unsafe link, but can choose to ignore the warning and click a link on the page to proceed to the Signal web address.

This move appears to be further confirmation that the free speech Musk seems to be so chiefly concerned with only applies to online right wing edgelords and neo-Nazis. People that draw his ire, such as journalists and embattled federal workers, don’t enjoy the same privileges.

Donald Trump is urging a foreign government to relax restrictions on a right-wing influencer charged with human trafficking and rape.

Andrew Tate, the former kickboxer and self-described “misogynist” influencer, and his brother Tristan, have been the subject of a protracted legal battle in Romania after they were arrested in 2022 on charges of human trafficking, sexual misconduct, money laundering, and organized crime, all of which they have denied.

The brothers were able to block their indictment in Romania for now, and they were freed from house arrest last month. They are still not allowed to leave the country as investigations continue, however, according to a court order. A Romanian court also ruled last year that after the court proceedings finish, the brothers can be extradited to the U.K., to face additional charges of sex crimes.

Tate’s name was first floated by a U.S. official during a phone call with the Romanian government last week, and then revisited by Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell, who spoke with Romanian Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu when he traveled to Munich last week, three people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times.

Another person said that a request was made for the brothers’ passports to be returned to them, and that they be allowed to travel while they wait for the court proceedings to conclude.

Hurezeanu declined to comment on his interaction with Grenell, but his spokesperson confirmed that a conversation took place. “Romanian courts are independent and operate based on the law, there is due process,” the spokesperson said, without getting into specifics.

The spokesperson said that Hurezeanu had initiated the conversation with Grenell, who he’d known since working together in Berlin during Trump’s first term.

Meanwhile, Grenell denied knowing Hureseanu at all. He “saw me in the hallway” in Munich and “asked for a meeting”, Grennel said, adding that the two had “no substantive conversation,” according to the Financial Times.

“I support the Tate brothers as evident by my publicly available tweets,” Grennell added.

Grenell had posted on X earlier this month claiming that programs funded by USAID had been “weaponized against people and politicians who weren’t woke,” adding that “Romania is the latest example.”

Tate is a central figure in the manosphere of contemptible internet chauvinists, a group of right-wing shills Trump was able to utilize in his run for the presidency. A 2023 study by Equimundo on the state of American men found that more of the youngest men trusted Tate than President Joe Biden.

Last month, Elon Musk expressed support for Tate’s strange bid to become prime minister of the UK. It’s possible that he thinks entering office could shield him from prosecution. Where have we seen that before?

Now, Trump seems to be searching for ways to pay back his staunch supporters—no matter how grotesque the accusations against them.

Elon Musk and DOGE are trying to get their hands on some of the most sensitive information the Internal Revenue Service has to offer: data on every single taxpayer, business, and nonprofit, according to The Washington Post. The request has put IRS officials on high alert.

The Trump administration sent the IRS a memorandum of understanding that would allow DOGE employees to infiltrate IRS programs like the Integrated Data Retrieval System, or IRDS, which gives IRS employees access to bank information and personal identification numbers. DOGE also plans to send its own software engineer, Gavin Kliger, to the IRS for 120 days to “provide engineering assistance and IT modernization consulting.”

The memo requires Kliger to keep tax return information confidential and to destroy the information he collects once his 120 days are up. He is expected to be given access “imminently,” an unnamed source told CNN.

“The information that the IRS has is incredibly personal,” former internal IRS watchdog Nina Olson told the Post. “Someone with access to it could use it and make it public in a way, or do something with it, or share it with someone else who shares it with someone else, and your rights get violated.”

While the IRS’s systems could certainly use upgrades, allowing private citizens full-fledged access to millions of Americans’ sensitive financial information does not seem like the safest or most ethical way of going about it, especially without congressional authorization.

Elon Musk is pushing for a massive crackdown on free speech, by taking up the rusty rapier that is Donald Trump’s pitiable crusade against CBS’s 60 Minutes.

The president has been fuming about Kamala Harris’s interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes since it first aired in September, and claimed that the show had “defrauded the public” by airing different portions of Harris’s answer to a question about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on different days. A transcript of the original interview released by the Federal Communications Commission earlier this month found that both answers were part of the same extended response.

“60 Minutes are the biggest liars in the world!” Musk wrote in a post on X Sunday. “They engaged in deliberate deception to interfere with the last election. They deserve a long prison sentence.”

Musk’s fascist threat to imprison journalists was a deflection written in response to a post from 60 Minutes that criticized his efforts to gut USAID.

“President Trump says USAID is rife with fraud. But Andrew Natsios, a Republican former administrator of USAID, calls that ‘utter nonsense.’ Natsios says USAID is ‘the most accountable aid agency in the world,’” read the post from 60 Minutes.

Musk’s outrageous threat feels all the more prescient after the Trump administration last week moved to indefinitely ban the Associated Press from the White House and Air Force One, over its refusal to use the fake name Trump came up with for the Gulf of Mexico.

The Washington Post—owned by billionaire and Trump inauguration attendee Jeff Bezos—spiked a print ad critical of Elon Musk and his increased influence on the federal government.

The watchdog group Common Cause, in cooperation with the Southern Poverty Law Center, had agreed to pay the Post $115,000 for one ad placement on the front and back of Tuesday’s print edition, and another similar full-page ad on the inside of the paper.

The ad shows a laughing Musk positioned over the White House with the question “Who’s running this country: Donald Trump or Elon Musk?” in large bold letters.

“Since day one, Elon has created chaos and confusion and put our livelihoods at risk. And he is accountable to no one but himself,” smaller print below reads. “The Constitution only allows for one president at a time. Call your senators and tell them it’s time Donald Trump fire Elon Musk.”

The ad includes a link and QR code for FireMusk.org at the bottom of the page. It was approved by the Post, all set to be delivered to subscribers at the Capitol, Pentagon, and the White House.

“We submitted the artwork back on Tuesday of last week. I’m assuming it went through a legal department or other kind of review. They said, ‘You can have something inside the paper but you can’t do the wrap.’ We said thanks, no thanks because we had a lot of questions,” Common Cause President Virginia Kase Solomón said to The Hill on Sunday.

On Friday, Common Cause learned the wrap ad would not be running, according to Kase Solomón.

“Is it because we’re critical of what’s happening with Elon Musk? Is it only ok to run things in the Post now that won’t anger the president or won’t have him calling Jeff Bezos asking why this was allowed?” Kase Solomón asked.

A spokesperson for the Post declined to comment to The Hill, citing the newspaper’s policy of keeping silent about internal decisions about specific advertising campaigns.

Donald Trump’s administration has begun indiscriminately culling scores of people who keep air travel safe, despite four deadly plane crashes during his first two months as president.

In a statement published Saturday, David Spero, the president of the AFL-CIO’s Professional Aviation Safety Specialists (PASS), said that several hundred employees represented by the organization had been fired “without cause nor based on performance or conduct.”

The notices, sent from an “exec order” Microsoft email address, began arriving Friday evening, according to the statement. “It is possible that others will be notified over the weekend or literally barred from entering FAA buildings on Tuesday, February 18,” Spero said in the statement

“These are not nameless, faceless bureaucrats. They are our family, friends and neighbors. They contribute to our communities. Many military veterans are among them. It is shameful to toss aside dedicated public servants who have chosen to work on behalf of their fellow Americans,” Spero said.

Last month, Trump baselessly blamed the Federal Aviation Administration’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policies for the deadly incident that killed 67 people aboard two aircrafts at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. The FAA shortly after released a statement indicating that the air traffic control tower might have been understaffed at the time of the collision. Still, the Trump administration seems intent to assert that excess is the issue.

So far in 2025, there have been four deadly plane crashes in the United States. Before then, the most recent deadly commercial aircraft accident was in 2009.

“Staffing decisions should be based on an individual agency’s mission-critical needs,” said Spero, according to CNN. “To do otherwise is dangerous when it comes to public safety. And it is especially unconscionable in the aftermath of three deadly aircraft accidents in the past month.”

The move is part of a wider push from the Trump administration targeting probationary workers in the federal government, who have been employed for less than a year, and therefore lack the job protections of their colleagues. While they are the easiest to get rid of, they will undoubtedly prove difficult to live without.

Elon Musk’s overhaul of the federal government seems to have hit a snag: His Department of Government Efficiency posted classified information on its website. 

Musk’s team posted information about the staff and size of a U.S. intelligence agency on their new website, HuffPost reports. DOGE has been criticized for the level of access into sensitive government departments, including the Treasury Department, but how they got the classified information isn’t clear. 

DOGE.gov was launched Wednesday claiming to give Americans the ability to “trace your tax dollars through the bureaucracy.” The feature allows users the ability to see data from all federal offices and agencies including head counts, budgets, and the average age of staff. But, the website was supposed to exclude data from U.S. intelligence agencies, according to the fine print at the bottom of its main page.  

The young whiz kids at DOGE appear to have forgotten that part and included information about the National Reconnaissance Office, which is tasked with creating and maintaining satellites for U.S. intelligence. Much of the agency’s activities, including its budget and head count, are classified and aren’t supposed to be available to the public. Plus, how did Musk’s team get access to that information, anyway? Does it have something to do with Musk’s company SpaceX having a $1.8 billion contract to build satellites for the NRO?

Members of the intelligence community would like to know the answer to these questions. One Defense Intelligence Agency employee told HuffPost anonymously that “DOGE just posted secret [Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals] info on their website about [intelligence community] headcount, so currently people are scrambling to check if their info has been accessed.”

While the NRO is the only intelligence agency that DOGE appears to have exposed, this incident doesn’t speak well of the pseudo-agency’s security procedures. The website has already been hacked by Thursday evening thanks to coding vulnerabilities. And since DOGE has gotten into all kinds of sensitive data, every American could be at risk.