Pardoned Jan. 6 Rioter Arrested for Plot to Kill Hakeem Jeffries

A Trump-pardoned January 6 insurrectionist was arrested last week for threatening to kill House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, in a chilling example of the right-wing political violence the GOP has been downplaying.

CBS reports that Christopher Moynihan—sentenced in 2022 to 21 months in prison for his role in the Capitol riot and fully pardoned by Trump—was arrested on Sunday after he sent texts about plans to “eliminate” Jeffries at an Economic Club event in New York City on Monday.

“Hakeem Jeffries makes a speech in a few days in NYC I cannot allow this terrorist to live,” he allegedly wrote. “Even if I am hated, he must be eliminated, I will kill him for the future.”

Moynihan has been charged with a felony for making a terroristic threat, and will make his first court appearance on Thursday.

“Following a thorough investigation, Moynihan was arrested and arraigned before the Town of Clinton Court,” a New York State Police statement read. “He was remanded to the Dutchess County Justice and Transition Center in lieu of $10,000 cash bail, a $30,000 bond, or an $80,000 partially secured bond.”

Moynihan is not the first January 6 insurrectionist to spoil their pardon with more run-ins with the law. Rioter Zachary Alam was arrested just weeks after his pardon for allegedly breaking and entering a Richmond, Virginia, home. And rioter Matthew Huttle was shot dead at a traffic stop by police after allegedly “raising a firearm at police.”

Not only are many of the insurrectionists going right back to committing alarming crimes, they’re continuing to directly contribute to right-wing violence.

Former FBI Director James Comey is hoping to get the indictment against him dismissed by proving President Donald Trump is on a vindictive quest to send him to prison. Easy enough, right?

In a 51-page filing Monday, Comey’s legal team called for the government’s charges against the former Trump ally to be dismissed because of the president’s “vindictive animus.” Last month, the former FBI director was charged with lying to Congress regarding his testimony to Senator Ted Cruz in a 2020 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

“Such a vindictive and selective prosecution violates the First Amendment, Due Process Clause, and equal protection principles,” the filing stated, noting that the case should be dismissed “with prejudice,” meaning that the verdict could not be appealed by the government.

The filing evoked the laundry list of times that Trump had made public statements attacking Comey since he was ousted from FBI leadership in 2017. Since then, Comey has openly criticized Trump during the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, writing in his memoir that Trump was “unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values.”

“In response to Mr. Comey’s protected speech, President Trump has resorted to personal attacks and calls to retaliate against Mr. Comey through punishment and imprisonment,” the filing stated. Comey’s legal team wrote there was “objective evidence” that Trump harbored genuine animus toward their client, based on the president’s clear “personal bias.”

As recently as September, Trump mistakenly posted on social media a private message to Attorney General Pam Bondi directing Comey’s prosecution, and the president has all but admitted his direct involvement in the proceedings. Not to mention that Comey’s name appeared on the “enemies list” penned by Trump’s new FBI Director Kash Patel. In any case, Trump’s hatred for Comey has been long-standing and well documented.

In a second filing Monday, Comey’s attorneys argued that the case should be nullified because Lindsey Halligan, Trump’s former personal lawyer, whom he recently installed as the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, had been “defectively” appointed.

“The United States cannot charge, maintain, and prosecute a case through an official who has no entitlement to exercise governmental authority,” the motion said.

Americans don’t want their representatives to bow to the pressures of the government shutdown.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle are hearing the same message from their constituents, whether they’re in vulnerable districts or partisan strongholds, reported MSNBC Monday: “Keep up the fight.”

“Almost to a T, I hear from people that they want us to keep fighting for them, that they want us to stand up and they don’t want us to cave,” Democratic Washington Representative Pramila Jayapal told the network.

The pressure would suggest that Americans are not interested in having their parties reach a resolution to continue funding the government. Instead, they’d rather the shutdown carry on.

“It won’t surprise you, being from a red state, that most of the calls are encouraging Republicans to stand their ground and keep up the fight,” GOP Indiana Senator Todd Young told MSNBC.

More than 700,000 federal employees have been furloughed under the auspices of the shutdown, according to a report from the Bipartisan Policy Center. Congress has yet to pass either a stop-gap funding measure or full-year appropriations bill to bring the shutdown to a close. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has axed thousands of federal employees.

Monday marked the twentieth day that the government has stayed shuttered as Republicans and Democrats disagree over how to fund Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget, which included details to slice billions from Obamacare subsidies and Medicaid.

Democrats—and their constituents—have insisted that party representatives hold firm until they can find a way to salvage the subsidized health care programs. But a major hitch looms on the horizon: Open enrollment for Obamacare plans begins on November 1. If the shutdown is not resolved by then, millions of Americans will be forced to make a decision about their health coverage without knowing whether premiums will come down.

Democratic Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin told MSNBC that “the vast majority of people I’m hearing from and seeing insist that we hang tough to resolve the health care crisis and the government shutdown at the same time.”

“We don’t have the luxury of choosing here,” Raskin said.

The issue, remarkably, has not gotten a lot of play in congressional offices around the country. Politicians on both sides of the aisle remarked to MSNBC that they were surprised by the minimal volume of calls about the shutdown their offices have received.

“I know there are a lot of Americans who are anxious about the shutdown, but I just don’t know that, until the last couple of days, there’s been a whole lot of engagement,” Young told MSNBC last week.

A 2–1 majority on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday granted President Trump a major legal win, ruling to allow him to deploy the National Guard in Portland, against the wishes of the state of Oregon, which had filed a temporary restraining order to pause the deployments. The victory was made possible thanks to two Trump judges.

Judges Ryan D. Nelson and Bridget S. Bade—both first-term Trump appointees—voted to affirm the president’s decision to “federalize 200 members of the Oregon National Guard for 60 days to protect federal personnel and property at the Lindquist Building, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Portland, Oregon.” Judge Susan Graber, a Clinton appointee, was the lone dissent.

“We conclude that it is likely that the President lawfully exercised his statutory authority under 10 U.S.C. § 12406(3), which authorizes the federalization of the National Guard when ‘the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States,’” the affirming judges wrote. “The evidence the President relied on reflects a ‘colorable assessment of the facts and law within a ‘range of honest judgment.’’”

This is the exact kind of situation in which the right would start to bemoan “activist judges.” They went on to compare the anti-ICE protests in Portland to Shays’s Rebellion in the eighteenth century, which resulted in nine deaths, dozens of woundings, and two eventual executions.

“The President federalized the militia to ensure that the law could be fully enforced ... Shays’s Rebellion … occurred during the Articles of Confederation period,” the affirming judges wrote. “General Washington feared that American republicanism might fail as the ‘mobbers’ tried ‘to shut down courts’ and attacked government officials who ‘earnestly [sought] to obey [and enforce] the laws that the people themselves had authorized.’ This episode left an indelible mark on the Founders. They designed the Constitution to provide a Union that could safeguard the lives of law-abiding Americans trying to enforce the nation’s laws the next time a Shays’s Rebellion arose.”

In her dissent, Judge Graber dispelled any such notions.

“Those rebellions shared several salient characteristics, including a large number of participants relative to the population and to available law enforcement, a wide geographic scope, evident organization and leadership, widespread use of arms, intense ferocity, and the creation of extreme difficulty restoring control by means of ordinary law enforcement,” she wrote. “What occurred in Portland differed in every dimension. As already noted, there is no evidence of organization or leadership, widespread use of arms, ferocity, or difficulty exerting control by ordinary means.”

She then used examples from police themselves to demonstrate that there was no “urgent need” for federal involvement, and warned against “political theater” in the judiciary.

“We have come to expect a dose of political theater in the political branches, drama designed to rally the base or to rile or intimidate political opponents. We also may expect there a measure of bending—sometimes breaking—the truth,” Graber concluded. “By design of the Founders, the judicial branch stands apart. We rule on facts, not on supposition or conjecture, and certainly not on fabrication or propaganda. I urge my colleagues on this court to act swiftly to vacate the majority’s order before the illegal deployment of troops under false pretenses can occur.”

Oregon’s attorney general Dan Rayfield chimed in shortly after the ruling was announced.

“We are on a dangerous path in America. A panel of Ninth Circuit judges has chosen to not hold the president accountable: They just granted the federal government’s motion to stay our first TRO, which prevented the president from deploying Oregon National Guard troops in Oregon,” he wrote on X. “We will oppose the government’s motion to dissolve the second TRO, and we urge the full Ninth Circuit to vacate today’s decision before the illegal deployments can occur. We’ll continue to fight for Oregon’s laws and values no matter what—and we’ll continue to share updates.”

President Donald Trump is reportedly spending millions more on weapons for his masked militia descending on American cities—who will now have access to “guided missile warheads.”

Independent journalist Judd Legum reported Monday that between Trump’s inauguration and October 18, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has increased weapons spending by 700 percent compared to the same period last year. In the last nine months, ICE has spent a whopping $71,515,762 on purchases of “small arms, ordnance and ordnance accessories manufacturing.”

“Small arms” include armor, explosives, chemical weapons, pistols, and rifles. “Ordnance and ordnance accessories manufacturing” refers to other materials, such as artillery, barrels, extractors, and mounts.

For comparison, in 2019, ICE spent just $5.7 million on the “small arms” category through October 18, and during Trump’s first administration, the government spent an average of $8.4 million per year.

While most of the spending was on guns and armor, Legum reported that ICE had also purchased “guided missile warheads and explosive components.” So while Trump has backed off selling Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, it seems he’s more than happy to arm his immigration authorities with lethal projectiles. It’s not immediately clear what part of a good-faith deportation operation would involve localized destruction and murder—but that’s because no such thing exists.

Clearly, Trump has plans to ramp up his federal immigration crackdown, which has gone hand-in-hand with his federal takeover of American cities. In Chicago, federal agents have conducted violent arrests of U.S. citizens and journalists, fired a pepper ball at a faith leader, unleashed tear gas on police, and shot two people, killing a father of two.

While bolstering his private army, Trump is planning to eliminate funding for SNAP benefits—starting four days ago.

President Donald Trump said his new 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom “won’t interfere with the current building.” But footage from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on Monday afternoon shows a crew tearing down the facade of the East Wing to make way for the garish structure.

An image obtained by The Washington Post shows a construction machine dismantling the side of the East Wing, which was added in 1942. Collapsed walls can be seen in the photograph, as can exposed rebar, with windows lying in a pile of debris on the ground.

As McClatchy White House correspondent Emily Goodin reported on X: “Bulldozers are taking down the façade and parts of the roof now. Windows have been removed. Trees were seen being taken from the property,” and the “area is fenced off and closed to staff.”

Asked in July about the possibility of East Wing demolition for the ballroom’s construction, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt answered, quite vaguely, that the wing would “be modernized” and “the necessary construction will take place.” Leavitt also said East Wing offices—including that of the first lady, the White House Military Office, and the visitors office—would be “temporarily relocated” while it is “being modernized.”

Observers online were shocked by this manifestation of Trump’s apparent belief that, as president, he owns “the People’s House”—to say nothing of other American institutions he’s sought to reshape (most in a less physical sense) to his liking.

“So any president can just start destroying portions of the White House? Is that how this works?” wrote Jim Acosta, independent journalist and former CNN White House correspondent, on X.

“Okay come on guys,” Gregg Carlstrom of The Economist quipped, “isn’t Trump taking a literal backhoe to the White House just a little heavy-handed as a metaphor?”

The White House press secretary is finding a lot of humor in international discord.

Karoline Leavitt doubled down Monday on a remarkably perverse response she gave a HuffPost reporter who inquired why the White House had chosen Budapest as the location for forthcoming ceasefire negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.

In a concise text exchange, Huffpost’s S.V. Dáte underscored the historical significance of the city as it relates to Ukraine-Russia relations, asking: “Who suggested Budapest?”

Leavitt had a three-word answer: “Your mom did.”

Fascinatingly, Leavitt seemed to believe that sharing the larger text exchange with her X followers would win her some public grace. Her continued response to Dáte, when pressed to explain whether she thought the situation was funny, reads as follows:

“It’s funny to me that you actually consider yourself a journal,” Leavitt said, according to a screenshot she posted to her social media. “You are a far left hack who nobody takes seriously, including your colleagues in the media, they just don’t tell you that to your face. Stop texting me your disingenuous, biased, and bullshit questions.”

In her caption, Leavitt suggested that Dáte should not be addressed or conversed with as a legitimate member of the press on the basis that she believed his social media feeds amount to an “anti-Trump personal diary.”

“Activists who masquerade as real reporters do a disservice to the profession,” the 28-year-old press secretary—who has never held down a full-time job in the media industry—wrote on X.

Whether or not the Trump administration is taking the proceedings seriously, the location choice will not be lost on Russia and Ukraine’s leadership. In 1994, Budapest was chosen as the site in which America and the U.K. agreed to defend Ukraine’s borders in exchange for its surrender of nuclear weapons.

Thirty-one years later, it appears that the Budapest Memorandum has not worked out well for Ukraine. During a White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday, Donald Trump reportedly tossed Zelenskiy’s maps of the battlefield in the air while insisting that the foreign leader cede portions of Ukraine-controlled eastern Donbas to Russia.

European governments rushed to Zelenskiy’s defense, alarmed by Trump’s trust that Russian President Vladimir Putin would end his assault on Ukraine after claiming some portions of the country for Russia.

“We see President Trump’s efforts to bring peace to Ukraine, all these efforts are welcome but we don’t see Russia wanting peace,” Kaja Kallas, the EU’s top diplomat, told the Financial Times on Monday. “We are discussing what more we can do.”

The European Commission suggested over the weekend that Ukraine could use a $163 billion reparations loan, bankrolled by frozen Russian assets, to buy arms abroad in their ongoing fight.

The government’s nuclear watchdog agency is poised to be understaffed, as Politico reports the Trump administration has placed about 80 percent of its personnel on furlough amid the ongoing government shutdown.

The National Nuclear Security Administration is a semiautonomous agency within the Department of Energy that maintains the U.S. nuclear stockpile, responds to nuclear emergencies domestically and abroad, and works to prevent nuclear proliferation globally. The NNSA’s staff of fewer than 2,000 workers oversees about 60,000 contractors.

On Monday morning, the administration sent out furlough notices to about 1,400 employees, Politico reports, leaving just 375 staff members on the job for the time being. This is an unprecedented action in the agency’s 25-year history.

Last week, when the then-impending cuts were first reported, Energy Secretary Chris Wright called the workers “critical to modernizing our nuclear arsenal.”

This is just the latest controversial NNSA staffing news to come out of the second Trump administration. The agency previously faced scrutiny for terminating hundreds of workers at the behest of President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, before scrambling to rehire some of them as Wright confessed he’d “made mistakes” and moved “a little too quickly.”

Republican Representative Chip Roy took some time on Monday to remind Americans that his party still has no regard for the separation of church and state, something the Founding Fathers they love to praise cared deeply about.

“The truth is, the Marxists, the radicals, and the Islamists the Democratic Party promoted this weekend, they cannot handle the truth,” Roy said, referring to the widespread No Kings protests on Saturday. “And the truth is that there is a king, and that king is Jesus. And the president has been willing to say it. His administration has been willing to say it. And Charlie Kirk was willing to say it, and he got killed for it.”

Roy sounds like a crazed individual who has not read much of the Bible or the U.S. Constitution. And he seriously misrepresents the makeup of the No Kings protests in the process, sticking to the party script of it being a haven for antifa-loving Communists rather than a very peaceful gathering of Americans closer to the political middle of this country.

We are not a theocracy; Jesus Christ is not the king of America. There is an entire clause in the First Amendment aimed at curtailing the very speech Roy put forth on Monday. As Thomas Jefferson put it: “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

Roy and his fellow Republicans may be too deep in their religious psychosis to take heed.

President Donald Trump flailed Monday while walking back his support for Ukraine.

During a press conference, Trump was asked about a comment he made last month suggesting that Ukraine could “win” the war against Russia and claim all of the territory seized by Russia. At the time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hailed the position as a “big shift” from his American ally. 

But on Monday, it seemed that the U.S. president had shifted back.

“Well, they could. They could still win it. I don’t think they will. But they could still win it. I never said they would win it, I said they could—anything can happen, you know, war is a very strange thing, a lot of bad things happen, a lot of good things happen,” Trump replied.  

So basically, it’s anyone’s game. It seems clear that Trump’s nonstatements, which are able to flip-flop despite not expressing any real position, demonstrate just how little grip the president actually has on the situation in Ukraine. 

Trump even lashed out at one journalist when she asked what was really stopping him from actually helping Ukraine. 

“You’re the most powerful man on earth, why don’t you just enable Ukraine to finish this war tomorrow?” the reporter asked. 

“Well, if you knew anything about what you were talking about—” Trump started. 

“I do,” she replied. 

“You do? I don’t think you do, really. I don’t think you do because it’s a little bit more complicated than that,” Trump said. 

Last week, Zelenskiy left the White House disappointed after Trump reneged on an offer to supply Tomahawk missiles to the embattled country, following a lengthy phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump reportedly had a fit during the meeting, cursing at Zelenskiy and throwing his maps of the battlefield.