Lock them up?

A bombshell Rolling Stone report today alleges that multiple members of Congress were intimately involved in planning both Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Two anonymous sources, who participated in the insurrection and are now cooperating with authorities, claim they interacted with members of Trump's team, including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. They also participated in "dozens" of planning briefings with the following congresspeople or their top staffers: Andy Biggs, Lauren Boebert, Mo Brooks, Madison Cawthorn, Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. —Rolling Stone

• — "Our impression was that it was a done deal." The Rolling Stone piece casts Gosar in a particularly bad light. Hours after the pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, Gosar accused antifa protesters of the attack. But he knew exactly who was to blame—he had already offered them a pardon. An unnamed organizer of the "Stop the Steal" rally that preceded the insurrection said Gosar offered planners a "blanket pardon" in an unrelated investigation to incentivize them to help organize Jan. 6 activities. The source claims Gosar told them, "I was just going over the list of pardons, and we just wanted to tell you guys how much we appreciate all the hard work you've been doing." —The Daily Beast
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• —"We know this was organized online." Internal documents leaked to the Securities and Exchange Commission by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen paint a picture of a company that was fundamentally unprepared for the pivotal role its platform played in helping the "Stop the Steal" movement organize. The documents show in real time the countermeasures Facebook employees were belatedly implementing, suggesting the social media company only reacted after the movement had turned violent. "Facebook misled investors and the public about its role perpetuating misinformation and violent extremism relating to the 2020 election and Jan. 6 insurrection," Haugen alleges. —CNN
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• — Money, money, money. As for the House select committee probing the insurrection, they're focused on the money trail. One investigative team has been tasked with tracking the financing behind the events and people associated with Jan. 6, including the funding behind the "Stop the Steal" rallies that preceded the attack, as well as the complex web of financial ties between rally organizers and entities affiliated with Trump and his campaign. Investigators want to determine if any funding came from domestic extremists or foreign sources, and if any election law violations or financial crimes took place. The panel has hired additional staff, including experienced financial investigators, who are solely focused on this issue. —CNN

MORE: Cheney reveals GOP's Banks claimed he was Jan. 6 panel's ranking member —The Hill

Graham: Is the failed coup the New Lost Cause?

"This mythology has many of the trappings of its neo-Confederate predecessor, which Trump also employed for political gain: a martyr cult, claims of anti-liberty political persecution, and veneration of artifacts. Most of all, the New Lost Cause, like the old one, seeks to convert a shameful catastrophe into a celebration of the valor and honor of the culprits and portray those who attacked the country as the true patriots. But lost causes have a pernicious tendency to be less lost than we might hope. Just as neo-Confederate revisionism shaped racial violence and oppression after the Civil War, Trump's New Lost Cause poses a continuing peril to the hope of 'one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.'" —David Graham in The Atlantic

David Graham is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

MORE: Cowboys for Trump founder turns on Trump in conference speech over Capitol riot charges —Newsweek

'Safe and secure' in Wisconsin

A non-partisan audit of the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin did not identify any widespread fraud in the battleground state. The report, released on Friday by the Legislative Audit Bureau, also determined that dozens of voting machines it reviewed worked correctly. Some conservatives have called for reviews of all voting machines. "Despite concerns with statewide elections procedures, this audit showed us that the election was largely safe and secure," tweeted Republican State Sen. Robert Cowles, who co-chairs the Legislature's Audit Committee, which assigned the bureau to conduct the review. A second probe of the state's election is being overseen by former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who has said he believes the election was stolen. —ABC News

MORE: Election fraud? Utah lawmaker calls for audit of Utah's 2020 election —Deseret News

Filibust the filibuster?

Some Democrats who were opposed to filibuster reform are beginning to have a change of heart, after Senate Republicans successfully filibustered a voting rights package for the third time this year. The Freedom to Vote Act, which includes changes to campaign finance law, redistricting rules to curb gerrymandering, automatic voter registration, and protections against foreign interference in elections, is a pared-back voting rights package pushed by Sen. Joe Manchin and designed to be more appealing to Republicans. Republicans, however, dismissed it as a radical raft of left-wing proposals. Like his fellow Democrats, President Biden, who was a senator for 36 years, has "evolved" on the filibuster issue. At a CNN town hall last Thursday, he said, "I also think we're going to have to move to the point where we fundamentally alter the filibuster." Stay tuned. —USA Today

MORE: White House touts 'progress' after Manchin, Schumer meet with Biden —Axios

Khrushcheva: How Putin is bringing back communism

"The fact that [Russian President Vladimir Putin] is claiming that Russian democracy 'hasn't died,' pointing to the country's 'lively opposition' as proof, shows that he has an interest in at least pretending not to have led Russia to near-totalitarianism. Putin says he just wants stability. But his regime is pushing Russia toward greater instability. If the Kremlin drives the Communist Party underground by devising and implementing rules capriciously, as it has done to Russia's liberals, the risk of a social explosion will grow. And if it decides against repression, Russia's Communists—yes, the Communists—could become a force to be reckoned with." —Nina Khrushcheva on Project Syndicate

Nina Khrushcheva is a professor of international affairs at The New School and is the co-author of "In Putin's Footsteps: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia's Eleven Time Zones."

MORE: Russian-backed hackers targeting more tech companies, Microsoft says —Axios

Focus on Anthony Fauci

Okay, so what was the deal with Dr. Fauci this weekend? If you're active on social media, you might have seen calls for President Biden's chief medical adviser—and a popular target of the far-right—to be fired. It all stems from a letter that Lawrence Tabak, the principal deputy director at the National Institutes of Health, wrote to Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, last week. The letter revealed new details regarding an NIH grant to EcoHealth Alliance, which conducted an experiment at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

• — "An unexpected result of the research." According to the letter, unpublished data showed that laboratory mice infected with one bat coronavirus became sicker than those infected with a different bat coronavirus. This is significant because Fauci had testified at a Senate hearing in July that the NIH did not fund any so-called "gain-of-function" experiments at the Wuhan lab.
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• — "He should be fired." At least that's what Sen. Rand Paul thinks. Paul and Fauci have tangled before over gain-of-function research. Paul's contention is that Fauci lied to Congress. "In the letter they acknowledge that yes, the viruses did gain in function, they became more dangerous," Paul said. "So they've created a virus that doesn't exist in nature to become more dangerous, that is gain of function."
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• — "Molecularly impossible." Top health officials, including NIH Director Francis Collins and Fauci himself, reject Paul's interpretation. An incidental finding "does not constitute research of gain of function of concern," Fauci said. "So I have to respectfully disagree with Sen. Paul. He is not correct that we lied or misled the Congress." Fauci added that none of the viruses studied in the Wuhan experiment are the virus that causes COVID-19. "They were distant enough molecularly that no matter what you did to them, they could never, ever become SARS-CoV-2," he said. —The Hill

MORE: Bipartisan legislators demand answers from Fauci on 'cruel' puppy experiments —The Hill

Warren: Learning to live together again

"Of course, to heal the deep divisions in our society we need profound political and systemic change. But though we need more than just small talk, we certainly do not need less than that. As a culture, our conversations can run so quickly to what divides us, and this is all the more true online. We cannot build a culture of peace and justice if we can't talk with our neighbors. It's in these many small conversations where we begin to recognize the familiar humanity in one another. These are the baby steps of learning to live together across differences." —Tish Harrison Warren in The New York Times

Tish Harrison Warren is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America and the author of "Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep."

MORE: Robert Tracy McKenzie: Americans embrace democracy for the wrong reason, and it could be our undoing —The Dallas Morning News

Regarding Trump's lawsuit to delay disclosure of his Jan. 6 activities, I have little hope that the congressional select committee will succeed in its efforts to expose Trump or any of the Jan. 6 conspirators. The contest looks hopelessly lopsided. On one side is an efficient and organized criminal enterprise, the Trump Organization. On the other side is the most dysfunctional institution on the planet, the U.S. Congress. I fear it will be no contest. I pray it turns out otherwise. —Tim P., New Mexico

Call me crazy, but I thought we are a nation of laws. I thought that no one is above the law in this country, and that the laws are to be applied and enforced equally. Since when did we become a nation of political calculation when it comes to the laws of the land? To hear people debating whether people like Steve Bannon should be held accountable for not complying with a subpoena because of the optics, the politics, is disgraceful. The same goes for any debate as to whether or not anyone else involved in what happened on Jan. 6, either as a witness or participant—such as Mr. Trump, Mr. Meadows, Mr. Pence, and others—should be called to testify or issued subpoenas is also disgraceful.

Is this how justice is actually applied? Has it all been lip service all along? I won't go though examples of people who were arrested and jailed for much less, much quicker, without such public debate. Just because a former president has never been indicted while in the White House or after leaving it does not mean it cannot, nor should not, be done. Gee, maybe it's because we've never had such a corrupt person, surrounded by corrupt people, occupy the White House and try to overthrow our government and our very way of life before now. —Bill T., Arizona

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