Mike Johnson Has Most Unhinged Defense Yet of January 6

House Speaker Mike Johnson is trying out some new language to describe the riotous mob that swarmed the U.S. Capitol on January 6: innocent Americans that were just there, “walking through the building.”

In an interview with Newsmax’s Eric Bolling on Monday night, the Republican leader seemed to suggest that the 2,000 people who charged the halls, destroyed federal property, and interrupted the peaceful presidential transfer of power—1,265 of whom have been charged by federal authorities—were actually mere innocent bystanders.

“I made a commitment immediately after I got the gavel that we would start releasing that,” Johnson said, referring to tapes of the insurrection. “Originally we were trying to blur some of the faces to protect the innocent, you know, people who were there and just happened to be walking through the building.”

“But then we realized a lot of this is out there in the public anyway,” Johnson continued. “We had to hire new staff to do it, they’re up late … it’s a 24-hour operation, all that tape will be out there as soon as possible. Thirteen thousand hours are available now.”

There’s no reason to give Johnson the benefit of the doubt on whom he’s referring to, especially since he unequivocally admitted in December that the conservative party was working on a project to doctor footage of the January 6 insurrection in an effort to thwart the identification of the rioters in an investigation by the Justice Department.

“We have to blur some of the faces of persons who participated in the events of that day because we don’t want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ,” Johnson said at the time. “That’s a slow process to get it done, we’re working steadily on it. We’ve hired additional personnel to do that and all of those tapes ultimately will be out so everybody can see them and draw their own conclusions.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. thinks that President Joe Biden is worse for American democracy than the guy who attempted to overturn the 2020 election results and said he’d be a dictator “on day one”—all because the independent candidate’s conspiracy-laden social media posts keep getting taken down.

In an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday night, Kennedy accused Biden of “weaponizing the federal agencies” in order to censor political speech, citing deleted posts while claiming that the major tech companies essentially hand over their data to U.S. intelligence agencies.

“I can say that because I just won a case in the Federal Court of Appeals, and now before the Supreme Court, that shows that he started censoring not just me—37 hours after he took office, he was censoring me,” Kennedy continued.

“No president in the country has ever done that. The greatest threat to democracy is not somebody who questions election returns, but a president of the United States who uses the power of his office to force the social media companies—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter—to open a portal and give access to that portal to the FBI, to the CIA, to the IRS.”

But if it’s between Donald Trump and Biden, Kennedy said the latter is the worse pick for the country because the First Amendment is the “most important.”

“So just to be clear, you’re saying you could make an argument that President Biden is a worse threat to democracy than Donald Trump?” prompted Burnett.

“Absolutely,” Kennedy responded. “What president in history has ever tried to censor political opponents? What president has weaponized the federal agencies?”

But the kind of speech Kennedy is fighting for isn’t the kind that’s protected by the First Amendment. The 70-year-old has been singled out by members of Congress for using his social media platforms to spread baseless conspiracies, including the debunked lies that vaccines cause autism, that the Covid-19 vaccine was “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people” and spare people who are “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese,” and that Jews in Nazi Germany had more freedom to roam about than American citizens living through the pandemic.

“This is not the kind of free speech that I know of,” Representative Stacey Plaskett said in July, during a hearing on the alleged weaponization of the federal government. Kennedy testified during that hearing.

Meanwhile, Trump has openly celebrated RFK Jr’s contributions in the race—or rather, his potential to pull votes away from Biden.

“RFK Jr. is the most Radical Left Candidate in the race, by far. He’s a big fan of the Green New Scam, and other economy killing disasters,” Trump wrote on Truth Social last week. “I guess this would mean he is going to be taking votes from Crooked Joe Biden, which would be a great service to America.”

“It’s great for MAGA, but the Communists will make it very hard for him to get on the Ballot,” Trump continued. “He is Crooked Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, not mine. I love that he is running!”

Donald Trump’s gag order in his hush-money trial has been expanded after he repeatedly attacked the judge’s daughter, and the former president has responded to the decision with shame and humility.

Nah, just kidding.

On Truth Social Tuesday morning, Trump complained that the expanded gag order was unfair, that the case against him shouldn’t have been brought, and that Judge Juan Merchan should be recused with the case thrown out. And for good measure, he called the whole thing “ELECTION INTERFERENCE at its worst!”

Trump was slapped with a gag order last week prohibiting him from talking publicly about jurors, witnesses, prosecutors, court staff, and the family members of the last two. The gag order was expanded Monday night to include the family members of the court and the judge’s family.

The expanded terms of the gag order still allow Trump to talk about the judge and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, but it’s anyone’s guess as to whether the former president will limit his insults and criticism to just those two. He’s already proven he can’t abide by other gag orders in the past, and was even hit with a $5,000* fine for violating the order in his bank fraud trial.

Trump is on trial for allegedly using his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen to cover up an affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election, and faces 34 felony counts for falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. The trial is scheduled to begin on April 15 with jury selection.

Can the former president keep his mouth shut until then?

*This article originally misstated the amount Trump was fined for violating the gag order.

Donald Trump doesn’t seem to have much success at keeping his mouth shut. A gag order issued last week by Judge Juan Merchan in the former president’s hush-money trial couldn’t stop Trump from attacking the judge’s daughter on Truth Social, not once but at least twice.

Now Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg wants to make that gag order even stronger. In a court filing Monday, Bragg said that Trump’s “dangerous, violent, and reprehensible rhetoric fundamentally threatens the integrity of these proceedings.” He urged Merchan to reiterate that attacks on the family of court staff, as well that of the district attorney, are prohibited.

“There is no constitutional right to target the family of this Court, let alone on the blatant falsehoods that have served as the flimsiest pretexts” for Trump’s attacks, Bragg stated in the filing.

Trump’s initial gag order last week was only the latest in a stream of judicial reprimands on his speech. In October, Judge Arthur Engoron issued a gag order in Trump’s bank fraud trial after he attacked the judge’s principal law clerk in the case. Trump was later fined $15,000 for violating the order.

Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over Trump’s D.C. trial for election interference, slapped him with a gag order in March after Trump attacked her family.

Right-wing activists and lawmakers have targeted Merchan’s daughter since last year, after Trump’s initial indictment in the hush-money case. Several far-right personalities, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, took issue with the fact that Merchan’s daughter worked at one time for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, claiming it was proof that Trump’s arrest and indictment were a political witch hunt.

Donald Trump’s businesses don’t have the best of track records: Trump Steaks, Trump Airlines, and several of his casinos have gone out of business.

And now, things aren’t looking good for Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of his personal social media platform Truth Social. The company’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings, released Monday, show just $4.1 million in revenue—and a staggering loss of more than $58 million.

Within hours of the filings being released, the news of the company’s losses led the stock price to drop by more than 20 percent in midday trading, with its market value standing at more than $6 billion, just a little more than Trump Media’s value when it debuted on the stock market last week.

And the worst may not be over. The company “expects to continue to incur operating losses and negative cash flows from operating activities for the foreseeable future, as it works to expand its user base, attracting more platform partners and advertisers,” the filing states.

The filing also included a note from an independent accounting firm, Colorado-based BF Borgers CPA PC, warning that Trump Media’s “operating losses raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.”

Trump Media completed a merger two weeks ago with Digital World Acquisition Corporation, a move that was expected to bring a financial windfall to the former president. However, Trump won’t be able to count on this deal just yet to help pay down his many legal bills.

He’ll have to wait six months to legally sell his 72 million shares in the company. Experts have warned, however, that the stock’s value can’t be counted on. It will be subject to how strong an individual investor considers Trump’s name.