Day 169: "A lot of good things."
1/ Trump sued Google, Facebook, and Twitter. He filed a class action lawsuit seeking “punitive damages” to represent broader complaints about social media policies. (Axios / Associated Press / Washington Post / BBC)
2/ Trump told his chief of staff in 2018 that Hitler “did a lot of good things,” according to a new book by Michael Bender. The remarks shocked John Kelly, Bender reports, detailing the former president’s “stunning disregard for history.” (The Guardian)
3/ Weeks after her visit to the Holocaust Museum, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene made a new Nazi-era comparison in opposing the latest COVID-19 vaccination push. The Georgia Republican used the phrase “medical brown shirts” to describe officials and volunteers who are encouraging all Americans to get vaccinated. (Washington Post)
4/ Russian hackers are accused of breaching a contractor for the Republican National Committee last week, around the same time that Russian cyber-criminals launched the single largest global ransomware attack on record. The attack occurred weeks after a U.S.-Russian summit. (New York Times / Bloomberg / NBC News)
5/ Rep. Mo Brooks says he can’t be sued for inciting the Capitol riot because he is a federal employee. The Alabama Republican said he acted as member of Congress when he gave a fiery speech with Trump on Jan. 6 urging the crowd to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. (Washington Post)
6/ Republican Sen. Ron Johnson mouthed that climate change is “bullshit” during a GOP luncheon. Johnson insisted again last week that he is not a climate change denier, but video of him at a GOP event weeks earlier shows him telling the Republican group that it is “bullshit.” (CNN)
7/ Rep. Matt Gaetz’s associate Joel Greenberg asked for a 90-day sentencing delay due to his cooperation with prosecutors. A lawyer for Greenberg, a key figure in a federal probe involving Gaetz, asked a judge to delay the former county tax collector’s sentencing date by 90 days. The lawyer cited Greenberg’s continued cooperation with federal prosecutors. (CNBC)
8/ The FBI infiltrated a group whose members wanted to test homemade bombs, surveil the Capitol, and secede from the U.S. Court records show the FBI infiltrated a “Bible study” group in Virginia that, after the January 6 riot, had members discussing surveilling the U.S. Capitol and their wish to secede from the U.S. Investigators closely followed one member’s plans to build and test Molotov cocktails. (CNN)
poll/ Americans’ life ratings are at a record high. An estimated 59.2% of U.S. adults rate their lives well enough to be categorized as “thriving” exceeding the previous record-high estimate of 57.3% from 2017. (Gallup)