Outgoing FBI Director Christopher Wray thoroughly trashed January 6 rioters when CBS News anchor Scott Pelley asked him about President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to pardon many convicted defendants.
There’s been a lot of chatter about whether Trump will pardon violent offenders — but Trump himself refused to rule out such a move. Trump held a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort Tuesday during which he was asked about his plan to pardon January 6 rioters, including one reporter who asked, “Will you pardon anyone who attacked a police officer?”
And Wray pulled no punches when asked about the prospect of Trump pardons, ticking off a damning set of facts:
Scott Pelley (Voice-Over): Christopher Wray oversaw the largest case in FBI history—the attack on the Capitol in 2021. President-elect Trump has vowed to pardon many of the 1,500 people who were charged.
Christopher Wray: I do think it’s important to step back and remember that we’re talking about hundreds of people who are convicted, most of them pled guilty of serious federal crimes. Heck, I think a 170 or so of them pled guilty to assaulting law enforcement, dozens of them with dangerous or deadly weapons. And there’s a whole bunch that were convicted of seditious conspiracy. We had a case in Tennessee just– a couple months ago where a jury convicted a January 6 defendant who had actually doubled down on his crimes by putting together a kill list to murder FBI agents. Now where I come from, violence against law enforcement, threats against law enforcement is serious business and totally unacceptable.
Hemphill was sentenced to two months behind bars, six months of probation and $500 restitution, serving 60 days in Dublin, California.
She then returned to prominence in June 2023 when Trump himself posted about her case on Truth Social, declaring that it was “HORRIBLE” that she had spent more time in jail than Hunter Biden, his successor’s son, whom House Republicans have tirelessly persecuted over seemingly baseless accusations of corruption and influence-peddling overseas.
Hemphill responded to the former president’s post on X by saying: “Please Donald Trump don’t be using me for anything, I’m not a victim of Jan6, I pleaded guilty because I was guilty! #StopTheSpin.”
Subsequently interviewed by The Daily Beast, Hemphill revealed that she had definitively broken with “the Trump cult” three months earlier.
“You don’t see it as a cult when you’re in it,” she reflected.
“You don’t recognize it.”
After her release, she explained, family members had staged a political intervention, talking to her just as she had once spoken to recovering addicts and telling her: “Pam, you’re in a cult. You really need to get out of that… We really care about you, but this is a cult. You’re trapped in a cult.”
let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Meta's CEO aired his grievances in a letter Monday to the House Judiciary Committee in response to its investigation into content moderation on online platforms. Zuckerberg detailed how senior administration officials leaned on the company to censor certain posts about Covid-19, including humor and satire, and “expressed a lot of frustration” when the social media platform resisted.
In 2019, before the pandemic began, Facebook announced that they were looking to reduce the influence of anti-vaccination posts on their social media platform.
“We will reduce the ranking of groups and Pages that spread misinformation about vaccinations in News Feed and Search. These groups and Pages will not be included in recommendations or in predictions when you type into Search,” stated Facebook at the time.
“When we find ads that include misinformation about vaccinations, we will reject them. We also removed related targeting options, like ‘vaccine controversies.’ For ad accounts that continue to violate our policies, we may take further action, such as disabling the ad account.”
Facebook already downgrades any posts it doesn’t like the look of regarding the virus, but it’s apparently concerned that some of its users might still interact with the wrong content. It’s not Facebook users’ fault, you see, they’re just hapless plebs with not critical faculties of their own. Thankfully Facebook is on the case.
The social media giant’s VP of Integrity (an Orwellian job title if there ever was one), Guy Rosen, recently provided An Update on Our Work to Keep People Informed and Limit Misinformation About COVID-19. “We’re going to start showing messages in News Feed to people who have liked, reacted or commented on harmful misinformation about COVID-19 that we have since removed,” said Rosen.
Mark Zuckerberg’s shock choice to scrap fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram has sparked concern and outrage—including from inside the top ranks of the company.
Michael McConnell, co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Board, said in an interview Friday that the move looks like “buckling to political pressure.”
“I would have liked to have seen these reforms laid out in less contentious and partisan times, so that they would be considered on the merits rather than…Donald Trump is president and now they’re caving in,” McConnell told NPR.
According to him, neither he nor the board, an international group of experts in law, human rights and journalism, were not told about the new policy ahead of time.
Meta executives, however, allegedly informed Trump officials about the change in policy prior to the announcement, a source with knowledge of the conversations told the New York Times.
Again, a publicly traded company with a board of directors and a publicly traded company that's sold itself to shareholders as a company that respected diversity and was socially conscious.
Roland Martin and Isaac Hayes III are calling on people to leave FACEBOOK and move to FANBASE.
I can't follow that call because I'm not on FACEBOOK. Never had been. But I will gladly amplify their call for people to move to FANBASE.
Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Miss Sassy On A Leash" went up Friday, Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Cult Member? Yes. Sex Slave? No" went up on Thursday and Isaiah's latest THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "The Ugly Rudy G" went up Wednesday. The following sites updated: