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Chris Stirewalt’s Select Panel Testimony

What Chris Stirewalt’s Testimony Revealed About His Former Fox Colleagues

Chris Stirewalt, who as Fox News’ politics editor helped lead the network’s decision desk during the 2020 election cycle, told the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection on Monday that it was evident almost immediately that President Donald Trump had lost his reelection bid.

Stirewalt’s testimony implicitly made the case that his former Fox colleagues spent months either lying to their viewers or revealing their own ignorance by trumpeting the former president’s election fraud conspiracy theories. But Fox is a GOP propaganda outlet that has little interest in informing its viewers, so the network ultimately sided with the fraudsters and fired Stirewalt for being correct about the election.

Monday’s hearing focused on how Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 election had been rigged against him ended up fueling rioters, who sought to subvert the results by attacking the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. The committee aired video clips of several former Trump administration and campaign officials who said that they had told Trump his “rigged election” claims were false.

Stirewalt explained that the collapse of Trump’s early lead in several states, which he seized upon as evidence of election fraud, is actually a well-known process known as the “red mirage” that “happens every time” because absentee ballots are usually counted later in the tabulation process, and more Democrats vote by mail than Republicans. He added that he and some of his colleagues had “gone to pains” before the election to stress to Fox viewers that this would happen “because the Trump campaign and the president had made it clear that they were going to try to exploit this anomaly.”

He further explained that as of November 7, 2020, when Fox and other networks called the presidential race for Joe Biden, Trump’s chances of winning were “none” and the odds of winning the Powerball were greater than the election being reversed.

Stirewalt did not directly address the role his network played after the election. But his remarks amounted to a condemnation of a wide swath of his former colleagues, including hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Maria Bartiromo, for their roles in bolstering Trump’s election fraud lies.

Fox questioned the election results or pushed conspiracy theories about it at least 774 times in the two weeks after Stirewalt’s decision desk called the race for Biden. In subsequent weeks, as Trump lashed out at Fox for being insufficiently supportive of his lies, and urged his followers to switch to its fringe-right competitors, the network’s claims became wilder, with hosts describing increasingly baroque methods by which some shadowy cabal had rigged the election.

Trump was watching Fox and its competitors during this period, and he tweeted in response to their election fraud reports dozens of times. He and his supporters also promoted those lies on the same networks, a fact the committee underlined by airing clips of Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, doing so on Fox.

The Fox hosts’ refusal to clearly state that Trump had lost and that the “red mirage” had inevitably faded — as Stirewalt did in his testimony — helped bolster the feverish state of the Trumpist right in the days following the election, which culminated in the January 6 coup attempt.

While those who touted Trump’s election lies almost universally still have their jobs at the network, Stirewalt does not. He took the blame for Fox correctly calling the state of Arizona for Biden and was dismissed during a purge of Fox’s so-called “real journalists.” Their replacements, in many cases, were Republican political operatives and Trump administration apparatchiks; that’s what Fox executives want from their “news” personnel these days.

“No one ever gets fired from Fox for publishing a story that isn't true,” a network staffer bemoaned in 2017. As Stirewalt discovered, Fox staffers who tell the truth about Republicans risk their jobs.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

U.S. House Panel Votes To End Mass NSA Surveillance

U.S. House Panel Votes To End Mass NSA Surveillance

Washington (AFP) – In a major congressional step towards curtailing widespread surveillance of millions of Americans, a House panel voted Wednesday to end the dragnet collection of telephone metadata.

The rare unanimous vote by the House Judiciary Committee provides strong bipartisan support for a measure that is backed by civil rights groups and could serve as a blueprint for a bill to be sent to President Barack Obama’s desk that would ultimately halt the controversial intelligence policies.

The U.S. Freedom Act would forbid the National Security Agency’s systematic scooping up of phone metadata — which includes numbers dialed, duration and times of calls, but not content.

It would require a secret surveillance court to issue an individual warrant, based on “reasonable articulable suspicion,” for each request by intelligence agencies to scour the database, which should be done only in relation to an existing investigation.

It would also boost transparency of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, create a panel of legal experts to ensure the FISA court adheres to privacy and constitutional rights, and allow communications firms, such as those ordered by the government to hand over data, to release more information about such requests.

“Today’s bill unequivocally ends bulk collection (and) makes it crystal clear that Congress does not endorse bulk collection,” the measure’s author, House Republican Jim Sensenbrenner said.

Sensenbrenner was also a primary author of the Patriot Act that passed Congress in the wake of the 9/11 attacks of 2001 and which broadened agencies’ intelligence-gathering powers.

But he became a forceful advocate for changing the law after NSA contractor Edward Snowden last year revealed the extent of the snooping on Americans.

“The government has misapplied the law that we passed,” overstepping its bounds to violate the privacy rights of millions of Americans with no suspicion of or connection to terrorist activities, he said.

“We urge the House and Senate to move expeditiously on this legislation so that we can begin to restore confidence in the way intelligence is gathered and protect the privacy rights of all Americans,” Sensenbrenner, Judiciary chairman Bob Goodlatte, and others on the panel said in a joint statement.

But the outcome in Congress is far from finalized, with a similar competing measure in another House panel set for a vote on Thursday.

Snowden’s stunning revelations prompted Obama to call for comprehensive reforms to how intelligence agencies operate in the United States. Both House panels say their legislation aligns with Obama’s priorities, but the White House has not publicly endorsed either bill.

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy hailed the House bill’s advancement as “historic,” and said his panel will consider the issue this summer, when he will press for additional reforms.

AFP Photo/Nicholas Kamm

Bridge Scandal Panel Looks To Get Insider’s View Of Christie Office

Bridge Scandal Panel Looks To Get Insider’s View Of Christie Office

By Melissa Hayes, The Record (Hackensack, N.J.)

TRENTON, N.J. — A former aide in New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s office is scheduled to appear before lawmakers Tuesday at the first in the latest series of hearings as the investigation into the George Washington Bridge lane closures continues.

Christina Renna is expected to answer questions about her job as director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, a section within the governor’s office where staff volunteered to secure Democratic endorsements for Christie’s re-election bid last year. Renna worked under Bridget Anne Kelly, the deputy chief of staff Christie fired after The Record first reported that she sent the now infamous email, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” setting into motion access lane closures in an apparent act of political retribution against the Fort Lee mayor.

State Sen. Loretta Weinberg, co-chairwoman of the committee, said Monday that the panel is trying to determine what the atmosphere in Christie’s office was at the time of the lane closures.

Renna is the first of five witnesses being called before the New Jersey Legislative Select Committee in its latest round of subpoenas to answer questions about documents she turned over to the panel.

Assemblyman John Wisniewski, co-chairman of the committee, said Renna would also be asked about remarks she made to a team of attorneys Christie hired to lead an internal investigation into his office’s involvement in the lane closures. The attorneys from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher released summaries of the 75 interviews last month at the request of the legislative panel.

Renna told the internal investigators that her office would receive “mandatory directives” of mayors they should not call or check in with. She said she did not know of an instance where it rose to the level of lane closures, but said not returning calls “was enough to send a message to the local elected official.”

She said intergovernmental affairs staff volunteered at Christie’s campaign headquarters in Bridgewater on Wednesdays and participated in weekend calls with campaign staff. Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich was one of the Democrats targeted for an endorsement, but his name was removed from the list last April after it became clear he wouldn’t support the governor, Renna told the investigators.

Wisniewski said the difficulty will be prioritizing questions to cover everything in one day.

The panel has scheduled weekly hearings. Michael Drewniak, the governor’s press secretary, is set to appear next Tuesday. Matt Mowers, an intergovernmental affairs employee who left to work on Christie’s campaign, has been asked to testify May 20. The final hearing on June 3 will focus on the Port Authority, with Patrick Foye, the executive director, and William “Pat” Schuber, a New Jersey commissioner, scheduled to appear.

Kelly and Bill Stepien, who held the deputy chief of staff post before leaving to manage Christie’s campaign last year, have refused to provide documents citing their Fifth Amendment rights. The committee has not yet called them to testify or issued narrower subpoenas after a judge ruled the initial requests were overly broad. On Friday an attorney for David Samson, who resigned last month as chairman of the Port Authority’s board, said he would not turn over any more documents in response to the committee’s subpoena.

All three have cited the ongoing U.S. Attorney’s Office investigation into the lane closures in their refusal to provide documents. Federal authorities subpoenaed the committee, seeking all documents the lawmakers have obtained through their inquiry.

The Gibson Dunn report, which cleared the governor of any involvement, blames Kelly and David Wildstein, a former Christie appointee at the Port Authority, for carrying out the lane closures.

Wildstein was also called to testify before the committee after turning over documents, but refused to answer questions, citing his right to protect himself against self-incrimination.

AFP Photo/Eric Thayer