On whether or not Schumer’s new attempt to pass HR1 is subject to the filibuster

The New Neo Posted on by

There was so much discussion and disagreement in the comments to the previous thread today about the new Democratic ploy to pass HR1 that I thought I’d tackle giving a response in a new post.

The question is whether this new effort can be passed by a simple majority of 50 votes, or whether it will be subject to the filibuster rule and will either need 60 votes to invoke cloture or a majority to eliminate the filibuster at least for this one bill. That distinction is an important one, for obvious reasons.

Sinema is on record for supporting the bill itself while not supporting the end of the filibuster. So if it could be passed by a simple majority vote without ending the filibuster, it seems that would satisfy her. Manchin seems to be against both, or at least against HR1 as it stands at present, although he might support it with some revisions.

Politicians being politicians, they could change their minds. But so far they haven’t and let’s assume they haven’t, because they’ve made fairly strong statements on these things (see my previous post for some links on that) and they’ve remained consistent so far.

Here’s a comment from “mkent” saying that the filibuster won’t apply, because the bill is one that has been stripped and refurbished:

My understanding of the parliamentary procedure is that because the “bill” in question already passed the Senate, it is not subject to a filibuster. That the “bill” now no longer contains a single word of the original bill does not matter.

From https://spacenews.com/nasa-leasing-bill-transformed-into-voting-rights-legislation/

“The Democratic leadership of the House, in an unusual move, then took the Senate-amended bill and stripped out the NASA provisions, replacing it with the text of two voting rights bills and now called the ‘Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act.’ They did so because H.R. 5746 had already passed the House and Senate, so the amended version could go directly to the Senate floor without the threat of a filibuster from Senate Republicans, who oppose the voting rights legislation.”

…The whole point of co-opting the NASA EUL bill [the bill-stripping] is to avoid the filibuster. If the filibuster is still in play, they didn’t need to do that, just consider HR-1.

I have read quite a few articles on this latest move by Schumer, and all of them say that the filibuster – and the 60-vote threshold – will ultimately come into play unless they vote to end it. The most detailed article on the subject can be found here. I suggest that everyone interested in the question read it. Here’s a small excerpt:

“Taking advantage of this existing exception to the Senate’s supermajority requirements will allow us to end the Republicans’ ability to block debate on voting rights legislation,” Schumer said in the memo to Senate Democrats.

“The Senate will finally debate voting rights legislation, and then every Senator will be faced with a choice of whether or not to pass the legislation to protect our democracy.”

“Of course, to ultimately end debate and pass the voting rights legislation, we will need 10 Republicans to join us — which we know from past experience will not happen — or we will need to change the Senate rules as has been done many times before.”

Note that last paragraph in the quote, wherein Schumer himself indicates, in his memo to Democrats, that the 60-vote threshold will come into play.

I don’t know for certain, but I think that perhaps the confusion is about the difference between the vote to debate a bill on the floor, and the vote to pass the bill. Because of the bill-stripping, the debate (which hadn’t occurred earlier because the GOP blocked it) can go forward. The debate doesn’t need to cross a 60-vote threshold anymore to take place. But the actual vote on the actual bill can still be blocked by 41 votes.

It’s one of those complicated things, but that’s my understanding from what I’ve read so far.

HR1, Obamacare, the filibuster, and political power

The New Neo Posted on by

Regarding yesterday’s news about Sinema and her speech to retain the filibuster, commenter “Frederick” wrote:

The rules are not the rules. The only rule is does a majority of both Houses want something. All else is distraction. Let’s learn the lesson so we can make effective changes.

I don’t think that’s something most of us didn’t already know. It seems to me that it’s acknowledged that a majority can change the rules if it so desires.

The issues right now – and perhaps always – are whether such changes will be made, when, by whom, in what manner, to what purpose, and what the result will be.

For many years the 60-vote Senate threshold rule remained intact, despite the fact that a majority could have changed it. Some of the reasons for this:

(1) each party recognized, when it was in power, that it might need to respect the 60-vote majority rule because soon it might be out of power (2) both parties wanted some sort of bipartisanship on major transformative legislation, or at least the approval of a strong majority of the public. Of course, if that party already held over 60 Senate seats and therefore was filibuster-proof as long as all its members voted to end cloture, then it was understood that a large majority of the public was already on their side.

What it really boiled down to was that both parties felt vulnerable to voters’ opinions for the next election, and therefore didn’t want to rile too many voters with extremely partisan transformative legislation and risk their seats next time. There are other factors, too – for example, the parties really used to be at least somewhat less polarized in their goals.

However, at present HR1 is the entire ball of wax for the Democrats, who have moved much further to the left than ever before in my lifetime and perhaps in American history. That’s what makes it different and that’s what makes them more even more determined than usual (and they usually are very determined indeed) to pass this legislation, because they believe it will give them permanent power. Permanent power includes the power to do more things that will solidify that power, including making new states out of DC and Puerto Rico. Then they would never have to worry about the likes of Sinema and Manchin. To be blunt, HR1 gives them a much greater opportunity to win elections through fraud, and if so then they also would never have to worry about the pesky voters’ rejection, either.

Whether anything will stop them is anyone’s guess. But they will not stop trying to pass this bill any way they can (and that includes some sort of executive action if the legislative action fails, and lawfare as well).

That’s why the latest approach to passing HR1 surprises me not in the least, and it should surprise no one:

Democrats have figured out a way to sneak their “voting reform” bill into the House and then on to the Senate. It involves hollowing out a bill that has to do with NASA, and replacing the text with the text of their voting bill…

…Politico reports:

“‘The Senate will finally debate voting rights legislation, and then every senator will be faced with a choice of whether or not to pass the legislation to protect our democracy,’ Schumer wrote in a memo, obtained by POLITICO, to Senate Democrats.

That “hollowing out a bill” approach rang a bell, and that bell was Obamacare. I’m not keen on relating all the Byzantine details of the passage of that legislation, but the main relevant points are the following:

(a) The United States Constitution requires all revenue-related bills to originate in the House. To formally comply with this requirement, the Senate repurposed H.R. 3590, a bill regarding housing tax changes for service members. It had been passed by the House as a revenue-related modification to the Internal Revenue Code. The bill became the Senate’s vehicle for its healthcare reform proposal, discarding the bill’s original content.

(b) The House passed it with only a narrow margin (220-215). Only one Republican voted for it, and 35 Democrats voted against it. Therefore, except for that one vote, support was not bipartisan but opposition was.

(c) The Senate passed its own bill with a 60-vote margin. You may remember some of the hurdles that were overcome to get to that magic number of 60:

At the start of the 111th Congress, Democrats had 58 votes. The Minnesota Senate election was ultimately won by Democrat Al Franken, making 59. Arlen Specter switched to the Democratic party in April 2009, giving them 60 seats, enough to end a filibuster.

The vote to end cloture was passed by 60 votes, as was the bill itself. No Republicans voted for it and all Democrats plus two Independents voted for it, thus making it a completely partisan affair. But at least it was a partisan affair passed by a strong majority rather than a very narrow one.

(d) The next step was to unite the House bill with the Senate bill and pass a single bill. This is where the election of Republican Scott Brown of Massachusetts (to replace the deceased Ted Kennedy) came in. That election let the Democrats know how opposed the public was to the passage of this bill – if even liberal Massachusetts seemed to want to stop it – but they didn’t care. It was thought that Brown could stop the Democrats from getting 60 votes to invoke cloture on the new bill that would unify the two previous ones, but the Democrats got around that little problem by having the House merely approve the previous Senate bill as written (with a few budgetary changes), which meant Democrats did not face a new cloture vote at all and the bill could now be passed in the Senate by a simple majority.

From that Wiki page:

Since any bill that emerged from conference that differed from the Senate bill would have to pass the Senate over another Republican filibuster, most House Democrats agreed to pass the Senate bill on condition that it be amended by a subsequent bill. They drafted the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, which could be passed by the reconciliation process.

Per the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, reconciliation cannot be subject to a filibuster. But reconciliation is limited to budget changes, which is why the procedure was not used to pass ACA in the first place; the bill had inherently non-budgetary regulations. Although the already-passed Senate bill could not have been passed by reconciliation, most of House Democrats’ demands were budgetary…

The House passed the Senate bill with a 219–212 vote on March 21, 2010, with 34 Democrats and all 178 Republicans voting against it. It passed the second bill, by 220–211, the same day (with the Senate passing this bill via reconciliation by 56-43 a few days later).

Note again the bipartisan nature of the opposition rather than of the support.

Coming back to HR1, the approach has some similarities and some differences. The hollowed-out bill is the same approach, but that wouldn’t be of concern if HR1 itself had strong bipartisan support. Not only does it not have that support, but the Democrats now don’t have the kind of majority they did back when Obamacare was passed. There is no way they could reach that 60-vote threshold that was initially reached for the Senate to pass Obamacare. That’s why there’s all this talk about ending the filibuster. It’s because the Democrats have only the slimmest of margins, and even that margin is iffy (Sinema has indicated she would vote for HR1 but not to end the filibuster, and I’m not sure what Manchin’s position is right now on the bill, but in the past he opposed it).

Obamacare was very important to the Democrats, but its importance pales in comparison to the importance of HR1. As I’ve stated many times, HR1 is the entire ballgame to them, their entree into permanent power. That’s not only the reason they are so grimly determined to pass it no matter what, but it’s also the reason it is a profoundly dangerous and pernicious bill. With its Orwellian “For the People” title, it purports to secure voting “rights.” In actuality, it provides the mechanism to subvert them.

COVID and Fauci: what did he know and when did he know it?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been meaning to write a long post on the subject of what now appears to have been the efforts of “scientists” such as Dr. Fauci to quash talk of the possible evidence for the Chinese lab genesis of COVID, which they knew early on was in fact a valid and even likely hypothesis. I may still write that longer post, but at the moment I’ll just deal with it by providing links, and by adding that their actions undermine the last vestiges of faith we might have in scientific objectivity, particularly among bureaucrats such as Fauci.

Here are three links: this, this, and this.

And here’s a summary video from Viva Frei:

A YouTube comment for that video: “I gotta say, I’m getting sick of being right.”

Sinema…

The New Neo Posted on by

…couldn’t care less what names Joe Biden calls her.

The filibuster stands – for now. Here are some quotes from Sinema’s speech on the subject:

What is the legislative filibuster other than a tool that requires new federal policy to be broadly supported by senators representing a broader cross section of Americans, a guardrail inevitably viewed as an obstacle by whoever holds the Senate majority?

Demands to eliminate this threshold (from whichever party holds the fleeting majority) amount to a group of people separated on two sides of a canyon, shouting to their colleagues that the solution to their shared challenges is to make that rift both wider and deeper.

Consider this: in recent years, nearly every party-line response to the problems we face in this body, every partisan action taken to protect a cherished value, has led us to more division, not less.

Sinema makes it clear in her speech that she supports much of the Democrats’ agenda – including the very bill they are so eager to end the filibuster to pass, HR1. But she will not support ending the filibuster to pass it. That’s unusual, and I certainly never expected this of Sinema back when she was first elected.

And Tom Cotton reminds everyone (everyone listening, that is) that Chuck Schumer used to be vociferously pro-filibuster – when Schumer was in the minority in the Senate, that is.

SCOTUS rules on vaccine mandates

The New Neo Posted on by

Interesting split:

6-3 against OSHA mandate, with liberals dissenting. 5-4 in favor of CMS mandate, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Barrett, dissenting. (In other words, Roberts and Kavanaugh voted with the liberal bloc on CMS.).

The OSHA mandate is the one for large employers, and the CMS mandate is the one for healthcare workers.

Here are some quotes from the decision on OSHA:

OSHA has never before imposed such a mandate. Nor has Congress. Indeed, although Congress has enacted significant legislation addressing the COVID–19 pandemic, it has declined to enact any measure similar to what OSHA has promulgated here…

Applicants [for blocking the mandate] are likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that the Secretary lacked authority to impose the mandate. Administrative agencies are creatures of statute. They accordingly possess only the authority that Congress has provided. The Secretary has ordered 84 million Americans to either obtain a COVID–19 vaccine or undergo weekly medical testing at their own expense. This is no “everyday exercise of federal power.”

Of course. It’s really quite obvious, and the decision should have been unanimous but of course it’s not because the Court’s liberals would approve virtually anything this administration does.

The decision in favor of the mandate for health care workers is based on the fact that, according to the majority, the government has the right to do it:

Congress has authorized the Secretary to impose conditions on the receipt of Medicaid and Medicare funds that “the Secretary finds necessary in the interest of the health and safety of individuals who are furnished services.” 42 U. S. C. §1395x(e)(9).* COVID–19 is a highly contagious, dangerous, and—especially for Medicare and Medicaid patients—deadly disease. The Secretary of Health and Human Services determined that a COVID–19 vaccine mandate will substantially reduce the likelihood that healthcare workers will contract the virus and transmit it to their patients.

But with Omicron, will a vaccine “substantially reduce the likelihood that healthcare workers will contract the virus and transmit it to their patients”? The evidence mounts that this may not be so, although it appears to be so for earlier variants. I’d like to know when the Secretary of Health and Human Services issued that statement – was it before Omicron came around? And do the SCOTUS justices even know the difference between Omicron and the other variants (Sotomayor seems to know almost next to nothing about COVID, based on her performance during oral arguments, but I’m talking about the others)?

No surprise that Roberts voted with the liberals on that one. Is Kavanaugh a surprise? He’s been a less-than-stalwart conservative, so his vote is not all that much of a surprise either. Both did vote correctly on the first question, however, which was the more egregious overreach by the administration.

The dissent by the four remaining justices on that second question was based on this (note that Amy Coney Barrett sided here with the conservatives):

…[O]ur decision turns primarily on whether the Government can make a “strong showing” that it is likely to succeed on the merits. Nken v. Holder, 556 U. S. 418, 426 (2009). In my view, the Government has not made such a showing here.

RIP Ronnie Spector

The New Neo Posted on by

On Monday I mentioned that it seems as though there have been a lot of celebrity deaths lately.

And now I see that pop singer Ronnie Spector has died:

Like burning magnesium, the Ronettes flared hot, brightly and quickly: Their string of hits, which began with 1963’s “Be My Baby,” had played out by 1966, as the producer’s interest in the group had run its course…

She was born in Spanish Harlem on Aug. 10, 1943; her mother was of African American and Native American descent and her father was white. She showed an affinity for singing at an early age; her mother, who split with her alcoholic husband when her daughters were still young, actively encouraged their professional career.

The Bennett sisters and their cousin Talley played New York sock hops and bar mitzvahs, performing material by Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers and the Shirelles, first as Ronnie and the Relatives and then, at Beatrice Bennett’s suggestion, as the Ronettes…

Granted an audition with Spector, the Ronettes, fronted by Ronnie, launched into a version of Frankie Lymon’s “Why Do Fools Fall In Love.” According to her autobiography, Spector instantly leaped up from his piano and exclaimed, “That’s the voice I’ve been looking for!”

It was the girl he’d been looking for, too – for a while, anyway. Their marriage of a few years was marked by the unbalanced Phil Spector’s abuse of his wife, but not before she’d become a big star for a while in classic early-60s hits like the following. Ronnie Spector looked like most of the girls in my junior high and high school – or maybe they looked like her. The accent she diplayed was the way everyone talked, too, although my New York accent wasn’t as strong (see this for the story of my New York accent). I didn’t have the beehive, but I certainly teased my hair to a formidable height, as well. You can get a feel for Ronnie’s effervescent personality here:

Here’s some history on the tune, which was not only produced by Phil Spector in the “wall of sound” style for which he became famous (“a Wagnerian approach to rock and roll”), it was also a song that obsessed Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. To hear the wall of sound version, go here.

Democrats admit they want to change voting laws because if they don’t, they’ll lose elections

The New Neo Posted on by

We already knew this, but I’m surprised that they’re saying it:

Democrats are warning that they could box themselves out of winning Senate races in key states unless they change the legislative filibuster and pass voting rights and election reform legislation.

The fear boils down to a belief among Senate Democrats that unless they take federal action, changes being made by GOP-controlled state legislatures will make it harder for certain constituency groups to vote, which would make it harder for Democrats to win elections. That, in turn, would make it harder for Democrats to keep or win back control of the Senate in the future.

Note how HR1 is always referred to by Democrats and the MSM as an “election reform” bill to solidify “voting rights.” Nothing bad there, right? It’s actually an entirely partisan federalization of the voting laws heretofore almost entirely under state discretion, an attempt to stop red states from protecting the integrity of their elections with traditional safeguards such as voter ID (voter ID is supported by the vast majority of Americans). The idea the Democrats and the MSM wish to convey to the public is that the Republicans are trying to stop the opposition from voting, and the Democrats are just trying to keep voting “fair.”

It’s an incredible power grab by the Democrats, and only Manchin, Sinema – and perhaps SCOTUS – stand in their way. This is do or die for the Democrats for 2022, and they know it.

But this drive isn’t just recent. HR1 has been a top priority for the Democratic Party long before January 6th, COVID, and the 2020 election ever happened. HR1 was the first bill they took up in January of 2019, right after they had taken back the House and even though they knew it would be blocked in the then-Republican-controlled Senate.

A little over a year later, COVID gave them the golden opportunity to institute the state-by-state “reforms” (that is, relaxation of voting security) that they couldn’t legislate at the federal level, and which may have enabled their 2020 win. Now that COVID may be waning, they want to make their changes permanent for all states and thus make their power permanent.

A recent poll, for what it’s worth

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s from Quinnipiac:

A majority of Americans, 58 – 37 percent, think the nation’s democracy is in danger of collapse. Republicans say 62 – 36 percent, independents say 57 – 39 percent, and Democrats say 56 – 37 percent.

Makes sense. Actually, perhaps it has already collapsed.

More:

Fifty percent say the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 was an attack on democracy that should never be forgotten, while 44 percent say too much is being made of the storming of the U.S. Capitol and it’s time to move on. That compares to a Quinnipiac University Poll on August 4, 2021 when 57 percent said it should never be forgotten and 38 percent said it was time to move on.

Do I detect a trend there?

Another trend:

Americans give President Joe Biden a negative 33 – 53 percent job approval rating, while 13 percent did not offer an opinion. In November 2021, Americans gave Biden a negative 36 – 53 percent job approval rating with 10 percent not offering an opinion. Among Democrats in today’s poll, 75 percent approve, 14 percent disapprove and 11 percent did not offer an opinion. Among Democrats in November’s poll, 87 percent approved, 7 percent disapproved and 6 percent did not offer an opinion. Among registered voters in today’s poll, Biden receives a negative 35 – 54 percent job approval rating with 11 percent not offering an opinion. In November, registered voters gave him a negative 38 – 53 percent job approval rating with 9 percent not offering an opinion.

Even if I were a Democrat and thought what Biden was trying to do was good, I can’t imagine giving him a positive approval rating for the simple reason that he sounds awful and he hasn’t even accomplished the policies he’s set out to implement. And yet 75% of Democrats still approve, although down from 87% in November (note that was already after the Afghanistan debacle).

The issues for disapproval of Biden are the economy, foreign policy, and the response to the coronavirus. Can’t say I disagree with any of that – he’s been abominable on all three. I expected nothing else of him, but many of those who voted for him probably expected more, although I don’t know why they would except for self-delusion.

So far I have only asked one Democrat what he thinks of Biden at this point. I got a terse, “He’ doing fine.” I didn’t probe further, but I plan to.

The Ray Epps puzzle

The New Neo Posted on by

The concern about Ray Epps isn’t just whether he was “a law enforcement agent or informant” (we’ll get to that phrase in a moment). It’s also these three things:

(1) Why was he high on the “wanted” list for a while – and then suddenly, when some media outlets focused attention on him, taken off it?

(2) With all the video evidence that he was at the very least a main instigator of the trespassing aspect of the incident for which so many people have been charged, why hasn’t he been charged with anything?

(3) Why hasn’t the government given the answers to (1) and (2)?

With regard to number 1, this is the closest I’ve come to finding a possible explanation:

If the FBI removes a picture, it means its agents no longer need the public’s assistance in identifying him, Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor who was an advisor to former FBI Director James B. Comey, told us in a phone interview.

There are many reasons that the FBI would remove Epps’ photo without filing charges during an ongoing investigation, Richman said, including that he may have spoken to investigators and clarified his role or that he is cooperating with investigators and may implicate others.

So has he become a witness for the government? Perhaps. At any rate, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the government will not be charging Ray Epps with anything.

With regard to number question 2, what about a conspiracy or even an incitement charge? Whether or not he’s guilty of those things, he appears to be at least as guilty if not more guilty than many of those whom the government has charged with conspiracy. They were tracked down and charged and in some cases have been detained. Why not Epps? He also clearly was on restricted Capitol grounds, an offense for which some have been charged. Why not Epps?

For that matter, though, if he was indeed a government agent, why was he ever put on the FBI wanted list in the first place? Are they that disorganized?

Epps has – according to the Democrat-dictated and motivated January 6th Committee, denied being a “law enforcement” agent or informant, although why we should believe him or them is anyone’s guess:

“The Select Committee is aware of unsupported claims that Ray Epps was an FBI informant based on the fact that he was on the FBI Wanted list and then was removed from that list without being charged,” the committee said in a statement. “Mr. Epps informed us that he was not employed by, working with, or acting at the direction of any law enforcement agency on January 5th or 6th or at any other time, and that he has never been an informant for the FBI or any other law enforcement agency.”

Well, that settles it, right? And by the way, was Epps under oath? Only the Shadow knows.

Note also how carefully phrased the statement is. The denial specifies “law enforcement” agencies rather than the more general “government agencies.” What is a law enforcement agency, technically? It’s basically either a police force or the FBI. That seems to leave other possibilities. The government is a big tent these days. And no one under that tent is willing to answer some very simple questions:

With speculation swirling, Republicans have been clamoring for more clarity on Epps, but Justice Department and FBI officials have repeatedly declined to provide answers about the provocateur as well as any FBI informants or agents who may have been embedded within the pro-Trump crowd as people stormed the Capitol and disrupted the certification of now-President Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 election. The Jan. 6 committee made the first move Tuesday, saying House investigators interviewed Epps, but did not offer any insight into whether he was under oath when he denied being an FBI informant.

Epps’ actions that day were highly suspect. For example [emphasis mine]:

Video footage shows Epps, a former president of the Arizona Oath Keepers militia group, urging a crowd of Trump supporters on the evening of Jan. 5, 2021, to “go into the Capitol” the next day, provoking allegations from the crowd that he was working for the federal authorities, with chants of “Fed!”

As former President Donald Trump spoke to supporters outside the White House on Jan. 6, Epps went to work loudly encouraging people to move toward the Capitol. He was also part of an initial group of rioters who broke through a police barrier on Capitol grounds, and he whispered something unknown into the ear of one rioter a few seconds before that person began trying to rip at a police barrier…

There is no evidence that Epps entered the Capitol building during the riot nor is there any footage of him personally participating in acts of violence against police officers or anyone else. He, along with thousands of others, did unlawfully enter the Capitol’s larger restricted grounds, but most of those cases have not been charged.

It is interesting to me that although Epps was constantly urging demonstrators to enter the Capitol, he did not do so himself. Why? Was he aware that that would protect him from charges? And although that last quoted sentence says that most of the people who entered the Capitol’s restricted grounds have not been charged, in fact some of them have been charged for just that. Epps was “wanted” enough to have been prominently featured in an FBI list for six months, so someone must have thought he had violated some law or other, or perhaps many.

More of the details of Epps actions that day can be found in two lengthy Revolver articles: this one and this one. In the last couple of days, there have been a flurry of articles in the MSM of the “pay no attention” variety, but none that I’ve seen actually deal with the many allegations taken from the video. They all conclude, however, that any suspicion of Epps (who clearly was egging people on, at the very least) is “baseless” and “unsupported” (two of their very favorite words).

The MSM and the rest of the left, who ordinarily seem to believe that even those who merely attended the Trump rally are insurrectionists and should be shunned, seem to have no problem these days with Epps although he was clearly a major player.

Note also that all this focus on Epps obscures the issue. There were so many others, some with faces exposed, instigating and even breaking down barriers and/or windows, and as yet uncharged. To me, this is more disturbing than Epps himself.

As for the FBI, it’s keeping mum:

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz raised questions about Epps and about any possible Capitol riot informants during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing featuring Jill Sanborn, the executive assistant director of the FBI’s national security branch, who dodged most of the questions.

Cruz asked her who Epps is, and she said, “I’m aware of the individual, sir. I don’t have the specific background to him.” He asked whether Epps was a federal informant or whether he encouraged anyone to tear down barricades. “I cannot answer that,” she replied to both.

Cruz also asked Sanborn how many FBI agents or confidential informants “actively participated” in the events of Jan. 6. She said only, “I can’t go into the specifics of sources and methods.” The senator then asked directly whether any FBI agents or informants participated, whether any committed any acts of violence, or whether any encouraged or incited acts of violence. Sanborn replied, “I can’t answer that.”

“A lot of Americans are concerned that the federal government deliberately encouraged illegal and violent conduct on Jan. 6,” Cruz claimed. “My question to you — and this is not an ordinary law enforcement question, this is a question of public accountability — did federal agents or those in service of federal agents actively encourage violent criminal conduct on Jan. 6?”

Sanborn replied, “Not to my knowledge, sir.”…

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton also grilled Matt Olsen, the assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s National Security Division, about similar matters Tuesday.

Cotton asked Olsen whether DOJ or the FBI had any “plainclothes officers” about the Capitol riot crowd, and Olsen said he was “not aware of whether or not there were.” When asked if any plainclothes officers entered the Capitol that day, Olsen said, “I don’t know the answer to that.” Cotton criticized his unresponsiveness, and Olsen said, “As a general matter, it’s not appropriate to comment on an ongoing investigation.”

When Cotton brought up Epps, Olsen repeatedly said, “I don’t have any information about that individual.” He also claimed, “I’m not familiar with the most wanted page.”

That seems – unbelievable.

And then there’s this tidbit:

The New York Times reported in September that it had obtained records showing an FBI informant affiliated with the Proud Boys had texted his FBI handler as he marched into the Capitol during the riot. The outlet said the records did not disclose the informant’s identity but contended that “the records, and information from two people familiar with the matter, suggest that federal law enforcement had a far greater visibility into the assault on the Capitol, even as it was taking place, than was previously known.”

Far greater visibility indeed – and probably not just “visibility.” There’s plenty of reason for suspicion, and precious few answers or even acknowledgment that it looks suspicious.