Congress
Oliver or Roger? First JFK hearing has a bit of an identity crisis.
The surprise of the first hearing of the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets wasn’t about the identify of who shot John F. Kennedy. Instead it was about who wrote a conspiratorial book about it.
The Capitol Hill hearing held Tuesday in the aftermath of the 80,000-page document dump by the Trump administration last month about the 1963 assassination, came to a cringeworthy pause more than halfway through Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) asked filmmaker Oliver Stone about a book he wrote alleging that Lyndon Baines Johnson was behind the Kennedy assassination.
Stone, who made the 1991 movie JFK which alleged a wide-ranging conspiracy behind the assassination but not focused on Kennedy’s vice president seemed confused by the question. Eventually another witness, former Washington Post reporter Jefferson Morley, worked out that Boebert had confused Oliver Stone with Roger Stone, the political consultant and longtime Trump confidante.
Boebert sheepishly paused and said “I may have misinterpreted that. I apologize.”
The hearing was chaired by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) only minutes after her triumph over Speaker Mike Johnson in an effort to force a vote on her proposal to allow proxy voting for new parents in Congress. Stone was urging the committee to fully investigate the 62-year-old crime.
Luna, who has indicated deep skepticism about Lee Harvey Oswald being the lone assassin, hailed the hearing as an “historical day in our nation’s history” and described to her efforts to uncover the truth about the death of the 35th president as crucial to ensuring that “what happened to President Kennedy can never happen again.”
Democrats though were less focused on Kennedy and more focused on Donald Trump. They took shots at the slapdash nature of the document release by the White House, which left the personal information of a number of former congressional staffers exposed, as well as taking shots at the Trump administration over the fallout of top officials communicating via Signal.
President Donald Trump and top White House officials are privately lobbying Republican senators to delay a ban on intoxicating hemp that’s set to kick in this fall.
At the Trump administration’s urging, the government funding patch the Senate is working to pass this week would push off the forthcoming ban of some cannabis products derived from hemp. But several Republican senators are demanding a vote to strip the delay out and let that prohibition kick in come November.
They’re hearing from the White House about it.
Trump called Sen. Ted Budd on Tuesday night, after the North Carolina Republican filed an amendment to ensure the ban kicks in as mandated on Nov. 12, according to a Senate aide granted anonymity to describe the private discussion. On the call, the president discussed creating a federal regulatory framework for hemp but did not ask Budd to withdraw his amendment, the individual added.
“I’ve been asked by lots of people to stand down on this amendment,” Budd told reporters Wednesday.
Budd noted that the Trump administration has had almost nine months to come up with a plan for implementing the ban.
“So why all of a sudden pop up for some seemingly innocent delay?” he asked, accusing the White House of instead preparing to “jam this on some must-pass” funding package at year’s end to further delay the prohibition.
A White House official granted anonymity to discuss the private debate said the Trump administration is seeking “a modest four-week delay” through the Dec. 11 expiration of the funding patch “to allow for productive conversations to continue.” Some synthetic cannabis products would be permanently banned in the meantime, the official added.
The administration lobbying has successfully swayed some Senate Republicans, such as Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who said in an interview that “the White House has committed to me that they’re committed to regulate the industry.”
Republican Sen. Rand Paul of hemp-rich Kentucky said the issue came up “in a big way” during Senate Republicans’ private lunch meeting Wednesday. Paul said he spoke in support of delaying the ban and said those arguing for a delay “aren’t very rational.”
“They’re wanting to hold up the funding for the government over one month,” he said. “It’s kind of insane.”
Grace Yarrow contributed to this report.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is in the Capitol meeting with holdout GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Bill Cassidy of Louisiania as he tries to lock down their support for his confirmation as permanent leader of the Justice Department.
Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) declined to respond directly Wednesday to Speaker Mike Johnson’s refusal to denounce his former son-in-law Rep. Max Miller over abuse accusations leveled by Moreno’s daughter: “These aren’t accusations in my world,” he said.
“In my world, this is the reality,” Moreno told reporters at the Capitol. “This is not something that is theoretical to me. This is my lived reality of my daughter and my family every single solitary day.”
In an interview with Dasha Burns for Blue Light News’s The Conversation, Johnson declined to take sides in the dispute between Miller (R-Ohio) and Emily Moreno. He called for a House Ethics probe to “play out.”
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