Congress
Trump-pardoned Jan. 6 rioter arrested for allegedly threatening to kill Jeffries
A man pardoned by President Donald Trump for storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 was arrested last week for allegedly threatening to kill House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Christopher Moynihan, who was among a small group of Jan. 6 rioters convicted for breaching the Senate floor and rifling through senators’ desks, was arrested by New York State Police after a “thorough investigation,” which authorities say began with an anonymous tip to the FBI.
Court records reflect that the FBI’s tipster told the bureau that on Oct. 17, Moynihan “made statements regarding the assassination of Congressman Hakeem Jeffries” and that he planned to carry out the attack “in a few days,” while the Democratic House leader was in New York. The person told the FBI that Moynihan described the motivation for the plot as “the future” and voiced concern that the man given clemency by Trump had been abusing drugs and expressing increasing “homicidal ideations.”
Investigators also indicated they had reason to believe Moynihan owned or had access to a firearm. Moynihan’s Oct. 19 arrest was first reported by CBS News. He faces a charge of making a terroristic threat against a member of Congress. Jeffries praised state and federal authorities for apprehending Moynihan and lamented Trump’s blanket pardon.
“Unfortunately, our brave men and women in law enforcement are being forced to spend their time keeping our communities safe from these violent individuals who should never have been pardoned,” Jeffries said in a statement.
Moynihan was part of a group of Trump supporters who entered the Capitol early Jan. 6, reaching the Senate chamber just minutes after lawmakers evacuated. Charging documents from that case say Moynihan could be seen on video reviewing papers on senators’ desks and saying, “There’s got to be something we can use against these fucking scumbags.” He then stood on the Senate dais — where then-Vice President Mike Pence had stood just minutes earlier — alongside “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley and others who formed the early vanguard of the Jan. 6 mob.
Moynihan was convicted in 2022 at a bench trial by U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, who later sentenced him to 21 months in prison for obstructing Congress’ proceedings on Jan. 6, 2021.
Cooper released him from prison a year into his sentence after the Supreme Court agreed to review questions about the way obstruction charges had been applied to those who attacked the Capitol. In reaching the decision,Cooper emphasized that he believed Moynihan “would not present a danger to the community” upon release.
After Trump’s inauguration, Moynihan’s case was dismissed altogether, following Trump’s grant of clemency to those who participated in the Jan. 6 riot.
Moynihan is one of a growing list of Jan. 6 defendants who have been charged with, convicted of, or sentenced for other crimes since Trump ended the nationwide manhunt. One of them, Edward Kelley, was sentenced to life in prison earlier this year for attempting to carry out an assassination plot against law enforcement officials who investigated him over his role in the riot.
Others have faced burglary, possession of child pornography or firearms-related charges. But Moynihan is the first Jan. 6 defendant accused of explicitly targeting a member of Congress for violence after Trump’s pardon.
Moynihan‘s arrest is also notable because it arrives in the midst of a national debate over political violence, particularly in the wake of the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. Trump and his allies have repeatedly ascribed political violence exclusively to left-wing extremists, and the president has worked in recent weeks to push conspiracy theories that the Jan. 6 attack was instigated by the FBI or other government actors, rather than supporters who believed that the 2020 election was stolen.
Asked about the threat against Jeffries, Speaker Mike Johnson called it “terrible” but reiterated that “The violence on the left is far more than the violence on the right.”
Meredith Lee Hill contributed reporting.
Sen. Darline Graham sought to take up her brother’s mantle Tuesday, going after former special counsel Jack Smith for obtaining the late-Sen. Lindsey Graham’s phone data.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” the South Carolina Republican told Smith as he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, adding that the anguish the prosecutor caused her brother “makes me sick.”
Lindsey Graham, until his unexpected death in July, was among the most vocal in his outrage over revelations that Smith secretly collected electronic data from GOP lawmakers as part of the Biden-era investigation into President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The late senator was also unapologetic in his support for a provision tucked into a government funding package, which was later repealed, allowing senators to sue the federal government for $500,000 or more if they discover their electronic records were seized without notification — language specifically designed to compensate Smith’s targets.
But Smith replied that Lindsey Graham was not a target of his investigation and was not suspected of wrongdoing — in fact, he considered Darline Graham’s brother “a patriotic public servant” who likely would have been a “witness” in his case against Trump for attempted election subversion.
“Your brother investigated the claims that Donald Trump was making,” Smith told Darline Graham. “He found them to be false.”
The federal government’s internal watchdog told Congress Tuesday that it has concluded President Donald Trump acted unlawfully in unilaterally canceling $810 million in federal funding.
In a letter to congressional leaders obtained by Blue Light News, the Government Accountability Office’s top lawyer panned Trump’s declaration Friday that he is nixing money Congress appropriated through a controversial budget maneuver called a “pocket rescission.”
“The Constitution vests in Congress the power of the purse,” GAO General Counsel Edda Emmanuelli Perez wrote,
adding that “Congress did not cede this important power” by enacting the 1970s impoundment law intended to stop presidents from withholding money Congress approves.
“Any withholding of appropriated funds beyond their date of expiration, regardless of size, subverts both the constitutional process for enacting federal law and Congress’s constitutional power of the purse,” Perez added. “The President may not force the expiration of budget authority Congress has already enacted and did not rescind.”
It is unclear what practical effect, if any, the letter will have on the interbranch funding fight. Outside groups sued the administration last year over a prior pocket rescission, but the Supreme Court issued a preliminary ruling that they did not have standing to challenge the matter. The Trump administration has argued that only the head of the GAO is able to sue under the 52-year-old law governing rescissions.
Sen. Eric Schmitt thought he caught Jack Smith in a lie. Instead, he outed him as a fan of former Iowa Hawkeyes star Caitlin Clark.
In a quest to frame former special counsel Jack Smith as a liar during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, Schmitt asked him if he was in Atlanta on Feb. 3, 2024, for an NBA basketball game between the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks — amid mounting drama around the Atlanta-based criminal investigation into Donald Trump led by prosecutor Fani Willis.
Smith clarified that he didn’t go to that game. But he did go to a different one on the same day: He was in College Park, Md. to see the Maryland Terrapins women’s basketball team play the Iowa Hawkeyes, led by phenom Caitlin Clark, who dropped 38 points that night in a win over the Terps.
It appeared that Schmitt misinterpreted a text message reference to the “hawks” among Smith’s deputies, who discussed reserving a seat for Smith in the front row.
“What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta at a Warrior Hawks game on Feb. 3, 2024, the day after Willis and Wade announced their affair,” the Missouri Republican asked, intimating that he was about to get Smith to perjure himself.
Schmitt also tried to connect the NBA game Smith did not attend in Atlanta to Feb. 2, 2024 — the date Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who was also investigating Trump, acknowledged a personal relationship with another prosecutor on her team.
“I definitely did not go to a Hawks game. I’m sure of that,” Smith said, as he initially struggled to recall the time frame.
After reviewing the messages more closely, Smith said he recalled going to the Iowa-Maryland game and being flanked in the crowd by U.S. marshals. His testimony prompted Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) to lash out at her colleague’s erroneous attack, saying Schmitt owed Smith an apology.
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