Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson will begin March 21 and end March 24, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced Wednesday.
“As I have said from the time that Justice Breyer announced his retirement, the Committee will undertake a fair and timely process to consider Judge Jackson’s nomination,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, D-Ill., wrote. “I look forward to Judge Jackson’s appearance before the Committee and to respectful and dignified hearings.”
If approved by the Senate, the current federal appellate judge will make history as the first Black woman to sit on the country’s top court.
At her 2021 confirmation hearing for the appellate court, she said, “I’ve experienced life in perhaps a different way than some of my colleagues because of who I am, and that might be valuable — I hope it would be valuable if I was confirmed.”
During the 2020 presidential campaign, U.S. President Joe Biden promised to nominate an African American woman to the highest court.
Jackson, a liberal whose nomination is supported by progressive groups, would replace another liberal, Justice Stephen Breyer, who intends to retire at the end of the current Supreme Court term.
The mayor of Medellín, Daniel Quintero Calle, presented this Thursday during a press conference evidence in which it is allegedly shown that the Recall Committee violated the ceilings for financing the campaign and, apparently,used resources from the support unit of Councilman Julio González Villa.
Quintero accused the councilman (promoter of the recall) of have paid with public resources of the Council from Medellín to the accountant Sofía León Rojas for the recall.
According to the president, according to the contract, submitted by the Recall Committee itself, the amount agreed with León Rojas was about 25 million pesos, 15 million pesos for the recall process, but it is detected that only he paid him in principle 7 and a half million.
We started looking for where the rest of the money was, our surprise is that we found the payment made by the Council of Medellín
“We started looking for where the rest of the money was, our surprise is that we found the payment made by the Medellín Council through the support unit of the recall spokesman, Julio González, who in two contracts pays him in total 15 million pesos, the same amount curiously, but not surprisingly, the recall was financed with public resources,” said Mayor Daniel Quintero.
On the other hand, the mayor presented the final accounts report of the Pact for Medellín, in which, according to him, it is evident that the ceilings established by law to finance this democratic system were exceeded.
“We already have sufficient evidence that this recall was financed irregularly (…) The ceilings, both individual and general, of the recall were violated. The recall is dead, in Medellín we are no longer worried about that, the ones who should be worried about responding are thembecause in Colombia there are laws and no one is above the law,” said the mayor.
It should be remembered that last Monday, after reviewing for the third time the signatures of citizens who are in favor of calling an election that defines whether or not the mayor of Medellín continues in office, the Registrar’s Office reported that 132,547 are valid.
Quintero indicated that he is not concerned that the electoral authority will endorse the signatures again, since he has already presented this evidence for the possible use of public resources before the National Electoral Council, the Attorney General’s Office and the Comptroller’s Office.
This occurs just when the National Electoral Council (CNE) is expected to certify the resources of the committee behind the recall to call an election.
Currently, the CNE is carrying out a process to determine if there were irregularities in the financing of the collection of signatures and if the ceilings established by law were violated.
With the numeral #CNEApruebe, the promoters of the recall of the mayor of Medellin, Daniel Quinteroand those who support it, demonstrated on social networks requesting speed from the National Electoral Council (CNE) so that it delivers the certificate of the accounting reports of the recall process.
Andrés Rodríguez, representative of the Recall Committee, stated that this process is already in the final stretch.
“Both the CNE and the Registry are aware that Daniel Quintero’s recall is inevitable. These are the last days, before they approve everything and we will finally go to the polls. Patience and prudence,” Rodríguez said.
The spokesman for the committee added that the officials of the CNE campaign accounts should already have finished the report to pass it on to the plenary room so that the financial statements can be approved.
See then, who would say that the @CNE_COLOMBIA has not been able to give us the approval for the revocation of Medellin.? What does it depend on? All legal protocols have been met, so when? #CNEAprove
Once this stage has been completed, the President of the Republic will be in charge of setting a date for citizens to come out to vote the recall.
For his part, the lawyer Juan Giraldo Mora, asked the magistrates to issue the resolution so that votes can be called.
“I believe that all the steps have been fulfilled, the pertinent explanations have been given and the principle of innocence that accompanies the actions of people must be respected,” said the lawyer.
(Keep reading: Are you looking for housing in Medellín? We explain how to access a subsidy)
The House committee investigating the U.S. Capitol insurrection subpoenaed more than a dozen individuals Friday who it says falsely tried to declare Donald Trump the winner of the 2020 election in seven swing states.
The panel is demanding information and testimony from 14 people who it says allegedly met and submitted false Electoral College certificates declaring Trump the winner of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to a letter from Mississippi Representative Bennie Thompson, the committee’s Democratic chairman. President Joe Biden won all seven states.
“We believe the individuals we have subpoenaed today have information about how these so-called alternate electors met and who was behind that scheme,” Thompson said in the letter. “We encourage them to cooperate with the Select Committee’s investigation to get answers about January 6th for the American people and help ensure nothing like that day ever happens again.”
The nine-member panel said it has obtained information that groups of individuals met on December 14, 2020 — more than a month after Election Day — in the seven states. The individuals, according to the congressional investigation, then submitted fake slates of Electoral College votes for Trump. Then “alternate electors” from those seven states sent those certificates to Congress, where several of Trump’s advisers used them to justify delaying or blocking the certification of the election during the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021.
Lies about election fraud from the former president and his allies fueled the deadly insurrection on the Capitol building that day, as a violent mob interrupted the certification of the Electoral College results.
FILE – An “alternate” slate of electors nominated by the Republican Party of Georgia cast their own electoral votes for President Donald Trump at the Georgia State Capitol, Dec. 14, 2020, at the same time the official Democratic electors were casting their votes for Joe Biden in another part of the Capitol.
Group obtained certificates
Last March, American Oversight, a watchdog group, obtained the certificates in question that were submitted by Republicans in the seven states. In two of them, New Mexico and Pennsylvania, the fake electors added a caveat saying the certificate was submitted in case they were later recognized as duly elected, qualified electors. That would have been possible only if Trump had won any of the several dozens of legal battles he waged against those states in the weeks after the election.
In the other five states, however, Republicans certified that they were their state’s duly elected and qualified electors.
U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a CNN interview this week that the Justice Department has received referrals from lawmakers regarding the fake certifications, and that prosecutors were now “looking at those.”
An Associated Press review of every potential case of voter fraud in six of the battleground states disputed by Trump has found fewer than 475 — a number that would have made no difference in the 2020 presidential election.
Biden won Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and their 79 Electoral College votes by a combined 311,257 votes out of 25.5 million ballots cast for president. The disputed ballots represent just 0.15% of his victory margin in those states.
The fake electors are the latest to be subpoenaed in the large-scale investigation the committee has been pursuing since it came together last summer. The congressional probe has scrutinized Trump family members and allies, members of Congress and even social media groups accused of perpetuating election misinformation and allowing it to spread rampantly.
The committee plans to move into a more public-facing phase of its work in the next few months. Lawmakers will be holding hearings to document to the American public the most detailed and complete look into the individuals and events that led to the Capitol insurrection.
