TRUMP REQUESTED NATIONAL GUARD AT CAPITOL: JAN. 6 TRANSCRIPT
A hidden Jan. 6 transcript undermines a narrative of the House select committee that investigated the breach of the U.S. Capitol that President Donald Trump did not propose sending 10,000 National Guard personnel to the area.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Tony Ornato said that Trump made that request, according to a transcript from the House select committee.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) speaks in Nashville, Tenn., on June 18, 2022. Seth Herald/Getty Images
“The former J6 Select Committee apparently withheld Mr. Ornato’s critical witness testimony from the American people because it contradicted their pre-determined narrative,” alleged Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), who released the transcript.
“Mr. Ornato’s testimony proves what Mr. [Mark] Meadows has said all along, President Trump did in fact offer 10,000 National Guard troops to secure the U.S. Capitol, which was turned down,” added Loudermilk, who is the chairman of the House Administration Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight.
Former Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller told the committee that he did not know of Trump’s apparent order—exemplifying the contradictory narratives of whether Trump requested the National Guard to protect the Capitol ahead of Jan. 6.
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Ultimately, National Guard personnel were sent to the Capitol, but only hours after the breach of the Capitol.
The president is in charge of the District of Columbia’s National Guard.
—Jackson Richman and Zack Stieber
BIDEN PROPOSES $7.3 TRILLION BUDGET WITH TAX HIKES FOR RICH
President Joe Biden yesterday released his $7.3 trillion budget for fiscal year 2025 that calls for significant tax increases for the wealthy and corporations.
The president proposes a 25 percent minimum tax on households earning more than $100 million. In addition, his plan seeks to partly repeal Trump’s tax cuts, raising the top individual tax rate to 39.6 percent from 37 percent and the corporate tax rate to 28 percent from 21 percent.
President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on March 7, 2024. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
These tax hikes would increase tax receipts by nearly $4.5 trillion over the next decade.
The budget request also features cost-cutting measures for families, building affordable housing, and investing in American manufacturing in line with previous years. It also includes funding for the administration’s climate and equity initiatives across the U.S. government.
The topline spending figure is a 4.7 percent increase over the current year’s budget. The blueprint proposes to increase defense spending by 1.8 percent and non-defense discretionary spending by 2.8 percent.
The budget would implement cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs while pushing for increased spending related to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. The VA’s discretionary spending is slated to face a cut of more than 4 percent, or roughly $5.6 billion.
Biden’s budget proposal would reduce the federal deficit by nearly $3 trillion over the next decade.
The budget was sent to Congress, which has “power of the purse.” However, it is widely seen as a political messaging document and is unlikely to become law.
—Emel Akan
HALEY VOTERS SPLIT BETWEEN BIDEN AND TRUMP
Both Biden and Trump are courting Nikki Haley voters after she dropped out of the presidential race last week. Who are her voters? The Epoch Times performed a deep dive by reviewing Edison Research’s Republican primary exit polls, commissioned by a consortium of mainstream media outlets.
Haley’s much-reported strengths among independents and in the suburbs likely existed in states with open primaries, where voters of various party affiliations could vote for any primary race they chose, and in deeply blue suburbs, survey data showed.
Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, speaks at a campaign event at The Madison Hotel in Washington on March 1, 2024. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
How many Haley voters are Democrats? We don’t know the answer, but the Emerson College national poll provides a partial answer.
Fifty-two percent of Haley supporters voted for Biden in the 2020 general election, the poll discovered. The same survey also shows that they break even at 45–45 for Biden or Trump, with only 10 percent undecided.
Haley voters aren’t feeling much pain in this economy. The exit polls found that half of Haley voters considered the nation’s economy “good,” and in many states, one-third of them said they were “getting ahead” with their family financial situations, while a majority said they were “holding steady.”
Polls showed Haley having a bigger chance of beating Biden in a general election. Some voters, including Donald Fraser in northern Virginia, don’t believe that.
“John McCain did not defeat Obama. Mitt Romney did not defeat Obama. Nikki Haley, in my mind, is just another John McCain, another Mitt Romney,” the 71-year-old retired naval officer told The Epoch Times on Super Tuesday. “So, she can say all she wants, but what’s happened before would happen again with her.”
–Terri Wu
WORRIES OVER BALLOTS IN CALIFORNIA
California voters have been expressing concerns over the issue of mail-in voting following last week’s primary on Super Tuesday.
For example, in Madera County, a registered GOP voter got such a ballot for those not registered with a party.
“I got my ballot in the mail, and I was going to vote early, but when I looked to where it said president of the United States, it didn’t have anybody there,” Saul, a 48-year-old wine bottle manufacturer from Madera who gave only his first name, told The Epoch Times.
He said he did not change his party preference.
“We had a few calls about the ballots, and some people came in with a no-party preference ballot that believed they were registered Republican,” Justin White, chief assistant county clerk-recorder for Madera County, told The Epoch Times on March 7. “But everyone received the ballot they wanted and were able to vote.”
In Mendocino County, voters got two mail-in ballots, causing confusion over which ballot was valid. A third party was to blame, according to Katrina Bartolomie, who is the county’s assessor, recorder, and clerk.
“The ballots basically looked the same,” Desiree Morales, 42, told The Epoch Times. “And some people could have sent the wrong one in without realizing.”
“This is why people think our elections are a fraud,” she added. “Why are we getting two mail-in ballots?”
—Jackson Richman and Travis Gillmore
WHAT’S HAPPENING
- Biden has a campaign meeting with the Teamsters in Washington, before holding a bilateral meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Donald Tusk at the White House.
- Special Counsel Robert Hur testifies before the House Judiciary Committee on his probe into the president’s handling of classified documents.
- White House Budget Shalanda Young testifies before the Senate Budget Committee on the president’s budget request for fiscal year 2025.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge announced she is stepping down effective March 22. Her tenure was marred by controversy, reports The Epoch Times’ Jackson Richman. She will be the second Cabinet member to depart the Biden administration.
Anthony Fauci’s deputy warned him not to advocate for vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to an email revealed thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, reports The Epoch Times’ Zachary Stieber. Matthew Memoli said that doing so “can have negative consequences from a biological, sociological, psychological, economical, and ethical standpoint and is not worth the cost even if the vaccine is 100 percent safe.”
Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who is on former President Donald Trump’s shortlist for vice president, blasted what she called a “brazen” attack on constitutional rights, reports The Epoch Times’ Janice Hisle, who got exclusive access to Gabbard’s speech at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
Conservatives want the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to be downsized and split into two, reports Politico’s Chelsea Cirruzzo. This proposal has been made by The Heritage Foundation, which released a playbook, Project 2025, for the next GOP administration to hit the ground running from the transition period to Day One in the Oval Office.
Scott McAfee may be a rookie judge, but he has a job for a veteran with drastic ramifications, overseeing the Trump Fulton County probe over the Trump campaign allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. Even before the trial, he will have a huge decision to make: whether to disqualify District Attorney Fani Willis from prosecuting the case given alleged conflicts of interest, reports The New York Times’s Danny Hakim and Richard Fausset.
According to a report by Politico’s Lara Korte and Mia McCarthy, while most of the GOP has come out in support of Trump’s third bid for the White House, there are a few notable holdouts including California Reps. Young Kim, Michelle Steel, and Rep. David Valadao, who voted in favor of Trump’s second impeachment. Those three are in swing districts.
