Today’s edition of quick hits.
* Wow: “The conspiracy theorist Alex Jones must pay $965 million to the families of eight Sandy Hook shooting victims and an FBI agent who responded to the attack for the suffering he caused them by spreading lies on his platforms about the 2012 massacre, a Connecticut jury found on Wednesday.”
* China and India, notably enough, abstained in this lopsided vote: “The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday overwhelmingly condemned Russia’s ‘attempted illegal annexation’ of four partially occupied regions in Ukraine and called on all countries not to recognize the move, reinforcing a diplomatic international isolation of Moscow since it invaded its neighbor.”
* Stewart Rhodes’ trial: “A member of the Oath Keepers who brought an AR-15 to a Virginia hotel on the eve of Jan. 6 described entering a room filled with a large stash of weapons in a seditious conspiracy trial on Wednesday. The Oath Keeper, Terry Cummings, testified that there were ‘a lot of firearms cases’ in the hotel room when he dropped off his weapon at the Comfort Inn in Arlington, Virginia, on Jan. 5, 2021. ‘I had not seen that many weapons in one location since I was in the military,’ Cummings said.”
* Aggravated assault charges: “A former San Antonio police officer who shot a teenager while he sat in his car in a McDonald’s parking lot has been arrested on two counts of assault, police said Tuesday. James Brennand, who was an officer with the San Antonio Police Department when the shooting occurred, turned himself in Tuesday and was arrested, Police Chief William McManus said.”
* Kenneth Chesebro’s newest problem: “On Wednesday, several dozen prominent legal figures submitted an ethics complaint to the Supreme Court of New York’s attorney grievance committee, calling Mr. Chesebro ‘the apparent mastermind behind key aspects of the fake elector ploy’ and accusing him of conspiring ‘with Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Eastman and others to subvert our democracy.’”
* A case I’ve been keeping an eye on: “A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit to compel casino mogul and Republican megadonor Steve Wynn to register as an agent of China, handing a setback to the U.S. government’s intensifying efforts to police foreign influence in American politics.” * What a fiasco: “A Minnesota supporter of former President Donald Trump who officials say staged a fire that he blamed on left-wing radicals pleaded guilty Tuesday to wire fraud, prosecutors said. Denis Molla, 30, had claimed that his camper was targeted because of his Trump flag. He filed fraudulent insurance claims worth hundreds of thousands of dollars after the 2020 incident at his Minneapolis-area residence, prosecutors said.” * Remember Rep. Madison Cawthorn? He’s still an elected lawmaker, but after losing his primary, the Republican hasn’t been around much: “It is difficult to discern what Cawthorn has been doing for his constituents back in North Carolina’s 11th district, which cuts across the state’s mountainous western region. A caller to two of his four district offices hears a recording that the offices are ‘no longer regularly staffed’ and that voice mail is not ‘regularly’ monitored.” See you tomorrow.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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