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We keep running into a relatively new and unfamiliar dynamic where the tools of investigative journalism as they are usually deployed wind up obscuring the truth rather than illuminating it.

It’s playing out now in the coverage of the Jan. 6 attack, especially over the last few days. First with the controversial PowerPoint presentation that’s been circulating, and since last night with the Mark Meadows texts.

Cristina Cabrera has all the top quotes from the Fox hosts with their hair on fire begging Mark Meadows to get the President to condemn and end the insurrection as it happened on January 6th. But for my money the best isn’t even a Fox host, or at least not formally: It’s Donald Trump Jr. “He’s got to condemn this shit ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough.”

As the first anniversary of the insurrection approaches, the Jan. 6 committee will probably vote later this evening to refer Mark Meadows for prosecution for contempt of Congress. It’s a proper and necessary step. But it is also singularly unsatisfying and insufficient.

A contempt conviction and a modest jail term for Meadows or Steven Bannon or any other Trumpster determined not to cooperate with Congress doesn’t produce either justice or a warm feeling of schadenfreude. Only a criminal investigation by the Justice Department can bring to bear the resources and stiff punishments that will do justice to the severity of what happened in 2020 and culminated on Jan. 6.

Earlier we noted the mystery of congressional candidate George A. Santos’ driving habits. Despite having a short commute (in miles if not in time) of 15 miles from Queens into Manhattan he apparently manages to drive at least 1,000 miles a week. And it’s costing him a ton of money. But now TPM Reader AL may have solved the mystery: Santos might be commuting each day to work in Florida!

Spiking gas prices have been an issue for many Americans over the last six months. Both on their own and as a primary driver of inflation they’ve hit President Biden’s popularity hard. But one New York City candidate, George Santos, apparently got a little carried away with himself trying to illustrate the point.

Santos is running in New York’s 3rd congressional district, currently represented by Tom Suozzi (D). The 3rd is basically the North Shore of Long Island in Nassau County, suburbs of New York City. But it also includes a slice of northeastern Queens (i.e., New York City proper) and a bit of Suffolk County, which is eastern Long Island.

Which brings us to Santos’ lament.

As is often the case with Trump crimes and Trump adjacent crimes, it’s easy to get distracted by the cloud of nonsense and not focus on the specifics. A few days ago I wrote up Bart Gellman’s new piece on the insurrection in The Atlantic. The best part of Gellman’s piece is how he captures the time urgency going into January 6th. That was the point of no return that even the coup plotters recognized. They needed to stop that clock. In this boffo story and video of Kanye’s “director of operations” threatening this election worker and trying to force her to admit to a plot the deadline for her to come clean is January 6th.

Here is yet another story from the range of conspiracies and criminal plots that were afoot last winter to overthrow the government of the United States and keep Donald Trump in power after losing the 2020 presidential election. Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman was one of those innocent bystanders who became the target of death threats and harassment tied to a conspiracy theory that she had helped steal the presidential election in Georgia for Joe Biden.

On January 4th 2021 – two days before the Capitol insurrection – a woman named Trevian Kutti knocked on Freeman’s door and told her she was in danger. If Freeman didn’t confess to the truth of Trump’s election rigging charges within 48 hours unidentified persons would come to her home and Freeman along with members of her family would be sent to jail.

Kutti is a publicist and head of Trevian Worldwide, a PR firm. As of 2018 she is also the “Director of Operations” for Kanye West, a friend and political ally of Trump. (Just before signing on with West Kutti had been PR Director for R Kelly. But she quit that job as sex trafficking and assault accusations piled up.) She was there as West’s employee but only identified herself as the emissary of a “high profile” individual with an urgent message and an offer of help.

I could read and write all day every day about those days in late September 2020 when Trump became the superspreader-in-chief. It almost feels like an obligation to do so, that we may inoculate ourselves against the potential claims of future historians that we were a blind, gullible, clueless people. Yes, we were, but not nearly as much as this episode suggests. We knew. We got it. The White House COVID outbreak with Trump at its center was very, very bad, and we understood that much in real time, not only in retrospect.

But now we have a new or more precisely an updated account of the shitshow, from someone who was neck deep in the shit at the time. Poor Chris Christie. He was done wrong so many times by Trump. He was the toadiest toady. There was the hostage video. There was this unforgettable headline: “Trump Uses Chris Christie As ‘Manservant’ To Fetch His McDonald’s.” There was Christie being unceremoniously dumped as the head of the transition. But in none of those episodes did Trump try to kill Christie.

OAKLAND is trying to bolster and expand its police force. The city just approved two more police academies as it struggles to attract officers amidst a spike in homicides. Another article looks at community support for Mayor Libby Schaaf’s plan to add 60 new officer’s to the city’s police force. (The SF Chronicle has a paywall.)

A NEW study out of Israel published in The New England Journal of Medicine shows a 90% reduction of mortality among those who received booster at least 5 months after initial vaccination compared to those who had only two shots. Israel uses the Pfizer vaccine almost exclusively.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) introduced a resolution today, asking the House to kick Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) off her committee assignments for repeatedly and brazenly attacking Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) with racist and hateful anti-Muslim remarks.

It’s the culmination of weeks of frustration for Omar and fellow progressives, as congressional leadership does next to nothing to discipline the far-right Boebert for making racist jokes about Omar, who is a Muslim, and insinuating that the Minnesota Democrat’s religion somehow makes her a terrorist.