In Other News: GOP candidates in Georgia split over Trump’s election lies; Sailor killed at Pearl Harbor to be laid to rest, at last

Published 12:00 am Wednesday, September 14, 2022

GOP candidates in Georgia split over Trump’s election lies

The shadow of Donald Trump’s tampering with the 2020 election in Georgia lands differently for the various Republicans running for office in 2022. Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has little choice but to defend his decision to defy the former president. Burt Jones, a lieutenant governor hopeful who signed on as a fake elector for Trump, must defend his role. But the Georgia GOP’s headliner candidates don’t say much about Trump at all. Gov. Brian Kemp is spared having to testify before a grand jury about 2020 until after the Nov. 8 elections. Senate nominee Herschel Walker insists he doesn’t think much about Trump, his close friend and key supporter.

What’s left as Jan. 6 panel sprints to year-end finishWith only three months left in the year, the House Jan. 6 committee is eyeing a close to its work and a final report laying out its findings about the U.S. Capitol insurrection. But the investigation is not over. The committee has already revealed much of its work at eight hearings over the summer, showing in detail how former President Donald Trump ignored many of his closest advisers and amplified his false claims of election fraud after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. Witnesses interviewed by the panel — some of them Trump’s closest allies — recounted in videotaped testimony how the former president declined to act when hundreds of his supporters violently attacked the Capitol as Congress certified Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021. Lawmakers say there is more to come. The nine-member panel — seven Democrats and two Republicans — interviewed witnesses through all of August, and they are planning at least one hearing this month. Members are expected to meet and discuss some of their next steps on Tuesday. Because the Jan. 6 panel is a temporary, or “select,” committee, it expires at the end of the current Congress. If Republicans take the majority in November’s elections, as they are favored to do, they are expected to dissolve the committee in January. So the panel is planning to issue a final report by the end of December.

Sailor killed at Pearl Harbor laid to rest, at lastA 21-year-old sailor is being laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery more than 80 years after he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Scientific testing that started in 2015 on remains of men whose bodies were pulled from the USS Oklahoma after the attack has led to the identification of Herbert “Bert” Jacobson and more than 350 others. The service scheduled for Tuesday ends decades of questions from survivors of the sailor from Grayslake, Illinois.