Closing summary
Joe Biden traveled to Florida to survey the destruction wrought by Hurricane Ian alongside Republican governor and White House critic, Ron DeSantis, with whom a temporary political truce had been declared. But bad news came from abroad, when the Opec+ grouping of oil producers agreed to slash production, potentially driving gas prices higher just as American voters cast ballots in the midterms.
Here’s more about what happened today:
The Opec+ production cut comes as the oil cartel’s leader Saudi Arabia appears to be cultivating warmer ties with Russia, in spite of Riyadh’s alliances with many western countries.
Gas prices may indeed rise, but not necessarily by a huge amount.
The justice department won yet another legal battle over the Mar-a-Lago documents, though the case is far from over.
One of the unanswered questions of the January 6 insurrection was whether senator Ron Johnson, a conservative Republican representing Wisconsin, was involved in the plot to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s win.
In the fourth hearing of the congressional committee investigating the attack held in June, it was revealed that a staff member for the senator contacted vice-president Mike Pence’s legislative affairs director, asking how to get fake slates of electors from Johnson to Pence, who was to preside over the certification of Biden’s election victory that day. The documents never got to the vice-president, but the January 6 committee detailed the attempt during a hearing dedicated to exploring the legal efforts made by Donald Trump’s allies to interfere with Biden taking office.
NBC News reports that Johnson told his side of the story during an appearance in Wisconsin on Tuesday, where he’s in a tough re-election battle against Democrat Mandela Barnes. Here’s what he had to say:
Of the electors scheme, Johnson said he communicated with Jim Troupis, a Wisconsin-based attorney who led legal efforts for Donald Trump in a recount of the state’s 2020 results.
“What would you do if you got a text from the attorney for the president of the United States?” Johnson said. “You respond to it.
“I got a text from the president’s lawyer asking if we could deliver something to the vice president and if I could have a staff member handle it,” Johnson said. Asked whether he knew what it was he was being asked to deliver, he said: “No. I had no idea.”
Johnson said he turned it over to his chief of staff, who was new at the time. “Next thing I know he’s letting me know the vice president’s not accepting anything, so I just texted back ‘no, we’re not delivering it,’ end of story. Nothing happened. I had no idea there were even an alternate slate of electors.”
