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Today’s edition of quick hits.
* In Ukraine: “Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that civilians in Ukraine’s Kherson region should be evacuated from the conflict zone, the Kremlin chief’s first acknowledgement of a deteriorating situation in a region he claims to have annexed.”
* The seditious conspiracy trial: “Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes took the witness stand Friday in his seditious conspiracy trial, telling jurors he is a patriotic American as he tries to counter allegations that his far-right extremist group planned an armed rebellion to stop the transfer of presidential power.”
* SCOTUS: “Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett on Friday rejected a second challenge to President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, keeping the court out of the fight over the program that’s raging in the lower courts.”
* Pelosi heads home: “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, was released from the hospital Thursday, a week after he suffered a brutal attack by an assailant who broke into the couple’s home in San Francisco.”
* Unsettling conditions on the Korean peninsula: “South Korea said it scrambled fighter jets after detecting about 180 North Korean warplanes flying near the countries’ shared border on Friday, hours after the North fired about 80 artillery rounds in protest of Seoul’s joint military drills with the United States.”
* Worth watching: “The House Jan. 6 committee will meet Friday with a Secret Service agent who was in the lead car of former President Donald Trump’s motorcade on the day of the riot, three sources familiar with the matter said. The committee also has plans to meet in the near future with the driver of the SUV that Trump rode in on Jan. 6, 2021, the sources told NBC News.”
* A trial we’d been keeping an eye on: “Former President Donald Trump’s longtime friend and former fundraiser, Tom Barrack, was found not guilty Friday of charges that he acted as an unregistered foreign agent for the United Arab Emirates during the Trump administration and then lied to the FBI about those contacts.”
* Following up on an item from yesterday: “The FBI said Friday that it’s identified the ‘source of the threat’ made against ‘an unspecified New Jersey area synagogue.’ The person ‘no longer poses a danger to the community,’ the FBI said.”
* DOJ: “The Justice Department hopes to reach a decision on whether to bring charges against former President Donald J. Trump before the 2024 campaign heats up, and is considering appointing a special counsel to oversee investigations of him if he runs again, according to people familiar with the situation.”
* I have a hunch he won’t comply with the subpoena by tonight: “Friday is the deadline for former-President Donald Trump to turn over documents as part of a subpoena issued by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The documents in question refers to assorted electronic messages, call logs, photos and videos — even hand-written notes — from as far back as September 2020.”
Have a safe weekend.