Insurrection News: Former White House lawyer Pat Cipollone testified privately for eight hours yesterday before the House January 6^th Committee. The interview was videotaped and portions could be revealed later at public sessions of the committee.

  His testimony could be critical in determining Donald Trump’s role in the January 6^th insurrection and whether he committed crimes.

  Cipollone was among a few people who were with Trump as he watched the Capitol riot on television from a dining room off the Oval Office. Others present were  Trump’s daughter Ivanka, and Dan Scavino, who was deputy chief of staff.

Patriot Games: The right wing Oath Keepers held training camps to practice military tactics before the January 6^th insurrection, according to new information released by the Justice Department. The training lessons included conducting “hasty ambushes..” 

  Nine members of the Oath Keepers are set to go to trial this fall on charges of  seditious conspiracy. 

  Among the documents the government found is one labelled “DEATH LIST” that the government says it found at the home of Oath Keeper Thomas Caldwell. The handwritten list includes the name of a Georgia 2020 election official and a family member who, according to a new court filing, were both targets of “unfounded conspiracy theories that they were involved in voter fraud.” 

  Caldwell told CNN, “the DOJ’s claim that I sought to assassinate election workers is a 100% false and disgusting lie.”

The Shooting Gallery: Japan is reeling from the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

 The Japanese police said the killer admitted a grudge against a political group with which Abe was associated, but didn’t name the group. Nothing personal, just business.

  The shooter used a homemade gun in a country in which the rules for buying and owning a gun are prohibitive. It was made of metal, wood, and tape and was electrically fired.

  Gun violence is rare in Japan, where there was only one gun death in all of 2021. Since 2017, Japan has had just 14 gun-related deaths in a country of 125 million people. So far this year, nearly 23,000 Americans have been killed by guns in a country of 333 million people.

Protest: Thousands of protesters have stormed the residence of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in Colombo. They’re even swimming in the pool. The president is reported to have fled.

  Months of simmering anger over the country’s financial collapse finally boiled over.

The Obit Page: Bradford Clark Freeman, who was believed to be the last surviving original member of the historic WWII paratroop Easy Company made famous by the book and television series “Band of Brothers,” died last Sunday in Columbus, Mississippi. He was 97.

  Known to his friends as Mr. B., Freeman was a freshman at Mississippi State when the war began and he volunteered for the paratroops. He jumped into Normandy as a mortarman, fought in Operation Market-Garden, and was among those troopers surrounded by Germans in Bastogne, Belgium, where he was wounded.

  After the war Freeman returned to his hometown of Caledonia, Mississippi, where he married and worked as a mail carrier for 32 years.

  Ambrose wrote, “Within Easy Company they had made the best friends they had ever had, or would ever have. They were prepared to die for each other; more important, they were prepared to kill for each other.” 

— Actor Tony Sirico, who played the mobster Paulie Walnuts on the HBO series “The Sopranos,” has died at age 79 at an assisted living facility in Florida. Sirico grew up around Italian mobsters and was arrested 28 times by age 27. He once told the Los Angeles Times, “In our neighborhood, if you weren’t carrying a gun, it was like you were the rabbit during rabbit-hunting season.” — Larry Storch, who played the broadly comic character Cpl. Randolph Agarn with the upturned cavalry hat on the 1960s television series “F Troop,” has died at age 99. The show has lasted longer in memory than it did on television.

The Spin Rack: President Biden yesterday issued an executive order to ensure national access to abortion medication and emergency contraception. It shows that he has little power to do anything about the Supreme Court decision overturning the right to abortion. — Tesla Founder Elon Musk filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to get out of his $44 billion bid to buy Twitter. Musk said in the filing that he and Twitter  still have a disagreement over the number of spam accounts on the platform. —  A judge in Louisiana allowed state laws banning nearly all abortions to take effect on yesterday.  Abortions starting at conception were immediately outlawed except for procedures saving the life of the mother. — A Moscow politician Alexei Gorinov, 60, has been sent to prison for seven years for publicly opposing  Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

Right to Dine: Protesters on Thursday night interrupted Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh dinner at  Morton’s Steakhouse in Washington. The justice left through a back door.

  Kavanaugh is an “originalist” who voted with the majority to overturn Roe v. Wade in a decision that said there is no constitutional right to abortion.

  The restaurant said in a statement provided to Politico, “Politics, regardless of your side or views, should not trample the freedom at play of the right to congregate and eat dinner. 

  Writing for Politico, Matt Ford asks whether there is a constitutional right to eat dinner and concludes that, “My own originalist analysis of this issue leads me to conclude that no such right to dinner exists in our legal heritage.”

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