The BulleTin • Thursday, January 13, 2022 A13
JAN.6 U.S. CAPITOL RIOT
Panel requests interview from GOP leader McCarthy
BY FARNOUSH AMIRI
AND ERIC TUCKER
associated Press
WASHINGTON — The
House panel investigating the
U.S. Capitol insurrection re-
quested an interview and re-
cords from House Minority
Leader Kevin McCarthy on
Wednesday, as it contin-
ues to seek first-hand details
from members of Congress
on former President Donald
Trump’s actions on the day
hundreds of his supporters
brutally beat police, stormed
the building and interrupted
the certification of the 2020
election.
Mississippi Rep. Bennie
Thompson, Democratic chair-
man of the panel, requested
that McCarthy, R-Calif.,
provide information to the
nine-member panel regarding
his conversations with Trump
“before, during and after” the
riot. The request also seeks in-
formation about McCarthy’s
communications with former
White House Chief of Staff
Mark Meadows in the days
before the attack.
“We also must learn about
how the President’s plans for
January 6th came together,
and all the other ways he at-
tempted to alter the results
of the election,” Thompson
said in the letter. “For exam-
ple, in advance of January 6th,
you reportedly explained to
Mark Meadows and the for-
mer President that objections
to the certification of the elec-
toral votes on January 6th ‘was
doomed to fail.’”
Hours after the commit-
tee’s request, McCarthy issued
a statement saying he would
refuse to cooperate. He said
the investigation was not le-
gitimate and was an “abuse of
power.”
Without his cooperation, it
remains unclear whether the
panel will be able to gain testi-
mony from McCarthy or any
other congressional allies of
Trump. While the committee
has considered subpoenaing
fellow lawmakers, that would
be an extraordinary move and
could run up against legal and
political challenges.
Lawmakers are seeking a
window into Trump’s state of
mind from an ally who has ac-
knowledged repeated interac-
tions with the then-president.
The committee also wants
to question McCarthy about
communications with Trump
and White House staff in the
week after the violence, includ-
ing a conversation with Trump
that was reportedly heated.
The committee acknowl-
edged the sensitive and un-
usual nature of its request as
it proposed a meeting with
McCarthy on either Feb. 3 or
4. “The Select Committee has
tremendous respect for the
prerogatives of Congress and
the privacy of its Members,”
Thompson wrote. “At the same
time, we have a solemn re-
sponsibility to investigate fully
the facts and circumstances of
these events.
Democrats have been seek-
ing more information about
McCarthy’s communications
with Trump since the former
president’s second impeach-
ment trial last year. At one
point in the trial, Democrats
said they would try and call
Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler,
R-Wash., as a witness because
she had described a potentially
evelyn hockstein/ pool, reuters via aP
From left, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell,
R-Ky., pay their respects to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., during a memorial service in
the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol as Reid lies in state Wednesday in Washington.
pivotal call between the two
men after hearing an account
from McCarthy.
Herrera Beutler’s statement
said McCarthy told her he had
asked Trump to publicly “call
off the riot” and had said the
violent mob was made up of
Trump supporters, not far-left
antifa members.
She said in the statement,
“That’s when, according to
McCarthy, the president said,
‘Well, Kevin, I guess these peo-
ple are more upset about the
election than you are.’”
In the end, Democrats
read a statement from Her-
rera Beutler into the record.
Trump, who had just left of-
fice, was acquitted by the Sen-
ate.
McCarthy had initially criti-
cized Trump’s actions after the
2020 election, saying he “bears
responsibility” for the deadly
Jan. 6 attack, which remains
the most serious domestic as-
sault on the building in its his-
tory.
“The saddest day I have ever
had” in Congress, McCarthy
said the night of the attack,
even as he went on to join 138
other House Republicans in
voting to reject election results.
The latest request from the
panel also puts McCarthy
RONNIE SPECTOR • 1943-2021
Deputy
’60s icon who sang ‘Be My Baby’ dies at 78
from Phil Spector — turned
them into one of the premier
NEW YORK — Ronnie
acts of the girl-group era, tour-
Spector, the cat-eyed, bee-
ing England with The Rolling
hived rock ‘n’ roll siren who
Stones and befriending the
sang such 1960s hits as “Be My Beatles.
Baby,” “Baby I Love You” and
Spector, alongside her sister
“Walking in the Rain”
Estelle Bennett and
as the leader of the girl
cousin Nedra Tal-
group The Ronettes,
ley, scored hits with
has died. She was 78.
pop masterpieces like
Spector died
“Baby, I Love You,”
Wednesday after a
“Walking in the Rain,”
brief battle with can-
“I Can Hear Music”
cer, her family said.
and “Be My Baby,”
Spector
“Ronnie lived her life
which was co-written
with a twinkle in her
by Spector, Jeff Barry
eye, a spunky attitude, a wicked and Ellie Greenwich.
sense of humor and a smile on
“We weren’t afraid to be hot.
her face. She was filled with
That was our gimmick,” Spec-
love and gratitude,” a statement tor said in her memoir. “When
said. No other details were re-
we saw The Shirelles walk on
vealed.
stage with their wide party
Tributes flooded social me-
dresses, we went in the oppo-
dia, from Stevie Van Zandt
site direction and squeezed our
saying it was an honor to pro-
bodies into the tightest skirts
duce her, to Brian Wilson, who we could find. Then we’d get
wrote on Twitter: “I loved her
out on stage and hike them up
voice so much and she was
to show our legs even more.”
a very special person and a
Spector, born Veronica Ben-
dear friend.” Diane Warren
nett, and her multiracial band-
called her “The voice of a mil-
mates grew up in the Washing-
lion teenage dreams including
ton Heights area of Manhattan.
mine.”
They began singing and danc-
The Ronettes’ sexy look and
ing in clubs as Ronnie and the
powerful voices — plus song-
Relatives, becoming notewor-
writing and producing help
thy for their liberal use of eye-
liner and mascara.
“The louder they applauded,
the more mascara we put on
the next time,” she wrote in her
memoir. “We didn’t have a hit
record to grab their attention,
so we had to make an impres-
sion with our style. None of it
was planned out; we just took
the look we were born with
and extended it.”
In March 1963, Estelle Ben-
nett managed to arrange an au-
dition in front of Phil Spector,
known for his big, brass-and-
drum style dubbed the “wall
of sound.” They were signed to
Philles Records in 1963. After
being signed, they sang backup
for other acts until Spector had
the group record “Be My Baby”
and “Baby I Love You.”
The group’s debut album,
“Presenting the Fabulous
Ronettes Featuring Veronica,”
was released in 1964. Five of
its 12 tracks had made it to the
U.S. Billboard charts.
“Nothing excites me more
than just being onstage, having
fun and flirting and winking
to the guys and stuff like that,”
she told People magazine in
2017. “I just have so much fun.
It’s just the best feeling when
I go out and they say, “Ladies
and gentlemen…” — my heart
stops for a minute — “…Ron-
nie Spector and the Ronettes!”
Then I just go out there and
the crowd reacts the way they
react and I can go on singing
forever.”
After touring Germany in
1967, the Ronettes broke up.
Spector married Ronnie in
1968, then she said he kept her
locked in their Beverly Hills
mansion. Her 1990 autobiogra-
phy “Be My Baby: How I Sur-
vived Mascara, Miniskirts And
Madness” tells an unhappy
story of abuse. The couple di-
vorced in 1974. Phil Spector
was sent to prison in 2009 for
the murder of actress Lana
Clarkson and died in 2021.
Ronnie Spector’s influence
was felt far and wide. Brian
Wilson became obsessed with
“Be My Baby” and Billy Joel
wrote “Say Goodbye to Holly-
wood” in Spector’s honor. Amy
Winehouse frequently cited
Spector as an idol.
Martin Scorsese used “Be
My Baby” to open his 1973
film “Mean Streets” and the
song appears in the title se-
quence of “Dirty Dancing” and
the closing credits of “Baby
Mama.” It also appeared on TV
in “Moonlighting” and “The
Wonder Years.”
Congress
tricting as Democrats pulled
Bend into the 5th District.
Bentz was left as the incum-
bent of the rest of the area east
of the Cascades and a portion
of southwest Oregon around
Medford.
The 6th District has a Dem-
ocratic lean but no incumbent.
A quirk in the U.S. Constitu-
tion does not require House
members to live in their dis-
tricts. McLeod-Skinner and
DeRemer, in the 5th District
race, are running from out-
side their district, but the larg-
est number of such candidates
filed in the 6th District. The
seat, based around Salem, has
drawn politicians from the
Portland area.
Moore said having a strong
donor list from state or local
races is a big plus. But federal
campaign finance rules and
limits — and ways around
them — don’t automatically
translate into fundraising suc-
cess in the jump to federal
races. While raising money
in Oregon is paramount, the
Skarlatos campaign shows that
big donations from national
groups can tilt or even the po-
litical playing field.
“Where money makes a very
interesting difference is in open
seats,” Moore said. “Oregon’s
CD 4 and CD 6 are in this cat-
egory. Fundraising will tell us a
lot about whether one party or
the other truly thinks it can win
either of these seats.”
DeFazio’s announcement
that he wouldn’t run just three
months before the deadline
to file shows uncertainty is
built into the system. The races
still have time to get scram-
bled further. Candidates have
until March 8 to get in or get
out. Once the fields are set, the
money spigot will open wider.
BY MARK KENNEDY
associated Press
Continued from A1
The winner will face the
GOP primary victor from a
field that so far includes for-
mer Happy Valley Mayor Lori
Chavez-DeRemer and Jimmy
Crumpacker, a Bend resident
who finished fourth in the 2020
2nd Congressional District Re-
publican primary won by now-
Rep. Cliff Bentz, R-Ontario.
Both are staunch conservatives.
Schrader starts with a big
financial advantage over any
potential opponent, with $3.3
million in the bank. DeRemer
reported over $300,000 raised
prior to Oct. 1. McLeod-Skin-
ner’s campaign will officially re-
port its first fundraising num-
bers later this month, but says
it raised $227,000 in November
and December.
Redistricting created bound-
aries for the five existing and
one new congressional seat
awarded Oregon for its in-
creased population over the
past decade. Under the new
maps, incumbent U.S. Reps.
Suzanne Bonamici, D-Beaver-
ton in the 1st District, and Earl
Blumenauer, D-Portland in the
3rd District, will run for reelec-
tion with strong Democratic
voter edges. Rep. Peter De-
Fazio, D-Springfield in the 4th
District — the longest-serving
member of Oregon’s congres-
sional delegation — is not run-
ning for reelection. State Labor
Commissioner Val Hoyle, a
Democrat, and Alek Skarlatos,
of Roseburg and DeFazio’s 2020
Republican opponent, have an-
nounced they are running for
the seat.
Bentz, the only Republican
in Oregon’s delegation, is run-
ning for his second term. His
2nd District became even more
Republican-favored with redis-
face-to-face with its vice-chair,
Rep. Liz Cheney, whom he
dumped from the No. 3 House
leadership position last sum-
mer as her very public criti-
cism of Trump’s lies about his
2020 election loss reverberated
through the Republican Party.
The GOP leader had
counseled Cheney to stay
on message, but as she con-
tinued to warn the party off
Trump’s falsehoods, McCarthy
groomed a newly transformed
Trump acolyte, Rep. Elise Ste-
fanik, R-N.Y., as her replace-
ment.
McCarthy is the third mem-
ber of Congress the committee
e
gwarner@eomediagroup.com
Continued from A1
Jefferson County Sheriff
Marc Heckathorn said Ol-
iveira took at least a month
of paid sick leave from work
before returning and abruptly
resigning, thus he was not
internally investigated by the
sheriff’s office.
“I assumed he had a medi-
cal condition, and I assumed
he’d be returning to work
once he got better,” Heck-
athorn said.
In a charging document
filed Tuesday, prosecutors
allege Oliveira sent sexually
explicit photos of a woman
to other people without her
consent. Deschutes County
District Attorney John Hum-
mel confirmed Oliveira al-
legedly sent the images to
people the woman previously
dated.
Author
Continued from A1
A nature lover, Tan said
that when she does get to a
place with strong outdoor
appeal, she’ll often linger a
few days to ski or partake in a
major interest of hers — and
a major subject in her jour-
nals — birds.
“Oh my God. You have no
idea,” she said of how avid her
interest in birds is.
Tan is highly active on
Facebook groups related to
birds and frequently posts
her drawings of the sparrows,
finches, hummingbirds,
wrens, warblers, titmice and
other varieties perched on
feeders at home in Sausalito,
California.
“I journal nearly every day
about the birds I see in my
backyard,” she said. “I have
seen probably 58 different
species, but I have regular
ones, and I follow their sto-
ries. I just write what I see,
these daily dramas that are
going on. It is a very big pas-
sion of mine.”
Tan’s bird curiosity took
flight amid the political and
social chaos of the past sev-
eral years. The direction the
country was heading in was
frequently ruffling her feath-
ers.
“It was in response to my
feeling that our country was
kind of out of whack … and
there was a lot of ugliness and
has reached out to for volun-
tary information. In the past
few weeks, GOP Reps. Jim
Jordan and Scott Perry were
also contacted by the panel but
have denied the requests to sit
down with lawmakers or pro-
vide documents.
The panel, comprised of
seven Democrats and two Re-
publicans, has interviewed
almost 350 people and issued
public subpoenas to around 50
people and organizations as it
seeks to create a comprehen-
sive record of the Jan. 6 attack
and the events leading up to it.
On Wednesday, former
White House Press Secretary
Kayleigh McEnany spoke to
the panel virtually, according
to a person familiar with the
interview who requested ano-
nymity to discuss it. The com-
mittee subpoenaed McEnany
in November.
The committee says the
extraordinary trove of mate-
rial it has collected — 35,000
pages of records so far, includ-
ing texts, emails and phone
records from people close to
Trump — is fleshing out crit-
ical details of the worst attack
on the Capitol in two centu-
ries, which played out on live
television.
Thompson told The Asso-
ciated Press in an interview
last month that about 90% of
the witnesses subpoenaed by
the committee have cooper-
ated despite the defiance of
high-profile Trump allies like
Meadows and Steve Bannon.
Lawmakers said they have
been effective at gathering in-
formation from other sources
in part because they share a
unity of purpose rarely seen in
a congressional investigation.
Two of the allegations are
from March and April and
the other from July.
Oliveira was assigned a
public defender. He is sched-
uled to enter a plea Feb. 16.
Oliveira is a graduate of
Madras High School. He
served in the U.S. Army from
2005 to 2006, according to
The Madras Pioneer.
In 2006, he was hired as a
control technician at the Jeffer-
son County Jail, opening and
closing doors. From 2009 to
2014, he moonlighted as a re-
serve officer with the Madras
Police Department while con-
tinuing to work as a jail guard.
“I’m disappointed to hear
the allegations of misconduct
of a former employee,” Heck-
athorn said. “And I’ll be even
more disappointed if he gets
convicted.”
e
Reporter: 541-383-0325,
gandrews@bendbulletin.com
racism,” Tan said. “I needed
to find the beauty in my life
again. So I started noticing
birds.”
Documenting the go-
ings-on of the local bird com-
munity relates to her fiction
writing work, Tan said.
“It’s very much like the
kind of observation that you
have with writing fiction,
but also with that curiosity
and need to continue to ask
questions about all the possi-
bilities of what this behavior
means, so it’s a natural tie-in,”
she said. “It’s storytelling, but
from a different viewpoint. I
am the bird in the story.”
Next up in the Author!
Author! lineup is Tommy
Orange, whose 2018 book
“There, There” was a Pulit-
zer Prize finalist and winner
of the 2019 American Book
Award. An enrolled member
of the Cheyenne and Arap-
aho tribes of Oklahoma, Or-
ange will present his program
at 7 p.m. Feb. 3. “Sandman”
and “American Gods” au-
thor Neil Gaiman’s March 6
appearance (time to be de-
termined) will conclude the
2022 series.
Tickets are $35 per event,
or $90 for all three, and are
available at dplfoundation.
org. Money from ticket sales
goes to support library pro-
grams and services that are
not funded by tax dollars.
e
Reporter: 541-383-0349,
djasper@bendbulletin.com