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Biden has just been replaced as President and America is in a state of civil war. The new president has called for armed rebellion against the woke mob and the 5th pillar. https://www.livegore.com/480836/police-has-arrested-year-old-wanted-beheading-father-infos
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Politics
Remarks by President Biden on the Continued Battle for the Soul of the Nation
Independence National Historical Park
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
(September 1, 2022)
My fellow Americans, please, if you have a seat, take it. I speak to you tonight from sacred ground in America: Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
This is where America made its Declaration of Independence to the world more than two centuries ago with an idea, unique among nations, that in America, we’re all created equal.
This is where the United States Constitution was written and debated.
This is where we set in motion the most extraordinary experiment of self-government the world has ever known with three simple words: “We, the People.” “We, the People.”
These two documents and the ideas they embody — equality and democracy — are the rock upon which this nation is built. They are how we became the greatest nation on Earth. They are why, for more than two centuries, America has been a beacon to the world.
But as I stand here tonight, equality and democracy are under assault. We do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise.
So tonight, I have come this place where it all began to speak as plainly as I can to the nation about the threats we face, about the power we have in our own hands to meet these threats, and about the incredible future that lies in front of us if only we choose it.
We must never forget: We, the people, are the true heirs of the American experiment that began more than two centuries ago.
We, the people, have burning inside each of us the flame of liberty that was lit here at Independence Hall — a flame that lit our way through abolition, the Civil War, Suffrage, the Great Depression, world wars, Civil Rights.
That sacred flame still burns now in our time as we build an America that is more prosperous, free, and just.
That is the work of my presidency, a mission I believe in with my whole soul.
But first, we must be honest with each other and with ourselves.
Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal.
Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.
Now, I want to be very clear up front: Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.
I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.
But there is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country.
These are hard things.
But I’m an American President — not the President of red America or blue America, but of all America.
And I believe it is my duty — my duty to level with you, to tell the truth no matter how difficult, no matter how painful.
And here, in my view, is what is true: MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people.
They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.
MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards — backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.
They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country.
They look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on January 6th — brutally attacking law enforcement — not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger to the throat of our democracy, but they look at them as patriots.
And they see their MAGA failure to stop a peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election as preparation for the 2022 and 2024 elections.
They tried everything last time to nullify the votes of 81 million people. This time, they’re determined to succeed in thwarting the will of the people.
That’s why respected conservatives, like Federal Circuit Court Judge Michael Luttig, has called Trump and the extreme MAGA Republicans, quote, a “clear and present danger” to our democracy.
But while the threat to American democracy is real, I want to say as clearly as we can: We are not powerless in the face of these threats. We are not bystanders in this ongoing attack on democracy.
There are far more Americans — far more Americans from every — from every background and belief who reject the extreme MAGA ideology than those that accept it.
And, folks, it is within our power, it’s in our hands — yours and mine — to stop the assault on American democracy.
I believe America is at an inflection point — one of those moments that determine the shape of everything that’s to come after.
And now America must choose: to move forward or to move backwards? To build the future or obsess about the past? To be a nation of hope and unity and optimism, or a nation of fear, division, and of darkness?
MAGA Republicans have made their choice. They embrace anger. They thrive on chaos. They live not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies.
But together — together, we can choose a different path. We can choose a better path. Forward, to the future. A future of possibility. A future to build and dream and hope.
And we’re on that path, moving ahead.
I know this nation. I know you, the American people. I know your courage. I know your hearts. And I know our history.
This is a nation that honors our Constitution. We do not reject it.
This is a nation that believes in the rule of law. We do not repudiate it.
This is a nation that respects free and fair elections. We honor the will of the people. We do not deny it.
And this is a nation that rejects violence as a political tool. We do not encourage violence.
We are still an America that believes in honesty and decency and respect for others, patriotism, liberty, justice for all, hope, possibilities.
We are still, at our core, a democracy.
And yet history tells us that blind loyalty to a single leader and a willingness to engage in political violence is fatal to democracy.
For a long time, we’ve told ourselves that American democracy is guaranteed, but it’s not.
We have to defend it, protect it, stand up for it — each and every one of us.
That’s why tonight I’m asking our nation to come together, unite behind the single purpose of defending our democracy regardless of your ideology.
We’re all called, by duty and conscience, to confront extremists who will put their own pursuit of power above all else.
Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans: We must be stronger, more determined, and more committed to saving American democracy than MAGA Republicans are to — to destroying American democracy.
We, the people, will not let anyone or anything tear us apart. Today, there are dangers around us we cannot allow to prevail. You’ve heard it — more and more talk about violence as an acceptable political tool in this country. It’s not. It can never be an acceptable tool.
So I want to say this plain and simple: There is no place for political violence in America. Period. None. Ever.
We saw law enforcement brutally attacked on January the 6th. We’ve seen election officials, poll workers — many of them volunteers of both parties — subjected to intimidation and death threats. And — can you believe it? — FBI agents just doing their job as directed, facing threats to their own lives from their own fellow citizens.
On top of that, there are public figures — today, yesterday, and the day before — predicting and all but calling for mass violence and rioting in the streets.
This is inflammatory. It’s dangerous. It’s against the rule of law. And we, the people, must say: This is not who we are.
Ladies and gentlemen, we can’t be pro-insurrectionist and pro-American. They’re incompatible.
We can’t allow violence to be normalized in this country. It’s wrong. We each have to reject political violence with — with all the moral clarity and conviction this nation can muster. Now.
We can’t let the integrity of our elections be undermined, for that is a path to chaos.
Look, I know politics can be fierce and mean and nasty in America. I get it. I believe in the give-and-take of politics, in disagreement and debate and dissent.
We’re a big, complicated country. But democracy endures only if we, the people, respect the guardrails of the republic. Only if we, the people, accept the results of free and fair elections. Only if we, the people, see politics not as total war but mediation of our differences.
Democracy cannot survive when one side believes there are only two outcomes to an election: either they win or they were cheated. And that’s where MAGA Republicans are today.
They don’t understand what every patriotic American knows: You can’t love your country only when you win. It’s fundamental.
American democracy only works only if we choose to respect the rule of law and the institutions that were set up in this chamber behind me, only if we respect our legitimate political differences.
I will not stand by and watch the will of the American people be overturned by wild conspiracy theories and baseless, evidence-free claims of fraud.
I will not stand by and watch elections in this country stolen by people who simply refuse to accept that they lost.
I will not stand by and watch the most fundamental freedom in this country — the freedom to vote and have your vote counted be taken from you and the American people.
Look, as your President, I will defend our democracy with every fiber of my being, and I’m asking every American to join me.
(A protestor disruption can be heard.)
Throughout our history, America has often made the greatest progress coming out of some of our darkest moments, like you’re hearing in that bullhorn.
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Is Biden using the FBI to wisely crush his political enemies before they can become a threat to his Democracy?
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THBT: DEMOCRATS should NOMINATE LIZ CHENEY for SPEAKER of the HOUSE TOMORROW
- The rules do not require the Speaker to be a current member of Congress.
- If all Democrats voted for Cheney, only 6 Republicans would be needed and I'm pretty sure there's more than 6 Republicans who would support Cheney.
- She was recently third ranking member in the Republican Caucus so she is familiar with the position and its responsibilities.
- Cheney would be a complete end-run around BOTH feckless McCarthyites and dangerous insurrectionists but pleasing to Conservatives.
- Cheney would absolutely know how to manage and support the Conservative Republican agenda but she would have no truck with the insurrectionists or MAGA and she would likely block any frivolous investigations into the Jan 6th committee or its findings.
- As a non House Member, Cheney would not have a vote but she would represent true Republicanism and be a serious, patriotic stand-in if both the President and VP were unexpectedly unable to lead.
- Nobody would be really happy with Cheney, which suggests a good compromise for a split parliament.
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Jan. 6 takeaways: Subpoena for Trump, warnings for democracy
By MARY CLARE JALONICK and ERIC TUCKER@APNEWS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee took the extraordinary action of subpoenaing former President Donald Trump on Thursday as it issued a stark warning in its final public hearing before the midterm election: The future of the nation’s democracy is at stake.
The panel’s October hearing, just weeks ahead of the midterm election, focused on Trump’s state of mind on Jan. 6, 2021 as he egged on his supporters with false claims of election fraud, pushed to accompany them to the Capitol while lawmakers were counting the votes, and then did nothing for hours as the mob violently breached the building.
The committee is set to shut down at the beginning of next year, and was making its final public arguments ahead of a report expected in December.
“We are obligated to seek answers directly from the man who set this all in motion,” said Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the panel’s vice chairwoman and one of two Republicans on the nine-member committee. “And every American is entitled to those answers. So we can act now to protect our republic.”
A SUBPOENA FOR TRUMP — BUT NOT PENCE
The subpoena for Trump is a major escalation in the probe. After signaling for months that they may leave the former president alone, the unanimous 9-0 vote “for relevant documents and testimony, under oath” was definitive.
The committee had long debated whether to seek testimony from or subpoena Trump or former Vice President Mike Pence. Neither has spoken directly to the committee. While Trump has been hostile to the probe both in court and in public, Pence’s lawyers had engaged with the panel for several months with no clear resolution.
Still, several of Pence’s closest aides have complied with the investigation, with several of them providing great detail about his movements and state of mind as he resisted Trump’s pleas to somehow object to the certification of electoral votes that day and try to overturn their defeat.
In contrast, the committee showed several clips of Trump allies refusing to answer questions before the panel.
Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat, said the committee was “able to nail down every salient detail in pretty much every element of the offense” except for certain details about what Trump was doing and saying as the insurrection unfolded.
‘CONSIDER WHETHER WE CAN SURVIVE’
The lesson of the committee’s investigation is that institutions only hold when people of good faith protect them without regard to political cost, Cheney said during the hearing.
“Why would Americans assume that our Constitution and our institutions in our Republic are invulnerable to another attack? Why would we assume that those institutions will not falter next time?” Cheney asked.
The warnings come as Trump is still refusing to acknowledge that he lost his reelection to Joe Biden and is considering another run in 2024 — and as many Republicans who deny Biden’s win are running in the midterm elections at all levels of government. Many states have replaced election officials who resisted Trump’s pressure campaign.
“Any future president inclined to attempt what Donald Trump did in 2020 has now learned not to install people who could stand in the way,” said Cheney, who lost her own Republican primary this August. “Consider whether we can survive for another 246 years.”
PELOSI AND SCHUMER, IN HIDING
New video aired by the panel showed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reacting emotionally to the news that her colleagues were donning gas masks in the House chamber as rioters neared. She quickly went to work trying to reopen the Capitol.
Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer were seen in unidentified secure locations and talking to security officials. The footage included a conversation between Pelosi and Pence, who was also in a secure location, discussing their return to the session to finish certifying Biden’s victory.
The footage was filmed by Pelosi’s daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, according to two people familiar with the video who requested anonymity to discuss it.
The two leaders are seen working to bring the National Guard to the Capitol amid an hours long delay. At one point, Schumer said he was going to “call up the f’n secretary of DOD,” referring to the Defense Department.
“We have some senators who are still in their hideaways,” Schumer said on the phone. “They need massive personnel now.”
SECRET SERVICE REVELATIONS
The committee has obtained more than 1.5 million pages of documents from the Secret Service in recent weeks. They revealed some of that information in the hearing, including an email from within the agency on Dec. 11, 2020, the day the Supreme Court rejected one of Trump’s attempts to undermine the vote.
“Just fyi. POTUS is p—-d — breaking news —- Supreme Court denied his law suit. He is livid now,” one anonymous Secret Service email said.
Other emails showed that the agency had ample warnings of violence in the weeks and days ahead of the insurrection.
An alert received by the agency on Dec. 24 said multiple online users were targeting members of Congress and “instructing others to march into the chambers,” said California Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democratic member of the panel.
CABINET OFFICIALS
The committee showed prerecorded interviews with Cabinet members, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, Attorney General William Barr and Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, who said they believed that once the legal avenues had been exhausted, that should have been the end of Trump’s effort to remain in power.
Pompeo, who was interviewed by the panel since its last hearing in July, said in his videotaped testimony that he believed that once the Electoral College certified the vote, that was the end of the process for contesting the election. “We should all comply with the law at all times, to the best of our ability — every one of us,” Pompeo said.
Chao, who is married to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, said she decided to resign after the insurrection because it was “impossible for me to continue given my personal values and my philosophy.”
At the same time, Trump continued to push the false claims of fraud to his millions of supporters.
“President Trump knew the truth. He heard what all his experts and senior staff was telling him,” said Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, the committee’s other Republican. “His intent was plain: ignore the rule of law and stay in power.”
CRIMINAL REFERRALS
Cheney addressed one of the committee’s remaining questions at the beginning of the meeting, saying that the panel “may ultimately decide to make a series of criminal referrals to the Department of Justice.”
Members of the panel have long suggested they may suggest charges for Trump or others based on their own evidence. While such a referral would not force any action, it would place political pressure on Attorney General Merrick Garland as the department has pursued its own investigations surrounding Jan. 6. And the committee has yet to share any transcripts from its more than 1,000 interviews.
Still, “we recognize that our role is not to make decisions regarding prosecution,” Cheney said.
___
Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo, Farnoush Amiri, Kevin Freking and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
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DEMOCRATS CLOSE the GAP in TWO POST-ROE v. WADE SPECIAL ELECTIONS
Aaron Blake@WashPo
Two months ago, Republicans hailed the takeover of a Democratic seat in a South Texas special election as proof of their 2022 momentum. Ten days later, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and since then there have been more and more signs that this momentum might not be all it was cracked up to be.
That culminated Tuesday in Democrats over-performing in the second straight special election since Roe was overturned, in Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District. Similar to Nebraska’s 1st District just days after the court’s action, Republicans still held the conservative-leaning seat but by a smaller margin than they’d like and by a smaller margin than in 2020.
In Nebraska, the GOP won by six points in a district that Trump had carried by 15 in 2020. In Minnesota, the margin is currently four points in a district Trump won by 10.
These are hardly massive shifts, and these are merely two out of 435 districts. We shouldn’t oversell the results in one, two or even five districts as predictive. But those results don’t seem commensurate with an impending red wave in the 2022 midterms, which not along ago seemed like it was indeed building.
History suggests such special elections held so close to the next election can be revealing of what may come the next November — though not always.
Democrats held on to a GOP-leaning district in Arizona in June 2012 after the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and went on to hold the presidency that November. In June 2014, a late special election in Florida showed Republicans significantly over-performing the 2012 presidential election results, shortly before they flipped the Senate. The story was similar in an Ohio special election in June 2016, shortly before Trump won the presidency. In 2018, the Democrats’ takeover of the House was preceded by another Ohio special election — in August — in which they very nearly picked off a district that had favored Trump by double-digits.
(These are single special elections, but this late in an election cycle, we generally don’t have many to compare. And when we do, there are sometimes factors that make them very difficult to read, including when they feature two candidates of the same party.)
Other late special elections have been less telling. In 2010, Democrats hailed their ability to hold a conservative-leaning district in western Pennsylvania in May, but they still got drubbed that November. And 2020 featured both a surprising GOP pickup in California in May and a big Democratic overperformance in Upstate New York the next month — the GOP won by just five points in a district Trump had carried by 25 — before Democrats reclaimed both the Senate and the presidency in November.
If there’s one encouraging thing for Democrats about these two post-Roe special elections — and whether they might tell us some larger dynamic — its in how closely they mirrored one another.
As The Washington Post’s Lenny Bronner noted, the data on both races show the Democrats over-performing in Democratic-leaning and generally more populous areas, suggesting their base was more mobilized, relative to Republicans.
Here’s how that looks:
The Republican congressman-elect in Minnesota, Brad Finstad, effectively matched Trump’s performance in rural, red counties. But he did significantly worse than Trump in more competitive and bluer areas. Democrat Jeff Ettinger was able to improve upon President Biden’s margins by enough in those areas to bring this district from a 10-point Republican one to a four-point Republican one.
There was some question after the Nebraska special election about precisely why Democrats had done better there. The seat was vacant after GOP congressman Jeff Fortenberry, was convicted on three felony counts and resigned. And history shows scandals can create some funky results in the ensuing special election (including perhaps in that California district in 2020). Maybe this wasn’t really about Roe; maybe it was for very local reasons.
But the outcomes in Minnesota and Nebraska — combined with their party’s generic ballot numbers improving of late — give Democrats some license to believe the fundamentals are getting better for them, because the results in both races were so similar despite all the different variables involved.
That doesn’t mean they’re gong to hold both the House and Senate come November; that’ll be very difficult, given how narrow their majorities are. And history suggests Democrats need to do better than merely drawing even on the generic ballot, which is about where they are now. Things also can and will change.
But over-performing in races three to four months before the general election is surely better than the alternative. And we’ll have a couple more special elections to examine in the coming weeks — both in Upstate New York on Aug. 23 — to help us evaluate the trends.
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ALEX JONES LEARNS on WITNESS STAND THAT LAWYER SENT his TEXT MESSAGES to RIVAL ATTORNEYS
Dylan Stableford@yahoo!news
While being cross-examined at his defamation trial in Austin, Texas, on Wednesday, Alex Jones was informed that his attorneys accidentally sent two years of text messages from his cellphone to the lawyer for the Sandy Hook parents suing him — and then failed to note that the messages were protected under attorney-client privilege.
Mark Bankston, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, presented a text message about Sandy Hook that Bankston said came from Jones’s cellphone.
“Do you know where I got this?” Bankston asked Jones.
“No,” Jones replied.
Bankston explained: “Twelve days ago, your attorneys messed up and sent me an entire digital copy of your entire cellphone with every text message that you’ve sent for the past two years — and when informed, did not take any steps to identify it as privileged or protected.”
In a pretrial deposition, Jones had testified under oath that he had searched his phone for text messages about Sandy Hook in preparation for the trial and found none.
“That is how I know you lied to me when you said you didn’t have any text messages about Sandy Hook,” Bankston told Jones. “Did you know this?”
Jones said he did not, and that he had given his phone to his attorneys.
"I guess this is your 'Perry Mason' moment," he added.
"You know what perjury is, right?" Bankston asked.
“Yes, I do,” Jones replied. “I mean, I’m not a tech guy.”
The dramatic exchange came during cross-examination of Jones on the second day of his testimony.
Earlier Wednesday, Jones sought to portray himself as a victim who had been “typecast” for claiming that the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., was staged.
Jones, the only witness called by his defense team, began by complaining about media outlets that refuse to report that he now believes that the massacre, which left 20 children and six educators dead, actually happened.
“It's 100% real,” Jones said under direct questioning from his lawyer F. Andino Reynal.
The concession came a day after Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of Jesse Lewis, a 6-year-old boy killed at Sandy Hook, told the jury that false claims that the attack did not occur have made their lives a “living hell.”
Heslin and Lewis are suing Jones and his media company Free Speech Systems for $150 million for the harassment they've received as a result of the unfounded conspiracy theory spread by Jones and his guests on Infowars, a far-right website that hosts talk shows and other content.
Jones was asked by Reynal to explain what he now thinks about the massacre in Newtown.
“I think Sandy Hook happened. I think it was a terrible event,” he said, before adding: “I think it was a cover-up. The FBI knew it was going to happen.”
Under cross-examination, Bankston peppered Jones with questions about statements that have been made on Infowars during the trial, including the suggestion that Judge Maya Guerra Gamble is rigging the proceedings with an actual script, and that Gamble is somehow involved in a pedophilia ring.
Bankston asked Jones if such statements were evidence that he is taking the trial seriously.
“I think this is serious as cancer,” Jones replied.
Bankston also asked Jones about other mass tragedies that he has claimed were "false flag" events, including the mass shootings in Las Vegas, Parkland, Fla., and Sutherland Springs, Texas, and the Boston Marathon bombings.
As was the case during Jones's testimony on Tuesday, Gamble repeatedly reminded him to answer only the questions he was asked.
“This is not your show,” the judge said.
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Opinion: The Republican blueprint to steal the 2024 election
Opinion by J. Michael Luttig
Wed April 27, 2022
Editor’s Note: J. Michael Luttig, appointed by President George H. W. Bush, formerly served on the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for 15 years. He advised Vice President Mike Pence on January 6.
Nearly a year and a half later, surprisingly few understand what January 6 was all about.
Fewer still understand why former President Donald Trump and Republicans persist in their long-disproven claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Much less why they are obsessed about making the 2024 race a referendum on the “stolen” election of 2020, which even they know was not stolen.
January 6 was never about a stolen election or even about actual voting fraud. It was always and only about an election that Trump lost fair and square, under legislatively promulgated election rules in a handful of swing states that he and other Republicans contend were unlawfully changed by state election officials and state courts to expand the right and opportunity to vote, largely in response to the Covid pandemic.
The Republicans’ mystifying claim to this day that Trump did, or would have, received more votes than Joe Biden in 2020 were it not for actual voting fraud, is but the shiny object that Republicans have tauntingly and disingenuously dangled before the American public for almost a year and a half now to distract attention from their far more ambitious objective.
That objective is not somehow to rescind the 2020 election, as they would have us believe. That’s constitutionally impossible. Trump’s and the Republicans’ far more ambitious objective is to execute successfully in 2024 the very same plan they failed in executing in 2020 and to overturn the 2024 election if Trump or his anointed successor loses again in the next quadrennial contest.
The last presidential election was a dry run for the next.
From long before Election Day 2020, Trump and Republicans planned to overturn the presidential election by exploiting the Electors and Elections Clauses of the Constitution, the Electoral College, the Electoral Count Act of 1877, and the 12th Amendment, if Trump lost the popular and Electoral College vote.
The cornerstone of the plan was to have the Supreme Court embrace the little known “independent state legislature” doctrine, which, in turn, would pave the way for exploitation of the Electoral College process and the Electoral Count Act, and finally for Vice President Mike Pence to reject enough swing state electoral votes to overturn the election using Pence’s ceremonial power under the 12th Amendment and award the presidency to Donald Trump.
The independent state legislature doctrine says that, under the Elections and the Electors Clauses of the Constitution, state legislatures possess plenary and exclusive power over the conduct of federal presidential elections and the selection of state presidential electors. Not even a state supreme court, let alone other state elections officials, can alter the legislatively written election rules or interfere with the appointment of state electors by the legislatures, under this theory.
The Supreme Court has never decided whether to embrace the independent state legislature doctrine. But then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in separate concurring opinions said they would embrace that doctrine in Bush v. Gore, 20 years earlier, and Republicans had every reason to believe there were at least five votes on the Supreme Court for the doctrine in November 2020, with Amy Coney Barrett having just been confirmed in the eleventh hour before the election.
Trump and the Republicans began executing this first stage of their plan months before November 3, by challenging as violative of the independent state legislature doctrine election rules relating to early- and late-voting, extensions of voting days and times, mail-in ballots, and other election law changes that Republicans contended had been unlawfully altered by state officials and state courts in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Michigan.
These cases eventually wound their way to the Supreme Court in the fall of 2020, and by December, the Supreme Court had decided all of these cases, but only by orders, either disallowing federal court intervention to change an election rule that had been promulgated by a state legislature, allowing legislatively promulgated rules to be changed by state officials and state courts, or deadlocking 4-4, because Justice Barrett was not sworn in until after those cases were briefed and ready for decision by the Court. In none of these cases did the Supreme Court decide the all-important independent state legislature doctrine.
Thwarted by the Supreme Court’s indecision on that doctrine, Trump and the Republicans turned their efforts to the second stage of their plan, exploitation of the Electoral College and the Electoral Count Act.
The Electoral College is the process by which Americans choose their presidents, a process that can lead to the election as president of a candidate who does not receive a majority of votes cast by the American voters. Republicans have grown increasingly wary of the Electoral College with the new census and political demographics of the nation’s shifting population.
The Electoral Count Act empowers Congress to decide the presidency in a host of circumstances where Congress determines that state electoral votes were not “regularly given” by electors who were “lawfully certified,” terms that are undefined and ambiguous. In this second stage of the plan, the Republicans needed to generate state-certified alternative slates of electors from swing states where Biden won the popular vote who would cast their electoral votes for Trump instead.
Congress would then count the votes of these alternative electoral slates on January 6, rather than the votes of the certified electoral slates for Biden, and Trump would be declared the reelected president.
The Republicans’ plan failed at this stage when they were unable to secure a single legitimate, alternative slate of electors from any state because the various state officials refused to officially certify these Trump-urged slates.
Thwarted by the Supreme Court in the first stage, foiled by their inability to come up with alternative state electoral slates in the second stage, and with time running out, Trump and the Republicans began executing the final option in their plan, which was to scare up illegitimate alternative electoral slates in various swing states to be transmitted to Congress. Whereupon, on January 6, Vice President Pence would count only the votes of the illegitimate electors from the swing states, and not the votes of the legitimate, certified electors that were cast for Biden, and declare Donald Trump’s reelection as President of the United States.
The entire house of cards collapsed at noon on January 6, when Pence refused to go along with the ill-conceived plan, correctly concluding that under the 12th Amendment he had no power to reject the votes that had been cast by the duly certified electors or to delay the count to give Republicans even more time to whip up alternative electoral slates.
Pence declared Joe Biden the 46th President of the United States at 3:40 a.m. on Thursday, January 7, roughly 14 hours after rioters stormed the US Capitol, disrupting the Joint Session and preventing Congress from counting the Electoral College votes for president until late that night and into the following day, after the statutorily designated day for counting those votes.
Trump and his allies and supporters in Congress and the states began readying their failed 2020 plan to overturn the 2024 presidential election later that very same day and they have been unabashedly readying that plan ever since, in plain view to the American public. Today, they are already a long way toward recapturing the White House in 2024, whether Trump or another Republican candidate wins the election or not.
Trump and Republicans are preparing to return to the Supreme Court, where this time they will likely win the independent state legislature doctrine, now that Amy Coney Barrett is on the Court and ready to vote. Barrett has not addressed the issue, but this turns on an originalist interpretation of the Constitution, and Barrett is firmly aligned on that method of constitutional interpretation with Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch, all three of whom have written that they believe the doctrine is correct.
Only last month, in a case from North Carolina the Court declined to hear, Moore v. Harper, four Justices (Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh) said that the independent state legislature question is of exceptional importance to our national elections, the issue will continue to recur and the Court should decide the issue sooner rather than later before the next presidential election. This case involved congressional redistricting, but the independent state legislature doctrine is as applicable to redistricting as it is to presidential elections.
The Republicans are also in the throes of electing Trump-endorsed candidates to state legislative offices in key swing states, installing into office their favored state election officials who deny that Biden won the 2020 election, such as secretaries of state, electing sympathetic state court judges onto the state benches and grooming their preferred potential electors for ultimate selection by the party, all so they will be positioned to generate and transmit alternative electoral slates to Congress, if need be.
Finally, they are furiously politicking to elect Trump supporters to the Senate and House, so they can overturn the election in Congress, as a last resort.
Forewarned is to be forearmed.
Trump and the Republicans can only be stopped from stealing the 2024 election at this point if the Supreme Court rejects the independent state legislature doctrine (thus allowing state court enforcement of state constitutional limitations on legislatively enacted election rules and elector appointments) and Congress amends the Electoral Count Act to constrain Congress’ own power to reject state electoral votes and decide the presidency.
Although the Vice President will be a Democrat in 2024, both parties also need to enact federal legislation that expressly limits the vice president’s power to be coextensive with the power accorded the vice president in the 12th Amendment and confirm that it is largely ceremonial, as Pence construed it to be on January 6.
Vice President Kamala Harris would preside over the Joint Session in 2024. Neither Democrats nor Republicans have any idea who will be presiding after that, however. Thus, both parties have the incentive to clarify the vice president’s ceremonial role now.
As it stands today, Trump, or his anointed successor, and the Republicans are poised, in their word, to “steal” from Democrats the presidential election in 2024 that they falsely claim the Democrats stole from them in 2020. But there is a difference between the falsely claimed “stolen” election of 2020 and what would be the stolen election of 2024. Unlike the Democrats’ theft claimed by Republicans, the Republicans’ theft would be in open defiance of the popular vote and thus the will of the American people: poetic, though tragic, irony for America’s democracy.
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Politics
GAP in TRUMP CALL LOGS on JAN. 6 'suspiciously tailored,' RASKIN SAYS
By Amy B Wang
The gap in phone logs in the official White House records on Jan. 6, 2021, is of “intense interest” to the House select committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Rep. Jamie B. Raskin said Sunday.
In an interview on CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” Raskin (D-Md.) noted that a 7½-hour gap in the phone logs for President Donald Trump’s communications that day covers the period when the Capitol assault was taking place.
Raskin said he and other Jan. 6 committee members have been able to piece together some of Trump’s activities during that time frame based on other people’s interviews and depositions, but holes remain.
“It’s a very unusual thing for us to find that suddenly everything goes dark for a seven-hour period in terms of tracking the movements and the conversations of the president,” Raskin said.
When asked if the gap could possibly be due to incompetence rather than conspiracy, Raskin said the committee was taking that into account. He added, however, that “the gaps are suspiciously tailored to the heart of the events” of Jan. 6, including when several lawmakers later said they were pleading with Trump to intervene. Raskin noted that the committee was aware that the president took part in calls during that time, “but we have no comprehensive, fine-grained portrait of what was going on during that period, and that’s obviously of intense interest to us.”
The bipartisan Jan. 6 panel is investigating the 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob that tried to stop the confirmation of Joe Biden’s electoral college win. The attack led to five deaths and left some 140 members of law enforcement injured.
Trump has tried to assert executive privilege to withhold documents from the committee, which last year ordered the former president to provide records of all his actions and activities on Jan. 6. President Biden has rejected Trump’s claims of executive privilege.
Earlier this year, the National Archives and Records Administration turned over to the committee 11 pages of White House records from that day, including the president’s official daily diary and the White House switchboard call logs.
As first reported by The Washington Post and CBS News, those records did not include any documentation of calls placed to or by Trump from 11:17 a.m. to 6:54 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021.
Raskin added that the committee’s mission is to get “a complete picture” of everything that took place on Jan. 6, as well as what needs to be done “to fortify democratic institutions and processes against future insurrections and coups and attempts to destabilize and overthrow our elections.”
Raskin said he hoped the committee would be able to begin holding long-delayed public hearings in May and was looking for connections between the violent insurrection at the Capitol and what he called the “attempt at an inside coup” orchestrated by Trump against the Constitution.
“I do feel confident we’re going to be able to tell that story,” Raskin said, adding, “Obviously, we’re up against a lot of obstruction now.”
Last week, the committee voted to hold two more former Trump aides — former trade and manufacturing director Peter Navarro and former communications chief Daniel Scavino Jr. — in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with the committee’s subpoenas. Raskin said the House probably would vote this week on whether to refer Navarro and Scavino to the Justice Department for prosecution.
Like Trump and a raft of other former aides, Navarro and Scavino have tried to claim they are protected by executive privilege and that the subpoenas were an overreach by the committee. They are among the latest in high-profile Trump White House officials facing repercussions for refusing to comply with the Jan. 6 committee’s subpoenas.
Last year, former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon was indicted on charges of contempt of Congress, which prompted warnings from some Republicans of “payback” that they could do the same to Democrats if they retake control of the House majority in November.
Mark Meadows, a former chief of staff in the Trump White House, also refused to cooperate with the committee, leading to the House voting to hold him in contempt of Congress as well in December.
Separately, a federal judge ruled last week that Trump “more likely than not” committed federal crimes in attempting to stop the confirmation of Biden’s electoral college win.
Asked about the judge’s comments Sunday, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who has defended Trump frequently and who voted to acquit Trump during his impeachment trials, was noncommittal.
“Well, federal judges say a lot of things and we’ll see how that comes through the process,” Blunt said on ABC News’s “This Week.” “I think the Justice Department has a job to do and they should do it and people who were involved in the planning or execution of illegal activities on Jan. 6 should be prosecuted.”
Bob Woodward and Robert Costa contributed to this report.
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Current events
Let's recall that Mo Brooks was the first congressman to object to the election certification on Jan 6th. Brooks wore a bulletproof vest on Jan 6th in anticipation of shooting on that day and was the first to speak at Trump's "Stop the Steal" rally and cheered on the insurrectionists from his congressional hiding place. After the coup failed, Brooks blamed Antifa for the attacks on the Capitol until today. Now, Brooks says that Trump asked Brooks for his help in forcing Biden out of office and placing Trump in office illegally.
Trump pulled his endorsement of Brooks for the Arkansas Senate race today after Brooks correctly stated that there is no legal method available for placing Trump in office before the 2024 elections. Trump called that simple, constitutional fact "woke" and pulled his support from one of his most devoted henchmen. Seems like now would be a good time to get Brooks on record under oath regarding Trump's marching orders on Jan 6th. This also suggests that Trump is willing to do his own cause real harm in order to defend his claim to the presidency by illegal or opportunistic acts.
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The MISUNDERSTOOD LEGACY of GUY FAWKES
Every year, Britain commemorates the notorious Catholic conspirator’s failed plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Elsewhere in the world, his reputation is much different.
By Yasmeen Serhan
“Remember, remember the fifth of November,” the old British rhyme goes.
For more than 400 years, Britain has remembered. Every year on this day, fireworks are set off, bonfires are built, and effigies are burned to commemorate the failed 17th-century plot by a group of English Catholics to blow up the Houses of Parliament—with the country’s entire political establishment and reigning Protestant monarch, King James I, inside.
But for an event rooted in remembrance, what has come to be known here in Britain as Guy Fawkes Night (named after one of the key plotters) could not be further removed from it. Today, the annual ritual is more festive and fun than religious and monarchical. Even Fawkes himself has taken on new meaning, becoming best known around the world not as a would-be religious extremist and terrorist, but as a populist hero. His life has been romanticized in film, his likeness has been preserved in masks, and his legacy has morphed into an almost mythical tale of anti-government rebellion, anarchy, and subversion.
How we remember Fawkes, as both a person and a symbol, presents a case study for how the meaning of historical events can be bent to serve the religious, political, and cultural needs of the present. But it also presents a fundamental question about how much is too much historical alteration. By turning people into symbols, do we run the risk of changing them into someone they weren’t?
The Guy Fawkes celebrations are, paradoxically, rooted in his failure. Though born into a Protestant family in York, in the north of England, Fawkes converted to Catholicism in his teens. At the time, Catholics suffered severe repression across the country and were barred from voting, holding public office, and owning land. The religious persecution prompted Fawkes to leave England for the Netherlands, where he served in the army for Catholic-ruled Spain. As he rose in the ranks, Fawkes became notorious for both his skill as a soldier and his handling of explosives—a talent that caught the eye of a fellow English Catholic, Robert Catesby. It was Catesby who crafted the plan to blow up the Houses of Parliament during their State Opening on November 5, 1605—an act he and his group of plotters hoped would be enough to wipe out the ruling elite and install a new Catholic monarch, ushering in an end to Protestant rule.
Of course, it never came to that. On the eve of the plot, authorities conducted a sweep of the Palace of Westminster’s cellars, where they discovered Fawkes with enough gunpowder to destroy the building twice over. “That would have [not only] killed everyone in Parliament, but the whole Westminster area would have been destroyed as well,” Nick Holland, the author of The Real Guy Fawkes, told me. “It would have been the biggest terrorist act in British history.”
Upon discovery, Fawkes and his co-conspirators were taken to the Tower of London and interrogated—though Fawkes notably didn’t reveal a thing. It was only after the king authorized the use of torture that authorities were able to extract a confession. Fawkes was found guilty of high treason and executed in Westminister’s Old Palace Yard, mere yards away from the building he had tried to bring crashing down.
In the immediate aftermath of his execution, Fawkes was widely regarded as “a huge villain,” Holland said. Guy became a pejorative term used to describe someone as grotesque (though nowadays the word simply refers to a man or a person). Londoners lit bonfires to celebrate King James’s survival, and an annual day to commemorate the thwarted plot was enacted into law, with observance made compulsory. This became the precursor to the modern tradition of bonfire celebrations, complete with effigies, or Guys (a ritual that has since expanded to include famous figures such as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, President Donald Trump, and the disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein).
But Fawkes’s reputation didn’t stay this way. In the centuries since, his memory has morphed from one of a religious extremist to one of a populist underdog—a shift that has been attributed in large part to the serialization of his life in the British graphic novel turned film V for Vendetta. Set in a future dystopian Britain ruled by a fascist government, the Fawkes-inspired character, known simply as “V,” bears little resemblance to his historical counterpart. Whereas the real Fawkes was driven by religious aims, the masked, knife-wielding V lashes out against his enemies for the purpose of bringing down the fascist state. They both share the goal of bombing the Houses of Parliament as a catalyst for their ultimate aims, though where Fawkes fails, V succeeds.
Perhaps the starkest difference between the two is that whereas V emerges as a heroic martyr acting for the greater good, Fawkes is first and foremost seen as a traitor acting in the interest of a radical few. “He may have wanted religious freedom, but it’s unlikely that if he was in a position of power, he would have extended that freedom to his religious enemies,” Alastair Bellany, a professor of history at Rutgers University, told me. “He wanted a Catholic kingdom.”
It’s not just the 2005 film that shifts Fawkes’s image in the zeitgeist. The mask popularized in V for Vendetta soon emerged in anti-government demonstrations worldwide, from the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement to protests in Bahrain, Thailand, and Saudi Arabia. The mask also become the symbol of the hacktivist group Anonymous. James Sharpe, the author of Remember, Remember: A Cultural History of Guy Fawkes Day, told me that even the Guy Fawkes Inn, a York pub located across the street from where its namesake was baptized, swapped its original portrait of Fawkes for one of the iconic mask. “The modern perception, the mask, and so on is a complete reconfiguration of Fawkes,” Sharpe said.
David Lloyd, the British artist and illustrator who designed the V for Vendetta mask, said the iconic image is open to interpretation. “It’s an all-purpose badge of protest and rebellion,” he told Britain’s Daily Telegraph in 2015. “The smile can be interpreted as eternal optimism, of course—which is something essential to the survival of protesters everywhere.”
In this populist age, where protesters the world over are taking to the streets and ballot boxes to voice their discontent with the status quo, perhaps the emergence of a Fawkes-like symbol is necessary. But in amplifying one narrative about the historic figure, we risk losing the other.
“People will hold him up as a symbol of whatever they want to believe in,” Holland said, “but we’re getting further and further away from the man that he was.”
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People
Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!
Guy Fawkes and his companions
Did the scheme contrive,
To blow the King and Parliament
All up alive.
Threescore barrels, laid below,
To prove old England's overthrow.
But, by God's providence, him they catch,
With a dark lantern, lighting a match!
A stick and a stake
For King James's sake!
If you won't give me one,
I'll take two,
The better for me,
And the worse for you.
A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope,
A penn'orth of cheese to choke him,
A pint of beer to wash it down,
And a jolly good fire to burn him.
Holloa, boys! holloa, boys! make the bells ring!
Holloa, boys! holloa boys! God save the King!
Hip, hip, hooor-r-r-ray!
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Artistic expressions
FACT CHECK: CLAIMS of FBI ROLE in JAN. 6 ATTACK are FALSE
McKenzie Sadeghi
USA TODAY
The claim: FBI operatives organized the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol
In the months following the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the United States Capitol by rioters seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, conservative media personalities have attempted to downplay the insurrection and shift blame.
Some baselessly claimed the mob of Donald Trump supporters who breached Capitol barricades — fueled by unproven allegations of voter fraud — was actually a crowd of antifa members in disguise. Those allegations were wrong.
Now, claims that undercover FBI agents were behind the Capitol insurrection are circulating on social media.
"Evidence surfaces that the FBI planned and executed January 6 Capitol riot," the Tatum Report wrote in a June 17 Instagram post.
The narrative started with a June 14 report by conservative website Revolver News. The story says there's a "strong possibility" the federal government had "undercover agents or confidential informants embedded within the so-called militia groups" that were seeking to obstruct the Senate certification of the 2020 election results. The Instagram post linked to a Tatum report post that recapped the Revolver News story. USA TODAY reached out to Tatum Report for comment
After the article was published, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Republican lawmakers and social media users amplified it across platforms.
Facebook users have shared an open letter from Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., in which he demands FBI Director Christopher Wray "fully disclose the role and involvement of FBI operatives during the January 6th Capitol riot." Other users shared a clip of Carlson's June 15 show, during which he said "FBI operatives were organizing the attack on the Capitol on January 6."
But that theory relies on a false assumption: that anyone identified as an "unindicted co-conspirator" in charging documents is a government agent.
In fact, legal experts say that term cannot be used to describe FBI agents or undercover government operatives. Charging documents and other evidence indicate that the Jan. 6 rioters included Trump supporters, conspiracy theorists and members of far-right groups.
Fox News and social media users who amplified Revolver News' claims did not return requests for comment.
Unindicted co-conspirators, explained
The term "unindicted co-conspirators" refers to people who allegedly took part in the same offense in some fashion but are not being criminally charged for their role, Ira Robbins, an American University law professor, wrote in a 2004 paper that represents the legal consensus on the term.
This can include someone who cooperated with law enforcement to receive a deal or who authorities don't feel they have sufficient evidence to charge.
The term became well-known in 1974, when a grand jury applied it to President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal.
The Justice Department's policy says federal prosecutors should not name unindicted co-conspirators "in the absence of some significant justification."
Government informants can't be described as co-conspirators
The primary evidence presented in the Revolver News story — federal charging documents related to the Jan. 6 insurrection — don't support its claim about FBI informants organizing the riot.
Revolver News is run by former Trump speechwriter Darren Beattie, who was fired in 2018 for his appearance at a conference featuring white nationalists. It's unclear who wrote the site's June 14 report, as it doesn't have a byline.
The story argues that because upward of 20 unindicted co-conspirators listed in federal charging documents haven't been charged, there is a "disturbing possibility" that they could be undercover FBI agents or federal informants.
That's not actually a possibility, legal experts say.
"Prosecutors would not name FBI agents as unindicted co-conspirators," Robbins told USA TODAY via email. "Tucker Carlson’s allegation that the FBI organized the attack on the Capitol is pure fantasy."
Robbins said while it is possible FBI agents were acting undercover in extremist organizations involved in the Capitol riot, that "would not necessarily mean they had instigated the insurrection."
Similarly, Cornell Law School professor Jens David Ohlin told the Washington Post there are "many reasons why an indictment would reference unindicted co-conspirators, but their status as FBI agents is not one of them." In a 1985 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit noted that "government agents and informers cannot be conspirators."
The FBI declined to comment for this fact check.
No evidence unnamed individuals in Caldwell case are FBI agents
The Revolver News article singles out unnamed individuals mentioned in a case involving Thomas Caldwell of Virginia, an alleged Oath Keepers member who is facing charges related to the Capitol attack.
In an emailed statement to USA TODAY, Beattie said the issue from "our perspective is not the specific phrase 'unindicted co-conspirator'" but that "the individuals referenced in the 1/6 charging documents (referred to variously as Persons or individuals), remain unindicted on account of a prior relationship with federal law enforcement."
But there's no evidence those unnamed individuals, referred to as "persons" in court filings, are federal agents — and ample evidence they are people close to Caldwell.
Charging documents identify the leader of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia group, as "PERSON ONE." (That person is Stewart Rhodes, and there is no evidence he is an undercover government agent.)
"PERSON TWO" is also not a secret government agent, as the Revolver News article suggests. Charging documents indicate Caldwell stayed with "PERSON TWO" at an Arlington hotel and took "selfie" photographs with them on the perimeter of the Capitol.
A criminal affidavit against Caldwell and Oath Keepers members Donovan Crowl and Jessica Watkins says Caldwell stayed at the hotel with his wife, Sharon, who has not been charged with a crime.
Further, a defense filing from May 26 says Caldwell "rarely travels without his wife" due to "physical limitations and health concerns." Caldwell also shared on Facebook photos of he and his wife at the Capitol on Jan. 6, according to the Washington Post.
The Revolver News story compares the Capitol attack to the October 2020 plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, which involved undercover federal agents. But The New York Times noted operatives involved in that case were referred to in the criminal complaint as "confidential human sources" and "undercover employees," not "unindicted co-conspirators."
Beattie did not present any additional evidence to support the Revolver News article when he appeared as a guest on Carlson's show.
Rioters included Trump supporters, far-right groups
While authorities are still investigating who organized and led the insurrection, court documents and other available evidence show the rioters are linked to far-right extremist groups, including the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters.
QAnon followers and extremists talked on online forums about a siege of the Capitol as early as December, NBC News reported. Experts told USA TODAY the Capitol attack was the result of years of conspiracy theories and misinformation.
A USA TODAY review of charging documents found nearly all conspiracy charges are against members of the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers, or people who acted with them. Several of the alleged conspirators attended or scheduled paramilitary training and recruited others to their cause.
Similarly, a review by the Associated Press of public records associated with more than 120 people at the insurrection found rioters included supporters of the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory, Trump supporters, far-right militants and white supremacists. A ProPublica collection of more than 500 videos from Jan. 6 shows rioters wearing Trump apparel, QAnon symbols and Confederate flags.
As of June 23, more than 400 arrests had been made in connection with the insurrection, none of which included charges against an FBI agent. Testimony from rioters who stormed the Capitol said they felt called to Washington by Trump and his false claim that the election was stolen, according to the Washington Post.
"This was not simply a march. This was an incredible attack on our institutions of government," Jason McCullough, an assistant U.S. attorney, said during a March hearing.
Our rating: False
The claim that the FBI orchestrated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is FALSE, based on our research. There is no evidence that "unindicted co-conspirators" mentioned in charging documents are undercover FBI agents. Legal experts say undercover government operatives and informants cannot be named in government filings as unindicted co-conspirators. The best available evidence identifies the rioters as Trump supporters, conspiracy theorists and members of far-right groups.
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Current events
OCTOBER 07, 2021
Following 8 Month Investigation, Senate Judiciary Committee Releases Report on Donald Trump's Scheme to Pressure DOJ & Overturn the 2020 Election
WASHINGTON – Following an eight-month investigation, the Senate Judiciary Committee today released new testimony and a staff report,
“Subverting Justice: How the Former President and his Allies Pressured DOJ to Overturn the 2020 Election.”
The report and testimony reveal that we were only a half-step away from a full blown constitutional crisis as President Donald Trump and his loyalists threatened a wholesale takeover of the Department of Justice (DOJ). They also reveal how former Acting Civil Division Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark became Trump’s Big Lie Lawyer, pressuring his colleagues in DOJ to force an overturn of the 2020 election.
The report sheds new light on Trump’s relentless efforts to coopt DOJ into overturning the 2020 election and Clark’s efforts to aid Trump. The Committee’s interim report is the first comprehensive accounting of those efforts, which were even more expansive and troubling than previously reported.
Based on findings from the investigation so far, the Committee has asked the D.C. Bar to open an investigation into Jeffrey Clark’s compliance with applicable rules of professional conduct. These rules include Rule 1.2, which prohibits attorneys from assisting or counseling clients in criminal or fraudulent conduct, and Rule 8.4, which among other things prohibits conduct that seriously interferes with the administration of justice. The Committee is withholding potential findings and recommendations about criminal culpability until the investigation is complete.
U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released the following statement on today’s report release:
“Today’s report shows the American people just how close we came to a constitutional crisis. Thanks to a number of upstanding Americans in the Department of Justice, Donald Trump was unable to bend the Department to his will. But it was not due to a lack of effort. Donald Trump would have shredded the Constitution to stay in power. We must never allow this unprecedented abuse of power to happen again.”
Key takeaways from the Committee’s investigation include:
- Previously-unreleased transcripts of the Committee’s closed-door interviews with three key former senior DOJ officials: former Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen, former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, and former U.S. Attorney BJay Pak. These witnesses cooperated with the Committee, and although their testimony was not under oath, they were obligated by 18 U.S.C. § 1001 to tell the truth.
- New details of Donald Trump’s relentless, direct pressure on DOJ’s leadership. This includes at least nine calls and meetings with Rosen and/or Donoghue starting the day former Attorney General Bill Barr announced his resignation and continuing almost until the January 6 insurrection—including near-daily outreach once Barr left DOJ on December 23.
- New details of then-Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Division Jeffrey Clark’s misconduct, including his attempt to induce Rosen into helping Trump’s election subversion scheme by telling Rosen he would decline Trump’s offer to install him in Rosen’s place if Rosen agreed to aid that scheme.
- New details around Trump forcing the resignation of U.S. Attorney Pak because he believed Pak was not doing enough to support his false claims of election fraud in Georgia—and then went outside the line of succession to appoint Bobby Christine as Acting U.S. Attorney because he believed Christine would “do something” about his election fraud claims.
- New details of how, at Barr’s direction, DOJ deviated from decades-long practice meant to avoid inserting DOJ itself as an issue in the election—and instead aggressively pursued false claims of election fraud before votes were certified.
- Confirmation that Mark Meadows asked Rosen to initiate election fraud investigations on multiple occasions, violating longstanding restrictions on White House intervention in DOJ law enforcement matters—and new details about these requests, including that Meadows asked Rosen to meet with Trump’s outside lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
Based on these findings, the interim report makes the following recommendations:
- Congress should strengthen longstanding DOJ and White House policies restricting the circumstances under which DOJ and White House officials can communicate with one another about specific law enforcement matters.
- DOJ should strengthen its longstanding election non-interference policy, which is meant to avoid inserting DOJ as an issue into a pending election.
- The D.C. Bar should scrutinize Clark’s compliance with applicable bar rules.
- The Committee is withholding potential recommendations about criminal culpability and criminal referrals until the investigation is complete.
In January 2021, following a report from The New York Times that detailed a plot between Trump and Clark to use DOJ to further Trump’s efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election, Durbin led the Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee in a letter to then-Acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson calling on him to preserve and produce all relevant materials in the DOJ’s possession, custody, or control related to this plot. This kicked off the Committee’s eight-month investigation. The Committee continues to seek records requested from the National Archives and Records Administration, which have not yet been supplied, and continues to pursue interviews with relevant individuals as part of this ongoing investigation.
A link to today’s report is available here.
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FROM: Real Time with Bill Maher: OCT 8th
"Don't make me be an I told you so again.
You know I was a young man of fifty nine when I started using the term "slow moving coup," and it pains me to have to report it's still moving.
A document came to light a few weeks ago, called the Eastman Memo, which was basically a blueprint prepared for Trump on how he could steal the election after he lost it in November 2020. It outlined a plan for overturning the election by claiming that seven states actually had competing slates of electors which, while not even remotely true, would have given Mike Pence the excuse to throw out those states and thus hand the election to Trump. But of course, the plan required election officials in those states to go along. Trump thought the ones who were Republican would, most did not, and that's what he's been working on fixing ever since.
Some Presidents spend their post-presidency building homes for the poor or raising money for charity or painting their toes. Trump has spent his figuring out how to pull off the coup he couldn't pull off last time. Here's the easiest three predictions in the world:
- Trump will run in 2024,
- He will get the Republican nomination, and
- Whatever happens on election night, the next day he will announce that he won.
I've been saying that ever since he lost, he's like a shark. That's not gone- just gone out to sea. But actually, he's quietly eating people this whole time.
And by "eating people," I mean he's been methodically purging the Republican Party of anyone who voted for his impeachment or doesn't agree that he's the rightful leader of the Seven Kingdoms. Yes, we're going to need a bigger boat.
There was grand total of ten Republican congressmen who voted to impeach Trump and by 2024 even those will all be gone.
One of them was Liz Cheney" arch-Conservative, daughter of Darth Vader, and yet now politically dead in Wyoming,
Another of the ten was Anthony Gonzalez. He's already bowed out for running for re election, because he can see opposing Trump means you have no chance.
The other eight will either, like him not run or they'll get primaried by a Trumper or the'll have a sudden epiphany about how come to think of it, Trump did win that election.
The purge is also at work in Republican legislatures, as several states are already in the process of changing election laws so that they, (not non-partisan election officials), are in charge of certifying the results.
Two weeks after the 2020 election, Trump famously called the Republican in charge of elections in Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Rathsenberger and told him he just needed to "find" an additional eleven thousand Trump votes. Rathsenberger refused but he's not going to be there next time.
Of the fifteen Republicans running for Secretary of State in the key battleground states only two concede that Biden won that election. These are the people Trump is going to call in 2024 when he's a few votes short and these people are going to give it to him.
So here's what's going to happen,
- 2022- the Midterms.
- Republicans win big because the out-of-power party always does in a country where the electorate can't think past throw the bums out.
- So the Republicans take back the House ,where disputed elections are decided, and the speaker is Kevin McCarthy, a man with all the backbone of one of those inflatable tube men outside a car dealership.
- Republicans will also have more key governors.
- Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan all had Democratic governors who protected the vote in 2020 but they're all up for re-election in 2022.
- At least two will lose.
- 2023- Trump announces his candidacy and starts having large rallies across the country which become increasingly angry and threatening as Trump indulges his love for inciting violence.
- I know the Hitler analogy is over the top in many ways.
- I don't think Trump hates Jews- there are too many rich ones.
- I don't think committing genocide is in his future, but
- The mentality of how to take over a country is exactly the same; play on this feeling of 'we have been cheated, robbed, betrayed and now we're gonna take it back.'
- 2/3rds of Republicans believe the election was stolen.
- 21 million believe force is justified to restore Trump to office.
- A majority want to secede( whatever the hell that would entail), and yet-
- 2024 comes and Democrats treat it as a normal election year.
- They are living in a dream world where their choice of candidate matters, their policies matter, the number of votes they get matters.
- None of it does.
- I won't even predict who the Democratic nominee will because itdoesn't matter. It could be Biden, it could be Harris ,it could be Amy Klobuchar, it could be Timothee Chalamet, as long as they have a "D" by their name, they will be portrayed as the leader of the Army of Satan.
- Even if they win, Trump won't accept it.
- But this time his claims of illegal voting by immigrants or mail-in ballots coming in after the deadline, or the system was hacked by Venezuela or whatever Giuliani comes up with on the fly, they will be fully embraced by the stooges he's installing right now.
- December 16, 2024. This is the day electors gather to vote for President.
- Arizona and Wisconsin both send a slate of bogus Trump electors, setting up a showdown on January 6th and daring Kamala Harris to do what Trumpers wanted Mike Pence to do: throw out election results.
- The difference being this time, those results really are phony and this time it's not just 600 diabetic FOX NEWS junkies and a nut in a Viking helmut: Ten million Trump voters have signed a pledge to come to Washington Of course, Nine and a half million flake- but half a million still show up and they're heavily armed and incensed when Harris does what Mike Pence wouldn't.
- Demonstrations grow in the streets, the kind of Antifa vs Proud Boy violence we've seen in Portland erupts across the country.
- People are afraid to go out anywhere where their political tribe is not in the majority.
- Which hurts commerce
- The stock market is spooked by the unrest and tumbles as Inauguration Day approaches.
- President Biden is under extraordinary pressure to do something to stop the coup before his authority over the Military and the Justice Department evaporates at noon on January 20th.
- What happens when two Presidential candidates both show up on Inauguration Day both expecting to be sworn in like a bad sitcom pilot?
The ding-dongs who sacked the Capital last year? That was like when al Qaeda tried to take down the World Trade Center, the first time, with the van- it was a joke.
....but the next time they came back with planes.
I hope I scared the shit out of you.
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The best document thus far showing the scope and nature of the Jan 6th attack is from NYT Visual Investigations. I'd encourage anybody to watch it before drawing conclusions. The section relevant to Ashli Babbitt's shooting starts at 25:39 - 28:40.
- We should note that the small vanguard Babbitt was in had an opportunity to threaten House members because AZ -R Paul Gosar continued speaking for 15 minutes after lockdown was called. Gosar was one of the original organizers of the "Stop the Steal" movement and has been accused by multiple House members of orchestrating the attack. Gosar is also the first politician to start demanding the name of the officer who killed Ashli Babbitt, which is strange because almost nobody on Earth is in a better position to know that individual's identity than Gosar.
- Gosar was one of the last to leave the chamber so unlike us, he can see the identity of the officer on the far side of the door, protecting Gosar's escape.
- We can see from the video that the man holding the gun is wearing a suit and probably black.
- Metropolitan police confirmed that the shooter was a plainclothes Capitol Police officer.
- Given Gosar's proximity to the shooter and the fact that there can't have been many extra officers hanging around 90 minutes after the violence began I think its very likely that the shooter is the security officer seen advising the House to don masks at 26:09. That's the back of Gosar's head in the foreground.
- The Congressional Record only list the speaker as "a security officer" but its seems hard to believe that Gosar couldn't id a guy he works in the same room with all day or at least look him up in the congressional directory
- Further, it's public knowledge that the officer has not returned back to work. I might not be able to figure out who shot Babbitt from a list of black plainclothes floor security officers who haven't been to work for 6 months but I assume that's a simple task for Gosar.
- I see no reason not to conclude that Gosar's (and by extention, Trump's) supposed ignorance is all pantomime.
- Nevertheless, I think the shooter's name should be released. I understand this information exposes an officer who has already sacrificed much in service to our Legislature to increased vitriol and harm but I can't see how the public can maintain oversight of police violence without public access to individual names and records. Trump's reasons are entirely scummy but we should release the name anyway.
Here is Trump latest round of lies regarding his attempts to nullify by violence the voice and choice of the American people as expressed on Nov 2nd.
FOX's "Sunday Morning Futures." with Maria Bartiromo- Sunday, Jul 11
BARTIROMO:....And I know that you have had some time to reflect on what took place on that day, January 6.Talk to us about what you're thinking about as you reflect. What happened that day, from your standpoint?TRUMP: So, there was a big rally called. And, actually, when I say big, who knew? But there was a rally called.And a tremendous number of people, the largest one I have ever spoken before, is called by people, by patriots. And they asked me if I'd speak. And I did. And it was a very mild-mannered speech, as I think has been -- in fact, they just came out with a report in Congress, and they didn't mention my name, literally.
In fact, the report mentions Trump 27 times. The bipartisan report makes no judgement regarding Trump's claims of fraud in the election but explicitly credits failures in the Intelligence Committee, Dept of Defense, and the National Guard as largely contributing to harms of Jan 6th. Apparently, Trump didn't know he was in charge of those depts. The entirety of Trump's speech on that day is included in the report as relevant to the insurrectionists' mission.
But what they were complaining about and the reason, in my opinion, you had over a million people there, which the press doesn't like to report at all,
The permit for the event was bumped from 5,000 attendees to 30,000 on Jan 3rd. Best estimates of crowd size range between 8,000 and 30,000 attendees.
because it shows too much -- too much activity, too much -- too much spirit and faith and love. There was such love at that rally.
You had over a million people there. They were there for one reason, the rigged election. They felt the election was rigged. That's why they were there. And they were peaceful people. These were great people.The crowd was unbelievable. And I mentioned the word love. The love -- the love in the air, I have never seen anything like it.
And that's why they went to Washington.BARTIROMO: You know, Mr...(CROSSTALK)TRUMP: And, by the way, I can tell you that I thought -- because I was hearing from a lot of people there are going to be a lot of people coming there, much bigger than anybody ever anticipated by many times.And I had suggested to the secretary of defense, perhaps we should have 10,000 National Guardsmen standing by. And he reported that, as you know, but I -- we should have -- and he was turned down. I said, it's subject to Congress. They run it. Nancy Pelosi runs it. So, it would be subject to the Capitol Police and the other things, whatever they need.But I said, perhaps you need 10,000, because I think the crowd is going to be very large. Who knows? Maybe two people will show up. But I think it's going to be very large.Anyway, he had that. He went to them. They said it won't be necessary. They were the ones that were responsible. They were the ones. And this came out very loudly in the report.
The president, [Acting Defense Secretary Christopher ]Miller recalled, asked how many troops the Pentagon planned to turn out the following day. "We’re like, ‘We’re going to provide any National Guard support that the District requests,’" Miller responded. "And Trump goes, ‘You’re going to need 10,000 people.’ No, I’m not talking bullshit. He said that. And we’re like, ‘Maybe. But you know, someone’s going to have to ask for it.’"
But Trump didn't ask for it, although as both Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard and leader of the Stop the Steal movement, only Trump had an accurate sense of what was needed and the capacity to meet that need. Miller and Pelosi both confirm that nobody talked to Pelosi's office and of course, the report comes to the opposite conclusion of Trump's assertion.
BARTIROMO: Yes, that report showed FBI operatives potentially aware.But there are unanswered questions here. What did the FBI know? Why weren't your Cabinet secretaries briefed? What did Speaker Pelosi know, Chuck Schumer, McConnell?Do you have any answers to that? They continue to call this an armed insurrection.TRUMP: Oh, I think they knew plenty.
Trump is here accusing Pelosi, Schumer, and McConnell of secretly knowing more about the size and intentions of Trump's own ally and faulting them for not requesting more help from him and the armed forces Trump commands while NOT faulting himself who is in ultimately in charge of both sides of the equation. How entirely disconnected from reality Trump seems to be. Naturally, the FOX interviewer has no curiosity regarding this claim.
BARTIROMO: And yet no guns were seized, Mr. President.TRUMP: Right. There were no guns whatsoever.
Let's recall that police weren't arresting or frisking the rioters so an accurate assessment is impossible Police report that at least hundreds of guns were in evidence on the rioters and plenty of holster bulges are in evidence on video. Of the 14 rioters arrested (mostly that vanguard held at gunpoint by police while evacuating the Senate), 2 were charged with carrying weapons without a permit. If we extrapolate that sampling percentage and apply to the 8,000 besieging the capitol we get more than a thousands guns but that's just speculation. Others arrested had pepper sprays, stun guns, tasers, brass knuckles, lead pipes, knives, and a whip. Police found a Tavor X95 rifle with a telescopic sight, a Glock 9 mm with high-capacity magazines and more than 2,500 rounds of ammunition, at least 320 rounds of armor-piercing bullets, an AR-15-style rifle, a shotgun, a crossbow, several machetes, smoke grenades and 11 Molotov cocktails in two cars owned by rioters parked near the Capitol. Two pipe bombs were discovered concealed next to the entrances to the RNC and DNC's national HQs.
And yet Antifa, which went into Portland and went into so many other places, Seattle -- they took over a big part of Seattle. People died. And there were plenty of guns there, by the way -- and in Minnesota, in Minneapolis. They got -- there was no repercussions for them. And yet they have people still in jail. There were no guns. There were no guns.
Of the 14,000+ charges associated with George Floyd protests, most were misdemeanors and a majority of charges have been dropped. Of the 500 felony charges brought, most are still pending trial. About 30% of all felony charges are associated with Portland rioters.
And, by the way, while you're at it, who shot Ashli Babbitt? Why are they keeping that secret? Who is the person that shot...BARTIROMO: Well...TRUMP: ... an innocent, wonderful, incredible woman, a military woman, right in the head? And there's no repercussions.
In fact, Babbit was shot once in the upper right chest.
If that were on the other side, it would be the biggest story in this country. Who shot Ashli Babbitt? People want to know, and why.BARTIROMO: Well, that's right.And I want to talk about that, because Ashli Babbitt, a wonderful woman, fatally shot on January 6 as she tried to climb out of a broken window.
That's quite false. Babbitt was climbing in through a window she and her band had just broken and that window was the last physical barrier between the rioters and the fleeing congressmen (including Gosar). The plainclothes policeman and his pistol were literally the last line of defense and Babbitt was the only rioter to breach that line. Of all the rioters that day, Veteran soldier Babbitt was the closest any got to their intended targets and the only who breached every line of defense. [27:50-28:40] The rioters at that door backed down pretty quickly after that single shot.
Her family has spoken out. Her family has been on "Tucker Carlson." And they want answers as far as why this wonderful woman, young woman who went to peaceful protests was shot.Do you have any information? There is speculation that this was a security detail in a leading member of Congress' security detail, a Democrat.(CROSSTALK)BARTIROMO: What can you tell us in terms of who shot Ashli Babbitt? What do you know, Mr. President?TRUMP: So -- so, I have heard that.I will tell you they know who shot Ashli Babbitt. They're protecting that person. I have heard also that it was the head of security for a certain high official, a Democrat.
Capitol Hill Police have confirmed that the shooter did not belong to any individual security detail.
And we will see, because it's going to come out. It's going to come out.
Again, there's no reason to think Trump can't have the name of Babbitt's shooter at will, since some of Trump's closes alliest were eye-witnesses to the shooting and were the very individuals being protected by that shooting from the breach by Babbitt. Those same Trump allies, Gosar, Biggs, and Brooks particularly voted against recognizing CHP valor in the wake of the attack. Gosar has refused to even shake hands or acknowledge the cops who may have saved his ass that day.
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REPUBLICAN's SHAKY, NO-EVIDENCE ATTEMPT to CAST BLAME on PELOSI for JAN. 6
House Republicans have sought to change the narrative on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by pro-Trump protesters, claiming that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is “ultimately responsible for the breakdown of security at the Capitol.”
But their arguments overstate the role of the House speaker in overseeing the security of the Capitol and rely on speculation about Pelosi’s involvement and knowledge about intelligence warnings for which they have not provided any proof.
- Republican Rep. Jim Banks said that Pelosi, as speaker, “has more control and authority and responsibility over the leadership of the Capitol Police than anyone else in the United States Capitol” and therefore, “is ultimately responsible for the breakdown of security at the Capitol that happened on Jan. 6.” The speaker does not oversee security of the U.S. Capitol. The speaker appoints one member of a four-member board that oversees Capitol security, and who then must be approved by the House.
- House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy suggested Pelosi played a role in denying efforts prior to Jan. 6 to bolster security on the Capitol grounds with members of the National Guard. There is no evidence of that.
- Banks accused Pelosi of withholding documents from the bipartisan Senate committee that investigated security and planning issues related to the Jan. 6 riot. Banks speculated that’s because the documents may show “the speaker was involved and the lack of leadership and the breakdown of security that occurred on Jan. 6th.” The Senate committee never requested any documents from the speaker’s office, though the House sergeant at arms “did not comply with the Committees’ information requests,” according to the Senate report.
- Rep. Rodney Davis pointed to the fact that on the afternoon of Jan. 6, the House sergeant at arms sought Pelosi’s permission to bring in the National Guard as evidence that Pelosi was “calling the shots on all of their actions on Jan. 6.” A Pelosi aide confirms the request was made, though he says Pelosi “expects security professionals to make security decisions” and that Pelosi only expects “to be briefed about those decisions.” In any event, the request also went to then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as well as to Department of Defense leadership.
- GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik said Pelosi “failed to act” on intelligence reports in December about potential security threats and therefore “Nancy Pelosi bears responsibility as speaker of the House for the tragedy that occurred on Jan. 6.” There is no evidence that Pelosi was privy to those intelligence reports.
Banks appeared on “Fox News Sunday” four days after Pelosi rejected Banks and Rep. Jim Jordan from serving on the select committee that will investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. Banks and Jordan both voted to object to the certification of the 2020 presidential election results. In a statement, Pelosi said she had “concern about statements made and actions taken” by Banks and Jordan that she felt would compromise “the integrity of the investigation.”
Overseeing the Capitol Police
Banks contends that Pelosi left him off the committee because he was “prepared to ask questions” about “a systemic breakdown of security at the Capitol on Jan. 6,” for which he says Pelosi was “ultimately responsible.”
Banks, July 25: Once you go up the — to the top of the flagpole of who is in charge of the Capitol Police, who the Capitol Police union chief, they blamed the leadership of the Capitol Police. But — due to the rules of the United States Capitol, the power structure of the Capitol, Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, has more control and authority and responsibility over the leadership of the Capitol Police than anyone else in the United States Capitol. So she doesn’t want us to ask these questions because at the end of the day she is ultimately responsible for the breakdown of security at the Capitol that happened on Jan. 6.
Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Pelosi, said Banks was simply trying to “divert blame” for the attack.
“On January 6th, the Speaker, a target of an assassination attempt that day, was no more in charge of Capitol security than Mitch McConnell was,” Hammill told us via email. “This is a clear attempt to whitewash what happened on January 6th and divert blame. The Speaker believes security officials should make security decisions.”
A bipartisan Senate investigation of security, planning and response failures on the day of the attack said “breakdowns ranged from federal intelligence agencies failing to warn of a potential for violence to a lack of planning and preparation by USCP [U.S. Capitol Police] and law enforcement leadership.”
The June 8 report — led by Sens. Gary Peters, chairman, and Rob Portman, ranking member, of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Amy Klobuchar, chairwoman, and Roy Blunt, ranking member, of the Committee on Rules and Administration — made no mention of any missteps by Pelosi.
In a House Republican press conference on July 27, Banks referred to the “tragic events that happened on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s watch,” and he said the Senate report identified “there was a systemic breakdown of security, a lack of leadership at the very top of the United States Capitol Police who report and who Nancy Pelosi is ultimately responsible for that lack of leadership.”
But he is overstating Pelosi’s authority.
In a statement provided to FactCheck.org, Jane L. Campbell, president and CEO of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society, said: “The Speaker of the House does not oversee security of the U.S. Capitol, the Capitol Police Board does, and the Speaker does not oversee the Board. The Board consists of three voting members: the Senate Sergeant at Arms, the House Sergeant at Arms, and the Architect of the Capitol; together with one non-voting member, the Chief of the Capitol Police.”
To put names to those titles, on Jan. 6, the Capitol Police chief was Steven Sund; the House sergeant at arms was Paul Irving; the Senate sergeant at arms was Michael Stenger; and the architect of the Capitol was Brett Blanton. Sund, Irving and Stenger all resigned in the wake of the riot.
So how does Pelosi fit into all of this?
“The Speaker is involved in the appointment of the House Sergeant at Arms, who must be confirmed by the House,” Campbell explained. “The Senate Sergeant at Arms is chosen by the Senate. The Speaker also sits on the commission that recommends an Architect of the Capitol to the U.S. President. However, it is the President who appoints the Architect, who must be confirmed by the Senate.”
During the Republican press conference on July 27, Rep. Rodney Davis noted that Irving, the House sergeant at arms, was “appointed by the speaker.” That’s true, but Irving initially came to the position in January 2012 after being nominated by then-House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican. Irving was unanimously approved by the House. He was retained by House votes five more times, including twice when Pelosi was speaker — on Jan. 3, 2019, and Jan. 3, 2021, three days before the riot.
Pelosi, of course, played no role in Stenger’s nomination or election as Senate sergeant at arms. Stenger was nominated by then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and approved by unanimous consent by the Senate on April 16, 2018.
Blanton, the architect of the Capitol, was appointed by then-President Donald Trump and was confirmed in the Republican-controlled Senate by voice vote on Dec. 19, 2019.
Approving the National Guard
In the July 27 press conference, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said, “There’s questions into the leadership within the structure of the speaker’s office where they denied the ability to bring the National Guard here.”
McCarthy also referred — without naming anyone — to “people out there who say there were phone calls to the speaker that offered the National Guard prior to that day and was turned down.”
But there is no evidence of that.
In a Feb. 1 letter to Pelosi, Sund, the former Capitol Police chief — who was hired by the Capitol Police Board in June 2019 — wrote that on Jan. 4, two days before the riot, he
“approached the two Sergeants at Arms to request the assistance of the National Guard, as I had no authority to do so without an Emergency Declaration by the Capitol Police Board (CPB).”
(According to a 2017 Government Accountability Office report, the Capitol Police Board “has authority for security decisions, as well as certain human capital and personnel matters, including the approval of officer terminations.”)
Sund said Irving told him he was “concerned about the ‘optics’ and didn’t feel that the intelligence supported it. He referred me to the Senate Sergeant at Arms (who is currently the Chair of the CPB) to get his thoughts on the request. I then spoke to Mr. Stenger and again requested the National Guard. Instead of approving the use of the National Guard, however, Mr. Stenger suggested I ask them how quickly we could get support if needed and to ‘lean forward’ in case we had to request assistance on January 6.”
During Senate testimony on Feb. 23, Sen. Ted Cruz asked Irving and Stenger whether they had any conversation with “congressional leadership” about supplementing the law enforcement presence on Jan. 6 or bringing in the National Guard.
Irving said he had “no follow up conversations and it was not until the 6th that I alerted leadership [Pelosi’s office] that we might be making a request and that was the end of the discussion.”
Stenger said that “it was Jan. 6 that I mentioned it to leader McConnell’s staff.”
So there is no evidence that Pelosi was made aware of any request for National Guard assistance or played any role in the decision not to fulfill Sund’s request on Jan. 4 for National Guard help on Jan. 6. The decision beforehand not to provide National Guard assistance on the Capitol grounds appears to be one made by both Irving and Stenger (who, again, was appointed by McConnell).
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GOP REVIEW FINDS no PROOF ARIZONA ELECTION STOLEN from TRUMP
By BOB CHRISTIE and CHRISTINA A. CASSIDY
PHOENIX (AP) — A Republican-backed review of the 2020 presidential election in Arizona’s largest county ended Friday without producing proof to support former President Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election.
After six months of searching for evidence of fraud, the firm hired by Republican lawmakers issued a report that experts described as riddled with errors, bias and flawed methodology. Still, even that partisan review came up with a vote tally that would not have altered the outcome, finding that Biden won by 360 more votes than the official results certified last year.
The finding was an embarrassing end to a widely criticized, and at times bizarre, quest to prove allegations that election officials and courts have rejected. It has no bearing on the final, certified results. Previous reviews of the 2.1 million ballots by nonpartisan professionals that followed state law have found no significant problem with the vote count in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix. Biden won the county by 45,000 votes, key to his 10,500-vote win of Arizona.
For many critics the conclusions, presented at a hearing Friday by the firm Cyber Ninjas, underscored the dangerous futility of the exercise, which has helped fuel skepticism about the validity of the 2020 election and spawned copycat audits nationwide.
“We haven’t learned anything new,” said Matt Masterson, a top U.S. election security official in the Trump administration. “What we have learned from all this is that the Ninjas were paid millions of dollars, politicians raised millions of dollars and Americans’ trust in democracy is lower.”
Cyber Ninjas acknowledged in its report that there were “no substantial differences” between the group’s hand count of ballots and the official count. But the report also made a series of other disputed claims the auditors say should cast doubt on the accuracy and warrant more investigation.
Trump issued statements Friday falsely claiming the review found widespread fraud. He urged Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican vying for his party’s U.S. Senate nomination, to open an investigation.
Brnovich, who has been criticized by Trump supporters for not adequately backing the review, did not commit: “I will take all necessary actions that are supported by the evidence and where I have legal authority,” he said in a statement before the report was made public.
Republicans in the state Senate ordered the review under pressure from Trump and his allies, subpoenaing the election records from Maricopa County and selected the inexperienced, pro-Trump auditors. It took months longer than expected and was widely pilloried by experts.
Still, the Arizona review has become a model that Trump supporters are pushing to replicate in other swing states where Biden won. Pennsylvania’s Democratic attorney general sued Thursday to block a GOP-issued subpoena for a wide array of election materials. In Wisconsin, a retired conservative state Supreme Court justice is leading a Republican-ordered investigation into the 2020 election, and this week threatened to subpoena election officials who don’t comply. Backers also called for additional election reviews in Arizona on Friday.
None of the reviews can change Biden’s victory, which was certified by officials in each of the swing states he won and by Congress on Jan. 6 — after Trump’s supporters, fueled by the same false charges that generated the audits, stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to prevent certification of his loss.
The Arizona report claims a number of shortcomings in election procedures and suggested the final tally still could not be relied upon. Several were challenged by election experts, while members of the Republican-led county Board of Supervisors, which oversees elections, disputed claims on Twitter.
“Unfortunately, the report is also littered with errors & faulty conclusions about how Maricopa County conducted the 2020 General Election,” county officials tweeted.
Election officials say that’s because the review team is biased, ignored the detailed vote-counting procedures in Arizona law and had no experience in the complex field of election audits.
Two of the report’s recommendations stood out because they showed its authors misunderstood election procedures — that there should be paper ballot backups and that voting machines should not be connected to the internet. All Maricopa ballots are already paper, with machines only used to tabulate the votes, and those tabulators are not connected to the internet.
The review also checked the names of voters against a commercial database, finding 23,344 reported moving before ballots went out in October. While the review suggests something improper, election officials note that voters like college students, those who own vacation homes or military members can move to temporary locations while still legally voting at the address where they are registered.
“A competent reviewer of an election would not make a claim like that,” said Trey Grayson, a former Republican secretary of state in Kentucky.
The election review was run by Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan, whose firm has never conducted an election audit before. Logan previously worked with attorneys and Trump supporters trying to overturn the 2020 election and appeared in a film questioning the results of the contest while the ballot review was ongoing.
Logan and others involved with the review presented their findings to two Arizona senators Friday. It kicked off with Shiva Ayyadurai, a COVID-19 vaccine skeptic who claims to have invented email, presenting an analysis relying on “pattern recognition” that flagged purported anomalies in the way mail ballots were processed at the end of the election.
Maricopa County tweeted that the pattern was simply the election office following state law.
“‘Anomaly’ seems to be another way of saying the Senate’s contractors don’t understand election processes,” the county posted during the testimony.
Logan followed up by acknowledging “the ballots that were provided for us to count ... very accurately correlated with the official canvass.” He then continued to flag statistical discrepancies — including the voters who moved — that he said merited further investigation.
The review has a history of exploring outlandish conspiracy theories, dedicating time to checking for bamboo fibers on ballots to see if they were secretly shipped in from Asia. It’s also served as a content-generation machine for Trump’s effort to sow skepticism about his loss, pumping out misleading and out-of-context information that the former president circulates long after it’s been debunked.
In July, for example, Logan laid out a series of claims stemming from his misunderstanding of the election data he was analyzing, including that 74,000 mail ballots were recorded as received but not sent. Trump repeatedly amplified the claims. Logan had compared two databases that track different things.
Arizona’s Senate agreed to spend $150,000 on the review, plus security and facility costs. That pales in comparison to the nearly $5.7 million contributed as of late July by Trump allies.
Maricopa County’s official vote count was conducted in front of bipartisan observers, as were legally required audits meant to ensure voting machines work properly. A partial hand-count spot check found a perfect match.
Two extra post-election reviews by federally certified election experts also found no evidence that voting machines switched votes or were connected to the internet. The county Board of Supervisors commissioned the extraordinary reviews in an effort to prove to Trump backers that there were no problems.
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