House Select Committee January 6 Insurrection

This thread is for comments about the Pelosi select committee as it forms and conducts its investigation. Posts about selection controversy, members, testimony, findings, conclusions, political and citizen responses to the Commission are welcomed.

To get the discussion going, Speaker Pelosi(D-CA) announced that she may appoint her own Republicans to the committee in response to Minority Leader McCarthy(R-CA) saying he might appoint Rep. Marjorie Greene(R-GA). Rep. Liz Cheney(R-WY) said today, "I believe this select committee is our only remaining option. I will vote to support it." Her name has arisen as a possible appointee.

"This investigation can only succeed if it is sober, professional and non-partisan. The threat to our democracy is far too grave for grandstanding or political maneuvering. The Committee should issue and enforce subpoenas promptly, hire skilled counsel and do its job thoroughly and expeditiously," she closed. Raw Story

An article in Politico says that Pelosi has the final say on who will be on the committee so there's no chance that Greene will be on it

Pelosi Names Committe Members, Includes Cheney (R-WY)

In a move to slap back at Minority Leader McCarthy, Speaker Pelosi named Rep. Cheney to the commission set to investigate all the Jan. 6th events and factors after the House Republican boss threatened to remove Cheney from all her party appointments on various House committees. Of the 8 already named, 7 are Democrats and several took active and leadership roles in Trumps two impeachments. Here's the list:

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who serves as the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, will chair the select committee on Jan. 6.

The other members include: Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA); Zoe Lofgren (D-CA; Pete Aguilar (D-CA); Stephanie Murphy (D-FL); Jamie Raskin (D-MD); and Elaine Luria (D-VA).

So that takes away McCarthy's option to not name Rs and make commission entirely D.
Will McCarthy now appoint Jim Jordan, MTG, Lauren Boebert, Louis Gohmert, and Matt Goetz?

>4 margd: He can, sure. But since Pelosi has the final say, they're not appointees that are likely to stand. He's in a position he likely doesn't want, since this requires some strategy and critical thinking. Not his best events. It will be interesting to see how he plays it, that's for sure.

>5 terriks: Pass the popcorn!

'This is no gift': McCarthy faces GOP resistance to serving on January 6 panel
Melanie Zanona, Manu Raju and Annie Grayer | July 1, 2021

...So far, only controversial firebrands such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida are openly jockeying for the job...

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/01/politics/republicans-january-6-committee-kevin-mc...

>6 margd: Good article. It illustrates how much better their position would be if they'd supported the independent commission. Now they're all squirming!

Pass the popcorn, indeed!

My money is on Pelosi only okaying Kinzinger, Stefanik, Herrera Beutler, Joyce, and outlier, McCaul. Frankly, I doubt McCarthy could dare even suggest the first three on the list; I don't think he'd have as much trouble with the last two, especially McCaul who I'd characterize as pretty spineless when pressed, but given to making mistakes on right wing positions and stumbling into sensibility due to inattention.

Here’s What to Expect from the Republicans on the Jan. 6 Committee
Kevin McCarthy met with Trump before announcing his appointees.
Tim Miller | July 20, 2021

(1)...Jim Jordan...the sweaty, jacketless, former wrestling coach who worked alongside a serial sexual assaulter while simultaneously not ever seeming to notice and allegedly telling one of his wrestlers he should help cover it up.

(2)...Jim “Numero Dos” Banks...is an election truther who polled his constituents on whether or not he should cancel the votes of citizens from other states. The new chairman of the House Republican Study Committee, he was among the members of Congress who joined Donald Trump in visiting the U.S.-Mexico border last month. Banks’s communications director is Buckley Carlson, son of Tucker, ensuring that the White Power Hour will have a direct line to leaks from the committee.

(3)...Troy Nehls, a former sheriff and freshman congressman from southeastern Texas, voted to overturn the election like Banks and Jordan. He expressed anger at the Jan. 6 insurrectionists in a Facebook post and helped barricade the doors of the House chamber to protect his colleagues.

...neither Armstrong nor Davis joined in the Jan. 6 votes objecting to the Electoral College results.

(4)...Kelly Armstrong, North Dakota’s member at large...On January 20 he conspicuously tweeted congratulating President Biden and Harris ... He voted against Trump’s second impeachment and against the creation of an independent January 6 commission, but he did say the riot was a “tragedy” and suggested that members “go back and talk some hard truths to your people. I’m going to do it.”

(5) Rodney Davis...southern Illinois...One of just 35 House Republicans who voted in favor of a bipartisan commission, Davis has said that Jan. 6 was “one of the worst days this great country has ever seen.”

In voting against the second impeachment of Trump, Davis said, “There must be accountability for leaders who deliberately misled the public but I fear that without thoughtful and clear-eyed leadership from both sides of the aisle, we are in danger of further violence and political unrest. There must be a full accounting of what happened leading up to and on the day of January 6th.”...

https://thebulwark.com/heres-what-to-expect-from-the-republicans-on-the-jan-6-co...

Well, the bar was set as low as McCarthy dared to go. Let's see how long his happy palship with tfg lasts after this move. Before the sun sets, he'll probably be somewhere whining McCarthy is "weak." Wouldn't argue with anyone who says McCarthy receives several death threats from so-called "fellow" Republicans for not appointing the gun nutty girls from GA and CO.

I hope Pelosi has the iron underwear to just say "No" to Johnson. I think she should replace him with a "leftist" rightist, like Adam Kinzinger to make a stand for Republican competency in government. That Party needs all the help Democrats can give it because its own membership won't, seeing as how it's become the cult of a demented personality rather than a conservative political party.

Word is Pelosi nixxed Jordan and Banks.

Petulant McCarthy Takes His Marbles and Goes Home

Following Speaker Pelosi's rejection of two of the most egregiously ideological Republican dummies for incompetence from the Jan 6 Committee, Minority Leader McCarthy yanks the remaining appointees of his choice. Then he tells the press that Republicans will hold their own circus, uh, "investigation" into the Insurrection. "Republicans will not be party to their (Democrats') sham process and will instead pursue our own investigation of the facts." Riiiight.

So, instead of letting three of his picks go to work -- one of whom did not vote to certify the election -- McCarthy calculates removing the others will destroy the credibility of the working commission

Pelosi's response to McCarthy drumming his heels on the marble floors of the Capitol during his hissy fit? First, she invited him to pick two replacements. But no, spite is the central platform of MAGArats, not governance. Left as the only adult in the room, Pelosi was succinct,"We have a bipartisan quorum. We can proceed." Tough but fair. Dismissed the righty before he got out of the starting gate. She knows that McCarthy playing his go-it-alone sulk has no chops; he fed them all to Trump's dogs.

Another well played move by Pelosi. I admit I was a bit nervous that she'd let the selections from McCarthy stand, but that proved a silly concern.

>12 Limelite: Seems unlikely there will be any kind of "investigation" from the Republicans on this. It's the last thing McCarthy wants to talk about. Instead, we can likely expect to see some kind of yammering about last year's marches, BLM, and prepared remarks to trot out to the podium whenever the Select Committee issues another subpoena.

Ha!

Unintended consequences of their present-day actions ~

Modern-day GOP reps want everyone in the world to know that they are upset because Pelosi failed to protect them from an assault by their own white nationalist, white supremacy, QAnon and Proud Boy cult-following core voters on January 6!

Jan. 6 select panel takes over House probe of Trump DOJ
BETSY WOODRUFF SWAN and NICHOLAS WU | 08/05/2021

A key House committee has postponed multiple scheduled witness interviews about Donald Trump’s final days in office, handing them off to the select panel investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

“As the Oversight Committee continues its crucial oversight work, we look forward to the Select Committee fully exposing the former president’s unconstitutional attacks on our democracy and attempts to stay in power after the American people voted him out of office,” House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) said i...

An aide to the Jan. 6 panel, speaking on condition of anonymity, did not dispute the handoff and added that the select committee would announce “additional actions” later.

The movement of those interviews with former Justice Department aides marks an abrupt change in House Democrats’ investigations of the end of Trump’s presidency. That shift underscores the growing importance of the select committee’s work...

...And notably, the shift in the investigation did not appear to affect the upper chamber ...The chair of that panel, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), told POLITICO that his committee planned to interview two Trump-era DOJ Justice Department officials soon...

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/05/jan-6-panel-house-probe-trump-doj-50262...

Jeffrey Rosen Races To Testify Before Insurrection-DOJ Combined Committee

A Tale of Two Jeffreys

The former acting attorney general, has emerged as a key witness in investigations that focus on efforts to undermine the election results. Based on the recent news reports about his and former DOJ official, Richard Donoghue's, last stand against 45's tyrannical waning days, he may also emerge a national hero.

Mr. Rosen had a two-hour meeting on Friday with the Justice Department’s office of the inspector general and provided closed-door testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Saturday.

. . .Rosen. . .has told the Justice Department watchdog and congressional investigators that one of his deputies tried to help former President Donald J. Trump subvert the results of the 2020 election, according to a person familiar with the interviews.

Put you money on that particular deputy being Jeffrey Clark, who kissed Trump's ass ring and set about doing his best to succeed as a traitor because he thought that DJT would reward him with the top job in the DOJ as a result of his attempts "to push top leaders to falsely and publicly assert that continuing election fraud investigations cast doubt on the Electoral College results."

On Friday Mr. Rosen told investigators from the inspector general’s office about five encounters with Mr. Clark, including one in late December during which his deputy admitted to meeting with Mr. Trump and pledged that he would not do so again, according to a person familiar with the interview.

Not only did Rosen know that Clark had circumvented the "chain of command" in the DOJ and was engaging in unauthorized conversations with Trump, Clark had also drafted a letter that he presented to Rosen to send to legislators in Georgia in which letter he directed them (GA legislators), wrongly, "that they should void Mr. Biden’s victory because the Justice Department was investigating accusations of voter fraud in the state."

Such a letter would effectively undermine efforts by Mr. Clark’s colleagues to prevent the White House from overturning the election results, and Mr. Rosen and his top deputy, Richard P. Donoghue, rejected the proposal.

P.S. Release the transcripts, Chairman Thompson! The American people need to know.

No Trasnscripts Yet, but Here's Clark's Draft Letter

Courtesy ABC News

Clark attached the draft letter in an email to Rosen and Donoghue telling them "I think we should get it out as soon as possible."

"Personally, I see no valid downsides to sending out the letter," Clark wrote. "I put it together quickly and would want to do a formal cite check before sending but I don't think we should let unnecessary moss grow on this."

The reply

"There is no chance that I would sign this letter or anything remotely like this," Donoghue said. "While it maybe true that the Department 'is investigating various irregularities in the 2020 election for President' (something we typically would not state publicly) the investigations that I am aware of relate to suspicions of misconduct that are of such a small scale that they simply would not impact the outcome of the Presidential Election."

Yes. Make no mistake, Trump and his swampy deep state coup allies within our government were at work to take down the USA.

Holy Mole-y? Whistle Blower Lawyer Blows Whistle

Attorney Mark Zaid, who represents whistleblower, Brian Murphy, the acting undersecretary for the Office of Intelligence and Analysis who had expressed frustration that DHS was not more actively monitoring domestic extremists as possible terrorism threats, has questioned why the Jan. 6 Commission hired a staffer who may have helped the Trump administration shut down DHS monitoring of coup plotters.

Zaid demanded to know why Joseph Maher, deputy general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, had been appointed as a senior staffer to the House select committee investigating the U.S. Capitol riot aimed at keeping Donald Trump in office.

"Maher is FACT witness for 1/6 event," Zaid said. "He helped shut down DHS monitoring of domestic extremists who led coup attempt.

"As part of the unlawful retaliation, Mr. Maher replaced Mr. Murphy at I&A in July 2020, and immediately shut down open-source collection efforts on domestic extremists that were being advocated and conducted by Mr. Murphy.

"To put it bluntly, Mr. Maher is likely (or should be) a direct fact witness as to why DHS failed -- under his leadership -- to identify, predict or help prevent the threats that grew into the events of January 6th."

This is a pretty serious charge that the fox is in the henhouse. Will Chairman Thompson or Speaker Pelosi act on this view of Maher's role under Trump and consider terminating his employment with the select committee? Will Thompson see fit to call Maher as a "direct witness"? The conundrum, as presented, could prove the first real test of the commission's credibility on any outcomes it reports resulting from its investigation.

Committee To Seek Phone Records of Some Republican Congress People

Notices to go out to various telecommunications companies requesting that they preserve the phone records of several people, including members of Congress.

Preserving communications records is the first step in an investigatory process that could eventually lead to witness testimony. The notices are set to go out as soon as this week. . .

Chairman Bennie Thompson also has signed off on a broader investigative strategy that will serve as a guide for the panel's work going forward. . .

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, have acknowledged speaking to then-President Donald Trump by phone on January 6.

Beyond phone records, similar letters sill go out to various social media platforms directing them to preserve records as well. The chairman declined to name which ones will get those requests. He went on to say the Committee has "several hundred people that make up the list of individuals we plan to contact."

In promising to comply to any letter from the Committee, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of OH issued a not-so-veiled threat.

"I've got nothing to hide. I've said that along, I've nothing to hide," Jordan, an Ohio Republican, said but then warned that should the committee take that step there could be political retribution.

Jordan and the other MAGARepublicans may soon regret blocking the independent inquiry panel last spring.

The scope and purview of the committee's work was part of what led to Republicans revolting over the concept of an independent bipartisan commission, but the select committee will likely be more expansive than the independent commission Republicans blocked in the spring.

The resolution empowering the Select Committee provides no specific limitations as to what it can and cannot investigate, leaving it up to the Committee to impose its own guard rails and narrower focus.

It seems that Democrats learned from and have adopted some of the procedures Republicans employed in their Benghazi witch hunt.

It also appears that the Committee could have limitless resources.

. . .its funding mirrors the framework for the select committee investigating the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi. That committee ended up spending close to $7 million over two years.

Some procedure Democrats have not adopted, however. After the public testimony from Capitol and Metropolitan police who were brutalized by right wing mobs storming the Capitol, no more public hearings are planned by the January 6th Commission.

"Stunning in Scope"

House select committee issues "a broad subpoena requesting documents from the Trump White House. . ." The subpoenas target "a very wide-ranging list of demands" and are directed to "eight different agencies including the DOJ, the FBI, and the National Archives."

CNN reporter Jessica Schneider said that the Archives could be "key" to the investigation because "it has custody of all the presidential records from Trump's time in office."

ADDENDUM: Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) told CNN's Kate Bolduan, ". . .about the commission's request for 'documents pertaining to the mental stability of Trump,' but Lofgren wouldn't elaborate on what prompted that request.

The conclusion may be drawn that the committee is looking for evidence of a long-time conspiracy as well as coordination with elements that may include elected officials and "Trump's army" of militia and neo-Nazi/racist gangs. At least, it's become apparent that this is going to be a thorough going investigation and one that, with these subpoenas, already has information or credible leads that such a path is one to pursue. To the very top.

Watch CNN video.

UPDATE NPR

Committee demand may be followed up by subpoenas.
They target communications by Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence and other top officials as well as White House visitor and call logs related to the day of the attack.
The agencies have two weeks to comply with the requests to turn over documents by Sept. 9.

Other communications for former officials targeted in the document requests include Mark Meadows, the former Trump chief of staff; Rudy Giuliani, Trump's former personal lawyer; and Ivanka Trump, daughter and former senior adviser.

The committee also goes into communications from last year involving Trump officials and top Republicans who figured largely in presidential election results in various states, including Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
(SNIP)
The requests also target figures who have been charged with helping spread misinformation ahead of Jan. 6, including Michael Flynn, the former White House official pardoned by Trump, and controversial Texas media personality Alex Jones.

Trump Response To Select Committee Document Demands

He's afraid. He's very afraid.

Laurence Tribe (Harvard Law) tribelaw | 8:54 AM · Aug 26, 2021:
Especially now that SCOTUS has unanimously spurned as bogus Trump’s claims of absolute immunity,
and now that the documents needed are beyond Trump’s control and out of his loyalists’ hands,
we can expect solid progress. Excellent explanation here:

Opinion: It looks like the Jan. 6 select committee means business
Jennifer Rubin | 8/26/2021

...The Post reports, “The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection issued its first sweeping requests Wednesday for records from federal agencies pertaining to the attack on the Capitol and President Trump’s efforts to subvert the election.” The list of agencies and individuals from whom documents are demanded is jaw-dropping in scope and confirm what we previously observed: This is an investigation of the entire plot to steal the 2020 election, of which Jan. 6 was only one element...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/26/jan-6-select-committee-means-...

>23 margd:

Tribe gets it.

What America needs to grasp is that Trump put into effect what Hillary Clinton accurately identified and labeled in the 90s, "a vast right wing conspiracy" to discredit and destroy not a mere political foe but the very idea of American democracy by attacking the heart of it -- the concept of of one man one vote in free and fair elections.

>24 Limelite: one man one vote

One person, one vote. I believe women can vote in the USA.

>25 John5918:

True. But that's not what the old saying is; it's only "man."

What Went Down in Michigan?

U.S. House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol wants to know what really went down in a post-2020 election White House meeting between then-President Donald Trump and Michigan legislative leaders, including state Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey (R-Clarklake) and former House Speaker Lee Chatfield (R-Levering). Republicans claimed afterward that the meeting was about COVID-19 relief, not to entertain Trump’s request to help overturn the 2020 election. Then why was Giuliani included via phone? And why would a bunch of Republican COVID-19 deniers want with aid to fight a pandemic that "didn't exist" in their state? That fishy smell isn't coming from Denmark!

Plus, following the supposed COVID-19 meeting all Trump tweeted about was how the meeting was

. . .“much different than reported by the media.

We will show massive and unprecedented fraud!” Chatfield and other lawmakers were seen drinking champagne at the Trump Hotel in Washington that night. Such a smart man. Unfortunately, as can be seen right here on LT thread about election and voter fraud, the only election fraud for which there is evidence and perps has been committed by Republicans. Not what the Orange Shitegibbon meant for his minions to believe.

Rep. Shirkey has subsequently lived life as a Trump Mini-Me.

Shirkey said that the election did come up, but he told Trump lawmakers had no role in awarding electoral votes. Shirkey also has endorsed the conspiracy theory that “dead people voted” in 2020 and called the Jan. 6 insurrection was a “hoax,” falsely claiming Trump supporters were not behind it.

And there's this. . .

Shortly after the meeting, the GOP-controlled Michigan House Oversight Committee invited Giuliani to testify on Dec. 2 about baseless allegations of election fraud. Giuliani told lawmakers they had the power to overturn the election.

What?! Not a word about all the relief Trump was sending to Michigan in its fight against COVID-19? Rudy, Rudy, Rudy!

All of which perfidious plotting has led to where we are now.

The special House committee has demanded documents from the National Archives and seven other agencies related to the attack and Trump’s attempt to overturn the election. Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said in a letter to the U.S. Archivist that the panel wants documents on “planning by the White House or others for legal or other strategies to delay, halt or otherwise impede the electoral count.”

As part of that, the panel wants communications from Nov. 3 and Jan. 20 between the Trump White House and three Michigan GOP officials: Shirkey, Chatfield and Wayne County Canvasser Monica Palmer. Trump called Palmer after the board certified Biden’s win during a chaotic Nov. 17 meeting in which Republican members initially refused to do so. Wayne is Michigan’s largest county that includes Detroit, a Democratic stronghold that’s 80% African-American. Palmer unsuccessfully tried to rescind her vote afterward.

Fasten your seatbelts, Americans, this investigation is going to reveal a lot more treason than the Republican and radical right's violent attempt to overthrow the government on January 6th. Needless to say, Democrats and real patriots in Michigan are pleased that the truth will come out for all of us to know, not just the Democrats in Michigan.

Trump’s political operation paid more than $4.3 million to Jan. 6 organizers but questions remain about the full extent of its involvement
Anna Massoglia | August 30, 2021

Former President Donald Trump’s political operation reported paying more than $4.3 million to people and firms that organized the Jan. 6 rally since the start of the 2020 election. However, questions remain about the full extent of the Trump campaign’s involvement in the “Save America” rally on the day of the Capitol attack as a House select committee’s sweeping requests attempt to shine some light on that day’s events.

...But since Trump’s campaign and joint fundraising committee funneled millions of dollars through layers of opaque firms and shell companies where the ultimate payee is hidden, the public may never know the full extent of the Trump campaign’s payments to organizers involved in the protests...

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2021/08/trumps-political-operation-paid-more-th...

Jan. 6th Committee Investigation Demonstrates What 'Far-reaching' Means

Phone records sought for Republican Reps. Andy Biggs, Paul Gosar, others in Jan. 6 probe. The Arizona Republic reports. . .

Both men opposed the creation of the special committee and have cast it as a partisan attack on Republicans.

Ali Alexander, a Texas man viewed as the lead organizer in the "Stop the Steal" rallies, singled out Biggs and Gosar, along with Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., for their assistance in a video published before the deadly melee. Brooks is among those whose phone records may be sought.
(SNIP)
Both Biggs and Gosar were part of a report of social media posts by those who voted against certifying the election compiled earlier this year by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who is a member of the special committee.
(SNIP)
CNN reported the panel now wants to review records for lawmakers who "either attended, spoke, actively planned or encouraged people to attend" rallies for "Stop the Steal."

In addition to Biggs, Brooks and Gosar, the panel reportedly wants to review phone records for Republican Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Jody Hice of Georgia, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

Sounds like a communications round-up of most of the Insurrectionist Rogues' Gallery. May be the first time when reaching out and touching someone will be viewed by many Republicans as the regrettable turning point of their lives for the worse.

Thugs, still...

Hugo Lowell (Guardian) @hugolowell | 5:56 PM · Aug 31, 2021:
New: House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy threatens telecom companies
to not comply with Jan. 6 committee request for phone records, claiming it would violate federal law —
“A Republican majority will not forget.”

Laurence Tribe (Harvard Law) tribelaw | 9:33 AM · Sep 3, 2021:

“To avoid having Jan. 6 transformed into a recurring ‘Ground Hog Day,’ the House cannot turn the other cheek on apparent threats to the Select Committee’s investigation.” It should refer McCarthy to DOJ for criminal prosecution under 18 USC sec 1505 *

* https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1505
----------------------------------------------------

Congress should fire back on McCarthy's obstruction tactics
Frederick Baron and Dennis Aftergut, opinion contributors — 09/03/21

...To head-off (telecom) companies’ compliance with evidence-preservation demands from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol assault, McCarthy declared that if the companies comply, Republicans “will not forget” whenever they retake control of Congress, potentially costing these companies “their ability to operate in the United States.”

The same day, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) piled on, declaring: “These telecommunications companies, if they go along with this, they will be shut down, and that's a promise.”

The Court has long recognized Congress’s authority to conduct investigations in order to execute its Constitutional powers of oversight and legislation...

Congress ... can refer criminal investigation matters to DOJ. Additionally, Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution empowers Congress to judge its members’ qualifications and punish them for disorderly behavior...

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/570690-congress-should-fire-back-on-mccart...

January 6 select committee refutes claim by McCarthy that the Justice Department cleared Trump of any role in insurrection (CNN)

The top members of the select committee investigating the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill refuted recent claims by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy that former President Donald Trump has been cleared by the Justice Department of any role in the insurrection. "(McCarthy) has suggested, based on an anonymous report, that the Department of Justice has concluded that Donald Trump did not cause, incite, or provoke the violence on January 6th," the statement read. "When this anonymous report was first published, the Select Committee queried the Executive Branch agencies and congressional committees involved in the investigation. We've received answers and briefings from the relevant entities, and it's been made clear to us that reports of such a conclusion are baseless"...

>32 John5918: Common sense reveals how baseless.

>1 Limelite: Surely the only thing to 'investigate' is: was there a pre-conceived plan to ... have a semi-riot, smash things up, injure policemen, and give a huge gift to the Left? If there was, what Evil Leftist Genius conceived it? If there wasn't ... what is there to investigate? The number of boneheads among patriots? We on the Right already know we've got our share of maniacs and not-very-bright people, easily suckered into doing something deeply stupid like this. Or were these people just imitating Antifa/BLM's summer riots? Probably not ... they didn't loot any stores.

Two things come out of this: we (the patriots) need a national organization which can provide tens of thousands of trained and equipped stewards at things like this ... both to protect them from AntiFa vermin, and to prevent provocateurs and/or boneheads from doing things like the 6 January riot. French political parties and trade unions have formations called their "service d'ordre". That's what we need. Men who are trained in waging 'sub-lethal' warfare against AntiFa attackers, and who know how to quickly take down provocateurs pretending to be patriots, or idiots who think they are patriots.

The other thing that comes out is the logical conclusion from the killing of Ashley Babbit. The officer who killed her said he didn't see a weapon on her. She was not threatening his life or the lives of others.. She was just smashing up a door, apparently. Okay .. that's what Antifa and BLM did all summer. So now we know -- a precedent has been set: next time AntiFa and BLM go out to burn down police staions and courthouses, and loot businesses ... policemen, empty your weapons into them.

And ... if there are any patriots reading this ... guys, this is not how you do insurrections. Go read Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution if you want to know what a real insurrection is like, and how to do it. It takes timing, planning, co ordination. You must neutralize the military first. You seize all the means of communication. You secure entry and exit routes. etc etc. And then read how not to do it, Albert Neuberg's Armed Insurrection (Neuberg was a collective pseudonym for several Comintern leaders, most of whom wrecked their organizations through trying to make insurrections without mass support.)

As the Left eat away at America's foundations, the time of social collapse draws nearer and nearer. But it could be a slow slide into something like a combination of Brazil and Lebanon. A good article in the NYT a couple of days ago on what life is now like in Beirut. No one knows the future. Our side has to organize, and it has to avoid doing deeply stupid things like 6 January, which was, to steal a line from Talleyrand, worse than a crime ... it was a blunder.

>43 prosfilaes:

Doug, I wonder what is your definition of a patriot? Does it only include people who share your own particular political views? Only people who see the USA as it is and as it should be through your own particular lens? Does it exclude people who uphold the very American values of democracy and political pluralism? Does it exclude people who see a different future than you do for your great country?

I happened to be in the USA when the second Gulf War started in 2003. Almost all of my US friends and colleagues opposed it; I joined them in some of their candlelight vigils. They called for the US invasion to end, and for US troops to be brought home. I saw some of your so-called "patriots" labelling them "unpatriotic" and "un-American" for not "supporting 'our boys'", and I saw them respond, "We are espousing the true American values, and we are the ones truly supporting 'our boys' by bringing them home out of harm's way". Whether one agrees or disagrees with that war is a legitimate political difference, but can't you see that both are patriots in their own way, and that you cannot redefine that term to include only your own political identity group?

#34 is arguably the most demented post I’ve seen here in some time. The number of people who have gone down the rabbit hole of mental instability since the advent of Trump onto our political scene is staggering and Doug is just another one. After reading this latest missive of his I decided to do with him the same as I did with earthling/Barney. I’ve blocked him. I don’t want to see any more of his crap.

>34 Doug1943: Our side has to organize

Your "side" is the side that attacked America on January 6 trying to overthrow the duly elected government. Organizing to overthrow the US government is literally treason, and it is a hanging offense. I would suggest that rather than engaging in treason with the sort of incompetents you seem to favor, which can only get you into serious trouble, you should go someplace where things are already the way you like them. Try Afghanistan - it sounds like you'd get along really well with the Taliban and I bet you'd look really cute in a shalwar kameez. They'd even let you wave a gun around and shout "death to America" without putting you on trial for it.

>34 Doug1943:--Patriot?

You lie.

J6 Committee Cranking Up the Heat

Trump may try to distract himself from the shrinking room he's in by suing his niece for disclosing that she found out he had cheated her out of her father's $10M. "But she shouldn't have because I fraudulently induced her to sign a non-disclosure agreement. So there!" But the walls just moved in even closer on him.

SCOOP: Jan. 6 select committee considering issuing subpoenas this week for Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, deputy chief Dan Scavino and former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale. @GuardianUS
Capitol attack panel said to be considering subpoenas to Trump White House aides
Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino and former campaign manager Brad Parscale are among those being targeted

From The Guardian.com:

The subpoenas – which are expected to be authorized as early as this week – would place House select committee investigators inside the White House and Trump campaign war rooms at the time of the insurrection as the panel prepares to ramp up the pace of its inquiry.

The scope and subjects of the subpoenas are not yet finalized and discussions about who to include in the first tranche are still ongoing, the source said, although the three Trump officials are presently considered likely targets.

Trump officials such as Meadows, Scavino and Parscale played a major part in advancing baseless and disproven lies about a stolen 2020 election that precipitated the “Stop the Steal” rally which descended into the insurrection as Trump supporters stormed the Capitol.

>34 Doug1943: Please explain how your “side” will “neutralize the military” “seize all means of communication” and “secure entry and exit routes.”

It’s fascinating that you’ve recommended a Communist author and a successful Communist revolution as a guide to what the correct course of action should be.

Isn’t what you’re calling for sedition?

And anyone who refers to another group of people as “vermin” is following in the footsteps of Joseph Goebbels.

Thanks for demonstrating exactly who and what you are.

Hugo Lowell (Guardian) @hugolowell | 1:25 PM · Sep 23, 2021
Wow — Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon says on his War Room podcast
he met with Trump and Giuliani the night before Jan. 6 to discuss
how to “kill the Biden presidency”, a potential admission of sedition.

Harvard Law Prof. Laurence Tribe: “Mounting evidence of a criminal conspiracy to commit sedition against the US Government and to give aid and comfort to an insurrection. See 18 USC secs. 2383 & 2384.”

J6 Committee Issues Subpoenas: These Former Aides:

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows
White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications Dan Scavino
Defense Department official Kashyap Pate
Trump adviser Stephen Bannon

The subpoenas are a significant escalation for the panel, which plans to begin its first closed-door witness interviews in the coming weeks after sorting through thousands of pages of documents the committee requested from federal agencies and social media companies.

UPDATE

From the J6 Committee:

Here's a tidbit about Steve Bannon that, at the very least, implies a planned conspiracy to commit seditious treason.

Stephen Bannon reportedly communicated with former President Trump on December 30th, 2020, urging him to focus his efforts on January 6th. Mr. Bannon also reportedly attended a gathering at the Willard Hotel on January 5th, 2021, as part of an effort to persuade Members of Congress to block the certification of the election the next day. Mr. Bannon is also quoted as stating, on January 5th, that “all Hell is going to break loose tomorrow.”

The subpoenas instruct the witnesses to appear at depositions on the following dates:

October 15, 2021: Mark Meadows and Daniel Scavino
October 14, 2021: Kashyap Patel and Stephen Bannon

The letters to the four witnesses can be found here:

Mark Meadows
Daniel Scavino
Kashyap Patel
Stephen Bannon

>34 Doug1943: we (the patriots)

Plan to overthrow the country? Remove the democratically elected government, elected by 7 million more votes than his opponent with a raw majority of the voters voting for him?

The officer who killed her said he didn't see a weapon on her. She was not threatening his life or the lives of others.

She was at the head of a mob that was actively threatening the lives of Vice President Pence and others, with the officer standing between Congressional members and the mob. The mob was actively assaulting police officers, putting 15 in the hospital that day.

policemen, empty your weapons into them.

She was shot once. The police fired one bullet during an event that so far has resulted in 600 arrests. How police can and should handle things is complex, but you're actively advocating them using lethal violence against people because of their political beliefs.

And here we go people, a proud "patriot" pushing violent overthrow of the government.

>43 prosfilaes: a proud "patriot" pushing violent overthrow of the government.

One wonders what Doug thinks about the imposition of sharia law in Texas...

People who would actually look at the video of what was going on outside the last set of doors of the House chambers would see this. A handful of guards between the doors and the mob with those in front of the mob punching around the guards and smashing the reinforced panes of the doors out. Whether they hit those guarding or not it was a real display of violence and Babbitt was the first of this enraged and very violent mob to try to go through one of the windows and when the officer moved to shoot her he didn’t shoot her in the head—he shot her in the shoulder. It was point blank but it was by no means an intentional kill shot. May the almighty if he/she/it exists have mercy on the officer for killing her but If you’re asking me he did his job.

I’d categorized her as a misguided Qanon insurrectionist and not at all a patriotic martyr. It doesn’t give me any pleasure that she died or felt compelled to take part in a coup over Trump’s completely unsubstantiated election lies. She wasn’t a patriot. She was a dupe.

Biden Hangs Tough

Kyle Cheney
@kyledcheney
·
PSAKI says Biden has decided he will NOT invoke executive privilege on Trump's behalf to shield any of his White House records from the Jan. 6 committee.

Our current president is indicating that he has no intention of running an administration like the Florida retiree. Obviously, the existential threat that a future Republican president would likewise do unto him what he believes he needs to do unto Trump poses no worries to Biden.

The path is now cleared for Trump to object to Biden's call within the next 60 days as a last gasp effort to prevent the J6 Committee from getting hold of the internal documents that it has demanded.

BREAKING: J6 Committee Issues New Subpoenas

Just now on MSNBC, Ari Melber's The Beat. Signs that the insurrection planners and coordinators with the White House are bieng pursued by House investigators. Eleven subpoenas went out to those who know how Trump incited the riot; who the funders of it were; and who was supplying live reports from the insurrection to Trump as it happened. One of those subpoenas is going out to a former Trump campaign official.

I will update when details become available.

UPDATE
From J6 Committee chair, Bennie Thompson (D-MS) issued eleven subpoenas this afternoon.

Women for America First (WFAF), which organized the rally preceding the insurrection, is among the groups being investigated. Intriguingly, the committee is also demanding "a range of records that include materials dealing with the planning, funding, and participation in the events."

Here is the complete list of those served.

Amy Kremer, founder and Chair of WFAF.
Kylie Kremer, founder and Executive Director of WFAF.
Cynthia Chafian, submitted the first permit application on behalf of WFAF for the January 6th rally, and founder of the Eighty Percent Coalition.
Caroline Wren, listed on permit paperwork for the January 6th rally as "VIP Advisor."
Maggie Mulvaney, listed on permit paperwork for the January 6th rally as "VIP Lead."
Justin Caporale, of Event Strategies, Inc., listed on permit paperwork for the January 6th rally as "Project Manager."
Tim Unes, of Event Strategies, Inc., listed on permit paperwork for the January 6th rally as "Stage Manager."
Megan Powers, of MPowers Consulting LLC, listed on permit paperwork for the January 6th rally as "Operations Manager for Scheduling and Guidance."
Hannah Salem, of Salem Strategies LLC, listed on permit paperwork for the January 6th rally as "Operations Manager for Logistics and Communications."
Lyndon Brentnall, of RMS Protective Services, listed on permit paperwork for the January 6th rally as "On-Site Supervisor."
Katrina Pierson, former Trump campaign official, reportedly involved in the organization of the January 5th and 6th rallies and was in direct communication with the former President about the rallies.

Dems Send a Message on Subpoenas

Things have changed in DC while the Dems control both chambers of Congress, and today one of them let potential witnesses to the House J6 Committee investigation know it.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) left no doubt that the House select committee investigating the Jan 6th Capitol riot will use every legal tool in the box to compel members of Donald Trump's inner circle to appear before it. Speaking to Ali Velshi on MSNBC, Raskin explained the meaning of 'criminal referrals' in the Congressional investigation process.

"The criminal referral is if our select committee on January 6th comes in possession of evidence related by criminal conduct by people that the Department of Justice is currently unaware of, we will refer it to them. In other words, if we have crimes that took place that the DOJ didn't know about we will send it to them for subpoenas, we have all of the same authority that a court would have to issue subpoenas.

(Congressional subpoenas are) "legally mandatory and we can coerce your cooperation through criminal contempt or civil contempt and (we can) fine them and use our own sanctions and that hasn't been done for a long time, but I don't think anybody should be testing our patience at this point.

"It's just not discretionary or optional. It's the government's subpoenas or documents from you: you have to testify unless you will assert a Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and we don't think that that exists.

". . . we will immunize you from the use of any information you give us, but you do still have to testify," he added. "The point is we're not going to play these games like they did during the Trump Administration."

Jan. 6 rioters exploited little-known Capitol weak spots: A handful of unreinforced windows
Sarah D. Wire | Oct. 4, 2021

Four major access points that Jan. 6 rioters used to break into and overtake the U.S. Capitol had something unusual in common: They were among a dozen or so ground-floor windows and glass-paned doors that had not been recently reinforced.

The majority of the Capitol’s 658 single-pane windows were quietly upgraded during a 2017-19 renovation of the historic building. The original wooden frames and glass were covered with a second metal frame containing bomb-resistant glass.

But planners skipped about a dozen ground-floor windows, including some located in doors, because they were deemed to be low risk in the event of implosion, largely due to their discreet or shielded location, or because the building couldn’t structurally handle the load of the heavier frames.

...Video shows some of the first rioters to break through the police line running past 15 reinforced windows, making a beeline for a recessed area on the Senate side of the building, where two unreinforced windows and two doors with unreinforced glass were all that stood between them and hallways leading to lawmakers inside who had not begun to evacuate.

A rioter’s fist cracked the glass of one window, video posted to social media shows. A stolen police riot shield and a wooden pole finished the job. In seconds, the unreinforced glass gave way in a single sheet. Rioters poured through the window. Similar methods were used to break glass in at least three other locations....

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-10-04/jan-6-rioters-exploited-little...

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/mike-pence-says-media-focus-on-january-6-is-a-media-...
Mike Pence Says Media Focus on January 6 Is a Media Distraction Meant to ‘Demean’ Trump Supporters

Mike "the imbecile" Pence is a leadership member of the "stupid and proud of it" modern-day GOP. He appears to be upset because Trump's cult followers were unable to carry out their plan to hang him. Lincoln must be shedding a waterfall of tears for the party he founded.

Note: this report was from Senate Judiciary Committee, not House Select Committee.

Senate Judiciary Committee issues sweeping report detailing how Trump and a top DOJ lawyer attempted to overturn 2020 election
Katelyn Polantz and Zachary Cohen | October 7, 2021

...Trump directly asked the Justice Department nine times to undermine the election result, and his chief of staff Mark Meadows broke administration policy by pressuring a Justice Department lawyer to investigate claims of election fraud, according to the report, which is based on witness interviews of top former Justice Department officials.

The Democratic-led committee also revealed that White House counsel Pat Cipollone threatened to quit in early January as Trump considered replacing then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with Jeffrey Clark, a DOJ lawyer who supported election fraud conspiracies.

Cipollone called the plot a "murder-suicide pact," according to the committee's investigation.

After the eight-month investigation, the findings highlight the relentlessness of Trump and some of his top advisers as they fixated on using the Justice Department to prop up false conspiracies of election fraud. The committee report called Trump's repeated demands an abuse of presidential power.

Soon after the release of the report Thursday morning, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley's office issued a GOP version, which pushes back on the Democrats' findings and defends Trump, saying he "listened to his senior advisors and followed their advice and recommendations."...

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/07/politics/senate-judiciary-committee-investigation...
---------------------------------------------------------

Subverting JUSTICE
How the Former President and His Allies Pressured DOJ to Overturn the 2020 Election
MAJORITY STAFF REPORT
394 p
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Interim%20Staff%20Report%20FINAL....

...B. Key Findings
FINDING 1: President Trump repeatedly asked DOJ leadership to endorse his false claims that the election was stolen and to assist his efforts to overturn the election results...

FINDING 2: White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows asked Acting Attorney General Rosen to initiate election fraud investigations on multiple occasions, violating longstanding restrictions on White House-DOJ communications about specific law-enforcement matters...

FINDING 3: After personally meeting with Trump, Jeffrey Bossert Clark pushed Rosen and Donoghue to assist Trump’s election subversion scheme—and told Rosen he would decline Trump’s potential offer to install him as Acting Attorney General if Rosen
agreed to aid that scheme...

FINDING 4: Trump allies with links to the “Stop the Steal” movement and the January 6 insurrection participated in the pressure campaign against DOJ...

FINDING 5: Trump forced the resignation of U.S. Attorney Byung Jin (“BJay”) Pak, whom he believed was not doing enough to address false claims of election fraud in Georgia. Trump then went outside the line of succession when naming an Acting U.S.
Attorney, bypassing First Assistant U.S. Attorney Kurt Erskine and instead appointing Bobby Christine because he believed Christine would “do something” about his election fraud claims...

FINDING 6: By pursuing false claims of election fraud before votes were certified, DOJ deviated from longstanding practice meant to avoid inserting DOJ itself as an issue in the election...

Well, this is an utterly shocking surprise.

Nice to know the Senate Judiciary Committee majority read the newspapers over the last year when all their "key" findings were reported.

The key finding for this reader is that the Republican Party aided and abetted the entire criminal enterprise that was the DJT administration, and that the RNC should be indicted as a co-conspirator.

Senate Judiciary Committee pulled together 394 pages of details, a service I think. (Refute THAT, T-rats!)

Bannon Stands with Trump: Defies J6 Committee Subpoena

Steve Bannon has informed the House committee investigating the US Capitol riot that he will not cooperate with their subpoena to provide related documents. . . Bannon is one of four Trump advisors subpoenaed who is defiant. Mark Meadows is the only other of the Gang of Four who has also responed to the J6 Committee, but his response is unknown. The response of the other two, Kash Patel and Dan Scavino, is unknown.

Bannon has fired the first shot in what appears to be a looming fight over executive privilege. Democrats have signaled that they will not put up with subpoena defiance and intend to use their full power to force subpoenaed witnesses' to appear before the committee where they may either plead the 5th or talk. But they will be compelled to appear.

Time will tell.
____________________________________________________________
UPDATE: The time is 2:10 PM 10/8/21

House J6 Committee will "swiftly consider" making a criminal referral for Steve Bannon if he continues to defy their subpoena. Adhering to his assertion a week ago today,

. . .committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) said they would not wait for a court to settle the dispute, reported Politico.

"We will not allow any witnesses to deny a lawful subpoena or attempt to run out the clock, and we will swiftly consider a criminal contempt of Congress referral," the pair said in a statement.

The lawmakers said former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Defense Department chief of staff Kash Patel have been engaging with the committee, while longtime Trump aide Dan Scavino still has not been served with his subpoena.

Scavino seems to be hiding from process servers.

Ex-Georgia AG Confirms He Quit Under Pressure from USAG Barr

From the Senate Judiciary Committee comes this related story to the House J6 Committee, similarly investigating the Trump Administration's attempts to overthrow the government of the United States by conspiring to raise insurrection and to overthrow the 2020 presidential election.

Former Georgia Attorney General, Byung "BJ" Pak, told Senate investigators that he resigned because former Attorney General Bill Barr told him to make it a "top priority" to investigate whether suitcases filled with "illegal" ballots were counted in Georgia's 2020 presidential election.

. . .Pak revealed how he actually did try to probe voter fraud claims made by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, only to find them without merit.

. . .Pak told committee investigators. "That was debunked. I was satisfied of the explanation."

Trump then pushed Department of Justice officials to fire Pak. . .Pak would subsequently resign before he could be terminated.

Bannon Loses Subpoena Battle Before the Fight

Appearing on CNN. . .former federal prosecutor Micheal Zeldin warned former Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon that he has no legal case that will keep him from having to comply with the House J6 Committee subpoena.

"He should lose," Zeldin began before adding, "Executive privilege is a privilege that allows the president at the time to seek candid advice from his senior advisers. Bannon didn't work in the White House since 2017. Therefore, on its face, the privilege is inapplicable to him. I think this is just typical Bannon stalling.

"His case should be resolved pretty quickly, and he should lose," he added.

It's Going To Get Ugly Soon

The road to a complete J6 Insurrection investigation goes both "through" and "over" Congressional Republicans. One of those who can expect tracks all over him is Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). He may have inadvertently handed committee members. . .the legal pathway to compel him to testify under oath about his many phone calls to Trump before, during, and after the violent Capitol attack.

“In order to get at the truth, the committee is going to need to selectively, carefully and precisely target the testimony, documents and other evidence of some of these lawmakers,” said Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who advised the House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump impeachment. “Clearly they’re central.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee released its report this week, which referenced Rep. Jim “I’ve got nothing to hide,” Jordan’s (R-Ohio) contacts with the White House during Trump's quest to overturn the election. As per. . .

. . .Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) asked the House to investigate Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) for helping Trump pressure the Justice Department to overturn the election. Perry played a key role in linking Trump with a Justice Department official who was willing to aid. . .

. . .the former president's ambitions.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was also busy working the phone line to Trump at that time. The coals are heating up underneath his chair, too. Because he spoke directly with Trump as a mob breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, the House panel asked telecommunications companies to retain the records of multiple lawmakers -- I'm looking at you, Kevin.

According to Eisen the committee should focus on subpoenaing lawmakers who had direct contact with key players in the events surrounding Jan. 6, since they can provide direct evidence of them and strengthen their case that largely hangs on documents as of now. But here, Congress is entering unexplored waters. No modern precedent for the House to subpoena fellow lawmakers other than in the context of an Ethics Committee investigation exists. The niceties of the law will no doubt be contested, and Politico does a good job of laying out the minefield the House Committee is getting set to navigate.

Scavino Served! Sort Of

On Friday, a proxy at Mar-a-Lago accepted the subpoena on behalf of Dan Scavino, former social media chief for the Trump White House, who was reportedly in New York at the time. Will he appear in front of the House J6 Committee next week? Remains to be seen. The deadline to respond was Thursday, Oct. 7. Process servers have been on the hunt for Scavino since the issue date of the subpoena, which is September 23rd.

In its letter to Scavino, the committee outlined that, because of his close proximity and long history of working with the former President, he can provide useful information regarding conversations Trump had on January 5 about trying to convince members of Congress to not certify the election, the former President's movements on January 6, and the broader communication strategy the White House had in the lead up to the January 6 rally.

Scavino will consult his lawyers before responding. He's playing a delay game, like Bannon, but is not yet spouting defiance of the summons.

House J6 Committee Will ‘Immediately’ Move to Seek Criminal Charges Against Steve Bannon if He Is a No-Show Today

Brass tacks, Mr. Bannon? Calling it “Bannon’s game of chicken,” CNN reports the former Trump campaign CEO and former Trump White House senior counselor is facing “his last chance to reverse course and comply with the panel’s subpoena before lawmakers likely move to seek criminal charges.”

Bannon’s attorney says his client “is not required to respond at this time” to the subpoena, claiming Donald Trump has the right to invoke executive privilege, but legal experts overwhelmingly agree that’s false.
(SNIP)
Acknowledging that it “could take some time” for the House to send the criminal contempt referral to DOJ, CNN reports “the committee could take initial steps within hours of the panel’s stated deadline — which is Thursday.”

Coould this mean 'game over' for future witnesses the J6 Committee may call? It certainly signals no-nonsense from Democrats.

UPDATE

4PM
House J6 Committee sets date to vote on criminal contempt of Congress charge against Bannon for next week. It will then be handed over to the full House for a vote. If it passes, it goes to the USAG's office for prosecution.

"Mr. Bannon has declined to cooperate with the Select Committee and is instead hiding behind the former President's insufficient, blanket, and vague statements regarding privileges he has purported to invoke," said committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS). "We reject his position entirely. The Select Committee will not tolerate defiance of our subpoenas. . . "

Should all this lead to a trial and guilty verdict, I predict there will be no pardon for Bannon for his criminal behavior this time. That was easy.

J6 Committee Grills Former Trump AG for 8 Hours

Former Trump acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen reportedly talked at length with the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th Capitol riots. Rosen resisted efforts by Trump to have the Department of Justice declare the 2020 election fraudulent.

. . .many questions at Rosen's hearing revolved around his interactions with former Trump DOJ official Jeffrey Clark. . .

"Clark authored and circulated a draft letter dated Dec. 28, addressed to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) that urged officials in the state to investigate unfounded claims of fraud," according to WaPo reports. . .Trump entertained a plan to oust acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and replace him with Clark, who was open to pursuing Trump's attempts to overturn the election results."

The House committee subpoenaed Clark to appear yesterday. He has yet to respond.

A pattern of investigation is beginning to emerge from the committee's subpoena actions. First it calls the reliable witness to the facts whose anticipated testimony is likely to back u the evidence already known from documents and records. Then it subpoena's the involved witness to events in order to determine if they will testify to ALL that they know truthfully, or lie, hide, or obfuscate under oath. This is the kind of interrogation technique employed by LE of a suspect to determine whether the person is guilty of the alleged crime (by confession) or if the person is guilty of criminal coverup from lying to them, or appears guilty by misdirection when they downplay their involvement, or point the finger at others in the face of already gathered evidence against them.

Elad Gross (civil rts attorney) @BigElad · Feb 23
https://twitter.com/BigElad/status/1364335691149303813

After the January 6 “Stop the Steal” event at the Capitol, @MarkPedroli and I requested records of communications between Missouri’s Attorney General’s Office and dark money groups that issued a robocall recruiting people to the event.

My report:
THE HIDDEN ASSAULT ON DEMOCRACY
A REPORT FOR THE PEOPLE OF MISSOURI
PREPARED BY ELAD GROSS
FEBRUARY 2021 REPORT 7
https://b32a21b6-c9e4-4029-a347-89a5b165c921.filesusr.com/ugd/37e92a_cb6008165d8...

We received 90 pages of documents that show the influence of these secretive organizations over state Attorneys General and their staff.

The records showed:
Summary ( https://twitter.com/BigElad/status/1364335696278933505/photo/1 )

The Rule of Law Defense Fund (RLDF) held at least 30 meetings for state Attorney General senior staff from July 2020-mid-January 2021, including one on January 5, 2021, during work hours. 3/
Memo ( https://twitter.com/BigElad/status/1364335701425274880/photo/1 )

• The Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) hosted a "War Games" meeting in late September 2020 attended by at least 44 senior Attorney General staff members, including the Solicitor General of Missouri, to plan for a potential electoral defeat of President Trump. 4/
Image-p 10 of report ( https://twitter.com/BigElad/status/1364335706584285189/photo/1 )

• RAGA sent emails addressed to "Generals" with descriptions of independent expenditures the group was making in Attorney General races. This coordination is illegal in many states and appears to be most problematic for RAGA member and West VA AG Patrick Morrisey. 5/
Image-p 18 ( https://twitter.com/BigElad/status/1364335711726563330/photo/1 )

• 19 corporations and organizations with special access to Attorneys General and their staff held policy sessions with state Attorneys General, including one session with Missouri's Attorney General called "The Business of Making Friends." 6/
Image-corporate influence (!) ( https://twitter.com/BigElad/status/1364335716537413637/photo/2 )

The U.S. Chamber, which is leading an effort to eliminate corporate liability for COVID-19-related cases, participated in a session called "Civil Liability and COVID" with Florida's Attorney General. 7/

Alabama's Attorney General participated in a session with a Facebook representative, and the Attorney General is one of only a few now not participating in a nationwide antitrust action against Facebook. 8/

You can see this report and all of the records at
TAKE BACK MISSOURI
For We the People
See Our Legal Actions
No MO Dark Money
http://takebackmo.org/darkmoney 9/

This investigation implicates for categories of legal and ethical concern:
1) Use of state resources for political purposes, which is illegal in many states
2) Potential violation of public records laws
3) Conflict of interest
4) Illegal political coordination 10/
Image-p 17 ( https://twitter.com/BigElad/status/1364335724632408068/photo/1 )

We need to make a lot of fixes to our political system. The report ends with 5 recommendations:
1) Full investigate the issues in this report and provide a transparent accounting of dark money influence in our government
2) Strengthen and enforce public records laws 11/
3) Establish and enforce conflict of interest policies
4) Reform our campaign finance system and end dark money
5) Establish more ombudsman offices to increase transparency and accountability 12/
Image-p 19 recommendations ( https://twitter.com/BigElad/status/1364335729988485124/photo/1 )

Our government is not representing us. It's representing corporations and hidden organizations with money and power. We the People need to take it back.
Wherever you are, you can help save our democracy. Visit http://takebackmo.org to get involved.
13/13

Trump sues Jan. 6 committee, National Archives
The former president’s lawyers filed the suit in D.C. district court on Monday.
BETSY WOODRUFF SWAN and KYLE CHENEY | 10/18/2021

...In their suit, Trump’s lawyers ask a federal judge to invalidate the entire request from the select committee, to block the Archives from turning over any materials to Congress in response to the request, and to specifically block the Archives from turning over any documents that Trump says are covered by executive privilege...also asking for the court to have the Archives first identify all documents from Trump’s White House that could be responsive to the request, then let Trump’s lawyers fully review them before sharing them with Congress. That process could take years.

The lawsuit kicks off a complex, high-stakes legal fight over congressional investigations and executive privilege.

...The thrust of Trump's claim is twofold, arguing first that the Jan. 6 committee's request for documents is so broad as to be unconstitutional. Secondly, the suit asserts that the committee lacks a legitimate "legislative purpose" for pursuing the documents. Both arguments were features of a lawsuit Trump lodged in 2019, when Democrats sought to obtain his financial records from the accounting firm Mazars USA.

That Mazars fight resulted in a Supreme Court decision that found limits to congressional probes related to sitting presidents -- not former ones -- but also underscored Congress' broad power to demand information related to its legislative efforts...

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/18/trump-sues-jan-6-committee-national-arc...
----------------------------------------------------------------

Trump’s suit is riddled with groundless assertions, starts and ends by treating Trump as though he were still POTUS, belittles Congress’s obvious need to enact laws strong enough to prevent a coup and an insurrection, and invokes inapplicable privileges.
- Laurence Tribe (Harvard Law) tribelaw | 8:27 PM · Oct 18, 2021

How the 'Stop the Steal' movement outwitted Facebook ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection
Shannon Bond & Bobby Allyn | October 22, 20219:50 PM ET

Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/22/1048543513/facebook-groups-jan-6-insurrection

House investigators target the money trail behind January 6 rally
Jamie Gangel, Whitney Wild, Zachary Cohen, Ryan Nobles and Kristen Holmes | October 22, 2021

The Democratic-led panel is focused in part on understanding how event organizers and vendors were paid, and how the two rallies were funded, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation...Investigators also want to know if any funding came from domestic extremists or foreign sources

...the committee has divided its work into at least five investigative teams, each with their own color designation.

The 'green' team, for example, is tasked with tracking money, including the funding behind the rallies, as well as untangling the complex web of financial ties between rally organizers and entities affiliated with former President Donald Trump or his campaign, according to multiple sources.

Some of the other teams such as the "red" "blue" and "gold" teams are examining everything from the motivation of participants, whether there was coordination between groups, and whether Trump used his executive authority to pressure lawmakers, former Vice President Mike Pence and the Justice Department...

..."There was a lot of money raised and a lot of money given, millions of dollars ... to pay for the buses and the hotels and the meals and the accommodation," Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat on the select committee, told CNN this week. "A lot of the staffing of it came from people who used to work for Donald Trump on his campaign and then just went over to work on the rally stuff, so we're gonna get to the bottom of that stuff."

...The panel has already hired...experienced financial investigators

...Steve Bannon..."Women for America First" (including Amy Kremer and Caroline Wren)...security forces at the rallies (Roger Stone)...'One Nation Under God'...Stop the Steal" or STS (Nathan Martin and Ali Alexander)...

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/22/politics/house-investigators-target-the-money-tra...

>64 margd: FWIW I don’t think the people running FB and it’s subsidiaries are at all concerned about anything but their bottom line and if stoking political divisions helps drive profits that company is more than happy to do so.

Two sources are communicating with House investigators and detailed a stunning series of allegations to Rolling Stone, including a promise of a “blanket pardon” from the Oval Office

EXCLUSIVE: Jan. 6 Protest Organizers Say They Participated in ‘Dozens’ of Planning Meetings With Members of Congress and White House Staff
Hunter Walker | October 24, 2021

Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.)
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.)
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.)
Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.)
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.)
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas)

...Gosar...dangled the possibility of a “blanket pardon” in an unrelated ongoing investigation to encourage them to plan the protests.

“Our impression was that it was a done deal,” the organizer says, “that he’d spoken to the president about it in the Oval … in a meeting about pardons and that our names came up. They were working on submitting the paperwork and getting members of the House Freedom Caucus to sign on as a show of support.”

...Gosar’s chief of staff, Thomas Van Flein...

...Katrina Pierson, who worked for Trump’s campaign in 2016 and 2020...key liaison between the organizers of protests against the election and the White House.

...White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows,...played a major role in the conversations surrounding the protests...

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/exclusive-jan-6-organizers-m...

Rolling Stone Details: Republican Politicians' J-6 Insurrection Plotting

Along with making plans for Jan. 6, the sources say, the members of Congress who were involved solicited supposed proof of election fraud from them. But its clear, they wanted insurrection with or without it because the planning of it was their main focus. Despite this, the witnesses insist that their involvement never included attacking the Capitol, only the rally on the Ellipse.

They suggest that the escalation into violence happened because Ali Alexander (more about him below) involved leaders of the Oath Keepers in the plans for that day, but not them.

Rolling Stone separately confirmed a third person involved in the main Jan. 6 rally in D.C. has communicated with the committee. This is the first report that the committee is hearing major new allegations from potential cooperating witnesses. While there have been prior indications that members of Congress were involved, this is also the first account detailing their purported role and its scope. The two sources also claim they interacted with members of Trump’s team, including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who they describe as having had an opportunity to prevent the violence.

Two of those witnesses testified to "participating in 'dozens' of planning briefings ahead of that day when Trump supporters broke into the Capitol." They also allege Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) dangled 'blanket pardons' to encourage them to plan the insurrection. Said one. . .

. . "in a meeting about pardons and that our names came up. They were working on submitting the paperwork and getting members of the House Freedom Caucus to sign on as a show of support."

That paperwork may be included in the documents in possession of the House committee that backs up the two witnesses' accounts. It also has interest in Gosar’s chief of staff, Thomas Van Flein, who the two allege "was personally involved in the conversations about the 'blanket pardon' and other discussions about pro-Trump efforts to dispute the election." Van Flein was included in the sweeping demand by the committee to preserve documents for investigation.

Ali Alexander, who led the Stop the Steal movement . . .confessed in a since-deleted livestream broadcast that “I was the person who came up with the Jan. 6 idea with Congressman Gosar, Congressman Mo Brooks, and Congressman Andy Biggs.” Further, one of the witnesses accuses. . .

Alexander of ratcheting up the potential for violence that day while taking advantage of funds from donors and others who helped finance the events, confirmed that he was in contact with those three members of Congress.

. . .the two sources say they can provide new details about the members’ specific roles in these efforts and plan to share that information with congressional investigators right away. Further, they are expecting to testify publicly.

“I have no problem openly testifying,” says one. (partially edited for brevity)

Despite their disgruntlement with the Trump Admnistration's failure to produce those pardons and their continuing allegiance to Trumpism, their desire to get out the truth about their involvement seems to arise from a desire to slap back. “It’s clear that a lot of bad actors set out to cause chaos. … They made us all look like shit," says one. Says the other, “I do kind of feel abandoned by Trump. I’m actually pretty pissed about it and I’m pissed at him.”

Unlike the anticipated witnesses, none of the accused elected officials responded to Rolling Stone's requests for their personal comments regarding the allegations.

UPDATE: At Least 5 Former Trump Aides Have Met w/ J6 Committee

And they are talking.

In an interview with Lisa Lerer, NYT national political correspondent, CNN reports that they did so voluntarily, but it is unknown if they came forward on their own, or if the committee reached out to them. In either case this is significant communication the investigators are gleaning from operatives inside the WH. It could signal an increased disenchantment with the Orange Retired Floridian among former Trump loyalists, a phenomenon that seems to be growing within the disintegrating cult. Mark Lindell, Mr. Pillow Guy, many of the cultist insurrectionists who now disavow him, and a number of bank-rollers to his previous candidacy have broken free of the enchantment -- for better or worse (in Lindell's case). Now the indications are, once freed, more and more are willing to reveal palace secrets. Let's hope they prove valuable to building a criminal case against Trump that USAG Garland will be unable to refuse to prosecute.

Kaitlan Collins (CNN) @kaitlancollins | 2:45 AM · Oct 30, 2021:
https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/1454338718345596931
Major news overnight — Per a sworn declaration from the National Archives, Trump is trying to keep more than 700 pages of files out of the hands of the Jan. 6 committee, including 30 pages of his daily schedule, visitor logs and call records for Trump/Pence, @kpolantz reports.

This includes documents from Trump's top aides, including three handwritten notes from Mark Meadows, proposed talking points for Kayleigh McEnany, files from Stephen Miller and deputy counsel Pat Philbin, the White House "daily diary" and drafts for remarks regarding 1/6
-----------------------------------------------------------

David Hensley @DAHensleySr | 2:48 AM · Oct 30, 2021:
But her emails

>70 margd: Suspicious much?

WATB, Trump Whines To Judge, "Make Them Stop Picking on Me"

Instead of using a shovel to offload his dirt to the J6 Committee, Trump demands that it hand-pick through his garbage. He . . .is pleading with a federal judge in Washington to slow down the Jan. 6 committee’s effort to obtain his White House records, instead asking her to order a document-by-document review that could take months.

In a 33-page filing Tuesday, Trump lawyer Jesse Binnall also falsely claimed that "both the FBI and Senate have confirmed that there was no coordinated effort, including at the White House, to overturn the election on January 6," according to Politico.

Since Biden denied him executive privilege over documents relating to his criminal attempt to overthrow a legitimate election, Trump seems to be trying to argue that that privilege is unitized and doesn't cover all insurrectionist things he did while the chief executive -- à la, it's not the deluge, it's the drip, drip, drip of only certain drops that caused the flood. As if that that lie about the flood of incriminating documents weren't enough, Trump's lawyer tried to inundate the court with another whopper.

In making his argument, Binnall falsely claimed that “both the FBI and Senate have confirmed that there was no coordinated effort, including at the White House, to overturn the election on January 6.”

But the FBI has stated no such official conclusion, and lawmakers have insisted this is not the case.

Further, the investigative committee has heard sworn testimony that belies Binnall's statement.

“We’ve received answers and briefings from the relevant entities, and it’s been made clear to us that reports of such a conclusion are baseless,” Jan. 6 Committee leaders, Reps. Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney said in a statement last month.

Not to mention the 300,000,000 million or so eye-witnesses as to the events of January 6th, and the one-third of that number, or so, of social media users who know who said and did what beforehand.

There's little support for Trump's tenuous position structured on a foundation of misrepresentation of fact among legal eagles.

While a former president may have an interest in asserting privilege over records, there’s no supporting case law that would allow a former president to override his successor on such matters. Doing so would create a “shadow presidency” those experts say.

Ultimately, so-called "executive privilege" is a courtesy, not a Constitutional right. For a former president like Trump to get up on his hind legs and demand to be treated more than courteously is nothing but boorish chutzpah and should be slapped down as such by Judge Tanya Chutkan.

Wait. . . There's More!

Trump's claims of executive privilege blown out of the water by his bosom buddy on Faux News, Jeanine Pirro who orchestrated campaign payments for 'command centers' at DC hotels. According to WaPo. . .

Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani and the city's former police chief Bernie Kerik had been paying for hotel rooms and travel related to their efforts to overturn Trump's election loss, but the pair grew concerned by early December as the bills piled up.

"How do I know I'm gonna get my money back?" Kerik thought at the time, as he recently told the newspaper.

He knew Guiliani hadn't been paid either and that's when Pirro stepped in to use her influence on the RNC to shell out. Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel spoke to Kerik by phone but refused to reimburse either him of Giuliani. Instead, she told him to go dun the Trump Campaign.

With Trump's approval, it cut the first check to Kerik in mid-December.

. . .and eventually paid more than $225,000 for hotel rooms and suites at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., that served as a "command center" for efforts to overturn the election results ahead of Jan. 6 riots.

Such payments undermine Trump's executive privilege claims because they pertain to campaign activities not to his official duties as president. In short, Trump, the candidate, was paying for help to overturn an election he had lost using his campaign war chest to do so.

Former Justice Department official John Yoo, who advised former vice president Mike Pence's staff that there was no legal basis to deny the certification of Joe Biden's election win, agreed that the payments could upend Trump's defense.

"If he acts as a president, he gets these things we talk about — executive privilege and immunity," Yoo said. "But if he's acting as a candidate, he's deprived of all of those protections."

Insurrection is not the official business of presidents, even Trump's bookkeeping proves he knew that to be true; therefore, no executive privilege exists for him now in spite of hiding his machinations behind his re-election campaign. Therein lies the rub. The person Trump once bragged he could shoot in the middle of 5th Avenue is himself. In the foot.

>72 Limelite: These are records that belong to the government/the people, yes? It’s very clear they should all be available for examination by our Congress.

>74 2wonderY:

Agreed

Follow-up on WATB Trump's Stupid Argument Stunt

The judge laughed out loud at the lawyer in court

The problem bullies have is that they assume no one is as "smart" as they are.

House Select Committee 'Burning' Through the Evidence

Jeffrey Clark, a former senior Justice Department official in the Trump administration, testifying before the committee today.

Clark, the former acting head of the Justice Department's civil division, was a proponent of Trump's unfounded claims that Democrat Joe Biden's victory in the November 2020 election was the result of fraud.

. . .the panel said it needed to understand all the details about efforts inside the previous administration to amplify misinformation about election results.

In January, the Justice Department's inspector general announced his office was launching an investigation into whether Clark plotted to oust then-Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen so he could take over the department and help pursue Trump's baseless claims by opening an investigation into voter fraud in Georgia.

A U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee report found Clark also drafted a letter he wanted Rosen to approve which urged Georgia to convene a special legislative session to investigate voter fraud claims.

The J6 committee is proving to be mega-effective in uncovering the evidence of Trump's seditious crimes. Members of the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol have interviewed more than 150 people so far, ranking member Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said Thursday (yesterday).

Cheney, the top Republican on the select committee, said that the panel spoke to “a whole range of people connected to the events, connected to understanding what happens.”

What this means: The vast majority of the committee’s work is happening out of public view.

The public has just seen the tip of the iceberg. Only a small list of interviews have been publicly confirmed. Those include former Trump Department of Justice officials like Richard Donoghue, pro-Trump activist Dustin Stockton, former Trump White House aide Alyssa Farah and several people convicted of breaching the Capitol on Jan. 6.

January 6 committee chair said he has signed about 20 new subpoenas that are going out 'soon'. "Today the committee is expected to interview former Justice Department official Jeffery Clark, who was integral to helping Trump in his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election."

The committee's interest in Clark and previous meeting with former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen underscore the panel's interest in learning more about how Trump attempted to pressure top officials to investigate claims of election fraud during his final days in office.

. . .none of the individuals that the committee continues to engage with have defied their subpoena like Steve Bannon.

Yesterday the committee interviewed a Jan. 6 rioter who witnessed state GOP contacts with Trump allies.

The rioter, who interviewed with the committee twice in the past week, described knowledge of contacts between GOP officials in a key state Trump lost and allies of the former president in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 attack. The person interviewed was one of the 650-plus defendants charged in the attack, and discussed those contacts in a voluntary interview with congressional investigators.

Questions from investigators ranged from the defendant’s knowledge of those who organized travel to Washington for the Jan. 6 event as well as details about the preparation of legal affidavits in support of Trump’s false claims of voter fraud.

The Jan. 6 select committee began soliciting voluntary testimony last month from these rioters . That request appears to have begun bearing fruit. At least three convicted rioters have cooperated or signaled their intent to speak to the committee, including Leonard Gruppo, who provided testimony on Oct. 12, according to court records. And more may be coming. . .

Leaves a reader breathless to follow the active pace of the J6 probe as it closes in on the details of the Trump conspiracy to overthrow the national (and in the case of Georgia) state governments. Hang on! The committee hasn't got to calling sitting Congresspeople yet to give sworn testimony about their roles in the conspiracy. But those subpoenas are coming.

Jeffrey Clark Facing Contempt Charges -- Refuses To Answer Questions

Clark Attorney submits letter to committee, citing attorney/client privilege.

“Mr. Clark will, of course, abide by a future judicial decision(s) appropriately governing all underlying disputes with finality, but for now he must decline to testify as a threshold matter because the President’s confidences are not his to waive,” reads the letter, dated Nov. 5 and addressed to select panel chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.).

. . .to make the case that Clark cannot testify to the Jan. 6 committee, it cites a separate letter in which Trump’s lawyer specifically said the former president would not try to block Clark’s congressional testimony.

Clark counsel Harry MacDougald cites attorney-client privilege — among other things — to justify his client's refusal to cooperate. But any such privilege lies with the client to assert, and even if Trump were Clark's client under these circumstances, the former president has already declined to block Clark’s testimony.

This seems odd because. . .

. . .MacDougald, the lawyer who accompanied Clark, told the conservative PowerLine blog in November that he worked on the suit contesting Trump’s 2020 loss in Georgia as “more than a mere conduit.” He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(SNIP)
MacDougald, for his part, signed on to the filing of a lawsuit that was part of Powell’s broad effort to invalidate the results of the 2020 election in multiple states. . .

. . .investigators’ focus on Clark’s involvement has also implicated a current member of Congress, Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who introduced Clark to Trump. Perry became a lead Trump (ally) in Congress in attempting to challenge the results of the election in Pennsylvania.

Will Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) finally move to issue a subpoena to Clark? And, if so, will Clark again refuse to answer questions? Then, will he face additional contempt charges?

J6 Committee Subpoenas Top Trump Officials

The Willard Hotel "war room" cabal that conspired with Trump's attempt to overturn the election subpoenaed. They are and their roles were. . .

Bill Stepien, the 2020 reelection campaign manager; Jason Miller, senior campaign advisor; Angela McCallum, campaign aide; John Eastman, conservative lawyer and advisor to Trump and his administration; Michael Flynn, national security advisor; Bernard Kerik, advisor who used D.C. hotels as "command centers" to (conspire with Trump allies on the election strategy and on the "Stop the Steal" conspiracy and messaging designed to disperse false election fraud misinformation.)

The panel said there is a voicemail recording of McCallum in which she asked an unknown Michigan state representative if the Trump campaign could "count on" the representative to appoint alternate electors.

Eastman briefed nearly 300 state legislators about baseless voter fraud claims and allegedly told the group to “make sure that we’re not putting in the White House some guy that didn’t get elected.”

. . .Miller also coordinated with Trump and Rudy Giuliani, the president's former lawyer, to discuss strategies for overturning the election results and pressuring then-vice president Mike Pence to not certify the Electoral College count. . .

. . .Flynn also was involved in discussions with the campaign and the administration — attending a December 2020 meeting in the Oval Office in which officials discussed seizing voting machines and declaring a national emergency. . .

Federal judge denies Trump's attempt to withhold records from January 6 committee
Katelyn Polantz | November 9, 2021

...The ruling Tuesday night from Judge Tanya Chutkan of the US District Court in DC is a blow to Trump's efforts to keep more than 700 pages of records from his White House secret -- though his legal team has informed the court it intends to appeal...

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/09/politics/trump-documents-january-6-committee-nati...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
US Dept of Justice | Friday, November 12, 2021
Stephen K. Bannon Indicted for Contempt of Congress
Two Charges Filed for Failing to Honor House Subpoena From Select Committee Investigating Jan. 6 Capitol Breach
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/stephen-k-bannon-indicted-contempt-congress

Domino Theory, MAGArats?

Harking back to a mid last century chorus from right wing hawks that communism would spread all over Asia from Vietnam based on the "domino theory" they applied in anticipation of falling governments everywhere, Republicans may get to relive their glory days following Bannon's indictment today. But I doubt they'll be as pleased with their theory now as they were then.

Earlier this morning, Mark Meadows chose to ignore his J6 Committee subpoena. Perhaps this afternoon he has suffered a short sharp shock. And what of Clark? Chairman Bennie Thompson told Politico that contempt is “on the table” for former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who also ignored his subpoena.

Lets play a game. The game is simple. Who will be next? Meadows or Clark? Will either or both prefer pleading the Fifth under oath rather than face prosecution for the cracks that Bannon's indictment might have caused in their own untouchableness? Believing you're above the law seems to be a major point of hubris among Trumplicans. And now it's looking like their fall.

>81 margd: Bannon, contd. (!!!)

Rex Chapman @RexChapman | 7:19 PM · Nov 12, 2021:
Please never forget Steve Bannon on January 5th, 2021…

Bannon before January 6 (2:21). From Media Matters
https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1459314849524109318

J6 Committee To Move on Criminal Contempt Against Meadows

Mark "Refusnik II" Meadows will face charges by the committee for disobeying its subpoena, according to committee member Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. Meadows refused to appear for a deposition on Friday, citing Donald Trump's dubious claim of post-presidential executive privilege. Like most Trumplicans, Meadows just doesn't want to hear that the law applies to him just like everyone else.

Only last week D.C. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan reminded Donald Trump that he's nothing special. “Presidents are not kings and plaintiff is not president,” she told the Orange Shitegibbon who sought to shield the J6 demand for his documents pertaining to the Insurrection by hiding them behind a fairy tale belief in his own executive privilege. Now Meadows is attempting to exempt himself from the J6 Committee by hiding behind the same veil. Only there's no there there. Try as he might to delude himself into believing the contrary, Meadows is not president, either. And the lesson he didn't learn but was served up to Trump by Judge Chutkan is, executive privilege "exists for the benefit of the Republic, not any individual."

Texts Show Kimberly Guilfoyle Bragged About Raising Millions for Rally That Fueled Capitol Riot
Joaquin Sapien and Joshua Kaplan | Nov. 18, 2021

Text messages reviewed by ProPublica represent the strongest indication yet that members of the Trump family inner circle were involved in financing and organizing the Jan. 6 “Save America” rally, which immediately preceded the Capitol riot...

https://www.propublica.org/article/texts-show-kimberly-guilfoyle-bragged-about-r...

Jan. 6 committee member: Many of 200+ witnesses are ex-Trump admin staff who voluntarily came forward (CNN)

A member of the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack told CNN Saturday many of the more than 200 witnesses they have interviewed are former officials from the Trump administration who came forward voluntarily. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, said some others have also volunteered testimony, but needed a subpoena for "cover." Lofgren remained relatively tight-lipped, however, and wouldn't say whether they were members of the Trump White House, the Trump campaign, or former Vice President Mike Pence's staff when pressed by CNN's Jim Acosta...

House Capitol attack committee subpoenas far-right leaders and groups (Guardian)

New subpoenas aim to uncover whether there was any coordination between the groups and the White House... The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack on Tuesday issued subpoenas to the leaders of the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militia, directly focusing for the first time on the instigators of the violence at the 6 January insurrection... as well as... the chairman of the 1st Amendment Praetorian militia...

Jan. 6 Organizers Used Anonymous ‘Burner Phones’ to Communicate with White House and Trump Family, Sources Say
Hunter Walker | Nov 23, 2021

...Kylie Kremer, a top official in the “March for Trump” group that helped plan the Ellipse rally, directed an aide to pick up three burner phones days before Jan. 6, according to three sources who were involved in the event. One of the sources, a member of the “March for Trump” team, says Kremer insisted the phones be purchased using cash and described this as being “of the utmost importance.”

The three sources said Kylie Kremer took one of the phones and used it to communicate with top White House and Trump campaign officials, including Eric Trump, the president’s second-oldest son, who leads the family’s real-estate business; Lara Trump, Eric’s wife and a former senior Trump campaign consultant; Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff; and Katrina Pierson, a Trump surrogate and campaign consultant.

The member said a second phone was given to Amy Kremer, Kylie Kremer’s mother and another key rally organizer. The team member said they did not know who the third phone was purchased for...

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/jan-6-rally-organizers-trump...

CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) requests records on Mnuchin and Pompeo’s involvement in talks to remove Trump following the insurrection
November 16, 2021

...CREW has requested records (FOIA) from the Treasury and State Departments for all records including phone logs, emails, and agendas from (then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and then-Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin) regarding invoking the 25th Amendment...

https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/foia-requests/treasury-...

Ted Lieu (Member of Congress) @tedlieu | 12:25 PM · Dec 7, 2021:
RIDICULOUS delay for Steve Bannon. The House needs to pass ASAP legislation by @RepDean
@RepCicilline
@RepJoeNeguse
@RepValDemings
@RepRaskin
and me to execute Congress’ inherent contempt power.
Congressional subpoenas are meaningless if witnesses can drag out the time line.

Quote Tweet
Ana Cabrera (CNN) @AnaCabrera · 3h
JUST IN: Judge sets July 18 trial date in criminal contempt case against Steve Bannon
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Ted Lieu (Member Congress) @tedlieu | 12:59 PM · Dec 7, 2021:
Bannon’s contempt trial doesn’t take place until July. Mark Meadows knows he can delay his subpoena compliance even longer. They will run out the clock.
This is why we need to pass our inherent contempt legislation NOW. Otherwise, Congressional subpoenas will remain meaningless.

Quote Tweet
Zachary Cohen @ZcohenCNN · 5h
And just like that, former WH chief of staff Mark Meadows will no longer cooperate with the House Select Committee investigating January 6, according to a letter from his attorney to the panel, which was obtained by CNN. w/ @GloriaBorger

"The mob takes the Fifth Amendment. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”
-- Donald Trump, 2016

----------------------------------------------------------

Roger Stone invokes Fifth Amendment in House Jan. 6 probe
Dartunorro Clark | Tue, December 7, 2021

Roger Stone, a longtime adviser to former President Donald Trump, is refusing to be deposed or to hand over documents to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, his attorney said in a letter dated Monday...

“Given that the Select Committee's demand for documents is overbroad, overreaching, and far too wide-ranging to be deemed anything other than a fishing expedition, Mr. Stone has a constitutional right to decline to respond," wrote his attorney, Grant Smith. "Indeed, the Select Committee seeks an imprecise and undefined category of 'documents and communications concerning' a broad range of constitutionally protected political activity."...

https://news.yahoo.com/roger-stone-invokes-fifth-amendment-033300740.html

Latest: Trump White House chief Mark Meadows turned over to Jan. 6 committee an email that
referred to a PowerPoint calling for Trump to declare a NatSec emergency and have VP Pence delay Biden’s certification

Text ( https://twitter.com/hugolowell/status/1468989737490911232/photo/1 )
Text ( https://twitter.com/hugolowell/status/1468989737490911232/photo/2 )

- Hugo Lowell (Guardian) @hugolowell | 12:03 PM · Dec 9, 2021

Rep. Liz Cheney @RepLizCheney | 1:05 PM · Dec 9, 2021:
Thread for those interested in the @January6thCmte
's progress: The Committee has already met with nearly 300 witnesses; we hear from four more key figures in the investigation today. We are conducting multiple depositions and interviews every week. (1/4)

We have received exceptionally interesting and important documents from a number of witnesses, including Mark Meadows. He has turned over many texts from his private cell phone from January 6th. (2/4)

We have litigated and won Trump’s executive privilege case in Federal District Court. The Federal Appellate Court has expedited the appeal, and we anticipate a ruling regarding many more Trump White House documents soon.

The investigation is firing on all cylinders. (3/4)

Do not be misled: President Trump is trying to hide what happened on January 6th and to delay and obstruct. We will not let that happen.

The truth will come out. (4/4)

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Scorned by Her Political Party

Rep. Cheney is well known as one of the conservatives' conservative since her election to the House. She has been loyal to the Party line and the then president throughout his term. She even voted for Trump in 2020. There was no line in the sand for her in terms of classic Republican core values or our Constitutional democracy despite whatever atrocities Trump performed against them until the man accused Biden of being an illegitimate president because the election was fraudulent. Only with the "Stop the Steal" crap having been proven specious did Cheney find her moral compass.

For that and for her public stand against and denial of Trumpist/QAnon conspiracy nonsense that threatened the peaceful transition of power when Trump was defeated her own Party persecuted her and deemed her "not a Republican." It stripped her of her power vis a vis committees, insulted her, and sent two of its worst Trumpty Dumbpty lickspittle agents to her home state of WY to destroy her character and conservative credentials among her own electorate.

As a result, Cheney is essentially a woman without a country. Quite literally kicked out, shunned, and disparaged even by those who once were recognizable Republicans. Her career is destroyed her Party abandoned her, forcing her to exist in no man's land. She's a non-person among the slavish Republicans who have all dunk the Kool Aid and who control the Republican machine now. So, what does her isolation make her?

A woman with nothing to lose.

Cheney, possibly more than the Dems on the J6 Committee wants to annihilate Trump and burn his criminal Trumpist insurrection organization to the ground. Think of her as the weapon of mass destruction determined to achieve revenge for what it has done to her. That's why I recommend (if you haven't been already) closely following her tweets.

She's hinting that there is a real weapon of mass destruction; she's the mouthpiece of HINT about what's going on in the J6 Committee that has not leaked a thing, unlike the Mueller investigation. That tells me that she's hinting to us that after all the witnesses and all those documents (especially Meadows' and probably some crucial small fry operatives) have been reviewed, there IS a bombshell waiting to explode. It's probably already armed -- hence the hints -- but just waiting for the Committee to light the fuse with its report. After the courts' rulings against Trump's desire to hide incriminating documentary evidence by false clams of "privilege," the J6 Committee is sitting in the catbird seat. There can be no doubt of that.

It wouldn't surprise me if Trump, in his wrath, "unleashed the Kraken" (not a reference to any lawyer) on the land to prevent the actual turn-over, since nothing in his pile of papers will be exculpatory. If there were something, he would have been fighting to have those papers released months ago, before requested, to his favorite propaganda outlets.

Wouldn't it be fitting if the J6 bombshell went off on the anniversary of the J6 Insurrection? You know the veteran inciters of the insurrection have been plotting their own bombshell of violent hell for the anniversary. That's a topic on which I will not speculate, other than to state my belief that a revolution/civil war is their ambition.

I will speculate that when the time comes, the J6 Committee selects Cheney to publicly deliver the bomb.

Cheney's reference to docs received from Meadows sounded to me like a ploy to sow division in Trump ranks? As a former Tea Party congressman he is a bit different from the rest of TFG's men. Has more in common with commission members than with Bannon, Stone, Flynn, Giuliani et al. (Star Wars bar) and more to lose in terms of reputation? Probably less adept than them at this criminal biz?

Liz Cheney has a lot of her daddy's strength of will. I am reminded of Margaret Thatcher. Not a woman scorned I think, but perhaps more likely to survive than the decent male Republicans who have left the arena when confronted by the large orange one and his hyenas. (No disrespect intended to hyenas.)

>92 margd: contd. (The plot thickens.)

Capitol attack panel obtains PowerPoint that set out plan for Trump to stage coup
Hugo Lowell | 10 Dec 2021

...The PowerPoint, titled “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 Jan”, made several recommendations for Trump to pursue in order to retain the presidency for a second term on the basis of lies and debunked conspiracies about widespread election fraud.

Meadows turned over a version of the PowerPoint presentation that he received in an email and spanned 38 pages...

...Senators and members of Congress should first be briefed about foreign interference, the PowerPoint said, at which point Trump could declare a national emergency, declare all electronic voting invalid, and ask Congress to agree on a constitutionally acceptable remedy.

The PowerPoint also outlined three options for then vice-president Mike Pence to abuse his largely ceremonial role at the joint session of Congress on 6 January, when Biden was to be certified president, and unilaterally return Trump to the White House.

Pence could pursue one of three options, the PowerPoint said: seat Trump slates of electors over the objections of Democrats in key states, reject the Biden slates of electors, or delay the certification to allow for a “vetting” and counting of only “legal paper ballots”.

The final option for Pence is similar to an option that was simultaneously being advanced on 4 and 5 January by Trump lieutenants – led by lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, as well as Trump strategist Steve Bannon – working from the Willard hotel in Washington DC.

...based on wild and unsubstantiated claims of election fraud, including that “the Chinese systematically gained control over our election system” in eight key battleground states.

...The powerpoint was presented on 4 January to a number of Republican senators and members of Congress... Trump’s lawyers working at the Willard hotel were not shown the presentation...

...the select committee ...did find in the materials turned over by Meadows, his text messages with a member of Congress, who told Meadows about a “highly controversial” plan to send slates of electors for Trump to the joint session of Congress.

Meadows replied: “I love it.”...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/10/trump-powerpoint-mark-meadows-ca...

Jacqueline Alemany (WaPo) @JaxAlemany | 7:40 PM · Dec 12, 2021:
House select committee’s contempt report on Meadows is out:
https://docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/ByEvent.aspx?EventID=114313

Quote Tweet
Josh Dawsey (WaPo) @jdawsey1 · 16h
Meadows email, per reports, says Trump wanted National Guard to protect pro-Trump folks.
In final scene of this story, we write how Trump was concerned about the safety of his people on Jan. 6.
https://washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2021/warnings-jan-6-insurrection...

"...While the public may have been surprised by what happened on Jan. 6, the makings of the insurrection had been spotted at every level, from one side of the country to the other. The red flags were everywhere..."

J6 Committee Ready To ID Republican "Lawmakers" Involved in Insurrection

And staff members, too. Documents turned over to the Select Committee by Mark Meadows name names. According to Chairman Bennie Thompson, they have been "quite revealing."

As of now, the Committee chooses not to reveal those revelations. Probably because they want the headlines to stay focused on the probable charge of criminal contempt against Meadows for the time being. And the committee members are quite happy for the press to keep the PowerPoint Coup Plot in the forefront of the public while it plans who and how they will make public the named Republican conspirators and their criminal roles in the insurrection. According to Chair Thompson, the wait wont be long but soon.

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/ingraham-rips-liz-cheney-for-reading-private-text-me...
Ingraham RIPS Liz Cheney for Reading Private Text Message During 1/6 Hearing: ‘Largely Irrelevant with No Real Constituency’

Actually, FOX News prime-time viewers and the remaining GOP base are clueless Hooterville citizens. Trump, Murdoch and their enablers and hires have been conning them from the day Trump won the nomination back in 2016. Taking advantage of low-info people is as American as apple pie for people who crave power and worship money. Australia dodged a giant bullet when the Murdoch family moved to our shores.

J6 Sharks Circling Their Criminal Prey

Mark Meadows, they're coming for you. James P "Phil" Waldron, the creator of the Power Point coup plot, has been subpoenaed by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th insurrection.

"Mr. Waldron reportedly played a role in promoting claims of election fraud and circulating potential strategies for challenging results of the 2020 election. He was also apparently in communication with officials in the Trump White House and in Congress discussing his theories in the weeks leading up to the January 6th attack. The document he reportedly provided to Administration officials and Members of Congress is an alarming blueprint for overturning a nationwide election," said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS). "The Select Committee needs to hear from him about all these activities. We expect him to comply with the law and provide records and testimony as the Select Committee continues its work to get answers for the American people about January 6th."

Those records will probably be his cell phone, computer, and bank statements.

People don't feel a sudden creative urge to make PowerPoint presentations for themselves. To think they do is ridiculous. They're for an audience of several to many people. Such "ideas" as methods and processes for overthrowing a legal election are highly likely to be commissioned by someone with a motive to put them into action. Additionally, no one would create such a thing for free, which means the PowerPoint presentation was paid for by the person(s) who desitred a plan which would give them the blueprint for what they wanted to do.

Remember, only a few days ago, Chairman Thompson alerted the public that his committee was expecting major incriminating revelations in the testimony from so-called "small-fry" in and associated with the Trump administration that they would be subpoenaing "soon." Soon arrived this afternoon for Waldron.

The rule of every criminal enterprise under investigation is, "follow the money." That's exactly what the J6 committee will be doing when they question Waldron under oath. His answers will point them to where/who the money paid him came from originally. Members already have enough documentary evidence to know the answers to the questions they intend to ask. Waldron's testimony will augment details and confirm that the figurative noose they have around Meadows' neck is around the right neck for the right reasons. Following the receipt of his documents and the revelations uncovered among the criminal congress members' text messages and phone calls, the J6 Committee is simply drawing the noose of criminal charges tighter by this subpoena.

J6 Comm. Still Not Leaking. . .but One Witness' Lawyer Is Dropping Mini-Bomb Hints

File this under the topic "Little Guys."

Today, a January 6 rally organizer delivered the goods about all he knew and did in oral testimony before the House Select Committee. But that was just one shoe. The other shoe is scheduled to drop next Tuesday when he delivers "text messages and emails with people 'very senior in the former president's orbit' and with members of Congress." According to his attorney, the man has the goods.

Jan. 6 Ellipse rally organizer Dustin Stockton, attorney Josh Nass have arrived for scheduled deposition w/ Jan. 6 investigators. Stockton arrived holding a binder, which Nass says is filled with docs/comms that should have former Trump admin officials \u201cquivering in their boots.\u201dpic.twitter.com/74caQ2iVSt
— Gary Grumbach (Gary Grumbach) 1639496537

When questioned by press, Ness stated. . .

"My client turned over a wealth of documents, communications in the form of email correspondence, text messages and other modes of communication.

"This is a wealth of evidence that I think the committee found illuminating. I think it is going to assist them greatly in their ultimate quest to get to the bottom of who the true culprits were behind the awful, awful tragic events of January 6th.

". . .I will tell you that Mark Meadows, for one, I believe, has reason to be concerned, not only for having been found in contempt and justifiably so for defying the subpoena, but also because my client was incredibly concerned, okay, in the days and even weeks leading up to the 6th about the lack of organization, about. . ."

"Did your client have direct contact -- did your client have direct contact with Mark Meadows?" (CNN reporter) Berman asked.

"For organizational purposes, I can tell you that all communications were going through Amy Kremer as the conduit. My client was getting assurances from Ms. Kremer about her communications with Meadows and others in the White House," Nass said.

Kremer is the chair of Women for America First (WFAF), has been subpoenaed by the select committee. Her daughter and the committee's executive director, Kylie Kremer, has also been subpoenaed.

Nass went on to say his client warned about Ali Abdul Akbar, also known as Ali Alexander, who has additionally been subpoenaed by the committee.

Those were the only names he divulged.

YouTube

CNN Exclusive: Jan 6 investigators believe Nov. 4 text pushing 'strategy' to undermine election came from Rick Perry
Jake Tapper and Jamie Gangel | December 17, 2021

Members of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol believe that former Texas Governor and Trump Energy Secretary Rick Perry was the author of a text message sent to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows the day after the 2020 election pushing an "AGRESSIVE (sic) STRATEGY" for three state legislatures to ignore the will of their voters and deliver their states' electors to Donald Trump...

...The text ... reads: "HERE's an AGRESSIVE (sic) STRATEGY: Why can t (sic) the states of GA NC PENN and other R controlled state houses declare this is BS (where conflicts and election not called that night) and just send their own electors to vote and have it go to the SCOTUS."...

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/17/politics/rick-perry-jan-6-text-mark-meadows-nov-4...

On the Jan. 6 commission - @LeaderMcConnell said he's watching the investigation as it occurs over in the House.
"It was a horrendous event and I think what they are seeking to find out is something the public needs to know."
0:51 ( https://twitter.com/JuliaBenbrook/status/1471673949788463112 )

- Julia Benbrook (Spectrum News) @JuliaBenbrook | 9:49 PM · Dec 16, 2021

See Post #101: "Stop the Steal" Founder Names Names

Ali Alexander told congressional investigators that he recalls “a few phone conversations” with Rep. Paul Gosar and a text exchange with Rep. Mo Brooks about his efforts in the run-up to Jan. 6, and spoke to Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) in person “and never by phone, to the best of his recollection,” his lawyers say.

The names emerged in a lawsuit against Congressional Democrats, the J6 Committee, and others that Alexander filed to block the Committee's subpoena of his phone records.

Alexander says in the suit that the records include contacts with people protected by privileges: religious advisers, people he counsels spiritually and his lawyers. He also indicated that he already shared more than 1,500 text messages with investigators, in addition to sitting for an eight-hour deposition. The Brooks text, he indicated, is among the texts he turned over.
(Snip)
(Additionally) Alexander said in a since-deleted video that he worked with Gosar, Biggs and Brooks to attempt to use Congress’ Jan. 6 session certifying Biden’s victory as a chance to pressure lawmakers to overturn the electoral results.

“We four schemed up to put maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting,” Alexander said in the video.

That's a direct admission of conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States. He may come to regret suing to escape having to release phone records that prove what he admitted to in the deleted video. Should have complied when subpoenaed. He could always plead the 5th when facing questions under oath from Rep. Bennie Thompson's Select Committee investigating the Insurrection.

Capitol panel to investigate Trump call to Willard hotel in hours before attack
Hugo Lowell | 27 Dec 2021

Trump, according to multiple sources, called lieutenants based at the Willard hotel in Washington DC from the White House in the late hours of 5 January and sought ways to stop Biden’s certification from taking place on 6 January.

Trump first told the lieutenants his vice-president, Mike Pence, was reluctant to go along with the plan to commandeer his ceremonial role at the joint session of Congress in a way that would allow Trump to retain the presidency for a second term...

But as Trump relayed to them the situation with Pence, ... on at least one call, he pressed his lieutenants about how to stop Biden’s certification from taking place on 6 January in a scheme to get alternate slates of electors for Trump sent to Congress.

The former president’s remarks came as part of wider discussions he had with the lieutenants at the Willard – a team led by Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn and Trump strategist Steve Bannon – about delaying the certification, ...

...a subpoena to Giuliani, the lead Trump lawyer at the Willard, is understood to be in the offing, ... the night before the Capitol attack, Trump called the lawyers and non-lawyers at the Willard separately, because Giuliani did not want to have non-lawyers participate on sensitive calls and jeopardize claims to attorney-client privilege.

It was not clear whether Giulaini might invoke attorney-client privilege as a way to escape cooperating with the investigation in the event of a subpoena, but Congressman Jamie Raskin, a member of the select committee, noted the protection does not confer broad immunity.

“The attorney-client privilege does not operate to shield participants in a crime from an investigation into a crime,” Raskin said. “If it did, then all you would have to do to rob a bank is bring a lawyer with you, and be asking for advice along the way.”...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/27/capitol-attack-panel-investigate...

Sean Hannity Had ADVANCED Knowledge of Insurrection & "CONCERNS"

Sean Hannity is a man of two faces: 1) His so-called "Journalist " face that he shows on TV; 2) The "Sedition Advisor" face that he showed before, during and after the January 6th Insurrection.

In today's letter from the J6 Select Committee, it makes clear, in asking for his cooperation with its investigation, that they have the documents authored by Hannity himself that incriminate him as being actively involved in the plans for January 6th to stop President Biden's election being certified by the House. In short, the TV Hannity face is, by his own admission, a fake. A mask that hides his real professional activity of right wing political advisor, lobbyist, and operative.

The letter cites three emails by Hannity in which he hides his advice by couching it in the language of concern. Here are some excerpts included in the letter.

On January 5, Hannity wrote that he was "very worried about the next 48 hours."

"We can't lose the entire WH counsel's office," wrote Hannity to Meadows on December 31, according to the committee's letter. "I do not see January 6 happening the way he is being told. After the 6th. (sic) He should announce will lead the nationwide effort to reform voting integrity. Go to Fl and watch Joe mess up daily. Stay engaged. When he speaks people will listen."

(I'm) "very worried about the next 48 hours" and referred to then-Vice President Mike Pence, who oversaw the certification of the 2020 election, saying: "Pence Pressure. WH counsel will leave."

Obviously, the text shows that he was very worried that Trump and his Insurrection Cabal planned to engage in illegal activity to overthrow the government a week before events unfolded at the Capitol. If Hannity were, in truth, a reporter, he would have broadcast that news as an exclusive scoop to his audience. If he were a patriot, he would have immediately called the FBI and reported his inside information on this conspiracy to agents. He is neither. He is a co-conspirator in a plan to violently overthrow the duly elected president of the United States. More pertinently, Hannity is patently warning his fellow conspirators of news he believes they may be unaware of -- "Pence Pressure. WH counsel will leave." How does he know this, if he's not up to his eyebrows in the innermost circle of plotters?

Further, he expressed his election interference advice as concern that Trump was out of control. . .

. . .on January 5 and on January 10, when Hannity wrote to Meadows and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan: "Guys, we have a clear path to land the plane in 9 days. He can't mention the election again. Ever. I did not have a good call with him today. And worse, I'm not sure what is left to do or say, and I don't like not knowing if it's truly understood. Ideas?"

What business of his as a reporter is it to solicit ideas to control a rogue executive unless he is part of the conspiracy? No one in such a conspiracy would dream of answering such an incriminating solicitation. To do so would be an outright admission of guilt and loss of control over the "Plan" and an outright acknowledgment that Trump has become a crazy actor who is beyond their reach to calm down. In short, they've lost their influence. Things are dangerously out of hand; they had better come up with ides to save themselves.

The final citation included in the Committe's letter. . .

on January 6, Hannity urged Meadows to tell Trump he should "ask people to peacefully leave the (C)apit(o)l.

"Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol?'"

The Committee puts more cards on the table.

“It also appears from other text messages that you may have had a conversation directly with President Trump on the evening of January 5th (and perhaps at other times) regarding his planning for January 6th. Each of these non-privileged communications is directly relevant to our investigation.”

The Committee is letting Hannity know that it knows he is not a journalist and his texts demonstrate that he was an advisor involved in the conspiracy. He has neither executive privilege since he was not a paid Federal employee of the Administration, nor does he have any First Amendment protection for whatever he did since was not a reporter -- none of his information that he was privy to made it out over the Fox News air waves as part of its programming. Considering the seminal events surrounding January 6th, one could fairly expect Hannity to have been immediately fired for failing to "get" the story he was handed, were he a journalist.

Hannity is a dangerous fake who may or may never face any music for his deeds. We will have to wait and see if he discovers any trace of honor or conscience in himself and tells the whole truth of what he knew and when he knew it to select committee investigators.

BREAKING: Former Trump Press Sec'y Will Meet with J6 Committee Tonight

Stephanie Grisham, one of the "honorable" associates of the Trump Administration who was the first to resign on Jan. 6th from her position as chief of staff to Melania Trump, having served as Donald's press secretary in April 2020, has voluntarily agreed to tell what she knows of events surrounding the insurrection. Grisham already discussed her information over the phone with Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, during which Raskin encouraged her to meet with the panel. According to reports. . .

Grisham was "candid" about events in the White House at the time, many of which Grisham was present for, including knowledge of conversations involving former President Donald Trump that day.
(SNIP)
. . .in her memoir of her time in the White House (Grisham writes that she) sent Melania Trump a text that said, "Do you want to tweet that peaceful protests are the right of every American, but there is no place for lawlessness and violence?" to which Trump replied with one word: "No."

The noose is tightening around the Orange Shitegibbon. Even if Hannity refuses to appear before the committee to answer question about what he knew before, during and after the insurrection, Grisham can provide eye and ear witness testimony to exactly what she saw and heard from the "major actors" within the family quarters, or Oval Office, or White House offices that day.

"What Did You Know and When Did You Know It?

The famous and iconic question of history that emerged from the Congressional Watergate Conspiracy investigation into Nixon's criminal re-election activities still echoes and resonates under the Capitol dome fifty years later. Today, the House Select Committee investigating another Republican president's nefarious acts against democracy is in the forefront of history yet to be written about the events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021 Insurrection. And it's the "when" wherein lies the key.

Reporting has made perfectly clear that the J6 Committee has an excellent handle on the what and the who of that period. The final brick in the wall that will encircle the wrong-doers at the top is going to be the minute-by-minute timeline of the exact "when" of those events by whom. Testimony from eye and ear witnesses to what was going on at the WH while insurrectionists stormed the Capitol is being filled in by such key WH insiders as former Trump press sec'y, Stephanie Grisham who provided direct evidence to the J6 Committee last night. And that is apparently exactly what the committee is laser focused on. Documents, electronic communications, phone calls and witnesses are corroborating the recall of eyewitnesses and a timeline is becoming clear and irrefutable.

For example. . .

. . .Trump sent a 2:24 p.m. tweet attacking Vice President Mike Pence, as the mob penetrated deeper into the Capitol: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.” We also know Trump placed a 2:26 p.m. call to Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) to encourage further challenges to the election results that could buy time to execute other elements of his plan.

But what occurred in the immediate moments before and after that phone call remains imprecise, at least to the public.
(SNIP)
. . . we don’t know — and the Jan. 6 select committee likely does — whether Trump’s tweet and call to Tuberville preceded GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy’s plea to Trump by phone to publicly denounce the riot.

It's co-conspirators and insiders, people like Hannity, and better, Grisham, who have the answers and can pinpoint sequencing.

For instance. . .

Trump, according to one account, downplayed his supporters’ role in the violence and said, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.” McCarthy, according to an account in Jonathan Karl’s “Betrayal,” responded that he had heard shots fired near the House floor, which places the conversation sometime after 2:44 p.m., when a Capitol Police officer shot and killed Ashli Babbitt.

In spite of his refusal to honor his subpoena, the documents Mark Meadows submitted to the committee contain the "when" as well as the "what" of what he was doing or didn't do.

Besides Grisham, another eye and ear witness to WH going on has come forward.

. . .Keith Kellogg — a national security adviser to Pence — also appealed directly to Trump to intervene. According to the Washington Post, Kellogg told the president, ”You’ve got to get on top of this and say something.” The timing of that exchange is unclear, but Kellogg has interviewed with the Jan. 6 committee — one of several Pence aides to comply with the panel’s requests.

All that stands between penning in and pinning down Trump during those 187 minutes of his engineered insurrection is the SCOTUS -- will it uphold the subpoena for all his pertinent records and documents as requested by the J6 Committee? They hold the mother lode of evidence: Full documentation of all the meetings and calls that took place within the White House over three fateful hours of Trump's inaction.

Let the public know the timeline, the deeds, and the actors. And let the LAW decide their fates.

Grisham Supplies Names "Never Heard of Before" to J6 Committee

In an interview with CNN last night, J6 Committee member, Rep. Jeremy Raskin (D-MD), revealed details of evidence and the direction of inquiry in the select committee's most recent investigation activity, with specific remarks about the hundreds of thousands of documents it has received.

"America is going to be shocked and surprised at what we all come to learn this year," he told CNN.

Raskin. . .said that former Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham “names a lot of names I had not heard before” and “identified some minds (lines?) of inquiry that had never occurred to me during a conversation he had with her prior to her interview yesterday with the committee.

Raskin said the committee is “hoping to connect the dots amount the different levels of activity,” and learn “how did the former president’s inner political entourage operate in conjunction with the domestic violent extremist groups brought to Washington.”

Pence Team Cooperating with J6 Committee

Axios has exclusive report that characterizes some members of the former vice-president's team as "particularly cooperative" with the select committee, even appearing before it voluntarily. The article implies that once it completes the all-important timeline in closed door information, that the committee will open public hearings in the spring.

Both Pence's former chief of staff Marc Short(subpoenaed), and former press secretary Alyssa Farah, who later served as White House communications director, are among those cooperating with the committee.

Keith Kellogg has already voluntarily submitted his deposition (see Post 108).

A great deal of information has come from second and third-tier staff, some of whom have spoken with the two Republican members of the committee. Those who have refused to cooperate have been described by sources as either ultimately loyal to Trump, or cognizant that there's a strong likelihood the committee already knows a great deal about their activities and don't want to face questions about them.

Beyond completing the timeline, the committee has two other foci:

It's also investigating the "procedural coup," as a second committee source put it, that began on Election Night 2020 to sow falsities about the integrity of the election results.

A concurrent focus is the players who helped plan Trump's "Save America" rally on the National Mall and any direct involvement from Trump officials in the insurrection itself.

J6 Committee Finds Forged Documents Declaring Trump 2020 Election Winner in Two Key States

The National Archives received forged certificates of ascertainment declaring (Trump) and then-Vice President Mike Pence the winners of both Michigan and Arizona and their electors after the 2020 election.

. . . the secretaries of state for those states sent those certificates to the Jan. 6 panel, along with correspondence between the National Archives and state officials about the documents.

Spokespeople for the Michigan and Arizona secretaries of state declined to comment. . . A cursory look at some of the submitted material reveals a criminal conspiracy to commit election fraud in AZ by Trump supporters. Their activity far exceeds the "dirty tricks" of Nixonian era Roger Stone/Steve Bannon authorship but reeks of their M.O., even though the dealing hand appears to have been Rudy Giuliani's.

Here's the outline of what happened in AZ.

The National Archives sent emails to the Arizona secretary of state on Dec. 11, 2020, passing along the forged certificates “for your awareness” and informing the state officials the Archives would not accept them.

Arizona then took legal action against at least one of the groups who sent in the fake documents, sending a cease and desist letter to a pro-Trump "sovereign citizen" group telling them to stop using the state seal and referring the matter to the state attorney general.

“By affixing the state seal to documents containing false and misleading information about the results of Arizona’s November 3, 2020 General Election, you undermine the confidence in our democratic institutions,” Hobbs wrote to one of the pro-Trump groups.

That group’s leader, Lori Osiecki, had told the Arizona Republic in December 2020 that she decided to send in the certificates after taking part in post-election rallies and after attending a daylong meeting in Phoenix that had included Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani

. The MI pro-Trump group did not attempt to use the state seal, so no legal action was taken by that state following the National Archives' rejection of the fraudulent filing.

J6 Committee Asks House Minority Leader to Give Testimony

Yesterday the committee subpoenaed three former Trump advisors, one of whom wrote the speech Trump delivered on Jan. 6, 2021. Today, it asked Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to speak with them about events and former President Donald Trump's state of mind before, during, and in the weeks after the Capitol attack. This request is another confirmation that the investigators are closing in on Trump by rounding up information from his WH inner circle and those with whom he communicated.

Fortunately for the committee, several of the witnesses they have already pursued expressed themselves in what can be termed as self-incriminating remarks in the weeks preceding and immediately in the aftermath of the J6 Insurrection. Leader McCarthy is one of those.

From Chairman Bennie Thompson's letter to McCarthy:

"We also must learn about how the President's plans for January 6th came together, and all the other ways he attempted to alter the results of the election," wrote committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi. "For example, in advance of January 6th, you reportedly explained to Mark Meadows and the former President that objections to the certification of the electoral votes on January 6th 'was doomed to fail.' "

You can read the letter here.

It makes clear that the committee already has the documentary evidence that validates McCarthy's contemporaneous communications with Trump. Meaning it won't be asking any questions it doesn't already know the answers to, but is extending McCarthy the courtesy of presenting his side of the story to the members in person. There are references in the letter to McCarthy's attempts to dissuade Trump from pursuing his intention of overturning the 2020 electoral certification in Congress.

Even as the assault on the Capitol was ongoing, McCarthy was pleading with Trump to drop his fraudulent scheme. As the letter states. . .

". . . It appears that you had one or more conversations with the President during this period.

"It appears that you may also have discussed with President Trump the potential he would face a censure resolution, impeachment, or removal under the 25th Amendment. It also appears that you may have identified other possible options, including President Trump's immediate resignation from office."

That's a very polite way of letting McCarthy know that the committee knows even he had realized Trump was unfit to continue as president, which makes his 180 degree turnaround in his relationship with Trump some days later another act of his that the members will probably want to ask him to explain. That will require him to endure some uncomfortable moments before his peers. If McCarthy declines Chairman Thompsons' invitation to appear, I think we will know why.

UPDATE: Minority Leader Wimps Out

McCathy refuses to testify. Instead, he grows testy and says Pelosi's select committee is not "legitimate." So everyone who has gone before the committee has been a phony? All the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of pages of documentary evidence is fake, like the Republican election fraud documents submitted to the National Archives subverting the 2020 election certifications in AZ, MI, and WI were fraudulent? Why would you call the Pelosi committee illegitimate if not to attempt to paint the results that you know are coming as fraudulent before the investigation is even complete?

Why would McCarthy completely reverse and embarrass himself?

Last May, McCarthy indicated that he would be willing to testify about his phone call with former president Donald Trump that took place as insurrectionists stormed the Capitol.

Because those are Trump's instructions. He's done it over and over again; it's as damning as a fingerprint or DNA. With Clinton, with Cohen, with both his impeachments, with the NY AG's bank fraud and tax evasion case against him, with the GA DA's criminal election fraud case against him. And with the 2020 election long before a single vote was cast. It's his M.O. -- discredit the truth everyone knows is about to emerge before it emerges by screaming FAKE NEWS at it at in simulated self-righteous anger/fear.

McCarthy is doing a copycat Mini Me enactment of Donald Trump's modus operandi, right down to using Twitter to rave and rant about the J6 Committee. He threw everything he had into the twiddling of his thumbs except for the words "witch hunt." Turns out, yes, Virginia, there are a lot of witches.

Too bad, McCarthy. That dog won't hunt. It was exhausted and worn out long ago by the Orange Shitegibbon.

J6 Committe Considering Trump Witness Tampering in Investigation

The Washington Post thinks it's possible. Chairman Bennie Thompson's letter to Minority Leader McCarthy. . .

. . .notes that McCarthy’s review of Trump’s role in the events of Jan. 6 shifted over time, eventually becoming much more favorable to the former president.

Soon after Jan. 6, McCarthy blamed Trump for his tardy response to the attack on the Capitol and even suggested a historic censure of Trump.

A few months later, though, McCarthy was talking as if Trump’s response once the riot began was sufficient.

“I was the first person to contact him when the riots” were going on, McCarthy said. “He didn’t see it. How he ended the call was saying — telling me, he’ll put something out to make sure to stop this. And that’s what he did; he put a video out later.”

The letter suggestively notes this happened after McCarthy made the decision to visit the former president, whom he had blamed for the Capitol riot, at Mar-a-Lago on Jan. 28. And then it just comes out and asks McCarthy whether Trump’s team had any bearing on his reversal.

. . .Thompson wrote, “At that meeting, or at any other time, did President Trump or his representatives discuss or suggest what you should say publicly, during the impeachment trial (if called as a witness), or in any later investigation about your conversations with him on January 6th?”

In a letter like this one, written with an eye to the fact that it is for public consumption as well as for the addressee, the committee members are only going to ask questions for which they already know the answers. To do otherwise would only leave the members open to humiliation and accusations of sheer speculation. That would give credence to charges that the committee is illegitimate. No way that's going to happen.

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/jake-tapper-mocks-marjorie-taylor-greene-and-others-...
‘Not Exactly a MENSA Group’: Jake Tapper Mocks Marjorie Taylor Greene and Others for Jan 6. Conspiracy Theory

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/12/politics/kevin-mccarthy-january-6/index.html
McCarthy says he will not cooperate with January 6 committee probe

***
Unfortunately for America, fact and fiction cross-pollinated in the minds of modern-day GOPers during the Trump era and the results will continue to erode our democracy going forward.

Kayleigh McEnany Meets with J6 Committee

Trump's former publicist press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, met virtually yesterday to testify about what she knows and when she knew it. Her documented records of activities surrounding Insurrection Day are among those held up by the SCOTUS. However, there is some information about them from the National Archives, indicating the J6 Committee requested 629 pp of notes and a small number of documents relating to voter fraud and election security, etc.

The original subpoena issued to her shows

. . .a specific interest in her public statements related to spreading misinformation about the 2020 election results.

The committee specifically pointed to many of her public statements as contributing to the belief there was something wrong with the election.

(Chairman Bennie Thompson) said in a statement at the time of the release of McEnany's subpoena, along with other former White House officials, "We need to know precisely what role the former President and his aides played in efforts to stop the counting of the electoral votes and if they were in touch with anyone outside the White House attempting to overturn the outcome of the election."

It's news like this that makes a tune play in my head, "The Heat Is On."

J6 Committee Subpoenas Major Social Media Outlets

Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit summoned by committee to respond to questions about their part in events surrounding the Insurrection. The committee has had access to a trove of records from the corporate giants and user groups since last summer, but considered their response "inadequate." Today's subpoena demands records related to "domestic terrorism, the spread of misinformation, and efforts to influence or overturn the 2020 election." In his sttement tody, Chair, Bennie Thompson said. . .

“Two key questions for the Select Committee are how the spread of misinformation and violent extremism contributed to the violent attack on our democracy, and what steps — if any — social media companies took to prevent their platforms from being breeding grounds for radicalizing people to violence. . .

“It’s disappointing that after months of engagement, we still do not have the documents and information necessary to answer those basic questions,” Thompson said. “The Select Committee is working to get answers for the American people and help ensure nothing like January 6th ever happens again. We cannot allow our important work to be delayed any further.”
(SNIP)
The committee believes the social media giants have held back information that is central to the House investigation, Thompson said in letters to each of the four firms.

According to Rep. Thompson. . .

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. . . failed to produce documents clarifying its discussions about content moderation and the policies that led to Trump’s suspension from Google-owned YouTube in the wake of the Capitol riot.

He said. . .

Meta has not handed over documents related to the reported disbandment of Facebook’s team focused on election risks ahead of the invasion (of the Capitol building).

He accused the chairman of Reddit of failing to conduct a conduct a "thorough review of its records” as per the committee’s requests. Finally, he charged "Twitter hasn’t produced documents that fully explain why it suspended Trump’s account."

Politicians on Hold; J6 Committee After Ivanka

Do us a favor, Ivanka and appear for questions," says committee. No subpoena for Ivanka. Yet. Why be so polite?

. . .witnesses have told investigators that because she was an aide to her father in the WH, she has direct knowledge of President Donald Trump’s actions before, during and after his supporters attempted to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden as president that day.

Chairman Thompson's letter states she. . .

. . .was present when her father pressured Vice President Pence to reject Biden’s victory when he presided over the electoral vote count in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

In addition, the committee has information that. . .

. . . Ivanka Trump was enlisted by other White House aides to get President Trump to call off his supporters while they were ransacking the Capitol.

Finally the letter indicates it wants to know whether or no Ivanka knows about her father's attempts to. . .

. . .deploy or block the deployment of the National Guard in response to the attack.

With the NY state AG and Manhattan DA appearing to wind down their respective civil and criminal probes, and the Fulton County prosecutor requesting a grand jury, the Trump family is living in an ever increasing pressure keg. The question is will they be able to withstand it, or will the forces allied against them compel them to shift their allegiance from family to themselves individually. After both Eric Trump and Allen Weisselberg invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination more than 500 times when questioned in the civil case, I'd guess --at the moment -- family members will either fail to appear voluntarily or if subpoenaed, or they will copy Eric's and Allen's performances, declining to incriminate themselves, if they do appear.

J6 Letter to Ivanka Makes Case Trump Failed to 'Protect and Defend' the Constitution

Bombshells exploding everywhere under close analysis of Chairman Thompson's letter requesting her cooperative testimony before the House select committee. Lets look at selected crucial portions of the public letter. (See the full text here.)

“As January 6th approached, President Trump attempted on multiple occasions to persuade Vice President Pence to participate in his plan. One of the President’s discussions with the Vice President occurred by phone on the morning of January 6th. You were present in the Oval Office and observed at least one side of that telephone conversation.”

The Chairman is letting the recipient know that the committee is aware that Ivanka was "in direct contact" with her father during key moments as events unfolded. For instance, when "the former President attempt(ed) to persuade Vice President Pence to take action to stop the counting of electoral votes." She is, in the committee's opinion, an eye witness to events.

The letter aims an arrow straight at the issue of Trump's knowledge that what he was attempting was illegal; in fact, unconstitutional.

“The Committee would like to discuss any other conversations you may have witnessed or participated in regarding the President’s plan to obstruct or impede the counting of electoral votes.”

Here the letter lets readers know that Ivanka was an active player in unfolding events in the WH. It implies the question: Just what were you thinking and doing at the time the Capitol was besieged by insurgents?

On the question of whether Trump executed his sworn duties as president to protect and the defend the Constitution, and more concretely, the life of the VP and members of Congress, i.e. the government, the letter has this to say.

“The Committee is aware that certain White House staff devoted time during the violent riot to rebutting questions regarding whether the President was attempting to hold up deployment of the guard…. But the Committee has identified no evidence that President Trump issued any order, or took any other action, to deploy the guard that day. Nor does it appear that President Trump made any calls at all to the Department of Justice or any other law enforcement agency to request deployment of their personnel to the Capitol."

Succinctly, Trump fiddled while the Capitol "burned" even though he had the authority, means, and troops to shut down the insurrection he did nothing to uphold his oath of office. What we know he did is quite the opposite. His last live remarks to his adoring throng, two minutes before he left the stage 1:11 p.m. were to,: "fight like hell" because if they don't, "you're not going to have a country anymore." And when in the WH, with the insurrection underway since 1:45, Trump tweets the inflammatory message at 2:24 p.m. that Pence "didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution." Decoded meaning: "Pence betrayed you, release the Kraken!" Or to quote his last public message, "fight like hell."

Not only does the committee already have evidence that Trump did nothing to attempt to stop the violence, it has -- and we all have -- evidence that he did the opposite by inciting it. It is not mere speculation to expect the committee wants to hear from Ivanka's lips that her father ignored and brushed aside her urging him to stop the riot. Testimony to that effect has already been given to the committee, according to the statement of Rep. Liz Cheney on Jan. 3rd.: " We know his daughter — we have firsthand testimony — that his daughter Ivanka went in at least twice to ask him to please stop this violence." She is being given the opportunity to corroborate that she used all the influence she possessed as both an advisor and daughter to get her father to "do the right thing."

Beyond the insurrection itself, the committee wants to learn what Ivanka may have known or done to promote the Big Lie in its aftermath.

“The Committee has information suggesting that White House staff and others were attempting to persuade President Trump to halt his statements regarding a ‘stolen election’ and were working directly with other supporters outside the White House in an effort to persuade President Trump to do so.”

This may be the crux on which Ivanka will refuse to appear voluntarily. It is this question that shifts the focus of inquiry from Ivanka Trump, witness to Ivanka Trump, perpetrator.

In sum, the entire letter is directed at obtaining an eye witness overview to Trump's criminal behavior on January 6th: That he knowingly and illegally incited violence to overturn a legitimate election and when urged to stop it, stubbornly refused to do so even though he had the power to do so. Instead, he egged the violence on and refused to perform the duties of a president of the United States to defend the legitimately elected government and the lives of its officials with all means available to him.. In short, that's a high crime. The blood is on his hands.

And that, folks, is BIG beans.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/21/read-the-never-issued-trump-order-that-...
Read the never-issued Trump order that would have seized voting machines

The Jan. 6 select panel has obtained the draft order and a document titled "Remarks on National Healing." Both are reported here in detail for the first time.

Among the records that Donald Trump’s lawyers tried to shield from Jan. 6 investigators are a draft executive order that would have directed the defense secretary to seize voting machines and a document titled “Remarks on National Healing.”

The executive order — which also would have appointed a special counsel to probe the 2020 election — was never issued, and the remarks were never delivered. Together, the two documents point to the wildly divergent perspectives of White House advisers and allies during Trump’s frenetic final weeks in office.

***
Twilight-zoners lived and worked at the White House during the Trump era. America's democracy dodged a number of bullets during the Trump era.

Bill Kristol @BillKristol
Interesting. Even if the "Trump White House" didn't draft the order, the citation of classified authorities indicates cooperation from senior WH, DOD or DOJ officials. And I always come back to the Jan. 3 letter from all living former Secretaries of Defense: They. Were. Alarmed.

Quote Tweet
@4everNeverTrump | 3:02 PM · Jan 21, 2022
December 16, 2020: Trump White House drafts an executive order ordering the Defense Secretary to seize every voting machine in the country.

December 18, 2020: Acting Defense Secretary Miller halts all cooperation with the Biden transition team.

They 100% wanted to go for it.

>121 Molly3028:

What your post and mine (>118 Limelite:) demonstrate is that Trump DID everything in his power -- and beyond his legitimate power -- to steal the election, overthrow the government, and install himself as dictator, and that he DID NOT do anything in his legitimate power as required by his presidential oath to stop the attempt at the violent overthrow of the government's due process to certify the electors' votes giving Biden the presidency, nor to defend the Constitution from enemies domestic, nor to protect the lives of his vice-president, and sitting members of the Senate.

Lock him up!

Vincent Rajkumar (Mayo) @VincentRK | 2:17 PM · Jan 21, 2022:
https://twitter.com/VincentRK/status/1484606177103200259
For the skeptics: Vaccines work all right. Deaths per 100,000. The top curve is unvaccinated. Bottom lines are vaccinated. Cdc.gov
Graph - # deaths https://twitter.com/VincentRK/status/1484606177103200259/photo/1

https://cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e2.htm?s_cid=mm7104e2_w#F1_down

I described what a real insurrection would do. I am not advocating one, so long as the US has reasonably-democratic channels for popular control of the government.

To use the word 'insurrection' for the confused disorganized mob on 6 January is a mis-use of words, just as when my side calls your side's leaders 'traitors'.

Of course, if the man who murdered Ashli Babbitt had been white and she had been a Black member of an AntiFa/BLM mob burning down a courthouse, we all know the outcome would have been very different. And there wouldn't be any pious liberals justifying the murder.

As for 'patriotism': Abstractly, it's something that the human race ought to outgrow. It's an extension of genetically-based tribal allegiance -- MY side, because it benefits me, even if my side is raping and murdering innocent people on your side. But people cannot jump over their own heads, and the material basis for a genuine patriotism-of-the-human-race does not yet exist.

I also use the word because I want to cut across a trend in the Right, where I am active, which requires those who support America -- the keystone of the liberal democratic order -- to be 'conservatives'.

The real division in America today is betwen those who see the country, with all its flaws, as worthy of their fierce loyalty and support - as opposed to those who see it as effectively irredeemable, saturated with racism and other evils, founded on stolen land, built with slave labor, etc. (The difference is not in the facts of history, but in what conclusions we draw from those facts and others.)

I want to be able to unite with people to defend the nation and its democratic institutions, including Free Speech, now being abandonded by many liberals, especially the younger generation. I don't want to let our disagreements on secondary things like the minimum wage get in the way of joint action.

I also use the term because it challenges the small, but serious and active, tendency of genuine racists, who want to restructure the Right as an explicitly White movement. I use examples of Muslim, Hispanic, Asian and Black military heroes as people we should honor and want to make a nation with -- this, rather than some virtue-signalling pious pronouncement about racism, is what can counter the propaganda of the white supremacists. American patriotism is the only real anti-racism.

>125 Doug1943: As for 'patriotism': Abstractly, it's something that the human race ought to outgrow

I would agree.

https://www.newsweek.com/liz-cheney-issues-warning-after-newt-gingrich-says-1-6-...
Liz Cheney Issues Warning After Newt Gingrich Says 1/6 Committee Members May Face Jail

"A former Speaker of the House is threatening jail time for members of Congress who are investigating the violent January 6 attack on our Capitol and our Constitution," the Wyoming Republican wrote. "This is what it looks like when the rule of law unravels."

***
Newt is apparently looking forward to the time when the eyes of the world are on the USA as the 1/6 Committee Members are lined up in a perp walk on their way to prison. Giving everyone on the planet hard evidence that the modern-day GOP is anti-democracy looks like a very sound plan to me!

>125 Doug1943: The real division in America today is betwen those who see the country, with all its flaws, as worthy of their fierce loyalty and support - as opposed to those who see it as effectively irredeemable, saturated with racism and other evils, founded on stolen land, built with slave labor, etc.

I disagree with this. I would say the division is between those who think the country's ideals are worth living up to, and those who do not.
Someone who sees an injustice and takes to the streets to try to correct that injustice is in fact showing their "fierce loyalty and support" - they are saying, with their actions, that they think this nation is worth fixing, and demanding that it be fixed. On the other hand, if someone goes to the Capitol to try to overthrow the nation's government by murdering its elected representatives and installing an unelected coup, that does suggest that they think the nation that they're trying to overthrow is "irredeemable", doesn't it?

Let's not forget, Doug, that it's your people who are in the dock for an attempted coup. Trying to play the patriot card isn't going to work anymore, not while you're busy denying that unfortunate reality.

I want to be able to unite with people to defend the nation and its democratic institutions, including Free Speech.

Sounds great. Suppose we unite to defend the right to vote?I understand that's one of your specialist subjects. Of course, that might be a bit uncomfortable for you since defeating the right to vote is now official Republican policy - are you ready to walk away yet?

Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski | 1:10 PM · Jan 23, 2022:
Newt Gingrich said this morning (on FOX) that
people serving on the J6 Committee are going to go to jail
if Republicans take over Congress after the next election.

0:50 ( https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1485313965177589770 )

Laurence Tribe (Harvard Law emiratus) tribelaw | 9:23 AM · Jan 28, 2022:
“With Trump’s lawyer’s messages in their sights, the Committee shortens its range to the former President.”
Read this razor-sharp explanation of why this move by the 1/6 Committee was so astute:
---------------------------------------------------

Judge’s Ruling Helps January 6 Committee Zero in on Trump Lawyer’s Emails
Dennis Aftergut | 28 Jan 2022

Earlier this week, on January 24, a federal court in Santa Ana, California, put John Eastman, former Trump lawyer and Chapman University Law School professor, more squarely in the crosshairs of the bipartisan House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attacks. And with Trump’s lawyer’s messages in their sights, the Committee shortens its range to the former President...

https://verdict.justia.com/2022/01/28/judges-ruling-helps-january-6-committee-ze...

Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a member of the January 6 committee, told CNN: “We have filled in a lot more evidence that Trump wasn’t just inciting an insurrection, he was working to organize a coup against the democracy...I can’t imagine that the Department of Justice would not have evidence at this point to that effect.”

Heather Cox Richardson’ s blog post yesterday.

Attempt to influence potential witnesses? prosecutors?

Trump suggests that if he is reelected, he will pardon Jan. 6 Capitol rioters
Tyler Pager | 1/29/2022

Former president Donald Trump speaks during a “Save America” rally in Conroe, Tex., on Jan. 29, 2022...

...“If I run and I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly,” he said near the end of a lengthy campaign rally in Conroe, a city about 40 miles north of Houston. “We will treat them fairly, and if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.”...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/29/trump-jan6-protesters/

---------------------------------------------------

Trump Calls On Massive Protests If Prosecutors Go After Him And Offers Pardons To Jan. 6ers
S.V. Date | 01/29/2022

At a Texas rally, Trump focused on multiple investigations into him in New York, Washington and Atlanta, claiming: "They want to put me in jail...If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere, because our country and our elections are corrupt,” he said to a rally audience in Conroe, Texas, reading from teleprompters set up on either side of his lectern...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-protests-prosecution_n_61f60c9ee4b02de5f51a...

https://www.mediaite.com/trump/oh-my-goodness-no-republicans-recoil-on-the-sunda...
‘Oh My Goodness, No!’ Republicans Recoil on the Sunday Shows When Confronted With Trump’s Idea to Pardon Jan. 6 Rioters

Liz Cheney @Liz_Cheney | 6:38 AM · Jan 31, 2022
Trump uses language he knows caused the Jan 6 violence;
suggests he’d pardon the Jan 6 defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy;
threatens prosecutors; and
admits he was attempting to overturn the election.

He’d do it all again if given the chance.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/01/trump-tore-up-records-turned-ove...
Trump tore up records turned over to House Capitol attack committee

In a statement, the Archives said: “Some of the Trump presidential records received by the National Archives and Records Administration included paper records that had been torn up by former president Trump.

These were turned over to the National Archives at the end of the Trump administration, along with a number of torn-up records that had not been reconstructed by the White House. The Presidential Records Act requires that all records created by presidents be turned over to the National Archives at the end of their administrations.”

Exclusive: Newly obtained records show Trump and Jim Jordan spoke at length on morning of January 6
Ryan Nobles, Annie Grayer and Zachary Cohen | February 4, 2022

The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection is now in possession of White House records that provide new details about a phone call Donald Trump made to Republican Rep. Jim Jordan on January 6, 2021...Trump spoke on the phone at the White House residence with Jordan for 10 minutes on the morning of January 6. That afternoon, Jordan took to the House floor to object to the certification of President Joe Biden's Electoral College win, and pro-Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol...

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/04/politics/jim-jordan-trump-january-6/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/07/trump-records-mar-a-lago/
National Archives had to retrieve Trump White House records from Mar-a-Lago

***
Thanks to the work of the 1/6 Committee members, future historians are going to be able to pinpoint the period in which America became a democracy in name only.

>137 Molly3028: Makes you wonder what else he boxed up and took with him.

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/nikki-haley-dings-pence-for-calling-trump-wrong-abou...
Nikki Haley Dings Pence for Calling Trump ‘Wrong’ About Overturning the Election: ‘I’m Not a Fan of Republicans Going Against Republicans’

***
She meant she is not a fan of America's 21st century democracy. A majority of GOPers have lost the needle on their moral compasses. Thanks to Pence, America's democracy dodged a bullet on 1/6.

>139 Molly3028: ‘I’m Not a Fan of Republicans Going Against Republicans’

That sounds like the ultimate irony (or hypocrisy) given the extent to which Trump-supporting Republicans have been going against more moderate Republicans, and given the recent Republican National Committee censure resolution against Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger because they want to find out what happened on 6th January 2021.

Judge says Trump could be culpable for January 6 and says lawsuits against the former President can proceed
Katelyn Polantz, Marshall Cohen and Tierney Sneed | February 19, 2022

...Civil lawsuits seeking to hold Donald Trump accountable for the January 6, 2021, insurrection can move forward in court, a federal judge said Friday in a ruling* outlining how the former President could conceivably be responsible for inciting the attack on the US Capitol.

Trump’s statements to his supporters before the riot “is the essence of civil conspiracy,” Judge Amit Mehta wrote in a 112-page opinion, because Trump spoke about himself and rallygoers working “towards a common goal” of fighting and walking down Pennsylvania Avenue.

“The President’s January 6 Rally Speech can reasonably be viewed as a call for collective action,” Mehta said.

...Two of the lawsuits were brought by Democratic House members, while a third was filed by Capitol Police officers...Trump’s legal team is likely to appeal the decision, which was made at the trial-level DC District Court.

...Mehta’s opinion, essentially melting away the protections of the presidency and the First Amendment because of the context of Trump’s speech and specific words and actions that day, could have further implications, including creating a new avenue to subpoena Trump and ask him questions and establishing where immunity for presidents ends...

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/18/politics/trump-giuliani-swalwell-january-6-lawsui...
----------------------------------------------------------

* https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21264312-amit-mehta-ruling-in-swalwell-r...

Hugo Lowell (Guardian) @hugolowell | 9:46 AM · Feb 22, 2022:
New: Supreme Court just formally denied cert to Trump over the National Archives case to release his White House documents to the Jan. 6 select committee ( https://supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/022222zor_bq7d.pdf )

...SCOTUS earlier denied his request for a stay — which allowed them to give all his records to the Jan. 6 committee — and this decision formally tells Trump that they won’t hear his case...

President Joe Biden won’t grant executive privilege to former Trump Administration advisors Michael Flynn and Peter Navarro to shield them from the January 6th House Select Committee’s subpoenas.
https://hillreporter.com/like-trump-before-them-president-biden-denied-flynn-and...

Oath Keeper Pleads Guilty to Seditious Conspiracy

In a landmark Capitol riot legal development, Joshua James, a member of the Oath Keepers and a co-defendant of Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, has pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy.

James' guilty plea is "a big win" for the DOJ and "potentially... problematic" for Rhodes, who has pleaded not guilty to the same charge. Guess Rhodes will have a lot of 'splaining to do when he's in front of a judge. For sure, James' guilty plea has created a nightmare for Rhodes' defense team. Adding to the complications is that James' guilty plead is part of a deal he's made with prosecutors. He probably bargained for a reduced sentence, and got it for a commitment of full cooperation. That cooperation likely extends to testifying against Rhodes.

Both of them are the only insurrectionists who have faced seditious conspiracy charges. So far.

Jan. 6 Committee Lays Out Potential Criminal Charges Against Trump
Luke Broadwater and Alan Feuer | March 2, 2022. Updated March 3, 2022

...In a court filing* in a civil case in California, the committee’s lawyers for the first time laid out their theory of a potential criminal case against the former president. They said they had accumulated evidence demonstrating that Mr. Trump, the conservative lawyer John Eastman and other allies could potentially be charged with criminal violations including obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the American people.

The filing also said there was evidence that Mr. Trump’s repeated lies that the election had been stolen amounted to common law fraud.

...In asserting the potential for criminality, the committee largely relied on the extensive and detailed accounts already made public of the actions Mr. Trump and his allies took to keep him in office after his defeat...added information from its more than 550 interviews with state officials, Justice Department officials and top aides to Mr. Trump, among others...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/us/politics/trump-criminal-charges-jan-6.html
-----------------------------------------------------------

* Court filing (221 p): https://january6th.house.gov/sites/democrats.january6th.house.gov/files/2022.03....

_______________________________________________

Politico summary of crimes
Highlighted text ( https://twitter.com/MollyJongFast/status/1499351693112352771/photo/1 )

United States v. Donald Trump A "Model Prosecution Memo" on the Conspiracy to Pressure Vice President Pence
Barbara McQuade | February 22, 2022

Report on the Investigation into the 2020 Presidential Election: Pressuring Vice President Mike Pence
I. BACKGROUND ON FEDERAL PROSECUTION

II. RELEVANT STATUTES
A. Conspiracy to Defraud the United States
B. Obstruction of an Official Proceeding

III. FACTUAL SUMMARY
A. DHS Issues a Statement Refuting Election Fraud
B. Nov. 19 Trump Campaign Memo Finds Fraud Allegations False
C. Attorney General William Barr Announces No Widespread Voter Fraud; and Privately Briefs Trump and Mark Meadows
D. DOJ Officials Tell Trump There is No Evidence of Fraud
E. Director of National Intelligence Finds No Evidence of Foreign Interference
F. Rosen Tells Trump He Has No Basis for a Lawsuit in the Supreme Court
G. Trump Again Threatens to Replace Acting Attorney General with Clark
H. Georgia Secretary of State Tells Trump There Was No Significant Fraud in Georgia
I. Trump Speaks with 300 State Legislators
J. Trump Pushes to Send Clark Letter to Georgia and Other States; Senior Government Lawyers Threaten to Resign
K. Pence Meets with Senate Parliamentarian
L. Pence Meets with Trump and Eastman in the Oval Office
M. Pence Meets Again with Trump in Oval Office
N. Trump’s Lawyer Concedes That Pence Plan Was Unsupportable
O. Eastman Pushes Fallback Plan for Pence
P. Trump Campaign Issues a False Statement that Pence Has Agreed to Act
Q. Trump’s Lawsuits Claiming Election Fraud Are Unsuccessful
R. Trump Pressures Pence Over Twitter
S. Trump Speaks with Pence by Phone
T. Trump Speaks at the Ellipse
U. Pence Issues Public Letter Rejecting Eastman’s Theory
V. U.S. Capitol Attack Begins
W. Eastman Persists During and After the Attack
X. Pence Certifies Election Results
Y. Trump Continues to Insist Pence Had Power to Overturn Election

IV. ANALYSIS

A. Conspiracy to Defraud the United States
1. Trump and Eastman Entered into an Agreement
2. To Obstruct a Lawful Function of the Government
3. By Deceitful or Dishonest Means
4. Overt Act

B. Obstruction of an Official Proceeding
1. Attempt to Obstruct, Influence or Impede
2. Official Proceeding
3. Corruptly

C. Other Crimes
...federal voter fraud statute...seditious conspiracy...conspiracy to impede or injure an officer of the United States...

V. CONCLUSION
A. The Legal Prong

B. The Discretionary Prong
1. Substantial Federal Interest
2. Effective Prosecution in Another Jurisdiction
3. Adequate Non-Criminal Alternative

VI. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
A final factor would need to be considered that is absent in most cases – whether the country would be best served by a criminal prosecution. On the one hand, as discussed above, a substantial federal interest is served by prosecuting a leader who attempted to overturn an election. On the other hand, criminal charges against Trump could have a dangerously divisive effect on the country. Trump’s unrelenting rhetoric about a stolen election no doubt contributed to the violent response that occurred on Jan. 6. DOJ would need to consider the backlash that would likely follow the filing of criminal charges against him. Violent protests and civil unrest should be expected. We might even anticipate loss of life.

The other potential negative consequence that would need to be considered would be an acquittal. If Trump were charged and acquitted at trial, then he and his violent extremist followers would be emboldened. A sober and clear-eyed assessment of prosecution must consider that charging Trump criminally could have profoundly negative consequences for our country.

The only thing worse would be not charging him.

https://www.justsecurity.org/80308/united-states-v-donald-trump-model-prosecutio...
______________________________________________

Josh Dawsey (WaPo) @jdawsey1 | 10:05 PM · Mar 2, 2022:
Here are emails where Trump lawyer John Eastman urges Pence to not follow Electoral Count Act and alleges it’s Pence’s fault they are under siege, after Pence’s lawyer Greg Jacob blames him. And Pence’s lawyer tells Eastman he’s done a disservice to POTUS with his advice.
Email ( https://twitter.com/jdawsey1/status/1499219489375801345/photo/1 )
Email ( https://twitter.com/jdawsey1/status/1499219489375801345/photo/2 )

Lordy, there be tapes!

The Stone Tapes
Dalton Bennett and Jon Swaine | March 4, 2022

...filmed ... by a Danish camera crew for a documentary on the veteran Republican operative.

...Stone allowed the filmmakers to document his activities during extended periods over more than two years. In addition to interviews and moments when Stone spoke directly to the camera, they also captured fly-on-the-wall footage of his actions, candid off-camera conversations from a microphone he wore and views of his iPhone screen as he messaged associates on an encrypted app. Reporters from The Washington Post reviewed more than 20 hours of video filmed for the documentary, “A Storm Foretold,” which is expected to be released later this year.

The footage, along with other reporting by The Post, provides the most comprehensive account to date of Stone’s involvement in the former president’s effort to overturn the election and in the rallies in Washington that spilled over into violence on Jan. 6.

Stone privately coordinated post-election protests with prominent figures, and in January he communicated by text message with leaders of far-right groups that had been involved in the attack on the Capitol, the footage shows. The filmmakers did not capture conversations between Stone and Trump, but on several occasions, Stone told them or his associates that he remained in contact with the president.

Stone has refused to give testimony and evidence to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, citing his rights under the Fifth Amendment. Last week, he sued members of the panel to try to block them from using a subpoena to obtain his telephone records...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2022/roger-stone-docum...

Trump White House aide was secret author of report used to push ‘big lie’
Hugo Lowell | 17 Mar 2022

Report on Dominion voting machines* produced after 2020 election was not the work of volunteer in Trump’s post-election legal team...The previously unreported involvement of the Trump White House aide in the preparation of the Dominion report raises the extraordinary situation of at least one administration official being among the original sources of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election...senior Trump White House policy aide Joanna Miller...who worked for the senior Trump adviser Peter Navarro...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/16/trump-white-house-aide-secret-au...
--------------------------------------------------------------

* https://archive.org/details/dominion-voting-systems-report-final-12-2-20.docx-1/...

Great stuff, margd!

Exclusive: Witness Claims Trump’s Chief of Staff Was on Phone Call Planning Jan. 6 March on Capitol
Hunter Walker |

...Scott Johnston — who worked on the team that helped plan the Ellipse rally — says that’s just not so. He claims that leading figures in the Trump administration and campaign deliberately planned to have crowds converge on the Capitol, where the 2020 election was being certified — and “make it look like they went down there on their own.”

...Johnston, who says he described the phone call to House select committee investigators, detailed his allegations in a series of conversations with Rolling Stone. Johnston says he overheard Mark Meadows, then-former President Trump’s chief of staff, and Katrina Pierson, Trump’s national campaign spokesperson, talking with Kylie Kremer, the executive director of Women For America First, about plans for a march to the Capitol. Johnston said the conversation was clearly audible to him since it took place on a speakerphone as he drove Kremer between the group’s rallies in the final three days of 2020...

....According to Johnston, Meadows, Pierson, and Kremer discussed the possibility of setting up a permit to make the march from the White House to the Capitol official. He says the trio decided against officially permitting the march, citing concerns about security costs and about the optics of a sitting president organizing a push towards Congress as lawmakers certified his loss in the 2020 election. Ultimately, Johnston tells Rolling Stone, they planned to “direct the people down there and make it look like they went down there on their own.”...

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/jan6-trump-mark-meadows-...

Cheney( R-WY): Trump Can Expect "additional enhanced criminal penalties"

Speaking to Chuck Todd yesterday on MSNBC's Meet the Press the Republican representative said,

. . .we're looking at things like do we need additional enhanced criminal penalties for the kind of supreme dereliction of duty that you saw with President Trump when he refused to tell the mob to go home after he had provoked that attack on the Capitol. . . .there will be legislative recommendations and there certainly will be new information. . .

"And I can tell you, "I have not learned a single thing since I have been on this Committee that has made me less concerned or less worried about the gravity of the situation and the actions that President Trump took and also refused to take while the attack was underway."

J6 Committee Turns Up Heat on RNC 'Big Lie' Involvement

The House Select Committee is in court to force RNC to turn over its "spammy" fundraisng e-mails that it says "took a pernicious turn in the weeks just prior to the Capitol siege."

One hour before rioters breached police lines at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a fundraising email — sent jointly by the Trump campaign and the RNC — arrived in the inboxes of thousands of supporters.

“This is our last chance,” the subject line read above an email urging supporters to “FIGHT BACK.”

Committee investigators allege that the emails it's seeking amount to a

. . .disinformation campaign that fueled the unrest that turned violent at the Capitol. And they want to know who at the RNC authored and approved these small-dollar fundraising efforts, which helped raise millions on the false claim that then-President Donald Trump’s loss could be reversed.

Republicans have whined that the committee is trying to spy on its election strategy details, but the brief maintains its focus only on "the extent to which the RNC stoked, and profited from, Trump’s election disinformation — plus any nexus their messaging had to the violence that followed."

The Committee isn't pursuing the RNC directly. Instead, it subpoenaed Salesforce, the bulk mail platform. Salesforce issued a public statement following the insurrection, saying that. . .

it was concerned there was a connection between the RNC’s email campaign and the political violence that erupted days earlier.

It said it had “taken action” to ensure its platform couldn’t be used that way again, and soon thereafter, the RNC announced it would no longer use Salesforce’s platform for digital fundraising.

But so far, the company hasn't explained the ‘actions’ it took, nor has it publicly elaborated. . .

. . .on the connection it saw between the ‘use of its services’ and the violence on January 6, 2021.
(SNIP)
(The Select Committee is). . .seeking the identities of the Trump campaign or RNC officials who logged into the Salesforce platform to execute the email campaigns.

It has hopes of questioning those officials to determine their involvement in possible conspiracy and other crimes between Trump and the RNC in the 2020 election.

First on CNN: January 6 committee has text messages between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows
Ryan Nobles, Annie Grayer, Zachary Cohen and Jamie Gangel | March 24, 2022

The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 riot has in its possession more than two dozen text messages between former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a conservative activist and the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, according to multiple sources familiar with the messages.

These text messages, according to sources, took place between early November 2020 and mid-January 2021. Thomas recently revealed that she attended the pro-Trump rally that preceded the US Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, but says she “played no role” in planning the events of that day.

The content of the text messages may be of interest to the committee’s investigation, because it asked Meadows in a subpoena to turn over “both documents and your deposition testimony regarding these and other matters that are within the scope of the committee’s activity.”

The revelation of text messages between Thomas and Meadows, both key allies of former President Donald Trump, comes as progressives and some legal ethics experts see her activism as a potential conflict of interest for Justice Thomas’ work on some Supreme Court cases...

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/24/politics/ginni-thomas-mark-meadows-text-messages/...

29 Emails Revealed Between Ginni Thomas & Mark Meadows

Emails exchanged between the wife of SCOTUS Judge Clarence Thomas and former Trump Chief-of-Staff Mark Meadows have been obtained by the J6 Committee. The topic? Efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Those messages — part of 29 total messages obtained — reveal an extraordinary pipeline between Virginia Thomas, who goes by Ginni, and then-President Donald Trump's top aide during a period when Trump and his allies were vowing to go to the Supreme Court in an effort to subvert the election results.

Corruption is too polite a word, IMO. Perhaps the Select Committee agrees and is looking for evidence of collusion and conspiracy to influence the SCOTUS, anticipating Trump's men could get their man installed in the presidency by Ginni and Mike's efforts should the issue go to Clarence and his cohort for settlement.

The messages, which do not directly reference Justice Thomas or the Supreme Court, show for the first time how Ginni Thomas used her access to Trump's inner circle to encourage and seek to guide the president's strategy to overturn the election results — and how receptive and grateful Meadows said he was to receive her advice.

See the video of CBS reporter Robert Costa here.