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trumpbites · 1 year

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For Trump, the Legal Shoes Finally Drop - The New York Times

For Trump, the Legal Shoes Finally Drop – The New York Times

Criminal Referrals: In its final public session, the Jan. 6 House committee accused Mr. Trump of inciting insurrection and other federal crimes as it referred him to the Justice Department for potential prosecution. Cassidy Hutchinson: The former White House aide told the panel in September that a lawyer aligned with Mr. Trump had attempted to influence her testimony. A Diminished Trump: The…

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leapingmonkeys · 2 years

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#house select committee to investigate the january 6th attack

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tomorrowusa · 8 months

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Cassidy Hutchinson spoke with Rachel Maddow in her first live interview since her testimony before the House January 6th Committee. In case you missed her testimony on 22 June 2022, it is still available here.

She was an assistant to Trump's Chief of Staff Mark Meadows who has since been indicted for election fraud in Georgia.

Ms. Hutchinson spoke about the current mindset of the GOP and also described the less than professional behavior of other Trump White House staffers as well as some GOP members of Congress including Matt Gaetz.

One phrase she used in the interview was: "Mr Trump's attempt to overthrow the government to stay in power"

Her book "Enough" has just been published.

#cassidy hutchinson #trump white house #select committee to investigate the january 6th attack on the us capitol #us house of representatives #trump's attempted coup #assault on the us capitol by pro-trump terrorists #donald trump #mark meadows #matt gaetz #Youtube

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 5 months

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 5, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JAN 6, 2024

President Joe Biden launched his reelection campaign today with a speech at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. He spoke after a visit to nearby Valley Forge, where General George Washington quartered his troops from December 1777 to June 1778 during the Revolutionary War in which the former colonies sought to establish their independence from Great Britain.

Biden began the speech by outlining what the soldiers in the Continental Army quartered at Valley Forge had fought for. “America made a vow,” Biden said. “Never again would we bow down to a king.”

A “ragtag army made up of ordinary people” fought for what Washington called “a sacred cause,” he said: “Freedom, liberty, democracy. American democracy.” Valley Forge, he said, “tells the story of the pain and the suffering and the true patriotism it took to make America.”

Three years ago, he said, when insurrectionists tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power on January 6, 2021, “we nearly…lost it all.”

“Today, we’re here to answer the most important of questions,” Biden said. “Is democracy still America’s sacred cause?... This is not rhetorical, academic or hypothetical. Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time.”

“And it’s what the 2024 election is all about.”

Biden described Trump’s attack on American democracy and warned that “Donald Trump’s campaign is about him, not America, not you.” Biden remembered the “smashing windows, shattering doors, attacking the police” of January 6. He recalled the rioters erecting a gallows while the crowd chanted, “Hang Mike Pence,” hunting for then–House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and injuring more than 140 police officers.

Like the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, Biden emphasized that while the whole world was watching the attack in horror and disbelief, and even as staff, family members, and Republican leaders pleaded with Trump to do something, the former president watched events unfold on the television in a little room off the Oval Office and “did nothing.”

Biden repeated the condemnation of former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) when he called that refusal to act “among the worst derelictions of duty by a president in American history.”

The president went on to explain how Trump continued to lie that he had won the 2020 presidential election despite losing recounts and 60 court cases. For those lies, Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani was ordered last month to pay $148 million to election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss for defamation, and the Fox News Corporation agreed to pay $787 million to Dominion Voting Systems for lying that their machines had switched votes from Trump to Biden.

Then, when he had exhausted all his legal options, Trump urged his supporters to assault the Capitol. Since then, more than 1,200 people have been charged with crimes related to the events of that day; nearly 900 of them have pleaded guilty or been convicted.

Trump has called those insurrectionists “patriots” and has promised to pardon them if he is returned to office. But normalizing violence as part of our political system destroys the reasonable debate and peaceful transition of power that is at the heart of democracy. Biden identified this danger, warning: “Political violence is never, ever acceptable in the United States political system—never, never, never. It has no place in a democracy. None. You can’t be pro-insurrectionist and pro-American.”

Biden noted that Trump has promised to continue to assault democracy, threatening “a full-scale campaign of ‘revenge’ and ‘retribution’...for some years to come.” Trump has said he “would be a dictator on day one,” called for the “termination of all the rules, regulation, and articles, even those found in the U.S. Constitution,” and echoed the language used in Nazi Germany by calling those who oppose him “vermin” and talking about the blood of Americans being poisoned by immigrants.

“There’s no confusion about who Trump is and what he intends to do,” Biden said.

Immediately after January 6, 2021, “even Republican members of Congress and Fox News commentators publicly and privately condemned the attack,” he said. “But now…those same people have changed their tune…. [P]olitics, fear, money, all have intervened. And now these MAGA voices who know the truth about Trump on January 6th have abandoned the truth and abandoned democracy.”

“They made their choice,” Biden said. “Now the rest of us—Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans—we have to make our choice. I know mine. And I believe I know America’s. We will defend the truth, not give in to the Big Lie. We’ll embrace the Constitution and the Declaration, not abandon it. We’ll honor the sacred cause of democracy, not walk away from it.”

“Today, I make this sacred pledge to you,” he said. “The defense, protection, and preservation of American democracy will remain, as it has been, the central cause of my presidency.”

“America, as we begin this election year, we must be clear,” Biden said. “Democracy is on the ballot. Your freedom is on the ballot.” “The alternative to democracy is dictatorship—the rule of one, not the rule of ‘We the People.’”

“Together, we can keep proving that America is still a country that believes in decency, dignity, honesty, honor, truth,” he said. “We still believe that no one, not even the President, is above the law…. [T]he vast majority of us still believe that everyone deserves a fair shot at making it. We’re still a nation that gives hate no safe harbor…. We still believe in ‘We the People,’ and that includes all of us, not some of us.”

In “that cold winter of 1777,” Biden said, referring back to the soldiers at Valley Forge, “George Washington and his American troops…waged a battle on behalf of a revolutionary idea that everyday people—like where I come from and the vast majority of you—…that everyday people can govern themselves without a king or a dictator.”

Americans “take charge of our destiny,” Biden said. “We get our job done with…the help of the people we find in America, who find their place in the changing world and dream and build a future that not only they but all people deserve a shot at.”

“This is the first national election since [the] January 6th insurrection placed a dagger at the throat of American democracy,” Biden said. “We all know who Donald Trump is. The question we have to answer is: Who are we? That’s what’s at stake. Who are we?”

And then he answered his own question, concluding with his characteristic faith in the American people. “After all we’ve been through in our history, from independence to Civil War to two world wars to a pandemic to insurrection,” he said, “I refuse to believe that, in 2024, we Americans will choose to walk away from what’s made us the greatest nation in the history of the world: freedom, liberty.”

“Democracy,” he said, “is still a sacred cause.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #January 6th #insurrection #democracy #Joe Biden #history #a sacred cause

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vote-democrat-president-congress · 6 months

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Smith recounts these facts to establish Trump’s motive and intent on January 6

December 5, 2023 (Tuesday)

A new filing today by Special Counsel Jack Smith in the case United States of America v. Donald J. Trump for his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election shows Smith’s office establishing that Trump has a longstanding pattern of refusing to accept election results he dislikes.

As early as 2012, the filing notes, Trump baselessly alleged that voting machines had switched votes intended for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. In the 2016 campaign he “claimed repeatedly, with no basis, that there was widespread voter fraud,” and publicly refused to commit to accepting the results of that election. This pattern continued in 2020, but in that election he took active steps to seize power.

The filing introduced information that Trump, an agent, and an unindicted co-conspirator tried to start a riot at the TCF Center in Detroit as vote counting showed Biden taking the lead. As Josh Kovensky of Talking Points Memo points out, this scheme sounds much like the Brooks Brothers Riot of 2000 that stopped vote counting in Miami-Dade County in Florida. Roger Stone was a participant in the Brooks Brothers Riot; in 2020 he was working to keep Trump in office.

Smith’s team shows how this pattern continued to play out in the 2020 election, with Trump urging supporters like the Proud Boys to back him, falsely asserting that the election had been stolen, and attacking former supporters who denied that the election had been stolen. The pattern has continued until the present, with Trump calling those who were found guilty of offenses related to the attack on the U.S. Capitol “hostages” and claiming they were “treated horribly.”

Smith recounts these facts to establish Trump’s motive and intent on January 6, but his identification of a longstanding pattern indicates it would be a grave mistake to think Trump has any intention of campaigning fairly or accepting any result in 2024 other than his return to the White House.

New House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who has endorsed Trump for president and was a key organizer of the congressional effort to keep Trump in office, has promised to release all the surveillance footage from the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Trump supporters insist that the full tapes will reveal that the attack was not as bad as the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol showed. Johnson said that the tapes must be shared publicly for “transparency.”

Today, Johnson supported Trump’s message about January 6 when he said that he was making sure the faces of rioters are blurred in the surveillance footage. "We have to blur some of the faces of persons who participated in the events of that day because we don't want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ [Department of Justice] and to have other, you know, concerns and problems," he said. Johnson’s spokesperson quickly walked back the comment, saying Johnson meant to say that faces were blurred to prevent “all forms of retaliation against private citizens from any non-governmental actors.”

Also today, Kash Patel, who served on Trump’s national security team and is widely expected to return in a second Trump administration, expanded the authoritarian threats Trump people have been making to include the media. On former Trump ally Steve Bannon’s podcast, Patel promised that the Trump team would fill government positions from top to bottom with loyalists and would use the Department of Justice to go after those perceived to be Trump’s enemies.

“We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media,” Patel said. “Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections—we’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”

Yesterday, former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), who is promoting her new book, Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning, called out Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) for his continuing hold on military appointments that kept more than 450 routine promotions from taking effect over the past ten months. Tuberville claimed his refusal to permit the nominees’ confirmations was an attempt to change Pentagon policy of permitting leave for service members in states that ban abortion to obtain abortion care elsewhere. But on NPR yesterday, Cheney wondered: “Why is Tommy Tuberville doing that? Is he holding those positions open so that Donald Trump can fill them?”

Today, under great pressure from members of his own party who worried the Democrats would change the rules to weaken the power of the Senate minority, Tuberville released his hold on most of the nominees. The Senate promptly confirmed 425 of them.

Still, Tuberville retained holds on 11 officers of the most senior rank. According to congressional reporter for Punchbowl News Andrew Desiderio, the positions left vacant are commander of Pacific Air Forces, commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, Air Component Command for the United States Indo-Pacific Command, commander for Air Combat Command, the head of the Navy’s Nuclear Propulsion Program, the head of Northern Command (which defends the United States and coordinates defenses with Canada, Mexico, and the Bahamas), the head of the U.S. Cyber Command, vice chief of staff of the Army, vice chief of staff of the Air Force, vice chief of Space Operations, and vice chief of Naval Operations.

Last night, Cheney explained to political commentator and television host Rachel Maddow exactly what a second Trump presidency would look like, Cheney said: "He would take those people who are the most radical, the most dangerous, who had the proposals that were the most dangerous, and he will put them in positions of supreme power. That's a risk that we simply cannot take."

Mark Joyella of Forbes took note of Maddow’s introduction last night, in which the host stressed the importance of protecting democracy. She began by emphasizing how much she and Cheney disagreed about everything in politics, so much so that it was as if they were on different planets at war with each other.

Maddow made that point, she said, because “in civic terms, in sort of American citizenship terms, I think it's really important how much we disagree. It's important how far apart we are in every policy issue imaginable. It is important that Liz Cheney is infinity and I am negative infinity on the ideological number line. It's important because that tells you how serious and big something has to be to put us, to put me and Liz Cheney, together on the same side of something in American life.”

The Rachel Maddow Show was the most watched news show on cable television last night, with 3.15 million viewers. The Fox News Channel’s show Hannity, hosted by personality Sean Hannity, had just under 2 million viewers.

It seems clear Americans are waking up to Trump’s threats to stack the government with loyalists, weaponize the Justice Department and military, deport 10 million people, and prosecute those he perceives to be his enemies in politics and the media. Interviewing Trump tonight, Hannity tried to downplay Trump’s statements about his authoritarian plans for a second term by getting him to commit to staying within the normal bounds of a president should he be elected in 2024. The first time he was asked, Trump sidestepped the question. So Hannity asked again. “Under no circumstances, you are promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?” he asked.

“Except for day one,” Trump responded.

Source: Heather Cox Richardson

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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Donald Trump has come under fire for amplifying a call to his supporters to get “locked and loaded” and “physically fight” for the Republican party’s front-runner for the 2024 presidential elections.

Mr. Trump, who is actively using his own social media platform Truth Social after he was barred from Twitter, reposted a message by a supporter who seemed to suggest violence.

“Then they will have to figure out how to fight 80,000,000 + it’s not going to happen again. People my age and old will physically fight for him this time,” a Truth Social post from username @freeTX1776 read.

“What we got to lose? I’ll donate the rest of my time here on this planet to do it. And I know many many others who feel the same. They got my 6 and we Are Locked and LOADED.”

Mr. Trump, who was investigated for over 18 months by a House committee over his role in the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot, was blamed as the “central cause”.

His supporters descended on Capitol Hill after he told his more than 80 million Twitter followers to come to Washington on the day Congress would make final his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden, and wrote that the day’s events would be “wild”.

The twice-impeached President was called out by prominent people on social media for amplifying a message that suggested a repeat of the 6 January riots.

Former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger, who was one of two Republicans on the Democratic-led January 6 select committee, asked whether it is even legal to support this for a presidential runner.

“This is sick sick sick. Is it legal to even invite this kind of stuff?” Mr. Kinzinger, 44, a staunch critic of Mr. Trump, said.

Former FBI agent Peter Strozk, who shared the screenshot on Twitter of Mr. Trump resharing the post, said it is the “normal signs of a well-functioning democracy” in an apparent sarcasm.

He referred to Mr. Trump’s latest comments in which he said he trusts Russia’s president Vladimir Putin over his own Director of National Intelligence.

Responding to Mr. Kinzinger, attorney Harris Peskin said he is stunned. “Absolutely shocked that the guy who tried to overthrow the government the first time, would try again. I just DID NOT see this coming! What a twist!”

The official Twitter handle for the Lincoln Project said: “Just appalling. Trump is gearing up for another January 6th attack. Show this to anyone who does not take seriously the existential threat that MAGA poses to our democracy.”

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factcheckdotorg · 1 year

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#donald trump #january 6th #house select committee

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carolyn-magazine · 9 months

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This is a letter I wrote to my Secretary of State in regard to the disqualification of Donald J. Trump, and any others, from holding public office, per the United States Constitution, Amendment 14, Section 3.

[Disclaimer: this letter has been altered by me to remove the name of this state's Secretary of State in case anyone else would like to copy and send it to their Secretary of State or Lieutenant Governor. [Note: In Some States the Lieutenant Governor also serves as the Secretary of State and/or Chief Election Officer]

Dear Secretary of State [insert name] ,

In addition to serving as Secretary of State of [insert state], you also serve as Chief Election Officer. As a proud resident of [insert state], I am aware that you stand by the wisdom of The United States Constitution, as we all should. I implore you to please read, and take into serious consideration, the below information.

I am writing to your offices urging a formal review of whether Donald J. Trump, and any others, are barred from the ballot in this state by way of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. That Amendment disqualifies from the ballot any person who “shall have engaged” in an “insurrection.”

For such a disqualification, there is no requirement that Trump or any person be first convicted of any crime - as the Congressional Research Service notes.

Additionally, last year after a trial in New Mexico, a judge ruled that Jan. 6 was an “insurrection” within the meaning of the 14th Amendment and that Otero County Commissioner Cuoy Griffin was removed from office and disqualified from the ballot for “engaging” in that attack. Mr. Griffin is also prohibited from ever holding an elected position in the state of New Mexico.

Donald Trump’s actions - as detailed in the final report of the “Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack” - far exceed the actions of Griffin in terms of “engaging” in the Jan. 6 insurrection. While that New Mexico ruling is not binding in this or any other state, it is persuasive in its reasoning, and I urge your offices to read it.

Recently, conservative legal scholars (former Federal Judge on the Court of Appeals 4th circuit, J. Michael Luttig, and Professor Emeritus at Harvard Law School, who taught Constitutional Law at Harvard for nearly five decades, Laurence Tribe) have recently penned articles reaching the conclusion that given Trump’s conduct, the US Constitution does in fact bar Trump from the ballot.

Article VI of The United States Constitution reads, "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any state to the Contrary notwithstanding."

Amendment 14, Section 3 of The United States Constitution reads, "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."

As Americans, we should always take the Constitution seriously, and most people do, including Donald Trump, as we've witnessed him repeatedly standing by the 1st and 5th amendments.

We can't pick and choose which amendments are legally binding because each one is considered part of the supreme law of the land, as stated above in Article VI of The Constitution.

The time is now to review if Trump, or anyone for that matter, has done just that, and is barred from the ballot - well before the 2024 election.

George Santayana once famously wrote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

We must learn from History and there is a reason why Section 3 of the 14th Amendment was written into The Constitution - as a way to prevent our democracy from being destroyed.

Thank you for considering this issue that is vitally important to protecting our Republic.

Sincerely,

[insert your name here]

References

https://www.senate.gov/about/origins-foundations/senate-and-constitution/constitution.htm

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/donald-trump-constitutionally-prohibited-presidency/675048/

https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:VA6C2:d5f3903a-9ef1-413d-8b62-d42d1e8f44a5

https://nmpoliticalreport.com/2022/09/06/nm-judge-orders-couy-griffin-to-be-removed-from-otero-county-commission-bars-him-from-holding-any-office-in-the-future/

https://www.c-span.org/video/?507774-1/president-trump-video-statement-capitol-protesters

https://iep.utm.edu/santayan/

https://youtu.be/5Aaqz4qiQYM?si=ls1xrwNcKcFZrVMd

#United States Constitution #Amendment 14 section 3 #disqualification #insurrection #letter to secretary of state #barred from ballot #threat to democracy #stop the madness #inciting an insurrection #george santayana #history #remember the past #don't let history be repeated #secretary of state #facts #MSNBC

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follow-up-news · 4 months

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Former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro was sentenced to four months in prison Thursday for criminal contempt of Congress, with federal prosecutors saying he “thumbed his nose” at the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Navarro was convicted in September on two counts for refusing to testify and provide documents to the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, which issued its report and dissolved in late 2022 after Republicans won control of the House. The charge carried a mandatory minimum sentence of a month in prison. Federal prosecutors had sought six months for Navarro, saying he, “like the rioters at the Capitol, put politics, not country, first, and stonewalled Congress’s investigation.” Navarro, prosecutors said, “chose allegiance to former President Donald Trump over the rule of law.” U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta handed down the sentence Thursday and also ordered Navarro to pay a fine of $9,500.

#jan. 6

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mreyc · 5 months

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Trump Attacks Biden in Christmas Morning Messages, Trump Issues Remarks Addressing Biden

Trump Fires Christmas Barbs at Biden, Accusing Him of Corruption and 'Madness & Doom'.

Former President Donald Trump used Christmas Day as a platform to launch into a verbal attack on President Joe Biden, accusing him of incompetence, corruption, and contributing to a national state of "madness & doom."

Trump's criticisms, posted on his social media platform Truth Social, centered around allegations of election interference, biased law enforcement, and mishandled situations like the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. He also lashed out at special counsel Jack Smith, who is investigating Trump, and the House Select Committee probing the January 6th Capitol attack.

While offering some general holiday greetings, Trump's Christmas Day messages predominantly focused on attacking Biden and his administration, showcasing a continuation of his political rivalry despite the holiday season.

FULL VIDEO

#Trump #Biden #Election #Election2024 #PresidentialElection

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yourreddancer · 2 years

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HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

July 15, 2022 (Friday)

A late news dump tonight: the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol has subpoenaed from the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) the text messages between agents on January 5 and January 6, 2021, that it learned Wednesday had been deleted.

Chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) told Secret Service director James Murray, who recently announced his upcoming resignation, that the committee wants all the texts by July 19, 2022.

Politico legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney noted that this is the first time the committee has subpoenaed an agency in the executive branch, at least publicly.That joins other legal news today.

Trump confidant Steve Bannon tried again today to get his trial for contempt of Congress dismissed, arguing that because the court has refused to let him subpoena members of Congress, he cannot have a fair trial. That trial is due to start Monday.

Fani Willis, the Fulton County, Georgia, prosecutor, today told the chair of the Georgia Republican Party, David Shafer, as well as two state senators, that they could be indicted for their participation in the attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.

And the Department of Justice requested that the first defendant from the January 6 insurrection to be convicted at trial, Guy Reffitt, be sentenced to 15 years in prison. This is an upward adjustment of sentencing guidelines because the department is asking the judge to consider Reffitt’s actions as terrorism, since the offense for which he was convicted “was calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct.”

Reffitt was a leader of the Texas Three Percenters militia gang, which calls for “rebellion” against the federal government. He came to Washington, D.C., for January 6. He attacked U.S. Capitol Police officers and encouraged others to do so before entering the Capitol armed with a handgun, where he targeted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and then–Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

A camera on his helmet recorded Reffitt’s words that day. “I’m taking the Capitol with everybody f*cking else,” Reffitt told the people around him. “We’re all going to drag them m*therf*ckers out kicking and screaming. I don’t give a sh*t. I just want to see Pelosi’s head hit every f*cking stair on the way out. (Inaudible) F*ck yeah. And Mitch McConnell too. F*ck ‘em all. They f*cked us too many g*dd*mn years for too f*cking long. It’s time to take our country back. I think everybody’s on the same d*mn wavelength. And I think we have the numbers to make it happen…. [W]e’ve got a f*cking president. We don’t need much more. We just get rid of them m*therf*ckers and start over.”

Afterward, he boasted, “We took the Capital [sic] of the United States of America and we will do it again.” Back in Texas, Reffitt deleted a thread of messages between him and another planner—the FBI was able to recover it—and threatened to hurt his teenaged children if they reported him. Reffitt has a history of domestic violence, including threatening his wife with a gun.

The hefty sentence request for Reffitt is likely to convince others implicated in the insurrection to cooperate.The timing of today’s legal news highlights that the prosecution of those who tried to destroy our government is imperative to uphold the rule of law.

On this date in 1870, Congress voted to readmit Georgia to the United States after the Civil War. So far as the people living through that era thought, this ended Reconstruction, which they conceived of as the reconstruction of the U.S. government. And that was it.

While there were military tribunals for those who had committed war crimes– most of them concerning the treatment of prisoners of war—there was never a legal reckoning for even the leaders of those who had tried to destroy the nation, although their efforts had led to the deaths of 620,000 soldiers and sailors and cost the country more than $5 billion.

In an attempt to be magnanimous, U.S. officials gave former Confederates no reason to abandon their loyalty to their failed nation. They clung to it through Lost Cause mythology, convincing themselves that theirs was the true version of America despite their defeat, and that their cause was noble. Georgia’s return to the Union depended on the state’s ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing Black men the right to vote, but within a year of Georgia’s readmission, white southerners were already undermining Black voting. Within a decade, they had regained control of their states and were pushing their Black neighbors into second-class citizenship.

Without any cost for adherence to the Lost Cause, there was no reason for Confederate symbols to disappear. They have continued to play an astonishingly large role in our society, and not just in the South. They have inspired those eager to dismantle the government ever since the Civil War. They have made a spectacular comeback since the 1980s until finally, on January 6, 2021, the Confederate battle flag flew in the U.S. Capitol.

This time, though, there is a chance to change the story. Prosecutions have January 6 participants like Reffitt trying to hide their actions, and jail time will almost certainly dampen the enthusiasm of those who were happy to be part of an insurrection until they discovered there was a legal cost. While U.S. leaders after the Civil War thought their best hope of building a nation based on racial equality was to avoid prosecutions, scholars who study the restoration of democracy after an authoritarian crisis are very clear: central to any such restoration is enforcing the rule of law.

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tomorrowusa · 2 years

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Democrat Elaine Luria’s closing campaign message.

Ms. Luria is running for re-election from VA-02 in what may be the closest US House race this year. Her opponent is Trump Republican Jen Kiggans who is following the Elise Stefanik playbook of abandoning previous moderate views and going full MAGA in a fit of putting ambition ahead of decency.

Rep. Luria is on the House January 6th Committee. Obviously the Trump Republicans don’t like having her expose their complicity with the pro-Trump terrorists who assaulted the US Capitol.

People may remember Rep. Luria as the committee member who made public the cowardice of Trump Republican Senator Josh Hawley.

youtube

So the far right has targeted Elaine Luria for making one of their icons look like an object of national ridicule. Hawley memes quickly proliferated after she showed that clip.

Late night comedians had fun with the footage of the hypocritical wingnut. Trevor Noah’s reaction was classic.

youtube

Elaine Luria is a genuine protector of democracy and human rights including LGBTQ rights. She has a 100 rating from the Human Rights Campaign. Contributing to her campaign is easy via ActBlue. ActBlue accepts donations as small as $1.

#elaine luria #va-02 #us house of representatives #lgbtq rights #the closest house race in 2022 #assault on the us capitol by pro-trump terrorists #select committee to investigate the january 6th attack on the united states capitol #trump republicans #josh hawley #trevor noah

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 6 months

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 15, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

DEC 15, 2023

CNN reporters today pulled together evidence from a number of sources to explain how “a binder containing highly classified information related to Russian election interference went missing at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency.” The missing collection of documents was ten inches thick and contained 2,700 pages of information from U.S. intelligence and that of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies about Russian efforts to help Trump win the 2016 presidential election.

The binder went missing in the last days of the Trump presidency and has not been recovered. Its disappearance has raised “alarms among intelligence officials that some of the most closely guarded national security secrets from the US and its allies could be exposed.”

Reporters Jeremy Herb, Katie Bo Lillis, Natasha Bertrand, Evan Perez, and Zachary Cohen have pieced together the story of how in his last days in office, Trump tried to declassify most of the information in the binder in order to distribute copies to Republican members of Congress and right-wing media outlets. According to an affidavit by reporter John Solomon, who was shown a copy of the binder, the plan was to begin releasing information from it on the morning of January 20, 2021, so that it would hit the news after President Joe Biden had been sworn in.

But late on January 19, while Solomon was copying the documents, White House lawyers recalled the copies to black out, or redact, sensitive information, worrying that while most of the facts in the binder were apparently already public, the methods of collection and persons involved were not. At some point in that process, an unredacted copy of the binder disappeared.

A former aide to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, Cassidy Hutchinson, told the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol last year that she thought Meadows took the unredacted binder with him.

Today, in statements that seemed very carefully worded, Meadows’s lawyer, George Terwilliger, told CNN: “Mr. Meadows was keenly aware of and adhered to requirements for the proper handling of classified material, any such material that he handled or was in his possession has been treated accordingly and any suggestion that he is responsible for any missing binder or other classified information is flat wrong.” Terwilliger told the New York Times: “Mark never took any copy of that binder home at any time.”

The missing binder was not among the material the Federal Bureau of Investigation recovered from Mar-a-Lago last year, and intelligence officials briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee about the missing information (the CNN story does not say that the House Intelligence Committee has been briefed). In April 2021, Trump allegedly offered to let the author of a book about him see the binder, saying “I would let you look at them if you wanted…. It’s a treasure trove…it would be sort of a cool book for you to look at.”

The story of yet more missing classified information highlights that Judge Aileen Cannon, who was confirmed to her position after Trump lost the 2020 election, has permitted Trump to slow down United States of America v. Donald J. Trump, Waltine Nauta, and Carlos De Oliveira, the pending criminal case in which he and two aides are accused of mishandling classified documents under the Espionage Act as well as making false statements and engaging in a conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Perhaps even more strongly, at a time when House Republicans have declined to fund Ukraine’s war against Russia’s 2022 invasion, the story serves as a reminder of the role Russia played in Trump’s 2016 election and how, during Trump’s time in office, he continued to cultivate a relationship with Russia’s authoritarian president Vladimir Putin and to turn his back on America’s traditional democratic allies, including those in NATO. (At one point, he told National Security Advisor John Bolton, “I don’t give a sh*t about NATO.”)

Indeed, Trump has suggested he would take the U.S. out of NATO if he returns to office, breaking the coalition that held first the Soviet Union and then Russia at bay since World War II. Such a betrayal would weaken all of the security alliances of the United States, according to Eastern European specialist Anne Applebaum, exposing the U.S. as an unreliable ally. As democracies ceased to work together, they would have to work with authoritarian governments, and after American political influence declined, so would the economic influence that has protected our economy. Authoritarian leaders like Putin would be the winners.

News about the missing binder also highlights just how hard Trump worked to convince his loyalists that that connection was a hoax. Although all U.S. intelligence services and the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee assessed that, in fact, Russia did intervene in the election to get Trump into the White House, many Trump loyalists continue to believe Trump’s lie that such interference did not happen.

Trump’s determination to convince his followers that “Russia, Russia, Russia” was a hoax was in part an attempt to get out from under the legal implications of working with a foreign country to win an election but also, perhaps more profoundly, an attempt to make his followers believe his lies over reality. If he could make them believe him, rather than the conclusions of the U.S. intelligence community and the Senate, they would be his to command.

Russia, Russia, Russia was an important precursor to the Big Lie that Trump, rather than Joe Biden, won the 2020 presidential election. The Big Lie has failed at every test of evidence, and yet Trump loyalists still say they believe it.

Today, former Trump ally Rudy Giuliani continued to defend the idea that the 2020 election had been stolen, even after a jury of eight Americans said he must pay the eye-popping sum of $148,169,000 to Georgia election workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman for defaming them by saying they had participated in election fraud—he made that up—and for emotional distress. Freeman and Moss had asked for $24 million each.

Of that verdict, $75,000,000 was for punitive damages, illustrating that spreading Trump’s lies so that they hurt individuals comes at a whopper of a cost. Giuliani had refused to cooperate in the case, although he admitted to the truth of the underlying facts, and he had continued to attack Moss and Freeman to reporters during the trial.

Trump’s election lies that hurt companies are also costly, as the Fox News Corporation found when it settled with Dominion Voting Systems for $787 million over the media company’s lies about the 2020 election.

Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) tried to address Trump’s attack on our democracy when this week they inserted into the National Defense Authorization Act a provision saying that no president can withdraw from NATO without approval from the Senate or from Congress as a whole.

“NATO has held strong in response to Putin’s war in Ukraine and rising challenges around the world,” Kaine said. He added that the legislation “to prevent any U.S. President from unilaterally withdrawing from NATO reaffirms U.S. support for this crucial alliance that is foundational for our national security. It also sends a strong message to authoritarians around the world that the free world remains united.”

Rubio added, “The Senate should maintain oversight on whether or not our nation withdraws from NATO. We must ensure we are protecting our national interests and protecting the security of our democratic allies.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Russia #Ukraine war #Letters from an American #Heather Cox Richardson #national security #NATO #classified information

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davematthews · 2 years

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 2 years

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In a bombshell revelation, former Representative Denver Riggleman (R-Va.) said former President Donald Trump White House’s links to the insurrection “need to be explored more.”

“You get a real ‘a-ha’ moment when you see that the White House switchboard had connected to a rioter’s phone while it’s happening,” Riggleman said in a released clip from an upcoming episode of “60 Minutes,” which is set to air on Sunday night.

Riggleman served as a Republican Congressman until 2021 and worked as an adviser to the January 6 Committee until April.

When host Bill Whitaker asked if the call from the White House could have been an accident, Riggleman replied: “When the White House just happened to call numbers, that somebody misdialed a rioter that day, on January 6th? Probably not.”

The former Congressman also said that he knows who the rioter is, but doesn’t know who was on the line at the White House.

Representatives for neither Trump nor the January 6 Committee have responded to requests for comment, according to Newsweek.

Bill Kristol, former chief of staff to former Vice President Dan Quayle, expressed concern for such a call in a tweet: “I placed many calls through the wonderful people at the White House switchboard during an earlier Republican Administration. I'm confident I never asked them to connect me with someone assaulting the U.S. Capitol. But that was a different era and a different Republican party.”

Riggleman was rebuked by the Committee in June, when he spoke about the findings of the Committee in a CNN interview. House Committee staff director David Buckley wrote in an internal email: “[Riggleman’s] specific discussion about the content of subpoenaed records, our contracts, contractors and methodologies, and your hard work is unnerving.” He added that Riggleman’s television appearance was “in direct contravention to his employment agreement.”

Riggleman disagreed, saying he spoke to CNN after he left the Committee, so was no longer bound to such agreements.

The news of the White House phone connection comes days before the (potential) final January 6 Committee hearing is scheduled to air on September 28.

The Capitol rioter who received a perplexing nine-second phone call from inside the White House on the afternoon of January 6, 2021, has been identified by CNN.

Anton Lunyk, 26, had already left the Capitol premises that day when his phone rang at 4:34 p.m., according to records reviewed by the outlet. The call came from the White House's publicly available phone number just minutes after former President Donald Trump posted a video encouraging his supporters to "go home," telling them, "we love you, you're very special," CNN reported.

The revelation of Lunyk's identity as the mysterious call recipient comes after a former technical advisor to the the House Select Committee investigating the insurrection said Friday that he traced a call between a rioter and the White House switchboard during the attack.

"You get a real 'a-ha' moment when you see that the White House switchboard had connected to a rioter's phone while it's happening," Denver Riggleman, a former Republican Congressman , whose unauthorized "behind-the-scenes" book on the probe is set to be published later this week, told 60 Minutes. "That's a big, pretty big 'a-ha' moment."

Members of the January 6 House Select Committee have since downplayed Riggleman's role with the panel — as well as the importance of the phone call — suggesting that Riggleman is "overstating" the incident.

An anonymous source told CNN that the Committee is still investigating the nature of the phone call, but has thus far been unable to uncover who made it — or why.

What has been made clear this week, however, is who received the call: Anton Lunyk — who claims he doesn't remember getting the ring and says he doesn't know anyone who worked in the Trump White House, according to CNN's sources.

Lunyk, of Brooklyn, New York, was initially charged with five counts related to his role in the riot, including violent entry, disorderly and disruptive conduct, and entering or remaining in a restricted building. But in April, he pleaded guilty to just one count of parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building and was sentenced to 12 months of probation, 60 hours of community service, and a restitution fine in September.

Prosecutors said Lunyk traveled to Washington, DC, the evening before the riot with two of his friends, Francis Connor and Antonio Ferrigno. The three men first attended the "Stop the Steal" rally before joining the mob of Trump supporters in walking to the US Capitol, where the crowd laid siege to the building.

Photos of Lunyk inside the Capitol show him wearing a red "Make America Great Again" hat, and videos from the scene captured Lunyk and his friends laughing and recording on their cellphones while in the building, according to court documents.

A sentencing memorandum revealed that Lunyk and his friends made violent jokes about Democratic lawmakers in the days after the November 2020 election, alleging that the presidency had been "stolen."

"If they take my money I'm gonna shoot Pelosi," Lunyk said in a message to Connor, Ferrigno, and others on January 12, 2021.

The trio spent approximately 10 minutes inside the Capitol before exiting through a window, prosecutors said. They had been out of the building for nearly an hour and a half when Lunyk's phone rang, according to CNN, and photographic evidence suggests the friends were already on their way back to New York when the call came through.

There is no mention of the phone call in any court records related to Lunyk's case, and an attorney for him did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

#us politics #news #vanity fair #business insider #2022 #Denver Riggleman #capitol protests #capitol riot #capitol riot investigation #house select committee #60 minutes #twitter #tweet #Bill Kristol #David Buckley #cnn #Anton Lunyk #insurrectionists #trump administration

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mariacallous · 2 years

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Ever since Donald Trump descended the Trump Tower escalator to Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World,” he’s remained the center of America’s political universe. But at least one former congressman believes the continued fixation on the 45th president is now a distraction. He’s only part of the story, especially now that Trumpism has grown larger than Trump himself.

On Friday, the House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol formally subpoenaed Trump, which seems to be the minimum amount of red meat the Democratic base demanded from the panel. While the big reveal of the subpoena—which was leaked to NBC News during the panel’s final hearing earlier this month—garnered headlines and TV hits, it overshadows the misunderstood and still-unfolding story of the digital machinations that fueled the attack and are poised to remake America for years to come, if not forever.

The US has entered an era of algorithmic political warfare, according to former Republican congressman Denver Riggleman. Until this spring, he served as a senior advisor to the January 6 committee, which he recounts in his new book, The Breach: The Untold Story of the Investigation into January 6th. A former Air Force intelligence officer, Riggleman cofounded a successful data mining and analysis military contracting firm before his election to the House in 2018. While the special panel conducted hundreds of interviews, Riggleman says, they’ve been lapped.

“The information war moves at the speed of electrons, not at the speed of interviews. That’s it. We’re in a new world,” Riggleman says. “The committee did a great job, but we have to move faster. We have to be more aware of how data can help any investigation into these types of activities when it comes to domestic terrorism or the radicalization pipeline.”

Riggleman says it’s unfortunate that the select committee devoted the bulk of its time and resources looking backward. He fears they missed what’s afoot—and still to come. “We’re trying to solve today’s problems tomorrow with yesterday’s technology. We’re in an information warfare battlespace,” Riggleman contends. “They’ve already changed their tactics. Deplatforming didn’t work. They just go to other platforms.”

Riggleman, a conservative who left the Republican Party after he was primaried out of office in 2020 for officiating a same-sex wedding, had asked the committee for a budget of $3.2 million for his digital sleuthing, but he says he was allocated just a fraction of that.

Still, he was granted a rare, behind-the-scenes glimpse into not just the January 6 attack. He also believes he identified the insurrection’s central player: Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Riggleman handed the special committee 2,319 text messages Meadows sent or received from the election through Biden’s inauguration, which he says reveals how deeply conspiracies have now “metastasized” in today’s Republican Party.

“What it shows is that QAnon conspiracy theories have saturated every level of the GOP,” Riggleman says.

The coordination included members of Congress, the wife of a Supreme Court justice, myriad lawyers, little-known aides, and, of course, Trump’s most ardent supporters. Riggleman also revealed a mysterious nine-second phone call placed from the White House switchboard at 4:34 pm on January 6 to 26-year-old Anton Lunyk, who has since pleaded guilty to entering the Capitol. Despite these findings, the former intel officer bemoans not being able to go all the way down the meme- and hashtag-laden rabbit hole.

“Thousands of documents are great, but millions of lines of data are better. And so when you look at call detail records or open source intelligence research or you look at social media, those types of things can tell you a lot,” Riggleman says. “And I think it can actually direct the way that you investigate more than bringing people in who lie, plead the Fifth, or sometimes conveniently forget things.”

The real story, Riggleman contends, isn’t Trump. (“If you indict Trump, his polling numbers are going to go up,” he says. “So good luck.”) Trumpism is now gospel to an online army of devotees, hundreds of whom are now running for state and local offices. No matter which party comes out in control of Congress once the dust settles on Election Night, the next Congress is guaranteed to have Donald Trump’s stamp on it. The GOP candidates on the ballot next month include 291 who say they wouldn’t have certified Biden’s 2020 victory, according to the Washington Post. Of those, 171 are running in safely Republican districts.

As a former member of the House Freedom Caucus who has deep libertarian leanings (he farms his own hemp), Riggleman is worried about the digital takeover of a party he used to love, respect, and doggedly fight for. “You also have to figure out who the hell is pushing these radicalizing ideas over digital channels because that’s where it’s happening too,” Riggleman says.

Thousands of Trump supporters took his post-January 6 deplatforming as their cue to follow their leader off Twitter and Facebook and into a new world of almost-anything-goes social media apps, like Trump’s own struggling Truth Social, or Parler, which Kanye “Ye” West plans to buy. Those apps suck up the most recent coverage, but other apps continue to attract new and frustrated users.

There’s Gab (where QAnon devotees feel safe discussing ever-evolving conspiracy theories), GETTR (a “free speech”-focused app founded by former Trump aide Jason Miller), Rumble (think YouTube for the far right), MeWe (think Facebook for Trump Republicans), and CloutHub (if Twitter and Facebook had a baby). Even Reddit is helping Trump successfully spread ungrounded conspiracies about ballot-stuffing in Arizona.

Many on the right are also increasingly employing popular messaging apps like Telegram, which allows private groups to include as many as 200,000 members, and Signal, popular for its promised end-to-end encryption. That includes many of Trump’s most motivated followers, which we know from the dramatic spike in users they both attracted after Silicon Valley firms started their post-insurrection purges.

Then there are forums like 4chan, 8kun, and Endchan. Movement-inspiring memes, dangerous conspiracy theories, celebrations of violence and violent rhetoric all abound on these hubs connecting kindreds who proudly consider themselves social outcasts set on upending the “normie” society most of us inhabit.

As the select committee now prepares its final report on the preparation and planning leading up to the savage assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the right has moved on. And in laying the groundwork to leave a Trump-sized imprint on this year’s midterms—including upending voting laws in countless battleground states and recruiting thousands of new pro-Trump poll workers to “police” local polling locations—the former president’s acolytes are also proving to be a few steps ahead of their opponents in their plan to capture the White House in 2024.

Just as an escalator helped Trump glide into the center of US politics, Riggleman says, the real story is the online gears, lubricants, chains, and steps lurking just under our feet. Likewise, unless more attention is paid to these means of political production, this new political order is something we all should get used to.

“We’re in a post-truth era, but we’re also in a post-Trump world—where those belief systems are baked in, and we’re going to have to deal with this for decades,” Riggleman says. “We need to look at going faster, harder, and better with more technology and more resources in that arena.”

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