“American Insurrection”: How Far-Right Extremists Moved from Fringe to Mainstream After Jan. 6 Attack
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
January 5, 2022
https://www.democracynow.org/2022/1/5/a ... transcript
GUESTS
Rick Rowley: award-winning filmmaker, independent journalist and director of PBS Frontline’s documentary American Insurrection.
LINKS
"American Insurrection"
Thursday marks one year since a violent mob of thousands of far-right and white supremacist Trump supporters descended on the U.S. Capitol, disrupting Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election and resulting in five deaths and hundreds of injuries. We look at where these movements are one year later, with the updated investigative documentary “American Insurrection” by Frontline in collaboration with ProPublica and Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program. Director Rick Rowley explains how the far-right social movements have grown since the insurrection and says “the locus of the organizing has shifted really from a national platform to a local one, which makes it more difficult to track and increases the potential for local or regional violence.” Rowley and Frontline correspondent A.C. Thompson interviewed January 6 select committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson about what makes this a moment for “far-right mobilization” and discussed the significance of the widespread contradictory beliefs by many on the far right that antifa and Black Lives Matter dressed up as Trump supporters and carried out the January 6 riot, but that those who tried to overturn the election are patriots.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Thursday marks the first anniversary of the deadly January 6th insurrection, when thousands of people attacked the U.S. Capitol with the goal of overthrowing the 2020 election. Many were part of far-right extremist and white supremacist groups. Today we look at where these movements are now with an investigation by Frontline, ProPublica and Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program that began in the wake of the deadly 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally. In their reporting, they found many white supremacist groups started to splinter amidst the backlash following Charlottesville, but President Trump gave them new life.
This is an excerpt from American Insurrection with correspondent A.C. Thompson that actually begins before January 6, 2020, when, on November 14th, one week after the presidential election was called for Joe Biden, Trump supporters took to the streets of Washington, D.C., stirred up by Trump’s refusal to concede. They demanded the results be overturned.
A.C. THOMPSON: As night falls, Proud Boys merge with MAGA marchers and roam the city looking for fights. Trump supporters confront journalists, vandalize Black Lives Matter signs and fight with activists who try to stop them.
POLICE OFFICER: Get out of here!
A.C. THOMPSON: A month later, Trump supporters take to the streets of Washington again. And once again, the protests turn violent. And then, he calls his supporters to the Capitol on January 6th.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you. We’re going to walk down to the Capitol! … You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing. … And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.
A.C. THOMPSON: As the clock runs out on his presidency, he urges them towards the Capitol building.
TRUMP SUPPORTERS: Whose house? Our house!
PROUD BOY: Ready?
A.C. THOMPSON: The Proud Boys are here, but they aren’t wearing their trademark yellow and black. The boogaloo bois are here, too, also out of uniform. They both blend into the pro-Trump crowd. Inside, Congress is trying to certify the election. Outside, the crowd is bearing down on them.
TRUMP SUPPORTERS: U.S.A.! U.S.A.! Whose house? Our house!
A.C. THOMPSON: But the police on the steps are outnumbered and unprepared.
TRUMP SUPPORTERS: U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
A.C. THOMPSON: Around 140 police officers are injured. One officer, Brian Sicknick, will later die. A Proud Boy from New York state smashes through a window. The Capitol has been breached. A Proud Boy broke the window, but what about the crowd behind him? A mob, urged on by the president, willing to embrace an insurrectionary violence that was once confined only to the most extreme elements of the far right.
TRUMP SUPPORTER: It’s amazing!
A.C. THOMPSON: Bewildered, some wander through the halls. Others move towards the Senate chamber. Police struggle to hold them off while congressmembers flee through back exits. The mob surges through the hallways searching for them, coming within feet of their targets.
TRUMP SUPPORTERS: Break it down! Break it down! Break it down!
A.C. THOMPSON: Rioters try to break into a hallway that lawmakers are escaping through.
TRUMP SUPPORTER: Shots fired!
A.C. THOMPSON: A protester is shot and killed. Three other rioters die in the mayhem. It would be hours before the Capitol was cleared.
AMY GOODMAN: Now in an update to the documentary American Insurrection that came out this week, Frontline correspondent A.C. Thompson examines how far-right extremist groups have evolved since January 6th and the threat they pose today.
A.C. THOMPSON: In Washington, D.C., the fences are gone. So are the National Guard patrols. The city no longer feels like a war zone. But when I come back to the Capitol almost a year later, there are many questions that remain unanswered.
REP. BENNIE THOMPSON: We cannot allow what happened on January 6 to ever happen again. We owe it to the American people, and we will not fail, I assure you, in that responsibility.
A.C. THOMPSON: The House of Representatives has impaneled a committee to investigate January 6th and to recommend changes that will prevent something like that from happening again. Representative Bennie Thompson is the committee chair.
REP. BENNIE THOMPSON: January 6th was a difficult day for me personally because I was in the Capitol. I’ve seen a lot of people come to this Capitol. People have the ability, I thought, in Washington, D.C., to express themselves regardless of position. But if I ever imagined that somebody would invade the United States Capitol, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that would occur. Despite what all had occurred, we were called back in the early morning hours to complete the certification, because if we don’t certify the election, then Donald Trump is still president. And he can do a number of things. Martial law is a potential.
A.C. THOMPSON: It could have been something looking like a coup.
REP. BENNIE THOMPSON: Absolutely. You get people, who I talk to on a daily basis, who will actually tell me that what I saw and experienced on January 6th really didn’t happen.
A.C. THOMPSON: People come to you, and they say January 6th didn’t happen?
REP. BENNIE THOMPSON: Yeah, and say, “Look, it was the Black Lives Matter folk. It was antifa dressed up as Trump people who did that.” Or, in addition to that, you have those millions of folk who are out there who are convinced that those individuals who broke into the United States Capitol, they were some of the greatest patriots.
A.C. THOMPSON: Right, right. They say these are heroes.
REP. BENNIE THOMPSON: That’s right.
A.C. THOMPSON: They say that people like you are the enemy.
REP. BENNIE THOMPSON: Absolutely. And that’s why our mission on this committee is so important.
A.C. THOMPSON: Thompson’s committee has subpoenaed members of Trump’s inner circle and interviewed hundreds of witnesses, including some D.C. and Capitol Police officers.
SGT. HARRY DUNN: The fence came down, and still nothing has changed. If a hitman is hired and he kills somebody, not only does the hitman go to jail, but the person who hired them does. There was an attack carried out on January 6, and a hitman sent them. I want you to get to the bottom of that.
Those windows up there, those were some of the first windows that were smashed. That door, they were able to breach that door.
A.C. THOMPSON: The big one up the steps?
SGT. HARRY DUNN: Yeah, up the steps right there.
A.C. THOMPSON: Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn walks me through what happened that day.
SGT. HARRY DUNN: I was on the other side of the Capitol. Once I cleared like this tree line right here, I was just looking out, and I just couldn’t believe what I saw. There were flashbangs going off. There were smoke grenades going off.
A.C. THOMPSON: From your side or from the other?
SGT. HARRY DUNN: Both.
A.C. THOMPSON: From both?
SGT. HARRY DUNN: I’ve never seen anything like that before. My number one thought was just to survive that day. Just to survive. At that time, we had no clue what was going on. We were fighting for our lives, fighting for democracy. And how is this going to end? Like, because we were hours and hours and hours — it’s got to end somehow. How is it going to end?
A.C. THOMPSON: And did you think, like, it might end with these guys overrunning this place?
SGT. HARRY DUNN: Yeah, yeah. It crossed my mind.
A.C. THOMPSON: So, I was interviewing recently an elected public official, and he was here. He said, “I think maybe that was an antifa event. It was meant to make Republicans and Trump supporters, MAGA people, look bad.” What do you think when you hear stuff like that? And he was here.
SGT. HARRY DUNN: The rioters that day in the building told us that “Donald Trump sent us.” I don’t know how to make that any more clear to anybody. Now, whether Donald Trump gave what they’ve been saying as the marching orders, whether he did or not, whatever, that’s not — that’s not my job. I just know what I experienced. I know what I went through. And they were there because Donald Trump sent them. According to them, “Donald Trump sent us.”
A.C. THOMPSON: After the attack, we tried to get information from the Justice Department about its investigation and the people who had been arrested. Along with other news organizations, ProPublica sued for access to evidence they had been gathering.
DANIEL RODRIGUEZ: Trump called us. Trump called us to D.C. I thought that there was going to be battles across the country. I thought that there was going to be fighting. I kept thinking that we’re going to go to like a civil war.
A.C. THOMPSON: In late November 2021, the DOJ made public its interrogation of Daniel Rodriguez, who had admitted to assaulting a police officer.
DANIEL RODRIGUEZ: What do you want me to tell you? That I tased him? Yes. I thought we were going to do something. I thought that it was not going to end and happen like that. I thought that Trump was going to stay president.
A.C. THOMPSON: Rodriguez has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have argued that he was manipulated by the agents. But his words echo the narratives I’ve heard before.
DANIEL RODRIGUEZ: We felt that they stole the election. We thought — we felt that they stole this country, that it’s gone, it’s wiped out, America is over, it’s destroyed now.
A.C. THOMPSON: The arrests after January 6th may have quieted the movement for a time, but it would turn out to be short-lived.
RALLY SPEAKER: We need to fight back now.
A.C. THOMPSON: In rallies across the country, I see momentum building around overturning the 2020 election. The crowds include fewer of the characters and groups I’ve been tracking. I see more and more mainstream Americans. According to polling data, around two-thirds of Republicans have come to believe that the 2020 elections were stolen. About a third say violence may be necessary to save the country. I go back to talk to Mary McCord.
What do you think has happened to those organized groups now — the Proud Boys, the boogaloo bois, the militias? Like, where are they at in terms of strength at this point?
MARY McCORD: Well, within days, literally days, they started finger-pointing. Some dissolved. Some reconstituted themselves. You know, I think the Three Percenters said, “We are no longer.” And you had all these Three Percenters nationally saying, “OK, we need to find another group.” And they also started, you know, making up other disinformation, like this was all an antifa plot, this was a law enforcement plot. But, you know, Americans have really short memory. And time has passed. Many months have passed now. And we’re starting to see, at least in the social media and online forums, you know, organizing again in very dangerous ways.
A.C. THOMPSON: So the movement lives on.
MARY McCORD: It does live on. And, you know, in a way, it’s harder for law enforcement to deal with when it’s so disparate like that, right? You know, a dozen individuals going to a local school board meeting in a rural county without a big police force, that’s harder to protect against than the Capitol, right? The Capitol will not suffer an insurrection like that again.
A.C. THOMPSON: Where do you see the threats coming from at this point and into the future? What keeps you up at night?
MARY McCORD: I mean, a lot of the threats I still see coming from disinformation getting into our political discourse. And particularly as we come into another election year, what I’m really seeing is, you know, the seeds are just being planted already of fraud rampant throughout our election systems.
A.C. THOMPSON: Polling on this issue is pretty chilling. There are tens of millions of Americans that absolutely believe that the 2020 election, it was a fraud. And a lot of them have said, “I’m willing to use violence to change things.”
MARY McCORD: First of all, it’s astounding to see that data. And I tell myself sometimes that surely there’s something wrong about that data collection and that some of that is hyperbolic, right? All of that said, you know, we know that gun purchases were up dramatically over 2020. We have seen more and more armed individuals coming out to government proceedings, whether it’s the counting of the vote after the elections, whether it’s public health meetings, school board meetings. The willingness to be threatening government officials, and even threatening them with arms, is — you know, is something that really needs to be addressed, because that could just snowball.
A.C. THOMPSON: A year later, the country is still living in the shadow of January 6th. The trail that began for me in Charlottesville has taken another turn. Along the way, I’ve seen up close the peril posed by a resurgent white supremacist movement, armed militias pledging to execute police and elected officials, ultranationalists brawling in the streets, would-be revolutionaries wearing Hawaiian shirts, and now this: millions of people convinced that the 2020 election was a fraud, some of them angry enough to turn to violence. Charlottesville and January 6th had once seemed like bookends to an era. But today it’s clear: The movements I’ve been covering have been changing, evolving, but they are not going away.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s an excerpt from the updated version of the American Insurrection documentary with correspondent A.C. Thompson. It was released this week. You can watch the full report at PBS.org/frontline and on YouTube.
For more, we’re joined by the director and writer of this documentary, Rick Rowley. He’s also the director of their Emmy-winning series Documenting Hate.
Rick, welcome back to Democracy Now! So, you now have this updated version of American Insurrection, where you look at these white supremacist and extremist militias, if you will, and where they are today. What do you think is most important to understand about what we’ve learned in this last year?
RICK ROWLEY: It’s great to be with you, Amy and Juan.
Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, Mary McCord does a good job of summing up where the movement has landed at this particular moment. I mean, there was a real backlash against the perpetrators of January 6th in the immediate weeks afterwards, just as there was a backlash after Charlottesville. And so, some of the big above-ground national groups splintered. But that backlash was really short-lived. And over the course of the next months, they reconstituted themselves. Mostly, the national networks have disarticulated themselves, and they’re being organized locally — so, Proud Boys chapters showing up at school board meetings around the country. And the locus of the organizing has shifted in many ways from a national platform to a local one, which makes it more difficult to track and increases the potential for local or regional violence, which was already a trajectory we were seeing — right? — with the plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, last year. So that is really where the kind of threat is now, I think, for right-wing violence.
But I think it’s important also to remember that, like — or, think of these things as — of this as a far-right social movement. So, you have groups inside it, small, committed, militant groups, like lifelong white supremacist organizations or militias that are committed to catalyzing a civil war now. You have those groups, that are always sort of pushing the envelope. But they’re swimming in a sea of a much larger group of people, millions of people, who, in the words of the national security analysts, are vulnerable to radicalization, you know, a sea of people who are on the edge and could be recruited into violence by these groups. And that pool of people, of radicalizable people, of vulnerable people, is just growing bigger and bigger and bigger. More people today believe that the election was stolen than believed it on the morning of January 6th. More people today believe that violence might be necessary to defend America than believed it on the morning of January 6th. So, that broader kind of milieu that these movements and that this violence has generated inside has only gotten bigger.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Rick, I wanted to ask you — you did get a chance to interview Congressmember Bennie Thompson, who’s chairing the House investigation of the January 6th insurrection, his committee. All the attention has been focused in the media in recent months, really, on will Trump and his circle be able to draw out the demands or the subpoenas for investigation into the next election season. What was your sense of how — of Thompson’s resolve and what his committee has already found and is seeking to prove?
RICK ROWLEY: Well, Representative Thompson said that January is going to be a big month for them. They’re going to start to make — much of the work that the committee has been doing in private, it’s going to become public. And there will be more public hearings, and we’ll begin to see, you know, what’s going on there.
I mean, I think — I mean, the danger that I fear is that, you know, this — so, Trump obviously played a key role, and has over the entire course of this rise in far-right violence, from before Charlottesville through today. A key player in that and a catalyst for these organizations has been Trump, his candidacy first and then his presidency. And then, obviously, on the morning of January 6th, he pointed to the Capitol and said, you know, “You’ve got to fight.” So, you know, his role is absolutely key.
But I think it’s important for us to remember that it doesn’t have to be a smoke-filled room with three people who, like, planned a very sophisticated operation. I mean, what you have is currents, like deeper political sicknesses inside America, that are being — and fault lines and fissures, that are being tapped into, cynically sometimes, by political players that make this, you know, moments like this, kind of happen. So, you know, I mean — and there’s many things that make this a moment that is incredibly ripe for far-right mobilization and populist mobilization. I mean, things that create this [inaudible] are the rampant economic inequality of our moment, the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I mean, those were both major elements in creating a large chunk of the population that has lost faith or believes that the institutions of this country have failed them in some ways. And lots of those grievances are legitimate. So, in that milieu, you then have old, legacy, far-right, white supremacist groups who are pushing the envelope constantly, and then you have political actors, like Trump and others, who are able to mobilize, crystallize, unite and exploit those energies that existed already and point them in a direction.
So, that, I think, is why you see that this is not — it’s an argument that can be won with facts and evidence, right? I mean, the whole narrative around the 2020 election being stolen, time and again it faces what appear to be — on the surface, to be sort of crippling defeats — right? — the Arizona recount, or audit, you know, every single one of the cases brought by Giuliani and company being thrown out of court. Those don’t actually matter. I mean, the narrative that is feeding the social movement underneath it all survives and continues and reconstitutes itself and will continue, I think, until the underlying problems and sicknesses that feed this kind of movement are addressed in a kind of more systemic way.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And speaking about those lies and those narratives, this narrative that the right-wing media especially push, still claiming that, somehow or other, antifa was involved in the insurrection, could you talk about that and the importance of that to the narrative?
RICK ROWLEY: Yeah, it’s kind of amazing. And one of the things that is characteristic of authoritarian narratives and authoritarian politics, in general, is their ability to have completely contradictory ideas simultaneously held inside the same movement. So, on the one hand, you have people who say it was all fake; it was a false flag operation; antifa and Black Lives Matter dressed up as Trump supporters and organized this whole, like, operation. And then, inside the same movement, shoulder to shoulder with them, you’ll have — and inside the same person sometimes — you’ll also have the belief that the January 6th rioters are patriots and that they’re being crucified in these trials that are just now beginning to happen against them. So, those two contradictory ideas are being held together.
But the creation of this sort of bogeyman on the left of antifa and Black Lives Matter, turning them from what they are, like broad kind of social movements or tactics or whatever, turning them into this communist conspiracy that is going to take over America, undermine it from the inside and destroy it, like, that has been key to the reformulation of far-right groups since Charlottesville. In fact, one of the things we explore early in the film is the way that Charlottesville launches this new kind of political take for these movements.
So, one of the guys we talk to in — we interview in America Insurrection is Brien James, who’s a lifelong, hardcore leader in white supremacist groups — you know, the Klan, the early militia movement where he met Timothy McVeigh, skinhead gangs. And then, after Trump rode down the golden escalator and started his campaign, he said that he realized that the more effective political move was to jettison the most explicitly racist politics and rebrand himself, take off the swastika armband, wrap himself in the American flag and become a Trump supporter. So he joined the Proud Boys. He’s a regional leader of the Proud Boys in Indiana. And he says that using — rather than naming a racial enemy, saying, “We’re against Blacks or Mexican immigrants,” or whatever, naming a political enemy — “We’re against the communists who want to destroy everything that you love about this country” — was the way that they retargeted their political message so that they could reach into the mainstream. And it was incredibly effective. I mean, Brien James says that throughout his career in the far right, he’s always had 20 guys in Minneapolis, you know, maybe 40 statewide. Now he has 200. We saw with our own eyes him in Washington, D.C., with a crew of former skinhead gang members with racist tattoos on their faces, who were dressed in yellow and black of the Proud Boys and were embraced by a throng of mainstream Trump supporters. So, yeah, I mean, you’re right, Juan, the creation of this leftist kind of communist threat to mobilize against, of that kind of enemy to mobilize against, is central to the work that the extreme far right is doing to penetrate the mainstream.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Rick, we want to thank you for being with us, Rick Rowley, director of the PBS Frontline-ProPublica documentary American Insurrection, now updated and available at their website, in collaboration with correspondent A.C. Thompson.
Next, “Is the 'smoking gun' in Trump’s Jan. 6 attempted coup hiding in plain sight?” We’ll speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Will Bunch. Stay with us.
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Columnist Will Bunch: Trump Came Much Closer to Pulling Off a January 6 Coup Than People Realize
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
January 5, 2022
https://www.democracynow.org/2022/1/5/j ... coup_trump
GUESTS
Will Bunch: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and national columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer.
LINKS
Will Bunch on Twitter
"Is the 'smoking gun' in Trump’s Jan. 6 attempted coup hiding in plain sight?"
"America gave up on truly educating all its kids. Then Jan. 6 happened. Coincidence?"
"Resent U: How College Broke the American Dream and Divided the Nation, and How to Fix It"
The January 6 insurrection resulted in criminal charges for over 700 rioters, and the FBI has since called it an act of domestic terrorism. Philadelphia Inquirer national columnist Will Bunch says there is growing evidence that links Trump and his inner circle to the Capitol attack. He argues understanding what was happening behind the scenes at the Pentagon, which has operational control over the National Guard in D.C., can help explain Trump’s botched attempt to overturn the 2020 election and the insurrection that followed. “I think they fully believed that they would be able to call out the National Guard,” says Bunch, explaining Trump’s strategy to incite violence between his supporters and counterprotesters in an attempt to make military orders to disrupt the certification. Bunch predicts Trump and allies will delay cooperation with the House probe into the attack until Republicans can gain congressional power in 2022 and dismiss the investigation.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
Thursday marks one year since the violent mob of thousands of Trump supporters descended on the U.S. Capitol, disrupting Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. Many have referred to the attack as an attempted coup. Five people died, hundreds were injured. At least four police officers who responded to the Capitol on January 6th died of suicide in the days and months after. The FBI has called the insurrection an act of domestic terrorism. Some 700 rioters have been criminally charged.
Meanwhile, the House select committee investigating the January 6th attack has interviewed over 300 witnesses, subpoenaed several key figures in Trump’s inner circle. Last week, it learned of a document that could be crucial evidence in proving Trump’s intentions to tamper with the 2020 election and in inciting the deadly Capitol insurrection. The document is called the ”DRAFT LETTER FROM POTUS TO SEIZE EVIDENCE IN THE INTEREST OF NATIONAL SECURITY FOR THE 2020 ELECTIONS.” It’s included on a list of records that former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, a close Trump ally, is refusing to turn over.
For more, we’re joined in Philadelphia by Will Bunch, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer. He writes about this in his column, “Is the 'smoking gun' in Trump’s Jan. 6 attempted coup hiding in plain sight?”
Will, welcome back to Democracy Now! Explain what this is.
WILL BUNCH: Right. Well, as you mentioned, you know, Bernie Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, a very close associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who became kind of a Trump insider — in fact, he’d been committed of criminal activity, and Trump had pardoned him. So, he was definitely part of this kind of new inner circle that gathered around Trump between the election loss to Joe Biden and January 6th, who was giving him advice.
And I think the most interesting and, I guess, maybe the most alarming thing that’s been coming out of some of these news reports and leaks out of the House January 6th committee in the last few weeks is the focus of this working group on the idea that Trump might somehow declare a national emergency — which, as you know, in many countries around the world, that’s basically a code name for a coup, right? — and that as part of this national emergency, he might even seize paper election ballots or seize voting machines, which would just be a mess.
And so, we’ve had a couple things. We had an email from Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, about the role of the National Guard, how they expected the National Guard would be there January 6th to, quote, “support” pro-Trump demonstrators, which is an interesting take on things. We had this PowerPoint presentation that circulated on Capitol Hill from Trump’s advisers that talked about this national emergency idea. And now Bernie Kerik’s lawyer has logged the documents that are in his possession, including some that he claims are privileged and that the committee shouldn’t be allowed to see. And one of the ones he’s claiming privilege on is the one that you just mentioned and the one that I think could be a smoking gun, and which is a draft letter from Trump that would basically declare this emergency and allow for the seizing of this evidence.
And I think it’s a very complicated thing, but, very quickly, I think the Trump team expected that on January 6th there would be something that in fact did not happen, which was they expected there to be left-wing counterprotesters, like that December 12th episode that was in the documentary that you just played. They expected a repeat of that. And I think they fully believed that they would be able to call out the National Guard. And remember, Trump installed a lot of close allies in the Pentagon just in the weeks right before January 6th, and the Pentagon has operational control over the National Guard. So, you know, I think there was this theory that if there had been more violence that had involved antifa, which was the enemy of the Trump people, as you just discussed in the last segment, that antifa could have been a pretext for them to call out the National Guard on their side to close down the Capitol. And if the Capitol had been closed down and seized by troops, you wouldn’t have been able to have the certification of Biden’s election. It would have bought them more time for these other schemes that they were working on. You know, it’s interesting that members of Congress, and even Mike Pence himself, were very adamant about not leaving the Capitol. And I think they were afraid if they left the capital on January 6th, that they would never get back.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Will, you wrote in a column a few weeks ago, quote, “the central role of the leftist clashes that never happened, and the thwarted mission for the National Guard and Trump-friendly law enforcement — the final, Hail Mary pass in Team Trump’s slow-motion coup to undo Biden’s election victory — reveals how close a rogue president came to ending … democracy earlier this year.” Could you talk about, one, how — you also say that you believe the left didn’t go for the bait of coming out there —
WILL BUNCH: Yes.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — in Washington, and how that then ended up gumming up the plans of the Trump people, from what you can tell.
WILL BUNCH: Yeah, I mean, that’s one of the most amazing little-known stories about January 6th, is in the maybe two-week run-up before January 6th, when a lot of people — although apparently not the FBI for some reason, but a lot of normal people — knew that this was going to be a potentially violent day and that, you know, we knew that busloads of these people were descending on the Capitol, and the word got out on the left that they’re trying — they want to provoke violence. You know, they want to provoke clashes between left-wing counterprotesters, whether they were, quote, “antifa,” unquote, or just normal resistant folks — they wanted to set up these clashes.
And so, on social media, you actually saw this hashtag, like you said; #DontTakeTheBait became a popular hashtag at the end of December and early January. And you had public officials join in. You know, Muriel Bowser, the mayor of D.C., and other officials went public telling people who were not Trump supporters, “You don’t want to be anywhere near the Capitol on January 6th. Please stay away.” And I think the city even kept some of its workers home. And there was a real effort to just let the Trump people do their thing in the city, and not confront them, not provoke them. And, you know, that was kind of like — in the famous Sherlock Holmes line, that was like the dog that did not bark on January 6th, because you didn’t have those clashes.
And it explains a lot. People are baffled by the inaction of the National Guard. And we now know — and Ryan Goodman and Justin Hendrix from Just Security have done some great reporting on this. You know, we now know that Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint Chiefs, and other top people in the Defense Department were horrified at the idea that the Trump allies within the Pentagon could use the National Guard in service of a coup, basically, in service of Trump. And as a result, I mean, that really was the reluctance to call out the National Guard. You know, D.C. officials were baffled, because they wanted to use the Guard to fight against the Trumpists, the insurrectionists. But in the Pentagon, the worry was that if the Guard got involved and took over the Capitol, that that would end up looking more like a coup. And so, that explains why the National Guard didn’t get involved for three or four hours, until the incident was basically over at that point.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I want to go back for second to this draft national security letter, with Bernard Kerik’s lawyer claiming attorney-client privilege. Of course, Bernard Kerik, as you mentioned, was not only convicted on tax evasion charges but has the dubious distinction of being one of the only people, perhaps in American history, who spent time in the very jail that was named after him, the Bernard Kerik Correctional Facility. And, of course, he’s not a lawyer. So, could you talk about this claim and how it could stand up if it went to court? But, obviously, it might take months for a court decision on it.
WILL BUNCH: Yeah. Well, Juan, you, like me, remember Watergate, and you remember the famous term from Watergate, “stonewalling.” Well, you know, Trump and his team, they’re the masters of stonewalling 2.0. I mean, the basic philosophy, which Trump honed during his years as a sleazy real estate developer in New York, is just when there’s a problem, throw everything up against the wall, you know, lawsuits, just delay.
I mean, what we’re seeing here is unprecedented in terms of people who clearly have no reason to not testify or to defy a subpoena claiming they have the right to defy these subpoenas. And you’ve seen charges now against Steve Bannon. You may see charges against Mark Meadows. But I think for the next 12 months you’re going to see this web of obstruction, of these privilege claims that are going to have to be fought out in court, whether it’s executive privilege or something just more mundane like attorney privilege, which is what Bernie Kerik is claiming.
And I think that the ultimate reason behind this is because Republicans are very confident that they’re going to retake the House in the midterms this November, just based on history and the other trends. And when they do that, they know they’ll be able to end this probe. So, you’ve got the Democrats with this one year to get to the truth, basically. You know, I think the January 6th committee has been doing a fantastic job, and we’ve been seeing the fruits of that in the last couple weeks. And [inaudible] is going to be very dramatic. But you do have that hanging over their head. You know, they’ve got a one-year race against this massive wall of obstruction from Team Trump.
AMY GOODMAN: It will be very interesting when they hold public hearings, and then that comparison to the Watergate public hearings that so many watched at the time. But I wanted to ask you, Will Bunch, about what former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro said on MSNBC yesterday when he was interviewed by Ari Melber. He outlined his support last year for what he called the Green Bay sweep, a plan to overturn the election results in six states.
PETER NAVARRO: The plan was simply this: We had over a hundred congressmen and senators on Capitol Hill ready to implement the sweep. The sweep was simply that. We were going to challenge the results of the election in the six battleground states. They were Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada.
ARI MELBER: Do you realize you are describing a coup?
PETER NAVARRO: No. I totally reject many of your premises there.
AMY GOODMAN: So, there you have it, Will. I’m wondering if you could respond to this. Jamie Raskin, one of the key members of the select committee, has responded, the congressman from Maryland, and said that you have this very unusual situation where maybe the Trump supporters outside, in their violence, with this insurrection, subverted what they wanted to accomplish, their allies wanted to accomplish, Trump wanted to accomplish inside, what Peter Navarro just laid out.
WILL BUNCH: Well, yeah, I mean, when you look back at it, there are so many different ways that things could have broken on January 6th as opposed to what happened. But I think the bottom line — I mean, I think Ari Melber nailed it. I mean, there’s no other word for what they’re talking about here other than a coup. You know, the idea was that if you could block the certification in enough states — and I guess those six states would have done it — then you would have taken Biden under 270 electoral votes. Then the claim would be that, well, you’re throwing the election into the House under the constitutional procedure. And the way the House vote goes, which is not by individual member but by state delegations, the Republicans actually still control the majority of the delegations, and so Republicans could have imposed — used that mechanism to impose a Trump presidency.
So, the thing is, I don’t think that plan could have worked without the cooperation of Mike Pence. And so, you know, I mean, there were three or four incredible hinge points about January 6th, and the failure to convince Pence, who had been such a compliant vice president for four years, to go along is one of the hinge points. I think Mark Milley and the Pentagon realizing the threats — and don’t forget the January 3rd letter from every former — every living former defense secretary, from Dick Cheney to the Democratic ones, warning about the military getting involved on January 6th, because they knew that something was afoot, and they were terrified of the possibilities.
But I think this talk about the Green Bay sweep just shows the high level of planning that was going on here. And let’s not forget, it’s a felony to disrupt the operations of Congress. And I think that’s something that the January 6th committee is really honing in on. Was there a criminal conspiracy to disrupt Congress from doing its job on January 6th? And if so, who was involved in that? You know, obviously, Trump advisers were involved. Was the president himself involved? You know, to again, for the umpteenth time, get back to Watergate, what did the president know, and when did he know it? I mean, I think there’s going to be some real drama behind these hearings when they go public. They may be in primetime, I’m hearing now, which would be quite a political event in 2022.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Will Bunch, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, national columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer_. We’ll link to his pieceswill/ at democracynow.org.
Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certification
Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat
by admin » Thu Jan 06, 2022 1:33 am
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat
by admin » Thu Jan 06, 2022 2:13 am
Is the ‘smoking gun’ in Trump’s Jan. 6 attempted coup hiding in plain sight?
by Will Bunch
The Philadelphia Inquirer
January 3, 2022
While America was preoccupied last week with getting home from the holidays or lining up around the block for COVID-19 testing, there was a bombshell development in the investigation to learn just how far Donald Trump was prepared to go in turning the Capitol Hill chaos of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection into a coup to end U.S. democracy.
Thanks to a somewhat surprising source — the disgraced former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik, a Team Trump insider — we now know the name of a document with the potential to become a “smoking gun.” Just its title suggests Trump was planning an unprecedented abuse of presidential power — to use the Big Lie of nonexistent 2020 election fraud to undo the results of a free and fair vote.
On the eve of the one-year anniversary of the insurrection that disrupted Congress and left five people dead or dying, the question that looms large over 2022 is whether the American people will ever get to see this proof, or the other evidence of the 45th president’s involvement in election tampering, in inciting those who violently rioted on Capitol Hill — and whether the endgame was an autocoup to seize power and deny Joe Biden the White House.
According to a letter from Kerik’s attorney, the document is called “DRAFT LETTER FROM POTUS TO SEIZE EVIDENCE IN THE INTEREST OF NATIONAL SECURITY FOR THE 2020 ELECTIONS” — and it’s believed to have been written on Dec. 17, 2020. That was a critical time for the Trump insiders who were accelerating their schemes to deny the presidency to Biden, even after the Democrat won 7 million more popular votes and the Electoral College by a 306-232 margin.
Here’s the catch: While Kerik, a longtime close associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani, last week turned over some election-related materials to the House Select Committee tasked with getting to the bottom of Jan. 6, the draft letter from Trump is on a list of records that Kerik is refusing to turn over — claiming that the document is shielded as “attorney work product.” While some legal experts are already throwing cold water on that claim, the reality is that Team Trump has been remarkably successful for months in stonewalling — in keeping both key records and important witnesses out of investigators’ reach. In an echo of Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, the future of democracy may hinge on Trump’s ability to thwart the probe.
Understanding why the 12/17/20 document could be a “smoking gun” means understanding where the concept of a national emergency and “seizing evidence,” which could include paper ballots or voting machines from the 2020 election, fits into the growing body of data showing both that an attempted Trump coup was afoot — and why it failed.
First of all, the evidence that Trump had drafted a proposed “National Emergency” letter is completely in sync with last month’s bombshell revelation of a 38-page PowerPoint presentation that circulated among Trump’s inner circle and their allies in Congress just before Jan. 6. The PowerPoint laid out a scenario in which Trump would declare “a National Security Emergency” as a pretense to invalidate electronic voting and possibly prompt lawmakers to award electoral votes to the incumbent president in states that he’d in reality lost.
Of course, Trump didn’t ultimately declare such an emergency. But a series of new revelations has now deepened our understanding of what happened — and, just as important, what didn’t happen — on Jan. 6, and thus shed a lot of light on just how close America came to a full-blown coup attempt.
Nearly one year ago, there were a lot of loose threads about the events of Jan. 6 — and the violence that disrupted but didn’t prevent the official certification of Biden’s election victory — that didn’t seem to add up. Why was the Capitol so lightly defended, and why didn’t National Guard troops respond for hours as the building was overrun? Why didn’t the most militant groups, like the Oath Keepers, fight harder once the Capitol had been breached, and what was Trump himself doing as he watched the events unfold?
Now we know that learning what was happening behind the scenes at the Pentagon, which has operational control over the National Guard in Washington, D.C., may be the critical link to understanding how Trump’s inner circle thought it could stop the certification of Biden, and why it ultimately could not. A tell came exactly one year ago on Jan. 3, 2021, with a stunning op-ed from all 10 living ex-Pentagon chiefs warning against a role for the military in the election.
This came after Trump spent the weeks after Election Day replacing many Pentagon higher-ups with hard-core loyalists. But we now know the Joint Chiefs chair, Gen. Mark Milley, and the permanent military brass worked hard to make sure the National Guard didn’t get involved on Jan. 6 — thus blocking any chance troops would support a coup, yet also raising understandable questions why they didn’t quickly respond to violent pro-Trump insurrectionists.
Trump wouldn’t invoke the Insurrection Act against his own people — but his team fully expected bloody clashes with left-wing counterprotesters whom POTUS 45 had been pumping up as a threat for weeks. We now know, from the House investigation, that Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows stated in an email on Jan. 5 that the Guard was expected to act to “protect” pro-Trump demonstrators. Likewise, hard-core armed members of the militarized Oath Keepers were making plans to wait in a staging area in an Arlington motel.
What were Meadows, the Guard, Trump’s embedded allies in the Pentagon, and the Oath Keepers all waiting for? Presumably what they’d seen throughout 2020, peaking with mayhem in D.C. streets during a kind of trial run on Dec. 12, 2020 — violent clashes between Trumpists and left-wing counterprotesters. But leftists smartly stayed home on Jan. 6, egged on by a social media hashtag #DontTakeTheBait. Lacking the expected trigger for invoking the Insurrection Act and perhaps declaring a “national emergency,” both Trump and the Pentagon-led National Guard both were AWOL for hours.
Until now, little has been made public that would tie these schemes to invoke the Insurrection Act directly to Trump — instead connecting allies like Meadows and ad hoc advisers like the ex-Army colonel and psyops specialist Phil Waldron, likely author of the PowerPoint. That’s why the draft letter described last week by Kerik should be seen as a potential “smoking gun,” because it would prove that Trump was personally involved in the planning for a scenario that could have shut down the Capitol on Jan. 6.
And evidence that Trump himself was an active participant in a plot that saw the disruption of Congress, and its Electoral College certification, on Jan. 6 as its ultimate goal would also, legal experts argue, place the ex-president in the middle of a felony conspiracy scheme. Indeed, a key figure on the House Select Committee — the rogue Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming — recently pointed specifically to Trump’s known or potential actions on Jan. 6 in the context of the federal law against impeding Congress.
This shows why 2022 looks to be such a critical year in the history of the United States. Trump and his associates are planning to spend the next 12 months hoping to obstruct Congress — much as Trump became skillful in blocking probes of his shady real estate or financial practices, with a web of lawsuits and outrageous claims. Although sitting presidents have the justified right to shield some of their sensitive White House communications, the current claims by Trump hangers-on — like Kerik, for example — of broad legal or executive privileges for who weren’t even part of the administration are absurd.
In the landmark, unanimous 1974 ruling in the United States v. Richard Nixon that started the chain of events that led to the 37th president’s resignation, the Supreme Court weakened the power of executive privilege claims in matters like a criminal trial when the desired secrecy doesn’t serve the wider public interest. That ruling is credited with steering America through a perilous moment. In 2022, the high court will likely be called on again, but decades of politicization feeding into Trump’s naming of three of the nine justices makes confidence more shaky.
I don’t want to be overly melodramatic, and God knows there are other ongoing crises in America — COVID-19, climate change, gun violence — but whether the Supreme Court ultimately allows the public to see what the former president knew about Jan. 6, and when he knew it, could decide whether we’ll keep the republic for much longer.
In 1974, the Supreme Court’s bipartisan resolve allowed the public to finally hear Watergate’s “smoking gun” — a White House tape confirming what had been long suspected, that Nixon abused his power as president over the CIA and FBI to rein in probes of that affair. In 2022, whether the public can read “DRAFT LETTER FROM POTUS TO SEIZE EVIDENCE IN THE INTEREST OF NATIONAL SECURITY FOR THE 2020 ELECTIONS” will again decide whether the president is completely above the law, and whether planning for what amounts to a 2024 version of the coup can proceed. For the sake of our democracy, secrecy is not an option.
Will Bunch
I'm the national columnist — with some strong opinions about what's happening in America around social injustice, income inequality and the government.
by Will Bunch
The Philadelphia Inquirer
January 3, 2022
While America was preoccupied last week with getting home from the holidays or lining up around the block for COVID-19 testing, there was a bombshell development in the investigation to learn just how far Donald Trump was prepared to go in turning the Capitol Hill chaos of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection into a coup to end U.S. democracy.
Thanks to a somewhat surprising source — the disgraced former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik, a Team Trump insider — we now know the name of a document with the potential to become a “smoking gun.” Just its title suggests Trump was planning an unprecedented abuse of presidential power — to use the Big Lie of nonexistent 2020 election fraud to undo the results of a free and fair vote.
On the eve of the one-year anniversary of the insurrection that disrupted Congress and left five people dead or dying, the question that looms large over 2022 is whether the American people will ever get to see this proof, or the other evidence of the 45th president’s involvement in election tampering, in inciting those who violently rioted on Capitol Hill — and whether the endgame was an autocoup to seize power and deny Joe Biden the White House.
According to a letter from Kerik’s attorney, the document is called “DRAFT LETTER FROM POTUS TO SEIZE EVIDENCE IN THE INTEREST OF NATIONAL SECURITY FOR THE 2020 ELECTIONS” — and it’s believed to have been written on Dec. 17, 2020. That was a critical time for the Trump insiders who were accelerating their schemes to deny the presidency to Biden, even after the Democrat won 7 million more popular votes and the Electoral College by a 306-232 margin.
Here’s the catch: While Kerik, a longtime close associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani, last week turned over some election-related materials to the House Select Committee tasked with getting to the bottom of Jan. 6, the draft letter from Trump is on a list of records that Kerik is refusing to turn over — claiming that the document is shielded as “attorney work product.” While some legal experts are already throwing cold water on that claim, the reality is that Team Trump has been remarkably successful for months in stonewalling — in keeping both key records and important witnesses out of investigators’ reach. In an echo of Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, the future of democracy may hinge on Trump’s ability to thwart the probe.
Understanding why the 12/17/20 document could be a “smoking gun” means understanding where the concept of a national emergency and “seizing evidence,” which could include paper ballots or voting machines from the 2020 election, fits into the growing body of data showing both that an attempted Trump coup was afoot — and why it failed.
First of all, the evidence that Trump had drafted a proposed “National Emergency” letter is completely in sync with last month’s bombshell revelation of a 38-page PowerPoint presentation that circulated among Trump’s inner circle and their allies in Congress just before Jan. 6. The PowerPoint laid out a scenario in which Trump would declare “a National Security Emergency” as a pretense to invalidate electronic voting and possibly prompt lawmakers to award electoral votes to the incumbent president in states that he’d in reality lost.
Of course, Trump didn’t ultimately declare such an emergency. But a series of new revelations has now deepened our understanding of what happened — and, just as important, what didn’t happen — on Jan. 6, and thus shed a lot of light on just how close America came to a full-blown coup attempt.
Ryan Goodman
@rgoodlaw
I was on @allinwithchris
Topic: Our @just_security research on reasons for delay on National Guard on Jan. 6 / Pentagon concern Trump would invoke Insurrection Act, re-mission Guard.
Sharp points by @chrislhayes here on how exactly Trump could've used to shut down certification.Chris Hayes: The highest levels of leadership at the Department of Defense are concerned that if the National Guard is brought in to back up the Capitol Police and MPD who are there being set upon by the mob, the President is ultimately their Commander and can say, "The new mission is, you must clear the Capitol of everyone; we're not doing the electoral stuff today; everyone go home." And then you have something that we've never encountered before.
Ryan Goodman: That's right. It's a Constitutional coup. And that's exactly what he could do. He could say, "We're locking everything down; we have to lock it down until we figure out what's going on here." Right? That was the goal. We know that's the goal. He wanted to delay the certification at a minimum so that he could have tried to effectuate it that very way.
Chris Hayes: And in fact, all different players in this are understanding that. Ruben Gallego is on the record saying that he told his fellow members of Congress, "Look, don't get on the buses and leave, because that's how a coup happens." We know that Mike Pence essentially refused to leave the building. And I think all those different folks: DOD, Mike Pence, Ruben Gallego, all of those people understand the President of the United States wants to stop the transfer of power, and if he can get everyone out of the building, then maybe he can do it.
Ryan Goodman: That's right. And that's why you even have on the phone Mitch McConnell with the Secretary of Defense later in the day saying, "We need this cleared; we are getting back to work so that everybody can continue to perform their duties and transfer power to the next President."
[Chris Hayes] Ryan Goodman who did some great work and you can check it out over at JustSecurity. Thank you very much.
9:10 AM. Dec 23, 2021
Nearly one year ago, there were a lot of loose threads about the events of Jan. 6 — and the violence that disrupted but didn’t prevent the official certification of Biden’s election victory — that didn’t seem to add up. Why was the Capitol so lightly defended, and why didn’t National Guard troops respond for hours as the building was overrun? Why didn’t the most militant groups, like the Oath Keepers, fight harder once the Capitol had been breached, and what was Trump himself doing as he watched the events unfold?
Now we know that learning what was happening behind the scenes at the Pentagon, which has operational control over the National Guard in Washington, D.C., may be the critical link to understanding how Trump’s inner circle thought it could stop the certification of Biden, and why it ultimately could not. A tell came exactly one year ago on Jan. 3, 2021, with a stunning op-ed from all 10 living ex-Pentagon chiefs warning against a role for the military in the election.
The former Pentagon chiefs issued their warning Sunday evening in an opinion piece that they co-wrote and published in The Washington Post. Its authors include Trump’s two former defense secretaries, Jim Mattis and Mark T. Esper, as well as each surviving, Senate-confirmed Pentagon chief dating back to Donald H. Rumsfeld in the 1970s....
The article brings together a group of Republicans and Democrats who disagree on many national security issues. Its genesis is a conversation between Eric Edelman, a former U.S. ambassador and defense official, and former vice president and defense secretary Richard B. Cheney about how the military might be used in coming days, Edelman said in an interview....
Edelman, who was among a group of Republicans who endorsed President-elect Joe Biden over Trump, said that after Cheney expressed interest in co-authoring an opinion piece, Edelman solicited participation from other former defense secretaries, and wrote a draft of the article along with Eliot Cohen, a former Republican national security official who is dean of the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies....
-- The time to question election results has passed, all living former defense secretaries say, by Dan Lamothe, Jan 3, 2021, Washington Post
This came after Trump spent the weeks after Election Day replacing many Pentagon higher-ups with hard-core loyalists. But we now know the Joint Chiefs chair, Gen. Mark Milley, and the permanent military brass worked hard to make sure the National Guard didn’t get involved on Jan. 6 — thus blocking any chance troops would support a coup, yet also raising understandable questions why they didn’t quickly respond to violent pro-Trump insurrectionists.
Trump wouldn’t invoke the Insurrection Act against his own people — but his team fully expected bloody clashes with left-wing counterprotesters whom POTUS 45 had been pumping up as a threat for weeks. We now know, from the House investigation, that Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows stated in an email on Jan. 5 that the Guard was expected to act to “protect” pro-Trump demonstrators. Likewise, hard-core armed members of the militarized Oath Keepers were making plans to wait in a staging area in an Arlington motel.
Scott MacFarlane
@MacFarlaneNews
One year ago at this moment: Accused OathKeeper conspirator allegedly sent message recommending a Ballston Virginia hotel. Feds say that hotel was where some defendants stashed guns for a "quick reaction force," if Trump invoked the Insurrection Act on Jan 6."Here is the direct number for Comfort Inn Ballston/Arlington 1-[DELETE]. I strongly recommend you guys get one or two rooms for a night or two. Arrive 5th, depart 7th will work. She says there are five of you including a husband and wife new recruits. This time of year especially you will need to be indoors to set up, etc. Really, press this home, just get somebody to put it on a credit card. Even if you tell the hotel its double occupancy, you can STILL put a couple of people on the floor with bedrolls and the hotel won't know shit. Paul said he might be able to take one or two in his room as well. I spoke to the hotel last night (actually 2 a.m. this morning) and they still had rooms. This is a good location and would allow us to ...
11:10 AM Jan 1, 2022
What were Meadows, the Guard, Trump’s embedded allies in the Pentagon, and the Oath Keepers all waiting for? Presumably what they’d seen throughout 2020, peaking with mayhem in D.C. streets during a kind of trial run on Dec. 12, 2020 — violent clashes between Trumpists and left-wing counterprotesters. But leftists smartly stayed home on Jan. 6, egged on by a social media hashtag #DontTakeTheBait. Lacking the expected trigger for invoking the Insurrection Act and perhaps declaring a “national emergency,” both Trump and the Pentagon-led National Guard both were AWOL for hours.
Until now, little has been made public that would tie these schemes to invoke the Insurrection Act directly to Trump — instead connecting allies like Meadows and ad hoc advisers like the ex-Army colonel and psyops specialist Phil Waldron, likely author of the PowerPoint. That’s why the draft letter described last week by Kerik should be seen as a potential “smoking gun,” because it would prove that Trump was personally involved in the planning for a scenario that could have shut down the Capitol on Jan. 6.
And evidence that Trump himself was an active participant in a plot that saw the disruption of Congress, and its Electoral College certification, on Jan. 6 as its ultimate goal would also, legal experts argue, place the ex-president in the middle of a felony conspiracy scheme. Indeed, a key figure on the House Select Committee — the rogue Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming — recently pointed specifically to Trump’s known or potential actions on Jan. 6 in the context of the federal law against impeding Congress.
This shows why 2022 looks to be such a critical year in the history of the United States. Trump and his associates are planning to spend the next 12 months hoping to obstruct Congress — much as Trump became skillful in blocking probes of his shady real estate or financial practices, with a web of lawsuits and outrageous claims. Although sitting presidents have the justified right to shield some of their sensitive White House communications, the current claims by Trump hangers-on — like Kerik, for example — of broad legal or executive privileges for who weren’t even part of the administration are absurd.
In the landmark, unanimous 1974 ruling in the United States v. Richard Nixon that started the chain of events that led to the 37th president’s resignation, the Supreme Court weakened the power of executive privilege claims in matters like a criminal trial when the desired secrecy doesn’t serve the wider public interest. That ruling is credited with steering America through a perilous moment. In 2022, the high court will likely be called on again, but decades of politicization feeding into Trump’s naming of three of the nine justices makes confidence more shaky.
I don’t want to be overly melodramatic, and God knows there are other ongoing crises in America — COVID-19, climate change, gun violence — but whether the Supreme Court ultimately allows the public to see what the former president knew about Jan. 6, and when he knew it, could decide whether we’ll keep the republic for much longer.
In 1974, the Supreme Court’s bipartisan resolve allowed the public to finally hear Watergate’s “smoking gun” — a White House tape confirming what had been long suspected, that Nixon abused his power as president over the CIA and FBI to rein in probes of that affair. In 2022, whether the public can read “DRAFT LETTER FROM POTUS TO SEIZE EVIDENCE IN THE INTEREST OF NATIONAL SECURITY FOR THE 2020 ELECTIONS” will again decide whether the president is completely above the law, and whether planning for what amounts to a 2024 version of the coup can proceed. For the sake of our democracy, secrecy is not an option.
Will Bunch
I'm the national columnist — with some strong opinions about what's happening in America around social injustice, income inequality and the government.
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat
by admin » Thu Jan 06, 2022 5:38 am
Merrick Garland vows to hold all January 6th perpetrators accountable under the law
by Merrick Garland
January 5, 2022
In a sweeping speech marking the one-year anniversary of the Capitol attack, Attorney General Merrick Garland pushed back on criticism that the Justice Department's January 6 probe has not been aggressive enough, while signaling that no one would be off limits as prosecutors "followed the facts."
"The actions we have taken thus far will not be our last," Garland said. "The Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law -- whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy."
**************************
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland Delivers Remarks on the First Anniversary of the Attack on the Capitol
Remarks as Delivered
January 5, 2022
Good afternoon.
It’s nice to see some of you here in the Great Hall. And to be able to connect with all of you virtually today.
On my first day as Attorney General, I spoke with all of you — the more than 115,000 employees of the Department of Justice — for the first time.
Today, I have brought us all together again, for two reasons.
First and foremost, to thank you. Thank you for the work you have done, not just over the last 10 months, but over the past several years. Work that you have done in the face of unprecedented challenges — ranging from an unprecedented deadly pandemic to an unprecedented attack on our democracy.
Thank you for your service, for your sacrifice, and for your dedication. I am honored to serve alongside you.
And second, as we begin a new year — and as we prepare to mark a solemn anniversary tomorrow – it is a fitting time to reaffirm that we at the Department of Justice will do everything in our power to defend the American people and American democracy.
We will defend our democratic institutions from attack.
We will protect those who serve the public from violence and threats of violence.
We will protect the cornerstone of our democracy: the right to every eligible citizen to cast a vote that counts.
And we will do all of this in a manner that adheres to the rule of law and honors our obligation to protect the civil rights and civil liberties of everyone in this country.
Tomorrow will mark the first anniversary of January 6th, 2021 — the day the United States Capitol was attacked while lawmakers met to affirm the results of a presidential election.
In the early afternoon of January 6th — as the United States Senate and House of Representatives were meeting to certify the vote count of the Electoral College — a large crowd gathered outside the Capitol building.
Shortly after 2 p.m., individuals in the crowd began to force entry into the Capitol, by smashing windows and assaulting U.S. Capitol police, who were stationed there to protect the members of Congress as they took part in one of the most solemn proceedings of our democracy. Others in the crowd encouraged and assisted those who attacked the police.
Over the course of several hours, outnumbered law enforcement officers sustained a barrage of repeated, violent attacks. About 80 Capitol Police and 60 D.C. Metropolitan Police were assaulted.
As our own court filings and thousands of public videos of the event attest,
• Perpetrators punched dozens of law enforcement officers, knocking some officers unconscious.
• Some perpetrators tackled and dragged law enforcement officers. Among the many examples of such violence: One officer was crushed in a door. Another was dragged down a set of stairs, face down, repeatedly tased and beaten, and suffered a heart attack.
• Some perpetrators attacked law enforcement officers with chemical agents that burned their eyes and skin.
• And some assaulted officers with pipes, poles, and other dangerous or deadly weapons.
• Perpetrators also targeted, assaulted, tackled and harassed journalists and destroyed their equipment.
With increasing numbers of individuals having breached the Capitol, members of the Senate and the House of Representatives — including the President of the Senate, Vice President Mike Pence — had to be evacuated.
As a consequence, proceedings in both chambers were disrupted for hours — interfering with a fundamental element of American democracy: the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next.
Those involved must be held accountable, and there is no higher priority for us at the Department of Justice.
It is impossible to overstate the heroism of the Capitol Police officers, Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officers, and other law enforcement officers who defended and secured the Capitol that day. They demonstrated to all of us, and to our country, what true courage looks like.
Their resolve, their sacrifice, and their bravery protected thousands of people working inside the Capitol that day.
Five officers who responded selflessly to the attack on January 6th have since lost their lives.
I ask everyone to please join me in a moment of silence in recognition of the service and sacrifice of:
Officer Brian Sicknick.
Officer Howard Liebengood.
Officer Jeffrey Smith.
Officer Gunther Hashida.
And Officer Kyle DeFreytag.
I know I speak for all of us in saying that tomorrow, and in our work in the days ahead, we will not only remember them — we will do everything we can to honor them.
In the aftermath of the attack, the Justice Department began its work on what has become one of the largest, most complex, and most resource-intensive investigations in our history.
Only a small number of perpetrators were arrested in the tumult of January 6th itself. Every day since, we have worked to identify, investigate, and apprehend defendants from across the country. And we have done so at record speed and scale — in the midst of a pandemic during which some grand juries and courtrooms were not able to operate.
Led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the FBI’s Washington Field Office, DOJ personnel across the department — in nearly all 56 field offices, in nearly all 94 United States Attorneys’ Offices, and in many Main Justice components — have worked countless hours to investigate the attack. Approximately 70 prosecutors from the District of Columbia and another 70 from other U.S. Attorney’s Offices and DOJ divisions have participated in this investigation.
So far, we have issued over 5,000 subpoenas and search warrants, seized approximately 2,000 devices, pored through over 20,000 hours of video footage, and searched through an estimated 15 terabytes of data.
We have received over 300,000 tips from ordinary citizens, who have been our indispensable partners in this effort. The FBI’s website continues to post photos of persons in connection with the events of January 6th, and we continue to seek the public’s assistance in identifying those individuals.
As of today, we have arrested and charged more than 725 defendants, in nearly all 50 states and the District of Columbia, for their roles in the January 6th attack.
In charging the perpetrators, we have followed well-worn prosecutorial practices.
Those who assaulted officers or damaged the Capitol face greater charges.
Those who conspired with others to obstruct the vote count also face greater charges.
Those who did not undertake such conduct have been charged with lesser offenses — particularly if they accepted their responsibility early and cooperated with the investigation.
In the first months of the investigation, approximately 145 defendants pled guilty to misdemeanors, mostly defendants who did not cause injury or damage. Such pleas reflect the facts of those cases and the defendants’ acceptance of responsibility. And they help conserve both judicial and prosecutorial resources, so that attention can properly focus on the more serious perpetrators.
In complex cases, initial charges are often less severe than later charged offenses. This is purposeful, as investigators methodically collect and sift through more evidence.
By now, though, we have charged over 325 defendants with felonies, many for assaulting officers and many for corruptly obstructing or attempting to obstruct an official proceeding. Twenty defendants charged with felonies have already pled guilty.
Approximately 40 defendants have been charged with conspiracy to obstruct a congressional proceeding and/or to obstruct law enforcement. In the months ahead, 17 defendants are already scheduled to go to trial for their role in felony conspiracies.
A necessary consequence of the prosecutorial approach of charging less serious offenses first is that courts impose shorter sentences before they impose longer ones.
In recent weeks, however, as judges have sentenced the first defendants convicted of assaults and related violent conduct against officers, we have seen significant sentences that reflect the seriousness of those offenses — both in terms of the injuries they caused and the serious risk they posed to our democratic institutions.
The actions we have taken thus far will not be our last.
The Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law — whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy. We will follow the facts wherever they lead.
Because January 6th was an unprecedented attack on the seat of our democracy, we understand that there is broad public interest in our investigation. We understand that there are questions about how long the investigation will take, and about what exactly we are doing.
Our answer is, and will continue to be, the same answer we would give with respect to any ongoing investigation: as long as it takes and whatever it takes for justice to be done — consistent with the facts and the law.
I understand that this may not be the answer some are looking for. But we will and we must speak through our work. Anything else jeopardizes the viability of our investigations and the civil liberties of our citizens.
Everyone in this room and on these screens is familiar with the way we conduct investigations, and particularly complex investigations.
We build investigations by laying a foundation. We resolve more straightforward cases first because they provide the evidentiary foundation for more complex cases.
Investigating the more overt crimes generates linkages to less overt ones. Overt actors and the evidence they provide can lead us to others who may also have been involved. And that evidence can serve as the foundation for further investigative leads and techniques.
In circumstances like those of January 6th, a full accounting does not suddenly materialize. To ensure that all those criminally responsible are held accountable, we must collect the evidence.
We follow the physical evidence. We follow the digital evidence. We follow the money.
But most important, we follow the facts — not an agenda or an assumption. The facts tell us where to go next.
Over 40 years ago in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the Justice Department concluded that the best way to ensure the department’s independence, integrity, and fair application of our laws — and, therefore, the best way to ensure the health of our democracy — is to have a set of norms to govern our work.
The central norm is that, in our criminal investigations, there cannot be different rules depending on one’s political party or affiliation. There cannot be different rules for friends and foes. And there cannot be different rules for the powerful and the powerless.
There is only one rule: we follow the facts and enforce the law in a way that respects the Constitution and protects civil liberties.
We conduct every investigation guided by the same norms. And we adhere to those norms even when, and especially when, the circumstances we face are not normal.
Adhering to the department’s long-standing norms is essential to our work in defending our democracy, particularly at a time when we are confronting a rise in violence and unlawful threats of violence in our shared public spaces and directed at those who serve the public.
We have all seen that Americans who serve and interact with the public at every level — many of whom make our democracy work every day — have been unlawfully targeted with threats of violence and actual violence.
Across the country, election officials and election workers; airline flight crews; school personnel; journalists; local elected officials; U.S. Senators and Representatives; and judges, prosecutors, and police officers have been threatened and/or attacked.
These are our fellow citizens — who administer our elections, ensure our safe travel, teach our children, report the news, represent their constituents, and keep our communities safe.
Some have been told that their offices would be bombed. Some have been told that they would be murdered, and precisely how — that they would be hanged; that they would be beheaded.
Police officers, who put their lives on the line every day to serve our communities, have been targeted with extraordinary levels of violence.
Flight crews have been assaulted. Journalists have been targeted. School personnel and their families have been threatened.
A member of Congress was threatened in a gruesome voicemail that asked if she had ever seen what a 50-caliber shell does to a human head. Another member of Congress — an Iraq War veteran and Purple Heart recipient — received threats that left her “terrified for [her] family.”
And in 2020, a federal judge in New Jersey was targeted by someone who had appeared before her in court. That person compiled information about where the judge and her family lived and went to church. That person found the judge’s home, shot and killed her son, and injured her husband.
These acts and threats of violence are not associated with any one set of partisan or ideological views.
But they are permeating so many parts of our national life that they risk becoming normalized and routine if we do not stop them.
That is dangerous for people’s safety. And it is deeply dangerous for our democracy.
In a democracy, people vote, argue, and debate — often vociferously — in order to achieve the policy outcomes they desire. But in a democracy, people must not employ violence or unlawful threats of violence to affect that outcome. Citizens must not be intimidated from exercising their constitutional rights to free expression and association by such unlawful conduct.
The Justice Department will continue to investigate violence and illegal threats of violence, disrupt that violence before it occurs, and hold perpetrators accountable.
We have marshaled the resources of the department to address the rising violence and criminal threats of violence against election workers, against flight crews, against school personnel, against journalists, against members of Congress, and against federal agents, prosecutors, and judges.
In 2021, the department charged more defendants in criminal threat cases than in any year in at least the last five.
As we do this work, we are guided by our commitment to protect civil liberties, including the First Amendment rights of all citizens.
The department has been clear that expressing a political belief or ideology, no matter how vociferously, is not a crime. We do not investigate or prosecute people because of their views. Peacefully expressing a view or ideology — no matter how extreme — is protected by the First Amendment. But illegally threatening to harm or kill another person is not. There is no First Amendment right to unlawfully threaten to harm or kill someone.
As Justice Scalia noted in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, true “threats of violence are outside the First Amendment” because laws that punish such threats “protect[] individuals from the fear of violence, from the disruption that fear engenders, and from the possibility that the threatened violence will occur.”
The latter point hits particularly close to home for those of us who have investigated tragedies ranging from the Oklahoma City bombing to the January 6th attack on the Capitol. The time to address threats is when they are made, not after the tragedy has struck.
As employees of the nation’s largest law enforcement agency, each of us understands that we have an obligation to protect our citizens from violence and fear of violence. And we will continue to do our part to provide that protection.
But the Justice Department cannot do it alone. The responsibility to bring an end to violence and threats of violence against those who serve the public is one that all Americans share.
Such conduct disrupts the peace of our public spaces and undermines our democracy. We are all Americans. We must protect each other.
The obligation to keep Americans and American democracy safe is part of the historical inheritance of this department. As I have noted several times before, a founding purpose of the Justice Department was to battle violent extremist attacks on our democratic institutions.
In the midst of Reconstruction following the Civil War, the department’s first principal task was to secure the civil rights promised by the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. This meant protecting Black Americans seeking to exercise their right to vote from acts and threats of violence by white supremacists.
The framers of the Civil War Amendments recognized that access to the ballot is a fundamental aspect of citizenship and self-government. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 sought to make the promise of those amendments real. To do so, it gave the Justice Department valuable tools with which to protect the right to vote.
In recent years, however, the protections of the Voting Rights Act have been drastically weakened.
The Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in the Shelby County case effectively eliminated the preclearance protections of Section 5, which had been the department’s most effective tool for protecting voting rights over the past half-century. Subsequent decisions have substantially narrowed the reach of Section 2 as well.
Since those decisions, there has been a dramatic increase in legislative enactments that make it harder for millions of eligible voters to vote and to elect representatives of their own choosing.
Those enactments range from: practices and procedures that make voting more difficult; to redistricting maps drawn to disadvantage both minorities and citizens of opposing political parties; to abnormal post-election audits that put the integrity of the voting process at risk; to changes in voting administration meant to diminish the authority of locally elected or nonpartisan election administrators.
Some have even suggested permitting state legislators to set aside the choice of the voters themselves.
As I noted in an address to the Civil Rights Division last June, many of those enactments have been justified by unfounded claims of material vote fraud in the 2020 election.
Those claims, which have corroded people’s faith in the legitimacy of our elections, have been repeatedly refuted by the law enforcement and intelligence agencies of both the last administration and this one, as well as by every court — federal and state — that has considered them.
The Department of Justice will continue to do all it can to protect voting rights with the enforcement powers we have. It is essential that Congress act to give the department the powers we need to ensure that every eligible voter can cast a vote that counts.
But as with violence and threats of violence, the Justice Department — even the Congress — cannot alone defend the right to vote. The responsibility to preserve democracy — and to maintain faith in the legitimacy of its essential processes — lies with every elected official and with every American.
All Americans are entitled to free, fair, and secure elections that ensure they can select the representatives of their choice.
All Americans are entitled to live in a country in which their public servants can go about their jobs of serving the public free from violence and unlawful threats of violence.
And all Americans are entitled to live in a country in which the transition from one elected administration to the next is accomplished peacefully.
The Justice Department will never stop working to defend the democracy to which all Americans are entitled.
As I recognized when I first spoke with you all last March, service in the Department of Justice is more than a job and more than an honor. It is a calling.
Each of us — you and I — came to work here because we are committed to the rule of law and to seeking equal justice under law. We came to work here because we are committed to ensuring the civil rights and civil liberties of our people. We came to work here because we are committed to protecting our country — as our oath says — from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Together, we will continue to show the American people, by word and by deed, that these are the principles that underlie our work.
The challenges that we have faced, and that we will continue to face, are extraordinary. But I am moved and humbled by the extraordinary work you do every single day to meet them.
I look forward to seeing more of you in person, soon, and to our continued work together.
Thank you all.
by Merrick Garland
January 5, 2022
In a sweeping speech marking the one-year anniversary of the Capitol attack, Attorney General Merrick Garland pushed back on criticism that the Justice Department's January 6 probe has not been aggressive enough, while signaling that no one would be off limits as prosecutors "followed the facts."
"The actions we have taken thus far will not be our last," Garland said. "The Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law -- whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy."
**************************
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland Delivers Remarks on the First Anniversary of the Attack on the Capitol
Remarks as Delivered
January 5, 2022
Good afternoon.
It’s nice to see some of you here in the Great Hall. And to be able to connect with all of you virtually today.
On my first day as Attorney General, I spoke with all of you — the more than 115,000 employees of the Department of Justice — for the first time.
Today, I have brought us all together again, for two reasons.
First and foremost, to thank you. Thank you for the work you have done, not just over the last 10 months, but over the past several years. Work that you have done in the face of unprecedented challenges — ranging from an unprecedented deadly pandemic to an unprecedented attack on our democracy.
Thank you for your service, for your sacrifice, and for your dedication. I am honored to serve alongside you.
And second, as we begin a new year — and as we prepare to mark a solemn anniversary tomorrow – it is a fitting time to reaffirm that we at the Department of Justice will do everything in our power to defend the American people and American democracy.
We will defend our democratic institutions from attack.
We will protect those who serve the public from violence and threats of violence.
We will protect the cornerstone of our democracy: the right to every eligible citizen to cast a vote that counts.
And we will do all of this in a manner that adheres to the rule of law and honors our obligation to protect the civil rights and civil liberties of everyone in this country.
Tomorrow will mark the first anniversary of January 6th, 2021 — the day the United States Capitol was attacked while lawmakers met to affirm the results of a presidential election.
In the early afternoon of January 6th — as the United States Senate and House of Representatives were meeting to certify the vote count of the Electoral College — a large crowd gathered outside the Capitol building.
Shortly after 2 p.m., individuals in the crowd began to force entry into the Capitol, by smashing windows and assaulting U.S. Capitol police, who were stationed there to protect the members of Congress as they took part in one of the most solemn proceedings of our democracy. Others in the crowd encouraged and assisted those who attacked the police.
Over the course of several hours, outnumbered law enforcement officers sustained a barrage of repeated, violent attacks. About 80 Capitol Police and 60 D.C. Metropolitan Police were assaulted.
As our own court filings and thousands of public videos of the event attest,
• Perpetrators punched dozens of law enforcement officers, knocking some officers unconscious.
• Some perpetrators tackled and dragged law enforcement officers. Among the many examples of such violence: One officer was crushed in a door. Another was dragged down a set of stairs, face down, repeatedly tased and beaten, and suffered a heart attack.
• Some perpetrators attacked law enforcement officers with chemical agents that burned their eyes and skin.
• And some assaulted officers with pipes, poles, and other dangerous or deadly weapons.
• Perpetrators also targeted, assaulted, tackled and harassed journalists and destroyed their equipment.
With increasing numbers of individuals having breached the Capitol, members of the Senate and the House of Representatives — including the President of the Senate, Vice President Mike Pence — had to be evacuated.
As a consequence, proceedings in both chambers were disrupted for hours — interfering with a fundamental element of American democracy: the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next.
Those involved must be held accountable, and there is no higher priority for us at the Department of Justice.
It is impossible to overstate the heroism of the Capitol Police officers, Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officers, and other law enforcement officers who defended and secured the Capitol that day. They demonstrated to all of us, and to our country, what true courage looks like.
Their resolve, their sacrifice, and their bravery protected thousands of people working inside the Capitol that day.
Five officers who responded selflessly to the attack on January 6th have since lost their lives.
I ask everyone to please join me in a moment of silence in recognition of the service and sacrifice of:
Officer Brian Sicknick.
Officer Howard Liebengood.
Officer Jeffrey Smith.
Officer Gunther Hashida.
And Officer Kyle DeFreytag.
I know I speak for all of us in saying that tomorrow, and in our work in the days ahead, we will not only remember them — we will do everything we can to honor them.
In the aftermath of the attack, the Justice Department began its work on what has become one of the largest, most complex, and most resource-intensive investigations in our history.
Only a small number of perpetrators were arrested in the tumult of January 6th itself. Every day since, we have worked to identify, investigate, and apprehend defendants from across the country. And we have done so at record speed and scale — in the midst of a pandemic during which some grand juries and courtrooms were not able to operate.
Led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the FBI’s Washington Field Office, DOJ personnel across the department — in nearly all 56 field offices, in nearly all 94 United States Attorneys’ Offices, and in many Main Justice components — have worked countless hours to investigate the attack. Approximately 70 prosecutors from the District of Columbia and another 70 from other U.S. Attorney’s Offices and DOJ divisions have participated in this investigation.
So far, we have issued over 5,000 subpoenas and search warrants, seized approximately 2,000 devices, pored through over 20,000 hours of video footage, and searched through an estimated 15 terabytes of data.
We have received over 300,000 tips from ordinary citizens, who have been our indispensable partners in this effort. The FBI’s website continues to post photos of persons in connection with the events of January 6th, and we continue to seek the public’s assistance in identifying those individuals.
As of today, we have arrested and charged more than 725 defendants, in nearly all 50 states and the District of Columbia, for their roles in the January 6th attack.
In charging the perpetrators, we have followed well-worn prosecutorial practices.
Those who assaulted officers or damaged the Capitol face greater charges.
Those who conspired with others to obstruct the vote count also face greater charges.
Those who did not undertake such conduct have been charged with lesser offenses — particularly if they accepted their responsibility early and cooperated with the investigation.
In the first months of the investigation, approximately 145 defendants pled guilty to misdemeanors, mostly defendants who did not cause injury or damage. Such pleas reflect the facts of those cases and the defendants’ acceptance of responsibility. And they help conserve both judicial and prosecutorial resources, so that attention can properly focus on the more serious perpetrators.
In complex cases, initial charges are often less severe than later charged offenses. This is purposeful, as investigators methodically collect and sift through more evidence.
By now, though, we have charged over 325 defendants with felonies, many for assaulting officers and many for corruptly obstructing or attempting to obstruct an official proceeding. Twenty defendants charged with felonies have already pled guilty.
Approximately 40 defendants have been charged with conspiracy to obstruct a congressional proceeding and/or to obstruct law enforcement. In the months ahead, 17 defendants are already scheduled to go to trial for their role in felony conspiracies.
A necessary consequence of the prosecutorial approach of charging less serious offenses first is that courts impose shorter sentences before they impose longer ones.
In recent weeks, however, as judges have sentenced the first defendants convicted of assaults and related violent conduct against officers, we have seen significant sentences that reflect the seriousness of those offenses — both in terms of the injuries they caused and the serious risk they posed to our democratic institutions.
The actions we have taken thus far will not be our last.
The Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law — whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy. We will follow the facts wherever they lead.
Because January 6th was an unprecedented attack on the seat of our democracy, we understand that there is broad public interest in our investigation. We understand that there are questions about how long the investigation will take, and about what exactly we are doing.
Our answer is, and will continue to be, the same answer we would give with respect to any ongoing investigation: as long as it takes and whatever it takes for justice to be done — consistent with the facts and the law.
I understand that this may not be the answer some are looking for. But we will and we must speak through our work. Anything else jeopardizes the viability of our investigations and the civil liberties of our citizens.
Everyone in this room and on these screens is familiar with the way we conduct investigations, and particularly complex investigations.
We build investigations by laying a foundation. We resolve more straightforward cases first because they provide the evidentiary foundation for more complex cases.
Investigating the more overt crimes generates linkages to less overt ones. Overt actors and the evidence they provide can lead us to others who may also have been involved. And that evidence can serve as the foundation for further investigative leads and techniques.
In circumstances like those of January 6th, a full accounting does not suddenly materialize. To ensure that all those criminally responsible are held accountable, we must collect the evidence.
We follow the physical evidence. We follow the digital evidence. We follow the money.
But most important, we follow the facts — not an agenda or an assumption. The facts tell us where to go next.
Over 40 years ago in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the Justice Department concluded that the best way to ensure the department’s independence, integrity, and fair application of our laws — and, therefore, the best way to ensure the health of our democracy — is to have a set of norms to govern our work.
The central norm is that, in our criminal investigations, there cannot be different rules depending on one’s political party or affiliation. There cannot be different rules for friends and foes. And there cannot be different rules for the powerful and the powerless.
There is only one rule: we follow the facts and enforce the law in a way that respects the Constitution and protects civil liberties.
We conduct every investigation guided by the same norms. And we adhere to those norms even when, and especially when, the circumstances we face are not normal.
Adhering to the department’s long-standing norms is essential to our work in defending our democracy, particularly at a time when we are confronting a rise in violence and unlawful threats of violence in our shared public spaces and directed at those who serve the public.
We have all seen that Americans who serve and interact with the public at every level — many of whom make our democracy work every day — have been unlawfully targeted with threats of violence and actual violence.
Across the country, election officials and election workers; airline flight crews; school personnel; journalists; local elected officials; U.S. Senators and Representatives; and judges, prosecutors, and police officers have been threatened and/or attacked.
These are our fellow citizens — who administer our elections, ensure our safe travel, teach our children, report the news, represent their constituents, and keep our communities safe.
Some have been told that their offices would be bombed. Some have been told that they would be murdered, and precisely how — that they would be hanged; that they would be beheaded.
Police officers, who put their lives on the line every day to serve our communities, have been targeted with extraordinary levels of violence.
Flight crews have been assaulted. Journalists have been targeted. School personnel and their families have been threatened.
A member of Congress was threatened in a gruesome voicemail that asked if she had ever seen what a 50-caliber shell does to a human head. Another member of Congress — an Iraq War veteran and Purple Heart recipient — received threats that left her “terrified for [her] family.”
And in 2020, a federal judge in New Jersey was targeted by someone who had appeared before her in court. That person compiled information about where the judge and her family lived and went to church. That person found the judge’s home, shot and killed her son, and injured her husband.
These acts and threats of violence are not associated with any one set of partisan or ideological views.
But they are permeating so many parts of our national life that they risk becoming normalized and routine if we do not stop them.
That is dangerous for people’s safety. And it is deeply dangerous for our democracy.
In a democracy, people vote, argue, and debate — often vociferously — in order to achieve the policy outcomes they desire. But in a democracy, people must not employ violence or unlawful threats of violence to affect that outcome. Citizens must not be intimidated from exercising their constitutional rights to free expression and association by such unlawful conduct.
The Justice Department will continue to investigate violence and illegal threats of violence, disrupt that violence before it occurs, and hold perpetrators accountable.
We have marshaled the resources of the department to address the rising violence and criminal threats of violence against election workers, against flight crews, against school personnel, against journalists, against members of Congress, and against federal agents, prosecutors, and judges.
In 2021, the department charged more defendants in criminal threat cases than in any year in at least the last five.
As we do this work, we are guided by our commitment to protect civil liberties, including the First Amendment rights of all citizens.
The department has been clear that expressing a political belief or ideology, no matter how vociferously, is not a crime. We do not investigate or prosecute people because of their views. Peacefully expressing a view or ideology — no matter how extreme — is protected by the First Amendment. But illegally threatening to harm or kill another person is not. There is no First Amendment right to unlawfully threaten to harm or kill someone.
As Justice Scalia noted in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, true “threats of violence are outside the First Amendment” because laws that punish such threats “protect[] individuals from the fear of violence, from the disruption that fear engenders, and from the possibility that the threatened violence will occur.”
The latter point hits particularly close to home for those of us who have investigated tragedies ranging from the Oklahoma City bombing to the January 6th attack on the Capitol. The time to address threats is when they are made, not after the tragedy has struck.
As employees of the nation’s largest law enforcement agency, each of us understands that we have an obligation to protect our citizens from violence and fear of violence. And we will continue to do our part to provide that protection.
But the Justice Department cannot do it alone. The responsibility to bring an end to violence and threats of violence against those who serve the public is one that all Americans share.
Such conduct disrupts the peace of our public spaces and undermines our democracy. We are all Americans. We must protect each other.
The obligation to keep Americans and American democracy safe is part of the historical inheritance of this department. As I have noted several times before, a founding purpose of the Justice Department was to battle violent extremist attacks on our democratic institutions.
In the midst of Reconstruction following the Civil War, the department’s first principal task was to secure the civil rights promised by the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. This meant protecting Black Americans seeking to exercise their right to vote from acts and threats of violence by white supremacists.
The framers of the Civil War Amendments recognized that access to the ballot is a fundamental aspect of citizenship and self-government. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 sought to make the promise of those amendments real. To do so, it gave the Justice Department valuable tools with which to protect the right to vote.
In recent years, however, the protections of the Voting Rights Act have been drastically weakened.
The Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in the Shelby County case effectively eliminated the preclearance protections of Section 5, which had been the department’s most effective tool for protecting voting rights over the past half-century. Subsequent decisions have substantially narrowed the reach of Section 2 as well.
Since those decisions, there has been a dramatic increase in legislative enactments that make it harder for millions of eligible voters to vote and to elect representatives of their own choosing.
Those enactments range from: practices and procedures that make voting more difficult; to redistricting maps drawn to disadvantage both minorities and citizens of opposing political parties; to abnormal post-election audits that put the integrity of the voting process at risk; to changes in voting administration meant to diminish the authority of locally elected or nonpartisan election administrators.
Some have even suggested permitting state legislators to set aside the choice of the voters themselves.
As I noted in an address to the Civil Rights Division last June, many of those enactments have been justified by unfounded claims of material vote fraud in the 2020 election.
Those claims, which have corroded people’s faith in the legitimacy of our elections, have been repeatedly refuted by the law enforcement and intelligence agencies of both the last administration and this one, as well as by every court — federal and state — that has considered them.
The Department of Justice will continue to do all it can to protect voting rights with the enforcement powers we have. It is essential that Congress act to give the department the powers we need to ensure that every eligible voter can cast a vote that counts.
But as with violence and threats of violence, the Justice Department — even the Congress — cannot alone defend the right to vote. The responsibility to preserve democracy — and to maintain faith in the legitimacy of its essential processes — lies with every elected official and with every American.
All Americans are entitled to free, fair, and secure elections that ensure they can select the representatives of their choice.
All Americans are entitled to live in a country in which their public servants can go about their jobs of serving the public free from violence and unlawful threats of violence.
And all Americans are entitled to live in a country in which the transition from one elected administration to the next is accomplished peacefully.
The Justice Department will never stop working to defend the democracy to which all Americans are entitled.
As I recognized when I first spoke with you all last March, service in the Department of Justice is more than a job and more than an honor. It is a calling.
Each of us — you and I — came to work here because we are committed to the rule of law and to seeking equal justice under law. We came to work here because we are committed to ensuring the civil rights and civil liberties of our people. We came to work here because we are committed to protecting our country — as our oath says — from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Together, we will continue to show the American people, by word and by deed, that these are the principles that underlie our work.
The challenges that we have faced, and that we will continue to face, are extraordinary. But I am moved and humbled by the extraordinary work you do every single day to meet them.
I look forward to seeing more of you in person, soon, and to our continued work together.
Thank you all.
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat
by admin » Thu Jan 06, 2022 10:30 pm
GOP Group Calls Out Trump’s Enablers In Congress By Name In Scathing Fox News Ad
by Ed Mazza
Wed, January 5, 2022, 5:03 AM
A conservative group is calling out GOP lawmakers for failing to hold former President Donald Trump accountable for the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol carried out by his supporters.
The new ad from the Republican Accountability Project, set to air on Fox News on the first anniversary of the attack, focuses on five lawmakers who were sharply critical of Trump last year, but since either changed their tune or went silent.
“They told the truth then. Why won’t they now?” the text on the screen reads after clips featuring comments by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.):
The spot is set to run during “Fox & Friends,” “Hannity” and “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Thursday. The Republican Accountability Project has been running ads targeting members of the party who enabled Trump, complete with an online “Hall of Shame” of 13 lawmakers who “actively invented and disseminated lies, misinformation and conspiracy theories.”
The group is also looking to support primary challengers to those lawmakers.
****************************
Cowardice: Some Republicans have made it clear that they cannot be trusted with power
by accountability.gop
Accessed: 1/6/22
https://accountability.gop/cowardice/
The balance has turned against the responsible, reasonable wing of the Republican Party. Most Republicans in Congress abetted the insurrection on January 6 and ignored, excused, or even participated in the dog whistles to QAnon and other dangerous conspiracy theories.
Most Republicans went along with the trend because it was politically safe, but a few of them drove the trend. They actively invented and disseminated lies, misinformation, and conspiracy theories to rile up their base and advance their own careers at the expense of the country and the Constitution.
They have made it clear that they can never be trusted with power. To ensure that as few of them as possible return to Congress in 2022, we will recruit and support primary candidates against them through our political action committee where strategically viable.
CAMPAIGNS
“Resign” Billboards
We're holding irresponsible Republican lawmakers accountable.
We’re kicking off a $1 million billboard campaign across the country calling for prominent members of Congress to resign for their role in the January 6 Capitol attack.
This is a selection of the billboards that we’re running across the country, which are targeting GOP lawmakers who were the most irresponsible during the aftermath of the 2020 election.
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
SEN. CRUZ: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
SEN. HAWLEY: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
MCCARTHY: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
JORDAN: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
REP. GREENE: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
SEN. CRUZ: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
CAWTHORN: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
BROOKS: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
SEN. CRUZ: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
REP. NUNES: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
STEFANIK: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
REP. GAETZ: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
GOHMERT: RESIGN
"You Did This" Commercial
We're showing the direct line between the destructive rhetoric of Congressional Republicans and the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Airing in January.
REPUBLICAN HALL OF SHAME
Rep. Lauren Boebert
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Rep. Mo Brooks
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Rep. Madison Cawthorn
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Sen. Ted Cruz
SENATE
Rep. Matt Gaetz
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Rep. Louie Gohmert
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Rep. Paul Gosar
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Sen. Josh Hawley
SENATE
Rep. Jim Jordan
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Rep. Kevin McCarthy
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Rep. Devin Nunes
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Rep. Elise Stefanik
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
by Ed Mazza
Wed, January 5, 2022, 5:03 AM
A conservative group is calling out GOP lawmakers for failing to hold former President Donald Trump accountable for the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol carried out by his supporters.
The new ad from the Republican Accountability Project, set to air on Fox News on the first anniversary of the attack, focuses on five lawmakers who were sharply critical of Trump last year, but since either changed their tune or went silent.
“They told the truth then. Why won’t they now?” the text on the screen reads after clips featuring comments by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.):
The Republican Accountability Project
@AccountableGOP
@GOPLeader, @LeaderMcConnell, @tedcruz, @LindseyGrahamSC, @MikeforWI, this you?
Running on January 6 on Fox and Friends, Tucker Carlson Tonight, and Hannity.
7:07 PM Jan 4, 2022
The spot is set to run during “Fox & Friends,” “Hannity” and “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Thursday. The Republican Accountability Project has been running ads targeting members of the party who enabled Trump, complete with an online “Hall of Shame” of 13 lawmakers who “actively invented and disseminated lies, misinformation and conspiracy theories.”
The group is also looking to support primary challengers to those lawmakers.
****************************
Cowardice: Some Republicans have made it clear that they cannot be trusted with power
by accountability.gop
Accessed: 1/6/22
https://accountability.gop/cowardice/
The balance has turned against the responsible, reasonable wing of the Republican Party. Most Republicans in Congress abetted the insurrection on January 6 and ignored, excused, or even participated in the dog whistles to QAnon and other dangerous conspiracy theories.
Most Republicans went along with the trend because it was politically safe, but a few of them drove the trend. They actively invented and disseminated lies, misinformation, and conspiracy theories to rile up their base and advance their own careers at the expense of the country and the Constitution.
They have made it clear that they can never be trusted with power. To ensure that as few of them as possible return to Congress in 2022, we will recruit and support primary candidates against them through our political action committee where strategically viable.
CAMPAIGNS
“Resign” Billboards
We're holding irresponsible Republican lawmakers accountable.
We’re kicking off a $1 million billboard campaign across the country calling for prominent members of Congress to resign for their role in the January 6 Capitol attack.
This is a selection of the billboards that we’re running across the country, which are targeting GOP lawmakers who were the most irresponsible during the aftermath of the 2020 election.
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
SEN. CRUZ: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
SEN. HAWLEY: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
MCCARTHY: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
JORDAN: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
REP. GREENE: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
SEN. CRUZ: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
CAWTHORN: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
BROOKS: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
SEN. CRUZ: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
REP. NUNES: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
STEFANIK: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
REP. GAETZ: RESIGN
YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
GOHMERT: RESIGN
"You Did This" Commercial
We're showing the direct line between the destructive rhetoric of Congressional Republicans and the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Airing in January.
REPUBLICAN HALL OF SHAME
Rep. Lauren Boebert
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Rep. Mo Brooks
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Rep. Madison Cawthorn
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Sen. Ted Cruz
SENATE
Rep. Matt Gaetz
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Rep. Louie Gohmert
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Rep. Paul Gosar
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Sen. Josh Hawley
SENATE
Rep. Jim Jordan
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Rep. Kevin McCarthy
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Rep. Devin Nunes
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Rep. Elise Stefanik
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
- admin
- Site Admin
- Posts: 37523
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat
by admin » Fri Jan 07, 2022 12:37 am
Watch Biden’s full Jan. 6 anniversary speech
by Pres. Joe Biden
an 6, 2022
Madam Vice President, my fellow Americans: to state the obvious, one year ago today, in this sacred place, Democracy was attacked. Simply attacked. The will of the people was under assault. The Constitution, our constitution faced the gravest of threats. Outnumbered in the face of a brutal attack, the Capitol Police, the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, the National Guard and other brave law enforcement officials saved the rule of law. Our democracy held. We the people endured. We the people prevail.
For the first time in our history, a president had not just lost an election, he tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the Capitol. But they failed. They failed. And on this day of remembrance, we must make sure that such attack never, never happens again.
I'm speaking to you today from Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol. This is where the House of Representatives met for 50 years in the decades leading up to the Civil War.
This is – on this floor is where a young congressman from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, sat at desk 191. Above him, above us over that door, leading into the rotunda is a sculpture depicting Clio, the muse of history. In her hands, an open book, in which she records the events taking place in this chamber below. Clio stood watch over this hall, one year ago today, as she has for more than 200 years. She recorded what took place: the real history, the real facts, the real truth, the facts and the truth that Vice President Harris just shared, and that you and I and the whole world saw with our own eyes.
The Bible tells us that we shall know the truth and the truth shall make us free. We shall know the truth. Well, here is the God's truth about January 6, 2021. Close your eyes. Go back to that day. What do you see?
Rioters rampaging, waving for the first time inside this Capitol, the confederate flag that symbolized the cause to destroy America, to rip us apart. Even during the Civil War, that never, ever happened. But it happened here in 2021.
What else do you see? A mob, breaking windows, kicking in doors, breaching the Capitol, American flags on poles being used as weapons as spears, fire extinguishers being thrown at the heads of police officers. A crowd that professes their love for law enforcement assaulted those police officers, dragged them, sprayed them, stomped on them.
Over 140 police officers were injured. We all heard the police officers who were there that day testified to what happened. One officer called it quote "a medieval battle" and that he was more afraid that day than he was fighting the war in Iraq.
They've repeatedly asked since that day, how dare anyone, anyone diminish belittle or deny the hell they were put through? We saw with our own eyes rioters menace these halls, threatening the life of the Speaker of the House, literally erecting gallows to hang the vice president of the United States of America.
What do we not see? We didn't see a former president who had just rallied the mob to attack, sitting in the private dining room off the Oval Office in the White House, watching it all on television and doing nothing for hour, as police were assaulted. Lives at risk. The nation's capital under siege.
This wasn't a group of tourists. This is an armed insurrection. They weren't looking to uphold the will of the people. They were looking to deny the will of the people. They were looking to uphold – they weren't looking to hold a free and fair election. They were looking to overturn one. They weren't looking to save the cause of America. They were looking to subvert the Constitution. This isn't about being bogged down in the past. This is about making sure the past isn't buried.
That's the only way forward. That's what great nations do. They don't bury the truth. They face up to it. It sounds like hyperbole, but that's the truth. They face up to it. We are a great nation.
My fellow Americans in life, there's truth. And tragically, there are lies. Lies conceived and spread for profit and power. We must be absolutely clear about what is true and what is a lie. And here's the truth: the former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election. He's done so because he values power over principle.
Because he sees his own interest as more important than his country's interest and America's interest. And because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our constitution. He can't accept he lost. Even though that's what 93 United States senators, his own attorney general, his own vice president, governors and state officials in every battleground state have all said: he lost.
That's what 81 million of you did as you voted for a new way forward. He has done what no president in American history, the history of this country has ever, ever done. He refused to accept the results of an election and the will of the American people.
While some courageous men and women in the Republican Party are standing against it, trying to uphold the principle of that party, too many others are transforming that party into something else. They seem no longer to want to be the party, the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan, the Bushes.
But whatever my other disagreements are with Republicans who support the rule of law and not the role of a single man, I will always seek to work together with them, to find shared solutions where it possible.
Because if we have a shared belief in democracy, that anything is possible. Anything.
And so at this moment, we must decide, what kind of nation are we going to be? Are we going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm? Are we going to be a nation where we allow partisan election officials to overturn the legally expressed will of the people?
Are we going to be a nation that lives not by the light of the truth but under the shadow of lies? We cannot allow ourselves to be that kind of nation. The way forward is to recognize the truth and to live by it.
The Big Lie being told by the former president and many Republicans who fear his wrath is that the insurrection in this country actually took place on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2020.
Think about that. Is that what you thought? Is that what you thought when you voted that day? Taking part in an insurrection, is that what you thought you were doing, or did you think you were carrying out your highest duty as a citizen and voting?
The former president's supporters are trying to rewrite history. They want you to see Election Day as the day of insurrection. And the riot that took place there on January 6th as a true expression of the will of the people.
Can you think of a more twisted way to look at this country, to look at America? I cannot.
Here's the truth. The election of 2020 was the greatest demonstration of democracy in the history of this country. More of you voted in that election than have ever voted in all of American history. Over 150 million Americans went to the polls and voted that day in a pandemic. Some at great risk to their lives. They should be applauded, not attacked.
Right now in state after state, new laws are being written. Not to protect the vote, but to deny it. Not only to suppress the vote, but to subvert it, not to strengthen or protect our democracy, but because the former president lost. Instead of looking at election results from 2020 and saying they need new ideas or better ideas to win more votes, the former president and his supporters have decided the only way for them to win is to suppress your vote and subvert our elections.
It's wrong. It's undemocratic, and frankly, it's un-American. The second Big Lie being told by the former president's supporters is that the results of the election 2020 can't be trusted. The truth is that no election, no election in American history has been more closely scrutinized or more carefully counted.
Every legal challenge questioning the results and every court in this country that could have been made was made and was rejected, often rejected by Republican-appointed judges, including judges appointed by the former president himself from state courts to the United States Supreme Court. Recounts were undertaken in state after state. Georgia – Georgia counted its results three times, with one recount by hand.
Phony partisan audits were undertaken long after the election in several states. None changed the results. And in some of them, the irony is the margin of victory actually grew slightly.
So let's speak plainly about what happened in 2020. Even before the first ballot was cast, the former president was preemptively sowing doubt about the election results. He built his lie over months. It wasn't based on any facts. He was just looking for an excuse, a pretext to cover for the truth. He's not just a former president. He's a defeated former president. Defeated by a margin of over seven million of your votes. In a full and free and fair election.
There is simply zero proof the election results are inaccurate. In fact, in every venue where evidence had to be produced and oath to tell the truth had to be taken, the former president failed to make his case.
Just think about this, the former president and his supporters have never been able to explain how they accept as accurate the other election results that took place on November 3rd. The elections for governor. United States Senate. House of Representatives. Elections, in which they closed the gap in the House. They challenged none of that. The president's name was first. Then we went down the line, governors, senators, House of Representatives.
Somehow, those results are accurate on the same ballot. But the presidential race was flawed? And on the same ballot, the same day, cast by the same voters? The only difference, the former president didn't lose those races. He just lost the one that was his own.
Finally, the third Big Lie being told by a former president and supporters is that the mob who sought to impose their will through violence are the nation's true patriots. Is that what you thought when you looked at the mob ransacking the Capitol, destroying property, literally defecating in the hallways? Rifling through the desks of senators and representatives? Hunting down members of congress. Patriots? Not my view.
To me, the true patriots for the more than 150 Americans who peacefully expressed their vote at the ballot box. The election workers who protected the integrity of the vote and the heroes who defended this Capitol. You can't love your country only when you win. You can't obey the law only when it's convenient. You can't be patriotic when you embrace and enable lies.
Those who stormed this Capitol and those who instigated and incited and those who called on them to do so held a dagger at the throat of America, at American democracy.
They didn't come here out of patriotism or principle. They came here in rage. Not in service of America but rather in service of one man. Those who incited the mob, the real plotters who are desperate to deny the certification of this election, and defy the will of the voters. But their plot was foiled; congressmen, Democrats, Republicans stayed. Senators, representatives, staff, they finished their work, the Constitution demanded. They honored their oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Look folks, now it's up to all of us — to We the People — to stand for the rule of law, to preserve the flame of democracy, to keep the promise of America alive. The promise is at risk. Targeted by the forces that value brute strength. Over the sanctity of democracy. Fear over hope. Personal gain over public good.
Make no mistake about it, we're living at an inflection point in history, both at home and abroad. We're engaged anew in a struggle between democracy and autocracy, between the aspirations of the many and the greed of the few. Between the people's right of self-determination and self-seeking autocrat. From China to Russia and beyond, they're betting the democracies' days are numbered - they've actually told me democracy is too slow, too bogged down by division to succeed in today's rapidly changing, complicated world.
And they're betting, they're betting America will become more like them and less like like us. They're betting in America is a place for the autocrat, the dictator, the strongman. I do not believe that. That is not who we are. That is not who we have ever been. And that is not who we should ever, ever be.
Our founding fathers, as imperfect as they were, set in motion, an experiment that changed the world, literally changed the world. Here in America, the people would rule. Power would be transferred peacefully. Never the tip of a spear or the barrel of a gun. They committed paper and idea that couldn't live up to – they couldn't live up to, but an idea it couldn't be constrained.
Yes, in America, all people are created equal. Reject the view that if you, if you succeed, I fail. If you get ahead, I fall behind. If I hold you down, I somehow lift myself up.
The former president who lies about this election and the mob that attacked this Capitol could not be further away from the core American values. They want to rule or they will ruin. Ruin when our country fought for at Lexington and Concord at Gettysburg and Omaha Beach, Seneca Falls, Selma, Alabama. What – and what we were fighting for: The right to vote. The right to govern ourselves. The right to determine our own destiny.
With rights come responsibilities. The responsibility to see each other as neighbors. Maybe we disagree with that neighbor, but they're not an adversary. The responsibility to accept defeat, then get back in the arena and try again the next time to make your case. The responsibility to see that America is an idea. An idea that requires vigilant stewardship.
As we stand here today, one year since January 6, 2021, the lies that drove the anger and madness we saw on this place, they have not abated. So we have to be firm, resolute and unyielding in our defense of the right to vote and have that vote counted.
Some have already made the ultimate sacrifice in this sacred effort. Jill and I have mourned police officers in this Capitol rotunda not once, but twice in the wake of January 6th. Once to honor Officer Brian Sicknick, who lost his life the day after the attack. The second time to honor Officer Billy Evans, who lost his life defending the Capitol as well.
We think about the others who lost their lives and were injured and everyone living with the trauma of that day. From those defending this Capitol to members of Congress in both parties and their staffs to reporters, cafeteria workers, custodial workers and their families.
Don't kid yourself. The pain and scars from that day run deep. I've said it many times and it's no more true or real when we think about the events of January 6th. We are in a battle for the soul of America. A battle that by the grace of God and the goodness and greatness of this nation, we will win.
Believe me: I know how difficult democracy is. And I'm crystal clear about the threats America faces. But I also know that our darkest days can lead to light and hope. From the death and destruction as the vice president referenced in Pearl Harbor can the triumph over the forces of fascism. From the brutality of Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettus Bridge came a historic voting rights legislation.
So now let's step up. Write the next chapter in American history, where January six marks not the end of democracy but the beginning of a renaissance of liberty and fair play.
I did not seek this fight right to this Capitol year ago today, but I will not shrink from it either. I will stand in this breach. I will defend this nation, and I will allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of democracy. We will make sure the will of the people is heard. That the ballot prevails, not violence. That authority of this nation will always be peacefully transferred. I believe the power of the presidency and the purpose is to unite this nation, not divide it.
To lift us up. Not tear us apart. It's about us, not about me. Deep in the heart of America, burns a flame lit almost 250 years ago of liberty, freedom and equality. This is not the land of kings or dictators or autocrats.
We're a nation of laws of order, not chaos, of peace, not violence. Here in America, the people rule, through the ballot. And their will prevails. So let's remember together, we're one nation under God, indivisible, that today, tomorrow and forever, at our best, we are the United States of America.
God bless you all. May God protect our troops. My God bless those who stand watch over our democracy.
by Pres. Joe Biden
an 6, 2022
Madam Vice President, my fellow Americans: to state the obvious, one year ago today, in this sacred place, Democracy was attacked. Simply attacked. The will of the people was under assault. The Constitution, our constitution faced the gravest of threats. Outnumbered in the face of a brutal attack, the Capitol Police, the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, the National Guard and other brave law enforcement officials saved the rule of law. Our democracy held. We the people endured. We the people prevail.
For the first time in our history, a president had not just lost an election, he tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the Capitol. But they failed. They failed. And on this day of remembrance, we must make sure that such attack never, never happens again.
I'm speaking to you today from Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol. This is where the House of Representatives met for 50 years in the decades leading up to the Civil War.
This is – on this floor is where a young congressman from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, sat at desk 191. Above him, above us over that door, leading into the rotunda is a sculpture depicting Clio, the muse of history. In her hands, an open book, in which she records the events taking place in this chamber below. Clio stood watch over this hall, one year ago today, as she has for more than 200 years. She recorded what took place: the real history, the real facts, the real truth, the facts and the truth that Vice President Harris just shared, and that you and I and the whole world saw with our own eyes.
The Bible tells us that we shall know the truth and the truth shall make us free. We shall know the truth. Well, here is the God's truth about January 6, 2021. Close your eyes. Go back to that day. What do you see?
Rioters rampaging, waving for the first time inside this Capitol, the confederate flag that symbolized the cause to destroy America, to rip us apart. Even during the Civil War, that never, ever happened. But it happened here in 2021.
What else do you see? A mob, breaking windows, kicking in doors, breaching the Capitol, American flags on poles being used as weapons as spears, fire extinguishers being thrown at the heads of police officers. A crowd that professes their love for law enforcement assaulted those police officers, dragged them, sprayed them, stomped on them.
Over 140 police officers were injured. We all heard the police officers who were there that day testified to what happened. One officer called it quote "a medieval battle" and that he was more afraid that day than he was fighting the war in Iraq.
They've repeatedly asked since that day, how dare anyone, anyone diminish belittle or deny the hell they were put through? We saw with our own eyes rioters menace these halls, threatening the life of the Speaker of the House, literally erecting gallows to hang the vice president of the United States of America.
What do we not see? We didn't see a former president who had just rallied the mob to attack, sitting in the private dining room off the Oval Office in the White House, watching it all on television and doing nothing for hour, as police were assaulted. Lives at risk. The nation's capital under siege.
This wasn't a group of tourists. This is an armed insurrection. They weren't looking to uphold the will of the people. They were looking to deny the will of the people. They were looking to uphold – they weren't looking to hold a free and fair election. They were looking to overturn one. They weren't looking to save the cause of America. They were looking to subvert the Constitution. This isn't about being bogged down in the past. This is about making sure the past isn't buried.
That's the only way forward. That's what great nations do. They don't bury the truth. They face up to it. It sounds like hyperbole, but that's the truth. They face up to it. We are a great nation.
My fellow Americans in life, there's truth. And tragically, there are lies. Lies conceived and spread for profit and power. We must be absolutely clear about what is true and what is a lie. And here's the truth: the former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election. He's done so because he values power over principle.
Because he sees his own interest as more important than his country's interest and America's interest. And because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our constitution. He can't accept he lost. Even though that's what 93 United States senators, his own attorney general, his own vice president, governors and state officials in every battleground state have all said: he lost.
That's what 81 million of you did as you voted for a new way forward. He has done what no president in American history, the history of this country has ever, ever done. He refused to accept the results of an election and the will of the American people.
While some courageous men and women in the Republican Party are standing against it, trying to uphold the principle of that party, too many others are transforming that party into something else. They seem no longer to want to be the party, the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan, the Bushes.
But whatever my other disagreements are with Republicans who support the rule of law and not the role of a single man, I will always seek to work together with them, to find shared solutions where it possible.
Because if we have a shared belief in democracy, that anything is possible. Anything.
And so at this moment, we must decide, what kind of nation are we going to be? Are we going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm? Are we going to be a nation where we allow partisan election officials to overturn the legally expressed will of the people?
Are we going to be a nation that lives not by the light of the truth but under the shadow of lies? We cannot allow ourselves to be that kind of nation. The way forward is to recognize the truth and to live by it.
The Big Lie being told by the former president and many Republicans who fear his wrath is that the insurrection in this country actually took place on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2020.
Think about that. Is that what you thought? Is that what you thought when you voted that day? Taking part in an insurrection, is that what you thought you were doing, or did you think you were carrying out your highest duty as a citizen and voting?
The former president's supporters are trying to rewrite history. They want you to see Election Day as the day of insurrection. And the riot that took place there on January 6th as a true expression of the will of the people.
Can you think of a more twisted way to look at this country, to look at America? I cannot.
Here's the truth. The election of 2020 was the greatest demonstration of democracy in the history of this country. More of you voted in that election than have ever voted in all of American history. Over 150 million Americans went to the polls and voted that day in a pandemic. Some at great risk to their lives. They should be applauded, not attacked.
Right now in state after state, new laws are being written. Not to protect the vote, but to deny it. Not only to suppress the vote, but to subvert it, not to strengthen or protect our democracy, but because the former president lost. Instead of looking at election results from 2020 and saying they need new ideas or better ideas to win more votes, the former president and his supporters have decided the only way for them to win is to suppress your vote and subvert our elections.
It's wrong. It's undemocratic, and frankly, it's un-American. The second Big Lie being told by the former president's supporters is that the results of the election 2020 can't be trusted. The truth is that no election, no election in American history has been more closely scrutinized or more carefully counted.
Every legal challenge questioning the results and every court in this country that could have been made was made and was rejected, often rejected by Republican-appointed judges, including judges appointed by the former president himself from state courts to the United States Supreme Court. Recounts were undertaken in state after state. Georgia – Georgia counted its results three times, with one recount by hand.
Phony partisan audits were undertaken long after the election in several states. None changed the results. And in some of them, the irony is the margin of victory actually grew slightly.
So let's speak plainly about what happened in 2020. Even before the first ballot was cast, the former president was preemptively sowing doubt about the election results. He built his lie over months. It wasn't based on any facts. He was just looking for an excuse, a pretext to cover for the truth. He's not just a former president. He's a defeated former president. Defeated by a margin of over seven million of your votes. In a full and free and fair election.
There is simply zero proof the election results are inaccurate. In fact, in every venue where evidence had to be produced and oath to tell the truth had to be taken, the former president failed to make his case.
Just think about this, the former president and his supporters have never been able to explain how they accept as accurate the other election results that took place on November 3rd. The elections for governor. United States Senate. House of Representatives. Elections, in which they closed the gap in the House. They challenged none of that. The president's name was first. Then we went down the line, governors, senators, House of Representatives.
Somehow, those results are accurate on the same ballot. But the presidential race was flawed? And on the same ballot, the same day, cast by the same voters? The only difference, the former president didn't lose those races. He just lost the one that was his own.
Finally, the third Big Lie being told by a former president and supporters is that the mob who sought to impose their will through violence are the nation's true patriots. Is that what you thought when you looked at the mob ransacking the Capitol, destroying property, literally defecating in the hallways? Rifling through the desks of senators and representatives? Hunting down members of congress. Patriots? Not my view.
To me, the true patriots for the more than 150 Americans who peacefully expressed their vote at the ballot box. The election workers who protected the integrity of the vote and the heroes who defended this Capitol. You can't love your country only when you win. You can't obey the law only when it's convenient. You can't be patriotic when you embrace and enable lies.
Those who stormed this Capitol and those who instigated and incited and those who called on them to do so held a dagger at the throat of America, at American democracy.
They didn't come here out of patriotism or principle. They came here in rage. Not in service of America but rather in service of one man. Those who incited the mob, the real plotters who are desperate to deny the certification of this election, and defy the will of the voters. But their plot was foiled; congressmen, Democrats, Republicans stayed. Senators, representatives, staff, they finished their work, the Constitution demanded. They honored their oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Look folks, now it's up to all of us — to We the People — to stand for the rule of law, to preserve the flame of democracy, to keep the promise of America alive. The promise is at risk. Targeted by the forces that value brute strength. Over the sanctity of democracy. Fear over hope. Personal gain over public good.
Make no mistake about it, we're living at an inflection point in history, both at home and abroad. We're engaged anew in a struggle between democracy and autocracy, between the aspirations of the many and the greed of the few. Between the people's right of self-determination and self-seeking autocrat. From China to Russia and beyond, they're betting the democracies' days are numbered - they've actually told me democracy is too slow, too bogged down by division to succeed in today's rapidly changing, complicated world.
And they're betting, they're betting America will become more like them and less like like us. They're betting in America is a place for the autocrat, the dictator, the strongman. I do not believe that. That is not who we are. That is not who we have ever been. And that is not who we should ever, ever be.
Our founding fathers, as imperfect as they were, set in motion, an experiment that changed the world, literally changed the world. Here in America, the people would rule. Power would be transferred peacefully. Never the tip of a spear or the barrel of a gun. They committed paper and idea that couldn't live up to – they couldn't live up to, but an idea it couldn't be constrained.
Yes, in America, all people are created equal. Reject the view that if you, if you succeed, I fail. If you get ahead, I fall behind. If I hold you down, I somehow lift myself up.
The former president who lies about this election and the mob that attacked this Capitol could not be further away from the core American values. They want to rule or they will ruin. Ruin when our country fought for at Lexington and Concord at Gettysburg and Omaha Beach, Seneca Falls, Selma, Alabama. What – and what we were fighting for: The right to vote. The right to govern ourselves. The right to determine our own destiny.
With rights come responsibilities. The responsibility to see each other as neighbors. Maybe we disagree with that neighbor, but they're not an adversary. The responsibility to accept defeat, then get back in the arena and try again the next time to make your case. The responsibility to see that America is an idea. An idea that requires vigilant stewardship.
As we stand here today, one year since January 6, 2021, the lies that drove the anger and madness we saw on this place, they have not abated. So we have to be firm, resolute and unyielding in our defense of the right to vote and have that vote counted.
Some have already made the ultimate sacrifice in this sacred effort. Jill and I have mourned police officers in this Capitol rotunda not once, but twice in the wake of January 6th. Once to honor Officer Brian Sicknick, who lost his life the day after the attack. The second time to honor Officer Billy Evans, who lost his life defending the Capitol as well.
We think about the others who lost their lives and were injured and everyone living with the trauma of that day. From those defending this Capitol to members of Congress in both parties and their staffs to reporters, cafeteria workers, custodial workers and their families.
Don't kid yourself. The pain and scars from that day run deep. I've said it many times and it's no more true or real when we think about the events of January 6th. We are in a battle for the soul of America. A battle that by the grace of God and the goodness and greatness of this nation, we will win.
Believe me: I know how difficult democracy is. And I'm crystal clear about the threats America faces. But I also know that our darkest days can lead to light and hope. From the death and destruction as the vice president referenced in Pearl Harbor can the triumph over the forces of fascism. From the brutality of Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettus Bridge came a historic voting rights legislation.
So now let's step up. Write the next chapter in American history, where January six marks not the end of democracy but the beginning of a renaissance of liberty and fair play.
I did not seek this fight right to this Capitol year ago today, but I will not shrink from it either. I will stand in this breach. I will defend this nation, and I will allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of democracy. We will make sure the will of the people is heard. That the ballot prevails, not violence. That authority of this nation will always be peacefully transferred. I believe the power of the presidency and the purpose is to unite this nation, not divide it.
To lift us up. Not tear us apart. It's about us, not about me. Deep in the heart of America, burns a flame lit almost 250 years ago of liberty, freedom and equality. This is not the land of kings or dictators or autocrats.
We're a nation of laws of order, not chaos, of peace, not violence. Here in America, the people rule, through the ballot. And their will prevails. So let's remember together, we're one nation under God, indivisible, that today, tomorrow and forever, at our best, we are the United States of America.
God bless you all. May God protect our troops. My God bless those who stand watch over our democracy.
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat
by admin » Fri Jan 07, 2022 3:14 am
Liz Cheney: We Won’t Let Trump Hide Behind ‘Phony Claims’ During Jan. 6 Investigation
by Savannah Guthrie
USA Today
January 6, 2022
Rep. Liz Cheney, the top Republican on the congressional committee investigating the riot at the U.S. Capitol, joins TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie to discuss how close the country came to a violent overthrow of a valid election and the ongoing threat to democracy. She also talks about what she has learned about former President Trump’s conduct in the moments around the attack.
by Savannah Guthrie
USA Today
January 6, 2022
Rep. Liz Cheney, the top Republican on the congressional committee investigating the riot at the U.S. Capitol, joins TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie to discuss how close the country came to a violent overthrow of a valid election and the ongoing threat to democracy. She also talks about what she has learned about former President Trump’s conduct in the moments around the attack.
[Savannah Guthrie] With us now exclusively is Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the top Republican on the Congressional Committee investigating the insurrection. Congresswoman Cheney, good morning to you.
[Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming] Good morning, Savannah.
[Savannah Guthrie] I’ve never known you to be one for big emotions, but as you sit here today, one year later, and consider, how close did we come in this country, how close did we come to the violent overthrow of a valid election?
[Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming] We came very close. Our institutions held, but they only held because of the people who were willing to stand up against the pressure from former President Trump: people at his own Department of Justice who stood up to him, elected officials at the state level who stood up to him, and the law enforcement officers here at the Capitol. You just had Harry Dunn on. People like Harry, Mike Fanone, and 140 law enforcement officers who fought at the tunnel to prevent thousands more from breaching the Capitol that day. We came very close. And we need to recognize how important it is that the system depends upon individuals, and that we make sure that it never happens again.
[Savannah Guthrie] Your co-chair Benny Thompson has said we came critically close to the end of democracy as we know it. The President expected to address the nation, and portray our democracy as in a very fragile moment right now. Not a year ago, right now. Do you agree?
[Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming] I do. The threat continues. Former President Trump continues to make the same claims that he knows caused violence on January 6, and it’s very important, if you look at what’s happening today in my party, in the Republican party, rather than reject what happened on the 6th, reject the lies about the election, and make clear that a President who engaged in those activities can never be President again, unfortunately, too many in my own party are embracing that former President, are looking the other way, or minimizing the danger. That’s how democracies die. And we simply cannot let that happen.
[Savannah Guthrie] The Committee in Congress that is investigating this matter has already interviewed 300 plus witnesses, and looked at 35,000 pages of documents. The big picture first: for those who think maybe this was a protest that got emotional, out of control, how high does it go? Have you been surprised or alarmed by anything you have unearthed so far in the committee?
[Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming] You know, we have unearthed new things in every single aspect of our investigation, and I’m confident that we’ll continue to do so. We’ve had tremendous cooperation from many, many people, including people in the President’s inner circle, people who were in the West Wing that day, and people who have come forward to us with information about what they saw and what they know. And I’m confident that cooperation will continue. The Committee is absolutely determined to ensure that we understand the entire plot, the entire plan to overthrow the election, to really overturn the rule of law. You know, we had over 60 courts in this country that ruled against the claims the former president was making, and yet he rejected those rulings, and attempted to overturn the will of the people. That simply cannot happen in the United States.
[Savannah Guthrie] I know the Committee is zeroing in on a key time frame, a chunk of about three hours in the afternoon of January 6. At 1:10 p.m. or so the President tells his crowd, his protesters at a speech, to march on the Capitol, and it’s not until 187 minutes later that he releases a video statement telling them to go home. What have you learned about those 187 minutes? How would you characterize the President’s conduct, or lack thereof, in those moments?
[Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming] We know, Savannah, that the President was watching television in his private dining room off the oval office. We know from firsthand testimony that he was watching the violent assault on the Capitol. We also know that he could have, at any moment, walked the very few steps to the White House briefing room, could have gone on the air and told the people who were his supporters assaulting the Capitol to go home. He did not do that. And we are very focused on the minute by minute activities at the White House, what he was doing. And again, as I said, we now have firsthand testimony about the extent to which he was watching television, and was refusing to ask people to stop, ask them to go home.
[Savannah Guthrie] There’s been reporting that the Committee is looking for out-takes of that video, previous versions that the President recorded before the one that he ultimately released. Do you have information that he gave a different kind of message in some of those videos that never saw the light of day?
[Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming] Well, we are certainly focused on that, looking at it. We will, in fact, be ensuring that we have access to those videos. You know, one of the things the Committee is very engaged in right now is litigation. The former president is attempting to hide, to hide behind executive privilege claims. We’ve won now in the lower court. We’ve won now in the Appellate court. That case is now potentially in front of the Supreme Court. But we will not let the former president hide behind these phony claims of privilege, and we will get to the bottom of things like that video, the out-takes of that video, and everything else that was going on that day, both his action and his refusal to take action.
[Savannah Guthrie] Well, let me put a fine point on it. Have you seen, have you heard, about conduct from witnesses or otherwise, that suggests that there is a potential criminal case against the President?
[Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming] Certainly we will be looking at that. There are important questions in front of the Committee such as whether or not, through his action or inaction, President Trump attempted to obstruct an official proceeding of Congress, attempted to delay the count of electoral votes. Those are questions the Committee is looking at. We also know, certainly, that it was a supreme dereliction of duty when the President of the United States refuses to take action to stop a violent assault on the Congress, to stop a violent assault on any of the co-equal branches of government. That’s clearly a dereliction of duty, and we will, I’m sure, be giving more information …
[Savannah Guthrie] Sorry to jump in, but I have a couple of more things to get to. How does Vice President, former Vice-President Pence, fit into this case? Are you willing to subpoena him to get his testimony? Do you think he’ll cooperate?
[Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming] You know, former vice president Pence was a hero on January 6. He refused the pressure of the former President. He did his duty, and the nation should be very grateful for the actions that he took that day. We look forward to continuing the cooperation that we’ve had with members of the former Vice President’s team, and look forward as well to his cooperation.
[Savannah Guthrie] You know, even as you investigate January 6, the current threat is still looming large. As mentioned, in 16 states there are pending laws that would change election rules to give more power to politicians in the state legislatures rather than election officials and governors. There are at least 18 Trump loyalist election deniers who are running for secretary of state. 71% of Republicans believe the election was stolen. About 1/3 think that political violence is justified in some circumstances. Is the former president, President Trump, in a better position today, legally, politically, rhetorically, than he was a year ago to subvert a U.S. election?
[Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming] We will not allow him to subvert a U.S. election. He is certainly continuing his efforts in that regard. I think it’s incumbent upon every one of us who is elected, it’s incumbent on every American out there, to ensure when they’re casting their vote, when they’re deciding who they’re going to support, that they are aware that there are candidates that this former president is attempting to support who, for example, would not have certified the election results last time around. That’s going to be a critical part of our upcoming elections. And we all have a duty to ensure that he cannot subvert this democracy.
[Savannah Guthrie] And finally, congresswoman, you know a year ago it was all there for us to see, this violent mob attacking police officers, attacking our Capitol, live on television. And it was unthinkable that anyone could deny it. And yet that is exactly what has happened. Take a look.[Sean Hannity, Fox News, January 6, 2021] The vast majority in Washington D.C. today were peaceful.
[Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.] By and large it was a peaceful protest.
[Laura Ingraham] This is one of the big lies, that this was a coordinated insurrection.
[Rep. Andrew S. Clyde (R-Ga.)] If you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.
[Savannah Guthrie] If people are willing to believe voices like that, and spin like that, instead of their own eyes, what hope is there for your Committee, or for any investigation here?
[Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming] I have tremendous hope, Savannah. There are millions of Americans across this country who understand their responsibility with respect to defending the institutions, and defending the Constitution. And all of those people that you just played, all of my colleagues, anyone who attempts to minimize what happens, anyone who denies the truth of what happened, they ought to be ashamed of themselves, and history is watching, and history will judge them. But the American people have the ability to ensure that we protect our Constitution, and we protect our institutions with their votes, with their voices. And we certainly are not going to be part, on our Committee, of allowing those institutions to be unraveled.
[Savannah Guthrie] Congresswoman Liz Cheney, thank you very much for your time this morning.
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat
by admin » Sat Jan 08, 2022 3:51 am
'Craven Cruz' Gets Owned On Live TV After MAGA Backlash On Riot
by Ari Melber
Jan 7, 2022
After MAGA Senator Ted Cruz referred to the January 6th insurrection as a “violent terrorist attack on the Capitol,” he immediately drew backlash from the proponents of the “big lie.” Cruz ultimately folded and rushed to recant his statement in an odd interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, whose show is known to spread misinformation about the January 6th riot. (This segment is from MSNBC’s “The Beat with Ari Melber," a news show covering politics, law, and culture airing nightly at 6pm ET on MSNBC bit.ly/thebeatwithari).
by Ari Melber
Jan 7, 2022
After MAGA Senator Ted Cruz referred to the January 6th insurrection as a “violent terrorist attack on the Capitol,” he immediately drew backlash from the proponents of the “big lie.” Cruz ultimately folded and rushed to recant his statement in an odd interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, whose show is known to spread misinformation about the January 6th riot. (This segment is from MSNBC’s “The Beat with Ari Melber," a news show covering politics, law, and culture airing nightly at 6pm ET on MSNBC bit.ly/thebeatwithari).
Ari Melber: Our top story right now draws on a new development involving one of the most strident Republican leaders in Congress: Ted Cruz, and it includes his odd apology interview with Tucker Carlson. This story reveals a picture of the current Republican party and a warning about the authoritarianism rising on the American right. To see how important this is, and how deep it runs, and why this isn't just some "DC skirmish", it's also necessary right now for us to see how Ted Cruz and the Republican party got here. Because as the Right rallies around the lies of The Loser of the last election, who President Biden admonished in that fiery speech last night, as a "defeated, lying, former President," it is also vital to understand that Republican leaders KNOW Trump is lying. They KNOW how dangerous he is. They KNOW his combination of lies, ego and emotional temperament can pose a real danger, as Cruz himself warned so heatedly in 2016.Ted Cruz: This man is a pathological liar.
What Donald does when he loses is he blames everybody else. It's never Donald's fault.
Donald, you're a sniveling coward.
He engages in insults. I think the people are interested in substance and record.
We need a commander-in-chief, not a Twitter-in-Chief.
The man cannot tell the truth, but he combines it with being a narcissist.
The man is utterly amoral.
His reaction to everything is to throw a fit! Donald finds it very hard to lose. He finds that very difficult for him.
Ari Melber: That's where Cruz started, speaking there to largely Republican audiences, and expressing things that he did not find controversial in the least. Of course Trump was a liar. Of course his career and Twitter life showed narcissism rather than public service. Of course Trump was a sore loser. And that can get dangerous when The Sore Loser oversees a nuclear power. Everything I said is in reference to what Cruz asserted in public repeatedly to Republicans. Who knows also better than most that Trump does not honor democracy, and doesn't pretend to. The 2016 primaries first began with Trump losing to Cruz in Iowa prompting Trump to immediately impugn the result, and lie about them, and talk about fraud, because when he loses, it's a fraud problem. There, he was of course, accusing many Republicans of fraud. It didn't matter. Now he accuses different opponents in his mind, but Ted Cruz was on the other end of that. And then, when Trump won the nomination, Cruz was still dubious enough about Trump as a potential President that Ted Cruz, famously, went to the RNC, got up on the podium, and refused to endorse Trump in that ultimately bizarre scene where then Trump, as a candidate, disrupted it by coming out on the floor during Cruz's speech not endorsing Trump. This history matters, because that's what Ted Cruz first thought. that's what Ted Cruz apparently REALLY thought about Donald Trump. And then, as Trump solidified his grip on power, Cruz has publicly completely owned himself. He endorsed Trump, he campaigned with him, he defended every Trump action in office, and after Trump lost to Biden, and after Trump kept attacking the election, something Cruz knew all about from his own experience, it was then Ted Cruz who led the futile effort to challenge the certification of the Biden victory on the Senate floor.Ted Cruz: And we've seen in the last two months unprecedented allegations of voter fraud.
And we have an obligation to the Constitution to ensure that this election was lawful.
What does it say to the nearly half the country that believes this election was rigged if we vote not even to consider the claims of illegality and fraud in this election?
Conduct a 10-day emergency audit to consider the evidence.
Ari Melber: Yes, 10 more days of all that. And what would ten more days of sham reviews achieve? It sounded strange at the time even to everyone covering it closely, but, well, when you gather up all the evidence from primary sources, it looks even worse, because we are hearing from Trump's own White House aides Cruz was leading a more complex authoritarian play. The idea was to use that time to somehow then decertify the results and steal the whole election. Here was Trump aide Peter Navarro on Cruz's role on The Beat this week:Peter Navarro: The plan was simply this: We had over a hundred Congressmen and Senators on Capitol Hill ready to implement the Sweep... At 1 p.m. Ted Cruz, Senator Ted Cruz and Gosar, Representative, started The Green Bay Sweep beautifully, challenging the results of Arizona.
Ari Melber: Listen closely -- they are telling on themselves! And it's the context for all of this threat to our future elections. Not a drill! As you heard Navarro say, Cruz spoke at 1 p.m., and within the hour a violent mob stormed the Capitol demanding assassinations, attacking police, beating people, committing what are now convicted crimes in the courts, and causing havoc that did result in deaths. A literal insurrection. A security meltdown. An act of domestic terrorism. And this week Cruz referred to that fact of a violent terrorist attack.Ted Cruz: We are approaching a solemn anniversary this week, and as an anniversary of a violent terrorist attack on the Capitol where we saw the men and women in law enforcement demonstrate incredible courage.
Ari Melber: Fact Check: True!
Yet that very straightforward recent historical truth that you just heard him say in his own words on Wednesday drew huge backlash from the Right-Wing Big Lie Movement, attacking Cruz for accurately referring to the truth of those crimes, the domestic terror and the violence.NPR: Republicans criticize Ted Cruz for calling Jan. 6 a violent terrorist attack.
KTLA5: Ted Cruz slammed for calling Jan. 6 'Violent Terrorist Attack'
WBAP: Ted Cruz under fire for calling January 6th rioters 'Terrorists'
Ari Melber: And Cruz immediately folded, rushing to recant everything in a very sad interview with Tucker Carlson, who by the way hosts a lot of misinformation about January 6th, so that's the place where you go when you have to prove to people that when you said something true about the violence, you didn't mean it. So Cruz went to publicly apologize and say he was "dumb" to call it terrorism, and "sloppy," in his words, and then he got his push-back in public, millions watching, from Carlson.Ted Cruz: The way I phrased things yesterday, it was sloppy and it was frankly dumb.
Tucker Carlson: I don't buy that! Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! I don't buy that. Look, I've known you for a long time since before you went to the Senate; I do not believe that you used that accidentally. I just don't!
Ted Cruz: So Tucker, as a result of my sloppy phrasing, it's caused a lot of people to misunderstand what I meant...I wasn't saying that the thousands of peaceful protesters supporting Donald Trump are somehow terrorists.
Ari Melber: It's a new low, after other recent new lows. Ted Cruz went from the Senator who would supposedly stand up to Trump and the threat that he said Trump posed, the lies, the amorality as Cruz called it, the attack on democracy, you know, those were the words he used to phrase the threat Trump posed. He went from that to a Trump supporter, then a Trump enabler, then a Trump accomplice in trying to end democracy, and then, NOW, with crimes on the table, he's Trump's chief lying propagandist, willing to lie about the very violence that Mr. Cruz claimed to condemn one day before.
He knew better five years ago, just as he knew better earlier this week. And that makes it all the more craven as a personalized reflection of the wider Republican party's dissent.Ted Cruz: It would be ridiculous for me to be saying that the people standing up and protesting to follow the law were somehow terrorists.
If you assault a police officer, you should go to jail. That's who I was talking about.
I used that word all in 2020 for the Antifa and BLM terrorists that assaulted cops.
I wasn't saying the millions of patriots across the country who were supporting President Trump are terrorists.
I agree with you -- it was a mistake to say that yesterday.
They want to paint us as Nazis. I'm the one leading the fight in the Senate against this garbage.
Ari Melber: We're joined by Washington Post write Eugene Robinson. Your thoughts, sir.
Eugene Robinson: Well, I think you used the operative word Ari. You used the word "craven." It was a craven performance that we saw last night from Ted Cruz. At the end of this long transformation, he was very clear, as you pointed out at the beginning, what he saw in Donald Trump, the danger he saw in Donald Trump, the fact that he was totally unsuited and unfit to ever be President of the United States, and now he is waving the Trump banner because of his own craven ambition. He still wants to be President. He still thinks he can be President some day. He still thinks, somehow, he can inherit the Trump base. And so it couldn't happen to a nicer guy. But it was just an embarrassing performance. It was hard to believe. It's difficult to watch, even happening to Ted Cruz.
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat
by admin » Sat Jan 08, 2022 5:06 am
The Two Faces of Kevin McCarthy: Why He Must be Subpoenaed to Testify About Trump's Conduct on 1/6
by Glenn Kirschner
Jan 7, 2022
Just days after the 1/6 insurrection, Rep. Kevin McCarthy stated unequivocally that Donald Trump bears responsibility for the attack on Congress. But after a trip to Mar-a-Lago and (undoubtedly) some arm- twisting by Donald Trump, McCarthy makes contradictory statements.
Given the claims in his second statement about what Trump said about the insurrection, Kevin McCarthy must testify to the House select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol. Here's why . . .
by Glenn Kirschner
Jan 7, 2022
Just days after the 1/6 insurrection, Rep. Kevin McCarthy stated unequivocally that Donald Trump bears responsibility for the attack on Congress. But after a trip to Mar-a-Lago and (undoubtedly) some arm- twisting by Donald Trump, McCarthy makes contradictory statements.
Given the claims in his second statement about what Trump said about the insurrection, Kevin McCarthy must testify to the House select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol. Here's why . . .
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat
by admin » Sun Jan 09, 2022 2:59 am
Retired Generals warn segments of the military could support a future coup
by Mary Louise Kelly
NPR
December 29, 2021, 4:51 PM ET
Transcript
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with retired Major General Paul Eaton about the possibility of another insurrection after the 2024 election.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
As we approach the first anniversary of the January 6 Capital riot, three retired U.S. generals are warning that another insurrection could occur after the next presidential election in 2024. And they are sounding the alarm that next time, it could come from the military. They made their case in a recent Washington Post op-ed.
And joining us now is one of the authors - retired Army Major General Paul Eaton. General Eaton, welcome.
PAUL EATON: Mary Louise, thank you very much for having me.
KELLY: So the scenario that you imagine is that after 2024 election, a losing candidate could - what? - could contest the results, claim to be commander in chief and some members of the military might take orders from them?
EATON: Mary Louise, the real question is, does everybody understand who the duly elected president is? If that is not a clear-cut understanding, that can infect the rank and file or at any level in the U.S. military. So if you have that kind of confusion around the 2020 election, it is not outlandish to consider that you're going to have a little bit of confusion and that confusion could slip into the ranks of the U.S. military.
KELLY: And to understand exactly what you're concerned about, are you more worried about rank-and-file soldiers who might sympathize with anti-democratic views, are you more worried about officers giving their units orders that would be unconstitutional, what?
EATON: Frankly, it could be a little bit of all of the above because we saw it in 2020. And the concern is to ensure that we have a very clear understanding of the support and defend the Constitution of the United States part of our oath and that everybody in the U.S. military truly understands how that oath works and how to understand the civilian leadership of the U.S. military.
KELLY: You said it's not outlandish to contemplate a scenario like this, but I - it is outlandish. I mean, this is the United States of America. As you noted, we have civilian control of the military. It's required by law. On a scale of 1 to 10, how worried actually are you about the possibility of a military insurrection following a contested result in 2024?
EATON: I see it as a low probability, high impact. I hesitate to put a number on it, but it's an eventuality that we need to prepare for. In the military, we do a lot of war-gaming to ferret out what might happen. You may have heard of the Transition Integrity Project that occurred about six months before the last election. We played four scenarios. And what we did not play is a U.S. military compromised; not to the degree that the United States is compromised today as far as 39% of the Republican party refusing to accept President Biden as president, but a compromise nonetheless. So we advocate that that particular scenario needs to be addressed in a future war-game held well in advance of 2024.
KELLY: It sounds like you're sounding an alarm bell saying I hope this doesn't happen; I think it's low probability that this will happen, but if there's any chance, we need to work now to ensure that everything that could possibly be done to prevent things going so far off the rails gets done now. Is that right?
EATON: That's a good assessment.
KELLY: So what do you recommend the military do to ensure this scenario does not unfold?
EATON: I had a conversation with somebody about my age who - we were talking about civics and the development of the philosophical underpinnings of the U.S. Constitution. And I believe that bears a reteach to make sure that each and every 18-year-old American truly understands the Constitution of the United States, how we got there, how we developed it, what our forefathers wanted us to understand years down the road. That's an important bit of education that I think that we need to readdress. The fact that we were caught completely unprepared militarily and from a policing function on January 6 is incomprehensible.
KELLY: When you talk about civics classes, when you talk about war-gaming, that all sounds reasonable. It sounds smart. It also sounds like a very weak tea to stave off potential insurrection by the military.
EATON: A component is that beyond that, unsaid, is that we all know each other very well. And if there is any doubt in the loyalty and the willingness to follow the oath of the United States, the support and defend part of the U.S. Constitution, then those folks need to be identified and addressed in some capacity. But when you talk to a squad leader, a staff sergeant, a nine-man rifle squad, he knows his men and women very, very well.
KELLY: Paul Eaton, retired U.S. Army Major General, thank you.
EATON: Mary Louise, thank you very much for having me.
Copyright © 2021 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at http://www.npr.org for further information.
**************************************
Excerpt from Play Democracy!
by Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader Radio Hour
January 1, 2022
https://secureservercdn.net/198.71.233. ... script.pdf
Steve Skrovan: So, Ralph, I started by talking about having an interview with John Larson just before he went to the Capitol where the insurrection happened. You wanna tell us about an op-ed that you read in the Washington Post by a couple of generals who are speaking to that and the possibility of insurrection in this country?
Ralph Nader: Indeed. Actually, three generals--Paul Eaton, Antonio Taguba, and Steven Anderson. This is an extraordinary op-ed titled “The military must prepare now for a 2024 insurrection.” And it's not what you might think it is. It's basically an article showing that the Pentagon cannot wait. They have to prepare to educate their people about the Constitution, the oath of the Constitution, about their proper role. And the quote is, “All service members take an oath to protect the Constitution. But in a contested election, with loyalties split, some might follow orders from the rightful commander in chief, while others might follow the Trumpian loser. Arms might not be secured depending on who was overseeing them. Under such a scenario, it is not outlandish to say a military breakdown could lead to civil war.” And what they say is that the Pentagon has got to be prepared for all of this to prevent a breakdown of discipline. And it's really quite a bold position.
The other quote in the article is, “But the military cannot wait for elected officials to act. The Pentagon should immediately order a civics review for all members--uniformed and civilian--on the Constitution and electoral integrity. There must also be a review of the laws of war and how to identify and deal with illegal orders. And it must reinforce “unity of command” to make perfectly clear to every member of the Defense Department to whom they answer that no service member should say they didn’t understand whom to take orders from during a worst-case scenario.” And then they go into how to head off the signs of an insurrection to overturn the 2024 election. This is quite remarkable. And I think people who are interested should just pull it down and read it [from the] December 21st, 2021, Washington Post. And the lead author is retired General Paul Eaton [that’s] EATON.
Steve Skrovan: Well, that really is scary because we have always depended on the ethic and the code of conduct of our military, which has historically been different than most other countries and regimes where there is that acceptance of civilian control. And you have these three generals now who are saying that is not a rock solid guarantee.
Ralph Nader: And to fortify what you just said, Steve, is another quote in the article. “The potential for a total breakdown of the chain of command along partisan lines--from the top of the chain to squad level--is significant should another insurrection occur. The idea of rogue units organizing among themselves to support the “rightful” “commander in chief” cannot be dismissed.” So this is what's going on here. And it's quite clear that these three retired generals are not alarmists. They understand the potential. They're recently retired. So they know what's going on in the Pentagon all the way down to the squad level. So, this is a good sign that they are standing firm as they did in the 2020 election.
Imagine even having to discuss something like this, but then imagine having somebody like Trump coming back with his cohorts and his version of American fascism. Some people think, well, that's too strong a word. No. One of the first characteristics of fascism is that they automatically say ahead of time that if they lose the election, it's because it's stolen. Right there. That's the first indicia of a fascistic political system.
Steve Skrovan: The messaging here is really interesting because I was actually talking to president of Public Citizen, Robert Weissman, yesterday about the mail that they receive. And you can see it on Twitter. You can see it on all the social media, where especially in terms of vaccine mandates, and I get these Heritage Foundation emails. I somehow got on their mailing list, and I don't unsubscribe because I kind of wanna know what they're talking about. And they use the language of authoritarians. They’re fighting authoritarianism. In other words, a public health mandate is taking away your freedoms. It really is an Orwellian use of the language where these fascistic elements are saying, “No, we're the ones fighting fascism. It's these other people who want to take away your freedoms.” And if they can convince enough people of that; it's like both sides are fighting the same concept of authoritarian fascism, but one is fascist and one isn't.
Ralph Nader: Yeah. Which side is suppressing votes, purging voters, harassing voters in discriminatory manner, state after state? And which part of this equation is trying to defund the IRS [Internal Revenue Service] and aid and abet tax evasion by the rich and the powerful? What's emerging here, Steve and David, is basically a new kind of fascistic oligarchy wanting to take over the political system and doing the bidding of an existing extraordinarily powerful corporate plutocracy. So, this is what Trump actually did when he was president. He spread suppression of regulation for health and safety and tried to turn the government into a profit center for his cronies. But at the same time that he was violating all kinds of criminal statutes-- the Hatch Act, the Antideficiency [Act] law, shoveling around money without congressional authority, defying over 120 congressional subpoenas, engaging in a dozen clear impeachable offenses day after day--he was open about it. He was a brazen unlike [Richard] Nixon hovering in a corner, saying he's not a crook. At that same time, he was making peace with his other interests, which is his corporate pocketbook and he was deregulating. Wall Street loved that. He was giving them huge tax cuts. Wall Street loved that. And he was getting rightwing corporatist judges throughout the federal judiciary all the way up to the Supreme Court and Wall Street liked that. So, what we're seeing here is a merging canopy over American democracy of the older corporate plutocracy, which is basically strategically planning about everything that we do in this country right down to the commercialization of childhood as well as planning our tax system, our healthcare system, our food processing system, our land planning system zoning, our control, our disposition of resources on the public lands. You just go on and on; there isn't anything they're not strategically planning.
And on the other side of the canopy is emerging this new authoritarian fascistic oligarchy. And what that spells, if it's not stopped, is a very deep-rooted corporate state. It’s the end of the democracy! In reality, it’s the end of our republic. And it's Wall Street merging with Washington under the influence of the new American fascists and basically taking over any kind of potential opposition and dissent and labeling them as communists, socialists, terrorists--all the language that Trump has already used.
Now, this all can be prevented because we still have our basic institutions and they gotta be taken over like Congress and state legislatures by the people who sent them there, by the people who they're supposed to vote for. And so, while we have to be very vigilant about worst-case scenarios, as this article in the Post pointed out, we know that the power constitutionally is still in the hands of the people--we, the people. And we also know that people have enormous assets in terms of the commons, the public lands, the public airways, all the money that built all these industries through research and development from various departments and agencies of Washington, from NASA [National Aeronautics and Space Administration] to the Defense Department, National Institutes of Health. And of course, we've got the vote. The corporations don't have the vote.
So, we've got to be levelheaded about this. We can't wallow on hopelessness and say, “Oh, what can we do? And I give up. I'm gonna play video games.” We need 1% of the people to get very serious, as we've said ad infinitum on this program, district by district, focusing on the Congress. That's the great fulcrum that we have available to turn our country into frontiers of justice, opportunity, renewability and protection of posterity. It's the Congress because of the way it's authorized by the Constitution to engage in the tax power, the spending power, the nomination power, the public information power, and above all, the war declaration power, which has been shoved over to the shelf, allowing presidents to start wars on their own say so.
David Feldman: Ralph, I’d like to ask you about framing all this. Because I remember earlier this year, Georgia passed some very restrictive voting rights laws. Delta [Air Lines], which is headquartered there and Coca-Cola spoke out against Georgia. It was a branding exercise. When we talk of fascism, we think of the military taking over. And shouldn't we be calling it a corporate takeover so that it hurts the corporations, that it hurts them in the pocketbook if they're perceived as being the ones behind this fascism? You can't have fascism without a corporate takeover. Is that correct?
Ralph Nader: Well, you point to an interesting opportunity here. There are some corporate executives who really are scared of American fascism. It's too unstable. Right now, corporations have it their way. I mean, they dominate Washington as if they're sitting on it. I mean, there isn't a single department in Washington, a single agency in Washington, that the outside force that's dominating it is not corporate. It's all corporate! Even the Department of Labor; the most powerful forces on the Department of Labor over the decades has not been the labor unions. It's been corporations. I mean, look how they froze the minimum wage, how they froze labor law reform, how they perpetuated anti-labor laws, how they violated with impunity fair labor standards in the workplace, how they disabled OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration]. So, they've never had it so good. It's the lowest tax on corporations in decades, for example; the weakest regulation in decades of corporations. The corporate crime laws are totally antiquated and they're not enforced. The budgets are not enforced. The corporations in the healthcare area are getting away with $350 billion in billing fraud this year, according to Malcolm Sparrow at Harvard and other studies. Very little prosecution. So, they've never had it so good. Massive profits. They can go to tax havens and escape. They can shift jobs to fascist communist dictatorships and get their will there. So, why would they want an additional fascist oligarchy to take charge?
Now, some are like the Koch brothers. They would like that kind of fascist oligarchy. They think they can benefit from it. But I think a majority of major CEOs, if they were asked privately, they would say, “We've never had it so good.” Whether it's Democrat or Republican, we don't even have to deal with the many congressional hearings anymore.” There are no corporate crime hearings. There may be some tough hearings where the members pound the table for the television cameras, but they never do anything about it. And we've seen those with the Facebook and Google hearings.
And so, they're basically – we've never had it so good. And we don't need this kind of destabilization, this kind of provocation of all kinds of demonstrations by people opposed to this kind of oligarchy. And that's what I think is in the minds of some of these generals is that this is the quest for continued stability under a corporate plutocratic system. That's their preferred approach. And that's why some of them don't like Trump at all. Never mind his own personal characteristics. They just don't like the prospects of fundamental destabilization of the political economy by going too far.
David Feldman: I think Corporate America is terrified that they don't think they have it good. I read somewhere that 75% of corporate CEOs say they expect to be fired in 2022. Corporate America has something like $18 trillion in debt that most of the companies, the S&P 500, are laggards; they’re not doing well; that the reason the stock market seems to be going up is the way they waited. And there were about 25 companies that are dragging the stock market up, but the rest of the corporations in America are suffering under debt. So, I could see corporate CEOs expressing the same anger that the insurrectionists had on January 6th and thinking a fascist takeover would help them.
Ralph Nader: Well, not as long as they have the Federal Reserve printing money backing them up at $150 billion a month. They're buying bonds and increasing liquidity and juicing up the stock market. Yeah. You know, I'm sure these CEOs sometimes look ahead and they get worried, but they’re never around very long, David. Four or five years, CEO at the best; then they get retired with huge benefits. And then they become the leisure class again. It's hard to exaggerate the narcissism that is built in at the top of these corporations. You have to go to some midsize companies that have done it right. I've got a manuscript about 12 CEOs, like the head of Patagonia[, Inc.], the head of Interface[, Inc.] corporation, and other companies who have met the bottom line, but have done great work dealing with the way they treat their employees, the way they treat the environment, the way they condition their suppliers. And these CEOs never get any publicity. They're doing it right. But they don't get anywhere near the publicity as someone like Bill Gates or Elon Musk’s outbursts. And so, we've gotta get these new standards that we have already seen in these midsize companies and give them much more coverage because these standards are very consonant with an economic democracy; they're very consonant with a competitive economy. They're very consonant with a respect for the environment. They're very consonant with the proper role of workers in these companies and the rights of workers. But we don't get NPR [National Public Radio], PBS [Public Broadcasting Service], all these supposed public interest media to pay any attention to them, which is, I suppose, why we have this program, huh? [chuckle]
David Feldman: By the way, thanks to you, my new year's resolution is to read the business page. I've been focusing more on – I don't want to endorse any newspapers, but the magazines and newspapers that cover business primarily I've been reading. And they do cover capitalism; it's very critical. Thank you for that because the most critical reporting on capitalism comes from the business pages.
Ralph Nader: As I've said before, we're living in a golden age of muckraking books. Those of you who want a big list of recent books critical of corporations, I had a column a few days ago; go to nader.org. You can sign up for the column and get it automatically free. But it made the point. There are about 60 books that have come out recently-- tremendous on one company or one industry after another--very well documented critical books and nothing happens. And the same with all these documentaries. We have 10 times more critical documentaries of power structures in our country and the world than we had 30, 40 years ago and almost nothing happens. And that's because all these people back home who are very concerned about the future of their country are not organizing the way they should and getting a foothold by focusing on Congress, which is the purpose of the Congress Club. Otherwise, they'll be so overwhelmed due to their sensitivity to injustice that it will freeze them and turn it into a kind of hopelessness.
by Mary Louise Kelly
NPR
December 29, 2021, 4:51 PM ET
Transcript
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with retired Major General Paul Eaton about the possibility of another insurrection after the 2024 election.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
As we approach the first anniversary of the January 6 Capital riot, three retired U.S. generals are warning that another insurrection could occur after the next presidential election in 2024. And they are sounding the alarm that next time, it could come from the military. They made their case in a recent Washington Post op-ed.
And joining us now is one of the authors - retired Army Major General Paul Eaton. General Eaton, welcome.
PAUL EATON: Mary Louise, thank you very much for having me.
KELLY: So the scenario that you imagine is that after 2024 election, a losing candidate could - what? - could contest the results, claim to be commander in chief and some members of the military might take orders from them?
EATON: Mary Louise, the real question is, does everybody understand who the duly elected president is? If that is not a clear-cut understanding, that can infect the rank and file or at any level in the U.S. military. So if you have that kind of confusion around the 2020 election, it is not outlandish to consider that you're going to have a little bit of confusion and that confusion could slip into the ranks of the U.S. military.
KELLY: And to understand exactly what you're concerned about, are you more worried about rank-and-file soldiers who might sympathize with anti-democratic views, are you more worried about officers giving their units orders that would be unconstitutional, what?
EATON: Frankly, it could be a little bit of all of the above because we saw it in 2020. And the concern is to ensure that we have a very clear understanding of the support and defend the Constitution of the United States part of our oath and that everybody in the U.S. military truly understands how that oath works and how to understand the civilian leadership of the U.S. military.
KELLY: You said it's not outlandish to contemplate a scenario like this, but I - it is outlandish. I mean, this is the United States of America. As you noted, we have civilian control of the military. It's required by law. On a scale of 1 to 10, how worried actually are you about the possibility of a military insurrection following a contested result in 2024?
EATON: I see it as a low probability, high impact. I hesitate to put a number on it, but it's an eventuality that we need to prepare for. In the military, we do a lot of war-gaming to ferret out what might happen. You may have heard of the Transition Integrity Project that occurred about six months before the last election. We played four scenarios. And what we did not play is a U.S. military compromised; not to the degree that the United States is compromised today as far as 39% of the Republican party refusing to accept President Biden as president, but a compromise nonetheless. So we advocate that that particular scenario needs to be addressed in a future war-game held well in advance of 2024.
KELLY: It sounds like you're sounding an alarm bell saying I hope this doesn't happen; I think it's low probability that this will happen, but if there's any chance, we need to work now to ensure that everything that could possibly be done to prevent things going so far off the rails gets done now. Is that right?
EATON: That's a good assessment.
KELLY: So what do you recommend the military do to ensure this scenario does not unfold?
EATON: I had a conversation with somebody about my age who - we were talking about civics and the development of the philosophical underpinnings of the U.S. Constitution. And I believe that bears a reteach to make sure that each and every 18-year-old American truly understands the Constitution of the United States, how we got there, how we developed it, what our forefathers wanted us to understand years down the road. That's an important bit of education that I think that we need to readdress. The fact that we were caught completely unprepared militarily and from a policing function on January 6 is incomprehensible.
KELLY: When you talk about civics classes, when you talk about war-gaming, that all sounds reasonable. It sounds smart. It also sounds like a very weak tea to stave off potential insurrection by the military.
EATON: A component is that beyond that, unsaid, is that we all know each other very well. And if there is any doubt in the loyalty and the willingness to follow the oath of the United States, the support and defend part of the U.S. Constitution, then those folks need to be identified and addressed in some capacity. But when you talk to a squad leader, a staff sergeant, a nine-man rifle squad, he knows his men and women very, very well.
KELLY: Paul Eaton, retired U.S. Army Major General, thank you.
EATON: Mary Louise, thank you very much for having me.
Copyright © 2021 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at http://www.npr.org for further information.
**************************************
Excerpt from Play Democracy!
by Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader Radio Hour
January 1, 2022
https://secureservercdn.net/198.71.233. ... script.pdf
Steve Skrovan: So, Ralph, I started by talking about having an interview with John Larson just before he went to the Capitol where the insurrection happened. You wanna tell us about an op-ed that you read in the Washington Post by a couple of generals who are speaking to that and the possibility of insurrection in this country?
Ralph Nader: Indeed. Actually, three generals--Paul Eaton, Antonio Taguba, and Steven Anderson. This is an extraordinary op-ed titled “The military must prepare now for a 2024 insurrection.” And it's not what you might think it is. It's basically an article showing that the Pentagon cannot wait. They have to prepare to educate their people about the Constitution, the oath of the Constitution, about their proper role. And the quote is, “All service members take an oath to protect the Constitution. But in a contested election, with loyalties split, some might follow orders from the rightful commander in chief, while others might follow the Trumpian loser. Arms might not be secured depending on who was overseeing them. Under such a scenario, it is not outlandish to say a military breakdown could lead to civil war.” And what they say is that the Pentagon has got to be prepared for all of this to prevent a breakdown of discipline. And it's really quite a bold position.
The other quote in the article is, “But the military cannot wait for elected officials to act. The Pentagon should immediately order a civics review for all members--uniformed and civilian--on the Constitution and electoral integrity. There must also be a review of the laws of war and how to identify and deal with illegal orders. And it must reinforce “unity of command” to make perfectly clear to every member of the Defense Department to whom they answer that no service member should say they didn’t understand whom to take orders from during a worst-case scenario.” And then they go into how to head off the signs of an insurrection to overturn the 2024 election. This is quite remarkable. And I think people who are interested should just pull it down and read it [from the] December 21st, 2021, Washington Post. And the lead author is retired General Paul Eaton [that’s] EATON.
Steve Skrovan: Well, that really is scary because we have always depended on the ethic and the code of conduct of our military, which has historically been different than most other countries and regimes where there is that acceptance of civilian control. And you have these three generals now who are saying that is not a rock solid guarantee.
Ralph Nader: And to fortify what you just said, Steve, is another quote in the article. “The potential for a total breakdown of the chain of command along partisan lines--from the top of the chain to squad level--is significant should another insurrection occur. The idea of rogue units organizing among themselves to support the “rightful” “commander in chief” cannot be dismissed.” So this is what's going on here. And it's quite clear that these three retired generals are not alarmists. They understand the potential. They're recently retired. So they know what's going on in the Pentagon all the way down to the squad level. So, this is a good sign that they are standing firm as they did in the 2020 election.
Imagine even having to discuss something like this, but then imagine having somebody like Trump coming back with his cohorts and his version of American fascism. Some people think, well, that's too strong a word. No. One of the first characteristics of fascism is that they automatically say ahead of time that if they lose the election, it's because it's stolen. Right there. That's the first indicia of a fascistic political system.
Steve Skrovan: The messaging here is really interesting because I was actually talking to president of Public Citizen, Robert Weissman, yesterday about the mail that they receive. And you can see it on Twitter. You can see it on all the social media, where especially in terms of vaccine mandates, and I get these Heritage Foundation emails. I somehow got on their mailing list, and I don't unsubscribe because I kind of wanna know what they're talking about. And they use the language of authoritarians. They’re fighting authoritarianism. In other words, a public health mandate is taking away your freedoms. It really is an Orwellian use of the language where these fascistic elements are saying, “No, we're the ones fighting fascism. It's these other people who want to take away your freedoms.” And if they can convince enough people of that; it's like both sides are fighting the same concept of authoritarian fascism, but one is fascist and one isn't.
Ralph Nader: Yeah. Which side is suppressing votes, purging voters, harassing voters in discriminatory manner, state after state? And which part of this equation is trying to defund the IRS [Internal Revenue Service] and aid and abet tax evasion by the rich and the powerful? What's emerging here, Steve and David, is basically a new kind of fascistic oligarchy wanting to take over the political system and doing the bidding of an existing extraordinarily powerful corporate plutocracy. So, this is what Trump actually did when he was president. He spread suppression of regulation for health and safety and tried to turn the government into a profit center for his cronies. But at the same time that he was violating all kinds of criminal statutes-- the Hatch Act, the Antideficiency [Act] law, shoveling around money without congressional authority, defying over 120 congressional subpoenas, engaging in a dozen clear impeachable offenses day after day--he was open about it. He was a brazen unlike [Richard] Nixon hovering in a corner, saying he's not a crook. At that same time, he was making peace with his other interests, which is his corporate pocketbook and he was deregulating. Wall Street loved that. He was giving them huge tax cuts. Wall Street loved that. And he was getting rightwing corporatist judges throughout the federal judiciary all the way up to the Supreme Court and Wall Street liked that. So, what we're seeing here is a merging canopy over American democracy of the older corporate plutocracy, which is basically strategically planning about everything that we do in this country right down to the commercialization of childhood as well as planning our tax system, our healthcare system, our food processing system, our land planning system zoning, our control, our disposition of resources on the public lands. You just go on and on; there isn't anything they're not strategically planning.
And on the other side of the canopy is emerging this new authoritarian fascistic oligarchy. And what that spells, if it's not stopped, is a very deep-rooted corporate state. It’s the end of the democracy! In reality, it’s the end of our republic. And it's Wall Street merging with Washington under the influence of the new American fascists and basically taking over any kind of potential opposition and dissent and labeling them as communists, socialists, terrorists--all the language that Trump has already used.
Now, this all can be prevented because we still have our basic institutions and they gotta be taken over like Congress and state legislatures by the people who sent them there, by the people who they're supposed to vote for. And so, while we have to be very vigilant about worst-case scenarios, as this article in the Post pointed out, we know that the power constitutionally is still in the hands of the people--we, the people. And we also know that people have enormous assets in terms of the commons, the public lands, the public airways, all the money that built all these industries through research and development from various departments and agencies of Washington, from NASA [National Aeronautics and Space Administration] to the Defense Department, National Institutes of Health. And of course, we've got the vote. The corporations don't have the vote.
So, we've got to be levelheaded about this. We can't wallow on hopelessness and say, “Oh, what can we do? And I give up. I'm gonna play video games.” We need 1% of the people to get very serious, as we've said ad infinitum on this program, district by district, focusing on the Congress. That's the great fulcrum that we have available to turn our country into frontiers of justice, opportunity, renewability and protection of posterity. It's the Congress because of the way it's authorized by the Constitution to engage in the tax power, the spending power, the nomination power, the public information power, and above all, the war declaration power, which has been shoved over to the shelf, allowing presidents to start wars on their own say so.
David Feldman: Ralph, I’d like to ask you about framing all this. Because I remember earlier this year, Georgia passed some very restrictive voting rights laws. Delta [Air Lines], which is headquartered there and Coca-Cola spoke out against Georgia. It was a branding exercise. When we talk of fascism, we think of the military taking over. And shouldn't we be calling it a corporate takeover so that it hurts the corporations, that it hurts them in the pocketbook if they're perceived as being the ones behind this fascism? You can't have fascism without a corporate takeover. Is that correct?
Ralph Nader: Well, you point to an interesting opportunity here. There are some corporate executives who really are scared of American fascism. It's too unstable. Right now, corporations have it their way. I mean, they dominate Washington as if they're sitting on it. I mean, there isn't a single department in Washington, a single agency in Washington, that the outside force that's dominating it is not corporate. It's all corporate! Even the Department of Labor; the most powerful forces on the Department of Labor over the decades has not been the labor unions. It's been corporations. I mean, look how they froze the minimum wage, how they froze labor law reform, how they perpetuated anti-labor laws, how they violated with impunity fair labor standards in the workplace, how they disabled OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration]. So, they've never had it so good. It's the lowest tax on corporations in decades, for example; the weakest regulation in decades of corporations. The corporate crime laws are totally antiquated and they're not enforced. The budgets are not enforced. The corporations in the healthcare area are getting away with $350 billion in billing fraud this year, according to Malcolm Sparrow at Harvard and other studies. Very little prosecution. So, they've never had it so good. Massive profits. They can go to tax havens and escape. They can shift jobs to fascist communist dictatorships and get their will there. So, why would they want an additional fascist oligarchy to take charge?
Now, some are like the Koch brothers. They would like that kind of fascist oligarchy. They think they can benefit from it. But I think a majority of major CEOs, if they were asked privately, they would say, “We've never had it so good.” Whether it's Democrat or Republican, we don't even have to deal with the many congressional hearings anymore.” There are no corporate crime hearings. There may be some tough hearings where the members pound the table for the television cameras, but they never do anything about it. And we've seen those with the Facebook and Google hearings.
And so, they're basically – we've never had it so good. And we don't need this kind of destabilization, this kind of provocation of all kinds of demonstrations by people opposed to this kind of oligarchy. And that's what I think is in the minds of some of these generals is that this is the quest for continued stability under a corporate plutocratic system. That's their preferred approach. And that's why some of them don't like Trump at all. Never mind his own personal characteristics. They just don't like the prospects of fundamental destabilization of the political economy by going too far.
David Feldman: I think Corporate America is terrified that they don't think they have it good. I read somewhere that 75% of corporate CEOs say they expect to be fired in 2022. Corporate America has something like $18 trillion in debt that most of the companies, the S&P 500, are laggards; they’re not doing well; that the reason the stock market seems to be going up is the way they waited. And there were about 25 companies that are dragging the stock market up, but the rest of the corporations in America are suffering under debt. So, I could see corporate CEOs expressing the same anger that the insurrectionists had on January 6th and thinking a fascist takeover would help them.
Ralph Nader: Well, not as long as they have the Federal Reserve printing money backing them up at $150 billion a month. They're buying bonds and increasing liquidity and juicing up the stock market. Yeah. You know, I'm sure these CEOs sometimes look ahead and they get worried, but they’re never around very long, David. Four or five years, CEO at the best; then they get retired with huge benefits. And then they become the leisure class again. It's hard to exaggerate the narcissism that is built in at the top of these corporations. You have to go to some midsize companies that have done it right. I've got a manuscript about 12 CEOs, like the head of Patagonia[, Inc.], the head of Interface[, Inc.] corporation, and other companies who have met the bottom line, but have done great work dealing with the way they treat their employees, the way they treat the environment, the way they condition their suppliers. And these CEOs never get any publicity. They're doing it right. But they don't get anywhere near the publicity as someone like Bill Gates or Elon Musk’s outbursts. And so, we've gotta get these new standards that we have already seen in these midsize companies and give them much more coverage because these standards are very consonant with an economic democracy; they're very consonant with a competitive economy. They're very consonant with a respect for the environment. They're very consonant with the proper role of workers in these companies and the rights of workers. But we don't get NPR [National Public Radio], PBS [Public Broadcasting Service], all these supposed public interest media to pay any attention to them, which is, I suppose, why we have this program, huh? [chuckle]
David Feldman: By the way, thanks to you, my new year's resolution is to read the business page. I've been focusing more on – I don't want to endorse any newspapers, but the magazines and newspapers that cover business primarily I've been reading. And they do cover capitalism; it's very critical. Thank you for that because the most critical reporting on capitalism comes from the business pages.
Ralph Nader: As I've said before, we're living in a golden age of muckraking books. Those of you who want a big list of recent books critical of corporations, I had a column a few days ago; go to nader.org. You can sign up for the column and get it automatically free. But it made the point. There are about 60 books that have come out recently-- tremendous on one company or one industry after another--very well documented critical books and nothing happens. And the same with all these documentaries. We have 10 times more critical documentaries of power structures in our country and the world than we had 30, 40 years ago and almost nothing happens. And that's because all these people back home who are very concerned about the future of their country are not organizing the way they should and getting a foothold by focusing on Congress, which is the purpose of the Congress Club. Otherwise, they'll be so overwhelmed due to their sensitivity to injustice that it will freeze them and turn it into a kind of hopelessness.
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat
by admin » Tue Jan 11, 2022 9:12 am
Jan. 6 panel ramps up investigation into Trump's state-level pressure [Forged election documents in Michigan and Arizona]
by Nicholas Wu
Politico
01/10/2022 04:30 AM EST
Updated: 01/10/2022 12:28 PM EST
POLITICO has identified the information the committee has received from key swing states, as lawmakers prepare to take their findings public.
The public focus of Congress’ Jan. 6 investigation, so far, is what happened in Washington, D.C. Behind the scenes, the probe’s state-level work is kicking into overdrive.
The House committee investigating the Capitol attack has gathered thousands of records from state officials and interviewed a slate of witnesses as it attempts to retrace former President Donald Trump's attempts to subvert the 2020 election, particularly in four key states that swung the presidency to Joe Biden. They're getting ready to take their work public, possibly as soon as the spring.
“We want to let the public see and hear from those individuals who conducted elections in those states,” select panel chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said in an interview. He described those witnesses as particularly important given their mandates to keep elections “fair and impartial” while hailing from one political party.
The voluminous documents state election officials have sent the Jan. 6 committee, obtained by POLITICO through open records requests, underscore the depth of Trump's pressure campaign directed at the typically lower-level administrators of presidential balloting. The emails, texts and phone recordings also add consequential context to previously reported incidents, such as Trump’s call to Georgia's top elections investigator and Mark Meadows’ outreach to Georgia election officials.
The select panel asked states for any scrap of evidence to justify allegations of election fraud that Trump baselessly promoted, focusing much of its efforts on officials in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Those states found virtually no evidence of fraud, according to Thompson.
Among the officials who spoke with the committee was Kathy Boockvar, Pennsylvania's secretary of state during the 2020 election, according to a source familiar with the situation not authorized to speak publicly. A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania secretary of state declined to comment on whether the panel had been in touch with the state’s officials.
Mainly, the records show state officials trying to either mollify or ignore Trump and his allies without distorting election results or embracing debunked claims of vote tampering. A spokesperson for the select panel declined to comment on the documents.
Pressure in Georgia
Just one day before Georgia was set to certify the 2020 election results and seal Trump’s defeat, records turned over to the Jan. 6 committee show a text message that arrived on the phone of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
“Mr Secretary. Mark Meadows here. If you could give me a brief call at your convenience. Thank you,” the then-White House chief of staff texted Raffensperger in a Nov. 19, 2020, message obtained through a public records request.
It doesn’t appear that Raffensperger, a Republican, responded to Meadows. (His office sent no reply to one Meadows text because aides weren't sure if it was real, according to CNN.) But it was not the last time Raffensperger would hear from Trump’s allies as they sought to pressure state-level officials to overturn the president's loss.
A spokesperson for Georgia's secretary of state did not respond to a request for comment.
Meadows texted Raffensperger a second time on the morning of Dec. 5, 2020, asking him to call the White House switchboard to set up a call. “Your voicemail is full,” Meadows told Raffensperger.
Raffensperger has already interviewed with the panel, according to Thompson, who praised him as “very straightforward” in his testimony.
A previously unreported email from one of Raffensperger’s top aides, Jordan Fuchs, was also turned over to the committee. In it, Fuchs responded to Meadows' Dec. 22, 2020, trip to Georgia's Cobb County during the state’s signature match audit. She emailed Meadows to “clarify a few items” about the rejection rate of absentee ballots — something Trump and his allies had alleged was much lower than normal.
Fuchs’ note included the text of a press release sent out by the secretary of State’s office a month beforehand with a more thorough explanation of how the office evaluated absentee ballots.
Meadows' attorney did not respond to a request for comment.
Also included in the document dump are emails between Sen. Lindsey Graham’s and Raffensperger’s offices, which shows how a previously reported call between the two officials came about roughly two weeks after the 2020 election.
“Hope you are doing well. Senator Graham has requested a call w/ Sec. Raffensperger at his earliest convenience,” a Graham staffer told two of Raffensperger’s top aides on Nov. 12, 2020. The call between the two men ended with Graham indicating to Raffensperger some ballots should be tossed out, the Georgia official said later.[!!!]
Graham’s office declined to comment.
The state also turned over a previously reported audio recording of a Dec. 23, 2020, call between Trump and Frances Watson, the chief investigator in the Georgia secretary of state’s office, and a brief call between Watson and an unidentified staffer. In the Dec. 23 call, Trump had urged Watson to find “dishonesty” in the state’s election results.[!!!]
Forged election documents in Michigan and Arizona
As Trump's team pushed its discredited voter fraud narrative, the National Archives received forged certificates of ascertainment declaring him and then-Vice President Mike Pence the winners of both Michigan and Arizona and their electors after the 2020 election. Public records requests show 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 on the documents. The offices confirmed that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, both Democrats, and their staff met with the panel in November.
“They mostly discussed election administration in Arizona, the 2020 elections, threats/harassment directed toward the office, and the Cyber Ninja’s partisan ballot review,” said Hobbs' spokesperson C. Murphy Hebert.
Benson and her staff took questions from the committee on the 2020 election and events leading up to the Jan. 6 riot, according to Tracy Wimmer, a spokesperson for Benson.
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 group that forged the Michigan certification had not used the state seal, and it appears state officials there took no further action after the Archives rejected it.
Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.
*****************
Hobbs asks AG to investigate fake Trump electors for employing Arizona's state seal
Dylan Smith
TucsonSentinel.com
Posted Dec 24, 2020, 3:06 pm
A group of people who sent a slate of fake electoral votes for President Donald Trump to Washington, D.C., may be facing legal trouble for using the state seal without authorization.
Secretary of State Katie Hobbs sent a cease-and-desist letter to Mesa resident Lori Osiecki, one of the 11 fake electors, demanding that her group no longer use Arizona's state seal. The state requires people to get the secretary of state's permission to "use, display or otherwise employ any facsimile, copy, likeness, imitation or other resemblance" to the state seal, which Hobbs said the group didn't do.
Hobbs also referred the matter to the Attorney General's Office for investigation. Using the state seal without authorization is a class 3 misdemeanor, which carries a maximum penalty of 30 days in jail and a $500 fine.
Osiecki and 10 others, who identified themselves as "The Sovereign Citizens of the Great State of Arizona," sent signed, notarized certificates to the National Archives purporting to be electoral votes for Trump, despite the fact that former Vice President Joe Biden won Arizona by about 10,500 votes. They also sent a copy of their faux electoral votes to the Secretary of State's Office. The state seal was on the cover sheet of the documents, as well as at the top of each subsequent page.
"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 in her letter, dated Dec. 22.
Osiecki could not be reached for comment.
The group cast its fake electoral votes as Trump supporters across the country rejected the results of the presidential election. Many Trump supporters, as well as the president himself, have falsely claimed the election was swayed by fraud and have spread baseless conspiracy theories and unsubstantiated claims, particularly about Biden's win in Arizona and five other swing states.
Osiecki and her cohorts were not the official Republican electors who were pledged to vote for Trump if the president had won Arizona in the 2020 general election.
Arizona's official Republican electors, which includes several prominent GOP officials, submitted fake electoral votes of their own on Dec. 14, the date when electors across the nation cast their votes. The Arizona Republican Party said the votes would be sent to Congress, where it hopes they will be counted as Arizona's official electoral votes on Jan. 6, when Congress will count and certify the votes of the Electoral College.
Some Republicans believe that Congress can reject Biden electors and instead certify Trump as the winner of the election. The notion is widely rejected because both the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and the Republican-controlled Senate would have to vote to reject a slate of electors.
Were the votes of Arizona's Republican electors to somehow be counted, they would be deemed invalid under state law. Arizona is one of 33 states prohibiting "faithless electors," a term for electors who cast their votes for a candidate other than their state's winner. If an Arizona elector casts a vote for someone besides the winner, his or her position would be immediately deemed vacant, and the chair of the political party representing the winner would choose a replacement.
This report was first published by the Arizona Mirror
*********************
'Sovereign citizens' try to undermine Arizona electoral vote
by Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
Pinal Central
Dec 14, 2020 Updated Jan 23, 2021 0
PHOENIX — Arizona’s 11 Democrat electors cast their votes Monday for Joe Biden even as the chairman of a Senate panel said he will issue subpoenas to check the accuracy of hardware and software that gave the Democrat the edge over President Trump.
Sen. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, said there are enough questions raised about whether the Dominion Voting Systems used in Maricopa County produced reliable results.
The announcement followed more than six hours of testimony at the Senate Judiciary Committee which led to a series of questions about whether the results can be trusted. And as Farnsworth said, that doesn’t even address other allegations that ballots were not properly handled and that observers from political parties did not have sufficient access to oversee what was going on.
It’s unlikely that anything that an audit turns up would affect the results of the election.
That would require either a court ruling overturning the results — something multiple judges have so far refused to do — or the full legislature trying to pick its own slate of electors. But both Senate President Karen Fann and House Speaker Rusty Bowers have said there does not appear to be a legal way to do that, even assuming lawmakers could call themselves into special session before Jan. 6 when Congress counts the electoral votes.
Even Farnsworth, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, suggested that this was simply a matter of addressing the various claims and doubts “and try and see if we can reinsert some confidence in our election process.’’
“We hold and audit and we see what the outcome is,’’ he said. “And then we can put this to rest.’’
Farnsworth said the subpoenas could be issued as early as Tuesday.
All this comes as the official slate of electors — the ones pledged to Biden — cast their votes and Secretary of State Katie Hobbs sent off the results to both Congress and the National Archives.
That, however, did not stop two other groups from filing reports that their “electors’’ had met and were supporting Trump.
One group consists of the 11 Republicans whose names were on the ballot as pledged to Trump, who lost the popular vote according to the certified results.
That vote was organized by the state GOP on the premise that those outstanding legal challenges to the Arizona tally could end up changing the final vote total. In essence, Kelli Ward, the party chair who is a litigant in both pending cases, believes that having the Trump-pledged electors voting on Monday — the date set in federal law — sends a slate of GOP electors to Congress should the cases go their way or Congress decides that their votes are the ones that should be counted and not those pledged to Biden.
But Hobbs aide Murphy Hebert said that’s meaningless.
“It’s clearly a political gesture,’’ she said. Hebert said Congress can acknowledge only those electors whose votes are accompanied by “letters of ascertainment’’ signed by Hobbs and Gov. Doug Ducey.
Separately, a group of self-proclaimed “sovereign citizens’’ filed their own slate of electors with the National Archives claiming they represent the state’s 11 electoral votes for Trump.
Documents obtained by Capitol Media Services show that Mesa resident Lori Osiecki submitted sworn statements for the 11 people “by authority & direction of the sovereign citizens of the great state of Arizona.’’ That comes complete with the use of the official state seal which in and of itself Hebert said is itself a violation of the law.
“We absolutely anticipated there would be efforts to disrupt the system like this,’’ Hebert said. But she said the actual “votes’’ sent to Washington amount to little more than political theater.
“The statute is very, very clear: The slate of electors for the candidate with the most number of votes in the popular vote are the ones who represent the state in the Electoral College vote,’’ she said. And these were the 11 Democrats who took the official oath of office Monday morning and signed the certificate of votes.
And what of the “votes’’ sent off by on behalf of either slate of 11 Republicans?
“Anybody can send a letter to the National Archives,’’ Hobbs said.
One thing different this year is that the process, normally a routine action with little public attention, was moved to the Phoenix Convention Center. And the location was not made public ahead of the event amid security concerns, including threats of violence against Hobbs and other staffers in her office and fears protesters might seek to disrupt the voting.
At the same time members of the Senate Judiciary were focused on Dominion Voting Systems used in the state’s largest county.
There have been a series of charges leveled against the company both here and nationally that the equipment and software were deliberately programmed to deliver more votes for Biden.
None of those complaints have been found valid by any court anywhere in the nation. But that didn’t stop lawmakers from asking and saying that there needs to be an independent audit and even a full hand count of all the ballots.
Sen. Vince Leach, R-Tucson, one of those who wants that 100% hand count, got Maricopa County Elections Director Scott Jarrett to acknowledge that Dominion workers had 24/7 access to his office and even, in certain circumstances, access to the equipment.
But Jarrett said there is no way to alter the codes in a way that would change the outcome.
He said it starts with “logic and accuracy’’ test of the equipment, both before and after the election. Jarrett said that would not only capture any change made in the software but that the program is built in a way so that any change would render the results “not readable.’’
The equipment itself, he said, is also subject to independent certification by the Secretary of State’s Office.
More to the point, Jarrett pointed out that state law requires an actual hand count of a random sample of ballots, both those mailed in early and those cast on Election Day.
He said the batches to be sampled and the elections to be reviewed are chosen by officials from both political parties. And of the more than 47,000 ballots checked by hand there was not a single vote difference from what was recorded by the equipment.
“These hand counts are an independent audit,’’ Jarrett told lawmakers. And he said they showed the equipment worked as expected.
Farnsworth was not convinced.
“I do have a concern that the county is taking the position that it just can’t happen,’’ he said.
“There is a litany of white-collar crimes, digital crimes in the history of this country and this world of some very sophisticated people and the victims didn’t recognize it until some future time,’’ Farnsworth said. “I think it’s really, really dangerous for us to say, ‘It can’t happen.’ ‘’
That sentiment was echoed by Sen. Sonny Borrelli, R-Lake Havasu City. He said even the operating manual for Dominion software suggests “data can be changed and votes switched around.’’
“Nothing’s 100% secure,’’ he said. “If people want to cheat they’re going to cheat.’’
Farnsworth also complained that it’s possible for people who are not U.S. citizens to have voted in the presidential race.
Arizona does require proof of citizenship to register to vote.
But a federal law spells out that people without such proof can use a registration form prepared by the Election Assistance Commission, one that has no such requirement. And those who do not provide citizenship proof can vote in federal elections, including for president and members of Congress.
Jarrett acknowledged that more than 3,000 such “federal-only’’ ballots were cast in Maricopa County, people who he acknowledged might not be U.S. citizens. That angered Farnsworth.
“That is harmful, detrimental, undercuts,’’ he said.
“And it is outrageous that we have that kind of a mandate from Congress,’’ Farnsworth said. “It challenges the very sovereignty of this country, in my opinion.’’
Jarrett also defended against claims that observers from political parties could not get close enough to really monitor what was going on in both the process to check signatures on early ballot envelopes and in the actual counting. He acknowledged, though, that there were efforts to keep observers at least six feet from election workers amid fears of COVID-19.
He also said that, despite rumors to the contrary, there were not late “spikes’’ of votes for Biden. In fact, Jarrett said, the reverse was in some ways true, with Biden having a big lead among the first ballots counted and the later-counted ballots swinging for Trump.
by Nicholas Wu
Politico
01/10/2022 04:30 AM EST
Updated: 01/10/2022 12:28 PM EST
Highlights:
The select panel asked states for any scrap of evidence to justify allegations of election fraud that Trump baselessly promoted, focusing much of its efforts on officials in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Those states found virtually no evidence of fraud, according to Thompson....
Just one day before Georgia was set to certify the 2020 election results and seal Trump’s defeat, records turned over to the Jan. 6 committee show a text message that arrived on the phone of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
“Mr Secretary. Mark Meadows here. If you could give me a brief call at your convenience. Thank you,” the then-White House chief of staff texted Raffensperger in a Nov. 19, 2020, message obtained through a public records request.
It doesn’t appear that Raffensperger, a Republican, responded to Meadows....
Meadows texted Raffensperger a second time on the morning of Dec. 5, 2020, asking him to call the White House switchboard to set up a call. “Your voicemail is full,” Meadows told Raffensperger....
A previously unreported email from one of Raffensperger’s top aides, Jordan Fuchs, was also turned over to the committee. In it, Fuchs responded to Meadows' Dec. 22, 2020, trip to Georgia's Cobb County during the state’s signature match audit. She emailed Meadows to “clarify a few items” about the rejection rate of absentee ballots — something Trump and his allies had alleged was much lower than normal.
Fuchs’ note included the text of a press release sent out by the secretary of State’s office a month beforehand with a more thorough explanation of how the office evaluated absentee ballots....
Also included in the document dump are emails between Sen. Lindsey Graham’s and Raffensperger’s offices, which shows how a previously reported call between the two officials came about roughly two weeks after the 2020 election.
“Hope you are doing well. Senator Graham has requested a call w/ Sec. Raffensperger at his earliest convenience,” a Graham staffer told two of Raffensperger’s top aides on Nov. 12, 2020. The call between the two men ended with Graham indicating to Raffensperger some ballots should be tossed out, the Georgia official said later.[!!!]...
The state also turned over a previously reported audio recording of a Dec. 23, 2020, call between Trump and Frances Watson, the chief investigator in the Georgia secretary of state’s office, and a brief call between Watson and an unidentified staffer. In the Dec. 23 call, Trump had urged Watson to find “dishonesty” in the state’s election results.[!!!]
-- Jan. 6 panel ramps up investigation into Trump's state-level pressure [Forged election documents in Michigan and Arizona], by Nicholas Wu
POLITICO has identified the information the committee has received from key swing states, as lawmakers prepare to take their findings public.
The public focus of Congress’ Jan. 6 investigation, so far, is what happened in Washington, D.C. Behind the scenes, the probe’s state-level work is kicking into overdrive.
The House committee investigating the Capitol attack has gathered thousands of records from state officials and interviewed a slate of witnesses as it attempts to retrace former President Donald Trump's attempts to subvert the 2020 election, particularly in four key states that swung the presidency to Joe Biden. They're getting ready to take their work public, possibly as soon as the spring.
“We want to let the public see and hear from those individuals who conducted elections in those states,” select panel chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said in an interview. He described those witnesses as particularly important given their mandates to keep elections “fair and impartial” while hailing from one political party.
The voluminous documents state election officials have sent the Jan. 6 committee, obtained by POLITICO through open records requests, underscore the depth of Trump's pressure campaign directed at the typically lower-level administrators of presidential balloting. The emails, texts and phone recordings also add consequential context to previously reported incidents, such as Trump’s call to Georgia's top elections investigator and Mark Meadows’ outreach to Georgia election officials.
The select panel asked states for any scrap of evidence to justify allegations of election fraud that Trump baselessly promoted, focusing much of its efforts on officials in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Those states found virtually no evidence of fraud, according to Thompson.
Among the officials who spoke with the committee was Kathy Boockvar, Pennsylvania's secretary of state during the 2020 election, according to a source familiar with the situation not authorized to speak publicly. A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania secretary of state declined to comment on whether the panel had been in touch with the state’s officials.
Mainly, the records show state officials trying to either mollify or ignore Trump and his allies without distorting election results or embracing debunked claims of vote tampering. A spokesperson for the select panel declined to comment on the documents.
Pressure in Georgia
Just one day before Georgia was set to certify the 2020 election results and seal Trump’s defeat, records turned over to the Jan. 6 committee show a text message that arrived on the phone of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
“Mr Secretary. Mark Meadows here. If you could give me a brief call at your convenience. Thank you,” the then-White House chief of staff texted Raffensperger in a Nov. 19, 2020, message obtained through a public records request.
It doesn’t appear that Raffensperger, a Republican, responded to Meadows. (His office sent no reply to one Meadows text because aides weren't sure if it was real, according to CNN.) But it was not the last time Raffensperger would hear from Trump’s allies as they sought to pressure state-level officials to overturn the president's loss.
A spokesperson for Georgia's secretary of state did not respond to a request for comment.
Meadows texted Raffensperger a second time on the morning of Dec. 5, 2020, asking him to call the White House switchboard to set up a call. “Your voicemail is full,” Meadows told Raffensperger.
Raffensperger has already interviewed with the panel, according to Thompson, who praised him as “very straightforward” in his testimony.
A previously unreported email from one of Raffensperger’s top aides, Jordan Fuchs, was also turned over to the committee. In it, Fuchs responded to Meadows' Dec. 22, 2020, trip to Georgia's Cobb County during the state’s signature match audit. She emailed Meadows to “clarify a few items” about the rejection rate of absentee ballots — something Trump and his allies had alleged was much lower than normal.
Fuchs’ note included the text of a press release sent out by the secretary of State’s office a month beforehand with a more thorough explanation of how the office evaluated absentee ballots.
Meadows' attorney did not respond to a request for comment.
Also included in the document dump are emails between Sen. Lindsey Graham’s and Raffensperger’s offices, which shows how a previously reported call between the two officials came about roughly two weeks after the 2020 election.
“Hope you are doing well. Senator Graham has requested a call w/ Sec. Raffensperger at his earliest convenience,” a Graham staffer told two of Raffensperger’s top aides on Nov. 12, 2020. The call between the two men ended with Graham indicating to Raffensperger some ballots should be tossed out, the Georgia official said later.[!!!]
Graham’s office declined to comment.
The state also turned over a previously reported audio recording of a Dec. 23, 2020, call between Trump and Frances Watson, the chief investigator in the Georgia secretary of state’s office, and a brief call between Watson and an unidentified staffer. In the Dec. 23 call, Trump had urged Watson to find “dishonesty” in the state’s election results.[!!!]
Forged election documents in Michigan and Arizona
As Trump's team pushed its discredited voter fraud narrative, the National Archives received forged certificates of ascertainment declaring him and then-Vice President Mike Pence the winners of both Michigan and Arizona and their electors after the 2020 election. Public records requests show 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 on the documents. The offices confirmed that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, both Democrats, and their staff met with the panel in November.
“They mostly discussed election administration in Arizona, the 2020 elections, threats/harassment directed toward the office, and the Cyber Ninja’s partisan ballot review,” said Hobbs' spokesperson C. Murphy Hebert.
Benson and her staff took questions from the committee on the 2020 election and events leading up to the Jan. 6 riot, according to Tracy Wimmer, a spokesperson for Benson.
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 group that forged the Michigan certification had not used the state seal, and it appears state officials there took no further action after the Archives rejected it.
Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.
*****************
Hobbs asks AG to investigate fake Trump electors for employing Arizona's state seal
Dylan Smith
TucsonSentinel.com
Posted Dec 24, 2020, 3:06 pm
A group of people who sent a slate of fake electoral votes for President Donald Trump to Washington, D.C., may be facing legal trouble for using the state seal without authorization.
Secretary of State Katie Hobbs sent a cease-and-desist letter to Mesa resident Lori Osiecki, one of the 11 fake electors, demanding that her group no longer use Arizona's state seal. The state requires people to get the secretary of state's permission to "use, display or otherwise employ any facsimile, copy, likeness, imitation or other resemblance" to the state seal, which Hobbs said the group didn't do.
Hobbs also referred the matter to the Attorney General's Office for investigation. Using the state seal without authorization is a class 3 misdemeanor, which carries a maximum penalty of 30 days in jail and a $500 fine.
Osiecki and 10 others, who identified themselves as "The Sovereign Citizens of the Great State of Arizona," sent signed, notarized certificates to the National Archives purporting to be electoral votes for Trump, despite the fact that former Vice President Joe Biden won Arizona by about 10,500 votes. They also sent a copy of their faux electoral votes to the Secretary of State's Office. The state seal was on the cover sheet of the documents, as well as at the top of each subsequent page.
"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 in her letter, dated Dec. 22.
Osiecki could not be reached for comment.
The group cast its fake electoral votes as Trump supporters across the country rejected the results of the presidential election. Many Trump supporters, as well as the president himself, have falsely claimed the election was swayed by fraud and have spread baseless conspiracy theories and unsubstantiated claims, particularly about Biden's win in Arizona and five other swing states.
Osiecki and her cohorts were not the official Republican electors who were pledged to vote for Trump if the president had won Arizona in the 2020 general election.
Arizona's official Republican electors, which includes several prominent GOP officials, submitted fake electoral votes of their own on Dec. 14, the date when electors across the nation cast their votes. The Arizona Republican Party said the votes would be sent to Congress, where it hopes they will be counted as Arizona's official electoral votes on Jan. 6, when Congress will count and certify the votes of the Electoral College.
Some Republicans believe that Congress can reject Biden electors and instead certify Trump as the winner of the election. The notion is widely rejected because both the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and the Republican-controlled Senate would have to vote to reject a slate of electors.
Were the votes of Arizona's Republican electors to somehow be counted, they would be deemed invalid under state law. Arizona is one of 33 states prohibiting "faithless electors," a term for electors who cast their votes for a candidate other than their state's winner. If an Arizona elector casts a vote for someone besides the winner, his or her position would be immediately deemed vacant, and the chair of the political party representing the winner would choose a replacement.
This report was first published by the Arizona Mirror
*********************
'Sovereign citizens' try to undermine Arizona electoral vote
by Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
Pinal Central
Dec 14, 2020 Updated Jan 23, 2021 0
PHOENIX — Arizona’s 11 Democrat electors cast their votes Monday for Joe Biden even as the chairman of a Senate panel said he will issue subpoenas to check the accuracy of hardware and software that gave the Democrat the edge over President Trump.
Sen. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, said there are enough questions raised about whether the Dominion Voting Systems used in Maricopa County produced reliable results.
The announcement followed more than six hours of testimony at the Senate Judiciary Committee which led to a series of questions about whether the results can be trusted. And as Farnsworth said, that doesn’t even address other allegations that ballots were not properly handled and that observers from political parties did not have sufficient access to oversee what was going on.
It’s unlikely that anything that an audit turns up would affect the results of the election.
That would require either a court ruling overturning the results — something multiple judges have so far refused to do — or the full legislature trying to pick its own slate of electors. But both Senate President Karen Fann and House Speaker Rusty Bowers have said there does not appear to be a legal way to do that, even assuming lawmakers could call themselves into special session before Jan. 6 when Congress counts the electoral votes.
Even Farnsworth, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, suggested that this was simply a matter of addressing the various claims and doubts “and try and see if we can reinsert some confidence in our election process.’’
“We hold and audit and we see what the outcome is,’’ he said. “And then we can put this to rest.’’
Farnsworth said the subpoenas could be issued as early as Tuesday.
All this comes as the official slate of electors — the ones pledged to Biden — cast their votes and Secretary of State Katie Hobbs sent off the results to both Congress and the National Archives.
That, however, did not stop two other groups from filing reports that their “electors’’ had met and were supporting Trump.
One group consists of the 11 Republicans whose names were on the ballot as pledged to Trump, who lost the popular vote according to the certified results.
That vote was organized by the state GOP on the premise that those outstanding legal challenges to the Arizona tally could end up changing the final vote total. In essence, Kelli Ward, the party chair who is a litigant in both pending cases, believes that having the Trump-pledged electors voting on Monday — the date set in federal law — sends a slate of GOP electors to Congress should the cases go their way or Congress decides that their votes are the ones that should be counted and not those pledged to Biden.
But Hobbs aide Murphy Hebert said that’s meaningless.
“It’s clearly a political gesture,’’ she said. Hebert said Congress can acknowledge only those electors whose votes are accompanied by “letters of ascertainment’’ signed by Hobbs and Gov. Doug Ducey.
Separately, a group of self-proclaimed “sovereign citizens’’ filed their own slate of electors with the National Archives claiming they represent the state’s 11 electoral votes for Trump.
Documents obtained by Capitol Media Services show that Mesa resident Lori Osiecki submitted sworn statements for the 11 people “by authority & direction of the sovereign citizens of the great state of Arizona.’’ That comes complete with the use of the official state seal which in and of itself Hebert said is itself a violation of the law.
“We absolutely anticipated there would be efforts to disrupt the system like this,’’ Hebert said. But she said the actual “votes’’ sent to Washington amount to little more than political theater.
“The statute is very, very clear: The slate of electors for the candidate with the most number of votes in the popular vote are the ones who represent the state in the Electoral College vote,’’ she said. And these were the 11 Democrats who took the official oath of office Monday morning and signed the certificate of votes.
And what of the “votes’’ sent off by on behalf of either slate of 11 Republicans?
“Anybody can send a letter to the National Archives,’’ Hobbs said.
One thing different this year is that the process, normally a routine action with little public attention, was moved to the Phoenix Convention Center. And the location was not made public ahead of the event amid security concerns, including threats of violence against Hobbs and other staffers in her office and fears protesters might seek to disrupt the voting.
At the same time members of the Senate Judiciary were focused on Dominion Voting Systems used in the state’s largest county.
There have been a series of charges leveled against the company both here and nationally that the equipment and software were deliberately programmed to deliver more votes for Biden.
None of those complaints have been found valid by any court anywhere in the nation. But that didn’t stop lawmakers from asking and saying that there needs to be an independent audit and even a full hand count of all the ballots.
Sen. Vince Leach, R-Tucson, one of those who wants that 100% hand count, got Maricopa County Elections Director Scott Jarrett to acknowledge that Dominion workers had 24/7 access to his office and even, in certain circumstances, access to the equipment.
But Jarrett said there is no way to alter the codes in a way that would change the outcome.
He said it starts with “logic and accuracy’’ test of the equipment, both before and after the election. Jarrett said that would not only capture any change made in the software but that the program is built in a way so that any change would render the results “not readable.’’
The equipment itself, he said, is also subject to independent certification by the Secretary of State’s Office.
More to the point, Jarrett pointed out that state law requires an actual hand count of a random sample of ballots, both those mailed in early and those cast on Election Day.
He said the batches to be sampled and the elections to be reviewed are chosen by officials from both political parties. And of the more than 47,000 ballots checked by hand there was not a single vote difference from what was recorded by the equipment.
“These hand counts are an independent audit,’’ Jarrett told lawmakers. And he said they showed the equipment worked as expected.
Farnsworth was not convinced.
“I do have a concern that the county is taking the position that it just can’t happen,’’ he said.
“There is a litany of white-collar crimes, digital crimes in the history of this country and this world of some very sophisticated people and the victims didn’t recognize it until some future time,’’ Farnsworth said. “I think it’s really, really dangerous for us to say, ‘It can’t happen.’ ‘’
That sentiment was echoed by Sen. Sonny Borrelli, R-Lake Havasu City. He said even the operating manual for Dominion software suggests “data can be changed and votes switched around.’’
“Nothing’s 100% secure,’’ he said. “If people want to cheat they’re going to cheat.’’
Farnsworth also complained that it’s possible for people who are not U.S. citizens to have voted in the presidential race.
Arizona does require proof of citizenship to register to vote.
But a federal law spells out that people without such proof can use a registration form prepared by the Election Assistance Commission, one that has no such requirement. And those who do not provide citizenship proof can vote in federal elections, including for president and members of Congress.
Jarrett acknowledged that more than 3,000 such “federal-only’’ ballots were cast in Maricopa County, people who he acknowledged might not be U.S. citizens. That angered Farnsworth.
“That is harmful, detrimental, undercuts,’’ he said.
“And it is outrageous that we have that kind of a mandate from Congress,’’ Farnsworth said. “It challenges the very sovereignty of this country, in my opinion.’’
Jarrett also defended against claims that observers from political parties could not get close enough to really monitor what was going on in both the process to check signatures on early ballot envelopes and in the actual counting. He acknowledged, though, that there were efforts to keep observers at least six feet from election workers amid fears of COVID-19.
He also said that, despite rumors to the contrary, there were not late “spikes’’ of votes for Biden. In fact, Jarrett said, the reverse was in some ways true, with Biden having a big lead among the first ballots counted and the later-counted ballots swinging for Trump.
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