Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certification

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Jordan Klepper Shows Trump Supporters January 6th Hearing Clips
by Jordan Klepper
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
Jun 23, 2022

Jordan Klepper heads to a Mississippi rally to figure out if the January 6th hearings are enough to break the MAGA bubble surrounding Trump supporters. #DailyShow #Comedy



(upbeat music)
0:05
(heart beating)
0:06
- Last weekend, the Trump Freedom Tour,
0:08
comprised of Don, his son, and a caravan of folks
0:11
looking for book deals, headed to Mississippi.
0:13
And I was curious, who was shelling out
0:15
the 9 to $4,000 for a ticket to see the show.
0:19
Much of the country was watching the revelations
0:21
coming out of the January 6th hearings.
0:24
And surely, these politically engaged folks
0:26
were also tuned in.
0:28
Have you guys been watching the January 6th hearings?
0:30
- Um, no.
0:32
- Have you watched any of the January 6th hearings?
0:34
- Not really, I had a ___ and change of phones, but-
0:37
- You had to what?
0:39
- I changed phones.
0:40
- Are you watching them? -
No, sir.
0:41
- No, why not?
0:42
- Well, A, time.
0:43
- You don't have time to watch a two hour hearing?
0:46
- Yeah. - Not at all.
0:47
- How long are you here today?
0:48
- Until five.
0:49
- Until five, which is, you got here at?
0:51
- I got here at seven.
0:51
- Seven, which makes it 10 hours.
0:53
- Right.
0:54
- But the two hour hearing, who's got time for that shit?
0:56
(inquisitive music) Most were paying no attention,
0:58
and yet, there were some paying even less attention.
1:01
What about what happened on January 6th?
1:03
What do you think, what happened there?
1:06
- I don't really know what happened on January 6th.
1:09
- January 6th, the-
1:10
- The election day?
1:12
- No, election day was back in November.
1:14
Do you-
1:15
- I don't even know what-
1:15
- Do you know about January 6th?
1:16
- No.
- So when I say
1:17
January 6th, that means just-
1:19
- Nothing, I don't know.
1:20
- That's just a day to you.
1:21
- Yeah.
1:23
- Did you hear about the insurrection attempt
1:26
at the capitol?
1:27
- [Both] No.
1:28
(inquisitive music) - For almost everyone here,
1:30
insurrectioning was a non-issue.
1:32
It was the hearings themselves that were the problem.
1:36
- I think it's an abomination.
1:38
- [Interviewee] It's just McCarthyism, it's a witch trial.
1:40
- It's a witch hunt.
1:41
- Eh, it is.
1:42
It absolutely is.
- Yeah, it's like a mob
1:43
of people coming together with pitchforks.
1:45
- Yeah.
- Saying, we can't
1:46
have that.
- Yeah, with an agenda.
1:49
Here's the narrative we're pushing
1:50
and that's all we're pushing, is our narrative.
1:52
- A mob of people with an agenda pushing an agenda,
1:55
that can't stand in America.
1:57
- No.
1:58
- We should have an investigation about a mob of people.
2:01
- We should.
- Everybody would watch that.
2:02
- Yeah, absolutely.
- Yes.
2:03
- Nancy Pelosi.
2:05
She is very responsible for what went on then.
2:08
She planned it.
2:09
- She planned what happened?
2:10
- I believe so.
2:11
- Why did she plan to get attacked
2:13
by a mob of Trump supporters?
2:14
- Because she wanted to be able to blame it
2:16
on the Trump supporters
2:17
and have something bad to say about 'em.
2:18
- Shouldn't we investigate that?
2:20
- Yes.
2:21
- So, you must be watching the January 6th committee.
2:23
- (scoffing) No.
2:25
(inquisitive music)
- So what was it
2:26
people were watching?
2:26
- "2000 Mules" came out and it showed a lot of stuff.
2:30
- You've got "2000 Mules".
2:31
- And then this movie, "2000 Mules."
2:33
- "2000 Mules"?
2:34
- Yes.
- "2000 Mules" is a
2:36
documentary by Dinesh D'Souza,
2:38
claiming massive voter fraud based on some cell phone data
2:41
and surveillance footage that's been lauded by Trump,
2:44
laughed at by Bill Barr, discredited by fact-checkers
2:46
and banned from even right wing media
2:49
because of its unfounded claims.
2:51
- You notice, you turn on Fox News,
2:52
they have never mentioned that movie once.
2:55
Somebody's pulling the strings.
2:56
- Who do you think it is?
2:58
- It may be Obama.
2:59
- (laughing) You think Obama's
3:00
pulling the strings, Obama-
- Or it could be George Soros.
3:03
- You think it's possible that Fox News
3:05
doesn't mention "2000 Mules",
3:07
your theory, there's a giant conspiracy up on top
3:10
in which they don't do it.
3:11
Or the second theory is that movie's not credible.
3:14
- I know the movie's credible.
3:15
(inquisitive music)
- Maybe sharing
3:16
some of the committee's findings would break
3:18
through this MAGA bubble.
3:20
Rudy Giuliani was drunk the night of the election
3:22
and it was partially his idea to deny the election results.
3:27
Buy it?
3:27
- I haven't seen that, you're the first source
3:30
I've gotten on that.
3:31
- You haven't heard that at all?
3:32
- No.
- That Rudy was drunk
3:33
that night?
3:34
- It's an election night.
3:35
I wouldn't be surprised if anybody was, so.
3:37
- You trust a drunk Rudy Giuliani?
3:40
- I'm not saying
3:41
I trust a drunk Rudy Giuliani.
- The question is,
have you trusted yourself
3:45
or other individuals that you are with
3:47
under the influence of alcohol?
3:48
- I totally have.
3:49
- Then what's the difference?
3:50
- I am not the commander-in-chief in charge of
3:52
the United States of America.
- Doesn't matter.
3:53
- Well, I think that's an important detail.
3:55
(inquisitive music)
If no one was willing
3:56
to turn on the hearing, I decided to bring
3:58
the hearing to them.
4:00
I first shared testimony from Trump's
4:02
own acting attorney general,
4:03
dismissing Trump's claims of voter fraud.
4:06
- I told him that the stuff that his people were shoveling
4:08
out to the public was bullshit.
4:13
(Interviewee sighing)
4:18
- Like I said, you just can't be up 300,000 votes
4:24
and then lose.
- No, but that's
4:25
Trump's attorney general.
- I know.
4:26
- Does that sway you at all?
4:28
- He's turned on him, he's been paid,
4:30
been paid by somebody to shut his mouth.
4:31
- Everybody knows the election was fraud.
4:33
- No, no, he's saying the opposite.
4:35
He's saying-
- He's saying the opposite?
4:36
- Yeah, he's saying there wasn't fraud.
4:37
That that's bullshit.
- Wow, wow!
4:39
- Does it make you kind of change your perspective
4:41
and your assumptions?
4:42
- It does.
- Yeah, so you're not
4:43
gonna go in there right now?
4:44
- Oh yes, sir, I am.
4:45
- You are going in there right now
4:46
to see Donald Trump speak?
4:46
- Yes, sir.
- Okay, cool.
4:48
Well, good productive chat.
4:50
What's your response there?
4:52
- I think it's true.
4:53
- You think Bill Barr is right?
4:54
- Yeah.
- 'Cause he's talking about
4:56
the fact that the election
4:57
was stolen is bullshit.
- Yeah.
4:59
Yeah.
- Yeah, for sure.
5:00
- [Jordan] So he says it wasn't stolen.
5:02
- Oh, then no.
- No.
5:03
Oh, no.
- Yeah, it was stolen.
5:04
- [Jordan] You don't believe that?
5:06
- No.
- So who do you trust?
5:07
Like Trump, Trump's family?
5:09
- I trust Trump.
5:10
- You trust Ivanka?
5:11
- Yeah.
- Yeah, I do,
5:13
I think she's very smart and very intelligent.
5:16
- Let me show you, this is what she said.
5:17
- How did that affect your perspective about the election,
5:19
when Attorney General Barr made that statement?
5:22
- It affected my perspective.
5:24
I respect Attorney General Barr,
5:27
so I accepted what he was saying.
5:34
- How do I know that's not edited in any way?
5:38
- You don't believe she actually said that?
5:40
- Did she say it on Twitter?
5:42
- It don't even look like her.
5:44
- You don't think that-
5:46
- It could not be her, it might be one of those,
5:48
what, they got clones out there these days?
5:50
- You think that was a-
5:51
- (laughing) It might be a clone, yeah.
5:53
- It might be an Ivanka clone.
5:54
- (laughing) Yeah.
- Hot take, my friend.
5:56
(Interviewee laughing) It's almost like
5:58
you're confronted with it and your brain
5:59
just does somersaults to figure out,
6:01
there must be some other reason-
6:03
- She looks frightened.
6:04
- She does look scared,
6:05
almost like she's-
- Yeah, she does.
6:06
- Like she's been caught.
6:07
What do you think?
6:10
(Interviewee laughing)
- I'm confused.
6:13
- A little bit.
6:14
- So, Ivanka-
6:15
- [Both Interviewees] His daughter.
6:16
- His daughter says she accepts
6:19
what the attorney general said,
6:19
which is that the election wasn't stolen.
6:22
That Trump lost.
6:26
- Well, is it a lie?
6:28
- I mean, if you listen to these people, yeah.
6:29
It's a big lie and I'm fearful you're gonna go inside there
6:33
and he's gonna keep telling you that lie.
6:37
- We should go.
- Yeah. (laughing)
6:39
I think we're ready to cut this off.
6:41
- [Jordan] Being confronted with an uncomfortable information
6:43
isn't easy to swallow, but this crowd chooses to live
6:47
by the immortal words of the barred Rudy Giuliani who said,
6:50
"We've got lots of theories,
6:52
we just don't have the evidence."
6:54
Especially when it comes to Donald Trump.
6:56
- I believe him and the military are running the country
6:58
and that idiot that's up there is a puppet,
7:00
and Obama's in the basement
7:02
telling him what to do.
- Wait, that sounds so crazy,
7:04
it's probably not true.
7:05
- You probably don't even wanna ask me
7:06
what I think about 9/11, so. (laughing)
7:08
- God, you got some theories for miles.
7:10
- Well, yeah, and I read a lot of stuff
7:12
but I know probably not all of it is true,
7:14
but enough of it is true to know
7:16
that we need change in this country.
7:17
- Absolutely.
- Yeah, a little bit
7:18
(patriotic music) of shit in the pool
7:19
doesn't mean you can't swim in it.
7:20
- Right.
7:23
(upbeat music)

[admin]

Secret Service Deleted Jan. 6 Text Messages After Oversight Officials Requested Them: A letter given to the January 6 committee says the erasure took place shortly after oversight officials requested the agency’s electronic communications.
by Ken Klippenstein
The Intercept
July 14 2022, 1:25 p.m.

THE SECRET SERVICE erased text messages from January 5 and January 6, 2021, according to a letter given to the January 6 committee and reviewed by The Intercept. The letter was originally sent by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General to the House and Senate homeland security committees. Though the Secret Service maintains that the text messages were lost as a result of a “device-replacement program,” the letter says the erasure took place shortly after oversight officials requested the agency’s electronic communications.

The Secret Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Secret Service has emerged as a key player in the explosive congressional hearings on former President Donald Trump’s role in the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to prevent the 2020 election results from being certified. That day, then-Vice President Mike Pence was at the Capitol to certify the results. When rioters entered the building, the Secret Service tried to whisk Pence away from the scene.

“I’m not getting in the car,” Pence reportedly told the Secret Service detail on January 6. “If I get in that vehicle, you guys are taking off.” Had Pence entered the vice presidential limo, he would have been taken to a secure location where he would have been unable to certify the presidential election results, plunging the U.S. into uncharted waters.

“People need to understand that if Pence had listened to the Secret Service and fled the Capitol, this could have turned out a whole lot worse,” a congressional official not authorized to speak publicly told The Intercept. “It could’ve been a successful coup, not just an attempted one.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the January 6 committee, called Pence’s terse refusal — “I’m not getting in the car” — the “six most chilling words of this entire thing I’ve seen so far.”

But, the Office of Inspector General letter suggests, key evidence in the form of the Secret Service’s electronic communications may never see the light of day. The Department of Homeland Security — the Secret Service’s parent agency — is subject to oversight from the DHS Office of Inspector General, which had requested records of electronic communications from the Secret Service between January 5 and January 6, 2021, before being informed that they had been erased. It is unclear from the letter whether all of the messages were deleted or just some. Department officials have also pushed back on the oversight office’s records request by arguing that the records must first undergo review by DHS attorneys, which has delayed the process and left unclear if the Secret Service records would ever be produced, according to the letter.

Asked about the matter, a DHS Office of Inspector General spokesperson told The Intercept, “To preserve the integrity of our work and protect our independence, we do not discuss our ongoing reviews or our communications with Congress.”

On June 28, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified before the January 6 committee, disclosing that Trump had ordered Secret Service to take him to the Capitol so he could address his supporters. Later that day, Secret Service officials disputed aspects of her account, including her allegation that Trump had reached for the wheel of the presidential limousine and lunged at Secret Service.

A top Secret Service official allegedly involved in the attempt to spirit away Pence on January 6 remains in a leadership position at the agency. Tony Ornato, a Secret Service agent whom Trump made the unprecedented decision to appoint as his deputy White House chief of staff, reportedly informed Pence’s national security adviser, Keith Kellogg, on January 6 that agents would relocate the vice president to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. “You can’t do that, Tony,” Kellogg reportedly told Ornato. “Leave him where he’s at. He’s got a job to do. I know you guys too well. You’ll fly him to Alaska if you have a chance. Don’t do it.” (Ornato has denied the account.)

Today Ornato serves as the assistant director of the Secret Service’s Office of Training.

Agencies, especially those involved in national security, often use the sensitivity of their work to sidestep oversight, stymying the work of offices of inspectors general. It is not uncommon for inspectors general, particularly effective ones, to face institutional resistance during the course of investigations. Tasked with rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse, inspectors general are not always welcomed.

A Customs and Border Protection official provided The Intercept with a document illustrating the challenges. A briefing memo produced by the agency for a leadership meeting with the DHS Office of Inspector General on July 7 instructs participants on how to push back against what it calls the inspector general’s “persistent” request for “direct, unfettered access to CBP systems,” as part of its “high number of OIG audits covering a variety of CBP program areas.” In a section titled “Watch Out For/ If Asked,” the memo describes a number of exemptions Customs and Border Protection can rely on to evade records requests from the inspector general’s office — including national security exemptions.

[admin]

Leaked Audio: Before Election Day, Bannon Said Trump Planned to Falsely Claim Victory: “That’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a winner.”
by Dan Friedman
Mother Jones
July 12, 2022

On the evening of October 31, 2020, Steve Bannon told a group of associates that President Donald Trump had a plan to declare victory on election night—even if he was losing. Trump knew that the slow counting of Democratic-leaning mail-in ballots meant the returns would show early leads for him in key states. His “strategy” was to use this fact to assert that he had won, while claiming that the inevitable shifts in vote totals toward Joe Biden must be the result of fraud, Bannon explained.

Steve Bannon: And what Trump's gonna do, is just declare victory. Right? He's gonna declare victory. [LOL] But that doesn't mean he's a winner. He's just gonna say he's a winner.

Steve Bannon, 10/31/20: The Democrats -- more of our people vote early that count. Theirs vote in mail. And so they're going to have a natural disadvantage, and Trump's going to take advantage of it. That's our strategy. He's gonna declare himself a winner. So when you wake up Wednesday morning, it's going to be a firestorm. You're going to have antifa, crazy. The media, crazy. The courts are crazy. And Trump's gonna be sitting there mocking, tweeting shit out, "You lose." [Girls laughing and clapping] Like, "I'm the winner. I'm the King." And he'll be all over. He'll be going, "Where's Hunter? Is Hunter on a crack pipe?" I mean, no, he'll be -- because then it doesn't matter. Remember. Here's the thing. After then, Trump never has to go to a voter again. He's going to fire Wray, the FBI director. He's gonna say, "Fuck you." How about that? Because he's, he's never going to -- he's he's done his last election. [Girls laughing and clapping] Oh, he's going to be off the chain. He's gonna be crazy. [Girls laughing] Also, if Trump -- if Trump is losing by 10 or 11 o'clock at night, it's going to be even crazier. No, because he's gonna sit right there and say, "They stole it." [Girl: "Yeah, agreed."] "I'm directing the attorney general to shut down all ballot places in all 50 states." It's going to be no, he's not going out easy. Trump -- if Biden is winning, Trump is going to do some crazy shit.

“What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory. Right? He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner,” Bannon, laughing, told the group, according to audio of the meeting obtained by Mother Jones. “He’s just gonna say he’s a winner.”

“He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner.”

“As it sits here today,” Bannon said later in the conversation, describing a scenario in which Trump held an early lead in key swing states, “at 10 or 11 o’clock Trump’s gonna walk in the Oval, tweet out, ‘I’m the winner. Game over. Suck on that.'”

Trump’s plan to falsely declare victory while tens of millions of votes were still being counted was public knowledge even before the election. Axios reported on the scheme at the time. Bannon himself discussed the idea on November 3—Election Day—on his War Room podcast. Weeks earlier, Bannon had interviewed a former Trump administration official who outlined how Trump would use allegations of fraud to dispute an electoral defeat and would seek to have Congress declare him the winner. Last month, the congressional committee investigating January 6 detailed how Rudy Giuliani convinced Trump to go ahead with a victory declaration after 2 a.m. on November 4, over the objections of campaign staff. “Frankly, we did win this election,” Trump insisted in that infamous news conference.

The nearly hourlong audio obtained by Mother Jones is new evidence that Trump’s late-night diatribe—which came a few hours later than Bannon had anticipated—followed a preexisting plan to lie to Americans about the election results in a bid to hold onto power. The new recording stands out for the striking candor and detail with which Bannon described a scheme to use lies to subvert democracy. Bannon also predicted that Trump’s false declaration of victory would lead to widespread political violence, along with “crazy” efforts by Trump to stay in office. Bannon and his associates laughed about those scenarios at various points in the recording.

In a comment sent Wednesday, a Bannon spokesperson argued that Bannon’s statements on the recording are not news. “Nothing on the recording wasn’t already said on War Room or on multiple other shows like The Circus on Showtime,” the spokesperson said. “Bannon gave that lecture multiple times from August to November to counter Mark Elias’ Election Integrity Project.” Elias is a prominent Democratic election lawyer. The spokesperson also said that the January 6 committee “should have the courage to have Mr. Bannon come and testify publicly about these events.”

After Election Day, Bannon became a prominent booster of Trump’s bogus election fraud claims. The Washington Post reported Monday that Bannon’s “vociferous support” for those lies helped convince Trump to grant him a last-minute pardon on unrelated fraud charges. Speaking to Mother Jones, Bannon’s attorney, Robert Costello questioned that reporting. He said that as far as he knew, “Trump never made any” statement linking the pardon to Bannon’s election rhetoric.

Bannon refused last year to cooperate with a January 6 committee subpoena. The Justice Department later charged him with two counts of contempt of Congress. This weekend, he claimed that he now wishes to testify before the committee. But federal prosecutors argued this about face was “irrelevant” to the charges that Bannon had already broken the law. A judge ruled Monday that the trial would go forward next week.

“Trump’s gonna be sitting there mocking, tweeting shit out: ‘You lose. I’m the winner. I’m the king.'”

The pre-election audio comes from a meeting between Bannon and a half dozen supporters of Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese mogul for whom Bannon has worked. Bannon helped Guo launch a series of pro-Trump Chinese-language news websites that have promoted an array of far-right misinformation, including a video streaming site called GTV. The meeting was intended to help GTV plan its election night coverage.

Though he did not attend, Guo arranged the confab, which was held in the Washington, DC, townhouse where Bannon tapes War Room, according to a person who was present. That source recorded the meeting and recently provided the audio to Mother Jones. The attendees included Dr. Li Meng Yan, a virologist who had made unsubstantiated claims that Covid was designed by China as a bioweapon—claims that Bannon had helped to propagate. Also there was Wang Dinggang, a GTV host who had helped to spread false claims about Hunter Biden.

Speaking to this group of mostly Chinese immigrants, Bannon explained US electoral processes—and Trump’s plans to exploit them—in some detail. He emphasized that in 2020, Republicans were more likely to vote in person, casting ballots that, in many states, would be counted first. Democrats disproportionately voted by mail. Their ballots would take days to tally in a number of states. That meant that when it came to public perceptions about who was winning, Democrats would “have a natural disadvantage,” Bannon said. “And Trump’s going to take advantage of it. That’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a winner.”

“So when you wake up Wednesday morning, it’s going to be a firestorm,” Bannon continued. “You’re going to have antifa, crazy. The media, crazy. The courts are crazy. And Trump’s gonna be sitting there mocking, tweeting shit out: ‘You lose. I’m the winner. I’m the king.'”

It’s not clear how much influence Bannon, who had previously been Trump’s top White House strategist before being ousted, really wielded over Trump at this time. But Bannon has suggested that he was a key architect of Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results and has reportedly asserted that he convinced Trump to make January 6 a moment of reckoning in that bid. Bannon was also among the Trump associates who gathered in a set of rooms and suites in the Willard Hotel on January 6 to advise on the president’s attempt to remain in power.

Bannon’s remarks to Guo’s supporters indicate that he was working with a group, led by Giuliani, that wanted Trump to take particularly aggressive steps to contest unfavorable election results. Other advisers have said they opposed these steps. Bannon said during the October 31 meeting that he was collaborating closely with Giuliani, who was preparing to oversee Trump’s planned legal efforts.

Bannon’s meeting with Guo’s associates occurred a few weeks after Bannon, working with Giuliani, had provided the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop to the New York Post. Bannon acknowledged in the recording that he had also helped supply Guo supporters with this material. As Mother Jones has reported, Guo then directed his backers to put sex videos and other salacious content from the laptop online. Bannon praised Guo’s effort during the meeting, saying it had helped slow Biden’s momentum. That left Biden with little prospect of a resounding election night victory that Trump wouldn’t easily be able to contest, Bannon added.

As a result, any chance for a “peaceful resolution of this is probably gone,” Bannon said. “Because the other three alternatives [are], either Biden’s up slightly and Trump says he stole it, right, and he’s not leaving. Or it’s undefined and we can’t figure out who’s leading, and Trump’s saying he’s stealing it, and he’s not leaving. Or, Trump’s leading, which is the one where they’re gonna burn the city down.”

Bannon expressed the belief that Trump actually winning would lead to violence by the left. But he also said that Trump falsely claiming he’d won—a strategy Bannon was cheering on—would probably cause violence too. And Bannon emphasized that election night would mark the start of a battle for power in which Trump would try to stop the votes of people who opposed him from being counted, while Democrats would try to use invalid ballots to defeat him. Democrats, Bannon claimed, “steal elections all the time.”

Election Day 2020 would not be like others, Bannon said. “This is a revolution,” he explained. “This election just triggers more fighting.”

Bannon also said during this meeting that once the voting was done, Trump would be unencumbered by electoral pressure. “Here’s the thing. After then, Trump never has to go to a voter again,” Bannon said. “He’s gonna fire [Christopher] Wray, the FBI director…He’s gonna say ‘Fuck you. How about that?’ Because…he’s done his last election. Oh, he’s going to be off the chain—he’s gonna be crazy.”

Bannon also said he expected that Trump would quickly fire CIA Director Gina Haspel, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, and Dr. Anthony Fauci.

“If Trump is losing by 10 or 11 o’clock at night, it’s going to be even crazier. No, because he’s gonna sit right there and say, ‘They stole it. I’m directing the attorney general to shut down all ballot places in all 50 states,'” Bannon said. “He’s not going out easy. If Biden is winning, Trump is going to do some crazy shit.”

Update: This story has been updated to include a statement provided by a Bannon spokesperson after publication.

[admin]

Thompson, Cheney, Murphy, & Raskin Opening Statements at Select Committee Hearing, Jul 12, 2022

-- January 6 Select Committee Hearing, Day Seven, July 12, 2022

-- As Delivered --

Chairman Thompson: “Good afternoon.

“When I think about the most basic way to explain the importance of elections in the United States, there’s a phrase that always comes to mind. It may sound straightforward, but it’s meaningful: We settle our differences at the ballot box.

“Sometimes my choice prevails. Sometimes yours does. But it’s that simple. We cast our votes. We count the votes. If something seems off with the results, we can challenge them in court. And then we accept the results.

“When you’re on the losing side, that doesn’t mean you have to be happy about it.

“And in the United States, there’s plenty you can do and say so.

“You can protest. You can organize. You can get ready for the next election to try to make sure your side has a better chance the next time the people settle their differences at the ballot box.

“But you can’t turn violent. You can’t try to achieve your desired outcome through force or harassment or intimidation.

“Any real leader who sees their supporters going down that path—approaching that line—has a responsibility to say, “Stop. We gave it our best. We came up short. We’ll try again next time. Because we settle our differences at the ballot box.”

“On December 14th, 2020, the Presidential election was officially over. The Electoral College had cast its votes. Joe Biden was the President-elect of the United States.

“By that point, many of Donald Trump’s supporters were already convinced that the election had been stolen, because that’s what Donald Trump had been telling them.

“So what Donald Trump was required to do in that moment—what would have been required of any American leader—was to say, “We did our best and we came up short.”

“He went the opposite way. He seized on the anger he had already stoked among his most loyal supporters. And as they approached the line, he didn’t wave them off. He urged them on.

“Today the committee will explain how as part of his last-ditch effort to overturn the election and block the transfer of power, Donald Trump summoned a mob to Washington, DC, and ultimately spurred that mob to wage a violent attack on our democracy.

“Our colleagues Mrs. Murphy of Florida and Mr. Raskin of Maryland will lay out this story.

“First, I’m pleased to recognize our distinguished Vice Chair, Ms. Cheney of Wyoming, for any opening comments she’d care to offer.”

***

Vice Chair Cheney: “Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

“The Committee did not conduct a hearing last week, but we did conduct an on-the-record interview of President Trump’s former White House Counsel, Pat Cipillone.

“If you have watched these hearings, you have heard us call for Mr. Cipillone to come forward to testify. He did. And Mr. Cipillone’s testimony met our expectations.

“We will save for our next hearing President Trump’s behavior during the violence of January 6th.

“Today’s hearing will take us take us from December 14th, 2020, when the Electoral College met and certified the results of the 2020 Presidential election, up through the morning of January 6th.

“You will see certain segments of Pat Cipillone’s testimony today. We will also see today how President Trump summoned a mob to Washington and how the President’s stolen election lies provoked that mob to attack the Capitol.

“And we will hear from a man who was induced by President Trump’s lies to come to Washington and join the mob, and how that decision has changed his life.

“Today’s hearing is our seventh. We have covered significant ground over the past several weeks. And we have also seen a change in how witnesses and lawyers in the Trump orbit approach this Committee.

“Initially, their strategy in some cases appeared to be to ‘deny and delay.’

“Today, there appears to be a general recognition that the Committee has established key facts, including that virtually everyone close to President Trump—his Justice Department officials, his White House advisors, his White House Counsel, his campaign—all told him the 2020 election was not stolen.

“This appears to have changed the strategy for defending Donald Trump. Now, the argument seems to be that President Trump was manipulated by others outside the Administration.

“That he was persuaded to ignore his closest advisors, and that he was incapable of telling right from wrong.

“This new strategy is to try to blame only John Eastman, or Sidney Powell, or Congressmen Scott Perry, or others, and not President Trump. In this version the President was quote ‘poorly served’ by them.

“The strategy is to blame people his advisors called ‘the crazies’ for what Donald Trump did.

“This of course is nonsense. President Trump is a 76-year-old man, he is not an impressionable child.

“Just like everyone else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions, and his own choices.

“As our investigation has shown, Donald Trump had access to more detailed and specific information showing that the election was not actually stolen than almost any other American.

“And he was told this over and over again. No rational or sane man in his position could disregard that information and reach the opposite conclusion.

“And Donald Trump cannot escape responsibility by being willfully blind.

“Nor can any argument of any kind excuse President Trump’s behavior during the violent attack on January 6th.

“As you watch our hearing today, I would urge you to keep your eye on two specific points.

“First, you will see evidence today that Trump’s legal team, led by Rudy Giuliani, knew that they lacked actual evidence of widespread fraud sufficient to prove that the election was actually stolen.

“They knew it. But they went ahead with January 6th anyway.

“And second, consider how millions of Americans were persuaded to believe what Donald Trump’s closest advisors in his Administration did not.

“These Americans did not have access to the truth, like Donald Trump did. They put their faith, and their trust, in Donald Trump. They wanted to believe in him; they wanted to fight for their country.

“And he deceived them.

“For millions of Americans, that may be painful to accept. But it is true.

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.”

***

Rep. Murphy: “Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

“We know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that then-President Donald Trump lost in a free and fair election.

“And yet, President Trump insisted that his loss was due to fraud in the election process, rather than to the democratic will of the voters.

“The President continued to make this claim despite being told, again and again, by the courts, by the Justice Department, by his campaign officials, and by some of his closest advisors, that the evidence did not support this assertion.

“This was the Big Lie—and millions of Americans were deceived by it.

“Too many of our fellow citizens still believe it to this day. It’s corrosive to our country and damaging to our democracy.

“As our Committee has shown in prior hearings, following the election, President Trump relentlessly pursued multiple, interlocking lines of effort, all with a single goal: to remain in power despite having lost.

“The lines of effort were aimed at his loyal Vice President, Mike Pence; at state election and elected officials; and at the U.S. Department of Justice.

“The President pressured the Vice President to obstruct the process to certify the election result.

“He demanded that state officials “find” him enough votes to overturn the election outcome in that state.

“And he pressed the Department of Justice to find widespread evidence of fraud.

“When Justice officials told the President that such evidence did not exist, the President urged them to simply declare that the election was corrupt.

“On December 14th, the Electoral College met to officially confirm that Joe Biden would be the next President.

“The evidence shows that, once this occurred, President Trump—and those who were willing to aid and abet him—turned their attention to the Joint Session of Congress scheduled for January 6th, at which the Vice President would preside.

“In their warped view, this ceremonial event was the next, and perhaps the last, inflection point that could be used to reverse the outcome of the election before Mr. Biden’s inauguration.

“As President Trump put it, the Vice President and enough Members of Congress simply needed to summon the ‘courage’ to act. To help them find that courage, the President called for backup.

“Early in the morning of December 19th, the President sent out a tweet, urging his followers to travel to Washington, DC for January 6th. ‘Be there, will be wild!’ the President wrote.

“As my colleague Mr. Raskin will describe in detail, this tweet served as a call to action, and in some cases as a call to arms, for many of President Trump’s most loyal supporters.

“It’s clear the President intended the assembled crowd on the January 6th to serve his goal.

“And as you have already seen, and as you will see again today, some of those who were coming had specific plans.

“The President’s goal was to stay in power for a second term despite losing the election. The Assembled crowd was one of the tools to achieve that goal.

“In today’s hearing, we will focus on events that took place in the final weeks leading up to January 6th, starting in mid-December.

“We will add color and context to evidence you’ve already heard about, and will also provide additional new evidence.

“For example, you’ll hear about meetings in which the President entertained extreme measures designed to help him stay in power, like the seizure of voting machines.

“We will show some of the coordination that occurred between the White House and Members of Congress as it relates to January 6th.

“And some of these Members of Congress would later seek pardons.

“We will also examine some of the planning for the January 6th protest, placing special emphasis on one rally-planner’s concerns about the potential violence.

And we will describe some of the President’s key actions on the evening of January 5th and the morning of January 6th, including how the President edited and ad-libbed his speech that morning at the Ellipse, directed the crowd to march to the Capitol, and spoke off-script in a way that further inflamed an already angry crowd.

“I yield to the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Raskin.”

***

Rep. Raskin: “Thank you, Mrs. Murphy.

“Four days after the Electors met across the country and made Joe Biden the President-Elect of the United States, Donald Trump was still trying to find a way to hang on to the presidency.

“On Friday, December 18th, his team of outside advisors paid him a surprise visit in the White House that would quickly become the stuff of legend.

“The meeting has been called, ‘unhinged,’ ‘not normal,’ and the ‘craziest meeting of the Trump presidency.’

“The outside lawyers, who had been involved in dozens of failed lawsuits, had lots of theories supporting the Big Lie, but no evidence to support it.

“As we will see, however, they brought to the White House a draft Executive Order that they had prepared for President Trump to further his ends.

“Specifically, they proposed the immediate mass seizure of state election machines by the United States military.

“The meeting ended after midnight with apparent rejection of that idea.

“In the wee hours of December 19th, dissatisfied with his options, Donald Trump decided to call for a large and “wild” crowd on Wednesday, January 6th, the day when Congress would meet to certify the Electoral votes.

“Never before in American history had a president called for a crowd to come contest the counting of Electoral Votes by Congress, or engaged in any effort designed to influence, delay, or obstruct the Joint Session of Congress in doing its work required by our Constitution and the Electoral Count Act.

“As we’ll see, Donald Trump’s 1:42 a.m. Tweet electrified and galvanized his supporters and, especially the dangerous extremists in the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and other racist and white nationalist groups spoiling for a fight against the government.

“Three rings of interwoven attack were now operating towards January 6th.

“On the inside ring, Trump continued trying to work to overturn the election by getting Mike Pence to abandon his Oath of Office his Vice President, and assert the unilateral power to reject electoral votes.

“This would have been a fundamental and unprecedented breach of the Constitution that would promise Trump multiple ways of staying in office.

“Meanwhile, in the middle ring, members of domestic violent extremist groups created an alliance, both online and in person, to coordinate a massive effort to storm, invade and occupy the Capitol.

“By placing a target on the Joint Session of Congress Trump had mobilized these groups around a common goal, emboldening them, strengthening their working relationships, and helping build their numbers.

“Finally, in the outer ring, on January 6th there assembled a large and angry crowd, the political force that Trump considered both the touchstone and the measure of his political power.

“Here were thousands of enraged Trump followers, thoroughly convinced by the Big Lie, who traveled from across the country to join Trump’s, ‘wild’ rally to ‘Stop the Steal.’

“With the proper incitement by political leaders, and the proper instigation from the extremists, many members of this crowd could be led to storm the Capitol, confront the Vice President, and Congress, and try to overturn the 2020 election result.

“All of these efforts would converge and explode on January 6th.

“Mr. Chairman, as you know better than any other Member of this Committee from the wrenching struggle for voting rights in your beloved Mississippi, the problem of politicians whipping up mob violence to destroy fair elections is the oldest domestic enemy of constitutional democracy in America.

“Abraham Lincoln knew it too.

“In 1837, a racist mob in Alton, Illinois broke into the offices of an abolitionist newspaper and killed its editor, Elijah Lovejoy.

“Lincoln wrote a speech in which he said that no ‘transatlantic military giant’ could ever crush us as a nation even with all the fortunes in the world.

“But if downfall ever comes to America, he said, we ourselves would be its ‘author and finisher.’

“If racist mobs are encouraged by politicians to rampage and terrorize, Lincoln said, they will violate the rights of other citizens and quickly destroy the bonds of social trust necessary for democracy to work.

“Mobs and demagogues will put us on a path to political tyranny Lincoln said.

“As we will see today, this very old problem has returned with new ferocity today as a president who lost an election deployed a mob which included dangerous extremists to attack the constitutional system of election and the peaceful transfer of power.

“And as we’ll see, the creation of the Internet and social media has given today’s tyrants tools of propaganda and disinformation that yesterday’s despots could only have dreamed of.

“I yield back to the gentlelady from Florida, Mrs. Murphy.”

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The DOJ Must Prosecute Trump: The January 6 committee has provided overwhelming evidence that the former president was not some bit player along for the ride, but the central driver of a nefarious plot.
by Donald Ayer, Stuart Gerson, and Dennis Aftergut
JULY 14, 2022, 7 AM ET

About the authors: Donald Ayer served as United States attorney and principal deputy solicitor general in the Reagan administration and as deputy attorney general under George H. W. Bush. Stuart M. Gerson served as assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the Department of Justice from 1989 to 1993 and as acting attorney General in 1993. He is a member of the firm at Epstein Becker Green. Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor and former Chief Assistant City Attorney in San Francisco, currently Of Counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy.

After seven hearings held by the January 6 committee thus far this summer, doubts as to who is responsible have been resolved. The evidence is now overwhelming that Donald Trump was the driving force behind a massive criminal conspiracy to interfere with the official January 6 congressional proceeding and to defraud the United States of a fair election outcome.

The evidence is clearer and more robust than we as former federal prosecutors—two of us as Department of Justice officials in Republican administrations—thought possible before the hearings began. Trump was not just a willing beneficiary of a complex plot in which others played most of the primary roles. While in office, he himself was the principal actor in nearly all of its phases, personally executing key parts of most of its elements and aware of or involved in its worst features, including the use of violence on Capitol Hill. Most remarkably, he did so over vehement objections raised at every turn, even by his sycophantic and loyal handpicked team. This was Trump’s project all along.

Everyone knew before the hearings began that we were dealing with perhaps the gravest imaginable offense against the nation short of secession—a serious nationwide effort pursued at multiple levels to overturn the unambiguous outcome of a national election. We all knew as well that efforts were and are unfolding nationwide to change laws and undermine electoral processes with the specific objective of succeeding at the same project in 2024 and after. But each hearing has sharpened our understanding that Donald Trump himself is the one who made it happen.

As former prosecutors, we recognize the legitimacy of concerns that electoral winners prosecuting their defeated opponents may look like something out of a banana republic rather than the United States of America; that doing so might be viewed as opening the door to prosecutorial retaliation by future presidential winners; and that, in the case of this former president, it might lead to civil unrest.

But given the record now before us, all of these considerations must give way to the urgency of achieving a public reckoning for Donald Trump. The damage to America’s future that would be inflicted by giving him a pass far outweighs the risks of prosecuting him.

The committee’s evidence to date establishes multiple significant points for prosecutors. (A comprehensive summary of the evidence—offense by offense—is available at Just Security’s “Criminal Evidence Tracker.”)

First, contrary to speculation that Trump may have genuinely believed he won the election, and thus in his own mind was seeking rough justice in trying to change the outcome, the committee has demonstrated repeatedly that he knew beyond all doubt that he had lost fair and square. Trump’s former attorney general Bill Barr told the president that claims of widespread voter fraud were “bullshit.” Numerous reinforcements of that message were delivered by many others, including Barr’s successor, former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen; former Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue; and multiple Trump-campaign officials.

Second, Trump’s involvement in carrying out the scheme was systematic, expansive, and extraordinarily personal. As if to illustrate how personal his intervention was (and is), Republican Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chair and the representative from Wyoming, dropped a bombshell at the end of Tuesday’s hearing: Sometime since the previous hearing on June 28, Trump himself had contacted a witness, something that his lawyers certainly could have told him could easily lead to charges of witness tampering. Cheney announced that the committee has notified the Justice Department of Trump’s latest misconduct.

The committee’s previous hearings showed that in the months after the 2020 election, Trump himself—not some aide or lawyer or other ally—tried to interfere with the state vote-counting processes. Among the most memorable incidents was his 67-minute January 2 call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger asking him to “find” 11,780 nonexistent votes, creating a Trump win. Trump himself also called to try to influence the state’s chief elections investigator, Frances Watson, and spoke with Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to urge him to call a special legislative session to appoint alternative electors.

There is also evidence that Trump spoke with Republican Pennsylvania House Speaker Bryan Cutler after he had declined repeated calls from Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, two Trump-campaign attorneys, to bring the legislature into session to decertify the state’s election results. And Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel and Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, also a Republican, both testified that Trump phoned them in December to ask for their help in implementing the infamous bogus-elector scheme. (John Eastman, another Trump lawyer, and Giuliani were also involved with those calls.)

Trump tried persistently to obtain the help of the Department of Justice in creating a false public impression that the election had been fraudulent. After he failed in mid-December to persuade Bill Barr to assert election fraud, Trump called Rosen, Barr’s successor, nearly every day in the same pursuit. And when this effort too failed, at a White House meeting on January 3, he undertook to replace Rosen with Jeffrey Clark, a second-tier DOJ official whom Trump had spoken with personally and found more compliant. This effort failed only when Donoghue and Rosen told Trump that the entire department’s leadership would resign if Clark were installed.

Crucial to the whole plot, of course, was the unlawful scheme to pressure Vice President Mike Pence into rejecting or delaying the electoral count. Multiple witnesses testified about being present to hear Trump’s “heated” call with Pence on the morning of January 6. One witness said that Trump called Pence a “wimp.” Ivanka Trump testified that she had never previously heard her father treat Pence that way, and she told another witness that Trump had used the “P-word” to denigrate the vice president’s manhood.

Ample evidence has also shown Trump well knew that Pence could not properly do as Trump urged. Mike Pence’s counsel, Greg Jacob, testified that Trump was present at a January 4 White House meeting where John Eastman admitted the unlawfulness of his and Trump’s plan to have the vice president not certify the electoral count two days later.

A third significant point for prosecutors is that the hearings have put into sharp focus Trump’s personal involvement and advance knowledge of the dangerous circumstances surrounding the January 6 insurrection. Cassidy Hutchinson, who was the principal aide to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, testified that she overheard Trump complain just before his January 6 speech on the Ellipse that supporters were not being allowed into the security area for his speech while armed, and thus were staying outside. She recalled Trump asking to have the magnetometers removed, saying that he did not care if attendees were armed, because “they’re not here to hurt me.”

Hutchinson also testified that Trump expected to go to the Capitol after his speech and was angry when the Secret Service denied his request to do so, testimony that others have corroborated. He wanted to be part of and lead an armed mob aimed, at minimum, at intimidating Congress and Mike Pence. That is significant evidence demonstrating criminal intent in connection with the crime of inciting an insurrection. Told that the mob had threatened to hang the vice president, Trump apparently responded that he “deserves” it.

Finally, the committee has persuasively established that Trump continued to facilitate the insurrection, even after he returned to the White House once the Secret Service refused to take him to Capitol Hill. Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley testified that during the violence, Pence called him to request the National Guard to restore order; Trump made no such call. In fact, Trump did nothing for more than three hours to quell the insurrectionists.

To the contrary, Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Matthews testified that by tweeting that Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done” to overturn the election, Trump was “pouring gasoline on the fire.”

All of that was enough to show Trump’s personal leadership of the Big Lie effort and his complicity in the violence of January 6. But in addition, at Tuesday’s hearing, the committee focused attention on Trump’s December 19 tweet inviting his supporters to a “big protest in D.C. on January 6th.” He added, “Be there, will be wild!” The committee showed evidence of communications among the militant Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and Three Percenters hours after the tweet demonstrating that it was the signal that prompted previously unaligned groups to cooperate in developing military-style operational tactics for the violent Capitol invasion.

In assessing the importance and priority to be given to a DOJ decision to prosecute, the Justice Department Manual lists three factors with special relevance here: “the nature and seriousness of the offense,” “the deterrent effect of the prosecution,” and “the person’s culpability in connection with the offense.”

On the first point, it is hard to imagine an offense that would more urgently call for criminal accountability by federal prosecution than a concerted and nearly successful effort to overthrow the result of a presidential election. It is an offense against the entire nation, by which Trump sought to reverse a 235-year-old constitutional tradition of presidential power transferring lawfully and peacefully.

The fact that a related state grand-jury investigation is proceeding in Fulton County, Georgia, relating to the part of the plot aimed at the Georgia vote count and certification process does not alter or lessen the urgency of this federal interest. Separate state and federal prosecutions can and should proceed when federal interests are as strong or stronger than the local interest.

Nor can there be any doubt about the crucial need to deter future attempts to overthrow the government. For the past 18 months, and presently, Trump himself and his supporters have been engaged in concerted efforts across the country to prepare for a similar, but better-planned, effort to overcome the minority status of Trump’s support and put him back in the White House. Moreover, if the efforts of the former president and his supporters garner a pass from the federal authorities, even in the face of such overwhelming evidence, Trump will not be the only one ready to play this game for another round.

As many have pointed out, deterrence requires that the quest for accountability succeed in achieving a conviction before a jury—here most likely made up of citizens of the District of Columbia. And the Department’s regulations make the odds of the prosecution’s success an important consideration in determining whether to go forward. In the case of a person who has made a career out of escaping the consequences of his misconduct, this is no small issue for the attorney general to take into account.

But as former prosecutors, we have faith that the evidence of personal culpability is so overwhelming that the case can be made to the satisfaction of such a jury. One of us—Gerson—has tried many difficult cases before D.C. juries with success. As a defendant, Donald Trump would open the door to all sorts of things that wouldn’t come into a normal trial, and the prosecutor could have a field day in argument about how this would-be tyrant tried to overthrow the government that has kept our nation free for two and a quarter centuries. Bottom line: Given what is at stake, even with the risk of a hung jury—leaving room for a second trial—there is no realistic alternative but to go forward.

Any argument that Donald Trump lacked provable criminal intent is contradicted by the facts elicited by the January 6 committee. And the tradition of not prosecuting a former president must yield to the manifest need to protect our constitutional form of government and to ensure that the violent effort to overthrow it is never repeated.

Donald Ayer served as United States attorney and principal deputy solicitor general in the Reagan administration and as deputy attorney general under George H. W. Bush.

Stuart M. Gerson served as assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the Department of Justice from 1989 to 1993 and as acting attorney General in 1993. He is a member of the firm at Epstein Becker Green.

Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor and former Chief Assistant City Attorney in San Francisco, currently Of Counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy.

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Trump’s Lawyers Think Mark Meadows Is Going Down: The Jan. 6 Committee is probing the former chief of staff’s finances, Rolling Stone has learned, adding to a long list of legal headaches
by Asawin Suebsaeng & Adam Rawnsley
Rolling Stone
July 13, 2022 10:29AM ET

As she opened the House Jan. 6 committee hearing Tuesday, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney ticked through a list of names of people Donald Trump’s legal team have attempted to pin the blame for the Capitol attack, naming the president’s lawyers, MAGA-friend lawmakers, and others.

Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, didn’t make the list — yet.

Trump’s inner circle increasingly views Meadows as a likely fall guy for the former president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Members of Trump’s legal team are actively planning certain strategies around Meadows’ downfall — including possible criminal charges. Trump has himself begun the process of distancing himself from some of his onetime senior aide’s alleged actions around Jan. 6.

Meadows’ already bleak legal prospects could get even worse. Rolling Stone has learned that the Jan. 6 committee has been quietly probing his financial dealings, and any new revelations would add to an already long list of unethical and potential illegal actions he’s accused of taking on behalf of Donald Trump.

“Everyone is strategizing around the likelihood that Mark is in a lot of trouble,” says a lawyer close to the former president. “Everyone who knows what they’re doing, anyway.”

This reporting is based on Rolling Stone’s conversations with eight sources familiar with the matter, each of whom is still working in Trump’s political orbit, on his legal defense, or in Republican circles in regular contact with the ex-president. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss sensitive matters. A spokesperson for Meadows declined to comment.

For Meadows, it doesn’t help his case that he’s loathed by any number of his fellow Trumpworld veterans, some of whom view him as a two-faced man prone to double-dealing and simply telling people what they want to hear. Some of Meadows’ ex-colleagues and staff in the Trump administration continue to hold grudges against him, partly because they see him as responsible for putting their lives and health in danger when he oversaw a period of rapid coronavirus spread in Trump’s White House towards the end of the presidency. And the former president himself is not long on loyalty, particularly when facing legal peril of his own. Trump’s team has already explored possible legal gameplans about what would happen if Meadows faced additional criminal charges stemming from the events surrounding Jan. 6, according to three people familiar with the situation. And those discussions have at times focused on how to insulate Trump, should any significant charges against foot soldiers like Meadows actually materialize.

Indeed, in recent weeks, Trump himself has casually dropped into conversations with some of his longtime associates that he didn’t always know what Meadows was doing during the months leading up to the riot or after his time in office, two sources with knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone. (When Trump finds himself backed into a corner or a moment of legal jeopardy, he will often claim — however flimsily — that he barely knew a top aide who was doing his bidding, or that he didn’t know what his own personal lawyers were doing for him.)

Furthermore, investigators on Capitol Hill have shown a willingness to investigate Meadows’ private dealings, beyond the scope of how he directly aided Trump during his anti-democratic and violent crusade to cling to power. According to two sources familiar with the matter, the Jan. 6 committee has asked some witnesses specific questions about Meadows’ financial arrangements with other Trump advisers who sought to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. The line of questioning made it clear to witnesses that the committee members were searching for signs of legally dubious payments. (The congressional Jan. 6 investigation is of course separate from the Biden Justice Department’s probe, though the House select committee does have the power to make criminal referrals to the feds.)

“Mark is gonna get pulverized…and it’s really sad,” predicts one of Trump’s current legal advisers. “Based on talking to [Meadows in the past, it felt like] he doesn’t actually believe any of this [election-theft] stuff, or at least not most of it. He was obviously just trying to perform for Trump, and now he’s maybe screwed himself completely.”

As the Jan. 6 hearings on Capitol Hill have unfolded — and particularly after former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony before the committee late last month — questions of Meadows’ own potential liability over his conduct before and after the riot have intensified, including among Trump’s former and current legal brass. “I do think criminal prosecutions are possible,” says Ty Cobb, a former top lawyer in the Trump White House. “Possible for Trump and Meadows certainly. And for the others, including lawyers, who engaged fraudulently in formal proceedings or investigations.”

In her appearance before the January 6 Committee, Hutchinson revealed that White House staff repeatedly warned her former boss that the rally goers on the mall who Trump encouraged to march on the Capitol were armed. Once informed of the threat, Meadows allegedly shrugged it off. Meadows himself, however, seemed to anticipate that the January 6 rally could turn ugly, according to Hutchinson’s testimony. “Things might get real, real bad on Jan. 6,” she quoted him warning in the days before the insurrection.

Meadows was back in the committee’s unflattering spotlight on Tuesday, as investigators highlighted how he assured members of Trump’s government that the then-president would concede, while privately encouraging him to keep fighting and aiding him in that scandalous fight.

Legal experts say Meadows’ foreknowledge of the armed mob on the mall, his own expectation that the rally could be “really, really bad,” combined with his inaction could mean potential criminal exposure for the former Trump aide. Rep. Liz Cheney said in early July that messages sent to Hutchinson telling her that she’s “loyal” and urging her to “do the right thing” in her deposition with the committee could prompt a criminal referral from the committee for potential witness tampering. Reporting by CNN and Politico identified the author of those messages as an intermediary for Meadows but the former White House chief of staff’s spokesman denied that he or anyone in his “camp” attempted to sway her testimony.

But Trumpland’s concerted efforts to distance the former president and other protected persons from Meadows comes amid a broader search for someone to take the fall. Cheney’s list of patsies on Tuesday included Trumpist lawyer and “coup memo” author John Eastman — whom, as Rolling Stone reporting in June, Trump’s team has been eyeing — and Sydney Powell, another Trump lawyer. Cheney also named Rep. Scott Perry, who allegedly was part of the push to get the Justice Department to overturn the election.

Though it remains to be seen who will ultimately be saddled with the bulk of the blame and legal baggage, it is clear this collective — long known for petty backbiting and infighting before, during, and after the Trump administration — has no intention of all going down together.

Ultimately, however, the committee hearings have made clear that Trump was repeatedly made aware that he was the legitimate loser of the 2020 election, and the efforts to overturn that election happened at his behest.

“The strategy is to blame people his advisers called ‘the crazies’ for what the president did,” Cheney said at the hearing Tuesday. “This, of course, is nonsense. President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child. Just like everyone else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices.”

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Investigate Ron Johnson’s Role in the January 6 Coup Attempt: The senator played a part in Trump’s scheme, and his actions need to be investigated by the January 6 Committee and the Department of Justice.
by John Nichols
JUNE 30, 2022

The House’s inquiry into the January 6 Capitol attack is shedding light on the role members of Congress played in Donald Trump’s scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Americans now know that several Republican members of Congress were so wrapped up in Trump’s coup attempt that they sought preemptive pardons to protect them from prosecution for what they obviously understood to be a criminal conspiracy.

But nothing that has come out so far has provided a clearer insight into the plotting than the revelations regarding the activities of US Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and his aides and associates on the day of January 6, 2021. As was revealed last week during an extraordinary session of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, a top aide to Johnson contacted a top aide to Vice President Mike Pence shortly before the certification of the Electoral College votes that would confirm the election of Democrat Joe Biden.

The Johnson aide indicated that the senator was interested in delivering to the vice president—who would preside over the proceedings—alternative lists of electors from the battleground states of Wisconsin and Michigan. The fake electors were pledged to Trump, who lost the popular vote by more than 7 million ballots nationwide and who lost Wisconsin, Michigan, and three other states that had voted for the Republican four years earlier.

As the hearings have made clear, Trump’s attempted coup was framed around a strategy that sought to have Pence reject the legitimately chosen electors for Biden and accept fake electors for Trump.

During the committee’s fourth session, we learned that around noon on January 6, Johnson aide Sean Riley sent a text message to Craig Hodgson, a top staffer for Pence, in which Riley said, “Johnson needs to hand something to VPOTUS please advise.”

“What is it?” asked Hodgson.

Riley replied, “Alternate slate of electors for MI and WI because archivist didn’t receive them.”

“Do not give that to him,” the Pence aide responded.

The revelation of that text exchange puts Johnson and his office in the thick of the conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election. And in the days that followed, the senator was clearly shaken.

Confronted by reporters on Capitol Hill about the news, Johnson claimed he was ignorant of most of the details. The senator told CNN’s Manu Raju he didn’t know who had delivered the lists of fake electors to his office. But he did admit, “I was aware that we got this package and that somebody wanted us to deliver it, so we reached out to Pence’s office.” He also acknowledged that, at an incredibly volatile moment, he and his aides failed to vet the package that was to be delivered to the vice president.

“We got handed an envelope that was supposed to go to the Vice President,” Johnson said. He claimed, “I wasn’t involved,” and said, “[There’s] no conspiracy here. This is a complete non-story, guys. Complete non-story.”

But, of course, it was a story. And Johnson was lying about it. Several days after the committee released the text messages, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noted, “After initially claiming to be ‘basically unaware’ of an effort by his staff to get fake presidential elector documents to Vice President Mike Pence, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson said Thursday he coordinated with a Wisconsin attorney to pass along such information.” Specifically, the paper reported, Johnson “acknowledged he coordinated with Dane County attorney Jim Troupis and his chief of staff by text message that morning to get to Pence a document Troupis described as regarding ‘Wisconsin electors.’”

Clearly, Ron Johnson involved himself in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. And the senator’s actions need to be investigated—by the January 6 committee and the Department of Justice.

One of the Democrats who hopes to challenge Johnson in the fall, Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson, has for months been arguing that the committee should investigate Johnson. In a January 6, 2022, letter to the committee’s leadership, Nelson urged the select committee to subpoena Johnson, seeking “records and testimony relating to his efforts to delay and disrupt the results of the election; his contacts with any groups or individuals with ties to domestic terrorism before, during and after the attack; his coordination with the Trump White House advancing the disinformation campaign that led to the attack on the U.S. Capitol; and his continued and persistent advocacy of election disinformation.”

“This subpoena,” Nelson wrote, “should include, but not be limited to, phone and text records; logs and schedules; email records; and any other records relevant to his work seeking to undermine the peaceful transfer of power.”

After last week’s revelations about the plotting around fake electors, Nelson now says the committee is

learning the full extent of how much Ron Johnson was the “go-to” guy for insurrection among the Trump plotters and how he himself was prepared to subvert our democracy by overturning the will of Wisconsin voters and throwing the election to Donald Trump. I had suspected he had a far bigger role than reported when I wrote my letter asking for him and his records to be subpoenaed by the Commission. But today’s revelations go beyond anything I could have imagined for how far Ron Johnson would go to overturn our Wisconsin election result.

Nelson is not the only Democratic Senate candidate who is calling on the January 6 Committee to investigate Johnson. On Tuesday, State Treasurer Sarah Godlewski wrote committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and ranking member Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and urged them to examine “urgent new questions about the senator’s dangerous and potentially illegal actions.” As part of that examination, she suggested, Johnson should be called before the committee and required to “answer questions under oath and penalty of perjury about his involvement in an attempted coup to install Donald Trump as president.”

Godlewski proposed a list of questions:

-- Why did Ron Johnson’s story change about who approached him and his office about the fake elector scheme?

-- What conversations took place between Sen. Johnson and the Republican activists who served as fake electors and their lawyers—including Trump attorney Jim Troupis, who helped organize the fake electors and who Johnson invited to testify at the hearing he called on election fraud?

-- What communications occurred between Sen. Johnson and his staff, and Pennsylvania Congressman Mike Kelly and his staff?

-- What conversations took place between Sen. Johnson and his chief of staff about reaching out to the Vice President?

-- What correspondence and communications exist between Sen. Johnson and his office, and the fake electors and their lawyers?

-- The text from Sen. Johnson’s chief of staff claims that the slates could not be delivered to the “archivist,” but that isn’t true—the archivist had received both sets of fake slates weeks before. Where did this false assertion come from?

Godlewski is right when she says the new evidence “strongly implicates Senator Johnson in that conspiracy against America.” And the senator’s response to that evidence raises fundamental questions about whether he is now engaged in an—admittedly bumbling—attempt to cover up his role in what has been properly identified as an attempted coup. The committee has to demand the truth from Johnson, and the Department of Justice has to investigate whether this senator should be prosecuted for seditious conspiracy.

John Nichols is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and the author of the new book Coronavirus Criminals and Pandemic Profiteers: Accountability for Those Who Caused the Crisis (Verso). He’s also the author of The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party: The Enduring Legacy of Henry Wallace's Anti-Fascist, Anti-Racist Politics, from Verso; Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse: A Field Guide to the Most Dangerous People in America, from Nation Books; and co-author, with Robert W. McChesney, of People Get Ready: The Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy.

[admin]

Lindsey Graham desperate to avoid testifying about Trump's Georgia election crimes
by Glenn Kirschner
Jul 16, 2022

A Georgia state court judge has ordered Lindsey Graham to testify before the grand jury because Graham is an important and necessary witness to the possible Georgia state election crimes of former president Donald Trump. In a remarkable show of cowardice, Graham ran to a federal court in South Carolina and filed a motion to quash the subpoena in a desperate attempt to keep from having to testify about Trump's crimes.

This video takes apart the legal claims in Graham's court court filing. This video also discusses the real reason Graham is scared to death of being placed under oath and examined about his repeated phone calls with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.



0:00
so senator lindsey graham
0:03
is trying to avoid
0:06
having to testify about the crimes of
0:09
donald trump
0:12
a sitting united states senator
0:14
is trying to use the legal process use
0:17
the courts
0:19
to continue to conceal
0:22
evidence
0:23
of donald trump's crimes
0:26
let that sink in
0:29
and then let's talk about it
0:32
because justice
0:34
matters
0:43
[Music]
0:49
hey all glenn kirschner here
0:52
so senator lindsey graham
0:55
graham has been ordered by a state court
0:58
judge in georgia
0:59
to appear before a grand jury in fulton
1:03
county georgia to testify
1:06
about the possible georgia state
1:08
election crimes
1:10
of donald trump
1:12
so what does lindsey graham do
1:14
does he step up and say i am happy to
1:17
help and provide truthful testimony
1:21
about everything i know no
1:23
lindsay runs to a federal court
1:26
in south carolina
1:29
and tries to avoid having to testify
1:33
he files what's called the motion to
1:35
quash to basically kill the subpoena so
1:39
he doesn't have to go into a grand jury
1:41
and testify about the democracy ending
1:44
crimes of his man
1:47
donald trump
1:49
lindsey graham would rather use
1:51
the legal process and the courts to try
1:54
to continue to conceal
1:57
the crimes of donald trump
2:00
we're going to have some fun with this
2:01
one friends
2:03
let's start by looking at the recent
2:05
reporting in the washington post
2:08
headline
2:09
graham
2:10
trying to quash subpoena denies election
2:14
meddling
2:16
that article begins
2:19
u.s senator lindsey graham
2:21
wasn't seeking to interfere in georgia's
2:24
2020 election when he called state
2:26
officials to ask them to re-examine
2:30
certain absentee ballots after president
2:33
donald trump's narrow loss to democrat
2:36
joe biden
2:37
his lawyers said in a federal court
2:41
filing
2:42
talk about protesting too much
2:47
the article continues
2:49
graham's lawyers made that argument as
2:51
part of efforts to fight a subpoena
2:54
compelling the south carolina republican
2:56
to testify before a special grand jury
2:59
in georgia that's investigating trump
3:02
and his allies actions
3:04
after his 2020 election defeat
3:08
in her subpoena petition
3:11
fulton county district attorney fawnee
3:13
willis
3:14
wrote that graham a longtime trump ally
3:18
made at least two telephone calls to
3:20
georgia secretary of state brad
3:23
raffensberger and members of his staff
3:26
in the weeks after trump's loss to biden
3:30
asking about re-examining certain
3:32
absentee ballots
3:34
to explore the possibility of a more
3:37
favorable outcome
3:39
for former president donald trump
3:44
and friends
3:46
here is the court filing
3:49
that i just read
3:50
filed by lindsey graham and his lawyers
3:54
and frankly you don't need to be
3:57
a lawyer to laugh at this to find the
3:59
comedic value in what we read
4:02
in lindsey graham's court filing it's a
4:05
court filing that's basically captioned
4:08
lindsey graham
4:09
versus the grand jury
4:12
and it's called an expedited motion to
4:15
quash
4:16
quash is a fancy word to kill the
4:19
subpoena and please don't make me
4:20
testify
4:23
and here is how lindsey graham's motion
4:26
opens
4:29
fulton county district attorney has
4:31
ensured south carolina senator lindsey o
4:34
graham that he's not a target or a
4:36
subject of the grand jury investigating
4:40
possible attempts to disrupt the lawful
4:43
administration of the 2020 elections in
4:45
the state of georgia
4:49
talk about
4:50
this sort of
4:51
breathless denial of any wrongdoing
4:55
that's not even what this motion is all
4:57
about
4:58
lindsay
5:00
but as much as you're protesting
5:03
it seems like you might have a little
5:05
consciousness of guilt going on
5:08
the first sentence says i didn't i
5:10
didn't do anything wrong
5:14
the motion continues
5:16
senator graham moves to quash
5:19
because
5:20
one
5:21
uh the constitution's speech or debate
5:23
clause protects him from this legal
5:26
process or to
5:28
sovereign immunity
5:30
prohibits enforcement of the state court
5:32
process on him as a federal officer or
5:35
three
5:36
there are no extraordinary circumstances
5:38
exist for compelling his testimony or or
5:41
for the dog ate his subpoena
5:45
i made up number four
5:47
but the breathlessness of this nonsense
5:52
is telling
5:55
and folks as far as the legal argument
5:57
itself here is what it all boils down to
6:00
and then we're going to talk about why
6:01
lindsay is going to lose this litigation
6:06
and is going to be forced to testify and
6:08
then we're going to talk about what he's
6:10
really afraid of
6:13
here's what it all boils down to
6:16
when the speech or debate clause is
6:19
raised
6:20
in defense to a subpoena
6:22
the only question to resolve
6:25
is whether the matters about which the
6:27
testimony are sought
6:30
fall within the sphere of legitimate
6:33
legislative
6:34
activity
6:36
so
6:37
that's the operative legal question the
6:39
whole legal ballgame is
6:42
whether
6:43
when lindsey graham
6:45
repeatedly called
6:47
secretary of state brad raffensberger
6:51
he had a legitimate legislative purpose
6:56
let's look at some of the data points in
6:58
trying to answer that question
7:00
first of all these calls that he placed
7:02
to raffensberger apparently were not
7:05
recorded
7:06
unlike
7:07
the call that donald trump placed to the
7:09
same republican secretary of state brad
7:12
raffensberger when we have all heard him
7:15
on virtually an endless loop now
7:19
say just find me eleven thousand seven
7:22
hundred and eighty votes
7:24
and corruptly declare me the winner i
7:26
don't care about anything else
7:29
and that ladies and gentlemen
7:31
on that audio recording in donald
7:34
trump's own voice that
7:36
is the georgia state crime of soliciting
7:39
election fraud for which donald trump
7:41
must be indicted and for which donald
7:44
trump i predict will be indicted
7:47
but as far as we know the calls that
7:50
lindsey graham placed to brad raffen's
7:53
burger were not recorded
7:56
however
7:58
brad raffensberger told us a little
8:01
something about the content of those
8:03
calls
8:05
here is what brad raffensberger told the
8:07
washington post about those calls that
8:10
lindsey graham was making to him
8:14
after their call raffensberger told the
8:16
washington post that graham had asked
8:19
him whether he had the power to reject
8:23
certain absentee ballots
8:25
a question
8:27
raffensberger interpreted
8:29
as graham's suggestion to toss out
8:33
legally cast votes
8:36
an allegation that graham calls
8:39
ridiculous
8:41
so friends let's think about that the
8:43
other party on that phone call those
8:46
multiple phone calls because lindsay
8:48
kept calling in
8:50
brad raffensberger said
8:53
yeah the things
8:54
senator graham was saying to me
8:57
made it sound like he was urging me to
8:59
toss out lawfully cast votes
9:04
i mean can't you just hear lindsey
9:06
graham on those phone calls
9:10
brad
9:11
brad come on you're a republican i'm a
9:13
republican
9:15
would it kill you to just you know
9:18
toss out
9:19
some of those votes
9:21
for joe biden
9:23
oh and brad brad
9:24
if anybody asks
9:27
i'm saying these things
9:29
for
9:30
a legitimate
9:32
legislative purpose
9:36
i don't know if lindsay would have
9:37
winked because it was an audio call
9:40
maybe not a zoom call but
9:43
you get the point
9:45
this was not
9:47
for a legitimate
9:48
legislative purpose
9:51
but you know i just wanted to check
9:53
and be sure
9:54
and i reached out to one of my good
9:56
friends kim whaley she's a
9:59
constitutional law professor and wicked
10:02
smart on this kind of stuff and i said
10:05
you know kim
10:06
any of this nonsense
10:08
in what lindsey graham just filed in
10:11
federal court in south carolina
10:14
trying you know
10:15
not to have to testify about donald
10:17
trump's crimes does any of that hold
10:19
water
10:21
and she said well
10:24
speech and debate which is what
10:26
lindsey graham is offering to try to
10:29
defeat
10:30
the
10:31
necessity to testify the speech and
10:33
debate clause
10:34
speech and debate does not protect him
10:38
from non-legislative activity like
10:42
trying to overthrow an election
10:47
yet lindsey graham
10:49
will
10:50
lose
10:51
in federal court he will be compelled to
10:55
testify before the fulton county special
10:58
grand jury investigating donald trump's
11:00
election crimes
11:02
and here is what i suggest is really
11:05
driving old lindsay's train
11:08
this is why he is breathless and
11:10
hysterical in his determination not to
11:14
have to testify
11:16
part of it is he wants to keep
11:17
concealing the crimes of donald trump i
11:19
have no doubt
11:21
but here is another important piece of
11:22
it
11:24
once we know
11:26
that brad raffensberger's interpretation
11:30
of what lindsey graham was telling him
11:32
to do was to toss out lawfully cast
11:36
votes
11:38
lindsay has a little thing called
11:40
the fifth amendment privilege against
11:43
self-incrimination
11:46
yeah
11:47
when the other party to the conversation
11:50
says he was trying to get me to commit
11:52
election fraud
11:55
lindsey graham doesn't want to have to
11:56
be placed under oath before a grand jury
11:58
and testify about that
12:02
because brad raffensberger is already on
12:05
record
12:06
saying what lindsay told him to do
12:10
so lindsey graham's lawyers
12:12
undoubtedly would advise him look if you
12:14
lose this litigation and you have to
12:16
testify and he will lose
12:20
you're going to need to invoke your
12:21
fifth amendment right against
12:22
self-incrimination you're going to need
12:24
to plead the fifth
12:27
and that
12:29
is not a good look
12:31
for a sitting united states senator you
12:34
know why
12:37
because justice
12:39
matters
12:42
stay tuned friends
12:44
we will update this one in real time
12:47
and hopefully um
12:49
lindsay's day of reckoning will come
12:54
friends please stay safe please stay
12:56
tuned and i look forward to talking with
12:58
you all again tomorrow
13:01
[Music]

[admin]

Former federal judge reveals most compelling evidence against Trump's election lies
by Erin Burnett
CNN
Jul 15, 2022

Conservative former Federal Judge Thomas Griffith, one of the authors of the report dismissing Trump's election lies, tells CNN's Erin Burnett what he found to be the most compelling evidence disproving Trump's claims.



************************

Conservative group finds ‘absolutely no evidence of widespread fraud’ in 2020 election
by Zach Schonfeld
07/14/22 3:46 PM ET

Eight prominent conservatives released a 72-page report Thursday refuting claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election in dozens of unsuccessful court cases brought forth by former President Trump and his allies.

The group — which includes former federal judges, Republican senators and Republican-appointed officials — said they reviewed all 64 court cases Trump and his allies initiated challenging the election outcome, saying they had reached an “unequivocal” conclusion that the claims were unsupported by evidence.

“We conclude that Donald Trump and his supporters had their day in court and failed to produce substantive evidence to make their case,” the group wrote.

The eight conservatives repeatedly condemned the election fraud claims, but said they have not switched their allegiance to the Democratic Party and have no “ill will” toward Trump nor his supporters.

The group consists of former Sen. John Danforth (R-Mo.); longtime Republican lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg; former federal Judge Thomas Griffith; David Hoppe, chief of staff to former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.); former federal judge J. Michael Luttig; former federal judge Michael McConnell; Theodore Olson, solicitor general under former President George W. Bush; and former Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.).

“We urge our fellow conservatives to cease obsessing over the results of the 2020 election, and to focus instead on presenting candidates and ideas that offer a positive vision for overcoming our current difficulties and bringing greater peace, prosperity and liberty to our nation,” the group wrote.

The Hill has reached out to a Trump spokesperson for comment.

The group’s report includes an analysis of the claims in each court case challenging the election results in six swing states President Biden narrowly won in 2020: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The cases included unfounded widespread claims of improperly counted ballots, rigged voting machines, mail-in ballot irregularities, ineligible voters who cast ballots and officials who blocked access for observers in polling places.

The claims have also been a focus of numerous investigations, including the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and a criminal investigation led by the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney.

Two members of the group, Ginsberg and Luttig, have testified publicly before the House panel. Luttig served as an informal adviser to then-Vice President Mike Pence in the lead-up to Jan. 6, telling Pence he could not constitutionally overturn the Electoral College votes.

The eight conservatives acknowledged the election administration was not “perfect” Thursday, noting a relatively small number of cases where authorities found irregularities.

“But there is absolutely no evidence of fraud in the 2020 presidential election on the magnitude necessary to shift the result in any state, let alone the nation as a whole,” they wrote.

“In fact, there was no fraud that changed the outcome in even a single precinct,” the report continued. “It is wrong, and bad for our country, for people to propagate baseless claims that President Biden’s election was not legitimate.”

Beyond the court cases, the conservatives’ report also discussed post-election reviews conducted outside of the legal system by the six swing states, all of which the group said also “failed to support” Trump’s allegations.

In one example, the group noted the Arizona’s state Senate’s review of Maricopa County election results, which was conducted by private firm Cyber Ninjas. The firm’s final analysis found 99 additional votes for Biden and 261 fewer votes for Trump, according to the report.

Cyber Ninjas later shut down after a judge ordered it to pay $50,000 per day in fines until it turned over public records to The Arizona Republic.

In another example, the conservatives referenced a full manual recount of Georgia ballots by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), which confirmed Biden’s victory in the state.

Trump had pressured Raffensperger in a now-infamous call to “find” enough votes to reverse Biden’s victory in the state.

“There is no principle of our republic more fundamental than the right of the people to elect our leaders and for their votes to be counted accurately,” the conservatives wrote. “Efforts to thwart the people’s choice are deeply undemocratic and unpatriotic.”

— Updated at 9:57 p.m.

[admin]

Arizona Republican censured by party over testimony on resisting Trump: Rusty Bowers, the Arizona house speaker, testified to the House January 6 committee in June
by Martin Pengelly @MartinPengelly
the guardian
Wed 20 Jul 2022 12.45 EDT

Rusty Bowers, the Arizona house speaker who testified to the January 6 committee about how he resisted Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in the sun belt state, has been formally censured by his own Republican party.

Kelli Ward, chair of the Arizona Republican party, said on Tuesday its “executive committee formally censured Rusty Bowers tonight – he is no longer a Republican in good standing and we call on Republicans to replace him at the ballot box in the August primary”.

Ward released a copy of the formal censure, which included “killing all meaningful election integrity bills” among Bowers’ alleged misdeeds and called on Arizona voters to “expel him permanently from office”.

Bowers testified to the House January 6 committee on 21 June. Discussing Trump’s claim that Bowers told him the Arizona election was “rigged”, Bowers said: “Anyone, anywhere, anytime I said the election was rigged, that would not be true.”

Bowers also recalled a conversation with Rudy Giuliani in which Trump’s personal lawyer, a key player in the attempt to prove mass electoral fraud, allegedly said: “We’ve got lots of theories but we just don’t have the evidence.”

Bowers also spoke about how his Christian faith motivated his defiance of Trump, and described threats made to his safety by Trump supporters while his daughter lay mortally ill.

Like Liz Cheney, one of two Republicans on the January 6 committee and its vice-chair, Bowers was given a Profile in Courage award for his resistance to Trump.

After the hearing at which he appeared, though, it emerged that Bowers had previously told the Associated Press: “If [Trump] is the nominee [in 2024], if he was up against [Joe] Biden, I’d vote for him again. Simply because what he did the first time, before Covid, was so good for the country. In my view it was great.”

This month, Bowers told the Deseret News he might have changed his mind.

“I don’t want the choice of having to look at [Trump] again,” he said. “And if it comes, I’ll be hard pressed. I don’t know what I’ll do.

“But I’m not inclined to support him. Because he doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the morals and the platform of my party …

“That guy is just – he’s his own party. It’s a party of intimidation and I don’t like it. So I’m not going to be boxed by, ‘Who am I gonna vote for?’ Because that’s between me and God. But I’m not happy with him.

“And I’m not happy with the thought that a robust primary can’t produce somebody better than Trump, for crying out loud.”

He also told Business Insider: “Much of what [Trump] has done has been tyrannical, especially of late. I think that there are elements of tyranny that anybody can practice on any given day, and I feel like I’ve seen a lot of it.”

**************************

Q&A: Rusty Bowers opens up on Trump, the Jan. 6 committee and his Latter-day Saint faith: The Arizona Speaker of the House recently testified before Congress about Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election
by Samuel Benson [email protected]
Jul 10, 2022, 8:58pm MDT

It’s been a busy two weeks for Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers. In late June, the Republican gave an emotional testimony before the Jan. 6 Select Committee about the 2020 election. He said former President Donald Trump, attorney Rudy Giuliani and Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., all pressured him to illegally overturn the election results in Arizona, where Joe Biden won.

“It is a tenet of my faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired … and so for me to do that because somebody just asked me to is foreign to my very being,” Bowers said. “I will not do it.”

In Arizona, the price of Bowers’ testimony has been steep. The state’s GOP chair endorsed Bowers’ challenger in the upcoming primary election. So, too, did Trump.

Bowers is a graduate of Brigham Young University and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His faith figured prominently in his congressional testimony.

When we spoke via phone on a recent weekday, Bowers was returning from the cemetery, where he’d just paid to have a headstone placed on his deceased daughter’s gravesite. In his testimony before the Jan. 6 Committee, Bowers became emotional when he described how his daughter Kacey, who was gravely ill at the time, became “upset at what was happening outside” as Trump supporters — at least one of whom was armed — protested in front of the Bowers’ home following the 2020 election. Kacey died only weeks later, in January 2021.

Deseret News writer Christian Sagers traveled to Phoenix to profile Bowers in March 2022. But after Bowers’ recent testimony, the Deseret News caught up with the lawmaker again to better understand the motives behind the man Sagers dubbed Arizona’s “last Republican maverick.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Deseret News: Thanks for making the time, Speaker Bowers. Many people were impressed with your testimony before the Jan. 6 Committee. A lot of Republicans are choosing not to cooperate. How did you make the decision to testify?

Rusty Bowers: I know that they all have their own reasons. When they said they would subpoena me, there were no threats. I was open with the investigators when they came and talked to me. I’m in no rush to get a contempt of Congress letter. But they said they really wanted me to come. So they sent a subpoena and we immediately complied. And it was all good. I didn’t look forward to it. But I felt there were some tender mercies concerning it.

DN: The committee, at least for folks on the right, has become somewhat politicized. It’s viewed as a partisan effort. Both Reps. Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney have received a lot of pushback for participating. What is your perspective of those two as lawmakers?

RB: I did not interact with Kinzinger, but I have interacted with Cheney as we went to the JFK Profiles (in Courage Awards). We met and chatted. So I already had some information as to her character, and it was really actually good to see her up there. It was calming for me. I didn’t feel she was a threatening force. And I wasn’t intimidated. But it’s not something I would want to do every other day.

DN: How do you respond to fellow Republicans who say that this committee is all just a sham effort to make Republicans look bad, or a Democratic-motivated effort?

RB: I don’t doubt that there are politics involved. There are politics involved with everybody in the political world, but whether or not the information that is shared is true or not, I think that’s a more important element. I just today had a meeting in Mesa — I call it close encounters of the worst kind — with supposedly Republican women, and some of them were just vicious, vicious people.

I like to ask people — well, I’ll ask you. Have you ever been in a gunfight?

DN: I have not.

RB: Okay. Have you ever been held against your will and somebody instructed somebody else to kill you?

DN: That has never happened to me. No, sir.

RB: Well, it’s happened to me. And I found myself, and I think a lot of America finds ourselves, with the MS-13 on the one side, and in our case, it’s the Sonoran cowboy cartel on the left side. And they intimidate their respective sides and box you in and threaten you and malign you. Those sides don’t represent the real strength of a party, but when they start to embed themselves so deeply in a party that you can’t do anything without incurring their wrath or their intimidation, then the veneer of civilization — which is already paper thin — just goes away. And I think a lot of America feels pinned between the extremes of both sides of the party. And the reaction is either give up and join or flee from the neighborhood and get away from it. And they’ll be an independent or “party not determined” or just bow out totally. And I just don’t want to be bullied to do that. But I feel it all the time. It continues to this day.

DN: What do you foresee is the future of the Republican Party?

RB: If I was antifa or some other hard left group, you might be asking me that, too, if they, after the next election, started raising their profile in an intimidating way. I don’t know that it makes the party go away, but it certainly whittles down the membership of the party until maybe they’ll be happy when they finally can fit in a phone booth. I don’t think it’s helpful. When the (Arizona) party chair comes out in a primary and tells everybody what a jerk I am and what a RINO I am, and to vote for my competitor in this election, and that’s the chair? We’re supposed to be neutral in the primaries, and then you jump behind your candidate in the general! But it’s just on its head here. Trump lies and claims that I told him that our election was bogus, and that he was really the president. I mean, the guy is trying to undermine a basic institution of our governability, that is our ability to vote and have trust in it. And it’s terrible. It’s terrible, and I think it affects the party. I’ve talked to many people who say, “We were Republicans, but we’re out of there now. We don’t want any part of it.” And it’s sad. It’s sad.

DN: I wanted to ask you about Mr. Trump. In your testimony, you said that his efforts to overturn the election were “illegal” and the effects were “horrendous.” You spoke about some of his supporters harassing you and your family, and just recently, Trump called you a RINO and endorsed your challenger. But you also recently said that if Trump is the GOP nominee in 2024, you will support him. Why is that?

RB: That’s a false choice. Why would we focus on that? And I’m not gonna let you box me. I am a conservative. I have a heart that wants to help people in need and feel that we should do that. I want a candidate who has character, who wants to help other people and still maintain their principles, and who is an upright individual. After Trump’s childlike behavior in the first debate (in 2020), many Arizona women wouldn’t vote for him, and he lost the election. That election wasn’t stolen. He lost it. And they went, they voted in Arizona, 60,000ish of those women, 18 to 40, with small children. They just said, “We just can’t do it.” So they voted down-ballot Republican, but they didn’t vote for him. Or some of them even voted for Biden.

I don’t want the choice of having to look at (Trump) again. And if it comes, I’ll be hard pressed. I don’t know what I’ll do. But I’m not inclined to support him. Because he doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the morals and the platform of my party. And I just see it more and more all the time. That guy is just — he’s his own party. It’s a party of intimidation and I don’t like it. So I’m not going to be boxed by, “Who am I gonna vote for?” Because that’s between me and God. But I’m not happy with him. And I’m not happy with the thought that a robust primary can’t produce somebody better than Trump, for crying out loud.

DN: OK. The Associated Press reported that you plan to vote for Trump. Was that a false report?

RB: It’s not a false report. I know Bob Christie. He’s my AP guy. And I did say it. But it’s just that you get used to, as a defensive mechanism, when people say, “Who are you gonna vote for,” you usually say, “Well, you know, whoever the nominee is for my party,” rather than saying, “I’m voting for X, Y or Z.” I don’t like to be boxed. And so as kind of a sad evasion, I just said that. And it gets me out of a discussion and into a hotter fire. So I’d say it wasn’t a false report. He did quote me, and I’ve talked to him since. I give grace to people, Mr. Benson. If somebody gets in a fight with me, I’ll give them grace. We’ll say we’re sorry to each other. We’ll try to be amicable. So that’s my nature, is to extend some grace and not be hard in judgment against everybody or anybody. But I feel like people are being pinned both ways. I will be supporting somebody in the primary other than Mr. Trump. But it will be a Republican.

DN: Thank you for clarifying that. I wanted to ask about your faith as well. You mentioned your faith as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints several times in your testimony. Did you intend to speak much about your belief in God and how that influenced your decisions? Or is that something that just came naturally?

RB: Well, I didn’t pre-plan anything except the written part that they specifically asked me to read. They asked the question, “Why do you feel so intensely defensive of the Constitution?” So that’s why, because I believe it is divinely inspired and the principles in it are divine. So that’s kind of where they came from. It’s how I believe, how I feel. I’ve believed that since I was a child.

“I will be supporting somebody in the primary other than Mr. Trump. But it will be a Republican.” — Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers.

DN: The Latter-day Saint prophet Joseph Smith supposedly said that at some future day, the Constitution of the United States would “hang by a thread,” and Latter-day Saints would be involved in helping to save it. Do you think you fulfilled prophecy to any degree?

RB: I have thought about that statement about the Constitution hundreds, if not more, times in my life, especially my political life, wondering what the condition of the country would be at and when that would have to happen, and hopefully that we could stand up and defend it, and didn’t know how. And to have that corollary or that parallel come out of the testimony is at least extremely humbling. I hope it’s not me, but if it is in any way me, I hope I don’t fail in achieving that goal.

DN: The last thing I wanted to ask you about is the impact this has had in Arizona. What has been the response from your constituents in Arizona, especially Republicans?

RB: I’ve had hundreds of letters and hundreds of emails from all over the world. It is funny. They compliment me, and then when they read the other part from the AP that I might vote for Trump again, we’ve had some pretty vile responses. You know, if they just give me a chance, instead of automatically putting me in the box. Just now, I paid for the placing of my daughter’s headstone at the cemetery. I don’t know the lady who waited on me, who took my credit card. I didn’t introduce myself. I just said Kasey’s name, and they looked it up and gave me the price. And as she handed me the receipt, she says, “I just wanted you to know that I really was impressed and agree with what you said.” And I think, what did I say? I just said I had a Mastercard. She said, “No, aren’t you the man that testified in Congress?” And I said yes. And she said that she was very thankful, that I showed a lot of bravery in saying that.

I’m grateful that in some way it affected them for good, and I hope if that’s all I ever did, that I would affect somebody for good. If they would want to be a little better or a little more careful of our government and our responsibilities, then that would be enough.