Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certification

Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Fri Sep 17, 2021 8:34 pm

Pence Had to Ask Dan Quayle If American Democracy Should Continue: The former vice president did the right thing, but it’s terrifying how close we came to autocracy
by Peter Wade
Rolling Stone
September 14, 2021 4:37PM ET

The fate of a healthy Democracy does not come down to a phone call with Dan Quayle. But, well, here we are.

According to an upcoming book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, in the final days of Trump’s presidency, then-Vice President Mike Pence was struggling to decide whether to honor the votes of the American people or to refuse to certify Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump and set off an unprecedented constitutional crisis.

The authors write that Pence sought advice from Dan Quayle, the only living Republican vice president who had been in the position of certifying an election where his ticket was the losing one. And it was Quayle — the same man who has been something of a national punchline for a decade — who talked Pence off the ledge and into doing the right thing.


Trump at the time was frantically trying to find a way to cling to power. He was spreading lies that rampant election fraud took place, pushing election officials in Georgia to undermine their state’s results and pushing the Justice Department to “just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the [Republican] congressmen.” And he was privately and publicly pressuring Pence.

During their conversation, Quayle said Pence had no wiggle room and told him to certify the election results. “Mike, you have no flexibility on this. None. Zero. Forget it. Put it away,” Quayle told him.

“I know, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell Trump,” Pence responded. “But he really thinks he can. And there are other guys in there saying I’ve got this power.”

Pence then brought up Trump’s allegations of voter fraud and the lawsuits filed by Trump supporters in Arizona attempting to decertify Biden as the winner in the state. “Well, there’s some stuff out in Arizona,” Pence said to Quayle, who immediately shot him down.

“Mike, I live in Arizona,” Quayle said. “There’s nothing out here.”


The book also reveals that Trump ally and former White House senior strategist Steve Bannon was fueling the president’s delusions. According to the authors, Bannon told Trump on December 30th that he and Pence needed to return to D.C. immediately to prepare to “bury Biden” during “the moment for reckoning” on January 6th.

“You’ve got to return to Washington and make a dramatic return today. You’ve got to call Pence off the fucking ski slopes and get him back here today. This is a crisis,” Bannon told the president. “People are going to go, ‘What the fuck is going on here?'” Bannon added. “We’re going to bury Biden on January 6th, fucking bury him.”

After Pence’s call to Quayle, he spoke with Trump in the Oval Office on January 5th — the day before the election certification and Capitol attack — and refused Trump’s orders to stop the certification process. Already, the president’s supporters were gathered in front of the White House. Referring to the protesters, Trump asked Pence: “If these people say you had the power, wouldn’t you want to?”

“I wouldn’t want any one person to have that authority,” Pence said.

To this, Trump replied, “But wouldn’t it be almost cool to have that power?”

“No,” Pence said, according to the book. “I’ve done everything I could and then some to find a way around this. It’s simply not possible.”

It was then, the authors say, Trump began to shout. “No, no, no! You don’t understand, Mike. You can do this. I don’t want to be your friend anymore if you don’t do this,” said Trump, who, by chronology, is an adult.

Trump’s anger continued into the next morning when he called Pence to again apply pressure. “If you don’t do it, I picked the wrong man four years ago,” Trump said, then added, angrily and defeatedly, “You’re going to wimp out.”


According to the book, Pence wasn’t the only person in the White House who was desperately trying to contain Trump as he became increasingly unhinged after the election. Gen. Mark A. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was also scrambling trying to prevent a nuclear war because he was worried the president would “go rogue” and launch nuclear weapons at China unprovoked.

On some level, Pence deserves credit for ultimately doing the right thing, even if it meant not getting to be Trump’s BFF4eva. On another level, it’s rough that he had to chew it over with anyone. Pence’s early career had an awful lot of talk about being a “constitutional conservative,” and we’re pretty sure there’s nothing in the Constitution that says the losing candidate gets to stay in office if he really, really wants to.

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

Mike Pence Sought Way To Hand Election To Trump Claims Book
Sep 14, 2021



Excerpt from "Peril"
by Bob Woodard and Robert Costa

In late December, Pence phoned former vice president Dan Quayle. At 74, the once boyish looking Quayle was living the private, golf-playing life he loved in Arizona. The two men shared a unique profile: Indiana Republicans who had become vice president.

Pence wanted advice. Despite the Electoral College casting its ballots for Biden on December 14, Trump was convinced that Pence could throw the election to Trump on January 6, when Congress certified the final count.

Pence explained to his fellow Indianan that Trump was pressuring him to intervene to ensure Biden would not secure the needed 270 votes during the certification and push the election to a vote in the House of Representatives.

If thrown to the House, there was a twist. And Trump was fixated on the twist, Pence said. It was the provision that could keep Trump in power. While the Democrats held the current House majority, the 12th Amendment of the Constitution stated the voting on a contested election would not be done by a simple majority vote.

Instead, the amendment states that the election vote would be counted in blocs of state delegations, with one vote per state ...

Republicans now controlled more delegations in the House of Representatives, meaning Trump would likely win if the chamber ended up deciding the victor. Quayle thought Trump's suggestion was preposterous and dangerous ....

Trump's effort to cajole Pence was a dark, Rube Goldberg-like fantasy, Quayle believed, and could precipitate a constitutional crisis. "Mike, you have no flexibility on this. None. Zero. Forget it. Put it away," Quayle said.

"I know, that's what I've been trying to tell Trump," Pence said. "But he really thinks he can. And there are other guys in there saying I've got this power. I've --"

Quayle interrupted him.

"You don't, just stop it," he said.

Pence pressed again. It was easy for Quayle to make a blanket statement from political winter. He wanted to know, veep to veep, whether there was even a glimmer of light, legally and constitutionally, to perhaps put a pause on the certification if there were ongoing court cases and legal challenges.

"Forget it," Quayle repeated.

Pence finally agreed acting to overturn the election would be antithetical to his traditional view of conservatism. One man could not effectively throw the election to the House of Representatives.

Quayle told Pence to let it go.

"Mike, don't even talk about it," he said.

Pence paused.

"You don't know the position I'm in," he said.
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Wed Sep 22, 2021 11:45 pm

More Evidence of Trump Crimes Revealed: John Eastman 6-Point-Plan to Overturn Election Results
by Glenn Kirschner
Sep 21, 2021

Multiple stories broke over the past 24 hours providing yet more evidence of Trump's criminal attempt to overturn the election results.

First, CNN reported that a Trump lawyer named John Eastman drafted a 6-point-plan to unconstitutionally overture the election results. Trump pressed Vice President Mike Pence to "listen to John" and refuse to certify Joe Biden the winner.

Second, the New York Times reported that an internal Trump campaign memo had concluded that the election fraud claims later made in fraudulent court cases filed by Sydney Powell and Rudy Giuliani were "untrue." Yet, even knowing the claims were baseless, the Trump lawyers went on the push the election lies.

Here is what the Department of Justice should do with this ADDITIONAL evidence of the election crimes committed by Trump and his co-conspirators.



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

Six-point-plan to unconstitutionally overture the election results ("Eastman Memo"
by John Eastman

January 6 scenario

7 states have transmitted dual slates of electors to the President of the Senate.

The 12th Amendment merely provides that “the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted.” There is very solid legal authority, and historical precedent, for the view that the President of the Senate does the counting, including the resolution of disputed electoral votes (as Adams and Jefferson did while Vice President, regarding their own election as President), and all the Members of Congress can do is watch.

The Electoral Count Act, which is likely unconstitutional, provides:

If more than one return or paper purporting to be a return from a State shall have been received by the President of the Senate, those votes, and those only, shall be counted which shall have been regularly given by the electors who are shown by the determination mentioned in section 5 of this title to have been appointed, if the determination in said section provided for shall have been made, or by such successors or substitutes, in case of a vacancy in the board of electors so ascertained, as have been appointed to fill such vacancy in the mode provided by the laws of the State; but in case there shall arise the question which of two or more of such State authorities determining what electors have been appointed, as mentioned in section 5 of this title, is the lawful tribunal of such State, the votes regularly given of those electors, and those only, of such State shall be counted whose title as electors the two Houses, acting separately, shall concurrently decide is supported by the decision of such State so authorized by its law; and in such case of more than one return or paper purporting to be a return from a State, if there shall have been no such determination of the question in the State aforesaid, then those votes, and those only, shall be counted which the two Houses shall concurrently decide were cast by lawful electors appointed in accordance with the laws of the State, unless the two Houses, acting separately, shall concurrently decide such votes not to be the lawful votes of the legally appointed electors of such State. But if the two Houses shall disagree in respect of the counting of such votes, then, and in that case, the votes of the electors whose appointment shall have been certified by the executive of the State, under the seal thereof, shall be counted.


This is the piece that we believe is unconstitutional. It allows the two houses, “acting separately,” to decide the question, whereas the 12th Amendment provides only for a joint session. And if there is disagreement, under the Act the slate certified by the “executive” of the state is to be counted, regardless of the evidence that exists regarding the election, and regardless of whether there was ever fair review of what happened in the election, by judges and/or state legislatures.

So here’s the scenario we propose:

1. VP Pence, presiding over the joint session (or Senate Pro Tempore Grassley, if Pence recuses himself), begins to open and count the ballots, starting with Alabama (without conceding that the procedure, specified by the Electoral Count Act, of going through the States alphabetically is required).

2. When he gets to Arizona, he announces that he has multiple slates of electors, and so is going to defer decision on that until finishing the other States. This would be the first break with the procedure set out in the Act.

3. At the end, he announces that because of the ongoing disputes in the 7 States, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those States. That means the total number of “electors appointed” – the language of the 12th Amendment -- is 454. This reading of the 12th Amendment has also been advanced by Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe (here). A “majority of the electors appointed” would therefore be 228. There are at this point 232 votes for Trump, 222 votes for Biden. Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected.

4. Howls, of course, from the Democrats, who now claim, contrary to Tribe’s prior position, that 270 is required. So Pence says, fine. Pursuant to the 12th Amendment, no candidate has achieved the necessary majority. That sends the matter to the House, where the “the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote . . . .” Republicans currently control 26 of the state delegations, the bare majority needed to win that vote. President Trump is re-elected there as well.

5. One last piece. Assuming the Electoral Count Act process is followed and, upon getting the objections to the Arizona slates, the two houses break into their separate chambers, we should not allow the Electoral Count Act constraint on debate to control. That would mean that a prior legislature was determining the rules of the present one — a constitutional no-no (as Tribe has forcefully argued). So someone – Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, etc. – should demand normal rules (which includes the filibuster). That creates a stalemate that would give the state legislatures more time to weigh in to formally support the alternate slate of electors, if they had not already done so.

6. The main thing here is that Pence should do this without asking for permission – either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court. Let the other side challenge his actions in court, where Tribe (who in 2001 conceded the President of the Senate might be in charge of counting the votes) and others who would press a lawsuit would have their past position -- that these are non-justiciable political questions – thrown back at them, to get the lawsuit dismissed. The fact is that the Constitution assigns this power to the Vice President as the ultimate arbiter. We should take all of our actions with that in mind.

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

Memo shows Trump lawyer's six-step plan for Pence to overturn the election
by Jamie Gangel and Jeremy Herb
CNN
Updated 5:39 PM ET, Tue September 21, 2021

Washington (CNN) A conservative lawyer working with then-President Donald Trump's legal team tried to convince then-Vice President Mike Pence that he could overturn the election results on January 6 when Congress counted the Electoral College votes by throwing out electors from seven states, according to the new book "Peril" from Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.

The scheme put forward by controversial lawyer John Eastman was outlined in a two-page memo obtained by the authors for "Peril," and which was subsequently obtained by CNN. The memo, which has not previously been made public, provides new detail showing how Trump and his team tried to persuade Pence to subvert the Constitution and throw out the election results on January 6.

The effort to sway Pence was just one of several behind-the-scenes attempts that Trump's team undertook ahead of January 6 in a desperate bid to overturn the 2020 election loss, after dozens of lawsuits were thrown out of the courts. "Peril," which will be released Tuesday, details how Eastman's memo was sent to GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and how Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani tried to convince fellow Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina of election fraud. But both Lee and Graham scoffed at the arguments and found they had no merit.

"You might as well make your case to Queen Elizabeth II. Congress can't do this. You're wasting your time," Lee said to Trump's lawyers trying to overturn the results in Georgia, according to the book.

The Eastman memo laid out a six-step plan for Pence to overturn the election for Trump, which included throwing out the results in seven states because they allegedly had competing electors. In fact, no state had actually put forward an alternate slate of electors -- there were merely Trump allies claiming without any authority to be electors.

Under Eastman's scheme, Pence would have declared Trump the winner with more Electoral College votes after the seven states were thrown out, at 232 votes to 222. Anticipating "howls" from Democrats protesting the overturning of the election, the memo proposes, Pence would instead say that no candidate had reached 270 votes in the Electoral College. That would throw the election to the House of Representatives, where each state would get one vote. Since Republicans controlled 26 state delegations, a majority could vote for Trump to win the election.

The plan was first proposed to Pence when Eastman was with Trump in the Oval Office on January 4, during one of Trump's attempts to convince Pence that he had the authority to stop the certification of the election.

"You really need to listen to John. He's a respected constitutional scholar. Hear him out," Trump said to Pence at that meeting, Woodward and Costa write in "Peril."

In the memo, Eastman went so far as to suggest Pence should take action without warning.

"The main thing here is that Pence should do this without asking for permission -- either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court," Eastman wrote. "The fact is that the Constitution assigns this power to the Vice President as the ultimate arbiter. We should take all of our actions with that in mind."

In the end, Pence didn't go along with Eastman's scheme, concluding that the Constitution did not give him any power beyond counting the Electoral College votes. He did his own consultations before January 6, according to the book, reaching out to former Vice President Dan Quayle and the Senate parliamentarian, who were both clear in telling him he had no authority beyond counting the votes.

When Pence refused to intervene, Trump turned on his vice president, attacking him on Twitter even as the insurrection at the Capitol was unfolding on January 6.

The memo could be of interest to the House select committee now investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol, which recently requested documents from the National Archives that specifically included communications involving Eastman.

"It shows intent, a sophisticated plan, a blueprint to illegally and unconstitutionally overturn and steal the election" by Trump and his team based on false and misleading information and legal arguments, a source familiar with the investigation told CNN.

'Lee's head was spinning'

Eastman spoke at the January 6 rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol. He retired from his position as a professor at Chapman University a week after January 6, which occurred amid protests from faculty at the Southern California university over his participation in Trump's efforts to overturn the election.

Eastman told the Washington Post that his memo merely "explored all options that had been proposed." In an interview on Tuesday, Eastman told CNN that the two-page memo had been only a preliminary draft. He provided CNN with a longer six-page memo laying out numerous other scenarios for Pence to follow on January 6. Eastman told CNN that during the January 4 meeting he'd had in the Oval Office with Trump and Pence, he had told Pence he should only delay certifying votes in the seven states, not try to throw the election to Trump.

The reality, however, is that a delay was simply another avenue to stop Biden from taking office.

Eastman said he had told Pence it was an open question whether he had the authority to unilaterally set aside slates of electors, but that it would be "foolish" to exercise that power because state legislatures had not certified the alternate slates put forward by Trump allies.

As part of the efforts of Trump's team to convince Congress not to certify the election, the initial two-page Eastman memo was given to Lee, one of the Senate's top Republican constitutional authorities. At the same time, Giuliani sent multiple memos to Graham trying to convince him that the claims of election fraud coming from Trump's team were legitimate.

The memos show how even some of Trump's closest allies balked at the measures Trump's team was taking behind the scenes to try to overturn his loss to Biden. But while Lee and Graham heard out the cases from Trump's lawyers, they soundly rejected their claims, Woodward and Costa write.

Lee was shocked by the claims the memo was making, since no state had considered, let alone put forward, any alternate slates of electors. "Lee's head was spinning," the authors write. "No such procedure existed in the Constitution, any law or past practice. Eastman had apparently drawn it out of thin air."

Lee also dismissed the Trump team's arguments that it had a case to overturn the election results in Georgia, saying they had to be made in court.

'Third grade'

Woodward and Costa also obtained several memos Giuliani sent to Graham to try to convince him of election fraud in Georgia and other states. CNN has also obtained those memos.

The authors write that on January 2, Giuliani briefed Graham at the White House. Giuliani presented a statistical analysis arguing Biden's win was impossible, but Graham dismissed Giuliani's evidence as too abstract. "Give me some names. You need to put it in writing. You need to show me the evidence," Graham said, according to the book.

Giuliani then sent Graham several memos and affidavits claiming fraud. But when Graham's chief Judiciary Committee counsel Lee Holmes went over the claims, he found they were sloppy, overbearing and "added up to nothing," Woodward and Costa write. "Holmes reported to Graham that the data in the memos were a concoction, with a bullying tone and eighth grade writing."

"Third grade," Graham responded, according to the book. "I can get an affidavit tomorrow saying the world is flat."

Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump has continued to push baseless claims that the election was stolen from him. Last week, he sent a new letter to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger claiming he should start the process of decertifying the 2020 election.

Criminal investigators in the state have been investigating Trump's efforts to overturn Georgia's 2020 election results, including an infamous call Trump made to Raffensperger in which Trump urged the secretary of state to "find" more than 11,000 votes that Trump needed to win.

Graham also made a phone call to Raffensperger, which is part of the Fulton County district attorney's probe. Graham has said his call was to understand the process of verifying signatures on mail-in ballots.

This story has been updated with a full version of the memo from Eastman.
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Wed Sep 22, 2021 11:55 pm

Decertify the ‘Illegitimate’ Election, Says Man Under Investigation for Election Interference: Donald Trump, who lies a lot, tells Georgia officials that “the truth must be allowed to come out”
by Peter Wade
Rolling Stone
September 17, 2021 4:40PM ET

Donald Trump just can’t quit trying to interfere in the 2020 election.

As a criminal investigation moves forward in Georgia into his attempts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results, the former president sent a letter Friday to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger that calls the election “illegitimate” and asks him to “start the process of decertifying the election… and announce the true winner.”

In the letter, Trump claims — as usual without evidence — that some 43,000 absentee ballot votes from DeKalb County “violated chain of custody rules, making them invalid.” The Washington Post’s Phillip Bump points out, this bogus chain of custody story originated on a pro-Trump, misinformation-spreading website called The Georgia Star News, which Bump says is “part of a group of sites established to mimic local news coverage but which largely promotes stories friendly to the right.”

Liz Harrington
@realLizUSA

NEW!

President Donald J. Trump's letter to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger

SAVE
AMERICA
PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP

September 17, 2021

Letter to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger

DONALD J. TRUMP

September 17, 2021

The Honorable Bradford Raffensperger
Secretary of State
Atlanta, Georgia

Dear Secretary Raffensperger,

Large scale Voter Fraud continues to be reported in Georgia. Enclosed is a report of 43,000 Absentee Ballot Votes Counted in DeKalb County that violated the Chain of Custody rules, making them invalid. I would respectfully request that your department check this and, if true, along with many other claims of voter fraud and voter irregularities, start the process of decertifying the Election, or whatever the correct legal remedy is, and announce the true winner. As stated to you previously, the number of false and/or irregular votes is far greater than needed to change the Georgia election result. People do not understand why you and Governor Brian Kemp adamantly refuse to acknowledge the now proven facts, and fight so hard that the election truth not be told. You and Governor Kemp are doing a tremendous disservice to the Great State of Georgia, and to our Nation -- which is systematically being destroyed by an illegitimate president and his administration. The truth must be allowed to come out.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Donald J. Trump


8:22 AM - Sep 17, 2021


Trump continued his missive, writing, “People do not understand why you and Governor Brian Kemp adamantly refuse to acknowledge the now proven facts, and fight so hard that the election truth not be told.”

Trump’s letter comes at the same time Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s investigation into his election interference is progressing. According to a Daily Beast report, Willis and her investigators have interviewed at least four staff members from the Georgia Secretary of State’s office and obtained documents. But the investigation is still in its beginning stages, and key witnesses, including Kemp and Raffensperger, have not yet been interviewed.

“What I can tell you is that the Trump investigation is ongoing,” Willis told reporters this week, according to CNN. “As a district attorney, I do not have the right to look the other way on any crime that may have happened in my jurisdiction. We have a team of lawyers that is dedicated to that, but my number one priority is to make sure that we keep violent offenders off the street.”

The Fulton County DA is not just looking into the former president’s actions. She is investigating Trump allies Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), who placed a call to Raffensperger asking him to use his power to throw out mail-in ballots, and Rudy Giuliani, who like the president, is also under investigation for lying a lot about the election.
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Mon Sep 27, 2021 10:28 pm

Legal Luminary Reveals He Advised Pence To Ignore ‘How To Coup’ Memo: This memo was trash, and a former federal judge laid it all out for Pence.
by Joe Patrice
Above The Law
September 22, 2021 at 1:13 PM

John Eastman’s six-page primer on word-twisting the Electoral Count Act to suggest that the law vests the Vice President with the power to unilaterally decide who wins presidential elections is getting a lot of attention this week — despite Trump’s efforts to change the topic. That’s understandable considering a prominent Federalist Society figure, Justice Thomas clerk, and law school dean composed a document laying out a hypothetical legal path to subverting the democratic process. Without the benefit of a Florida recount process this time!

But last night, we learned that there was a committed textualist out there who didn’t buy this reading and dutifully advised Mike Pence that John Eastman was wrong — and it was Eastman’s former boss.

Judge J. Michael Luttig doesn’t Tweet very often, but last night he took to the app to lay out his conversations with t

I was honored to advise Vice President Pence that he had no choice on January 6, 2021, but to accept and count the Electoral College votes as they had been cast and properly certified by the states.

— @judgeluttig (@judgeluttig) September 22, 2021

@judgeluttig
I believe(d) that Professor Eastman was incorrect at every turn of the analysis in his January 2 memorandum, beginning with his claim that there were legitimate, competing slates of electors presented from seven states; continuing to his conclusion that the VP could unilaterally decide not to count the votes from the seven states from which competing slates were allegedly presented; to his determination that the VP himself could decide that the Electoral Count Act of 1887 is unconstitutional and accordingly submit the 2020 Presidential Election for decision only to the House of Representatives, instead of to both Houses of Congress, as provided in the Electoral Count Act; to his recommendation that the VP not consult with the Joint Session of Congress as to whether the election should be submitted to both Houses or only to one; to his urging that the VP not seek decision from the federal courts, including from the Supreme Court; and finally, to his belief that the federal courts and the Supreme Court would decline to decide every one of these fundamental constitutional questions on the grounds that they were non-justiciable political questions; I believ(d) the Supreme Court would have decided each of these issues had they been presented to the Court, which they undoubtedly would have been had the VP proceeded as outlined in the January 2 memorandum.

11:50 PM Sep 21, 2021 Twitter Web App


It’s a thorough repudiation of a former clerk’s work, which is no doubt hard for a judge to put out there. But “country over clerkships,” as they say. Well, they don’t because it’s never really come up before, but they can say it now. Thankfully, Judge Luttig had retired from the bench, affording Pence the opportunity to get insights from Eastman’s mentor on the quality of the memo he’d been handed.

But it also raises some fairly frightening questions about just how close the country came to a full-on crisis. We already knew that Pence, who is A LAWYER, turned to former Vice President Dan Quayle — also a lawyer — to discuss the memo. Quayle reportedly told Pence that the theory was nonsense and Pence continued to push back until Quayle had to say, “I do know the position you’re in. I also know what the law is.”

The revelation that Pence — again, a lawyer — consulted with another lawyer who told him the memo was garbage and then still felt the need to talk to a former federal judge about it underscores just how worryingly unsettled Pence’s resolve was. He could tell the strategy was dubious enough to seek out advice, yet seemed willing to keep searching to find anyone willing to give him the answer Trump wanted to hear.

Mercifully, the lawyers he relied upon who actually read these statutes were never going to give him that answer.

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Thu Oct 21, 2021 10:46 am

Claire McCaskill: Contempt Vote Will Test Whether Congress Has Any Power
by Nicolle Wallace
MSNBC
Oct 20, 2021

Maybe I learned something I didn’t know about one of the privileges of being White: I could literally smash up the United States Capitol! What else? The White House? What else could I do, and nothing would happen to me? Man! I mean, that’s a high bar. Nothing. No terrorism charges. Trespassing, illegal entry, stealing Nancy Pelosi’s mail, stealing Jim Clkyburn’s tablet, his Ipad is gone. That’s a felony.

And then the footage later that night of some of these same protesters – they had a shot of them back at the Willard Hotel smoking cigars and having a good laugh. First of all, if you’re not familiar with the Willard Hotel, it’s maybe the most expensive hotel to stay in in D.C. It’s right across from the White House. Right across from Lafayette Park. It’s right there on the corner on 16th street where it dead ends at Lafayette Park, and there’s the White House right there. And they are sitting there in the – I don’t know if they have a cigar bar or a lounge, or whatever, and they’re smoking cigars, and having a great laugh! Wow!

Image
Willard Intercontinental Hotel

Image
Willard Intercontinental Hotel

-- The Terrorist Attack Is NOT Over, by Michael Moore, Rumble podcast


Former Senator Claire McCaskill and national political reporter for the Washington Post Robert Costa discuss the January 6th committee sending the vote to hold Steve Bannon in contempt to the full House....

[Nicolle Wallace] Is Steve Scaline for or against congressional subpoenas holding water, as a reporter asked him there?

[Robert Costa, The Washington Post, National Political Reporter] Let's step back for a second. With all these partisan shots happening, coming across the bow, from the Republicans and others, what really matters with this Bannon subpoena is not only the power of Congress potentially being diminished if Bannon doesn't end up testifying under oath, but we're not going to have the full story. The Willard Hotel is mentioned by Representative Cheney in her remarks yesterday. January 5th is the day that Trump and his allies push democracy to the brink, coordinating from, just steps from the White House, in a hotel suite, Rudy Giuliani, Jason Miller, Steve Bannon, talking by phone with the President who is pressuring Pence over at the White House, talking to lawmakers, coordinating the message with Conservative allies, this was the day, the eve of the insurrection, to try to make it all happen, to put it in motion. And Bannon, in our reporting, is in that room. And what this Committee clearly wants to figure out under oath is what was being said specifically by Trump to this war room at the Willard, what was being done when they issued a statement in Pence's name late at night saying Pence agreed with the move to push the election to the House, even though Pence did not. There are so many looming questions about why what happens on the 6th gets put into motion. And if you want to answer that, you have to really know what exactly was said by the people at the Willard Hotel and to the President of the United States sitting across the street.

[Nicolle Wallace] It's one of the more vivid scenes that you depict in a book full of vivid scenes, Robert Costa. So let me just follow up and add another name to the mix. I think you for the first time reported this that Bannon talks to Trump about killing the Biden presidency in its crib. You also, I believe, are the first to report on the Eastman memo, which is what was written on paper, the white paper if you will for the coup plot. Talk a little bit more about the premeditated nature, and how January 5 makes clear that January 6 was exactly what they'd planned?

[Robert Costa, The Washington Post, National Political Reporter] When does Bannon talk to Trump? December 30, 2020. That's after they have failed in the courts, and the Electoral College has already said Biden's the winner. The only thing left is certification on the 6th. So disrupting certification on the 6th becomes key. But you can't just disrupt it with some kind of conflict at the Capitol. You need a legal cover, a legal rationale. And so John Eastman enters the scene as someone who says there's a legal rationale for Pence to push it to the House. And he comes up with this idea of alternate electors. And so Bannon, Trump, so many others within the White House say, "That's the play. Let's use this memo as the legal rationale," and give it to Pence and say, "Mike, this is all you have to do. We're giving you a Conservative lawyer's argument for tilting it toward the House." And they needed to create momentum. That's why it's given to Senator Mike Lee of Utah. It's given to others, because they want Conservative buy-in. And it all culminates on the night of the 5th. Total buy-in is necessary so events unfold on the 6th to delay the certification, and eventually push it to the House.


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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Wed Oct 27, 2021 9:47 pm

Senate Report Reveals More Trump Election Crimes; What Congress Should Do About Witness in Contempt
by Glenn Kirschner
Oct 7, 2021



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

Following 8 Month Investigation, Senate Judiciary Committee Releases Report on Donald Trump's Scheme to Pressure DOJ & Overturn the 2020 Election
Durbin: America was only a half-step away from a full-blown constitutional crisis
by Senate Judiciary Committee
October 07, 2021

WASHINGTON – Following an eight-month investigation, the Senate Judiciary Committee today released new testimony and a staff report, “Subverting Justice: How the Former President and his Allies Pressured DOJ to Overturn the 2020 Election.” The report and testimony reveal that we were only a half-step away from a full blown constitutional crisis as President Donald Trump and his loyalists threatened a wholesale takeover of the Department of Justice (DOJ). They also reveal how former Acting Civil Division Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark became Trump’s Big Lie Lawyer, pressuring his colleagues in DOJ to force an overturn of the 2020 election.

The report sheds new light on Trump’s relentless efforts to coopt DOJ into overturning the 2020 election and Clark’s efforts to aid Trump. The Committee’s interim report is the first comprehensive accounting of those efforts, which were even more expansive and troubling than previously reported.

Based on findings from the investigation so far, the Committee has asked the D.C. Bar to open an investigation into Jeffrey Clark’s compliance with applicable rules of professional conduct. These rules include Rule 1.2, which prohibits attorneys from assisting or counseling clients in criminal or fraudulent conduct, and Rule 8.4, which among other things prohibits conduct that seriously interferes with the administration of justice. The Committee is withholding potential findings and recommendations about criminal culpability until the investigation is complete.

U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released the following statement on today’s report release:

“Today’s report shows the American people just how close we came to a constitutional crisis. Thanks to a number of upstanding Americans in the Department of Justice, Donald Trump was unable to bend the Department to his will. But it was not due to a lack of effort. Donald Trump would have shredded the Constitution to stay in power. We must never allow this unprecedented abuse of power to happen again.”


Key takeaways from the Committee’s investigation include:

• Previously-unreleased transcripts of the Committee’s closed-door interviews with three key former senior DOJ officials: former Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen, former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, and former U.S. Attorney BJay Pak. These witnesses cooperated with the Committee, and although their testimony was not under oath, they were obligated by 18 U.S.C. § 1001 to tell the truth.
• New details of Donald Trump’s relentless, direct pressure on DOJ’s leadership. This includes at least nine calls and meetings with Rosen and/or Donoghue starting the day former Attorney General Bill Barr announced his resignation and continuing almost until the January 6 insurrection—including near-daily outreach once Barr left DOJ on December 23.
• New details of then-Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Division Jeffrey Clark’s misconduct, including his attempt to induce Rosen into helping Trump’s election subversion scheme by telling Rosen he would decline Trump’s offer to install him in Rosen’s place if Rosen agreed to aid that scheme.
• New details around Trump forcing the resignation of U.S. Attorney Pak because he believed Pak was not doing enough to support his false claims of election fraud in Georgia—and then went outside the line of succession to appoint Bobby Christine as Acting U.S. Attorney because he believed Christine would “do something” about his election fraud claims.
• New details of how, at Barr’s direction, DOJ deviated from decades-long practice meant to avoid inserting DOJ itself as an issue in the election—and instead aggressively pursued false claims of election fraud before votes were certified.
• Confirmation that Mark Meadows asked Rosen to initiate election fraud investigations on multiple occasions, violating longstanding restrictions on White House intervention in DOJ law enforcement matters—and new details about these requests, including that Meadows asked Rosen to meet with Trump’s outside lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Based on these findings, the interim report makes the following recommendations:

• Congress should strengthen longstanding DOJ and White House policies restricting the circumstances under which DOJ and White House officials can communicate with one another about specific law enforcement matters.
• DOJ should strengthen its longstanding election non-interference policy, which is meant to avoid inserting DOJ as an issue into a pending election.
• The D.C. Bar should scrutinize Clark’s compliance with applicable bar rules.
• The Committee is withholding potential recommendations about criminal culpability and criminal referrals until the investigation is complete.

In January 2021, following a report from The New York Times that detailed a plot between Trump and Clark to use DOJ to further Trump’s efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election, Durbin led the Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee in a letter to then-Acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson calling on him to preserve and produce all relevant materials in the DOJ’s possession, custody, or control related to this plot. This kicked off the Committee’s eight-month investigation. The Committee continues to seek records requested from the National Archives and Records Administration, which have not yet been supplied, and continues to pursue interviews with relevant individuals as part of this ongoing investigation.

A link to today’s report is available here.

A link to the transcripts of the Committee’s closed-door interviews with former Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen, former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, and former U.S. Attorney BJay Pak is available here.
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Sat Oct 30, 2021 9:20 am

Chief federal judge in D.C. assails ‘almost schizophrenic’ Jan. 6 prosecutions: ‘The rioters were not mere protesters’
by Rachel Weiner
Washington Post
October 28, 2021 at 5:55 p.m. EDT

Image

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misstated the name of a prosecutor who spoke at the hearing. It was Assistant U.S. Attorney Jamie Carter, not Assistant U.S. Attorney Mitra Jafary-Hariri. The article has been corrected.

The chief judge presiding over the federal court in Washington on Thursday unleashed a blistering critique of the Justice Department’s prosecution of Capitol rioters, saying fiery rhetoric about the event’s horror did not match plea offers involving minor charges.

“No wonder parts of the public in the U.S. are confused about whether what happened on January 6 at the Capitol was simply a petty offense of trespassing with some disorderliness, or shocking criminal conduct that represented a grave threat to our democratic norms,” Judge Beryl A. Howell said in court Thursday. “Let me make my view clear: The rioters were not mere protesters.”


While she and other judges have expressed similar concerns before, this was Howell’s first time sentencing a rioter and her first chance to fully air her views and demand answers from prosecutors. She took the opportunity, spending over an hour interrogating prosecutors on the decision to let Tennessee video game developer Jack Jesse Griffith plead guilty to the misdemeanor of parading inside the Capitol.

Howell, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2010, also oversaw portions of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Before taking the bench, she served as a prosecutor and worked on cybersecurity law in the public and private sector.

Why, she asked, when prosecutors called the riot an “attack on democracy . . . unparalleled in American history,” were Griffith and other participants facing the same charge as nonviolent protesters who routinely disrupt congressional hearings?

“It seems like a bit of a disconnect,” Howell said — “muddled” and “almost schizophrenic.”

The parading charge carries a sentence of at most six months, with no supervised release.

“Is it the government’s view that the members of the mob that engaged in the Capitol attack on January 6 were simply trespassers?” Howell asked incredulously. “Is general deterrence going to be served by letting rioters who broke into the Capitol, overran the police . . . broke into the building through windows and doors . . . resolve their criminal liability through petty offense pleas?”

After asking for probationary sentences in several cases, the government sought a three-month jail sentence for Griffith. Howell questioned what distinguished those cases from this one. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jamie Carter said prosecutors gave some defendants credit for early acceptance of responsibility. Griffith, she added, displayed a lack of remorse after the attack and continued to spread false election claims.

“Probation should not be the norm,” Howell said, but added that Griffith should not be punished more than others who engaged in similar conduct. Instead, she put him on probation for 36 months.

Other federal judges in D.C. have ignored probationary recommendations from prosecutors and imposed jail time in riot cases.

On Thursday, Griffith told the judge his behavior was “truly disgraceful.”


“I am ashamed of the way I acted,” he said. At the time of the break-in, he said, he thought it was a “minor inconvenience” for police, but he now understood they were “crippled by fear and wildly outnumbered.”

Prosecutors also agreed that Griffith, like other misdemeanor defendants, would pay only $500 in restitution. Howell calculated that if everyone charged paid that fine, it would amount to $300,000, while taxpayers are paying $500 million to improve Capitol security in the wake of the attack.

Assistant U.S. Attorney James Pearce said the government was in “somewhat uncharted territory.” The $500 number, he said, came from dividing the cost of repairs to the Capitol — $1.5 million — by the number of people believed to have entered the building — 2,000 to 2,500. Those charged with felonies are asked to pay more, and those charged with misdemeanors less.

The goal, he said, is “to make the victims whole.” Howell shot back that “it doesn’t even come close.”

She said it was also unusual that prosecutors were not asking for defendants to be under court supervision until they paid their fines. “This is the first time I’ve ever had the government ask for a restitution payment and not ask for a term of probation,” she said. “Is it because the government thinks these defendants are more trustworthy?”


It is unclear legally whether a judge can impose a sentence of jail time followed by probation for a petty offense such as parading. Prosecutors argued Howell could, while Griffith’s attorney maintained she had to choose one or the other.

The law is clear that a person can serve a mix of probation and intermittent jail time, prosecutors said. But Howell said it did not seem wise to have defendants going in and out of the prison system during an ongoing pandemic.

“My hands are tied,” Howell said in frustration. “In all my years on the bench, I’ve never been in this position before, and it’s all due to the government, despite calling this the crime of the century, resolving it with a . . . petty offense.”
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Mon Nov 01, 2021 2:56 am

Email From Trump Team Lawyer John Eastman Further Proves Conspiracy to Overturn Election Results
by Glenn Kirschner
Oct 31, 2021



John Eastman is the Trump team lawyer who authored and attempted to implement a 6-point plan to deprive Joe Biden of his election win. New reporting shows that Eastman sent an email to an aide to Vice President Mike Pence on January 6 WHILE THE CAPITOL WAS BEING ATTACKED BY TRUMPS' SUPPORTERS, blaming Pence for the attack because he did not block Joe Biden's win. This email directly contradicts Eastman's own attempts to explain away his memo.

The disclosure of this email shows how valuable the documents, call records, visitor logs, etc., that are maintained by the National Archives will become to the House select committees investigation AND to the Department of Justice.

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

During Jan. 6 riot, Trump attorney told Pence team the vice president’s inaction caused attack on Capitol
by Josh Dawsey, Jacqueline Alemany, Jon Swaine and Emma Brown
The Washington Post
October 29, 2021 at 10:26 p.m. EDT

Image
Attorney John Eastman, left, with President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, speaks at a rally on the Ellipse in Washington on Jan. 6. (Jim Bourg/Reuters)


As Vice President Mike Pence hid from a marauding mob during the Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol, an attorney for President Donald Trump emailed a top Pence aide to say that Pence had caused the violence by refusing to block certification of Trump’s election loss.

The attorney, John C. Eastman, also continued to press for Pence to act even after Trump’s supporters had trampled through the Capitol — an attack the Pence aide, Greg Jacob, had described as a “siege” in their email exchange.

“The ‘siege’ is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so that the American people can see for themselves what happened,” Eastman wrote to Jacob, referring to Trump’s claims of voter fraud.

Eastman sent the email as Pence, who had been presiding in the Senate, was under guard with Jacob and other advisers in a secure area. Rioters were tearing through the Capitol complex, some of them calling for Pence to be executed.

Jacob, Pence’s chief counsel, included Eastman’s emailed remarks in a draft opinion article about Trump’s outside legal team that he wrote later in January but ultimately chose not to publish. The Washington Post obtained a copy of the draft. Jacob wrote that by sending the email at that moment, Eastman “displayed a shocking lack of awareness of how those practical implications were playing out in real time.”

Jacob’s draft article, Eastman’s emails and accounts of other previously undisclosed actions by Eastman offer new insight into the mind-sets of figures at the center of an episode that pushed American democracy to the brink. They show that Eastman’s efforts to persuade Pence to block Trump’s defeat were more extensive than has been reported previously, and that the Pence team was subjected to what Jacob at the time called “a barrage of bankrupt legal theories.”

Eastman confirmed the emails in interviews with The Post but denied that he was blaming Pence for the violence. He defended his actions, saying that Trump’s team was right to exhaust “every legal means” to challenge a result that it argued was plagued by widespread fraud and irregularities.

“Are you supposed to not do anything about that?” Eastman said.

He stood by legal advice he gave Pence to halt Congress’s certification on Jan. 6 to allow Republican state lawmakers to investigate the unfounded fraud claims, which multiple legal scholars have said Pence was not authorized to do.

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Vice President Mike Pence exits the House chamber en route to the Senate after objections to the Arizona electoral votes were lodged during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6. (Amanda Voisard/for The Washington Post)

Eastman said the email saying Pence’s inaction led to the violence was a response to an email in which Jacob told him that his “bull----” legal advice was why Pence’s team was “under siege,” and that Jacob had later apologized.

A person familiar with the emails said Jacob apologized for using profanity but still maintained that Eastman’s advice was “snake oil.” That person, like several others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

A Trump spokesman did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack has said that it plans to subpoena Eastman as it investigates his role in Trump’s efforts, which included two legal memos in which Eastman outlined how Republicans could deny Joe Biden the White House.

In the days before the attack, Eastman was working to salvage Trump’s presidency out of a “command center” in rooms at the Willard hotel near the White House, alongside such top Trump allies as Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Jacob wrote in his draft article that Eastman and Giuliani were part of a “cadre of outside lawyers” who had “spun a web of lies and disinformation” in an attempt to pressure Pence to betray his oath of office and the Constitution.


Jacob wrote that legal authorities should consider taking action against the attorneys.

“Now that the moment of immediate crisis has passed, the legal profession should dispassionately examine whether the attorneys involved should be disciplined for using their credentials to sell a stream of snake oil to the most powerful office in the world, wrapped in the guise of a lawyer’s advice,” he wrote in the draft.

Robert Costello, a lawyer for Giuliani, said Jacob had a right to his opinion. “This is an opinion piece, and not surprisingly, he agrees with his own opinion,” Costello said.

A bipartisan group of former government officials and legal figures, including two former federal judges, has asked the California bar association to investigate Eastman’s conduct.

Eastman’s memos gave several options for Pence to use the vice president’s ceremonial role of counting electoral college votes to halt Trump’s defeat. Eastman has argued that the 1887 Electoral Count Act is unconstitutional, and that the vice president has power under the 12th Amendment to decide whether electoral votes are valid.

Under the most drastic of the options outlined in the memos, Pence would have rejected electoral votes for Biden from states where Republicans were claiming fraud, making Trump the winner — a proposal that Eastman has more recently tried to disown as a “crazy” suggestion he did not endorse.

Eastman made the case for Pence to act during a meeting in the Oval Office with Trump, Pence, Jacob and Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, on the afternoon of Jan. 4, according to two people familiar with the discussions. The meeting was reported in the media soon after. Pence advisers said they had never heard of Eastman before January.

The meeting was called, the people said, because Trump was frustrated that Pence was not acceding to his demands, and wanted the vice president to hear arguments from Eastman, whom he viewed as having more credibility in legal circles than some of Trump’s other legal advisers.

Eastman argued that Pence should at least try the maneuver of not certifying electors on Jan. 6, because it had never been done before, and so had not been ruled on by the courts, one of the people familiar with the discussions said. Eastman told The Post he did not recall making “any such statement.”

Eastman said that, in response to a question from Pence, he said in the meeting that it was an “open question” whether Pence had the ability to unilaterally decide which electoral votes to count.

During a little-noticed radio interview that evening, Eastman said that although it would be politically impossible for a vice president to certify his “favorite slate of electors” without any evidence of fraud, the “level of corruption” in the 2020 vote could not be allowed to stand.

“I think that makes the exercise of the vice president’s power here very compelling,” Eastman said.

In a meeting the following day with Short and Jacob at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Eastman began by arguing that Pence should reject Biden electors, according to the two people. He did not share his memos outlining how to stop Biden’s victory with Pence’s team at either the Jan. 4 or the Jan. 5 meetings, according to the people familiar with the discussions. Eastman’s memos were first reported in the book “Peril” by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.

Jacob wrote in his draft article that a Trump lawyer conceded to him in a Jan. 5 meeting that “not a single member of the Supreme Court would support his position,” that“230 years of historical practice were firmly against it,” and that “no reasonable person would create a rule that invested a single individual with unilateral authority to determine the validity of disputed electoral votes for President of the United States.”

The two people familiar with the matter said Eastman was the only lawyer in the Jan. 5 meeting.

By the end of the two-hour meeting, the people said, Eastman had conceded that having Pence reject Biden electors was not a good plan.

Eastman denied to The Post that he made concessions and said he never advocated for Pence to reject the electors outright. “That is false,” he said. “And distorting the conversation, which depends heavily on what scenario was being discussed.”

In telephone calls later on Jan. 5, Eastman proposed to Pence advisers that he take a less drastic option outlined in the memos of “sending it back to the states” for the unfounded fraud claims to be examined. Eastman also suggested on several occasions, according to the people with knowledge of the meetings, that Pence could intervene because the courts would invoke “the political question doctrine” and not intervene.

“But if the courts stayed out of a standoff between the Vice President and Congress over the fate of the presidency, then where would the issue be decided? In the streets?” Jacob wrote in his draft op-ed.

Eastman told The Post: “I did not push for electors to be thrown out, but for the disputes to be referred to state legislatures, as had been requested by key legislators in several states, for assessment of the impact of the acknowledged illegality in the conduct of the election.”

Around 1 p.m. on Jan. 6, as Trump addressed supporters at a rally near the White House, Pence’s office released a letter to Congress stating that he would not block the certification. Thousands of Trump supporters marched to the Capitol and rioted.

“What the lawyers did not tell the crowd — and to the best of my knowledge, never told the president — is that they were pushing an abstract legal theory that had overwhelming drawbacks and limitations,” Jacob wrote in the op ed.

Jacob wrote that Pence never considered a different course of action.

After the unrest began on Jan. 6, Jacob sent an email to memorialize his conversation with Eastman from the day before, according to the two people with knowledge.

After Pence was escorted out of the Senate, Jacob emailed Eastman to criticize the legal advice he had pushed to Pence on stopping certification.

“Thanks to your bull----, we are now under siege,” Jacob wrote, according to Eastman. Eastman, while willing to discuss the email, declined to provide a copy to The Post. One of the other people with knowledge of the matter confirmed the content of Jacob’s email.

That led to Eastman sending the email stating that Pence’s decision led to the “siege.”

The two exchanged further messages in which Jacob apologized for his expletive, but not his critiques, and Eastman said that he had wanted Pence to postpone the count to allow states to investigate, according to Eastman and the two people familiar with the exchange.

That evening, Eastman told Jacob in another email that Pence should still not certify the results, according to Eastman and one of the people familiar with the emails. That email from Eastman came after the rioters had been cleared from the Capitol and Pence had returned to the chair to preside over the proceedings and vowed to continue.

Image
Vice President Mike Pence passes the document certifying Arizona's election to a staffer after it has been challenged by Republicans during the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

Pence allowed other lawmakers to speak before they returned to counting the votes, and said he wasn’t counting the time from his speech or the other lawmakers against the time allotted in the Electoral Count Act.

Eastman said that this prompted him to email Jacob to say that Pence should not certify the election because he had already violated the Electoral College Act, which Pence had cited as a reason that he could not send the electors back to the states.

“My point was they had already violated the electoral count act by allowing debate to extend past the allotted two hours, and by not reconvening ‘immediately’ in joint session after the vote in the objection,” Eastman told The Post. “It seemed that had already set the precedent that it was not an impediment.”

Eastman, 61, is a veteran conservative legal activist who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. A longtime member of the Federalist Society, he has spent much of his legal career fighting same-sex marriage.

He is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank based in Upland, Calif., whose leaders stridently defended Eastman from criticism over his role in Trump’s attempt to overturn the election and attacked the media’s coverage of it.

Eastman was sharply criticized by Democrats in August last year for writing an article for Newsweek that questioned then-Sen. Kamala D. Harris’s eligibility to be vice president on the grounds that her parents were not U.S. citizens when she was born. He said his understanding was that Trump first noticed him arguing against birthright citizenship on Fox News.

Eastman has said that he first made contact with lawyers working on Trump’s election challenges during the weekend after the election in Philadelphia, where he happened to be attending an academic conference. The law firm Jones Day had just withdrawn from representing Trump and, Eastman said in a podcast interview in June, “somebody had heard I was in town and brought me over to the headquarters.”

Eastman’s visit to Trump’s team was brief, but “long enough to catch covid,” he said on the podcast hosted by David Clements, a former New Mexico State University professor who is well known in election-denial circles.

Eastman testified via video about purported fraud to Georgia state senators at a Dec. 3 hearing where Giuliani also spoke. Giuliani said state legislators were given copies of a paper by Eastman that argued they could reject election results and directly appoint electors.

Eastman’s seven-page paper featured theories about voter fraud published by the right-wing blog the Gateway Pundit and an anonymous Twitter user named “DuckDiver19,” according to a copy Eastman shared with The Post.

Eastman has said that Trump asked him to draft a brief calling for the Supreme Court to allow Trump to intervene in a case filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), which sought to block the electoral college votes from four states. Eastman submitted his brief on Dec. 9 and the high court rejected the case two days later.

Eastman was previously a professor of law at Chapman University in Orange, Calif. A week after the Jan. 6 attacks, Chapman President Daniele Struppa announced that Eastman had agreed to retire from the school after what Struppa called a “challenging chapter for Chapman.”

At the time of the Capitol attack, Eastman was on leave from Chapman and serving as a visiting professor at the University of Colorado, which subsequently stripped him of some of his duties there.
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Mon Nov 01, 2021 8:22 am

General Michael Flynn is channeling cult leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet
Oct 12, 2021



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

Michael Flynn to QAnon Believers: I’m Not a Satanist!: Michael Flynn is finding out the hard way that surrounding himself with QAnon followers can have a pretty sharp downside.
by Will Sommer
Politics Reporter
Updated Oct. 08, 2021 5:18AM ET Published Oct. 08, 2021 5:02AM ET

The Great White Brotherhood, in belief systems akin to Theosophy and New Age, are said to be perfected beings of great power who spread spiritual teachings through selected humans. The members of the Brotherhood may be known as the Masters of the Ancient Wisdom or the Ascended Masters. The first person to talk about them in the West was Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (Theosophy), after she and other people claimed to have received messages from them. These included Helena Roerich, Aleister Crowley, Alice A. Bailey, Guy Ballard, Geraldine Innocente (The Bridge to Freedom), Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Bob Sanders, and Benjamin Creme.

--Great White Brotherhood, by Wikipedia




Image
Photo Illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast / Photos Getty

Former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has been on a relentless media tour since his pardon last year, sitting for interviews with even the most obscure right-wing media outlets to promote the MAGA agenda.

But on Tuesday, Flynn appeared on a little-known YouTube channel called Truth Unveiled TV for a very different reason: rebutting the idea that he led a church congregation in a Satanic ritual borrowed from a nuclear doomsday cult.

In a video entitled “Some Have Said That General Flynn Prayed to Satan in a Recent Prayer,” host Paul Oebel gave Flynn a chance to rebut the growing right-wing controversy alleging he’s signed on with Lucifer.

“I even saw a show the other day saying ‘Michael’s flipped on the side of the devil,’” Oebel said. “Can you please explain what happened there?”

“All of these people that talk about turning to whatever...” Flynn said. “People need to stop overthinking what everybody is saying.”

The bizarre YouTube interview marked Flynn’s latest attempt in a weeks-long campaign to convince his one-time fans in the QAnon conspiracy theory movement that he isn’t a Satanist.

Prior to the unusual controversy, Flynn had embraced his position as a hero to supporters of QAnon, taking a QAnon oath, raising money from QAnon believers, and selling QAnon T-shirts. In May, Flynn even appeared at a QAnon conference and endorsed the idea of a military coup.

But QAnon fame is a fickle thing. After promoting QAnon for more than a year, Flynn now finds himself on the business end of the conspiracy theory. Like QAnon targets before him, Flynn is now struggling to persuade angry QAnon believers that he isn’t a secret Satan-worshipper.

Flynn didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Flynn’s trouble started on Sept. 17, when he led a congregation at Nebraska pastor Hank Kunneman’s Lord of Hosts Church in prayer. Flynn’s prayer included invocations to “sevenfold rays” and “legions,” two phrases that struck some of Flynn’s followers as strange.

“We are your instrument of those sevenfold rays and all your archangels, all of them,” Flynn said, later adding, “We will be the instrument of your will, whatever it is. In your name, and in the name of your legions, we are freeborn, and we shall remain freeborn, and we shall not be enslaved by any foe.”


As video of the prayer circulated in online conspiracy theorist groups, the references to “legions” and “rays” soon sparked speculation among Flynn’s right-wing supporters that their hero had been lured to the dark side. Always on the lookout for the Satanic influence they imagine lurks at the heart of the world, they claimed that Flynn had secretly been worshiping the devil. Worse, since the congregation was repeating the prayer after Flynn, the rumor went, he had duped hundreds of Christians into joining the ritual.

“A lot of people in the Christian world believe that when you pray to rays of light and legions that you’re praying to the devil,” Oebel, the YouTube host, explained in his interview with Flynn.

Rick Wiles, an extremist antisemitic Florida pastor who runs a conspiracy theory outlet called TruNews, seized on Flynn’s prayer in a nearly hour-long TruNews broadcast last month blasting the retired lieutenant general. While Wiles’s cohost claimed that the mentions of “rays” and “legions” demonstrated Flynn was praying to the devil, Wiles said Flynn was threatening his followers’ souls.

“My advice to you is to separate from Gen. Michael Flynn,” Wiles told his audience. “I don’t care about politics, I care about your soul.”

The Satanic panic sparked by Flynn’s prayer bears more than a passing similarity to the Flynn-endorsed QAnon movement, in which figures like Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and Barack Obama have been accused of being cannibalistic Satanists—or, in QAnon parlance, ”Luciferians.” It also recalls Pizzagate, the baseless conspiracy theory once endorsed by Flynn’s son, Michael Flynn Jr., which holds that a Washington pizzeria doubles as a Satanic sex dungeon for pedophiles.

Lin Wood, a QAnon-endorsing pro-Trump lawyer who has appeared at some of the same right-wing conferences as Flynn, acknowledged the rumors in a Sept. 22 post on social media app Telegram. In his post, Wood seemed to defend Flynn while distancing himself from the prayer.

“I find nothing in the Bible about seven rays of light or legions,” Wood wrote.


On Sept. 25, Flynn acknowledged the growing controversy among his supporters. In a post on social media app Telegram, Flynn said the prayer was about his namesake, St. Michael, adding that it has “great meaning to me.”

(a) The seven sublime lords are the Seven Creative Spirits, the Dhyan-Chohans, who correspond to the Hebrew Elohim. It is the same hierarchy of Archangels to which St. Michael, St. Gabriel, and others belong, in the Christian theogony. Only while St. Michael, for instance, is allowed in dogmatic Latin theology to watch over all the promontories and gulfs, in the Esoteric System, the Dhyanis watch successively over one of the Rounds and the great Root-races of our planetary chain. They are, moreover, said to send their Bhodisatvas, the human correspondents of the Dhyani-Buddhas (of whom vide infra) during every Round and Race. Out of the Seven Truths and Revelations, or rather revealed secrets, four only have been handed to us, as we are still in the Fourth Round, and the world also has only had four Buddhas, so far. This is a very complicated question, and will receive more ample treatment later on.

So far “There are only Four Truths, and Four Vedas” — say the Hindus and Buddhists. For a similar reason Irenaeus insisted on the necessity of Four Gospels. But as every new Root-race at the head of a Round must have its revelation and revealers, the next Round will bring the Fifth, the following the Sixth, and so on.

-- The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena P. Blavatsky, 1888


Yet his post didn’t mollify many of his QAnon followers, who commented in anger under Flynn’s post.

“I’ve never heard anyone pray the 7 fold ray in a Christian prayer,” one confused Flynn supporter replied. “What am I missing?”

Flynn’s prayer bears a striking resemblance to a prayer by Elizabeth Clare Prophet, the now-deceased leader of an anticommunist doomsday cult obsessed with nuclear war. Prophet’s group, the Church Universal and Triumphant, reached its peak in 1990, the year she predicted much of the world would be destroyed in a fiery nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and the United States. Prophet’s followers flocked to her Montana ranch, building fallout shelters for an apocalypse that never arrived.

Twitter user Jim Stewartson first noted the similarities between Flynn’s prayer and Prophet’s. Both prayers mention “legions” and “seven-fold rays,” and are nearly identical in their phrasing.

For example, in one address to her congregation, Prophet said, “In the name of Archangel Michael and his legions, I am freeborn, and I shall remain freeborn, and I shall not be enslaved by any foe within or without.”


Jim Stewartson, Antifascist, #RIPQ
@jimstewartson
I did a video comparison of I AM / Church Universal Triumphant cult leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet in 1984 and Mike Flynn in 2021.
It's verbatim the same. He just changed "I AM" to "WE WILL"
Please share this with his cult. It's important that they know he is not a Christian.

[x]
1:07 PM Oct 6, 2021


By comparison, Flynn told the Nebraska church congregation, “In your name and the name of your legions, we are freeborn, and we shall remain freeborn, and we shall not be enslaved by any foe within or without.”

Hank Kunneman, the Nebraska pastor whose church played host to Flynn, eventually acknowledged the Satanic accusations himself. In a cryptic address to his congregation on Sept. 26, Kunneman avoided mentioning Flynn by name but said he had received messages claiming a speaker at his church had performed a Satanic prayer.


“Can you just give people a break?” Kunneman asked his congregation.

Wood addressed the Satanism allegations against his MAGA ally again on Wednesday, claiming his own supporters had been asking him about whether Flynn’s prayer meant he was a member of the occult.

“Occult prayer???” Wood wrote. “Are you kidding me???”

Flynn isn’t the first right-wing figure tied to QAnon to see its acolytes turn on him. Oklahoma Senate candidate Jackson Lahmeyer, whose challenge to Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) has been endorsed by Flynn, appeared at an April pro-QAnon conference with Flynn in Tulsa.

A few months later, however, Lahmeyer posted a seemingly innocent picture of his daughter wearing red shoes—apparently unaware that QAnon followers consider red shoes to be yet another sign of their imagined Satanic sex-trafficking cabal. Lahmeyer was soon caught up in a QAnon controversy of his own.

"Unfortunately, I have to say it because people are asking me," Lahmeyer wrote in a Facebook post. "I’m in no way involved in Child Sex Trafficking, pedophilia or devil worship."
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Tue Nov 02, 2021 2:20 am

Jan. 6 Protest Organizers Say They Participated in ‘Dozens’ of Planning Meetings With Members of Congress and White House Staff: Two sources are communicating with House investigators and detailed a stunning series of allegations to Rolling Stone, including a promise of a “blanket pardon” from the Oval Office
by Hunter Walker
Rolling Stone
OCTOBER 24, 2021 8:33PM ET

As the House investigation into the Jan. 6 attack heats up, some of the planners of the pro-Trump rallies that took place in Washington, D.C., have begun communicating with congressional investigators and sharing new information about what happened when the former president’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Two of these people have spoken to Rolling Stone extensively in recent weeks and detailed explosive allegations that multiple members of Congress were intimately involved in planning both Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 events that turned violent.

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

The two sources, both of whom have been granted anonymity due to the ongoing investigation, describe participating in “dozens” of planning briefings ahead of that day when Trump supporters broke into the Capitol as his election loss to President Joe Biden was being certified.

“I remember Marjorie Taylor Greene specifically,” the organizer says. “I remember talking to probably close to a dozen other members at one point or another or their staffs.”


For the sake of clarity, we will refer to one of the sources as a rally organizer and the other as a planner. Rolling Stone has confirmed that both sources were involved in organizing the main event aimed at objecting to the electoral certification, which took place at the White House Ellipse on Jan. 6. Trump spoke at that rally and encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol. Some members of the audience at the Ellipse began walking the mile and a half to the Capitol as Trump gave his speech. The barricades were stormed minutes before the former president concluded his remarks.

These two sources also helped plan a series of demonstrations that took place in multiple states around the country in the weeks between the election and the storming of the Capitol. According to these sources, multiple people associated with the March for Trump and Stop the Steal events that took place during this period communicated with members of Congress throughout this process.

Along with Greene, the conspiratorial pro-Trump Republican from Georgia who took office earlier this year, the pair both say the members who participated in these conversations or had top staffers join in included Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas).

“We would talk to Boebert’s team, Cawthorn’s team, Gosar’s team like back to back to back to back,” says the organizer.


Image
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) attends a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing titled The Capitol Insurrection: Unexplained Delays and Unanswered Questions, on Capitol Hill on May 12, 2021 in Washington, DC. Jonathan Ernst-Pool/Getty Images

And Gosar, who has been one of the most prominent defenders of the Jan. 6 rioters, allegedly took things a step further. Both sources say he dangled the possibility of a “blanket pardon” in an unrelated ongoing investigation to encourage them to plan the protests.

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

The organizer claims the pair received “several assurances” about the “blanket pardon” from Gosar.

“I was just going over the list of pardons and we just wanted to tell you guys how much we appreciate all the hard work you’ve been doing,” Gosar said, according to the organizer.

The rally planner describes the pardon as being offered while “encouraging” the staging of protests against the election. While the organizer says they did not get involved in planning the rallies solely due to the pardon, they were upset that it ultimately did not materialize.


“I would have done it either way with or without the pardon,” the organizer says. “I do truly believe in this country, but to use something like that and put that out on the table when someone is so desperate, it’s really not good business.”

Gosar’s office did not respond to requests for comment on this story. Rolling Stone has separately obtained documentary evidence that both sources were in contact with Gosar and Boebert on Jan. 6. We are not describing the nature of that evidence to preserve their anonymity. The House select committee investigating the attack also has interest in Gosar’s office. Gosar’s chief of staff, Thomas Van Flein, was among the people who were named in the committee’s “sweeping” requests to executive-branch agencies seeking documents and communications from within the Trump administration. Both sources claim Van Flein was personally involved in the conversations about the “blanket pardon” and other discussions about pro-Trump efforts to dispute the election. Van Flein did not respond to a request for comment.

These specific members of Congress were involved in the pro-Trump activism around the election and the electoral certification on Jan. 6. Both Brooks and Cawthorn spoke with Trump at the Ellipse on Jan. 6. In his speech at that event, Brooks, who was reportedly wearing body armor, declared, “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.” Gosar, Greene, and Boebert were all billed as speakers at the “Wild Protest,” which also took place on Jan. 6 at the Capitol.

Nick Dyer, who is Greene’s communications director, said she was solely involved in planning to object to the electoral certification on the House floor. Spokespeople for the other members of Congress, who the sources describe as involved in the planning for protests, did not respond to requests for comment.

“Congresswoman Greene and her staff were focused on the Congressional election objection on the House floor and had nothing to do with planning of any protest,” Dyer wrote in an email to Rolling Stone.

Image
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene speaks during former President Donald Trump’s Save America rally in Perry, Ga., on Saturday, Sept. 25, 2021. Ben Gray/AP

Dyer further compared Greene’s efforts to dispute certification of Biden’s victory with similar objections certain Democrats lodged against Trump’s first election.

“She objected just like Democrats who have objected to Republican presidential victories over the years,” wrote Dyer. “Just like in 2017, when Jim McGovern, Jamie Raskin, Pramila Jayapal, Barbara Lee, Sheila Jackson Lee, Raul Grijalva, and Maxine Waters tried to prevent President Trump’s election win from being certified.”

Dyer also suggested the public is far more concerned with issues occurring under President Joe Biden than they are with what happened in January.

“No one cares about Jan. 6 when gas prices are skyrocketing, grocery store shelves are empty, unemployment is skyrocketing, businesses are going bankrupt, our border is being invaded, children are forced to wear masks, vaccine mandates are getting workers fired, and 13 members of our military are murdered by the Taliban and Americans are left stranded in Afghanistan,” Dyer wrote.

In another indication members of Congress may have been involved in planning the protests against the election, Ali Alexander, who helped organize the “Wild Protest,” declared in a since-deleted livestream broadcast that Gosar, Brooks, and Biggs helped him formulate the strategy for that event.

“I was the person who came up with the Jan. 6 idea with Congressman Gosar, Congressman Mo Brooks, and Congressman Andy Biggs,” Alexander said at the time. “We four schemed up on putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting so that — who we couldn’t lobby — we could change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body hearing our loud roar from outside.”

Alexander led Stop the Steal, which was one of the main groups promoting efforts to dispute Trump’s loss. In December, he organized a Stop the Steal event in Phoenix, where Gosar was one the main speakers. At that demonstration, Alexander referred to Gosar as “my captain” and declared “one of the other heroes has been Congressman Andy Biggs.”


Alexander did not respond to requests for comment. The rally planner, who accused Alexander of ratcheting up the potential for violence that day while taking advantage of funds from donors and others who helped finance the events, confirmed that he was in contact with those three members of Congress.

“He just couldn’t help himself but go on his live and just talk about everything that he did and who he talked to,” the planner says of Alexander. “So, he, like, really told on himself.”

While it was already clear members of Congress played some role in the Jan. 6 events and similar rallies that occurred in the lead-up to that day, the two sources say they can provide new details about the members’ specific roles in these efforts. The sources plan to share that information with congressional investigators right away. While both sources say their communications with the House’s Jan. 6 committee thus far have been informal, they are expecting to testify publicly.

“I have no problem openly testifying,” the planner says.

A representative for the committee declined to comment. In the past month, the committee has issued subpoenas to top Trump allies, government agencies, and activists who were involved in the planning of events and rallies that took place on that day and in the prior weeks. Multiple sources familiar with the committee’s investigation have confirmed to Rolling Stone that, thus far, it seems to be heavily focused on the financing for the Ellipse rally and similar previous events.

Both of the sources made clear that they still believe in Trump’s agenda. They also have questions about how his election loss occurred. The two sources say they do not necessarily believe there were issues with the actual vote count. However, they are concerned that Democrats gained an unfair advantage in the race due to perceived social media censorship of Trump allies and the voting rules that were implemented as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Democrats used tactics to disrupt their political opposition in ways that frankly were completely unacceptable,” the organizer says.


Despite their remaining affinity for Trump and their questions about the vote, both sources say they were motivated to come forward because of their concerns about how the pro-Trump protests against the election ultimately resulted in the violent attack on the Capitol. Of course, with their other legal issues and the House investigation, both of these sources have clear motivation to cooperate with investigators and turn on their former allies. And both of their accounts paint them in a decidedly favorable light compared with their former allies.

“The reason I’m talking to the committee and the reason it’s so important is that — despite Republicans refusing to participate … this commission’s all we got as far as being able to uncover the truth about what happened at the Capitol that day,” the organizer says. “It’s clear that a lot of bad actors set out to cause chaos. … They made us all look like shit.”

And Trump, they admit, was one of those bad actors. A representative for Trump did not respond to a request for comment.

“The breaking point for me [on Jan. 6 was when] Trump starts talking about walking to the Capitol,” the organizer says. “I was like. ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here.’ ”

“I do kind of feel abandoned by Trump,” says the planner. “I’m actually pretty pissed about it and I’m pissed at him.”

The organizer offers an even more succinct assessment when asked what they would say to Trump.

“What the fuck?” the organizer says.


The two potential witnesses plan to present to the committee allegations about how these demonstrations were funded and to detail communications between organizers and the White House. According to both sources, members of Trump’s administration and former members of his campaign team were involved in the planning. Both describe Katrina Pierson, who worked for Trump’s campaign in 2016 and 2020, as a key liaison between the organizers of protests against the election and the White House.

“Katrina was like our go-to girl,” the organizer says. “She was like our primary advocate.”

Pierson spoke at the Ellipse rally on Jan. 6. She did not respond to requests for comment.

Both sources also describe Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, as someone who played a major role in the conversations surrounding the protests on Jan. 6. Among other things, they both say concerns were raised to Meadows about Alexander’s protest at the Capitol and the potential that it could spark violence. Meadows was subpoenaed by the committee last month as part of a group of four people “with close ties to the former President who were working in or had communications with the White House on or in the days leading up to the January 6th insurrection.”

“Meadows was 100 percent made aware of what was going on,” says the organizer. “He’s also like a regular figure in these really tiny groups of national organizers.”

A separate third source, who has also communicated with the committee and was involved in the Ellipse rally, says Kylie Kremer, one of the key organizers at that event, boasted that she was going to meet with Meadows at the White House ahead of the rally. The committee has been provided with that information. Kremer did not respond to a request for comment.

Both the organizer and the planner say Alexander initially agreed he would not hold his “Wild Protest” at the Capitol and that the Ellipse would be the only major demonstration. When Alexander seemed to be ignoring that arrangement, both claim worries were brought to Meadows.

“Despite making a deal … they plowed forward with their own thing at the Capitol on Jan.y 6 anyway,” the organizer says of Alexander and his allies. “We ended up escalating that to everybody we could, including Meadows.”


A representative for Meadows did not respond to requests for comment.

Along with making plans for Jan. 6, the sources say, the members of Congress who were involved solicited supposed proof of election fraud from them. Challenging electoral certification requires the support of a member of the Senate. While more than a hundred Republican members of the House ultimately objected to the Electoral College count that formalized Trump’s loss, only a handful of senators backed the effort. According to the sources, the members of Congress and their staff advised them to hold rallies in specific states. The organizer says locations were chosen to put “pressure” on key senators that “we considered to be persuadable.”

“We had also been coordinating with some of our congressional contacts on, like, what would be presented after the individual objections, and our expectation was that that was the day the storm was going to arrive,” the organizer says, adding, “It was supposed to be the best evidence that they had been secretly gathering. …
Everyone was going to stay at the Ellipse throughout the congressional thing.”

Heading into Jan. 6, both sources say, the plan they had discussed with other organizers, Trump allies, and members of Congress was a rally that would solely take place at the Ellipse, where speakers — including the former president — would present “evidence” about issues with the election. This demonstration would take place in conjunction with objections that were being made by Trump allies during the certification on the House floor that day.

“It was in a variety of calls, some with Gosar and Gosar’s team, some with Marjorie Taylor Greene and her team … Mo Brooks,” the organizer says.

“The Capitol was never in play,” insists the planner.

A senior staffer for a Republican member of Congress, who was also granted anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation, similarly says they believed the events would only involve supporting objections on the House floor. The staffer says their member was engaged in planning that was “specifically and fully above board.”

“A whole host of people let this go a totally different way,” the senior Republican staffer says. “They fucked it up for a lot of people who were planning to present evidence on the House floor. We were pissed off at everything that happened .”

The two sources claim there were early concerns about Alexander’s event. They had seen him with members of the paramilitary groups 1st Amendment Praetorian (1AP) and the Oath Keepers in his entourage at prior pro-Trump rallies. Alexander was filmed with a reputed member of 1AP at his side at a November Stop the Steal event that took place in Georgia. The two sources also claim to have been concerned about drawing people to the area directly adjacent to the Capitol on Jan. 6, given the anger among Trump supporters about the electoral certification that was underway that day.

“They knew that they weren’t there to sing “Kumbaya” and, like, put up a peace sign,” the planner says. “These frickin’ people were angry.”


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

Jan. 6 Organizers: We ‘Lost The Battle’ When Trump Ordered March To Capitol
by Chris Hayes
MSNBC
Dec 15, 2021



Jan. 6 rally organizers Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lynn Lawrence join Chris Hayes: "There was an internal conflict that was ongoing inside the organizer groups about what the program and what the day on January 6 should look like...we didn't realize we lost that battle until President Trump told people to walk down to the Capitol."
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