Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certification

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

Postby admin » Fri Dec 24, 2021 3:06 am

Legal Expert Laurence Tribe: DOJ Must Immediately Conduct 'Full-Blown' Jan. 6 Probe
by MSNBC
Dec 23, 2021

Laurence Tribe calls on his former student, Attorney General Garland, to take action over Trump’s role in the insurrection: “If Merrick Garland has not yet ginned up a full-blown investigation, he should do so yesterday.”

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

Postby admin » Fri Dec 24, 2021 5:34 am

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."

[Dustin Stockton] There were several things, like we saw warning signs along the way with Trump, right? And frankly we made some excuses for him, and excuses for why, you know, maybe Michael Cohen, or Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, or some of these other people that we knew and liked, right, had run into trouble with it. But uh, for us, when He [Trump] directed people to the Capitol at the 6th, what we revealed to the Committee is that there was an internal conflict that was ongoing inside the organizer groups about what the program, and what the day on January 6th should look like. And we kind of lost that battle, and we didn't realize we lost that battle until President Trump told people to walk down to the Capitol. And we had put several events in D.C. together before. We knew the kind of logistics it took to do that safely: the Marshals, the Security, the Stage, the Sound -- all the things you have to do to be able to safely manage a crowd of that size, and we knew that wasn't in place. And we knew that the people that they had asked to lead, that they were not people who should ever be associated with something as solemn as the White House. And so for us, it was devastating. Like, it was very deflating. And it's one of those like "snap-to-reality" moments where you look back over all the previous warning signs that you've ignored, and you have to challenge yourself on....

[Chris Hayes] There's a key factual claim you're making here, which I just want to follow up on, because I think it's key, and then I want to come back around to one more thing, and then I will let you guys go on with your evening. So the key factual claim here, which I think is fascinating, is essentially an internal debate that emerges among the organizers about what happens after the Ellipse... What you're saying is there was a group that wanted to mobilize that huge crowd, and basically kind of send them off towards the Capitol ...

[Dustin Stockton] [Nods his head in agreement]

[Chris Hayes] ... without a permit, we should note, without Security ...

[Jennifer Lynn Lawrence] [Nods her head in agreement]

[Chris Hayes]... without any sort of checks for who would control the crowd, who would lead them, who would make sure things didn't get out of hand. And you were in the opposite faction that said, "We shouldn't do that." And the moment that you found out you lost that internal debate was the President of the United States saying literally to the riled-up crowd, "Now you're going to come with me down to the Capitol, so they can hear you how angry you are." That's what you're saying, and what you're telling the Committee.

[Jennifer Lynn Lawrence] Absolutely yes that is. And I mean, I'm quoted in Pro Publica, I don't know if I'm allowed to say on air what I actually said the moment that you know uh, He said it from the stage, but you can go look up that quote. But I mean, at this point, we didn't know. Our plan for that day was we were supposed to stay at the Ellipse all day. And we were being told that we could stay there 12 and 14 hours, until all the electors had been seated up at Capitol Hill. And you know it was portrayed to us that if the electors were seated for President Biden, that Trump would recognize those results. So he wanted the largest crowd ever -- this is what was portrayed to us, you know, at the Ellipse -- that if He had to give whatever his form of "Sayonara Speech" was, he wanted the biggest crowd there possible. And that was our plan. So the minute that we realized like, "Oh my god, you're marching those people. We have nothing in place. Like there's nothing" -- like, "What are you doing?" And it was so disheartening, and so deflating, and it is really not okay.
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Sat Jan 01, 2022 1:25 am

Trump Adviser Peter Navarro Lays Out How He and Bannon Planned to Overturn Biden’s Electoral Win: “It started out perfectly. At 1 p.m., Gosar and Cruz did exactly what was expected of them…”
by Jose Pagliery
Updated Dec. 28, 2021 3:44AM ET Published Dec. 27, 2021 10:14PM ET

A former Trump White House official says he and right-wing provocateur Steve Bannon were actually behind the last-ditch coordinated effort by rogue Republicans in Congress to halt certification of the 2020 election results and keep President Donald Trump in power earlier this year, in a plan dubbed the “Green Bay Sweep.”

In his recently published memoir, Peter Navarro, then-President Donald Trump’s trade adviser, details how he stayed in close contact with Bannon as they put the Green Bay Sweep in motion with help from members of Congress loyal to the cause.

But in an interview last week with The Daily Beast, Navarro shed additional light on his role in the operation and their coordination with politicians like Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX).

“We spent a lot of time lining up over 100 congressmen, including some senators. It started out perfectly. At 1 p.m., Gosar and Cruz did exactly what was expected of them,” Navarro told The Daily Beast. “It was a perfect plan. And it all predicated on peace and calm on Capitol Hill. We didn’t even need any protestors, because we had over 100 congressmen committed to it.”

That commitment appeared as Congress was certifying the 2020 Electoral College votes reflecting that Joe Biden beat Trump. Sen. Cruz signed off on Gosar’s official objection to counting Arizona’s electoral ballots, an effort that was supported by dozens of other Trump loyalists.

Staffers for Cruz and Gosar did not respond to requests for comment. There’s no public indication whether the Jan. 6 Committee has sought testimony or documents from Sen. Cruz or Rep. Gosar. But the committee has only recently begun to seek evidence from fellow members of Congress who were involved in the general effort to keep Trump in the White House, such as Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA).

This last-minute maneuvering never had any chance of actually decertifying the election results on its own, a point that Navarro quickly acknowledges. But their hope was to run the clock as long as possible to increase public pressure on then-Vice President Mike Pence to send the electoral votes back to six contested states, where Republican-led legislatures could try to overturn the results. And in their mind, ramping up pressure on Pence would require media coverage. While most respected news organizations refused to regurgitate unproven conspiracy theories about widespread election fraud, this plan hoped to force journalists to cover the allegations by creating a historic delay to the certification process.

“I never spoke directly to him about it. But he was certainly on board with the strategy. Just listen to his speech that day. ”


“The Green Bay Sweep was very well thought out. It was designed to get us 24 hours of televised hearings,” he said. “But we thought that we could bypass the corporate media by getting this stuff televised.”

Navarro’s part in this ploy was to provide the raw materials, he said in an interview on Thursday. That came in the form of a three-part White House report he put together during his final weeks in the Trump administration with volume titles like, “The Immaculate Deception” and “The Art of the Steal.”

“My role was to provide the receipts for the 100 congressmen or so who would make their cases… who could rely in part on the body of evidence I'd collected,” he told The Daily Beast. “To lay the legal predicate for the actions to be taken.” (Ultimately, states have not found any evidence of electoral fraud above the norm, which is exceedingly small.)

The next phase of the plan was up to Bannon, Navarro describes in his memoir, In Trump Time.

“Steve Bannon’s role was to figure out how to use this information—what he called ‘receipts’—to overturn the election result. That’s how Steve had come up with the Green Bay Sweep idea,” he wrote.

“The political and legal beauty of the strategy was this: by law, both the House of Representatives and the Senate must spend up to two hours of debate per state on each requested challenge. For the six battleground states, that would add up to as much as twenty-four hours of nationally televised hearings across the two chambers of Congress.”

His book also notes that Bannon was the first person he communicated with when he woke up at dawn on Jan. 6, writing, “I check my messages and am pleased to see Steve Bannon has us fully ready to implement our Green Bay Sweep on Capitol Hill. Call the play. Run the play.”

Navarro told The Daily Beast he felt fortunate that someone cancelled his scheduled appearance to speak to Trump supporters that morning at the Ellipse, a park south of the White House that would serve as a staging area before the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol building.

“It was better for me to spend that morning working on the Green Bay Sweep. Just checking to see that everything was in line, that congressmen were on board,” he said during the interview. “It was a pretty mellow morning for me. I was convinced everything was set in place.”

Later that day, Bannon made several references to the football-themed strategy on his daily podcast, War Room Pandemic.

"We are right on the cusp of victory,” Bannon said on the show. “It’s quite simple. Play’s been called. Mike Pence, run the play. Take the football. Take the handoff from the quarterback. You’ve got guards in front of you. You’ve got big, strong people in front of you. Just do your duty."

This idea was weeks in the making. Although Navarro told The Daily Beast he doesn’t remember when “Brother Bannon” came up with the plan, he said it started taking shape as Trump’s “Stop the Steal” legal challenges to election results in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin fizzled out. Courts wouldn’t side with Trump, thanks to what Navarro describes in his book as “the highly counterproductive antics” of Sydney Powell and her Kraken lawsuits. So instead, they came up with a never-before-seen scheme through the legislative branch.

Navarro starts off his book’s chapter about the strategy by mentioning how “Stephen K. Bannon, myself, and President Donald John Trump” were “the last three people on God’s good Earth who want to see violence erupt on Capitol Hill,” as it would disrupt their plans.

When asked if Trump himself was involved in the strategy, Navarro said, “I never spoke directly to him about it. But he was certainly on board with the strategy. Just listen to his speech that day. He’d been briefed on the law, and how Mike [Pence] had the authority to it.”

“The Green Bay Sweep was very well thought out. It was designed to get us 24 hours of televised hearings.”


Indeed, Trump legal adviser John Eastman had penned a memo (first revealed by journalists Robert Costa and Bob Woodward in their book, Peril) outlining how Trump could stage a coup. And Trump clearly referenced the plan during his Jan. 6 speech, when he said, “I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so… all Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people.”

When Pence certified the electoral votes instead, he became what Navarro’s book described as “the Brutus most responsible… for the final betrayal of President Trump.”

Although the bipartisan House committee investigating the violence on Jan. 6 has demanded testimony and records from dozens of Trump allies and rally organizers believed to be involved in the attack on the nation’s democracy, Navarro said he hasn’t heard from them yet. The committee did not respond to our questions about whether it intends to dig into Navarro’s activities.

And while he has text messages, phone calls, and memos that could show how closely an active White House official was involved in the effort to keep Trump in power, he says investigators won’t find anything that shows the Green Bay Sweep plan involved violence. Instead, Navarro said, the investigative committee would find that the mob’s attack on the U.S. Capitol building actually foiled their plans, because it incentivized Pence and other Republicans to follow through with certification.

“They don’t want any part of me. I exonerate Trump and Bannon,” he said.

The committee is, however, engaged in a bitter battle with Bannon. The former Trump White House chief strategist refused to show up for a deposition or turn over documents, and he’s now being prosecuted by the Justice Department for criminal contempt of Congress.

Navarro said he’s still surprised that people at the Trump rally turned violent, given the impression he got when he went to see them in person during an exercise run that morning.

“I’m telling you man, it was just so peaceful. I saw no anger. None. Zero,” he said.
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Mon Jan 03, 2022 8:28 am

Capitol attack: Cheney says Republicans must choose between Trump and truth
Republican member of the House committee investigating the events of 6 January issues stark warning to her party

by Martin Pengelly @MartinPengelly
The Guardian
Sun 2 Jan 2022 12.03 EST

On a day of alarming polling about attitudes to political violence and fears for US democracy, and as the first anniversary of the Capitol attack approached, a Republican member of the House committee investigating the events of 6 January 2021 had a stark warning for her party.

“Our party has to choose,” Liz Cheney told CBS’s Face the Nation. “We can either be loyal to Donald Trump or we can be loyal to the constitution, but we cannot be both.”

Trump supporters attacked Congress in an attempt to stop certification of his defeat by Joe Biden, which Trump maintains without evidence was the result of electoral fraud. Five people died around a riot in which a mob roamed the Capitol, searching for lawmakers to capture and possibly kill.

On Sunday, Cheney and Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the committee chairman, again discussed the possibility of a criminal referral for Trump over his failure to attempt to stop the riot or for his obstruction of the investigation.

Speaking to ABC’s This Week, Cheney said there were “potential criminal statutes at issue here, but I think that there’s absolutely no question that it was a dereliction of duty. And I think one of the things the committee needs to look at is … a legislative purpose, is whether we need enhanced penalties for that kind of dereliction of duty.”

Thompson said subpoenas could be served on Republicans in Congress who refuse to comply with information requests of the kind which have led to a charge of criminal contempt of Congress for Steve Bannon, Trump’s former strategist, and a recommendation of such a charge for Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff.

The Democrat told NBC’s Meet the Press the committee was examining whether it could issue subpoenas to members of Congress, immediately Jim Jordan of Ohio and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.

“I think there are some questions of whether we have the authority to do it,” Thompson said. “If the authorities are there, there’ll be no reluctance on our part.”

Last month, the committee asked Jordan for testimony about conversations with Trump on 6 January. Jordan told Fox News he had “real concerns” about the credibility of the panel.

Perry was asked for testimony about attempts to replace Jeffrey Rosen, acting head of the justice department, with Jeffrey Clark, an official who tried to help overturn Trump’s defeat.

Perry called the committee “illegitimate, and not duly constituted”. A court has ruled that the panel is legitimate and entitled to see White House records Trump is trying to shield, an argument that has reached the supreme court.

Sunday saw a rash of polls marking the anniversary of 6 January.

CBS found that 68% of Americans saw the Capitol attack as a sign of increasing political violence, and that 66% thought democracy itself was threatened.

When respondents were asked if violence would be justifiable to achieve various political ends, the poll returned an average of around 30%. A survey by the Washington Post and the University of Maryland said more than a third of Americans said violence against the government could be justified.

ABC News and Ipsos found that 52% of Republicans said the Capitol rioters were trying to protect democracy.

Other polling has shown clear majorities among Republicans in believing Trump’s lie about electoral fraud and distrust of federal elections.

On CNN’s State of the Union, Larry Hogan, Maryland governor and a moderate Republican with an eye on the presidential nomination, said: “Frankly, it’s crazy that that many people believe things that simply aren’t true.

“There’s been an amazing amount of disinformation that’s been spread over the past year. And many people are consuming that disinformation and believing it as if it’s fact. To think the violent protesters who attacked the Capitol, our seat of democracy, on 6 January was just tourists looking at statues? It’s insane that anyone could watch that on television and believe that’s what happened.”

Cheney told CBS the blame lay squarely with her own party.

“Far too many Republicans are trying to enable the former president, embrace the former president or look the other way and hope that the former president goes away, or trying to obstruct the activities of this committee, but we won’t be deterred. At the end of the day, the facts matter, the truth matters.”

Her host, Margaret Brennan, pointed out that Republicans across the US, some in states where Trump’s attempt to steal the election was repulsed, are changing election laws to their advantage.

“We’ve got to be grounded on the rule of law,” Cheney said. “We’ve got to be grounded on fidelity of the constitution … So I think for people all across the country, they need to recognise how important their vote is for their voices. They’ve got to elect serious people who are going to defend the constitution, not simply do the bidding of Donald Trump.”

Cheney faces a primary challenger doing Trump’s bidding and enjoying his backing. The other Republican on the 6 January committee, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, will retire in November rather than fight such a battle of his own.

Cheney said she was “confident people of Wyoming will not choose loyalty to one man as dangerous as Donald Trump”, and that she will secure re-election.

She also notably did not say no when she was asked if she would run against Trump if he sought the nomination next time.

On ABC, Cheney was asked if she agreed with Hillary Clinton, who has said a second Trump presidency could end US democracy.

“I do,” Cheney said. “I think it is critically important, given everything we know about the lines that he was willing to cross.

“… We entrust the survival of our republic into the hands of the chief executive, and when a president refuses to tell the mob to stop, when he refuses to defend any of the co-ordinate branches of government, he cannot be trusted.”
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Thu Jan 06, 2022 1:25 am

Trump lawyers drafted letter for seizure of election ‘evidence’ in ‘interest of national security’, documents show: The letter is not the only document that suggested a plan to seize ballots to bolster former president Donald Trump’s false election fraud claims
by Andrew Feinberg
Independent.co.uk
January 3, 2022
(Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

Outside lawyers working for former president Donald Trump drafted a letter for his signature that would have called for the seizure of “evidence” in service of the false claims of voter fraud he and his allies promoted in the days leading up to the 6 January insurrection, documents turned over to Congress show.

An entry on a four-page list of evidence that ex-New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik is refusing to turn over to the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the Capitol shows Mr Kerik is in possession of a document listed as a “draft POTUS letter,” meaning a draft letter from the President of the United States.

The draft document, which Mr Kerik is purporting to withhold under attorney-client privilege despite his not being an attorney, is further described as a “DRAFT LETTER FROM POTUS TO SEIZE EVIDENCE IN THE INTEREST OF NATIONAL SECURITY FOR THE 2020 ELECTIONS” dated 17 December 2020, more than a month after most news organisations called the 2020 race for President Joe Biden.

Unlike the other 26 documents described in the “withheld evidence log”, the document has no author, but the log states that it is being kept from the select committee because it was “drafted and/or edited by attorney”.

Several members of the motley crew that surrounded Mr Trump in the days after he became the first president to lose a reelection bid in nearly two decades reportedly pushed for him to use extralegal means to bolster the false claims of election fraud he and his allies made in the run-up to the worst attack on the Capitol since Major General Robert Ross ordered it burned in 1814.

A 36-page PowerPoint presentation that found its way into then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ email inbox laid out a scenario in which the US Marshals Service would have seized ballots in all 50 states for the purpose of a sham recount conducted by federalised National Guard soldiers.

That unprecedented proposal tracked with demands made in a post-election phone call from ex-Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn to Ezra Cohen, a former Flynn aide who was then serving as the acting undersecretary of defence for intelligence.

In Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, author Jonathan Karl reported that Mr Flynn placed a call to Mr Cohen in late 2020 — just days after having received a presidential pardon from Mr Trump — to urge his former aide to immediately return to Washington from an official trip he was on.

“We need you,” Mr Flynn reportedly said before telling Mr Cohen that he would need to obtain signed orders to seize ballots and take “extraordinary measures…to stop Democrats from stealing the election”.

When the Defence Department official replied that the election was “over” and it was “time to move on”, Mr Flynn berated him for being a “quitter” and maintained that the election was “not over”.

In a letter to select committee chairman Bennie Thompson, Mr Kerik’s attorney Timothy Paratore claimed that Mr Kerik “was hired by former president Donald Trump’s legal team to act as an investigator tasked to look into claims of election fraud” and therefore can withhold documents from the committee because his work “was done at the behest of attorneys in anticipation of litigation” and is therefore “shielded from disclosure by the work-product doctrine”.

Mr Kerik, who is not licensed as a private investigator in either New York or Washington, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Independent.
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Thu Jan 06, 2022 1:33 am

“American Insurrection”: How Far-Right Extremists Moved from Fringe to Mainstream After Jan. 6 Attack
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
January 5, 2022
https://www.democracynow.org/2022/1/5/a ... transcript



GUESTS
Rick Rowley: award-winning filmmaker, independent journalist and director of PBS Frontline’s documentary American Insurrection.
LINKS
"American Insurrection"

Thursday marks one year since a violent mob of thousands of far-right and white supremacist Trump supporters descended on the U.S. Capitol, disrupting Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election and resulting in five deaths and hundreds of injuries. We look at where these movements are one year later, with the updated investigative documentary “American Insurrection” by Frontline in collaboration with ProPublica and Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program. Director Rick Rowley explains how the far-right social movements have grown since the insurrection and says “the locus of the organizing has shifted really from a national platform to a local one, which makes it more difficult to track and increases the potential for local or regional violence.” Rowley and Frontline correspondent A.C. Thompson interviewed January 6 select committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson about what makes this a moment for “far-right mobilization” and discussed the significance of the widespread contradictory beliefs by many on the far right that antifa and Black Lives Matter dressed up as Trump supporters and carried out the January 6 riot, but that those who tried to overturn the election are patriots.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Thursday marks the first anniversary of the deadly January 6th insurrection, when thousands of people attacked the U.S. Capitol with the goal of overthrowing the 2020 election. Many were part of far-right extremist and white supremacist groups. Today we look at where these movements are now with an investigation by Frontline, ProPublica and Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program that began in the wake of the deadly 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally. In their reporting, they found many white supremacist groups started to splinter amidst the backlash following Charlottesville, but President Trump gave them new life.

This is an excerpt from American Insurrection with correspondent A.C. Thompson that actually begins before January 6, 2020, when, on November 14th, one week after the presidential election was called for Joe Biden, Trump supporters took to the streets of Washington, D.C., stirred up by Trump’s refusal to concede. They demanded the results be overturned.

A.C. THOMPSON: As night falls, Proud Boys merge with MAGA marchers and roam the city looking for fights. Trump supporters confront journalists, vandalize Black Lives Matter signs and fight with activists who try to stop them.

POLICE OFFICER: Get out of here!

A.C. THOMPSON: A month later, Trump supporters take to the streets of Washington again. And once again, the protests turn violent. And then, he calls his supporters to the Capitol on January 6th.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you. We’re going to walk down to the Capitol! … You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing. … And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.

A.C. THOMPSON: As the clock runs out on his presidency, he urges them towards the Capitol building.

TRUMP SUPPORTERS: Whose house? Our house!

PROUD BOY: Ready?

A.C. THOMPSON: The Proud Boys are here, but they aren’t wearing their trademark yellow and black. The boogaloo bois are here, too, also out of uniform. They both blend into the pro-Trump crowd. Inside, Congress is trying to certify the election. Outside, the crowd is bearing down on them.

TRUMP SUPPORTERS: U.S.A.! U.S.A.! Whose house? Our house!

A.C. THOMPSON: But the police on the steps are outnumbered and unprepared.

TRUMP SUPPORTERS: U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

A.C. THOMPSON: Around 140 police officers are injured. One officer, Brian Sicknick, will later die. A Proud Boy from New York state smashes through a window. The Capitol has been breached. A Proud Boy broke the window, but what about the crowd behind him? A mob, urged on by the president, willing to embrace an insurrectionary violence that was once confined only to the most extreme elements of the far right.

TRUMP SUPPORTER: It’s amazing!

A.C. THOMPSON: Bewildered, some wander through the halls. Others move towards the Senate chamber. Police struggle to hold them off while congressmembers flee through back exits. The mob surges through the hallways searching for them, coming within feet of their targets.

TRUMP SUPPORTERS: Break it down! Break it down! Break it down!

A.C. THOMPSON: Rioters try to break into a hallway that lawmakers are escaping through.

TRUMP SUPPORTER: Shots fired!

A.C. THOMPSON: A protester is shot and killed. Three other rioters die in the mayhem. It would be hours before the Capitol was cleared.

AMY GOODMAN: Now in an update to the documentary American Insurrection that came out this week, Frontline correspondent A.C. Thompson examines how far-right extremist groups have evolved since January 6th and the threat they pose today.

A.C. THOMPSON: In Washington, D.C., the fences are gone. So are the National Guard patrols. The city no longer feels like a war zone. But when I come back to the Capitol almost a year later, there are many questions that remain unanswered.

REP. BENNIE THOMPSON: We cannot allow what happened on January 6 to ever happen again. We owe it to the American people, and we will not fail, I assure you, in that responsibility.

A.C. THOMPSON: The House of Representatives has impaneled a committee to investigate January 6th and to recommend changes that will prevent something like that from happening again. Representative Bennie Thompson is the committee chair.

REP. BENNIE THOMPSON: January 6th was a difficult day for me personally because I was in the Capitol. I’ve seen a lot of people come to this Capitol. People have the ability, I thought, in Washington, D.C., to express themselves regardless of position. But if I ever imagined that somebody would invade the United States Capitol, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that would occur. Despite what all had occurred, we were called back in the early morning hours to complete the certification, because if we don’t certify the election, then Donald Trump is still president. And he can do a number of things. Martial law is a potential.

A.C. THOMPSON: It could have been something looking like a coup.

REP. BENNIE THOMPSON: Absolutely. You get people, who I talk to on a daily basis, who will actually tell me that what I saw and experienced on January 6th really didn’t happen.

A.C. THOMPSON: People come to you, and they say January 6th didn’t happen?

REP. BENNIE THOMPSON: Yeah, and say, “Look, it was the Black Lives Matter folk. It was antifa dressed up as Trump people who did that.” Or, in addition to that, you have those millions of folk who are out there who are convinced that those individuals who broke into the United States Capitol, they were some of the greatest patriots.

A.C. THOMPSON: Right, right. They say these are heroes.

REP. BENNIE THOMPSON: That’s right.

A.C. THOMPSON: They say that people like you are the enemy.

REP. BENNIE THOMPSON: Absolutely. And that’s why our mission on this committee is so important.

A.C. THOMPSON: Thompson’s committee has subpoenaed members of Trump’s inner circle and interviewed hundreds of witnesses, including some D.C. and Capitol Police officers.

SGT. HARRY DUNN: The fence came down, and still nothing has changed. If a hitman is hired and he kills somebody, not only does the hitman go to jail, but the person who hired them does. There was an attack carried out on January 6, and a hitman sent them. I want you to get to the bottom of that.

Those windows up there, those were some of the first windows that were smashed. That door, they were able to breach that door.

A.C. THOMPSON: The big one up the steps?

SGT. HARRY DUNN: Yeah, up the steps right there.

A.C. THOMPSON: Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn walks me through what happened that day.

SGT. HARRY DUNN: I was on the other side of the Capitol. Once I cleared like this tree line right here, I was just looking out, and I just couldn’t believe what I saw. There were flashbangs going off. There were smoke grenades going off.

A.C. THOMPSON: From your side or from the other?

SGT. HARRY DUNN: Both.

A.C. THOMPSON: From both?

SGT. HARRY DUNN: I’ve never seen anything like that before. My number one thought was just to survive that day. Just to survive. At that time, we had no clue what was going on. We were fighting for our lives, fighting for democracy. And how is this going to end? Like, because we were hours and hours and hours — it’s got to end somehow. How is it going to end?

A.C. THOMPSON: And did you think, like, it might end with these guys overrunning this place?

SGT. HARRY DUNN: Yeah, yeah. It crossed my mind.

A.C. THOMPSON: So, I was interviewing recently an elected public official, and he was here. He said, “I think maybe that was an antifa event. It was meant to make Republicans and Trump supporters, MAGA people, look bad.” What do you think when you hear stuff like that? And he was here.

SGT. HARRY DUNN: The rioters that day in the building told us that “Donald Trump sent us.” I don’t know how to make that any more clear to anybody. Now, whether Donald Trump gave what they’ve been saying as the marching orders, whether he did or not, whatever, that’s not — that’s not my job. I just know what I experienced. I know what I went through. And they were there because Donald Trump sent them. According to them, “Donald Trump sent us.”

A.C. THOMPSON: After the attack, we tried to get information from the Justice Department about its investigation and the people who had been arrested. Along with other news organizations, ProPublica sued for access to evidence they had been gathering.

DANIEL RODRIGUEZ: Trump called us. Trump called us to D.C. I thought that there was going to be battles across the country. I thought that there was going to be fighting. I kept thinking that we’re going to go to like a civil war.

A.C. THOMPSON: In late November 2021, the DOJ made public its interrogation of Daniel Rodriguez, who had admitted to assaulting a police officer.

DANIEL RODRIGUEZ: What do you want me to tell you? That I tased him? Yes. I thought we were going to do something. I thought that it was not going to end and happen like that. I thought that Trump was going to stay president.

A.C. THOMPSON: Rodriguez has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have argued that he was manipulated by the agents. But his words echo the narratives I’ve heard before.

DANIEL RODRIGUEZ: We felt that they stole the election. We thought — we felt that they stole this country, that it’s gone, it’s wiped out, America is over, it’s destroyed now.

A.C. THOMPSON: The arrests after January 6th may have quieted the movement for a time, but it would turn out to be short-lived.

RALLY SPEAKER: We need to fight back now.

A.C. THOMPSON: In rallies across the country, I see momentum building around overturning the 2020 election. The crowds include fewer of the characters and groups I’ve been tracking. I see more and more mainstream Americans. According to polling data, around two-thirds of Republicans have come to believe that the 2020 elections were stolen. About a third say violence may be necessary to save the country. I go back to talk to Mary McCord.

What do you think has happened to those organized groups now — the Proud Boys, the boogaloo bois, the militias? Like, where are they at in terms of strength at this point?

MARY McCORD: Well, within days, literally days, they started finger-pointing. Some dissolved. Some reconstituted themselves. You know, I think the Three Percenters said, “We are no longer.” And you had all these Three Percenters nationally saying, “OK, we need to find another group.” And they also started, you know, making up other disinformation, like this was all an antifa plot, this was a law enforcement plot. But, you know, Americans have really short memory. And time has passed. Many months have passed now. And we’re starting to see, at least in the social media and online forums, you know, organizing again in very dangerous ways.

A.C. THOMPSON: So the movement lives on.

MARY McCORD: It does live on. And, you know, in a way, it’s harder for law enforcement to deal with when it’s so disparate like that, right? You know, a dozen individuals going to a local school board meeting in a rural county without a big police force, that’s harder to protect against than the Capitol, right? The Capitol will not suffer an insurrection like that again.

A.C. THOMPSON: Where do you see the threats coming from at this point and into the future? What keeps you up at night?

MARY McCORD: I mean, a lot of the threats I still see coming from disinformation getting into our political discourse. And particularly as we come into another election year, what I’m really seeing is, you know, the seeds are just being planted already of fraud rampant throughout our election systems.

A.C. THOMPSON: Polling on this issue is pretty chilling. There are tens of millions of Americans that absolutely believe that the 2020 election, it was a fraud. And a lot of them have said, “I’m willing to use violence to change things.”

MARY McCORD: First of all, it’s astounding to see that data. And I tell myself sometimes that surely there’s something wrong about that data collection and that some of that is hyperbolic, right? All of that said, you know, we know that gun purchases were up dramatically over 2020. We have seen more and more armed individuals coming out to government proceedings, whether it’s the counting of the vote after the elections, whether it’s public health meetings, school board meetings. The willingness to be threatening government officials, and even threatening them with arms, is — you know, is something that really needs to be addressed, because that could just snowball.

A.C. THOMPSON: A year later, the country is still living in the shadow of January 6th. The trail that began for me in Charlottesville has taken another turn. Along the way, I’ve seen up close the peril posed by a resurgent white supremacist movement, armed militias pledging to execute police and elected officials, ultranationalists brawling in the streets, would-be revolutionaries wearing Hawaiian shirts, and now this: millions of people convinced that the 2020 election was a fraud, some of them angry enough to turn to violence. Charlottesville and January 6th had once seemed like bookends to an era. But today it’s clear: The movements I’ve been covering have been changing, evolving, but they are not going away.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s an excerpt from the updated version of the American Insurrection documentary with correspondent A.C. Thompson. It was released this week. You can watch the full report at PBS.org/frontline and on YouTube.

For more, we’re joined by the director and writer of this documentary, Rick Rowley. He’s also the director of their Emmy-winning series Documenting Hate.

Rick, welcome back to Democracy Now! So, you now have this updated version of American Insurrection, where you look at these white supremacist and extremist militias, if you will, and where they are today. What do you think is most important to understand about what we’ve learned in this last year?

RICK ROWLEY: It’s great to be with you, Amy and Juan.

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, Mary McCord does a good job of summing up where the movement has landed at this particular moment. I mean, there was a real backlash against the perpetrators of January 6th in the immediate weeks afterwards, just as there was a backlash after Charlottesville. And so, some of the big above-ground national groups splintered. But that backlash was really short-lived. And over the course of the next months, they reconstituted themselves. Mostly, the national networks have disarticulated themselves, and they’re being organized locally — so, Proud Boys chapters showing up at school board meetings around the country. And the locus of the organizing has shifted in many ways from a national platform to a local one, which makes it more difficult to track and increases the potential for local or regional violence, which was already a trajectory we were seeing — right? — with the plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, last year. So that is really where the kind of threat is now, I think, for right-wing violence.

But I think it’s important also to remember that, like — or, think of these things as — of this as a far-right social movement. So, you have groups inside it, small, committed, militant groups, like lifelong white supremacist organizations or militias that are committed to catalyzing a civil war now. You have those groups, that are always sort of pushing the envelope. But they’re swimming in a sea of a much larger group of people, millions of people, who, in the words of the national security analysts, are vulnerable to radicalization, you know, a sea of people who are on the edge and could be recruited into violence by these groups. And that pool of people, of radicalizable people, of vulnerable people, is just growing bigger and bigger and bigger. More people today believe that the election was stolen than believed it on the morning of January 6th. More people today believe that violence might be necessary to defend America than believed it on the morning of January 6th. So, that broader kind of milieu that these movements and that this violence has generated inside has only gotten bigger.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Rick, I wanted to ask you — you did get a chance to interview Congressmember Bennie Thompson, who’s chairing the House investigation of the January 6th insurrection, his committee. All the attention has been focused in the media in recent months, really, on will Trump and his circle be able to draw out the demands or the subpoenas for investigation into the next election season. What was your sense of how — of Thompson’s resolve and what his committee has already found and is seeking to prove?

RICK ROWLEY: Well, Representative Thompson said that January is going to be a big month for them. They’re going to start to make — much of the work that the committee has been doing in private, it’s going to become public. And there will be more public hearings, and we’ll begin to see, you know, what’s going on there.

I mean, I think — I mean, the danger that I fear is that, you know, this — so, Trump obviously played a key role, and has over the entire course of this rise in far-right violence, from before Charlottesville through today. A key player in that and a catalyst for these organizations has been Trump, his candidacy first and then his presidency. And then, obviously, on the morning of January 6th, he pointed to the Capitol and said, you know, “You’ve got to fight.” So, you know, his role is absolutely key.

But I think it’s important for us to remember that it doesn’t have to be a smoke-filled room with three people who, like, planned a very sophisticated operation. I mean, what you have is currents, like deeper political sicknesses inside America, that are being — and fault lines and fissures, that are being tapped into, cynically sometimes, by political players that make this, you know, moments like this, kind of happen. So, you know, I mean — and there’s many things that make this a moment that is incredibly ripe for far-right mobilization and populist mobilization. I mean, things that create this [inaudible] are the rampant economic inequality of our moment, the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I mean, those were both major elements in creating a large chunk of the population that has lost faith or believes that the institutions of this country have failed them in some ways. And lots of those grievances are legitimate. So, in that milieu, you then have old, legacy, far-right, white supremacist groups who are pushing the envelope constantly, and then you have political actors, like Trump and others, who are able to mobilize, crystallize, unite and exploit those energies that existed already and point them in a direction.

So, that, I think, is why you see that this is not — it’s an argument that can be won with facts and evidence, right? I mean, the whole narrative around the 2020 election being stolen, time and again it faces what appear to be — on the surface, to be sort of crippling defeats — right? — the Arizona recount, or audit, you know, every single one of the cases brought by Giuliani and company being thrown out of court. Those don’t actually matter. I mean, the narrative that is feeding the social movement underneath it all survives and continues and reconstitutes itself and will continue, I think, until the underlying problems and sicknesses that feed this kind of movement are addressed in a kind of more systemic way.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And speaking about those lies and those narratives, this narrative that the right-wing media especially push, still claiming that, somehow or other, antifa was involved in the insurrection, could you talk about that and the importance of that to the narrative?

RICK ROWLEY: Yeah, it’s kind of amazing. And one of the things that is characteristic of authoritarian narratives and authoritarian politics, in general, is their ability to have completely contradictory ideas simultaneously held inside the same movement. So, on the one hand, you have people who say it was all fake; it was a false flag operation; antifa and Black Lives Matter dressed up as Trump supporters and organized this whole, like, operation. And then, inside the same movement, shoulder to shoulder with them, you’ll have — and inside the same person sometimes — you’ll also have the belief that the January 6th rioters are patriots and that they’re being crucified in these trials that are just now beginning to happen against them. So, those two contradictory ideas are being held together.

But the creation of this sort of bogeyman on the left of antifa and Black Lives Matter, turning them from what they are, like broad kind of social movements or tactics or whatever, turning them into this communist conspiracy that is going to take over America, undermine it from the inside and destroy it, like, that has been key to the reformulation of far-right groups since Charlottesville. In fact, one of the things we explore early in the film is the way that Charlottesville launches this new kind of political take for these movements.

So, one of the guys we talk to in — we interview in America Insurrection is Brien James, who’s a lifelong, hardcore leader in white supremacist groups — you know, the Klan, the early militia movement where he met Timothy McVeigh, skinhead gangs. And then, after Trump rode down the golden escalator and started his campaign, he said that he realized that the more effective political move was to jettison the most explicitly racist politics and rebrand himself, take off the swastika armband, wrap himself in the American flag and become a Trump supporter. So he joined the Proud Boys. He’s a regional leader of the Proud Boys in Indiana. And he says that using — rather than naming a racial enemy, saying, “We’re against Blacks or Mexican immigrants,” or whatever, naming a political enemy — “We’re against the communists who want to destroy everything that you love about this country” — was the way that they retargeted their political message so that they could reach into the mainstream. And it was incredibly effective. I mean, Brien James says that throughout his career in the far right, he’s always had 20 guys in Minneapolis, you know, maybe 40 statewide. Now he has 200. We saw with our own eyes him in Washington, D.C., with a crew of former skinhead gang members with racist tattoos on their faces, who were dressed in yellow and black of the Proud Boys and were embraced by a throng of mainstream Trump supporters. So, yeah, I mean, you’re right, Juan, the creation of this leftist kind of communist threat to mobilize against, of that kind of enemy to mobilize against, is central to the work that the extreme far right is doing to penetrate the mainstream.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Rick, we want to thank you for being with us, Rick Rowley, director of the PBS Frontline-ProPublica documentary American Insurrection, now updated and available at their website, in collaboration with correspondent A.C. Thompson.

Next, “Is the 'smoking gun' in Trump’s Jan. 6 attempted coup hiding in plain sight?” We’ll speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Will Bunch. Stay with us.

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

Columnist Will Bunch: Trump Came Much Closer to Pulling Off a January 6 Coup Than People Realize
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
January 5, 2022
https://www.democracynow.org/2022/1/5/j ... coup_trump

GUESTS
Will Bunch: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and national columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer.
LINKS
Will Bunch on Twitter

"Is the 'smoking gun' in Trump’s Jan. 6 attempted coup hiding in plain sight?"
"America gave up on truly educating all its kids. Then Jan. 6 happened. Coincidence?"
"Resent U: How College Broke the American Dream and Divided the Nation, and How to Fix It"

The January 6 insurrection resulted in criminal charges for over 700 rioters, and the FBI has since called it an act of domestic terrorism. Philadelphia Inquirer national columnist Will Bunch says there is growing evidence that links Trump and his inner circle to the Capitol attack. He argues understanding what was happening behind the scenes at the Pentagon, which has operational control over the National Guard in D.C., can help explain Trump’s botched attempt to overturn the 2020 election and the insurrection that followed. “I think they fully believed that they would be able to call out the National Guard,” says Bunch, explaining Trump’s strategy to incite violence between his supporters and counterprotesters in an attempt to make military orders to disrupt the certification. Bunch predicts Trump and allies will delay cooperation with the House probe into the attack until Republicans can gain congressional power in 2022 and dismiss the investigation.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

Thursday marks one year since the violent mob of thousands of Trump supporters descended on the U.S. Capitol, disrupting Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. Many have referred to the attack as an attempted coup. Five people died, hundreds were injured. At least four police officers who responded to the Capitol on January 6th died of suicide in the days and months after. The FBI has called the insurrection an act of domestic terrorism. Some 700 rioters have been criminally charged.

Meanwhile, the House select committee investigating the January 6th attack has interviewed over 300 witnesses, subpoenaed several key figures in Trump’s inner circle. Last week, it learned of a document that could be crucial evidence in proving Trump’s intentions to tamper with the 2020 election and in inciting the deadly Capitol insurrection. The document is called the ”DRAFT LETTER FROM POTUS TO SEIZE EVIDENCE IN THE INTEREST OF NATIONAL SECURITY FOR THE 2020 ELECTIONS.” It’s included on a list of records that former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, a close Trump ally, is refusing to turn over.

For more, we’re joined in Philadelphia by Will Bunch, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer. He writes about this in his column, “Is the 'smoking gun' in Trump’s Jan. 6 attempted coup hiding in plain sight?”

Will, welcome back to Democracy Now! Explain what this is.

WILL BUNCH: Right. Well, as you mentioned, you know, Bernie Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, a very close associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who became kind of a Trump insider — in fact, he’d been committed of criminal activity, and Trump had pardoned him. So, he was definitely part of this kind of new inner circle that gathered around Trump between the election loss to Joe Biden and January 6th, who was giving him advice.

And I think the most interesting and, I guess, maybe the most alarming thing that’s been coming out of some of these news reports and leaks out of the House January 6th committee in the last few weeks is the focus of this working group on the idea that Trump might somehow declare a national emergency — which, as you know, in many countries around the world, that’s basically a code name for a coup, right? — and that as part of this national emergency, he might even seize paper election ballots or seize voting machines, which would just be a mess.

And so, we’ve had a couple things. We had an email from Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, about the role of the National Guard, how they expected the National Guard would be there January 6th to, quote, “support” pro-Trump demonstrators, which is an interesting take on things. We had this PowerPoint presentation that circulated on Capitol Hill from Trump’s advisers that talked about this national emergency idea. And now Bernie Kerik’s lawyer has logged the documents that are in his possession, including some that he claims are privileged and that the committee shouldn’t be allowed to see. And one of the ones he’s claiming privilege on is the one that you just mentioned and the one that I think could be a smoking gun, and which is a draft letter from Trump that would basically declare this emergency and allow for the seizing of this evidence.

And I think it’s a very complicated thing, but, very quickly, I think the Trump team expected that on January 6th there would be something that in fact did not happen, which was they expected there to be left-wing counterprotesters, like that December 12th episode that was in the documentary that you just played. They expected a repeat of that. And I think they fully believed that they would be able to call out the National Guard. And remember, Trump installed a lot of close allies in the Pentagon just in the weeks right before January 6th, and the Pentagon has operational control over the National Guard. So, you know, I think there was this theory that if there had been more violence that had involved antifa, which was the enemy of the Trump people, as you just discussed in the last segment, that antifa could have been a pretext for them to call out the National Guard on their side to close down the Capitol. And if the Capitol had been closed down and seized by troops, you wouldn’t have been able to have the certification of Biden’s election. It would have bought them more time for these other schemes that they were working on. You know, it’s interesting that members of Congress, and even Mike Pence himself, were very adamant about not leaving the Capitol. And I think they were afraid if they left the capital on January 6th, that they would never get back.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Will, you wrote in a column a few weeks ago, quote, “the central role of the leftist clashes that never happened, and the thwarted mission for the National Guard and Trump-friendly law enforcement — the final, Hail Mary pass in Team Trump’s slow-motion coup to undo Biden’s election victory — reveals how close a rogue president came to ending … democracy earlier this year.” Could you talk about, one, how — you also say that you believe the left didn’t go for the bait of coming out there —

WILL BUNCH: Yes.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — in Washington, and how that then ended up gumming up the plans of the Trump people, from what you can tell.

WILL BUNCH: Yeah, I mean, that’s one of the most amazing little-known stories about January 6th, is in the maybe two-week run-up before January 6th, when a lot of people — although apparently not the FBI for some reason, but a lot of normal people — knew that this was going to be a potentially violent day and that, you know, we knew that busloads of these people were descending on the Capitol, and the word got out on the left that they’re trying — they want to provoke violence. You know, they want to provoke clashes between left-wing counterprotesters, whether they were, quote, “antifa,” unquote, or just normal resistant folks — they wanted to set up these clashes.

And so, on social media, you actually saw this hashtag, like you said; #DontTakeTheBait became a popular hashtag at the end of December and early January. And you had public officials join in. You know, Muriel Bowser, the mayor of D.C., and other officials went public telling people who were not Trump supporters, “You don’t want to be anywhere near the Capitol on January 6th. Please stay away.” And I think the city even kept some of its workers home. And there was a real effort to just let the Trump people do their thing in the city, and not confront them, not provoke them. And, you know, that was kind of like — in the famous Sherlock Holmes line, that was like the dog that did not bark on January 6th, because you didn’t have those clashes.

And it explains a lot. People are baffled by the inaction of the National Guard. And we now know — and Ryan Goodman and Justin Hendrix from Just Security have done some great reporting on this. You know, we now know that Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint Chiefs, and other top people in the Defense Department were horrified at the idea that the Trump allies within the Pentagon could use the National Guard in service of a coup, basically, in service of Trump. And as a result, I mean, that really was the reluctance to call out the National Guard. You know, D.C. officials were baffled, because they wanted to use the Guard to fight against the Trumpists, the insurrectionists. But in the Pentagon, the worry was that if the Guard got involved and took over the Capitol, that that would end up looking more like a coup. And so, that explains why the National Guard didn’t get involved for three or four hours, until the incident was basically over at that point.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I want to go back for second to this draft national security letter, with Bernard Kerik’s lawyer claiming attorney-client privilege. Of course, Bernard Kerik, as you mentioned, was not only convicted on tax evasion charges but has the dubious distinction of being one of the only people, perhaps in American history, who spent time in the very jail that was named after him, the Bernard Kerik Correctional Facility. And, of course, he’s not a lawyer. So, could you talk about this claim and how it could stand up if it went to court? But, obviously, it might take months for a court decision on it.

WILL BUNCH: Yeah. Well, Juan, you, like me, remember Watergate, and you remember the famous term from Watergate, “stonewalling.” Well, you know, Trump and his team, they’re the masters of stonewalling 2.0. I mean, the basic philosophy, which Trump honed during his years as a sleazy real estate developer in New York, is just when there’s a problem, throw everything up against the wall, you know, lawsuits, just delay.

I mean, what we’re seeing here is unprecedented in terms of people who clearly have no reason to not testify or to defy a subpoena claiming they have the right to defy these subpoenas. And you’ve seen charges now against Steve Bannon. You may see charges against Mark Meadows. But I think for the next 12 months you’re going to see this web of obstruction, of these privilege claims that are going to have to be fought out in court, whether it’s executive privilege or something just more mundane like attorney privilege, which is what Bernie Kerik is claiming.

And I think that the ultimate reason behind this is because Republicans are very confident that they’re going to retake the House in the midterms this November, just based on history and the other trends. And when they do that, they know they’ll be able to end this probe. So, you’ve got the Democrats with this one year to get to the truth, basically. You know, I think the January 6th committee has been doing a fantastic job, and we’ve been seeing the fruits of that in the last couple weeks. And [inaudible] is going to be very dramatic. But you do have that hanging over their head. You know, they’ve got a one-year race against this massive wall of obstruction from Team Trump.

AMY GOODMAN: It will be very interesting when they hold public hearings, and then that comparison to the Watergate public hearings that so many watched at the time. But I wanted to ask you, Will Bunch, about what former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro said on MSNBC yesterday when he was interviewed by Ari Melber. He outlined his support last year for what he called the Green Bay sweep, a plan to overturn the election results in six states.

PETER NAVARRO: The plan was simply this: We had over a hundred congressmen and senators on Capitol Hill ready to implement the sweep. The sweep was simply that. We were going to challenge the results of the election in the six battleground states. They were Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada.

ARI MELBER: Do you realize you are describing a coup?

PETER NAVARRO: No. I totally reject many of your premises there.

AMY GOODMAN: So, there you have it, Will. I’m wondering if you could respond to this. Jamie Raskin, one of the key members of the select committee, has responded, the congressman from Maryland, and said that you have this very unusual situation where maybe the Trump supporters outside, in their violence, with this insurrection, subverted what they wanted to accomplish, their allies wanted to accomplish, Trump wanted to accomplish inside, what Peter Navarro just laid out.

WILL BUNCH: Well, yeah, I mean, when you look back at it, there are so many different ways that things could have broken on January 6th as opposed to what happened. But I think the bottom line — I mean, I think Ari Melber nailed it. I mean, there’s no other word for what they’re talking about here other than a coup. You know, the idea was that if you could block the certification in enough states — and I guess those six states would have done it — then you would have taken Biden under 270 electoral votes. Then the claim would be that, well, you’re throwing the election into the House under the constitutional procedure. And the way the House vote goes, which is not by individual member but by state delegations, the Republicans actually still control the majority of the delegations, and so Republicans could have imposed — used that mechanism to impose a Trump presidency.

So, the thing is, I don’t think that plan could have worked without the cooperation of Mike Pence. And so, you know, I mean, there were three or four incredible hinge points about January 6th, and the failure to convince Pence, who had been such a compliant vice president for four years, to go along is one of the hinge points. I think Mark Milley and the Pentagon realizing the threats — and don’t forget the January 3rd letter from every former — every living former defense secretary, from Dick Cheney to the Democratic ones, warning about the military getting involved on January 6th, because they knew that something was afoot, and they were terrified of the possibilities.

But I think this talk about the Green Bay sweep just shows the high level of planning that was going on here. And let’s not forget, it’s a felony to disrupt the operations of Congress. And I think that’s something that the January 6th committee is really honing in on. Was there a criminal conspiracy to disrupt Congress from doing its job on January 6th? And if so, who was involved in that? You know, obviously, Trump advisers were involved. Was the president himself involved? You know, to again, for the umpteenth time, get back to Watergate, what did the president know, and when did he know it? I mean, I think there’s going to be some real drama behind these hearings when they go public. They may be in primetime, I’m hearing now, which would be quite a political event in 2022.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Will Bunch, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, national columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer_. We’ll link to his pieceswill/ at democracynow.org.
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Is the ‘smoking gun’ in Trump’s Jan. 6 attempted coup hiding in plain sight?
by Will Bunch
The Philadelphia Inquirer
January 3, 2022

While America was preoccupied last week with getting home from the holidays or lining up around the block for COVID-19 testing, there was a bombshell development in the investigation to learn just how far Donald Trump was prepared to go in turning the Capitol Hill chaos of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection into a coup to end U.S. democracy.

Thanks to a somewhat surprising source — the disgraced former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik, a Team Trump insider — we now know the name of a document with the potential to become a “smoking gun.” Just its title suggests Trump was planning an unprecedented abuse of presidential power — to use the Big Lie of nonexistent 2020 election fraud to undo the results of a free and fair vote.


On the eve of the one-year anniversary of the insurrection that disrupted Congress and left five people dead or dying, the question that looms large over 2022 is whether the American people will ever get to see this proof, or the other evidence of the 45th president’s involvement in election tampering, in inciting those who violently rioted on Capitol Hill — and whether the endgame was an autocoup to seize power and deny Joe Biden the White House.

According to a letter from Kerik’s attorney, the document is called “DRAFT LETTER FROM POTUS TO SEIZE EVIDENCE IN THE INTEREST OF NATIONAL SECURITY FOR THE 2020 ELECTIONS” — and it’s believed to have been written on Dec. 17, 2020. That was a critical time for the Trump insiders who were accelerating their schemes to deny the presidency to Biden, even after the Democrat won 7 million more popular votes and the Electoral College by a 306-232 margin.

Here’s the catch: While Kerik, a longtime close associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani, last week turned over some election-related materials to the House Select Committee tasked with getting to the bottom of Jan. 6, the draft letter from Trump is on a list of records that Kerik is refusing to turn over — claiming that the document is shielded as “attorney work product.” While some legal experts are already throwing cold water on that claim, the reality is that Team Trump has been remarkably successful for months in stonewalling — in keeping both key records and important witnesses out of investigators’ reach. In an echo of Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, the future of democracy may hinge on Trump’s ability to thwart the probe.

Understanding why the 12/17/20 document could be a “smoking gun” means understanding where the concept of a national emergency and “seizing evidence,” which could include paper ballots or voting machines from the 2020 election, fits into the growing body of data showing both that an attempted Trump coup was afoot — and why it failed.

First of all, the evidence that Trump had drafted a proposed “National Emergency” letter is completely in sync with last month’s bombshell revelation of a 38-page PowerPoint presentation that circulated among Trump’s inner circle and their allies in Congress just before Jan. 6. The PowerPoint laid out a scenario in which Trump would declare “a National Security Emergency” as a pretense to invalidate electronic voting and possibly prompt lawmakers to award electoral votes to the incumbent president in states that he’d in reality lost.

Of course, Trump didn’t ultimately declare such an emergency. But a series of new revelations has now deepened our understanding of what happened — and, just as important, what didn’t happen — on Jan. 6, and thus shed a lot of light on just how close America came to a full-blown coup attempt.


Ryan Goodman
@rgoodlaw
I was on @allinwithchris
Topic: Our @just_security research on reasons for delay on National Guard on Jan. 6 / Pentagon concern Trump would invoke Insurrection Act, re-mission Guard.
Sharp points by @chrislhayes here on how exactly Trump could've used to shut down certification.
Chris Hayes: The highest levels of leadership at the Department of Defense are concerned that if the National Guard is brought in to back up the Capitol Police and MPD who are there being set upon by the mob, the President is ultimately their Commander and can say, "The new mission is, you must clear the Capitol of everyone; we're not doing the electoral stuff today; everyone go home." And then you have something that we've never encountered before.

Ryan Goodman: That's right. It's a Constitutional coup. And that's exactly what he could do. He could say, "We're locking everything down; we have to lock it down until we figure out what's going on here." Right? That was the goal. We know that's the goal. He wanted to delay the certification at a minimum so that he could have tried to effectuate it that very way.

Chris Hayes: And in fact, all different players in this are understanding that. Ruben Gallego is on the record saying that he told his fellow members of Congress, "Look, don't get on the buses and leave, because that's how a coup happens." We know that Mike Pence essentially refused to leave the building. And I think all those different folks: DOD, Mike Pence, Ruben Gallego, all of those people understand the President of the United States wants to stop the transfer of power, and if he can get everyone out of the building, then maybe he can do it.

Ryan Goodman: That's right. And that's why you even have on the phone Mitch McConnell with the Secretary of Defense later in the day saying, "We need this cleared; we are getting back to work so that everybody can continue to perform their duties and transfer power to the next President."


[Chris Hayes] Ryan Goodman who did some great work and you can check it out over at JustSecurity. Thank you very much.

9:10 AM. Dec 23, 2021


Nearly one year ago, there were a lot of loose threads about the events of Jan. 6 — and the violence that disrupted but didn’t prevent the official certification of Biden’s election victory — that didn’t seem to add up. Why was the Capitol so lightly defended, and why didn’t National Guard troops respond for hours as the building was overrun? Why didn’t the most militant groups, like the Oath Keepers, fight harder once the Capitol had been breached, and what was Trump himself doing as he watched the events unfold?

Now we know that learning what was happening behind the scenes at the Pentagon, which has operational control over the National Guard in Washington, D.C., may be the critical link to understanding how Trump’s inner circle thought it could stop the certification of Biden, and why it ultimately could not. A tell came exactly one year ago on Jan. 3, 2021, with a stunning op-ed from all 10 living ex-Pentagon chiefs warning against a role for the military in the election.

The former Pentagon chiefs issued their warning Sunday evening in an opinion piece that they co-wrote and published in The Washington Post. Its authors include Trump’s two former defense secretaries, Jim Mattis and Mark T. Esper, as well as each surviving, Senate-confirmed Pentagon chief dating back to Donald H. Rumsfeld in the 1970s....

The article brings together a group of Republicans and Democrats who disagree on many national security issues. Its genesis is a conversation between Eric Edelman, a former U.S. ambassador and defense official, and former vice president and defense secretary Richard B. Cheney about how the military might be used in coming days, Edelman said in an interview....

Edelman, who was among a group of Republicans who endorsed President-elect Joe Biden over Trump, said that after Cheney expressed interest in co-authoring an opinion piece, Edelman solicited participation from other former defense secretaries, and wrote a draft of the article along with Eliot Cohen, a former Republican national security official who is dean of the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies....

-- The time to question election results has passed, all living former defense secretaries say, by Dan Lamothe, Jan 3, 2021, Washington Post


This came after Trump spent the weeks after Election Day replacing many Pentagon higher-ups with hard-core loyalists. But we now know the Joint Chiefs chair, Gen. Mark Milley, and the permanent military brass worked hard to make sure the National Guard didn’t get involved on Jan. 6 — thus blocking any chance troops would support a coup, yet also raising understandable questions why they didn’t quickly respond to violent pro-Trump insurrectionists.

Trump wouldn’t invoke the Insurrection Act against his own people — but his team fully expected bloody clashes with left-wing counterprotesters whom POTUS 45 had been pumping up as a threat for weeks. We now know, from the House investigation, that Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows stated in an email on Jan. 5 that the Guard was expected to act to “protect” pro-Trump demonstrators. Likewise, hard-core armed members of the militarized Oath Keepers were making plans to wait in a staging area in an Arlington motel.


Scott MacFarlane
@MacFarlaneNews
One year ago at this moment: Accused OathKeeper conspirator allegedly sent message recommending a Ballston Virginia hotel. Feds say that hotel was where some defendants stashed guns for a "quick reaction force," if Trump invoked the Insurrection Act on Jan 6.
"Here is the direct number for Comfort Inn Ballston/Arlington 1-[DELETE]. I strongly recommend you guys get one or two rooms for a night or two. Arrive 5th, depart 7th will work. She says there are five of you including a husband and wife new recruits. This time of year especially you will need to be indoors to set up, etc. Really, press this home, just get somebody to put it on a credit card. Even if you tell the hotel its double occupancy, you can STILL put a couple of people on the floor with bedrolls and the hotel won't know shit. Paul said he might be able to take one or two in his room as well. I spoke to the hotel last night (actually 2 a.m. this morning) and they still had rooms. This is a good location and would allow us to ...

11:10 AM Jan 1, 2022


What were Meadows, the Guard, Trump’s embedded allies in the Pentagon, and the Oath Keepers all waiting for? Presumably what they’d seen throughout 2020, peaking with mayhem in D.C. streets during a kind of trial run on Dec. 12, 2020 — violent clashes between Trumpists and left-wing counterprotesters. But leftists smartly stayed home on Jan. 6, egged on by a social media hashtag #DontTakeTheBait. Lacking the expected trigger for invoking the Insurrection Act and perhaps declaring a “national emergency,” both Trump and the Pentagon-led National Guard both were AWOL for hours.

Until now, little has been made public that would tie these schemes to invoke the Insurrection Act directly to Trump — instead connecting allies like Meadows and ad hoc advisers like the ex-Army colonel and psyops specialist Phil Waldron, likely author of the PowerPoint. That’s why the draft letter described last week by Kerik should be seen as a potential “smoking gun,” because it would prove that Trump was personally involved in the planning for a scenario that could have shut down the Capitol on Jan. 6.

And evidence that Trump himself was an active participant in a plot that saw the disruption of Congress, and its Electoral College certification, on Jan. 6 as its ultimate goal would also, legal experts argue, place the ex-president in the middle of a felony conspiracy scheme. Indeed, a key figure on the House Select Committee — the rogue Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming — recently pointed specifically to Trump’s known or potential actions on Jan. 6 in the context of the federal law against impeding Congress.


This shows why 2022 looks to be such a critical year in the history of the United States. Trump and his associates are planning to spend the next 12 months hoping to obstruct Congress — much as Trump became skillful in blocking probes of his shady real estate or financial practices, with a web of lawsuits and outrageous claims. Although sitting presidents have the justified right to shield some of their sensitive White House communications, the current claims by Trump hangers-on — like Kerik, for example — of broad legal or executive privileges for who weren’t even part of the administration are absurd.

In the landmark, unanimous 1974 ruling in the United States v. Richard Nixon that started the chain of events that led to the 37th president’s resignation, the Supreme Court weakened the power of executive privilege claims in matters like a criminal trial when the desired secrecy doesn’t serve the wider public interest. That ruling is credited with steering America through a perilous moment. In 2022, the high court will likely be called on again, but decades of politicization feeding into Trump’s naming of three of the nine justices makes confidence more shaky.

I don’t want to be overly melodramatic, and God knows there are other ongoing crises in America — COVID-19, climate change, gun violence — but whether the Supreme Court ultimately allows the public to see what the former president knew about Jan. 6, and when he knew it, could decide whether we’ll keep the republic for much longer.

In 1974, the Supreme Court’s bipartisan resolve allowed the public to finally hear Watergate’s “smoking gun” — a White House tape confirming what had been long suspected, that Nixon abused his power as president over the CIA and FBI to rein in probes of that affair. In 2022, whether the public can read “DRAFT LETTER FROM POTUS TO SEIZE EVIDENCE IN THE INTEREST OF NATIONAL SECURITY FOR THE 2020 ELECTIONS” will again decide whether the president is completely above the law, and whether planning for what amounts to a 2024 version of the coup can proceed. For the sake of our democracy, secrecy is not an option.


Will Bunch
I'm the national columnist — with some strong opinions about what's happening in America around social injustice, income inequality and the government.
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Thu Jan 06, 2022 5:38 am

Merrick Garland vows to hold all January 6th perpetrators accountable under the law
by Merrick Garland
January 5, 2022



In a sweeping speech marking the one-year anniversary of the Capitol attack, Attorney General Merrick Garland pushed back on criticism that the Justice Department's January 6 probe has not been aggressive enough, while signaling that no one would be off limits as prosecutors "followed the facts."

"The actions we have taken thus far will not be our last," Garland said. "The Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law -- whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy."

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

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland Delivers Remarks on the First Anniversary of the Attack on the Capitol
Remarks as Delivered
January 5, 2022

Good afternoon.

It’s nice to see some of you here in the Great Hall. And to be able to connect with all of you virtually today.

On my first day as Attorney General, I spoke with all of you — the more than 115,000 employees of the Department of Justice — for the first time.

Today, I have brought us all together again, for two reasons.

First and foremost, to thank you. Thank you for the work you have done, not just over the last 10 months, but over the past several years. Work that you have done in the face of unprecedented challenges — ranging from an unprecedented deadly pandemic to an unprecedented attack on our democracy.

Thank you for your service, for your sacrifice, and for your dedication. I am honored to serve alongside you.

And second, as we begin a new year — and as we prepare to mark a solemn anniversary tomorrow – it is a fitting time to reaffirm that we at the Department of Justice will do everything in our power to defend the American people and American democracy.

We will defend our democratic institutions from attack.

We will protect those who serve the public from violence and threats of violence.

We will protect the cornerstone of our democracy: the right to every eligible citizen to cast a vote that counts.

And we will do all of this in a manner that adheres to the rule of law and honors our obligation to protect the civil rights and civil liberties of everyone in this country.

Tomorrow will mark the first anniversary of January 6th, 2021 — the day the United States Capitol was attacked while lawmakers met to affirm the results of a presidential election.

In the early afternoon of January 6th — as the United States Senate and House of Representatives were meeting to certify the vote count of the Electoral College — a large crowd gathered outside the Capitol building.

Shortly after 2 p.m., individuals in the crowd began to force entry into the Capitol, by smashing windows and assaulting U.S. Capitol police, who were stationed there to protect the members of Congress as they took part in one of the most solemn proceedings of our democracy. Others in the crowd encouraged and assisted those who attacked the police.

Over the course of several hours, outnumbered law enforcement officers sustained a barrage of repeated, violent attacks. About 80 Capitol Police and 60 D.C. Metropolitan Police were assaulted.

As our own court filings and thousands of public videos of the event attest,

• Perpetrators punched dozens of law enforcement officers, knocking some officers unconscious.

• Some perpetrators tackled and dragged law enforcement officers. Among the many examples of such violence: One officer was crushed in a door. Another was dragged down a set of stairs, face down, repeatedly tased and beaten, and suffered a heart attack.

• Some perpetrators attacked law enforcement officers with chemical agents that burned their eyes and skin.

• And some assaulted officers with pipes, poles, and other dangerous or deadly weapons.

• Perpetrators also targeted, assaulted, tackled and harassed journalists and destroyed their equipment.

With increasing numbers of individuals having breached the Capitol, members of the Senate and the House of Representatives — including the President of the Senate, Vice President Mike Pence — had to be evacuated.

As a consequence, proceedings in both chambers were disrupted for hours — interfering with a fundamental element of American democracy: the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next.

Those involved must be held accountable, and there is no higher priority for us at the Department of Justice.

It is impossible to overstate the heroism of the Capitol Police officers, Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officers, and other law enforcement officers who defended and secured the Capitol that day. They demonstrated to all of us, and to our country, what true courage looks like.

Their resolve, their sacrifice, and their bravery protected thousands of people working inside the Capitol that day.

Five officers who responded selflessly to the attack on January 6th have since lost their lives.

I ask everyone to please join me in a moment of silence in recognition of the service and sacrifice of:

Officer Brian Sicknick.

Officer Howard Liebengood.

Officer Jeffrey Smith.

Officer Gunther Hashida.

And Officer Kyle DeFreytag.

I know I speak for all of us in saying that tomorrow, and in our work in the days ahead, we will not only remember them — we will do everything we can to honor them.

In the aftermath of the attack, the Justice Department began its work on what has become one of the largest, most complex, and most resource-intensive investigations in our history.

Only a small number of perpetrators were arrested in the tumult of January 6th itself. Every day since, we have worked to identify, investigate, and apprehend defendants from across the country. And we have done so at record speed and scale — in the midst of a pandemic during which some grand juries and courtrooms were not able to operate.

Led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the FBI’s Washington Field Office, DOJ personnel across the department — in nearly all 56 field offices, in nearly all 94 United States Attorneys’ Offices, and in many Main Justice components — have worked countless hours to investigate the attack. Approximately 70 prosecutors from the District of Columbia and another 70 from other U.S. Attorney’s Offices and DOJ divisions have participated in this investigation.

So far, we have issued over 5,000 subpoenas and search warrants, seized approximately 2,000 devices, pored through over 20,000 hours of video footage, and searched through an estimated 15 terabytes of data.

We have received over 300,000 tips from ordinary citizens, who have been our indispensable partners in this effort. The FBI’s website continues to post photos of persons in connection with the events of January 6th, and we continue to seek the public’s assistance in identifying those individuals.

As of today, we have arrested and charged more than 725 defendants, in nearly all 50 states and the District of Columbia, for their roles in the January 6th attack.

In charging the perpetrators, we have followed well-worn prosecutorial practices.

Those who assaulted officers or damaged the Capitol face greater charges.

Those who conspired with others to obstruct the vote count also face greater charges.

Those who did not undertake such conduct have been charged with lesser offenses — particularly if they accepted their responsibility early and cooperated with the investigation.

In the first months of the investigation, approximately 145 defendants pled guilty to misdemeanors, mostly defendants who did not cause injury or damage. Such pleas reflect the facts of those cases and the defendants’ acceptance of responsibility. And they help conserve both judicial and prosecutorial resources, so that attention can properly focus on the more serious perpetrators.

In complex cases, initial charges are often less severe than later charged offenses. This is purposeful, as investigators methodically collect and sift through more evidence.

By now, though, we have charged over 325 defendants with felonies, many for assaulting officers and many for corruptly obstructing or attempting to obstruct an official proceeding. Twenty defendants charged with felonies have already pled guilty.

Approximately 40 defendants have been charged with conspiracy to obstruct a congressional proceeding and/or to obstruct law enforcement. In the months ahead, 17 defendants are already scheduled to go to trial for their role in felony conspiracies.

A necessary consequence of the prosecutorial approach of charging less serious offenses first is that courts impose shorter sentences before they impose longer ones.

In recent weeks, however, as judges have sentenced the first defendants convicted of assaults and related violent conduct against officers, we have seen significant sentences that reflect the seriousness of those offenses — both in terms of the injuries they caused and the serious risk they posed to our democratic institutions.

The actions we have taken thus far will not be our last.

The Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law — whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy. We will follow the facts wherever they lead.

Because January 6th was an unprecedented attack on the seat of our democracy, we understand that there is broad public interest in our investigation. We understand that there are questions about how long the investigation will take, and about what exactly we are doing.

Our answer is, and will continue to be, the same answer we would give with respect to any ongoing investigation: as long as it takes and whatever it takes for justice to be done — consistent with the facts and the law.

I understand that this may not be the answer some are looking for. But we will and we must speak through our work. Anything else jeopardizes the viability of our investigations and the civil liberties of our citizens.

Everyone in this room and on these screens is familiar with the way we conduct investigations, and particularly complex investigations.

We build investigations by laying a foundation. We resolve more straightforward cases first because they provide the evidentiary foundation for more complex cases.

Investigating the more overt crimes generates linkages to less overt ones. Overt actors and the evidence they provide can lead us to others who may also have been involved. And that evidence can serve as the foundation for further investigative leads and techniques.

In circumstances like those of January 6th, a full accounting does not suddenly materialize. To ensure that all those criminally responsible are held accountable, we must collect the evidence.

We follow the physical evidence. We follow the digital evidence. We follow the money.

But most important, we follow the facts — not an agenda or an assumption. The facts tell us where to go next.

Over 40 years ago in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the Justice Department concluded that the best way to ensure the department’s independence, integrity, and fair application of our laws — and, therefore, the best way to ensure the health of our democracy — is to have a set of norms to govern our work.

The central norm is that, in our criminal investigations, there cannot be different rules depending on one’s political party or affiliation. There cannot be different rules for friends and foes. And there cannot be different rules for the powerful and the powerless.

There is only one rule: we follow the facts and enforce the law in a way that respects the Constitution and protects civil liberties.

We conduct every investigation guided by the same norms. And we adhere to those norms even when, and especially when, the circumstances we face are not normal.

Adhering to the department’s long-standing norms is essential to our work in defending our democracy, particularly at a time when we are confronting a rise in violence and unlawful threats of violence in our shared public spaces and directed at those who serve the public.

We have all seen that Americans who serve and interact with the public at every level — many of whom make our democracy work every day — have been unlawfully targeted with threats of violence and actual violence.

Across the country, election officials and election workers; airline flight crews; school personnel; journalists; local elected officials; U.S. Senators and Representatives; and judges, prosecutors, and police officers have been threatened and/or attacked.

These are our fellow citizens — who administer our elections, ensure our safe travel, teach our children, report the news, represent their constituents, and keep our communities safe.

Some have been told that their offices would be bombed. Some have been told that they would be murdered, and precisely how — that they would be hanged; that they would be beheaded.

Police officers, who put their lives on the line every day to serve our communities, have been targeted with extraordinary levels of violence.

Flight crews have been assaulted. Journalists have been targeted. School personnel and their families have been threatened.

A member of Congress was threatened in a gruesome voicemail that asked if she had ever seen what a 50-caliber shell does to a human head. Another member of Congress — an Iraq War veteran and Purple Heart recipient — received threats that left her “terrified for [her] family.”

And in 2020, a federal judge in New Jersey was targeted by someone who had appeared before her in court. That person compiled information about where the judge and her family lived and went to church. That person found the judge’s home, shot and killed her son, and injured her husband.

These acts and threats of violence are not associated with any one set of partisan or ideological views.

But they are permeating so many parts of our national life that they risk becoming normalized and routine if we do not stop them.

That is dangerous for people’s safety. And it is deeply dangerous for our democracy.

In a democracy, people vote, argue, and debate — often vociferously — in order to achieve the policy outcomes they desire. But in a democracy, people must not employ violence or unlawful threats of violence to affect that outcome. Citizens must not be intimidated from exercising their constitutional rights to free expression and association by such unlawful conduct.

The Justice Department will continue to investigate violence and illegal threats of violence, disrupt that violence before it occurs, and hold perpetrators accountable.

We have marshaled the resources of the department to address the rising violence and criminal threats of violence against election workers, against flight crews, against school personnel, against journalists, against members of Congress, and against federal agents, prosecutors, and judges.

In 2021, the department charged more defendants in criminal threat cases than in any year in at least the last five.

As we do this work, we are guided by our commitment to protect civil liberties, including the First Amendment rights of all citizens.

The department has been clear that expressing a political belief or ideology, no matter how vociferously, is not a crime. We do not investigate or prosecute people because of their views. Peacefully expressing a view or ideology — no matter how extreme — is protected by the First Amendment. But illegally threatening to harm or kill another person is not. There is no First Amendment right to unlawfully threaten to harm or kill someone.

As Justice Scalia noted in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, true “threats of violence are outside the First Amendment” because laws that punish such threats “protect[] individuals from the fear of violence, from the disruption that fear engenders, and from the possibility that the threatened violence will occur.”

The latter point hits particularly close to home for those of us who have investigated tragedies ranging from the Oklahoma City bombing to the January 6th attack on the Capitol. The time to address threats is when they are made, not after the tragedy has struck.

As employees of the nation’s largest law enforcement agency, each of us understands that we have an obligation to protect our citizens from violence and fear of violence. And we will continue to do our part to provide that protection.

But the Justice Department cannot do it alone. The responsibility to bring an end to violence and threats of violence against those who serve the public is one that all Americans share.

Such conduct disrupts the peace of our public spaces and undermines our democracy. We are all Americans. We must protect each other.

The obligation to keep Americans and American democracy safe is part of the historical inheritance of this department. As I have noted several times before, a founding purpose of the Justice Department was to battle violent extremist attacks on our democratic institutions.

In the midst of Reconstruction following the Civil War, the department’s first principal task was to secure the civil rights promised by the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. This meant protecting Black Americans seeking to exercise their right to vote from acts and threats of violence by white supremacists.

The framers of the Civil War Amendments recognized that access to the ballot is a fundamental aspect of citizenship and self-government. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 sought to make the promise of those amendments real. To do so, it gave the Justice Department valuable tools with which to protect the right to vote.

In recent years, however, the protections of the Voting Rights Act have been drastically weakened.

The Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in the Shelby County case effectively eliminated the preclearance protections of Section 5, which had been the department’s most effective tool for protecting voting rights over the past half-century. Subsequent decisions have substantially narrowed the reach of Section 2 as well.

Since those decisions, there has been a dramatic increase in legislative enactments that make it harder for millions of eligible voters to vote and to elect representatives of their own choosing.

Those enactments range from: practices and procedures that make voting more difficult; to redistricting maps drawn to disadvantage both minorities and citizens of opposing political parties; to abnormal post-election audits that put the integrity of the voting process at risk; to changes in voting administration meant to diminish the authority of locally elected or nonpartisan election administrators.

Some have even suggested permitting state legislators to set aside the choice of the voters themselves.

As I noted in an address to the Civil Rights Division last June, many of those enactments have been justified by unfounded claims of material vote fraud in the 2020 election.

Those claims, which have corroded people’s faith in the legitimacy of our elections, have been repeatedly refuted by the law enforcement and intelligence agencies of both the last administration and this one, as well as by every court — federal and state — that has considered them.

The Department of Justice will continue to do all it can to protect voting rights with the enforcement powers we have. It is essential that Congress act to give the department the powers we need to ensure that every eligible voter can cast a vote that counts.

But as with violence and threats of violence, the Justice Department — even the Congress — cannot alone defend the right to vote. The responsibility to preserve democracy — and to maintain faith in the legitimacy of its essential processes — lies with every elected official and with every American.

All Americans are entitled to free, fair, and secure elections that ensure they can select the representatives of their choice.

All Americans are entitled to live in a country in which their public servants can go about their jobs of serving the public free from violence and unlawful threats of violence.

And all Americans are entitled to live in a country in which the transition from one elected administration to the next is accomplished peacefully.

The Justice Department will never stop working to defend the democracy to which all Americans are entitled.

As I recognized when I first spoke with you all last March, service in the Department of Justice is more than a job and more than an honor. It is a calling.

Each of us — you and I — came to work here because we are committed to the rule of law and to seeking equal justice under law. We came to work here because we are committed to ensuring the civil rights and civil liberties of our people. We came to work here because we are committed to protecting our country — as our oath says — from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Together, we will continue to show the American people, by word and by deed, that these are the principles that underlie our work.

The challenges that we have faced, and that we will continue to face, are extraordinary. But I am moved and humbled by the extraordinary work you do every single day to meet them.

I look forward to seeing more of you in person, soon, and to our continued work together.

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

Postby admin » Thu Jan 06, 2022 10:30 pm

GOP Group Calls Out Trump’s Enablers In Congress By Name In Scathing Fox News Ad
by Ed Mazza
Wed, January 5, 2022, 5:03 AM

A conservative group is calling out GOP lawmakers for failing to hold former President Donald Trump accountable for the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol carried out by his supporters.

The new ad from the Republican Accountability Project, set to air on Fox News on the first anniversary of the attack, focuses on five lawmakers who were sharply critical of Trump last year, but since either changed their tune or went silent.

“They told the truth then. Why won’t they now?” the text on the screen reads after clips featuring comments by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.):

The Republican Accountability Project
@AccountableGOP
@GOPLeader, @LeaderMcConnell, @tedcruz, @LindseyGrahamSC, @MikeforWI, this you?
Running on January 6 on Fox and Friends, Tucker Carlson Tonight, and Hannity.

7:07 PM Jan 4, 2022


The spot is set to run during “Fox & Friends,” “Hannity” and “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Thursday. The Republican Accountability Project has been running ads targeting members of the party who enabled Trump, complete with an online “Hall of Shame” of 13 lawmakers who “actively invented and disseminated lies, misinformation and conspiracy theories.”

The group is also looking to support primary challengers to those lawmakers.

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

Cowardice: Some Republicans have made it clear that they cannot be trusted with power
by accountability.gop
Accessed: 1/6/22
https://accountability.gop/cowardice/

The balance has turned against the responsible, reasonable wing of the Republican Party. Most Republicans in Congress abetted the insurrection on January 6 and ignored, excused, or even participated in the dog whistles to QAnon and other dangerous conspiracy theories.

Most Republicans went along with the trend because it was politically safe, but a few of them drove the trend. They actively invented and disseminated lies, misinformation, and conspiracy theories to rile up their base and advance their own careers at the expense of the country and the Constitution.

They have made it clear that they can never be trusted with power. To ensure that as few of them as possible return to Congress in 2022, we will recruit and support primary candidates against them through our political action committee where strategically viable.

CAMPAIGNS

“Resign” Billboards


We're holding irresponsible Republican lawmakers accountable.

We’re kicking off a $1 million billboard campaign across the country calling for prominent members of Congress to resign for their role in the January 6 Capitol attack.

This is a selection of the billboards that we’re running across the country, which are targeting GOP lawmakers who were the most irresponsible during the aftermath of the 2020 election.

YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
SEN. CRUZ: RESIGN

YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
SEN. HAWLEY: RESIGN

YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
MCCARTHY: RESIGN

YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
JORDAN: RESIGN

YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
REP. GREENE: RESIGN

YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
SEN. CRUZ: RESIGN

YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
CAWTHORN: RESIGN

YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
BROOKS: RESIGN

YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
SEN. CRUZ: RESIGN

YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
REP. NUNES: RESIGN

YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
STEFANIK: RESIGN

YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
REP. GAETZ: RESIGN

YOU LIED ABOUT THE ELECTION. THE CAPITOL WAS ATTACKED.
GOHMERT: RESIGN

"You Did This" Commercial

We're showing the direct line between the destructive rhetoric of Congressional Republicans and the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Airing in January.



REPUBLICAN HALL OF SHAME

Rep. Lauren Boebert
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Rep. Mo Brooks
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Rep. Madison Cawthorn
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Sen. Ted Cruz
SENATE

Rep. Matt Gaetz
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Rep. Louie Gohmert
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Rep. Paul Gosar
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Sen. Josh Hawley
SENATE

Rep. Jim Jordan
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Rep. Kevin McCarthy
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Rep. Devin Nunes
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Rep. Elise Stefanik
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Fri Jan 07, 2022 12:37 am

Watch Biden’s full Jan. 6 anniversary speech
by Pres. Joe Biden
an 6, 2022



Madam Vice President, my fellow Americans: to state the obvious, one year ago today, in this sacred place, Democracy was attacked. Simply attacked. The will of the people was under assault. The Constitution, our constitution faced the gravest of threats. Outnumbered in the face of a brutal attack, the Capitol Police, the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, the National Guard and other brave law enforcement officials saved the rule of law. Our democracy held. We the people endured. We the people prevail.

For the first time in our history, a president had not just lost an election, he tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the Capitol. But they failed. They failed. And on this day of remembrance, we must make sure that such attack never, never happens again.

I'm speaking to you today from Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol. This is where the House of Representatives met for 50 years in the decades leading up to the Civil War.

This is – on this floor is where a young congressman from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, sat at desk 191. Above him, above us over that door, leading into the rotunda is a sculpture depicting Clio, the muse of history. In her hands, an open book, in which she records the events taking place in this chamber below. Clio stood watch over this hall, one year ago today, as she has for more than 200 years. She recorded what took place: the real history, the real facts, the real truth, the facts and the truth that Vice President Harris just shared, and that you and I and the whole world saw with our own eyes.

The Bible tells us that we shall know the truth and the truth shall make us free. We shall know the truth. Well, here is the God's truth about January 6, 2021. Close your eyes. Go back to that day. What do you see?

Rioters rampaging, waving for the first time inside this Capitol, the confederate flag that symbolized the cause to destroy America, to rip us apart. Even during the Civil War, that never, ever happened. But it happened here in 2021.

What else do you see? A mob, breaking windows, kicking in doors, breaching the Capitol, American flags on poles being used as weapons as spears, fire extinguishers being thrown at the heads of police officers. A crowd that professes their love for law enforcement assaulted those police officers, dragged them, sprayed them, stomped on them.

Over 140 police officers were injured. We all heard the police officers who were there that day testified to what happened. One officer called it quote "a medieval battle" and that he was more afraid that day than he was fighting the war in Iraq.

They've repeatedly asked since that day, how dare anyone, anyone diminish belittle or deny the hell they were put through? We saw with our own eyes rioters menace these halls, threatening the life of the Speaker of the House, literally erecting gallows to hang the vice president of the United States of America.

What do we not see? We didn't see a former president who had just rallied the mob to attack, sitting in the private dining room off the Oval Office in the White House, watching it all on television and doing nothing for hour, as police were assaulted. Lives at risk. The nation's capital under siege.

This wasn't a group of tourists. This is an armed insurrection. They weren't looking to uphold the will of the people. They were looking to deny the will of the people. They were looking to uphold – they weren't looking to hold a free and fair election. They were looking to overturn one. They weren't looking to save the cause of America. They were looking to subvert the Constitution. This isn't about being bogged down in the past. This is about making sure the past isn't buried.

That's the only way forward. That's what great nations do. They don't bury the truth. They face up to it. It sounds like hyperbole, but that's the truth. They face up to it. We are a great nation.

My fellow Americans in life, there's truth. And tragically, there are lies. Lies conceived and spread for profit and power. We must be absolutely clear about what is true and what is a lie. And here's the truth: the former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election. He's done so because he values power over principle.

Because he sees his own interest as more important than his country's interest and America's interest. And because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our constitution. He can't accept he lost. Even though that's what 93 United States senators, his own attorney general, his own vice president, governors and state officials in every battleground state have all said: he lost.

That's what 81 million of you did as you voted for a new way forward. He has done what no president in American history, the history of this country has ever, ever done. He refused to accept the results of an election and the will of the American people.

While some courageous men and women in the Republican Party are standing against it, trying to uphold the principle of that party, too many others are transforming that party into something else. They seem no longer to want to be the party, the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan, the Bushes.

But whatever my other disagreements are with Republicans who support the rule of law and not the role of a single man, I will always seek to work together with them, to find shared solutions where it possible.

Because if we have a shared belief in democracy, that anything is possible. Anything.

And so at this moment, we must decide, what kind of nation are we going to be? Are we going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm? Are we going to be a nation where we allow partisan election officials to overturn the legally expressed will of the people?

Are we going to be a nation that lives not by the light of the truth but under the shadow of lies? We cannot allow ourselves to be that kind of nation. The way forward is to recognize the truth and to live by it.

The Big Lie being told by the former president and many Republicans who fear his wrath is that the insurrection in this country actually took place on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2020.

Think about that. Is that what you thought? Is that what you thought when you voted that day? Taking part in an insurrection, is that what you thought you were doing, or did you think you were carrying out your highest duty as a citizen and voting?

The former president's supporters are trying to rewrite history. They want you to see Election Day as the day of insurrection. And the riot that took place there on January 6th as a true expression of the will of the people.

Can you think of a more twisted way to look at this country, to look at America? I cannot.

Here's the truth. The election of 2020 was the greatest demonstration of democracy in the history of this country. More of you voted in that election than have ever voted in all of American history. Over 150 million Americans went to the polls and voted that day in a pandemic. Some at great risk to their lives. They should be applauded, not attacked.

Right now in state after state, new laws are being written. Not to protect the vote, but to deny it. Not only to suppress the vote, but to subvert it, not to strengthen or protect our democracy, but because the former president lost. Instead of looking at election results from 2020 and saying they need new ideas or better ideas to win more votes, the former president and his supporters have decided the only way for them to win is to suppress your vote and subvert our elections.

It's wrong. It's undemocratic, and frankly, it's un-American. The second Big Lie being told by the former president's supporters is that the results of the election 2020 can't be trusted. The truth is that no election, no election in American history has been more closely scrutinized or more carefully counted.

Every legal challenge questioning the results and every court in this country that could have been made was made and was rejected, often rejected by Republican-appointed judges, including judges appointed by the former president himself from state courts to the United States Supreme Court. Recounts were undertaken in state after state. Georgia – Georgia counted its results three times, with one recount by hand.

Phony partisan audits were undertaken long after the election in several states. None changed the results. And in some of them, the irony is the margin of victory actually grew slightly.

So let's speak plainly about what happened in 2020. Even before the first ballot was cast, the former president was preemptively sowing doubt about the election results. He built his lie over months. It wasn't based on any facts. He was just looking for an excuse, a pretext to cover for the truth. He's not just a former president. He's a defeated former president. Defeated by a margin of over seven million of your votes. In a full and free and fair election.

There is simply zero proof the election results are inaccurate. In fact, in every venue where evidence had to be produced and oath to tell the truth had to be taken, the former president failed to make his case.

Just think about this, the former president and his supporters have never been able to explain how they accept as accurate the other election results that took place on November 3rd. The elections for governor. United States Senate. House of Representatives. Elections, in which they closed the gap in the House. They challenged none of that. The president's name was first. Then we went down the line, governors, senators, House of Representatives.

Somehow, those results are accurate on the same ballot. But the presidential race was flawed? And on the same ballot, the same day, cast by the same voters? The only difference, the former president didn't lose those races. He just lost the one that was his own.

Finally, the third Big Lie being told by a former president and supporters is that the mob who sought to impose their will through violence are the nation's true patriots. Is that what you thought when you looked at the mob ransacking the Capitol, destroying property, literally defecating in the hallways? Rifling through the desks of senators and representatives? Hunting down members of congress. Patriots? Not my view.

To me, the true patriots for the more than 150 Americans who peacefully expressed their vote at the ballot box. The election workers who protected the integrity of the vote and the heroes who defended this Capitol. You can't love your country only when you win. You can't obey the law only when it's convenient. You can't be patriotic when you embrace and enable lies.

Those who stormed this Capitol and those who instigated and incited and those who called on them to do so held a dagger at the throat of America, at American democracy.

They didn't come here out of patriotism or principle. They came here in rage. Not in service of America but rather in service of one man. Those who incited the mob, the real plotters who are desperate to deny the certification of this election, and defy the will of the voters. But their plot was foiled; congressmen, Democrats, Republicans stayed. Senators, representatives, staff, they finished their work, the Constitution demanded. They honored their oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Look folks, now it's up to all of us — to We the People — to stand for the rule of law, to preserve the flame of democracy, to keep the promise of America alive. The promise is at risk. Targeted by the forces that value brute strength. Over the sanctity of democracy. Fear over hope. Personal gain over public good.

Make no mistake about it, we're living at an inflection point in history, both at home and abroad. We're engaged anew in a struggle between democracy and autocracy, between the aspirations of the many and the greed of the few. Between the people's right of self-determination and self-seeking autocrat. From China to Russia and beyond, they're betting the democracies' days are numbered - they've actually told me democracy is too slow, too bogged down by division to succeed in today's rapidly changing, complicated world.

And they're betting, they're betting America will become more like them and less like like us. They're betting in America is a place for the autocrat, the dictator, the strongman. I do not believe that. That is not who we are. That is not who we have ever been. And that is not who we should ever, ever be.

Our founding fathers, as imperfect as they were, set in motion, an experiment that changed the world, literally changed the world. Here in America, the people would rule. Power would be transferred peacefully. Never the tip of a spear or the barrel of a gun. They committed paper and idea that couldn't live up to – they couldn't live up to, but an idea it couldn't be constrained.

Yes, in America, all people are created equal. Reject the view that if you, if you succeed, I fail. If you get ahead, I fall behind. If I hold you down, I somehow lift myself up.

The former president who lies about this election and the mob that attacked this Capitol could not be further away from the core American values. They want to rule or they will ruin. Ruin when our country fought for at Lexington and Concord at Gettysburg and Omaha Beach, Seneca Falls, Selma, Alabama. What – and what we were fighting for: The right to vote. The right to govern ourselves. The right to determine our own destiny.

With rights come responsibilities. The responsibility to see each other as neighbors. Maybe we disagree with that neighbor, but they're not an adversary. The responsibility to accept defeat, then get back in the arena and try again the next time to make your case. The responsibility to see that America is an idea. An idea that requires vigilant stewardship.

As we stand here today, one year since January 6, 2021, the lies that drove the anger and madness we saw on this place, they have not abated. So we have to be firm, resolute and unyielding in our defense of the right to vote and have that vote counted.

Some have already made the ultimate sacrifice in this sacred effort. Jill and I have mourned police officers in this Capitol rotunda not once, but twice in the wake of January 6th. Once to honor Officer Brian Sicknick, who lost his life the day after the attack. The second time to honor Officer Billy Evans, who lost his life defending the Capitol as well.

We think about the others who lost their lives and were injured and everyone living with the trauma of that day. From those defending this Capitol to members of Congress in both parties and their staffs to reporters, cafeteria workers, custodial workers and their families.

Don't kid yourself. The pain and scars from that day run deep. I've said it many times and it's no more true or real when we think about the events of January 6th. We are in a battle for the soul of America. A battle that by the grace of God and the goodness and greatness of this nation, we will win.

Believe me: I know how difficult democracy is. And I'm crystal clear about the threats America faces. But I also know that our darkest days can lead to light and hope. From the death and destruction as the vice president referenced in Pearl Harbor can the triumph over the forces of fascism. From the brutality of Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettus Bridge came a historic voting rights legislation.

So now let's step up. Write the next chapter in American history, where January six marks not the end of democracy but the beginning of a renaissance of liberty and fair play.

I did not seek this fight right to this Capitol year ago today, but I will not shrink from it either. I will stand in this breach. I will defend this nation, and I will allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of democracy. We will make sure the will of the people is heard. That the ballot prevails, not violence. That authority of this nation will always be peacefully transferred. I believe the power of the presidency and the purpose is to unite this nation, not divide it.

To lift us up. Not tear us apart. It's about us, not about me. Deep in the heart of America, burns a flame lit almost 250 years ago of liberty, freedom and equality. This is not the land of kings or dictators or autocrats.

We're a nation of laws of order, not chaos, of peace, not violence. Here in America, the people rule, through the ballot. And their will prevails. So let's remember together, we're one nation under God, indivisible, that today, tomorrow and forever, at our best, we are the United States of America.

God bless you all. May God protect our troops. My God bless those who stand watch over our democracy.
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