US Capitol attack

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Why Trump appears deeply unnerved as Capitol attack investigation closes in

      by

      Why Trump appears deeply unnerved as Capitol attack investigation closes in Flurry of recent revelations raises the specter that the committee is swiftly heading towards an incriminating conclusion

      6 January panel will say if Trump committed crime – Kinzinger
      Donald Trump is increasingly agitated by the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack, according to sources familiar with the matter, and appears anxious he might be implicated in the sprawling inquiry into the insurrection even as he protests his innocence.Republicans are shamelessly working to subvert democracy. Are Democrats paying attention? Read moreThe former president in recent weeks has complained more about the investigation, demanding why his former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, shared so much material about 6 January with the select committee, and why dozens of other aides have also cooperated.Trump has also been perturbed by aides invoking the Fifth Amendment in depositions – it makes them look weak and complicit in a crime, he has told associates – and considers them foolish for not following the lead of his former strategist Steve Bannon in simply ignoring the subpoenas.When Trump sees new developments in the Capitol attack investigation on television, he has started swearing about the negative coverage and bemoaned that the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, was too incompetent to put Republicans on the committee to defend him.The former president’s anger largely mirrors the kind of expletives he once directed at the Russia inquiry and the special counsel investigation when he occupied the White House. But the rapidly accelerating investigation into whether Trump and top aides unlawfully conspired to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory at the 6 January joint session appears to be unnerving him deeply. The portrait that emerges from interviews with multiple sources close to Trump, including current and former aides, suggest a former president unmoored and backed into a corner by the rapid escalation in intensity of the committee’s investigation.A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to requests for comment.But as Trump struggles to shield himself from the select committee, with public hearings next year and the justice department said to be tracking the investigation, the path ahead is only likely to be more treacherous.The former president is especially attuned to his potential for legal exposure, even as he maintains he did nothing wrong in conferring about ways to overturn the 2020 election and encouraging supporters to march on the Capitol. He has expressed alarm to associates about repeated defeats in court as he seeks to stop the select committee obtaining some of the most sensitive of White House documents about 6 January from the National Archives, on grounds of executive privilege.The reality is that with each passing day, the committee seems to be gathering new evidence about Trump’s culpability around the Capitol attack that might culminate with recommendations for new election laws – but also for prosecutions.“I think that the justice department will keep a keen eye on what evidence the committee has accumulated, as well as looking out for witnesses for a potential case,” said Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel at the Department of Defense now a law professor at New York University.“One of the outcomes of the committee’s work and the public hearings will be to demonstrate individuals who might be wanting to come forward as witnesses and that’s got to be very important to justice department prosecutors,” Goodman said.House investigators are expected to soon surpass more than 300 interviews with Trump administration officials and Trump political operatives as part of a process that has yielded 30,000 documents and 250 tips via the select committee’s tip line.The flurry of recent revelations – such as the disclosure of Meadows’s connection to a powerpoint outlining how Trump could stage a coup, as first reported by the Guardian – raises the specter that the select committee is swiftly heading towards an incriminating conclusion.Trump’s associates insist they are not worried, at least for the moment, since the select committee has yet to obtain materials covered by executive privilege either through Meadows or the National Archives that could ensnare Trump personally.The former president’s defenders are correct in that respect – the committee does not have messages that show Trump directing an attack on the Capitol, one source said – and Trump has vowed to appeal the National Archives case to the supreme court.House panel gathers mountain of evidence in Capitol attack investigationRead moreBut no one outside the select committee, which is quietly making progress from a glass office on Capitol Hill with boarded-up windows and electronically secured doors, knows exactly what it has uncovered and whether the inquiry ends with a criminal referral.The material Meadows turned over alone depicts an alarming strategy to stop Biden’s certification on 6 January, involving nearly the entire federal government and lieutenants operating from the Willard hotel in Washington.One member on the select committee described the events around 6 January as showing a coalescence of multiple strategies: “There was a DoJ strategy, a state legislative strategy, a state election official strategy, the vice-president strategy. And there was the insurrection strategy.”The text messages Meadows received on his personal phone implicate Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr, and Republican members of Congress. Texts Meadows turned over to the committee might also be used by an enterprising prosecutor as evidence of criminal obstruction to stop a congressional proceeding if the White House knew election fraud claims to be lies but still used them to stop Biden’s certification.While Meadows never testified about the communications, a cadre of top Trump officials, from former acting national security adviser Keith Kellogg to Pence’s former chief of staff Marc Short, have moved to cooperate with House investigators.The trouble for Trump – and part of the source of his frustration, the sources said – is his inability, out of office, to wield the far-reaching power of the executive branch to affect the course of the inquiry.The limited success of strategies he hoped would stymie the committee – ordering aides to defy subpoenas or launching legal challenges to slow-walk the release White House records – has been jarring for Trump.“I think what he’s finding is that as the ex-president, he has a lot less authority than he did as president. But his playbook doesn’t work if he’s not president,” said Daniel Goldman, former lead counsel in the first House impeachment inquiry into Trump.In a reflection of dwindling legal avenues available to undercut the investigation, Trump has returned to launching attacks-by-emailed-statement on the select committee, stewing over his predicament and what he considers an investigation designed only to hurt him politically.“The Unselect Committee itself is Rigged, stacked with Never Trumpers, Republican enemies, and two disgraced RINOs, Cheney and Kinzinger, who couldn’t get elected ‘dog catcher’ in their districts,” Trump vented last month.Trump tested positive for Covid few days before Biden debate, chief of staff says in new bookRead moreIn private, Trump is said to have reserved the brunt of his scorn for Meadows, furious with his former White House chief of staff for sharing sensitive communications on top of all the unflattering details about Trump included in his book this month.Trump’s associates, however, have focused more on questioning the legitimacy of the select committee and its composition, arguing the fact that the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, appointed both Republican members reduces the investigation to a partisan political endeavor.They also argue that none of the revelations to date – like the Guardian’s reporting on Trump’s call to the Willard hotel, during which he pressed operatives to stop Biden’s certification from taking place entirely – amounts to criminal wrongdoing.But in the meantime, Trump is left with little choice but to wait for the committee’s report.“The justice department seems to be more reactive than proactive,” Goodman said. “They might be waiting for the committee to wrap up its work to make criminal referrals.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsRepublicansHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Capitol attack panel will determine if Trump committed crime – Republican

      by

      Capitol attack panel will determine if Trump committed crime – Republican
      Kinzinger promises to determine if criminal statute violated
      ‘He’s not a king. Former presidents, they aren’t former kings’
      Robert Reich: Beware the big lie, big anger and big money
      Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the House committee investigating the deadly 6 January Capitol attack incited by Donald Trump, said on Sunday he was not “yet” ready to declare the former president guilty of a crime – but that the panel was investigating the likelihood that he is.Mark Meadows was at the center of the storm on 6 January. But only Trump could call it offRead more“Nobody is above the law,” the Illinois congressman told CNN’s State of the Union. “And if the president knowingly allowed what happened on 6 January to happen, and, in fact, was giddy about it, and that violates a criminal statute, he needs to be held accountable for that.”The committee has been picking up pace in recent weeks with dozens of subpoenas issued, some to close Trump aides. The waters lapped at the doors of Trump’s Oval Office this week when his fourth and final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, became a focus of the investigation over tweets he received on and around the day of the insurrection.The committee voted unanimously to refer Meadows for criminal prosecution for contempt of Congress, after he withdrew his cooperation.Kinzinger, who alongside fellow Republican Liz Cheney has drawn the ire of Trump allies for serving on the committee, said he had no qualms about scrutinising how Trump incited supporters to try to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden, which he says was the result of massive electoral fraud, which it was not.“He’s not a king,” Kinzinger said, “Former presidents, they aren’t former kings.”Kinzinger added that he feared the events of 6 January were “trial run” for Trump and his allies to attempt another coup.“We will get every bit of detail that we can possibly get on that, so that’s important for the president’s role,” he said. “I want to hold the people guilty accountable but I want to make sure this never happens again.“Otherwise, 6 January will have been, yes, a failed trial run, but, sometimes, a failed trial run is the best practice to get one that succeeds, a coup that would succeed in toppling our government.”Kinzinger’s comments are the strongest to date about the depth of the inquiry into Trump’s role.At a “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House on 6 January, the then-president urged supporters to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell [or] you’re not going to have a country any more”.He was impeached a second time for inciting the insurrection that followed, but though Kinzinger, and nine other House Republicans and seven GOP senators voted with Democrats, Trump was acquitted in his Senate trial and remains free to run for office again.Pressed on whether he thought Trump was guilty of a crime, Kinzinger said: “I don’t want to go there yet, to say, ‘Do I believe he has’. But I sure tell you I have a lot of questions about what the president was up to.”Earlier this month at a sentencing hearing for one of the rioters, a district court judge, Amy Berman Jackson, said she believed Trump stoked the riot and should be held accountable. Jackson was one of a growing number of federal judges to speak out.Trump is also in legal jeopardy from investigations of his business affairs, with authorities in New York looking at tax issues in particular.Trump spoke to Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures but was not asked about the 6 January inquiry, instead riffing on subjects including the Taliban’s hatred of dogs and how Biden’s chief medical adviser, Dr Anthony Fauci, struggles to pitch a baseball. Bob’s Burgers bans actor over alleged involvement in Capitol attack – reportRead moreTrump also weighed in on a conspiracy theory popular on Fox News which says Biden is not running the country, based on an apparent gaffe in which he called his vice-president, Kamala Harris, “president” in a university commencement speech this week.On CNN, Kinzinger acknowledged the 6 January committee was working to complete its work before next year’s midterm elections, in which Republicans are likely to take back control and thereby kill the investigation.The Ohio congressman Jim Jordan, a Trump loyalist whose text messages were included in those released this week, was one of the Republicans rejected by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, for a place on the 6 January panel.Regardless, Jordan has been tipped as a possible judiciary committee chair – who would therefore act to close the investigation of the Capitol attack.“He could not credibly head the [judiciary] committee,” Kinzinger said. “But he certainly could head the committee.”TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsUS elections 2020Donald TrumpTrump administrationRepublicansHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Bob’s Burgers bans actor over alleged involvement in Capitol attack – report

      by

      Bob’s Burgers bans actor over alleged involvement in Capitol attack – reportJay Johnston ‘blacklisted’ by Fox and no longer allowed to voice character Jimmy Pesto Sr, the Daily Beast reports While conservative Fox News hosts continue to downplay the extent of the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January – and their links to the president who incited it – another part of the Fox media empire appears to have cracked down on a personality alleged to have taken part: the actor and comedian Jay Johnston.Mark Meadows was at the center of the storm on 6 January. But only Trump could call it offRead moreAccording to a report by the Daily Beast, the Bob’s Burgers cast member has been “blacklisted” by Fox over his reported presence among supporters of Donald Trump who sought to violently overturn the presidential election.Johnston, 53, has not been charged or convicted of a crime, or even admitted he was at the Capitol on 6 January.Nonetheless, the Beast cited anonymous sources close to the makers of Bob’s Burgers as saying Johnston was no longer allowed to voice the character Jimmy Pesto Sr on the long-running cartoon sitcom.Johnston has appeared in 43 episodes of Bob Burger’s since 2011 but has been missing from the 12th season that began in September, the Beast said, adding that his final appearance to date was in a season 11 episode that last aired in May.Johnston was unavailable for comment, the Beast said, while Fox and Disney, which includes the show on its Disney+ streaming service, declined the chance to do so.Internet sleuths have identified Johnston as a man seen wearing a camouflage face mask at the Capitol and wanted by the FBI for questioning.The Beast quoted a tweet identifying Johnston by Cassandra Church, an actor who worked with him on the comedy podcast Harmontown.“I’m no detective, but I do know Jay,” Church tweeted in March. “He said he was there. And that’s him in the picture. So…”From Peril to Betrayal: the year in books about Trump and other political animalsRead moreIn a tweet subsequently deleted, Spencer Crittenden, who also featured in Harmontown, wrote that Johnston was “a craven Trump supporter and was there at the time”.Tim Heidecker, a comedy writer, claimed to have “fully confirmed through reliable sources” that “it’s Jay”, although he too later deleted his messages.Johnston’s reported treatment by his employer sits in stark contrast to that of Fox News personalities including Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham who continue to push the false narrative that outside actors were involved in the insurrection.Both Hannity and Ingraham this week became entangled in the House investigation of the violence on 6 January, when it was revealed that they were among authors of text messages sent to the then White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, urging him to persuade Trump to call off the mob.TopicsAnimation on TVUS Capitol attackFoxTelevisionnewsReuse this content More

    • 238 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Mark Meadows was at the center of the storm on 6 January. But only Trump could call it off

      by

      Mark Meadows was at the center of the storm on 6 January. But only Trump could call it offTrump’s former White House chief of staff has become a character of supreme interest to the Capitol attack committee, with a treasure trove of documents divulging golden nuggets of information On the morning of 29 December, eight days before hundreds of Trump supporters and far-right extremists stormed the US Capitol in the worst domestic attack on American democracy arguably since the civil war, the White House chief of staff Mark Meadows fired off an email to the head of the justice department.It was a strange message for Donald Trump’s right-hand man to send to Jeffrey Rosen, acting US attorney general, given that the material in it was written entirely in Italian. It attached a letter addressed to Trump from an Italian named Carlo Goria who said he worked for a US aerospace company and then went on to regurgitate a conspiracy theory that was doing the rounds, known as “Italygate”.Three days later, Meadows sent Rosen another email containing a link to a 13-minute YouTube video titled “Brad Johnson: Rome, Satellites, Services, an Update”. In the video, Johnson, a retired CIA station chief, gave further details of Italygate, which he described as a secret plot to overturn the US presidential election and stop Trump from gaining a second term.In Johnson’s account, an Italian defense contractor, Leonardo, had joined forces with the CIA to carry out the dastardly scheme. Together, they had hacked into Italian military satellites, beaming them down on to US voting machines in battleground states and remotely switching votes from Trump to Joe Biden.Rosen politely replied to Meadows that he had received the video, then sent a copy of it to his deputy Richard Donoghue. Later that day, Donoghue told his boss what he thought of Johnson’s video.“Pure insanity”, he said.Meadows’ Italygate emails, highlighted in a 51-page report released this week by the House select committee investigation into the Capital insurrection, are some of the more memorable elements of his vast campaign to advance Trump’s big lie that the presidential election had been rigged.It’s not every day that the chief aide to the most powerful person on Earth bombards the top law enforcement official in the country with lurid tales of vote-switching military satellites, composed in Italian.But that is just the start of it.As the select committee descends ever deeper into the murky waters of Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election, Meadows is fast surfacing as a character of supreme interest.Between election day on 3 November and 6 January, when Trump’s exhortations to his supporters to scupper the certification of Biden’s victory climaxed in violent scenes that left five people dead and more than 140 law enforcement officers injured, Meadows was a whirlwind of activity.Not only was he frantically busy propagating Italygate and other conspiracy theories, not only did he try to influence the actions of the Department of Justice in flagrant violation of White House rules barring any such interference, but he was also in direct contact with the organisers of the 6 January rally that preceded the violence, and he was there too by his master’s side when the insurrection at the US Capitol kicked off.In short, Meadows is honing into view, in the Washington Post’s phrase, as the “chief enabler to a president who was desperate to hold on to power”.That role has now landed Meadows in a great deal of legal trouble. The hard-right Republican from North Carolina, who was one of Trump’s cheerleaders in Congress before being airlifted to the White House as his final chief of staff, initially defied a subpoena to appear before the select committee, then changed his mind after Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House adviser, was indicted for similar lack of cooperation.A little over a week ago he did a U-turn on his U-turn, announcing he was no longer playing ball with the congressional investigators after all. Some reports have suggested that his second change of heart was motivated by Trump’s furious reaction to what he read in the Guardian.The Guardian revealed Meadows had disclosed in his new book, The Chief’s Chief, that Trump had tested positive for Covid before going on stage with Biden last September in the first presidential debate. That inconvenient truth had previously been kept secret, and conflicts with the official line peddled at the time.On Tuesday the full House of Representatives voted to hold Meadows in contempt of Congress after he failed to turn up for a deposition, referring the decision to the Department of Justice for possible prosecution. He faces a maximum sentence of a year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000 for every count with which he may be charged.Meadows’ renewed non-cooperation will make the select committee’s job harder, but he has already presented them with a treasure trove of documents that has supercharged their investigation. It includes no fewer than 9,000 pages of records, among them 2,000 text messages.Those texts are beginning to divulge golden nuggets of information that expose members of the Trump inner circle as having been intimately involved in pressing for the election to be overturned.One text from an as yet anonymous member of Congress sent to Meadows on 4 January advocated for the states of Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, all of which Biden had won, to send alternate slates of Trump electors to Congress “and have it go” to the US supreme court for a ruling.Jim Jordan, the former wrestler-turned-Ohio congressman who was a close ally of Meadows in the rightwing House Freedom Caucus which they co-founded, sent a text to his friend a day before the insurrection outlining a plot in which the vice-president Mike Pence could simply refuse to certify Biden’s victory, in blatant disregard for his constitutional duties.The 38-page PowerPoint that laid out in detail a blueprint for a Trump coup was also sent to Meadows, though he denies having acted on the document.As for the insurrection itself, the select committee said that Meadows was in touch with at least some of the main organisers of the “Stop the Steal” rally on the morning of 6 January at which Trump called on his supporters to “fight like hell”. Members of the committee were intrigued to know why the chief of staff chose to use his personal cell phone, as well as the encrypted mobile app Signal, to conduct these conversations.When the violence erupted, Meadows continued to act as a communications hub alongside the president. Text messages sent to him by Donald Trump Jr give a rare glimpse into Trump family dynamics that would be worthy of a Roy family subplot in Succession.As hundreds of Trump supporters were smashing their way into the Capitol building, attacking police officers as they went, Don Jr desperately wanted to get a message to his father. But he didn’t call dad, as might be expected.Instead, he texted Meadows. “We need an Oval address,” the presidential son exclaimed. “He has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand.”Similar urgent missives were fired at Meadows by several Fox News stars. Laura Ingraham, the ultra-right host of the Ingraham Angle, told him: “Hey Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”Sean Hannity added his own plaintiff appeal: “Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol.”The plethora of texts to Meadows from Trump family members, Fox News hosts and top Republicans underline important aspects of Trump’s coterie in the hours before, during and after the insurrection. The Fox News hosts used language (“hey Mark”, “all of us”) suggesting they viewed themselves as one of the inner team, casting aside any pretense at journalistic integrity.They were also boldly hypocritical. Soon after sending Meadows her text about Trump “destroying his legacy”, Ingraham went on air and talked about “antifa sympathizers” having been “sprinkled throughout the crowd” at the Capitol.The most critical lesson to leap out of the Meadows documents is that behind the scenes, in their private correspondence, Trump’s inner circle had no doubts about the nature and significance of the Capitol insurrection. It was an eruption of violence inspired and instigated by one man alone – Donald Trump – and only he could call it off.Meadows himself presumably has some valuable insights on that point. But at least for now he doesn’t seem to want to share them.TopicsMark MeadowsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsanalysisReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Republicans are plotting to destroy democracy from within | Lawrence Douglas

      by

      Republicans are plotting to destroy democracy from withinLawrence DouglasOpportunism and cowardice has more than sufficed to make Republicans espouse a noxious falsehood as an axiomatic truth At hand is a plot to destroy American democracy from within. Its organizers have infiltrated the highest echelons of state and federal government, and have instigated and condoned acts of violence directed against our elected officials. This might sound far-fetched. But the threat is real and the seditious group is none other than the Republican party. Its target is the 2024 presidential election.Less than a year ago, Donald Trump limped from the White House a badly discredited figure, roundly condemned for having instigated a shocking attack against a coordinate branch of government. The 6 January insurrection seemed like a wake-up call to Republican lawmakers. No longer could they indulge the self-serving story that Trump was simply an uncouth, untraditional president. The reality was stark and undeniable. The president was at heart a petty autocrat, willing to torch democracy to cling to power.The wake-up call went unheeded. The critical inflection point came during the second impeachment trial, when Republican senators had the opportunity to join Democrats in condemning Trump. And while seven Republican senators voted along with all 50 Democrats to convict, this still left the Senate 10 votes short of the 67 needed to hold Trump to account.Emblematic of the Republican refusal to reckon was the stance adopted by Mitch McConnell, who only weeks before had lost his position as Senate majority leader. On the floor of the Senate, McConnell delivered a powerful condemnation of Trump – only then to vote to acquit. Insisting that an ex-president was “constitutionally not eligible for conviction”, McConnell cynically overlooked the fact that the purpose of the trial was not to remove Trump from office but to bar him from ever running again. And while McConnell presumably was hoping to mollify the Republican base while keeping Trump himself sidelined, that strategy backfired grandly.The acquittal served as the first step to Trump’s rapid rehabilitation and the further radicalization of the Republican party. Ten months ago, McConnell castigated Trump for spinning “increasingly wild myths about a reverse landslide election that was being stolen in some secret coup”. Now these same myths have been elevated to first principles of the Republican party, as the party has come to effectively close its doors to those unwilling to lie about the 2020 election. In George Orwell’s 1984, Winston Smith had to be tortured into declaring that 2+2=5. In the case of today’s Republicans, no torture has been necessary. Opportunism and cowardice has more than sufficed to make Republicans across the land espouse a noxious falsehood as an axiomatic truth.No less ominous has been the whitewashing of the insurrection itself. Ten months ago, McConnell declared the “mob … assault[ed] the Capitol in [Trump’s] name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him.” Hardly a day passes without fresh revelations from the House select committee, documenting the shocking steps Trump contemplated in his effort to remain in the White House. Yet despite the intrepid work of Liz Cheney, the larger Republican response has been to distort and suppress the committee’s findings. Paul Gosar, the Arizona congressman who recently posted an animated video that depicted him slashing to death his House colleague Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has recast the insurrectionists as patriots. Others, including Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, have insisted the attack was a false-flag operation, a conspiracy theory given traction by Tucker Carlson’s three-party series.Republican state lawmakers have in turn weaponized the lies about the 2020 election and the 6 January insurrection to gain control over the local administration of elections. Bad enough are the 33 laws that have been passed in 19 states designed to make it harder for persons of color to vote. But more disturbing still are the Republican party’s radical efforts to purge officials who resisted Trump’s attempt to subvert the 2020 results and replace them with loyalists who have bought into the big lie. Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin are seeking to eliminate the state’s bipartisan elections commission altogether and to install themselves as the sole arbiter of state election results. And more than a dozen other red states have similarly enacted laws to transform the counting and review of ballots cast into a carefully monitored partisan exercise.By the time insurrectionists stormed the Capitol on 6 January, the 2020 election was a fait accompli. True, Trump tried desperately to forestall Congress from counting and accepting the duly certified state electoral certificates attesting to Biden’s victory. What ultimately frustrated Trump’s putsch attempt was the fact that election officials in Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania had already accurately and honestly reported the results. Many of these officials were Republicans. They acted in simple defense of democracy and were rewarded with death threats, ostracism and now ouster.Come 2024 these quiet custodians of democracy will have been replaced with loyalists and hacks ready to muddy the waters or supply the votes to secure a Trump win. The 2024 election will not witness a repeat of the events of 6 January. By the time Congress tallies the electoral votes on 6 January 2025, the putsch could be complete. And if it is, it will have been staged in the small offices of the election officials in the key swing states. And it’s all being scripted now.
      Lawrence Douglas is the author, most recently, of Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020. He is a contributing opinion writer for the Guardian US and teaches at Amherst College
      TopicsUS Capitol attackOpinionRepublicansUS politicscommentReuse this content More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      Capitol attack panel subpoenas author of PowerPoint plan for coup

      by

      Capitol attack panel subpoenas author of PowerPoint plan for coupTrump operative who outlined ‘Options for 6 Jan’ met with the president’s chief of staff repeatedly before the Capitol riot The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack on Thursday subpoenaed Trump operative Phil Waldron, the retired colonel whose PowerPoint recommending Donald Trump declare a national emergency to return himself to office was sent to the White House chief of staff.The subpoena to Waldron, demanding documents and testimony, marks the select committee’s focus on the PowerPoint and the extent that the document’s recommendations – as reported by the Guardian – were considered by the White House or the former president himself.Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the select committee, said in the subpoena letter he wanted to depose Waldron as part of their inquiry into the 6 January insurrection and determine the precise nature of his repeated contacts with Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows.Thompson said the select committee was pursuing Waldron’s cooperation to also establish the nature of his visits to the White House, his briefings to members of Congress, and his participation in meetings held at the Willard hotel in Washington DC just before 6 January. “The document he reportedly provided to Administration officials and Members of Congress is an alarming blueprint for overturning a nationwide election,” Thompson said of the PowerPoint. “The Select Committee needs to hear from him.”The select committee subpoenaed Waldron after he emerged as an author of the PowerPoint titled “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 Jan”, which ended up in Meadows’ personal email inbox – and he met with Meadows repeatedly before the Capitol attack.The PowerPoint recommended in brazen terms that Trump declare a national security emergency on the basis of lies about election fraud, and that then-vice president Mike Pence abuse his ceremonial role to stop Biden’s certification on 6 January, the Guardian first reported.The fact that Meadows was in possession of a PowerPoint that outlined steps to stage a coup, and met with its lead author almost a dozen times before the Capitol attack, is significant as it suggests the Trump White House knew of plans to stop Joe Biden’s certification.Senators and members of Congress should first be briefed about foreign interference, the PowerPoint said, at which point Trump could declare a national emergency, declare all electronic voting invalid, and ask Congress to agree on a constitutionally acceptable remedy.The PowerPoint also outlined three options for then vice-president Mike Pence to abuse his largely ceremonial role at the joint session of Congress on 6 January, when Biden was to be certified president, and unilaterally return Trump to the White House.In a letter to Meadows’ attorney, George Terwilliger, the select committee noted that among the 6,000 documents Meadows produced was an email accompanying the PowerPoint that indicated it was to be “presented on the Hill”, a reference to Congress.The contents of the PowerPoint was ultimately briefed to a number of Republican members of Congress on 4 January, according to a source familiar with the matter. The Washington Post reported that GOP senator Lindsey Graham was briefed by Waldron himself.The new subpoena for Waldron comes days after the select committee voted to recommend criminal prosecution for Meadows for his refusal to testify pursuant to a subpoena, and Waldron was unmasked in media reports as the lead author of the coup PowerPoint.In a statement, Terwilliger said that Meadows’ involvement with the PowerPoint did not go beyond the receipt of the presentation in his inbox, though Waldron’s claims that he met with Meadows numerous times at the White House appear to undercut that characterization.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Congressman Jim Jordan sent plans for Capitol attack to Mark Meadows

      by

      Congressman Jim Jordan sent plans for Capitol attack to Mark MeadowsJordan forwarded a text to Meadows on 5 January, one of the congressman’s aides has confirmed, containing details of the plot The Ohio congressman Jim Jordan has been identified as the Republican who sent a message to Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows the day before the deadly 6 January US Capitol riots outlining a plan to stop Joe Biden – the legitimate winner of the presidential election – from reaching the White House.The House select committee investigating the insurrection has been looking at numerous messages sent to Meadows on and around that day, many of which were from Trump supporters urging the then-president to call off a mob of his supporters as they ransacked the Capitol building.Meadows, whose role in events has become a central plank of the investigation, and who provided many of the messages to the committee, is facing possible contempt of Congress charges for withdrawing his cooperation.Jordan, a staunch Trump ally whom Republicans originally wanted to sit on the committee, forwarded a text message to Meadows on 5 January, one of the congressman’s aides has confirmed, containing details of the plot to block Biden.The message was sent to Jordan by Joseph Schmitz, a former US defense department inspector general who outlined a “draft proposal” to pressure vice-president Mike Pence to refuse to certify audited election returns on 6 January.A portion of the message was shown by Democratic committee member Adam Schiff on Tuesday. It read: “On January 6, 2021, Vice-President Mike Pence, as president of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all.”The plotters falsely believed Pence had the constitutional authority to reject the election results and allow rival slates of electors from Republicans in states that Biden won to decide the outcome. Pence refused to do so, and has since been castigated by Trump and his allies.Jordan was one of five Republicans rejected from serving on the committee by Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker who instead appointed Trump critics Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. Some commentators say the move “saved” the committee’s integrity.The panel has accelerated its inquiries in recent days and weeks, issuing dozens of subpoenas, interviewing more than 300 witnesses and reviewing more than 30,000 documents as it attempts to tie Trump to the events of 6 January.A clearer picture has emerged of the involvement of Trump loyalists, including senior Republican party officials such as Jordan, in the coup attempt, with questions swirling this week particularly over the role of Meadows.Trump’s former chief of staff is revealed to have received numerous messages on the day of the riot from Republican politicians, Fox News television personalities such as Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, and the president’s son Donald Trump Jr.The text from Trump Jr was succinct. “We need an Oval address. He has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand. He’s got to condemn this shit asap.”Meadows replied: “I’m pushing it hard. I agree.”Schiff, a California Democrat who led the prosecution in the Senate at Trump’s second impeachment in January, has argued that Meadows was at the heart of the pressure campaign on Pence, and voted for him to face contempt charges for his refusal to explain it.“You can see why this is so critical to ask Mr Meadows about,” Schiff said during the committee’s presentation on Tuesday.“About a lawmaker suggesting that the former vice-president simply throw out votes that he unilaterally deems unconstitutional in order to overturn a presidential election and subvert the will of the American people.”TopicsUS Capitol attackMark MeadowsOhioHouse of RepresentativesRepublicansDonald TrumpUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

    • 200 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump’s lackeys would rather defy US Congress than anger their old boss. Sad! | Lloyd Green

      by

      Trump’s lackeys would rather defy US Congress than anger their old boss. Sad!Lloyd GreenBannon and Meadows are trying to become heroes for Trump’s base – and secure seats at the table in the event of a second Trump presidency Late Tuesday night, the House of Representatives voted to hold Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s fourth and final chief of staff, in criminal contempt of Congress. Whether Meadows is formally charged is now up to the justice department and a federal grand jury.If indicted, Meadows would be the second member of the Trump administration under a cloud of pending prosecution – alongside Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign guru, who also played an integral role in the run-up to the 6 January riot at the US Capitol.For Bannon and Meadows alike, their challenges to the House special committee are a mixture of theatrics and political self-preservation. Both men yearn for a seat at Trump’s righthand if a second Trump presidency comes to pass. Beyond that, they want to be heroes to the ex-president’s base.Obviously, Meadows’s task is more complicated. Before his latest change of heart, he had delivered thousands of pages of documents to the special committee, including emails and texts from Donald Trump Jr, the president’s son, and Fox News’s Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham pleading for Trump to stop the riot.And then there are the revelations contained in Meadows’s recent memoir, The Chief’s Chief. There on the page, he admits that Trump had tested positive for Covid days before the first presidential debate. In other words, he and Trump engaged in a coverup that potentially jeopardized the life of Joe Biden.From the looks of things, Meadows is now engaged in a salvage operation. As for Trump, he has made his displeasure towards Meadows known, labeling him “fucking stupid” and damning his book as “fake news”.Not surprisingly, sales of The Chief’s Chief have languished, according to Amazon. Beyond that, Meadows looks ridiculous.Let’s recap. Here, Meadows turned over reams of records to a congressional committee that has Trump in its crosshairs, and then belatedly refused to appear before that very same committee after publishing a book and spilling his guts.To top it off, Meadows has also invoked the doctrine of “executive privilege”, despite the fact that Trump never asserted that claim on Meadows’s behalf.Meadows’s perorations are incoherent and craven. In contrast, Bannon has remained singularly defiant, going above and beyond the directives purportedly issued by Trump.According to Bannon, Trump had sought to limit the purview of Bannon’s testimony and document production to non-privileged matters. Bannon, however, took that a step further, and stiff-armed the committee: no documents and testimony. For all intents and purposes, his motto is “catch me if you can”, with an extended middle finger that all can see.Unlike Meadows, Bannon was not collecting a federal paycheck on 6 January – he had left the White House more than three years earlier. How Bannon’s post-election communications with Trump could be covered by executive privilege remains unclear, a fact that has not escaped notice.As framed by the committee: “There is no conceivable executive privilege claim that could bar all of the select committee’s requests or justify Mr Bannon’s flat refusal to appear for the required deposition.”Already, Bannon and Meadows have spawned at least one copycat – Peter Navarro, a Trump economic adviser who, in a book of his own, has cast Mike Pence as Brutus to Trump’s Caesar.More to the point, according to published reports, Navarro recently defied a subpoena issued by a separate House select committee that is examining the Trump administration’s response to Covid. In his letter to the committee, Navarro wrote that Trump told him to “protect executive privilege and not let these unhinged Democrats discredit our great accomplishments”. Whether contempt charges will follow Navarro is the subject of speculation.Regardless, Trump alums’ claims of privilege appear shakier by the day. Last week, an intermediate federal appeals court rejected Trump’s assertion of executive privilege in the face of the select committee’s bid for documents from the national archives.According to the court: “Former President Trump has provided no basis for this court to override President Biden’s judgment and the agreement and accommodations worked out between the political branches over these documents.”Then on Tuesday of this week, US district judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, rejected Trump’s attempt to block the treasury department from handing over his tax records to the House’s ways and means Committee. “A long line of supreme court cases requires great deference to facially valid congressional inquiries. Even the special solicitude accorded former presidents does not alter the outcome,” McFadden wrote.Against this backdrop, claims of executive privilege by Bannon, Meadows and Navarro appear to be more noise than signal. Trump remains the main prize – and it looks like Representative Liz Cheney is gunning for him.In summarizing Meadows’ texts, Cheney observed: “Mr Meadows’s testimony will bear on another key question before this committee: Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress’s official proceeding to count electoral votes?” Cheney’s language mirrored that of Section 1512(c) of Title 18 of the US code, a felony punishable by as much as 20 years in prison.Trump’s time outside office appears as tempestuous as his time behind the Resolute Desk. As for Meadows and Bannon, they are playing supporting roles. In the end, the spotlight belongs to their ex-boss.
      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York. He was opposition research counsel to George HW Bush’s 1988 campaign and served in the Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionUS Capitol attackUS CongressMark MeadowsSteve BannonDonald TrumpDonald Trump JrcommentReuse this content More