House Select Committee on 1/6

[LFC]

Jun 23, 2022 5:11:39 GMT pnwguy said:

We have "defined deviancy down" when it comes to GOP behavior.

I've said for years that Republicans get credit for pooping in the potty. I remember the MSM falling all over itself about how well George W Bush did in the debate with Al Gore because he spouted "FUZZY MATH!" and didn't soil himself. It's as sad and pathetic today.

[LFC]

Next up, how Trump tried to use the DOJ to invalidate the state elections he didn't like. We came so close to losing our democracy. We'll come closer in 2022 and I expect it to collapse in 2024. And once a Republican gets back in the White House they'll be sure to destroy every government employee who might stand up for democracy. Welcome to the Deep State, coming to a former democracy near you.

It all came down to a showdown in the Oval Office on the evening of Jan. 3, 2021.

Trump sat behind the Resolute Desk as a skeleton staff of senior Justice Department officials joined with White House Counsel’s Office attorneys to try to prevent Jeffrey Bossert Clark, an assistant attorney general for the Environment and Natural Resources Division, from being installed as attorney general.

Trump had big plans for Clark: he was to use the DOJ to invalidate Biden’s victory in key swing states. That, in turn, could buy the White House more time and bolster its claims of fraud, perhaps paving the way for Jan. 6 to certify not Biden’s election, but Trump’s.

The January 6 Committee will revisit the scheme in a Thursday hearing, devoted to Trump’s attempts to hijack the DOJ to stay in power.

Committee aides said that Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) will lead the hearing, focused on Trump’s efforts, an aide said, to “misuse the department to advance his own agenda to stay in power at the end of his term.”

That will include information on how Clark “planned on reversing the Department’s investigative conclusions regarding fraud if he was appointed.”

Much of what we know about the effort comes from an interim report issued in October 2021 by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

That investigation provided the contours of a scheme that would have seen Clark installed as attorney general days before Jan. 6, in charge of wielding the DOJ as a blunt instrument to discredit the results of the 2020 election in the hope of creating an opening for Trump to stay in power.

That effort ended in the Oval Office showdown. Aides said that the committee’s Thursday hearing will reveal new information about the scheme, going beyond what the Senate uncovered last year.

Below is a recap of how close the DOJ came to being used as a bludgeon as Trump sought to demolish the democratic transfer of power.

[LFC]

RonJohn is in a panic over his involvement in Trump's coup, hence the fake phone call to avoid a reporter. Now he's trying to throw an unnamed intern under the bus. What a tool.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) has some explaining to do after the Jan. 6 Select Committee’s public hearing on Tuesday, in which the panel revealed his staff’s apparent involvement in a fake electors scheme to help then-President Trump overturn the 2020 election results.

Tuesday’s hearing focused on Trump’s pressure campaign targeting state officials as part of his and his allies’ broader efforts to subvert the election. The committee revealed a text exchange between Johnson’s chief of staff, Sean Riley, and Chris Hodgson, former Vice President Mike Pence’s assistant. Shortly before the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, Riley messaged Hodgson that the GOP senator had an “alternate slate of electors” from Michigan and Wisconsin that he wanted to deliver to Pence. Hodgson, however, advised Riley against going through with the request, supposedly coming from the senator.

Pressed on the committee’s revelation as he left the Capitol on Tuesday, Johnson awkwardly squirmed to get out of answering reporters’ questions on the matter.

After a reporter pointed out that it looked like Johnson’s phone was off, the senator pinned the blame on an unnamed House intern, who he claimed somehow obtained a packet of information on the fake electors and dropped it off at the senator’s office. The senator then claimed that the unnamed intern’s actions prompted his chief of staff to reach out to Pence’s office.

This panicky whining is beyond pathetic. I hope the stress is tearing his insides apart.

“I was not involved in this at all. I don’t know why you’re asking me questions, so why don’t you just leave me alone?” Johnson said as he attempted to flee from reporters.

[LFC]

Raise your hand if this surprises you. Then just leave.

Jan. 6 Committee Members Likely To Receive Security Detail Amid Uptick In Threats

[LFC]

Oh, I can hardly wait for this one.

RonJohn: Stay Tuned For ‘Nothing Burger’ Explanation Of That Mike Pence/Fake Electors Thing

After taking great pains to avoid reporters’ questions about his staff’s apparent involvement in a fake electors scheme to help Trump steal the election, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) would like everyone to know that the fuss over the Jan. 6 Select Committee’s revelation is a “nothing burger”!

According to CNN, Johnson reportedly said that he will release a statement today that will “piece together” an explanation of why his aide offered to deliver an “alternate slate of electors” from Michigan and Wisconsin to then-Vice President Pence shortly before the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6.

“We are piecing this together. … You’ll find out what a nothing burger this is,” Johnson said, according to CNN.

Much like his efforts to awkwardly dodge reporters’ questions on the matter, Johnson again insisted that the committee’s revelation is a “non-story.”

[LFC]

We're finding out about a draft letter that was to be sent to the states, telling them that non-existent fraud existed in their elections. This would have been key to Clark's attack on democracy if people at the DOJ hadn't stood up in opposition.

This is about the letter.

Breitbart’s Ken Klukowski Authored Notorious Draft DOJ Letter

At the center of the plot being described today is a draft letter that Trump wanted the DOJ to send to swing states he had lost, starting with Georgia.

The letter declared that the DOJ had found fraud that would invalidate the election results, and that state legislatures should consider approving alternate, pro-Trump slates of electors.

From the Senate Judiciary Committee’s report on this last year, we knew that a little-known Breitbart contributor and attorney named Ken Klukowski had a role in drafting the letter.

But Cheney just now made it sound like Klukowski and Clark were essentially co-authors of this letter, which they wanted the real DOJ leadership — Rosen and Donoghue — to affix their names to.

And this is about how it was to be used. It was a fig leaf for Republican state legislatures to throw out the unwanted election results and install their boy.

Cheney Draws Line From Fake Electors To Jeff Clark

Important moment just now: Rep. Cheney just drew a line between the last two hearings and today’s.

In her telling, the draft DOJ letter existed in part to prod swing states that Trump had lost to certify the pro-Trump electors as real, instead of the Biden ones.

The letter “indicates that a separate ‘fake’ slate of electors, supporting Donald Trump, has already been transmitted to Washington, D.C.” Cheney said.

That’s key: It draws a line between what Clark wanted to do, and what outside Trump attorneys like John Eastman, Ken Chesebro, and Rudy Giuliani were trying to accomplish. Two hands, potentially working together.

“Had this letter been released on official Department of Justice letterhead, it would at falsely informed all Americans … that President Trump’s concerns were likely very real,” Cheney added.

[LFC]

Oh, shit. Ron John just threw another Republican Congressman under the bus. This is hilarious.

RonJohn Fake Electors Weirdness Gets Weirder

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) has been going out of his way to blame a bunch of different people and things for why one of his top aides was trying to set up an exchange in which he would hand fake Trump electors from Michigan and Wisconsin to Vice President Pence.

He pretended to be on the phone when reporters asked him about it earlier this week and claimed that it’s all a “nothing burger,” that an intern from a random House member’s office brought the fake electors package to his office.

According to the Democratic super PAC American Bridge, Johnson just told a local radio station that the fake elector records were delivered to his office from Rep. Mike Kelly’s (R-PA) office. Kelly objected to the certification of Biden’s victory after the insurrection.

[LFC]

Stated under oath, unlike the trash the right-wingers and coup members have been spouting.

Ex-Acting Deputy AG: I Needed To Be Blunt With Trump

Former acting deputy attorney General Richard Donoghue testified that he wanted to “cut through the noise” during a Dec. 27, 2020 meeting with Trump by being “very blunt” that the then-President’s bogus claims of election fraud were “simply not true.”

After reiterating that Trump’s claims of massive election fraud lacked credibility, Donoghue noted that although there were “isolated incidents” of fraud, none of them were enough to question the results in any state.

Donoghue then claimed that Trump told him: “Just say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”

[LFC]

Clark <- Klukowski -> Eastman. Looks like the Breitbart contributor was the monkey in the middle.

Ken Klukowski Was Conduit Between Eastman And DOJ

Rep. Cheney gave some more info on Ken Klukowski just now, the Breitbart contributor and attorney who joined the DOJ on Dec. 15.

Cheney said Klukowski worked with Eastman, Trump’s lawyer, before and after he was appointed, offering to brief Vice President Pence and his team jointly in a Dec. 28, 2020 email.

“This e-mail suggests that Mr. Klukowski was simultaneously working with Jeffery Clark to draft the proposed letter to Georgia officials to overturn their certified election and working with Dr. Eastman to help pressure the Vice President to overturn the election,” Cheney said.

It’s another piece of evidence which ties the fake elector scheme to Trump’s pressure on the DOJ.

[LFC]

Two notes from Josh Marshall. Number 2 is scary as f*** (bold mine). All I can say is thank heavens Michael Flynn is an idiot who failed to cover his tracks. I'm convinced he would have gone along with anything Trump wanted. Anything.

Point 2: One of the things we’re seeing today is this effort to stock new unknown loyalists into the executive departments after it was already clear the President had lost and that it was a lame duck administration. We’ve known a lot of this story. But we found out significantly more today. The only time this happens in normal situations is that you sometimes have caretaker appointees come in because the top appointee leaves before the President’s last day in office. Sometimes it’s simply to burnish someones future resume. They can say they were “acting such and such” for a brief time. Not great maybe but essentially no harm. But it doesn’t work like this. When they were already only in a caretaker role they were restocking the departments to further the coup. But here’s another point. It wasn’t only at DOJ. There was something very similar happening at the Pentagon. Those new appointees don’t seem to have played direct roles in the coup as it played, though I think that’s still an open question. But it sure seemed like they might at the time. At the end of the day coups almost always come down to control of the armed forces.

[LFC]

The hits just keep coming. The coup plot was clearly more fleshed out than I suspected. Trump wanted the attorney who admitted in court that she had nothing to "investigate" i.e. lie about the election.

Sidney Powell Says That Trump Wanted To Appoint Her As Special Counsel To Investigate The Election

After former DOJ office of legal counsel head Steven Engel testified the White House asked whether Attorney General Bill Barr could appoint a state attorney general as special counsel to investigate election fraud, the Jan. 6 Select Committee aired video testimony of Sidney Powell claiming that Trump wanted to appoint her to that role.

Jeffrey Clark almost got the helm at the DOJ.

Trump White House Was Ready To Call Clark AG

On the day that Jeffrey Clark’s hopes of becoming acting attorney general went up in flames, he was in constant contact with the White House, according to call logs obtained by the Jan. 6 Committee.

On the logs, Rep. Kinzinger said, Clark was described as “acting attorney general.”

Trump wanted to seize voting machines. The treason is endless.

Ex-Acting Deputy AG: Trump Was ‘Agitated’ When Told DOJ Could Not Seize Voting Machines

Ex-Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen testified that Trump asked whether voting machines could be seized.

Rosen said he told Trump that the DOJ saw nothing improper with the machines and that the DHS had looked into the matter as well, who also found nothing wrong with the machines.

Kinzinger then asked about the then-President’s reaction after he was told the DOJ would not seize voting machines. Donoghue testified that Trump was “very agitated” by Rosen’s response.

[AnBr]

[goldenvalley]

Well I'm glad those DOJ dudes told Trump he couldn't have what he wanted.  And yet again I want to know why they didn't go public with what was going on.  Their hands are clean I suppose, but I'd argue they are still immoral.  Imagine how the impeachment trial would have gone if they came forward with what they knew.   

[LFC]

Here's the complete list of Republicans scrambling for pardons while claiming they did nothing wrong. Five made explicit requests and two more discussed it. Gaetz and Brooks looked for a blanket pardon for a whole group of House Republicans who attended a coup plan meeting in December.

As promised, the Jan. 6 Committee just aired testimony from former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann, ex-Mark Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson and Trump’s director of the White House presidential personnel office, John McEntee — all of whom outlined what they knew about Republican requests for pardons from Trump.

Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-WY) teased in recent days that the panel would reveal a list of members of Congress who requested pardons, presumably for their roles in helping Trump try to overturn the 2020 election.

The list includes: Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Mo Brooks (R-AL), Scott Perry (R-PA), Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Andy Biggs (R-AZ). Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) both spoke of wanting pardons, but didn’t specifically ask any of the three White House witnesses featured in today’s hearing to make it happen, according to the testimony. Jordan “talked about congressional pardons,” Hutchinson said, but never asked for one. Greene asked the White House counsel’s office for a pardon, Hutchinson said, but didn’t ask Hutchinson specifically for one.

A real shocker: Gaetz was apparently particularly aggressive about his pardon request. Both he and Brooks advocated for a “blanket pardon” for all House members who were at a Dec. 21 Oval Office meeting in which planning for Trump’s election-theft campaign took place. Gaetz even was requesting a pardon in early December, before that infamous meeting — “I’m not sure why,” Hutchinson said of the timing — and the kind of pardon he wanted was “as broad as you could describe,” Herschmann said in the recorded testimony the committee aired today.

[LFC]

Trump, in a nutshell.

For most of us this is not new information. But the testimony late this afternoon brings out in a particularly vivid way how little Trump cared about the fate of the country or the constitution or really anything else besides what he saw as his own political well-being. That’s clear enough. But beyond that he had a hard time even understanding the question. “What do I have to lose?” the President asked, according to the participants in the Oval Office meeting. It’s basically, why not burn the country down? What do I have to lose?

Again, this is not a surprise to most of us. But I haven’t seen it captured so vividly.

[LFC]

Not from the House Select Committee but it ties with the Republicans asking Trump for pardons for their treasonous parts in the coup attempt.

On Thursday evening, CBS News Chief Election and Campaign Correspondent Robert Costa posted a January 11th, 2021 email sent by United States Representative Mo Brooks (R-Alabama) to then-Special Assistant to the President and Oval Office Operations Coordinator Molly Michael on behalf of himself and congressional allies with instructions from former President Donald Trump on how they should request pardons for their roles in the January 6th, 2021 attempted coup.

The extraordinary memo was texted to CBS by Brooks and contains numerous typos as well as references to constitutional clauses that do not exist.

The text is at the link in full.

[goldenvalley]

The Select Committee just announced a hearing will be held tomorrow.  Any bets on what will be shown?  I've been wondering about that documentary guy that was interviewed last week.  Maybe that?

Whatever it is, it's a good public relations move by the Committee. They had some dynamite info revealed last week and then the Supreme Court came up with the gun and abortion decisions and dominated the media with that.  Sad as it is, the media should ignore the Supreme Court for a bit to refocus on Trump and the Republican Party that supported him and the Supreme Court.

[LFC]

Jun 27, 2022 17:31:32 GMT goldenvalley said:

The Select Committee just announced a hearing will be held tomorrow.  Any bets on what will be shown?  I've been wondering about that documentary guy that was interviewed last week.  Maybe that?

I'm wondering if some of those involved in or at least witnessing the plot first-hand have decided to fold rather than facing a DOJ that seems to be looking at potential charges. Or, dare I hope, maybe some have awoken from their comas and decided to put America first. I imagine some of the folks the committee has been trying to talk to have a trove of emails and documents that could tell us a lot.

[goldenvalley]

Jun 27, 2022 17:57:38 GMT LFC said:

Jun 27, 2022 17:31:32 GMT goldenvalley said:

The Select Committee just announced a hearing will be held tomorrow.  Any bets on what will be shown?  I've been wondering about that documentary guy that was interviewed last week.  Maybe that?

I'm wondering if some of those involved in or at least witnessing the plot first-hand have decided to fold rather than facing a DOJ that seems to be looking at potential charges. Or, dare I hope, maybe some have awoken from their comas and decided to put America first. I imagine some of the folks the committee has been trying to talk to have a trove of emails and documents that could tell us a lot.

I did read somewhere in the last two weeks that the Committee was being contacted by people who had information. Congress, the White House, DOJ is crawling with staff that don't have decision making power but who are involved in the process one way or another, even if it is just transcribing notes from a meeting.  I noted a Meadows staffer testifying about who was asking about pardons.  Probably Jared knows a lot about that too.

[indy]

Hmmmm...I hope whatever it is is worth it.

[indy]

Politico seems to think the witness to give testimony today will be Meadows' aide Cassidy Hutchinson. This seems a bit weird since they already interviewed her and she gave testimony to the committee (in private). Either she has agreed to testify publicly after having declined (which I think makes this a mishandled situation because expectations are very high for today and somebody just putting their previous private testimony out publicly would surely be a disappointment) or she has something new to say. Interesting but I really hope they didn't raise expectations too high by doing it this way.

I do wonder if something on the film from the documentary stuff they received maybe contradicted her previous sworn testimony? That would put her in quite a bind and potentially get her to really spill the beans, if there are any. Hmmmm.

www.politico.com/news/2022/06/27/jan-6-committee-surprise-tuesday-hearing-00042595

ETA: Further thought: If she did lie in her previous testimony and had been coerced to do so, well then...As they say, it's not the crime, it's the cover up that gets you caught.

[goldenvalley]

Listening to the testimony of the Meadows staff person.  Some interesting stuff about armed folks being spotted during the rally and hearsay on Trump being mad that the rally space looked too thinly populated and asking that the metal detectors be removed from the perimeter because those were his people who wouldn't hurt him.  Lots of hearsay about what a Secret Service guy told her about Trump's behavior in the car on the way from his rally back to the White House when he demanded to go to the Capitol.  I wonder why the SS guy isn't testifying.  

[indy]

A good question. Ornado (was that his name?) is a political appointee as a deputy chief of staff and I assume could reasonably claim executive privilege. But there is no reason other SS people can't testify. One testified against Bill Clinton I believe. They obviously don't like it and would certainly resist testifying against the people they are charged to protect. But I can pretty much guarantee that they have a whole lot of evidence to support her testimony or they never would have done this.

[pnwguy]

Holy F*ck. Cassidy Hutchinson had plenty of reason to be worried about her safety. MAGAts will target her for death, for revealing what she did today.

[goldenvalley]

Jun 28, 2022 22:25:09 GMT pnwguy said:

Holy F*ck. Cassidy Hutchinson had plenty of reason to be worried about her safety. MAGAts will target her for death, for revealing what she did today.

Yeah I'm thinking the witness protection program could be in her future.