House Select Committee on 1/6

[indy]

Jul 15, 2022 2:03:31 GMT goldenvalley said:

Well here's a new avenue of investigation....Secret Service texts from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021 were erased as part of a device replacement program.

A government watchdog accused the U.S. Secret Service of erasing texts from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, after his office requested them as part of an inquiry into the U.S. Capitol attack, according to a letter sent to lawmakers this week.
Joseph V. Cuffari, head of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, wrote to the leaders of the House and Senate Homeland Security committees indicating that the text messages have vanished and that efforts to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack were being hindered.

“The Department notified us that many U.S. Secret Service (USSS) text messages, from January 5 and 6, 2021 were erased as part of a device-replacement program,” he wrote in a letter dated Wednesday and obtained by The Washington Post. The letter was earlier reported on by CNN.

Cuffari emphasized that the erasures came “after” the Office of Inspector General requested copies of the text messages for its own investigation, and signaled that they were part of a pattern of DHS resistance to his inquiries. Staff members are required by law to surrender records so that he can audit the sprawling national security agency, but he said they have “repeatedly” refused to provide them until an attorney reviews them.

But her emails!

The speed at which 'sources' in the secret service went from telling the media they had people willing to contradict Hutchinson's testimony under oath to 'sorry, never mind because we accidentally lost all the evidence' was almost as fast as Josh Hawley fleeing from the Jan 6. mob (https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-runs-with-josh-hawley-solidarity-fist-and-flee-moment-2022-7).

[indy]

Probably my favorite (so far) sound track to Hawley:

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Donald threw a trumper tantrum on fake Twitter.

[indy]

Bannon guilty on two counts of contempt of congress: www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/jury-begins-deliberating-steve-bannons-jan-6-contempt-congress-trial-rcna39497

[LFC]

From TPM highlights, here's Trump still advocating for his coup.

Hours Before Hearing, Trump Issues Statement Lamenting That Pence Didn’t Steal The Election

As if to underscore one of the core theses of these Jan. 6 presentations — that our democracy remains under threat — Trump issued a statement hours before tonight’s hearing railing against a new Senate deal to adjust election law to prevent future subversions of democracy.

He complained that “everybody ganged up and said that Mike had no choice.” A move by Pence to toss the results, he wrote, “may have proven to be an Election-changing event.”

“What a difference it would have made if the State Legislatures had another crack at looking at all of the Fraud, Abuse, and Irregularities that have been found. Our Country would have been a different place!” he declared.

[LFC]

The committee announced they have a lot more to investigate in August. Expect additional hearings in September.

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They might subpoena Gini Thomas, one half of the most corrupt power couple in D.C. Do it! She, along with her corrupt husband, are traitors to America.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), vice chair of the Jan. 6 Select Committee, on Sunday said the panel will “contemplate a subpoena” for Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, if she does not voluntarily come forward.

During an interview on CNN, Cheney said the committee is in touch with Ginni Thomas’ counsel and that it hopes she will agree to come in voluntarily.

Cheney said the panel is the leaving the door open to a subpoena if necessary.

“The committee is fully prepared to contemplate a subpoena if she does not,” Cheney said. “I hope it doesn’t get to that. I hope she will come in voluntarily.”

“It’s very important for us to speak with her and as I said, I hope she will agree to do so voluntarily, but I’m sure we will contemplate a subpoena if she won’t,” Cheney continued.

And once again we have a clearly guilty person who screeches about wanting to clear their name and then, once the cameras are gone, runs and hides. Be sure to read that last paragraph I quoted for some Grade-A bullshit. 

The committee previously asked Ginni Thomas, a conservative activist, to testify and provide documents related to its investigation. Thomas’ lawyer, Mark Paoletta, expressed reluctance for his client to cooperate in a letter to the committee late last month. Paoletta requested the panel provide “better justification” for why it wants his client’s testimony.

Paoletta’s letter came weeks after Ginni Thomas told the Daily Caller that she “looks forward” to speaking with the panel and “can’t wait to clear up misconceptions.” The committee sought her testimony after news broke that she was in contact with conservative lawyer John Eastman, who was a key figure in a pressure campaign to push then-Vice President Mike Pence to do then-President Trump’s bidding of overturning the election results on Jan. 6. Multiple reports indicated that the panel obtained copies of emails between Thomas and Eastman.

In his letter to the committee, Paoletta argued that the emails Eastman handed over to the committee did not provide a legal basis for the panel to interview Thomas.

Additionally, Paoletta dismissed his client’s texts with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the days after the 2020 election, in which she urged Meadows to keep the Big Lie of a stolen election alive, as an “entirely unremarkable” development where she was “simply texting with a friend.”

[pnwguy]

Of course, if Justice Thomas had been in the capitol on Jan 6, those mobsters would have been happy to lynch him

[LFC]

The DHS IG is being asked to recuse himself from the email investigation. That's bad. That's very bad. The DHS and Secret Service are sounding more and more like they consider themselves completely above the law and not accountable to anybody.

Democratic chairs of the House Oversight and Homeland Security committees are demanding that DHS inspector general Joseph Cuffari recuse himself from the investigation into the deleted Secret Service text messages around the time of the Capitol insurrection, following the Washington Post’s report last week about Cuffari’s months-long delay in informing Congress about the missing messages.

Last week, the Post reported that Cuffari found out in February that the Secret Service had deleted texts from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, but chose not report it to Congress. Cuffari also reportedly decided against releasing a public alert that his office had prepared in Oct. 2021 about the Secret Service stonewalling its requests for records and texts surrounding the attack on the Capitol.

House Oversight chair Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Homeland Security chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) — who also chairs the Jan. 6 Select Committee — wrote to Cuffari and Allison Lerner, chair of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, in a letter dated Tuesday. The top House Democrats said Cuffari’s failure to inform Congress that the Secret Service was stonewalling his requests for records related to the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6 “cast serious doubt on his independence and his ability to effectively conduct such an important investigation.”

“These omissions left Congress in the dark about key developments in this investigation and may have cost investigators precious time to capture relevant evidence,” Maloney and Thompson wrote. “There must be no doubt that the Inspector General leading this investigation can conduct it thoroughly and with integrity, objectivity and independence. We do not have confidence that Inspector General Cuffari can achieve those standards.”

Maloney and Thompson noted that Cuffari told Congress in Nov. 2021 that DHS “significantly delayed” the inspector general’s access to records, but Cuffari failed to disclose that the Secret Service was the source of the access issues. They also pointed to Cuffari becoming aware in Dec. 2021, two months earlier than previously reported, that text messages sent and received by Secret Service agents related to the events surrounding Jan. 6 had been deleted.

“Yet, Inspector General Cuffari took no steps to inform Congress of this serious and flagrant violation of federal records laws,” Maloney and Thompson wrote. “The DHS IG’s failure to promptly report and escalate the Secret Service’s stonewalling calls into question whether Inspector General Cuffari has the professional judgment and capacity to effectively fulfill his duties in this investigation.”

[pnwguy]

Jul 27, 2022 14:50:17 GMT LFC said:

The DHS and Secret Service are sounding more and more like they consider themselves completely above the law and not accountable to anybody.

Sure signs of a MAGAt Infestation.  Biden probably had no idea during the campaign about how much toxic fumigation it would take to rid the federal government of deeply imbedded pests.

[LFC]

Jul 27, 2022 17:44:33 GMT pnwguy said:

Jul 27, 2022 14:50:17 GMT LFC said:

The DHS and Secret Service are sounding more and more like they consider themselves completely above the law and not accountable to anybody.

Sure signs of a MAGAt Infestation.  Biden probably had no idea during the campaign about how much toxic fumigation it would take to rid the federal government of deeply imbedded pests.

Deep State; the Republicans has it.

[LFC]

The Trump / Meadows claim that they ordered troops to the Capitol to stop the insurrection? Lies. What a shock.

But But Trump Said He Did!

The House Jan. 6 Committee released more new footage of witness testimony on Tuesday, with this particular clip coming from testimony from former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller on whether Trump had ordered troops to be ready protect the Capitol on Jan. 6.

• Miller disputed Trump and ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ claims that the then-president had done so. “I was never given any direction or order or knew of any plans of that nature,” the ex-Pentagon chief testified.

• Trump has claimed he ordered 20,000 troops, and Meadows claimed on Fox that it was 10,000 troops. It was, in fact, zero, per Miller.

• Miller said explicitly in his testimony that there was “no order from the President” on deploying troops, and that there was nothing “more than contingency planning.”

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[indy]

Two top officials in DHS have also had their texts go missing...

The Department of Homeland Security notified the agency’s inspector general in late February that the text messages of acting Secretary Chad Wolf and deputy acting Secretary Ken Cuccinelli were lost in a “reset” of their government phones when they left their jobs in January 2021, according to an internal record obtained by the Project on Government Oversight and shared with The Washington Post.

I'm shocked.

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Gee. Just like the missing 18 minutes. Imagine that.

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The DHS IG's handling of the "missing" text messages continues to stink more and more. It should be noted that he's a Trump appointee soooo...

Democratic chairs of the House Oversight and Homeland Security committees said in a letter to DHS inspector general Joseph Cuffari on Monday that they obtained new evidence showing that his office may have “secretly abandoned efforts” to collect text messages from the Secret Service more than a year ago and that it possibly took steps to “cover up the extent” of the missing records.

The top Dems also renewed their calls for Cuffari recuse himself from the investigation into the deleted Secret Service text messages around Jan. 6.

House Oversight chair Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Homeland Security chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) — who also chairs the Jan. 6 Select Committee — said it wrote to Cuffari with “grave new concerns over your lack of transparency and independence” in his office’s probe into the missing text messages.

The chairs noted that Cuffari told Congress in a letter for the first time last month that Secret Service text messages from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021 had been deleted. The Dem chairs said Cuffari’s letter failed to mention that a year earlier, senior officials in his office instructed the DHS that the office of inspector general no longer needed Secret Service text messages as part of its probe related to the Capitol insurrection, citing emails on July 27, 2021 from Cuffari’s deputy, Thomas Kait, to a liaison.

After saying that it is unclear to the committees why Cuffari’s office decided against pursuing more information from the Secret Service at that point, information obtained by the committees show that Cuffari’s office issued a new request in Dec. 2021 to DHS for certain text messages, four months after abandoning efforts.

The committees also obtained evidence that Kait removed “key language” from a Feb. 2022 memo to DHS, which noted the importance of the Secret Service text messages to the inspector general’s probe and criticized the DHS for failing to fulfill the Dec. 2021 request from Cuffari’s office.

The committees also found that Kait appeared to work with other senior staffers in Cuffari’s office to alter the Feb, 2022 memo “to remove the reference to text messages and instead praise the Department for its responses.”

“These documents raise troubling new concerns that your office not only failed to notify Congress for more than a year that critical evidence in this investigation was missing, but your senior staff deliberately chose not to pursue that evidence and then appear to have taken steps to cover up these failures,” Maloney and Thomas wrote.

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Well there we have it, folks. It's abundantly clear that the Trump administration deliberately destroyed records concerning the January 6 Republican Insurrection. The coverup couldn't be more obvious. Wait, I take that back. I suspect the coverup will become much more obvious.

The Defense Department wiped the phones of top departing DOD and Army officials at the end of the Trump administration, deleting any texts from key witnesses to events surrounding the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, according to court filings.

The acknowledgment that the phones from the Pentagon officials had been wiped was first revealed in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit American Oversight brought against the Defense Department and the Army. The watchdog group is seeking January 6 records from former acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, former chief of staff Kash Patel, and former Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, among other prominent Pentagon officials -- having filed initial FOIA requests just a few days after the Capitol attack.

Miller, Patel and McCarthy have all been viewed as crucial witnesses for understanding government's response to the January 6 Capitol assault and former President Donald Trump's reaction to the breach. All three were involved in the Defense Department's response to sending National Guard troops to the US Capitol as the riot was unfolding. There is no suggestion that the officials themselves erased the records.

Garland better get his f***ing ass in gear. If he needs additional help then he needs to request it.

The pattern across multiple agencies has prompted her organization to write to Attorney General Merrick Garland, who is already facing a request from congressional Democrats that he take over the DHS' probe into the missing Secret Service texts.

"American Oversight accordingly urges you to investigate DOD's actions in allowing the destruction of records potentially relevant to this significant matter of national attention and historical importance," the letter said, while citing calls from Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin that the Department of Homeland Security be investigated for similar failures, the letter, shared with CNN on Tuesday, said.

[goldenvalley]

Aug 2, 2022 20:54:58 GMT LFC said:

Well there we have it, folks. It's abundantly clear that the Trump administration deliberately destroyed records concerning the January 6 Republican Insurrection. The coverup couldn't be more obvious. Wait, I take that back. I suspect the coverup will become much more obvious.

The Defense Department wiped the phones of top departing DOD and Army officials at the end of the Trump administration, deleting any texts from key witnesses to events surrounding the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, according to court filings.

The acknowledgment that the phones from the Pentagon officials had been wiped was first revealed in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit American Oversight brought against the Defense Department and the Army. The watchdog group is seeking January 6 records from former acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, former chief of staff Kash Patel, and former Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, among other prominent Pentagon officials -- having filed initial FOIA requests just a few days after the Capitol attack.

Miller, Patel and McCarthy have all been viewed as crucial witnesses for understanding government's response to the January 6 Capitol assault and former President Donald Trump's reaction to the breach. All three were involved in the Defense Department's response to sending National Guard troops to the US Capitol as the riot was unfolding. There is no suggestion that the officials themselves erased the records.

Garland better get his f***ing ass in gear. If he needs additional help then he needs to request it.

The pattern across multiple agencies has prompted her organization to write to Attorney General Merrick Garland, who is already facing a request from congressional Democrats that he take over the DHS' probe into the missing Secret Service texts.

"American Oversight accordingly urges you to investigate DOD's actions in allowing the destruction of records potentially relevant to this significant matter of national attention and historical importance," the letter said, while citing calls from Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin that the Department of Homeland Security be investigated for similar failures, the letter, shared with CNN on Tuesday, said.

What a coincidence!  When a Republican president is in charge the text messages of Secret Service, DHS, and the Dept of Defense get wiped during some sort of phone transition.  Lock him up!

[LFC]

Oh, Dougie. Seditious and cowardly isn't the best look. It almost makes us think you're guilty of something.

Mastriano Looking To Weasel Out Of Testifying In Front Of Jan. 6 Panel

Doug Mastriano, Pennsylvania’s hardcore MAGA gubernatorial nominee, sent a letter to the House Jan. 6 Committee via his lawyer on Friday threatening to pull out of his agreement to sit in for a deposition unless the lawyer can record the session. The committee’s really not likely to go for that.