House Select Committee on 1/6

[LFC]

Thanks, Twitter. Your service to all you hold dear, namely money, is noted. I guess fascism isn't such a bad system for a business to thrive under.

Just how much did social media big wigs know about the Jan. 6 insurrection beforehand? For those investigating the storming of the Capitol, getting to the bottom of that question has been like trying to pull out rotten teeth with a pair of chopsticks. Now, a new report shows just how far investigators have gone to understand what tech companies internally knew before insurrectionists breached the Capitol building.

Rolling Stone, citing unnamed sources familiar with the Jan. 6 investigation, reported the committee is growing increasingly annoyed at Twitter’s obstinance to handing over its internal communications. The committee wants Twitter’s Slack messages centered around its moderation policies in the lead up to the attack on the Capitol building. The committee is hosting its first public hearings about the insurrection Thursday evening.

This latest report is more evidence of the challenge faced by social media companies that cite First Amendment protections and the need to protect employees’ privacy while facing calls to account for their failure to curb disinformation on their platforms. Twitter itself has a hard time understanding why disinformation and right-leaning info gets proliferated on its site.

Twitter told Rolling Stone they have already “provided appropriate, relevant information to contribute to this important investigation,” though it must “evaluate the merits of each request to protect the rights of the people who use our service, as well as the rights of Twitter and its employees.”

[goldenvalley]

Jun 8, 2022 19:52:19 GMT LFC said:

Thanks, Twitter. Your service to all you hold dear, namely money, is noted. I guess fascism isn't such a bad system for a business to thrive under.

Just how much did social media big wigs know about the Jan. 6 insurrection beforehand? For those investigating the storming of the Capitol, getting to the bottom of that question has been like trying to pull out rotten teeth with a pair of chopsticks. Now, a new report shows just how far investigators have gone to understand what tech companies internally knew before insurrectionists breached the Capitol building.

Rolling Stone, citing unnamed sources familiar with the Jan. 6 investigation, reported the committee is growing increasingly annoyed at Twitter’s obstinance to handing over its internal communications. The committee wants Twitter’s Slack messages centered around its moderation policies in the lead up to the attack on the Capitol building. The committee is hosting its first public hearings about the insurrection Thursday evening.

This latest report is more evidence of the challenge faced by social media companies that cite First Amendment protections and the need to protect employees’ privacy while facing calls to account for their failure to curb disinformation on their platforms. Twitter itself has a hard time understanding why disinformation and right-leaning info gets proliferated on its site.

Twitter told Rolling Stone they have already “provided appropriate, relevant information to contribute to this important investigation,” though it must “evaluate the merits of each request to protect the rights of the people who use our service, as well as the rights of Twitter and its employees.”

The social media companies just can't see or won't admit that they were used. Their sort of libertarian, anything goes attitude doesn't accept responsibility.

[LFC]

Raffensberger is potentially going to publicly testify.

Trump’s Really Not Gonna Like This One

After steamrolling Trump crony Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) in the primaries, Georgia Secretary of State and key witness Brad Raffensperger (R) is now speaking to the House Jan. 6 Committee on potentially testifying at a public hearing, according to Politico.

• Raffensperger has already provided testimony to investigators behind closed doors: He had a private interview with the Jan. 6 committee in November, and he also testified in front a special grand jury in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ Trump election meddling probe last week.

• Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone is also huddling with the Jan. 6 panel over a potential public testimony, according to ABC News.

Wouldn't it be awesome if Trump stroked out over the public hearings and ended up alive but incapable of speaking and with a drooping face. Then we can make fun of him since, as he taught us, making fun of the disabled is really good stuff.

[LFC]

Looks like we're going to find out more about what the deal was with Pence.

Pence Counsel’s Public Testimony Has Been Scheduled

Greg Jacob, former Vice President Mike Pence’s ex-chief counsel, is scheduled to testify at the House Jan. 6 Committee’s public hearing next Thursday on June 16, Politico reports. Former Pence chief of staff Marc Short and ex-federal Judge J. Michael Luttig, a friend of Pence, are reportedly expected to publicly testify, too, but it’s unknown when exactly they’ll do so.

[LFC]

Kevin McCarthy is a spineless traitor to America who does whatever he's told.

Before he was obediently helping ex-President Donald Trump stonewall the House Jan. 6 Committee’s investigation into the Capitol insurrection, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was privately stressing the need for an investigation in the days after the attack.

On Thursday night, New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns released new audio of one of McCarthy’s calls with fellow Republicans on Jan. 11 last year, during which the GOP leader declared that it was essential to get to the bottom of the insurrection.

“We cannot just sweep this under the rug. We need to know why it happened, who did it, and people need to be held accountable for it,” he said. “And I’m committed to making sure that happens.”

Cut to seven months later, when McCarthy (having already bashed the bipartisan proposal for a commission to investigate Jan. 6) tried to undermine the legitimacy of the House Jan. 6 Committee by purposefully choosing GOP members he knew House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) wouldn’t approve, giving him cover to 1) refuse to participate in the probe and 2) feed into Trump’s narrative that the investigation was a Democratic partisan attack.

That narrative imploded when GOP Reps. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) joined the committee.

Now McCarthy refuses to cooperate with the committee’s subpoena.

In another newly released clip of the same Jan. 11 call, McCarthy described a phone conversation he had with Trump as the insurrection was unfolding.

“When they started breaking into my office, myself and the staff got removed from the office,” the GOP leader recounted. “In doing so, I made a phone call to the President telling him what was going on, asking him to tell these people to stop, to make a video and go out.”

McCarthy made sure his colleagues knew just how very serious and tough and unflinching he was with Trump.

“I was very intense and very loud about it,” he said.

The recordings are the latest of the damning tapes being released by Martin and Burns for their new book, “This Will Not Pass.”

And like those other tapes, these latest recordings exposed the astonishing extent to which McCarthy, with his eye on potentially becoming House speaker after the midterms, backpedaled on holding Trump accountable for the attack.

[LFC]

Predictably Republicans are screeching about ... whatever the f*** they pulled out of their collect ass this time.

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee complained about a "media spectacle" after seeing a press seating chart for Thursday's prime-time public hearings by the House Select Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Ashley Oliver of Breitbart News posted what she said is a seating chart of hearings taking place in the circular rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building.

The seating chart showed each major outlet being assigned space between the room's Corinthian columns all the way around the rotunda, hinting at a theatre-in-the-round presentation.

The Architect of the Capitol says the rotunda "is typically flooded with natural light."

"Tomorrow’s January 6th hearing is nothing more than a partisan, made for TV, media spectacle," the Judiciary Republicans posted to Twitter.

[LFC]

More cracks? I wonder if the recent DOJ indictments are waking these people up or if they finally decided to be Americans.

Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide to Mark Meadows, appears to be more willing to cooperate with federal officials and the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.

Reporter Betsy Woodruff Swan revealed that sources close to Hutchinson say she has retained a new lawyer and indicated a further willingness "to cooperate fully" with the House probe.

Hutchinson, however, has already spoken to the committee on at least two occasions, giving considerable details about what former President Donald Trump was told about his attempt to change the 2020 election results.

[LFC]

Steve Bannon provided plans for the coup to Jr. just two days after the election. I suspect we're likely to hear about this in the public hearings.

On Thursday, ahead of the first public hearings of the January 6 Committee, The New York Times reported that the plan to overturn the election Donald Trump Jr. relayed to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows originated with former Trump strategist Steve Bannon.

"On Nov. 5, 2020, as his father waited for key states to finish counting their votes, Donald Trump Jr. relayed over text message a series of suggestions to Mr. Meadows, the White House chief of staff, for how President Trump could stay in power," said the report. "One message referred to Jan. 6, 2021, when the vice president would oversee the congressional certification of the Electoral College votes — typically a routine process. The message described the date as a last-ditch option, one that would be meaningful only if the Trump forces could engineer a situation in which neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Biden, the election’s winner, was found to have amassed enough electoral votes to win and the race was sent to the House of Representatives to decide."

"That plan had been pushed by Mr. Trump’s informal adviser Stephen K. Bannon, and a person familiar with the younger Mr. Trump’s text message identified Mr. Bannon as being the source of the information," said the report. "This tactic would involve two strands: pressing Mr. Pence to agree to flout the Constitution on the critical date of Jan. 6, and creating at least the appearance that there were alternate slates of pro-Trump electors from swing states that had clearly been won by Mr. Biden. The electors plan is now under scrutiny by federal prosecutors."

Previous reporting revealed that far-right attorney John Eastman, another ally of Trump, drafted a memo purporting to show the legal basis for this plan.

[LFC]

Well, we know where Trump falls on this issue.

Hours before the House select committee investigation hearing on the Jan. 6 insurrection, which saw hundreds of supporters of Donald Trump storm the U.S. Capitol, the former president raged on Truth Social that the day of the riot "represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country."

With the first of six nationally televised hearings that promise new videos and bombshell testimony set to begin, the former president took to one of the only social media platform where he is still welcome to snarl at the bipartisan committee and complain that the real crime was having the elections "stolen" from him despite all evidence to the contrary.

[pnwguy]

Jun 8, 2022 17:38:29 GMT LFC said:

Can we please just jail this prick?

MAGA lawyer John Eastman has been ordered by a federal judge to hand over a large batch of emails and documents to the Jan. 6 select committee, including an email said to provide evidence of a likely crime. 

If there actually were Jewish space lasers, they should just vaporize him.

I think we need a new thread:  Who Would You Space Laser?  Personally, I'd put Steve Bannon and his MAGAt King higher up in the firing list.  

[AnBr]

Jun 9, 2022 20:29:37 GMT pnwguy said:

Who Would You Space Laser? 

Moscow Mitch number one. Thomas and Kavanaugh next. Then on to various sens and reps. The list gets fairly long.

[goldenvalley]

Jun 9, 2022 21:09:37 GMT AnBr said:

Jun 9, 2022 20:29:37 GMT pnwguy said:

Who Would You Space Laser? 

Moscow Mitch number one. Thomas and Kavanaugh next. Then on to various sens and reps. The list gets fairly long.

The list is a long one...I'm adding Kevin McCarthy to it.  I didn't like him before Trump's insurrection; certainly now he deserves a zapping.

[goldenvalley]

I was glued to the tv last night.  Guess why?  The video was devastating and Thompson and Cheney pulling it all together made a clear picture.  Too bad they couldn't get this together for the impeachment trial, but it really did take this long to get all this info.

And Cheney...still detest her politics but sheesh she's been awesome on this...she's committing political suicide.  Most of her fellow Reps have completely sold out...craven.  She said Trump will be dead, but you'll live with the dishonor for a long time.

[indy]

I see they announced that multiple members of congress sought a pardon from Trump. I guess that answers the question of whether or not they were too stupid to understand what they were trying to do.

[goldenvalley]

Last night I noticed that the documentary guy who had video of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers meeting in a parking lot the night before 1/6 pointed out that he was there under subpoena.  I wonder what message he was sending with that statement.  Maybe "Proud Boys don't hurt me, I was compelled to show my video of you, no offense meant". 

[jackd]

Guarding his cred for next group of criminals he wants to embed with.

[pnwguy]

Jun 10, 2022 16:33:24 GMT goldenvalley said:

Last night I noticed that the documentary guy who had video of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers meeting in a parking lot the night before 1/6 pointed out that he was there under subpoena.  I wonder what message he was sending with that statement.  Maybe "Proud Boys don't hurt me, I was compelled to show my video of you, no offense meant". 

I believe he referred to himself as a documentarian journalist.  So the ethic of protecting sources, even if they are disclosing everything for a film, probably is a credibility he needs to pay homage to.

[indy]

It's absolutely amazing how anxious criminals are to have their crimes documented on camera. One of the things that struck me in the videos they played in the hearings was the sheer number of people who were filming.

These are the same people, by the way, that would be absolutely livid about government overreach if they were caught with a traffic cam rolling a stop sign or running a red light.

[goldenvalley]

Jun 11, 2022 0:57:53 GMT indy said:

It's absolutely amazing how anxious criminals are to have their crimes documented on camera. One of the things that struck me in the videos they played in the hearings was the sheer number of people who were filming.

These are the same people, by the way, that would be absolutely livid about government overreach if they were caught with a traffic cam rolling a stop sign or running a red light.

They were proud of what they were doing and wanted to document it.  They were on the side of all that is good and right.  And a certain amount of defiant "F#$K Yeah!" attitude is present too.

Plus we just live in a society where something hasn't happened unless there are photos or video of it. 

[goldenvalley]

I don't know if this will be discussed in upcoming hearings, but Pence had legal counsel Greg Jacob (beyond Dan Quayle) who said the Eastman dude was flat wrong.  This was said on 1/6:

On Jan. 6, just as rioters were bearing down on the Capitol, Eastman made a last-ditch plea with Jacob to convince Pence to reconsider. In an email, he showed Pence a letter suggesting that Republican legislators in Pennsylvania appeared likely to reconvene and appoint pro-Trump electors if they had more time. When Jacob said any effort to send the matter back to the states would still violate the law, Eastman called his response “small minded.”

“You’re sticking with minor procedural statutes while the Constitution is being shredded,” Eastman wrote.

“I respect your heart here,” replied Jacob. “I share your concerns about what Democrats will do once in power. I want election integrity fixed. But I have run down every legal trail placed before me to its conclusion, and I respectfully conclude that as a legal framework, it is a results oriented position that you would never support if attempted by the opposition, and essentially entirely made up.”

“And thanks to your bullshit,” he continued, “we are now under siege.”

[goldenvalley]

Just finished stage 2 of the hearings.  I would like to hear a lot more testimony instead of film clips but I'm a nerd. The very end of the hearing tied in fundraising going on as 1/6 insurrection was unfolding.

And the final video is a compilation of statements by people at the insurrection...all completely convinced by the BS they were told. Those folks probably aren't watching the hearing or seeing any part of it on their favored news purveyors.

[andydp]

I'm guessing they didn't really think it was "legitimate political discourse".

Capitol attack pardon revelations could spell doom for Trump and allies

The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack revealed at its inaugural hearing that Donald Trump’s top Republican allies in Congress sought pardons after the January 6 insurrection, a major disclosure that bolstered the claim that the event amounted to a coup and is likely to cause serious scrutiny for those implicated.

The news that multiple House Republicans asked the Trump White House for pardons – an apparent consciousness of guilt – was one of three revelations portending potentially perilous legal and political moments to come for Trump and his allies.


www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/12/us-capitol-attack-panel-hearings-trump-allies-trouble

[goldenvalley]

ETA: Beats me why Twitter worked and FB didn't. 

[AnBr]

Jun 13, 2022 22:14:45 GMT goldenvalley said:

ETA: Beats me why Twitter worked and FB didn't. 

Most likely has to do with privacy/share settings of the FB poster.

[LFC]

TPM's live blogging of hearing #2. They note that convicted felon Dinesh D'Souza is melting down because Bill Barr mocked his "documentary" on alleged (i.e. not real) election fraud back in 2000.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr’s taped testimony has sent conservative pundit Dinesh D’Souza into a bit of a tailspin.

It didn’t take long for D’Souza to air his grievances over Barr’s testimony that the Jan. 6 Select Committee aired during its second public hearing today. In his taped deposition, Barr took swipes at Trump for becoming “detached” from reality by refusing to back down on pushing the Big Lie.

But perhaps a line was crossed for D’Souza when Barr laughed at the much-hyped and ultimately baseless findings featured in the conservative pundit’s opus titled “2000 mules,” which alleged that there was “coordinated voter fraud” in the 2000 presidential election.

“I haven’t seen anything since the election that changes my mind on that,” Barr said in his taped testimony, after saying that he does not believe the 2020 election was fraudulent.

“Including the 2000 Mules movie,” Barr added, with a chuckle.

Bill Barr told the committee how Doug Mastriano, the current GOP nominee for PA state governor, is the source of fabricated bullshit about voter fraud in Philadelphia. It wasn't even clever.

Barr Throws Mastriano Under The Bus For Boosting Election Fraud Falsehoods Trump Embraced

In taped testimony, former Attorney General Bill Barr said that then-state senator Doug Mastriano (R) was an original source of one of Trump’s voter fraud claims. Barr said he asked then-U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain about claims of voter fraud in Pennsylvania that Mastriano had pushed. Barr said McSwain told him that he did not find voter fraud in the commonwealth.

Barr noted that in Pennsylvania, Trump “generally was a weak element on the Republican ticket.”

“That does not suggest the election was stolen by fraud,” Barr said.

(Side note: Mastriano, a champion of the Big Lie who won the GOP Pennsylvania governor primary, is endorsed by Trump. Mastriano has openly suggested that as governor, he would reject future election results.)

Here's a clip of Barr's testimony. You can start at 1:42. Interestingly I put this up on Facebook about 15 minutes ago and my post still hasn't shown up. I guess CSpan is one of those sources that needs to be checked.