Hugo Lowell
Dec. 11, 2023
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/11/donald-trump-2020-election-trial-tweets-phone-data
[Excerpts:]
Special counsel prosecutors indicated on Monday they will call three expert witnesses at Donald Trump’s trial over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election who could potentially show how January 6 rioters moved on the Capitol in response to the former president’s tweets.
The witnesses, according to a three-page filing , involve two experts on geolocation data to show the crowd’s movement during and after Trump’s speech at the Ellipse, and an expert on cellular phone data to testify about when and how Trump’s phone was being used, including over the same time period.
In recent weeks, prosecutors have made it increasingly clear that they want to make the case that Trump sought to obstruct the January 6 congressional certification of the election results with the rioters by tying him to the Capitol attack, as well as through political means.
The notice about the subject of the expert witness testimony suggests prosecutors also intend to make the case that Trump – through his action and inaction – simultaneously advanced the physical obstruction of Congress as the Capitol attack progressed.
Now It’s Getting Good
Since the indictment of Donald Trump last August for trying to overturn the 2020 election, Special Counsel Jack Smith hasn’t offered much publicly to advance the underlying narrative. But that changed yesterday with a new filing that vividly describes how prosecutors want to frame up their case against Trump for jurors.
In a filing that the rules require, Smith revealed other bad acts and conduct that he intends to introduce against Trump at trial. What emerges is a compelling argument that Trump’s his own anti-democratic statements and conduct began years before the 2020 election and continued well after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. But it goes even further than that.
I’m going to cheat and just share the subheads that Smith used in the filing because they elegantly show the framing of the case:
Historical Evidence of the Defendant’s Consistent Plan of Baselessly Claiming Election Fraud
Historical Evidence of the Defendant’s Common Plan to Refuse to Commit to a Peaceful Transition of Power
Evidence of the Defendant and Co-Conspirators’ Knowledge of the Unfavorable Election Results and Motive and Intent to Subvert Them
Pre- and Post-Conspiracy Evidence That the Defendant and Co-Conspirators Suppressed Proof Their Fraud Claims Were False and Retaliated Against Officials Who Undermined Their Criminal Plans
Pre- and Post-Conspiracy Evidence of the Defendant’s Public Attacks on Individuals, Encouragement of Violence, and Knowledge of the Foreseeable Consequences
The filing is only nine pages long, but it’s chockablock with specific instances and examples that show the contours of the prosecution’s case against Trump. I’d urge you to read it .
What Jack Smith Says
Joyce Vance from Civil Discourse
December 6, 2023
<joycevance@substack.com >
[Excerpts:]
Smith says he will introduce evidence that “in the years since the January 6 attack on the Capitol, the defendant has openly and proudly supported individuals who criminally participated in obstructing the congressional certification that day, including by suggesting that he will pardon them if re-elected, even as he has conceded that he had the ability to influence their actions during the attack.”
The Special Counsel writes that Trump’s support for some of the most violent participants in January 6 will be part of his evidence, including a September 17, 2023, appearance on Meet the Press, where Trump, referring to Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, now convicted of seditious conspiracy, said, “I want to tell you, he and other people have been treated horribly.” Smith says he’ll also delve into Trump’s criticism of lengthy sentences set for other seditious conspiracy defendants.
Then there’s Trump’s support for the “January 6 Choir,” inmates in the District of Columbia jail, “many of whose criminal history and/or crimes on January 6 were so violent that their pretrial release would pose a danger to the public” and who Trump has staunchly supported. He played their rendition of the Star Spangled Banner at the first rally of his 2024 campaign. Watch here . He has supported the financially according to Smith who also says he refers to them as “hostages.”
Smith feels strongly about this last category of evidence, and he offers a lot of reasons it’s admissible. He says it proves Trump’s motive and intent, that on January 6 he sent his angry group of supporters “to the Capitol to achieve the criminal objective of obstructing the congressional certification.” Smith says it proves the Trump intended to obstruct the certification because he “held, and still holds, enormous influence over his supporters’ actions” and chose not to end the violence on January 6.
But Smith says the most important proof the evidence provides is that Trump’s “embrace of January 6 rioters is evidence of his intent during the charged conspiracies, because it shows that these individuals acted as he directed them to act; indeed, this evidence shows that the rioters’ disruption of the certification proceeding is exactly what the defendant intended on January 6.
And finally, evidence of the defendant’s statements regarding possible pardons for January 6 offenders is admissible to help the jury assess the credibility and motives of trial witnesses, because through such comments, the defendant is publicly signaling that the law does not apply to those who act at his urging regardless of the legality of their actions.
“Echoes of Jan. 6 committee as Jack Smith foreshadows plan to tie Trump to Capitol riot”
Politico:
When Donald Trump faces a jury on charges stemming from his bid to subvert the 2020 election, he wants to prohibit federal prosecutors from even mentioning the chaos and violence unleashed by his supporters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But to special counsel Jack Smith, Trump’s role in the riot is the heart of the case.
A new court filing from Smith’s team this week reveals that the mob that stormed Congress in Trump’s name will be the centerpiece of his trial, scheduled to begin on March 4. It wasn’t just an unfortunate reaction to Trump’s incendiary remarks that day, prosecutors contend. It was a tool that Trump used to launch one last desperate bid to cling to power.
Trump’s criminal conspiracies “culminated and converged” on Jan. 6, when he attempted to prevent Congress from finalizing Joe Biden’s victory, argued senior assistant special counsel Molly Gaston.
“One of the ways that the defendant did so … was to direct an angry crowd of his supporters to the Capitol and to continue to stoke their anger while they were rioting,” Gaston wrote in the filing.
In a way, Smith is now casting Trump’s trial as a long-awaited collision between two distinct narratives: Trump’s monthslong campaign to use lies about election fraud to pressure state and federal election officials to keep him in power; and the rioters who embraced Trump’s false claims and took violent action on his behalf on Jan. 6. Those investigations have largely moved along separate tracks in the Washington courts, where a revolving door of Jan. 6 riot defendants have faced punishment while Smith’s grand jury, just a few paces down the hall, worked secretly on the Trump probe.
BY ASKING FOR TANYA CHUTKAN’S RECUSAL, TRUMP INVITED A LESSON IN HIS CENTRALITY TO JANUARY 6
September 15, 2023 / in 2020 Presidential Election , January 6 Insurrection / by emptywheel
https://www.emptywheel.net/by-asking-for-tanya-chutkans-recusal-trump-invited-a-lesson-in-his-centrality-to-january-6/
[Excerpt:]
Trump’s motion for Tanya Chutkan to recuse was not designed to work. Rather, it was designed as a messaging vehicle, to establish the basis for Trump to claim that a Black Judge was biased against him so he can better use it to discredit rule of law and as a campaign and fundraising vehicle.
Because Trump’s motion was primarily a messaging vehicle, the — legally apt — messaging with which DOJ responded is of some interest.
Invited to do so by Trump, DOJ laid out how central Trump is to the thousand other January 6 prosecutions.
Invited to do so by Trump, for example, DOJ provided eight other times — in addition to the cases of Robert Palmer and Christine Priola cited in the recusal motion — where defendants before Judge Chutkan have implicated Trump in their actions.
The Trump Jan. 6 Indictment, Annotated
The Justice Department unveiled an indictment on Tuesday charging former President Donald J. Trump with four criminal counts. They relate to Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which culminated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a mob of his supporters.
1 count
Conspiracy to defraud the United States
The charge against Mr. Trump details the various methods he and co-conspirators used to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
2 counts
Related to efforts to obstruct the vote certification proceedings
Mr. Trump faces two charges involving the vote certification proceedings at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021: one of obstructing that process and one of conspiring to do so.
1 count
Conspiracy to violate civil rights
Related to Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse election results in states with close elections in 2020.
The New York Times annotated the document.
Download the full PDF
The Trump Jan. 6 indictment (unannotated):
https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2023/08/trump-indictment.pdf
In Tuesday’s filing, Shafer underscored that the strategy was driven almost entirely by lawyers acting on Trump’s behalf. The false electors were later used by Trump allies to attempt to foment a conflict on Jan. 6, 2021 and derail the transfer of power to President Joe Biden.
Shafer is among the 18 defendants indicted in Fulton County, Georgia, alongside Trump as part of a conspiracy to subvert the 2020 election.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-prosecute-trump
Russia’s Latest Sanctions on U.S. Officials Turn to Trump Enemies
Among the 500 people singled out for travel and financial restrictions were Americans seen as adversaries by former President Donald J. Trump.
Russia has expanded its list of sanctioned Americans in a tit-for-tat retaliation for the latest curbs imposed by the United States. But what is particularly striking is how much President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is adopting perceived enemies of former President Donald J. Trump as his own.
Among the 500 people singled out for travel and financial restrictions on Friday were Americans seen as adversaries by Mr. Trump, including Letitia James, the state attorney general of New York who has sued him for alleged fraud , and Jack Smith, the Justice Department special counsel investigating his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents after leaving office.
Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state of Georgia who rebuffed Mr. Trump’s pressure to “find” enough votes to reverse the outcome of the election, also made the list. So did Lt. Michael Byrd, the Capitol Police officer who shot the pro-Trump rioter Ashli Babbitt on Jan. 6, 2021.
None of them has anything to do with Russia policy, and the only evident reason they would have come to Moscow’s attention is because Mr. Trump has publicly assailed them. The Russian Foreign Ministry offered no specific explanation for why they would be included on the list but did say that among its targets were “those in government and law enforcement agencies who are directly involved in the persecution of dissidents in the wake of the so-called storming of the Capitol.”
As recently as this month, Mr. Trump has tried to rewrite the history of that day and has dangled pardons for convicted rioters if he is elected to a second term. He also refused to commit to supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia if he is elected president again, saying instead he would seek to mediate between Kyiv and Moscow.
[Excerpt:]
The findings of the Committee include the following:
9. Based on false allegations that the election was stolen, Donald Trump summoned tens of thousands of supporters to Washington for January 6th. Although these supporters were angry and some were armed, Donald Trump instructed them to march on the Capitol on January 6th to “take back” their country.
10. Knowing that a violent attack on the Capitol was underway and knowing that his words would incite further violence, Donald Trump purposely sent a social media message publicly condemning Vice President Pence at 2:24 p.m. on January 6th.
11. Knowing that violence was underway at the Capitol, and despite his duty to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed, Donald Trump refused repeated requests over a multiple hour period that he instruct his violent supporters to disperse and leave the Capitol, and instead watched the violent attacks unfold on television. This failure to act perpetuated the violence at the Capitol and obstructed Congress’s proceeding to count electoral votes.
12. Each of these actions by Donald Trump was taken in support of a multi-part conspiracy to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 election.
https://www.govinfo.gov/collection/january-6th-committee-final-report?path=/gpo/January%206th%20Committee%20Final%20Report%20and%20Supporting%20Materials%20Collection/Final%20Report/GPO-J6-REPORT
Jan. 6 committee refers Trump to Justice Dept. for criminal charges
The decision — an unprecedented move for Congress — came as the panel released a summary of its final report and met publicly for the last time
Updated December 19, 2022
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/19/trump-referrals-jan-6-committee/
House Jan. 6 Committee Signals It Will Issue Criminal Referrals
Who is Roger Stone?
[Excerpt:]
What are the Roger Stone tapes?
Following in the footsteps of Nixon, Stone now too has a set of noteworthy tapes. Filmed by a Danish crew that was following the political operative as part of a documentary, the tapes show Stone leading up to and during the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.
Obtained by the Washington Post in March, the footage documents Stone as he organizes post-election protests and communicates with far-right militia groups later found to be involved in the attack on the Capitol.
Footage, reviewed by the Post also shows Stone on Jan. 6 packing up bags and preparing to leave Washington on a private flight. “I really want to get out of here” he says, mentioning a fear of prosecution from incoming Attorney General Merrick Garland.
How is Roger Stone connected to January 6th?
Roger Stone//, if not already a household name, may become even more so since being name-checked several times by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The select committee found that Stone interacted with extremist groups present at the riot, and recent footage released by the committee shows him taking the Proud Boys oath, declaring himself a “Western chauvinist. “
In the days following the attack, the political operative lobbied the president to follow a document he had dubbed the “Stone Plan,” which encouraged Trump to preemptively pardon prominent Republican lawmakers, Stone himself and “the America First movement” for any crimes that could be related to the attempts made to overturn the 2020 election.
More on Roger Stone’s Jan 6th involvement:Roger Stone served with Jan. 6 Capitol riot lawsuit during live radio interview
In a hurry?
See the following summaries prepared by PBS, The New Yorker and the New York Times: Then track the story with us, as it emerged, day by day, through the dedicated work of courageous journalists.
Reflect on the audacity of Trump enablers seeking undermine our Republic, safeguard by safeguard, and their relentless efforts to cover up and deny their misdeeds.
A CLEAR LOOK AT TRUMP’S COURT BATTLES
By Lisa Desjardins, Correspondent, PBS NewsHour
August 9, 2023
We have never had a former president face criminal charges. Now we have one facing three sets of them and a possible fourth in the coming days.
In hopes of preventing the many threads involved from tangling, we’ll walk through the status of each of the cases centered around Donald Trump, former president and current Republican front-runner for 2024.
[Excerpt:]
1. The Jan. 6 and 2020 election inquiry Basics: Related to Trump’s efforts to overturn results of the 2020 election, which led to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack in Washington, D.C. Status: Trump was indicted in this case on Aug. 1. He has pleaded not guilty. We await a trial date. Read the full indictment here.
The charges. Trump faces four federal felony charges:
Conspiracy to defraud the United States, by attempting to overturn a legitimate election. Conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, by attempting to stop the electoral certification on Jan. 6, 2021. Obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding. (See above.) Conspiracy against rights, by attempting to overturn voters’ rightful decision in 2020. This charge comes from a 19th-century post-Civil War law.
Who is prosecuting? Department of Justice, led by independent special counsel Jack Smith. When is the trial? No date has been set yet. The judge in the case will hold a hearing Aug. 28 to decide the trial start date. Which brings us to … The judge. Tanya Chutkan. She is an Obama appointee who was confirmed 95-0 in the Senate in 2014. Chutkan was randomly selected from the judges sitting on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Trump has questioned her ability to be unbiased. CNN has reported an increase in security around her. What does the prosecution say? In the grand jury indictment, Smith argued that Trump acted to overturn the 2020 election results and stop the legal transition of power. The indictment listed six unnamed co-conspirators who are accused of working with Trump. No one else has been charged yet, but still could be.
This case is NOT directly about the rioting or insurrection on Jan. 6 so much as it is about other actions related to the 2020 vote count and certification of results. That includes an alleged scheme to force then-Vice President Mike Pence to stop the electoral certification as well as attempts to replace legitimate slates of electors with Trump voters.
Trump’s defense. Trump’s attorneys argue that their client’s words about the 2020 election were free speech protected by the First Amendment and not conspiracy for fraud. (Sidenote: the special counsel anticipated this. The indictment states that lying is not a crime, but that fraud based on a lie is. See the bottom of pg. 1.)
From our reporting, we also know the defense team also will use every legal means to try to get the current judge, who they see as biased, removed from the case. They may propose moving the trial from the heavily Democratic-leaning Washington, D.C. to other states like West Virginia and Virginia. The Trump team is considering arguing that their client cannot get a fair trial anywhere, but that the nation’s capital is especially unfair.
The latest. The two sides’ first legal skirmish is over what evidence Trump’s team can publicly release and discuss in the case. Prosecutors with special counsel Smith’s team have asked for a “protective order” — a standard request in many cases — to keep legal teams from releasing most evidence to the public before trial. Trump’s team said the prosecutors’ request is unusually broad and are pushing for more leeway.
Ultimate guide to Jan. 6 hearings: Lesson plans, timeline, key terms
Jan. 6, 2023
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/classroom/2023/01/
What the January 6th Report is Missing
“Here, radically reduced—forty gallons of sap to one gallon of maple syrup—is a very un-executive summary of the report. Donald Trump never said he’d abide by the outcome of the election. In May of 2020, fearing that Biden might win in November, he tweeted, “It will be the greatest Rigged Election in history!” He understood that he would likely lose but that, owing to an effect known as the Red Mirage, it would look, for a while, as if he had won: more Democrats than Republicans would vote by mail and, since mail-in ballots are often the last to be counted, early counting would favor Republicans. “When that happens,” Roger Stone advised him, “the key thing to do is to claim victory. . . . No, we won. Fuck you, Sorry. Over.””
“That was Plan A. In September, The Atlantic published a bombshell article by Barton Gellman reporting that the Trump campaign had a scheme “to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority.” That was Plan B. Plan A (“Fuck you”) was more Trump’s style. “He’s gonna declare victory,” Steve Bannon said. “But that doesn’t mean he’s the winner. He’s just gonna say he’s a winner.” On Election Night, November 3rd, Trump wanted to do just that, but his campaign team persuaded him not to. His patience didn’t last long. “This is a fraud on the American public,” Trump said on November 4th. “We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.” The next day, he tweeted, “stop the count! ” On November 7th, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, ABC, the Associated Press, and Fox News all declared that Joseph Biden had won. The election was not close. Counting the votes just took a while.”
“After Biden won, Trump continued to insist that widespread fraud had been committed. Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager, told the January 6th Committee that the campaign became a “truth telling squad,” chasing allegations, discovering them to be unfounded, and telling the President, “Yeah, that wasn’t true.” The Department of Homeland Security looked into allegations, most of which popped up online, and announced, “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” The Justice Department, too, investigated charges of fraud, but, as Barr informed the committee, he was left telling the President, repeatedly, “They’re not panning out.””
“For Plan C, the President turned to Rudy Giuliani and a group of lawyers that included Sidney Powell. They filed sixty-two lawsuits challenging election results, and lost all but one of these suits (and that one involved neither allegations of fraud nor any significant number of votes). Twenty-two of the judges who decided these cases had been appointed by Republicans, and ten had been appointed by Trump.”
“On December 11th, the Supreme Court rejected a suit that had challenged the results in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Trump had had every right to challenge the results of state elections, but at this point he had exhausted his legal options. He decided to fall back on Plan B, the fake-electors plan, which required hundreds of legislators across the country to set aside the popular vote in states won by Biden, claiming that the results were fraudulent, and appointing their own slate of electors, who would cast their Electoral College votes for Trump on December 14th. According to Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, the White House counsel determined that, since none of the fraud allegations had been upheld by any court, the fake-electors plan was illegal. But one deputy assistant to the President told Trump that it didn’t matter whether there had been fraud or not, because “state legislators ‘have the constitutional right to substitute their judgment for a certified majority of their constituents’ if that prevents socialism.””
“Plan B required Trump to put pressure on a lot of people. The committee counted at least two hundred attempts he made to influence state or local officials by phone, text, posts, or public remarks. Instructing Trump supporters to join in, Giuliani said, “Sometimes it even requires being threatened.” A Trump-campaign spreadsheet documents efforts to contact more than a hundred and ninety Republican state legislators in Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan alone.”
‘Barr resigned. “I didn’t want to be part of it,” he told the committee. Plenty of other people were happy to be part of it, though. Ronna McDaniel, the R.N.C. chair, participated and provided Trump with the assistance of R.N.C. staffers. On December 14th, certified electors met in every state. In seven states that Biden had won—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—fake electors also met and produced counterfeit Electoral College certificates for Trump. Five of these certificates were sent to Washington but were rejected because they lacked the required state seal; two arrived after the deadline. None were accepted.’
“Trump then launched Plan D, which was not so much a plan as a pig’s breakfast of a conspiracy, a coup, and a putsch. Everything turned on January 6th, the day a joint session of Congress was to certify the results of the Electoral College vote. To stop that from happening, Trump recruited members of Congress into a conspiracy to overturn the election by rejecting the certified votes and accepting the counterfeits; he asked the Vice-President to participate in a coup by simply declaring him the winner; and he incited his supporters to take over the Capitol by force, in a poorly planned putsch, which he intended to lead. On December 17th, Kayleigh McEnany said on Fox News, “There has been an alternate slate of electors voted upon that Congress will decide in January.” Two days later, Trump tweeted, “Big protest in D.C. On January 6th. Be there, will be wild.” The legal architect of the Pence part of the pig’s breakfast—“a coup in search of a legal theory,” as one federal judge called it—was a lawyer named John Eastman. The Trump lawyer Eric Herschmann recalled a conversation he had with Eastman:
‘You’re saying you believe the Vice President, acting as President of the Senate, can be the sole decisionmaker as to, under your theory, who becomes the next President of the United States? And he said, yes. And I said, are you out of your Fing mind?”
“Trump pressed the acting Attorney General, Jeffrey Rosen, and other members of the Department of Justice to aid the conspiracy by declaring some of the voting to have been fraudulent. Rosen refused. “The D.O.J. can’t and won’t snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election,” he told Trump. Trump replied, “I don’t expect you to do that. Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressmen.” Trump tried to replace Rosen with a lackey named Jeffrey Clark, but, in a tense meeting at the White House on January 3rd, Rosen and others made clear to him that, if he did so, much of the department would resign. Trump and Eastman met repeatedly with Pence in the Oval Office and tried to recruit him into the conspiracy. Pence refused. At 11:20 a.m. on January 6th, Trump called Pence and again asked him, and again Pence refused, after which, according to Ivanka, the President called the Vice-President a pussy.”
‘Trump was slated to speak at his be-wild rally at the Ellipse at noon, but when he arrived he was unhappy about the size of the crowd. The Secret Service had set up magnetometers, known as mags, to screen for weapons. Twenty-eight thousand people went through the mags, from whom the Secret Service collected, among other banned items, “269 knives or blades, 242 cannisters of pepper spray, 18 brass knuckles, 18 tasers, 6 pieces of body armor, 3 gas masks, 30 batons or blunt instruments.” Some people had ditched their bags, and presumably their weapons, in trees or cars. In a crowd that included members of white-supremacist and far-right, anti-government extremist groups—including the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, America First, and QAnon—another twenty-five thousand people simply refused to go through the mags. “I don’t fucking care that they have weapons,” Trump shouted. “They’re not here to hurt me . Take the fucking mags away.” The mags stayed. Trump took to the podium and fired up his followers for the march to the Capitol until 1:10 p.m., and then he walked to his motorcade, climbed into the Presidential S.U.V., which is known as the Beast, and demanded to be driven to the Capitol. Secret Service agents persuaded him to return to the White House.”
“Just before the Joint Session was to begin, at one o’clock, Pence released a written statement: “I do not believe that the Founders of our country intended to invest the Vice President with unilateral authority to decide which electoral votes should be counted during the Joint Session of Congress.” The voting began. By 1:21, Trump had been informed that the Capitol was under attack. He spent the rest of the day watching it on television. For hours, his staff and his advisers begged him to order the mob to disperse or to call for military assistance; he refused. At 1:46, Representative Paul Gosar objected to the count from Arizona, after which Senator Ted Cruz endorsed that objection. Pence was evacuated at 2:12. Seconds later, Proud Boys achieved the first breach of the Capitol, smashing a window in the Senate wing. Eleven minutes later, the mob broke through the doors to the East Rotunda, and Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.” The mob chanted, “Hang Mike Pence.” Meadows told a colleague, “He thinks Mike deserves it.” Kevin McCarthy called the President. “They literally just came through my office windows,” he said. “You need to call them off.” Trump said, “Well, Kevin, I guess they’re just more upset about the election theft than you are.” At 4:17 p .m ., the President released a video message in which he asked the insurrectionists to go home, and told them that he loved them.”
“And that, in brief, is the report, which concludes that “the central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump.” And that, in brief, is the problem: chasing Trump, never quite untethering itself from him, fluttering in the biting wind of his violent derangement, like a ribbon pinned to the tail of a kite during a tornado, and failing, entirely, to see the tornado.”
THE AMERICAN PUBLIC has had much to learn about Mike Johnson over the past two weeks.
. . .
He’s also a dyed-in-the-wool Christian conservative , and there’s a flag hanging outside his office that leads into a universe of right-wing religious extremism as unknown to most Americans as Johnson was before he ascended to the speakership.
Johnson slots firmly within the more hardline evangelical wing of the Republican coalition. He holds stringent positions on abortion , thinks homosexuality is a lifestyle choice that should not be recognized under legal protections against discrimination , defends young Earth creationism , blames school shootings on the sexual revolution of the 1960s , and questions the framework of the separation of church and state. “The founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around,” he has said.
Johnson was also integral to Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. As The New York Times has reported , he collected signatures for a brief supporting a Texas lawsuit alleging, without evidence, irregularities in election results; served a key role in the GOP’s attempts to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s election; and touted Trump’s conspiracy theories about election fraud, even saying, “You know the allegations about these voting machines, some of them being rigged with this software by Dominion, there’s a lot of merit to that.”
If this was all we knew about Mike Johnson, we could accurately say that he is a full-bore, right-wing Christian and an election denier who dabbles in conspiracy theories — qualities that might give one pause before putting him second in line to the presidency. But there is another angle to Johnson’s extremism that has received less scrutiny, and it brings us back to that flag outside his office.
The flag — which Rolling Stone has confirmed hangs outside his district office in the Cannon House Office Building — is white with a simple evergreen tree in the center and the phrase “An Appeal to Heaven ” at the top. Historically, this flag was a Revolutionary War banner, commissioned by George Washington as a naval flag for the colony turned state of Massachusetts. The quote “An Appeal to Heaven” was a slogan from that war, taken from a treatise by the philosopher John Locke. But in the past decade it has come to symbolize a die-hard vision of a hegemonically Christian America.
To understand the contemporary meaning of the Appeal to Heaven flag, it’s necessary to enter a world of Christian extremism animated by modern-day apostles, prophets, and apocalyptic visions of Christian triumph that was central to the chaos and violence of Jan. 6 . Earlier this year we released an audio-documentary series , rooted in deep historical research and ethnographic interviews, on this sector of Christianity, which is known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). The flag hanging outside Johnson’s office is a key part of its symbology.
The New Apostolic Reformation is a set of networks of Christian leaders that formed in the 1990s around a renegade evangelical seminary professor named C. Peter Wagner. These networks are part of the nondenominational charismatic segment of Christianity (“charismatic” here is a technical term of Christian theology and practice describing a spirituality built around miraculous manifestations and aiming to re-create the supernaturally imbued environment of the early Christian church). Wagner and his cohort believed that they were at the vanguard of a revolution in church leadership that Wagner often described as “the most radical change to the way of doing church since, at least, the Protestant Reformation.”
The hundreds of leaders who joined Wagner’s movement and leadership-networking circles almost all identify as apostles (enterprising church builders) or prophets (who hear directly from God), though some identify as both. In the mid-2000s, these NAR networks collectively embraced a theological paradigm called the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” a prophecy that divides society into seven arenas — religion, family, government, education, arts and entertainment, media, and business. The “Mandate,” as they understand it, is given by God for Christians to “take dominion” and “conquer” the tops of all seven of these sectors and have Christian influence flow down into the rest of society.
Drawn into American politics by this aggressive theological vision, many New Apostolic Reformation leaders became very active in right-wing political circles, including one of Wagner’s key disciples, an apostle-prophet named Dutch Sheets . Sheets is not a household name in Christian politics like Jerry Falwell or Ralph Reed or James Dobson, but he has real influence. Sheets has written more than 18 popular evangelical books, and his Intercessory Prayer has sold more than a million copies. He was an endorser and faith adviser to Newt Gingrinch’s short-lived candidacy for president in 2012, and he openly espoused the lie that Barack Obama was secretly a Muslim.
In 2013, Sheets was given an Appeal to Heaven flag by a friend who told him that, because it predated the Stars and Stripes, it was the flag that “had flown over our nation at its birthing.” Sheets describes this experience as revelatory, and he seized upon the flag as a symbol of the spiritual-warfare driven Christian nationalist revolution he hoped to see in American politics. In 2015, he published a book titled An Appeal to Heaven and rolled out a systematic campaign to propagate this symbol in right-wing Christian circles. That same year Sarah Palin wrote an opinion piece in Breitbart , endorsing the Appeal to Heaven campaign and thanking her “[s]pecial friends, Pastor Dutch and Ceci Sheets,” who had given her the flag.
Sheets and his fellow New Apostolic Reformation leaders were the tip of the spear of Christian Trumpism, endorsing Donald Trump’s candidacy early on and championing his cause to their fellow Christians. Over the course of the 2016 campaign, the Appeal to Heaven flag and the NAR’s vision of a Christianity-dominated America became entwined with Trump, a potent-though-covert symbol.
Since 2015, you can find these Appeal to Heaven flags popping up over and over: in the background of pictures of far-right politicians and election deniers like Doug Mastriano ; as wall decorations in state legislators’ offices ; at right-wing rallies . It even flew over the Illinois State Capitol for a time at the instigation of the Illinois Apostolic Alliance, a local NAR activist group.
We make the case in our audio-documentary series that the New Apostolic Reformation networks were at the molten core of Christian mobilization for Jan. 6, with many NAR leaders in attendance that day, including a handful of C. Peter Wagner’s closest mentees . Dutch Sheets was integral to this effort, propelling the Appeal to Heaven narrative alongside the Stop the Steal narrative through his popular daily prophecy podcast in the lead-up to the riot.
This is why, if you look closely at the panopticon of videos and pictures of the Capitol insurrection, Appeal to Heaven flags are everywhere. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of them punctuating the crowd, including even on the front lines of clashes between rioters and Capitol police officers — a powerful signal of the spread of Sheets’ ideas and influence.
Hundreds of Christian figures supported Trump’s effort to overthrow the 2020 election, but, having spent years researching and tracking the direct influences on Christians who actually showed up on Jan. 6, we contend that no single Christian leader contributed more to this effort to mobilize Christians against the very structures of American democracy than Sheets. One case in point: Sheets and his team were reportedly at the White House a week before the insurrection, strategizing with administration officials, as we reported on Jan. 6, 2023:
On December 29, 2020 — eight days before the insurrection — Sheets and his team of prophets were in Washington, D.C., staying at the Willard Hotel, the site of the various war rooms overseen by Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon . On that day, Sheets, along with 14 other apostles and prophets , had a multi-hour meeting inside the White House with Trump administration officials. Who exactly among White House Staff attended this meeting is unclear (and the Trump administration has made the White House Visitor Logs secret and invulnerable to FOIA requests until 2026). But members of Sheets’ team posted photos of themselves (with White House visitor passes) both outside and inside the building.
The Appeal to Heaven flag was the banner of this mobilization, which brings us back to Mike Johnson and the flag outside his office. What does it signal that the speaker of the House of Representatives is purposely flying this symbol of Christian warfare?
[Boldface added}
When Rolling Stone reached out to Johnson’s office for comment, a spokesperson for his personal office noted that all members have three flag posts outside their office and that Johnson flies the Appeal to Heaven flag alongside the American and Louisiana flags. “Rep. Johnson’s Appeal to Heaven flag was a gift to him and other members of Congress by Pastor Dan Cummins, who has served as a guest chaplain for the House of Representatives over a dozen times, under Speakers from both parties,” the spokesperson wrote, adding that Johnson appreciates the “rich history of the flag,” citing its connection to George Washington and John Locke.
Accepting this backstory as true, it does not in any way refute our basic premise that this flag, since Dutch Sheets’ spiritual-warfare appropriation of it in 2013, connotes an aggressive form of Christian nationalism. In fact, Pastor Dan Cummins, whom Johnson credits as the one who gave him the flag, is a mentee of another major NAR leader (and Trump evangelical adviser ) named Jim Garlow. Johnson has described Garlow as having “a profound influence” on his life and spirituality.
Garlow and Cummins have long operated as Christian nationalist activists targeting members of Congress . The Appeal to Heaven Flag was flown over Garlow’s former California church beginning in 2017, and Garlow himself has celebrated how the flag “has recently become an important flag in the present day spiritual warfare prayer movement.” If anything, Johnson’s office’s statement only highlights another vector of NAR and Christian nationalist influence on the new speaker.
Trump appointee who assaulted Capitol officers on Jan. 6 sentenced to nearly 6 years
“Hell yea I’m going. I’m a Trump appointee,” Federico Klein wrote in a message ahead of the Capitol attack.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/trump-appointee-assaulted-capitol-officers-jan-6-sentenced-nearly-6-ye-rcna123188
[Excerpt:]
WASHINGTON — A former Donald Trump political appointee at the State Department who tried to storm the Capitol and assaulted law enforcement officers on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced to 70 months in prison on Friday.
Federico Klein was arrested in March 2021 and convicted of eight felonies as well as misdemeanor offenses by U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, also a Trump appointee, in July 2023 following a bench trial.
Klein did not speak during his sentencing hearing and declined to comment after the hearing when NBC News asked him if he continued to believe that the election was stolen and if he had any regrets about his actions that day.
McFadden said that Klein’s conduct was “shocking and egregious,” and suggested his sentence would have been higher had Klein not already been on home detention for two years. Klein, McFadden said, was “intent on breaking into the building,” and said he was “astonished” by Klein’s behavior on Jan. 6.
“This is a government of laws, not of men,” McFadden said, adding that Klein seemed determined to reverse that maxim. McFadden said he’d seen no evidence that Klein felt remorse.
D.C. Circuit, on 2-1 Vote, Upholds Conviction of Jan. 6 Attacker on Grounds He Acted “Corruptly” in Obstructing Proceedings; Implications for Trump Prosecution
You can find the majority opinion (by two Democratic-appointed judge) and the dissent (by a Republican-appointed judge) at this link .
To oversimplify things a bit, the majority defined “corruptly” to include acting unlawfully. The dissenter viewed the term as applying to a benefit that was financial, professional, or exculpatory.
Notably, even under the dissent’s definition, Trump’s alleged post-2020 election conduct in attempting to manipulate state elected and election officials, and DOJ, so that he could stay in office despite losing would fit as both unlawful conduct under the majority view and as conduct that provided him a professional benefit under the dissent’s view.
This case, however, could be bound for an en banc decision at the D.C. Circuit, or the Supreme Court. I expect the Court will ultimately have to resolve this issue for the Jan. 6 defendants.
Proud Boys leader gets 18 years, matching longest Jan. 6 punishment to date
Ethan Nordean led a group to the Capitol. Dominic Pezzola, who smashed a Capitol window, received a 10-year term.
Updated September 1, 2023
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/09/01/proud-boys-pezzola-nordean-sentencing-jan6/
[Excerpts:]
Two more members of the Proud Boys convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol were sentenced to lengthy prison terms Friday, with one of the group’s leaders that day receiving an 18-year sentence for seditious conspiracy, the longest term for a Proud Boys member so far and equal to the longest Jan. 6 sentence yet imposed. Another member who gained national renown for smashing a window at the Capitol, enabling the first breach of the building by rioters, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
But some of the defendants seemed unrepentant. After expressing deep remorse over his actions on Jan. 6, and receiving the 10-year term, half what prosecutors had sought, Dominic Pezzola turned to the audience as he left the courtroom Friday, raised his fist and yelled, “Trump won!”
The sentencings are the latest milestone in the Jan. 6 investigation, which has targeted leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers who led their members to the Capitol and inflamed the actions of the larger crowd of Donald Trump supporters angry with the 2020 election results.
Prosecutors have now racked up dozens of guilty pleas or trial convictions for members of the two groups, with sentences ranging from home detention to 18 years for Ethan Nordean, who was sentenced after Pezzola on Friday, and for Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes , who was sentenced earlier this year. Nordean and Pezzola were convicted after a five-month trial with co-defendants Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and former Proud Boys chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio.
Nordean, 33, of Washington state, was tapped to head the “boots on the ground” in D.C. after Tarrio was banned from the city because of a Jan. 4 arrest. Nordean and Biggs, a far-right online personality and associate of broadcaster Alex Jones, used bullhorns to direct about 200 men away from a rally featuring Trump.
Photos and videos show the two marching the group toward the Capitol long before Trump’s remarks at the “Stop the Steal” rally, and then imploring Proud Boys as well as the arriving cr owd of Trump supporters to overrun the police and enter the Capitol after the electoral vote certification began at 1 p.m. on Jan. 6.
The prosecution asked U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly to enhance the sentences of Pezzola and Nordean on Friday by ruling that their acts to disrupt the electoral vote certification qualified as terrorism. Kelly had agreed to this request with Biggs and Rehl, and did so again with Pezzola and Nordean.
Prosecutors initially sought a 27-year term for Nordean and 20 years for Pezzola. But as with Biggs and Rehl, Kelly decided that the sentencing ranges for Nordean and Pezzola were too severe. After seeing the sentences for Biggs and Rehl, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason McCullough argued Friday that Nordean deserved at least 17 years, as a “structural equal” of Biggs.
“The truth is I did help lead a group of men back to the Capitol,” Nordean told the judge. “There is no excuse for my actions, ignoring police commands, going past barricades, entering the Capitol. Adding myself to the dangerous situation was sorely irresponsible. I would like to take the time to apologize to anyone I wronged. There is no excuse for what I did. I would also like to apologize for my lack of leadership that day.”
Kelly said that most cases with terrorism adjustments “seem to incorporate an intent to kill people or at least a means in the offense to risk serious injury or death. I don’t think — while what Mr. Nordean was convicted of was a serious crime — I don’t think he intended to kill anyone that day.”
He did not say why he gave Nordean one more year than Biggs.
The sentencing guideline ranges are optional, and most judges have gone below them in sentencing Jan. 6 defendants.
The jury convicted Nordean of seditious conspiracy but acquitted Pezzola of the same charge.
What to know about the Proud Boys sedition trial
Architect of Fake Electors Scheme Appeared to Be Outside Capitol on Jan. 6
It remains unclear why the lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, seemed to be with the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones outside the Capitol or how he came to be with Mr. Jones and his entourage.
By Alan Feuer Maggie Haberman
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/us/politics/kenneth-chesebro-jan-6-trump
Photographs and videos reviewed by The New York Times suggest that Kenneth Chesebro, one of the legal architects of former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, was in the crowd outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and spent part of that day closely following the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who helped lead a mob toward the building.
Mr. Chesebro did not appear to have illegally entered the Capitol, as did hundreds of other rioters, or commit any violence.
But the photographs and videos appearing to show him marching with Mr. Jones, the proprietor of Infowars, and members of his entourage — including Ali Alexander, a prominent “Stop the Steal” organizer — were the first time that one of the many aides and lawyers who helped the former president try to subvert the democratic process with controversial legal theories was also found to have had a connection to pro-Trump activists who were on the ground during the Capitol attack.
Mr. Chesebro’s presence at the Capitol was reported earlier by CNN . His lawyer did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
It remains unclear why Mr. Chesebro was with Mr. Jones’s group outside the Capitol or how he came to be with them. A lawyer for Mr. Jones said that Mr. Jones was unaware that Mr. Chesebro had been following his entourage that day.
Mr. Chesebro was charged this week as one of Mr. Trump’s 18 co-defendants in a sprawling racketeering indictment brought by the district attorney’s office in Fulton County, Ga. That indictment accused him of taking part in a sweeping plot to create slates of so-called fake electors pledged to Mr. Trump in several key swing states that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had won.
Mr. Chesebro also appeared as an unnamed co-conspirator in a similar federal indictment brought against Mr. Trump in Washington this month by prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith . Mr. Chesebro wrote three memos in November and December 2020, which prosecutors used to trace the evolution of the fake elector plan and an attempt to use it as part of a broader effort to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to throw the election to Mr. Trump during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.
Wearing a red MAGA hat, Mr. Chesebro can be seen joining Mr. Jones’s group outside the Capitol shortly before 2 p.m. that day, according to the photographs and video reviewed by The Times. The visual evidence shows he stayed with Mr. Jones, Mr. Alexander and others — including Owen Shroyer, one of Mr. Jones’s top aides — for about an hour and a half, often filming Mr. Jones on his cellphone as the group walked around the Capitol and went partly up the stairs outside the east front of the building.
Mr. Jones and Mr. Alexander were among the first “Stop the Steal” activists to draw attention from federal prosecutors investigating the Capitol riot. As early as April 2022, Mr. Jones reached out to the Justice Department in an unsuccessful effort to secure an immunity deal in exchange for information. Mr. Alexander was subpoenaed by — and ultimately testified to — a grand jury in Washington that was looking into various aspects of the attack.
As for Mr. Shroyer, he pleaded guilty in June to a single count of illegally entering and remaining on the Capitol’s restricted grounds.
It was a remarkable turn of events that Mr. Chesebro, an obscure lawyer versed in the complexities of election law, appeared to be seen on video marching on Jan. 6 with two of the main “Stop the Steal” activists who helped lead the mob to the Capitol from Mr. Trump’s speech near the White House that day. The convergence of someone who took part in the legal attempts to keep Mr. Trump in power with those who were central to bringing the force of a crowd to bear as Congress was certifying the election results was a powerful reminder of how many mysteries remain where Jan. 6 is concerned.
Until now, there appeared to be different tentacles of the efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power that had not overlapped. But Mr. Chesebro hinted at those connections in an email exchange with John Eastman, another lawyer who was instrumental in the plan to pressure Mr. Pence with the fake elector scheme.
In late December 2020, the two lawyers discussed how to get a case before the Supreme Court. Mr. Chesebro told Mr. Eastman as they discussed filing a legal action that in terms of the highest court, the “odds of action before Jan. 6 will become more favorable if the justices start to fear that there will be ‘wild’ chaos on Jan. 6 unless they rule by then, either way.”
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Justice Department seeks 33 years in prison for ex-Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio in Jan. 6 case
https://apnews.com/article/enrique-tarrio-capitol-riot-proud-boys-sentencing
[Excerpt:]
The Justice Department is seeking 33 years in prison for Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys leader convicted of seditious conspiracy attack on the U.S. Capitol
The sentence, if imposed, would be by far the longest punishment that has been handed down in the massive prosecution of the riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy in a separate case, has received the longest sentence to date — 18 years.
Tarrio, who once served as national chairman of the far-right extremist group, and three lieutenants were convicted by a Washington jury in May of conspiring to block the transfer of presidential power in the hopes of keeping Donald Trump in the White House after the Republican president lost the 2020 election.
Proud Boy on house arrest in Jan. 6 case disappears ahead of sentencing
https://apnews.com/article/jan-6-capitol-attack-proud-boy
[Excerpt:]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Authorities are searching for a member of the Proud Boys extremist group who disappeared days before his sentencing in a U.S. Capitol riot case, where prosecutors are seeking more than a decade in prison, according to a warrant made public Friday.
Christopher Worrell, 52, of Naples, Florida, was supposed to be sentenced Friday after being found guilty of spraying pepper spray gel on police officers, as part of the mob storming the Capitol as Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory on Jan. 6, 2021. Prosecutors had asked a judge to sentence him to 14 years.
The sentencing was canceled and a bench warrant for his arrest issued under seal on Tuesday, according to court records. The U.S. attorney’s office for Washington, D.C., encouraged the public to share any information about his whereabouts.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-prosecute-trump
Donald Trump’s legal hot water continues to heat up. Special counsel Jack Smith sent a target letter to the former president last week, and an indictment could come within days. We don’t yet know Smith’s full theory of the case, but the statutes he is reportedly considering open the possibility of a broad prosecution that could go beyond the events of January 6. The insurrection was not an isolated moment of political violence but a last throw of the dice in Trump’s monthslong conspiracy to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. The prosecution should recognize that fact.
Smith has reportedly notified Trump that he could be charged under three statutes. The most widely anticipated of the charges is for obstructing an official proceeding — Congress’s certification of the 2020 election results on January 6. A second charge, attempting to defraud the United States, likely relates to Trump’s collection of fake elector certificates, which he pressed Vice President Mike Pence to adopt in order to subvert the Electoral College.
These charges both relate directly to the events of January 6. But the third charge could go further. Smith reportedly will accuse Trump of violating Section 241 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, which makes it a crime to “conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person . . . in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”
The provision, originally part of the Ku Klux Klan Acts of the Reconstruction era, aimed to protect Black voters from intimidation and physical violence. The KKK’s power has faded since then, but the law remains a vital safeguard against all forms of election subversion, as my colleague Sean Morales-Doyle explains . It has been used to prosecute public officials who attempted to omit valid ballots from a vote count as well as private actors who sought to coerce or bribe voters. Just this year, a Twitter user who gave deliberately false voting instructions to divert votes from Hillary Clinton in 2016 was convicted under Section 241. Fundamentally, Section 241 prohibits any attempt to prevent, alter, dilute, or nullify a vote. How did Trump conspire to do so? Let us count the ways.
He contacted the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, seeking help in overturning the state’s electoral results. He called county canvassing board officials in Michigan, after which the officials attempted to rescind their certification of the vote. Most infamously, he called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, urging him to “find 11,780 votes,” enough to reverse Joe Biden’s win in the state.
Trump tried to weaponize the court system, filing a slew of bogus lawsuits to stop the counting and certification of votes. These lawsuits were based on conspiracy theories and disinformation, in at least one case leading to court-ordered sanctions against his attorneys. (Will these frivolous lawsuits be included in the charges? That’s hard to say, for constitutional reasons. But as a matter of fact if not law, they were part of the effort to undo the legitimate election results.)
Trump’s spokespeople and allies in the media lied relentlessly about both the voting machines and the actual human beings tasked with counting the votes. The lies were so shameless that Fox News agreed to pay a whopping settlement rather than having to defend them in court.
And, finally, Trump’s associates contacted leaders of white supremacist groups to help bring armed and deluded goons to Washington, where Trump urged them to “fight like hell.”
All of this happened before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi banged the gavel on January 6 to begin the certification of the 2020 election.
Insurrections aren’t built in a day. January 6 was the result of months of planning by a band of election saboteurs, with Trump at its center.
Peter Stager, a truck driver who assaulted a police officer with a flagpole during the Jan. 6 attack, was sentenced to 52 months in prison yesterday. Stager was one of nine men charged with assaulting Miller and two of his colleagues. Stager was recorded on camera declaring, “Everybody in [the Capitol] is a disgrace. That entire building is filled with treasonous traitors. Death is the only remedy for what’s in that building.” Alan Feuer reports for the New York Times .Early Edition: July 25, 2023
Building a Legal Wall Around Donald Trump
DAVID FRENCH
July 20, 2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/20/opinion/jan-6-legal
[Excerpt:]
Does anything make a difference in the fight against Trump’s lawlessness and lies?
The answer is yes, and the record is impressive. Let’s go through it.
The pro-Trump media ecosphere that repeated and amplified his election lies has paid a price. Fox News agreed to a stunning $787 million defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, and multiple defamation cases continue against multiple right-wing media outlets.
Trump’s lawyers and his lawyer allies have paid a price. Last month the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld the bulk of a sanctions award against Sidney Powell and a Mos Eisley cantina’s worth of Trump-allied lawyers. A New York State appellate court temporarily suspended Rudy Giuliani’s law license in 2021, and earlier this month a Washington, D.C., bar panel recommended that he be disbarred . Jenna Ellis, one of Guiliani’s partners in dangerous dishonesty and frivolous legal arguments, admitted to making multiple misrepresentations in a public censure from the Colorado Bar Association. John Eastman, the former dean of Chapman University’s law school and the author of an infamous legal memo that suggested Mike Pence could overturn the election, is facing his own bar trial in California.
Congress has responded to the Jan. 6 crisis, passing bipartisan Electoral Count Act reforms that would make a repeat performance of the congressional attempt to overturn the election far more difficult.
The Supreme Court has responded, deciding Moore v. Harper , which gutted the independent state legislature doctrine and guaranteed that partisan state legislatures are still subject to review by the courts.
The criminal justice system has responded, securing hundreds of criminal convictions of Jan. 6 rioters , including seditious conspiracy convictions for multiple members of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys . And the criminal justice system is still responding, progressing steadily up the command and control chain, with Trump himself apparently the ultimate target.
In roughly 30 months — light speed in legal time — the American legal system has built the case law necessary to combat and deter American insurrection. Bar associations are setting precedents. Courts are setting precedents. And these precedents are holding in the face of appeals and legal challenges.
Do you wonder why the 2022 election was relatively routine and uneventful, even though the Republicans fielded a host of conspiracy-theorist candidates? Do you wonder why right-wing media was relatively tame after a series of tough G.O.P. losses, especially compared to the deranged hysterics in 2020? Yes, it matters that Trump was not a candidate, but it also matters that the right’s most lawless members have been prosecuted, sued and sanctioned.
The consequences for Jan. 6 and the Stop the Steal movement are not exclusively legal. The midterm elections also represented a profound setback for the extreme MAGA right. According to an NBC News report, election-denying candidates “overwhelmingly lost ” their races in swing states. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the relentless legal efforts also had a political payoff.
And to be clear, this accountability has not come exclusively through the left — though the Biden administration and the Garland Justice Department deserve immense credit for their responses to Trump’s insurrection, which have been firm without overreaching. Multiple Republicans joined with Democrats to pass Electoral Count Act reform. Both conservative and liberal justices rejected the independent state legislature doctrine. Conservative and liberal judges, including multiple Trump appointees, likewise rejected Trump’s election challenges. Republican governors and other Republican elected officials in Arizona and Georgia withstood immense pressure from within their own party to uphold Joe Biden’s election win.
American legal institutions have passed the Jan. 6 test so far, but the tests aren’t over. Trump is already attempting to substantially delay the trial on his federal indictment in the Mar-a-Lago case, and if a second federal indictment arrives soon, he’ll almost certainly attempt to delay it as well. Trump does not want to face a jury, and if he delays his trials long enough, he can run for president free of any felony convictions. And what if he wins?
GOP field’s Jan. 6 tightrope
Axios Sneak Peek
By Zachary Basu
July 24, 2023
Donald Trump’s rivals are at risk of pleasing no one with their response to his potential third indictment — empowering the GOP front-runner by refusing to condemn him while irking a base that sees no room for nuance on Jan. 6.
Why it matters: Leading GOP candidates have argued in recent days that Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 were irresponsible but not criminal. Straddling that line won’t make the race any closer — but it could backfire if special counsel Jack Smith unveils an indictment as damning as his last one.
Smith’s inquiry extends far beyond Trump’s literal words on the day of Jan. 6 — the center of Republicans’ defense — with at least three sets of charges under consideration: deprivation of rights, conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and witness tampering. Testimony has been supplied by virtually every figure involved in Trump’s months-long campaign to overturn the election — and thousands of pages of new evidence are still streaming in.
Driving the news: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told comedian Russell Brand on Friday that Jan. 6 “was not an insurrection,” accusing the media of concocting the narrative that it was “a plan to somehow overthrow the government.”
Earlier last week, DeSantis said Trump “should have come out more forcefully” to call off the mob attacking the Capitol — but downplayed the notion that the president’s inaction was criminal.
Former Vice President Mike Pence , who has testified to the grand jury and whose life was threatened by Trump supporters on Jan. 6, echoed that sentiment on CNN yesterday.
“While his words were reckless, based on what I know, I am not yet convinced that they were criminal,” Pence said.
Jan 6 Defendant Found Near Obama D.C. Residence Indicted On Federal Firearms Charges
The charges come after Taranto was arrested outside the home
https://themessenger.com/politics/jan-6-defendant-found-near-obama-d-c-residence-indicted-on-federal-firearms-charges
House GOP flirts with Jan. 6 extremism
By JORDAIN CARNEY and KYLE CHENEY
Updated: 06/18/2023
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/18/house-gop-jan-6-extremism-00101259
Far-right conservatives have entertained false conspiracy theories about the Capitol attack — but so have some House GOP leaders and key committee chiefs, without outright embracing them.
House Republicans don’t want to talk about Jan. 6. They also can’t stop talking about it.
At times, GOP lawmakers insist they’re uninterested in relitigating an attack that is political poison for the party outside of deep-red areas. But at other times, some Republicans have stoked narratives that falsely pin blame for the attack on police, Democrats or far-left agitators — or downplay the violence at the Capitol. The latter approach has seen a noticeable uptick of late.
And it’s not just far-right conservatives who fall in that group — some House GOP leaders and key committee chiefs have shown they’re willing to flirt with the fringe without an outright embrace. Speaker Kevin McCarthy has shared security video of that day with far-right media figures who have minimized or fed inaccurate portrayals of the attack.
Yet they’re also batting down some of those same false conspiracy theories and preparing to focus on at least one area of bipartisan concern: Capitol security vulnerabilities, many of which remain unresolved since the attack. Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), who faced scrutiny from the Jan. 6 select committee for a Capitol complex tour he gave on Jan. 5, 2021, is warning allies against automatically accepting certain claims.
“You wouldn’t believe how many experts there are out there on Jan. 6, who know exactly what happened because they read it on the internet,” said Loudermilk, who is leading the GOP’s look back at the attack and at the Democratic-led Jan. 6 panel.
Loudermilk’s comments underscore House Republicans’ reality. While most admit privately, if not publicly, that Jan. 6 was the work of a violent mob, they have a political calculus to consider: A not-insignificant faction of their party is hellbent on rewriting the history of the day.
Hanging over it all is former President Donald Trump’s vociferous defense of the rioters and continued false claims that he won the 2020 election. Federal and Georgia prosecutors are investigating his efforts to subvert the election and could bring charges later this year.
Trump is uninterested in making the balance any easier on Republicans: His pledge to pardon a large number of Jan. 6 defendants is a feature of his commentary on the campaign trail, where he remains the frontrunner for the party’s 2024 nomination.
Still, House Republicans aren’t fully playing to Trump. For now, they’re giving Jan. 6 a side hug more than a bear hug.
McCarthy encapsulates the half-hearted embrace. He angered some allies on the right this year by defending a Capitol Police officer’s decision to shoot a Jan. 6 rioter who was attempting to breach a room adjacent to the House chamber. But he’s also provided exclusive access to thousands of hours of security footage to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who’s used the film to demean and distort police officers’ actions.
“Speaker McCarthy promised that House Republicans would investigate the security failures of that day and provide transparency to the American people. Former Speaker Pelosi and her Select Committee set one bad precedent after another — including releasing select clips for partisan purposes,” a McCarthy spokesperson said in a statement that did not address conference dynamics around Jan. 6.
“For two years, we heard no concerns when footage was used by Democrats, the media, and Pelosi’s daughter for her HBO documentary,” the McCarthy spokesperson added, declining to be identified by name and referring to Nancy Pelosi’s daughter filming her mother and other party leaders on Jan. 6.
Some of McCarthy’s most trusted committee chairs have taken a similar approach to the California Republican, eschewing the most extreme efforts demanded by the far-right flank but still winking at some of their concerns.
For example, no committees have pursued baseless claims that Ray Epps, who rioted on Jan. 6, was acting as an undercover government agent. And GOP leaders have sidestepped a far-right fervor to subpoena and probe Jan. 6 select panel members, to scrutinize distorted allegations about Pelosi’s handling of Capitol security or to dig into judges’ treatment of the 1,000-plus criminal cases stemming from the attack.
Notably, no committee chairs or party leaders participated in the biggest platform House Republicans have given Jan. 6 defendants so far: Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), joined by a handful of others from the conference’s right flank, hosted an event last week with former Trump acting assistant attorney general Jeffrey Clark, people charged in relation to Jan. 6, defendants’ family members and allies.
The event featured a veritable kitchen sink of conspiracy theories as well as rehashed false claims, including that the 2020 election was “stolen” and that the Jan. 6 committee “doctored” video.
But Jan. 6 defendants, their advocates and some GOP lawmakers have called for Republicans to push further.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said that probing the Justice Department’s handling of Jan. 6 prosecutions should be one of the “top priorities” for a Judiciary sub-panel tasked with investigating GOP claims of bias against conservatives within the federal government.
She introduced impeachment articles against the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia who has taken the lead on prosecuting members of the mob. Meanwhile, Gaetz introduced a resolution to censure Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who led the now-closed riot select committee. Both efforts have a single-digit number of cosponsors at the moment.
Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) did recently release a wider report that accused the FBI of artificially conflating the number of Jan. 6-related investigations. The report and a subsequent hearing also included testimony from whistleblowers who lost their security clearances due to improper actions related to Jan. 6.
One of the whistleblowers, Steve Friend, and several Freedom Caucus members were invited to speak at a retreat hosted by the conservative Center for Renewing America, where Friend is a senior fellow, shortly before the hearing, according to research by the progressive group Accountable.US that was provided exclusively to POLITICO and confirmed via House disclosure forms.
Jordan also fired off new Jan. 6-related letters, one asking for more information on the FBI’s investigation into pipe bombs found near the Capitol the day of the attack and another expanding a probe into record-sharing with federal investigators .
But those efforts make up a small slice of his collective, sweeping investigations.
The Oversight Committee organized a tour of the D.C. jail to investigate two-year-old claims of “disparate treatment” of the approximately two dozen Jan. 6-related detainees — nearly all of whom were incarcerated or detained for violence against police. But Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) didn’t attend the tour, which was led by panel member Greene.
Democrats who attended said that GOP lawmakers and the detained rioters treated each other as allies and friends.
Some members of the Oversight panel recently raised Jan. 6 during a hearing with testimony from Graves and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser — but the session was billed as about broader crime and governance issues.
There’s a reason behind the conference’s actions to sidestep those issues: A broad swath of House Republicans see spotlighting Jan. 6-related investigations as a terrible political strategy.
Loudermilk has largely conducted the GOP’s most focused dive into Jan. 6 so far. He received a copy of the Capitol Police’s radio transmissions from the day and met privately with former law enforcement officials to discuss security failures. Loudermilk’s sub-panel, according to the McCarthy spokesperson, will also soon be rolling out “additional access” to view Capitol security footage.
Still, Loudermilk set off alarm bells among Democrats when he pushed the D.C. police to disclose how many undercover officers were in the crowd during the attack. The letter dovetails with, but did not specifically mention, claims by some Jan. 6 defendants that plainclothes agents or the government itself might have fomented the riot.
But Loudermilk says he won’t lend his subcommittee’s imprimatur to some of the most egregious false claims.
“We want to just follow the facts, not hyperbole or some kind of conspiracy theory, so our interest is just: What is the truth?” he said.
[Boldface added]
FBI resisted opening probe into Trump’s role in Jan. 6 for more than a year
In the DOJ’s investigation of Jan. 6, key Justice officials also quashed an early plan for a task force focused on people in Trump’s orbit.
By Carol D. Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis
June 20, 2023
https://wapo.st/3XhMR7z
https://wapo.st/3XhMR7z
[Excerpt:]
In several cases, before the special counsel’s office got in touch, witnesses in the fake electors scheme hadn’t heard from the FBI in almost a year and thought the case was dead. Similarly, firsthand witnesses to Trump’s Jan. 2, 2021, call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — in which Trump asked him to “find” enough votes to win that state — were not interviewed by the Justice Department until this year, after Smith’s team contacted them.
In late May, members of Trump’s legal team began bracing for Smith to bring charges in his other line of investigation. On June 8, a grand jury in Miami endorsed Smith’s evidence that Trump kept and withheld top-secret documents, indicting Trump.
On Tuesday, as Trump pleaded not guilty to those charges in federal court in Miami, Smith’s investigation into efforts to steal the election continued: Michael McDonald and Jim DeGraffenreid, the chairman and vice chairman of the Nevada Republican Party who had signed a document claiming to be electors for Trump, entered the area of the D.C. federal courthouse where a grand jury has been meeting on cases related to Jan. 6.
Oath Keepers attorney is found incompetent to stand trial in Jan. 6 case
A volunteer for Lawyers for Trump, Kellye SoRelle became Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes’s girlfriend and a key post-2020 election contact with ‘Stop the Steal’ groups
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/06/16/sorelle-incompetent-trial-oathkeepers-jan6/
How Far-Right Extremists Are Targeting Pro-LGBT Schools
Proud Boys members and Jan. 6 rioters have been identified by The Daily Beast at protests over school board LGBT initiatives as they attempt to spread their extremist ideals.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-far-right-extremists-are-targeting-pro-lgbt-schools
The Path From The Tea Party Through Jan. 6 To Today
by David Kurtz
talk@talkingpointsmemo.com
May 25, 2023
The sentencing today of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy for the Jan. 6 attack prompted me to dig into the TPM archives. We’ve been covering Rhodes and the Oath Keepers for a long time. But I couldn’t remember exactly how long. On closer look, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was from virtually the beginning of his emergence on the national stage. But rummaging through our past coverage also helped me to re-familiarize myself with the context in which Rhodes founded the Oath Keepers.
Rhodes incorporated the Oath Keepers in 2009 (gee, who became president that year?), and you can’t divorce its creation from the then-emerging Tea Party movement.
The first mention of the Oath Keepers at TPM came in January 2010 in a story by Zachary Roth headlined: “Former Marine With Ties To Right-Wing Movements Charged With Child Rape, Possessing Grenade Launcher.” A lot going on there, no? Here’s an excerpt:
It’s not clear what Dyer might want with a grenade launcher. But he has declared himself a proud member of Oath Keepers, an organization that aims to enlist ex-military and law enforcement personnel, and has stoked fears that the federal government may try to seize Americans’ guns and round people up into concentration camps.
In this video , Dyer appears at a Tea Party event to promote the Oath Keepers and to rail against what the group — perhaps uniquely — sees as the federal government’s overzealous response to Hurricane Katrina.
A month later, in February 2010, Stewart Rhodes made his first appearance at TPM in a story by Eric Kleefeld about a Tea Party candidate for Texas governor in the GOP primary against incumbent Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison:
Debra Medina, the Tea Party activist and candidate in the Texas Republican gubernatorial primary who has attracted attention for her favorable comments about 9/11 Truthers and Birthers , is also involved with another extreme ideological movement: The Oath Keepers.
Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Daily News points out that Medina will appear this Sunday at an event in San Antonio, called “Taking Back Texas.” The other two top-billed speakers are Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers movement, and Oather activist Richard Mack, a former sheriff of Graham County, Arizona.
You can see in each of those initial stories the adjacency, to put it charitably, of the Oath Keepers and the Tea Party, with a little birtherism and 9/11 trutherism thrown in for good measure. I’m not suggesting TPM was alone at the time in covering the flourishing of right-wing extremism, but to this day I don’t think it’s as widely understood as it should be that the cauldron of racial grievance, white resentment, transgressive extra-constitutionalism, and conspiracizing in 2009-10 was a precursor to the Trump presidency and ultimately to Jan. 6.
Our first closer look at Rhodes himself came a few days later in a story by Jillian Rayfield – “Too Extreme For O’Reilly? The Man Behind The Right-Wing Group ‘Oath Keepers’” – that pivoted off an appearance by Rhodes on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor.* Keep in mind here that less than a year after founding the Oath Keepers, Rhodes is being elevated into a primetime appearance on Fox News’ most popular show:
The Oath Keepers have some connections to the Tea Party movement, which itself has gained a lot of traction within the conservative movement. For one thing, Oath Keepers is part of the Friends for Liberty coalition, an umbrella group for such Tea Party-friendly movements as Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project and the John Birch Society. Rhodes is even on the planning committee for the 2010 9/12 Project. …
Also, notably, Oath Keepers has a booth at the ongoing CPAC conference in Washington, D.C., where they are handing out a DVD called “For Liberty: How the Ron Paul Revolution Watered the Withered Tree of Liberty” (the ties between the group and Ron Paul don’t stop there – Rhodes himself is a former member of Paul’s D.C. staff, according to his Oath Keeper’s bio page ).
CPAC. Glenn Beck. The John Birch Society. Ron Paul. The point isn’t that all the ingredients were there for what became seditious conspiracy. It’s not as simple as a pinch of Ron Paul and a dollop of Birchers and a cup of Tea Party and presto you have a coup. Rather, the point is that conservatism in America, or what passed for it in its various manifestations, went off the rails more than a decade before the events of Jan. 6. Barack Obama’s election was, we all know, a catalyzing event. But it didn’t start there, and it certainly didn’t start in 2016 with the election of Donald Trump.
There’s another little echo of that time in the archive. In the screenshot above from the O’Reilly-Rhodes interview, see the partial chyron? “CRASHED A SMALL PLANE INTO A TX OFFICE BUILDING.” That’s a reference to the suicide attack by 53-year-old Andrew Joseph Stack III, who had just flown his plane into an IRS office in Austin, killing an IRS employee and injuring several others. Coming less than a decade after 9/11, the attack sparked more of a nationwide reaction than you would expect now.
An angry, middle-aged white man with a grudge against the federal government turning violent and acting out his grievances. It’s a familiar tableau now, but there’s a certain naivete about right-wing extremism in the NYT report on the incident that persists to this day:
But in place of the typical portrait of a terrorist driven by ideology, Mr. Stack was described as generally easygoing, a talented amateur musician with marital troubles and a maddening grudge against the tax authorities. …
Within hours of the crash, before the death or even the identity of the pilot had been confirmed, officials ruled out any connection to terrorist groups or causes.
“The main thing I want to put out there is that this is an isolated incident here; there is no cause for alarm,” said the Austin police chief, Art Acevedo, in a televised news conference at midday. Asked how he could be sure, Mr. Acevedo said, “You have to take my word at it, don’t you?”
Oath Keepers Leader Is Sentenced to 18 Years in Jan. 6 Sedition Case
The sentence for Stewart Rhodes was the longest so far in the federal investigation of the Capitol attack and the first issued to a defendant convicted of sedition.
[Excerpt:]
Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, was sentenced on Thursday to 18 years in prison for his conviction on seditious conspiracy charges for the role he played in helping to mobilize the pro-Trump attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The sentence, handed down in Federal District Court in Washington, was the most severe penalty so far in the more than 1,000 criminal cases stemming from the Capitol attack — and the first to be increased for fitting the legal definition of terrorism.
It was also the first to have been given to any of the 10 members of the Oath Keepers and another far-right group, the Proud Boys, who were convicted of sedition in connection with the events of Jan. 6
Letters from an American , Heather Cox Richardson
May 24, 2023
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/
The Department of Homeland Security today issued a bulletin warning, “Lone offenders and small groups motivated by a range of ideological beliefs and personal grievances continue to pose a persistent and lethal threat to the Homeland.” Both domestic extremists and foreign terrorists are using online extremist messaging and calls for violence to motivate supporters to launch attacks. Individuals upset about the 2024 election and new laws or court decisions might attack “US critical infrastructure, faith-based institutions, individuals or events associated with the LGBTQIA+ community, schools, racial and ethnic minorities, and government facilities and personnel, including law enforcement.” The advisory is in force for six months.
The announcement warned that a key factor in potential violence is “perceptions of the 2024 general election cycle,” a reference to disinformation suggesting that U.S. elections are rigged. This false allegation is a staple of former president Trump’s political messaging.
That disinformation led to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, of course, although many of those who have stood trial for participating in that attack have expressed regret—at least in front of the judge. But not all of them. Today Judge Christopher Cooper noted that Richard “Bigo” Barnett had “not shown any acceptance of responsibility” for his actions before sentencing him to four and a half years in prison. Barnett is an Arkansas man who was convicted on eight counts for his participation in the attack, during which he was famously photographed with his foot on then–House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk.
Letters from an American , Heather Cox Richardson
May 19, 2023
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/
WaPo:
Six people described by authorities as being affiliated with the right-wing extremist group the Oath Keepers were convicted Monday of numerous federal crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
After a trial in U.S. District Court in Washington, the jury returned a total of 27 guilty verdicts, with every defendant convicted of at least one charge and most found guilty of several offenses. In all, the defendants faced 34 charges stemming from the Capitol riot. The jury, which is continuing to deliberate, issued not guilty verdicts on five counts and has yet to reach decisions on two others.
Four of the defendants were convicted of the most serious offense in the case, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding. Theirs was the latest of several trials dealing with the militia group’s involvement in the Capitol mayhem.
Authorities have described the defendants, ranging in age from their 20s to their 70s, as members or associates of the Oath Keepers. Five of them originally were charged in early 2021 with conspiracy and aiding and abetting the obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress . Their trial was separate from two different, higher-profile trials in which other defendants, including Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes , were accused of seditious conspiracy.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy gave Fox News access to thousands of hours of video from the events of January 6, and Tucker Carlson’s effort to rewrite history isn’t just laughably incompetent; it’s already falling flat.
The Atlantic Daily
Tom Nichols
Mar. 7, 2023
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/03/jan-6-carlson-mccarthy/673312/
