Saturday, July 16, 2022

Last Call For The Coup-Coup Birds Take Flight, Con't

Yes, January 6th was a white supremacist domestic terrorism attack, in the sense that terrorism is defined by using violence or the threat of violence to change government policy. What Donald Trump did after his loss to Joe Biden was to organize a terrorist attack on the country in order to change the outcome of the election.

Around 5 in the afternoon on Christmas Day in 2020, as many Americans were celebrating with family, President Donald J. Trump was at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Fla., on the phone with a little-known conservative lawyer who was encouraging his attempts to overturn the election, according to a memo the lawyer later wrote documenting the call.

The lawyer, William J. Olson, was promoting several extreme ideas to the president that Mr. Olson later conceded could be regarded as tantamount to declaring “martial law” and could even invite comparisons with Watergate. They included tampering with the Justice Department and firing the acting attorney general, according to the Dec. 28 memo by Mr. Olson, titled “Preserving Constitutional Order,” describing their discussions.

“Our little band of lawyers is working on a memorandum that explains exactly what you can do,” Mr. Olson wrote in his memo, obtained by The New York Times, which he marked “privileged and confidential” and sent to the president. “The media will call this martial law,” he wrote, adding that “that is ‘fake news.’”

The document highlights the previously unreported role of Mr. Olson in advising Mr. Trump as the president was increasingly turning to extreme, far-right figures outside the White House to pursue options that many of his official advisers had told him were impossible or unlawful, in an effort to cling to power.

The involvement of a person like Mr. Olson, who now represents the conspiracy theorist and MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, underscores how the system that would normally insulate a president from rogue actors operating outside of official channels had broken down within weeks after the 2020 election.

That left Mr. Trump in direct contact with people who promoted conspiracy theories or questionable legal ideas, telling him not only what he wanted to hear, but also that they — not the public servants advising him — were the only ones he could trust.

“In our long conversation earlier this week, I could hear the shameful and dismissive attitude of the lawyer from White House Counsel’s Office toward you personally — but more importantly toward the Office of the President of the United States itself,” Mr. Olson wrote to Mr. Trump. “This is unacceptable.

The memo was written 10 days after one of the most dramatic meetings ever held in the Trump White House, during which three of the president’s White House advisers vied — at one point almost physically — with outside actors to influence Mr. Trump. In that meeting, the lawyer Sidney Powell and Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, pushed for Mr. Trump to seize voting machines and appoint Ms. Powell special counsel to investigate wild and groundless claims of voter fraud, even as White House lawyers fought back.

But the memo suggests that, even after his aides had won that skirmish in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump continued to seek extreme legal advice that ran counter to the recommendations of the Justice Department and the counsel’s office.
And, the memo suggests, Mr. Trump was acting on the outside advice. At one point, the memo refers to the president urging Mr. Olson to contact the acting attorney general directly about having the Justice Department lend its credibility to Mr. Trump’s legal efforts to invalidate the election results.

A person familiar with the work of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said the committee was aware that Mr. Olson was in contact with Mr. Trump and that it was exploring his role in pushing forward plans to overturn the 2020 election.

Mr. Olson, who practices law in Washington, D.C., and Virginia, did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment about the former president’s relationship with Mr. Olson.

According to his memo, Mr. Olson was discussing with Mr. Trump the notion that the Justice Department would intercede directly with the Supreme Court to reverse his electoral defeat.

The court had declined to hear a case that allies of Mr. Trump in Texas had brought challenging the election results in Pennsylvania, saying the plaintiffs lacked standing.

Mr. Olson told Mr. Trump that he believed the Justice Department “will do nothing except continue to run out the clock.”

“While time to act was short when we spoke on Christmas Day, time is about to run out,” he wrote.

It was unclear which White House lawyer Mr. Olson referred to in his memo. At the time, the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone; Patrick Philbin, his deputy; and another lawyer who did not work for the counsel’s office, Eric Herschmann, were working in tandem to push back on some of the more outlandish ideas being recommended. Mr. Cipollone and Mr. Herschmann had taken lead roles during the Dec. 18 White House meeting in countering Ms. Powell and Mr. Flynn.

“The feeling I had was that not just was he not offering you any options, but that he was there to make certain you did not consider any,” Mr. Olson wrote, referring to the unnamed White House lawyer. “But you do have options.”
 
The electoral coup was the plan they decided on for January 6th, and that's because the other options failed: the planned Saturday Night Massacre at Main Justice, the SCOTUS takeover of the elections, the planned seizing of voting machines by Homeland Security, and apparently, now, a plan declaring martial law to lock the country down.

Folks, these guys had multiple plans to steal the damn election and keep Trump in power. It wasn't just January 6th. There's a lot Trump has to answer for.
 

 

Saudi Arabia, Coca-Cola

The Saudis are playing real hardball these days, because they know they have President Biden and the West over a barrel (of oil).
 
Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, hit back at Joe Biden after the US President confronted him about the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi during a meeting between the two leaders on Friday
In the meeting, Bin Salman, also known as MBS, denied responsibility for the killing of Khashoggi at the kingdom's Istanbul consulate. Biden said he indicated that he disagreed with MBS, based on US intelligence assessments, according to the source. 
In response to Biden bringing up Khashoggi, MBS cited the sexual and physical abuse of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison by US military personnel and the May killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the occupied West Bank as incidents that reflected poorly on the US, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, the Saudi foreign minister, told reporters on Saturday. 
"The Crown Prince responded to President Biden's remarks on ... Khashoggi after quite clearly -- that this crime, while very unfortunate and abhorrent, is something that the kingdom took very seriously (and) acted upon in a way commiserate with its position as a responsible country," bin Farhan said. "These are issues, mistakes that happen in any country, including the US. The Crown Prince pointed out that the US has made its own mistakes and has taken the necessary action to hold those responsible accountable and address these mistakes just as the kingdom has." 
Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir echoed the sentiment in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer shortly after the end of the meeting, which Jubeir was part of. 
"We investigated, punished and ensure that this doesn't happen again," Jubeir said when asked about the Khashoggi murder. "This is what countries do. This is what the US did when the mistake of Abu Ghraib was committed."
 

The president of the BRICS International Forum expects Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to join the group "very soon". In an interview with Russia's Izvestia, Purnima Anand said that China, Russia and India discussed this issue during the 14th BRICS Summit, which was held online last month.

"All these countries have shown an interest in joining and are preparing to apply for membership. I think this is a good step, because expansion is always perceived positively; this will clearly increase the influence of BRICS in the world," explained Anand. "I hope that the accession of countries to BRICS will happen very quickly, because now all representatives of the core of the association are interested in expanding the organisation, so it will be very soon."

She stressed that the accession of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey may not take place at the same time.

Earlier, Li Kexin, Director-General of the Department of International Economic Affairs of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said that several countries were "knocking on the doors" of the organisation, including Indonesia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Argentina.

The BRICS forum is a political organisation that began negotiations for its formation in 2006 and held its first summit in 2009. Its members were the countries with emerging economies, namely Brazil, Russia, India, and China, operating under the name BRIC, before South Africa joined the organisation in 2010, making it BRICS.

The organisation's countries are characterised as being among the industrialised developing countries with large and emerging economies. Half of the world's population lives in these five countries, and their combined gross domestic product is equivalent to that of the US ($13.6 trillion). Their total foreign exchange reserves are $4 trillion.
 
If the Saudis, Egypt, and Turkey actually did this, it would mean massive chaos in the oil markets and in NATO itself, which is what Russia and China want. But right now, having them pretend that this is possible serves all of those country's individual interests, especially Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Realpolitik is a bitch at times.

Retribution Execution, Con't

The January 6th hearings with committee co-chair Republican Rep. Liz Cheney all over the news and making the case for Trump's prosecution is landing like a T-Rex turd in the cotillion punchbowl back in Cheney's home state of Wyoming, and with less than a month to go to the state's House GOP primary, Cheney is looking at getting crucified by 20+ points.




Former President Donald Trump’s pick to unseat Rep. Liz Cheney in the race for Wyoming’s lone House seat holds a commanding 22-point lead with a month until the primary, a new Casper Star-Tribune poll shows.

Natural resources attorney Harriet Hageman leads Cheney 52% to 30%, the poll shows. No other challenger received more than 5% support. Only 11% of voters were undecided.

The poll, conducted for the Star-Tribune by Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy, surveyed 1,100 registered Wyoming voters likely to participate in the primary, resulting in a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent, according to Brad Coker, Mason-Dixon managing director.

While the Cheney-Hageman race is one of the nation’s most closely watched, this is the first independent, public in-state poll to be conducted. It was performed from July 7 to July 11 – shortly after early voting began here.

"The big story is Liz Cheney is going to get beat," said Coker. "That's a foregone conclusion."


Cheney’s vote to impeach the former president after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and her relentless criticism of Trump as a threat to democracy and the rule of law have spurred the toughest reelection fight of her career. In September, Trump selected Hageman from several challengers as his pick to take on Cheney, one of his biggest political enemies.

In past elections, Cheney has handily beat her primary opponent. And given that Wyoming is one of the nation’s most conservative states, the Republican House nominee often coasts to victory in the general election. But the Wyoming Republican Party has turned on Cheney, censuring her soon after Trump’s impeachment and voting last fall to no longer recognize her as a member of the GOP.

Among those polled, only 27% approved of Cheney’s job performance. Two-thirds disapproved, with 7% saying they were not sure. Men were especially critical of Cheney’s performance: Only one in five approved of the job she’s doing.

Those results track with interviews conducted by the Star-Tribune this summer. The congresswoman’s critics say she's too distracted by her service on the House Jan. 6 committee and her battles with Trump to properly serve the state, and the poll found 54% of voters were less likely to support her because she’s part of the panel investigating the attack on the Capitol.

Cheney critics complain that she rarely visits, with many of them calling her a "RINO" (Republican in name only) as they air their grievances. Voters also called her a "carpetbagger," an insult she's been hit with since she moved to the state in 2012, a year before her unsuccessful bid for U.S. Senate.

"Liz Cheney betrayed President Trump," said Mark Hladik, who's lived in Wyoming for 42 years. "Ninety-nine point nine percent pure RINO
."
 
Cheney's doing the right thing, and it's going to cost her a House seat and her political career. But don't feel too bad, she'll end up in a law firm or lobbyist shop soon enough.
 
A lobbying shop working against Democrats.