Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

Once again, if you or I announced publicly that we would not comply with a subpoena, we'd have county sheriffs, skip tracers, and US marshals saying hello. Donald Trump's kids on the other hand, well, I guess somehow they're immune to things.

Former President Trump’s eldest son and daughter have refused to comply with subpoenas issued by the New York State attorney general’s office as it conducts a civil investigation into the way the family real estate business valued its holdings.

“A dispute has arisen between the OAG and the Individual Trump Parties regarding the Subpoenas,” a document filed Monday said.

The document, filed jointly by New York Attorney General Letitia James and an attorney for the Trump Organization, said Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump will now be named as respondents in James’ ongoing inquiry, which parallels a criminal investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump will file motions to quash the subpoenas as soon as Monday, the filing indicated.

The former president and his company have denied wrongdoing and have attacked the investigation as political.

The ongoing criminal investigation has so far resulted in indictments against the Trump Organization and its longtime chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg on tax charges.

 

Keep in mind that Tish James has subpoenaed Donald Trump himself last year, and Trump has been ignoring that subpoena too. And yes, these are civil trials, where the state of New York has a lot of power to compel compliance. So far, it hasn't resulted in any action other than legal wrangling.

Of course, the elephant in the room would be the near instantaneous spate of domestic terrorism attacks caused by a Trump arrest, possibly killing thousands or more.

 

Nobody it seems is actually discussing that...

The Big Lie, Con't

A year into the Biden presidency, and the big news remains that a majority of Trump voters still believe the election was stolen from Donald Trump, and that a hefty portion of these Trump voters believe that violence is justified to "protect American values".

 

One year after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Americans are deeply pessimistic about the future of democracy.

A new NPR/Ipsos poll finds that 64% of Americans believe U.S. democracy is "in crisis and at risk of failing." That sentiment is felt most acutely by Republicans: Two-thirds of GOP respondents agree with the verifiably false claim that "voter fraud helped Joe Biden win the 2020 election" — a key pillar of the "Big Lie" that the election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.

Fewer than half of Republicans say they are willing to accept the results of the 2020 election — a number that has remained virtually unchanged since we asked the same question last January.

"There is really a sort of dual reality through which partisans are approaching not only what happened a year ago on Jan. 6, but also generally with our presidential election and our democracy," said Mallory Newall, a vice president at Ipsos, which conducted the poll.

"It is Republicans that are driving this belief that there was major fraudulent voting and it changed the results in the election," Newall said.

Nearly two-thirds of poll respondents agree that U.S. democracy is "more at risk" now than it was a year ago. Among Republicans, that number climbs to 4 in 5.

Overall, 70% of poll respondents agree that the country is in crisis and at risk of failing.

The country can't even decide what to call the assault on the Capitol. Only 6% of poll respondents say it was "a reasonable protest" — but there is little agreement on a better description. More than half of Democrats say the Jan. 6 assault was an "attempted coup or insurrection," while Republicans are more likely to describe it as a "riot that got out of control."

Americans are bitterly divided over the events that led to Jan. 6, as well.

"I think the Democrats rigged the election," said Stephen Weber, a Republican from Woonsocket, R.I. "And who the hell would vote for Biden?"

More than 81 million people voted for Biden, compared with more than 74 million for Trump. Biden won with 306 electoral votes to 232 for Trump.

But Weber is skeptical. In a follow-up interview, Weber said he doesn't trust mail-in voting and doesn't believe that Democratic lawmakers have the country's best interests at heart.

"They want to change it to something else. We don't want it changed," he said.

Democrats also expressed dismay about the state of democracy — but for very different reasons. In follow-up interviews, they voiced concern about voting restrictions passed by Republican-controlled state legislatures in the wake of the 2020 election. And they struggled to make sense of the persistent belief in the fiction that Trump won.

"When Trump first came out with his 'big lie,' it just never occurred to me that so many Republicans would jump on board," said Susan Leonard of Lyme, N.H.

"It's like a group mental illness has hit these people," said Leonard. "I cannot believe this is happening in our country. I'm scared, I really am."

 

We're looking at tens of millions of Americans who believe that the 2020 election was somehow magically stolen from Trump, and tens of millions who believe violence is the answer to resolving that problem.

The poll found that support for false claims about election fraud and the Jan. 6 attack have been remarkably stable over time.

For example, one-third of Trump voters say the attack on the Capitol was actually carried out by "opponents of Donald Trump, including antifa and government agents" — a baseless conspiracy theory that has been promoted by conservative media since the attack, even though it has been debunked.

"They probably had some antifa people, or they paid those people to do that and try to say that it was Trump's people," said Krissy Cripps, a Republican from Carterville, Ill., in a follow-up interview. Cripps said without evidence that the Democratic National Committee was likely responsible for the false flag operation.

Claims of major fraud that affected the results of the election have also been widely disproved. But large numbers of Republican voters remain unmoved.

Heidi Kravitz remembers watching Trump's lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, at a news conference shortly after the election.

"He had a stack of papers as evidence," said Kravitz, a Republican from Salem, Ore., in a follow-up interview. "And I was just like, 'OK, well, then why don't we at least check that?' Like if there's nothing to hide and if it is not true, then why don't we just check it?"

 

It will be a miracle if we go through this year without another insurrectionist attack on the country.

Insurrection Investigation, Con't

As both President Biden and Donald Trump line up dueling press events for January 6th on Friday, the investigation by the House continues, and it's clear that even Trump's own children pleaded with their father to stop the violence that he stoked that day nearly one year ago.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol Riot has received “firsthand testimony” that President Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, twice asked him to intervene, Rep. Liz Cheney said. Trump was watching the riot unfold on television while sitting in the dining room next to the Oval Office at the time. “We have firsthand testimony that his daughter Ivanka went in at least twice to ask him to please stop this violence,” Cheney, the vice chair of the committee and one of two Republican members on the panel, said on ABC’s This Week.

"The president could have at any moment, walked those very few steps into the briefing room, gone on live television, and told his supporters who were assaulting the Capitol to stop," Rep. Liz Cheney says of former Pres. Trump's actions on Jan. 6. https://t.co/zo7wSq6hc1 pic.twitter.com/sUYg0wGKsi

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) January 2, 2022

As far as Cheney is concerned, Trump could have taken clear steps to make sure the violence didn’t get out of hand that day but he chose not to act. “We know, as you know well, that the briefing room at the White House is just a mere few steps from the Oval Office,” Cheney said. “The president could have at any moment, walked those very few steps into the briefing room, gone on live television, and told his supporters who were assaulting the Capitol to stop.” Instead, Cheney said, Trump did nothing. “He could have told them to stand down. He could have told them to go home—and he failed to do so,” Cheney added. “It’s hard to imagine a more significant and more serious dereliction of duty than that.”

“The Republican Party has to make a choice. We can either be loyal to our Constitution or loyal to Donald Trump, but we cannot be both,” GOP Rep. Liz Cheney tells @GStephanopoulos. https://t.co/RhbkmuCrEO pic.twitter.com/B9OLaDxdY2

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) January 2, 2022

His failure to act shows Trump should never be allowed near the Oval Office again. “Any man who would watch television as police officers were being beaten, as his supporters were invading the Capitol of the United States, is clearly unfit for future office,” Cheney said. The way in which Trump refused to tell his supporters to stop the riot shows “he cannot be trusted,” she added. Republicans now have a choice to make. “We can either be loyal to our Constitution or loyal to Donald Trump, but we cannot be both,” Cheney said.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said on CNN that the panel had received “significant testimony” that the White House “had been told to do something” and ignored the pleas. “The only thing I can say, it’s highly unusual for anyone in charge of anything to watch what’s going on and do nothing,” Thompson said.

 

It is significant that a member of Trump's own party is saying that Trump himself is unfit to hold future office, even if it is 100% self-serving in Cheney's case.  It also happens to be 100% true.

We'll see where this week goes, but since the GOP is already trying to sweep the investigation under the rug, claiming that Americans simply don't care about the insurrection, and using that the rehabilitate their image, if we don't see federal changes soon, my prediction is they get away with it, and that's the end of things in 2022 and 2024.