Last Call For Hearing Aides For America, Con't

The 7th hearing of the January 6th Committee today laid out the case that the white supremacist domestic terrorists involved in the deadly terrorist insurrection were of course there at Trump's bidding.

The day after an explosive Oval Office meeting in which a motley crew of outside advisers clashed with White House lawyers over a plan to seize voting machines, then-President Donald Trump turned his focus to riling up his supporters for the Jan. 6 push to stop the counting of electoral votes, according to evidence presented in Tuesday's House committee hearing.

Two longtime Trump advisers, Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, were in contact with leaders of the violent extremist groups The Proud Boys and The Oath Keepers, according to text messages and photographs produced by the committee — though Stone, through a lawyer, disputed participating in a group chat. The two groups began working together for the first time after Trump issued his call for a Jan. 6 rally in Washington, the panel said.

One witness, Stephen Ayres, who has pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct after entering the Capitol Jan. 6, said he didn't plan to march until Trump called on the crowd at a "Stop the Steal" rally to march to the Capitol to encourage Republican lawmakers to block certification. Ayres said he went thinking that Trump would accompany the mob.

"We basically just followed on what he said," Ayres said. "I think everybody thought he was going to be coming down. ... I believed it."

The evidence presented by the committee Tuesday is designed to fit into its broader case that Trump resorted to inciting violence after learning that he had lost the election and had no legal means to prevent a peaceful transfer of power. In that effort, the panel portrayed the weeks after the November 2020 election as a time of desperation for Trump, during which he considered strategies his own lawyers viewed as detrimental to the nation and his close confidants encouraged the extremist groups that led the attack on the Capitol.

 

Trump's own inner circle told him that the game was up on several occasions. Trump turned around and tweeted a call to armed insurrection.

On Dec. 19, just hours after the meeting ended, Trump tweeted to his followers that they should come to the nation’s capital.

“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Be there, will be wild!”

That turned into a “call to action” for some and a “call to arms” for others, said Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., a member of the committee.

Some Trump supporters came to see Jan. 6 as the last chance to stop his ouster by voters — and a moment that begged for violence, according to videos and online posts the committee played.

There was at least one reference to a “red wedding” — the scene from the HBO show “Game of Thrones” in which members of a leading family are slaughtered by enemies.

“I’m ready to die for my beliefs,” one person posted on social media in reference to Jan. 6. “Are you ready to die police?”

In a group chat dubbed “The Ministry of Defense” Proud Boys and Oath Keepers discussed strategic and tactical plans for Jan. 6, including pinpointing police locations, according to the committee. Kelly Meggs, a leader of the Oath Keepers, directly discussed security with Stone on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, Raskin said.

 

And at the end of the day's testimony, Rep. Liz Cheney hinted at what's coming next. 

 

The House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 revealed that they told the Department of Justice that former President Donald Trump contacted one of its witnesses who hasn’t publicly testified yet.

“After our last hearing. President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation. A witness you have not yet seen in these hearings,” Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the committee, said on Tuesday.

“That person declined to answer or respond to President Trump’s call and instead alerted their lawyer to the call. Their lawyer alerted us. And this committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice,” she added.

A spokesman for Trump did not respond to requests for comment.

 

The Committee has now referred Trump to the Justice Department for investigation into federal witness tampering, folks.  Already, the info from this hearing has pushed Thursday's prime time hearing back until next week.

We'll see.

Sittenfeld This One Out, Con't

After his arrest on federal bribery and corruption charges in November 2020, former Cincinnati City Councilman and rising Democratic party star PG Sittenfeld was convicted last week on two of those charges and now faces prison time.

 

Former Cincinnati City Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld, who at one point was widely considered to be the next mayor, was found guilty Friday of federal corruption charges.

Sittenfeld, 37, was convicted on felony charges of bribery and attempted extortion. But he was acquitted on four other counts, including honest services fraud.

Sittenfeld dipped his head and slumped forward in his seat after hearing the verdict. His wife, Sarah Coyne, and at least one other woman in the packed courtroom started to cry.

No sentencing date was set. Those are often set weeks after verdicts in federal cases.

Federal sentences are determined by calculating numerous factors. Chase College of Law professor Kenneth Katkin, who attended nearly every day of the trial, calculated a possible sentence range between 15 months and 3½ years in prison.

U.S. District Judge Douglas Cole could depart from that range, but he would have to have a specific reason for doing so.

Sittenfeld's attorney, Charles M. Rittgers, declined to comment after the verdict.

Mike Allen, a former prosecutor who practices in federal court, said he expects an appeal to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"This isn’t over," said Allen, who is now a defense attorney. "The 6th Circuit will be looking at this closely."

U.S. Attorney Kenneth Parker said in a statement: “Democracy requires politicians to uphold their oath with the highest standards of integrity and respect. In this case, we worked alongside the FBI to hold Mr. Sittenfeld accountable for abusing his oath and, ultimately, the trust that the citizens of Cincinnati placed in him.”

The jury convicted Sittenfeld of bribery and attempted extortion that took place between Sept. 21, 2018 and Dec. 17, 2018.

He was acquitted of alleged crimes that took place between July 8, 2019 and Feb. 5, 2020 – all of which involved interactions with undercover FBI agents.

Before the trial began, Sittenfeld turned down a plea deal that would have capped his possible prison term at two years and allowed him to argue for probation only.

 

The number of bad decisions made by Sittenfeld over the last few years almost guaranteed this outcome.  The Feds have been cleaning up Ohio corruption in both parties over the last few years, and Sittenfeld destroyed his career over a stupid bribery move.  He then refused a plea deal, and now he's stuck looking at two or three years in prison. If he had taken the deal in 2021, he'd probably have gotten away with probation.

Even if the guy gets out of the clink and makes another stab at Ohio politics, he's a convicted felon now. People tend to not vote for those.

This dumbass did it all to himself.

Don't Read All About It

America has tuned out the news in 2022 so far, and if you're wondering why the only thing voters care about is $5 gas, it's because nobody really wants to look at the damn news anymore.

Engagement with news content has plunged during the first half of this year compared to the first half of 2021 and in some cases has fallen below pre-pandemic levels.

Why it matters: Americans have grown exhausted from the constant barrage of bad headlines that have replaced Trump-era crises, scandals and tweets.

The big picture: The level of news consumption in 2021 took a nosedive following historic highs in 2020. Despite a slew of major stories, readers have retrenched further in 2022.The war in Ukraine, a series of deadly mass shootings, the Jan. 6 hearings and the Supreme Court's revocation of abortion rights haven't been able to capture the same level of attention spurred by the onset of the pandemic and the 2020 election.

Details: Engagement with news content across all platforms declined significantly in the first half of 2022.Cable viewership across the three major cable news networks — CNN, Fox News and MSNBC — is, on average, down 19% in prime time for the first half of this year compared to the first half of 2021. Those losses skew heavily toward CNN and MSNBC, which are down 47% and 33%, respectively. Fox's ratings are up 12% in that six-month span.  

News app sessions for the top 12 mainstream most-trafficked publishers dropped 16% in the first half of 2022, according to data from Apptopia. Website visits for the top 5 news websites in the U.S. by unique visits tracked by Similarweb dropped 18% in the first half of 2022. Engagement on social media with news articles cratered over the past six months, dropping 50% since the first half of last year, despite more articles published, according to data from Newswhip. Engagement is measured by interactions with articles posted, which includes likes, comments and shares.

Yes, but: The steep drop-off in social media engagement with news was likely influenced by Facebook's de-emphasizing news in the News Feed as it seeks to move news consumption to its News Tab.

Zoom out: In some cases, engagement has fallen below pre-pandemic levels — a news diet "whiplash."Among the top 12 news apps, sessions in the first half of 2022 are down 13% compared with the first half of 2019, per Apptopia.Engagement with news articles on social media has cratered from the pre-pandemic rate, according to NewsWhip data, with interactions down 42% in the first half of 2022 compared to the first half of 2019. 

The pre-pandemic comparison for cable news viewership also shows a drop, with numbers for the three major cable news networks in primetime down 15% in the first half of 2022 compared to the first half of 2019. Fox News is up slightly, but MSNBC and CNN are down 16% and 35%, respectively.

Be smart: Interest in the presidency has declined considerably under Biden compared to his predecessor, fueling some of the engagement declines.Trump and Biden have generated the same level of Google searches in the time since Biden took office. In the year and a half after Trump took office in 2017, he generated 7 times more search interest than former President Obama.

The big picture: Survey data shows Americans have grown weary amid what feels like a never-ending cycle of bad news.

 

This seems like a confession to me. "We're flooding America with bad news, Biden and the Democrats are greatly suffering because of it, and nobody cares about Biden's accomplishments....nobody."

I think the second half will see more of America turning in as the midterms get closer, but the real story here is that the news industry desperately wants Donald Trump back and are at this point openly pulling for Republicans so that they can get more coverage, controversy, and clicks.

Maybe tuning out the news is a good idea at this point.