Jack Makes A Deal, Or, Mark Of Betrayal

Fulton County Georgia DA may not have flipped former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows yet in her RICO case, but Jack Smith sure as hell got him to testify before a grand jury in his January 6th federal case.

 

Former President Donald Trump's final chief of staff in the White House, Mark Meadows, has spoken with special counsel Jack Smith's team at least three times this year, including once before a federal grand jury, which came only after Smith granted Meadows immunity to testify under oath, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The sources said Meadows informed Smith's team that he repeatedly told Trump in the weeks after the 2020 presidential election that the allegations of significant voting fraud coming to them were baseless, a striking break from Trump's prolific rhetoric regarding the election.

According to the sources, Meadows also told the federal investigators Trump was being "dishonest" with the public when he first claimed to have won the election only hours after polls closed on Nov. 3, 2020, before final results were in.

"Obviously we didn't win," a source quoted Meadows as telling Smith's team in hindsight.

Trump has called Meadows, one of the former president's closest and highest-ranking aides in the White House, a "special friend" and "a great chief of staff -- as good as it gets."

The descriptions of what Meadows allegedly told investigators shed further light on the evidence Smith's team has amassed as it prosecutes Trump for allegedly trying to unlawfully retain power and "spread lies" about the 2020 election. The descriptions also expose how far Trump loyalists like Meadows have gone to support and defend Trump.

Sources told ABC News that Smith's investigators were keenly interested in questioning Meadows about election-related conversations he had with Trump during his final months in office, and whether Meadows actually believed some of the claims he included in a book he published after Trump left office -- a book that promised to "correct the record" on Trump.

ABC News has identified several assertions in the book that appear to be contradicted by what Meadows allegedly told investigators behind closed doors.

According to Meadows' book, the election was "stolen" and "rigged" with help from "allies in the liberal media," who ignored "actual evidence of fraud, right there in plain sight for anyone to access and analyze."

But, as described to ABC News, Meadows privately told Smith's investigators that -- to this day -- he has yet to see any evidence of fraud that would have kept now-president Joe Biden from the White House, and he told them he agrees with a government assessment at the time that the 2020 presidential election was the most secure election in U.S. history.

 

Mark Meadows doesn't just know where the bodies are, he helped Trump bury them. He's testified at least once to a grand jury.

But does that mean he's actually going to help Jack Smith bury Trump? Marcy Wheeler throws up a big caution flag.

But I caution against concluding too much about what the testimony means. Most importantly, there’s no hint that Meadows has flipped. Meadows has testified (which a past ABC scoop made clear). But giving immunized testimony is not flipping, and the two ABC stories raise far more questions about the story Meadows has told.

I say that for several reasons. First, ABC doesn’t describe the dates for any of his interviews. I’ll return to that, but it’s important that ABC doesn’t reveal whether Meadows’ testimony to Jack Smith precedes or postdates the Georgia indictment and subsequent failure to get the Georgia indictment removed to Federal courts. An earlier big ABC scoop describes April grand jury testimony, and it’s not clear that this would be a different time frame or grand jury appearance.

I offer cautions, as well, because virtually all of ABC’s reporting says that Meadows was asked not about what Trump did on a given day, but whether Meadows believed what Meadows had said publicly. Here’s an example.

Sources told ABC News that Smith’s investigators were keenly interested in questioning Meadows about election-related conversations he had with Trump during his final months in office, and whether Meadows actually believed some of the claims he included in a book he published after Trump left office — a book that promised to “correct the record” on Trump.

Again, click through to see how much of the rest is of the same sort.

As I noted in my post on that prior big ABC scoop, there are still loads of details — especially about January 6 — missing from the public timeline that Meadows surely knows.

There’s a lot that’s missing here — most notably Meadows’ coordination with Congress and any efforts to coordinate with Mike Flynn and Roger Stone’s efforts more closely tied to the insurrection and abandoned efforts to deploy the National Guard to protect Trump’s mob as it walked to congress. Unless those actions get added to charges quickly, Meadows will be able to argue, in Georgia, that his actions complied with federal law without having to address them. If and when they do get charged in DC, I’m sure Meadows’ attorneys hope, his criminal exposure in Georgia will be resolved.

Importantly, that earlier ABC scoop served to signal co-conspirators how Meadows changed his testimony after prosecutors obtained proof his claims about his ghost-writers — the same ghost-writers whose book remains at the center of ABC’s scoop! — were proven wrong by further evidence.

That story suggested Meadows was only going to be as truthful as evidence presented to him required him to be.

And this story is of the same type. It describes how, as he did in the stolen documents case, Meadows said he didn’t believe what he wrote when it was legally necessary.

Meadows is trying to save his ass, yes. But it doesn't mean he's singing like a canary quite yet. 

Still, four major players in Trump's inner circle have now possibly turned on him in the last week.

 

Sleep well, Donnie. Prison bunks are far less comfortable.

 

Fani Makes A Deal, Or, Sidney's Kraken Up

Looks like Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis played Let's Make A Deal again, and I told you she would. Her contestant: Former Trump lawyer and oceanic cryptid enthusiast Sidney Powell, who just flipped on Trump in Fani Willis's Georgia election interference case.

 

Sidney Powell, a GOP lawyer who briefly represented Donald Trump, has flipped on the former president, striking a plea deal with Georgia prosecutors ahead of her trial on a slew of criminal charges.

According to court filings, Powell pleaded guilty to six counts of conspiracy to interfere with election duties.

She was one of over a dozen co-defendants — including Trump himself — in the Fulton County DA's office's RICO case, which accused Trump and his allies of violating the state's racketeering statute while working to overturn Georgia's 2020 presidential election results.

As part of the plea agreement, Powell — who pushed several conspiracy theories about the 2020 election results and vowed to release the "Kraken," purported evidence of widespread election fraud that never materialized — will have to testify at future trials and write a letter apologizing to Georgia citizens.

Powell's plea deal was announced at a court hearing on Thursday. As part of the agreement, she will also have to pay $2,700 in restitution to replace election equipment, as well as a $6,000 fine. She faces a maximum sentence of six years probation.

Powell was set to go to trial on Monday, along with co-defendant and former Trump campaign lawyer Kenneth Chesebro.

 

I don't use this language often, but Trump is fucked. 

 

We'll see if Kenny Cheseboro flips before his trial on Monday, but does Willis really need him at this point? The only bigger fish on this seafood buffet are Rudy, Mark Meadows, and the king marlin himself, Trump. At this point, unless Meadows or Rudy flips, the window for a deal has closed.

Expect another tirade as Trump gets closer and closer to prison.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Federal Judge Tanya Chutkan made good Monday on her admonishment of Donald Trump's social media attacks, setting the trial for his role in January 6th insurrection on March 4 of next year.

 

Judge Tanya Chutkan delivered that ruling after rejecting two wildly different trial schedules proposed by Trump’s attorneys and special counsel Jack Smith’s federal prosecutors.

The Department of Justice’s suggestion to take the case to trial on Jan. 2 “does not” give Trump enough time to prepare, Chutkan said in a Monday morning hearing in U.S. District Court in Washington.

But Trump’s proposal for an April 2026 trial date went “far beyond what is necessary,” the judge said, NBC News reported.

The jury selection process in the D.C. case is currently set to begin one day before Super Tuesday, the biggest day of elections in the presidential primary cycle.

Trump’s attorney John Lauro quickly rose to protest the trial schedule.

“In our judgment, that trial date is inconsistent with President Trump’s right to due process and the right to effective assistance of counsel,” Lauro said in the hearing. The judge noted his objection before moving on.

 

Fani Willis had asked for that date for Trump's Georgia trial, so we'll see when that gets scheduled, but again, this is the day before the Super Tuesday primaries. I don't think Trump's going to be complaining too loudly about that schedule. But he did complain anyway.

Trump vowed to appeal the decision as he attacked the judge on social media.

“Today a biased, Trump Hating Judge gave me only a two month extension, just what our corrupt government wanted,” Trump wrote in a livid social media post Monday afternoon.

“I will APPEAL!” he declared.

 

 You do that, champ. See how far that gets you with this judge.

 

Meanwhile we've now reached the point where the mobsters under Don Tangerini here are trying to get away with "I was only following his orders". 

A former top White House aide to Donald Trump made a last-ditch bid to scuttle his upcoming trial for contempt of Congress, testifying to a federal judge on Monday that Trump “directed” him to defy the House Jan. 6 select committee.

Peter Navarro, a top trade adviser who pushed discredited claims of fraud about the 2020 election during Trump’s final days in office, is scheduled to go to trial Sept. 5 on criminal contempt charges for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the committee.

But Navarro has argued that Trump asserted executive privilege to shield him from having to cooperate with the committee’s request for testimony and documents. If Judge Amit Mehta agrees, he may order the charges dismissed.

At Monday’s hearing, Navarro took the stand and described his communications with Trump and his aides about two congressional subpoenas he received: one from the Jan. 6 panel and another from a separate congressional committee investigating the coronavirus pandemic.

Navarro said Trump communicated to him that he had invoked executive privilege, a legal doctrine that allows the president to withhold certain confidential communications from the other branches of government. Navarro’s lawyer, Stanley Woodward, asked Navarro if he went to a Jan. 6 select committee deposition.

“I was directed by the president not to,” Navarro replied.

Mehta’s decision is likely to turn on whether he buys Navarro’s description of his conversations with Trump, which were not backed by any documents or written confirmation that have accompanied other privilege assertions that Trump has made. 

"I can't be in contempt for not testifying if Trump ordered me not to and you can't prove he didn't so you must dismiss the case" is the most ballsy thing I've heard from Trump's motley crew so far.

Or it was until Mark Meadows did the same thing on Monday.

Former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows took the witness stand in federal court Monday in a bid to get the criminal case charging him with tampering with the 2020 presidential election results moved out of state court and, ultimately, dismissed.

Meadows spent more than two and a half hours testifying during the morning session, declaring that he took an extremely wide-ranging view of his responsibilities as chief of staff and viewed that role as encompassing nearly all his actions prosecutors say amounted to corrupt pressure on Georgia officials.

If a federal judge agrees that Meadows’ actions plausibly fell within the scope of his federal duties, the case may get moved into federal court, and Meadows may be immune from the charges against him, which prosecutors brought under state law. Other defendants in the case, including Donald Trump himself, are expected to raise similar immunity arguments.

“It was a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week kind of job,” Meadows said during questioning by his lead attorney, George Terwilliger III. “It was a very broad responsibility. … I found myself on defense a lot with things coming at me from a million different directions.”

Meadows’ appearance was a gamble by his defense team, opening him to cross examination by the prosecution and locking him into a specific description of events in a way that will be difficult for him to vary from if the case goes to trial.

However, it gave Meadows a chance to try personally to persuade U.S. District Court Judge Steve C. Jones that the charges brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis following a lengthy grand jury investigation intrude on fundamental federal responsibilities. Earlier this month, Willis charged Trump, Meadows and 17 other defendants with a sprawling “criminal enterprise” aimed at overturning the election in Georgia and other states.

Monday’s hearing was one of the only times Meadows — a former Republican member of Congress and once a ubiquitous power player in Washington — has been heard from in a public forum since Jan. 6, 2021.

 

The thing is Meadows will probably get away with it and he knows it.

 

We'll see.

 

Fani Flagged The Whole Gang In Georgia

Apparently today's planned testimony was either moved up to yesterday or it was a rope-a-dope worthy of Ali in his prime, because Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis got a true bill of indictment for not just Trump, but his whole Georgia gang late last night.

Former President Donald Trump and 18 allies were charged on Monday with conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.

In a sweeping 98-page indictment handed up by a Fulton County grand jury, Trump was charged with racketeering and a dozen other felonies, such as solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer, conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree and false statements and writings. The indictment contained 41 criminal counts.

It marks the fourth time that Trump has been criminally charged ― and the second time this August the former president has been indicted for his attempts to cling to power.

The Georgia case is unique because in addition to Trump, it also charges a cast of supporting players— from former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to then White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer.

The long-anticipated indictment, which came after the grand jurors heard roughly 10 hours of testimony on Monday, will place Atlanta at the center of an historic legal battle that could be bitterly waged in court as Trump campaigns to return to the White House. He has strongly denied any wrongdoing in Georgia after the 2020 election.

Also indicted Tuesday were Trump co-defendants: state Sen. Shawn Still; attorneys John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, Bob Cheeley, Ray Smith III and Kenneth Chesebro; former assistant U.S. attorney general Jeffrey Clark; GOP strategist Michael Roman; former Coffee County elections supervisor Misty Hampton; former Coffee County GOP chairwoman Cathy Latham; Atlanta bail bondsman Scott Hall; publicist Trevian Kutti; Illinois pastor Stephen Cliffguard Lee; and Harrison Floyd, who briefly ran for a suburban Atlanta U.S. House seat before serving as director of Black Voices for Trump.

The charges are the culmination of a 2 1/2-year criminal investigation launched by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis shortly after Trump’s leaked Jan. 2, 2021, phone call with Brad Raffensperger, during which he asked the Georgia secretary of state to “find” him 11,780 votes.

Fani Willis didn't just throw the book at Trump and his co-conspirators, she put the entire Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System in a railgun and set the dial to 41.

PS: Georgia's RICO statue alone is five to twenty in the state pen, and Trump is facing the rest of his life in prison if convicted. And turns out GOP Gov. Brian Kemp can't actually pardon Trump, either. The state is one of the few that has an independent pardon and parole commission, as some of you have pointed out. Trump would have to serve at least five years before even being eligible.

And on top of all that, Georgia state courts regularly broadcast proceedings.

It'll be must-see TV.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

It's slowly beginning to dawn on Team Trump that former Trump WH Chief of Staff Mark Meadows may have cut a deal and is cooperating with Jack Smith.

 

EARLIER THIS YEAR, Donald Trump sent some of his lawyers and political advisers on a “small fact-finding mission,” as a person with knowledge of the matter describes it to Rolling Stone. The former president wanted to know, according to that source and another person close to Trump: “What is Mark doing?”

Trump was referring to his former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Justice Department investigators and Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office had been keen on questioning Meadows under oath about Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election and to hoard government documents. And it’s been an ongoing mystery to Trump and his team how much Meadows has given the feds, and whether or not he’s actually cooperating. Months ago, Meadows and his lawyer severed communications with most of Trumpland, in a move that continues to frustrate people working to keep the now twice–indicted former president out of deeper legal peril.

The Trump attorneys and advisers who went looking for answers returned with bad news for Trump: They couldn’t figure out what was going on, leaving them to repeat rumors and speculation.

Meadows, his lawyer, and Trump’s spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment from Rolling Stone.

Meadows’ team is keeping quiet. Early this month, The New York Times revealed that Meadows had indeed testified before the grand jury, but scant details have been unearthed about what he discussed or to which specific topics his testimony was related. And Meadows’ lawyer George Terwilliger this month offered only vagueness: “Without commenting on whether or not Mr. Meadows has testified before the grand jury or in any other proceeding, Mr. Meadows has maintained a commitment to tell the truth where he has a legal obligation to do so.”

That cryptic statement did not sit well with much of Trumpworld. In recent weeks, several lawyers and confidants had already discussed their unconfirmed suspicions with Trump that Meadows was being very useful to the feds in order to reduce Meadows’ own possible legal exposure, two other people familiar with the matter say. Both sources independently tell Rolling Stone that when the topic has come up within the past several months, Trump has at times said that he doesn’t know what Meadows is doing, adding that it would be a “shame” if the MAGAland rumors were true.

In the days since Terwilliger’s brief statement to media outlets, some of Trump’s longtime allies and close advisers have taken to sardonically referring to Meadows by using the rat emoji in their private conversations, according to a source with knowledge of the situation and a screenshot reviewed by Rolling Stone.

However, others in Trump’s immediate orbit have recently sought to reassure him that, for now at least, he should not read too much into Meadows’ silence, two people with direct knowledge of the matter say. Despite all the rumors that have been flying, these individuals have told Trump that there is no hard evidence yet that Meadows is formally cooperating, and that he could simply be following lawyers’ advice to keep a low profile, answering the feds’ questions when he has to until the special counsel investigation runs its course.
Unfortunately for Meadows and other witnesses, Trump has for years often seen little difference between a witness having an official cooperation agreement with prosecutors, and someone who is legally required to answer questions and in doing so offers up potentially damning information to the authorities, according to sources who’ve spoken to Trump about federal probes and other investigations over the decades. Indeed, Trump was furious over the degree of detail in the notes made by his own attorney, Evan Corcoran, which have since become very useful for prosecutors in this case.

There's no proof that Meadows is singing like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but the Trump camp is deep into the paranoid style, and Meadows continues to refuse to deny the accusations.

Personally, I hope Meadows is indeed giving Jack Smith the grand jury info necessary to indict Trump for January 6th and a host of other charges.

We'll see who's right: if Meadows was cooperating, somebody would have ratted him out for doing so by now.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

The federal cases against Trump involving January 6th and documents in Mar-a-Lago both took major steps forward with grand jury testimony in both venues. Former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows testified about both cases.

Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, has testified to a federal grand jury as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s ongoing investigation into the former president, according to one source familiar with the matter.

Meadows was asked about the former president’s handling of classified documents as well as efforts to overturn the 2020 election, another source familiar with the matter said.

George Terwilliger, a lawyer representing Meadows, said in a statement that “Without commenting on whether or not Mr. Meadows has testified before the grand jury or in any other proceeding, Mr. Meadows has maintained a commitment to tell the truth where he has a legal obligation to do so.”

A spokesperson for the special counsel’s office declined to comment.

The New York Times first reported on Meadow’s appearance before the grand jury.

Meadows is viewed as a critical witness to Smith’s investigation. He was ordered to testify before the grand jury and to provide documents after a judge rejected Trump’s claims of executive privilege.

His testimony could provide investigators key insight into the former president’s actions and mental state following the election he lost to Joe Biden as well as into Trump’s actions after he left office in January 2021.

CNN previously reported that Meadows, under subpoena, turned over some materials to the Justice Department as part of their investigation.

 

And in Florida, the grand jury in the documents case has been very busy this week.

Federal prosecutors have subpoenaed multiple witnesses to testify before a previously unknown grand jury in Florida in the criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s handling of national security materials and obstruction of justice, according to people familiar with the matter.

The new grand jury activity at the US district court in Miami marks the latest twist in the investigation that for months has involved a grand jury that had been taking evidence in the case in Washington but has been silent since the start of last month.

Trump aide Taylor Budowich is scheduled to testify before the Florida grand jury on Wednesday, one of the people said, and questioning is expected to be led by Jay Bratt, the justice department’s counterintelligence chief detailed to the special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the investigation.

The previously unreported involvement of Bratt could suggest the questioning may focus on potential Espionage Act violations, particularly whether Trump showed off national security documents to people at his Mar-a-Lago resort – a recent focus of the investigation.

Bratt, who was seen arriving in Miami on Tuesday by the Guardian, has previously appeared for grand jury proceedings in the espionage side of the investigation, as opposed to the obstruction side, which has typically been led by Smith’s other prosecutors or national security trial attorneys.

A justice department spokesperson declined to comment.

But the underlying reasons as to why prosecutors in the special counsel’s office impaneled the new grand jury in Florida, and whether it is now the only grand jury active in the case after the Washington grand jury has sat dormant for weeks, remains an open question.

 

We know now that the Washington grand jury heard from Mark Meadows today.

 

We're reaching the end game here, folks.

 

Whether or not Trump gets federal charges, well, I have to believe he will.

 

[UPDATE] Maybe this is moving much faster than we thought.

The Department of Justice is preparing to ask a Washington, DC grand jury to indict former president Donald Trump for violating the Espionage Act and for obstruction of justice as soon as Thursday, adding further weight to the legal baggage facing Mr Trump as he campaigns for his party’s nomination in next year’s presidential election.

The Independent has learned that prosecutors are ready to ask grand jurors to approve an indictment against Mr Trump for violating a portion of the US criminal code known as Section 793, which prohibits “gathering, transmitting or losing” any “information respecting the national defence”.

The use of Section 793, which does not make reference to classified information, is understood to be a strategic decision by prosecutors that has been made to short-circuit Mr Trump’s ability to claim that he used his authority as president to declassify documents he removed from the White House and kept at his Palm Beach, Florida property long after his term expired on 20 January 2021.

That section of US criminal law is written in a way that could encompass Mr Trump’s conduct even if he was authorised to possess the information as president because it states that anyone who “lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any document ...relating to the national defence,” and “willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it” can be punished by as many as 10 years in prison.

It is understood that prosecutors intend to ask grand jurors to vote on the indictment on Thursday, but that vote could be delayed as much as a week until the next meeting of the grand jury to allow for a complete presentation of evidence, or to allow investigators to gather more evidence for presentation if necessary.

 

Tomorrow's my birthday. The universe doesn't love me this much for this to happen then, but we'll see.

 

 

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

As Donald Trump may still yet dodge state-level indictments from Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, and Fani Willis's Georgia election fraud case is facing obliteration from the Georgia GOP, Special Counsel Jack Smith's federal case got a huge boost on Friday.

 

A federal judge has rejected former President Donald Trump's claims of executive privilege and has ordered Mark Meadows and other former top aides to testify before a federal grand jury investigating Trump's efforts to overturn the election leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

Meadows, Trump's former chief of staff, was subpoenaed along with the other former aides by Special counsel Jack Smith for testimony and documents related to the probe.

Trump's legal team had challenged the subpoenas by asserting executive privilege, which is the right of a president to keep confidential the communications he has with advisers.

In a sealed order last week, Judge Beryl Howell rejected Trump's claim of executive privilege for Meadows and a number of others, including Trump's former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, his former national security adviser Robert O'Brien, former top aide Stephen Miller, and former deputy chief of staff and social media director Dan Scavino, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Former Trump aides Nick Luna and John McEntee, along with former top DHS official Ken Cuccinelli, were also included in the order, the sources said.

Trump is likely to appeal the ruling, according to sources briefed on the matter.

"The DOJ is continuously stepping far outside the standard norms in attempting to destroy the long accepted, long held, Constitutionally based standards of attorney-client privilege and executive privilege," a Trump spokesperson said in a statement. "There is no factual or legal basis or substance to any case against President Trump. The deranged Democrats and their comrades in the mainstream media are corrupting the legal process and weaponizing the justice system in order to manipulate public opinion, because they are clearly losing the political battle."

Meadows did not respond to ABC's request for comment and neither did an attorney representing him. Ratcliffe, O'Brien, Miller, Luna, McEntee and Cuccinelli did not respond to ABC's request for comment. An attorney representing Scavino also did not respond.

 

For now, expect the testimony of Trump's inner circle to be blocked as the appeal runs it course. Such an appeals process could take months or years however, and the odds of Smith being forced to abandon the testimony under DoJ non-interference directives will increase as Trump's legal camp gums up the works.  On the other hand, there are plenty of other witnesses, lawyers, and non-executive figures that will be forced to testify in the days and weeks ahead.

We'll see.

The Galleria Of Crime, Con't

Jared and Ivanka get to talk to Special Counsel Jack Smith for a bit as the federal criminal investigation(s) into Donald Trump continue.

 

The special counsel overseeing a criminal investigation of former President Donald Trump has issued subpoenas to Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, according to a new report.

The subpoenas by special counsel Jack Smith, which demand the couple’s testimony before a grand jury, are related to his probe of Trump’s efforts to remain in the White House after losing the 2020 election to President Joe Biden and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, The New York Times reported.

Both Ivanka Trump and Kushner served as senior White House advisors to the former president.

Both of them had testified to the select House committee that investigated the Capitol riot by a mob of Trump supporters whipped up into anger by the former president’s false claims of losing to Biden due to ballot fraud.

Smith previously issued a subpoena to former Vice President Mike Pence, who has said he will oppose the demand for his testimony.

And Smith reportedly subpoenaed Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows in the same probe.

The special counsel’s spokesmen declined to comment on the Times report. Attorneys for Ivanka Trump and Kushner did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.

 

So we've got the gang back together here, Meadows, Pence, and now Jared and Ivanka.  Needless to say some six years plus since Trump crapped himself into an Oval Office chair, the fact we're still back at the subpoena stage (and all parties are fighting these still, particularly Pence) doesn't fill me with confidence.

Regardless, Merrick Garland has to get this right, or the country is lost. Period.

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

Turns out Trump did indeed hire an analytical firm to"find the election fraud" in December 2020 and when they find no evidence of it, he buried their findings and has lied about the election for more than two years now.

Former president Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign commissioned an outside research firm in a bid to prove electoral fraud claims but never released the findings because the firm disputed many of his theories and could not offer any proof that he was the rightful winner of the election, according to four people familiar with the matter.

The campaign paid researchers from Berkeley Research Group, the people said, to study 2020 election results in six states, looking for fraud and irregularities to highlight in public and in the courts. Among the areas examined were voter machine malfunctions, instances of dead people voting and any evidence that could help Trump show he won, the people said. None of the findings were presented to the public or in court.

About a dozen people at the firm worked on the report, including econometricians, who use statistics to model and predict outcomes, the people said. The work was carried out in the final weeks of 2020, before the Jan. 6 riot of Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol.

Trump continues to falsely assert that the 2020 election was stolen despite abundant evidence to the contrary, much of which had been provided to him or was publicly available before the Capitol assault. The Trump campaign’s commissioning of its own report to study the then-president’s fraud claims has not been previously reported.

“They looked at everything: change of addresses, illegal immigrants, ballot harvesting, people voting twice, machines being tampered with, ballots that were sent to vacant addresses that were returned and voted,” said a person familiar with the work who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private research and meetings. “Literally anything you could think of. Voter turnout anomalies, date of birth anomalies, whether dead people voted. If there was anything under the sun that could be thought of, they looked at it.”

The findings were not what the Trump campaign had been hoping for, according to the four people. While the researchers believed there were voting anomalies and unusual data patterns in a few states, along with some instances in which laws may have been skirted, they did not believe the anomalies were significant enough to make a difference in who won the election.

The research also contradicted some of Trump’s more conspiratorial theories, such as his baseless allegations about rigged voting machines and large numbers of dead people voting.

A person familiar with the findings said there were at least a dozen hypotheses that Trump’s team wanted tested.

“None of these were significant enough,” this person said. “Just like any election, there are always errors, omissions and irregularities. It was nowhere close enough to what they wanted to prove, and it actually went in both directions.”

 

It means Trump knew the election wasn't stolen, and that he went ahead with his January 6th coup plot anyway.

Another piece of strong evidence that, when combined with the rest of the January 6th report, proves Trump tried to overthrow the government.

He should be in prison already.

Holidaze Week: A Public Insurrection

As its final act, the House Select Committee on January 6th has made a huge database of evidence accessible to the public in order to support last month's expansive report on Trump's criminality and why he and other members of his circle were referred for criminal prosecution.

The panel posted thousands of pages of evidence late Sunday in a public database that provide the clearest glimpse yet at the well-coordinated effort by some Trump allies to help Trump seize a second term he didn’t win. Much of the evidence has never been seen before and, in some cases, adds extraordinary new elements to the case the select committee presented in public — from voluminous phone records to contemporaneous text messages and emails.

Trump lawyers strategized which federal courts would be likeliest to uphold their fringe constitutional theories; Trump White House aides battled to keep unhinged theories from reaching the president’s ears; as the Jan. 6 attack unfolded, West Wing aides sent horrified messages about Trump’s incendiary tweets and inaction; and after the attack, some Trump allies discussed continued efforts to derail the incoming Biden administration.

Here’s a look at some of the most extraordinary and important evidence in the select committee’s files.

Jan. 6 investigators have pored over the circumstances of Trump’s Dec. 19, 2020 tweet exhorting followers to come to Washington to protest the counting of electoral votes by Congress. “Will be wild,” Trump wrote, a message that experts and security officials viewed as rocket fuel for extremists.

The committee’s evidence includes a Jan. 22, 2021 text exchange between Trump adviser Katrina Pierson and his longtime social media guru Dan Scavino in which Scavino makes clear: No one told Trump to author the tweet. Scavino rejected the notion that advocates involved in “Stop the Steal” efforts had anything to do with Trump’s decision to issue the tweet. And in what appears to be a nod to its authorship, Scavino wrote “He does do his own tweets.”

In an earlier exchange, just hours after Congress concluded certifying the election for Biden, Scavino told Pierson: “We’re dealing w/lot now, but we’ll prevail.”

Scavino was an elusive witness for the select committee, and the House voted to hold him in contempt for refusing to cooperate, but the Justice Department declined to prosecute him.

Two days after the Jan. 6 attack, Trump adviser Steve Bannon told his spokeswoman that he didn’t necessarily think the fight to prevent a Biden administration had ended.

In an interview with Bannon’s spokesperson Alexandra Preate, the select committee read from a text exchange Preate had with Bannon on Jan. 8, 2021

“We must turn up the heat,” Bannon wrote to Preate.

When Preate asked when Trump was leaving town ahead of Biden’s inauguration, Bannon replied, “He’s not staying in the White House after the 20th. But who says we don’t have one million people the next day?”

“I’d surround the Capitol in total silence,” Bannon added.

The select committee posted Trump’s complete White House call logs from Jan. 2, Jan. 3 and Jan. 5, 2021 — each reflecting Trump’s intense focus on remaining in power.

The Jan. 2 call log denotes Trump’s hour-long call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which Trump famously urged him to “find” enough votes to flip the election results to him. The logs put that call in context: Immediately afterward, Trump had a Zoom meeting with attorney Rudy Giuliani, a phone call with Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and a 22-minute call with Bannon.

On Jan. 3, Trump’s call logs reflect a flurry of contacts with top Justice Department officials as he contemplated elevating Jeffrey Clark to acting attorney general — a figure he viewed as sympathetic to his bid to stay in power. Trump spoke to Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) that afternoon just before the call logs reflect Clark actually being elevated, however briefly, to the top DOJ post. But the move didn’t hold. A mass resignation threat by DOJ leaders prompted Trump to back away from the plan.

 

The criminality, on multiple fronts, is both pervasive and conspiratorial. At this point we have to have prosecutions, or we're done as a nation.

 

If Merrick Garland doesn't have the evidence by now, if he doesn't have a case by now, he never will. 

On another note, we'll be resuming normal operations tomorrow as we head into 2023.

Last Call For Insurrection Investigation, Con't

Josh Marshall's crew over at Talking Points Memo are publishing the January 6th related texts from former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and while some have been published, TPM has gotten their hands on the bulk of the texts and is running a major expose on Meadows and the GOP January 6th conspiracy.

 

The messages you are about to read are the definitive, real-time record of a plot to overturn an American election.

TPM has obtained the 2,319 text messages that Mark Meadows, who was President Trump’s last White House chief of staff, turned over to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. Today, we are publishing The Meadows Texts, a series based on an in-depth analysis of these extraordinary — and disturbing — communications.

The vast majority of Meadows’ texts described in this series are being made public for the very first time. They show the senior-most official in the Trump White House communicating with members of Congress, state-level politicians, and far-right activists as they work feverishly to overturn Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. The Meadows texts illustrate in moment-to-moment detail an authoritarian effort to undermine the will of the people and upend the American democratic system as we know it.

The text messages, obtained from multiple sources, offer new insights into how the assault on the election was rooted in deranged internet paranoia and undemocratic ideology. They show Meadows and other high-level Trump allies reveling in wild conspiracy theories, violent rhetoric, and crackpot legal strategies for refusing to certify Joe Biden’s victory. They expose the previously unknown roles of some members of Congress, local politicians, activists and others in the plot to overturn the election. Now, for the first time, many of those figures will be named and their roles will be described — in their own words.

Meadows turned over the text messages during a brief period of cooperation with the committee before he filed a December 2021 lawsuit arguing that its subpoenas seeking testimony and his phone records were “overly broad” and violations of executive privilege. The committee did not respond to a request for comment on this story. Since then, Meadows has faced losses in his efforts to challenge the subpoena in court. However, that legal battle is ongoing and is unlikely to conclude before next month, when the incoming Republican House majority is widely expected to shutter the committee’s investigation. Earlier this year, Meadows reportedly turned over the same material he gave the select committee to the Justice Department in response to another subpoena. These messages are key evidence in the two major investigations into the Jan. 6 attack. With this series, the American people will be able to evaluate the most important texts for themselves.

Meadows has not, thus far, responded to multiple requests for comment. The texts Meadows provided to the select committee encompass the period from election night in 2020 through President Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021. It is not clear which, if any, texts Meadows withheld from the committee, but the text message log offers multiple hints it is only a partial record of his conversations. There are discussions that clearly lack prior context and messages where participants indicate there is further communication taking place on encrypted channels.

But despite the seeming gaps, Meadows’ text record is still incredibly revealing. Some of the contents of the log were published in “The Breach,” a book about the Jan. 6 attack that I co-wrote with Denver Riggleman, a former Republican congressman and senior technical adviser to the committee. In our book, Riggleman described how he and his fellow committee investigators dubbed Meadows’ text log “the crown jewels” because they served as the “road map to an insurrection.” Along with the text messages that appeared in “The Breach,” some of Meadows’ messages have also been revealed by media outlets. The Washington Post published his exchanges with Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Some of Meadows’ conversations with Fox News personalities and other members of the media were disclosed by the select committee. CNN and I have published Meadows’ conversations with some Republican members of Congress including; Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Additionally, CNN has published Meadows’ texts with Fox News personality Sean Hannity and his messages from the period directly surrounding the Jan. 6 attack. However, there’s more. So much more.

TPM is kicking off this series with an exclusive story showing that the log includes more than 450 messages with 34 Republican members of Congress. Those texts show varying degrees of involvement by members of Congress, from largely benign expressions of support for Trump to the leading roles played by Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Jody Hice (R-GA), Mo Brooks (R-AL), and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the plot to reverse Trump’s defeat. We reached out to all these legislators, and will be detailing their roles and responses to our questions in the first installment of the series, which is coming later today.

 

Those files begin with today's installment, posted here. 

One message identified as coming from Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) to Meadows on January 17, 2021, three days before Joe Biden was set to take office, is a raw distillation of the various themes in the congressional correspondence. In the text, despite a typo, Norman seemed to be proposing a dramatic last ditch plan: having Trump impose martial law during his final hours in office.

Mark, in seeing what’s happening so quickly, and reading about the Dominion law suits attempting to stop any meaningful investigation we are at a point of � no return � in saving our Republic !! Our LAST HOPE is invoking Marshall Law!! PLEASE URGE TO PRESIDENT TO DO SO!!Ralph NormanRN

The text, which has not previously been reported, is a particularly vivid example of how congressional opposition to Biden’s election was underpinned by paranoid and debunked conspiracy theories like those about Dominion voting machines. Norman’s text also showed the potentially violent lengths to which some congressional Republicans were willing to go in order to keep Trump in power. The log Meadows provided to the select committee does not include a response to Norman’s message.

Reached via cell phone on Monday morning, Norman asked TPM for a chance to review his messages before commenting.

“It’s been two years,” Norman said. “Send that text to me and I’ll take a look at it.”

TPM forwarded Norman a copy of the message calling for “Marshall Law!!” We did not receive any further response from the congressman.

Based on TPM’s analysis, Meadows received at least 364 messages from Republican members of Congress who discussed attempts to reverse the election results with him. He sent at least 95 messages of his own. The committee did not respond to requests for comment. Some of Meadows’ texts — notably with Fox News personalities and a couple members of Congress — have already been made public by the committee, media outlets, and in the book “The Breach.” However, the full scope of his engagement with congressional Republicans as they worked to overturn the election has not previously been revealed.

 

It's going to take a while to chew through all this, but keep in mind, January 6th Chair Bennie Johnson has all but said that Trump, Meadows, Rudy, and others will be referred to Merrick Garland for prosecution as part of the J6 Committee's final report coming next week.

Orange Meltdown, Trump's Triple Trouble Edition

Trump's former Secretary of Racism, Stephen Miller, spent hours on Tuesday testifying before the federal grand jury investigating Trump's role in the January 6th terrorist insurrection.

 

Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller testified on Tuesday to a federal grand jury in Washington, DC, as part of the January 6, 2021, investigation, CNN has learned, making him the first known witness to testify since the Justice Department appointed a special counsel to oversee the criminal investigations around the former president.

Miller was at the federal courthouse in downtown Washington for several hours throughout Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the investigation. January 6 lead prosecutor Thomas Windom was spotted at the same federal courthouse on Tuesday.

Windom is expected to join the newly created Special Counsel’s Office led by longtime public corruption prosecutor Jack Smith and will continue leading the investigation into former President Donald Trump’s role in efforts to impede the transfer of power following the 2020 election.

Federal investigators have for months sought information from Trump’s inner circle in the White House, attempting to gather insight into Trump’s state of mind before his supporters rioted on January 6.

Miller, a former White House speechwriter and senior adviser to Trump, could provide a firsthand account of the former president’s preparations for his speech at the Ellipse in Washington on January 6, including how he wanted to inspire his supporters, many of whom went on to attack the Capitol and disrupt Congress.

Miller was first subpoenaed in the federal criminal investigation months ago.

 

That's two major Trump players this week who have turned evidence against Trump, Miller yesterday to the grand jury investigating Trump, and former Trump Mouth of Sauron Kellyanne Conway on Monday to the House January 6th Committee.

Former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway met for nearly five hours Monday with investigators on the House committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

The committee did not publicly issue Conway a subpoena, and aides refused to comment on whether she was issued one privately. The panel declined to comment on her appearance Monday.


The closed-door meeting took place at the O’Neill House Office Building, where Conway was seen entering a conference room with attorney Emmet Flood, a lawyer in former President Donald Trump’s White House.

Conway spoke to the committee on the record, two sources familiar with her appearance said.

Speaking to reporters around 3 p.m. after the meeting ended, Conway said she did not invoke the Fifth Amendment at any point Monday.

Earlier, when Conway left the meeting room for a break, she told reporters, “I’m here voluntarily.” Asked by a reporter when she last spoke with Trump, Conway said he called her last week.

Conway worked as a senior counselor to Trump from the beginning of his term through August 2020. She decided to leave the administration because, she said, she needed to focus on her family. She also was a campaign manager for Trump's 2016 presidential bid.

Conway told reporters Monday that she is not working on Trump's 2024 campaign, and she refused to detail previous discussions with Trump about the 2020 election.

 

Oh but it gets even better, kids.

In South Carolina, former Trump WH Chief of Staff Mark Meadows lost his bid to block his Georgia subpoena compelling his testimony before Fulton County DA Fani Willis's grand jury on Trump's election interference case in that state.

The Supreme Court of South Carolina has ordered former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to testify before a special grand jury investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.

“We have reviewed the arguments raised by Appellant and find them to be manifestly without merit,” the South Carolina Supreme Court justices wrote in their opinion.

The decision upholds a ruling by a lower court in South Carolina, where Meadows resides, which determined he was “material and necessary to the investigation.”

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is spearheading the special purpose grand jury investigation into attempts to manipulate Georgia’s 2020 election results. The probe was prompted by the infamous call between then-President Donald Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which Trump requested that he “find” the nearly 12,000 votes that would secure his victory in the state. But the investigation has grown to include the fake electors plot, the presentations made by Trump allies to Georgia lawmakers that promoted bogus voter fraud claims and other Trump-world machinations from that period.

The Atlanta-area investigators, in demanding Meadows’ testimony, pointed to his involvement in the Trump-Raffensperger call and to a December 2020 White House meeting about election fraud claims that was touted by Meadows. Their filings also reference his visit to a site where an audit of Georgia’s election was underway and emails Meadows sent to Justice Department officials about unsubstantiated fraud allegations.

A spokesperson for Willis declined to comment.

An attorney and a spokesman for Meadows did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

You see, Meadows is scheduled to testify...today.

 

It's been a bad, bad 72 hours for Team Trump on three different fronts.

 

It's only going to get worse for him.

Last Call For Insurrection Investigation, Con't

If you're wondering why former Trump WH Chief of Staff Mark Meadows hasn't been indicted yet, even after telling the January 6th Commission to piss off last December and then getting hit with a contempt charge for refusing a subpoena, the answer is he's been cooperating with the Justice Department and yes, he showed up for their subpoena after all. 

 

Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has complied with a subpoena from the Justice Department's investigation into events surrounding January 6, 2021, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN, making him the highest-ranking Trump official known to have responded to a subpoena in the federal investigation. 

Meadows turned over the same materials he provided to the House select committee investigating the US Capitol attack, one source said, meeting the obligations of the Justice Department subpoena, which has not been previously reported. 

Last year, Meadows turned over thousands of text messages and emails to the House committee, before he stopped cooperating. The texts he handed over between Election Day 2020 and Joe Biden's inauguration, which CNN previously obtained, provided a window into his dealings at the White House, though he withheld hundreds of messages, citing executive privilege. 

In addition to Trump's former chief of staff, one of Meadows' top deputies in the White House, Ben Williamson, also recently received a grand jury subpoena, another source familiar with the matter tells CNN. That subpoena was similar to what others in Trump's orbit received. It asked for testimony and records relating to January 6 and efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Williamson previously cooperated with the January 6 committee. He declined to comment to CNN. 

Meadows' compliance with the subpoena comes as the Justice Department has ramped up its investigation related to January 6, which now touches nearly every aspect of former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss -- including the fraudulent electors plot, efforts to push baseless election fraud claims and how money flowed to support these various efforts, CNN reported this week. 

An attorney for Meadows declined comment. The Justice Department did not respond to CNN requests for comment.

 

Getting a subpoena from the January 6th Committee is something that Meadows could fight, or delay. Meadows folded on that fight anyway earlier this year. But a subpoena from the Justice Department, with the investigations into Trump well into the multiple grand jury stage and dozens of subpoenas issued for his lackeys?

Meadows knows he can cooperate now or go to prison, and that Trump won't save him even if he could. Turning over all his January 6th evidence to the DoJ directly is pretty huge, which means whatever the DoJ told him was coming was serious enough to make him stop playing games.

We're after the 60 days before the election deadline, meaning indictments won't be going out until after the midterms. But I guarantee you they are coming.

Again, everything that has been made public about the Trump regime's criminality has been done in order to prepare the American public for Trump's indictment, and Meadows fully cooperating and turning over material evidence means we're a lot closer to that happening in mid-November.

Enter your email to subscribe to the CNN Five Things Newsletter.

close dialog

You give us five minutes, we’ll give you five things you must know for the day.

By subscribing you agree to our

priva

Hearing Aides For America, Con't

One of the crimes lost in the shuffle of the January 6th Committee hearings last month was the outright, mobster-level witness tampering by Trump's cronies by offering to pay for legal fees in exchange for those testifying in front of the House to "do the right thing" for Trump. More attention is being paid to that evidence these days.

Former President Donald J. Trump's political organization and his allies have paid for or promised to finance the legal fees of more than a dozen witnesses called in the congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 attack, raising legal and ethical questions about whether the former president may be influencing testimony with a direct bearing on him.

The arrangement drew new scrutiny this week after Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide in his White House, made an explosive appearance before the House panel, providing damning new details about Mr. Trump’s actions and statements on the day of the deadly riot.

She did so after firing a lawyer who had been recommended to her by two of Mr. Trump’s former aides and paid for by his political action committee, and hiring new counsel. Under the representation of the new lawyer, Jody Hunt, Ms. Hutchinson sat for a fourth interview with the committee in which she divulged more revelations and agreed to come forward publicly to testify to them.

It is not known whether Ms. Hutchinson’s change in counsel led directly to her willingness to appear at a televised hearing and provide a more detailed, wide-ranging account of what she witnessed, but some members of the panel believe that it played a role, according to two people familiar with the committee’s work.

Mr. Trump claimed that Ms. Hutchinson’s new lawyer could have prompted her to make false statements. “Her story totally changed!” he complained on his social media site, Truth Social.

The episode raised questions about whether Mr. Trump and his allies may, implicitly or explicitly, be pressuring witnesses to hold back crucial information that might incriminate or cast a negative light on the former president. Mr. Trump and his advisers have been accused before of trying to influence witnesses in past investigations involving him. The committee is known to ask witnesses frequently during closed-door interviews whether anyone has tried to influence their testimony.

Ms. Hutchinson has told the Jan. 6 committee that she was among the witnesses who have been contacted by people around Mr. Trump suggesting that they would be better off if they remained loyal to the former president. Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the vice chairwoman of the panel, quoted two witnesses making such claims on Tuesday and suggested that the committee was looking into the possibility that the former president or his allies were trying to obstruct its inquiry, saying that, “most people know that attempting to influence witnesses to testify untruthfully presents very serious concerns.”

Unlike witness tampering, which is a crime, there is nothing illegal about a third party covering legal fees for a witness. Aides to former President Bill Clinton reported being overwhelmed with legal bills because of the various inquiries into his and his family’s personal and business affairs, and were dismayed when a legal-defense fund set up by Mr. Clinton’s allies to help the first family pay its multimillion-dollar legal debts did not help them. Mr. Clinton later pledged to help raise money to cover his former aides’ legal expenses, but did not make any major effort to do so.

In the case of Mr. Trump, several former aides have requested that he pay their lawyers’ fees, many of them citing financial hardship and the exorbitant cost of representation in connection with a major congressional investigation. Still, given Mr. Trump’s potential criminal exposure and interest in the inquiry’s outcome, the practice has come under added scrutiny.

According to financial disclosures, in May alone, Mr. Trump’s “Save America” political action committee paid about $200,000 to law firms. That including $75,000 to JPRowley Law, which represents Cleta Mitchell, a pro-Trump lawyer who has filed suit to try to block the committee’s subpoena, and $50,000 to Silverman, Thompson, Slutkin & White, which has represented Stephen K. Bannon, a close ally of the former president who refused to meet with the panel and has been charged with criminal contempt. The managing partner at the firm representing Mr. Bannon declined to comment.

It was not immediately clear whether those payments were for covering legal fees connected to the Jan. 6 inquiry, but people familiar with the matter said the PAC has paid for the representation of several former officials and aides in the investigation, including some high-profile ones such as Stephen Miller, who served as a senior adviser to Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump’s PAC paid a portion of Mr. Miller’s legal bills.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump also declined to comment.

 

Paying for legal fees isn't illegal, paying for legal fees with the expectation that it will affect your testimony as a quid pro quo very much is illegal, and these idiots put that in writing.

Meanwhile, actually illegal witness tampering is going on as well.

Former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson received at least one message tacitly warning her not to cooperate with the House January 6 select committee from an associate of former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The message in question was the second of the two warnings that the select committee disclosed at the end of its special hearing when Hutchinson testified about how Donald Trump directed a crowd he knew was armed to march on the Capitol, the sources said.

“[A person] let me know you have your deposition tomorrow. He wants me to let you know that he’s thinking about you. He knows you’re loyal, and you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition,” read the message. The redaction was Meadows, the sources said.

The message was presented during closing remarks at the special hearing with Hutchinson by the panel’s vice-chair, Liz Cheney, who characterized the missive as improper pressure on a crucial witness that could extend to illegal witness tampering or intimidation.

The exact identity of the person who sent Hutchinson the message – beyond the fact that they were an associate of Meadows – could not be confirmed on Thursday, but that may be in part because the select committee may wish to interview that person, the sources said.

 

So yes, take your picke from Trump's Cavalcade of Crime, Merrick Garland.

Pick and prosecute.

Hearing Aides For America, Surprise Edition

After scheduling the next hearing for July, the H=January 6th Committee sprung a surprise hearing today to hear the testimony of former Trump WH administrative staffer Cassidy Hutchinson, assistant to then WH Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who like any good administrative assistant, knew wehre all the proverbial (and almost very literal) bodies were all buried on January 6th planning.

And yes, as Hutchinson's testimony made very clear, the January 6th insurrection was very much planned by the Trump regime.

Aides to former President Donald Trump were left speechless amid the first half of Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony on Tuesday, acknowledging to CNN that her testimony was "a bombshell" with potentially huge repercussions for Trump.

Trump was already bracing for an explosive day of testimony from Hutchinson, who previously told the House select committee that the former President approved of rioters chanting violent threats against Vice President Mike Pence on January 6, 2021.

"This is a bombshell. It's stunning. It's shocking. The story about 'The Beast' -- I don't have words. It's just stunning," said one Trump adviser, referring to the presidential limousine.

"This paints a picture of Trump completely unhinged and completely losing all control which, for his base, they think of him as someone who is in command at all times. This completely flies in the face of that," the adviser added.

The Trump adviser, who was in a group text chat with several other Trump aides and allies as the hearing played out, said that "no one is taking this lightly."

"For the first time since the hearings started, no one is dismissing this," the adviser said.

Another Trump ally told CNN the testimony from Hutchinson, a former top aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, would seal Meadows' fate as "persona non grata" to the former President.

"This is one of the reasons [Trump] is furious with Meadows. He was already iced out but now he will be persona non grata," this person said.

The startling revelations from Hutchinson's testimony about Trump's erratic behavior and state of mind on January 6 could make it easier for Republican presidential hopefuls to challenge the former President in a primary should he run, the Trump ally added.

"This is basically a campaign commercial for (Florida Gov.) Ron DeSantis 2024," said the Trump ally.

 

It's starting to sink in that Trump may not be the 2024 GOP candidate for the White House because of this.

 

He's going to be otherwise occupied.

Minutes before Donald Trump took the stage at an Ellipse rally on Jan. 6, 2021, he urged the Secret Service to remove security magnetometers to let in people with weapons because “they’re not here to hurt me,” a former top White House aide told investigators on Tuesday.

Cassidy Hutchinson also testified to the Jan. 6 select panel that Trump intended to travel with his supporters at the rally to the Capitol, a progression that quickly became a violent mob. She also recalled hearing from two security officials — including Robert Engel, the head of the then-president’s Secret Service detail — that when Trump was told he’d be returning to the White House instead of going to the Capitol on Jan. 6, he lunged for the steering wheel of his vehicle and was physically restrained by Engel.

Hutchinson also said she heard firsthand worries about Trump potentially traveling to the Capitol to disrupt the certification of his loss from Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone. She testified that Cipollone warned against letting Trump travel to the Capitol that day in stark terms: If Trump did so, his White House counsel said, “we’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable,” from obstruction to fraud.

The former White House aide’s remarks portrayed Trump as spiraling into an increasingly manic rage as he continued his last-ditch effort to seize a second term he didn’t win. Hutchinson offered some of the gravest evidence yet of Trump’s awareness of the violent elements within his base that were ultimately unleashed against Congress — and his indifference to the ultimate result. And her testimony landed hard on the Hill, where some Republican lawmakers immediately pushed back.

Signs of Trump’s fury had been emerging for weeks, Hutchinson said, recalling that Trump once hurled a plate of food at the wall after his Justice Department batted down claims of widespread election fraud.

Hutchinson’s comments came in an explosive public hearing of the Jan. 6 select committee focused on her insights into the machinations by Trump, Meadows and their allies in the runup to Jan. 6. Her knowledge, informed by being present in nearly every meeting involving Meadows during the post-election period, have quickly propelled Hutchinson into a prominent role for Capitol riot investigators.

 

Trump's own people are saying that he went way beyond any "Nixon in the bunker" moments.  But yes, you'd be forgiven for thinking the big winner here was not America, but Ron DeSantis's 2024 run, looking more and more likely by the day.