Last Call For A Pence-ive Retreat

Former VP Mike Pence has dropped out of the 2024 GOP primary contest, to the surprise of nobody, and to the loss of no great value.

 

Former Vice President Mike Pence suspended his 2024 presidential campaign Saturday, with his campaign running low on money and the Republican Party moving in a different direction than the longtime Indiana conservative.

He made the unexpected announcement at the annual Republican Jewish Coalition convention in Las Vegas.

"I came here to say it’s become clear to me this is not my time. So after much deliberation I have decided to suspend my campaign for president effective today," he said onstage. "I have no regrets. The only thing that would have been harder than coming up short would have been if we never tried at all."

His spokesperson Devin O’Malley said Pence chose the convention for the announcement because “the conflict in Israel is a microcosm of what Pence has been evangelizing regarding populism and traditional conservative values."

“RJC provided him one last opportunity to make that case and do so in front of a supportive audience," O'Malley added.

Republican candidates praised Pence following his announcement. "He’s been a good man of faith. He’s been a good man of service," said former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tweeted: “Vice President Mike Pence is a principled man of faith who has worked tirelessly to advance the conservative cause."

 

For all the (unfair) flak that current VP Kamala Harris gets about people not liking her (which is untrue) it's important to remember that Pence's party is currently eulogizing him even though he's you know, still alive.

 

His political career is quite dead however, and I'm sure he'll get a lobbyist job somewhere soon where he can be on the letterhead and give speeches where a whole 16 people will show up. Maybe he can hang out with Dan Quayle some more.

Nobody really cares, and good riddance to a man who took Trump's 30 silver in order to betray the country.

Bye.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Since Judge Tanya Chutkan wasn't appointed by Donald Trump to the federal bench, there's no way he can get a fair trial if the case stays in her hands, he whines.

 

Former President Donald Trump on Sunday called for recusal of the judge presiding over the federal case that alleges he illegally conspired to overturn his election loss to President Joe Biden in 2020.

The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, according to the docket in federal court in Washington, D.C. Chutkan, 61, was appointed to the district in 2014 by then-President Barack Obama. She is one of the only federal judges in D.C. who has delivered sentences against defendants in cases related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that are longer than the sentences that the DOJ asked for, according to NBC News.

On Saturday, Chutkan gave Trump's team until 5 p.m. ET on Monday to respond to prosecutors' request for a protective order. The order would prevent the former president and his legal team from sharing discovery materials with the public. Trump's attorneys asked for more time to prepare their response, which Chutkan swiftly denied.

"THERE IS NO WAY I CAN GET A FAIR TRIAL WITH THE JUDGE 'ASSIGNED' TO THE REDICULOUS FREEDOM OF SPEECH/FAIR ELECTIONS CASE. EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS, AND SO DOES SHE," Trump wrote on his social media site Truth Social Sunday morning.

 

Trump lawyer John Lauro went on the Sunday shows to predict an easy acquittal.

 

Donald Trump’s lawyer, John Lauro, will welcome testimony from former Vice President Mike Pence in the federal case Trump is facing for his alleged efforts to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election.

“Mike Pence will be one of our best witnesses at trial,” Lauro said Sunday during an interview on ABC’s “This Week.” “I read his book very carefully, and if he testifies consistent with his book, then President Trump will be acquitted,” Lauro added.

Trump is currently facing 78 felony charges across three criminal cases. In the latest indictment unveiled Tuesday, federal prosecutors charged Trump with four felony counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.

The 45-page document revealed key details from Pence’s testimony to the grand jury, including that Pence took contemporaneous notes of some conversations he had with Trump in the days leading up to Jan. 6. In one conversation, Pence recalled Trump falsely telling him that the Justice Department was finding “major infractions” related to election fraud.

Despite the revelations in the indictment, Lauro said Sunday that he does not believe Pence’s testimony would be enough to prove that what Trump did in the days leading up to the violent riot on the Capitol was criminal.

“I cannot wait until I have the opportunity to cross-examine Mr. Pence, because what he will do is completely eliminate any doubt that Mr. Trump, President Trump firmly believed that the election irregularities had led to inappropriate results,” Lauro said.

 

Tauro also agrees with congressional Democrats that the trial needs to be televised, which should be a gigantic alarm against doing that. Trump and Tauro want this case tried the court of public opinion for a distinct reason.

America's response to this week's indictment of Donald Trump is providing a window into more than just how Americans view his alleged actions per se — but also into what they think it means for democracy itself.

 

• Half the nation believes Trump tried to stay in office beyond his term through illegal and unconstitutional means.
• To most Americans, such an effort would mean undermining democracy.
• For them and for a majority of Americans overall, the series of indictments and ongoing investigations against Trump are seen as "defending democracy" and "upholding the rule of law."
• Just under a third of the country thinks Trump was trying to stay in office through legal, constitutional means — legal, in part because most of them (and including most Republicans) believe Trump's claim that the election was illegitimate in the first place.
•  For most Republicans, the series of indictments are also personal, seeing them as "an attack" on people like them — echoing some of Trump's rhetoric on the campaign trail. 
• And big majorities of Republicans think the indictments are an attempt to stop Trump's 2024 presidential campaign.

 

In fact more than 85% of Republicans in this CBS News poll believe the indictments are meant to stop Trump's campaign, and more than 55% believe these indictments are "an attack on people like us". There's no way these charges are going to result in anything other than a Trump landslide in the primaries. Oh, and two thirds of Republicans don't believe Biden won in 2020.

We'll see where this goes, but it's not going to be pretty, and we have tens of millions cheering the cancer on.

 

 

 

 

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

As expected, Republicans in DC and on the campaign trail are flocking to Donald Trump's defense after this week's suite of federal indictments by calling the charges part of a federal conspiracy to destroy Trump's 2024 campaign.

The Republican campaign to discredit federal prosecutors skims over the substance of those charges, which were brought by a grand jury in Florida. GOP lawmakers are instead working, as they have for several years, to foster a broader argument that law enforcement — and President Joe Biden — are conspiring against the former president and possible Republican nominee for president in 2024.

“Today is indeed a dark day for the United States of America,” tweeted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, soon after Trump said on his social media platform Thursday night that an indictment was coming. McCarthy blamed Biden, who has declined to comment on the case and said he is not at all involved in the Justice Department’s decisions.

McCarthy called it a “grave injustice” and said that House Republicans “will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”

Republican lawmakers in the House have already laid extensive groundwork for the effort to defend Trump since taking the majority in January. A near constant string of hearings featuring former FBI agents, Twitter executives and federal officials have sought to paint the narrative of a corrupt government using its powers against Trump and the right. A GOP-led House subcommittee on the “weaponization” of government is probing the Justice Department and other government agencies, while at the same time Republicans are investigating Biden’s son Hunter Biden.

“It’s a sad day for America,” said Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the House Judiciary Committee chairman who is a leading Trump defender and ally, in a statement Thursday. “God bless President Trump.”

Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs was more strident. “We have now reached a war phase,” he tweeted. “Eye for an eye.”

Democrats say the Republicans are trafficking in conspiracy theories, with potentially dangerous consequences. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both Democrats from New York, issued a joint statement Friday urging calm around the Trump case, saying everyone should “let this case proceed peacefully in court.”

Former VP Mike Pence, now openly running against Trump for the 2024 nomination, is calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to explain his case to the American people. Trump's MAGA faithful are calling on Pence, DeSantis and others to suspend or drop out of the 2024 campaign altogether in order to solidify the party in Trump's defense.

But the biggest obstacle is our old friend Judge Aileen "Loose" Cannon, the Trump-appointed judge who delayed the case by months in order to help Trump, who is now the judge who will run this case.

The criminal case against President Donald J. Trump over his hoarding of classified documents was randomly assigned to Judge Aileen M. Cannon, a court official for the Southern District of Florida said on Saturday.

The chief clerk of the federal court system there, Angela E. Noble, also confirmed that Judge Cannon would continue to oversee the case unless she recused herself.

The news of Judge Cannon’s assignment raised eyebrows because of her role in an earlier lawsuit filed by Mr. Trump challenging the F.B.I.’s search of his Florida club and estate, Mar-a-Lago. In issuing a series of rulings favorable to him, Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, effectively disrupted the investigation until a conservative appeals court ruled she never had legitimate legal authority to intervene.

Under the district court’s procedures, new cases are randomly delegated to a judge who sits in the division where the matter arose or a neighboring one, even if it relates to a previous case. That Judge Cannon is handling Mr. Trump’s criminal indictment elicited the question of how that had come to be.

Asked over email whether normal procedures were followed and Judge Cannon’s assignment was random, Ms. Noble wrote: “Normal procedures were followed.”

 

Unfortunately, Judge Cannon now has every right to intervene in the case, if not shut it down completely. She's already made the argument that the case shouldn't exist, ordering a months-long delay to have the documents in Trump's possession reviewed by a special master after the Mar-a-Lago raid before the investigation could even proceed. Now she has the case in her hands and while she could throw the entire case out, she can also sabotage the case completely from within.

Cannon, a Trump appointee, gained notoriety while presiding over Trump’s attempt to halt the classified documents investigation in 2022. Following the search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s lawyers filed a complaint alleging that the search was illegitimate and unconstitutional; they demanded the appointment of a special master and, in the meantime, a freeze on prosecutors’ review of seized materials. In a calculated act of judge shopping, the case was assigned to Cannon, who leaped at the opportunity to prove her fidelity to the man who’d appointed her and, perhaps, audition for a future Supreme Court seat. Trump’s lawsuit amounted to pure gibberish, a glorified Truth Social post that alleged a Democratic conspiracy. So Cannon promptly encouraged his lawyers to rewrite the suit so it sounded marginally less asinine. She then issued an order prohibiting the government from “further review and use of any of the materials” seized from Mar-a-Lago “for criminal investigative purposes.”

This command marked the first time in the history of the republic that a federal judge had claimed the power to stop a pre-indictment criminal investigation into a suspect. Cannon’s overreach provoked genuine shock in legal circles and fear in the intelligence community, as it effectively blocked officials from assessing the seized documents for national security risks. (Her order reflected a profound misunderstanding of national security damage assessments.) A right-leaning panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit—which included two Trump appointees—soon stayed this portion of her decision, highlighting its “chilling” effect on fundamental “national-security duties.”

But Cannon wasn’t finished. She agreed to Trump’s request for a special master and appointed Raymond Dearie, a well-respected federal judge. After Dearie tried to bring some discipline to the case, though, Cannon immediately ran interference for Trump. She overruled an order that would’ve required the former president to either disavow or stand by previous claims that FBI agents planted evidence at Mar-a-Lago. She spared him the burden of lodging specific objections to the review of individual documents, which would have revealed the bogus nature of his claim to executive privilege. And she extended deadlines to help Trump drag out the special master’s review for as long as possible.

The madness finally ended when a panel of the 11th Circuit—made up of two Trump appointees and the ultraconservative William Pryor—ruled that Cannon had no authority to hear Trump’s lawsuit in the first place, rendering every one of her orders null and void. It was one of the most humiliating appellate smackdowns in recent history, a total demolition of literally every action that Cannon had taken from the outset of the case. The 11th Circuit accused Cannon of attempting “a radical reordering of our caselaw” that violated “bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.” And it directed her to relinquish control over the case.

Now fast-forward to today. Cannon has been assigned to handle at least the initial phases of Trump’s federal indictment in Florida. Her name appeared on the summons sent to the former president, as did Bruce Reinhart’s, the magistrate judge who signed off on the Mar-a-Lago search warrant. (Magistrate judges may conduct preliminary proceedings in a criminal case, like authorizing a warrant, but it’s unlikely that Reinhart will play a major role here.) Typically, federal district court judges are assigned cases randomly, though the court may transfer a case to a specific judge who has prior experience with the matter. So, perhaps Cannon’s (calamitous) oversight of the Mar-a-Lago search dispute gave her dibs on this indictment. Cases are also reassigned based on workload to ensure that there’s a roughly even distribution among active judges. All of this means that we don’t really know why Cannon was initially assigned the case, and we don’t know if she will keep it. We can be fairly confident, though, based on her history, that she will do everything in her power to keep it to protect her benefactor, who is clearly in immense legal danger from this case.

Smith, for his part, has the option of requesting a different judge; 11th Circuit precedent allows reassignment when the presiding judge appears unable to put “previous views and findings aside.” (This is a nice way of saying that they’re in the tank for the defendant.) Trump would surely fight such a request, and it’s impossible to say where the 11th Circuit would come down.

Imagine, though, that Cannon does preside over this case. She has infinite tools at her disposal to thwart the prosecution at nearly every turn. Big swings, like tossing out the whole case—a very real possibility in her courtroom of chaos—can be appealed and overturned. But at every step, there are opportunities for sabotage. Cannon can try to rig voir dire to help the defense stack the jury with Trump supporters. She can exclude evidence and testimony that’s especially damning to Trump. She can disqualify witnesses who are favorable to the prosecution. She can sustain the defense’s frivolous objections and overrule the prosecution’s meritorious ones. She can direct a verdict of acquittal to render the jury superfluous. She can declare a mistrial prematurely for any number of reasons, including lengthy juror deliberations, and stretch out various deadlines to run out the clock. Many of these procedural moves could not be appealed until the proceedings have drawn to a close; appeals courts do not referee every little dispute in a jury trial as they happen. Cannon will be in control.

So no, I don't expect this case to go anywhere now anytime soon. At the very least, the trial, if it happens at all, won't start before 2025, and if Trump wins, it gets dismissed as moot.

That leaves us with the January 6th investigation, and Fani Willis in Georgia.

We'll see where this is going, but as astonishing as the last 48 hours have been, this case may already be over...

A Pence-ive Response

Former VP and Trump chewing toy Mike Pence was in here in Cincy yesterday addressing a right-wing "Christian" advocacy group when news of Trump, sexual abuser broke and Pence immediately dismissed it as nothing that voters would care about.

 

Former Vice President Mike Pence subtly defended former President Donald Trump in an interview Tuesday, hours after a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation.

“I would tell you, in my 4½ years serving alongside the president, I never heard or witnessed behavior of that nature,” he said.

Pence was in Cincinnati to speak at a gala for the Center for Christian Virtue.

The decision to avoid criticizing Trump was stark at a moment when Pence is weighing whether to challenge his former boss for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

But Pence sidestepped the question of whether the jury’s verdict affects his view of Trump’s fitness for the presidency.

“I think that’s a question for the American people,” Pence said. “I’m sure the president will defend himself in that matter.”

He added his prediction that those very voters would pay little attention to what he cast as a distraction from their daily lives.

“It’s just one more instance where — at a time when American families are struggling, when our economy is hurting, when the world seems to become a more dangerous place almost every day — [there's] just one more story focusing on my former running mate that I know is a great fascination to members of the national media, but I just don’t think is where the American people are focused.”

 

Mike Pence supplicating himself to a man that tried to have him killed when he refused to help steal an election for him, a man now found liable for sexual assault, in front of a Christian virtue group and dismissing it as not "where the American people are focused" is the best example yet of the Republican party's absolute corruption and ownership of everyone in it by Donald Trump.

 

And remember, Mike Pence is supposedly deciding whether or not he's running against Trump in the GOP primaries still.

Not one of them will stand up and say "enough is enough".

All of them work for Trump.

 

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Team Trump has lost yet another court fight trying to block his former VP Mike Pence from testifying in front of a grand jury for Special Counsel Jack Smith.

 

 

Former President Donald Trump has lost an emergency attempt to block former Vice President Mike Pence from testifying about their direct conversations, in the latest boost to a federal criminal investigation examining Trump’s and others’ actions after the 2020 election.

The former president has repeatedly tried and failed to close off some answers from witnesses close to him in the special counsel’s investigation. This latest order from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals likely will usher in Pence’s grand jury testimony quickly – an unprecedented development in modern presidential history.

The decision, from Judges Patricia Millett, Robert Wilkins and Greg Katsas on the DC Circuit, came in a sealed case on Wednesday night that CNN previously identified as Trump’s executive privilege challenge to Pence. No dissents were noted on the public docket.

Trump has tried to block Pence from testifying about their direct communications, even after the former vice president wrote about some of those exchanges and a lower-court judge had ruled against him.

Trump asked the DC Circuit for emergency intervention weeks ago. The court refused to put on hold Pence’s subpoena and to override the lower-court ruling, flatly denying Trump’s requests.

Trump could try to appeal again and even press the issue at the Supreme Court. Yet he gave up pushing several past executive privilege challenges to special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation after similar rulings from this court of appeals.

Pence has already said he was not appealing part of a lower court’s decision, and would comply with the subpoena. Judge James Boasberg of the DC District Court has acknowledged Pence could have some congressional protections during the time he served as president of the Senate on January 6, 2021. But that ruling does not appear to prevent him from answering questions before the grand jury about his many conversations with Trump from Election Day on, when Trump and his allies were pressuring Pence to block the congressional certification of the vote.

 

Trump's folks are going to tell him that the last thing he wants is a SCOTUS ruling that can be used against him in the future should he be reelected, and Trump's ego is gargantuan enough to be swayed by that argument. 

But the wheels of justice continue to grind on as Jack Smith and Merrick Garland slowly put together the pieces to build an impregnable case. Too slowly for some, and there are days, but I have to believe that justice will come.

The alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

Last Call For A Pence-ive Decision

Mike Pence has essentially cut a deal to testify against Donald Trump about January 6th, as the feds have put him in a corner and given him precisely one way out.

Former Vice President Mike Pence will not appeal a federal judge’s order that he testify in the special counsel’s probe of former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, his adviser announced Wednesday.

The decision not to fight the order could provide special counsel Jack Smith with remarkable access to one of the key people with critical insight into Trump’s thinking and efforts to cling to power.


Last week, Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, largely dismissed efforts mounted by Pence and Trump to limit his testimony and avoid handing over documents.

Boasberg acknowledged a constitutional argument against forcing Pence to testify in front of a grand jury about matters related to his role as Senate president during the certification of the election on Jan. 6, but nevertheless concluded that immunity should not prevent Pence from testifying about conversations related to alleged “illegality” on Trump’s part.


“Vice President Mike Pence swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution, and his claim that the Biden Special Counsel’s unprecedented subpoena was unconstitutional under the Speech or Debate Clause was an important one made to preserve the Separation of Powers outlined by our Founders,” Pence adviser Devin O’Malley said in a statement Wednesday. “In the Court’s decision, that principle prevailed. The Court’s landmark and historic ruling affirmed for the first time in history that the Speech or Debate Clause extends to the Vice President of the United States. Having vindicated that principle of the Constitution, Vice President Pence will not appeal the Judge’s ruling and will comply with the subpoena as required by law.”

It’s unclear exactly when Pence will appear before the grand jury in Washington, according to a source familiar with the matter, and the case remains under seal. Trump’s attorneys could still appeal Boasberg’s ruling. Last week, his legal team filed an appeal to block the testimony of several of his senior aides.

That appeal got blown up yesterday, and it looks like Special Counsel Jack Smith is going to have a feast, if not a full-blown smorgasbord of grand jury testimony to bring to the grand jury. Whatever you think about the Bragg case, it'll be tied up well into 2024. Jack Smith on the other hand may be able to move (relatively) more quickly. 

We'll see where things go from here.

A Pence-ive Turn

If Mike Pence is to have any hope in the 2024 primary, he had to make his turn against Donald Trump, and as possible state-level indictments in New York and Georgia draw closer, Trump's former VP is finally making his move.

 

Former Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday harshly criticized former President Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, widening the rift between the two men as they prepare to battle over the Republican nomination in next year’s election.

“President Trump was wrong,” Pence said during remarks at the annual white-tie Gridiron Dinner attended by politicians and journalists. “I had no right to overturn the election. And his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”

Pence’s remarks were the sharpest condemnation yet from the once-loyal lieutenant who has often shied away from confronting his former boss. Trump has already declared his candidacy. Pence has not, but he’s been laying the groundwork to run.

In the days leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, Trump pressured Pence to overturn President Joe Biden’s election victory as he presided over the ceremonial certification of the results. Pence refused, and when rioters stormed the Capitol, some chanted that they wanted to “hang Mike Pence.”

The House committee that investigated the attack said in its final report that “the President of the United States had riled up a mob that hunted his own Vice President.”

With his remarks, Pence solidified his place in a broader debate within the Republican Party over how to view the attack. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, for example, recently provided Tucker Carlson with an archive of security camera footage from Jan. 6, which the Fox News host has used to downplay the day’s events and promote conspiracy theories.

“Make no mistake about it, what happened that day was a disgrace,” Pence said in his Gridiron Dinner remarks. “And it mocks decency to portray it any other way.”

 

This comes about two years too late, frankly.

 

I wonder then if Pence will cooperate with Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith's grand jury subpoena, which he was trying to block as recently as last week.

If Pence actually believes any of the the things he said last night, then he should be more than willing to cooperate with Smith.

Of course, that's not what's going to happen.  But notice if Trump lays into Pence on social media this week or not. If Trump manages to hold his tongue, maybe it's because Pence's grand jury testimony could really damage Trump if Smith can work out a deal with Pence.

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.

A Pence Sieve Response, Con't

Good morning.

 

Mike Pence is turning state's evidence against Donald Trump.

 

The Justice Department Special Counsel overseeing the criminal investigation into Trump's classified document mess has just subpoenaed former VP Mike Pence to testify, and things just got real interesting as the testimony has been negotiated for months now.

 

Former Vice President Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel overseeing probes into former President Donald Trump, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

It's not immediately clear what information the subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith is seeking, but it follows months of negotiations between federal prosecutors and Pence's legal team.

Smith was appointed in November to oversee the investigation into Trump's potential mishandling of classified documents after leaving the presidency and obstructing the government's efforts to retrieve them -- as well as a separate probe into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

A spokesperson for Pence did not respond to a request for comment by ABC News. The special counsel's office also declined to comment.

 

That explains Pence's radio silence in 2023.

 

He's flipping on Trump.

 

Get the popcorn.

Last Call For Documenting The Atrocities

 You'll never guess which Republican was caught with classified documents in their house.

 

A lawyer for former Vice President Mike Pence discovered about a dozen documents marked as classified at Pence’s Indiana home last week, and he has turned those classified records over to the FBI, multiple sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

The FBI and the Justice Department’s National Security Division have launched a review of the documents and how they ended up in Pence’s house in Indiana.

The classified documents were discovered at Pence’s new home in Carmel, Indiana, by a lawyer for Pence in the wake of the revelations about classified material discovered in President Joe Biden’s private office and residence, the sources said. The discovery comes after Pence has repeatedly said he did not have any classified documents in his possession.

It is not yet clear what the documents are related to or their level of sensitivity or classification.

Pence’s team notified congressional leaders and relevant committees of the discovery on Tuesday.

Pence asked his lawyer with experience handling classified material to conduct the search of his home out of an abundance of caution. Sources said that the attorney, Matt Morgan, began going through four boxes stored at Pence’s house last week, finding a small number of documents with classified markings.

Pence’s lawyer immediately alerted the National Archives, the sources said. In turn, the Archives informed the Justice Department.

A lawyer for Pence told CNN that the FBI requested to pick up the documents with classified markings that evening, and Pence agreed. Agents from the FBI’s field office in Indianapolis picked up the documents from Pence’s home, the lawyer said.

On Monday, Pence’s legal team drove the boxes back to Washington, DC, and handed them over to the Archives to review the rest of the material for compliance with the Presidential Records Act.

In a letter to the National Archives obtained by CNN, Pence’s representative to the Archives Greg Jacob wrote that a “small number of documents bearing classified markings” were inadvertently boxed and transported to the vice president’s home.

“Vice President Pence was unaware of the existence of sensitive or classified documents at his personal residence,” Jacob wrote. “Vice President Pence understands the high importance of protecting sensitive and classified information and stands ready and willing to cooperate fully with the National Archives and any appropriate inquiry.”

 

So the goalposts have now moved to Obama, with the MAGA Chuds calling for his home to be raided by armed FBI agents to discover the classified documents he's "surely hiding from America" and such nonsense.

 

Maybe you guys can raid Jimmy Carter's house while you're at it. 

In all seriousness, note how Pence is cooperating completely, and yet this story will vanish tomorrow, because it can't be used to hurt President Biden or help Donald Trump.

Turkey Time: A Pence Sieve Approach

Former VP Mike Pence can certainly continue to stonewall the House January 6th Committee as it heads into its final days, but he's not going to be able to avoid the Justice Department in the same way.

The Justice Department is seeking to question former Vice President Mike Pence as a witness in connection with its criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to stay in power after he lost the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Pence, according to people familiar with his thinking, is open to considering the request, recognizing that the Justice Department’s criminal investigation is different from the inquiry by the House Jan. 6 committee, whose overtures he has flatly rejected.

Complicating the situation is whether Mr. Trump would try to invoke executive privilege to stop him or limit his testimony, a step that he has taken with limited success so far with other former officials.

Mr. Pence was present for some of the critical moments in which Mr. Trump and his allies schemed to keep him in office and block the congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. An agreement for him to cooperate would be the latest remarkable twist in an investigation that is already fraught with legal and political consequences, involving a former president who is now a declared candidate to return to the White House — and whose potential rivals for the 2024 Republican nomination include Mr. Pence..

Thomas Windom, one of the lead investigators examining the efforts to overturn the election, reached out to Mr. Pence’s team in the weeks before Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed a special counsel on Friday to oversee the Jan. 6 investigation and a separate inquiry into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents, according to one of the people familiar with the matter. Mr. Garland has said that the appointment of the special counsel, Jack Smith, will not slow the investigation.

Officials at the Justice Department declined to comment. A spokesman for Mr. Pence also declined to comment.

 

But the person who can stonewall Pence's testimony, even if he's willing to agree, if Donald Trump himself.

The discussions about questioning Mr. Pence are said to be in their early stages. Mr. Pence has not been subpoenaed, and the process could take months, because Mr. Trump can seek to block, or slow, his testimony by trying to invoke executive privilege.

Mr. Trump has cited executive privilege to try to stop other former top officials from talking with investigators. While those efforts have generally been unsuccessful in stopping testimony by the officials to a federal grand jury, they have significantly slowed the process.

Mr. Trump’s efforts to slow or block testimony included asserting executive privilege over testimony from two of Mr. Pence’s top aides: his former chief of staff, Marc Short, and his general counsel, Greg Jacob. But both men returned for grand jury interviews after the Justice Department, in a closed-door court proceeding, fought the effort to apply executive privilege.

Mr. Pence, who rebuffed Mr. Trump’s efforts to enlist him in the plan to block certification of the Electoral College results, has been publicly critical of Mr. Trump’s conduct in the run-up to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol and on the day of the attack, when members of a pro-Trump mob were chanting “Hang Mike Pence.”

 

Eventually Pence will cooperate with the DoJ. Whether or not it makes any difference at this point is an open debate.

Secret Squirrels

The US Secret Service's texts on January 6th, 2021 are key evidence against Trump, if not the USSS itself as an active participant in his palace coup. No wonder then that much of those texts have disappeared, and the Inspector General's office in Homeland Security was aware of the missing texts as early as February 2021...and then the investigation was dropped, without Congress being informed.

The Department of Homeland Security’s chief watchdog scrapped its investigative team’s effort to collect agency phones to try to recover deleted Secret Service texts this year, according to four people with knowledge of the decision and internal records reviewed by The Washington Post.

In early February, after learning that the Secret Service’s text messages had been erased as part of a migration to new devices, staff at Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari’s office planned to contact all DHS agencies offering to have data specialists help retrieve messages from their phones, according to two government whistleblowers who provided reports to Congress.

But later that month, Cuffari’s office decided it would not collect or review any agency phones, according to three people briefed on the decision.

The latest revelation comes as Democratic lawmakers have accused Cuffari’s office of failing to aggressively investigate the agency’s actions in response to the violent attack on the Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021.

Cuffari wrote a letter to the House and Senate Homeland Security committees this month saying the Secret Service’s text messages from the time of the attack had been “erased.” But he did not immediately disclose that his office first discovered that deletion in December and failed to alert lawmakers or examine the phones. Nor did he alert Congress that other text messages were missing, including those of the two top Trump appointees running the Department of Homeland Security during the final days of the administration.

Late Friday night, Cuffari’s spokesman issued a statement declining to comment on the new discovery.

“To preserve the integrity of our work and consistent with U.S. Attorney General guidelines, DHS OIG does not confirm the existence of or otherwise comment about ongoing reviews or criminal investigations, nor do we discuss our communications with Congress,” the statement read.

Cuffari, a former adviser to Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R), has been in his post since July 2019 after being nominated by Trump.

DHS spokeswoman Marsha Espinosa said the agency is cooperating with investigators and “looking into every avenue to recover text messages and other materials for the Jan. 6 investigations.”

After discovering that some of the text messages the watchdog sought had been deleted, the Federal Protective Service, a DHS agency that guards federal buildings, offered their phones to the inspector general’s investigators, saying they lacked the resources to recover lost texts and other records on their own, according to three people familiar with the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive investigation.

A senior forensics analyst in the inspector general’s office took steps to collect the Federal Protective Service phones, the people said. But late on the night of Friday, Feb. 18, one of several deputies who report to Cuffari’s management team wrote an email to investigators instructing them not to take the phones and not to seek any data from them, according to a copy of an internal record that was shared with The Post.

Staff investigators also drafted a letter in late January and early February to all DHS agencies offering to help recover any text messages or other data that might have been lost. But Cuffari’s management team later changed that draft to say that if agencies could not retrieve phone messages for the Jan. 6 period, they “should provide a detailed list of unavailable data and the reason the information is unavailable,” the three people said.

Cuffari also learned in late February that text messages for the top two officials at DHS under the Trump administration on the day of the attack were missing, lost in a “reset” of their government phones when they left their jobs in January 2021, according to an internal record obtained by the Project on Government Oversight. But Cuffari did not press the department’s leadership to explain why they did not preserve these records, nor try to recover them, according to the four people briefed on the watchdog’s actions. Cuffari also did not alert Congress to the missing records.

 

There's every reason now to believe that the missing Trump and Pence detail US Secret Service texts, and missing texts from Trump's Homeland Security heads, Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli, are absolutely damning evidence of criminal activity, and the plan involved preventing Mike Pence from ever conducting the electoral vote count, by whatever means were necessary.

So yes, there's a lot more to come on this.

 

Last Call For Hearing Aides For America, Con't

Day 8 of the January 6th terrorist insurrection hearings by the House laid out in prime time why Donald Trump should be prosecuted for crimes against the country: as Rep. Adam Kinzinger put it, Trump didn't fail to act to stop the attack, he chose not to do so.

The committee used Thursday's hearing to show how former President Donald Trump not only failed to act, but chose not to as he watched the violent assault on the US Capitol unfold.

Several witnesses with first-hand knowledge of what was happening inside the White House on January 6 told the committee that Trump did not place a single call to any of his law enforcement or national security officials as the Capitol attack was unfolding, according to previously unseen video testimony played during Thursday's hearing. 

The panel said it "confirmed in numerous interviews with senior law enforcement and military leaders, Vice President Mike Pence's staff, and DC government officials: None of them -- not one -- heard from President Trump that day," Luria said. 

The committee used that testimony to make the case that Trump's refusal to intervene amounted to a dereliction of duty. 

Former officials who were with Trump as he watched the riot unfold on television, including then-White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Trump's body man Nick Luna, told the committee they had no knowledge of the former President making a single call to the heads of various agencies who could have responded to the violence, including the secretary of defense or attorney general. 

Keith Kellogg, Pence's national security adviser who was also with Trump that day, testified that he never heard the former President ask for the National Guard or a law enforcement response. 

Kellogg also reaffirmed that he would have been aware if Trump had made such an ask. 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley told the House select committee that he was astonished by the fact that he never heard from Trump as the Capitol attack was unfolding -- suggesting his failure to act amounted to an abdication of his duties as Commander in Chief, according to previously unseen video from his close-door deposition. 

"You know, you're the Commander in Chief. You've got an assault going on on the Capitol of the United States of America and there's nothing? No call? Nothing? Zero?" he said in the clip. 

On top of that, the missing US Secret Service texts from that day are now being treated as a criminal investigation.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General has launched a criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding the destruction of Secret Service text messages that may have been relevant to inquiries about the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.

The results of the investigation could be referred to federal prosecutors, the sources said, depending on the results.


The DHS Inspector General informed the Secret Service on Wednesday evening that the investigation is now criminal and that it should halt all internal investigations on the missing text messages, according to a letter detailed to NBC News.

“To ensure the integrity of our investigation, the USSS must not engage in any further investigative activities regarding the collection and preservation of the evidence referenced above,” DHS Deputy Inspector General Gladys Ayala wrote in a letter to Secret Service Director James Murray on Wednesday evening. “This includes immediately refraining from interviewing potential witnesses, collecting devices or taking any other action that would interfere with an ongoing criminal investigation.”

 

The information the Committee does have, and that it revealed tonight, was shocking. Former VP Mike Pence's detail left calls for their family to say goodbye, because they didn't believe they would survive the day.

Former Vice President Mike Pence's security detail was so concerned for safety inside the Capitol as rioters broke into the building, that they "were starting to fear for their own lives," one committee witness said.

The moments were so tense, "there were calls to say goodbye to family members," an unidentified national security professional told the committee in a recorded interview played on Thursday.

He said it appeared that the agents were realizing they were running out of options and may have considered using lethal force.

"Is the VP compromised? Like, I don't know. We didn't have visibility, but if they're screaming and saying things, like, say goodbye to family....this is going to a whole other level soon," the national security official said. The committee shielded the identity of the official and obscured his voice.

Mike Pence was a target. If he couldn't fulfill his duty to count the electoral votes, Trump would have muddied the waters with Pence's blood and almost certainly triggered a Constitutional emergency.

We came that close to losing the country.

Trump has to be held accountable or we will lose it in the very near future.

Last Call For Hearing Aides For America, Con't

The Bigger Than Watergate crimes keep being bigger than Watergate.

A government watchdog accused the U.S. Secret Service of erasing texts from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, after his office requested them as part of an inquiry into the U.S. Capitol attack, according to a letter sent to lawmakers this week.

Joseph V. Cuffari, head of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, wrote to the leaders of the House and Senate Homeland Security committees indicating that the text messages have vanished and that efforts to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack were being hindered.

“The Department notified us that many U.S. Secret Service (USSS) text messages, from January 5 and 6, 2021 were erased as part of a device-replacement program,” he wrote in a letter dated Wednesday and obtained by The Washington Post. The letter was earlier reported on by CNN.

Cuffari emphasized that the erasures came “after” the Office of Inspector General requested copies of the text messages for its own investigation, and signaled that they were part of a pattern of DHS resistance to his inquiries. Staff members are required by law to surrender records so that he can audit the sprawling national security agency, but he said they have “repeatedly” refused to provide them until an attorney reviews them.

“This review led to weeks-long delays in OIG obtaining records and created confusion over whether all records had been produced,” he wrote, and offered to brief the House and Senate committees on the “access issues.”

The Secret Service’s text messages could provide insight into the agency’s actions on the day of the insurrection and possibly those of former president Donald Trump. A former White House official last month told the House select committee investigating the assault on the Capitol that Trump knew his supporters were armed, wanted to lead the mob to the Capitol and physically assailed the senior Secret Service agent who told him he could not.

 

So, three things:

The January 6th Committee has these texts. The OIG for Homeland Security mentions that all the cover-up did was delay his office getting the texts. Whatever incriminating evidence those texts reveal, the January 6th Committee knows about. My guess is that they involve former VP Mike Pence's detail and the plans that day to remove him from the Capitol to "protect" him, meaning he couldn't certify the electoral ballots, throwing the country into chaos.

Number two, if you wanted to know why Trump-appointed Secret Service director James Murray announced his retirement last week, it's because he knew this was coming. There's no way Murray would have survived this story, Biden would have fired him over the weekend. He was told this was coming and given a choice to retire or get canned.

Three, the Service who participated in this coup need to be expelled from the agency. Murray fell on his sword, but the USSS is clearly still rife with Trumpists. All of them need to go, and then face charges of obstructing justice in the investigation.

This all make's next week's prime time hearing more important. I'm going to bet we hear testimony.involving the plot to take Pence.

We'll see.

Trump Cards, Con't

Donald Trump has apparently decided that moving up the timetable for a possible 2024 presidential bid is the only way to stop the twin threats of the January 6th investigation and his primary problems with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and former VP Mike Pence.

Republicans are bracing for Donald J. Trump to announce an unusually early bid for the White House, a move designed in part to shield the former president from a stream of damaging revelations emerging from investigations into his attempts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election.

While many Republicans would welcome Mr. Trump’s entry into the race, his move would also exacerbate persistent divisions over whether the former president is the party’s best hope to win back the White House. The party is also divided over whether his candidacy would be an unnecessary distraction from midterm elections or even a direct threat to democracy.

Mr. Trump has long hinted at a third consecutive White House bid and has campaigned for much of the past year. He has accelerated his planning in recent weeks just as a pair of investigations have intensified and congressional testimony has revealed new details about Mr. Trump’s indifference to the threat of violence on Jan. 6 and his refusal to act to stop an insurrection.

Mr. Trump has also watched as some of his preferred candidates have lost recent primary elections, raising hopes among his potential Republican competitors that voters may be drifting from a politician long thought to have an iron grip on the party.

Rather than humble Mr. Trump, the developments have emboldened him to try to reassert himself as the head of the party, eclipse damaging headlines and steal attention from potential rivals, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a rising favorite of donors and voters. Republicans close to Mr. Trump have said he believes a formal announcement would bolster his claims that the investigations are politically motivated.

Mr. Trump would enter the race as the clear front-runner, with an approval rating among Republicans around 80 percent, but there are signs that a growing number of the party’s voters are exploring other options.

“I don’t think anyone is inevitable,” said Haley Barbour, a former Republican National Committee chairman who also served eight years as Mississippi’s governor.

The timing of a formal announcement from Mr. Trump remains uncertain. But he recently surprised some advisers by saying he might declare his candidacy on social media without warning even his own team, and aides are scrambling to build out basic campaign infrastructure in time for an announcement as early as this month.

That timing would be extraordinary — presidential candidates typically announce their candidacies in the year before the election — and could have immediate implications for Republicans seeking to take control of Congress in November. Mr. Trump’s presence as an active candidate would make it easier for Democrats to turn midterm races into a referendum on the former president, who since losing in 2020 has relentlessly spread lies about the legitimacy of the election. Some Republicans fear that would distract from pocketbook issues that have given their party a strong advantage in congressional races.

“Republicans want to win badly in 2022, and it is dawning on many of them that relitigating the 2020 election with Trump’s daily conspiracy diatribes are sure losers,” said Dick Wadhams, a Republican strategist and former chairman of the Colorado Republican Party.

 

It's not going to save him.

 

He has to be indicted, and on a wide variety of crimes.

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Hearing Aides For America

The January 6th Committee hearings got underway last evening, and the criminality recounted in the primetime show included that yes, the Committee absolutely believes that Donald Trump organized a conspiracy to commit sedition, that everyone in Trump's inner circle, including his family, were in on it, that former VP Mike Pence got cold feet at the end and Trump wanted active harm to come to him as a result, and that multiple sitting Republicans in Congress wanted full pardons after the coup succeeded and Trump remained in power.

 

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) was one of “multiple” GOP lawmakers who asked President Trump for pardons given their roles in seeking to unwind the 2020 election results, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said in its first hearing Thursday night.

Perry’s office forcefully denied the allegation.

Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said Perry, who helped introduce former President Trump to a mid-level Justice Department attorney willing to forward his election fraud claims, was among several seeking pardons due to their roles.

“As you will see, Representative Perry contacted the White House in the weeks after January 6th to seek a presidential pardon. Multiple other Republican congressmen also sought presidential pardons for their roles in attempting to overturn the 2020 election,” Cheney said.

Perry spokesman Jay Ostrich denied that Perry sought a pardon from Trump.

“Laughable, ludicrous, and a thoroughly soulless lie,” Ostrich told The Hill.

 

But we know for a fact that GOP lawmakers wanted pardons. They knew what they were doing was seditious conspiracy.

CNN reported in January 2021 that “several” GOP lawmakers who were involved with the rally at the Ellipse in front of the White House that Trump spoke before the Capitol riot sought pardons from Trump. GOP lawmakers who spoke at the rally include Arizona GOP Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, as well as Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.).

And according to an October 2021 Rolling Stone report, Gosar floated the idea of “blanket pardons” for some of those organizing the Ellipse rally of Jan. 6.

The Jan. 6 committee issued subpoenas to Perry, Biggs, and Brooks. In a May letter requesting information from Biggs, the committee said that Biggs was identified by former White House personnel as being part of “an effort by certain House Republicans after January 6th to seek a presidential pardon for activities taken in connection with President Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.”

 

And that's because Trump wanted to become dictator, as the NY Times's Peter Baker tells us.

In the entire 246-year history of the United States, there was surely never a more damning indictment presented against an American president than outlined on Thursday night in a cavernous congressional hearing room where the future of democracy felt on the line.

Other presidents have been accused of wrongdoing, even high crimes and misdemeanors, but the case against Donald J. Trump mounted by the bipartisan House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol described not just a rogue president but a would-be autocrat willing to shred the Constitution to hang onto power at all costs.

As the committee portrayed it during its prime-time televised hearing, Mr. Trump executed a seven-part conspiracy to overturn a free and fair democratic election. According to the panel, he lied to the American people, ignored all evidence refuting his false fraud claims, pressured state and federal officials to throw out election results favoring his challenger, encouraged a violent mob to storm the Capitol and even signaled support for the execution of his own vice president.

“Jan. 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt, as one rioter put it shortly after Jan. 6, to overthrow the government,” said Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the select committee. “The violence was no accident. It represents Trump’s last stand, most desperate chance to halt the transfer of power.”

 

The purpose of the hearings is the make the case to America why Donald Trump must be arrested, tried, and convicted of sedition. 

They made that case last night alone.

Most incriminating were the words of Mr. Trump’s own advisers and appointees, played over video on a giant screen above the committee dais and beamed out to a national television audience. There was his own attorney general who told him that his false election claims were “bullshit.” There was his own campaign lawyer who testified that there was no evidence of fraud sufficient to change the outcome. And there was his own daughter, Ivanka Trump, who acknowledged that she accepted the conclusion that the election was not, in fact, stolen as her father kept claiming.

Much of the evidence was outlined by the lead Republican on the committee, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who has been ostracized by Mr. Trump and much of her own party for consistently denouncing his actions after the election. Unwavering, she sketched out the case and then addressed her fellow Republicans who have chosen to stand by their defeated former president and excuse his actions.

“I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone but your dishonor will remain,” she said.

 

These bastards have to fry. I know in the past I've said that Trump will never be convicted, and that any federal court proceedings will almost certainly lead to nationwide attacks on Democrats, but it has to happen. After what I saw last night, we have to do it.

 

More than ever, I am convinced that the alternative to perp-walking Trump is far worse.

The Big Lie, Con't

Trump's cultists would do anything in order to "prove" their case of "massive election fraud" and that apparently included breaching swing state election systems in order to find...or plant...evidence of such.

Eighteen months after Donald Trump lost the White House, loyal supporters continue to falsely assert that compromised balloting machines across America robbed him of the 2020 election.

To stand up that bogus claim, some Trump die-hards are taking the law into their own hands – by attempting, with some success, to compromise the voting systems themselves.

Previously unreported surveillance video captured one such effort in August in the rural Colorado town of Kiowa. Footage obtained by Reuters through a public-records request shows Elbert County Clerk Dallas Schroeder, the county’s top election official, fiddling with cables and typing on his phone as he copied computer drives containing sensitive voting information.

Schroeder, a Republican, later testified that he was receiving instructions on how to copy the system’s data from a retired Air Force colonel and political activist bent on proving Trump lost because of fraud.

That day, Aug. 26, Schroeder made a “forensic image of everything on the election server,” according to his testimony, and later gave the cloned hard drives to two lawyers.

Schroeder is now under investigation for possible violation of election laws by the Colorado secretary of state, which has also sued him seeking the return of the data. Schroeder is defying that state demand and has refused to identify one of the lawyers who took possession of the hard drives. The other is a private attorney who works with an activist backed by Mike Lindell, the pillow mogul and election conspiracy theorist.

Schroeder said in a legal filing that he believed he had a “statutory duty” to preserve voting records. He declined to comment for this report.

The episode is among eight known attempts to gain unauthorized access to voting systems in five U.S. states since the 2020 election. All involved local Republican officeholders or party activists who have advanced Trump’s stolen-election falsehoods or conspiracy theories about rigged voting machines, according to a Reuters examination of the incidents. Some of the breaches, including the one in Elbert County, were inspired in part by the false belief that state-ordered voting-system upgrades or maintenance would erase evidence of alleged fraud in the 2020 election. In fact, state election officials say, those processes have no impact on the voting systems’ ability to save data from past elections.

The incidents include a North Carolina case, first reported last week by Reuters, in which a local Republican Party leader threatened to get a top county election official fired or have her pay cut if she didn’t give him unauthorized access to voting equipment. In southern Michigan, a pro-Trump clerk who has expressed support for the QAnon conspiracy theory on social media defied state orders to perform maintenance on a voting machine on the unfounded belief that doing so could erase proof of alleged fraud. In another Michigan case, a Republican activist impersonated an official from a made-up government agency in a plot to seize voting equipment.

Some of the people and groups involved in the vigilante election-investigator movement are drawing financial support from Lindell, the My Pillow Inc chief executive and one of the most visible backers of Trump’s false fraud claims. Lindell said he hired four top members of one group, the U.S. Election Integrity Plan, or USEIP. The group got Lindell’s backing about three months after its co-founder advised Elbert County Clerk Schroeder in his effort to copy and leak voting data. In all, Lindell told Reuters he has spent about $30 million and hired up to 70 people, including lawyers and “cyber people,” partly in support of Cause of America, a right-wing network of election activists.

Lindell, who said he hasn’t been involved in any data breaches, said his quest aims to prove fraud in the 2020 vote and to reshape American elections by getting rid of electronic voting machines and returning to paper ballots. The Trump ally said his fraud claims will eventually be vindicated in spite of what he described as ridicule from the media.

“We’ve got to get rid of the machines!” Lindell said. “We need to melt them down and use them for prison bars and put everyone in prison that was involved with them.”

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

 

A lot of people should be in jail, chiefly Trump himself.  But the larger problem is that these crooks are setting up their game plan to steal the election from the Democrats in 2024, they're doing it in broad daylight, and little is being done to stop them.  If we don't, well....

 

From long before Election Day 2020, Trump and Republicans planned to overturn the presidential election by exploiting the Electors and Elections Clauses of the Constitution, the Electoral College, the Electoral Count Act of 1877, and the 12th Amendment, if Trump lost the popular and Electoral College vote.

The cornerstone of the plan was to have the Supreme Court embrace the little known "independent state legislature" doctrine, which, in turn, would pave the way for exploitation of the Electoral College process and the Electoral Count Act, and finally for Vice President Mike Pence to reject enough swing state electoral votes to overturn the election using Pence's ceremonial power under the 12th Amendment and award the presidency to Donald Trump. 

The independent state legislature doctrine says that, under the Elections and the Electors Clauses of the Constitution, state legislatures possess plenary and exclusive power over the conduct of federal presidential elections and the selection of state presidential electors. Not even a state supreme court, let alone other state elections officials, can alter the legislatively written election rules or interfere with the appointment of state electors by the legislatures, under this theory.

The Supreme Court has never decided whether to embrace the independent state legislature doctrine. But then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in separate concurring opinions said they would embrace that doctrine in Bush v. Gore, 20 years earlier, and Republicans had every reason to believe there were at least five votes on the Supreme Court for the doctrine in November 2020, with Amy Coney Barrett having just been confirmed in the eleventh hour before the election. 

Trump and the Republicans began executing this first stage of their plan months before November 3, by challenging as violative of the independent state legislature doctrine election rules relating to early- and late-voting, extensions of voting days and times, mail-in ballots, and other election law changes that Republicans contended had been unlawfully altered by state officials and state courts in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Michigan.

These cases eventually wound their way to the Supreme Court in the fall of 2020, and by December, the Supreme Court had decided all of these cases, but only by orders, either disallowing federal court intervention to change an election rule that had been promulgated by a state legislature, allowing legislatively promulgated rules to be changed by state officials and state courts, or deadlocking 4-4, because Justice Barrett was not sworn in until after those cases were briefed and ready for decision by the Court. In none of these cases did the Supreme Court decide the all-important independent state legislature doctrine.

Thwarted by the Supreme Court's indecision on that doctrine, Trump and the Republicans turned their efforts to the second stage of their plan, exploitation of the Electoral College and the Electoral Count Act.

The Electoral College is the process by which Americans choose their presidents, a process that can lead to the election as president of a candidate who does not receive a majority of votes cast by the American voters. Republicans have grown increasingly wary of the Electoral College with the new census and political demographics of the nation's shifting population. 

The Electoral Count Act empowers Congress to decide the presidency in a host of circumstances where Congress determines that state electoral votes were not "regularly given" by electors who were "lawfully certified," terms that are undefined and ambiguous. In this second stage of the plan, the Republicans needed to generate state-certified alternative slates of electors from swing states where Biden won the popular vote who would cast their electoral votes for Trump instead. Congress would then count the votes of these alternative electoral slates on January 6, rather than the votes of the certified electoral slates for Biden, and Trump would be declared the reelected president.

The Republicans' plan failed at this stage when they were unable to secure a single legitimate, alternative slate of electors from any state because the various state officials refused to officially certify these Trump-urged slates.

Thwarted by the Supreme Court in the first stage, foiled by their inability to come up with alternative state electoral slates in the second stage, and with time running out, Trump and the Republicans began executing the final option in their plan, which was to scare up illegitimate alternative electoral slates in various swing states to be transmitted to Congress. Whereupon, on January 6, Vice President Pence would count only the votes of the illegitimate electors from the swing states, and not the votes of the legitimate, certified electors that were cast for Biden, and declare Donald Trump's reelection as President of the United States.

 

All three of those tactics failed in 2020. In 2024, they  may very well succeed.

 

Unless we stop them.