2020 Election: Predictions, Results and Reactions

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Meanwhile, the DOJ has refused to defend Mo Brooks in the lawsuit filed against him, Trump, Trump, Jr. and Giuliani by Rep. Swalwell over 1/6, rejecting his claim that he was acting in the course of his duties as a Congressman when he delivered a speech to Trump supporters at the Jan. 6 "Stop the Steal" rally that helped rile up the crowd.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/27/politics ... index.html

[N.E. Brigand]

Also, my O.J. Simpson analogy earlier was not idle. I think there's a reasonable chance that Jim Jordan has personal knowledge (or worse) of the most serious crimes committed in connection to the events of January 6th.

Broadly, I harbor suspicions that Donald Trump told Jordan and some other members of Congress to delay the day's proceedings as long as possible, because Trump hoped that there would be violence from anti-Trump protesters, to which his supporters would respond with further violence (i.e., I suspect that Trump, via Roger Stone, may have known that the Proud Boys, Oathkeepers, etc. had a "quick reaction force" stationed just outside D.C. with caches of weapons that they could bring to bear), which would get dangerous enough that he could use it as an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act, call in active duty troops, and stop the certification of the vote. This appears to be what Gen. Milley feared when he was comparing Trump to Hitler.

My suspicions as outlined above extend only a little past what we already know. It's been reported that Trump met with Jordan and others a few days before Jan. 6th to discuss ways to stop Biden's victory from being certified. The QRF has been documented in numerous Jan. 6th indictments. The Oathkeepers acted as bodyguard for Stone on Jan. 5th. Stone is known to have regularly been in touch with Trump in the past. And on January 6th, as the attack was under way, CNN's Jim Acosta reported that a "source close to the White House who is in touch with some of the rioters at the Capitol said it's the goal of those involved to stay inside the Capitol through the night."

Jordan may be called as a witness by the committee. He might even take the Fifth.

On Fox News tonight, Jim Jordan said that he did speak to Donald Trump on January 6.

He should testify. And not just about what he and Trump discussed that day, but going back at least to December.

[Frelga]

This seems to be treated as a bold victory of some sort. Why's that?

[elengil]

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/doj-dec ... d=79103944

The Justice Department declined a request from Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., Tuesday night to intervene for him in a lawsuit brought by a Democratic lawmaker suing him for his role in allegedly inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

[N.E. Brigand]

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have obtained and released notes taken by the Acting Deputy Attorney General, Richard Donoghue, on a Dec. 27 call between President Donald Trump and Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen. During that call, Rosen explains to Trump that the Dept. of Justice can't "snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election". Trump responds that he didn't "expect you to do that," but that Rosen should "just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressmen."

More evidence that this was an attempted coup.

And even if there had been no insurrection attempted by Trump's domestic terrorist supporters (whether that attack was carried out at his explicit directions we don't yet know), today's revelation alone would make what Trump did at least as bad as Watergate.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Much worse, as far as I am concerned. And the worst part of it is that it will likely cause barely a ripple.

I don't really see this news as evidence that Trump was involved in the 1/6 insurrection per se. While it shows that Trump had motivation to spur an uprising, we already knew that. It doesn't actually move the needle at showing that he actively took steps that led to the actions of the terrorists on that day. But it does show that he was seeking to use the Justice Department as a tool to facilitate extralegally overturning the lawful results of the election. That alone should be enough charge him, though of course it won't be.

[Frelga]

[N.E. Brigand]

While we're deliberating that subject, I'll note something about the election and not the insurrection: tonight's reporting from the New York Times that President Trump in late December and early January contemplated firing Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and replacing him with a conspiracy-addled attorney named Jeffrey Bossert Clark, who was the acting head of the Dept. of Justice's Civil Division. Clark was proposing a scheme by which the Dept. of Justice would get Georgia to void their election results. This is apparently what Trump had in mind when he said in his infamous phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger that if Raffensberger wouldn't toss out the results as Trump proposed, then Trump had another way to fix the situation, but he didn't "want to get into it" during the call. Rosen wouldn't go along with this scheme, which is why Clark suggested that Trump replace him -- and Clark even told Rosen that Trump was going to remove him. But Clark and Rosen met with Trump together, each explaining their positions, and Rosen won out by informing Trump that every other Dept. of Justice official would resign if Rosen was fired.

Following up on this Times story from late January: today ABC News reports new details on Jeffrey Clark's plan for the Justice Department to help Donald Trump overturn the election, including a draft letter that would have been sent to the Georgia legislature urging them to declare a "special session for the limited purpose of considering issues pertaining to the appointment of Presidential Electors." Fortunately Clark was not in a position to send that letter, and his colleagues at DOJ refused to go along with the scheme.

[N.E. Brigand]

While we're deliberating that subject, I'll note something about the election and not the insurrection: tonight's reporting from the New York Times that President Trump in late December and early January contemplated firing Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and replacing him with a conspiracy-addled attorney named Jeffrey Bossert Clark, who was the acting head of the Dept. of Justice's Civil Division. Clark was proposing a scheme by which the Dept. of Justice would get Georgia to void their election results. This is apparently what Trump had in mind when he said in his infamous phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger that if Raffensberger wouldn't toss out the results as Trump proposed, then Trump had another way to fix the situation, but he didn't "want to get into it" during the call. Rosen wouldn't go along with this scheme, which is why Clark suggested that Trump replace him -- and Clark even told Rosen that Trump was going to remove him. But Clark and Rosen met with Trump together, each explaining their positions, and Rosen won out by informing Trump that every other Dept. of Justice official would resign if Rosen was fired.

Following up on this Times story from late January: today ABC News reports new details on Jeffrey Clark's plan for the Justice Department to help Donald Trump overturn the election, including a draft letter that would have been sent to the Georgia legislature urging them to declare a "special session for the limited purpose of considering issues pertaining to the appointment of Presidential Electors." Fortunately Clark was not in a position to send that letter, and his colleagues at DOJ refused to go along with the scheme.

I think Chris Hayes makes a good point: I have been understating the gravity of what Clark did, and we came dangerously close to the end of American democracy.

[N.E. Brigand]

Arguably this news actually belongs in a thread about the 2016 U.S. presidential election, but rather than resurrect something so old, I'll note it here.

The Inspector General for the Department of Justice has *finally* released a report into the investigation of the FBI leaks in October 2016 that led James Comey to inform Congress that the FBI was reopening its investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server because of messages found a computer belonging to disgraced Congressman Anthony Wiener, who was married to Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Some of these leaks appeared to go to Donald Trump's advisor, Rudy Giuliani, who said on news programs that FBI leadership was covering up important information about Clinton.

About a week after Comey wrote to Congress, which promptly leaked the news to the press, the investigation determined (and Comey informed Congress) that all emails on the Wiener computer had already been identified in the FBI's earlier investigation and were not relevant. But both the Clinton campaign (at the time) and some elections analysts like Nate Silver (in later analysis) have pointed to Comey's October announcement as having been the key event that enabled Donald Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton (whose standing in the polls had already been weakened by a month of a Russian smear campaign spread via Wikileaks).

And what does the I.G. report find?

Apparently that so many FBI agents (30+) were leaking, with the general effect if not always necessarily the intention of damaging Clinton's campaign, that it's not possible to determine who leaked the information that led to Comey disclosing the reopened investigation to Congress before it was complete. As for Giuliani, the FBI identified four agents as the likeliest suspects, but because they called the central phone number for Rudy Giuliani's law firm and not a phone held by Giuliani himself (and the law firm's internal switching records apparently were not available), the I.G. can't determine whether any of those agents were the leakers or even that Giuliani actually was contacted by anyone at the FBI. And Giuliani himself told investigators working on this report that he wasn't contacted by any active FBI agents and that he had no idea what was coming. (I don't believe him.)

[N.E. Brigand]

While we're deliberating that subject, I'll note something about the election and not the insurrection: tonight's reporting from the New York Times that President Trump in late December and early January contemplated firing Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and replacing him with a conspiracy-addled attorney named Jeffrey Bossert Clark, who was the acting head of the Dept. of Justice's Civil Division. Clark was proposing a scheme by which the Dept. of Justice would get Georgia to void their election results. This is apparently what Trump had in mind when he said in his infamous phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger that if Raffensberger wouldn't toss out the results as Trump proposed, then Trump had another way to fix the situation, but he didn't "want to get into it" during the call. Rosen wouldn't go along with this scheme, which is why Clark suggested that Trump replace him -- and Clark even told Rosen that Trump was going to remove him. But Clark and Rosen met with Trump together, each explaining their positions, and Rosen won out by informing Trump that every other Dept. of Justice official would resign if Rosen was fired.

Following up on this Times story from late January: today ABC News reports new details on Jeffrey Clark's plan for the Justice Department to help Donald Trump overturn the election, including a draft letter that would have been sent to the Georgia legislature urging them to declare a "special session for the limited purpose of considering issues pertaining to the appointment of Presidential Electors." Fortunately Clark was not in a position to send that letter, and his colleagues at DOJ refused to go along with the scheme.

The New York Times is reporting that Donald Trump's Acting Attorney General at the time of the insurrection, Jeffrey Rosen, recently gave a couple hours of testimony to the Department of Justice Inspector General's office and today met with the Senate Judiciary Committee.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Heather Cox Richardson broke her usual pattern of just posting a picture on the weekend to discuss this:

While I try to post a picture on weekends, I don’t want to fail to put in this record that today’s testimony by Jeffrey A. Rosen, acting attorney general during the Trump administration, before the Senate Judiciary Committee, strikes me as being a game-changer.

New York Times reporter Katie Benner broke the news way back in January that a relatively unknown lawyer in the Justice Department, Jeffrey Clark, worked secretly with then-president Donald Trump to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Clark was a political appointee in the Environmental and Natural Resources Division of the Department of Justice until he was moved in September 2020 to the civil division.
Rosen replaced Attorney General William Barr when Barr resigned on December 23, 2020. But immediately, when Rosen refused to entertain the idea of overturning the election, Trump considered firing Rosen and replacing him with Clark. Rosen and his acting deputy attorney general, Richard P. Donoghue, along with top leaders in the Department of Justice all threatened to resign if Trump made the change, and the then-president backed down.

The news that Clark and Trump were working together to overturn the election sparked congressional investigations in the House Oversight and Reform Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee. On Wednesday July 28, from the House committee, we learned that Trump had pressured Rosen daily to help him overturn the election. And we learned that Donoghue had taken notes of the calls.
On Friday, July 31, the House Oversight and Reform Committee released some of those notes. They were explosive. On December 27, Rosen said that the Department of Justice had concluded the election was legitimate and that it “can’t + won’t snap its fingers + change the outcome of the election.” Trump replied that he just wanted the department to “say the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R[epublican] Congressmen.”

The next day, Clark tried to get Rosen and Donoghue to sign off on a letter claiming that the election had been fraudulent and saying that the Georgia legislature should appoint a different set of presidential electors on the grounds that the election there was full of irregularities.
The Justice Department had already determined that the election was, in fact, legitimate, and not marred by fraud. Donoghue responded to Clark that “there is no chance that I would sign this letter or anything remotely like this…. [T]his is not even within the realm of possibility.” Rosen wrote: “I confirmed again today that I am not prepared to sign such a letter."

According to an article in the New York Times by Katie Benner today, Rosen has been in talks with the Department of Justice for months to determine what information he could offer without disclosing information covered by executive privilege. On July 27, the Department of Justice said it would not restrict the testimony of former officials to the House Oversight and Reform Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee, and shortly after, former president Donald Trump said he would not sue to stop them from testifying.

Clark did not comment, but in January he said that while he had “a candid discussion of options and pros and cons with the president,” all of his official communications with Trump “were consistent with law.”

According to Benner, as soon as he got the all-clear, Rosen scheduled interviews with the congressional committees and with the inspector general of the Department of Justice to tell as much as he could of what he had seen before anyone tried to stop him. He met with the inspector general yesterday, and today he talked to the Senate Judiciary Committee for more than six hours.
Richard P. Donoghue has also agreed to testify, as have other Department of Justice officials.

What this means is that congressional investigating committees now have witnesses to Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.

I agree with her that this could be a game-changer.

[N.E. Brigand]

As that piece notes, Donald Trump has said he won't sue to stop Jeffrey Rosen from testifying.

But if Trump were to sue, and Rosen wanted to testify anyway, what's to stop him? Wouldn't Rosen's First Amendment rights trump Trump's executive privilege claims? And even if somehow Trump won his suit, what would that really mean? What punishment could Rosen face for telling the truth? As long as Rosen doesn't publicly reveal classified information, he wouldn't be breaking any laws, right?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I agree that there wouldn't be anything to stop Rosen from testifying if he wanted to. Just as there wouldn't really have been anything stopping Bolton from testifying if he really had wanted to do the right thing (but I digress).

I'm venturing into speculation way outside my area of knowledge, but I really wouldn't think that Trump would have standing to assert executive privilege as an ex-President, thought that wouldn't necessarily mean that he couldn't try.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It looks like Rosen et al. will be testifying before the Select Committee rather than the the House Oversight Committee.

Jan. 6 select panel takes over House probe of Trump DOJ

[N.E. Brigand]

This story is just nuts:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/12/politics ... index.html

Colorado's secretary of state says that the county clerk for Mesa County seems to have assisted in the disabling of security cameras and the theft of sensitive election machine information that was then provided to conspiracy theorists. Accordingly the county must replace hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of equipment. That clerk appeared this week at Mike Lindell's conference in South Dakota.

[RoseMorninStar]

[River]

This story is just nuts:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/12/politics ... index.html

Colorado's secretary of state says that the county clerk for Mesa County seems to have assisted in the disabling of security cameras and the theft of sensitive election machine information that was then provided to conspiracy theorists. Accordingly the county must replace hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of equipment. That clerk appeared this week at Mike Lindell's conference in South Dakota.

And that's the vulnerability in the CO election system: it's only as good as the idiot the locals pick to run the show.

[N.E. Brigand]

Yesterday, Reuters published a troubling story about the investigation into the January 6 insurrection, in which it was reported that "the FBI has so far found no evidence that he or people directly around [President Trump] were involved in organizing the violence," according to some current and former law enforcement issues.

I have the evidence, if the FBI needs it. It's right here:

In December 2020, the President of the United States invited his supporters to a D.C. rally to be held on January 6, the day that his opponent's victory was scheduled to be certified. He said the event would be "wild." He spent two months claiming that there was widespread voter fraud and that lawmakers should overturn the reults. He and his allies filed numerous lawsuits attempting to overturn the election; these lawsuits were so ridiculous that the lawyers involved are at serious risk for sanctions, but they led Trump's supporters to believe that crimes had been committed. At the rally itself, Trump told his supporters that he would lead them to the Capitol, where lawmakers needed to be prevented from confirming Joe Biden's election. He told them "if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." And then thousands of his supporters marched to the Capitol and attempted to do just that. (Some of those people have said in the legal defense that they were just donig what Trump asked them to do.) Trump himself did not lead the march on the Capitol but instead returned to the White House where he watched the violence on TV and did nothing for hours to quell it.

Here's some more evidence:

The day before insurrection, Trump confidant and former senior Trump administration official Steve Bannon said this on a podcast: "All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. Just understand this. All hell his going to break loose tomorrow. It's gonna be moving. It's gonna be quick."

And here's still more:

This is from CNN's Jim Acosta on January 6, during the insurrection: "A source close to the White House who is in touch with some of the rioters at the Capitol said it's the goal of those involved to stay inside the Capitol through the night." And at about the same time, Trump was on the phone with Republican lawmakers, still urging them to delay the certification.

Just because you conduct your conspiracy in the open doesn't mean it's not a conspiracy.

[RoseMorninStar]

Just because you conduct your conspiracy in the open doesn't mean it's not a conspiracy.

THIS. It's Trump's modus operandi. He does it all of the time. You are correct, that he does/says it in the open/publically shouldn't nullify what it is.