2020 Election: Predictions, Results and Reactions

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Then there is this intersection between the 1/6 Select Committee investigation, and the investigation by the Fulton County District Attorney, Fani Willis:

Georgia official texted Mark Meadows as Trump badgered secretary of state to 'find' votes

As Donald Trump badgered Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on an hour-long call to "find" the votes necessary to flip the battleground state to Trump's column after the 2020 election, a Raffensperger aide fired off a plea for help.

"Need to end this call," Jordan Fuchs, then the deputy secretary of state, said in a text message to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. "I don't think this will be productive much longer."
She added: "Let's save the relationship."
The little-noticed text messages, included in a recent court filing, provide a deeper look at the chaos that ensued as the former President pressed Raffensperger to help prove Trump won in Georgia -- a state Trump lost. That call now stands at the center of an investigation into Trump, which is set to advance this week when Atlanta-area prosecutors convene a special grand jury to determine whether any of Trump's actions related to Georgia's election -- or those of his allies -- were criminal.

With all of the stuff that has come out from the texts that Meadows voluntarily provided before he stopped cooperating with the Select Committee, one has to wonder what is in the texts that he did not give up.

[N.E. Brigand]

A jury today found that Thomas Webster, the guy in the red jacket on the left in this photo from January 6th, was not engaged in self-defense at this moment:



Webster himself is a retired New York police officer.

Edit: The image link now appears to be broken. It showed Webster standing with his hands on the head of a Capitol Police officer who is kneeling and appears to be in pain.

[N.E. Brigand]

"We have multiple paths. We control them all."

source: Donald Trump Jr. texted Mark Meadows ideas on how to overturn the 2020 election (Business Insider)

Mind you, that particular message dates to November 5, the day before the election, and Don Jr.'s lawyer says he was probably just forwarding Meadows a message originally written by somebody else.

As a number of people are observing, for all the attention devoted to Hunter Biden, he was never part of his father's vice presidential or presidential offices, unlike Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, and there's been nothing to suggest he did anything to interfere in an election, but Donald Trump, Jr. only avoided being prosecuted for his interaction with Russia in 2016 because Robert Mueller decided he didn't know he was breaking the law (and wasn't sure how to assign a value to information that would be used to affect an election), and now we learn that Don Jr. was also plotting ways to undermine the 2020 election results.

I didn't read it at the time, but there was a Washington Post story published just over a month ago about Hunter Biden's laptop. The Post examined a hard drive purporting to contain the contents of the laptop. The reporters found that while some of the content on the drive definitely belonged to the president's son, other things had been added after Biden supposedly left the machine at a computer repair store in 2019 and forgot about it. The added items included new folders added in September 2020 named "Desktop Biden," "Biden Burisma," and "Hunter. Burisma Documents" and new folders added in October 2020 named "Mail," "Salacious Pics Package," and "Big Guy File." (There have been reports indicating that Hunter referred to his dad in correspondence as "the Big Guy.") In addition, even some emails pertaining to the Ukrainian gas company Burisma which appeared to be legitimate still couldn't be verified, because it is known that Russian agents had hacked into Burisma, where they could have planted false evidence.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

My gut feeling is that Fani Willis is going to eventually file charges against Trump. That is not based on any kind of solid reasoning, it is just a gut feeling (which of course goes against my normal cynicism).

[N.E. Brigand]

The Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security has determined that in the summer of 2020, Chad Wolf, the Acting DHS Secretary, blocked the release of a report about Russia's then ongoing attempts to hurt Joe Biden's presidential campaign. The I.G. says that Wolf did this in order to help Donald Trump.

Eventually the report was released, but only after DHS had it changed to add a statement that Iran and China wanted to Trump to lose (a conclusion about which DHS analysts had much less confidence), in order to politically "balance" the report -- which the I.G. says is not supposed to be a purpose of intelligence reports.

[N.E. Brigand]

I think that last point bears repeating: the Acting Director of the Department of Homeland Security covered up Russia's support of Donald Trump.

In other words, he aided and abetted a foreign power that was (again!) attacking the U.S. election system.

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A new Washington Post / ABC poll finds that a slight majority of Americans -- 52% -- believe that Donald Trump should be criminally charged for his role in the January 6th insurrection.

And that's based on a question that makes arguably the kindest possible framing of Trump's actions:

"As you may know, Donald Trump encouraged his supporters to march to the U.S. Capitol, where the riot followed. Do you think Trump should be charged with a crime for his role in the incident, or do you think he should not be charged?"

If Trump is charged, it won't be for just urging his followers to march.

[N.E. Brigand]

Another member of the Oath Keepers, William Todd Wilson of North Carolina, has been charged with seditious conspiracy, and he is pleading guilty; he's the third person to do so. According to the Information at that link, Wilson was one of the "regional leaders" of the group, which:

"coordinated travel across the country to enter Washington, D.C., equipped themselves with a variety of weapons, donned combat and tactical gear, and were prepared to answer Rhodes’s call to take up arms at Rhodes’s direction. WILSON and other co-conspirators also amassed firearms on the outskirts of Washington, D.C.--some distributed across hotels and “quick reaction force” (“QRF”) teams--and planned to use them in support of their plot to halt the lawful transfer of power."

As some have noticed, the reference to multiple QRF teams at multiple hotels appears to be new information.

- - - - - - - - - -
In other January 6th news, Donald Trump Jr. testified to the House Select Committee today for more than two hours and without a subpoena.

[N.E. Brigand]

Another member of the Oath Keepers, William Todd Wilson of North Carolina, has been charged with seditious conspiracy, and he is pleading guilty; he's the third person to do so. According to the Information at that link, Wilson was one of the "regional leaders" of the group, which:

"coordinated travel across the country to enter Washington, D.C., equipped themselves with a variety of weapons, donned combat and tactical gear, and were prepared to answer Rhodes’s call to take up arms at Rhodes’s direction. WILSON and other co-conspirators also amassed firearms on the outskirts of Washington, D.C.--some distributed across hotels and “quick reaction force” (“QRF”) teams--and planned to use them in support of their plot to halt the lawful transfer of power."

As some have noticed, the reference to multiple QRF teams at multiple hotels appears to be new information.

- - - - - - - - - -
In other January 6th news, Donald Trump Jr. testified to the House Select Committee today for more than two hours and without a subpoena.

Whoa.

Wilson says that later in the day on January 6, 2021, while he was in a hotel suite with Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, he listened on speakerphone as Rhodes called some associate of Donald Trump and attempted, unsuccessfully, to talk to Trump directly.

Now it may help Trump's eventual case (if there is one) that he didn't speak with Rhodes then, but it doesn't look good that Rhodes was able to speak with someone who apparently was close enough to Trump to get the president on the phone if he wished.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Just because Wilson says that he didn't hear Rhodes speak to Trump doesn't mean that Rhodes didn't eventually talk to Trump directly. Of course, we'll probably never know for sure.

[N.E. Brigand]

In other January 6th news, Donald Trump Jr. testified to the House Select Committee today for more than two hours and without a subpoena.

I rather hope his testimony sounded like this:

[N.E. Brigand]

If you're in court to enter a guilty plea, don't tell the judge you're innocent.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

If you're in court to enter a guilty plea, don't tell the judge you're innocent.

It would be helpful if you would say what you are referring to.

[N.E. Brigand]

If you're in court to enter a guilty plea, don't tell the judge you're innocent.

It would be helpful if you would say what you are referring to.

The Far-Right Troll Known As “Baked Alaska” Just Blew Up His Own Jan. 6 Plea Hearing (Buzzfeed)

His real name is Tim Gionet, and here's how his hearing was described in the moment on social media:



The judge set a trial date for Gionet -- who used to work for Buzzfeed and has promoted white nationalism on his very active social media video feeds -- for March of 2023, but prosecutors agreed to give him two more months to take their deal. He had livestreamed from inside the Capitol on January 6th saying things like "1776 will commence again."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Thank you.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The January 6 Select Committee has taken the extraordinary step of issuing subpoenas to Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and four other GOP representatives, Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania. Of course they won't appear, and then the committee will have the choice of whether to try to hold their colleagues in contempt of Congress, if that is even possible. I'm not sure what they think they are going to achieve by doing this, but at the same time, I'm not sure what choice they had.

January 6 committee issues subpoenas to 5 House Republicans, including Kevin McCarthy

[RoseMorninStar]

Rules and laws are nothing without accountability. If there is no accountability, we may as well kiss our democracy goodbye.

“We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws.” -Hunter Thompson

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Forgive my moment of extreme cynicism, but not only is democracy already dead (if it ever was really alive), the human race itself is already in its death throes as we have passed the point of actually being able to take the actions necessary to effectively address the climate crisis.

[RoseMorninStar]

Forgive my moment of extreme cynicism, but not only is democracy already dead (if it ever was really alive), the human race itself is already in its death throes as we have passed the point of actually being able to take the actions necessary to effectively address the climate crisis.

Unfortunately, I agree but that doesn't mean we have to go without a fight/expressing rage.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Hard to say how significant this is.

Justice Department asks January 6 committee for transcripts of witness testimony

[N.E. Brigand]

One hopes that it was a move long planned and that it will bear fruit. Apparently there's going to be some negotiating between DOJ and the Committee.

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In other 2020 election news, yesterday the Federal Election Commission, which has three Republican members and three Democratic members, deadlocked once more when confronted with claims of Republican campaign improprieties. Although the Democrats on the FEC have joined their Republican colleagues to impose fines on both Hillary Clinton ($8,000) and the Democratic National Committee ($105,000) in the past year, the FEC has time and again voted 3-3 on matters concerning Republicans, and a tie prevents action.

In this case, a complaint was submitted to the FEC alleging that Donald Trump's 2020 campaign "funneled hundreds of millions in donor cash through American Made Media Consultants (AMMC), a shell company that Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner helped create, and Parscale Strategy, which is run by former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, to hide payments to sub-vendors. The Trump campaign funneled about $617 million in campaign spending through AMMC, making it virtually impossible for the public to know how the money was spent. The complaint notes that Parscale Strategy was run by one of Trump's top aides and AMMC's board included family members of Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence." If the FEC were to investigate and determine that the complaint was accurate, it could result in Trump being fined more than one billion dollars, but the Republicans on the FEC balked, so the issue won't even be investigated.

Is this evidence that Democrats are more moral than Republicans?