2020 Election: Predictions, Results and Reactions

[Sunsilver]

Jones and Bannon - birds of a feather, it seems!

[N.E. Brigand]

Bradley Moss points out that for Donald Trump to have declassified the material he took to Mar-a-Lago, he would have had to have signed a "declassification order that went to the agency with control over the document". This was established by Trump's repeated public statements as President that he had declassified this or that document, only for reporters to find that their attempts to see such documents via Freedom Of Information Act requests were denied because the agencies in question had never received a formal order. On the other hand, Marcy Wheeler argues that the Scooter Libby trial seemed to establish that information could be declassified without taking such steps.

Moss believes that Trump broke the law and therefore should be prosecuted just like Gen. David Petraeus and Reality Winner were prosecuted for similar mishandling of documents. Petraeus pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years of probation and a $100,000 fine for sharing classified documents with his biographer (who was also his lover). Winner pleaded guilty and was sentenced to more than five years in jail for sharing NSA documents about Russia's interference in the 2016 election with a reporter. The day after Winner pleaded in 2018, President Trump tweeted that her crime was "'small potatoes' compared to what Hillary Clinton did!"

Wheeler suggests that one key document that Trump probably took to Florida was the transcript of his "perfect call" in 2019 with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that led to Trump's first impeachment (in other words, contrary to my suggestion of espionage above, Trump's primary motivation in taking these documents may have been to further cover up his wrongdoing). Which got me thinking: there's a case to be made that if the Senate had convicted Trump in that trial, President Mike Pence would have responded more effectively to the Covid-19 pandemic than Trump did and would have gone on to beat Joe Biden in the general election.

Speaking of Reality Winner: according to a new CBS report, after the Intercept published the NSA documents that Winner leaked to them showing that Russia had indeed attempted to hack U.S. election systems in 2016 (she said she was motivated in part by President Trump having publicly questioned whether Russian actually did any hacking), this happened:

But what prosecutors called grave damage was a bombshell of truth to the Federal Election Assistance Commission, which helps secure the vote. In hours, the commission issued an alert on the "NSA document leak." It spelled out the top secret email addresses "utilized by the attackers." And urged officials to "check email logs." Blindsided by Winner's revelation, the commission called for "full disclosure of election security intelligence." Two former officials told us, Reality Winner helped secure the 2018 midterm election.

My emphasis. She's now out after serving about four years. By contrast:

In 2008, Gregg Bergersen, a Pentagon employee, was convicted of selling secrets to the Chinese. He was seen in FBI surveillance getting his pocket stuffed with cash. His sentence was six months shorter than Reality Winner's. In 2012, former Army general and CIA Director David Petraeus gave notebooks of top secret information to an author who was his mistress. He was charged with misdemeanor mishandling of classified information and never spent a minute in jail.

[N.E. Brigand]

The January 6th Committee shared this image of the draft of the speech that President Trump delivered on January 7th, with his edits.

[RoseMorninStar]

That's quite telling, isn't it?

[N.E. Brigand]

In response to questions about whether texts on the phone of Secret Service Director James Murray were preserved in the upgrade of January 2021, the Secret Service responded that the only texts on Murray's phone from Jan. 5-6, 2021 were personal because:

"By policy, Secret Service employees are not to conduct official government business via text for information security purposes as well as government record retention."

Does that mean that there never were any (work-related) texts on other agents phones? (In January 2021, The Secret Service told a Buzzfeed reporter that there were texts responsive to his FOIA inquiry.) Or did the Secret Service just admit that its agents violate policy?

[Sunsilver]

Okay, how come no one's ever mentioned this before?

[N.E. Brigand]

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).

A minor update today: a court has ruled -- not unreasonably I think -- that D.A. Willis is disqualified in the case of one of the fake 2020 electors. She cannot oversee the grand jury investigation into State Senator Burt Jones because she campaigned for his opponent in this year's race for Georgia's lieutenant governor. (She campaigned for one of the would-be Democratic contenders during the primaries, but it was known by then that Jones would be the Republican nominee for this position.) The state district attorney will select another prosecutor to oversee matters pertaining to Jones. But the other non-electors will continue to be investigated by Willis.

[N.E. Brigand]

Two advisers to former Vice President Mike Pence testified to a federal grand jury last week: his chief of staff Marc Short and his legal counsel Greg Jacob.

[N.E. Brigand]

The New York Times has new reporting on the fake electors schemes, including an email in which a lawyer taking part in the scheme even refers to them as "'fake' electors."

Edited to add what that lawyer also wrote about what Kelli Ward, the chair of the Arizona Republican Party, told him about the fake electors. He wrote that Ward said she wanted "to keep them under wraps until Congress counts the vote Jan. 6th (so we can try to 'surprise' the Dems and media with it) — I tend to agree with her."

Edited to add this line about Congress: "They could potentially argue that they’re not bound by Federal Law because they’re Congress and make the law."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Edited to add something from the article pertinent to the upcoming 2022 elections: "As they organized the fake elector scheme, lawyers appointed a 'point person' in seven states to help organize those electors who were willing to sign their names to false documents. In Pennsylvania, that point person was Douglas V. Mastriano, a proponent of Trump's lies of a stolen election who is now the Republican nominee for governor."

[N.E. Brigand]

Edited to add what that lawyer also wrote about what Kelli Ward, the chair of the Arizona Republican Party, told him about the fake electors. He wrote that Ward said she wanted "to keep them under wraps until Congress counts the vote Jan. 6th (so we can try to 'surprise' the Dems and media with it) — I tend to agree with her."

This could be a key point differentiating this scheme from what was done in Hawai'i in 1960. In that year, Vice President Richard Nixon was initially declared the winner of that new state's presidential election, but a federal judge ordered a recount, and by the date the electors were to meet in December, the recount still in progress showed Senator John F. Kennedy ahead in the votes. So Democrats announced that, given the strong possibility that Kennedy would win the state's popular vote, their slate of electors would also meet that day to certify Kennedy as the winner pending the final count. And when the final tally did indeed show Kennedy in the lead, and the judge who had ordered the recount ruled that Kennedy had won Hawai'i, the state's Republican governor (1) certified the Democratic electors and (2) told the General Services Administration that Hawai'i would not appeal the ruling. The certification on January 6, 1961 was overseen by Richard Nixon himself, who asked Congress for and received unanimous consent to accept the ballots for Kennedy. Everything was above board and contingent upon ongoing legal processes.

But in 2020-21, court decisions went 60-1 against the Trump campaign, no recount showed Trump winning, and the Trump team wanted to spring the alternate slates of electors on Congress during the certification!

[N.E. Brigand]

Mother Jones has obtained audio of Steve Bannon on Oct. 31, 2020 discussing election strategy with Guo Wengui, the exiled Chinese billionaire on whose yacht Bannon had been arrested earlier that year. The article is titled "Bannon Bragged That He Used Porn to Help Smear Hunter Biden." Bannon praised Guo's "editorial creativity" in mixing apparently genuine explicit content from Hunter's laptop -- which Bannon says he gave to Guo (apparently having received it from Rudy Giuliani?) -- with "false claims about the material":

First, [Guo] told [his staff who were posting the material online] to say the files included images of Hunter Biden with underage Chinese girls. There is no evidence at all supporting this allegation. Second, Guo told subordinates to claim that the Chinese government had obtained the material and used it to blackmail Hunter and his father, Joe Biden. That, too, was a lie, people involved in publishing the material told me.

In the recordings, Bannon also says -- more than a week before the election -- that the lies Guo spread about Hunter Biden were keeping Donald Trump close enough in the polls that Joe Biden would not be able to win in a blowout, which meant that Trump could adopt his backup "strategy" of claiming that there was fraud and declaring victory even if he was behind in the votes. Bannon went on: "So my point is, any peaceful resolution of this [election] is probably gone."

[N.E. Brigand]

The Washington Post reports, with four sources, that Donald Trump actually is under investigation by the Department of Justice for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Here's a story from earlier this month that takes on new irony.

The head of the Secret Service is leaving after 27 years to become Snapchat's security chief

And what is snapchat famous for? Messages that rapidly disappear!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Meanwhile, Benny Thompson (who is not only the Chair of the 1/6 Select Committee but also the Chair of the House Homeland Security Committee) and Carolyn Maloney, chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, have called for Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari to step down, because he delayed for months notifying the House committees that Secret Service texts that they were seeking had been erased.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/l ... 747b851b78

[N.E. Brigand]

The Washington Post reports, with four sources, that Donald Trump actually is under investigation by the Department of Justice for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

According to that article, DOJ's investigation was far enough along in April of this year that it had acquired "phone records of key officials and aides in the Trump administration" by that point. That was two months before the start of the January 6th Committee's hearings. There is speculation that the reason we're learning this now is that the phone companies initially were under a gag order and could only recently inform these former White House staff (who are now talking to the press).

Meanwhile, a journalist at the New York Times is pointing out that he reported more than seven months ago that DOJ was "looking for information about a possible 'organized conspiracy' involving the former president."

[N.E. Brigand]

Interesting little discussion here (involving a former Attorney General from the 2010s and a former White House counsel from the 1970s) about the long-term damage that Gerald Ford did to the U.S. by pardoning Richard Nixon.

If Donald Trump is ever charged and convicted in federal court for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, I could accept a decision by President Biden to commute his sentence, as long as Trump didn't serve less time than any other January 6th conspirator.

(Despite recent news, it still remains a long shot that Trump would be charged must less convicted.)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm currently at about 0.036% chance. Which, to be fair, is 0.0036% higher than I was.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yesterday, the government provided the following update regarding the seizure of John Eastman's phone, which he had unsuccessfully tried to get returned. At the time that the court rejected that request, it required that the government give an update by July 27 confirming that it had obtained a second warrant to examine the contents of the phone.

The United States is in possession of Plaintiff’s cell phone, as well as a manual screen capture of certain contents of the device obtained by an agent not associated with the investigation team. Plaintiff’s cell phone and the manual screen capture currently are in Northern Virginia, in the possession of federal agents with the Department of Justice, Office of Inspector General. On July 12, 2022, a federal agent obtained a second federal search warrant from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that authorizes review of the contents of Plaintiff’s cell phone and the manual screen capture. The warrant includes a filter protocol, which has been provided to Plaintiff’s counsel

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This might be the strongest indication yet that Garland and his team really are serious.

EXCLUSIVE: Prosecutors prepare for court battle to force former White House officials to testify about Trump's January 6 conversations

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Guy Reffitt, the first 1/6 insurrectionist to go to trial rather than plead guilty, has received a sentence of over seven years. Reffit was armed with a gun and threated Speaker Nancy Pelosi. While not an insignificant sentence, it certainly could have been longer.

Jan 6. rioter who carried gun to US Capitol and threatened Nancy Pelosi gets more than 7 years in prison