The face of evil. Apologists for Jan. 6 2021 have to weigh where this is headed. I.e. a plan curated by Putin allies and Congressional enablers
First I will list 5 allegations as to the Jan 6 hearings
a. Ivanka Trump accepted there was no widespread election fraud
b.Trump allegedly knew the Jan. 6 crowd had weapons — and wanted to join them at the Capitol anyways
c.Trump’s own campaign manager balked at fraud claims and was proud to be on ‘Team Normal’
d.The ‘Election Defense Fund’ that didn’t exist
e.Trump reportedly thought Mike Pence deserved to hang
g. Quote
Shortly after the election, Mr. Trump and his allies seized on conspiracy theories, falsely claiming that election workers in Atlanta had been caught on video quietly taking thousands of ballots from a suitcase and feeding them into counting machines. Even though the allegations were quickly investigated and debunked, Mr. Sterling said, Mr. Trump and his lawyers continued to push the claims in public and on social media.
Fighting back against this flood of misinformation, Mr. Sterling said, was like “a shovel trying to empty the ocean.”
The committee showed the breathtaking sweep of the pressure campaign across seven states, playing clips from officials in Michigan and Pennsylvania who were inundated with thousands of text messages, phone calls, protesters near their homes and threats. At one point, Bryan Cutler, the Republican House speaker in Pennsylvania, asked Mr. Trump’s legal team to stop its daily phone calls to him because they were inappropriate.
The plan found eager allies in Congress, however.
end of quote
Essentially due to a misinformation campaign partly curated in Moscow, every lever imaginable was used to try to ruin representative Government, PERMAMENTLY. What is worse is that elderly Americans, whom I do not doubt in terms of their patriotism and I have spoken to many of them, due to their age, and the shocking implications of this betrayal cannot process the degree of deception and depravity. Their worn out, terrified state as I witnessed it, is systematic of the wound done to the United States by this horror
h. Finally
quote
Fake elector plan.?The committee used its fourth hearing to detail how Mr. Trump was personally involved in?a scheme to put forward fake electors. The panel also presented fresh details on how the former president leaned on state officials to invalidate his defeat,?opening them up to violent threats when they refused.
Strong arming the Justice Department.?During the fifth hearing, the panel explored Mr. Trump’s?wide-ranging and relentless scheme to misuse the Justice Department?to keep himself in power. The panel also presented evidence that at least half a dozen Republican members of Congress?sought?pre-emptive?pardons.
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Now for the articles
https://www.yahoo.com/news/five-most-damaging-allegations-against-100000223.html
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The five most damaging allegations against Trump from the Jan. 6 hearings — so far
Mon, July 4, 2022 at 6:00 AM·6 min read
The House select committee investigating Jan. 6 has dominated the news agenda during the past month, holding six public hearings.
The panel, comprised of seven Democrats and two Republicans critical of Trump — Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) — has laid out a compelling case against the former president.
By the panel’s account, Trump knew his claims of election fraud were bogus, recklessly encouraged the Jan 6. rioters and endangered his own vice president as members of a mob marching on the Capitol called for Mike Pence’s hanging.
Whether the panel will make a criminal referral of Trump to the Department of Justice has not been settled. And there are still more hearings to go.
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Here are five of the most damaging details leveled against Trump during the proceedings so far.
Ivanka Trump accepted there was no widespread election fraud
The first Jan. 6 hearing was carried in prime time on June 9 and drew an audience of around 20 million people.
There was plenty of dramatic testimony from the hearing room but the most telling detail — and the one with the most lasting impact — came from a video interview with Ivanka Trump.
The president’s elder daughter said that she accepted the view of then-Attorney General William Barr that there was no evidence that fraud altered the outcome of the 2020 election.
“It affected my perspective,” Ivanka Trump said on the video, referring to Barr’s assessment. “I respect Attorney General Barr so I accepted what he was saying.”
Others in Trump’s circle have derided his spurious claims of election fraud, but his own daughter doing so packed a unique emotional force.
The following day, the former president fired back, insisting that “Ivanka Trump was not involved in looking at, or studying, Election results.”
His post, on his Truth Social network, added: “She had long since checked out and was, in my opinion, only trying to be respectful to Bill Barr and his position as Attorney General (he sucked!).”
As is often the case with the former president, the ferocity of the response seemed to betray an awareness that he’d taken a hit.
Trump allegedly knew the Jan. 6 crowd had weapons — and wanted to join them at the Capitol anyways
Cassidy Hutchinson, a 26-year-old former aide to former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, caused a sensation when she testified to a hastily convened meeting of the committee on June 28.
Hutchinson related all kinds of unflattering details regarding Trump’s behavior around Jan. 6.
Controversy raged for days over her testimony.
She said she was told a story of Trump lunging for the steering wheel of his vehicle and tussling with a Secret Service agent after being informed he could not go to the Capitol after his rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6.
The Secret Service agent involved and the driver of the vehicle are reported to be willing to testify that Trump did not make such a lunge and that no one was assaulted.
But on Friday, CNN reported that two Secret Service agents confirmed they had heard accounts similar to Hutchinson’s.
In any event, the more substantively damning part of Hutchinson’s testimony concerned Trump’s knowledge that many of the people in the Jan. 6 crowd were carrying weapons.
Hutchinson, who was backstage at the Ellipse rally, said she heard Trump “say something to the effect of, ‘I don’t effing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me … They can march to the Capitol from here.’ ”
Trump again took to Truth Social to insist that he “didn’t want or request that we make room for people with guns to watch my speech,” adding, “Who would ever want that?”
But if Hutchinson’s testimony is accurate — and she says she heard the remarks firsthand — it suggests the then-president was acutely aware of the possibility for violence at the Capitol just before he told the crowd at the Ellipse that they should “fight like hell.”
That raises the stakes politically and could even elevate the chance of criminal prosecution.
Trump’s own campaign manager balked at fraud claims and was proud to be on ‘Team Normal’
The panel’s second hearing, held on June 13, made the case that Trump must have known his claims of election fraud were bogus, given how many people within his own inner circle were telling him this.
The hearing rendered an unflattering portrait of Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who served as Trump’s personal lawyer.
Trump campaign general counsel Matt Morgan recalled how “law firms were not comfortable making the arguments that Rudy Giuliani was making publicly” because of the dearth of evidence to back them up.
White House lawyer Eric Herschmann said he thought that the overall thrust of the arguments put forth by Giuliani and other Trump backers such as attorney Sidney Powell was “nuts.”
A memorable phrase from Trump 2020 campaign manager Bill Stepien best summed up the schisms that were developing in the then-president’s orbit.
“I didn’t mind being characterized as being part of ‘Team Normal’, as reporters kinda started to do around that point in time,” Stepien said in a video deposition.
Stepien said he hoped that he had earned “a good reputation for being honest and professional” over many years in Republican political consultancy.
“I didn’t think what was happening was necessarily honest or professional at that point in time,” he added.
The ‘Election Defense Fund’ that didn’t exist
The second hearing also focused on the Trump campaign’s fundraising efforts in the immediate aftermath of the election.
“The ‘Big Lie’ was also a big rip-off,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) contended.
Lofgren cited the barrage of fundraising emails Team Trump sent to supporters between Election Day and Jan. 6. On some days, more than 20 such emails were blasted out.
Many encouraged the recipients to contribute to an “Election Defense Fund,” the suggestion being that the money would be used to push Trump’s claims of fraud in court.
One problem: the Election Defense Fund didn’t exist.
“I don’t believe there is actually a fund called the ‘Election Defense Fund,’ ” the former digital director for the Trump campaign, Gary Coby, acknowledged.
The nonexistent fund was, at best, a marketing ruse.
It was also an effective one. Between the election and early December 2020, the joint fundraising efforts of Trump and the Republican National Committee raised about $207 million.
Much of the money seemed to go to Trump’s main post-election political action committee, Save America PAC.
According to the panel, this PAC in turn “made millions of dollars of contributions to pro-Trump organizations.”
Trump reportedly thought Mike Pence deserved to hang
One of many shocking occurrences on Jan. 6 was the call from some in the crowd to hang Pence, who resisted urgings from Trump and his allies to help overturn the election.
Trump had sought both publicity and privately to ratchet up the pressure on Pence, including in his speech at the Ellipse.
According to Hutchinson’s testimony, the then-president was blithely unconcerned with Pence’s fate even after serious violence broke out.
Hutchinson recounted witnessing a conversation between Meadows and White House counsel Pat Cipollone soon after the two had been in Trump’s presence.
Cipollone, she said, urged more direct action to quell the violence because “they are literally calling for the vice president to be effing hung.”
Meadows, according to Hutchinson, said “something to the effect of, ‘You heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.’ ”
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Next see what other stuff is out there
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/21/us/politics/trump-pressure-state-officials.html?utm_content=buffer58d34&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer
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Panel Ties Trump to Fake Elector Plan, Mapping His Attack on Democracy
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack showed how the former president leaned on state officials to invalidate his defeat, opening them up to violent threats when they refused.
The committee showed evidence that President Donald J. Trump was directly involved in trying to put forward the alternate slates of Trump electors that he hoped would replace legitimate electors awarded to Joseph R. Biden Jr.Credit
Credit...
Doug Mills/The New York Times
By?Luke Broadwater?and?Alan Feuer
June 21, 2022
Sign Up for On Politics, for Times subscribers only.??A Times reader’s guide to the political news in Washington and across the nation.?Get it in your inbox.
WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack directly tied Donald J. Trump on Tuesday to a scheme to put forward fake slates of pro-Trump electors and presented fresh details on how the former president sought to bully, cajole and bluff his way into invalidating his 2020 defeat in states around the country.
Using sworn in-person testimony from Republicans and videotaped depositions from other officials, the panel showed how the former president and a group of allies laid siege to state lawmakers and election officials after the balloting in a wide-ranging plot to reverse the outcome. The campaign led to harassment and threats of violence against anyone who resisted.
The hearing on Tuesday amounted to the most comprehensive picture to date of a president who directed an attack on democracy itself and repeatedly reached into its essential machinery — the administration of free and fair elections.
It was the committee’s fourth hearing, and it captured how, long before a throng of his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Trump used election lies to whip up violence against anyone who dared to deny his false claims of victory.
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The committee played a phone call between Mr. Trump and Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, when the president pressured him to find ballots in his favor.Credit...
Doug Mills/The New York Times
“The president’s lie was and is a dangerous cancer on the body politic,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff, the California Democrat who led the questioning on Tuesday. “If you can convince Americans they cannot trust their own elections, that any time they lose is somehow illegitimate, then what is left but violence to determine who should govern?”
Over nearly three hours, the committee demonstrated how Mr. Trump and his supporters — including his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, and his chief of staff, Mark Meadows — sought to persuade state officials to avoid certifying vote counts to give Mr. Trump a victory in the Electoral College.
Mr. Trump also sought to persuade lawmakers to create the slates of alternate electors, hoping that Vice President Mike Pence might use them to subvert the normal democratic process when he oversaw the official count of electoral votes on Jan. 6. And the panel presented evidence tying Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona and Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin to the plan.
The committee offered testimony from four public servants who stood up to the former president, rejecting his increasingly desperate pleas for help — often at great personal expense.
“I didn’t want to be used as a pawn,” Rusty Bowers, the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, testified. Mr. Bowers, a Republican, told the committee that he rebuffed Mr. Trump’s attempts to get him to create slates of pro-Trump electors in his state, explaining to the former president, “You are asking me to do something against my oath, and I will not break my oath.”
Such defiance, however, came at a cost.
Mr. Bowers told the committee that after bucking Mr. Trump, a truck was driven through his neighborhood playing a recording that declared him to be a pedophile. Mr. Bowers, who spoke about the Constitution in reverential and spiritual terms, had tears in his eyes as he described his gravely ill daughter enduring some of the harassment outside their house. (She died last year.)
In similar fashion, Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, testified that after he turned down Mr. Trump’s request in a phone call to find the votes that would throw him the election, his wife of 40 years received “sexualized” threats by text and people broke into his daughter-in-law’s house.
“It’s turned my life upside-down,” Wandrea Moss, a Georgia election worker who was implicated by name in one of Mr. Trump’s false election fraud allegations, said in her own emotional testimony. Ms. Moss, who is known as Shaye, added, “It’s affected my life in a major way — in every way — all because of lies.”
Shaye Moss, a Georgia election worker who was ensnared by one of Mr. Trump’s conspiracy theories about the election, was a witness at the hearing.Credit...
Kenny Holston for The New York Times
And the panel contrasted the willingness of the four officials to speak out with the refusal of many of Mr. Trump’s allies and others around him to tell investigators what they know. In particular, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the panel’s vice chairwoman, singled out Pat Cipollone, Mr. Trump’s White House counsel, who repeatedly pushed back on his efforts to overturn the election.
“Our committee is certain that Donald Trump does not want Mr. Cipollone to testify here,” she said. “But we think the American people deserve to hear from Mr. Cipollone personally. He should appear before this committee, and we are working to secure his testimony.”
The plan to enlist the help of state lawmakers to create fake slates of electors appears to have begun just days after the election when a pro-Trump lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, sent an email suggesting the idea to John Eastman, another lawyer close to Mr. Trump.
“A movement is stirring,” Ms. Mitchell wrote in the email, introduced as evidence at the hearing. “But needs constitutional support.”
By Nov. 18, 2020, the committee said, another pro-Trump lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, had joined the effort, writing a memo suggesting that the Trump campaign should organize its allies in several swing states to draft fake slates of electors. Around Thanksgiving, still others signed on to the plan, including Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Meadows, according to a recorded deposition from Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Mr. Meadows.
Eventually, the Republican National Committee was brought in as well, Ronna McDaniel, the group’s chairwoman, said in a recorded deposition played at the hearing.
Ms. McDaniel testified that during a call with Mr. Trump, he put Mr. Eastman on the phone with her “to talk about the importance of the R.N.C. helping the campaign gather these contingent electors.”
All of this was allowed to go forward despite the fact that several lawyers for the Trump campaign felt it was illegal. The White House Counsel’s Office said as much during a meeting with Mr. Meadows and Mr. Giuliani, according to Ms. Hutchinson.
And even those pushing the scheme conceded it was groundless.
“We’ve got lots of theories,” Mr. Bowers recalled Mr. Giuliani saying at a meeting with Arizona legislators. “We just don’t have the evidence.” On another occasion, as Mr. Bowers questioned Mr. Eastman about how there could possibly be a legal way for him to simply name new electors, the lawyer had no answer, replying, “Just do it and let the courts work it out.”
Even after Arizona had certified its electors, Mr. Eastman and Mr. Biggs called Mr. Bowers, pushing him to launch a fresh attempt to decertify the vote after the fact.
Mr. Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s top two election officials, recounted a similar story: pressure from Mr. Trump to overturn the election that ultimately led to threats and intimidation when they pushed back.
Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 Hearings
Making a case against Trump.?The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack is?laying out evidence?that could allow prosecutors to indict former President Donald J. Trump, though?the path to a criminal trial is uncertain. Here are the main themes that have emerged so far:
An unsettling narrative.?During the first hearing, the committee described in vivid detail what it characterized as?an attempted coup orchestrated by the former president?that culminated in the assault on the Capitol. At the heart of the?gripping story?were three main players:?Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.
Creating election lies.?In its second hearing,?the panel showed?how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers?as he declared victory prematurely and?relentlessly pressed claims of fraud he was told were wrong. “He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff,” William P. Barr, the former attorney general, said of Mr. Trump during a videotaped interview.
Pressuring Pence.?Mr. Trump continued?pressuring Vice President Mike Pence?to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing. The committee showed how Mr. Trump’s actions led his supporters to storm the Capitol,?sending Mr. Pence fleeing for his life.
Fake elector plan.?The committee used its fourth hearing to detail how Mr. Trump was personally involved in?a scheme to put forward fake electors. The panel also presented fresh details on how the former president leaned on state officials to invalidate his defeat,?opening them up to violent threats when they refused.
Strong arming the Justice Department.?During the fifth hearing, the panel explored Mr. Trump’s?wide-ranging and relentless scheme to misuse the Justice Department?to keep himself in power. The panel also presented evidence that at least half a dozen Republican members of Congress?sought?pre-emptive?pardons.
The surprise hearing.?Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, delivered?explosive testimony?during the panel’s sixth session, saying that the president?knew the crowd on Jan. 6 was armed, but wanted to loosen security. She also painted Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff in the Trump administration, as?disengaged and unwilling to act?as rioters approached the Capitol.
Mr. Raffensperger was on a call with Mr. Trump on Jan. 3, 2021, during which Mr. Trump pushed him to?“find” enough votes to overturn the outcome?and vaguely threatened him with “a criminal offense.” Mr. Sterling is perhaps best known for having given an impassioned speech on Dec. 1, 2020 in which he addressed Mr. Trump directly, telling him that his lies about the election were leading to violence against election workers.
“It has all gone too far — all of it,” Mr. Sterling said in the speech that was played at the hearing. He added, “It has to stop. Mr. President, you have not condemned these actions or this language.”
Shortly after the election, Mr. Trump and his allies seized on conspiracy theories, falsely claiming that election workers in Atlanta had been caught on video quietly taking thousands of ballots from a suitcase and feeding them into counting machines. Even though the allegations were quickly investigated and debunked, Mr. Sterling said, Mr. Trump and his lawyers continued to push the claims in public and on social media.
Fighting back against this flood of misinformation, Mr. Sterling said, was like “a shovel trying to empty the ocean.”
The committee showed the breathtaking sweep of the pressure campaign across seven states, playing clips from officials in Michigan and Pennsylvania who were inundated with thousands of text messages, phone calls, protesters near their homes and threats. At one point, Bryan Cutler, the Republican House speaker in Pennsylvania, asked Mr. Trump’s legal team to stop its daily phone calls to him because they were inappropriate.
The plan found eager allies in Congress, however.
The fourth hearing laid out evidence of how Mr. Trump spread lies about the election results.Credit...
Shuran Huang for The New York Times
The committee showed texts that an aide to Mr. Johnson had sent to an aide to Mr. Pence indicating that Mr. Johnson wanted to hand-deliver a slate of fake electors from Wisconsin to the vice president on Jan. 6. Mr. Pence’s aide responded, “Do not give that to him.”
A spokesman for Mr. Johnson on Tuesday blamed the exchange on his chief of staff, saying that the senator “had no involvement” in creating an alternate set of electors.
The hearing ending with testimony from Ms. Moss, an election worker who processed votes with her mother, Ruby Freeman, in Atlanta on Election Day. In early December, Mr. Giuliani appeared a state legislative hearing in Georgia and falsely accused her and her mother of taking ballots from a suitcase and illegally running them through voting machines.
Mr. Giuliani’s baseless allegations were amplified by right-wing media outlets and by Mr. Trump, who mentioned Ms. Moss’s name several times during his call with Mr. Raffensperger. After the accusations went viral, Ms. Moss was subjected to racist threats by phone and text and became afraid to leave the house.
She told the committee that her mother fled her home after the F.B.I. warned her that she could be in danger. Ms. Moss also recalled a panicked call from her septuagenarian grandmother, who said people had arrived at her home seeking to make a “citizen’s arrest” of Ms. Moss.
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Andrew Beckwith, PhD