Witness Tampering Highlighted By Jan. 6 Committee

 

Add possible witness tampering to the growing list of Trump crimes flowing from the January 6 insurrection, according to a reading of the January 6 Committee report summary. Yesterday, the Committee referred evidence of four serious crimes to the Justice Department's Special Counsel Jack Smith: obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., conspiring to make false statements, and incitement of insurrection. In his statement before the Committee yesterday, the eloquent Constitutional law expert Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) stated that these four crimes were "not the only statutes that are potentially relevant" to the Malignant Loser's activities related to the 2020 election. 

His formidable colleague Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) noted in her statement that the Malignant Loser raised millions of dollars from his cult to advance his stolen election lies, but instead hired lawyers for his own criminal defense. From the linked article:

“'For example, one lawyer told a witness, the witness could in certain circumstances tell the committee that she didn’t recall facts when she actually did recall them,' Lofgren said. 'That lawyer also did not disclose who was paying for the lawyer’s representation, despite questions from the client seeking that information.'

In another case, Lofgren added, 'a client was offered potential employment that would make her, quote, "financially very comfortable" as the date of her testimony approached, by entities that were apparently linked to Donald Trump and his associates. These offers were withdrawn or didn’t materialize, as reports of the content of her testimony circulated. The witness believed this was an effort to affect her testimony.'"  (our emphasis)

If this sounds like something that an organized crime boss would do to get a witness to change her testimony, you wouldn't be the only one and you wouldn't be off the mark. The Malignant Loser copied his lifetime modus operandi from the mob-controlled building trades world of 20th century New York City real estate, and combined it with the influence of his sinister mob lawyer / mentor Roy Cohn. It's his way. He's just now at the beginning of paying for a life of flouting the law while profiting from it.

BONUS:  Lawfare has the 160-page executive summary of the January 6 committee's report here.

 

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

The Jan. 6 select committee is preparing to vote on urging the Justice Department to pursue at least three criminal charges against former President Donald Trump, including insurrection.

The report that the select panel is expected to consider on Monday afternoon, described to POLITICO by two people familiar with its contents, reflects some recommendations from a subcommittee that evaluated potential criminal referrals. Among the charges that subcommittee proposes for Trump: 18 U.S.C. 2383, insurrection; 18 U.S.C. 1512(c), obstruction of an official proceeding; and 18 U.S.C. 371, conspiracy to defraud the United States government.

It’s unclear whether the select committee’s final report will recommend additional charges for Trump beyond the three described to POLITICO, or whether it will urge other criminal charges for other players in Trump’s bid to subvert his 2020 loss. The document, according to the people familiar, includes an extensive justification for the recommended charges.

To justify incitement of insurrection, the report references U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta’s February ruling saying Trump’s language plausibly incited violence on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters besieged the Capitol in a bid to disrupt congressional certification of his loss to Joe Biden. The report also cites the Senate’s 57 votes in last year’s impeachment trial, Trump’s second, to convict him on an “incitement of insurrection” charge passed by the House.

The select panel’s report also notes that, in order to violate the insurrection statute, Trump did not need an express agreement with rioters — but rather, simply needed to provide “aid or comfort” to them... (our emphasis)

Must-see t.v starts today at 1PM.

The bad:

Early in the pandemic, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis repeatedly praised President Donald Trump for the expedited development and rollout of a coronavirus vaccine. The governor’s office pushed for $480 million in pandemic resources, including media campaigns promoting the shots, according to state budget documents. And DeSantis, a Republican, even lauded the Biden administration for helping to expand access to vaccines.

“We’re having more vaccine because of this, which is great,” DeSantis said of a federal program shipping shots to pharmacies in February 2021.

But this past week, DeSantis threw himself into misleadingly disparaging the vaccines, convening skeptics to buck guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and seeking to investigate vaccine makers for fraud.

“These companies have made a fortune off this federal government imposing or at least attempting to impose mandates, and a lot of false statements,” DeSantis said at the roundtable event on Wednesday. “I think people want the truth and I think people want accountability, so you need to have a thorough investigation into what’s happened with these shots.”

A review of DeSantis’s public positions on the vaccines shows a full reversal that has unfolded gradually since 2021, seizing on the shots’ waning efficacy against new virus variants and portraying evolving scientific advice as deliberate deceit...  (our emphasis)

That's one dangerous demagogue.

The ugly:

As the 2022 World Cup wraps up, there is an overarching takeaway: Holding it in Qatar was a huge mistake. FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, had numerous chances to take a stand for basic human dignities. It didn’t. The result has been a World Cup of human rights horrors.

Awarding this major event to Qatar in 2010 was suspect from the start given that homosexuality is illegal there, women have almost no rights and are subject to a “male guardianship law,” and the nation’s long record of human rights abuses. Even former FIFA president Sepp Blatter, who presided over the selection, has admitted that “it was a bad choice.”

The stadiums and surrounding infrastructure for the event were built with abusive labor practices and cost thousands of lives, according to the Guardian and Human Rights Watch. Qatar bribed soccer officials to get the World Cup and then bribed government officials to look the other way. As the games began, the Qatari government censored how people dressed. Fans who wore or carried gay pride symbols, women’s rights slogans or anything else the government didn’t like were detained or banned from entering. Foreign journalists were instructed to stick to sports in their reporting. And Qatar changed the rules at the last minute to ban alcohol from stadiums...

FIFA is one of the most corrupt organizations on Earth, arguably THE MOST corrupt sports organization. That Qatar was awarded this event is largely a product of that corruption, to FIFA's placing profit and payoffs over ethics and human rights.

Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds. 

The New York Effing Times, where there is a cognitive dissonance between the editorial page and the news pages, had an editorial on the existential threat to our democracy posed by the Trump Republican Party:

It is regular citizens who threaten election officials and other public servants, who ask, “When can we use the guns?” and who vow to murder politicians who dare to vote their conscience. It is Republican lawmakers scrambling to make it harder for people to vote and easier to subvert their will if they do. It is Donald Trump who continues to stoke the flames of conflict with his rampant lies and limitless resentments and whose twisted version of reality still dominates one of the nation’s two major political parties.

In short, the Republic faces an existential threat from a movement that is openly contemptuous of democracy and has shown that it is willing to use violence to achieve its ends. No self-governing society can survive such a threat by denying that it exists. Rather, survival depends on looking back and forward at the same time.

Truly grappling with the threat ahead means taking full account of the terror of that day a year ago. Thanks largely to the dogged work of a bipartisan committee in the House of Representatives, this reckoning is underway. We know now that the violence and mayhem broadcast live around the world was only the most visible and visceral part of the effort to overturn the election. The effort extended all the way into the Oval Office, where Mr. Trump and his allies plotted a constitutional self-coup.  [snip]

This is where looking forward comes in. Over the past year, Republican lawmakers in 41 states have been trying to advance the goals of the Jan. 6 rioters — not by breaking laws but by making them. Hundreds of bills have been proposed and nearly three dozen laws have been passed that empower state legislatures to sabotage their own elections and overturn the will of their voters, according to a running tally by a nonpartisan consortium of pro-democracy organizations. [snip]

Thus the Capitol riot continues in statehouses across the country, in a bloodless, legalized form that no police officer can arrest and that no prosecutor can try in court.

The Times being The Times, no ink or electrons are expended examining the blame the media in general or The Times in particular shoulders for the current state of affairs.  Until and unless they come to grips with that and make changes, they're part of the problem, not the solution (not holding our breath).

As The Times editorial notes, the reckoning is underway in the form of the January 6 committee's upcoming must- see- tv:

They’ve interviewed more than 300 witnesses, collected tens of thousands of documents and traveled around the country to talk to election officials who were pressured by Donald Trump.

Now, after six months of intense work, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection is preparing to go public.

In the coming months, members of the panel will start to reveal their findings against the backdrop of the former president and his allies’ persistent efforts to whitewash the riots and reject suggestions that he helped instigate them. The committee also faces the burden of trying to persuade the American public that their conclusions are fact-based and credible.

But the nine lawmakers — seven Democrats and two Republicans — are united in their commitment to tell the full story of Jan. 6, and they are planning televised hearings and reports that will bring their findings out into the open.

Their goal is not only to show the severity of the riot, but also to make a clear connection between the attack and Trump’s brazen pressure on the states and Congress to overturn Joe Biden’s legitimate election as president.

Let's also get those criminal referrals ready to go, please. 

On the COVID-19 front, keep your eye on the hospitalization numbers:

As the United States continues to see a huge spike in coronavirus cases driven by the omicron variant, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, Anthony S. Fauci, says the better way to track the variant’s impact is to look at growing hospitalizations.

The United States was averaging more than 400,000 new cases each day as of Monday, double the previous week’s rate, according to Washington Post data, and is expected to soon hit as many as 1 million cases per day. Fauci, speaking on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, said “the real bottom line that you want to be concerned about is: Are we getting protected by the vaccines from severe disease leading to hospitalization?”

Hospitalizations are up 31 percent from last week, and deaths increased by 37 percent, with about 1,500 Americans dying of covid-19 each day. Experts have warned that this surge will be driven by the unvaccinated, as those who are vaccinated and boosted would have considerable protection from serious illness.

Fauci warned of the broader dangers on CNN: “Even if the rate of hospitalization is lower with omicron than it is with delta, there is still the danger that you will have a surging of hospitalizations that might stress the health-care system.”

Where is the problem most acute?  Why, mostly in Republican- governed anti-vax, anti-mask states, of course:

Lower vaccination rates and fewer mask and vaccine mandates have created a much different environment for the omicron variant to spread in the South, leaving experts unsure whether outbreaks will end up deadlier than in the North.

Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi are among the states experiencing the sharpest increases in covid-19 hospitalizations since Christmas, according to data tracked by The Washington Post. And the situation may only get worse, as initial outbreaks in metropolitan areas spread to more poorly vaccinated rural regions.

The unvaccinated are causing great harm to the health care system in this country, as they play a major role in perpetuating the pandemic.  At this point, we're losing interest in what harm they're doing to themselves and their families.

What happens when a cosseted pro football player is humored and enabled rather than helped? This:

Antonio Brown chucked his shoulder pads, hurled his black undershirt into the stands and walked off the MetLife Stadium field shirtless, exhorting the crowd as he jogged across the end zone and into the tunnel, disappearing from view. As his team lined up for third and seven, Brown torched what remained of his career. The spectacle rested upon a fundamental fact that should embarrass so many in the NFL: Brown orchestrated an exit of his own volition.

Coach Bruce Arians announced afterward that Brown no longer plays for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which Brown had already declared with his behavior. That Brown, 33, could choose the time and manner of his departure, no matter how bizarre, should shame the Buccaneers and many others across the NFL. All the times Brown should have received serious help or significant punishment over the past three years, he received more chances to play football.

Each time one team grew tired of his antics, another clamored to sign him. When two women accused Brown of sexual assault and the NFL suspended him for half a season for a separate battery charge involving a moving company employee, Tom Brady leaped to rehabilitate him. When he used a fake vaccination card this year, the NFL slapped his wrist with a three-game suspension and Arians allowed competitive desperation to trump his zero-tolerance vow about Brown.

Well, any league that will tolerate the on-going shame of having Li'l Danny Snyder as an owner is pretty much capable of tolerating anything.

"Now, for something completely different,"* please head over to Infidel 753's link round-up to interesting posts he curated from around the Internet.  There's plenty to interest even the most jaded reader.  Also check out his ten most important stories of 2021 -- hard to argue with his choices!

* Yes, that was a Monty Python reference.

Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

ABC's chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl's new book, "Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show," reveals yet another instance of the extent to which the Malignant Loser's lickspittles were conspiring to stage a coup on January 6.  Here's a portion of ABC News' account of the revelation:

In a memo not made public until now, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows emailed to Vice President Mike Pence's top aide, on New Year's Eve, a detailed plan for undoing President Joe Biden's election victory, ABC News' Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl reports.

The memo, written by former President Donald Trump's campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis, is reported for the first time in Karl's upcoming book, "Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show" -- demonstrating how Pence was under even more pressure than previously known to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Ellis, in the memo, outlined a multi-step strategy: On Jan. 6, the day Congress was to certify the 2020 election results, Pence was to send back the electoral votes from six battleground states that Trump falsely claimed he had won.

The memo said that Pence would give the states a deadline of "7pm eastern standard time on January 15th" to send back a new set of votes, according to Karl.

Then, Ellis wrote, if any state legislature missed that deadline, "no electoral votes can be opened and counted from that state."

Such a scenario would leave neither Biden nor Trump with a majority of votes, Ellis wrote, which would mean "Congress shall vote by state delegation" -- which, Ellis said, would in turn lead to Trump being declared the winner due to Republicans controlling the majority of state delegations with 26.

The day after Meadows sent Ellis' memo to Pence's aide, on Jan. 1, Trump aide John McEntee sent another memo to Pence's chief of staff, Marc Short, titled, "Jefferson used his position as VP to win."

Although McEntee's memo was historically incorrect, Karl says, his message was clear: Jefferson took advantage of his position, and Pence must do the same.

The January 6 select committee appears to be serious about holding the seditionists accountable, and there's a decent likelihood that there's already a grand jury (either the one that indicted Bannon or a separate one) that will be ready to indict these mooks after the select committee makes their referrals.

Meanwhile, the thugs warn of "payback" if their coup plotters are pursued legally:

Republicans are rallying around former White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon after his indictment on charges of contempt of Congress on Friday, warning that Democrats’ efforts to force Bannon to comply with what they say is an unfair subpoena paves the way for them to do the same if they take back the House in 2022. [snip]

Bannon is expected to turn himself in to law enforcement Monday ahead of a court appearance that afternoon. Democrats and a handful of anti-Trump Republicans argue that the indictment was necessary to enforce subpoenas issued by the Jan. 6 committee to Trump associates who are resisting cooperation and to witnesses summoned by other congressional panels.

Many GOP leaders, however, are seizing on Bannon’s indictment to contend that Democrats are “weaponizing” the Justice Department, warning Democrats that they will go after Biden’s aides for unspecified reasons if they take back the House majority in next year’s midterm elections, as most political analysts expect.

"Unspecified reasons" = Trumped- up bullshit.  Don't be distracted or deterred, Democrats!

In fact, the much- maligned- by- his- own- team AG Merrick Garland is making a lot of progress that doesn't get media attention.   Here's James Sullivan at Palmer Report (found via Fair and Unbalanced):

In the last eight days, the Justice Department has sued the state of Texas over the pernicious SB 8 bill that drew significant backlash in September, sued for fairer voting rights, went to court to prevent an egregious merger between publishing giants Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, and worked on an expansion for legal aid access for those who need it. This sounds like a pretty significant week – even if the Biden administration and congressional Democrats hadn’t scored a massive win with infrastructure this week.

Antitrust law is something that Amy Klobuchar, Chair of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee has been passionate about for a while, and a number of giant conglomerates got even bigger over the last four years, as the Trump administration only tried to prevent one major merger between AOL Time Warner and AT&T from happening – just on the basis that Donald Trump was trying to get back at CNN for saying mean things about him. Of course, that didn’t fly and the merger happened anyway. Monopolies are bad for competition and the market in general, and we should be seeing more lawsuits like the one Garland is bringing against Simon & Schuster.

The wheels of justice ...

Cheryl Rofer has a short piece on the anti- vaxxers, which concludes thusly:

The anti-vaxxers are part of a small anti-government movement that includes “militias,” sovereign citizens, and other kooks. Because they are willing to be loud and violent, and because the media get off on covering them, they look stronger than they are.

Public opinion is strongly in favor of the legislation Congress has passed and is considering; again, the nay-sayers are in the minority. Two of Biden’s significant recovery bills have passed. Unfortunately, the nay-sayers have inordinate power in Congress.

We outnumber them. We have to use that wherever we can to crush them.

She's right.  Look around you at the countless people going about their lives, doing the right thing for their families and communities.  We can't let these violence- prone crackpots and their representatives foil the will of the majority.  Unfortunately, it's not a quick battle, but rather a long struggle.

Finally, you'll find much more to delight, stimulate, mind boggle, etc., at Infidel 753's link round-up. He also directs you to his recent posts, including a post on historical cycles of cultural darkness and light. Always thought- provoking.

QOTD -- Not A King, Not Even A President

 

"Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President." -- U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in her ruling permitting the January 6 select committee to receive documents related to the insurrection that the Malignant Loser ("Plaintiff") has tried to block.  The Malignant Loser has filed a notice of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.

You can read the judge's full opinion here (pdf). 

Kevin McCarthy And The Radical Republican Spectrum

 

Greg Sargent writes about the dilemma facing spineless shitweasel House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Sedition-CA) after Speaker Pelosi backed him into a corner on the January 6 select committee.  Key to McCarthy's problem is the involvement of Republican lawmakers in encouraging and covering for their violent paramilitary wing  :

Perhaps all this is best understood as a spectrum moving from “parliamentary” to “paramilitary.” Some Republicans fed the lies about Trump’s loss. Some supported sham lawsuits to overturn the results. Some voted to overturn Biden electors. Some state Republicans entertained sending rogue electors.

Some called on people to attend the “Stop the Steal” rally that produced the violence. Some now minimize and distort the attack, giving cover to a movement that actually did attempt to overturn the constitutional order through mob violence.

The committee’s investigation will inevitably shed light on the place of Republicans all along that spectrum, including any role that GOP lawmakers might have had in planning the rally and, possibly, communicating with Trump about what his true intentions for it were.  [snip]

It’s hard to see how McCarthy can avoid appointing Republicans who themselves fell somewhere on that spectrum. Yet if he appoints Republicans who treat the committee’s mission with the weight it deserves, that will also pose a huge problem. His lack of any obvious way forward itself illustrates how deeply implicated the GOP is in the very horrors that the committee is designed to illuminate.

The bungled handling of a vehicle for investigating the January 6 insurrection (Republicans could have had a 50/50 bipartisan 9/11- style commission where they would have had considerable leverage, but Moscow Mitch McConnell blocked it in the Senate) comes after months of Republicans supporting the fascist former guy in his election overturning delusions through lawsuits, then passing laws to restrict voting, then phony "audits," all accompanied by constant bleating from right- wing media. 

Say what you will about Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), but her willingness to be on the select committee was a serious nut punch to McCarthy and to every Republican seditionist eager to avoid accountability. The workings of the committee are likely to go on well into 2022, and every rock that needs to be lifted will be lifted, and every seditionist worm under those rocks will be exposed, and the reckoning will begin.