January 6th legal proceedings and investigations megathread

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/UrbanAchievr/status/1514938691092951050

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1516150297034477568

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1517579196037443584

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Did anyone not assume this stuff was going on?

Judging by the responses from people TRAITORS like Fuzzy Bear, Grumps, etc they simply don’t care.

FTFY.  I would not have reported your consistency as a personal attack.

Am I wrong though?

Oh just string us up like Benedict Arnold and call it a day.

Blue posters wish they could retire as Russian generals with a pension.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1520239579692904450
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1520135290387529728

I think we've seen enough of Fox News conspiring with the White House on Trump's attempted coup.

We need a total and complete shutdown of Fox News until our representatives can figure out exactly what went on.  

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Can you believe there are people out there that think that all the transpired on Jan 6th was 200 morons breaking a book shelf and rubbing poop on the walls?
These people need mental assistance.

I don't think Mr. R really believes that's all it was; for one thing, he never acknowledges the documented assaults on police officers, which is something that in other settings I think he'd care very much about.  He repeatedly chooses to focus on lesser aspects of the riot in order to downplay the worst aspects.  And frankly, that's worse.

I guess after more than 2000 cops were injured during the 2020 Antifa riots and it was all dismissed as just an idea and mostly peaceful the additional 100 cops injured on 1/6 sort of get lost in the noise. Especially when we are told this riot is so much more special than the 2020 riots despite having 1/20th of the police injuries.

But again Ive said countless times capitol rioters should go to jail. Yall just dont like that i wont fall for your conspiracies again. My understanding is the idiots started rioting before Drumpf even gave the "incitement" speech.

"Your honor, the fire started before my client even arrived at the orphanage. He merely threw gasoline onto the already burning building!"

I recall a video where he told them to peacefully go home and that they were all special (since he knew the likely IQ of who he was dealing with)

A video that was broadcast an hour after the FBI SWAT team had started to sweep the Capitol, and well after the Virginia National Guard (since Trump's government mobilized but refused to deploy the DC National Guard) was publicly announced to be en route.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1522766219316707334

Your regular reminder that for Republicans, "rule of law" means that they get to use the laws to rule everyone else.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1523470875269378048

The hypocrisy is not accidental, it is deliberate. It serves both as a demonstration of power and as a test of loyalty for the faithful.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/JaneMayerNYer/status/1527693240098598912

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1530687744808062976

I'm just the January 6th committee would be glad to talk to Mr. Trump about his crowd size on January 6th, on camera, and at great length.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1534706400915402752

There's something pathetically funny about watching Rubio trying to defend the coup attempt that could easily have ended with his death at the hands of an enraged mob.

The reality is that Republicans are hopelessly broken as a political party. The Jan 6th committee is the last feeble effort of our Republic. If it doesn't finish them off - and I really doubt it will - sane, decent Americans need to start viewing their options using Germany in 1933 as a lens. And none of those options are particularly good; flight to functioning democracies seems to have been the best of many poor choices for non-Nazi Germans. I don't know if Americans have any better ones. Hunker down in blue states and prepare for the painful disintegration of the United States, perhaps.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1537220495652769792

I am shocked that the notoriously corrupt wife of a notoriously corrupt Supreme Court Justice, who has faced no consequences for decades-long partisanship and disrespect of the office of her husband holds, would participate in an attempted coup.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

LOL all this drama in the hearings and Trump is gonna still become president again in a couple years

COPE

These hearings are not about stopping Republicans' treason. They're not about justice for Trump and his fellow traitors. These hearings are a record.

They are making certain that, if and when people vote for Donald the Traitor again, no American can legitimately claim they "didn't know" or "don't believe" that January 6th, 2021, and everything leading up to it, was a shameless, naked assault on Americans, our Republic, and our freedoms.

This is about an end to pretense and excuses. No matter what happens in coming years, Donald Trump,and the Republican Party will never escape these hearings.  If the Republican Party is so foolish and wicked as to once again nominate Donald Trump, they will be declaring war on the United States. Should he somehow win, be it by hook and crook or through a very real electoral victory,  he and his government will still lack the legitimacy that all prior Presidential Administrations, even his own, have enjoyed.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/1537640003714658306?cxt=HHwWhMC93fjb5dYq...

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

“Whoever corruptly … obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so,
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.”

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1512#c_2

Aside from whether standing upon frivolous legal theories until a court says no is "corrupt," the title of the linked statute is:

18 U.S. Code § 1512 - Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant

The relevant statute is 18 U.S. Code § 372 - Conspiracy to impede or injure officer

If two or more persons in any State, Territory, Possession, or District conspire to prevent, by force, intimidation, or threat, any person from accepting or holding any office, trust, or place of confidence under the United States, or from discharging any duties thereof, or to induce by like means any officer of the United States to leave the place, where his duties as an officer are required to be performed, or to injure him in his person or property on account of his lawful discharge of the duties of his office, or while engaged in the lawful discharge thereof, or to injure his property so as to molest, interrupt, hinder, or impede him in the discharge of his official duties, each of such persons shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six years, or both.

Wire fraud (for defrauding his supporters by lying to them about the election, and about what he was doing with the donations to his non-existent "Election Defense Fund") is also a strong contender.

But the real key is to get a prosecutor and judge who refuse to play Trump's game, and who respond to obstruction with charges of obstruction instead of endless rounds of playing pattycake.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Even Trump can see it.  McCarthy could have sabotaged the investigation from the get-go ostensibly in the name of 'bipartisanship', and smothered it before it ever got to this stage.  Oh well, too late now.    

Congressional leadership has made no secret of their disdain for Trump.

I'm not sure how capable McCarthy is of playing 4-D chess, but I wonder if he decided to let Pelosi unilaterally call the shots so Dems (plus Cheney and Kinzinger) could do the dirty work of getting Trump out of the picture.

IIRC, McCarthy wanted to appoint Trumpster congressmen like Jim Jordan to the commission last year (I wonder why....).  Pelosi said no dice, so he pulled out of negotiations:

McCarthy pulls all Republicans from January 6 Select Committee after Pelosi rejects two picks

So yes, I think he certainly would have done exactly what I suggested had Pelosi been stupid enough to allow him to.  

I think the suggestion is that McCarthy could have offered up sane-appearing Republicans for the committee who would still have been willing and able to sabotage the whole thing. Instead he offered up the Trumpiest Trumpists he could find, and when Pelosi natually turned those down, he took all his toys and went home, leaving the committee to do its work and take a clean shot at Trump.

If the committee wrecks Trump, McCarthy will secretly celebrate while publicly saying "I tried".  And if the committee has no real impact, well, McCarthy doesn't take any heat, and can even claim he made sure n "real Republicans" supported it.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1539373269287112706

Senator Johnson needs to be charged and brought to trial. (As do any GOP politicians involved with Trump's coup attempt, before or after January 6th.)

18 U.S. Code § 2383 - Rebellion or insurrection

Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

Either the perpetrators and their allies face consequences under the law, in the very near future, or the rest of us will suffer from the failure to do so for the rest of our lives.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1541857500420382720

We are once again being reminded that we have a choice: Donald Trump and his enablers can be in jail, or we can have a Republic. This should not be a difficult choice.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Can we all agree this is a moot point until we actually hear the testimony of the agents?

The Trumpists won't. FUD is their lifeblood.

Unless we do hear the agents testimony directly, the right will be repeating increasingly exaggerated versions of this  ("All her testimony was second-hand and denied by multiple secret service agents under oath!") until their dying days. If if we do get first hand testimony confirming it, they'll just slide over to a different alternate reality.

(And if they ever do abandon Trump and move in the direction of becoming good faith members of society - unlikely, I know - they will use the same self-deluding skills to pretend they were never really Trump supporters in the first place.)

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

So now that video leaked of showing Trump did try to grab the wheel the question is now why did the secret service put on a statement disputing it

Did they? I thought it was a random reporter who claimed to have a "Secret Service source" who in turn said the SS would dispute it.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

So now that video leaked of showing Trump did try to grab the wheel the question is now why did the secret service put on a statement disputing it

Video?

https://mobile.twitter.com/MikeSington/status/1542235505047117825
https://mobile.twitter.com/jackabryan/status/1542591198610698240
https://mobile.twitter.com/jackabryan/status/1542609898541699079

I know that this is off-topic a bit, but the fact two songs played back-to-back in that video from two famous gay musical acts really bothers me. I hope they send a cease-and-desist to Trump to stop him from using their music at any more of his stupid rallies this year. The GOP is more than happy to denigrate the LGBTQ+ community while also partaking in their art-they shouldn't be allowed to do both.

They have. He's ignored it. Because he's a crook, and our justice system is broken.

Kathy Golik -- manager of Laura's legacy management company, Other Half Entertainment -- tells TMZ that it's no surprise Trump used the song again during his last hoorah before jetting off to Florida, as she says he's continued to use music from artists without permission for quite some time now

The Village People tell TMZ ... "We asked him to cease and desist long ago. However, since he's a bully, our request was ignored." It's true -- TVP have repeatedly made clear they're not down with DT constantly using their most famous tune ... but he's persisted.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

"Coup" is a tendentious term. What will it take for Republicans to admit that Biden won the election for reasons other than due to vote fraud, and Trump's behavior was wrong. Or what will it take for a majority of Republicans to not want Trump to be renominated again?

No, it damned well is not. If our democracy is to have a non-violent future, it is incredibly important that the awful depths of the Trump-led Republican attempt to overthrow the 2020 election is widely understood, not minimized.

Donald Trump fought tooth and nail, to the limits of the law and well beyond, using threats, lies, criminal schemes, and ultimately violence in an organized attempt to overturn an election that he and his enablers all knew they had fairly, if closely, lost. That effort culminated with Donald Trump attempting to lead an armed mob in an attack on the United States Capitol in order to overturn what he knew to be the legitimate results of the legal and democratic elections he lost, solely in order to keep himself in power. That the is dictionary definition of a coup.

It Was an Attempted Coup: The Cline Center’s Coup D’état Project Categorizes the January 6, 2021 Assault on the US Capitol

Donald Trump's direct connections to the 1/6/2021 coup attempt have only become clearer and clearer as additional evidence has been uncovered. This is not a biased take. Neither is it partisan nor prejudical nor slanted. That is what happened and it has been extremely well documented. Trump's Republican Party (virtually all of it, now), which has enabled, supported, defended and excused the coup doesn't like acknowledging that, because it makes them look really awful.  So Trump supporters have launched a concerted effort to downplay what happened.  Attacking the accurate label of 'coup' is one facet of that effort.

If we fail to hold Trump and his Republicans responsible for this coup attempt, we make more such attempts inevitable, and condemn ourselves and our children to a violent future. And to have any accountability, we need to start with confront the truth, no matter how unpleasant or problematic it and its implications are. Donald Trump attempted a coup in order to remain in power. That he and his coup failed  failed (because he is mostly blinded and crippled by the same grave flaws that led him to attempt it in the first place) does not diminish what was attempted.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

!!! Fulton County special grand jury subpoenas Rudy Giuliani, Lindsey Graham, John Eastman, and Jenna Ellis among others.

This ought to be interesting. Unlike Congress, Fulton County and the State of Georgia will face real consequences if they let their subpoenas be ignored. Meaning that rather than showboating refusals, they ought to face a choice between becoming fugitives hiding in deep red states, or cooperating with Fulton County.

What I predict we'll get is legal foot-dragging, where they pretend to be willing to abide by the law, but do everything possible in their power to delays their appearances (and will take the 5th if and when they are compelled to testify under oath).

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1546878553421144065

Likely Trump/GOP response: "How dare they spy on the President's treason!"

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

And now back to real news...

https://twitter.com/ZcohenCNN/status/1547006546781130753

Why is the the DOJ needing to ask Congress for it's own investigation results eighteen months after the coup attempt in question?