January 6th legal proceedings and investigations megathread

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

If you and your friends plan a robbery on a 7/11 and somebody ends up dead, you can all be charged with murder, even if it's one of your accomplices. How can you plan to overthrow the damn government, riot, and yet so many people are getting light charges or no charges.

Trump especially should be in prison.

It's starting to feel like the Democratic establishment quietly decided that the response to Trump's coup needs to be at least as stupid as the coup itself was. (Probably because something, something, bipartisan.) Next thing you know they'll be saying that charging Trump for his involvement in his coup before the 2024 elections would be prejudicial.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/ryanobles/status/1547390376763445249

While there are plenty of other deserving things he's done, can someone in the DOJ please bring charges against this flagrant repeat criminal? (And then ideally declare him a flight risk and deny bail until his competency hearing.)

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Why bother with seditious conspiracy at all? Just go straight for the treason charge.

18 U.S. Code § 2381 - Treason

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

And from Ex Parte Bollman and Ex Parte Swartwout

To constitute a levying of war, there must be an assemblage of persons for the purpose of effecting by force a treasonable purpose. Enlistments of men to serve against government is not sufficient.

When war is levied, all those who perform any part, however minute or however remote from the scene of action, and who are actually leagued in the general conspiracy, are traitors.

Any assemblage of men for the purpose of revolutionizing by force the government established by the United States in any of its territories, although as a step to or the means of executing some greater projects, amounts to levying war. The traveling of individuals to the place of rendezvous is not sufficient, but the meeting of particular bodies of men and their marching from places of partial to a place of general rendezvous is such an assemblage as constitutes a levying of war.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1549455493093281792

Not a surprise, but it's good to have them publicly confirm it.

I'm more concerned that they're going to "keep investigating" until  he orders it stopped on Jan 20, 2025.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Secret Service Jan. 6 texts erased despite Congress’ request

Secret Service text messages from around the time of the attack on the U.S. Capitol were deleted despite requests from Congress and federal investigators that they be preserved, the agency confirmed Tuesday in response to a subpoena from the House Jan. 6 committee.

Florida Rep. Stephanie Murphy, a Democratic member of the Jan 6. panel, said the Secret Service acknowledged the erasure in a letter Tuesday, detailing how agency phones were migrated to a new system in the weeks after the 2021 attack.

January 6th was already quite sinister enough, but this puts a new light on Pence's refusal to get into a Secret Service vehicle even as Trump's stormtroopers were trying to hunt him down and kill him.

And in case you missed it:

Secret Service Director James Murray to retire (July 7, 2022)

James Murray, the director of the Secret Service for the last three years, will retire at the end of the month, the agency announced Thursday.

Personally, I think the Secret Service needs to go as the President's protective detail. It's had multiple incidences of unprofessional conduct for years, but flouting Congress and the DoJ over a coup investigation is a bridge too far. Even if it is simple incompetence, it demonstrates they're unfit to be trusted with that level of vital responsibility.


And speaking of details I'd missed during Trump's treasonous coup attempt on January 6th:
Harris was at DNC when a pipe bomb was found outside building on Jan. 6 (1/6/22)

Vice President Harris was at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters on Jan. 6, 2021, until she was evacuated because a pipe bomb was discovered outside the premises, a White House official confirmed to The Hill on Thursday.

I knew about the pipe bombs, but not that one of them had potentially been targeted at then VP-elect Harris.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

More details on Secret Service text messages:

Secret Service provided a single text exchange to IG after request for many records

Inspector General Joseph Cuffari -- having already received an initial batch of documents including "hundreds of thousands of disclosures of agency documents, policies, radio communications, emails, briefings and interviews" -- requested in June 2021 text messages sent and received by 24 Secret Service personnel between December 7, 2020 and January 8, 2021, according to the letter, the details of which had not been previously reported. The letter does not identify the 24 personnel.

"The Secret Service submitted the responsive records it identified, namely, a text message conversation from former US Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund to former Secret Service Uniformed Division Chief Thomas Sullivan requesting assistance on January 6, 2021, and advised the agency did not have any further records responsive to the DHS OIG's request for text messages," Assistant Director Ronald Rowe wrote in the letter to the January 6 committee.

Beyond the inspector general requests, the Secret Service was also sent a broad preservation and production request by Congress on January 16, 2021, which asked for documents and materials related to January 6. A second request in March from several House committees specifically requested communications "received, prepared or sent" between January 5 and January 7.

The agency explained that it was up to employees to conduct the necessary preservation of records from their phones. The letter said the service did provide personnel a "step-by-step" guide to preserve mobile phone content, including text messages, prior to the phone migration that began January 27. It went on to explain that "all Secret Service employees are responsible for appropriately preserving government records that may be created via text messaging."
The Secret Service wrote in the letter that it was still working to determine if any relevant information was lost in the phone migration but said it was "currently unaware of text messages issued by Secret Service employees" that were requested by the inspector general "that were not retained."

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

In one Oval Office meeting, a triple Russian threat  - A midnight rendezvous with Trump posed a national security risk, says former FBI counterintelligence deputy Peter Strzok

Late on the night of Dec. 18, 2020, a small group of people sat in the Oval Office with Donald Trump, loser of the previous month’s presidential election. White House advisers and campaign staff had repeatedly told him he’d lost — as witness after witness appearing before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol affirmed — and every lawsuit challenging the outcome had gone against him. Regardless, this meeting’s participants were there to explore a range of extraordinary, and extraordinarily dangerous, options to keep Trump in power, including invoking martial law, seizing voting machines extralegally and deploying the National Guard to rerun the election.

Consider that the tiny group in the Oval Office that night was made up of not one, not two, but three people who’d had direct contact with employees or sanctioned or convicted agents of the Russian government: Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Overstock chief executive Patrick Byrne. At a moment of grave national peril for the United States, this was an astonishing intelligence achievement for Russia. Giuliani, Flynn and Byrne had all been likely targets of Russian information collection. Russia sought to gain access, develop relationships and, in varying ways, gather information from and convey disinformation to men who later had direct access to the Oval Office and the president. Each one, whether he knew it or not, had been bought, suckered or seduced by Russia.

Do I think any of the three men who graced the Dec. 18 meeting are recruited Russian agents? No. But at a certain level, it doesn’t matter. The bulk of Russia’s intelligence collection relies not on directed agents but on indirect contacts and friendships. That’s the way most countries collect most intelligence. Russia is just as happy with contacts who can be nurtured and developed to provide information (as Flynn did when he communicated the incoming administration’s position on U.S. sanctions for Russia’s attacks on the 2016 election) or pass on disinformation (as Giuliani did when he drew attention to edited audiotapes purporting to detail interactions between Vice President Joe Biden and Ukrainian government officials).

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

And... here we go,
https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1552067446542159873#m

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

This footage of Pelosi & Schumer in their secure locations is insane, holy sh*t

It certainly is. I've been watching coverage of the hearing for the better part of two hours now. Apparently, it was a documentarian - who I assume is a congressional staffer or aide - who recorded that footage on her phone. She certainly had considerable foresight in doing so, as it is historical footage that will be shown in documentaries and films in the years ahead. And it's very revealing how the congressional leaders had to take responsibility for getting law enforcement resources to the Capitol, while Trump sat on his laurels for hours and did nothing.

Did nothing to quell the violent sedition he initiated.

Given that we do not have the White House call logs, we do not know precisely what Mr. Trump did during that time. "Nothing" would be the least damaging action that does not contradict available evidence, but said evidence is hardly conclusive - it covers a range of possibilities, from "nothing" to "actively aided an attempt to overthrow the government of the United States".

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Potentially stupid question: Couldn't the January 6 committee just continue in the senate, where Democrats have the majority? I think Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins and a few others might be willing to participate for the Republican side?

Sure but the last session of the House made clear that it had run out of material. I don't think there is a Trump crime arising from Jan 6, just impeachment and conviction action. As Andy McCarthy observed, instead of impeaching with no ensuing conviction in play, the House should have just kept going with impeachment hearings until the chances of a Senate conviction were maximized, and then the conviction penalty would be a bar to future Federal office for the ex-President Trump. The whole process was otherwise meaningless given that Trump had but a fortnight of time left in office. If he went rogue, Pence could have pressed the incapacity button, and Trump knew that. As it was, Pence illegally ordered law enforcement to protect the Capitol with Trump AWOL.

That is my take of events anyway.

Whether or not there is a chargable Trump crime re: the January 6th assault on the Capitol that attempted to keep him in power depends on how far the DoJ is able to prove the chain of conspiracy regarding the organization of the attack.

That the mob Trump's campaign organized and which he incited attacked the Capitol with assistance and encouragement from members of the Proud Boys and other pro-Truml militants is well established.

Likewise, that the milita seeded into the mob were taking direction from their own leaders, and that their goals were seditious has been proven in court.

That pro-Trump milita leadership were in contact with Trump associates, like Roger Stone, is well-documented fact.

As far as I know,  beyond that point the cut-outs Trump used for his treasonous plot (note that even a plan to "just" threaten Pence by force to illegally overturn the election is treason) have been effective. To indict Trump over this particular set of crimes, the links that need to be proved are that instructions and information flowed between milita leadership and Trump's inner circle, and that those orders and information were passed at the direction of, or with the knowledge and approval of, Donald Trump.

While it has not been flashy or swift, Merrjt Garland's DoJ has been steadily building that chain. Hopefully the Special Prosecutor will be able to complete it. The investigation keeps slowly closing in. For example, the recent case of Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio showed that his associates at least believed he was in communication with Trump Junior about the Capitol attack.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1597715292582514688

(Plus Rhodes guilty of seditious conspiracy as emailking posted earlier.)

Guilty of obstruction but not conspiracy to obstruct - so the Oathkeepers just decided to spontaneously try and overturn the election results?

From what I've seen, it appears that the various milita leadership deliberately.kept their own "foot soldiers" out of the loop on the larger conspiracy. And if they did keep them informed, the DoJ failed to prove it to the jury's satisfaction.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna79720

A man who crushed D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges with a police shield on Jan. 6 was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in federal prison on Friday.

Patrick McCaughey III, who was dubbed #ThePinman by online sleuths, was present during some of the worst violence inside the lower west tunnel, the spot where presidents emerge during inauguration ceremonies. McCaughey was sentenced by Judge Trevor McFadden, a Donald Trump appointee who previously delivered the only full acquittal for a Jan. 6 defendant to date and has imposed more lenient sentences than other judges in the Capitol riot cases.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/14/politics/special-counsel-witnesses-maralago-trump-paid-lawyers/index.html

Federal prosecutors investigating former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents are pressing multiple witnesses for details about their attorneys, including whether any of them have attempted to influence testimony in order to protect the former president, multiple sources tell CNN.

Investigators have focused these questions toward a group of witnesses who either work for Trump or are represented by lawyers provided by him. In some instances, prosecutors have asked how witnesses found their lawyers and if they know how they were compensated during grand jury sessions.

The line of questioning about Trump-provided attorneys suggests prosecutors are looking at any efforts by the former president to keep control over more than two dozen Mar-a-Lago staffers and political aides who have become central witnesses in recent months, and whose legal bills are paid by Trump. Investigators working for special counsel Jack Smith are exploring multiple facets of a possible obstruction case, and that could include whether testimony has been improperly influenced and coordinated within Trump’s legal network.

Head of criminal organization named "Don" is acting like a mob boss? Quelle surprise!

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Has there been anything official? The claims of fraudster, sexual abuser, and criminal organization head Donald Trump obviously ought not be trusted.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Has there been anything official? The claims of fraudster, sexual abuser, and criminal organization head Donald Trump obviously ought not be trusted.

It's been verified by multiple major news organizations.

All I'm seeing from news organizations are endless repitions of "Trump says...".  Trump says he's gotten a letter from Jack Smith. Trump also aid he was going to release his taxes. How's that going?

Is there anything on a docket, from the special prosecutor's office, even from Donald's own lawyers, etc?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Great! This will wrap up the GOP nomination for Trump now. The more times he's indicted, the stronger he becomes.

Because the GOP is a party of abusers, criminals, and traitors.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

DeSantis on CNN

First question: “if Jack smith has evidence that Trump committed a crime, should Smith bring those charges”

Then Desantis starts talking about Alvin Bragg. He goes on and on without ever giving an answer to the question (and he was asked twice). I’m becoming more understanding of how DeSantis’ campaign has been going downhill

Cause all DeSantis can do is try to dodge these questions because if he answers “yes trump should be indicted” , his chances at the gop nomination would completely go up in smoke .

Because the Republican party is the antithesis of rule of law.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

It's hard to get a judge removed under that though.

She's already delayed the trial from this August to next May. She can doubtless find seemingly unobjectionable ways to push it out another three months. And once things are within 90 days of the election, the DoJ and the courts will slow down even more. 

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1686497045715050496?s=46

Kangaroo court.

I see you at least have the decency to change your avatar name before spouting stuff like this. Still, your original namesake would be ashamed of Trump.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/1686514964805140481

FF statement, makes me proud to support him. I hope the rest of you will consider joining me, regardless of your personal ideology.

I will not support Pence, but I acknowledge that speaking honestly like this is unlikely to do him any favors in the GOP, and respect that it took some courage to do so. (That it is, is damning to the GOP as a whole, but I still think its true.)

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Deeply evil people.

Republicans only use the law as a cudgel to beat their opponents with. They do not obey it themselves.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

(Quoting from the unreliable and untrustworthy deadbirdsite since it seems an appropriate venue for Haberman.)

https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1686516701297336320

Alarmed Trump whisperers must hurry to the well and start drawing water for their gravy train.

Haberman is shilling for Trump here. She is not doing journalism, she is simply amplifying a message Trump wants spread. The message that "Trump thought he'd won, so none of this is a crime!"
And she knows what she's doing. She's providing a legitimacy to a nonsense defense (Smith's indictment alone make it clear that Trump knew he'd lost). This is truly despicable behavior, and actions like this are a large part of why Trump is a still a political power in the United States.
 

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

(Quoting from the unreliable and untrustworthy deadbirdsite since it seems an appropriate venue for Haberman.)

https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1686516701297336320
Alarmed Trump whisperers must hurry to the well and start drawing water for their gravy train.

Haberman is shilling for Trump here. She is not doing journalism, she is simply amplifying a message Trump wants spread. The message that "Trump thought he'd won, so none of this is a crime!"
And she knows what she's doing. She's providing a legitimacy to a nonsense defense (Smith's indictment alone make it clear that Trump knew he'd lost). This is truly despicable behavior, and actions like this are a large part of why Trump is a still a political power in the United States.
 

I do not see this as shilling for Trump.  Haberman is reporting on what a Trump lawyer is floating as a defense.  This is legitimate news.  It's just not a legitimate defense.

Uncritically repeating misleading claims is not journalism.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan. Chutkan, an Obama appointee, is the only federal judge in Washington, D.C. who has sentenced Jan. 6 defendants to sentences longer than the government had requested.

https://politicalwire.com/2023/08/01/donald-trump-indicted/


Inject this s*** STRAIGHT into my f***ing veins.

It gets worse for Trump.

Judge assigned to Trump case previously said ‘the country is watching to see what the consequences are’ for January 6

District Judge Tanya Chutkan, the judge assigned to preside over former President Donald Trump’s criminal case in Washington, DC, has repeatedly spoken out in very strong terms against the efforts to overturn the election and disrupt the transfer of power.

Chutkan, a Jamaica native, has served as a federal judge since she was appointed by Barack Obama in 2014. After graduating from University of Pennsylvania Law School, Chutkan spent more than a decade working as a public defender in Washington, DC. According to her biography on the court website, Chutkan “argued several appellate cases and tried over 30 cases, including numerous serious felony matters” as a public defender.

The Defendant (head of the notorious criminal Trump Organization) will doubtless whine that a judge who has publicly evidenced a dislike of criminals and traitors will be biased against him and should be replaced by one whom he appointed in return for pledges of loyalty and favors.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I've heard some analysts say that even with the likely bump in donations it'll take in, the increase in legal fees could cause Trump's SuperPAC to run out of money possibly as soon as before the end of the year.

I had to pick up my jaw today when I read that last year his PAC had $105 million and now only has $4 million. What's even crazier is that up until he was a declared candidate, the RNC was paying his legal bills too! Being a career criminal really, really drains your bank account after you get caught. It's the republicans' own fault though. They could have convicted him at his impeachment trial and been done with him; legally barred from running again. Now he's a candidate again and he is financially bleeding the republican party dry. Karma's a b****

Nah, getting caught is cheap. Trying to dodge the consequences, when you have a history of not paying your lawyers, gets expensive fast, I'll bet. (I also wouldn't bet that some of that money isn't finding its way into the pockets of Donald Trump and his criminal organization.)