January 6th legal proceedings and investigations megathread

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

To Trump’s hard-core supporters, his rallies weren’t politics. They were life.

Kiczenski was inspired by a vista of Trumpian strength and patriotism: the Washington Monument in the distance, the majestic Capitol in the foreground, and freedom-loving patriots fighting like hell to stop a stolen and fraudulent election, liberate their country and save their president. She snapped pictures and recorded videos.

“It just looked so neat,” she said. “We weren’t there to steal things. We weren’t there to do damage. We were just there to overthrow the government.”

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1417860120126623750

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

You judged the fraudulent levels of 2020 based on the tipping point margin. Well the tipping point state in 2016 was .7% while the 2020 was .6%, so thanks for showing how transparent of a partisan hack you are about this issue even by your ridiculous standards

It was more certain because the democrats spent years litigating the election in multiple branches of federal government, and were unable to produce evidence that their claim (foreign interference by Russia) was decisive in the outcome.

In 2020, there has not yet been an autopsy of the changes in terms of voter registration and ballot laws.

Again we have audited the state results multiple times that show everything was fine at this points the only autopsy left is if the changes help lead to the higher turnout which if that is what your complaining about begs the question of why you would object to being called a democracy hater because that is what you would be

One possibility I've seen brought up in the context of the recent hearings on potential disbarment or other sanctions on the lawyers who brought Trump's lawsuits over the election is that they made procedurally flawed submissions to courts,  and then immediately turned around and started vocally complaining that their complaints had never been rejected on their (non-existent) merits.  Whether that outcome was deliberate or simply opportunistic isn't definitely established, but is apparently considered very poor lawyering either way.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/abughazalehkat/status/1418379937002700803

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/abughazalehkat/status/1418379937002700803

This appears to be selectively edited in that the guy appears to have confirmed it right before that.

That's nice. Please provide a cued link if you want to be taken seriously.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/rjsmithcpi/status/1418283188732973057

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Growing group of GOP members wants McCarthy to punish Kinzinger and Cheney for joining January 6 committee

A growing group of rank-and-file House Republicans wants House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and GOP leadership to punish Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for accepting a position from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to serve on the select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.

The push to seek punishment rose to a new level on Sunday, after Pelosi announced that Kinzinger had accepted her invitation to join the committee. Initially, most rank-and-file Republicans were content to let Cheney serve without much of a fight, but Kinzinger's addition has changed the conversation and has put a new level of pressure on McCarthy.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

We need a "sore loser" Amendment to the Constitution that expels, and then disqualifies, any sitting President who calls for the nullification of electoral results  or the disruption of any process of determining the count of the Electoral College or the popular vote. Dispute is a prerogative, but nullification is not.

We have such a mechanism. It's called impeachment.

I have said it again and again. There is no technical fix for forty-plus percent of the country participating in bad faith while actively plotting our destruction. American rejects modern Republicanism or America dies from the political equivalent of polonium.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Note the carefully framed "both sides" and the implicit rejection of the authority of the Democratic majority.

Congress reverts to childish antics with no adult supervision in sight

Democrats originally proposed a bipartisan commission to conduct the inquiry of the insurrection. Although that passed the House on a near party-line vote, it was blocked in the Senate. House Democrats then proposed a partisan select committee with all 13 members appointed by the Speaker, with five on the recommendation of the Republican leader. After Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) included Republican Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), then the No. 3 GOP leader, as one of her eight picks, Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) named his five choices. Pelosi rejected two of them on grounds they had voted against certifying the votes for Biden in two of the states. With that, McCarthy withdrew his remaining three nominees and vowed his party appointees might conduct their own investigation (without formal House authorization). 

Is there something about all this on both sides of the field that reminds you of the childish threat that, if you cannot make-up the rules of the game as you go along, you’re going to take your ball and go home? 

What would a neutral arbiter — a labor dispute judge (or a kindergarten teacher) — recommend to break this impasse?  Speaker Pelosi denies there is an impasse and has indicated the select committee will move forward, lopsided majority and all, to conduct the inquiry. That approach only confirms the other side’s argument that this was intended from the start to be a partisan hit on former President Trump, his national supporters, and his defenders in Congress. Any findings of such a select committee, without full Republican participation, will be portrayed by the media, or at least perceived by the public, as a predictable partisan attack against Republicans in the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections for Congress. Any Republican investigation, if launched, will have even less credibility without the imprimatur of an official House report. 

Being more eloquent and less heavy-handed that Fox News doesn't make what's happening here any better. This is an attempt to normalize Republican abuse of their responsibilities, and an attack on the legitimacy of our representative government. 

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Can you imagine if that shameless clown Jim Jordan was on the panel?

I can't even. Jordan would have been attacking those officers and trying to impeach the legitimacy of their testimony. That's precisely why Pelosi excluded him from the committee.

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1420147017242746885

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1420710928249675783

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

DHS Memo: Capitol Attackers Plotted in Advance

An internal Department of Homeland Security document reviewed by The Daily Beast describes “advanced preparations'' by Capitol rioters ahead of the Jan. 6 attack—and appears to go further than recent descriptions of the FBI’s characterization of the Capitol riot.

“The tactics used by domestic violent extremists (DVEs) to assault law enforcement and security personnel and ultimately breach the US Capitol suggests that some of the participants engaged in pre-operational coordination and planning activities,” reads the April 8 DHS document, entitled “Tactics Used to Breach the US Capitol Building on 6 January 2021

The report highlights the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, two organized groups involved in the attack. The Oath Keepers, the report notes, allegedly planned armed “quick response forces” based in off-site locations.

“DVEs [domestic violent extremists] used tactical radios, mobile devices, and encrypted applications to communicate securely during the breach, according to media reporting and a federal indictment,” the report continues. “Four alleged leaders of the Proud Boys solicited donations for electronic equipment, purchased radios, and established an encrypted channel used by dozens of associates. The four individuals are awaiting trial on a variety of charges, including conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding.”

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/MacFarlaneNews/status/1432337471405236226

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Trump’s political operation paid more than $4.3 million to Jan. 6 organizers but questions remain about the full extent of its involvement

Former President Donald Trump’s political operation reported paying more than $4.3 million to people and firms that organized the Jan. 6 rally since the start of the 2020 election. However, questions remain about the full extent of the Trump campaign’s involvement in the “Save America” rally on the day of the Capitol attack as a House select committee’s sweeping requests attempt to shine some light on that day’s events.

But since Trump’s campaign and joint fundraising committee funneled millions of dollars through layers of opaque firms and shell companies where the ultimate payee is hidden, the public may never know the full extent of the Trump campaign’s payments to organizers involved in the protests.

The full roster of people working for Trump’s campaign remains hidden from the public and details of those payments, such as the nature of services provided and the amount of money changing hands, are shrouded in mystery.

Recent campaign finance records reviewed by OpenSecrets show Trump’s political operation continued to pay Event Strategies Inc., a firm named in a permit for the rally where two of the rally organizers worked. The firm received payments from Trump aligned super PAC Make America Great Again Action as recently as Aug. 13, FEC records filed Aug. 26 show.

I strong recommend reading the whole thing. But the very short takeway is:

Rally organizers were paid by Trump (already known).

Who Trump paid and how much he paid them remains hidden.

Trump continues to pay the rally organizers.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Ha this guy got his bail revoked and sent back to jail because he watched the MyPillow guy's nonsensical fraud conference!

https://lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-breach/qanon-adherent-must-return-to-jail-ahead-of-jan-6-trial-because-he-watched-mypillow-ceos-symposium-online

How are these stories even real?  The creators of the matrix we live in went too far with this one.  The Trump movement is becoming too farcical.

It's been a mix of farce and horror the entire time.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/Otpor17/status/1379499510309789709

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1436390103564292097

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

A federal judge ordered this video released over prosecutors objections as they felt it was a national security risk.

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1441008337882071048

And?
What's your point?
Also, I have seen that video plenty of times in the past. Nothing new.

The point is not everyone there was there for a coup attempt.

Doesn't matter. Once it transformed from protest to use of force with the aim of keeping Trump in power every single one of them became guilty of treason.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://mobile.twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1447309413249912840

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/sgurman/status/1448606924476452865

This is the treason version of going easy on a young well-off white male rapist because they're "from a good family" or because a it would "destroy their life" at a "good college".

I'm increasingly thinking that how awful Republicans are is ultimately irrelevant to the outcome: our system of government is too broken to be able survive.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1452287436617355293

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Washington Post: Trump lawyer John Eastman blamed Pence for January 6 violence by refusing to block 2020 election certification.

https://us.cnn.com/2021/10/30/politics/mike-pence-january-6-john-eastman-trump/index.html

This is just nutty.
Pence follows the rules of his role in the certification process, and because he did not deviate from it (in the traitorous ways trump and his looney lawyers wanted) he somehow gets blamed for the viloence that took place during the January 6th Insurrection.
Can someone explain how trump thought he would get-away with this this lunatic logic?

It's perfectly ration if you put yourself in the place of the traitorous Trump-cult.

By precisely what mechanism traitor Donnie Dumb**** and his treasonous co-conspirators intended to keep him in power we may never know - their reasoning as presented to Pence was already incredibly tortured. Who can guess the exact byzantine depth to which they descended in their desperate madness?

What we do know is that Trump and his traitors known plans focused heavily on Pence's role as President of the Senate and the responsibilities explicitly assigned to that position. We also know that the rioters werespecifically hunting VP Pence, with the avowed intent of executing him.

The more violent and co-ordinated attackers were far-right milita members, whose presence was encouraged and aided by Trump's team and had a close connections Roger Stone, Trump's pardoned ratf***er.

From the above, it seems likely that whatever the precise details of planned justification for Trump's self-coup, they involved the removal of Pence. Either so that he could be replaced by someone that Trump and his fellow coup plotters thought would swing things there way, or so that his absence could be used as an excuse to claim that the electoral vote count had never been properly completed, thus paving the way for some convoluted path of legal self-justification.

So, by not surrendering to Trump's will, Pence "caused" Trump and his co-conspirators to fall back to other coup plans and launch an attack on the Capitol in an effort to block final stage of Biden's formal victory.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

New January 6 court filings reveal what Trump is trying to keep secret from Congress

In the Meadows documents alone, there are three handwritten notes about the events of January 6 and two pages listing briefings and telephone calls about the Electoral College certification, the archivist said.

Laster's outline of the documents offers the first glimpse into the paperwork that would reveal goings-on inside the West Wing as Trump supporters gathered in Washington and then overran the US Capitol, disrupting the certification of the 2020 vote.

Trump is also seeking to keep secret 30 pages of his daily schedule, White House visitor logs and call records, Laster wrote. The call logs, schedules and switchboard checklists document "calls to the President and Vice President, all specifically for or encompassing January 6, 2021," Laster said.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/RepAndyBiggsAZ/status/1461020889831645192

Background:
Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Biggs Helped Plan January 6 Event, Lead Organizer Says (Jan 11, 2021)

Jan. 6 Protest Organizers Say They Participated in ‘Dozens’ of Planning Meetings With Members of Congress and White House Staff  (Oct 24, 2021)

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/egavactip/status/1463516941251973127