January 6 - Insurrection Deniability and Control of US Government-New
What good are laws you can't enforce.?.
Donald Trump has a posse. The members of his posse may change, fall in and out of favor but he fashions himself after a mafia “Don” and these men (and a few women) have kissed the ring. We can name names: Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Mark Meadows, Elise Stefanik, Eric and Don, Jr., Rudy Giuliani, the Pillow Guy, Fox News commenters, Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Louie Gohmert, Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, and a cast of hundreds. Absolute loyalty is required or banishment results. You must be prepared to go to jail for the “don’s” illegal acts because he will see to it that he has deniability. Just ask Michael Cohen.
The Meetings at the Willard Hotel
We were told about a “Trump team ‘command center’ in the Willard Hotel in downtown DC for effort to deny Biden the Presidency” in a headline in The Washington Post on October 23, 2021, is something that came out in the committee investigating the January insurrection at the Capital. Of course, Trump was not at these meetings. Jacqueline Alemany, Emma Brown, Tom Hamburger and Jon Swaine, authors of the article began with “They called it the “command center,” a set of rooms and suites in the posh Willard hotel a block from the White House where some of President Trump’s most loyal lieutenants were working day and night with one goal in mind: overturning the results of the 2020 election.” The posse in this case included “Rudolph W Giuliani, Former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon, former NYC police commissioner Bernard K. Kerik was there as an investigator. John Eastman (scholar) was also present. He is the one who outlined scenarios for denying Biden the presidency in an Oval Office meeting on January 4 with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence”
“Their activities included finding, urging members of state legislatures to challenge Biden’s victory and calling on the Trump-supporting public to press Republican officials in key states.”
This tends to answer important questions although the built-in deniability makes it difficult to declare it absolute proof. Was there planning for the events of January 6 and was Trump involved in the planning to overturn the 2020 election using any means possible? Hard to believe these Trump loyalists acted without some prompting from their oddly charismatic leader. Do all these people want to overthrow the US government? Do they honestly believe that Trump will deliver the America of their dreams, whatever that is? Why the absolute pledge to such a flawed man? It seems like a top-down arrangement though, where orders come down from the top to the troops, perhaps not detailed scenarios to get things done, but orders to use the system against itself to keep their main man in power. Cases are settled on far less evidence than this.
John Eastman’s plan
Even earlier than the October plotting at the Willard Hotel in DC, John Eastman presented his plan to Trump and Pence in the Oval Office. Eastman claims to have been Trump’s lawyer but lawyers are not protected when the advice they give involves doing something illegal. Overturning a free and fair election is illegal, at least we assume it is. Did Trump ask Eastman for his input? Again, Trump knows how to get things done without directly involving himself, or at least he has been difficult to tie to these plots by his henchmen. It may be that Mark Meadows was the go-between. The January 6 Commission has seen over 2300 of the texts on his phone, but there are still over 1,000 the committee has not seen.
Under Eastman's scheme, “Pence would have declared Trump the winner with more Electoral College votes after the seven states were thrown out, at 232 votes to 222. Anticipating "howls" from Democrats protesting the overturning of the election, the memo proposes, Pence would instead say that no candidate had reached 270 votes in the Electoral College. That would throw the election to the House of Representatives, where each state would get one vote. Since Republicans controlled 26 state delegations, a majority could vote for Trump to win the election.
The plan was first proposed to Pence when Eastman was with Trump in the Oval Office on January 4, during one of Trump's attempts to convince Pence that he had the authority to stop the certification of the election.”
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/20/politics/trump-pence-election-memo/index.html
Rudy Giuliani’s Plan
States have some leeway when it comes to how they appoint or elect electors to convey votes to the Electoral College. They can give all their electoral votes to the biggest winner, or they can allot them in proportion to the voting results. Electors meet in their state capitals on a predetermined date to cast their votes for President and Vice President. Votes are then documented and certified under state seal and sent on the National Archives and then to Congress where they are accepted or rejected on January 6. This is considered ritual, and acceptance is a formality.
Giuliani, along with other Trump allies, came up with a plan to deal with electoral college votes in unprecedented ways. Since, they argued, election results were thought to be fraudulent in some states, they felt that the right-wing, victimized by this voter fraud, should appoint their own slate of electors who would vouch for a Trump win in that state’s election. While it may be creative, it is almost certainly illegal since it fell outside the regular procedures within each state. Seven states agreed to this scheme, and it was quite elaborate. They met at a state capital, signed official looking documents of certification, sometimes using a seal that approximated the actual state seal and sent these seven certifications off to the National Archives hoping they would pass muster and enter the official record. The National Archives, when presented with two sets of documents from these seven states, and apparently not brainwashed into a Trumpian stupor, declined to accept the fake certifications and the correct forms were sent on to Congress. You can’t make this stuff up.
Here are a few headlines and sources for this story:
Trump campaign officials, led by Rudy Giuliani, oversaw fake electors plot in 7 states
SELECT COMMITTEE SUBPOENAS “ALTERNATE ELECTORS” FROM SEVEN STATES
Trump allies created fake Electoral College certificates
The documents contain the signatures of Trump supporters who claimed to be the rightful electors
https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/01/12/trump-allies-created-fake-electoral-college-certificates/
Memos Show Roots of Trump’s Focus on Jan. 6 and Alternate Electors
Just over two weeks after Election Day, lawyers working with the Trump campaign set out a rationale for creating alternate slates of electors as part of an effort to buy time to overturn the results.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/02/us/politics/trump-jan-6-memos.html
A question posed to the internet:
Have there ever been any instances where electors have voted differently than they promised to?
History. Over 58 elections, 165 electors have not cast their votes for president or vice president as prescribed by the legislature of the state they represented. Of those: 71 electors changed their votes because the candidate to whom they were pledged died before the electoral ballot (in 1872 and 1912).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector
The Email Evidence
Emails leaked to the press from members of the January 6 investigation, or from people who felt freed up to expose information once the committee had obtained emails of people around Trump before, during and after January 6 provide evidence that there was advance planning for the violence on January 6. Certain militia figures seemed to have been in contact with those who were trying to keep Trump in power, the Oath Keepers being one such group. Names often connected with this activity include Mo Brooks, Louie Gohmert, Madison Cawthorn, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, and others. This links members of Congress to insurrectionist plans. The fact that it does not link Trump directly does not mean that Trump was not involved. He is a master at keeping the stink of illegal activities away from himself. He lets his people take the rap, and they do it.
The speeches at the Ellipse on January 6.
In case you never heard Trump and others speak on January 6, the Wall Street Journal captured the entire event, and it doesn’t seem to be behind a pay wall. We have heard key excerpts from these speeches many times. We heard Trump direct his follows to go march to the US Capital and tell them that he would be with them. We know that Trump did not accompany the demonstrators to the Capital. But direct orders issued by a President who wants his people to believe that he was victimized and must be avenged would seem to be one instance when Trump directly connected himself to the violence at the Capital and that puts his deniability in question. We heard it with our own ears. It is recorded for posterity. Why isn’t this kind of incitement enough to serve as proof of preplanning and seditious intent? How big is the burden of proof? Are our courts so compromised that with dueling right-wing and “liberal” courts Trump has assured that all legal decisions will end up in the Supreme Court now packed with right-wing justices.
https://m.wsj.net/video/20210205/01062021trumpspeechsmall/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8
During the attacks on the Capital:
We have clear evidence that Trump was unresponsive for hours as the violence unfolded at the Capital. We have family members and staff texts showing attempts to get Trump to call off his followers and ask them to go home. We know he did not answer these texts with actions. We know that there is a seven-hour gap in information on Trump’s phone when he was obviously being texted by staff and family. We know he waited hours before asking rioters to stand down. We have access to 2,300+ messages to and from Mark Meadows throughout the day on January 6 and 1000+ that no one has accessed. We learned this from CNN just this week
“The never-before-seen texts include messages from Trump’s family – daughter Ivanka Trump, son-in-law Jared Kushner and son Donald Trump Jr. – as well as White House and campaign officials, Cabinet members, Republican Party leaders, January 6 rally organizers, Rudy Giuliani, My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, Sean Hannity, and other Fox hosts. There are also text exchanges with more than 40 current and former Republican members of Congress, including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Mo Brooks of Alabama, and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
From The Mercury News, “Thousands of Mark Meadows texts show Trump inner circle’s communications on overturning election, Jan. 6 insurrection” April 25, 2022 and updated on April 26, 2022. (CNN Wire Service) by Jamie Gangel, Jeremy Herb, and Elizabeth Stuart.
The Burden of Proof
From a Google Image Search - Barbara Keon
Conclusions
The US Constitution gave us the tools to use if someone tried to subvert our democracy/republic. They gave us Impeachment, the 25 th Amendment to declare someone mentally incompetent to govern, and a section of the 14 the Amendment which says that if someone, anyone in government takes part in an act of sedition or insurrection they can no longer serve in government nor run again in a federal election. We have used Impeachment twice to no avail. We have agreed not to use the 25 th Amendment perhaps because it would be too difficult to prove mental incompetence. Perhaps the bar on this was not quite so high in the 18 th century.
What we have left is the 14 th Amendment which Trump most likely did not know about. He has fallen into an absolute ban from governing because he incited an insurrection, thwarted the peaceful transfer of power, and plotted to break his oath to uphold the US Constitution.
But who enforces the law? When Republicans refuse to enforce the law because they are in on this sedition, and because they now pretend there was no insurrection, there will be no vote in Congress to evict perpetrators or disallow Trump from future elections. The Supreme Court is compromised and will not enforce this law. The DOJ seems missing in action. We the people suspect that any demonstration may turn into a war. Is the coup over? Do the Democrats have any moves left? Mainstream media will not take a stand on this. They can’t afford any more hits to their revenue. Left-wing media is practically nonexistent except for MSNBC which is not available on all TVs without paying extra. The right-wing has been playing their hand for a long time and it may be too late to stop them now. Dems would have to overturn the ominous predictions about losing the midterms in 2022, and also the old “saw” that says that Congress always changes hands in a midterm election. This time it really matters.
We have referees in sports who can throw bad actors out of the game. The closest we have to a referee in our government is our DOJ. The 14 th Amendment tells us that if you are serving in government and you take part in an insurrection you cannot serve any longer in a government you tried to subvert or overthrow. Yet there are at least 8 Senators and 121 Representatives who tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power by voting to not accept the electoral votes in Congress on January 6. Those 8 senators and some of the representatives made statement to rile up the citizens who attacked our US Capital. The evidence is overwhelming. And yet they all sit as entitled and disrespectful as ever with no shame or guilt. Whose job is it to turf them out? What good is a law that cannot be enforced? If we are holding back because we don’t want to dissolve our government, because we think this is a temporary insanity and it will pass, then we will lose anyway. Is there any way to turn this lose-lose situation into a win-win without sending seditionists packing? Evicting those who took part in the January 6 insurrection, no matter how small the part, could swing the midterms and “stop the steal” by Trump and the Republicans of the US government.
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