Posted: October 14, 2021 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: attempted coup, authoritarianism, Department of Justice, Donald Trump, enforcing Congressional subpoenas, fascism, January 6 Committee, U.S. Marshalls |
Good Morning!!
There is outstanding news this morning from the January 6 Select Committee!
From Raw Story:
A member of the U.S. House select committee explained how Donald Trump’s allies might be rounded up and arrested if they continued to defy congressional subpoenas in the Jan. 6 investigation.
Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” where she called for fines or jail time for former Trump advisers who flout orders for their testimony and documents related to the insurrection, and she revealed what questions the committee had for former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and others served with the subpoenas.
“I want to know how much planning was involved, who was involved in the planning, who funded it, how they — what their intent was when they came into that day, and then what they knew as that day unfolded and the safety and security of people like the vice president and members of Congress were at risk, [and] what they did, either to respond or not respond on that occasion,” Murphy said.
If those individuals don’t show up for their scheduled testimony, Murphy said they could be taken into custody by the U.S. Marshals Service.
“We have engaged with a wide variety of law enforcement offices, including the U.S. Marshals, in order to issue the subpoenas,” Murphy said. “We will use everything, as you said, with all due respect, we will use all of the agencies and all of the tools at our disposal to issue the subpoenas and enforce them.”
Despite all the complaints on social media, today is the day the people who were subpoenaed by the committee were required too appear and produce documents; nothing can be done to enforce the subpoenas unless they don’t show up.
Yesterday the Committee subpoenaed Jeffrey Clark, the Justice Department official who worked with Trump to overturn the 2020 election and whom Trump wanted to appoint as Attorney General.
From the WaPo story:
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack is planning to ramp up its efforts to force Trump administration officials to cooperate with its inquiry, and on Wednesday it issued a subpoena for a former Justice Department official panel members view as key to the examination of the former president’s efforts to overturn election results.
The committee said it is seeking records and testimony from Jeffrey Clark, a Trump-era Justice Department official who sought to deploy department resources to support President Donald Trump’s false claims of massive voting fraud in the 2020 election.
“The Select Committee needs to understand all the details about efforts inside the previous administration to delay the certification of the 2020 election and amplify misinformation about the election results,” committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) said in a statement. “We need to understand Mr. Clark’s role in these efforts at the Justice Department and learn who was involved across the administration. The Select Committee expects Mr. Clark to cooperate fully with our investigation.” […..]
The committee on Wednesday also took eight hours of closed-door testimony from former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen regarding the final days of the Trump administration, according to two people familiar with the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private testimony, as it also focuses on witnesses willing to voluntarily meet with the panel.
The latest activity comes as tensions over compliance with the investigation are increasing and as the committee’s plans to hold depositions this week are already facing head winds. The focus of those depositions are Stephen K. Bannon and three other Trump administration officials — former chief of staff Mark Meadows, former deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino and Kash Patel, who was serving as chief of staff to then-acting Defense secretary Christopher Miller on Jan. 6.
Pierce writes:
In the plague-spotted orchard of Trumpian malfeasance, which the House of Representatives is trying to defoliate before it poisons everything in the garden, Steve Bannon, the last heir to House Harkonnen, is the low-hanging fruit. There is no reason on god’s despoiled earth why he shouldn’t be made to testify under oath about everything that happened on January 6. He wasn’t working for the president* at the time, so there’s no question of executive privilege. He was a private citizen when he allegedly played a role in orchestrating an insurrection meant to overturn a national election. Steve Bannon is the easy one.
He has until October 14 to turn over everything the special investigative committee’s subpoena demanded. Assuming he ignores the deadline, at 12:01 a.m. on October 15, he should be in cuffs and in the back of a car with two U.S. marshals, on his way to the pokey….
The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they’re Mixmasters compared to watching Congress and the Department of Justice move on this matter. I have been staunchly in the camp of take the time you need. I have believed from the jump that there’s more going on underground at the DOJ than we know about. But even my patience gauge is blinking red. It’s not enough to be doing something. The country needs to see you doing something. It needs to see that to build its confidence that justice is coming. It also needs to see it as a kind of vicarious triumph over all the worst cynicism and corruption that attended the last administration*. A Steve Bannon perp walk would do nicely.
CNN: January 6 panel prepares to immediately pursue criminal charges as Bannon faces subpoena deadline.
CNN: White House formally rejects Trump’s request to protect specific documents from being given to January 6 investigators.
How close did Trump come to actually overturning the election? Very close. And it’s not over yet. I’ll end with this Substack post by Jared Yates Sexton: How An Attempted Coup Becomes A Successful Coup. The piece is a response to Trump’s video on Ashli Babbitt’s birthday.
Like all things Trump, the former president’s video was equal parts absurd and disturbing. On what should have been veteran Ashli Babbitt’s thirty-sixth birthday, her family played a taped message from Donald Trump that lauded her as “a truly incredible person” and assured them “her memory will live on in our hearts for all time.”
Of course, Trump was eulogizing a woman who participated in the storming of the United States Capitol on his behalf. That Babbitt and her compatriots were attempting to overthrow the will of the electorate and re-install Trump as president, thus carrying out a violent coup, went unsaid. That Babbitt would have still been alive had Trump and his cronies not organized the even and attempted a violent coup also went unnoted. What was important, what really needed emphasized, was Babbitt’s newly minted role as rallying point and martyr.
With every passing day new and more damning information emerges that underscores the real and present danger of January 6th. There were legal strategies in place, under-the-table dealings, plans to both slaughter lawmakers and utilize terror to retain power. And yet, many in the political and pundit class still consider any concern over those facts hysterical, overblown, or at least look at the events as the culmination and final endpoint of the crisis. Meanwhile, the January 6th Commission has subpoenaed Trump confidants and conspirators Steve Bannon, Mark Meadows, and others, only to be stonewalled at every turn.
What we are watching is something we have seen time and again throughout history. A failed coup that, through continued momentum, sanctification as faith and movement, and the failure by those who should know better to head the threat off before it grows out of their control, is predictably and miserably heading toward completing its purpose of seizing power.
On that note, here’s hoping the January 6 Committee sends out the U.S. Marshalls for Steve Bannon and any other Trumpist who defies their subpoenas! U.S. democracy is in serious jeopardy.
What do you think? As always, this is an open thread.
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Posted: October 9, 2021 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Chuck Schumer, debt limit, Donald Trump, executive privilege, January 6 Committee, Michael Flynn, Mitch McConnell, QAnon, Senate Judiciary Committee report |
Lightning Cloud, by Chiakiro
Good Afternoon!!
Politico “Playbook” has a good brief summary of where things stand right now with the January 6 Committee investigation: The Jan. 6 committee drama gets serious. (I’ve added a few links to longer articles.)
JAN. 6 INVESTIGATION STEAMROLLS FORWARD — Over the last 24 hours, we’ve seen major developments in the ongoing investigation into the pro-Trump Jan. 6 riots that sought to overthrow democracy in America.
1) Executive privilege waived: “President JOE BIDEN will not invoke executive privilege to shield an initial set of records from DONALD TRUMP’s White House that’s being sought by congressional investigators probing the Jan. 6 Capitol attack,” report Nicholas Wu, Kyle Cheney, Betsy Woodruff Swan and Meridith McGraw.
— What comes next: Trump has 30 days to challenge the decision in court, after which time, the National Archives will release the documents to the Jan. 6 panel. The former president is already asserting privilege over 45 specific documents requested from the committee, and indicated in a letter that he wants to bar the release of additional documents “potentially numbering in the millions.”
2) Committee subpoenas hit deadlines: The first wave of high-profile subpoenas from the Jan. 6 committee have been served, and not all of the subjects are cooperating, as Nicholas, Kyle, Betsy and Meridith detail:
- STEVE BANNON claims that Trump’s invocation of executive privilege means that he doesn’t have to participate. (That strikes legal experts as dubious, seeing as at the time of the 2020 election, Bannon hadn’t worked in the White House for several years.)
- MARK MEADOWS is “engaging with the Select Committee,” per a statement from the panel.
- KASH PATEL issued a statement Friday confirming that he “responded to the subpoena in a timely manner” and is engaging with the committee.
- DAN SCAVINO was officially served with his subpoena on Friday.
— What comes next: In a statement from Jan. 6 Committee Chair BENNIE THOMPSON (D-Miss.) and Vice Chair LIZ CHENEY (R-Wyo.), the panel said it “will not allow any witness to defy a lawful subpoena or attempt to run out the clock, and we will swiftly consider advancing a criminal contempt of Congress referral.” If they’re serious, a criminal referral would require a full floor vote in the House.More from NYT’s Maggie Haberman and Luke Broadwater
— Something to watch:“Congress’ Jan. 6 investigators face an inevitable reckoning with their GOP colleagues,”by Kyle Cheney and Olivia Beavers
By Ophelia Redpath, 1965
Also from Politico: Capitol Police whistleblower delivers scathing rebuke to two of its senior leaders on Jan. 6, by Daniel Lippman and Betsy Woodruff Swan.
A former high-ranking Capitol Police official with knowledge of the department’s response to the Jan. 6 attack has sent congressional leaders a scathing letter accusing two of its senior leaders of mishandling intelligence and failing to respond properly during the riot.
The whistleblower, who requested anonymity for privacy reasons and left the force months after the attack, sent the 16-page letter late last month to the top members of both parties in the House and Senate. His missive makes scorching allegations against Sean Gallagher, the Capitol Police’s acting chief of uniformed operations, and Yogananda Pittman, its assistant chief of police for protective and intelligence operations — who also served as its former acting chief.
The whistleblower accuses Gallagher and Pittman of deliberately choosing not to help officers under attack on Jan. 6 and alleges that Pittman lied to Congress about an intelligence report Capitol Police received before that day’s riot. After a lengthy career in the department, the whistleblower was a senior official on duty on Jan. 6.
The whistleblower’s criticism went beyond Capitol Police leaders to Congress. Without naming specific lawmakers, his letter accuses congressional leaders of having “purposefully failed” to tell the truth about the department’s failures.
POLITICO obtained the letter detailing the allegations, which is circulating among Capitol Police officers, and is publishing portions of it here. To protect the whistleblower’s identity, POLITICO is not publishing the letter in full.
Click the Politico link to read the rest.
By Evelina Oliveira
This morning the Washington Post Editorial Board posted this in response to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s report on Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election at a meeting three days before the January 6 attack on the Capitol: Opinion: Without these changes, U.S. democracy will remain vulnerable to Trump and other bad actors.
The Senate report details how Mr. Trump tried persistently to enlist the Justice Department in his scheme to overturn the 2020 election results. His pressure campaign, after Attorney General William P. Barr resigned in December, featured calls and meetings with Mr. Rosen and other top Justice Department staff. It continued as Mr. Trump sent them a preposterous petition he wanted them to file with the Supreme Court asking the justices to void Joe Biden’s victory. It reached its zenith in a cockamamie plot to force Mr. Rosen to pressure state governments to cook the results or be replaced by Jeffrey Clark, a lower-ranking Justice official who would go along with the scheme.
Mr. Trump failed because Mr. Rosen and other officials in key positions refused to cooperate and threatened to resign. But they could not stop Mr. Trump from forcing the resignation of the U.S. attorney in Atlanta and replacing him with a lawyer the then-president thought would pursue the fraud investigations he wanted to see.
The editors argue:
The seriousness of Mr. Trump’s effort to nullify an election, his continuing lies about the results and the willingness of so many Republicans to indulge those lies call for several responses.
The investigations must continue. The House’s Jan. 6 committee should compel Mr. Clark, who did not cooperate with the Senate Judiciary panel, to testify. The House and the Justice Department must enforce the committee’s subpoenas, which several Trump confidantes appear prepared to flout on the former president’s say-so. The National Archives should turn over documents immediately. If courts are involved, judges must act with urgency….
Most urgently, Congress must reinforce elements of the nation’s democratic infrastructure vulnerable to exploitation by bad actors such as Mr. Trump. It should revamp the ancient Electoral Count Act to limit partisan interference in presidential vote tallying, and it should impose federal election standards that insulate state election officials from political pressure.
The Committee needs to get right to work on enforcing the subpoenas and Steve Bannon should immediately be arrested and jailed. I hope they do something quickly, but I’m not holding my breath.
After he backed down and allowed a vote to avert a U.S. default and a global financial crisis, Mitch McConnell is now threatening to let it happen in December. His excuse is that Chuck Schumer made an
“inappropriate” speech after the vote. Here’s the speech:
Behind Schumer, you can also see Joe Manchin having a hissy fit over the speech. He agrees with his pal McConnell, apparently.
The Guardian: Schumer ‘poisoned well’ over debt limit, McConnell says in insult-laden letter.
Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, sought to fight his way out of a corner on Friday by releasing an angry letter in which he blamed Democrats for the impasse over the debt ceiling he broke by ending a refusal to co-operate he had said was absolute.
In the letter to Joe Biden, McConnell complained about a speech in which the Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer, attacked Republicans for their behaviour.
Lamenting Schumer’s lack of civility – which prompted angry scenes in the Senate – McConnell levelled a string of insults at his opposite number.
Paradise Cat, by Hans Ruettimann
“Last night,” the minority leader wrote, late on Friday, “in a bizarre spectacle, Senator Schumer exploded in a rant that was so partisan, angry and corrosive that even Democratic senators were visibly embarrassed by him and for him.
“This tantrum encapsulated and escalated a pattern of angry incompetence from Senator Schumer … this childish behavior only further alienated the Republican members who helped facilitate this short-term patch. It has poisoned the well even further.”
Democrats argue it was McConnell who poisoned the well by refusing to co-operate with raising the debt limit, a step they took repeatedly with Donald Trump in power. Experts say a US default would be catastrophic for the global economy.
McConnell insisted: “In light of Senator Schumer’s hysterics and my grave concerns about the ways that another vast, reckless, partisan spending bill would hurt Americans and help China, I will not be a party to any future effort to mitigate the consequences of Democratic mismanagement.”
Suddenly being partisan is a bad thing because a Democrat did it? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
Finally, a little comic relief: it appears that the Q-Anon nuts have turned on Michael Flynn. Will Sommer at The Daily Beast: Michael Flynn to QAnon Believers: I’m Not a Satanist!
Former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has been on a relentless media tour since his pardon last year, sitting for interviews with even the most obscure right-wing media outlets to promote the MAGA agenda.
But on Tuesday, Flynn appeared on a little-known YouTube channel called Truth Unveiled TV for a very different reason: rebutting the idea that he led a church congregation in a Satanic ritual borrowed from a nuclear doomsday cult.
In a video entitled “Some Have Said That General Flynn Prayed to Satan in a Recent Prayer,” host Paul Oebel gave Flynn a chance to rebut the growing right-wing controversy alleging he’s signed on with Lucifer.
Steampunk cat lady, by Jeff Haynie
“I even saw a show the other day saying ‘Michael’s flipped on the side of the devil,’” Oebel said. “Can you please explain what happened there?”
“All of these people that talk about turning to whatever…” Flynn said. “People need to stop overthinking what everybody is saying.”
The bizarre YouTube interview marked Flynn’s latest attempt in a weeks-long campaign to convince his one-time fans in the QAnon conspiracy theory movement that he isn’t a Satanist.
Prior to the unusual controversy, Flynn had embraced his position as a hero to supporters of QAnon, taking a QAnon oath, raising money from QAnon believers, and selling QAnon T-shirts. In May, Flynn even appeared at a QAnon conference and endorsed the idea of a military coup.
But QAnon fame is a fickle thing. After promoting QAnon for more than a year, Flynn now finds himself on the business end of the conspiracy theory. Like QAnon targets before him, Flynn is now struggling to persuade angry QAnon believers that he isn’t a secret Satan-worshipper.
Read the rest at The Daily Beast.
That’s all I have for you today. Have a great weekend!
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