October 31, 2021
Heather Cox Richardson
Nov 1
In the weeks after the January 6 insurrection, one of the things that struck me as an odd political calculation was how quickly Republican lawmakers fell back into line behind former president Trump. Anyone watching could see that the information about Trump’s involvement in that insurrection that would come out by, well, right about now—about a year before the midterm elections—was going to be bad.
And here we are, and yes it is.
Today the Washington Post published a long report about the events before, during, and after January 6, compiled by a team of more than 25 reporters and additional staff who reviewed video and court transcripts, followed social media posts, and interviewed more than 230 people. The report lays the blame for January 6 on Trump and warns that we are in a fight for the survival of democracy.
The report is horrific, full of images, tapes, and timelines of a far more violent attack on our government than has previously been put together. It shows how very close the insurrectionists came to getting their hands on then–Vice President Mike Pence, who Trump told them was the architect of their disappointment.
What might have happened is the stuff of nightmares.
The report concludes: “Trump was the driving force at every turn as he orchestrated what would become an attempted political coup in the months leading up to Jan. 6, calling his supporters to Washington, encouraging the mob to march on the Capitol and freezing in place key federal agencies whose job it was to investigate and stop threats to national security.” It notes that the former president did not make any effort to stop the attacks until it was clear they wouldn’t succeed, and that lawmakers assumed he was backing the rioters.
The report lays out how, on January 6, Trump and his loyal lawyer John Eastman, the author of the infamous memo outlining a six-point plan for overturning the 2020 election, continued to try to steal the election even as rioters were running amok in the Capitol. As then–Vice President Mike Pence and his family were hiding for their safety from the mob, Eastman blamed Pence for the insurrection, saying that if he had only done as the memo suggested, the riot wouldn’t have happened.
Then, when Congress resumed to count the certified ballots, Eastman argued that the delay in debate caused by the insurrection meant that Congress had run out of time to count the certified votes, as established by the Electoral College Act, so that the election should be thrown back to the states.
The Washington Post report places the insurrection into context: “The consequences of that day are still coming into focus, but what is already clear is that the insurrection was not a spontaneous act nor an isolated event. It was a battle in a broader war over the truth and over the future of American democracy,” it says. “Since then, the forces behind the attack remain potent and growing.”
The Washington Post series raises a lot of questions. It notes both that FBI officials ignored a lot of red flags before January 6 and that Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, whom Trump put into office immediately after the election after firing Defense Secretary Mark Esper, refused to approve the use of the D.C. National Guard to defend the Capitol for more than two hours after Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund requested help.
Other news from the weekend suggests that there are things Trump does not want us to know about the insurrection. This weekend we learned that he is trying to block the National Archives and Records Administration from giving to the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol information that includes call records from that day, information about visitors to the White House around then, and so on: material that is generally a matter of public record. Only the current president can invoke executive privilege, and President Joe Biden has declined to do so over these materials.
An older story involving the former president is also suddenly in the news. In October 2016, four computer scientists noticed unusual activity between the Trump organization; Russia’s Alfa Bank, which was connected to the Kremlin; and Spectrum Health, a Michigan-based healthcare organization connected to the DeVos family. The computer folks took their information to the FBI, which was already engaged in its own investigation of the ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. The story got folded into all the other material about the campaign and its ties to Russia, and was largely forgotten.
Then, earlier this month, a special counsel appointed by Trump’s Attorney General William Barr to investigate the Russia investigation indicted a cybersecurity lawyer for lying to the FBI. In the indictment, Special Counsel John Durham accused those computer scientists of advancing a story they did not believe in order to hurt Trump’s 2016 presidential bid.
The computer scientists have come out swinging. They reject the idea that they were advancing a political attack and maintain that the weird connections they saw did, indeed, show coordination between Trump and the Russian-based Alfa Bank. They believed there was enough evidence to open a criminal investigation. They have accused Durham of misrepresenting their debates over the material, and they say their evidence is solid and reproducible.
It is this mess to which Republican lawmakers have tied themselves.
The Washington Post suggests that they made that calculation in the immediate aftermath of January 6 because Trump continued to command his base and they worried about being primaried from the right if they didn’t support Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen. And so they acquitted him in his second impeachment trial and supported the “audits” of state election results that had already been proved secure.
But that leaves a circle to be squared.
Winning a primary by staking out turf as a Trump supporter would mean losing in the general election… unless state legislatures fixed elections so that Republicans would win, no matter who the Republican candidate happened to be.
—
Notes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/10/31/about-jan-6-insurrection-investigation/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2021/jan-6-insurrection-capitol/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/eastman-pence-email-riot-trump/2021/10/29/59373016-38c1-11ec-91dc-551d44733e2d_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/10/30/most-shocking-new-revelation-about-john-eastman/
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/30/trump-sues-to-hide-documents-from-committee-investigating-the-jan-6-assault.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/us/politics/trump-alfa-bank-indictment.html
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Kyle Cheney
@kyledcheney
The first tranche: Meadows, Miller, Philbin, White House logs, call records >>>
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@phranny saidTrump endorsed candidates have lost several primary races to RINO's. An endorsement from "The Donald" isn't necessarily a guarantee of victory.
October 31, 2021
Heather Cox Richardson
Nov 1
In the weeks after the January 6 insurrection, one of the things that struck me as an odd political calculation was how quickly Republican lawmakers fell back into line behind former president Trump. Anyone watching could see that the information about Trump’s involvement in that insurrection that would come out by, well, ri ...[text shortened]... cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html
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@phranny saidjust a quick question…how many people have been charged with insurrection?
October 31, 2021
Heather Cox Richardson
Nov 1
In the weeks after the January 6 insurrection, one of the things that struck me as an odd political calculation was how quickly Republican lawmakers fell back into line behind former president Trump. Anyone watching could see that the information about Trump’s involvement in that insurrection that would come out by, well, ri ...[text shortened]... cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html
@Mott-The-Hoople
Your distraction method is 1: STUPID and 2: We already know some 400 or so have been arrested. SO WHAT? Did you think some pissspoor distraction would what, lull us to sleep so all of a sudden, no democracy while we were asleep?
It doesn't work like that.
It turns out there are MILLIONS of us NOT asleep and we know EXACTLY what is going on here.
That is republicans, state repubs, passing over 400 voter suppression bills in the US. Gee, I wonder what THAT is all about.
Well, we KNOW what that is all about. It is ALL about repubs wanting PERMENTANT control of government at ALL levels from local to fed.
AND we know that perfectly well so good luck with your STUPID distraction BS.
@mott-the-hoople saidNone have been charged with insurrection or treason to date. The following article describes why. The real point is that very powerful politicians, including Trump when he was President, tried to prevent a duly elected individual, Biden, from taking office. The GOP is actively attempting to thwart legal elections via gerrymandering and laws that restrict voting. They may also attempt to elect partisan electors to the college who will have the authority to cast their votes for someone other than the individual who won the state's popular vote. This is a critical time for our nation. Please try to pay attention to the facts, not the fictions.
just a quick question…how many people have been charged with insurrection?
CHICAGO (AP) — Plotted to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory: Check. Discussed bringing weapons into Washington to aid in the plan: Check. Succeeded with co-insurrectionists, if only temporarily, in stopping Congress from carrying out a vital constitutional duty: Check.
Accusations against Jan. 6 rioter Thomas Caldwell certainly seem to fit the charge of sedition as it’s generally understood — inciting revolt against the government. And the possibility of charging him and others was widely discussed after thousands of pro-Trump supporters assaulted scores of police officers, defaced the U.S. Capitol and hunted for lawmakers to stop the certification. Some called their actions treasonous.
But to date, neither Caldwell nor any of the other more than 500 defendants accused in the attack has been indicted for sedition or for the gravest of crimes a citizen can face, treason. And as an increasing number of lesser charges are filed and defendants plead guilty, those accusations may never be formally levied.
Some legal scholars say that sedition charges could be justified but that prosecutors may be reluctant to bring them because of their legal complexity and the difficulty historically in securing convictions. Overzealousness in applying them going back centuries has also discredited their use. And defense attorneys say discussions of such charges only add to the hyperbole around the events of that day.
Overall, the bar for proving sedition isn’t as high as it is for the related charge of treason. Still, sedition charges have been rare.
The last time U.S. prosecutors brought such a case was in 2010 in an alleged Michigan plot by members of the Hutaree militia to incite an uprising against the government. But a judge ordered acquittals on the sedition conspiracy charges at a 2012 trial, saying prosecutors relied too much on hateful diatribes protected by the First Amendment and didn’t, as required, prove the accused ever had detailed plans for a rebellion.
Among the last successful convictions for seditious conspiracy stemmed from another, now largely forgotten storming of the Capitol in 1954 when four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire on the House floor, wounding five representatives.
Treason is one of the few crimes specifically defined in the Constitution. It’s defined as “levying war” against the U.S. or “giving aid and comfort” to its enemies. Legal scholars say the Founding Fathers, who were themselves accused of treason by the British, sought to clearly articulate it because they knew the potential to misapply it to legitimate dissent.
In a landmark ruling in 1807, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that treason required a citizen actually go to war against the United States, not to just brainstorm or draw up plans for it. Even recruiting and training rebels for war, he argued, isn’t treason if war is never engaged.
In the history of the U.S., the government has convicted fewer than 10 people for treason, according to the FBI.
Among the last treason cases was of American-born Iva Toguri D’Aquino — known as “Tokyo Rose” during World War II for her anti-American broadcasts — convicted in 1949 of “giving aid and comfort” to Japan. President Gerald Ford pardoned her in 1977 after reports U.S. authorities pressured some witnesses to lie.
The only American charged with treason since the World II era was Adam Gadahn, indicted in 2006 for giving “aid and comfort” to al-Qaida. Before he could be tried, he was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan.
Carlton Larson, a University of California law professor and author of “On Treason: A Citizen’s Guide to the Law,” ruled out treason for the Jan. 6 rioters. But he believes some qualify for a provision of seditious conspiracy on “hindering” the execution of U.S. laws. “I think it easily fits,” he said.
Last summer, then-Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen sent a memo allowing federal prosecutors to consider sedition charges against police reform demonstrators, particularly in Portland, Oregon, where clashes between rioters and federal authorities raged outside a federal courthouse. It was never used.
But the memo said the Justice Department believed the statute doesn’t require proof of a plot to overthrow the government and could also be used when a defendant tries to oppose the government’s authority by force.
In the weeks after the Capitol attack, federal prosecutors said they were looking at all possible charges. Washington’s then-acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin told CBS’ “60 Minutes” on March 17 that prosecutors were mulling seditious conspiracy charges against some rioters.
“I believe the facts do support those charges,” Sherwin said. “And I think that, as we go forward, more facts will support that.”
He had first floated the possibility in January, saying a special group of prosecutors was examining whether they would apply to any rioters. The Justice Department did not respond to questions about what happened to that group, or why no sedition charges were ever brought. And Sherwin’s comments were criticized by a federal judge and defense lawyers who said it was inappropriate to discuss ongoing investigations publicly. He left the Justice Department soon after.
The Justice Department is continuing its work to prosecute a record number of cases. But they have so far opted for comparatively run-of-the-mill charges, like entering a restricted area and obstructing an official proceeding. Caldwell faces those charges, as well as conspiracy, which, like sedition, carries a maximum 20-year prison term. Treason carries a possible death sentence.
He has been charged alongside other members and associates of the far-right Oath Keepers extremist group with conspiring to block the vote certification. He later boasted in a message to a friend about grabbing an American flag, joining the crowd that surged toward the Capitol and saying “let’s storm the place and hang the traitors.” The 65-year-old from Virginia told his friend, “If we’d had guns I guarantee we would have killed 100 politicians.”
Defense attorneys say hyperbole has been a hallmark of the Jan. 6 prosecutions.
“If grandiose rhetoric was evidence, the Government’s case would be very strong,” Caldwell’s lawyer, David Fischer, wrote in one filing. He didn’t respond to a message seeking comment.
In filings, Fischer also said prosecutors took his client’s words out of context to falsely accuse an ailing 20-year military veteran. He said Caldwell, like many veterans, was prone to puffery and enjoyed portraying himself in recounting his actions on Jan. 6 as a movie character who picks up a battle flag to lead the charge.
Fischer also asked Caldwell’s Washington judge this month to transfer Caldwell’s case to another city on grounds Sherwin’s comments regarding sedition would prejudice jurors.
On Jan. 5, another rioter, Guy Reffitt, allegedly spoke of “dragging … people out of the Capitol by their ankles” and installing a new government. The 48-year-old Texan came prepared for battle on Jan. 6, carrying a gun and wearing body armor as he pushed through Capitol police lines as officers shot him with rubber bullets, prosecutors said.
Charges against Reffitt include entering a restricted building with a deadly weapon, as well as obstructing justice by threatening his teenage children. The oil industry consultant allegedly told them later in January they’d be traitors if they turned him in. He added, “Traitors get shot.”
In an unapologetic note written from jail and filed with the court in May, Reffitt denied there had ever been a conspiracy, and provided a chilling reason.
“If overthrow (of the government) was the quest,” Reffitt wrote about Jan. 6, “it would have no doubt been overthrown.”
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Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo in Washington and Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston contributed to this report.
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