Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

How will Trump's deadly sabotage of America end?



Trump unleashed what has become a million US Covid deaths, a war in Ukraine, and an attempted coup against the United States, all while coarsening our politics and ratcheting up hate. And now racist, rightwing politicians who disdain democracy are imitating him all across the nation.

What is the impact of all this on America and Americans, and when will he be held to account?

Five years ago today, Donald Trump broke the law and outed an Israeli spy who’d embedded himself into ISIS.

Trump gave the code-word-classified-Top-Secret intelligence to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, when he and Russian Ambassador Kislyak had a “private” meeting with Trump in the Oval Office which was not on Trump’s calendar or announced to the US press.

The Israeli spy had spent years burying himself deeply enough into ISIS that he was on the verge of disrupting a plot to attack a city in Russia-controlled Syria: instead he had to flee for his life because Trump burned him.

As ABC News reported at the time:

“The life of a spy placed by Israel inside ISIS is at risk tonight, according to current and former U.S. officials, after President Donald Trump reportedly disclosed classified information in a meeting with Russian officials...”

And Trump wasn’t even embarrassed or ashamed by his outing a top spy providing anti-Russian intel through Israel to the US, as ABC News noted:

“Trump said in a pair of tweets Tuesday he had the ‘absolute right’ to share ‘facts’ with the Russians.”

Can you imagine how Republicans would react if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama had done the same? Would it be three years of hearings and DOJ prosecutions in front of a grand jury — or four? Would they be in jail today?

But Trump’s first loyalty was never to America: it was always to himself and his billionaire “good friend” Vladimir Putin, whose war against Ukraine Trump still refuses to condemn.

This month will also commemorate over a million Americans having died from Covid, a death rate unsurpassed anywhere else in the developed world. This, too, lies at the feet of Donald Trump.

For the first four months of 2020, Trump’s team was actually trying to do something about Covid, even though he’d stupidly closed the pandemic offices Obama had created within the White House and the NSC after the Ebola scare.

Medical doctors were on TV daily; the media was freaking out about refrigerated trucks carrying bodies away from New York hospitals, and doctors and nurses were our new national heroes.

By the second week of March, US deaths had risen from 4 to only 22, but that was enough to spur federal action. Trump’s official emergency declaration came on March 11th, and most of the country shut down or at least went partway toward that outcome that week.

They even had a plan for the Post Office to distribute 650 million masks — 5 to every American household — to stop the pandemic.

But then came April 7th, just three weeks later, when the New York Times ran a front-page story with the headline: Black Americans Face Alarming Rates of Coronavirus Infection in Some States.

The opening paragraph laid it out:

“The coronavirus is infecting and killing black people in the United States at disproportionately high rates, according to data released by several states and big cities, highlighting what public health researchers say are entrenched inequalities in resources, health and access to care.”

Other media ran similar headlines that day, and it led the news on cable and network television that night.

Most of the non-elderly people dying from Covid, it turned out, were Black or Hispanic, not white people.

White conservatives responded with a collective, “What the hell?!?”

From Tucker Carlson to Brit Hume to Rush Limbaugh and beyond, the entire rightwing movement turned on a dime that week.

The new official message was that it was now time to put Covid, lockdowns, and masks behind us and get the economy back to work in preparation for Trump’s re-election in the fall.

That April 7th, 2020 front page story — that Covid was mostly killing Black people — echoed across the white supremacist rightwing landscape like a Fourth of July fireworks display.

Trump decided it was time to let more Americans die, because the economy was sagging and that could hurt his reelection chances.

On April 12th, Trump retweeted a call to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci and declared, in another tweet, that he had the sole authority to open the US back up, and that he’d be announcing a specific plan to do just that “shortly.”

If most of the deaths — outside of the elderly and infirm — were Black, well, to hell with doing anything about it. It’s easier, after all, than trying to purge African Americans from the voting rolls.

That was the end of the Trump administration doing anything meaningful to try to protect Americans from a deadly virus for the rest of Trump’s last year in office. He cancelled the planned mask distribution by the Post Office and instead promoted quack cures on TV.

Trump put race and politics above lives, and now a million Americans are dead.

And like with the Israeli spy, Trump has never been held to account for setting up so many gullible Americans to die an agonizing, strangling death.

But wait! There’s more!!

Trump conspired with armed white supremacist terrorists to block the peaceful transfer of power on January 6th and 20th, sending a murderous mob against our Capitol by lying to them that the election he’d lost by 7 million votes was “stolen” from him.

Now we’re learning from NSC security expert for Russia and Ukraine Fiona Hill that Trump’s buddy Putin was rooting for him to succeed with the coup plan for January 6th so Putin could get on with taking out Ukraine right after the first of the year.

Trump wouldn’t have done a thing about a Russian massacre of Ukraine; after all, he’d already tried to extort Zelensky by withholding anti-tank missiles and was impeached (but not convicted) for it.

He made no secret that he generally hated all things Ukraine. As well as doing pretty much everything Putin told him to do, including trying to damage both NATO and the European Union. Lacking a friendly president but pleased that Trump had weakened Ukraine for him, Putin decided to go ahead with his invasion anyway on February 24th, and the rest is history.

This short article just scratches the surface of the criminality of Donald Trump. In addition:

*He squeezed over a billion dollars out of the government and into his own pockets while in office, oversaw a corrupt PPP program where his buddies made off with billions, and again is threatening to end democracy in the United States.

*He conspired to steal an election and, when that didn’t work, launched a mob to murder Vice President Pence and stop Congress, resulting in multiple deaths, including several police officers.

*He stole top-secret documents, taking them to Florida where they could be seen by any old spy who wanted to drop by. (And Republicans wanted to lock up Hillary because her personal email wasn’t secure?!?)

*Significant questions linger about whether he blackmailed Anthony Kennedy to leave the Supreme Court; how much additional intelligence he handed over to Putin; and why he shut down the White House cybersecurity office, leaving the Russians to set up house in the computers of multiple federal agencies for over a year before Biden came into office.

*When he lost the election, he called the Secretary of State for Georgia and demanded that Raffensperger find an additional 11,000+ votes to reverse his loss, committing multiple explicit felonies.

*And while it’s not something he could go to jail for, he should also be held to account in some way for encouraging an explosion of racial, religious, and gender-based hatred and violence that echoes to this day.

Trump’s actions during his four years in the presidency, his year of campaigning before that, and his behavior since have corrupted American politics, sown deep distrust in our electoral system, and pitted Americans against each other.

And because he has not been held to account, Trumpism has spread across the American landscape like a metastasizing cancer, with Republican politicians who aspire to corrupt strongman status emulating him in every state.

It’s been an absolute sabotage of our nation and our national interests, crippling us in multiple ways — much to the delight of Putin and dictators around the world.

All of which begs the question: What’s it going to take for the Biden Department of Justice to prosecute this criminal?

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-sabotaging-america/

[Rick Plant]

Donnie was in full mental decline in the oval office, yet nobody in his administration said or did anything to remove this nut via the 25th Amendment which was the purpose of having it for a mentally incapacitated man like Trump in office. They all waited to tell us later in a book and there were several of them who did. All these ex officials had to placate and baby sit this loon so he wouldn't go out of control and do something dangerous like start a war based on delusions in his rotting brain. If your family member was talking like this about "China and a hurricane gun" you would put them in a mental institution. That's where Donnie belongs because no sane man would be talking this way.   

Trump Kept Asking if China Was Shooting Us With a ‘Hurricane Gun’

The then-leader of the free world also inquired whether the U.S. could bomb China in retaliation for the alleged hurricane attack


Trump wanted to know if "hurricane guns" — which are not a thing — were a thing

Near the beginning of Donald Trump’s time in office, the then-president had a pressing question for his national-security aides and administration officials: Does China have the secret technology — a weapon, even — to create large, man-made hurricanes and then launch them at the United States? And if so, would this constitute an act of war by a foreign power, and could the U.S. retaliate militarily? Then-President Trump repeatedly asked about this, according to two former senior administration officials and a third person briefed on the matter.

“It was almost too stupid for words,” said a former Trump official intimately familiar with the then-sitting president’s inquiry. “I did not get the sense he was joking at all.”

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, tell Rolling Stone that Trump began interrogating national-security officials and other staffers about the alleged weapon during the first year of his presidency, and his question would pop up sporadically until at least 2018. Two of the sources recalled that as Trump got deeper into the second year in his term, he started to drop the topic, and occasionally joked about it.

In certain circles within the upper ranks of Trumpland, the then-leader of the free world’s query became such a mockable occurrence that it became known among some as the “Hurricane Gun” thing.

“I was present [once] when he asked if China ‘made’ hurricanes to send to us,” said the other former senior official. Trump “wanted to know if the technology existed. One guy in the room responded, ‘Not to the best of my knowledge, sir.’ I kept it together until I got back to my office… I do not know where the [then-]president would have heard about that… He was asking about it around the time, maybe a little before, he asked people about nuking hurricanes.”

This patently boneheaded line of inquiry from Trump, which has not been previously reported, was merely one instance in an administration overflowing with Trump’s rampantly absurd, conspiracy-theory-powered ideas and policy proposals, many of which were ignored or shot down, thus avoiding additional atrocities. Last week, it was revealed that Trump’s former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper wrote in his new memoir that his ex-boss wanted to attack Mexico with missiles — during peacetime between the two nations — and then try to pin the blame on another country.

Despite leaving office in disgrace, Trump has continued on as the undisputed leader of the Republican Party and by far its most popular and influential national figure. He is currently the clear favorite to win the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, should he ultimately decide to launch another campaign. Though a final decision has not yet been made, Trump has strongly signaled to a variety of associates and counselors that he intends to run again, having made it his mission to turn his anti-democratic lies about the 2020 election being “stolen” from him into party orthodoxy.

A Trump spokesperson did not provide comment on this story.

"That does not surprise me at all,” says Stephanie Grisham, a former top Trump aide who has since had a very public break with the Trumps. Though Grisham said she was not privy to the “Hurricane Gun” chatter, she simply noted: “Stuff like that was not unusual for him. He would blurt out crazy things all the time, and tell aides to look into it or do something about it. His staff would say they’d look into knowing that more often than not, he’d forget about it quickly — much like a toddler.”

Trump’s “hurricane gun” inquiries add to a list of odd beliefs the former president holds not just about climate science in general — which he has called a hoax “created by and for the Chinese” — but hurricanes in particular. During the 2019 hurricane season, Trump insisted on telling the public that Hurricane Dorian was headed towards Alabama, which no models had predicted. Trump later appeared with a map that appeared to have been edited to include a projection of the storm hitting Alabama. The incident, dubbed Sharpiegate for Trump’s erroneous marking of a map, led to an inspector general’s report which concluded that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had falsely backed up Trump’s claim about the hurricane’s path as a result of White House pressure.

At times, Trump’s comments about possible Wile E Coyote-style weapons have touched on similarly bizarre ideas mulled by the U.S. during the Cold War.

During the 2019 hurricane season, Trump reportedly kept suggesting to aides that the U.S. bomb hurricanes with nuclear weapons in the mistaken belief that the explosions would somehow mitigate or destroy the tropical storms — an idea first floated by eccentric Cold War scientists working on Project Plowshare, which tried to brainstorm peaceful uses for nuclear weapons.

The U.S. Air Force’s Project Popeye aimed to use cloud seeding — dropping salts and dry ice into clouds in order to induce rain and snowfall — to try and defeat the insurgency in South Vietnam.

“The idea behind it was that we could we slow down weapons and materials getting from North to South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh trail by creating a monsoon season year round so that trail would be unpassable,” explains Vince Houghton, a historian whose book, Nuking the Moon, chronicles some of the more bizarre failed weapons of the Cold War.

While cloud seeding works to create precipitation, it can’t create hurricanes, which inflict damage primarily through strong winds and high storm surges rather than rainfall. But China’s investment in cloud-seeding technology for agricultural production and disaster mitigation has prompted conspiracy theories in the kinds of right-wing fever swamps that often inform MAGA discourse.

More recently, right-wing believers in the QAnon conspiracy theories have taken to arguing that President Joe Biden used a Chinese-made weather weapon to send the freezing weather that crippled Texas power lines as Sen. Ted Cruz fled to Cancun, Mexico.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-hurricane-gun-china-world-war-1350638/


'It's stupid': Trump kept demanding US Navy redesign aircraft carrier



On Tuesday, New York Magazine's Intelligencer highlighted one bizarre new claim from former Defense Secretary Mark Esper's tell-all book on former President Donald Trump's administration — that Trump apparently hated the way a certain aircraft carrier looked and repeatedly demanded Esper approve major design changes to it.

Specifically, he had tons of gripes with the appearance and design of the U.S.S. Gerald Ford.

"In his new book, A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times, Mark Esper writes that when Trump wasn’t plotting to secretly bomb Mexico, he was complaining about the $13 billion warship, denouncing it as 'overpriced,' insisting that its elevators would be disabled by 'one glass of seawater,' and arguing that its new digital catapult system should be powered by 'go**amned steam' instead.

The carrier, which will finally be deployed this year, did suffer years-long delays caused by problems with various new technologies. But according to Esper, Trump was the only person focused on its physical problem areas."

One of the biggest complaints Trump had, according to the report, is with the "island," the portion of the ship that houses the command center.

"The island 'looks really bad — it’s stupid,' Trump said, according to Esper, who added that the former president proposed moving the structure closer to the middle of the ship, which would have been a costly and largely pointless endeavor," said the report. "Esper says he tried to explain the functional reasons for the island’s positioning, but Trump wouldn’t have it, stressing that 'it just doesn’t look right' and noting that he has 'an eye for aesthetics.'"

Esper's book has also said, among other things, that Trump liked to brag that he was the real person running the military, not Esper.

Read more here: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-body-shame-aircraft-carrier.html

[Rick Plant]

Lindsey Graham caught on tape predicting America would rally against Trump after insurrection



Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is the latest senior Republican official to be exposed on tape by New York Times reporters Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin in their new book This Will Not Pass.

The two were interviewed on Tuesday by CNN's Anderson Cooper, who played a recording of Graham.

"We'll actually come out of this thing stronger. Moments like this reset. People will calm down. People will say, 'I don't want to be associated with that.' This is a group within a group," Graham said. "What this does, there will be a rallying effect for a while, the country says, 'we are better than this.'"

Graham went on to praise Joe Biden.

"Biden will help that, right?" Martin asked.

"Totally," Graham replied. "He'll be maybe the person to have, right? I mean, how mad can you get at Joe Biden?"

Graham also criticized Trump.

"He's misjudged the passion, he plays the TV game and he went too far here," Graham declared. "That rally didn't help, talking about primarying Liz [Cheney]. He created a sense of revenge."

Watch the video below:

Graham's private attacks on Trump are just the tip of the iceberg — the whole GOP wanted to 'walk away': NYT reporter



On Tuesday's edition of CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360," New York Times reporter Jonathan Martin said that newly revealed comments by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) predicting that Trump would be defeated by January 6 are indicative of a much broader desire within the GOP to move beyond Trump at that period.

Specifically, he argued, many other longtime GOP lawmakers were ready to "walk away" from Trump at that moment.

"You heard Senator Graham," said Martin. "He was not alone. A lot of lawmakers heard Trump mention Cheney by name and were appalled that he would do that before a crowd that turned out to be a mob. It put people's lives in jeopardy. She has to have security service because of the threats against her ... a lot of the climate that the GOP has fostered today, you can really trace back to that speech Trump game the morning of January 6."

"A lot of people in the old guard thought that that would be the trigger," continued Martin. "Finally, it would be okay to walk away from Trump. The party would have had enough. It turns out that those leaders were wrong. They didn't get their votes. They were not tired of Trump. They are still happily in his embrace, Anderson, it was moments after — moments after that Liz Cheney says 'we need to impeach the son of a b**ch,' she was surprised to find how few were willing to join her."

Whatever unity existed in the main GOP wing against Trump that day, was short-lived. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) both voted against the impeachment proceedings, and both remain committed to Trump should he be re-nominated in 2024.

Liz Cheney was the only GOP congressional leader who followed through with her criticisms of Trump and voted for impeachment — but was removed from leadership a few months later.

Watch the segment:

[Rick Plant]

Fake Georgia electors cooperating with prosecutors investigating Trump's 2020 coup plot



On Tuesday, CNN reported that multiple people who served as fake GOP "electors" as part of a slate alleging former President Donald Trump won the state of Georgia are cooperating with prosecutors investigating the former president's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

"Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' office appears to be trying to determine whether the pro-Trump electors in Georgia had any knowledge that their actions may have been a component of a broader and potentially illegal plot to pressure election officials and overturn Joe Biden's victory, a source told CNN," reported Zachary Cohen and Sara Murray.

The pro-Trump electors who have met with prosecutors in Georgia, including the state's Republican Party Chairman David Shafer, were reassured that they are currently considered witnesses, rather than subjects or targets, in the investigation — a notable distinction that suggests the Atlanta-area district attorney does not view their actions as criminal at this time, two of the sources told CNN," said the report. "The interviews with pro-Trump electors in Georgia, which have not been previously reported, are the first indication that the Fulton County DA has already begun looking into the matter — adding to an array of other probes by DOJ, the House Select Committee investigating January 6 and other states where alternate slates were put forward."

Willis has been investigating Trump's actions around 2020, which include placing a call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger demanding he "find" 12,000 extra votes to declare him the winner of the state. Raffensperger reportedly perceived that call as a threat and feared reprisal from Trump supporters — but refused to throw the election.

The fake electors were part of a scheme conceived of by far-right attorney John Eastman, where former Vice President Mike Pence would declare states with the "alternate" electors to be disputed and not count them, throwing the election to Trump. Legal experts have said this scheme was illegal, and Pence himself believed he lacked the authority.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/10/politics/georgia-trump-investigation-fake-electors-witness-interviews/index.html


Trump 'humiliated' as Nebraska Charles Herbster endorsement flops -- and shows GOP's 'fear' of him is fading: Morning Joe



The Republican gubernatorial primary in Nebraska showed former President Donald Trump's grip on the GOP is loosening, according to MSNBC's Joe Scarborough.

Jim Pillen won the GOP primary with the backing of Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts over Trump-backed and scandal-plagued newcomer Charles Herbster and state Sen. Brett Lindstrom, and the "Morning Joe" host said that shows the former president's seal of approval isn't enough to push Republican candidates over the hump.

"If Republicans actually have standards when it comes to those type of charges, then a lot of people that Donald Trump supported are in trouble," Scarborough said. "I will tell you what's also so interesting here is, one Republican heavyweight after another Republican heavyweight, one Republican standard-bearer after another have seemed to go up against Donald Trump since 2015 and lost."

"Ricketts and the Ricketts family went up against Donald Trump and wiped the floor with him," he added. "I was fascinated that, you know, Gov. Ricketts and the Ricketts family had absolutely no fear of Donald Trump and, by the way, what kind of message does that send that a guy with a future in Republican politics is like, 'Eh, I don't care who Trump's for, I'm going all in, and, man, the Ricketts went all in and humiliated Donald Trump in Nebraska."

Trump still holds sway over the party, Scarborough conceded, but so does tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who pumped $10 million into J.D. Vance's Senate campaign in Ohio, and the wealthy Ricketts family poured money into the Nebraska race.

"How fascinating that the Ricketts basically tell Trump to get lost in Nebraska and humiliating [him] there, and I think what is so new this year, what we're seeing is the fear that everybody in the party used to have for Trump, top to bottom, that fear's going away," Scarborough said. "DeSantis hasn't flinched for months, when they keep wanting to hear him say that he won't run if Donald Trump runs, [Mike] Pompeo won't say it, Chris Christie won't say it."

"A lot of Republicans, they just don't fear Donald Trump anymore," Scarborough added, "and that fear, I mean, that's how he maintained power for so long in the party."

Watch the segment below:

[Rick Plant]

So after OAN was sued for defamation they had to admit on air that they were liars and there was "no widespread voter fraud". Not too many people watch this bogus "network" since almost every cable provider dropped them because of their outright lies and conspiracies. Faux Propaganda should be next.   

OAN Finally Admits ‘No Widespread Voter Fraud’ After Settling Defamation Suit



The right-wing cable network One America News Network on Monday ran a pre-recorded 30-second segment acknowledging that there was “no widespread voter fraud” by Georgia election workers in the 2020 presidential election. The segment appears to be part of a recent settlement relating to a defamation lawsuit brought against the network by two such workers.

The segment notes that an investigation by state officials into unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud made by ex-President Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani turned up nothing. “The results of this investigation indicate that Ruby Freeman and Wandrea ‘Shaye’ Moss did not engage in ballot fraud or criminal misconduct,” a narrator states.

"A legal matter with this network and the two election workers has been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties through a fair and reasonable settlement,” the voiceover adds.

Freeman and her daughter, Moss, say they were harassed online and in person after baseless rumors began circulating online, due in part to content published by the conspiracy website The Gateway Pundit, which the pair also sued.

In January 2021, when Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to try to “find” votes to overturn the state’s election results, he mentioned Freeman’s name 18 times. Freeman was also visited by a publicist for Kanye West, who threatened her in an effort to extract a confession about committing election fraud.

And if that weren’t enough, video of the pair doing their jobs was hyped up by Rudy Giuliani—and Sean Hannity—who falsely claimed that it showed “blatant, clear, obvious” fraud. While speaking to Georgia State House Republicans about the video during a Zoom meeting in December 2020, Giuliani at one point can be heard saying, “We should try to get this on Newsmax and OANN.”

Freeman and Moss sued Giuliani as well, and that case is ongoing.

https://news.yahoo.com/oan-finally-admits-no-widespread-022816382.html

[Rick Plant]

John Eastman wanted to throw out absentee votes — to give 'cover' to fake electors scheme



Politico obtained over 50 pages of email correspondence sent one of the attorneys seeking to help Donald Trump stay in power despite losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden.

"Attorney John Eastman urged Republican legislators in Pennsylvania to retabulate the state’s popular vote — and throw out tens of thousands of absentee ballots — in order to show Donald Trump with a lead, according to newly unearthed emails sent in December 2020, as Trump pressured GOP lawmakers to subvert his defeat," Politico reported late Tuesday evening. "This recalculation, he posited in an exchange with one GOP state lawmaker, 'would help provide some cover' for Republicans to replace Joe Biden’s electors from the state with a slate of pro-Trump electors, part of a last-ditch bid to overturn the election results."

Politico obtained the emails from the University of Colorado, where Eastman was working. The Jan. 6 Select Committee Investigating the Attack on the U.S. Capitol has also reportedly obtained the emails, via the Colorado Ethics Institute.

"The Jan. 6 select committee is fighting a legal battle with Eastman in federal court in California to obtain hundreds of emails Eastman sent and received via his other previous employer, Chapman University. The panel has already won several rounds in this case, obtaining key emails Eastman sent from Jan. 4 to Jan. 7, 2021, but the panel is still fighting to receive thousands of pages sent in the run-up to Jan. 6," Politico reported. "Although Eastman would later go on to suggest that then-Vice President Mike Pence could single-handedly refuse to count Biden’s electors, his exchanges with Diamond in early December suggest he hadn’t fully embraced the theory that has since come to define his effort to help Trump cling to power."

The strategy has been widely called the "coup memo."

"In litigation between Eastman and the select committee in California, a federal judge ruled in March that Eastman and Trump likely criminally conspired to overturn the election by pushing this concept in the absence of legal support, particularly after no state legislature went along with the plan to override the election results and appoint Trump electors," Politico reported. "U.S. District Court Judge David Carter described the effort as 'a coup in search of a legal theory.'"

Read the full report.here: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/10/eastman-emails-pennsylvania-legislators-biden-00031668

[Rick Plant]

Blockbuster Jan. 6 hearings expected to include video of the Trumps' behind-closed-door testimony: CNN

The House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is finalizing a witness list before June public hearings that are coming into focus, according to a new report by CNN.

The hearings are likely to include video clips of recorded testimony.

"While the setup of the hearings is still a work in progress and evolving, sources note, the presentations will likely feature video clips from January 6, as well as some of the nearly 1,000 interviews the committee has conducted behind closed doors. That could help the committee share more testimony, as well as deal with potentially recalcitrant witnesses," CNN reported. "Among the witnesses whose testimony was videotaped were members of Trump's family, including recent interviews with Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner."

CNN talked to multiple people who expect to be called as witnesses, although none of them have said the select committee has officially notified them about public testimony.

"At least one fact witness who has been deposed by the committee behind closed doors already told the panel they will refuse to testify publicly if asked, according to a source familiar with the matter," CNN reported.

CNN's sources expect former Justice Department officials Jeff Rosen and Richard Donoghue will be called as witnesses, as well as Mike Pence's former chief of staff, Marc Short, and former general counsel, Greg Jacob.

"Each of the committee's nine members has been assigned to lead presentations of different topic areas, similar to how impeachment managers led certain portions of the two impeachment proceedings against Trump. One source close to the committee told CNN that the panel has drawn on experiences from Trump's two impeachment proceedings. Those hearings have served as a model of both what to do and not to do," CNN reported. "The main goal of the committee in holding the hearings is to show that even though Trump was told repeatedly there was no election fraud, he continued to push forward with his campaign to overturn the election."

Read the full report: https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/11/politics/jan-6-hearings-witness-list-preparations/index.html

[Rick Plant]

Donnie is a coward and a clown. He hid inside a bunker from protesters and was always looking for ways to appear "tough" in public.     

A fuming Trump woke up military officials in the middle of the night after protesters toppled a Confederate statue: book



One consistent thread through many of the post-Donald Trump presidency books is that he was so furious about the news he was rushed to an underground bunker during the Black Lives Matter protests that he spent the remainder of the summer desperately searching for something to make him look tough again.

Mary Trump detailed extensively in her book that the psychology in the Trump family surrounded the necessity of men looking strong. Weakness was the worst possible sin in the eyes of Fred Trump Sr.

In Defense Sec. Mark Esper's book A Sacred Oath, the summer of 2020 resulted in many demands from the president to call in soldiers to Washington, D.C., Seattle, Portland and other places.

During one such night, Esper describes being dead asleep when Trump called on the secure line and ordered soldiers be sent into D.C. because statues were being toppled. To Trump, it seemed like an emergency.

“Statues are being torn down in D.C. They’re going after Jefferson and Washington next. You need to get the Guard in there immediately," he said to Esper over the phone.

A groggy secretary agreed, calling Gen. Mark Milley. The two men turned on their televisions and couldn't find the story. Mark Meadows got called too.

Esper got online and found the story, "several people toppled a statue of Confederate general Albert Pike, which had been standing in Judiciary Square since 1901. I never heard of Pike and never even knew there was a statue to a Confederate general in D.C." He noted that many people in the city had been begging to have the statue taken down since 1992.

Milley reported back to them that the crowd was fewer than one hundred people, only a dozen or so were actually causing trouble and they left once the statue was toppled. Police hadn't even asked for help, they were handling it and there was no concern.

The following day Trump tweeted: “The D.C. Police are not doing their job as they watch a statue be ripped down & burn. These people should be immediately arrested. A disgrace to our Country!”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/protesters-washington-dc-topple-statue-confederate-brigadier-general-albert-pike/