Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Wisconsin swing voters who once voted for Trump now believe he should be locked up for Jan. 6



Axios reported Sunday that a focus group of swing voters by Engagious/Schlesinger is ready for former President Donald Trump to be prosecuted for the Jan. 6 attack on Congress and attempt to overthrow the 2020 election.

Polls have consistently shown an increase in the blame for the former president as the House Select Committee continues to host public hearings presenting the evidence they've uncovered. But a focus group can take a deeper dive into Americans' attitudes, particularly of swing voters in swing states.

The Wisconsin swing voters match the same opinion as Arizona swing voters who were interviewed last month.

"Engagious/Schlesinger conducted two online focus groups on Tuesday with 14 Wisconsinites who voted for Trump in 2016, then Joe Biden in 2020," said Axios. "They included 12 independents, one Democrat and one Republican... Eight participants said they've watched at least part of the Jan. 6 hearings so far. Several said the hearings were helpful for "accountability" but that the committee already has 'their proof' of what happened that day."

It's a problem for Donald Trump, but more for Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who is up for reelection in November. Johnson was asked by someone to hand over a list of fake electors to Vice President Mike Pence. That list has now come under investigation by the Department of Justice as potential fraud.

Signers to the slate of fake electors have been subpoenaed in recent weeks as the DOJ seeks information on who in Donald Trump's campaign was behind the scheme.

While many of those in the group didn't know much about Johnson, those who did weren't happy. One voter called him a "puppet for Trump."

"Those who thought Trump should face criminal prosecution didn't relent even when the moderator pushed back and said doing so would be unprecedented, potentially putting future presidents at risk of being prosecuted for political reasons," Axios said of the focus group report. "Voters were adamant that such a move would help deter similar attempts by anyone else in the future to 'overthrow the government.'"

One woman said that no president should have provoked what happened on Jan. 6.

"Many people were injured. Look at how many lives you put at stake because you were allowing this to happen. And he was happy about it," said Samantha O.

Another person in the focus group, 59-year-old Andrew R. said, "We have to show other people that this just can't be done in the future. [Prosecution] is going to be the price to pay if you try to do a coup again — and that's exactly what it was, a coup."

There were others in the group who compared Jan. 6 to something happening in "third-world countries." One called it "too extreme," and they feared it would happen again if something wasn't done to prevent it. "It just opens a floodgate for what anybody else is allowed to do."

Rich Thau, president of Engagious, was the one who created the focus group, explained that after leading chants of "lock her up," it's Trump they want to see locked up.

Read the full report at Axios:

https://www.axios.com/2022/07/17/wisconsin-swing-voters-biden-trump-2022-midterms

[Rick Plant]

Two New York residents charged with funneling Chinese investor money to Trump campaign


Sherry Li (right) is pictured with Donald Trump

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Two New York state residents were charged with illegally using funds from Chinese and Singaporean investors to donate $600,000 to then-President Donald Trump's re-election campaign in 2017, U.S. prosecutors said on Monday.

The scheme was part of an effort by Sherry Li and Lianbo Wang to showcase political connections as they sought funds to build a China-themed park in upstate New York, prosecutors said, adding that they raised $27 million in investment, but never completed the project.

Li called the park "Chinese Disneyland," according to a complaint filed in federal court in Brooklyn.

Prosecutors said Li and Wang made contributions in their own names to a committee hosting a fundraiser for Trump on June 28, 2017, but that the funds came from 12 foreign donors the pair had charged $93,000 each to attend the event with them.

U.S. campaign finance laws bar foreigners from contributing to political candidates, or being solicited for donations, but nothing prohibits foreign nationals from attending fundraisers, said Washington lawyer Kenneth Gross, an expert in election law.

Li and Wang, both naturalized U.S. citizens originally from China, were arrested in Long Island on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States, as well as wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy.

Wang's lawyer declined to comment. A lawyer for Li did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokeswoman and a lawyer for Trump, who was not accused of wrongdoing, did not reply to requests for comment.

Li and Wang used a photograph taken at the June 2017 event of Li smiling with Trump and then-first lady Melania Trump to solicit investment for the theme park project, prosecutors said.

Li also used a Chinese national's funds to make donations to other committees that enabled her to attend campaign events in October 2017, including a dinner with Trump.

© Reuters


Trump donors ran $27 million real estate and green card scam, prosecutors say



NEW YORK — Two major Trump donors from Long Island ran a multimillion-dollar immigration fraud scheme, tricking foreigners into believing they’d get green cards and political access for investing in an upstate real estate project, federal prosecutors charge.

Sherry Li and Lianbo "Mike" Wang, who pumped more than $600,000 into President Donald Trump’s failed reelection campaign, were charged Monday in Brooklyn federal court.

Li was photographed with Trump and first lady Melania Trump at a 2017 fundraiser. She and Wang are accused of running the $27 million real estate scam and acting as straw donors to help foreigners skirt bans on U.S. political contributions and gain access to politicians.

Li, 50, and Wang, 45, donated $600,000 to the Trump Victory Fund to get a dozen people from China and Singapore into a June 28, 2017, fundraiser at Trump’s D.C. hotel, according to a criminal complaint.

The money allegedly came from the foreign nationals — a violation of federal law barring foreign contributions to U.S. politicians.

There’s no indication in the criminal complaint that Li and Wang got anything more than fundraiser face-time with Trump in exchange for their donation.

Li and Wang used the appearance of that access, though, to bolster their claims to investors that plans to build an educational complex in upstate New York would go through, even though they didn’t even have the necessary local permits, prosecutors allege.

“Tens of millions of dollars came in from investors and straw donors, who expected their money would bear fruit. However, only one promise came to fruition, the access to political power,” Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement. “Foreign money pollutes our immigration and democratic processes, and we must do all we can to protect them.”

When one Chinese citizen asked in December 2018 how much it would cost to get a picture with the president, Wang sent along the photo of Li with the first couple and pushed the real estate project.

“It’s unlawful for businessmen in China to make donations. But these businessmen can invest in our company and become our shareholders. We can then arrange for them to meet with the president, congresspeople, etc.,” Wang explained, according to the complaint. “Donation is definitely necessary. Our company can do that and it is legal.”

Representatives of the former president and the Republican National Committee — which received more than $350,000 in donations from Li and Wang — did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

The duo, who live together in Oyster Bay, raised $27 million from about 150 investors into their company, Thompson Education Center, prosecutors allege.

That amount included $16.5 million from people who were hoping to take advantage of the EB-5 Visa Program, which offers the possibility of permanent resident status to foreigners who invest at least $500,000 in new businesses in high-unemployment or rural areas.

None of them ever received green cards, despite promises from Li and Wang, the feds allege.

Another $11 million allegedly came from investors promised that they’d hit it big when the educational center announced an initial public offering, which never materialized.

Li and Wang had initially proposed in 2011 a sprawling Chinese cultural theme park in upstate Sullivan County that Li referred to as a “Chinese Disneyland” — complete with an amusement park, a college, homes and an estimated 1.5 million visitors a year, according to court documents.

The plan met resistance from upstate residents and officials, so they scaled it back and instead announced they’d build the Thompson Educational Center in Thompson, New York. They proposed a “multi-phase” project, starting with a $150 million complex that included college classroom buildings, a sports facility, student activity centers and a half-dozen dorm buildings.

They paid for architect plans and minor construction work, but little else -- instead using the money on expensive clothes and jewelry, fine dining and vacations, prosecutors allege.

All the while, the government was rejecting the investors’ green card applications, since immigration officials didn’t find their business plan credible, according to the complaint.

In their marketing material, Li and Wang said the education complex had all the necessary zoning approvals, but that turned out to be a lie, federal prosecutors say.

Li also sent bogus updates to one investor’s mom, along with photos of an entirely different construction site as proof that the project was moving along, prosecutors allege.

© New York Daily News


Minnesota Trump supporter faces federal fraud charges after burning his own camper and blaming it on BLM



On Tuesday, Patch.com reported that a Trump supporter in Minnesota is facing multiple counts of wire fraud after allegedly committing vandalism and arson against his own property, then trying to blame it on Black Lives Matter activists and "Antifa."

"Denis V. Molla, 29, has been charged in federal court with two counts of wire fraud. Molla lied about being targeted by anti-Trump vandals, according to federal investigators," reported William Bornhoft. "On Sept. 23, 2020, Molla falsely reported to law enforcement that someone else had lit his camper on fire, authorities said. Molla reported that his garage door was vandalized with spray-painted graffiti stating, 'Biden 2020,' 'BLM,' and an Antifa symbol, according to investigators. Molla also that his camper was targeted because it had a Trump 2020 flag displayed on it, authorities said."

According to the report, Molla had actually committed the vandalism and arson himself — and then made $300,000 in fraudulent insurance claims for the property he destroyed, $61,000 of which was paid out by his insurance company after he threatened legal action against them.

He also received $17,000 from GoFundMe donors.

Trump repeatedly attacked Black Lives Matter activists as violent in the wake of the George Floyd protests, and threatened demonstrators with further violence, tweeting, "When the looting starts, the shooting starts."

This is not the first case of a Trump supporter engaging in fake vandalism and trying to blame it on political opponents. In 2017, Stephen Marks of Connecticut, another Trump fan, was charged with criminal mischief after he graffitied “Kill Trump,” “Left is the best,” “Bernie Sanders 2020” and “Death to Trump” on a local elementary school playground, hoping liberals would take the blame for it.

https://patch.com/minnesota/minneapolis/minnesota-trump-supporter-staged-blm-antifa-crime-feds

[Rick Plant]

Newsmax has broadcast 40 fabrications and conspiracy theories about Jan. 6 since the hearings began



On Monday, the Associated Press reported that far-right cable network Newsmax, an alternative to Fox News that has grown in popularity with conservative viewers in recent years, has told at least 40 false claims or outright conspiracy theories about the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol since June, when the House Select Committee's public hearings on the event began.

"Many of the falsehoods, presented by anchors, reporters and guests who include Republican members of Congress, have been repeatedly debunked. Newsmax did not comment on the report," reported Amanda Seitz. "Anchors and guests have claimed that there were only a few hundred rioters or that they were 'unarmed,' despite photos taken from that day and federal charges that show some were armed with guns or used pepper spray, flagpoles and stun guns as weapons. The Department of Justice estimates at least 2,000 people entered the U.S. Capitol."

"Another false claim that Trump ordered National Guard troops to the scene, only to be blocked by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was repeated 11 times since the Jan. 6 committee began its hearings on June 9, for example," continued the report. "That misinformation was proven false more than a year ago: Pelosi doesn’t direct the National Guard."

Jack Brewster, an analyst for NewsGuard, told the AP that this rate of misinformation is significant: “If you’re watching Newsmax, you may come away with an entirely different feeling of what happened at the hearings, and what happened on Jan. 6.”

This comes as Newsmax faces a defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, an elections equipment company that the network suggested secretly switched votes away from former President Donald Trump. Courts have rejected repeated efforts by Newsmax to get that litigation dismissed.

Trump has increasingly moved to giving interviews on Newsmax, viewing it as a friendlier venue than Fox News. However, even Newsmax has at some points been cowed by the threats of legal action for false claims, moving to cut the former president's conspiracy theories about election fraud during one interview at the end of June.

Read More Here:

https://apnews.com/article/capitol-siege-donald-trump-misinformation-afa51409a16672232b55fa62b432aba4


Is the Secret Service protecting Trump or itself?



Former senior adviser to Ted Cruz, Amanda Carpenter, wrote for the Bulwark that she's not quite clear on who the U.S. Secret Service is protecting given what has been uncovered about their behavior on Jan. 6.

Among the things that have been uncovered, it turns out the Secret service informed the president about weapons that participants at the Ellipse rally had on Jan. 6. They didn't arrest anyone, despite it being illegal to have firearms on federal property like the Washington Monument. In fact, the Secret Service didn't report the weapons they discovered from rally attendees to the DC Metro Police or the Capitol Police as those rally goers began marching in that direction.

The Jan. 6 committee uncovered an incident that an agent on leave while working for Trump relayed to Cassidy Hutchinson. He is now denying that the incident ever happened and that he told her about it.

Another incident that Carpenter took issue with is the idea that Vice President Mike Pence refused to allow the Secret Service to whisk him away from the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Pence’s aide Greg Jacob testified Pence told his lead Secret Service agent Tim Giebels, "I trust you, but you’re not the one behind the wheel." Secret Service procedure is to remove the protectee from dangerous situations. On Sept. 11, 2001, it was unclear what was happening in the United States and Vice President Dick Cheney was put on Air Force Two and they put him in the air away from the overwhelming majority of threats.

Pence's chief of staff, Marc Short, said that the vice president didn't want people at the Capitol chanting "hang Mike Pence" to see him fleeing and thinking they'd won. But the idea that Pence didn't trust the Secret Service to make the decisions was startling to those who've worked in the White House over the past several administrations.

Finally, the worst, said Carpenter, is that the Secret Service "lost" the data on their phones that would have revealed any evidence about the expectations or conversations on or around Jan. 5 and 6. It only adds to the years of scandals that the Secret Service has faced, prompting some, like former Breitbart staffer Kurt Bardella to ask if they were obstructing justice, lying and covering up evidence for Trump.

"Does that explanation not quite sound believable? It shouldn’t. Because, really, how could the Secret Service, a law enforcement agency well versed in the practice of preserving documents and corroborating stories, just accidentally destroy communications from one of the most momentous days in its history—especially after the agency was asked to preserve exactly those types of documents?" she asked.

She closed by asking what the real story is and for congressional investigators to probe the details to uncover if there are further questions about the Secret Service if oversight should investigate.

"Put another way: Who or what is the Secret Service really protecting? The president and the vice president, as the highest constitutional officers? Donald Trump? Or itself?" she asked.

Read the full column at The Bulwark:

https://www.thebulwark.com/who-is-the-secret-service-really-protecting/

[Rick Plant]

BREAKING: More sham Georgia GOP electors face potential charges in Fulton probe

At least 12 Republicans have been sent ‘target’ letters

The scope of the Fulton County grand jury investigation into Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election came into clearer focus as court filings Tuesday indicate that at least a dozen phony Georgia Republican electors have been informed they could face criminal charges.

The filing was the latest signal that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ investigation is circling the group of 16 GOP electors who gathered at the state Capitol in December 2020 as part of a sham ceremony to further Trump’s push to reverse his defeat to Joe Biden.

The records for the first time showed that 10 additional GOP electors have received letters from Fulton County prosecutors notifying them they’re targets of their criminal investigation of the 2020 elections and could be prosecuted.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported that two other high-ranking officials — state Sen. Burt Jones, the GOP nominee for lieutenant governor, and Georgia GOP chair David Shafer — have also received the “target” letters.

It’s not immediately clear if the remaining four “alternate” electors have received the notifications. Willis’ office didn’t immediately comment. Another official, state Sen. Brandon Beach, has also received a similar letter, as officials say he helped organize the process as an intermediary between the Trump campaign and Georgia electors.

The 10 additional electors facing prosecutorial scrutiny are: Mark Amick, Joseph Brannan, Brad Carver, Vicki Consiglio, John Downey, Carolyn Fisher, Kay Godwin, Cathy Latham, Shawn Still and C.B. Yadav.

Attorneys representing those 10 and Shafer filed a motion to block their grand jury subpoenas for appearances beginning next week as “unreasonable and oppressive.”

In the filing, the attorneys note that a prosecutor in late June “informed us for the first time that all of these eleven nominee electors were suddenly targets” as the “investigation has matured and new evidence has come to light.”

“The abrupt, unsupportable and public elevation of all eleven nominee electors’ status wrongfully converted them from witnesses who were cooperating voluntarily and prepared to testify in the Grand jury to persecuted targets of it,” wrote the attorneys, Holly Pierson and Kimberly Bourroughs Debrow.

The filing said 11 of the electors “reluctantly” invoked their 5th Amendment rights after receiving the target letters. Jones was not included in the filing.

“The unavoidable conclusion is that the nominee electors’ change of status was not precipitated by new evidence or an honestly-held belief that they have criminal exposure, but instead an improper desire to force them to publicly invoke their rights as, at best, a publicity stunt.”

Last week Jones filed a motion in Fulton County Superior Court seeking to disqualify Willis, citing a recent fundraiser she hosted to boost Charlie Bailey, an ex-Fulton prosecutor who is Jones’ Democratic opponent.

“Burt is more than happy to perform his civic duty and answer questions — but not from a prosecutor with such blatant conflicts of interest,” spokesman Stephen Lawson has said.

Fulton Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who’s overseeing the special grand jury, will hold a hearing on Jones’ motion on Thursday.

The false slate of 16 electors have become a major point of interest of the Fulton County special grand jury examining whether Trump or his allies broke any state laws as they sought to reverse Biden’s win in Georgia. Some legal experts say those GOP electors may have violated election fraud and forgery statutes, among others.

Investigators in Washington, both for the select committee examining the Jan. 6 attack and at the Justice Department, have also taken notice. Federal prosecutors recently subpoenaed Shafer and others for information about the fake electors.

It’s just one facet of a growing probe. The grand jury has also recently subpoenaed members of Trump’s inner circle, including attorney Rudy Giuliani and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Graham was scheduled to challenge his subpoena in Charleston, S.C., on Wednesday. But the senator and Willis announced on Tuesday that they have struck an agreement allowing for arguments to instead take place in Atlanta, either in Fulton Superior Court or U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

A judge from the latter is scheduled to hear a separate subpoena challenge from another congressman, U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, R-Greensboro, on Monday. Like Graham, Hice is citing the Constitution’s “Speech or Debate” clause to argue that he can’t be forced to testify about matters that directly relate to his legislative duties.

House Speaker David Ralston, meanwhile, recently testified before the grand jury amid questions about a special state legislative hearing that featured false claims of election fraud.

https://www.ajc.com/politics/breaking-more-sham-georgia-gop-electors-face-potential-charges-in-fulton-probe/HMHJV725ZVCXJD2BMEHGYEVLCI/

[Rick Plant]

Georgia Trump electors throw Giuliani and Eastman under the bus in legal filing

The legal interests of some of Donald Trump's most prominent supporters in Georgia appears to have diverged as Fulton County District Attorney's investigates the alleged scheme to have Mike Pence reject legitimate electors and install Trump for a second term despite the fact he lost the election.

GOP state Sen. Burt Jones, a Trump elector and the GOP nominee for Lt. Governor in the 2022 midterms, filed a motion seeking to quash his subpoena, which will play out in public on Thursday.

In a separate effort, attorneys representing 11 of the 16 Trump electors in Georgia sought to distance themselves from Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman by seeking to establish that the timeline shows they couldn't have been part of the effort to get Mike Pence to overturn Georgia's election results, Politico reported Tuesday.

In a footnote on page 12 of the filing, the lawyers argued, "It has also been reported in the media that certain high-level members of the Trump team (Mr. Eastman, Mr. Giuliani, et at.) developed a different plan in late December 2020 (after Christmas) to, among other things, attempt to convince Vice President Pence to count these contingent electoral slates as the valid elector slates despite the lack of any successful judicial ruling."

"To the extent these reports are accurate (which we have no way of knowing), the nominee electors did not and could not have had any involvement in or knowledge of any such plan, as it was not even conceived until several weeks after the GOP electors had completed their contingent electoral slates on Dec. 14, 2020, and, in any event, it was never disclosed to or discussed with the nominee electors at the time," the attorneys argued.

The briefing also claims the Trump electors have received "abuse and harassment."

All even have been told they are "targets" of the Fulton DA's investigation.

Read the full report:

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/19/false-georgia-electors-da-probe-00046593

[Rick Plant]

Stop the Steal organizer tried to stop the certification of Barack Obama in 2009 too: report



The Stop the Steal rally at the White House on Jan. 6 was organized, in part, by Women for America First, a pro-Donald Trump group started by Amy Kremer. Her daughter, Kylie Jane Kremer, was the main organizer and signed off on the documents for the event.

In a piece by the New York Times Tuesday, it was revealed that the elder Kremer has a history of trying to stop a president she didn't like from being certified as the president.

"Barack Obama had just won the election by a popular-vote margin of more than 9.5 million," the report recalled. "The lawsuits Kremer alluded to were not about these votes but about Obama’s eligibility to run for the presidency in the first place. Several legal complaints filed in state and federal court (all of them dismissed) asserted that Obama was not born in the United States and was thus barred from seeking the presidency — a false claim that, as late as the end of Obama’s presidency, 41 percent of Republicans said they believed."

Kremer then became a prominent organizer in the so-called "tea party" and then helped organize the women's group supporting Trump.

"I come from the Tea Party movement, and I’m asked all the time: What happened to the Tea Party?" Kremer told a rally crowd. "Well, we’re still here. We just grew and morphed into something bigger and better — the MAGA movement."

Kremer's daughter was the one who text messaged MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell on Jan. 4: "POTUS is going to have us march there/the Capitol... POTUS is going to just call for it 'unexpectedly.'" Phase 2 was for the group to them attack the Supreme Court because they refused to intervene and hand Trump the election.

One question that persists in the House Select Committee is how Alex Jones, Ali Alexander, Roger Stone, and the Kremers all knew that Donald Trump was going to go off script and announce that the group was going to march to the Capitol if it was unexpected.

"Kremer’s 'Stop the Steal' Facebook group acquired 320,000 members in its first 22 hours," the Times reported. "Facebook banned the group almost immediately when its planning for demonstrations in swing states was quickly subsumed in threats to kill liberals and calls for civil war. Women for America First took its organizing offline, planning a bus tour called the March for Trump that would culminate in a rally in Washington. One of its organizers was Dustin Stockton, a veteran activist Kremer met a decade before when they were both working on the Tea Party Express, an organization that toured the country by bus, rallying crowds on behalf of Tea Party candidates."

Stockton said that he was using "a lot of the same people who organized our Tea Party rallies to organize the bus-tour rallies" for the Stop the Steal buses.

Their ranks were increased slightly by those who were furious over COVID-19 lockdowns and far-right evangelicals who promoted the conspiracy theory the lockdowns as anti-Christian efforts of secularists to kill Christians.

"Their rhetoric would carry over to Stop the Steal, which accused many of the same Democratic governors and state officials of rigging the election against Trump with the expansions of absentee voting during the pandemic," the Times explained.

The bus tours became known as a kind of foretold insurrection with local Republican politicians invoking violence and calling for the murder of liberals.

"I jokingly told some folks in the Tea Party, see, we’d solve every problem in this country if on the Fourth of July every conservative went and shot one liberal,” said Tea Party activist and county commissioner Bob Cavanaugh, who spoke to a crowd in December before the attack.

That violent rhetoric increased over the years with the encouragement of Trump. Former New Mexico county commissioner Couy Griffin, founder of Cowboys for Trump, warned at a Jan. 3 rally in Bowling Green, Kentucky.: “If we allow this election to be stolen from us, we will become a third-world country overnight. The elitist, gross, wicked, vile people that are in place will continue to wage war on America. Because there is a war, mind you. I promise you that."

In May of 2020, he told a rally crowd, “I’ve come to the conclusion that the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat. I say that in the political sense."

The House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on Congress and attempt to overthrow the election hasn't delved into the details about who funded the trips to Washington and organized the attack on Congress to stop the election certification.

The FEC has referred several cases involving Amy Kremer to the Treasury Department for non-filing and other issues.

Read the full report on how the tea party became the MAGA party at the New York Times.

Read More Here: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/19/magazine/stop-the-steal.html

[Rick Plant]

'Y’all need to go get yourself a good criminal defense attorney': Former Trump admin aide tells his colleagues



During a discussion about the Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) being subpoenaed by the Fulton County District Attorney, former Homeland Security Department chief of staff Miles Taylor suggested that allies of Donald Trump should consider getting lawyers if they haven't already.

Hice, a firm "states rights" advocate, is begging that the grand jury be moved from the state to the federal court system. The case, however, involves the violation of state election laws.

"The first thing you pointed out has to be underscored, is the massive conflicts of interest here that we didn't necessarily know about when congress was trying to create first a version of the 9/11 commission -- to model something around Jan. 6 that was like the 9/11 commission and then subsequently trying to get Republicans to agree to the select committee," said Taylor. "At that time a lot of folks thought it was just partisan politics, but we're starting to find out that there's a whole array of targets of potential criminal investigations, sitting members of Congress who were very involved in this saying, 'No, no, no, we don't want this scrutiny.' That's what's really very terrifying about this. They're trying to use their official power to put their thumb on the scales to prevent themselves from getting in trouble."

He noted that the law that has been broken isn't an "arcane" or "obscure" one, it's the U.S. Constitution that members are sworn to uphold.

"These members of Congress aren't people who can say, well, I didn't know the law and didn't know how it worked," Taylor explained. "Not that that's a good defense, as the lawyers will tell me, but these are people who lived that cycle. They lived that process. They go through the electoral process. They absolutely knew better. Nicolle, if we were making jokes about this, somewhere in here it would be a public service announcement for people who are around Donald Trump. The PSA would be: 'Y'all need to go get yourself a good criminal defense attorney because they're starting to go into the network.' These prosecutors are starting to go around the people around Donald Trump and it will have big implications. Allies like Jody Hice, they're getting dragged into courtrooms and in front of prosecutors. It's an indicator not that they potentially were involved in bad things, but that the ex-president is going to be dealing with a much-diminished set of loyalists if he decides to make a comeback in this political system."

Watch: 

[Rick Plant]

Sarah Longwell @SarahLongwell25

Just had another focus group of Trump voters where ZERO wanted Trump to run again in 2024. Really a striking departure from dozens and dozens of focus groups pre-Jan 6 hearings when at least half of any Trump-voting group wanted him to run again. His support is noticeably softer.

https://twitter.com/SarahLongwell25/status/1549156542259363842