1/6 Insurrection Investigation

[Rick Plant]

Judge's warnings about Trump's 'ongoing threat' should 'alarm every person in this country': Bennie Thompson



Ahead of a contempt vote for Trump allies Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino, the chairman of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol cited what Judge David Carter wrote about former President Donald Trump and attorney John Eastman, whom he said likely committed crimes in their efforts to stay in power.

According to Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) every American should read what he wrote and it should "alarm every person in this country."

Addressing the committee, Thompson quoted Judge Carter saying, "Dr. Eastman and President Trump launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history. Their campaign was not confined to the ivory tower - it was a coup in search of a legal theory."

He explained that the plan from Trump's allies "spurred violent attack on the seat of our nation's government led to the death of several law enforcement officers and deepened public distrust in our political process. More than a year after the attack on our Capitol, the public is still searching for accountability. I'm proud to say that this committee is helping to lead that search for accountability."

He went on to explain how the two men played a key role in the Jan. 6 attack and what led up to that attack.

"In Mr. Scavino's case, he strung us along for months before making it clear that he believes he is above the law," Thompson continued. "Mr. Navarro, despite sharing relevant details on TV and podcasts and in its own book, he also stonewalled us."

Thompson filed the full report against the two men on Sunday evening.

See the video below:

 


Jan. 6 Committee reveals the case against Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino ahead of the contempt vote



The House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and what led to it will vote on whether to hold Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino Jr. in contempt of Congress for refusing to appear after being subpoenaed.

On Sunday evening, the committee released the case it intends to present to the full Congress about the two men and the details that they could provide to the committee.

In the case against Navarro, the committee cited his own recently published book, In Trump Time, in which he revealed a plan called the "Green Bay Sweep." He said that it was designed as the "last, best chance to snatch a stolen election from the Democrats' jaws of deceit." He later says that former President Donald Trump was "on board with the strategy," along with about 100 members of Congress.

The House committee emailed Navarro asking if he intended to accept service of the subpoena and he replied: "yes. no counsel. Executive privilege." After he received the subpoena, Navarro released a public statement saying he had no intention of complying with it.

"President Trump has invoked Executive Privilege; and it is not my privilege to waive," Navarro wrote in the statement. "[The Select Committee] should negotiate any waiver of the privilege with the president and his attorneys directly, not through me. I refer this tribunal to Chapter 21 of In Trump Time for what is in the public record about the Green Bay Sweep plan to insure [sic] election integrity[.]"

The president, as in the current president, has waived all executive privilege for issues involving Jan. 6. The committee also informed Navarro that he could still appear before the members and indicate which questions he refused to answer due to executive privilege. Navarro replied, asking, "Will this event be open to the public and press?" The committee said that it would not be. They even offered to find a new date for Navarro if he needed more time, "within [a] reasonable time," to comply with the documents request or there was a scheduling conflict. He responded the following day saying, he had "been clear in my communications on this matter" and that "it is incumbent on the Committee to directly negotiate with President Trump and his attorneys regarding any and all things related to this matter."

Dan Scavino was the social media person for Trump during the campaign and then in the White House. When the committee subpoenaed described Scavino it explained that the former White House staffer was part of the one who tweeted for Trump and worked with the multimedia for social media communication.

The committee said that Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) worked extensively with Scavino, "granting multiple extensions for the deposition and production of documents." They listed six different extension examples beginning on Oct. 28, 2021, and the last being Feb. 8, 2022.

In the details about Scavino, the documents said that the White House Counsel's Office provided Scavino with the necessary information to explain that explained executive privilege was waived.

Read the full details in the 34-page document from the House Committee here:

https://www.rawstory.com/peter-navarro-dan-scavino-contempt/

[Rick Plant]

Judge's new ruling is 'the most striking and provocative' thing we've heard yet about January 6th: reporter



On Monday, CBS News' Scott MacFarlane, the key authority covering the January 6 Capitol insurrection court proceedings, revealed that the sane federal judge who said former President Donald Trump is likely guilty of crimes is also warning the attack "will repeat itself" if the perpetrators aren't properly held to account for their actions.

"Here we are, 15 months, roughly, since the U.S. Capitol riot," said MacFarlane. "And one of the most striking, provocative, and telling things we've heard a judge say about the investigation was said today. But it wasn't said here in Washington. It was said by a federal judge in California, who ruled today that John Eastman, the attorney and the adviser to the Trump White House in the final days of the Trump administration, must turn over dozens of email records to the House Select January 6 Committee here at the Capitol. Eastman's attorney in a statement late today says Eastman intends to comply."

"But it wasn't that narrow ruling on that narrow issue that was so striking; it's what the judge said in his opinion," continued MacFarlane. "The judge said in so many words that the public is searching for accountability for January 6th, and that without accountability, 'the court fears January 6 could repeat itself.' The judge also said it's more likely than not that Trump tried to block the official congressional proceedings. The judge used the phrase 'coup'. The judge used the phrase 'end the peaceful transfer of power' if the plans succeeded before January 6th. Particularly striking language."

"The judge is giving voice to any number of Americans who believe, at this moment, despite there being 770-plus federal defendants, that there has not been accountability for January 6th, and that without accountability, there is a fear January 6th could recur," said MacFarlane. "This isn't the first time we've read or heard a nudge from a federal judge or a message from a federal judge of this sort. We've heard federal judges here in D.C. lend voice — unequivocal voice — to their concern about the low-level plea agreements the Justice Department has been cutting in some January 6th cases. Unlawful picketing and parading. The judges expressing fear that these plea deals don't provide the proper deterrence to a recurrence of January 6th."

Watch below:
https://twitter.com/MacFarlaneNews/status/1508569233046781958

[Rick Plant]

US Capitol attack panel votes to recommend prosecution of Trump duo
Select committee unanimously agrees to advance contempt of Congress citations against Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino



The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack voted on Monday to recommend the criminal prosecution of two of Donald Trump’s top former White House aides – Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino – for defying subpoenas in a bid to undermine the January 6 inquiry.

The select committee unanimously approved the contempt of Congress report it had been examining. The citations now head for a vote before the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, which is expected to approve resolutions for referrals to the justice department.

Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chair of the select committee, said at the vote that the panel was seeking the criminal prosecution for Navarro and Scavino to punish their non-cooperation over claims of executive privilege it did not recognize.

"Executive privilege doesn’t belong to just any White House official. It belongs to the president. Here, President Biden has been clear that executive privilege does not prevent cooperation with the Select Committee by either Mr Scavino or Mr Navarro,” Thompson said.

“Even if a president has formally invoked executive privilege regarding testimony of a witness – which is not the case here – that witness has the obligation to sit down under oath and assert the privilege question by question. But these witnesses didn’t even bother to show up.”

The vote to advance the contempt citations against the two Trump White House aides came as the select committee was expected to huddle to discuss whether to demand that Ginni Thomas, the wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, assist the investigation.

The panel had sought cooperation from Navarro, a former Trump senior adviser, since he helped to devise an unlawful scheme with operatives at the Trump “war room” in Washington to have then-vice president Mike Pence stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.

Navarro worked with the Trump campaign’s lawyers to pressure legislators in battleground states won by Biden to decertify the results and instead send Trump slates of electors for certification by Congress, the panel said in the contempt report.

The former Trump aide also encouraged then Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to call political operative Roger Stone to discuss January 6 and coordinated with Willard war room operative Steve Bannon in the days before the Capitol attack, the panel added.

But Navarro told the select committee – without providing any evidence – that the former president had asserted executive privilege over the contents of his subpoena issued last month, and refused to provide documents or testimony.

The panel for months has also sought assistance in its investigation from Scavino, the former Trump White House deputy chief of staff for communications, since he attended several meetings with Trump where election fraud matters were discussed.

But after the panel granted to Scavino six extensions that pushed his subpoena deadlines from October 2021 to February 2022, the former Trump aide also told House investigators that he would not comply with the order because Trump invoked executive privilege.

The select committee rejected those arguments of executive privilege, saying neither Navarro nor Scavino had grounds for entirely defying the subpoenas because either Trump did not formally invoke the protections, or because Biden ultimately waived them.

Congressman Jamie Raskin, visibly furious as he read out remarks at the vote, slammed the executive privilege claims. “Please spare us the nonsense talk about executive privilege, rejected now by every court that has looked at it,” Raskin said.

“This is America, and there’s no executive privilege here for presidents, much less trained advisors, to plan coups and organize insurrections against the people’s government in the people’s constitution and then to cover up the evidence of their crimes.

“These two men,” Raskin said of Navarro and Scavino, “are in contempt of Congress and we must say, both for their brazen disregard for their duties and for our laws and our institutions.”

The panel also said that even if it accepted the executive privilege claims, the two former Trump aides had no grounds to entirely ignore the subpoenas since they also demanded documents and testimony about non-privileged matters.

The panel added the justice department’s office of legal counsel had determined they also had no basis to defy the document request in the subpoena, noting there has never been any purported immunity for producing non-privileged documents to Congress.

And at the vote to recommend contempt citations, the vice-chair of the panel, Liz Cheney urged the justice department to also reject the two Trump aides’ arguments for defying their subpoenas should the House make the expected criminal referrals.

"The Department of Justice is entrusted with the defense of our constitution; department leadership should not apply any doctrine of immunity that might block Congress from fully uncovering and addressing the causes of the January 6th attack,” Cheney said.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/28/capitol-attack-committee-contempt-prosecution-vote-trump-aides

[Rick Plant]

Democrats ask Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from Jan. 6 cases after wife Ginni's role is exposed



A group of Democratic senators and representatives have asked Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from future cases involving the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The lawmakers sent a letter Monday to the Supreme Court asking Thomas to recuse himself from those cases and to provide a written explanation for why he did not do so in previous cases, in a move prompted by the revelation that his wife Ginni Thomas was repeatedly pressuring White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to help Donald Trump overturn his election loss, reported the Washington Post.

“Given the recent disclosures about Ms. Thomas’s efforts to overturn the election and her specific communications with White House officials about doing so, Justice Thomas’s participation in cases involving the 2020 election and the January 6th attack is exceedingly difficult to reconcile with federal ethics requirements,” read the letter, which the Post obtained.

The letter also called on Chief Justice John Roberts to create a binding code of conduct for justices that includes enforceable provisions and require justices issue written recusal decisions, with a deadline of April 28, in response to "major ethics" breaches at the court, including Thomas' failure to disclose his wife's income from the conservative Heritage Foundation.

“Chief Justice Roberts has often spoken about the importance of the Supreme Court’s ‘credibility and legitimacy as an institution.' That trust, already at all-time lows with the American public, must be earned,” the lawmakers wrote.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/29/democrats-clarence-thomas-recuse-jan6-letter/

[Rick Plant]

Columnist: Bombshell report on missing call logs could make it easier for Jan. 6 committee to get records from Trump allies



Nearly eight hours are missing from White House call logs for the period when Donald Trump's supporters mobbed the U.S. Capitol -- raising new questions about the president and his inner circle.

Documents turned over by the National Archives to the House select committee don't account for the period between just after 11 a.m. to nearly 7 p.m., although the former president reportedly called at least one Republican senator asking to delay the election certification as the violence raged, reported the Washington Post.

“He was using the leverage of the violent insurrection to keep the inside political coup against Pence going,” said Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-MD), a member of the Jan. 6 committee. “Most everyone not cooperating with the committee is helping shield Trump from public disclosure about what happened during that period."

But the select committee might already have records of those missing calls because they have subpoenaed phone records from some key players, and the lengthy gap in White House call logs will strengthen lawmakers' case to obtain phone records from other members of Congress or Trump allies.

"The committee is debating whether to subpoena members of Congress such as [House minority leader Kevin] McCarthy (R-CA) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who also talked to Trump on Jan. 6," wrote Post columnist Greg Sargent. "The source close to the committee tells me the missing phone logs might strengthen the case internally for subpoenaing them, because there should be more pressure on those lawmakers to testify about these calls with Trump."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/29/trump-missing-phone-logs-key-takeaways/

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/04/politics/jim-jordan-trump-january-6/index.html


Handwritten notes may reveal 'unknown person' in last Trump call before mysterious seven-hour gap



Handwritten notes in a previously released document from the National Archives may reveal the identity of the "unknown person" who was the last reported call made by Donald Trump before the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The National Archives turned over White call logs to the House select committee, which the Washington Post obtained and found a seven-hour, 37-minute gap in calls between 11:17 a.m., when the call was made to the unidentified individual, and 6:54 p.m., when Trump instructed the operator to call aide Dan Scavino.

However, handwritten notes on another White House document shows Trump called then-Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) at 11:17 a.m. -- three minutes before his final call to then-vice president Mike Pence, which has been previously reported but was not recorded in the call logs turned over to the committee.

Kyle Cheney
@kyledcheney

But the omissions are the key, as they point out. Calls we know occurred that are not on this list:

-Final call with Pence (11:20am)
-Later call with Jordan
-Heated with McCarthy
-Call with Lee/Tuberville

NOTE: The 11:17am call to an “unidentified” person appears to be Kelly LOEFFLER, based on this previously released document from the National Archives.https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.841840/gov.uscourts.cacd.841840.164.13.pdf



The logs obtained by the Post show Trump also spoke with then-Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) on Jan. 6, a day after each Georgia Republican lost runoff elections to Democratic challengers.

Loeffler had promised Trump two days earlier at a campaign rally that she would object to certification of Joe Biden's election win but changed her mind after the Capitol riot, but through a quirk in Georgia election law Perdue's term ended Jan. 3, 2021, so he was no longer in Congress.

Other previously reported phone calls that did not show up on the White House logs include a phone call with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), a heated exchange with House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and a conversation with Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL).

https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/15087699996698992


Bob Woodward: Unlikely that 'telephone addict' Trump didn’t call anyone for 7 hours during Jan. 6 riot

Speaking to CNN on Tuesday, Bob Woodward explained that former President Donald Trump "is a telephone addict," and any idea that he didn't speak to anyone for seven hours is "unlikely."

Paperwork revealed by Woodward and Robert Costa in the Washington Post showed more than 7 hours and 30 minutes in which Trump's phone calls were not logged. It's prompting questions about whether Trump or his allies were using burner phones or other cell phones to keep any communication off the record.

"What's so important what the Jan. 6 committee is doing is very aggressive effort to talk to everyone, get every piece of paper, chase it down like a reporter who has time," Woodward explained. "And I got to know from very well during the 2020 campaign when he would -- I was talking to him and we did 17 interviews, he would call any time. And he is a telephone addict, and the idea that nothing happened in the afternoon on the phone Jan. 6 is as unlikely as the sun not rising, quite frankly."

Host John King cited reports from others explaining that Trump frequently would use other people's phones or randomly ask for someone to hand him a cell phone.

"Yes, but they'll figure it out or they'll get parts of it," said Woodward about the committee. "And it is -- I remember talking to Trump one afternoon. I called him. I had some questions. This is in 2020 before the election. And he said, 'Oh, I can't talk. I have 20 generals waiting downstairs.' And then he talked for 25 minutes. You almost couldn't get him off the phone, and it would appear any time. So, to have seven hours and 37 minutes' void, where, in the morning, he's talking to ten people, in the evening he's talking to 12 people and then there are calls that we don't know about that didn't go through?"

Legal analysts have warned that intentionally hiding calls using other phones could show a "consciousness of guilt."

See the interview below:

[Rick Plant]

Ginni Thomas Pushed To Subvert The 2020 Election

Text exchanges revealed by the Washington Post show Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pushed Mark Meadows to overturn the 2020 election. Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance breaks down the damning messages.

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Biden’s DOJ is finally expanding criminal investigation into Jan. 6 insurrection

After fierce public criticism that the Department of Justice has not done enough to hold former President Donald Trump and his supporters accountable for their efforts to overturn the election, The Washington Post on Wednesday published a major new report on Attorney General Merrick Garland's investigations.

"The criminal investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has expanded to examine the preparations for the rally that preceded the riot, as the Justice Department aims to determine the full extent of any conspiracy to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election victory, according to people familiar with the matter. In the past two months, a federal grand jury in Washington has issued subpoena requests to some officials in former president Donald Trump’s orbit who assisted in planning, funding and executing the Jan. 6 rally," the newspaper reported, citing "people familiar with the matter" who were granted anonymity to speak candidly.

The report came after Judge David O. Carter of the Central District of California ruled Trump likely committed felony misconduct.

"The development shows the degree to which the Justice Department investigation — which already involves more defendants than any other criminal prosecution in the nation’s history — has moved further beyond the storming of the Capitol to examine events preceding the attack," the newspaper reported. "Grand jury subpoenas are a legal mechanism used by prosecutors to gather information for a criminal investigation, and a subpoena in and of itself doesn’t mean any particular recipient is under investigation or likely to face charges. But the subpoena demands issued in recent weeks do indicate that the aperture of the investigation has widened, after Attorney General Merrick Garland pledged in a speech this Jan. 5, the day before the first anniversary of the attack on the Capitol, to follow the evidence wherever it leads."

Read the full report:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/03/30/jan-6-fbi-subpoena-justice/

[Rick Plant]

Feds charge Missouri MAGA rioter who told cops he was there because 'your president told us to be'



On Thursday, CBS News' Scott MacFarlane, the key authority covering the January 6 Capitol insurrection prosecutions, reported that the Justice Department has unsealed a new case against Cale Clayton, who was caught on video yelling at and taunting police as they tried to defend the Capitol from the incoming mob.

"You guys realize your President told us to be here. Your President!" shouted Clayton at one point. "Hey, how does that make you feel? You’re defying your own f***ng country. Your own country you’re defying."

At another point, he also shouted at police, “We are going to win. You don’t have enough for all of us. You might hit me once or twice. You might spray me with pepper spray. I don’t give a f**k. There ain’t enough for millions of people here and you know it.”

Cale faces a multitude of charges according to the DOJ charging document, including assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers, civil disorder, theft of government property, entering a restricted area, and disorderly conduct.

At least 800 people have now been charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol, ranging from misdemeanors like trespassing to seditious conspiracy.

Scott MacFarlane:
@MacFarlaneNews

In newly unsealed case vs. Jan 6 defendant Cale Clayton of Missouri, feds say Clayton yelled at police:

"You guys realize your President told us to be here. Your President! Hey, how does that make you feel? You’re defying your own f***ng country. Your own country you’re defying"

Watch: https://twitter.com/MacFarlaneNews/status/1509589340472725515