1/6 Insurrection Investigation

[Rick Plant]

‘This is inner circle stuff’: Pence WH chief of staff testified before federal Jan. 6 grand jury – report

The former White House Chief of Staff to Vice President Mike Pence, Marc Short, testified before a federal grand jury investigating the January 6 insurrection last week.

“Marc Short was caught by an ABC News camera departing D.C. District Court on Friday alongside his attorney, Emmet Flood,” ABC News reports Monday afternoon. “Short appeared under subpoena, sources said.”

Short is now believed to be the highest-ranking Trump administration official to testify before the grand jury.

Former U.S Attorney Barb McQuade, now a law professor and well-known NBC News/MSNBC legal analyst, called it “inner circle stuff.”

Attorney George Conway, spouse to former Trump senior advisor Kellyanne Conway, offered up a one-word response: “Huge.”

Former Dept. of Defense Special Counsel Ryan Goodman, now the co-editor-in-chief of Just Security weighed in, saying: “Looks like a significant development.”

Short’s “appearance doesn’t fit neatly with prior known scope of probe,” he adds.

After the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack wrapped up its televised public hearings last week even more pressure has been put on Attorney General Merrick Garland to hold accountable not only the “foot soldiers” who attacked the U.S. Capitol and American democracy, but those responsible for inciting the insurrection and planning the events that led to it.

“There is a lot of speculation about what the Justice Department is doing, what’s it not doing, what our theories are and what our theories aren’t, and there will continue to be that speculation,” Attorney General Garland said at a press briefing last week., ABC News adds. “We have to hold accountable every person who is criminally responsible for trying to overturn a legitimate election, and we must do it in a way filled with integrity and professionalism.”'

Read More At ABC News:

https://abcnews.go.com/ABCNews/pence-chief-staff-appeared-grand-jury-probing-jan/story?id=87384833

[Rick Plant]

TODAY: Justice Dept to seek 5-year prison term at sentencing of high-level Capitol riot defendant Mark Ponder

Feds: "He swung a pole at an officer and, after his pole broke against the officer’s shield, he re-armed himself with a sPersonier pole, then committed another assault".

[Rick Plant]

Sentencing set for Sept 9 in the high-level US Capitol riot case of Army veteran Landon Copeland of Utah

Copeland pleaded guilty to assaulting/resisting police.  Before guilty plea, Copeland gave jailhouse interview in which he claimed Trump would return to office before 2024.

[Rick Plant]

Jan. 6 committee's Luria releases video testimony about lines that were stricken from Trump’s post-riot remarks

The video shows Ivanka Trump responding to a draft copy of her father’s remarks from the White House with edits that she said looked like his handwriting.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/jan-6-committees-luria-tweets-video-testimony-lines-stricken-trumps-po-rcna39848

[Rick Plant]

Jan. 6 grand jury asked questions that indicate Trump is the 'subject' of the probe: ex-Mueller prosecutor



Speaking to MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell on Tuesday, Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig revealed briefly some of the questions that witnesses were being asked while appearing before the grand jury were about former President Donald Trump.

Speaking to O'Donnell later, Andrew Weissmann, a former prosecutor on Robert Mueller's team, said that the fact that the grand jury asked about Trump means that he is a subject of the grand jury.

"What I'm getting at is, the definition of a 'subject' of an investigation is a technical term under the Department of Justice manual — the justice manual, and it is quite broad. It can't include anybody who is actually a participant in a meeting, whether they have criminal liability or not. So, it can be somewhat of a misleading term. But I think your interview with Carol, what's stood out to me, was her telling you, in the grand jury, the prosecutors weren't asking questions that this was Donald Trump just happened to be there. They were asking questions, she said, [such as] 'What did he say? What was said to him? What was his reaction?' Those are questions of what we referred to as a subject-plus. Meaning somebody who you are actually looking at in terms of potential criminal liability."

All grand jury investigations are secret, and lawyers and jurors aren't allowed to speak about it. Witnesses, however, can speak about it. So, after seeing Marc Short leave a grand jury proceeding, questions surfaced about what exactly this grand jury was focusing on. It's clear the Justice Department has a series of investigations open for Jan. 6 attackers. They're also working on the fake electors scheme. Bur Short was working in the White House on and before Jan. 6 and he had nothing to do with the campaign or organizing the Jan. 6 rally. It prompted questions about why he was there if it wasn't to ask questions about what was happening in the White House on Jan. 6.

See Weissmann's commentary below:

[Rick Plant]

Jan. 6 committee member Zoe Lofgren reveals the Secret Service has done more than delete digital documents

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) revealed to MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan that the Secret Service has done more than merely deleting text messages, which they are mandated by law to submit to the National Archives.

Addressing the recent revelations about the Justice Department expanding beyond the violence on Jan. 6 to the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election, Lofgren said that she's not sure what role the House Select Committee had in lighting a fire under the attorney general. What she does know, she said, is that public opinion has turned dramatically against Trump as the public hearings continue.

At the close of the interview, Hasan mentioned the Secret Service and Lofgren noted that it isn't just text messages. Almost a year ago, the committee asked for documents and it's taken until just this week for the Secret Service to collect them.

"Well, they are a lot of questions and I add some concerns," she began. "Not only erasing the text messages, but there is information that we have asked for, for almost a year that has only recently been produced — and in some cases, you know, what we got, they knew that we had from another source — they dumped, hundreds of thousands of documents on us, this morning, that we have asked for almost a year."

She said that it's a troubling pattern of behavior that is emerging from the agency under the Department of Homeland Security.

"I am also concerned about the actions of the inspector general," she noted. "He sat on this for months, months, and months as well. And now, he has ordered the department to stop the forensic analysis of the phones, which we need. We need that to happen. So there are a lot of questions here. And I hope that we can get answers to all of them."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Capitol rioter sentenced to 63 months in prison after taking an offer he previously refused



A District of Columbia man was sentenced today to 63 months in prison for assaulting law enforcement officers during the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol – the same deal he refused to accept last July.

Mark Ponder, 56, received the longer-than-usual sentence among the rioters after pleading guilty April 22 to assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers using a dangerous weapon, the Department of Justice announced today. Following his prison term, he will be placed on three years of supervised release. He also must pay $2,000 in restitution.

The DOJ stated that “Ponder ran out from the crowd and swung a long, thin pole at a U.S. Capitol Police officer. The officer protected himself by raising his riot shield above his head. Ponder’s pole struck the riot shield and broke in two, with part of the pole flying off to the side.”

After retreating into the crowd, the report said, “Ponder re-armed himself with a new, thicker pole that was colored with red, white, and blue stripes. He swung (it) and banged it against the ground in a menacing manner. Then, as the police officers advanced to move the crowd, Ponder wildly swung the pole at the advancing police line, striking an officer in the left shoulder.”

Last year, Buzz Feed had reported, “After he was restrained by MPD officers and escorted away from the Capitol grounds, Ponder allegedly repeatedly shouted to other rioters “Hold the line!” and “Do not give up!”

AFP

[Rick Plant]

Trump suffering inner turmoil as the Jan. 6 committee exposes him more and more



The video didn't have a clip of Donald Trump complaining about how he can't pronounce "yesterday" in it, but nonetheless, it's worth paying attention to it. On Monday, January 6 committee member Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., posted a video indicating that, even when he wasn't mispronouncing common words, Trump spent the day after the Capitol insurrection focused on finding that sweet spot between continuing to encourage domestic terrorism and not risking criminal exposure for doing so.

Rep. Elaine Luria @ RepElaineLuria

It took more than 24 hours for President Trump to address the nation again after his Rose Garden video on January 6th in which he affectionately told his followers to go home in peace.

There were more things he was unwilling to say.

Watch: https://twitter.com/RepElaineLuria/status/1551568001836670976

As hinted at by the deposed witnesses in the video, including both Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, one of the major reasons that his staff and family were pushing Trump to give a speech denouncing the Capitol riot on January 7, 2021 was to keep him out of legal trouble. Any fool could tell, from Trump's inciting speech and his extreme reluctance to call off the rioters, that Trump wanted the violence that day and was thrilled that his plans for an insurrection had gone as well as they had. But having him offer a statement, however reluctantly, claiming that he was appalled by the violence was a necessary step to constructing a legal and political defense. It was about having a document Trump's lawyers could point to when arguing (falsely) that Trump didn't mean for the riot to happen and that he was unaware of the effect his words would have.

The problem is that Trump's desire to stay out of jail was in direct conflict with another guiding Trump impulse: to gloat about the violence he inflicted on Congress and take full credit for unleashing the Capitol insurrection.

The inner battle between Trump's desire to evade legal consequences and his longing to yell "yeah I did it" was amply displayed in the "blooper reel" that the House committee investigating January 6 shared on Thursday night. While most of the public discussion about the video was mocking Trump for not wanting to say "yesterday," what is really most crucial is his unwillingness to either admit the election was over or to call for legal consequences for the rioters he sent to the Capitol.

Jan. 6 committee releases blooper reel of Trumps attempts to record a statement on Jan. 6.
"I don't want to say the election is over"
"Yesterday is a hard word for me"

Watch: https://twitter.com/i/status/1550305498553094145

But the video Luria released Monday gives even more crucial context. It really underscores how much Trump was being pressured by his staff to release a video for purely legal reasons. No one seems to believe Trump felt anything but glee over the chaos he caused. No, the post-riot condemnation was ass-covering, pure and simple. But Trump, who lies about everything all the time, was struggling to pretend to feel anything but joy over the riot. Distancing himself from the rioters meant he couldn't take credit for the insurrection, and that was clearly bumming him out.

Not only is Trump not sorry about January 6, he'd be happy to do it again.

That's why the still shot of how much ink Trump spilled over the remarks, in an attempt to take out any language that sounded too sorry about what happened, is such crucial evidence.



Particularly noteworthy is how reluctant Trump was to say that the rioters don't represent him. Because, of course, he wants the whole world to know that they do represent him. For someone as narcissistic as Trump, being able to convince so many people to risk their jobs, families and freedom on his behalf must be quite exciting. Not being able to brag about Jan. 6 must be incredibly painful for Trump.

This story, however, is about a lot more than Trump's ego. It's about the ongoing threat of right-wing domestic terrorism, and how Trump's antics after the Capitol insurrection created a roadmap for other Republican politicians and GOP propagandists to dial up the violent rhetoric. It's not a surprise, in retrospect, that Trump was reluctant to condemn the rioters too harshly. This is the same man who told the Proud Boys to be on "stand by" for him during a 2020 presidential debate. His behavior since he left office indicates that Trump's affection for political violence has not dimmed. Worse, it's spreading throughout the GOP.

Not being able to brag about Jan. 6 must be incredibly painful for Trump.

Salon's Chauncey DeVega has been doing the thankless work of tracking Trump's rhetoric on his app Truth Social and during his rallies. Taken together, DeVega outlines that a clear message is being sent to Trump's followers: Not only is Trump not sorry about January 6, he'd be happy to do it again.

Trump endorsed a post on Truth Social calling for "civil war" in response to the supposed enemy "within." This was right after a mass shooter in Buffalo, New York opened fire on mostly Black customers in a grocery store, having been hyped up on the racist "great replacement" conspiracy theory that Trump also likes to hint at. Trump has also really amped up the white nationalist rhetoric, unsubtly gesturing towards the eliminationism that such views always logically point to by arguing that "this nation does not belong" to "corrupt radicals," which is Trumpian code for American citizens who aren't part of the right-wing tribe.

Over the winter, Trump pounced on another violence-stoking opportunity by joining in the Fox News frenzy over the anti-vaccine "trucker" protest in Ottawa, Canada's capital. For weeks, the pundits on Fox hyped the protest and openly longed for violence to break out between the protesters and Canadian law enforcement. Trump himself joined in on the fray with one of his usual threats disguised as a "warning," telling Fox host Sean Hannity, "You can push people so far and our country is a tinderbox too, don't kid yourself." He used the word "tinderbox" repeatedly, understandably believing his followers might not pick up on his hint the first time.

Trump has also taken multiple opportunities to hint to his followers about his true feelings of pride and joy over January 6.

He floated the idea of pardoning the rioters at one rally. He's tried to turn Ashli Babbitt, the insurrectionist who was shot to prevent her from leading a mob to chase down fleeing members of Congress, into a martyr. He's claimed the people arrested for rioting that day are "being persecuted so unfairly." When asked about the people who were chanting "hang Mike Pence," he publicly defended them by saying it was "common sense" and they were "very angry." Trump's supporters, like most of us, know to ignore the condemnations of the insurrection as mere ass-covering language. They know that these other statements reflect his true feelings of approval for political violence.

Trump may not know that injecting bleach into your lungs will kill you, but he sure does have a strong grasp of how to signal violent intent to his followers while maintaining plausible deniability to law enforcement.

Unfortunately, the signals he's sending are spreading to other Republican politicians. As I noted yesterday, Dave Weigel of the Washington Post published a piece worth reading in full that really shows how normal this "civil war" talk has become among Republican candidates on the campaign trail. The Republican gubernatorial candidate in Maryland, Michael Peroutka, routinely describes Democrats as foreign enemies and recommends that "the Second Amendment" is a good response to Black Lives Matter protests. As Weigel writes:

That argument has been dramatized in ads that, for instance, show one armed candidate appearing to charge into the home of a political enemy, and another warning of "the mob" that threatens ordinary Americans. In many cases the candidates are brandishing firearms while threatening harm to liberals or other enemies.

In central Florida, U.S. Army veteran Cory Mills has run ads about his company selling tear gas that was used to quell riots in 2020. "You may have seen some of our work," he says, introducing a montage of what are labeled "antifa," "radical left" and "Black Lives Matter" protesters running from the gas.

There are too many other examples to recount here, but the gist is clear: January 6 was, for Trump and his most adamant allies in the GOP, not the end of the political violence but an excuse to ramp up the inciting rhetoric.

As intelligence analyst Malcolm Nance told DeVega this week at Salon, the "attack on the Capitol was really a template for the right-wing to do it correctly next time." It's unlikely that it will play out exactly the same way, of course. But Nance is right. Trump is encouraging his supporters to be at the ready should he call for violence again.

Read More Here: https://www.salon.com/2022/07/25/malcolm-nance-on-the-insurgency-jan-6-was-a-template-to-do-it-correctly-next-time/