FBI finds scant evidence U.S. Capitol attack was coordinated

[Rick Plant]

If you want to know who started the insurrection, ask the question we asked after 1-6: Who paid for it?

Trump.


Trump’s political operation paid more than $4.3 million to Jan. 6 organizers but questions remain about the full extent of its involvement

Former President Donald Trump’s political operation reported paying more than $4.3 million to people and firms that organized the Jan. 6 rally since the start of the 2020 election. However, questions remain about the full extent of the Trump campaign’s involvement in the “Save America” rally on the day of the Capitol attack as a House select committee’s sweeping requests attempt to shine some light on that day’s events.

On Friday, the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol sent letters requesting information from 15 social media companies. On Aug. 25, the select committee sent requests to federal agencies for records related to the riot.

The letters ask agencies from the National Archives and Records Administration to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice to expedite the gathering of the records, asking for information within two-weeks.

The House subpoena names Caroline Wren, a veteran GOP fundraiser who received at least $170,000 from the Trump political operation as the campaign’s national finance consultant with the joint fundraising committee. Wren was listed as a “VIP Advisor” on the permit granted by the National Park Service for the Jan. 6 rally.

Megan Powers, one of two operations managers listed on the rally permit, is not listed in the House request but was paid around $300,000 as the Trump campaign’s director of operations. And Make America Great Again PAC paid around $20,000 more to Powers for “recount administrative consulting” in 2021.

None of the other former Trump campaign officials listed on the permit for the rally on Jan. 6 are listed in the initial requests.

The House select committee did request records related to Women for Trump initiative co-chair  Gina Loudon, who spoke at the rally. The committee also requested records related to Amy Kremer, who notably co-founded Women for America First, the 501(c)(4) nonprofit “dark money” group that submitted the rally’s permit records to the National Park Service.

The select committee also requested letters related to Dustin Stockton, a co-organizer of the rally. Stockton was also a spokesperson for WeBuildtheWall when former White House strategist Steve Bannon and three others affiliated with the dark money group were charged with fraud related to the online fundraising effort. Stockton was not charged and records related to Bannon were requested by the House select committee.

Stockton and Kremer told ProPublica that they felt they needed to “urgently warn the White House of the possible danger” posed by the rally. They initially took their concerns to Katrina Pierson, a former Trump campaign spokesperson who reportedly served as a liaison between the White House and rally organizers, but after “feeling that they weren’t gaining enough traction” Stockton claims she and Kremer agreed to call White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. However, Kremer denies that she spoke with Meadows or any other White House official about Jan. 6 concerns.

Records requested by the House select committee could shine light on claims about those encounters as well as other outstanding questions about the extent of the Trump campaign’s involvement.

But since Trump’s campaign and joint fundraising committee funneled millions of dollars through layers of opaque firms and shell companies where the ultimate payee is hidden, the public may never know the full extent of the Trump campaign’s payments to organizers involved in the protests.

Trump’s 2020 campaign and joint fundraising committee, the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, spent more than $771 million through American Made Media Consultants LLC during the 2020 election cycle. OpenSecrets data shows Trump’s joint fundraising committee routed another $685,000 through the secretive limited-liability company in 2021 with around $222,000 of that going to text messaging on Jan. 6.

The Federal Election Commission generally does not require campaigns to detail payments vendors make to subcontractors as long as the subcontractor does not work under the direction or control of the campaign and the campaign does not have undue influence over the vendor.

But the role campaign aides and members of Trump’s inner circle played in creating the limited-liability company as a “clearinghouse” to pay vendors, concealing details of millions of dollars in the campaign’s transactions, raises the question of whether it was truly separate from the campaign.

The full roster of people working for Trump’s campaign remains hidden from the public and details of those payments, such as the nature of services provided and the amount of money changing hands, are shrouded in mystery.

The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center filed an FEC complaint alleging that Trump’s 2020 political operation may have violated federal election law by concealing details of the campaign’s financial dealings.

Recent campaign finance records reviewed by OpenSecrets show Trump’s political operation continued to pay Event Strategies Inc., a firm named in a permit for the rally where two of the rally organizers worked. The firm received payments from Trump aligned super PAC Make America Great Again Action as recently as Aug. 13, FEC records filed Aug. 26 show. 

Trump’s political operation paid Event Strategies more than $2.5 million since the start of the 2020 election with around $800,000 of that coming from Trump’s Save America leadership PAC and Make America Great Again Action super PAC in 2021.

Event Strategies is not the only vendor with Trump ties the Make America Great Again Action super PAC reported paying in its new FEC disclosure filed Aug. 26.

On July 15, the Make America Great Again Action super PAC paid $128,125 to Forward Strategies, a firm run by professional fundraiser Meredith O’Rourke, who was reportedly subpoenaed in federal prosecutors’ probe of longtime Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. The super PAC also paid Red Elephant Strategy, a consulting firm run by Brian Walsh. He was president of America First Policies, the dark money arm of America First Action, Trump’s one-time super PAC of choice and a roughly $1.8 million donor to Make America Great Again Action.

Red Eagle Media Group, a firm that funneled money from Trump’s campaign to shell companies tied to ad buyers at the center of an alleged illegal coordination scheme with the National Rifle Association and America First Action during the 2020 election cycle, received payments from the super PAC as well. 

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2021/08/trumps-political-operation-paid-more-than-4-3-million-to-jan-6-organizers-questions-remain-about-full-involvement/

[Rick Plant]

The Capitol riot committee now has a clear roadmap for subpoenas: Pulitzer Prize-winning Post reporter

There's a clear roadmap for the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter explained on MSNBC on Tuesday.

MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace interviewed Carol Leonnig as Politico is reporting the select committee is poised to begin issuing subpoenas.

The process was explained by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, was the lead impeachment manager during Donald Trump's first trial, and is a member of the select committee.

"In some cases, we're making requests we think will be complied with," Schiff said. "In other cases, we're going straight to subpoenas where we think we're dealing with recalcitrant witnesses."

Wallace asked Leonnig about a tweet by Miles Taylor, a former Trump administration official who served as chief of staff of the Department of Homeland Security.

"I firmly believe Trump provoked the attack on the Capitol so he could declare martial law. For years he talked in private about the Insurrection Act & his 'magical powers' to deploy the military on to the streets. The January 6th select committee needs to investigate this," Taylor tweeted.

Leonnig explained that "the most central unanswered questions sort of circle around the drain that Miles Taylor is smartly focusing on. And that is, the days before January 6th."

"This is why, to me, subpoena power is so powerful and I wish as a journalist I had it," she explained. "We need to know about the conversations that Republican lawmakers, Donald Trump, and White House staff had with each other and with organizers of the protest. We need to know those conversations in detail -- their communications about what they plan to do."

"We already know from very good reporting that — unfortunately, not with a subpoena — that there were protest members who were warning the senior White House folks that there was going to be a likely storming/march on the capitol," she continued. "So, the White House should have been on alert."

Republicans in Congress are also under scrutiny.

"There was also a crucial meeting in late December between the president and other lawmakers in that special caucus that wanted to stop the certification of the vote. They were all sort of fist-bumping after that meeting where they were going to discuss how they would stop the steal, how they would stop the certification. We need to know what they discussed and we need to know what White House staff notes were taken," she explained.

The meeting was announced on Twitter by then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Reuters reported that the meeting was attended by Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Mo Brooks (R-AL).

"We need to know the degree to which then President Trump was aware of the likelihood and potential for violence," Leonnig said.

Watch:

[Richard Smith]

Yawn.  How long are you going to milk this event to deflect from Biden's ongoing series of disasters?  There is nothing new here except that we learned that putting up a fence or wall can keep people out.  If only someone had thought to do that in Texas.

[Rick Plant]

The private security force surrounding Michael Flynn was on the ground at the Capitol on Jan. 6

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Donald Trump's former national security advisor who was convicted of lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador and subsequently pardoned, emerged as one of the most high-profile inspirational figures in the effort to keep Trump in office, which culminated with the attack on the US Capitol on Jan. 6.

Flynn's private security force, a group called 1st Amendment Praetorian that was launched less than two months before the Nov. 3 election, played a key role trafficking propaganda to convince Trump's supporters that the election was stolen. The group also fielded members on the ground in Washington DC on Jan. 6, and then helped promote the revisionist falsehood that the assault on the Capitol was "staged," as insurrection apologists sought to whitewash the attempted coup.

The self-described "group of military, law enforcement and intelligence community" veterans has received relatively little attention, compared to the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers — two right-wing paramilitary groups that have seen dozens of members charged with offenses related to the Capitol assault. In contrast, none of 1st Amendment Praetorian's members have been charged, although at least two are documented as being in a restricted area near the Capitol on Jan. 6. And to a much greater degree than the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, members of 1st Amendment Praetorian maintained direct contact with major Trump allies like Michael Flynn, his brother Joe Flynn, lawyer Sidney Powell, and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne.

The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, chaired by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), is seeking information about 1st Amendment Praetorian founder Robert Patrick Lewis, along with Michael Flynn, Trump confidant Roger Stone, InfoWars hosts Alex Jones and Owen Schroyer, Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander, Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio, Oath Keeper leader Kenneth Harrelson and dozens of other high-profile Trump supporters. The committee's interest in the individuals is part of a probe into "recruitment, planning, coordination, and other preparations for the rallies leading up to and including January 6th and the violence on January 6th."

Much of the information about 1st Amendment Praetorian's involvement in the events of Jan. 6 come from the accounts of its own members in contemporaneous social media posts and retrospective interviews with sympathetic right-wing podcasters.

1st Amendment Praetorian's most conspicuous role in the run-up to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol was providing security for a string of gatherings in Washington DC that built momentum for the Save America Rally where Trump addressed supporters on the Ellipse on Jan. 6. 1st Amendment Praetorian was listed as "demonstration marshals" on event permit applications of the Million MAGA March on Nov. 14 and the Rally to Revival on Jan. 5, both of which took place at Freedom Plaza. And 1st Amendment Praetorian members accompanied Michael Flynn and his family members when Flynn spoke at the Supreme Court on Dec. 12. Following that assignment, Lewis lauded Flynn as a "personal hero and motivation in this fight," while saying that serving on his personal security detail "takes the cake."

Lewis has spoken openly about his involvement with both Flynn and Sidney Powell. Powell represented Flynn in his quest to have his case dismissed after he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. Following the Nov. 3 election — and while still representing Flynn — Powell briefly served on Trump's legal team. Representing Trump, alongside Rudy Giuliani thrusted Powell into the public spotlight, where she was to become one of the loudest and most persistent tribunes of baseless conspiracy theories, largely around the false claim that Dominion Voting Systems conspired with the Venezuelan government to steal the election.

"We also had our intelligence team working in a couple different aspects, assisting her team," Lewis, a retired US Army Special Forces operative with combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, said in a Dec. 9, 2021 YouTube video. "So, our intel team has been processing a lot of OSINT, doing a lot of open source intelligence, a lot of digging, a lot of collating of all these different things that people have been sharing on social media regarding different pieces of this election fraud puzzle, whether it be digging into the companies that we know are behind it — Dominion, Smartmatic, Scytl, and all their ownership and their connections to Venezuela and Iran and China and all these other places."

In an interview with "The Right Side with Doug Billings" in June, Lewis elaborated on 1st Amendment Praetorian's inside role in the multi-pronged effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

"You know, that's from November to January; we had a team in DC with General Flynn and Sidney Powell and Patrick Byrne, and so we got a front-row view to a lot of this stuff coming in, and really what was going on and how that was happening," Lewis told Billings.

As has been widely reported, Flynn, Powell and Byrne visited Trump in the White House for a Dec. 18 meeting that reportedly devolved "into shouting," with White House counsel Pat Cipollone pushing back against the trio's insistence that Trump take dramatic action to halt the transfer of executive power.

During the June 2021 interview, Lewis told a clearly star-struck Billings that 1st Amendment Praetorian had provided intelligence "directly to the president" during the same timeframe as the Dec. 18 meeting. Raw Story was unable to independently confirm that any information compiled by Lewis' group was consumed by Trump.

"But we have other things where we do national objectives, like the intelligence that we're delivering to the White House, right, directly to the president," Lewis said. "That was stuff based on China's influence in the United States, and specific propaganda that we were outlining, because we have former military intelligence and NSA people that were very Asia-focused, that can pick this up. That's their job, right? They were in the military for decades specifically doing that."

The notion that China engineered the election of Joe Biden, an extension of Powell's baseless claim that Dominion Voting Systems conspired with Venezuela to steal the election that is also false, was cited by many of the Capitol rioters as a justification for violence.

Joseph Flynn, who introduced his brother to Powell in early 2020, was also in close proximity to the propaganda stream as it unspooled.

"Sidney is diving deeper into what went on in the election, the level of corruption, especially as it relates to the Dominion Voting Systems," Flynn told Alan Kielan, a 1st Amendment Praetorian member who hosts the "Uncensored Abe" podcast, in a Nov. 16, 2020 interview. Flynn went on to say that he considered Powell to be a member of the family.

"When she says, 'Release the Kraken,' she's talking about open the floodgates of hell," Flynn said, "because this is coming out, and if the courts aren't going to pay attention to it, we are absolutely looking at a situation where our vote will never count again."

Kielan has said on a recent episode of "Uncensored Abe" that he performs "volunteer security services for 1st Amendment Praetorian." A Marine Corps veteran, Kielan also identifies as a one of the "digital soldiers," a phrase coined by Michael Flynn that was embraced by the QAnon movement.

Both Michael Flynn and Lewis, the founder and chairman of 1st Amendment Praetorian, have occasionally applied the military language of counterinsurgency in discussing the controversy surrounding the 2020 presidential election.

Lamenting that the presidential election remained unsettled in a Jan. 5 interview with InfoWars host Alex Jones — although apparently missing the irony that he held as much responsibility as anyone else for fomenting the instability — Flynn said, "I have actually been part of taking over countries and running elections in countries — in other countries around the world, where we say, 'Hey, be more like us. Act more like us. In fact, we're going to show you how to do an election in your country, Iraq; in your country, Afghanistan; in your country, name the Central American country in the '80s and the '90s.'"

Similarly, Lewis ended an Oct. 11, 2020 Facebook Live by declaring: "Americans are standing up. We're taking our country back. We've activated the counterinsurgency."

In a Nov. 10 YouTube video previewing the Million MAGA March, Lewis explained low-intensity conflict to his audience.

"As a Green Beret, that was my job," he said. "Green Berets grow beards and long hair because we go to other countries where we want to get rid of dictators or leaders that are not on our side. And we want to do it without American fingerprints, right? So, our nation wants regime change, and they don't want it tied back to the United States of America. That's low-intensity conflict. That's where we send people there to ensure that a specific reaction takes place. You arm, you train, you equip rebel groups that are aligned with what you want. And you let them do it. You help them do it in some cases.

"Color revolutions — there's different formats that people have heard about lately that I've known about for 15 years, because it's what I did in the Special Forces; it's what Green Berets are there for and a lot of other groups," he added.

Lewis described people who voted for Joe Biden as a "populace" in thrall to "a small group of subversive, Marxist groups" and "propagandized by their media." He predicted — incorrectly, as it turned out — that once they realized that Donald Trump was the true winner of the election, the joy that Biden supporters were experiencing would turn to rage.

"All that positive energy is gonna change just like a chemical reaction, very quickly, and that's where we're in the danger zone," Lewis said.

On the eve of the attempted insurrection, Michael Flynn addressed Trump supporters at Freedom Plaza, telling them they were standing on "soil that we have fought over, fought for" and would continue to fight for.

"The members of Congress, the members of the House of Representatives, the members of the United States Senate, those of you who are feeling weak tonight, those of you that don't have the moral fiber in your body, get some tonight because tomorrow we the people are going to be here, and we want you to know that we will not stand for a lie," Flynn said.

Flynn could not be reached for this story.

That night, Flynn joined Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, Trump advisor Peter Navarro and Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) at the Trump International Hotel, according to a Facebook post by Charles Herbster, then serving as national chairman of the Agricultural and Rural Advisory Committee.

"These faithful servants of freedom need our prayers as well as US Congress," Herbster wrote. "Tomorrow on Capitol Hill, they open sealed electoral voting certificates from each state. This joint session is the last official chance for our members of Congress to object to the widespread voter fraud that happened on November 3."

The following day, Tuberville would take a call from President Trump as the US Senate was being evacuated, according to a report by USA Today. Tuberville said he had to hang up on the president; it remains unclear what motivated Trump's call.

Lewis, who attended Trump's speech at the Ellipse on the morning of Jan. 6, has acknowledged that 1st Amendment Praetorian members were at the Capitol later that day. Asked by Doug Billings in his June 2021 interview if he or other members of 1st Amendment Praetorian were "at the Capitol" on Jan. 6, Lewis answered in the affirmative while leaving the details ambiguous.

"We were," he said. "We had done a handful of events on the 5th, and then on the 6th we had some small kind of private things that we were doing around the city. And then because we had people that were in town, because of what we had done on the 5th, I got to hear a lot of different vantage points from people that were all around the city that saw it from multiple angles."

What, if anything, 1st Amendment Praetorian was trying to accomplish during the hours when the US Capitol was under assault remains unclear. Lewis tweeted four times from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. He has said that he was at the Willard Hotel. Lewis did not respond to attempts to reach him by email, Facebook message and Twitter direct message.

Lewis' messaging during the first few hours of the assault on the Capitol was decidedly affirmative.

"Today is the day true battles begin," he tweeted at 2:18 p.m., five minutes after Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola used a stolen police riot shield to bust out a window at the Capitol building.

At 2:51 p.m., Lewis re-shared a tweet announcing that "Trump supporters have breached the Capitol building," commenting, "You can only apply so much pressure to a system before it explodes."

While Lewis was at the Willard Hotel, 1st Amendment Praetorian member Geoffrey Flohr walked around the Capitol. Nicknamed "Yoda," Flohr's LinkedIn page describes him as a private investigator, and a spokesperson for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department confirmed to Raw Story that Flohr worked as a polygrapher for the agency from 2007 to 2011.

Dressed in a tan-colored cap with a bent bill and sunglasses perched atop, a green handkerchief knotted around his neck and thick white beard, Flohr made a memorable impression in a Getty Images photograph showing him leading Michael Flynn and Joseph Flynn away from the protest at the Supreme Court on Dec. 12. Flohr is identifiable by the cap, sunglasses, handkerchief and beard strolling on the west side of the Capitol in a video originally posted on Facebook by Samuel Di Gangi, a political and entertainment writer. The original video is no longer posted, but Di Gangi confirmed by email to Raw Story that a copy republished by a Jan. 6 researcher is authentic. A compilation of open-source video shows Flohr, who was nicknamed #ShadowFlynn by Jan. 6 researchers, moving around both the west and east sides of the Capitol, periodically talking on a cell phone. It remains unclear who Flohr was calling and what they discussed.

Flohr earned accolades from Joseph Flynn and Alan Kielan, who expressed affection towards him during a March 24 episode of Kielan's podcast.

"I just want to say hi to Yoda," Flynn said. "God bless you, man. Miss you. It's been a while. Let's get in touch soon."

Kielan concurred.

"There are rare people that are as great as Yoda is," he said. "Man, I miss him already, and I know he's got a lot going on in his personal life, but there are very few great people like Yoda, for sure."

Flohr could not be reached for this story.

Kielan himself acknowledged during the interview with Joseph Flynn that he was present at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

"We were there on the steps," he said. "We watched as flashbangs got shot right over our heads." Kielan said he witnessed a man die at the Capitol, but that information could not be confirmed by Raw Story. Kielan could not be reached for this story.

Rick Briggs, a 1st Amendment Praetorian member who served in the US Army Airborne Special Operations Forces, documented his activities on Jan. 6 on Twitter. Like Lewis and Flohr, Briggs had served on Michael Flynn's personal security detail on Dec. 12. On Jan. 6, Briggs chronicled his day with a tweet stating: "Me? Today? Resting after yesterday's awesome event and performing 'Overwatch' duties and Lame MSM Propaganda dump reviews." One of the accompanying photos in the tweet shows Briggs looking out a window from his hotel room in Arlington, Va., across the Potomac River from the Capitol.

Like Lewis, Briggs' tweets in the first couple hours of the assault on the Capitol appeared to embrace revolt.

Replying to a tweet by Tina Forte that showed the Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's Republican challenger dressed in a tactical vest and gloves, Briggs tweeted at 3:42 p.m.: "Ma'am… Let's GO Patriots!"

In another tweet, at 3:06 p.m., Briggs celebrated an armed revolt that took place in Tennessee in 1946.

"Remember, I did drive from central Texas to Washington DC with a stop in Athens TN for that 'Message!'" he wrote. Accompanying the tweet, Briggs posted a photo of himself posing next to a historical marker for the "Battle of Athens, August 1-2, 1946." The marker describes the battle as "an armed revolt" involving "World War II veterans" who assaulted a local jail where authorities had sequestered ballots boxes, forcing a surrender and paving the way for a veterans' slate of candidates to take control of local government.

Then, after Trump released a video telling his supporters, "You have to go home now," Briggs and Lewis changed tack, signaling that the most violent rioters were impostors.

"I work with a group, @1st_praetorian, and as a retired US Army Airborne Special Operations Forces veteran with COunterINsurgency (COIN) experience AND based upon PHOTOGRAPHIC evidence of these same 'Agents Provocateurs' at other events… Proof," Briggs wrote. "Facts. Time will tell."

Accompanying the tweet, Briggs posted photos of Pezzola and Jacob Chansley, the so-called "QAnon Shaman" who recently pleaded guilty to obstruction of an official proceeding.

At 5:32 p.m., Lewis tweeted: "Getting a lot of reports that the Capitol bum rush was staged & not MAGA.

"Fits the color revolution play book to a T.

"Going to look at pics with the @1st_praetorian intel shed, but seems pretty likely- we've already IDd some people we've been tracking."

During his March 24 podcast, Kielan told Joseph Flynn that the FBI came to interview him at his house.

"Oh, I didn't know that," Flynn responded.

Kielan professed to have enjoyed the FBI visit, hinting preposterously that the chaos at the US Capitol was a setup by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

"You wanna know what happened on this?" Kielan said he told the FBI. "Why don't you go talk to Nancy Pelosi and find out why she removed the Capitol police."

For his part, Flynn said he went back to his hotel after Trump's speech at the Ellipse because he was cold. He said described what happened at the Capitol as "a terrible disappointment."

"Yes, something went wrong with the Capitol police where something was fishy there," he said. "However, anybody who breached that building and broke laws and committed felonies, okay, made a massive mistake, number one, for themselves and their families. And, number two, for the movement, okay, because it sets us back when you commit crimes. It sets us back when you take the law into your own hands.

"We're not at that juncture yet," he added. "We're not at that juncture yet. Who knows down the road?"

[Rick Plant]

Select committee is investigating Capitol riot as 'conspiracy to commit a coup’: Adam Schiff

The House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack the U.S. Capitol is investigating the day as a coup attempt, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) explained on MSNBC on Wednesday.

Schiff, a former federal prosecutor who chairs the House Intel Committee and was the lead impeachment manger in Trump's first trial, was interviewed by MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace.

Wallace noted that Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) said that the 6-part plan to install Trump as president after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden "outlines a coup" attempt — and called out Senators Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) as "the go-to options for doing their overthrow."

Describing Jan. 6 as a coup is nothing new for Kinzinger, an Air Force Lt. Colonel currently serving in the Air National Guard. The Illinois Republican described the events as a coup as they happened.

"Is the select committee investigating a conspiracy to commit a coup?" Wallace asked Schiff.

"Yes," he replied. "And i think Adam is exactly right."

Schiff went on to explain that the commission isn't just looking at the Capitol riots but also the "quasi-legal means" Trump and his allies used that "so undermine our democracy that it creates a crisis and it falls apart."

"This is what the Republicans tried to do, the Trump campaign and administration tried to do with this memo, but it's also what GOP party leaders are trying to do around the country by stripping independent elections officials of their powers and handing them to partisan boards, so they can succeed where they failed with this attempted coup," he continued.

"That is, if they can't disenfranchise enough people and they still lose, this gives them the chance through the patina of legality to overturn the results. And that, to me, is the most desperate risk that our democracy faces," Schiff said.

https://www.rawstory.com/adam-schiff-select-committee/

[Rick Plant]

Capitol riot committee slaps four former Trump officials with subpoenas

Four former Trump administration officials have been hit with subpoenas by the House select committee investigating the January 6th riots at the United States Capitol building.

The first four officials receiving subpoenas are former chief of staff Mark Meadows, former political strategist Steve Bannon, former social media director Dan Scavino, and former defense official Kash Patel.

The group as a whole has until October 7th to respond to the subpoenas. Bannon and Patel are being ordered to appear before the committee on October 14th, with Meadows and Scavino slated to appear before the committee a day later.

In its letter announcing the subpoenas, the committee singled out Scavino for using social media to heavily promote the January 6th "Stop the Steal" rally that preceded the riot. Patel, meanwhile, was cited for being "involved with discussions among senior Pentagon officials prior to and on January 6th."

Although the subpoenas have been issued, it's no guarantee they will show up when scheduled, as Trump officials were notorious for defying Democratic subpoenas after Democrats took back the House of Representatives in 2018.

The committee's work has taken on new urgency after reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa revealed that Trump attorney John Eastman drafted a six-point plan to have former Vice President Mike Pence refuse to certify the results of the 2020 election.

Read the full announcement below:

Jan 6th committee: subpoenas issued for depositions from Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino, Kash Patel and Steve Bannon

[Rick Plant]

The infamous 'Eastman memo' shows how close Georgia GOP chair came to enabling Trump coup

Eleven months after the election, and nine months after the Jan. 6 insurrection attempt, we are only now beginning to understand how organized, intentional and dangerous the Trump coup attempt had been, and how dangerous it remains.
Take, for example, the events of Dec. 14 at the Georgia State Capitol. On that date, Democratic electors met in the state Senate chambers to formally commit the state's 16 electoral votes to Joe Biden. The event was ceremonial in nature, yet required under the U.S. Constitution.

Largely overlooked at the time – there was a lot going on – was a second meeting held that day in a committee room at the Capitol, this one convened by Georgia GOP Chair David Shafer. In that meeting, Shafer and his fellow Republicans approved a fake second slate of pro-Trump electors to be sent to Washington, on the grounds that Trump had really carried Georgia and that Biden's victory was based on fraud.

There was, is, and never will be any evidence whatsoever of that claim, as multiple recounts, investigations and court cases have demonstrated. But as we'll see, the legitimacy of that fake slate of electors didn't really matter. What mattered was the ability to claim that the competing slate existed.

We know that because of last week's publication of a memo from John Eastman, a now discredited constitutional law professor who also served as a top legal advisor to Trump. It's pretty much a how-to booklet on ending American democracy.

In that memo, Eastman lays out a step-by-step scheme by which Vice President Mike Pence could single-handedly overturn the results of the presidential election and ensure that Trump stayed in office, despite having lost the election. Trump embraced the strategy wholeheartedly, as subsequent events have proved.

A 'majority of the electors appointed' would therefore be 228. There are at this point 232 votes for Trump, 222 votes for Biden. Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected.

– John Eastman, a top legal advisor to former President Donald Trump

The key to that scheme was the creation of “competing slates of electors" in Georgia and six other supposedly “disputed" states. Again, it didn't matter whether those competing slates were legitimate. All that mattered was that a useful fiction was created, that those slates could be said to exist. According to the plan laid out by Eastman, Pence would unilaterally announce to a joint session of Congress on January 6 that “because of the ongoing disputes in the seven states, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those states." Using that excuse, all votes cast in those states would be canceled and their electoral votes would not be counted, thus reducing the total number of available electoral votes from 535 to 454.

As Eastman explains in that memo:

“A 'majority of the electors appointed' would therefore be 228. There are at this point 232 votes for Trump, 222 votes for Biden. Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected."

They also had a Plan B, and even a Plan C and D.

If their attempt to manipulate the electoral math somehow failed, Plan B called for Pence to then declare that since no candidate had a majority of electoral votes, the question of our next president would be decided by the House, with each state's congressional delegation getting one vote. The candidate who had the most state delegations would be our next president.

“Republicans currently control 26 of the state delegations, the bare majority needed to win that vote," Eastman wrote. “President Trump is re-elected there as well."

And if that didn't work, if we still didn't have a president, Eastman writes, “That creates a stalemate that would give the state legislatures more time to weigh in to formally support the alternate slate of electors, if they had not already done so."

In other words, by illegally and unconstitutionally delaying the electoral count, and putting pressure on Republican legislators to reverse the voters' decision, Trump wins yet again.

And Plan D? We saw that play out on live TV on January 6, when a mob of protesters summoned to Washington by Trump attacked Congress to try to stop the counting of electoral votes. Even if the insurrectionists couldn't force Congress to anoint Trump to another term, they could delay the official counting of votes and again give sympathetic GOP legislatures more time to toss the certified slate of electors and replace them with Trump electors. Indeed, even in the midst of the riot, as members of Congress were taking shelter in undisclosed hiding places, Trump and Rudy Giuliani were calling Republican senators, plotting how to delay the vote.

This is not all behind us; it is not merely history.

As recently as last Friday, Trump again called upon Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to decertify the 2020 election, calling Biden an “illegitimate president" and urging Raffensperger to “announce the true winner." And in a recent CNN poll, 59% of Republicans said that believing Trump won the 2020 election was central to being a Republican.

Trump is also working hard to ensure that when 2024 rolls around, he has people in place to do his bidding. Under Shafer's leadership, for example, the Georgia GOP lost the 2020 presidential race in Georgia as well as two U.S. Senate seats, which is an astonishingly poor performance. But when Shafer ran for re-election as party chair, that didn't matter. “No one in Georgia fought harder for me than David!" Trump announced. “He NEVER gave up! He has my Complete and Total Endorsement for re-election." Shafer won easily.

Trump has also endorsed U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, who remains a rabid, irrational advocate of overturning the election, to replace Raffensperger as secretary of state. If Hice wins in 2022, he would oversee the 2024 election. Trump has also endorsed state Sen. Burt Jones, who last year demanded a special session of the state Legislature to officially replace Biden electors with Trump electors, in his race for lieutenant governor.

So no, this is not a storm that has passed. This is at best the eye of the hurricane, the deceiving pause before the storm resumes.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter.

https://www.rawstory.com/eastman-memo/


The Capitol riot committee will 'draw a circle -- with Donald Trump in the middle': CNN's Elie Honig

On CNN Thursday, following the announcement of the first four January 6 committee subpoenas issued against former President Donald Trump's former chief of staff Mark Meadows, strategist Steve Bannon, social media director Dan Scavino, and defense official Kash Patel, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig weighed in on the significance.

"What level of cooperation are you going to get?" asked anchor Erin Burnett. "Are they going to completely defy it, is there any way to get them to comply?"

"Here is how this will play out," said Honig. "I would not expect any of these people to comply, to come in and testify because that is the history of the pattern we have seen from Trump White House when it was in power and now. Here is what happens next. It's up to the committee to decide are we going to go to court and fight this. Are we going to go to court and say we need a specific order from you requiring them to come in and testify and the key there is timing ... in past, it's taken House Democrats way too long to get into courts and these disputes have dragged on for months and years to the point where nobody even cared. The committee has to be ready to act quickly and demand expedited, sped up review from the courts here."

"What do these tell you about where this investigation is headed?" asked Burnett. "There's a whole lot of reasons why you may have started here, but these are four people they are starting with?

"This shows me they are looking at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," said Honig. "These are people who we know and letter confirms they were this direct communication with Donald Trump or having key conversations in days, hours leading up to January 6th and during January 6th. The questions for Mark Meadows and the other folks is you walk me through January 6th, minute by minute, phone call by phone call. This is at heart of the investigation."

Honig then gave an explanation for the legal strategy behind the committee's moves.

"What they are trying to do is draw a circle here, with Donald Trump in the middle," said Honig. "Who did he talk to? What were they talking about? Were they talking about what would happen on January 6th? Were they talking about the rigged election and et cetera, et cetera? I think they are kind of working their way in with Donald Trump in the center and I think they are going to be a lot of other circles, but these four people are people who are known to have communicated directly with the former president and that's important."

Watch below:

[Richard Smith]

Yawn.