Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Jan. 6 PowerPoint reveals many more Republicans were in on Trump's coup plot



Last week a federal court agreed to schedule Steve Bannon's contempt of Congress criminal trial for July of next year — just as the fall campaigns go into full swing. He must be very pleased. Bannon would like nothing more than to have a big show trial at that moment and be carted off to jail where he can write his Great Replacement manifesto.

With the news that there was a PowerPoint presentation called "Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for JAN 6", reported here by Brett Bachman, Bannon's revolutionary proclamations on his Jan. 5th podcast have become clearer. Recall what he said:

"Mitch McConnell's got to start taking care and focusing on these senators — because this is going to be very controversial. We are going into uncharted waters. We're going into something that's never happened before in American history. Tomorrow it's going — we're pulling the trigger on something that's going to be, it's going to be minute by minute, hour by hour, what happens. The stakes couldn't be higher right now."
"It's not going to happen like you think it's going to happen ...Okay, it's going to be quite extraordinarily different. All I can say is, strap in. … You made this happen and tomorrow it's game day. So strap in. Let's get ready...It's all converging, and now we're on the point of attack tomorrow."

It's understandable that people would suspect that he was talking about the violence that took place when Trump incited his crowd to converge on the Capitol and he may very well have been. He and the others who were plotting at the Willard Hotel in the days before the insurrection were very close to groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who had an outsized role in the attack.

But it's clear now that Bannon was also talking about the plans laid out in that PowerPoint presentation which included some of what we knew but also reveals some rather chilling recommendations that add more detail to what was undeniably a coup attempt. When he said, "We are going into uncharted waters. We're going into something that's never happened before in American history," he wasn't kidding.

The presentation indicated that Mike Pence had more than one way to overturn the election. As vice president, he could seat alternate Republican electors (which Rudy Giuliani and the boys were working feverishly to round up), he could reject the electoral votes of the states Donald Trump was disputing (with no evidence) or he could delay by refusing to certify until there was a recount of all paper ballots. That last coincidentally tracks with the fatuous proposal by Senator Ted Cruz, R-Tx, and 11 other senators who planned to delay the count in order to conduct an "emergency audit" in the states Donald Trump was disputing in order to "restore trust in the electoral system." Finally, Pence could just throw up his hands and say there was no way to ever know the real outcome and throw it to the House of Representatives which would vote as if it were a tie and Trump would win under the rules that each state delegation has one vote.

None of those recommendations were remotely constitutional.

Meanwhile, the PowerPoint also recommended that Trump brief Congress on alleged foreign interference in the election, deem all electronic voting in the states invalid, declare a National Security Emergency and put the National Guard on standby. (Politico reported that Chief of Staff Mark Meadows did order the guard to be available to "protect pro-Trump people.") Here's a little flavor of what they had in mind:

"A Trusted Lead Counter will be appointed with authority from the POTUS" -- the plan outlined in this PowerPoint slide is quite literally a military coup

Remember: The guy circulating this plan was in meetings w/Meadows, Trump, Ron Johnson, & others in weeks leading up to Jan 6



The PowerPoint also features some of the looniest conspiracy theories hatched in the wake of the election. One slide states that a "key Issue" is that "critical infrastructure control was utilized as part of ongoing globalist/socialist operation to subvert the will of United States Voters and install a China ally leading to another one advising the president to say the Chinese government interfered in the election as a pretext to declaring all the electronic votes invalid.

This presentation was released by the January 6th Commission because it turned up in former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows' documents which he voluntarily turned over the committee. It took a day or so before the person who circulated it was identified — a former Army Colonel by the name of Phil Waldron, who told the Washington Post that he worked with Trump's lawyers to put it together. Waldron said he contributed the stuff about foreign interference and he claims that he met with Meadows 8-10 times and helped to brief members of Congress before January 6th on what they had in mind, telling the Post that the presentation's recommendations were "constitutional, legal, feasible, acceptable and suitable courses of action." And he's right — if you are plotting a coup in a banana republic.

Not one of the people who read this disgraceful betrayal of American democracy blew the whistle. Well, except for Lara Logan, the Fox News personality who recently compared Dr. Anthony Fauci to infamous Nazi doctor Joseph Mengele. She tweeted out a version of the PowerPoint on January 5th but nobody paid any attention because she has no credibility. And yes, it was reported in Bob Woodward and Robert Costa's book "Peril" that Senators Mike Lee of Utah and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina "vetted" the fraud claims and determined that it wouldn't be prudent to overturn the election. I'm sure others clutched their pearls in the Senate cloak room, worrying about how risky the whole thing was as well. Not that they said anything publicly, of course.

We knew that Trump had many different plans to overturn the election. The memos prepared by right-wing lawyer John Eastman, Trump telling Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen "just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressmen" and threatening to replace him with a toady, Jeffrey Clark, if he refused were just a few examples. All of this was grossly unethical.

But this PowerPoint emphasizes just how desperate they were.

They threw everything at the wall in the hope that something would stick, that enough Republicans in Congress would grab on to one of the rationales they offered and agree to at least delay the certification or overturn it outright. When Vice President Mike Pence refused to go along, Trump tried one last gambit. He sent the angry mob he'd just whipped up to march to the Capitol to give the "weak" reluctant Republicans the "pride and boldness" they needed to stop the certification. It's why he sat on his hands for hours as his supporters stormed the Capitol.

https://www.rawstory.com/jan-6-powerpoint-reveals-many-more-republicans-were-in-on-trump-s-coup-plot/


'Donald Trump was on the rioters' side': CNN legal analyst breaks down 'incredibly chilling' MAGA riot texts

After Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) read a series of bombshell text messages sent to former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows on January 6th, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin argued they removed all doubt about where Trump's sympathies were during the Capitol riots.

Specifically, Toobin noted that Trump was seemingly unmoved by multiple pleas from political allies ranging from Donald Trump Jr. to Fox News host Sean Hannity to call off the rioters.

"What is incredible to me is that Donald Trump did nothing for hour after hour, despite all his close allies begging him to do something," Toobin explained. "Finally he makes this statement, and what does he say about the rioters? 'We love you.'"

Toobin then explained how this amount to a supreme dereliction of duty by a man who took a sworn oath to uphold the United States Constitution.

"All of this evidence, you know, adds to the impression that Donald Trump was on the rioters' side on January 6th," he said. "And that is an incredibly chilling message. But that's what I got out of the evidence that came out today."

Watch the video below:

[Rick Plant]

Liz Cheney hammers Trump for refusing to act for 187 minutes — even after Sean Hannity begged him to



Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) on Monday made a forceful case for holding former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows in criminal contempt of Congress.

Cheney argued that Meadows owes the committee answers -- and in particular wanted him to explain why former President Donald Trump refused to dispatch help to the Capitol for 187 minutes.

"The violence was evident to all. It was covered in real-time by almost every news channel," said Cheney. "For 187 minutes, President Trump refused to act. When action by our president was required, essential and indeed compelled in his oath to our constitution. Mr. Meadows received numerous text messages, which he has produced without any privilege claim imploring that Mr. Trump take the specific action we all knew his duty required. These text messages leave no doubt the White House knew what was happening here at the Capitol."

She explained that while the attack was underway, he even got a text message from members of the press telling him that the attack was happening.

"One text Mr. Meadows received said quote we are under siege here at the Capitol," she continued. "In a third, 'Mark, protesters are literally storming the Capitol breaking windows on doors rushing in. Is Trump going to say something?' A fourth, 'There is an armed standoff at the House Chamber door.' And another from someone inside the Capitol, 'We are all helpless.' Dozens of texts including from Trump administration officials urged immediate action by the president. Quote, 'He has to come out firmly and tell the protesters to dissipate. Someone is going to get killed.' In another, 'Mark, he needs to stop this now.' A third in all caps, 'TELL THEM TO GO HOME.' A fourth and I quote, 'POTUS needs to calm this shIt down.'"

She also revealed that the unnamed Fox News hosts who told Meadows that Trump had to do something, were Sean Hannity, an informal adviser to the president's 2020 campaign and Laura Ingraham.

"Please get him on tv, destroying everything you have accomplished," texted Ingraham.

"Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol," texted Hannity.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) revealed that Meadows, a former member of Congress, handed over 9,000 pages of documents before he decided he was going to declare executive privlege.

See the full statement from Cheney below:

[Rick Plant]

Stunning series of revelations': Erin Burnett astonished by texts sent by Trump allies during MAGA riot



On Monday, before recommending former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows be referred for criminal contempt of Congress, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) delivered a series of bombshell texts obtained by Meadows' disclosures, showing that a number of Trump's allies, from Donald Trump Jr. to Sean Hannity, begged the former president to intervene and stop the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

CNN anchor Erin Burnett was shocked by the new information.

"That was the pretty stunning series of revelations there when we consider what we heard ... and we had 55 pages earlier today," said Burnett, speaking to reporter Ryan Nobles. "We thought that they would be putting out new information and they did. The vice chair, Liz Cheney, adding a lot of new details to the January 6th committee."

"There's no doubt about that," agreed Nobles. "And it goes to show just how much information the Select Committee has as it relates to Mark Meadows that we haven't seen, because it seems as though every day, they can roll out some new bombshell of information that shows directly the role that Meadows played in the events leading up to and on January 6th. And tonight, they revealed some of the most damning yet."

Nobles went on to explain the significance of the messages.

"I don't think there's any doubt the text exchange from Donald Trump Jr. to the chief of staff imploring him to convince his father to go out and make a public statement to try to quell the violence on Capitol Hill, and we know that the timeline of everything essentially, the president ignoring even a plea from his son," he said. "This is all information that we did not have before."

"It also plays into this larger argument that the committee is making about the need for Meadows to come in and answer questions about what he knew about January 6th," continued Nobles. "And furthermore, about how his knowledge of the events is not in any way protected under executive privilege because ... he's offered up 6,000 documents, 9,000 pages worth of information, and he's written a book on the topic where he talks about his conversations with the president in and around that time. And so now he needs to fill in these gaps by coming and sitting in front of the committee for a full deposition."

Watch below:

Fox News hosts knew Trump fans were behind MAGA riots -- but still lied and blamed Antifa



Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) revealed during the Jan. 6 hearing vote on Monday that three Fox News personalities were hurriedly texting White House chief of staff Mark Meadows begging him to make President Donald Trump stop the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

On television that day and in the days that followed, however, those Fox hosts were saying something entirely different on air.

"I, for one, am shocked Fox News hosts were staying stuff in private different to what they say in public. Shocked," MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan said in reaction, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

Media Matters president Angelo Carusone described it as a "big deal" for two major reasons.

"One, this is a stunning illustration, and it is rare to use the word stunning in relation to something Fox does but this is a stunning illustration of the Trump-Fox feedback because it shows in real-time on Jan. 6 they knew there was a problem," he explained. "They tried to protect and advise Trump to address that problem in real-time. Then after Jan. 6 they ran cover for him and, to this day, continued to rewrite history. The second reason is that we actually have their words that they were saying on air at the same time they were sending these messages."

Hasan showed a video collection of twisting the situation to make it seem that Democrats were acting hysterically. The attack wasn't actually that big of a deal, they claimed.

"What we just saw — it is gaslighting," said Hasan. "Now, thanks to the texts, we have clear evidence for that gaslighting."

Carusone agreed, noting that on Jan. 6, the same day Fox News hosts were sending the panicked text messages, they were telling their viewers that those attacking the Capitol weren't Trump supporters but Antifa and Black Lives Matter.

"Laura Ingraham called in," he recalled. "Sean Hannity did a show that night. Brian Kilmeade did the same thing. So, they recognized in real-time that this was actually Trump supporters and yet they spent an enormous amount of effort that very day lying, explicitly saying, and blaming this on Antifa and Black Lives Matter."

Hasan wondered if Hannity would dedicate his 9 p.m. hour to his role in the conversations with Meadows on Jan. 6 and come clean about what he was saying and thinking.

See the video below:

[Rick Plant]

These are 6 ways to overturn a US election -- according to Team Trump memos



This past year, the House panel charged with investigating the Capitol riot has been diligently working to lay bare Donald Trump's failed election coup, subpoenaing his allies, interviewing agency officials, and requesting confidential documents. So far, the evidence suggests that Trump and his allies coordinated a far-reaching campaign of lies – spanning multiple agencies and branches – to cast doubt over the results of President Biden's win. Still, for many, the committee's body of evidence is amorphous and confusing. After all, it's a hodgepodge of damning memos, missives, messages, thus making it important to distinguish each one from the rest.

The Eastman memo

First unearthed by The Washington Post back in October, the two-page document, produced by conservative lawyer John C. Eastman, who was working with Trump's legal team immediately following the former president's defeat, outlined a step-by-step scheme aimed at undermining the 2020 election via various questionable legal pathways.

Central to Eastman's scheme was former vice president Mike Pence, who, according to the memo, would be required to throw out electors from seven key states that Trump lost. In doing this, the document erroneously alleges, Pence would be able to replace these electors with Trump-friendly substitutes, leaving no candidate with at least 270 electoral votes – a result that endows the House of Representatives with the final vote.

"The main thing here is that Pence should do this without asking for permission – either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court," the memo instructed. "The fact is that the Constitution assigns this power to the Vice President as the ultimate arbiter. We should take all of our actions with that in mind."

Both Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Mike Lee of Utah reportedly rejected the Eastman memos of the time of their proposal. And Pence, for his part, refused to go along with the plot.

While the Eastman memos were drawn up after the election, there's also evidence that Trump's allies concocted similar plots in anticipation of his loss.

Jenna Ellis' memos (2)

In the days leading up to the 2020 election, Politico reported, Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis also wrote a memo broadly echoing Eastman's proposal. Claiming that a provision of the Electoral Count Act contains a provision that violates the Constitution, Ellis argued that Pence had the right to nullify the votes of certain electors by refusing to open their envelopes during the election electoral vote count. After Pence did this, Ellis continued in her plan, he would claim that the federal government failed to meet its own legal threshold for certifying its electors, "requiring a final ascertainment of electors to be completed before continuing."

"The states," she added, "would therefore have to act."

Ellis' plan, Politico notes, did not go quite as far as Eastman's. After all, Eastman had argued that Pence could secure Trump's victory simply by throwing out certain electors. Ellis' proposal would have simply required a state-by-state review of the "validity" of certain electors, which could have theoretically ended in then-candidate Joe Biden's victory.

One day before the Jan.6 attack on the Capitol, Ellis wrote another memo, Politico reported, arguing that Pence should stop the certification process once the count reaches Arizona.

Despite their wild ambitions, Ellis and Eastman were not the only Trump sycophants to draft election coup manuals lacking in constitutional substance.

The McEntee memo

Last month, The Atlantic reported on a memo drawn up by Johnny McEntee, Trump's director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, who after the election made a series of bogus claims about how Trump could retake the throne. The memo, drafted by "rogue legal advisors," alluded to the likes of Thomas Jefferson, who presided over his own election certification as vice president, securing a victory against John Adams in 1801. At the time of the historical dispute, the memo notes, Georgia's ballots had been declared defective. According to McEntee, Jefferson simply ignored this issue and "announced himself the winner."

"This proves that the VP has, at a minimum, a substantial discretion to address issues with the electoral process," McEntee claimed. But in reality, The Atlantic notes, "Jefferson didn't discard electoral votes, as Trump wanted Pence to do. He accepted electoral votes from a state that nobody had questioned he had won."

Eastman, Ellis, and McEntee's memos were for the most part consigned only to those within Trump's allies. However, other missives breached Trump's inner circle and went beyond making technical claims.

The Clark memo

According to a report released by the Senate Judiciary Committee in October, Trump also attempted to weaponize the Justice Department following his election defeat, enlisting the help of sympathetic officials to cast doubt over Biden's win. Key to this scheme was Jeffrey Clark, the then-head of the Justice Department's civil division, who sent a letter to the Georgia legislature, vastly overstating the agency's concern around the state's election results.

"The Department will update you as we are able on investigatory progress, but at this time we have identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia," Clark wrote at the time, even though the department found no evidence of election-altering fraud.

Clark's letter, however, needed an official go-ahead from then-acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Donoghue, then the Justice Department's second-in-command. And both men quickly shut the effort down.

Eye-opening as it was, Clark's letter appears tame compared to the most recently unearthed artifact of Trump's failed election coup.

Meadows memo

This week, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, on track to be charged in contempt for flouting a congressional subpoena, turned over a PowerPoint presentation detailing a number of outlandish conspiracy theories and executive actions Trump could have allegedly taken to undermine the 2020 election.

The presentation, titled "Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN," instructed Trump to "declare a national emergency, declare all electronic voting invalid, and ask Congress to agree on a constitutionally acceptable remedy," according to The Guardian. In order to establish a precedent for such radical actions, the PowerPoint suggested spreading a baseless conspiracy theory that "the Chinese systematically gained control over our election system." Under the scheme, Pence was also given four options to abuse his ceremonial role in the certification process – none of which ultimately panned out.

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

[Rick Plant]

’They played their audience for fools: CNN analyst says ‘Fox News feedback loop has been totally exposed’



CNN senior political analyst John Avlon on Tuesday explained how Fox News revealed itself as a propaganda outlet after Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) read text messages that the network's stars sent to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows during the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“Please, get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished," Brian Kilmeade texted Meadows.

“Can he make a statement. Ask people to leave the Capitol," Sean Hannity texted.

“Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy," Laura Ingraham texted.

Avlon said "the Trump/Fox feedback loop has been totally exposed."

"All the people who have been trying to ritualistically downplay this attack on our democracy, saying it was a mostly peaceful protest, it was tourists on a -- you know, in areas they weren't supposed to be in times they weren't supposed to be there," he said.

"They were lying," he noted.

"They knew instinctively in real time this was a desperate moment, that the capitol was being attacked, they were pleading to the president, showing that they were really functioning as political functionaries, nothing resembling journalists in that administration. And so all their public denials — both in Congress and on TV — they're all lies," he explained. "They all knew the truth in real-time because it was self-evident and they've tried to create a false impression going forward to protect the president, protect the administration, and protect their reputations."

"They've played the audience for fools," Avlon said.

[Rick Plant]

Liz Cheney subtly implicated Trump in a potential felony: CNN's Jake Tapper



CNN's Jake Tapper on Tuesday noticed that Rep. Liz Cheney on Monday night used very specific language that potentially implicated former President Donald Trump in a felony.

While discussing the newly revealed batch of January 6th text messages, Cheney asked rhetorically whether they showed Trump "through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede congress' official proceedings to count electoral votes?"

As Tapper pointed out, "that's the same language for a federal felony law," and is in fact the same felony that many Capitol rioters have been charged with in the months after the attack.

Former U.S. assistant attorney Kim Wehle shared Tapper's analysis and said that Cheney deliberately raised the specter of criminal prosecution for Trump.

"Absolutely, this is a message that they are potentially seeing criminal action down the road against some of these organizers within government," she said. "We've seen people on the ground be held accountable, but no one behind the scenes."

During her presentation on Monday, Cheney emphasized that several of the president's own allies sent messages begging him to call off the rioters, but the president nonetheless refused to act for more than three hours.

Watch the video below:

[Rick Plant]

The GOP coup in full motion. This is what Meadows turned over to the Jan 6 committee.   

A right wing member of Congress suggested that the GOP controlled states anoint Trump electors BEFORE those states were even called. This wasn't just overturning the election, this was scrapping our democracy BEFORE the votes were even counted.

This was not only the apparent Trump plan in 2020 but is now also a blueprint for challenging any future election with an outcome someone doesn’t like. All they have to do is lie about "voter fraud" and have their cronies overturn their losses.