Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Trump-loving Ken Paxton blasted after judge dismisses election fraud case



An election fraud case brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton against a Medina County official has been tossed out by a judge, the San Antonio Express News reports.

Tomas “Tommy” Ramirez, a justice of the peace in Medina County, had all charges dismissed on Dec. 21 and will have his position restored after he was suspended when the charges came about. According to Ramirez, the case was "politically motivated and was totally unjustified," adding that his indictment was just for Paxton to get headlines and rile up his base.

“My family and I have received anonymous hate mail and ugly social media attacks,” Ramirez said. “My law office was vandalized and I was even asked by the State Bar of Texas if I wanted to voluntarily surrender my law license.”

Paxton’s office accused Ramirez and three women of running a vote harvesting operation that worked out of assisted living centers. The case's dismissal came after a separate court struck down a law allowing the state attorney general to unilaterally prosecute election law cases.

As the San Antonio Express News points out, the case's dismissal was a blow to allies of former President Donald Trump who promote his voter fraud conspiracy theories.

“The attorney general conducted an investigation that took a year, and their conclusions failed to find any probable cause of any law that I had violated,” Ramirez said.

https://www.rawstory.com/ken-paxton-election-fraud-case/

[Rick Plant]

Yes, Trump is a terrorist and made it possible for the far right wing extremist domestic terrorism we have today. This criminal needs to be behind bars for treason.

CNN security analyst slams Trump for 'terrorism'



On CNN Thursday, national security analyst Juliette Kayyem doubled down on her characterization of former President Donald Trump's lies and incitement about the 2020 election being stolen as a form of terrorism.

"You tweeted this article, after the January 6th attacks, almost a year ago, saying this," said anchor John Avlon. "'As we gear up for 1/6 anniversary coverage, reposting my take then. Many criticized this for calling Trump the leader of a terror movement who uses violence or threat of it as an extension of politics. After a year, I think I was too kind.' If you think you were too kind to call him extremist leader then, what do you call him now?"

"He uses violence or the threat of violence to disrupt democratic processes. That is terrorism," said Kayyem flatly. "We tend to focus on different pieces of the post-January 6th world. We have election systems and the fights over states and voting rights. We then have the investigation, the January 6th investigation, and then all the cases going on against people who were in the Capitol. But I think we sometimes forget that what sort of connects everything is violence and the threat of violence, that now animates so much of our political discourse coming from Republican leadership, from right-wing media."

"It's not just, you know, sort of random violence," added Kayyem. "It is targeted against secretaries of state, against various congresspeople. We see it percolate into the COVID space ... or language against leaders. And so it's that acceptance of violence and the threat of violence as part of a political agenda that I think I underestimated on January 6th."

Watch below:

[Rick Plant]

Faux Propaganda and the right wing hate media is dangerous and is radicalizing people towards violence!

Eric Swalwell IDs Tucker Carlson fan who threatened his life after Twitter failed to help



Democratic California Congressman Eric Swalwell on Thursday managed to identify a social-media user who threatened his life after Twitter reportedly failed to help.

"A man DM’d I should be shot," Swalwell wrote. "For my family’s safety, I asked Twitter for help ID’ing him. When Twitter fell short (thanks for trying!) I asked the guy his name (stringing him a bit) & why he threatened me. Meet Jeremy Marshall who told me he was radicalized by Tucker Carlson."

Swalwell shared screen shots of his direct message exchange with Marshall, who wrote, "Traitor hopefully u get hung one day. Traitor u should be shot."

Swalwell responded by striking up a conversation with the man, asking his name and where he was from. When the man identified himself as Jeremy from Canada, Swalwell played along.

"I love Canada. Which part?" Swalwell wrote.

"Ur a lot more personable than you come across," Marshall wrote, before revealing that his threats against Swalwell were based on allegations about the congressman's relationship with a Chinese spy.

Swalwell responded by sharing a news article in which the FBI indicated that he is not suspected of any wrongdoing.

"I did nothing wrong," Swalwell wrote, calling the attacks against him based on the spy controversy "Fox News targeting."

"What's your last name Jeremy?" Swalwell wrote, suggesting that they meet for coffee someday.

When the man hesitated to give his last name — acknowledging that he "said some mean things" and "could get in some trouble," Swalwell wrote, "Oh no way. We're totally cool."

The man then identified himself as Jeremy Marshall, before apologizing for the threats and admitting that he "got dragged down the rabbit hole" and "saw red" based articles he read about Swalwell.

After Marshall said he works as a contractor, Swalwell indicated he has family in Canada and would refer them to the man's business, asking for the name of it.

When Swalwell asked Marshall where he gets his news, he identified Carlson, the Fox News host, as well as podcaster Joe Rogan.

After sharing screen shots of their conversation, Swalwell wrote on Twitter: "I engaged with this guy solely to learn as much as I could about his identify to share it with law enforcement. I do not have any family in Canada, I was trying to get information about his business."

"Bottom-line: the lies from Tucker and others are radicalizing people across not just America but the world," Swalwell added. "And the lies are inspiring people to make threats of violence against lawmakers. Tucker & Co. know this. And that’s why they tell their lies. They want to incite the mob."

"Finally, please do not threaten/harass Jeremy. Let the law/Instagram hold him accountable," he wrote.

It's unclear why Swalwell sought Twitter's help identifying Marshall given that their conversation apparently occurred on Instagram. Marshall's Instagram account, where he goes by "out4bling," is set to private.

Read the full thread below:
https://www.rawstory.com/eric-swalwell-2656199083/

[Rick Plant]

Jeffrey Epstein introduced me to Trump at 14, Ghislaine Maxwell accuser says: Testifying at Maxwell’s trial in New York City, the woman, identified by the pseudonym Jane, said she met the former president in the 1990s at his Mar-a-Lago resort
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jeffrey-epstein-introduced-trump-14-ghislaine-maxwell-accuser-says-rcna7253

[Rick Plant]

Here's how Trump's 'extremist' GOP has actually morphed into the Third Reich



The Republican Party has fully surrendered to Donald Trump and has now embraced the aims of the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol nearly one year ago, according to a new column.

Trump's increasingly extremist GOP mirrors the Third Reich's operating principle, as described by historian Ian Kershaw, who said Nazi party members were always “working towards the Führer," anticipating what their leader wanted without being asked and pursuing ever-more radical steps to serve his interests, argued attorney David R. Lurie in a new column for The Daily Beast.

"Over time, it became clear that those who pursued the most radical, and often violent, steps to serve the party would be met with approbation, while those who hesitated would be met with disfavor or worse," Lurie wrote. "While Trump is, of course, no Hitler, he and his acolytes have used a similar reward-and-punishment dynamic to relentlessly move the GOP towards a dynamic of ever greater extremism, in which adherence to legal and moral norms is viewed as intolerable weakness."

This dynamic played out in 2016, when Trump's namesake son eagerly accepted a Russian government operative's offer of "dirt" on Hillary Clinton and in early 2021, when his chief of staff Mark Meadows enthusiastically embraced a plan to overturn the 2020 election loss, and both men used the same language to signal their corruption: "I love it."

"We do not know if Trump expressly blessed either scheme beforehand," Lurie wrote, "but it is clear that both Don Jr. and Meadows understood that they would risk Trump’s ire if they failed to pursue the most extreme attacks on American laws and democratic norms available in Trump’s name."

The same dynamic is playing out in statehouses across the country, where GOP legislators are undermining faith in elections and restricting access to the polls for likely Democratic voters, and the violent Jan. 6 insurrection.

"The former president claims that he didn’t tell the crowd that gathered for his speech on Jan. 6 to attack the Capitol, but virtually all of the people who did believed they were acting in his interests, and had every reason to believe that their attack would meet with his approbation," Lurie wrote.

Appeals to the extremist base has become the central element of the Republican Party, and GOP leaders -- including Trump -- fear losing their support if they don't embrace conspiracy theories or disregard democratic norms.

"Even Trump himself has found that his power as a 'leader' of an extremist movement depends on his own reliably continuous appeals to extremism," Lurie wrote. "This was starkly evident last week when Trump himself faced criticism from some of his most fervent followers for acknowledging that the COVID vaccine saves lives, and admitting that he received a booster dose."

Trump didn't need to explicitly order the insurrection, because his followers knew what he wanted them to do, and he allowed it to continue by refusing to call them off for nearly three chaotic hours.

"Extremism is Trump’s calling card, and the force that fuels his movement," Lurie wrote, "and during the months that have followed, GOP activists encouraged by Trump have normalized the goals and even the tactics of the insurrectionists — who are now frequently described by Trumpist Republicans as harmless tourists, or patriots."

"The party is working towards Trump," he concluded.


DC insider explains a 'fundamental truth' about Trump's Jan. 6 coup attempt



January 6 will be remembered as one of the most shameful days in American history. On that date in 2021, the United States Capitol was attacked by thousands of armed loyalists to Donald Trump, some intent on killing members of Congress. Roughly 140 officers were injured in the attack. Five people died that day.

But even now, almost a year later, Americans remain confused and divided about the significance of what occurred.

Let me offer four basic truths:

1. Trump incited the attack on the Capitol.

For weeks before the attack, Trump had been urging his supporters to come to Washington for a “Save America March” on January 6, when Congress was to ceremonially count the electoral votes of Joe Biden’s win. Without any basis in fact or law (60 federal courts as well as the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security concluded that there was no evidence of substantial fraud), Trump repeatedly asserted he had won the 2020 election and Biden had lost it.

“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” Trump tweeted on December 19. Then on December 26: “See you in Washington, DC, on January 6th. Don’t miss it. Information to follow.” On December 30: “JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!” On January 1: “The BIG Protest Rally in Washington, D.C. will take place at 11:00 A.M. on January 6th. Locational details to follow. StopTheSteal!”

At a rally just before the violence, Trump repeated his falsehoods about how the election was stolen. “We will never give up,” he said. “We will never concede. It will never happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore.”

He told the crowd that Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back, respectful of everyone — “including bad people.”

But, he said, “we’re going to have to fight much harder…. We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong…. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.“

He then told the crowd that “different rules” applied to them. “When you catch somebody in a fraud, you are allowed to go by very different rules. So I hope Mike [Pence] has the courage to do what he has to do, and I hope he doesn’t listen to the RINOs [Republicans in Name Only] and the stupid people that he’s listening to.”

Then he dispatched the crowd to the Capitol as the electoral count was about to start. The attack on the Capitol came immediately after.

2. The events of January 6 capped two months during which Trump sought to reverse the outcome of the election.

Shortly after the election, Trump summoned to the White House Republican lawmakers from Pennsylvania and Michigan, to inquire about how they might alter the election results. He even called two local canvassing board officials in Wayne County, Michigan’s most populous county and one that overwhelmingly favored Biden.

He phoned Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes,” according to a recording of that conversation, adding “the people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry. And there’s nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”

He suggested that Georgia’s secretary of state would be criminally prosecuted if he did not do as Trump told him. “You know what they did and you’re not reporting it. You know, that’s a criminal — that’s a criminal offense. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. That’s a big risk.”

He pressed the acting US attorney general and deputy attorney general to declare the election fraudulent. When the deputy said the department had found no evidence of widespread fraud and warned that it had no power to change the outcome of the election, Trump replied “Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me” and to Trump’s congressional allies.

Trump and his allies continued to harangue the attorney general and top Justice Department officials nearly every day until January 6. Trump plotted with an assistant attorney general to oust the acting attorney general and pressure lawmakers in Georgia to overturn the state’s election results. But Trump ultimately decided against it after top department leaders pledged to resign en masse.

Presumably, more details of Trump’s attempted coup will emerge after the House Select Committee on January 6 gathers more evidence and deposes more witnesses.

3. Trump’s attempted coup continues to this day.

Trump still refuses to concede the election and continues to assert it was stolen. He presides over a network of loyalists and allies who have sought to overturn the election (and erode public confidence in it) by mounting partisan state “audits” and escalating attacks on state election officials. When asked recently about the fraudulent claims and increasingly incendiary rhetoric, a Trump spokeswoman said that the former president “supports any patriotic American who dedicates their time and effort to exposing the rigged 2020 Presidential Election.”

Trump recently announced he would be hosting a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on January 6.

“Remember,” he said in the announcement “the insurrection took place on November 3rd. It was the completely unarmed protest of the rigged election that took place on January 6th.” (Reminder: they were armed.) Trump then referred to the House investigation: “Why isn’t the Unselect Committee of highly partisan political hacks investigating the CAUSE of the January 6th protest, which was the rigged Presidential Election of 2020?”

He went on to castigate “Rinos,” presumably referring to his opponents within the party, such as Republican Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who sit on the January 6 committee. “In many ways a Rino is worse than a Radical Left Democrat,” Trump said, “because you don’t know where they are coming from and you have no idea how bad they really are for our Country.” He added, “the good news is there are fewer and fewer RINOs left as we elect strong Patriots who love America.”

Trump has endorsed a primary challenger to Cheney, while Kinzinger will leave Congress at the next election. Trump and other Republicans have also moved to punish 13 House Republicans who bucked party leadership and voted for a bipartisan infrastructure bill in November.

4. All of this reveals a deep problem in America that must be addressed

Trump and his co-conspirators must be held accountable, of course. Hopefully, the Select Committee’s report will be used by the Justice Department in criminal prosecutions of Trump and his accomplices.

But this in itself will not solve the underlying problem. A belligerent and narcissistic authoritarian has gained a powerful hold over a large portion of America. As many as 60 percent of Republican voters continue to believe his lies. Many remain intensely loyal. The Republican party is close to becoming a cult whose central animating idea is that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

Trump has had help, of course. Fox News hosts and Facebook groups have promoted and amplified his ravings for their own purposes. Republicans in Congress and in the states have played along.

But even with this help, Trump’s attempted coup could not have gotten this far without something more basic: A substantial portion of the American population feels an anger and despair that has made them susceptible to Trump’s swagger and lies.

It is too simplistic to attribute this solely to racism or xenophobia. America has harbored white supremacist and anti-immigrant sentiments since its founding. The despair Trump has channeled is more closely connected to a profound loss of identity, dignity and purpose, especially among Americans who have been left behind – without college degrees, without good jobs, in places that have been economically abandoned and disdained by much of the rest of the country.

The wages of these Americans have not risen in forty years, adjusted for inflation, even though the economy is now three times larger than it was four decades ago. The norm of upward mobility has been shattered for these Americans. Through their eyes, the entire American system is now rigged against them.

This part of America yearns for a strongman to deliver it from despair. Trump has filled that void. To be sure, he’s filled it with bombast, lies, paranoia, and neofascism. But he has filled it nonetheless.

The challenge ahead is to fill it with a democracy and economy that work for everyone. Unless we understand and respond to this fundamental truth, we will miss the true meaning of January 6.


Donald Trump and his family fleeced America: Why aren’t they being held accountable?
https://www.rawstory.com/david-cay-johnston-books/

[Rick Plant]

CNN analyst reveals key blunder in Trump's legal fight against the January 6 Committee



On CNN Friday, law enforcement analyst Whitney Wild explained the key mistake former President Donald Trump's legal team is making in their lawsuit to block White House records from being turned over to the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The January 6th Committee is asking the Supreme Court to act quickly," said anchor Poppy Harlow. "How quickly?"

"Well, they would like to see at least some resolution in the next couple of weeks, and at a minimum they're asking the Supreme Court hear these arguments by January 14th," said Wild. "So let's break down everything that is going on here. The newest filing from the House and the Biden administration, on the same page here. What they're arguing is that lower courts ruled correctly, they pointed out that the Trump team has not articulated a specific harm that would arise from releasing these records."

"The Trump team has made a list of arguments, one of them is basically that the former president just has a right to executive privilege and that's basically the end of it," continued Wild. "They haven't said why releasing these documents would be specifically harmful, even though judges have sort of tried to lead them there. They questioned them saying, okay, if the records get released, what is going to be the result? And they haven't articulated a specific, concrete harm that would override the interests from the House Select Committee in getting these records."

"The impact here could be enormous, because there isn't a lot of definitive case law to dictate how this should go," Wild added. "So these will be consequential cases and, again, the House Select Committee hoping there is going to be some signal from the Supreme Court that they are going to take this by January 14th."

Watch below:

[Rick Plant]

'This is a really big deal': Reporter warns Jan. 6 committee might have enough to 'incriminate' Trump and his sons



Speaking to MSNBC on Saturday, Guardian reporter Hugo Lowell warned that the coming weeks of the House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol seems to incriminate the White House.

He explained that over the past several weeks, more and more information had been submitted that will implicate former President Donald Trump and his staff.

The new year will bring open hearings to air live on television so Americans can understand the extent of the coordination between rally organizers, Republican officials in Congress and Trump campaign allies staged at the Willard Hotel.

"The Select Committee is unlikely, I think, to issue an interim report in the next few weeks and months, but what they are going to do is hold a series of televised public hearings where they want to show the American public what the committee has learned in its closed-door evidence gathering process to date," said Lowell.

He went on to say that the committee has interviewed about 300 people and has obtained over 30,000 documents that include emails, text messages, and other bits of information to implicate those involved.

"Including, of course, Tump's former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who turned over a series of really damning messages that seemed to incriminate the White House and Trump, and Trump's sons, and Fox News hosts, and Republican members of Congress, so this is a really big deal," Lowell continued. "And this is going to feature large in how the committee moves forward. They're still going to be doing investigations and evidence gathering on the side, but I think they're going to really ramp up the pace and try and share with the American people what they've learned to date."

See the full interview in the video below: