Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Georgia DA turns eye to Trump's fake electors' fraud in new probe



Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis has been working with the special grand jury in the voter fraud case involving former President Donald Trump. According to an announcement from her office Monday, however, Willis is also turning her eye to the fake electors who attempted to defraud the government with documents meant to cause confusion in the Electoral College count.

"We're going to look at anything connected with interference with the 2020 election," Willis told CNN's Anderson Cooper. "I've allowed that to be a broad scope, not just the (former) President's phone call that you played there but other things that indicate that there may have been interference with that election, to include fake electorates."

Georiga was among several states where Trump campaign aides coordinated with Republicans to create false documents. In Michigan, the attorney general referred her investigation's findings to the Justice Department. In Arizona, the fake electors fraudulently used the state seal of Arizona on the documents. The Republican attorney general there, however, is refusing to hold them accountable.

David Shafer, a Republican from Georgia who was one of Trump's fake electors, revealed that he was given his marching orders by the Trump campaign.

A total of 84 people were put forward as fake electors in the Trump campaign scheme. They included Republicans from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — all states President Joe Biden won. The fake electors also include eight current officeholders and five former officials.

"I don't plan on specifically coordinating with the Department of Justice," Willis said. "What their investigation would be is obviously election fraud that may have occurred anyplace in this great country. Mine is much smaller -- a big investigation, but much smaller. I am only looking into election interference in the state of Georgia and, more specifically, things that they asked for around that call that occurred in my county, Fulton County."

Read more here: https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/02/politics/trump-investigation-georgia/index.html

[Rick Plant]

'Wholly inappropriate': Trump lawyers scrambled to remove some of his deposition answers from lawsuit



According to a report from the Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery, attorneys for former President Donald Trump frantically attempted to scrub some answers the former president made in a deposition removed from a court filing because they felt his own words would be "prejudicial" to his defense.

In the deposition linked to a lawsuit accusing the former president of ordering security officials to rough up protesters at Trump Tower in 2015, Trump expressed his fears that his foes could hurl fruit at him, and described the projectiles as "very dangerous stuff."

According to the former president, the "dangerous stuff" encompassed "pineapples, tomatoes, bananas."

When pressed about tomatoes being thrown at him, Trump then responded, "It’s worse than tomato, it’s other things also. But tomato, when they start doing that stuff, it’s very dangerous. There was an alert out that day.”

That revelation was reported by the Daily Beast last week and, after it was revealed, Trump's attorneys sent off a flurry of emails to the plaintiff's attorney, Benjamin N. Dictor, demanding that he remove the bizarre back and forth with the former president.

According to Pagliery, Trump attorney Jeffrey Goldman wrote, “That exhibit is unnecessary, prejudicial and needs to be pulled ASAP.”

In a separate email, Goldman's co-counsel Alina Habba admonished Dictor, writing, "ASAP Ben. That is wholly inappropriate and prejudicial.”

Goldman later asserted, "To make your points you did not need the deposition. You have wrongly released trial testimony.”

According to the Beast report, "But it was too late. Half an hour later, The Daily Beast published a story about the testimony, inspiring a comedy segment from Trevor Noah on The Daily Show and commentary on NBC’s Late Night With Seth Meyers and others," adding, "Later that night, Dictor responded to Trump’s lawyers that he was surprised to meet such fierce resistance, given that they had put him in that position in the first place."

Trump Lawyers Tried to Hide His Bizarre, Fruity Testimony
FRUIT BY THE FOOT IN YOUR MOUTH

Donald Trump admitted in a deposition that he was very afraid of people throwing fruit at him. His lawyers were desperate to have that information scrubbed from the public’s view.



After a transcript leaked last week of former President Donald Trump decrying “very dangerous” fruits he feared protesters might throw at him, Trump’s legal team sprang into action.

New emails show that Trump’s lawyers were so bothered by the deposition becoming public that they actually tried to un-make it public.

Even after The Daily Beast published a story about Trump expressing bizarre concerns about people hurling “pineapples, tomatoes, bananas” at him while onstage—“very dangerous stuff” in Trump’s words—his lawyers still tried to get the deposition that was posted in a court filing taken down.

Trump exposed his fructo-ballistophobia during a closed-door sworn deposition in October, when lawyers questioned him over a lawsuit about the way his security guards attacked demonstrators protesting his racist comments about Mexicans outside Trump Tower in 2015.

Snippets of that transcript—which was chock-full of references to the risk of getting hit with tomatoes—were filed in the court docket by the protesters’ attorney at 7:18 p.m. last Tuesday.

But while two Daily Beast journalists were preparing to publish a story about the fruity deposition, Trump’s legal team was trying to pressure the plaintiff’s lawyer, Benjamin N. Dictor, to delete his own filing. (Dictor also happens to represent The Daily Beast’s News Guild.)

“That exhibit is unnecessary, prejudicial and needs to be pulled ASAP,” Trump defense attorney Jeffrey Goldman wrote to him at 8:08 p.m.

Alina Habba, another Trump lawyer, chimed in as well: “ASAP Ben. That is wholly inappropriate and prejudicial.”

Goldman piled on with another email, saying the Trump assertions at issue—whether or not he ordered his security guards to attack protesters—could have been addressed with a heavily redacted transcript.

“To make your points you did not need the deposition,” Goldman wrote. “You have wrongly released trial testimony.”

But it was too late. Half an hour later, The Daily Beast published a story about the testimony, inspiring a comedy segment from Trevor Noah on The Daily Show and commentary on NBC’s Late Night With Seth Meyers and others.

Later that night, Dictor responded to Trump’s lawyers that he was surprised to meet such fierce resistance, given that they had put him in that position in the first place.

Dictor had independently discovered that Trump’s former fixer (and now sworn nemesis) Michael Cohen was actually in the executive’s office at Trump Tower on Sept. 3, 2015—and recalls the boss ordering security guards to “get rid” of the protesters.

It’s a significant development that, if true, would mean Trump lied under oath. Trump’s lawyers are sparring over Cohen’s upcoming testimony, seeking that it be blocked or limited. Dictor emailed them saying he felt it necessary to provide Trump’s testimony as proof that the twice-impeached former president’s claims would be contradicted by Cohen.

“I would need to submit the contradictory testimony of defendants to demonstrate why Cohen’s testimony was essential,” Dictor explained.

But Trump’s lawyers still didn’t budge.

“Remedy is to remove the exhibit now,” Goldberg shot back.

By that time, The Daily Beast had already written two stories about the deposition, one about the fruit and another noting that Trump admitted to personally overseeing pay for an executive whose fishy corporate perks have been under scrutiny by the Manhattan district attorney. Those admissions potentially strengthen the case against the former president and his company for tax fraud.

The next morning, Dictor said he called the Bronx County Clerk’s Office to have court administrators delete the digital copy of Trump’s deposition on the public docket.

“I advised that the request was being made with the consent of all parties. Notwithstanding, I was advised that they will not remove a document from the docket unless it was either (i) filed to wrong case or (ii) filed to the wrong court,” Dictor emailed Trump’s lawyers last Wednesday.

Cory Morris, an attorney on New York’s Long Island who’s worked on cases related to government transparency, told The Daily Beast he’s concerned about how otherwise public court records are pulled off public dockets and “requests for sealing are made with alarming fervor” nowadays.

“In a government of the People, we have constitutional and human rights to attend, access, retrieve and publish court records with minimal exceptions that must be tied to some articulated importance,” Morris noted. “People must have access to government records, including judicial records, if we are to have transparency and accountability in a democratic republic.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trumps-lawyers-tried-to-hide-his-bizarre-fruity-testimony

[Rick Plant]

FURTHER EVIDENCE EMERGES THAT TRUMP IS A VIOLENT SOCIOPATH

The former president wanted the military to shoot racial-justice protesters, according to his defense secretary’s new memoir.



Something you’ve probably gleaned over the last six-plus years is that Donald Trump is a big fan of turning to violence when things don’t go his way. Obviously, there was the January 6 insurrection to overturn the 2020 election, but before that, the ex-president also urged police officers to knock suspects’ heads against the sides of their squad cars; endorsed assaulting reporters; openly fantasized about “Second Amendment people” preventing the appointment of liberal judges; and told supporters, of a man who’d been ejected from one of his events, “I’d like to punch him in the face.” There was also the time he claimed that the police fatally shooting a civilian was on par with a golfer missing a shot, and just last week, we learned that during an October 2021 deposition, he insisted that beating up protesters was justified if they were trying to throw a piece of fruit. So it was pretty much business as usual to learn on Monday that during the height of the 2020 racial-justice protests, the then president wanted the military to fire bullets into the people exercising their First Amendment rights.

Per an Axios report, former defense secretary Mark Esper writes in his forthcoming memoir, A Sacred Oath, that as demonstrators gathered around the White House in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Trump asked, ”Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” It was a “surreal [moment], sitting in front of the Resolute desk, inside the Oval Office, with this idea weighing heavily in the air, and the president red faced and complaining loudly about the protests under way in Washington, D.C.,” according to Esper. Obviously, the defense secretary never once entertained the suggestion. However, as he was dealing with the mind of a child, he had to come up with a way to explain that the U.S. government doesn’t just shoot protesters. ”The good news—this wasn’t a difficult decision,” Esper writes. ”The bad news—I had to figure out a way to walk Trump back without creating the mess I was trying to avoid.”

Esper’s first-person account confirms the reporting of journalist Michael Bender, whose book, Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost, also detailed Trump’s desire to use violence and shoot demonstrators in June 2020. According to Bender, Trump insisted, “That’s how you’re supposed to handle these people. Crack their skulls!” He also reportedly said he wanted the military to go in and “beat the f--k out” of the protesters, saying “just shoot them” multiple times. Bender also reported that Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley, concerned about Trump’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act over the protests, pointed to a portrait of Abraham Lincoln and said, “That guy had an insurrection. What we have, Mr. President, is a protest.”

Which, according to the 45th president, is reason enough to start shooting people.

Spokespeople for Trump do not appear to have commented on Esper’s claims (yet), though as Axios notes:

The book was vetted at the highest levels of the Pentagon.… As part of the clearance process, the book was reviewed in whole or in part by nearly three dozen four-star generals, senior civilians, and some Cabinet members. Some of them had witnessed what Esper witnessed.

So yeah, the prospect of all of these high-ranking people at the Pentagon reading the part about Trump wanting to shoot civilians and being like, ‘Yeah, checks out,’ is more than a little concerning.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/05/donald-trump-mark-esper-just-shoot-them

[Rick Plant]

Top US general rejected Trump suggestions military should ‘crack skulls’ during protests last year, new book claims



Washington CNN — The top US general repeatedly pushed back on then-President Donald Trump’s argument that the military should intervene violently in order to quell the civil unrest that erupted around the country last year. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley often found he was the lone voice of opposition to those demands during heated Oval Office discussions, according to excerpts of a new book, obtained by CNN, from Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender.

Titled “Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost,” the book reveals new details about how Trump’s language became increasingly violent during Oval Office meetings as protests in Seattle and Portland began to receive attention from cable new outlets. The President would highlight videos that showed law enforcement getting physical with protesters and tell his administration he wanted to see more of that behavior, the excerpts show.

“That’s how you’re supposed to handle these people,” Trump told his top law enforcement and military officials, according to Bender. “Crack their skulls!”

Trump also told his team that he wanted the military to go in and “beat the f–k out” of the civil rights protesters, Bender writes.

“Just shoot them,” Trump said on multiple occasions inside the Oval Office, according to the excerpts.

When Milley and then-Attorney General William Barr would push back, Trump toned it down, but only slightly, Bender adds.

“Well, shoot them in the leg—or maybe the foot,” Trump said. “But be hard on them!”

The new details about how Milley and a handful of other senior officials were forced to confront Trump’s increasingly volatile behavior during the final months of his presidency only add to an already detailed portrait of dysfunction inside the White House at that time.

It also underscores the level of tension between Trump and top Pentagon officials leading up to the presidential election last November.

CNN has reached out to Trump about the claims in Bender’s book. A spokesperson for Milley declined to comment.

At times, Milley also clashed with top White House officials who sought to encourage the then-President’s behavior.

During one Oval Office debate, senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller chimed in, equating the scenes unfolding on his television to those in a third-world country and claiming major American cities had been turned into war zones.

“These cities are burning,” Miller warned, according to the excerpts.

The comment infuriated Milley, who viewed Miller as not only wrong but out of his lane, Bender writes, noting the Army general who had commanded troops in Iraq and Afghanistan spun around in his seat and pointed a finger directly at Miller.

“Shut the f–k up, Stephen,” Milley snapped, according to the excerpts.

'What we have, Mr. President, is a protest’

CNN previously reported that concerns within the Pentagon about Trump’s potential to make unpredictable decisions during the campaign and beyond reached a boiling point last September.

While Milley was among those who were particularly distressed about Trump’s attacks on senior Pentagon leaders, he was said to be on good terms with the President.

Still, Milley made a concerted effort to stay in Washington as much as possible during those final months. A significant concern for Milley at the time was how to advise Trump if he decided to invoke the Insurrection Act in the wake of civil unrest – a move that would have military force on the streets against civilians.

Ultimately, Trump never invoked the Insurrection Act but repeatedly suggested doing so during the end of his tenure – putting Milley and former Defense Secretary Mark Esper in a complicated situation each time.

Both Milley and Esper were deeply opposed to the idea when Trump first suggested it last June following protests against police brutality and racial injustice in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

According to Bender, Milley viewed the unrest around Floyd’s death as a political problem, not a military one.

He told the President there were more than enough reserves in the National Guard to support law enforcement responding to the protests. Milley told him that invoking the Insurrection Act would shift responsibility for the protests from local authorities directly to the President, according to the excerpts obtained by CNN.

Milley spotted President Abraham Lincoln’s portrait hanging just to the right of Trump and pointed directly at it, Bender writes.

“That guy had an insurrection,” Milley said. “What we have, Mr. President, is a protest.”

Milley offers public rebuke of Republicans lawmakers
Those comments have taken on new relevance months after the January 6 attack, when pro-Trump rioters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s electoral win.

Trump’s Republican allies in Congress have staunchly opposed any efforts to investigate the former President’s role in fueling the insurrection, with some simply denying there was anything violent about the protests that day.

Recently, some of those same lawmakers have also criticized the Department of Defense’s diversity efforts and alleged embrace of the “critical race theory.”

While testifying publicly before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday, Milley, who remains in his post as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, offered a forceful rebuke of Republican members over their comments related to both issues.

Responding to a question from Rep. Mike Waltz of Florida about the appropriateness of a seminar at the United States Military Academy at West Point called “Understanding Whiteness and White Rage,” Milley said: “I want to understand White rage. And I’m White. And I want to understand it.”

Tying the question to the January 6 insurrection, Milley asked: “What is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America? What caused that? I want to find that out. I want to maintain an open mind here.”

Milley called it “offensive” that service members were being called “quote, ‘woke’ or something else, because we’re studying some theories that are out there.”

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/24/politics/bender-book-trump-milley-protests/index.html

[Rick Plant]

Trump's DHS chief caught changing intel report on Russia’s interference in 2020 election



Former Trump administration acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf modified and delayed an intelligence report detailing interference in the 2020 election by Russia, according to the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at DHS.

"We found that DHS did not adequately follow its internal processes and comply with applicable [intelligence community] policy standards and requirements when editing and disseminating an I&A intelligence product regarding Russian interference with the 2020 U.S. Presidential election," the report found. ""The acting secretary participated in the review process multiple times despite lacking any formal role in reviewing the product, resulting in the delay of its dissemination on at least one occasion. The delays and deviation from I&A [Office of Intelligence and Analysis] standard process and requirements put [them] at risk of creating a perception of politicization."

The report noted I&A agreed with the watchdog's analysis.

"The delays and deviation from I&A’s standard process and requirements put I&A at risk of creating a perception of politicization. This conclusion is supported by I&A’s own tradecraft assessment, which determined that the product might be viewed as politicized," the report found. "The Acting Secretary’s involvement in I&A’s process caused a delay in the product’s release and potentially furthered the perception of politicization surrounding the product."

The initial intelligence assessment was supposed to be released on July 9, 2020, but it was delayed at the best of Wolf's chief of staff.

According to a whistleblower, identified as Brian Murphy by CBS News, Wolf said the document "made the president look bad."

"Wolf resigned his post in January 2021, after the Government Accountability Office and several federal judges deemed that he had served illegally, a judgment that he disputes," CBS reported. "In March 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report on the 2020 elections that found Kremlin-backed agents authorized by President Vladimir Putin tried to use President Trump's inner circle and right-leaning media to undermine his opponent."

Murphy, the whistleblower, was interviewed by CBS in October 2021.

"Russian disinformation was something [DHS leadership] didn't want to report on. It mattered. It had a material impact on life and safety of how the events unfolded during 2018 and forward," he argued. "Wolf told me that the plan with respect to the administration was to downplay Russian disinformation, that was supporting the Democrats… and instead, upscale the threat from China. That's where the real manipulation by the politicals came into effect."

[Rick Plant]

Oath Keepers founder tried to phone Trump on Jan. 6, group member tells court

William Todd Wilson said he was in a hotel with Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes as he spoke with a Trump intermediary and law enforcement tried to clear the Capitol.



WASHINGTON — The Oath Keepers founder facing seditious conspiracy charges attempted to speak directly with former President Donald Trump on the night of Jan. 6, and implored an intermediary to tell the president to use militia groups to stop the transfer of power, a fellow Oath Keepers member said in court Wednesday.

William Todd Wilson, a member of the far-right militia group who pleaded guilty Wednesday to seditious conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding in connection with the Jan. 6 riot, said in federal court that he joined Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes in a suite at the Phoenix Park Hotel not far from the Capitol shortly after the attack and listened as Rhodes called an unnamed Trump intermediary on speakerphone.

As he listened, he heard Rhodes “repeatedly implore the individual to tell President Trump to call upon groups like the Oath Keepers to forcibly oppose a transfer of power,” Wilson and prosecutors said. The individual on the line “denied Rhodes’ request to speak directly with President Trump,” according to the agreed upon statement of offense in Wilson’s case.

The alleged phone call, which Wilson said was made just after 5 p.m., would have taken place when rioters were still being cleared on the grounds of the Capitol, after Trump tweeted a video calling the rioters "very special" but before he tweeted, at 6:01 p.m., "Remember this day forever!”

Jonathan Moseley, a disbarred attorney who has worked with Rhodes, told NBC News on Wednesday night that the Oath Keepers “have always scoffed at the idea that they had anyway to talk to Trump or his team.”

Attorneys for Rhodes, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday night. But they pushed back in comments to CNN.

“None of them still show evidence of an actual plan to do something,” said Phillip Linder, one of the attorneys for Rhodes.

Wilson has been cooperating with the FBI and Justice Department investigation into Jan. 6, and agreed as part of his plea agreement to testify before grand juries and at jury trials if necessary.

Reporters from NBC News and CNN were waiting outside the courtroom before Wilson's plea hearing on Wednesday as Wilson, his lawyers and government officials discussed the logistics of Wilson's forthcoming testimony before a federal grand jury.

Wilson was the third Oath Keepers member to plead guilty to seditious conspiracy. In a separate hearing following Wilson's guilty plea, Judge Amit Mehta agreed to release Arizona Oath Keeper Edward Vallejo, who is also facing a seditious conspiracy charge, until trial.

The FBI has arrested nearly 800 people in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and more than 250 defendants have pleaded guilty. Federal authorities have the names of hundreds more who have not yet been arrested, and the Biden administration has requested more resources to prosecute cases already in the pipeline and the hundreds more that are expected to come.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/oath-keepers-founder-tried-phone-trump-jan-6-group-member-tells-court-rcna27412

[Rick Plant]

Listen: New audio reveals McCarthy feared 25th Amendment wouldn’t oust Trump fast enough



On Wednesday, CNN revealed the existence of new audio of a call with GOP leadership that suggested House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was sympathetic to the idea that former President Donald Trump should be removed after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — but believed that the 25th Amendment was an inadequate solution because it wouldn't remove him fast enough.

"The call took place on January 8, 2021, and the audio was obtained for the new book 'This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future,' by Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns," reported Clare Fore and Melanie Zanona. "At one point in the recording, McCarthy asks an aide for a readout of a separate call. It's not clear exactly what call he is referring to. The aide responds, 'I think the options that have been cited by the Democrats so far are the 25th Amendment, which is not exactly an elegant solution here.'"

"McCarthy interjects to say, 'That takes too long too. It could go back to the House, right?'" said the report. "The aide responds, 'Correct. If the President were to submit a letter overruling the Cabinet and the vice president, two-thirds vote in the House and the Senate to overrule the President. So it's kind of an armful.'"

McCarthy said at another point in the recording that "What the President did is atrocious and totally wrong." But he also added that he believed the other option, impeachment, would divide the nation further.

Ultimately, several Republicans in the House and Senate voted to impeach and convict Trump, respectively, for incitement to insurrection, although not enough in the Senate for conviction.

Subsequently, McCarthy — who did not vote for impeachment — has professed his continuing allegiance to Trump.

Watch: