Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Exclusive: Nationalist faction within the White House feuded with Mark Meadows amid plot to keep Trump in power



Peter Navarro, President Trump’s former trade advisor was indicted for contempt of Congress on Friday due to his refusal to cooperate with the January 6th Committee, which has signaled interest in his communications with the president.

Less attention has been paid to Garrett Ziegler, a Navarro aide and zealous Trump loyalist who both supported his boss’ efforts and coordinated with a network of outside operatives who were promoting an onslaught of false claims about election fraud and legally dubious schemes to preserve Trump’s hold on power.

Ziegler received an email from the senior investigative counsel for the committee, which is scheduled to begin public hearings on June 9, requesting a meeting to discuss information he might have that is relevant to the congressional investigation.

Among his extensive efforts from his office at the White House, Ziegler facilitated a now-infamous late-night meeting on Dec. 18, 2020 in which attorney Sidney Powell, retired Lt. General Michael Flynn and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne tried to persuade President Trump to order the National Guard to seize voting machines and re-running elections in six battleground states he lost to Joe Biden.

Ziegler used his White House Worker and Visitor Entry System, or WAVES pass to let Powell, Flynn and Byrne into the White House, allowing them to hold an impromptu meeting with Trump in the Oval Office, as he later recounted in an interview with fellow election denier David Clements. Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone were caught by surprise by the meeting, which reportedly descended into a shouting match. Ziegler’s efforts bypassed protocol for White House meetings, and he said when it was discovered that he had let the plotters into the White House, his visitor’s privileges were revoked.

In Navarro’s book In Trump Time, he wrote that “to support the challenge effort, he allowed “several members of my staff to help out in the battleground states on their own time.” Navarro’s book describes “the young and always earnest” Ziegler venturing to an Indian reservation in Nevada to investigate alleged vote-buying shortly after the election. The work eventually culminated in the three-part Navarro Report, which asserted without evidence that the election had been stolen from Trump.

Around the time of the election, a man named Mark Cook took a photograph of cardboard boxes stacked on metal shelves that were labeled “Dominion Voting” and “Made in China.”

“My good friend Mark Cook took this picture,” Ziegler, who is now 26, wrote on his Telegram channel in June 2021. “We infiltrated the election equipment storage facility in Sacramento County, CA, and documented all of the violations of law.”

Cook’s photograph would later be used on the final page of a PowerPoint presentation entitled “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN” put together by Phil Waldron, a retired Army colonel with a background in psychological warfare that was shown to members of Congress on Jan. 4 and 5, 2021. The presentation recommended that Vice President Mike Pence set aside the electoral votes from the six battleground states carried by Biden, and also called on President Trump to order the National Guard to seize voting machines and re-count the ballots.

For his part, Cook remains active in the election denial movement. Last month, he and Clements, a former New Mexico State University professor, addressed a Republican-controlled board of commissioners in Surry County, NC. Introduced by Clements as “our hardware and IT cybersecurity expert,” Cook told commissioners: “If our Pentagon can’t secure a network, Department of Defense can’t secure a network, our Department of Homeland Security can’t secure a network, are we really so foolish as to think the only system that is completely impervious to any cyber-hack is our voting system?”

Cook’s 25-minute presentation omitted a simple fact — voting tabulation machines are not networked, and preliminary counts are transferred on a mobile drive to a computer to be uploaded from local election offices for election-night reporting.

Both Ziegler and Cook were trusted associates in the network of operatives and conspiracy theorists that worked under the competing legal teams headed by Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and by Powell, alongside Flynn and Byrne.

In a private Telegram text to another election denier that has been reviewed by Raw Story, Waldron said, “Mark and Garrett have worked with us since 14 Nov 20.” He added that Ziegler and Cook “both passed rigorous background checks” after suspicions arose that CIA and British intelligence assets were attempting to infiltrate the network plotting to overturn the election.

“I have no idea what Waldron was alluding to,” Ziegler told Raw Story in an email. “None. I had an active [top secret/sensitive compartmented information] clearance at the time. I think he was just spinning a tale for others.”

Waldron declined to comment for this story.

Michael Trimarco, a Giuliani associate who rented a bloc of rooms at the Westin Arlington Gateway hotel in November 2020, also alluded to a dual role on Ziegler’s part in an interview with the far-right podcaster Ann Vandersteel earlier this year.

“I know some of the people that were his direct reports, because he wasn’t officially reporting directly to Peter,” Trimarco told Vandersteel. “So, I know some of these other people. And politically that didn’t make people around in Peter’s world very happy with Garrett in the inter-office kinda…. But from what I saw, he was well connected with Peter… and I know he furnished a lot of information for the report.”

While enmeshed with the outside election denial network, Ziegler also provided the external teams with a direct conduit to the White House and President Trump, to the extent that Trimarco said information about election irregularities would often reach Trump before even Giuliani knew about it.

“Ironically, a lot of the stuff that got back to Rudy didn’t end up coming through me,” Trimarco said. “Because once that connection was made, Garrett would give it to Peter, and Peter would give it to the president. And then it would circle back to Rudy.”

In his interview with Clements, Ziegler dated work on the three-part Navarro Report to Nov. 15 — one day after Waldron said he had started working with Ziegler. Ziegler said he and four other aides assisted Navarro with the reports.

“We prepared — Peter gave direction,” Ziegler told Clements. “He’s a fantastic, logical thinker, which is very hard — easier said than done. He laid it out, what his vision was. And our job was to get the first draft.”

Much of the information in the reports was funneled up from the outside team, Trimarco said.

“Peter put out a three-volume report together, and a lot of the information — not all of it — came from this group of analysts that work working out of the Westin that did not go to Tomotley,” Trimarco said, referencing attorney Lin Wood’s estate in South Carolina, where Powell and Flynn established a working headquarters away from DC.

One day after Powell, Flynn and Byrne’s Dec. 18 visit to the White House to promote their plan to have the National Guard seize voting machines and re-run the election, Trump tweeted out a link to the Navarro Report, with an invitation to his supporters to attend a “wild rally” in DC on Jan. 6, 2021.

Similar to his former boss, since leaving the White House Ziegler has continued to deride a coterie of officials he considers weak and insufficiently loyal to the president. In interviews and Telegram messages, Ziegler has particularly singled out Meadows for savage criticism.

In Telegram message in late January 2021, Ziegler wrote that he feared Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg would take control of the country and impose a dystopian “technocracy.”

“And I can assure you, from my standpoint in the WH, I did everything I could to prevent this,” Ziegler said. “I broke rules, protocol, etc. If I had a decade more of life under my belt, I would have had the formal power to get rid of Meadows, Cipollone, etc.”

Ziegler’s Telegram messages suggest he viewed Meadows as an obstacle to efforts to overturn the election. In one message, in February 2021, Ziegler faulted Meadows for citing an audit in Georgia as evidence of due diligence, writing that the chief of staff was “so fckn dumb (or compromised)” that he didn’t question whether an auditing company could be corrupted by “mob-like cartels.”

Like Navarro, who was indicted for contempt of Congress on Friday, Meadows is fighting a subpoena from the January 6th Committee. Last December, the House voted to hold Meadows in contempt, referring his case to the Justice Department for prosecution.

Meadows played a critical role in shepherding an array of schemes entertained by Trump in his quest to hold onto power. That included hosting meetings with the president and members of the House Freedom Caucus to discuss a plan — much like Navarro’s “Green Bay Sweep” — to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to remand the electoral votes back to the battleground states and delay certifying the election for Biden, according to testimony to the January 6th Committee by White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. Meadows also hosted a meeting in which Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who is now the chair of the Freedom Caucus, expressed support for the idea of sending Trump supporters to the Capitol on Jan. 6, while others in the meeting remained silent, the New York Times has reported. Hutchinson also reportedly testified to the committee that she saw Meadows burn documents in his office fireplace after a meeting with Perry.

Ziegler has positioned himself to the right of the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus, of which Meadows was a chair before he left Congress to serve as Trump’s chief of staff.

“He’s a Freedom Caucus guy,” Ziegler complained to Clements during his July 2021 interviewed. “And what this means is — I call them ‘permanent hearing holders.’ So, Benghazi, Killary…. Nobody ever gets indicted with these jokers. Mark Meadows comes from that ilk…. So, how does this relate to the president’s chief of staff? He just wasn’t effective. He would get steamrolled by people.”

Much of Ziegler’s rhetoric on Telegram is laced with racist vitriol that uses African nations as a stand-in for national decline, while Christian chauvinism as force for national rebirth.

“If we elect people like Mark Meadows — good, jolly, your brother next door — we’re gonna end up like Zimbabwe,” Ziegler said. “If I could do one thing — which is stop electing nice guys. We need Christian zealots, frankly.”

Ziegler expressed a similar sentiment in a March 2021 Telegram message, in which he wrote, “We could have a Third Great Awakening in the country, both religious and political. And the coup we just went through could be the flint that ignites it. Hopefully its ends will be a repentance to the Christ and a Republic that gets rid of this corrupt and satanic Oligarchy.”

Beyond the Dec. 18, 2020 meeting he arranged at the White House, Ziegler said he tried to help Powell get to the president on different occasion

“I walked Sidney over to the residence one to try to get the president a binder full of evidence,” Ziegler said on a podcast in February 2021. “And we got blocked again there, too.”

Ziegler recalled that he would tell anyone who would listen to him in the White House: “Let’s just go look at the ballots. We don’t have to do it. Have the National Guard in Georgia do it.”
     
https://www.rawstory.com/garrett-ziegler/

[Rick Plant]

'Darkening clouds' for Trump: Key Pence aides' live testimony set to lead off House hearings

According to an analysis by Slate's Dennis Aftergut, the constant drip of information about former President Donald Trump and his administration's involvement in the Jan 6th insurrection looks to turn into a flood when the House hearing on the Capitol riot kicks off on Thursday with three witnesses linked to former vice president Mike Pence poised to testify first for maximum effect.

As Trump and his allies prepare to do all they can to push back at the six scheduled hearings slated to be broadcast live, Aftergut wrote, a bad May for Trump is about to become a worse June for the former president.

"There are darkening clouds on his horizon," wrote Aftergut. "On June 9, the Jan. 6 House Select Committee will hold public hearings as part of their ongoing investigation into the storming of the Capitol last year. In short order, the set of six scheduled televised sessions this month are likely to build momentum towards making the case that the president was directly involved in attempts to undermine the peaceful transition of power."

"The steady dropping of shocking findings from the committee over the course of the past months suggests the sessions will likely have many viewers on the edge of their seats," Aftergut added, and then suggested that the Pence associates could set Trump's defenders back on their heels as they reveal the content of conversations between the former president and their former boss as Trump tried to get him to refuse to oversee the certification of the 2020 presidential election.

"June’s hearings follow a series of escalations in Trump’s ongoing legal battles stemming from his attempts to undermine the 2020 election," he writes. "May’s legal developments and the looming hearings suggest increasing pressures and prospects that Trump will face criminal charges, the committee’s lead-off witnesses will be three courageous Republicans working for Vice President Mike Pence, who supported his resistance to the multi-step conspiracy that Trump appears to have led and aimed at ending the lawful transfer of power: His staff attorney, Greg Jacob, Pence’s outside attorney, Michael Luttig, the eminent former federal Court of Appeals Judge, and Marc Short, Pence’s chief of staff."

Aftergut suggests that, after dropping several "bombshells" in the weeks precedinhg the hearings, the devil will be in the details as the committee makes their case for criminal charges againt Trump.

"While the final details are still being sorted, the upcoming hearings have two apparent goals. First, committee members intend to address Trump’s election meddling. And second, to elucidate the circumstances around the 'hours of inaction' before Capitol police received backup from the national guard releasing a video telling his followers inside the Capitol to leave," he wrote adding, "If the details coming out of the investigation are any indication, the committee is hard at work building their case."

"If May’s news was any indication, this select committee’s hearings will tell an even more chilling story — beginning, middle and end — about how a criminal conspiracy nearly ended our democracy," he concluded.

You can read more here:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/06/jan-6-hearings-trumps-summer-of-bad-news-is-about-to-get-much-worse.html

[Rick Plant]

‘Bad news for super MAGA’: Morning Joe says Jan. 6 probe is about to blow up Trump’s allies

The Jan. 6 select committee will start publicly revealing their findings this week, and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said those will blow up the political ambitions of Donald Trump's allies in Washington, D.C.

Rep. Elise Stefanik, in particular, has hitched her political fortunes to the twice-impeached former president, and the "Morning Joe" host said the upcoming hearings would deal her a harsh blow.

"Elise Stefanik, again, you talk about just a complete joke of a pose," Scarborough said. "Look how she was when she first came out. It's been obvious she wants to be the next Speaker, she wants Donald Trump to support her to be the next Speaker. I expect Kevin McCarthy to be pushed out of the way. You don't have to have spent time in Washington to understand what's going on."

"So she pushes the front of the line, but bad news for her, bad news for a lot of the super MAGA people or whatever, or bad news for the freaks and wingnuts and wackos, extremists," Scarborough continued. "The Jan. 6 committee has received worse news, and you can tell us about this, those receipts come from Donald Trump's chief of staff. Those receipts come from other members of the Trump team. They have so much information that there is no hoax here, just like there was, again, you're talking about the Russia hoax. This is what -- just for people to understand, you know, don't get distracted by -- the idiots use the word 'hoax,' but you can look at Marco Rubio's Senate Intelligence Committee report when Republicans ran it. they said Trump's connections with Russia was a national security threat. no hoax there -- no hoax here."

"It seems there are even more receipts showing that this was, in fact, a plan by Donald Trump to overturn a democratic election," he added.

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Impeachment lawyer tells Michael Cohen: Trump will be indicted by the DOJ



Michael Cohen spoke with former impeachment lawyer Norm Eisen on his "Mea Culpa" podcast this week about some of the findings in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and the attempt to overthrow the election.

Cohen began by saying that for years Donald Trump has gotten away with everything and without consequences. The first on the list of campaign law-breaking was him paying off Stormy Daniels under the table.

He also recalled the plot by Trump and the Justice Department to silence Cohen if they let him out of prison on house arrest during the pandemic. Cohen was told that he couldn't give interviews or publish a book, which a judge ultimately agreed was a violation of his First Amendment rights.

Cohen and his lawyers filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking for information involving this decision in the Trump administration. Trump then tried to stop the publishing of Cohen's book.

In 2018, American Oversight, filed their own FOIA request asking about details involving Cohen. Reps. Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) also sent a letter to the Office of the Inspector General on July 24, 2020, asking for information on the decision to try and restrict Cohen's movements.

Two years after that letter, and nearly a year since Cohen's FOIA request, the former Trump lawyer said that he got a letter saying that there are no documents.

Raw Story reached out to Reps. Lieu and Jeffries in Dec. 2021, to ask if there was any movement on their 2020 letter. Jeffries' office never responded where Lieu's office said they'd look into it and then didn't give any information after that.

Eisen said that it's not possible that there were no documents about the administration's plot to silence Cohen. One of his FOIA requests was answered by saying that he can only get 500 documents per month from the request. That would mean it would take 92 years to get all of the documents requested.

"You can't make this stuff up," said Cohen.

When it came to the Jan. 6 committee, both men speculated on whether Trump will ultimately be held accountable.

"I do think that Merrick Garland is going to — well there's already signs that they're working their way up the ladder," said Eisen, citing the indictment of Peter Navarro for refusing to comply with a subpoena.

Cohen asked why they even need Navarro after they were able to collect over 2,300 text messages exchanged with Mark Meadows on Jan. 6 and the lead up to it.

"What more do you need?" asked Cohen. "I don't think the DOJ is any better now than under Trump."

Eisen said that he doesn't agree and that one can't judge the DOJ by looking at the FOIA case for Cohen.

"Garland is a man of integrity," Eisen said. "I believe that the career prosecutors are investigating these cases are going to take a hard look because the evidence substantiates the existence of federal crimes against Trump or those around him. And if it does, they're going to make a recommendation. He's not going to play politics."

Cohen appeared in the documentary about Watergate on CNN and explained that to fully understand the egregious nature of Donald Trump's behavior people should also look back at Watergate and the scandal that happened there.

You can listen to the full podcast here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-the-gop-plans-to-sow-chaos-in-the-2020/id1530639447?i=1000565319161

[Rick Plant]

Reporter predicts 'bombshell' Jan. 6 committee hearing will show a split-screen of Trump vs. attackers



Speaking to MSNBC on Monday, Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig explained the main ways the House Select Committee will do to show the alleged conspiracy and corruption of Donald Trump and his allies. Officials intend to show side-by-side examples of the violence at the U.S. Capitol and what was happening at the White House at the same time.

"I think, Nicolle, you are going to see some bombshells that day," Leonnig said. "I applaud my colleagues who have been reporting on this curtain-raiser for the hearings to come. The one that will be led and focused on Donald Trump, I understand, will have a lot of Donald Trump's own words as relayed by witnesses, as relayed by Donald Trump himself, people who were at his shoulder. And, so, you will see a kind of a split-screen. What was happening on the capitol at the same moment as what was happening inside the White House with Donald Trump."

She cited one of the scenes in her book co-written with Phil Rucker, when Trump felt "giddy" when he saw his supporters committing multiple felonies and trumping up the side of the hill with weaponry, flag poles, fire extinguishers, bear spray, and two-way radios as if they were in a paramilitary event.

"So, you will see this split screen of what was Donald Trump doing, what was he saying," Leonnig continued. "And then what was actually happening on the capitol. The violence and the mayhem and the terror that he could have stopped and chose not to. This goes to the heart of what Liz Cheney warned early on, the dereliction of duty. She has brought that up over and over again and I think that will be a big subtheme of that hearing."

Wallace agreed, recalling how Cheney has outlined where the dereliction of duty occurred.

See the conversation below:

[Rick Plant]

Fulton County grand jury investigating Donald Trump in session

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Despicable Trump stooge Elise Stefanik is parroting the same bogus right wing talking points that every right winger is currently pushing. It's the same script they all use. They are terrified of the televised January 6th Committee Hearing on Thursday June 9th at 8pm Eastern Time. 

She calls a legitimate House investigation into the Capitol attack insurrection a "sham" and a "witch hunt" using the same words of Criminal Donald.

The fact is Criminal Donald, his administration, members of the Republican party, his supporters, and the right wing media all participated in a coup to steal the election from the American people. They attempted to overturn an election they lost fair and square because they did not like the results. After they lost in court over 60 times to overturn the election results, they tried to seize control of the government by violent force with their violent insurrection attack on the Capitol where 5 people died. Not only that, Trump and his cohorts tried to intimidate former Vice President Mike Pence into not certifying legitimate Electoral votes won by Joe Biden. From then on, Republicans have lied about "voter fraud" trying to delegitimize President Biden and our voting process. So, that is why Republicans are freaking out over the hearings because MANY of them are complicit in this coup.

Elise is lying because President Biden and Democrats have already addressed these issues.

Baby formula is now on the shelves thanks to President Biden invoking the Defense Production Act and also by importing baby formula from other countries.

Inflation and gas prices are sky high all around the world due to a global pandemic, Big Oil Price Gouging, and Putin's war in Ukraine.

President Biden is working on bringing inflation down.

Democrats put the "Big Oil and Gas Price Gouging Bill" on the House floor and Elise Stefanik and her right wing House Republicans voted against the bill. The bill passed because the House is controlled by Democrats. The bill is now sitting in the Senate currently being blocked by Republicans and they refuse to even vote on the bill for debate. Republicans want gas prices to stay high so they can keep falsely attacking Biden each day for political points. Gas prices would drop immediately if the Senate passed this bill because it will stop Big Oil from purposely gouging consumers at the pump. But Republicans would rather let you pay high gas prices because they think it will help them politically. Remember that in November. Republicans couldn't care less about high gas prices just the same way as they don't care about mass shootings since they still refuse to pass common sense gun reform. 

The GOP is despicable, the same treasonous traitors that tried to steal the election and install an orange lunatic as their wannabe dictator.

You can see the House vote on the "Big Oil and Gas Price Gouging Bill" under Stefanik's scripted talking points.                     
   




So, you can see with your own eyes that not one single Republican in the House voted to lower gas prices for American consumers just a couple of weeks ago. Republicans had a chance to lower gas prices, and they refused to help you, but they can't wait to go on Twitter and television to attack President Biden for high gas prices that he has no control over.

This bill will lower gas prices for American consumers which prevents Big Oil from artificially raising prices for big profit which they are currently doing. This bill passed only by Democrats in the House is currently sitting in the Senate being blocked by Republicans because they refuse to vote on it so gas prices can remain high. They want you to pay high gas prices because they think it will help then politically in November. Blocking, obstructing, and sabotage is all the GOP does. They do not care about you, if they did this bill would have passed unanimously in both chambers. Senate Republicans are blocking this bill because they don't want Biden to get credit for lowering gas prices for American consumers. So, they block the bill and gas prices remain high. The GOP has zero interest in helping Americans.