Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

New revelations indicate Trump may have committed a 'serious federal crime': legal expert



Former FBI Director James Comey and his top deputy Andy McCabe faced rare, intensive IRS audits after investigating former President Donald Trump, according to The New York Times.

Comey, whom Trump fired in 2017 while he oversaw the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia, and McCabe, who was similarly terminated after investigating Trump over the Coney firing, were selected for a "random" audit known as an "autopsy without the benefit of death," according to the report. Out of about 153 million individual tax returns filed in 2017, only about 5,000 people are selected for this type of invasive audit each year.

Comey and McCabe, along with their spouses, defied the odds, being selected for the audit after being fired. The two men were selected for an IRS research program that uses "compliance research examinations" to try to catch tax cheats. Unlike typical audits, these audits force individuals to produce bank records, copies of checks, receipts and letters effectively recreating their finances for the year in question. The process takes months and often costs thousands in accountant fees.

"Your federal income tax return for the year shown above was selected at random for a compliance research examination," the IRS said in letters to both men. "We must examine randomly selected tax returns to better understand tax compliance and improve fairness of the tax system. We'll give you the opportunity to explain any errors we may find during the examination."

The "minuscule chances" of the top two FBI officials being selected at random raised questions about whether Trump appointees in the government or at the IRS purposely targeted them, noted Times reported Michael Schmidt.

"Lightning strikes, and that's unusual, and that's what it's like being picked for one of these audits," former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told the outlet. "The question is: Does lightning then strike again in the same area? Does it happen? Some people may see that in their lives, but most will not — so you don't need to be an anti-Trumper to look at this and think it's suspicious."

A Trump spokeswoman denied any knowledge of the audits.

IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, a Trump appointee who remains on the job, declined an interview with the Times but said in a statement that he was not involved in any audit.

"Commissioner Rettig is not involved in individual audits or taxpayer cases; those are handled by career civil servants," the statement said. "As I.R.S. commissioner, he has never been in contact with the White House — in either administration — on I.R.S. enforcement or individual taxpayer matters. He has been committed to running the I.R.S. in an impartial, unbiased manner from top to bottom."

The IRS did not specifically comment on the cases but says it forwards any allegations of wrongdoing it receives to the Treasury Department for "further review."

It is illegal under federal law for nearly anyone in the executive branch to request an IRS audit of a specific individual's taxes.

Comey's audit, which lasted over a year, actually found that he and his wife overpaid their federal income taxes and they received a $347 refund, according to the Times.

"I don't know whether anything improper happened, but after learning how unusual this audit was and how badly Trump wanted to hurt me during that time, it made sense to try to figure it out," Comey told the Times. "Maybe it's a coincidence or maybe somebody misused the I.R.S. to get at a political enemy. Given the role Trump wants to continue to play in our country, we should know the answer to that question."

McCabe said his audit found that he and his wife owed a small amount of money, which they paid.

"The revenue agent I dealt with was professional and responsive," McCabe told the outlet. "Nevertheless, I have significant questions about how or why I was selected for this."

Months before McCabe's audit, Trump publicly questioned McCabe's finances, repeating a false claim about donations that his wife received when she ran for a Virginia state Senate seat.

"Was Andy McCabe ever forced to pay back the $700,000 illegally given to him and his wife, for his wife's political campaign, by Crooked Hillary Clinton while Hillary was under FBI investigation, and McCabe was the head of the FBI??? Just askin'?" Trump tweeted in September 2020.

McCabe was fired by Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2018, which cost him his pension shortly before he was set to retire. The Justice Department in October 2021, under new Attorney General Merrick Garland, reinstated his pension and cleansed his personnel record. He was informed his audit was completed last month.

McCabe claimed he was directly targeted for the audit.

"There was no penalties, there was no fines or anything like that, it was really pretty minimal thing in the end. But it's nerve-wracking, you know, it's really, it's really, kind of, you know – it's scary, really, to be … targeted like that," he told CNN. "I don't know what happened here. And like I said, I think they handled the business okay, you know, the person I dealt with was fine, but the question remains, how was I selected for this?"

McCabe called for an investigation into the audits.

"It just defies logic to think that there wasn't some other factor involved," he said.

"No coincidence, for sure. Odds are 30,000 to 1," tweeted Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, warning that "this kind of political targeting is a serious federal crime."

Read More Here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/06/us/politics/comey-mccabe-irs-audits.html

[Rick Plant]

As I've been saying, these right wing radical religious extremists want to take over our government with their radical beliefs and insane conspiracy theories forcing their laws upon us. These people are not "Christian", they are violent insurrectionist radicals. No real Christian uses violence as a means to gain power.       

United by a hashtag: Inside the Christian nationalist organizers who mobilized Trump supporters for Jan. 6



Six months before the 2020 election, Tomi Collins, a Christian right organizer from North Dakota, issued a demand on Twitter for the execution of political enemies in the federal government bureaucracy — citing an array of imagined offenses, including the QAnon hoax that progressive elites are harvesting children’s blood.

“#WeThe people demand incitements [sic] for #SpyGate #PizzaGate #UraniumOne #Adrenochrome,” she wrote. “#DeepState will be exposed and hung for treason. Even if we have to do it ourselves! #CoordinationMatters.”

Collins closed her digital call to arms with two more hashtags: #PatriotsMobilize and #1LoudVoice.

Collins serves as executive director of a little-known Christian right outfit called America Restored. Collins has described America Restored, which is organized as a private corporation, as a vehicle for providing strategic consulting and funding to grassroots organizers.

As early as January 2018, less than a year into the Trump administration, Collins was warning followers on Facebook Live about “voter machine fraud,” and foreign election interference, while specifically referencing Dominion Voting Systems. Her description of a plan “to cheat” in the upcoming 2018 midterm elections uncannily anticipated public claims by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell that have prompted a defamation lawsuit against the two attorneys who litigated President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Collins’ role as a key, if overlooked, organizer in the sprawling network of operatives and influencers highlights the role of Christian nationalism in a movement that remains committed to overturning the 2020 election and vanquishing political opposition. Many of the tenets of a hyper-partisan version of Christianity — entwined with syncretic strains of the QAnon cult — were voiced by the far-right organizers who galvanized defiance of the 2020 election results, including some who attacked the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The mission statement for America Restored, prominently displayed on its website’s landing page, clearly describes the work of the organization led by Collins: “America Restored is ‘We The People’ building a powerful, action-driven infrastructure by organizing and mobilizing existing, effective patriot groups and freedom-loving Americans in all major areas of influence: Education, Family, Faith, Business, Government, Entertainment and Media.”

The mission statement ends with a pledge that inaccurately conflates the organization’s vision of a Christian theocracy with an originalist view of the country: “We The People will see America restored to our founders’ original intent.”

America Restored’s mission statement explicitly references Seven Mountains dominionism, a far-right Christian ideology that emerged in the mid-1970s. It holds that Christians are called on by God to dominate all realms of civil society, including government.

Katherine Stewart, author of the 2020 book The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, described Seven Mountains dominionism in an email to Raw Story as “the conviction that Christians of a certain hyper-conservative variety are called by God to dominate the main peaks of modern civilization in the United States and, ultimately, the world.”

C. Peter Wagner, one of the ideology’s key proponents, preached that Christians’ responsibility for taking over “whatever molder of culture or subdivision God has placed them in” is a matter of “taking dominion back from Satan,” according to Stewart.

America Restored’s grafting of Seven Mountains dominionism ideology onto a claim of restoring the original republic represents a fundamental misreading of the founders’ intent, Stewart told Raw Story. Stewart cited appeals to reason and deistic or atheistic philosophy as underpinning the thinking of founders such as Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin. But even more important than what the founders thought, she said, is the question of what kind of government they established.

“Was it a government that derives its legitimacy from its appeal to Christian revelation, or from its endorsement by Christian ecclesiastical authorities?” Stewart wrote. “The answer to that is no. America’s founders established the world’s first large-scale modern secular republic.”

Four days after the 2020 election, Collins spoke at a “Stand With Trump Rally” at the North Dakota state capitol in Bismarck. Collins told the crowd she had been contacted by the Trump campaign’s legal team and had attended “meetings with intelligence folks.” Raw Story has not been able to verify these claims independently.

“It’s an amazing day when you get to stand and go from a conspiracy theorist to getting called up by the campaign and attorneys all over the country saying, ‘What about those voting machines? What’s going on in them?’” Collins said. “Hey, let’s go. We’ve got some lawsuits to do.”

Collins went on to describe a plan to “mobilize all 50 states” for rallies that would augment the lawsuits with continuous public pressure to overturn the election results.

“We worked in conjunction with Stop the Steal to get folks at capitols in every single state in the union so we the people could be heard,” Collins later recalled in an interview for a far-right podcast, referencing the coalition led by Ali Alexander.

Felisa Blazek, a New Hampshire-based event planner, described a markedly similar effort.

“I had started the 50-state rallies with — actually ahead of Ali,” Blazek told an interviewer the following summer. “And Ali, having all of his width and breadth of followers — although he’s gone into hiding — God used him in that way, right? God used Cain and God used Abel. He sends out someone who has a much bigger presence on social media than myself. God’s calling for me was to be a base cheerleader, not a main player. So, we’re doing these 50-state rallies at all the capitols every Saturday after the steal of the November election.”

It is unclear whether Collins and Blazek worked together on the effort to mobilize Trump supporters for the rallies, and neither woman responded to repeated requests for interviews. But language used by the two women in interviews to promote their projects and on websites for their respective organizations — including the #1LoudVoice hashtag and Seven Mountains dominionism ideology — bear striking similarities.

The #1LoudVoice hashtag was used in Collins’ social media beginning in May 2020 and has also been prominently displayed on the America Restored website. Meanwhile, a tab on the website ThePatriotParty.rocks, which promotes events organized by Blazek, includes the heading “Our Mission: #1LoudVoice.” The mission statement includes a “call to action,” declaring it is “time to rise up in unity, go into the harvest and take our country back.” The statement continues: “We are assembling to organizing and mobilizing [sic] existing Patriots groups [sic] in all major areas of influence by a national digital communication platform and network influencing all seven (7) spheres of influence: Education, Family, Faith, Business, Government, Entertainment, Media.”

The page includes a link to a separate site listing “coalition members,” including Virginia Freedom Keepers and Latinos for Trump, two of the groups that hosted a MAGA Freedom Rally one block from the US Capitol on Jan. 6; and 1st Amendment Praetorian, a security group associated with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn that provided personal security details for speakers at several rallies and assisted attorney Sidney Powell with research on purported election fraud.

And although it is unclear what role, if any, Blazek had in organizing the Dec. 12, 2020 Jericho March that helped build momentum for Jan. 6, a photo gallery is displayed under the “Events” tab on the ThePatriotParty.rocks website, with images of Flynn, InfoWars host Alex Jones, and Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes.

Using Seven Mountains dominionism language in an interview to promote a two-day Patriot Party event at the Scottsdale Plaza Resort in Arizona two weeks before the 2020 election, Blazek avoided any mention of Christianity while highlighting defiance of mask mandates during the COVID pandemic.

“The seven spheres of influence to me and what I am trying to rally around are organizing people in education, family, faith, business, government, entertainment and media,” she said. “Underneath all of those are health and medical because health and medical touch each one of those. It doesn’t get its own sphere; it’s that magical bridge.”

Blazek had hoped to secure a special appearance by Flynn and his family, whom she described as “the tip of the spear in our movement,” for the gathering, but had to settle for his sister, Barbara Redgate. Other guests included Cowboys for Trump, led by Otero County, NM County Commissioner Couy Griffin.

Folded into the Patriot Party, the Q Con Live! gathering organized by Chris Jacobson commandeered a conference room at the Arizona resort.

Blazek described her radicalization during a joint appearance with Jacobson on a QAnon podcast in June 2020. She said the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon provided an initial jolt, but in early 2020 she said a friend prodded her to look into a conspiracy theory associated with the Sovereign Citizen movement that posits that the British crown holds the originals of American birth certificates. That led her to research the Federal Reserve, she said, prompting a weekslong quest to sources that predate Christ, until, Blazek said, she “worked my way back up to the heart of the issue, and landed with the corruption of the Deep State and how everything’s really been a lie.”

While promoting QAnon, Jacobson expressed a more conventional view of religious nationalism in response to a question about the role of religious leaders in the United States’ civic life.

“And we need to get back to being one nation under God, so that He will continue to bless us,” Jacobson said. “Our founding fathers all, whether they were Christian or not, they understood and said that if we don’t have a higher power — in other words, God — that this whole experiment, this United States of America, would fail.”

Blazek, in turn, affirmed a “spiritual, but not religious” outlook, and expressed a QAnon slogan as a central tenet of her faith.

“I really feel like our statement, ‘Where we go one, we go all,’ represents the true God,” she said. “The true and one God — our God.”

During the Q Con Live! conference, Alan Hostetter, an anti-lockdown activist from southern California, told attendees: “We are at war right now…. Nobody wants violence. We are conditioned from the time we are children to always think violence is a horrible, horrible thing, until we go back and reflect on the Revolutionary War. They picked up guns at some point, and said, ‘Enough!’”

Hostetter would later recall in a court filing that when he sat down after his speech, he noticed a man dressed in headgear and horns carrying a sign that read “Q sent me” enter the back of the conference room and stand in the back. It was Jacob Chansley, who would later gain infamy as the “QAnon Shaman” when he stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. Hostetter faces charges of his own, including conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, due to his role in the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Griffin was found guilty of entering restricted grounds and sentenced to time served.

Griffin told Raw Story that he met Chansley “at the event in Scottsdale,” and that after their arrests the two men were housed in adjacent jail cells.

Reflecting on the awkward commingling of Christianity and QAnon, Griffin told an interviewer last fall: “I spent all my time witnessing to [Chansley] about Christ and about how he needs to put his faith in Jesus because he’s, in my opinion, and by scripture, he’s lost in that account.”

Griffin told Raw Story that he first met Blazek at the Patriot Party event in Scottsdale, and that since then he has come to know her “as a great patriot.”

“Felisa’s a good person; she’s an organizer,” Griffin said. “To make it look like she’s organizing a violent uprising — that’s what the American people are sick of. People are getting tired of the fake news.”

Many of Trump’s supporters involved in the effort to overturn the election — both before and after Nov. 3, 2020 — used language of “good” and “evil,” and even “war,” as a call to action.

“It’s not left and right, it’s not red and blue,” said David Sumrall, an organizer with the pro-Trump group Stop Hate during an interview with Redgate to promote her appearance at the October 2020 event in Scottsdale. “It’s good and evil…. It’s just real deal. And I’ve told people this a hundred times if I’ve said it once: Until we put the cross next to the flag again, this is a holy war we can’t win.”

A week before the election, Stop Hate posted a video of Daniel Goodwyn speaking at a rally in San Francisco on the group’s Instagram page.

“They’re Satanists and pedophiles,” said Goodwyn. “They’re disgusting. And we have God on our side. And Trump’s gonna win. The only thing standing in our way is the corruption, because they’re gonna try to steal the election via fraud.” Goodwyn, who shared a social media post promoting the Proud Boys and President Trump’s instruction to “stand back, stand by,” live-streamed his participation in the storming of the Capitol, and faces charges of violent entry and disorderly conduct, among other offenses.

A month after the election, white supremacist Nick Fuentes addressed Trump supporters at a “Stop the Steal” rally outside the Hyatt Regency hotel in Phoenix.

“This is not simply a political struggle, as I’m sure all of you know,” Fuentes said. “The real struggle is not between Republicans and Democrats. The real struggle is between good and evil. This is a spiritual war. It is a spiritual war between the devil and the children of Jesus Christ.” Video of Fuentes’ speech was amplified on social media by Goodwyn and Stop Hate.

Stewart, the author of the Power Worshipers, said extremism that rejects the idea that people can disagree without dehumanizing their opponents isn’t compatible with democracy.

“A large-scale political movement that believes that any deviation is illegitimate, and that political opponents are literally controlled by demons puts democracy in peril,” she said.

As Jan. 6, 2021 approached, #1LoudVoice became a mobilizing call for Trump supporters to pressure Congress to block the certification of Joe Biden as the next president.

Felisa Blazek hosted a conference call on Dec. 30, 2020. The guest, a social media strategist named Jason Sullivan who had worked with Trump confidant Roger Stone during the 2016 election, urged listeners to “descend on the Capitol.”

During the call, one of the listeners asked Sullivan what group he was with.

“I am not with a group,” Sullivan said. Blazek interjected and Sullivan amended his statement.

“Well, yes,” he said. “Thank you for correcting me. I just joined with #1LoudVoice. Yes, Felisa’s fantastic and I greatly admire her.”

https://www.rawstory.com/america-restored/

[Rick Plant]

Trump secretly left his social media company's board shortly before federal subpoenas dropped



Donald Trump removed himself from the board of his social media company just weeks before the company was issued federal subpoenas.

The former president was removed as chairman of the Trump Media and Technology Group, along with five other board members, on June 8, records show, and the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a subpoena to the Florida-based company on June 27 and the a grand jury in the Southern District of New York issued another on July 1, reported the Herald-Tribune.

The investigation appears to be related to the proposed $1.3 billion merger between the media company and a special purpose acquisition company called Digital World Acquisitions Corp., whose directors were served subpoenas seeking similar records to those sought from Trump Media, which issued a statement pledging full cooperation.

However, that statement did not mention Trump -- who had a licensing deal with the company to use his name -- was no longer chairman, but still listed former Rep. Devin Nunes as chief executive officer and businessman Phillip Juhan as chief financial officer.

The other board members removed with Trump were Kashyap Patel, a Nunes ally who served various roles in the former president's administration, Donald Trump Jr., and former Trump assistant Scott Glabe.

SPACs are blank-check companies formed to raise money to go public with the intent to find a company to merge with, but they are prohibited from finding a partner before going public, and the SEC is investigating whether Digital World Acquisitions and Trump Media held premature talks about such a deal.

Read more of the exclusive article here:

https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/2022/07/07/trump-leaves-board-social-media-company-florida-federal-investigation/7828534001/

[Rick Plant]

Georgia subpoenas of Trump allies offer hope 'that justice will ultimately be served'



The head of Common Cause Georgia on Wednesday welcomed the news that a Fulton County special grand jury investigating 2020 election interference subpoenaed seven key allies of former President Donald Trump.

"We need to know those who broke our laws in their dangerous attempts to hold on to power be held accountable."

"The coordinated attempts by former President Donald Trump and his associates to discount and ignore the will of Georgian voters during the 2020 election cannot be swept under the rug," said Aunna Dennis, the advocacy group's executive director, in a statement.

"That's why I am encouraged that the Fulton County grand jury is continuing their necessary work to uncover the truth of what happened by calling on those who perpetrated Trump's Big Lie to testify," she added, referencing the former president's false claim—frequently repeated by his allies—that the election was stolen from him.

As The Atlanta Journal-Constitution first reported, the subpoenas target U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) along with attorneys Kenneth Chesebro, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, Rudy Giuliani, Cleta Mitchell, and Jacki Pick Deason.

According to the newspaper:

The subpoenas were filed July 5 and signed by Fulton Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who is overseeing the special grand jury. They noted that all seven people were "a necessary and material witness" to the investigation.
Unlike subpoenas issued to Georgians, the summons required McBurney's blessing since they are for people who reside outside the state.

The 23-person special grand jury has heard testimony in recent weeks from a parade of witnesses, including some who had direct contact with Trump and his associates in late 2020 and early 2021. But Tuesday's subpoenas are the closest jurors have gotten to the Trump campaign or inner circle of the former president.

Common Cause Georgia's leader asserted Wednesday that the state, widely known for its voter suppression efforts in recent years, "cannot continue to be the testing grounds for sensationalized propaganda attempts that are designed to deter voters from the ballot box."

"We need to know those who broke our laws in their dangerous attempts to hold on to power be held accountable," she continued. "The transparency in this investigation into potential criminal misdeeds has bolstered my hopes that justice will ultimately be served."

"Our democracy," Dennis declared, "is dependent upon all of us in Georgia participating in the election process, and by knowing that voters' choices will be respected and accepted going forward."

Fani Willis, the Democratic district attorney in Fulton County, launched a probe after an infamous January 2, 2021 phone call in which Trump asked Georgia GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" over 11,000 votes to reverse the state's 2020 presidential election results.

In her first public comments since the subpoenas, Willis told NBC News on Wednesday that more subpoenas targeting members of Trump's inner circle are coming. Asked whether that will include the former president, she replied that "anything is possible."

"We'll just have to see where the investigation leads us," Willis said. "I think that people thought that we came into this as some kind of game. This is not a game at all. What I am doing is very serious. It's very important work. And we're going to do our due diligence and making sure that we look at all aspects of the case."

Willis convened the special grand jury in May and its work can continue for up to a year. The DA said Wednesday that she will pause the probe's activities in October, when early voting begins in Georgia, to avoid any appearance of election interference.

Graham on Wednesday announced in a statement from his attorneys that he plans to challenge the subpoena in court and accused the Fulton County investigators of engaging in "a fishing expedition and working in concert" with the congressional committee probing a pro-Trump mob's January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Trump White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, who was subpoenaed by the January 6 panel last month, has reached a deal with the committee to "sit for a videotaped, transcribed interview" on Friday, rather than testifying publicly.

According to an email reviewed by the Times, the interview can include his account of the events on January 6 as well as discussions of a meeting with Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, Trump's interactions with Eastman, and any contact with members of Congress.

Read More Here:

https://www.ajc.com/politics/fulton-grand-jury-subpoenas-giuliani-graham-trump-confidantes/POUNSTTUXZDGDB3D5LKA7TIQQM/


Accelerating investigation into Giuliani and Eastman ‘could fuel charges against Trump’: report



The Justice Department investigation into the unconstitutional effort to overturn Donald Trump's election loss has picked up speed since the start of the Jan. 6 committee's public hearings, and that has put new pressure on the scheme's architects.

The FBI has seized electronic devices from former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark and Trump lawyer John Eastman, who concocted the "fake electors" scheme, and witnesses have testified that they asked for pardons along with Rudy Giuliani, putting all three under intense legal heat, reported The Guardian.

“The strong evidence presented about the fake electors scheme at recent House committee hearings, including testimony by senior Justice Department officials, laid the foundation for charging Trump’s legal advisers, Eastman and Giuliani, and possibly Clark, with multiple state and federal crimes including obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, false statements in connection with the fake electors scheme, and election fraud," said former DOJ prosecutor Michael Zeldin.

The committee has heard testimony from former attorney general William Barr, who called Trump's claims about election fraud "bullsh*t," and several insiders who said that White House counsel Pat Cipollone -- who will testify Friday -- told the former president and his allies their efforts were most likely illegal.

“The cumulative evidence presented over the course of the hearings paint a picture of a president who was told explicitly by multiple people that he lost the election and that once he exhausted his judicial remedies (losing nearly 60 cases) his continuing pressure campaign to prevent the orderly transfer of power was illegal," Zeldin said. “Yet Trump and his attorneys persisted.”

Other former prosecutors say the raids indicate investigations into Clark and Eastman have escalated, which The Guardian reported "could fuel charges against Trump," who was at the center of the scheme, for obstruction of an official proceeding or defrauding the U.S. government.

“Search warrants of Clark and Eastman’s phones means that a judge found probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime would be found on each of those devices,” said former U.S. attorney Barbara McQuade.

U.S. District Court judge David Carter has already ruled that Trump "more likely than not" broke the law by trying to overturn his election loss, and so he ordered Eastman to turn over more than 100 emails he had withheld from the House select committee.

“Dr. Eastman and President Trump launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history,” Carter wrote in his order.

Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide who testified publicly and at length about those efforts, delivered powerful evidence of criminality by the former president and his allies, including Eastman and Giuliani, according to another former DOJ official.

"[She] might be the final nail in the legal jeopardy coffin of Trump’s coterie of lawyers and enablers," said Paul Pelletier, a former acting chief of DoJ’s fraud section. “Hutchinson’s testimony has lifted the curtain on the false narrative that the violent Capitol confrontation was spontaneous."

Former federal prosecutor Dennis Aftergut said investigators appear closer to pursuing criminal charges against Clark, Eastman and Giuliani, which puts the twice-impeached former president in ever more legal peril.

“Giuliani and Eastman seeking pardons is powerful evidence of ‘consciousness of guilt’,” Aftergut said, and at least one of them may be convinced to flip. “The earliest cooperators generally get the best deals from prosecutors … any of them could potentially provide damaging evidence against the other two and Trump.”

Read More Here:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/08/trump-clark-giuliani-eastman-lawyers-plot-overturn-election

[Rick Plant]

Georgia Official, Trump Cyber Chief Subpoenaed in Fox News Case

Dominion Voting is suing network over election-rigging claims
Brad Raffensperger, Christopher Krebs testimony sought

The voting-machine company falsely accused of rigging the 2020 election against Donald Trump is seeking to question two former administration officials and Georgia’s elections chief as part of its $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox News.

Dominion Voting Systems Inc. on Wednesday subpoenaed Christopher Krebs, the former top cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security whom Trump fired for refusing to question the integrity of the election, court filings show. The company is also seeking to question Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who was pressured by Trump to flip the state’s election results after Joe Biden was declared the winner.

Dominion’s subpoena of Raffensperger comes as Atlanta prosecutors appear to be stepping up a probe into a phone call in which Trump asked the state official to “find” votes for him. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s office on Tuesday subpoenaed Rudy Giuliani, Senator Lindsey Graham and five others to testify before a special grand jury.

According to Dominion’s suit in Delaware state court, Fox News knowingly broadcast false claims that voting machines were rigged in order to win back viewers upset that the conservative network had called the election for Biden. The voting machine maker’s suit notes that ratings for one Fox News show spiked when Giuliani and former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell appeared on air to claim that Dominion gave “kickbacks” to Raffensperger “for its contract to provide voting machines to the state.”

‘False Accusation’

“The false accusation that Dominion had bribed Georgia officials -- a claim for which Powell never offered a shred of evidence -- was manufactured out of whole cloth in order to discredit Georgia Republicans after they publicly rebutted” the conspiracy theory, according to the complaint.

Fox News said in a statement, “We are confident we will prevail as freedom of the press is foundational to our democracy and must be protected, in addition to the damages claims being outrageous, unsupported and not rooted in sound financial analysis, serving as nothing more than a flagrant attempt to deter our journalists from doing their jobs.”

Raffensperger declined to comment on the subpoena but said in a statement that the security of Georgia’s voting system “is among the best in the nation.”

Krebs was fired by Trump after he sent a tweet rejecting vote-rigging claims made by Powell in an appearance on Fox Business. Dominion argues that public statements by Raffensperger and Krebs, both Republicans, confirmed the veracity of Biden’s victory and put Fox on notice that the election wasn’t fraudulent, as some of its personalities and guests were claiming.

In addition to Krebs, Dominion also subpoenaed Benjamin Hovland, a US Election Assistance Commissioner who in 2020 administered hundreds of millions of dollars in grant money to election officials to help respond to the pandemic, court records show.

Neither Krebs nor Hovland immediately responded to requests for comment. Kristen Muthig, director of communications for the US Election Assistance Commission, said the agency can’t comment on pending litigation.

Fox News has pointed out that, in a number of its broadcasts, network personalities or guests questioned or refuted the conspiracy theory on air. But Dominion said in its complaint that Fox’s “handful of statements” in some broadcasts calling out Trump’s lies “do not excuse Fox’s behavior.”

“In fact, they make Fox’s actions worse,” Dominion said in the suit. “They demonstrate how Fox recklessly disregarded the truth -- indeed, that Fox knew the truth, but kept on broadcasting these malicious defamations anyway.”

A judge in December ruled Dominion’s suit against Fox News could go forward because the network probably had enough information after the election to know the conspiracy theory was false. The judge last month also allowed Dominion’s claim against Fox’s parent company Fox Corp. to move forward, because Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch may have acted with “actual malice” in directing the network to broadcast the conspiracy.

“When Fox guests spread or reiterated disinformation about Dominion, Fox did not use the information Dominion provided to correct its guests or to reorient its viewers,” the judge wrote in that decision. “Instead, Fox and its personnel pressed their view that considerable evidence connected Dominion to an illegal election fraud conspiracy.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-07/trump-georgia-officials-subpoenaed-in-fox-news-defamation-case

[Rick Plant]

A far right wing conspiracy theorist admitted to being a liar but is still continuing to promote their lie. This is what the right wing media and the Republican party does to Biden all the time. They make up lies and keep pushing them to their rabid base.

Person behind viral anti-Biden tweet admits it's misinformation — but is keeping it up 'because it's Biden'

A viral tweet that falsely claimed President Joe Biden put a Medal of Honor backwards around the neck of a Vietnam veteran is staying up even though its creator acknowledges that they are spreading misinformation.

As CNN's Daniel Dale reports, the tweet in question used grainy footage of Biden awarding the veteran the Medal of Honor to falsely claim that he placed it on backwards, even though clearer footage shows that the medal was placed correctly.

"The post that generated more than 2.9 million video views was published on Twitter on Wednesday by an obscure account that has sharply criticized Biden and promoted conspiracy theories," notes Dale. "Anti-Biden commentators with six-figure followings then amplified that account's inaccurate tweet, some of them adding their own assertions about how the video supposedly demonstrated that Biden is declining."

Dale tracked down the person who made the viral tweet and they acknowledged that "it's the way the medal is and it's not backwards."

However, the person also said they would not be deleting the tweet "because it's Biden and he deserves the scrutiny."

Read More Here:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/08/politics/fact-check-biden-medal-of-honor-backwards/index.html

[Rick Plant]

Trump firm must provide records to Congress: court rules Mazars has 'uniquely pertinent information'



Former President Donald Trump suffered yet another defeat in court on Friday as he lost an attempt to keep his financial records from Congress.

"A federal appeals court ruled Friday that a House committee is entitled to a wide array of records on former President Donald Trump’s finances and business practices, but the court further narrowed aspects of the subpoena the Democrat-controlled House issued to Trump’s accountants in 2019," Josh Gerstein reported for Politico. "If the decision from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals stands, Trump’s former accounting firm Mazars will have to give the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee five years of records on potential inaccuracies in the financial statements of Trump or his business and a little more than two years of records related to the lease with the federal government for the former Trump International Hotel in Washington."

Trump could appeal to the full D.C. court of appeals or try taking his case straight to the Supreme Court.

"Mazars will also have to provide records from 2017 and 2018 on transactions between the Trump Organization and any foreign, local or state government or official," Politico reported. "Two years ago to the day from Friday’s ruling, the justices issued an opinion rejecting Trump’s sweeping claims of executive privilege but declared that lower courts did not do enough to scrutinize the House panel’s purported needs for the information and whether the subpoena was tailored to those needs."

D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan was joined by Judge Judith Rogers in the majority opinion.

“President Trump has uniquely pertinent information that cannot reasonably be obtained from any other source,” Srinivasan wrote in a 67-page opinion. “Still, the Committee’s emoluments-related objectives cannot possibly justify the breadth of documents encompassed by the subpoena. ... We thus narrow the subpoena in several respects.”

Read More Here:

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/08/house-subpoena-trump-financial-records-00044826