Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

‘We Build the Wall’ leaders who worked with Bannon plead guilty to fraud
Brian Kolfage and Andrew Badolato each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.



“We Build the Wall” campaign crowd-funders Brian Kolfage and Andrew Badolato pleaded guilty Thursday for their roles in pocketing donations solicited to help build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.

Kolfage, 39, and Badolato, 57, each pleaded guilty in federal court in New York City to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Kolfage, a triple-amputee Air Force veteran, also pleaded guilty to tax and wire fraud charges.

The two men worked alongside Steve Bannon, who was the chief White House strategist during the Trump administration and was also indicted in connection with orchestrating the wall crowdfunding effort. Bannon pleaded not guilty and was later pardoned by then-President Donald Trump.

Another leader of the fundraising campaign who was not pardoned by Trump — Timothy Shea — has pleaded not guilty.

The men are alleged to have organized a scheme in December 2018 that raised more than $25 million by defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors who contributed to a crowdfunding campaign to build a wall along the southern border of the U.S., one of Trump's key campaign promises.

Kolfage “repeatedly and falsely assured the public that he would ‘not take a penny in salary’” and that “100 % of the fund raised ... will be used in the execution of our mission and purpose,” according to the indictment.

The indictment goes on to say he “covertly” took more than $350,000 for his personal use while Bannon used a nonprofit group under his control to receive $1 million from the campaign to pay Kolfage and personal expenses.

Bannon falsely claimed that the campaign was a “volunteer organization,” according to the indictment.

Federal prosecutors said the defendants used “fake invoices” and “‘sham’ vendor agreements” to route hundreds of thousands of donated dollars from “We Build the Wall” to pay for their personal expenses.

Kolfage and Badolato are scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 6.

NBC News has asked their attorneys for comment.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/-build-wall-leaders-worked-bannon-plead-guilty-fraud-rcna25498

[Rick Plant]

These people are lunatics.

California MAGA candidate claims God will commit voter fraud on her behalf to help her win



On Thursday, Rachel Hamm, a Republican candidate for secretary of state in California, claimed in an interview that God will commit voter fraud on her behalf to cancel out Democrats if they try to steal the election from her.

"I would pray that I win," said Hamm. "One thing that I have been doing is praying that if anyone tries to steal a vote, that God would send the angels to steal the vote back. To make it an honest vote."

Hamm previously announced her run for secretary of state after claiming that Jesus appeared to her son in her closet and handed her a scroll commanding her to run for the office. She also claims that she has verified former President Donald Trump was the real winner of the 2020 election using her "empath" powers.

Right Wing Watch
@RightWingWatch
Rachel Hamm, who is running for secretary of state in California because she claims Jesus appeared in her closet and told her to do so, is praying that if anyone tries to steal votes from her, "God will send the angels to steal the vote back."
https://twitter.com/i/status/1517169516798787584

Hemant Mehta
@hemantmehta
California GOP Secretary of State candidate Rachel Hamm said today that she decided to run for office after her son found Jesus inside a closet in their home, and Jesus handed him a scroll telling her to declare her candidacy.
https://twitter.com/hemantmehta/status/1504615074497011715

[Rick Plant]

January 6 to take center stage at disqualification hearing for Marjorie Taylor Greene



Atlanta CNN — A potentially precedent-setting disqualification hearing will kick off Friday in an Atlanta courtroom to determine if Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia is constitutionally barred from running for reelection because of her role in the January 6 insurrection.

Greene is expected to be called as a witness during the marathon hearing – making her the first lawmaker to testify under oath about their involvement in the insurrection. The outcome will reverberate beyond Georgia, because similar challenges are pending against other Republican officials and could be lodged against former President Donald Trump if he runs again in 2024.

The case resolves around a Civil War-era provision of the Fourteenth Amendment, which says any American official who takes an oath to uphold the Constitution is disqualified from holding any future office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” But how this applies to today is a hotly debated legal question.

Several of Greene’s constituents in her northwest Georgia district initiated the challenge last month with backing from a coalition of liberal activists and constitutional scholars. They claim Greene aided the insurrection by promoting voter fraud myths, posting videos before January 6 railing against the peaceful transfer of power, and allegedly coordinating with protest organizers.

The burden of proof will be on the challengers, to show by a “more likely than not” standard that January 6, 2021 was legally an insurrection, and that Greene helped the insurrectionists. State Judge Charles Beaudrot will preside over the administrative hearing and will issue a recommendation to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on whether Greene should be disqualified.

Greene can appeal Raffensperger’s decision in state courts. She has vehemently denied any wrongdoing regarding the insurrection at the US Capitol, maintains that she “never encouraged political violence” and says she wasn’t involved in planning any protests. Her lawyer told CNN that he thinks Friday’s hearing is a “show trial” and that the entire procedure is an egregious violation of her rights.

It’s notable that the disqualification hearing is even happening. Greene filed a federal lawsuit to shut down the state process – which is how GOP Rep. Madison Cawthorn fended off a similar candidacy challenge in North Carolina. But in a blistering 75-page ruling on Monday, a federal judge rejected many of Greene’s legal arguments and allowed the state case to move forward.

The anti-Greene challenge is backed by Free Speech for People, a legal advocacy group, and Our Revolution, the left-wing group founded by Sen. Bernie Sanders. Greene, who has become infamous for peddling far-right conspiracies, has found support from some conservative legal experts and from Trump himself, who released a lie-filled statement praising her on Thursday.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/22/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-disqualification/index.html

[Rick Plant]

Lock him up!

Treasonous traitors like Mark Meadows were screaming about legal mail in ballots trying to prevent Democratic voters from voting absentee as they were lying about imaginary "voter fraud" when every single one of them voted absentee as well. And here it turns out that Meadows committed voter fraud by being registered to vote in 3 states and in two states where he doesn't even live. The phony "election integrity" claim was just a scam for right wingers to use so they could try to keep Criminal Donald in power after he lost the election in a blowout. Meadows needs to go to prison for voter fraud. If any of you attempted to vote in 3 states you would be sitting in a jail cell right now. Trump's criminals are not above the law and are subject to the same laws as every American must follow. Lock him up.         

Trump's former chief of staff is demanding 'election integrity' – but was registered to vote in three states



Mark Meadows spent many of his final days as former President Donald Trump's chief of staff railing against election fraud, which he and other Republicans falsely claimed had tipped the 2020 election in favor of President Joe Biden.

After exiting the White House Meadows took a position as senior partner at the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), which promotes “election integrity” efforts. He gave a speech at CPI's Election Integrity Summit in Atlanta on Feb. 19. Then just three weeks later, according to records obtained by The Washington Post, Meadows and his wife, Debra, submitted registrations to vote in North Carolina - all while being registered to vote in Virginia and South Carolina.

"The overlap lasted about three weeks," The Washington Post reports, "and it might have continued if revelations about Meadows’s voting record had not attracted scrutiny in North Carolina. Meadows still is registered in Virginia and South Carolina." He and his wife no longer are registered to vote in North Carolina.

Meadows was the keynote speaker at a CPI Election Integrity Summit in Atlanta on Feb. 19. “What you’re doing is investing in the future of our country and making sure only legal votes count,” Meadows told attendees. He said he had just gotten off the phone with Trump, who he said had told him: “We cannot give up on election integrity.”

About three weeks after that speech, the New Yorker reported, Meadows registered to vote at a home where he did not reside. The magazine reports that on Sept. 19, "about three weeks before North Carolina’s voter-registration deadline for the general election, Meadows filed his paperwork. On a line that asked for his residential address - “where you physically live,” the form instructs - Meadows wrote down the address of a fourteen-by-sixty-two-foot mobile home in Scaly Mountain. He listed his move-in date for this address as the following day. Meadows does not own this property and never has. It is not clear that he has ever spent a single night there."

He then apparently voted based on that address in the 2020 election via absentee ballot.

The New Yorker reported: "The previous owner, who asked that we not use her name, now lives in Florida. 'That was just a summer home.'" She said she and her husband bought it in 1985. “We’d come up there for three to four months when my husband was living,” she said. Her husband died several years ago, and the house sat mostly unused for some time afterward, she said, because she had 'nobody to go up there with anymore.'”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/22/mark-meadows-was-simultaneously-registered-vote-three-states/

[Rick Plant]

Secret Service warned the White House of Capitol violence two days before the attack — Trump ignored it: court filing



Former chief of staff to Donald Trump, Mark Meadows is suing the House and the Select Committee investigating Jan. 6, for what he calls an overly broad subpoena to appear and answer questions. As part of that lawsuit, however, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson revealed a lot of details about Meadows that are being released now.

According to a deposition Hutchinson gave in March, that was just released publicly late Friday night, she revealed that the U.S. Secret Service gave warnings about violence at the Capitol to the White House.

"I just remember Mr. Ornato coming in and saying that we had intel reports saying that there could potentially be violence on the 6th. And Mr. Meadows said: 'All right. Let's talk about it,'" said Hutchinson speaking of U.S. Secret Service special agent in charge Anthony Ornato.

The House Select Committee cited her deposition in their Friday court filing responding to the Meadows lawsuit.

"But despite this and other warnings, President Trump urged the attendees at the Jan. 6th rally to march to the Capitol to 'take back your country,'" the court filing said. "Despite urgent pleas from Capitol Hill and from many of President Trump's supporters, President Trump did not act immediately to publicly ask or instruct the violent rioters [to] leave the Capitol."

The filing also states that it is clear that Trump never contacted the Department of Defense that day to dispatch help.

"It is also now clear that Mr. Trump never telephoned his Secretary of Defense that day to order deployment of National Guard, and never contacted any federal law enforcement agency to order security assistance to the Capitol Police," the filing explained. "Information received by the Select Committee indicates that Mr. Trump was in the dining room, watching on his TV, and did not urge his supporters to leave the Capitol for over three hours. And even at 4:17 p.m. when he released a video, President Trump told those in the Capitol 'we love you. You’re very special,' and at 6:01 p.m. he tweeted, 'Remember this day forever!'"

"Certain text communications with Members of Congress suggest that Mr. Meadows himself 'pushed' for Vice President Pence to take unilateral action to reject the counting of electoral votes on January 6th," the committee says in the filing.

Read the full documents here: https://www.rawstory.com/trump-secret-service-warnings-january-6/

[Rick Plant]

Mark Meadows knew the plot with an alternate slate of electors was illegal — but did it anyway: Court filing



The Guardian's justice reporter, Hugo Lowell, tweeted Friday evening that a new court filing could prove the White House's intent in the campaign to create an alternative slate of electors.

The House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol obtained the testimony that former President Donald Trump's chief of staff was told by the White House counsel that the plot would be unlawful.

The details came as part of an interview with former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified in the lawsuit that Meadows filed against the House and the Jan. 6 committee for what he called an overly broad subpoena requesting information about the events leading up to the attack on the Capitol.

"At any of these meetings with individuals from outside the White House or the executive branch, did the White House Counsel's Office express an opinion as to whether the plan to have electors for President Trump meet and cast electoral college votes in States that President Trump had lost was legal?" asked the House Committee's counsel, Mr. George.

"Yes," replied Hutchinson.

She went on to say that the meeting took place in early to mid-Dec. 2021. She noted that it could have been the end of Nov. 2021, but that she felt more comfortable saying with certainty that it was in December. Those present, she said, were Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, some of Giuliani's associates, and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone. She said that at a later meeting Pat Philbin, "but no members of Congress.

Read the full deposition here: https://www.rawstory.com/2657201434/

[Rick Plant]

Not just McCarthy: Dem Congresswoman reveals many GOP lawmakers hide how much they hate Trump



On Friday's edition of MSNBC's "Deadline: White House," Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA) said that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is far from the only Republican who has been trying to hide his true feelings about former President Donald Trump.

"I have to ask if you heard the tapes before?" asked anchor Nicolle Wallace.

"Well, I hadn't heard the tapes themselves, but I would say that although it may appear surprising, it is par for the course for the Republican colleagues to say one thing in private and not have the courage to speak up in the same way in the public," said Luria.

"You are immersed in the evidence," said Wallace. "If you have any role in — we covered the Republicans with great skepticism and painted an alternate reality to hear McCarthy on tape to say this ... do you view the acknowledgement that an assumption is made that Pence would have to pardon him after he resigns and the criminal conduct?"

"Certainly I think any time someone talks about pardon, there's implied criminal conduct," said Luria. "Can't read the words of what he meant by this will pass. My impression is if he resigns and out of the White House then the tension on it may pass. Probably how I interpreted that. But it is certainly implied if you talk about pardoning that you are implying that criminal conduct is in question and, as you mentioned earlier in the broadcast, there were the indications that former President Trump said to McCarthy that he felt some responsibility relative to the events on January 6. Tying the pieces together in real time, I would understand why McCarthy would, in the back of his mind, have the idea that there could have been criminal activity and Trump could be interested in seeking a pardon on the other side of this."

Watch below: