1/6 Insurrection Investigation

[Rick Plant]

Jan. 6 Committee soon 'releasing additional information' on Trump's 'big ripoff' scheme

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) said over the weekend that the Jan. 6 Select Committee is preparing to release additional evidence about a scheme to grift money from people who believe that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.

At a hearing last week, Lofgren revealed that the Trump campaign "used these false claims of election fraud to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from supporters who were told their donations were for the legal fight in the courts. But the Trump campaign didn't use the money for that. The 'Big Lie' was also a big ripoff."

Lofgren told CBS host Margaret Brennan on Sunday that there was an intense public interest in the "big ripoff."

"To be clear, there are about 100 candidates for office right now that are repeating election deniers," Brennan observed. "They are repeating some of what President Trump still claims. At least five of them have won their primaries."

Lofgren wouldn't say if the committee had found "direct" connections between the candidates and the Jan. 6 grift.

"We are going to be releasing additional information," Lofgren revealed. "I've got the staff working on it right now. Obviously, the hearings are a couple of hours each and you can't lay out all the information that's been compiled."

"So I know there's been substantial interest in the big ripoff and we will provide additional information to the public soon," she added.

Brennan wondered if the new information would "establish direct links" to the election deniers currently running for office.

"Not necessarily," Logren replied. "We will lay out what we have and people can look at it. I don't want to just pop off irresponsibly here."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

GOP's Madison Cawthorn says Donald Trump created a 'dangerous setting' at Jan. 6 DC rally



Disgraced outgoing Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) has blamed former President Donald Trump (R) for creating a “dangerous setting” outside of the U.S. Capitol during the January 6, 2021 riots.

In his recent interview on the Carlos Watson Show, the show’s host asked Cawthorn if there was anything he would have done differently when he spoke at Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington D.C. the morning before the riots began.

“Well, you know, one, I mean, you know, President Donald Trump said, ‘I want you to peaceably and patriotically protest,’ — that’s good on his part. But if I could go back, I probably and I had an opportunity to speak with the President, which I did not, I would have asked that he did not send or tell the crowd to go down to the Capitol,” Cawthorn said, adding, “You know, I think that that just put everything in a dangerous setting.”

Later on in the interview, Cawthorn said that if he could go back and change his own speech at the rally, he would have urged Trump’s followers to be more peaceful.

However, the rally repeatedly told Trump’s followers, without proof, that the election had been stolen. Trump himself said that his followers should “fight” for their democracy or else they wouldn’t have one anymore. He also repeatedly blamed his own Vice President Mike Pence for not overturning the election, something that Pence had no legal or political precedent to do.

Trump’s followers later called for Pence to be hung for treason.

Five people died during the January 6 riot, and Trump’s supporters injured roughly 140 police officers. The police injuries included a broken spine, a lost eye, lost fingers, brain damage and multiple cases of PTSD. Four Capitol Police officers have died by suicide since the riots.

The rioters ransacked the Capitol, shattered windows while trying to access congressional chambers, smeared feces in the hallway and stole computer equipment, potentially constituting a national security breach.

Cawthorn was voted out of office on May 17, 2022, when he lost his primary election. He has since that “Dark MAGA” will rise, a presumably more-violent and corrupt version of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” political platform which advocates against minorities and uses mob violence against its enemies.

https://www.rawstory.com/gop-s-madison-cawthorn-says-donald-trump-created-a-dangerous-setting-at-jan-6-dc-rally/

[Rick Plant]

Georgia secretary of state and other state officials slated to testify at January 6 hearing



CNN — The House select committee investigating the January 6 riot is set to hear live testimony from four witnesses during Tuesday’s hearing that will focus on how former President Donald Trump and his allies pressured state-level officials to overturn the 2020 election results.

The committee will also show evidence that Trump was involved in a scheme to submit fake slates of electors in the 2020 presidential election, US Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and member of the panel who is expected to play a leading role in the presentation, said Sunday.

The witness list for Tuesday’s hearing includes three individuals from Georgia: Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, his deputy Gabe Sterling and former election worker Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss.

Rusty Bowers, a Republican who is the Arizona House speaker, is also scheduled to testify, the committee formally announced Monday.

Tuesday’s hearing will also detail how Trump, his former attorney Rudy Giuliani and then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows pressured officials, as well as, how false election claims fueled death threats for those at the state level.

Bowers, Raffensperger and Sterling will be part of a panel detailing the Trump campaign’s effort to force states to overturn their certified election results.

Moss is slated to appear separately on a second panel, according to the committee’s hearing notice. She was accused by Trump and others of carrying out a fake ballot scheme in Fulton County, Georgia. The committee will hear first-hand about her experiences and the threats she received as a result of Trump’s false claims, committee aides said Monday.

Bowers, who supported Trump’s reelection bid in 2020, refused to bow to intimidation and efforts to get him to back efforts in the legislature to decertify Biden’s victory in Arizona.

Raffensperger’s profile grew after the 2020 election when he resisted Trump’s efforts to pressure him to “find” the votes necessary for the then-President to win Georgia in an infamous January 2021 phone call.

The Georgia Republican has already spoken privately with the committee about his experience in addition to testifying before a special grand jury in a criminal probe into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the Peach State.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/20/politics/january-6-hearing-witness-list/index.html

[Rick Plant]

Donald Trump plotted fake electors scheme, January 6 panel set to show

Committee also expected to probe Trump’s pressure on officials in crucial states to corruptly reverse his election defeat



The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is expected to show at its fourth hearing on Tuesday that Donald Trump and top advisers coordinated the scheme to send fake slates of electors as part of an effort to return him to the White House.

The panel is expected to also examine Trump’s campaign to pressure top officials in seven crucial battleground states to corruptly reverse his defeat to Joe Biden in the weeks and months after the 2020 election.

At the afternoon hearing, the select committee is expected to focus heavily on the fake electors scheme, which has played a large part in its nearly year-long investigation into Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the election at the state level.

The panel will show how the fake electors scheme – which may have been illegal – was the underlying basis for Trump’s unlawful strategy to have his vice-president, Mike Pence, refuse to certify Biden’s win in certain states and grant him a second term.

If the 2020 election cycle had been like any other when the electoral college convened on 14 December 2020 and Democratic electors attested to Biden’s victory over Trump, that would have marked the end of any post-election period conflict.

But that year, after the authorized Democratic electors met at statehouses to formally name Biden as president, in seven battleground states, illegitimate Republican electors arrived too, saying they had come to instead name Trump as president.

The Trump electors were turned away. However, they nonetheless proceeded to sign fake election certificates that declared they were the “duly elected and qualified” electors certifying Trump as the winner of the presidential election in their state.

The fake electors scheme was conceived in an effort to create “dueling” slates of electors that Pence could use to pretend the election was in doubt and refuse to formalize Biden’s win at the congressional certification on 6 January.

And, the select committee will show, the fake election certificates were in part manufactured by the Trump White House, and that the entire fake electors scheme was coordinated by Trump and his top advisers, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows.

“We will show evidence of the president’s involvement in this scheme,” congressman Adam Schiff, the select committee member leading the hearing alongside the panel’s chairman, Bennie Thompson, and vice-chair, Liz Cheney, said on CNN on Sunday.

Members of Trump’s legal team insist this is a distorted characterization of the scheme, saying the so-called alternate slates were put together and signed in case that states did re-certify their election results for Trump and they needed to be sent right away to Congress.

But that explanation is difficult to reconcile given Trump lawyer John Eastman admitted in a 19 December 2020 the Trump slates were “dead on arrival” if they were not certified, and yet still pushed Pence to reject Biden’s slates even though Trump slates were still not certified.

The fake electors scheme is important because it could be a crime. The justice department is investigating whether the Republicans who signed as electors for Trump could be charged with falsifying voting documents, mail fraud or conspiracy to defraud the United States.

If Trump was involved in the scheme, and the justice department pursues a case, then the former US president may also have criminal exposure. At least one federal grand jury in Washington is investigating the scheme and the involvement of top Trump election lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani.

The select committee is also set to closely focus on Trump’s pressure campaign on leading Republican state officials in the weeks and months after the election, according to a committee aide who previewed the hearing on a briefing call with reporters.

Among other key flash points that the panel intends to examine include Trump’s now-infamous 2 January 2021 call with Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger – who will testify live at the hearing – when Trump asked him to “find” votes to make him win the election.

“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said during the conversation, a tape of which was obtained by the Washington Post and House investigators working for the select committee.

The select committee will describe Trump pressuring other state officials to investigate election fraud claims his own White House and campaign lawyers knew were false, relying on testimony from Arizona House speaker Rusty Bowers.

And the panel will additionally hear testimony from Shaye Moss, a Georgia election worker in Fulton County, who was falsely accused by Giuliani and others of sneaking in “suitcases” of ballots for Biden – a conspiracy debunked by election officials.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/21/donald-trump-plotted-fake-electors-scheme-january-6-panel-set-to-show

[Rick Plant]

What to expect on Day 4 of the Jan. 6 committee hearings

The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol will hold its fourth hearing on Tuesday, focusing on former President Trump's efforts to pressure Georgia and Arizona election officials to overturn the 2020 election results. CBS News congressional correspondent Scott MacFarlane reports.

Watch: https://www.cbsnews.com/video/what-to-expect-on-day-4-of-the-jan-6-committee-hearings/

[Rick Plant]

Plea hearing scheduled for June 27 in high level Capitol riot case of Tim Boughner of Michigan.

He's accused of assaulting police with chemical spray and a bike rack.

[Rick Plant]

Sentencing set for Sept 16 in high-profile US Capitol riot case of Kevin Seefried of Delaware

Convicted on all charges. Judge cited Seefried's jabbing of Confederate flag at US Capitol officer Eugene Goodman.