1/6 Insurrection Investigation

[Rick Plant]

Ron Johnson blasted in Wisconsin after being first senator named in Jan. 6 hearings



The office of GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin was implicated in Donald Trump's phony electors scheme during Tuesday's public hearing of the House Select Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol.

"Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson wanted to hand then-Vice President Mike Pence official-looking documents falsely affirming former President Donald Trump won in Wisconsin and Michigan as Pence prepared to confirm Joe Biden's win in January 2021, according to text messages revealed at a U.S. House hearing Tuesday," the Wisconsin State Journal reported. "The Wisconsin document, signed by 10 Republicans who convened in the state Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, was filled out on the same day the Democratic slate of Wisconsin electors met in the same building to deliver the state's 10 electoral votes to Biden. The meeting of Republicans occurred after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Biden had won the election."

Leigh Ann Caldwell of The Washington Post reported it was the first time the actions of a senator have been highlighted by the select committee.



"The evidence presented Tuesday once again showed that Wisconsin — one of seven states Biden won where groups of Republicans gathered as false presidential electors — was at the center of efforts to overturn the election," the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. "A text message from state GOP executive director Mark Jefferson also presented Tuesday indicated Trump's campaign team wanted the elector paperwork flown to Washington D.C."

Johnson received harsh criticism in Wisconsin.

"Ron Johnson actively tried to undermine this democracy. He literally tried to hand Mike Pence a slate of fake electors. Ron Johnson is a danger to democracy," said Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who is challenging Johnson in the 2022 midterms.

He called on Johnson to resign.

"Trump and his MAGA allies planned, promoted, & paid for a seditious conspiracy to overturn an election they lost. And Ron Johnson attempted to deliver it to DC on a silver platter" wrote Democrat Alex Lasry, who is also challenging Johnson.

He called Johnson "a seditious traitor and danger to our democracy."

Tom Nelson, who is also running, said, "Ron Johnson is a traitor. He must resign."

"Voters won't forget this," he wrote.

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Jan. 6 committee member: 'None of this would have happened without' Trump



WASHINGTON, D.C. — Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), one of the officials on the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on Congress and the attempt to overthrow the election, spoke to Raw Story about the testimony heard on Tuesday.

The committee spoke to Republican officials, but also spoke with Shaye Moss, who served as an election worker for the 2020 election and ultimately became the target of Donald Trump's supporters. She tearfully described the attacks on her, her mother and grandmother and those who terrorized the women ahead and on Jan. 6.

As Raskin explained, "none of this would have happened without him. And Trump's lawlessness inevitably led to and leads to violence."

He went on to say that there must be an end to the attacks on election officials. As Moss testified, none of the workers and supervisors who helped in 2020 have returned to help count the votes. It means that there is a void in people who can be trusted to legitimately count the votes on election night.

"One of the things we could be looking at is penalties, stiffer penalties against people who intimidate election officials," said Raskin. "Donald Trump's relentless intimidation of election officials had a chilling effect on election officials across the country... It's a serious problem with people who are hired across the country to have people driven out of the business by virtue of this campaign."

He went on to say that the Congress of the United States must make clear that states are on the side of the election workers and not those who try to intimidate the workers.

When asked about others who might come before the committee, Raskin said that because the investigation is ongoing, they continue to receive evidence and it's possible that other witnesses will appear. The question about whether Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, will appear has been in the conversation after it was revealed she was pressuring lawmakers to change the election results.

"The original hearings were going to wrap up in June, but we are picking up new evidence at an enormous velocity," Raskin told Raw Story. "So, we're going to be incorporating and including the new information. Certainly, the hearings will conclude before the end of the summer."

The information is coming from "diverse" sources, he asked when questions about whether the additional testimony was from the Justice Department.

"I think that people are seeing we're running a serious investigation that is bipartisan in nature and is just focused on getting the facts of what happened and a lot of people are coming forward now with information they have," Raskin continued.

The Committee, he explained, will have a list of recommendations that will come out of the hearing that detail how elections can be fortified to protect against some of these attacks on them in the future. They intend to say as a committee that these actions will not stand.

He was asked about Rep. Andy Bigg (R-AZ) after fellow Republican Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers mentioned that he was among the GOP members in the pressure campaign. Raskin made it clear that if his name had come up multiple times in a congressional probe as someone involved that he would come forward to set the record straight.

There are reasons, however, that Republicans have that they won't come forward or help with the investigation," Raskin told reporters.

https://www.rawstory.com/raskin-nothing-without-trump/

[Rick Plant]

Liz Cheney explains why it's important the same people were involved in two plots to overturn the election

GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming on Tuesday linked different parts of Donald Trump's schemes to overturn the election together during her opening remarks at the public hearing of the House Select Committee Investigation the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Cheney, the committee's vice-chair, introduced a panel featuring Arizona House GOP Speaker Rusty Bowers, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and Gabriel Sterling, the Georgia secretary of state chief operating officer.

"Today we will begin examining President Trump's effort to overturn the election by exerting pressure on state officials and state legislators. Donald Trump had a direct and personal role in this effort as did Rudy Giuliani, as did John Eastman," Cheney said.

She then delivered a statement that seemed directed at Attorney General Merrick Garland.

"In other words, the same people who were attempting to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes illegally were also simultaneously working to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election at the state level. Each of these efforts to overturn the election is independently serious. Each deserves attention both by Congress and by our Department of Justice," she explained. "But as a federal court has already indicated, these efforts were also part of a broader plan, and all of this was done in preparation for Jan. 6."

"I would note two points for particular focus today," she continued. "First, today you will hear about calls made by President Trump to officials of Georgia and other states. As you listen to these tapes, keep in mind what Donald Trump already knew at the time he was making those calls. He had been told over and over again that his stolen election allegations were nonsense."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Trump accused Wandrea Moss and her mother, the Fulton County Georgia election workers, of being "vote scammers".

Trump, his lawyers, and the right wing media targeted these women based on outright lies. 

This led to several death threats and forced them both into hiding.

"They said we snuck ballots into the State Farm Arena in a suitcase. That is a lie."




Georgia election worker Wandrea Moss testifies to the Jan. 6 committee

'There is nowhere I feel safe,’ says Georgia election worker targeted by Trump

Following the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani repeatedly made unfounded accusations that Moss and Freemen committed election fraud. Moss described how she and her mother faced “hateful” and racist online threats and attacks from supporters of the former president.

Freeman, known as “Lady Ruby,” said in her recorded testimony that she lost her sense of security.

“There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?” she said, through tears. “He targeted me, Lady Ruby, a small business owner, a mother, a proud American citizen who stand up to help Fulton County run an election in the middle of a pandemic."

[Rick Plant]

'I need 11,000 votes, give me a break': Raffensperger details Trump's election demands

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger fielded a flood of demands from then-President Trump after the 2020 election to address alleged election fraud, according to testimony from Tuesday's hearing on the insurrection.

"'I just want to find 11,780 votes,'" Raffensperger said Trump told him during a phone call. "I need 11,000 votes, give me a break."

The audio played by the the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack depicted an increasingly frantic Trump, with the former president's requests to Raffensperger growing more explicit as time went on. Members of the audience in the Cannon Caucus Room, where the committee's hearings are taking place, laughed throughout the audio clips.

"I think you're gonna find that they are shredding ballots, because they have to get rid of the ballots," Trump said on one phone call to Raffensperger. "The ballots are corrupt."

Trump then claimed that the law enforcement officers who investigated the allegations of election fraud — and found them to be false — were dishonest, and suggested that Raffensperger could be held liable for criminal behavior if he didn't comply with the president's requests, according to the audio clips.

"You can't let that happen, that's a big risk to you," Trump said. "All of this stuff is very dangerous."

Raffensperger said that he maintained his stance that the election in Georgia was not rigged or subject to fraud.

"What I knew is that we didn't have any votes to find," Raffensperger told the panel Tuesday. "There was no shredding of ballots."

Tuesday was the select committee's fourth day of hearings on the Jan. 6 insurrection. The next hearing is on Thursday.

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

January 6 Hearing: Full testimony of Brad Raffensperger, Gabriel Sterling on Georgia 2020 election

The House Committee investigating the U.S. Capitol Riot on January 6 questioned Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Chief Operating Officer Gabriel Sterling about evens surrounding the 2020 Election in Georgia when officials said Joe Biden beat Donald Trump.

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

RNC coordinated fake electors at Trump's 'direct request': Ronna McDaniel



Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel confirmed that former President Donald Trump was involved in lawyer John Eastman's fake elector scheme.

During a brief excerpt from her deposition played during the Jan. 6 committee hearing Tuesday, McDaniel explained that Trump called her and put her in touch with Eastman, who then engaged with the RNC about the scheme over the following months.

"He turned the call over to Mr. Eastman, who then proceeded to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent electors in case any of these legal challenges that were ongoing changed the result of any of the states. I think more, just helping them reach out and assemble them," she said. "My understanding is the campaign did take the lead, and we just were helping them in that — in that role."

Eastman was providing legal advice to Trump's allies about efforts to challenge the election. The House Jan. 6 select committee has battled Eastman in court for weeks, seeking his emails to gain insights about what advice he had been giving to Trumpworld. Eastman turned over roughly 1,000 pages of emails in April, and the committee ordered that he turn over hundreds more earlier this month.

McDaniel's testimony before the committee helped members establish the direct role Trump played in the fake elector plot.

During the hearing Tuesday, the panel honed in on some of Eastman's scheming to put forward an alternative slate of electors for key battleground states. The goal was to challenge the election results in select states and have an alternative slate of electors on standby in case those legal challenges were successful.

Amid the fallout of the 2020 election, Trump's own White House Counsel’s Office said the plan was "not legally sound," according to the panel.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) has long teased that the committee had evidence of Trump's involvement in a plot to supplant official electors with those who favored the former president to tip the election to him.

“We’ll show evidence of the president’s involvement in this scheme,” Schiff hinted during an interview with CNN Sunday. “We’ll also, again, show evidence about what his own lawyers came to think about this scheme.”

Part of the plan appeared to revolve around Congress and states decertifying the 2020 election results. Once the election results were decertified, the theory was that the fake slate of electors could be used to give Trump the victory.

All of this culminated with then-Vice President Mike Pence's refusal to decertify the election on Jan. 6, 2021. A mob of angry protesters had stormed the Capitol earlier that day, but Pence ultimately participated in the certification of then-candidate Joe Biden's electoral triumph over Trump.

January 6th Committee @January6thCmte

Even the White House Counsel’s Office felt the 'fake electors' plan was not legally sound, but President Trump and his allies went forward with the scheme anyway.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1539313938889728001

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/rnc-coordinated-fake-electors-trump-direct-request