Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Gov. Kemp receives subpoena to testify for special grand jury in Trump election probe

ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp has received a subpoena to testify in front of the special grand jury investigating possible criminal interference in the 2020 Georgia election.

Kemp’s office confirmed to Channel 2′s Richard Elliot that he received a subpoena this week. The governor’s office said it has no further comment at this time.

Special prosecutor Nathan Wade sent the governor’s attorney a letter along with the subpoena.

“Fulton County District Attorney’s Office has agreed to take the Governor’s sworn recorded statement on July 25, 2022,” the letter states.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis called for the grand jury to investigate if calls made to Georgia leaders after the 2020 election amounted to election tampering.

It includes former President Donald Trump’s now-infamous phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asking him to find votes in the 2020 election.

“So look, all I want to do is just, I want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state,” Trump said at the time during the call with Raffensperger.

Willis told Channel 2 that she asked for this grand jury after she said too many potential witnesses declined to cooperate with her own 15-month long investigation without a subpoena.

The grand jury can grant Willis the legal authority to issue subpoenas to compel those people to talk and produce evidence like documents and recordings.

https://www.wsbtv.com/news/georgia/gov-kemp-testify-special-grand-jury-trump-election-probe/53IIVJZCL5FZJBJZH7AHREHPSE/

[Rick Plant]

Trump insider 'worried' and sees 'possibility' of criminal charges: report



According to a report from the HuffPost, political observers believe the televised Jan 6th hearings are "moving the needle," on the public perception that Donald Trump not only committed crimes when he attempted to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election but that he could actually be charged.

After five public hearings so far -- with more on the horizon -- S.V Date wrote that the hearings, which one conservative called "incredibly well-executed," has one Trump insider admitting that the former president could be in real trouble.

According to former senior Justice Department prosecutor Mary McCord, "Given the ubiquity of commentary about the evidence being presented during the hearings, whether on the news, social media or at the water cooler, it would be hard not to be exposed to it at least to a limited extent. This has the potential to move the needle a bit for people who aren’t firmly in the Trump camp already, possibly viewing more skeptically those who seek to downplay Jan. 6 and the involvement of others that led to it.”

After five public hearings so far -- with more on the horizon -- S.V Date wrote that the hearings, which one conservative called "incredibly well-executed," has one Trump insider admitting that the former president could be in real trouble.

According to former senior Justice Department prosecutor Mary McCord, "Given the ubiquity of commentary about the evidence being presented during the hearings, whether on the news, social media or at the water cooler, it would be hard not to be exposed to it at least to a limited extent. This has the potential to move the needle a bit for people who aren’t firmly in the Trump camp already, possibly viewing more skeptically those who seek to downplay Jan. 6 and the involvement of others that led to it.”

Former senior aide to Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz (R) agreed, adding, "People are familiar with what happened on Jan. 6 but millions of people are tuning into the hearings and finding out why it did. The hearings provide a chance for the public to rethink these events and change their minds, given all the new information.”

After writing, "The hearings are doing a good job laying out the various laws Trump appears to have broken as he tried to remain in power despite his election loss," Date quoted former prosecutor Glenn Kirschner predicting, "I suspect, when it’s all said and done, we will learn that DOJ has been investigating in far-reaching fashion all along."

That has one Trump adviser, who asked to not be identified, admitting things are not going well for the former president.

"One top Trump adviser said he worried that the hearings are making criminal charges against Trump seem more justified and therefore, in his view, more likely. 'That is a possibility,' he said on condition of anonymity," Date wrote before adding that investigators are becoming less worried that "Trump’s open threat to create civil unrest as a societal cost for prosecutors to consider when deciding to charge him may, in the end, fail to be the deterrent he might have hoped."

The report adds, "... legal experts, including former prosecutors, said the facts laid out by the committee would absolutely support criminal charges against Trump himself, given the testimony of top White House and campaign aides telling Trump he had lost the election and that his efforts to overturn that loss were both illegal and unconstitutional."

You can read more here:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jan-6-trump-criminal-charges_n_62b48d67e4b06594c1e11989

[Rick Plant]

Michael Cohen paints grim portrait of what awaits John Eastman for protecting Trump

Appearing on MSNBC on Sunday afternoon, former Donald Trump fixer Michael Cohen attempted to offer advice to attorney John Eastman who is facing likely criminal charges for trying to help the former president steal the 2020 presidential election.

Speaking with host Yasmin Vossoughian, Cohen -- who lost his law license and spent time in jail due to his work for Trump -- said it is inevitable that Trump will disassociate himself from Eastman before "throwing him under the bus."

"You don't want to be me, you don't to be that guy, self-surrendering to any FCI institution in this country," he began. "One of the things that I can assure you that is going to occur here -- look already, there are articles written, like Rolling Stone did one, as Donald was talking about John Eastman, about distancing himself"

"As a result of what is going on, John Eastman is bringing -- this is the greatest part -- he's bringing negative attention and media coverage to Donald's inner sanctum and what went on there January 6th at the insurrection," he continued. "Now, what John Eastman did was, like with me, at the direction and for the benefit of Donald Trump. And Donald goes on and, what is the next thing? It's the disparagement; he's going to say he barely knows him. That, you know, he hardly knows him and anything that John Eastman or Jeffrey Clark did was done at their own volition."

"And then, of course, destroy the lives," he elaborated. "You're going to see these people in the same situation that I was in, self-surrendering to an institution and being away from your family, friends, losing your life, losing your happiness, your family's happiness, and I'm trying to -- if they're listening to this, please listen to my warning -- I'm telling you, you will be in the same situation."

"Welcome to under the bus club," he added.

Watch below:

[Rick Plant]

Newly revealed details in Mo Brooks pardon request could provide evidence for criminal case



The pardon request submitted by Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) contains language that could be used to prove corrupt intent in a criminal proceeding.

The Alabama Republican sought a pardon from Donald Trump in a Jan. 11, 2021, email obtained by the Guardian that shows his request for all-purpose, preemptive pardons for lawmakers who objected to the certification of Joe Biden's election win just hours after the insurrection.

At least a half dozen Republican lawmakers asked for pardons immediately after the Capitol riot after Trump “hinted at a blanket pardon for the Jan. 6 thing for anybody,” according to testimony from former White House presidential personnel director John McEntee.

Brooks refers to a Texas lawsuit lawsuit that put pressure on vice president Mike Pence to halt or stop certification, which the select committee has argued violated the Electoral Count Act of 1887, and to objections filed in Arizona and Pennsylvania.

Objections filed in those two states came after the Capitol attack, and when viewed alongside efforts by Trump attorneys to push senators to continue objecting to Biden's certification suggests additional corrupt intent.

https://www.rawstory.com/mo-brooks-pardon-2657565581/

[Rick Plant]

Former marketing executives launch campaign to keep Fox News from 'fueling next insurrection'



An organization called Check My Ads has launched a campaign in an effort to restrict Fox News ad revenue to prevent them from "working overtime to fuel the next insurrection."

The organization, which is run by two former marketing executives, has already collected over 40,000 signatures from people backing their efforts in just five days, according to The Guardian, and the goal is to get ad exchanges to drop the news site.

"Foxnews.com benefits enormously from being a part of the global advertising society. Foxnews.com receives ads from blue chip brands, which gives incredible legitimacy to the lies that they are publishing. That brand equity is intrinsically valuable," says Claire Atkin, a team member of Check My Ads.

The messaging included in the campaign reads:

HERE'S THE PROBLEM

Advertisers don't place ads on the internet themselves. They use ad exchanges — technology companies that run ads for them.

Ad exchanges don't work with just anyone. They choose which websites to work with and which ones to drop. They have standards to protect advertisers from funding violence. This is so important to advertisers that they have it written into their contracts.

When Fox News promoted the January 6th insurrection, it was violent. We all saw it — but ad exchange executives pretended it didn't happen.

Since then, Fox News has just gotten worse.

So here's the plan: we need to tell ad exchanges to block their ads from FoxNews.com now.

"Advertisers have been crystal clear that they do not want to sponsor violence. And we all saw what happened on January 6. It's not just violence, this was the attempted overthrow of the government. This is world-scale political violence," Atkin said. "We are opening the conversation up for everyone who wants to say enough is enough."

Read More Here:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/jun/24/campaign-strip-fox-news-site-of-ad-revenue

[Rick Plant]

Trump and his supporters have blown up Illinois Republicans' $50 million midterm campaign: report

According to a report from the New York Times, the Illinois Republican Party's plan to put a candidate in place that they feel can beat Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) in November is going down in flames due to Donald Trump and his supporters.

As the Times' Reid Epstein reports, more than $50 million dollars was involved to make Mayor Richard C. Irvin of Aurora the nominee and now it looks like -- due to the former president and his rabid followers, -- they will be saddled with previously little known state Sen. Darren Bailey (R) who once proposed kicking Chicago out of Illinois.

On Saturday Trump endorsed the man the Times described as "A 56-year-old farmer whose Southern Illinois home is closer to Nashville than to Chicago, he wears his hair in a crew cut, speaks with a thick drawl and does not sand down his conservative credentials, as so many past leading G.O.P. candidates have done to try to appeal to suburbanites in this overwhelmingly Democratic state."

That has boosted the chances of Bailey getting the GOP nomination -- where he is already leading in the polls -- and has derailed plans made by the GOP.

According to the report, "Mr. Bailey rose to prominence in Illinois politics by introducing legislation to kick Chicago out of the state. When the coronavirus pandemic began, he was removed from a state legislative session for refusing to wear a mask, and he sued Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, over statewide virus mitigation efforts. Painted on the door of his campaign bus is the Bible verse Ephesians 6:10-19, which calls for followers to wear God’s armor in a battle against 'evil rulers.'"

Adding to the Republican Party's problems is that Pritzker is boosting the campaign for Bailey which is also giving the GOP headaches.

According to the report, "Kenneth Griffin, the Chicago billionaire hedge fund founder who is the chief benefactor for Illinois Republicans, gave $50 million to Mr. Irvin for the primary alone and pledged to spend more for him in the general election. Mr. Griffin, the state’s richest man, will not support any other Republican in the race against Mr. Pritzker, according to his spokesman, Zia Ahmed. Mr. Griffin announced last week that his hedge fund and trading firm would relocate to Miami."

Pritzker, for his part, is enjoying the chaos, telling reporters, "It’s a mess over there. They’re all anti-choice. Literally, you can go down the list of things that I think really matter to people across the state. And, you know, they’re all terrible. So I’ll take any one of them and I’ll beat them."

You can read more here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/26/us/politics/illinois-governor-bailey-irvin-pritzker.html

[Rick Plant]

'Stop the Steal' didn't start in 2020 - it was 20 years in the making



As the January 6th Committee continues to unpeel layers of criminality and conspiracy, it’s important to note that the Stone/Bannon/Trump “Stop The Steal” scheme did not originate in 2020. It was, in fact, 20 years in the making.

Roger Stone, Trump’s dirty trickster who was sentenced to 40 months in prison before Trump pardoned him, rolled out version 1.0 in Florida in 2000, helping the George W. Bush campaign stop a Florida Supreme Court-mandated statewide recount that would have handed the election to Al Gore.

After Stone’s successful efforts to shut down the Miami-Dade County recount with the infamous “Brooks Brothers Riot,” five Republicans on the US Supreme Court overruled the Florida Supreme Court (so much for “state’s rights” and the 10th Amendment) and blocked the recount because it would “cause irreparable harm” to “plaintiff George W. Bush.”

Stone coordinated the program to shut down the vote count and throw the election to Bush, who had lost the election by 500,000 votes nationwide, a role Stone reprised in both 2016 and 2020.

]In 2000, “I set up my command center there [in Miami]” Stone told Jeffrey Toobin. “I had walkie-talkies and cell phones, and I was in touch with our people in the building. Our whole idea was to shut the recount down. That was why we were there. We had the frequency to the Democrats’ walkie-talkies and were listening to their communications…”

Joe Geller was the Miami-Dade County Democratic Party Chairman, and was threatened and roughed up by Stone’s goons, many staffers from Republican members of Congress flown down for the event.

“Anybody who says it was unrelated to the intimidation and violence floating around there is not telling the truth. I saw it with my own eyes,” Geller told The Washington Post. “Violence, fear and physical intimidation affected the outcome of a lawful elections process. I think that’s pretty bad.”

Stone’s next Stop The Steal, this one Version 2.0, was to be on behalf of Donald Trump in 2016, an election they fully expected to lose but were willing to unleash chaos on the country over anyway.

The day before the 2016 election — six years ago — ABC News reported that Roger Stone’s second “Stop The Steal” program had been forced to back off their efforts to put armed white “election monitors” into minority neighborhoods after a court threatened him.

“For weeks,” John Kruzel reported for ABC, “the group has used incendiary rhetoric to motivate members to turn up at contested areas tomorrow to participate in a survey of voters leaving polling places.”

Two weeks earlier The Guardian reported that the Trump campaign was targeting “Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Fort Lauderdale, Charlotte, Richmond and Fayetteville,” all cities with large Black populations.

Trump and Stone were expecting to lose the election to Hillary Clinton, so finding or manufacturing any evidence of hanky panky in Black neighborhoods would be pure gold for the “Stop The Steal” operation they were planning for the days after the election was called for Clinton.

If if there was anything that might throw a monkey wrench into the 2016 election, armed white men going door-to-door in Black neighborhoods to ask about voting plans, and standing outside polling places doing “exit interviews” was at the top of the list.

“In court filings,” ABC reported, “Democrats argue Stop the Steal’s exit polling operation serves no legitimate purpose, but is merely a pretext for harassing and intimidating likely Democratic voters of color. They say the ruse goes hand-in-hand with Donald Trump's heated, racially-tinged accusations of vote-rigging and his calls for supporters to monitor voting in ‘certain areas,’ which Democrats argue is code for minority communities.”

That year, 2016, was a dress rehearsal for 2020. Stone and Trump’s 2016 StopTheSteal.org website (here’s the link to the archive) laid out the lies they were going to deploy and their strategy for profiting from them:

“[Democrats] intend to flood the polls with illegals. Liberal enclaves already let illegals vote in their local and state elections and now they want them to vote in the Presidential election.
“What can we do to stop this outrageous steal? We must step up to the plate and do this vital job? That€™s why I am working with a statistician attorneys and computer experts to find and make public any result which has been rigged.
“We at THE EMERGENCY COMMITTEE TO STOP THE STEAL WILL:
“– Demand inspection of the software used to program the voting machines in every jurisdiction...
“– Conduct targeted EXIT-POLLING in targeted states and targeted localities that we believe the Democrats could manipulate based on their local control...
“– Retain the countries foremost experts on voting machine fraud to help us both prevent and detect voting machine manipulation….”

And, of course, there was the ever-present Trump-trademarked fundraising grift:

“Under the law, you €”or your corporation €”can contribute in any amount. Won’t you send $10,000 for this vital program today? Of course $5,000 or even $2,500 would be a great help. If you can send $5,000 or $10,000 or more it would be a Godsend.”

Thus, by the time the 2020 election rolled around, Trump and Stone were running a well-oiled machine, at least when it came to preparing the ground to convince the public the election had been stolen from Trump.

The BBC compiled a series of Trump tweets throughout 2020, all designed to prepare his followers to believe his lies about a stolen election that fall.

The first came in April, as the pandemic was biting and then-President Trump’s approval numbers were collapsing:

GET RID OF BALLOT HARVESTING, IT IS RAMPANT WITH FRAUD. THE USA MUST HAVE VOTER I.D., THE ONLY WAY TO GET AN HONEST COUNT!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2020

Then, in June as the Democratic candidacy of Joe Biden was gaining traction:

RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2020

In August, he tweeted again to his millions of followers:

The Democrats are demanding Mail-In Ballots because the enthusiasm meter for Slow Joe Biden is the lowest in recorded history, and they are concerned that very few people will turn out to vote. Instead, they will search & find people, then “harvest” & return Ballots. Not fair!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 20, 2020

Around that time, in August — three months before the election — the BBC documented how Trump and Stone rolled out dozens of Facebook groups all using the same banner; millions joined them or got their “news” from these groups between August and the election:



Finally, the night of the election Trump again tweeted, laying the ground for both January 6th and a massive half-billion-dollar theft of money from his mostly older small-dollar donors:

We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 4, 2020

That’s how Trump has made over $390 million dollars just since he lost the election. And he’s still fundraising, fleecing the rubes: I get a dozen emails a week from him begging for money and telling me I can win a prize.

The big difference between 2000 and 2020 is that back in 2000 Stone’s plan worked, but it failed the second time around.

Stone’s “Brooks Brothers” goons succeeded in stopping the Florida vote count and cemented Bush’s ascent to the White House, even though he’d lost the election.

In 2020, on the other hand, the January 6th protests failed to intimidate members of Congress the way they had the Miami-Dade County vote-counters twenty years earlier.

Having succeeded in stealing an election with a mob once, it’s not surprising that Stone and Trump thought it might work again. They just couldn’t pull it off because Trump was so incompetent. The next Republican may not be.

Given that Republicans have used these “big lie” and intimidation tactics in three presidential elections in this century, Republican criminality should cease to surprise us. And, indeed, there’s a long tradition of criminal GOP presidential tactics.

Nixon blew up LBJ’s Vietnam negotiations (causing another 20,000 American deaths) to win the 1968 election, something LBJ and Republican Senate leader Everett Dirksen agreed at the time was treason. Reagan cut a deal with the Iranians in 1980 to sabotage Jimmy Carter, elevating him to the White House.

Bush’s dirty work was done by his brother in Florida and his dad’s friends on the Supreme Court, and in 2016 Trump had a big boost from Vladimir Putin, a boost that Trump tried his best to repay during his presidency by shutting down two of our cybersecurity agencies, withholding military support to Ukraine, and trying to pull the US out of NATO.

And here come the new outrages, just in time for the 2022 and 2024 elections.

At this moment multiple Republican-controlled states are considering laws giving their legislatures the power to override the vote of the people of the state and send the presidential electors of their choice to Washington, DC.

The trend started in Arizona last year, when, as NBC News noted:

“The Republican chair of Arizona's state House Ways and Means Committee introduced a bill Wednesday that would give the Legislature authority to override the secretary of state’s certification of its electoral votes.”

Meanwhile, 27 states with Republican Secretaries of State are most likely following the examples of Ohio, Texas and Georgia and purging people in “certain” zip codes from their voter rolls.

Five Republicans on the US Supreme Court legalized that in 2018; it was a decision that NBC News reported “discourages minority turnout”:

“At least a dozen other politically conservative states said they would adopt a similar practice if Ohio prevailed,” NBC reported.

Ever since ALEC got to work and the first mandatory voter ID law was put into place in both Georgia and Indiana in 2005, Republican-controlled states have been hard at work.

They’ve figured out dozens of ways to make it harder for working class people to vote at a convenient time, impossible in some cases for low income people to vote at all, and to throw up expensive and/or time-consuming barriers to voting for young and elderly people.

One of their favorites is criminalizing making mistakes while voting, like making it a crime to misspell your name or city, or to offer to carry your neighbor’s ballot to the post office, or to register to vote or sign a petition.

The laws are so all-over-the-place and almost always only enforced against Black and Brown people that entire communities have become reluctant to vote.

Stories of voting-related prison sentences spread fast, like Pamela Moses’, who got 6-years-and-a day in prison for registering to vote, not knowing she couldn’t in that state because she had once been a felon.

And that drop in voting is what Republicans have been calling for ever since Heritage Foundation co-founder Paul Weyrich, working for Ronald Reagan’s campaign in 1980, laid out the new GOP strategy to a group of Republicans in the basement of a Dallas church (check it out: it’s only 40 seconds and was a moment that changed history):

Fully 393 pieces of voting-related legislation intended to suppress the vote have been proposed in 39 state legislatures as of May of this year. One-hundred-forty-eight of them have passed in 27 states.

These Republicans haven’t fought fair in over 50 years.

Don’t expect them to this fall; and we must be on particular alert for the presidential election in 2024.

They’re gaming that one out as you read these words. We need to be, too.

https://www.rawstory.com/stop-the-steal-2657562135/