1/6 Insurrection Investigation

[Rick Plant]

Bill Stepien wasn't the voice of reason in Trump's ear as he claims -- he was on 'Team Coup': columnist



During today's testimony in front of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot on Monday, the panel heard about former Trump aides and legal professionals who purportedly tried to tell the former president that his claims of mass voter fraud in the 2020 election were bogus -- a group of people branded as "Team Normal" by Trump spokesperson Jason Miller.

Among those included in "Team Normal" is former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien. But according to The Bulwark's Tim Miller, Stepien "spent 5 years watching Donald Trump’s cruelty, pathological duplicity, irrationality, narcissistic personality disorder, buffoonery, and criminality."

"After that half-decade of evidence, this 'professional' decided to accept a role as the campaign manager for Trump’s flagging re-election campaign," Miller writes.

Miller says that Stepien must have known that Trump had no plans of leaving office in the event that he lost. "And yet on election night 2020, as this fate was coming to pass, Bill Stepien testified that he advised the president to give a measured statement about how it’s 'too early to tell,'" Miller writes. "He wanted Trump to be dignified about how the team was 'proud of the race we ran' and close by offering that he would have 'more to say' after the votes came in."

According to Miller, Stepien's failure to resign in protest, or to go to the press to tell them how "deluded" Trump was, or to testify against Trump during his impeachment hearings just shows that "Team Normal" wasn’t functionally any different from the “Ultra-Krakens.”

"They just didn’t want to get their hands dirty. They had professional reputations to keep," writes Miller.

The committee had planned to hear in-person testimony from Stepien but he canceled an hour before the hearing after his wife went into labor.

Trump started pushing what came to be known as his "Big Lie" around 2:30 am on November 4, 2020, making baseless allegations of fraud and prematurely declaring victory on the night of an election he ultimately lost to Joe Biden by seven million votes.

Former attorney General Bill Barr told the committee in previously unseen video testimony that Trump claimed there was major fraud underway "right out of the box on election night... before there was actually any potential of looking at evidence."

The committee says that initial claim grew quickly into a conspiracy to cling to power by Trump and his inner circle -- and a fundraising campaign that raised $250 million between election night and the insurrection.

The panel hopes to demonstrate that the clips from Stepien, Barr and others prove Trump should have known that what he was being told by his allies wasn't true.

AFP

[Rick Plant]

Ex-Fox News political editor tells Jan. 6 committee how Trump tried to exploit a peculiar voting anomaly



On Monday morning, June 13, former Fox News Political Editor Chris Stirewalt testified during a series of public hearings being held by the U.S. House of Representatives’ select committee on the January 6, 2021 insurrection. Stirewalt was working Fox News’ decision desk on Election Night 2020, and during his testimony, he recalled that then-President Donald Trump failed to understand some basic facts about the counting of election results.

Trump and his allies were furious when Stirewalt, on Election Night 2020, called Arizona for now-President Joe Biden. Fox News, in fact, called Arizona for Biden before other media outlets, although Stirewalt’s reporting was totally accurate: Biden won Arizona — a fact that was upheld and confirmed by subsequent vote recounts.

Stirewalt, a veteran of television news, did exactly what reporters are encouraged to do: He scooped the competition with his reporting on Arizona — and Fox News later “thanked” Stirewalt by firing him. MAGA World was furious with Fox News because of Stirewalt’s reporting, and the firing showed that pleasing Trump was more important to Fox News than having high-quality, accurate reporting.

During his testimony before the January 6 select committee, Stirewalt explained that Trump didn’t understand the concept known as the “red mirage” — which is when the vote count, at a certain point, is deceptively favorable to a Republican candidate because it is coming from a GOP-leaning area and the votes from the more Democratic places haven’t been counted yet.

Stirewalt testified, “We had gone to pains — and I’m proud of the pains we went — to make sure that we were informing viewers that this was going to happen. Because the Trump campaign and the president had made it clear they were going (to) try to exploit this anomaly.”

Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren asked Stirewalt, “So, this red mirage, that’s really what you expected to happen on Election Night?” And Stirewalt responded, “It happens every time.”

Take Pennsylvania, for example. Trump clearly failed to understand how the “red mirage” worked in that state, where things were looking hopeful for him when the votes were being counted in GOP-friendly parts of Central Pennsylvania. But the more the votes were counted in Philadelphia — which is overwhelmingly Democratic and hasn’t had a Republican mayor since the early 1950s — the better things looked for Biden, who ultimately won the state.

During his testimony, Stirewalt recalled how he defended his election reporting at Fox News even when Trumpsters were angrily railing against it.

Mediaite reporter Aidan McLaughlin explains, “The network faced the wrath of Trump over the Arizona call, and millions of his supporters ditched Fox for Trumpier alternatives like OANN and Newsmax that more forcefully denied Biden’s win. Fox’s efforts to regain that audience — through moves like firing Stirewalt and adding additional hours of pro-Trump opinion to their lineup — ended up working. The network is back in first place in the ratings after falling behind CNN and MSNBC for the first time in decades.”

ABC News Politics @ABCPolitics
Former Fox News political editor Chris Stirewalt notes then-Pres. Trump would have needed three states to change their election results due to allegedly fraudulent ballots to win.

“You're better off to play the Powerball than to have that come in.” https://abcn.ws/3Hlim8V

Watch Video: https://twitter.com/i/status/1536395688493432836

[Rick Plant]

Vets for Trump leader faces new charges after Jan. 6 committee reveals more evidence against him



The co-founder of the Vets for Trump organization is facing new charges after he was spotted in a video recording of a meeting between Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers chief Stewart Rhodes.

Joshua Macias was arrested in November 2020 after driving with a security guard to a Philadelphia vote center in a Hummer plastered with with QAnon paraphernalia and carrying guns and ammunition, and district attorney Larry Krasner announced new charges based on the Jan. 5, 2021, meeting in a parking garage, reported The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The district attorney's office filed four new charges against Macias -- including attempted interference with primaries and elections, and hindering the performance of a duty -- based on new evidence revealed by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Video footage shown during the select committee's first public meeting shows Macias meeting with Tarrio and Rhodes, who have each been charged with seditious conspiracy for their alleged roles in planning the U.S. Capitol riot.

The 43-year-old Macias and alleged conspirator Antonio LaMotta, 63, are still awaiting trial on charges related their post-election arrest, which investigators believe had stopped a possible mass shooting linked to threats against former city commissioner Al Schmidt.

Schmidt testified Monday before the select committee's second public hearing, where he described the increasingly violent threats he faced after Trump pressured election officials in an effort to overturn his loss.

https://www.rawstory.com/joshua-macias/

[Rick Plant]

Exclusive: Rep. Jamie Raskin says Trump either knew he was lying or was mentally incapacitated

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told reporters after the second day of the House Select Committee hearings about the Jan.6 attack on Congress that the only two options for Donald Trump are that he knew he was lying about the 2020 election fraud or he was mentally incapacitated.

Testifying under oath, former Attorney General Bill Barr commented that if the former president truly believed the things he was saying then he was "detached from reality."

Raskin explained to Raw Story that the committee has chosen to believe that the former president was in his right mind during this period and thus understood what he was doing.

"It's very important for everyone to see that not only was the 'big lie' a big lie, but Donald Trump must have known it was a big lie unless as William Barr put it, 'he was detached from reality. But we're going to assume that the president of the United States was connected to reality. And in that case, he had to listen to the attorney general of the United States, all of the White House lawyers, and the campaign lawyers and campaign advisers — they were all telling him the same thing. It was over. He'd lost the election."

Instead, however, the former president parroted unsubstantiated claims, and conspiracy theories, and then told his followers to come to Washington, D.C.to fight for his presidency.

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-knew-lies-mentally-incapacitated/


Official draws a line between the months of Trump's lies and ​the Jan. 6 Capitol attack

Speaking to Raw Story after the second of four House Select Hearings on the attack on Congress, Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) connected the dots about how important the testimony was about the plot to overthrow the election and the violence seen on Jan. 6.

The committee walked through many Republican witnesses who testified under oath that they told former President Donald Trump that his conspiracies about the 2020 election being stolen were false. Over and over, the committee showed former officials who worked at both the state and federal level who investigated Trump's claims of fraud. Each of the witnesses said that they were able to prove that the claims were false.

Those officials ultimately conveyed to the former president that his public comments were subsequently untrue, yet he continued to voice them. As the Electoral College certification date approached, Trump then pushed his supporters to stand up for the election in Washington, D.C.

As participants have testified in their own trials, they were called by the president and they heeded that call.

Sherrill, who was in the gallery during the Jan. 6 certification process, told Raw Story that none of them fully realized just how much planning took place to motivate Trump's supporters into action.

"I think there's a narrative that this was just sort of a normal protest turned violent," said Sherrill. "And I think what the committee is showing with this evidence is that there is there is a lot of forethought and planning into trying to overturn the results across the country from the American electorate — and that that began as far back as September (2020)."

She went on to quote former Attorney General Bill Barr, who testified that Trump was uninterested in the facts, regardless of how many people around him made it clear that the election was legitimate.

Sherrill called Trump's unwillingness to concede to losing an election an "existential threat to our government... What's troubling he wasn't coming into this trying to get to the truth. He wasn't coming into this in an attempt to protect our elections. He wasn't coming into this with what we would call a good faith attempt to ensure the will of the people was executed as far as who the president of the United States would be, but rather, throwing out all evidence based in fact and really just trying to search for any means of overturning the election."

According to the New Jersey congresswoman, we're only the beginning of what the committee will present to help connect those dots between Trump knowingly lying, and then motivating his supporters to act on those lies.

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-from-eleection-lies-to-violence/

[Rick Plant]

Key takeaways from second Jan. 6 hearing: Barr emerges as central figure

Former Attorney General William Barr, who appeared only in recorded video interviews, offered some of the most riveting new testimony.



WASHINGTON — Listening to Donald Trump spout outlandish claims of election fraud, Attorney General William Barr began to wonder if the 45th president of the United States was in his right mind, he told the Jan. 6 committee in a video-recorded deposition.

The two were meeting privately on December 14, 2020, and Trump purported to have new evidence that Dominion voting machines were rigged, Barr testified. He would get a second term after all, he told Barr. The president then handed Barr a report from a cyber-security firm and as Barr flipped through the pages, he saw nothing that gave credence to such a startling claim.

“I was somewhat demoralized,” Barr told House Jan. 6 committee investigators, “because I thought, ‘Boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has, you know, lost contact with — he’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff.’”

Barr's testimony — which came only via pre-recorded video — proved to be some of the most riveting from the second hearing, putting the former Trump appointee at the center of the committee's case against Trump.

Barr’s concern over Trump’s mental state — and how a parade of aides and advisers were trying to convince him that he lost the 2020 election — was the central theme from the committee’s second public hearing on Monday.

Other takeaways included:

Trump was urged not to declare victory prematurely

On the night of the election, Trump’s closest advisers gathered in the White House and debated what he should say publicly given that it might be days before the winner was declared.

With votes still being counted, some of his senior advisers believed it was too early for him to call the race. At least one told him so. Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager, suggested to the president that he give a more guarded statement until it was clear who had won. Trump didn’t heed the advice.

“He thought I was wrong. He told me so,” Stepien said in videotaped testimony aired by the committee.

Trump instead took an approach favored by his longtime confidant, Rudy Giuliani.  The former New York City mayor was at the White House that night. In a conversation with a handful of Trump advisers near the Map Room — where Franklin Roosevelt monitored troop movements during World War II — he called for declaring victory.

Jason Miller, a Trump campaign official, told the committee that Giuliani said, “‘We won. They’re stealing it from us. We need to go say that we won.’ And, essentially, that anyone who didn’t agree with that position was being weak.” Miller, whose testimony was played in video by the committee, said that Giuliani was intoxicated. (A lawyer for Giuliani denied he was inebriated.)

When Trump delivered his speech, he bluntly — and falsely — told his supporters:  “Frankly, we did win this election.”

Panel says Trump engaged in ‘the big ripoff’

The Jan. 6 committee is also tracking the money. One big reason why Trump and his allies continued to push false election fraud claims long after the courts had ruled against Trump was to continue raising millions from fervent Trump supporters, committee members argued.

The committee has previously hinted that money could be a theme that runs throughout the hearings, including who paid for the Jan. 6 rally.

Jan. 6 Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., told reporters after the hearing that more details about Trump’s fundraising efforts will be published in the committee’s final report.

"The big lie was also a big ripoff,” said one committee member, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.

In fact, Lofgren said the Trump campaign sent millions of fundraising emails to its backers, between Election Day and Jan. 6, claiming that a “left-wing mob” was undermining the election and calling on supporters to “step-up” and “fight back” to protect election integrity.

Supporters were urged to donate to Trump’s “election defense fund” but the committee said it found no such committee or fund existed. Instead, much of the $250 million raised went to Trump’s new super PAC, called the Save America PAC, launched just the days after the election.

The Jan. 6 panel said Save America funneled millions of dollars of contributions to Trump-friendly organizations and entities. That included $1 million to the Conservative Partnership Institute, a charitable foundation closely linked to Trump’s last chief of staff, Mark Meadows; another $1 million to the America First Policy Institute, a closely-aligned advocacy  group which employs several former Trump administration officials; more than $200,000 to the Trump Hotels chain; and more than $5 million to the events company that produced Trump’s Jan. 6 rally before the attack.

“The [fundraising] emails continued through Jan. 6, even as President Trump spoke on the Ellipse. Thirty minutes after the last fundraising email was sent, the Capitol was breached,” Amanda Wick, senior investigative counsel for the Jan. 6 committee, said in a video during the hearing

Trump’s 2020 campaign was a hot mess

Stepien took over the campaign from Brad Parscale just four months before the election.

Though the campaign would raise $774 million, Stepien said that when he became campaign manager he inherited an operation that was at a low point in the polls and both “structurally and fiscally deficient.” He set about “fixing things that could be fixed with 115 days left in the campaign.”
Trump rebuffed basic campaign tactics that would have maximized his chances. He proved stubborn when it came to mail-in voting.

At one point, Stepien testified, he called a meeting with Trump and House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy to persuade the president that mail-in voting could be an asset. McCarthy backed him up.

Stepien’s point was that Republicans had built a grassroots campaign apparatus that could mobilize people to vote by mail. Also, it was risky to bet so heavily on in-person voting. But Trump was unmoved.

“The president’s mind was made up,” Stepien said.

Committee stays on message

With no dissenting voices on the panel,  the Jan. 6 committee has demonstrated the benefit of having an entire panel operating from the same playbook.

Republicans chose not to seat anyone on the committee after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected two congressmen they’d wanted to serve. The committee is made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans who are both vocal Trump critics. As a consequence, the panel has been able to stay extremely disciplined and on message as it builds its case against the 45th president.

A typical House committee might see members in the minority interrupt the chairman, cross examine key witnesses, or introduce evidence that contradicts the majority’s narrative. But that hasn’t been the case here.

Add to that the highly scripted format, and the first two hearings have not resembled the productions Congress is accustomed to.

The Jan. 6 panel has presented video montages of the Capitol riot, taped interviews of committee staff who helped connect the dots for viewers, and friendly questioning of witnesses like prominent GOP election attorney Ben Ginsberg.

The Trump campaign “did have their day in court,” Ginsberg testified. “In no instance did a court find that the charges of election fraud were real.” Ginsberg didn’t face any followup questions.

The only surprise Monday came before the hearing got going: Stepien, the star witness of the day, canceled his appearance after his wife went into labor. After a brief delay, the committee regrouped and moved forward with the hearing using video-taped testimony from Stepien during his earlier deposition.

Lofgren said the panel does not need Stepien to give live testimony at a future hearing given his previous “very extensive interview.”

The committee’s presentation is the Trump impeachment trial that never happened

The first two hearings are shaping up to look like the Trump impeachment trial that his accusers wanted last year but never got.

That may not be an accident.

One of the committee members is Rep. Jamie Raskin, D., Md., who led the team of House managers who served as the prosecution in Trump’s second trial.

Trump’s impeachment proceeded on a fast track that made it difficult for Democrats to collect and present evidence laying out Trump’s precise role in the scheme to overturn the election. Plus they had little power to force the sitting president to turn over records, whereas the National Archives has been much more compliant after taking custody once he left office.

Basic questions about Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 went unanswered during the trial. For example, when senators asked what steps Trump took to end the violence at the Capitol, one of Trump’s lawyers made reference to a tweet he had sent out asking people to stay “peaceful.”  Trump was acquitted.

The committee is offering a richer account of what happened that day. During the first hearing, Rep. Liz Cheney, R., Wyo., vice-chair of the Jan. 6 committee, said that Trump began yelling and got “really angry at advisers who told him he needed to be doing something more” to call off the attack.

Watch videos in link below:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/jan-6-hearing-committee-takeaways-day-two-rcna32994

[Rick Plant]

'Admissible in any future trial': Analysts nail Trump's 12-page Jan. 6 response rant
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-statement-admissible-in-court/

[Rick Plant]

Jan. 6 committee abruptly postpones Wednesday hearing
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/jan-6-committee-abruptly-postpones-wednesday-hearing-rcna33433