The political crime beat, that's what I cover. Crook:
A
Nevada Republican politician who ran unsuccessfully two years ago for
state treasurer was found guilty Thursday of using funds raised for a
statue honoring a slain police officer for personal costs, including plastic surgery.
A jury convicted Michele Fiore,
a former Las Vegas city councilwoman and state lawmaker, of six counts
of federal wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, KLAS-TV in Las Vegas reported. The weeklong trial in U.S. District Court in Nevada began last week.
She stole money for a dead police officer's family and spent it on plastic surgery for herself. How big of a sack of s**t do you have to be to do that? Seriously. Matthew Chapman (Raw Story) notes:
While
serving in the legislature, she proclaimed that cancer is a "fungus,"
said "hot little girls" need to carry guns on college campuses, and
suggested pimps should have their genitals cut off. She also has ties to far-right militias and has proclaimed that if a police officer points a gun at you, you should point a gun right back.
The wire fraud trial saw damning testimony from a number of people, including the sitting Republican governor, Joe Lombardo, who was the Clark County sheriff when officers Fiore pretended to solicit memorial donations for were killed.
Fiore's
daughter, Sheena Siegel, testified in her mother's defense. However,
she not only failed to provide anything exonerating, but may also have incriminated herself on the witness stand.
Presiding District Judge Jennifer Dorsey, who was apparently unaware of
an immunity agreement Siegel had with prosecutors, went on to strike her testimony from the proceedings.
According to The Nevada Independent, each charge carries a sentence of up to 20 years. Fiore will be sentenced in January.
She needs to spend at least 20 years in prison. What she did was so wrong and so disgusting.
A former Republican county clerk who
promoted election conspiracy theories and tampered with voting machines
in Colorado was sentenced Thursday to nine years in prison during a
hearing in which the judge in the case called her a "charlatan."
Tina
Peters, who denies that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election over
Donald Trump, was found guilty in August of seven counts. They included
attempting to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit criminal
impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, failure to comply with
an order from the Secretary of State and violation of duty. Three were
felonies and four were misdemeanors.
[. . .]
Judge Matthew Barrett called Peters one of the most defiant defendants he has ever seen.
“You
are no hero. You abused your position – and you’re a charlatan who
used, and is still using your prior position, to peddle a snake oil
that’s been proven to be junk time and time again,” Barrett said. “Your
lies are well-documented and these convictions are serious. I’m
convinced you’d do it all over again if you could.”
"Your
lies are well documented, and these convictions are serious," District
Judge Matthews Barrett said. "I'm convinced you would do it all over
again if you could. You're as defiant as a defendant as this Court has
never seen."
"There
are many things in my mind that are crystal clear about this case, you
are no hero," Barrett added. "You abused your position, and you're a
charlatan who used and is still using your prior position in office to
peddle a snake oil that's been proven to be junk, time and time again."
Barrett called the damage done by Peters to undermine the integrity of elections "immeasurable."
Before
being sentenced, Peters took the stand to ask for probation, and told
the judge she "never did anything with malice" and believed she was
serving the people in Mesa County.
[. . .]
The
former Mesa County clerk, who gave a lengthy and emotional speech, told
the judge she would be willing to not talk about elections anymore if
sentenced to probation.
No,
you broke the law and you need to go to prison. Furthermore, if you
had been sentenced to probation with the agreement that you never talk
about elections again, you would've immediately appealed to a higher
court and claim your free speech rights were being infringed upon.
You're a liar and a grifter and we are all on to you.
Friday, October 4, 2024. We look at the importance of the coalition
behind Kamala and we note the growing criticism of 'independent' media's
failure to serve and recognize Black people.
Starting with Lawrence O'Donnell last night on MSNBC.
Liz Cheney campaigned with Kamala Harris in Wisconsin yesterday.
"Thank you, Liz!" chants greeted her. Like Adam Kinzinger, Liz is one of many Republicans endorsing Kamala.
I
love Jon Stewart and have known him for years. He is very funny and
that's his first obligation -- I understand that. There are two times
where we did not note him here this election cycle. I didn't want to
take part in the national stupidity of 'why violence, why!' You preach
violence, you sew it, karma comes after you. Live by the sword, die by
the sword, I didn't invent the phrase.
So we
skipped that. The other we skipped was the Dick Cheney insult. I am
not a Cheney fan -- to put it mildly. We are on completely oposite
sides and always will be and I will never forgive him for his actions
regarding our attack on Iraq.
Jon was going for the joke and I get that and have no ill will towards him.
But
I do not attack anyone from the opposite side of the aisle for
endorsing Kamala Harris for president. I have many policy reasons for
endorsing Kamala. I also think she has the skill, training and wisdom
to be president -- I'm basing that on having known Kamala for many
years. And for any late to the party, Kamala and I are not friends.
She was in a relationship with a friend of mine and I just didn't like
her (probably feeling protective -- and maybe even territorial -- with
regards to my friend). But when we started calling for Joe Biden to
step aside, I was dictating the snapshot and going over some of the
possibilities. I wouldn't have thought she would be a valid
possibility. It's while dictating the snapshot -- and you can read it
-- that I really thought about what her strengths are and what they are
not and realize that not only is she a worthy possibility but she's
actually the best possibility.
So I endorse her
for her policies and also for her strong traits that argue she could be
a great president -- she's immensely qualified from a resume
perspective but I've also seen her under pressure and she has the skill
set required and the temperament needed for the office.
But
before there was Kamala's run, in 2023, I said here that I was voting
for the Democrat whoever it ended up being. I said that all of 2023 and
I said that in 2024 -- long after everyone announced it was Joe and
that that-was-that. No, it wasn't.
Our
country's future is at stake which is why I would vote for any Democrat
to do my part to ensure that Donald Trump wasn't given the chance to
destroy the country. We were talking about, for example, Project 2025
here back in 2023.
Donald is a threat to our democracy.
And I see that. A lot of people see that.
Adam
and I would not agree on everything, Liz and I would not agree on
everything. Dick Cheney and I agree on pretty much nothing. One thing I
do applaud him for is taking this stand because it's right for the
country but also because it's right for a parent.
We
have seen Donald's threats to attack Liz Cheney. Dick doesn't have to
say anything. He could be silent. Bully Boy Bush is being silent
(though he hates Donald Trump and even he thinks Donald is a threat to
democracy). So Dick could have been silent.
But
that's his daughter that's being attacked and threatened by Donald.
And Dick has spoken out and I am glad he's on the side of democracy but
I'm also happy to see that he would defend his daughter because I'm
aware of just how many Republican politicians fear Donald getting back
in the White House and yet they stay silent for various reasons.
So I'm not going to make fun of Dick Cheney for doing the right thing.
That is what so many Americans around the country are trying to do.
We are trying to save our republic.
We are trying to defend our democracy.
We are trying to save our nation.
And
that is why you are seeing people coming together who may have nothing
in common other than wanting to defend and save the United States.
In this election cycle, that's enough. That's more than enough.
And I'm thankful for everyone willing to stand together and defend our country.
That's
Liz Cheney speaking in Wisconsin and a speech worth hearing but what
should especially resonate is Donald's efforts to force Mike Pence to
help him overturn the legal election.
I'm not
a Mike Pence fan. We mainly just noted him here when he visited Iraq
in 2019. I wasn't impressed. But for the post-2020 election, I have to
wonder why he hasn't received some official honor from the US
government?
He certainly deserves it.
I
did not rush to judgment on the January 6th incident. Legal terms
should be applied carefully and not in the heat of the moment is how I
feel. As one piece of evidence after another has emerged, this was an
attempted coup that Donald plotted. It was supposed to be violence.
Violence was supposed to create hysteria and stop the proceedings. He
spent weeks working on gathering a mob and then he incited the mob on
January 6th. He was willing to destroy our country to get four more
years in office. That's a disgusting motive and it's undeniable that is
what he was doing.
The days after January 6th,
I noted here reaptedly -- because I go cold when people try to inflame
-- that the story here was that the system worked.
And it did work.
I was right about that.
But I wasn't right on why it worked.
It
worked, as the facts now clearly attest, because Mike Pence believed in
democracy and loved his country. Again, he deserves our nation's
highest honor and I don't know why he hasn't received it. I hope he
will under a Kamala Harris presidency. If, heaven forbid, Donald wins
this election, I hope one of President Joe Biden's last actions will be
to award Mike Pence with some honor recognizing the patriotism that
Pence demonstrated.
I am very thankful for Mike
Pence. And I am very thankful for all the people coming together
around the effort to save this country by voting for Kamala.
In
this week's vice presidential debate, JD Vance refused to answer
questions about the insurrection and insisted he was "focused on the
future."
As though an attempted coup less than four years ago is ancient history?
This
goes to MAGA's hatred for books and knowledge. The Trump cult can't
stand books or knowledge or teaching. They are the people who, like JD
Vance, complain and whine about fact checking. Reality is what MAGA
wants to help Donald destroy.
And that's why this is Donald's war on America.
This
country has struggled and struggled from the beginning. Our history is
not perfect or without blame. And that's why we learn from the past
and that's why we strive for better.
And that's why people who believe in this country can come together with Kamala to try to save this country.
I don't usually question other people's love for this country.
It's clear Donald doesn't love the country -- or anything or anyone but himself.
But
did you pay attention to our so-called left media? I'm not talking
about corporate media which is slimed as "left media" by some -- I wish
it were left media. I'm talking about DEMOCRACY NOW!, COMMON DREAMS, IN
THESE TIMES, et al.
Yesterday wasn't about Jack Straw's legal filing for them.
I don't know how you ignore that except you just don't care about this country.
A former federal prosecutor said Thursday night that the special counsel
in former President Donald Trump's election subversion case may have a
key response to the MAGA leader's latest attempt to have some of the
charges against him dismissed.
Trump
is now trying to get obstruction charges tossed from his federal
election conspiracy case, arguing that the Supreme Court's recent
decision in Fischer v. United States, which erased obstruction charges for January 6 rioters, also applies to him.
But
that's not a done deal, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig explained
to CNN's Kaitlan Collins on Thursday evening, because special counsel Jack Smith, who recently made an enormous filing
detailing explosive evidence against Trump in the case, has one key way
he can make a distinction between Trump and the rioters at issue in the
Supreme Court's decision.
So RAW STORY is covering the issue.
We
hear criticism that Donald's insane mutterings are getting "sane
washed" by reporters who try to justify the remarks or down play them or
try to instead report what they think he was trying to say. And that's
wrong.
But it's also wrong that DEMOCRACY NOW!, COMMON DREAMS, IN THESE TIMES and so many others are ignoring what's at stake.
They don't like Kamala, these outlets. They're too busy grudge f**king America to argue on its behalf.
Many
of them are telling and hoping Americans will waste their vote on Jill
Stein. She's not going to win and you're throwing your vote away
because you're supporting MAGA and Trump because that's who has provided
the legal support and the financial support to Jill Stein.
Your
inflamed over Gaza to the point that you can't see reality. Trump's
not going to help Palestinians. He would make things much, much
worse.
Not only are they voting to harm Palestinians,
they're also harming support for Palestinians -- support in the US.
They don't know what they're doing. And when those of us who were
covering it regularly (here, it was daily) stepped back because the Jill
Stein crazies lied to America that it was supporting Gaza or supporting
Kamala Harris, we saw how interest in the issue caved.
Because they don't know how to sell the issue, they don't know to structure the narrative.
The
killing in Gaza has not stopped. But most Americans are not as tied to
the issue as they were. It's become a I HATE AMERICA movement with the
crazies in charge. And hate is never going to rally good people. It
can frighten and trick stupid people -- and often does.
So
they offer their hate. And they join with other haters like Glenn
Greenwald who can't shut up about, for example, Dick Cheney. And people
do realize that Glenn helped sell the Iraq War, right? He was for it.
And yet today, he's the virgin protecting his maidenhead from Dick. Ed
Snowden's also attacking Kamala Harris. From Russia. As is Tara
Reade. From Russia. Seems the more you hate America, the more you
flirt with Donald Trump.
I don't know what COMMON
DREAMS, DEMOCRACY NOW! and others think there future is. I know that
one of the biggest things we're discussing right now -- those of us who
have funded independent media -- is their behavior currently. And we're
not planning on funding this garbage again.
We're a
month away from a US election and DEMOCRACY NOW ignored Jack Smith's
filings to give us a film ALJAZEERA made and broadcast about another
country.
In a Donald Trump administration, other nations will not be pressured regarding human rights abuses or anything else.
I
rightly criticized DEMOCRACY NOW! in 2009 for doing an inauguration
party for Barack Obama and I had spent 2008 noting how the program
tilted the scales and flat out lied -- Melissa Lie Face Harris you are
not forgotten nor do I ever forget that Amy Goodman knew she was
campaigning for Barack -- knew it by appearing on Rev Jesse Jackson's
program with Lie Face -- and then brought her on DEMOCRACY NOW! and lied
to the audience by presenting Lie Face as a disinterested college
professor.
That I called out.
That's not journalism and it's nothing to be proud of.
They should be ashamed to this day.
And
I am not calling for them to provide that kind of treatment to Kamala
Harris campaign. (Although it is worth noting that they and other
outlets celebrated Barack Obama as a Black candidate -- remember David
Lindorf's infamous quote? -- while today refusing to celebrate Kamala as
the same.) All I'm asking is that they cover the news, actually cover
the news. And Jack Straw's filing is news. And Myrlie Evers-Williams
endorsing Kamala Harris was news. But DEMOCRACY NOW! couldn't even note
that in a headline -- despite having had this Civil Rights pioneer, the
widow of Medgar Everts on their program before.
You're not doing journalism.
So-called
'independent' media -- that begs constantly for money -- either whores
for their favored candidate or they ignore the one that they don't care
about.
There's no balance, there's nothing between the two extremes. And this is not journalism and should not be mistaken for it.
As Stacey Abrams notes in the video above, "There could not be a starker choice."
Stacey
Abrams . . . who's been a guest multiple times on DEMOCRACY NOW! in the
past. But endorsing Kamala means she's vanished.
I've
talked about why I support the coalition building around Kamala. Maybe
Amy doesn't? Could be. But how is this coalition not worthy of a
debate or segment on DEMOCRACY NOW!?
We know who
Donald Trump is. We know the damage he has done. We know the damage he
wants to do. I don't see the point in ever giving another dime to
DEMOCRACY NOW! or any of the other outlets that are working to get
Donald back in the White House.
What
I'm hearing as I speak with one group after another every day this week
is that 'independent' media doesn't care about Black people. They
complain about the way DN! and others refuse to celebrate Kamala Harris'
run as historic, they complain about how their views and their opinions
are not being embraced. I'm going to note Betty's post from last night:
At the end of C.I.'s snapshot --
which I'll repost in full at the end -- she notes Will Bunch's column
about Trump's desired "purge." I want to note that here to give him
credit for writing about it because very few White people have. C.I.
and I have covered it -- see my "" -- and C.I. not just written of it
but also posted a huge number of video reports about it and you should
have noticed that the people addressing this very serious topic in
videos were overwhelmingly Black. As both C.I. and I have noted, that's
the community that would be hardest targeted in Trump's purge. So
thank you to Will Bunch -- who is White -- for writing about it.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump recently claimed that
"one real tough, nasty" and "violent" day of police brutality would
bring an immediate end to crime in the nation, raising alarms for
experts on authoritarianism about the danger to democracy should Trump's
remarks ever translate into policy.
[. . .]
Geoff
Eley, a University of Michigan professor of contemporary history who
studies nationalism and the far-right, told Salon that Americans should
take Trump's comments seriously even if it's often hard to know his true
intent.
"We
need to take his comments very, very seriously, partly because this
time he's bull-in-a-china-shop determined to get his way, partly because
(by contrast with 2016) he's surrounded by a core of smart and
ruthlessly committed helpers and ideologues, whose ideas are most
definitely coherent, thought-through and focused," Eley said in an
email.
Trump's
"political accomplishment," Eley said, has been in imparting to large
swaths of the country that "democracy, proceduralism, civility, speaking
across differences, and the rule of law have outlived their purposes —
they're fictions, illusions, tricks, and they no longer matter."
Despite
Trump's insistence both at the rally and throughout his campaign that
crime "has gone through the roof," data indicates that the opposite is
true.
Recently released FBI stats show
a 2.4% decrease in property crime between 2022 and 2023. Preliminary
data comparing periods of 2024 ranging from the first quarter to the
first half to the same periods of 2023 also indicated a drop in violent
crime following the COVID-19 isolation-era uptick, suggesting this year
will see a continued decline in the nation's crime rate.
I
am sick of the failing White politician trying to scapegoat to win an
election. Donald Trump's entire campaign is a Willie Horton ad. For
those new to the Willie Horton aspect of a campaign, from WIKIPEDIA:
During the 1988 presidential election, US Vice President and Republican nominee George H. W. Bush brought Horton up frequently during his campaign against Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis who
was the governor of Massachusetts. He was commonly referred to as
"Willie" Horton, despite never having gone by the nickname. The renaming
of the African-American Horton has been speculated to be the product
of racist stereotyping.[2] A prominent PAC ad for Bush about Horton has been widely characterized as a textbook example of dog-whistle politics.[3][4][5][6][7]
In other words, when you can't win on your own, demonize Black people.
And
thank you to Tatyana but, again, she's Black. It would be nice to see
more people like Will Bunch -- more non-Blacks -- grabbing this very
serious story. Instead, it comes off like yet again Black people are
on their own. We're expected to speak on behalf of all groups but when
we're targeted White left goes silent too many times. But thank you to
Tatyana and to every Black person who
has rightly raised their voices to call Trump's deranged proposal out.
Black
people are already the most targeted with police violence. Trump is
threatening us and he's threatening us because it feeds his racist
base. It plays to their hatred and racism and resentment. He's
painting a target on our backs.
A white Republican running for Congress in Nevada was caught on tape Monday telling supporters, “I’m from North Las Vegas. I’m not worried about Black people.”
John Lee is
seeking to represent Nevada’s 4th Congressional District, where 15
percent of the population is Black. His opponent, incumbent Democrat Steven Horsford, was recently named chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, a promotion that drew ridicule from Lee, formerly mayor of North Las Vegas.
“They made him chair of the Black Caucus. Whoop-de-doo,” Lee said on an audiotape obtained by HuffPost.
Lee
went on to denigrate the CBC, following a pattern of insults over the
last year. In August, he said they were comparable to a “blond-haired
caucus,” and he had previously called the group “stupid.”
[. . .]
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Lauryn Fanguen condemned Lee’s remarks in a statement.
“John
Lee’s shocking comments about Black Nevadans and CBC Chair Steven
Horsford are not only deeply offensive but betray an utter disdain for a
large swath of the district he claims to want to represent,” Fanguen said.
Ava
and I have spent a lot of time in Georgia with Betty (Betty is
exclusively speaking Georgia -- her home state -- and has taken time off
from her job to do so).
Donald Trump is using Black people,
threats against them, insults and targeting them for violence. And
that's disgusting. But where's our 'independent' media in this? They
aren't rushing to defend.
We were speaking -- Betty, Ava
and I -- near Johns Creek yesterday to a group and a Black woman from
Johns Creek stated she felt as though the left media -- she named COMMON
DREAMS -- was playing the oppression olympics and giving all this
credence to issues outside this country while ignoring the very threats
to Black people in our country.
Betty is correct in her
post that Donald's doing dog whistles and Willie Horton-ing Black
people. He's playing to and promoting racism. And apparently
White-White-White 'independent' media can't grasp that -- can't grasp
what Black people are seeing and feeling.
Let's note that THE BLACK COMMENTATOR is back from its summer hiatus:
Nearly
two months ago, CNN reached out to Melania Trump’s book publisher to
request an interview with the former first lady ahead of her upcoming
memoir. After several exchanges about a possible interview, the
publisher sent an unusual demand last week: an interview would cost
$250,000.
[. . .]
Last month, CNN revealed that
the former first lady spoke at two political fundraisers for the Log
Cabin Republicans this year, and she was paid $237,500 for an April
event, according to former President Donald Trump’s latest financial disclosure form. The payment was listed as a “speaking engagement.”
Records
show Melania Trump was also paid $250,000 for a Log Cabin Republican
event in December 2022, one of three payments for $250,000 or more that
she received for speaking that month, just after the former president
announced he was running for reelection, according to Donald Trump’s
prior year financial disclosure form.
I think Tina Turner put it best.
Melania's a private dancer, dancer for money.
Why?
Maybe
she needs some cash to leave Donald. Or maybe, as C.I. has repeatedly
pointed out for some time, Donald is living on loans and if banks ever
started calling those in, Donald would be broke. That would explain
those tacky watches and her tacky book.
Grift, grift, grift.
My
mother said I need two things. First about, Melania. In her book, she
claims to be for reproductive rights. So what -- that's what my mother
says. She said that they got used to the nonsense with the Reagans --
Nancy's for abortions!!!! Barbara Bush is for abortions!!!! Etc, etc.
Well the First Lady doesn't vote in Congress and doesn't sign anything
into law. My mom says Nancy Reagan truly was pro-choice. The others
pretended to give their husbands cover.
Second,
she and my father are not voting for Jill Stein. This will be the
first election they've voted in since 1996 where they didn't vote
Green. Like myself, they see Jill Stein as a con artist and a liar.
They'll be voting for Kamala Harris.
Thursday, October 3, 2024. New details emerge about Donald Trump's attempted January 5th coup.
Starting with the news regarding Donald Trump's attempted coup. Madeline Halpert (BBC NEWS) reports
on Special Counsel Jack Smith's new filing, "The new 165-page
document presents the
clearest view yet of how Mr Smith's team would pursue their case, having
tweaked the wording of their charges after the Supreme Court's
intervention. It gives details of
Trump's alleged scheme, including his actions when his supporters rioted
at the US Capitol building on 6 January 2021. It also outlines the
efforts of Mike Pence, the vice-president at the time, to talk him
down." It outlines a lot more than just that and, in being released
raises a central question that will get to in a bit. But let's all
remember that in Tuesday's vice presidential debate, Miss Sassy JD Vance refused to admit that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.
Tim Walz: There's one, there's one, though, that this one is troubling to me.
And I say that because I think we need to tell the story. Donald Trump
refused to acknowledge this. And the fact is, is that I don't think we
can be the frog in the pot and let the boiling water go up. He was very
clear. I mean, he lost this election, and he said he didn't. One hundred
and forty police officers were beaten at the Capitol that day, some
with the American flag. Several later died. And it wasn't just in there.
In Minnesota, a group gathered on the state capitol grounds in St. Paul
and said we're marching to the Governor's residence and there may be
casualties. The only person there was my son and his dog, who was rushed
out crying by state police. That issue. And Mike Pence standing there
as they were chanting, hang Mike Pence. Mike Pence made the right
decision. So, Senator, it was adjudicated over and over and over. I
worked with kids long enough to know, and I said, as a football coach,
sometimes you really want to win, but the democracy is bigger than
winning an election. You shake hands and then you try and do everything
you can to help the other side win. That's, that's what was at stake
here. Now, the thing I'm most concerned about is the idea that
imprisoning your political opponents already laying the groundwork for
people not accepting this. And a President's words matter. A President's
words matter. People hear that. So I think this issue of settling our
differences at the ballot box, shaking hands when we lose, being honest
about it, but to deny what happened on January 6, the first time in
American history that a President or anyone tried to overturn a fair
election and the peaceful transfer of power. And here we are four years
later in the same boat. I will tell you this, that when this is over, we
need to shake hands, this election, and the winner needs to be the
winner. This has got to stop. It's tearing our country apart.
[. . .]
Tim Walz: January 6th was not Facebook ads. And I think a revisionist
history on this. Look, I don't understand how we got to this point, but
the issue was that happened. Donald Trump can even do it. And all of us
say there's no place for this. It has massive repercussions. This idea
that there's censorship to stop people from doing, threatening to kill
someone, threatening to do something, that's not censorship. Censorship
is book banning. We've seen that. We've seen that brought up. I just
think for everyone tonight, and I'm going to thank Senator Vance. I
think this is the conversation they want to hear, and I think there's a
lot of agreement. But this is one that we are miles apart on. This was a
threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen. And it
manifested itself because of Donald Trump's inability to say, he is
still saying he didn't lose the election. I would just ask that. Did he
lose the 2020 election?
JD Vance: Tim, I'm focused on the future. Did
Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of
the 2020 COVID situation?
Tim Walz: That is a damning. That is a damning non answer.
And it's even more of a damning non-answer as a result of the release of Straw's filing. Here's last night's NEWSHOUR (PBS).
We're learning previously undisclosed details tonight
about former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020
election.
A newly unsealed 165-page court filing from the
Department of Justice argues the former president should still face
trial even after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled presidents have immunity
for official acts.
NPR's Carrie Johnson and former U.S. attorney Mary McCord are following the latest developments. They join me now.
Welcome to you both.
So,
Carrie, what do we know about why this filing was unsealed now by Judge
Tanya Chutkan, and what stood out to you as you made your way through
it?
Carrie Johnson, NPR:
Yes, the Justice Department made this filing in response to what the Supreme Court did this past summer.
The
Supreme Court ruled that Trump and future presidents do enjoy
substantial immunity from prosecution for official acts. But the special
counsel, Jack Smith, and his team maintain that Trump was acting as a
political candidate and not the president of the United States when he
allegedly attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
And
this court filing today was filed under seal a short while ago. There's
been some back-and-forth about how much the public should be able to
see. And just this afternoon, Judge Tanya Chutkan mostly sided with
prosecutors and released this filing with some redactions.
There
are some new details in here based on grand jury testimony and notes
that people like former Vice President Mike Pence took about his
interactions with former President Donald Trump. There's some really
interesting mentions of notes that Pence took about this all being up to
Pence in the later part of 2020 and early 2021 as people prepared to
count the electoral votes on January 6.
And there's some new
detail from prosecutors, who maintain that Trump himself was in the
dining room near the Oval Office tweeting on January 6 as Mike Pence was
in danger from rioters in the Capitol. And Trump allegedly said to an
aide who asked him about all this: "So what?"
So there's a lot of
new color and vivid detail about Trump's alleged actions and his state
of mind and his knowledge in those waning weeks of 2020 and early 2021.
Amna Nawaz:
Mary, we knew this was an argument that Jack Smith was
going to lay out, saying, even though Trump was holding the official
office of president, his scheme, as he writes in the filing — quote —
"was a fundamentally private one."
Just broadly speaking, how does he make that case here and how compelling a case is that?
Mary McCord, Former Justice Department Official:
He goes through all of the different facets of the scheme
the pressure on state legislatures, the pressure on his own vice
president, the efforts to orchestrate the fraudulent electors scheme,
and his comments not only at the Ellipse on the morning of January 6,
but in the lead-up to that, including public speeches and tweets.
And
he — and Jack Smith emphasizes at every step how many private actors,
private attorneys, and advisers, including some of his co-conspirators,
were involved in so many of these efforts. He also makes the point about
there not being executive branch officials involved in these various
efforts.
And he also adds, I think, some really interesting
details, to go to Carrie's point about showing his capacity as a
candidate. He adds details about, when he's pressuring state
legislatures, for example, and state government officials, he is, for
one, only pressuring Republicans. He never calls, for example, the
Michigan Democratic governor or secretary of state to complain about
election fraud.
He only pressures Republicans. And in those states
that are led by Democrats, he instead pressures state legislatures. He
constantly refers only to his own race when he talks about fraud in the
election and never to the election more generally. So, in other words,
claims of election integrity, you would expect to be calling into
question a number of different facets of the election, but, instead, he
focused only on himself.
So, Jack Smith really does paint quite a
vivid picture throughout not only the first part of this motion, which
includes this extensive factual recitation, but particularly in his
legal analysis and his application of the law, the law that the Supreme
Court laid down in Trump v. United States, to the facts of this case.
Amna Nawaz:
Carrie, I want to underscore here that moment you briefly
mentioned about Mr. Trump's reaction to learning that his vice
president had been taken to a secure location. Here is what is actually
written out in the filing related to that.
Jack Smith writes that:
"Upon receiving a phone call, learning that Pence had been taken to a
secure location, a redacted person rushed to the dining room to inform
the defendants in hopes the defendant would take action to ensure
Pence's safety. Instead, after he delivered the news, the defendant," in
this case, former President Trump, "looked at him and said only: 'So
what?'"
What else do we learn from this, Carrie, about the many
efforts Vice President Pence made to offer then-President Trump an
off-ramp from these false claims of election fraud?
Carrie Johnson:
Yes, we learned a lot about conversations that Pence had
with Trump, as well as Pence's aides, who met with some of Trump's
alleged co-conspirators, people we believe to be former New York City
mayor Rudy Giuliani, law professor John Eastman, and others who were
advancing these bogus claims.
And after they tried all kinds of
other efforts in the courts and with the states, they basically failed
at all of those things, and it came down for them to Mike Pence. And so
they placed enormous pressure on Pence, tried to signal that he had the
power to overturn the will of millions of voters.
And Pence wasn't
buying it. Nor was one of his legal aides who's testified before the
house January 6 Committee. And we get a lot of detail about that. Pence
basically says to Trump, why don't you try again? Take this — sit this
one out. You can try again in 2024. And Trump and his top aides were
just not having it.
In fact, Trump called Pence on January 5 and
the morning of January 6 asked him to be tough. And Pence was under
enormous pressure, as we saw in that period, but, still, he held firm
and refused to go along with this alleged scheme.
Amna Nawaz:
Mary, there are some newly disclosed details in here,
some newly confirmed details. Much of it was also known from the results
of the January 6 hearings. But the big question is, now what?
What kind of impact will this filing have on the case moving forward?
Mary McCord:
Right.
So now it will be Mr. Trump's legal
counsel's turn to file a response to this and make arguments in
opposition to Jack Smith's arguments.
So he has argued that, for
each facet of the scheme, Mr. Trump's conduct — well, first of all, for
his pressure on his vice president, where the Supreme Court said that
could — that's official, they have made a showing and an argument that
they can rebut the presumption of immunity by showing through the
evidence that prosecution for this illegal pressure on Mike Pence would
not create any danger of intrusion the functions of the presidency.
For
every other category, he argues that acts are private and not official.
And even if the court were to find they were official, again, he can
rebut the presumption of immunity by showing prosecution would have no
danger of intrusion the functions of the presidency.
And this is
something that Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in her concurring opinion, she
pointed out some areas that she thought were private and said if she
had — she thought the majority should have said so in its opinion, and
some areas where she thought the presumption was rebutted.
Amna Nawaz:
That is former U.S. attorney Mary McCord and NPR's Carrie Johnson joining us tonight.
Thank you to you both.
Here's ABC NEWS zooming
on Donald Trump insisting immediately after the 2020 election that the
actual results -- HE LOST! -- do not matter.
And
here's Chris Hayes discussing it on MSNBC with Lawrence O'Donnell and
Rachel Maddow and Chris focuses on the Tweet Donald used to put a
target on then-Vice President Mike Pence's back.
The released court filing (here)
contains a lot of newly released facts and it also provides a timeline
of the attempt by Donald Trump to attack our democracy. There's so much
in there that anyone should be able to find new details and facts.
In the discussion above in the MSNBC clip, Rachel noted:
One
of the things that I never connected before is something that's
provided on page 63 of this document. We knew from Pence's memoir, that
when he was really making clear, as of New Year's Day, as of January
1st, that he was not going to go along with this, that all of the
lobbying of him was not working, we know from his memoir that Trump
threatened him and said that, "Hundreds of thousands of people are going
to hate your guts." We knew he had done that. What I did not know
before reading this today is that he's threatening him that hundreds of
thousands of people are going to effectively come after him for what
he's doing here and then immediately after he says that to Pence,
immediately afterwards, he Tweets a reminder to all of his supporters to
make sure you're going to be in Washington, DC on January 6th. I mean
when he makes that threat to Pence, he's already announced "will be
wild, come for January 6th," he tells him hundreds of thousands of
people will come for you and then he hits a reminder in Twitter telling
people that they need to show up so that they can make good on the
threat. It is just wielding the promise of an angry mob as a deliberate
threat and as as one that he is planning to make good on. And I have
never seen it laid out that way before even though I knew the individual
pieces and it just sent a chill down my spine.
And
as you hear about the filing, as you read about it, read it and/or
watch videos about it, you'll probably have a similar reaction. Erik De La Garza (RAW STORY) notes:
“I don’t usually gasp at things,” said MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin during an appearance with host Nicole Wallace on Wednesday on her show “Deadline: White House," but added, “We are learning facts that weren’t previously known to us.”
“I’ll
read first what made Lisa Rubin gasp. Why make everybody wait?” Wallace
said before going on to read from page 142 of the massive document,
including a portion where Trump reportedly responded with, “So what?” when delivered the news that Mike Pence was taken to a secure location because of fears over his safety.
“The cavalierness with which Donald Trump received that news
certainly is news to me,” Rubin said, adding that the new court filing
contains more information than what has previously been released by the Jan. 6 committee investigation. “There is a whole lot of new content here Nicole and that is just one part of it.”
MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissman took
it a step further when he called Trump’s actions after the 2020
election and in the lead-up to Jan. 6 the most serious crime “in
American history.”
“What you have here is chapter and verse over and over again about an
effort, a conspiracy – a criminal conspiracy – to thwart the will of the
American electorate,” Weissman, a former FBI general counsel, told
Wallace. “There is no more serious crime in American history than that.”
At one point, Smith details
how a Trump campaign employee was informed that a final batch of
ballots at a Detroit vote-counting center would favor Joe Biden. “Find a
reason it isn’t,” the staffer said. “Give me options to file
litigation.”
When a colleague warned doing so could spark unrest, the staffer replied, “Make them riot.”
Smith’s motion also indicates that the special counsel intends
to prove Trump and his allies baselessly invented claims that
noncitizens were voting in U.S. elections, and ignored indications that their theory that dead Americans were casting their votes was flat-out wrong.
The
motion further reveals that the MAGA politicos failed to deliver on
their own election fraud theories. They promised to “package up”
evidence of the election-stealing crime and then never delivered it to
its intended recipients, namely former Arizona Governor Doug Ducey and
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, where two prongs of the scheme have
resulted in sprawling election conspiracy cases.
Here are two more videos that should be streamed on this important topic.
The lightly redacted filing argues that Trump’s scheme to use bogus
election fraud claims to stop Biden from taking office “was
fundamentally a private one” and did not involve “official conduct.” If
the courts accept that argument, the indictment could survive the
expansive presidential “immunity” standard invented by the Supreme Court
in its controversial July 1 decision.
But regardless of the fate of Smith’s legal case, the motion matters
politically. It bolsters the argument that Trump’s disregard for the
Constitution, democracy, and the rule of law leave him unfit to return
to office. And it functions as a reminder for distractible voters about
the seriousness of the charges against the first election loser in
American history to incite violence in bid to retain power.
Trump’s lawyers fought unsuccessfully in court to block release of
the motion based on the claim that it could affect the election, an
argument Chutkan, who has repeatedly said she does consider Trump’s
status as a presidential candidate to be relevant to her proceedings,
rejected. Smith also filed an appendix that includes FBI interviews,
grand jury testimony, and other evidence, which remains sealed, though
parts of that could also be made public before election day.
More evidence could come out in coming days. A hefty
appendix accompanying Wednesday’s filing remains under seal, and the
judge has asked both sides to weigh in on how much of it should be made
public. Among the documents in the appendix are grand jury transcripts
and notes from FBI interviews conducted during the yearslong
investigation.
Donald
staged a coup. He should be in prison. But he's not our only issue.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon needs to be removed from the bench
immediately. Her constant delays in this case and her eventual
dismissal of it were questioned by other justices and legal scholars.
Now knowing some of what we do -- things Cannon already knew -- we see
that she worked to deprive the American people -- ahead of an election
-- of the details and facts that they needed. They needed to know how
the coup was staged, they needed to Donald Trump's involvement. The
right of a citizenry to be informed, to be informed voters, didn't
matter to Aileen. She saw her position on the bench as running
interference for the man that got her that post. She betrayed the law,
she betrayed our judicial system.
These
shocking things that we're learning -- and more may be coming -- were
shielded by her. She refused to allow the American people to know what
went down as our democracy was attacked.
Her
rulings have been questionable from the beginning; however, it is no
longer speculation about what she was doing. Her intent some can
argue. But her decisions and her actions prevented the American people
from knowledge they should have had, from facts they should have known.
She did not pursue justice, instead she worked to cover up a crime.
She should be removed from the bench.
Winding
down with Will Bunch. Over the weekend, Donald Trump advocated for a
lawless purge period attacking people in the United States. Many
outlets have ignored it. Will Bunch covers it below:
This is not a test. This is your
emergency broadcast system announcing the commencement of the Annual
Purge, sanctioned by the U.S. Government.Commencing at the siren, any and all crime, including murder, will be legal for 12 continuous hours.
That’s how “The Purge,”
an annual —and thankfully fictional, at least for now — event held in a
dystopian 2040 America is announced in a sequel of the long-running
film series called, fittingly, The Purge: Election Year. The run of action horror films first launched in the early 2010s has become something of a B-movie sensation. Its pretense about a troubled America
that tries controlled mayhem to stave off non-stop anarchy surely
alarms some viewers — and thrills others. One thing I’m pretty sure
about is that the producers didn’t mean for The Purge movies to serve as a policy white paper.
And yet here was Donald Trump,
ex-president and GOP nominee for the last three elections, telling a
smallish rally crowd in Erie, Pa. on Sunday afternoon that if returned
to the White House, he will write his own sequel to The Purge
— treating a violent Hollywood murder flick like it was the lost 31st
chapter of Project 2025. The plot twist is that in Trump’s remake,
everyday folks aren’t committing the crimes, but instead getting a
whupping from an all-powerful police state.
“See, we have to let the police do their job.” Trump said,
even if “they have to be extraordinarily rough.” That was the start of a
long, hard-to-follow ramble in which the Republican candidate claimed
to have seen TV images of shoplifters walking out of stores with
refrigerators or air conditioners on their backs — for which he blamed
the permissive left. Trump’s solution would be “one really violent day”
by the cops. Or even just “one rough hour. And I mean real rough. The
word will be out. And it will end immediately...”
Well, as you can imagine, Trump’s call for a National Day of Violence — many commentators on X/Twitter compared it to an American Kristallnacht — caused an immediate frenzy. CBS
News interrupted Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, and the Kansas City
Chiefs for a special report: “Trump’s Day of Violence.” New York Times
executive editor Joe Kahn ran down the newsroom’s iconic red stairs and
screamed at his top lieutenants to rip up tomorrow’s front page. And...
And, who am I kidding with this tired bit? Of course those things never happened. Most news organizations did mention the Trump rant
— it was hard to ignore — but treated it as the umpteenth instance of
Trump being Trump, and not as a dangerous escalation of national
rhetoric. The future 2024 Word of the Year — sanewashing — came back this weekend in a big way among the handful of media critics exasperated at the lack of urgency.
“Trump constantly saying extreme, racist, violent stuff can’t always be new,” the New Republic’s Michael Tomasky wrote in an essay.
“But it is always reality. Is the press justified in ignoring reality
just because it isn’t new? Are we not allowed to consider his
escalations as dangerous, novel developments in and of themselves? And
should we not note the coincidence that his remarks seem more escalatory
as the pressures of the campaign mount?”
America — and especially the media — should take Trump’s rants seriously and literally.
Tomasky
and others noted that Trump’s hateful weekend comments about immigrants
were just as troubling as his endorsement of violence. At a Saturday
rally in the ironically named Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin (ironic
because Trump hates chiens, or dogs), Trump unleashed a flurry
of the kind of dehumanizing language that typically precedes ethnic
cleansing. “I will liberate Wisconsin from this mass migrant invasion of
murderers, rapists, hoodlums, drug dealers, thugs, and vicious gang
members,” the GOP nominee claimed. He called migrants “animals,” and,
most bizarrely, claimed that they “will walk into your kitchen, they’ll
cut your throat.”
Sanewashing? “Trump pounds immigration message after Harris’ border visit,” was the headline in Axios, while Bloomberg tweeted
that “Donald Trump sharpened his criticism on border security in a
swing-state visit, playing up a vulnerability for Kamala Harris.”
Really? Trump’s words sounds more like they were sharpened in the flames
of a cross at a KKK rally than any kind of serious policy. Is it a
vulnerability for Harris that her speeches about the border don’t sound
like they were drafted by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels? What
different election are these journalists watching than the one that’s
actually happening?
