2020 Election: Predictions, Results and Reactions

[N.E. Brigand]

The National Republican Committee, meeting in Utah, today voted overwhelmingly to approve a resolution censuring Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, the only Republicans serving on the House Select Committee investigating January 6th, for "participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse".

So per the Republican party, brutally attacking police officers and threatening the Vice President** of the United States with hanging is "legitimate political discourse"?

Well, later in the day, RNC chair Ronna (nee Romney) McDaniel* told reporters in other statements that the people she thinks of as being persecuted by the Committee had nothing to do with the violence at the Capitol -- but that caveat wasn't in the official resolution passed by the RNC members!

Per a Washington Post article, McDaniel apparently was thinking of "an elderly, recently widowed friend" whom the Select Committee subpoenaed following reports that this person was one of Michigan's "alternate" slate of electors. In other words, someone who very probably committed fraud in the course of attempting to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 election, which also is not "legitimate political discourse."


*McDaniel infamously dropped the "Romney" from her name in order to secure President Trump's approval for her to become RNC chair, so it's worth noting that her uncle, Senator Mitt Romney, issued a statement today criticizing the RNC and praising Cheney and Kinzinger.

**And speaking of former Vice President Mike Pence, today he spoke at a meeting of the Federalist Society, where he responded as follows to Trump's claims that he could have changed the election results: "President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president."

I gather that Ronna McDaniel's friend, referenced here more than a year ago, is Kathy Berden, who was charged in Michigan today.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

From Ryan Goodman
@rgoodlaw
ABC News confirms:

“The target letter mentions three federal statutes: conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud the United States, deprivation of rights under color of law, and tampering with a witness, victim or an informant.”

[Voronwë the Faithful]

QAnon Shaman, who pleaded guilty and made a heartfelt apology in Jan. 6 case, has changed his mind and wants his plea reversed

I'm sure that the DoJ doesn't want to devote the resources to doing so, particularly since they likely have bigger fish to fry (so to speak), but part of me thinks that they should not oppose allowing him to withdraw his guilty plea and send him away for the 20 years that he deserves.

Judge Royce Lambert, a Reagan appointee who has seen a lot in his decades on the bench and has overseen numerous January 6 trials, has things to say in denying Chansley's motion to vacate his conviction, as reported by Roger Parloff;

Denying QAnon Shaman Jacob Chansley's motion to vacate, Judge slams
@TuckerCarlson
's March 6 broadcast as "replete with misstatements & misrepresentations ... too numerous to count" ...
/1
.. "the host explicitly questioned the integrity of this Court-not to mention the legitimacy of the entire U.S. criminal justice system with inflammatory characterizations of cherry-picked videos stripped of their proper context. ..."
/2

... "The Court finds it alarming that the host's viewers throughout the nation so readily heeded his command. But this Court cannot and will not reject the evidence before it. Nor should the public. ..."
/3

... "Those of us who have presided over dozens of cases arising from, listened to hundreds of hours of
testimony describing, and reviewed thousands of pages of briefing about the attack on our democracy of January 6 know all too well ... "
/4

"... that neither the events of that day nor any particular
defendant's involvement can be fully captured in a seconds-long video carelessly, or perhaps even
cynically, aired in a television segment or attached to a tweet."
/5

Here is the full opinion:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents ... er-denying

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Next week, a man named Douglass Mackey will go on trial for his efforts to undermine the U.S. presidential election in *2016.* He was charged in January 2021. Mackey was apparently a prominent troll on social media using the nickname "Ricky Vaughan"; his true identity became public in 2018. Mackey is alleged, along with four unnamed co-conspirators, with having spread disinformation to Democratic voters in 2016 about how to vote. Today the judge in this case unsealed an order approving a request by prosecutors to keep the identify of one of Mackey's co-conspirators, who has pleaded guilty and is cooperating, secret from Mackey. Apparently Mackey only knew this person by his internet alias.

I'm noting this here because (1) I don't want to unearth the 2016 thread so and (2) journalists previously identified another of Mackey's alleged accomplices as Anthime Gionet, aka "Baked Alaska," who is "a pro-Trump white nationalist who was arrested on Jan. 16 [2021] for his involvement in storming the Capitol on Jan. 6. Gionet also participated in the deadly white nationalist 'Unite the Right' rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017." (emphasis added)

It took four years to charge Mackey for what he did in 2016. That tells me that three more years may pass before the final charges are brought for actions on January 6th.

It hasn't been quite 3 years, but Mackey's case is instructive. With regards to the reported content of the recent target letter sent to Trump.

Charlie Savage
@charlie_savage
Ironic twist: Citation to §241 on target letter raises the possibility that Jack Smith is thinking about charging Trump with election fraud conspiracy (in trying to flip Biden's wins in Georgia, Arizona, etc.)

Brandon Van Grack
@BVanGrack
People interested in recent prosecutions of Section 241 should look at the case of Douglass Mackey for interfering in the 2016 election.

[N.E. Brigand]

There was some weird business in D.C. today. Stanley Woodward, now best known as Walt Nauta's attorney in the classified documents case, also represents some January 6 defendants. One of them today was scheduled to learn the verdict in his bench trial. Woodward was 25 minutes late. Judge Trevor McFadden demanded an explanation. Woodward said that he was delayed by a grand jury matter. The judge wasn't satisfied with that, and he told Woodward that he would waive the grand jury secrecy so that Woodward could explain himself. (Mind you, grand juries fall under the purview of the district's chief judge, James Boasberg, who may not be happy with McFadden now.) Woodward said in open court that the prosecutors in the grand jury matter, led by Thomas Windom -- who is working on Jack Smith's team -- had improperly asked his (unnamed) client questions that are covered by executive privilege. McFadden was then heard to say, "Talking about obstructions of official proceedings" and “The government has not acted as I required." McFadden then sent U.S. Marshals to fetch Windom and another prosecutor from the grand jury room, and then, with the "husher" activated so that reporters couldn't hear what was said, there was some five minutes of discussion before Windom and his colleague returned to the grand jury room.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It is really difficult to overstate how inappropriate McFadden's actions were.

ETA: However, he did find the defendant -- a former State Department official -- guilty in the bench trial.

Trump State Department appointee found guilty of seven felonies in Jan. 6 case

[N.E. Brigand]

"Special Counsel Probes Team Trump’s Jan. 6 ‘War Room’. The special counsel's investigators are grilling Trump's allies about a series of meetings at the Willard Hotel ahead of Jan. 6, sources tell Rolling Stone."

"One former senior Trump administration official, who stayed on through the Jan. 6 riot, simply refers to it as 'the crime headquarters.'"

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Even better.

Trump aides referred to the Willard War Room--Giuliani, Eastman, Kerik, Bannon, Epshteyn--as "idiot island"

[Frelga]

Understood, but at the same time, that's a pretty major handicap when your opponents are chaos agents who don't care about rules or norms.

One of my frustrations has been that the Michigan triumvirate (Gov. Whitmer, Sec. State Benson, and Atty General Nessel) have frequently stated that "democracy is on the ballot." Democracy *cannot* be on the ballot, ever. The ballot is the place to decide among different *ways* of doing democracy. Whether to do it at all is not open for discussion, and no one who opposes it should be allowed into the forum in the first place, period.

Still catching up with this thread but wanted to echo Dave's excellent post.

Democracy, however, is at stake.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Lisa Rubin gives a good summary of the timeline in the documents case for comparison's sake in determining when there might be a new indictment.

It’s impossible to know if and when a new federal indictment against former president Trump is coming. But for comparison’s sake, here’s how things unfolded after Trump was informed he was a target in relation to the records investigation on 5/19/23. 1/

5/23/23: Trump’s team asks for a meeting with AG Garland;
5/24/23: Nauta is informed he is a target;
6/5/23: Trump’s lawyers meet with Jack Smith and others, including at least one career prosecutor, at Main Justice;
6/7/23: Taylor Budowich testified to Miami grand jury; 2/


Lisa Rubin
@lawofruby
·
18m
6/8/23: Indictment is filed under seal;
6/9/23: Indictment is unsealed; Smith makes brief public statement.

Will things happen more quickly now, especially after at least two witnesses went in last week? Watch this space & those of the
@NBCNews
justice & investigative team. FIN

Based on this, if it follows a similar timeline, we probably are a week or more away.

[N.E. Brigand]

It appears that Patrick Byrne, the founder and former CEO of Overstock.com (Wikipedia describes him as "an American businessman and conspiracy theorist") recently suggested on Twitter that he has compromising information on Special Counsel Jack Smith, whom Byrne describes "a very naughty boy" who "was videotaped in his naughtiness." Byrne may be under investigation by Smith's office for his role on January 6th. You may remember Byrne's name coming up in stories about the Trump-Russia investigation because he was romantically involved with Russian spy Maria Butina. Until reading the story at the link, I had not heard about how Byrne claimed that he became involved with Butina at the direction of the FBI.

[N.E. Brigand]

Associated Press: "FBI arrests Texas businessman at center of alleged crimes that led to impeachment of Texas's Attorney General Ken Paxton."

Update (Dallas News): Ken Paxton's "attorney ... believes the FBI charges against Nate Paul involve Paxton [and that] the FBI is trying to get Paul to flip on Paxton."

Per this article in the Houston Chronicle, Attorney General Ken Paxton made a loan, still outstanding, of $125,000 to Dan Patrick, who is the Lieutenant Governor of Texas. In that role, Patrick is the President of the Texas Senate, and unlike other states -- or for that matter the U.S. Senate -- where the body's president only has an occasional role, in Texas, the President regularly presides.

And the Texas Senate is going to try Paxton on the impeachment counts brought by the Texas House.

Texas's lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, will preside over the Texas Senate's impeachment trial of the state's Attorney General, Ken Paxton. As noted above, Patrick is the recipient of a $125,000 loan from Paxton that he has yet to pay back.

And yesterday, we learned from quarterly campaign filings that Patrick's 2026 reelection campaign got a $3 million donation from a pro-Paxton PAC.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Guardian has new reporting on the charges against Trump or others that prosecutors have been considering in Fulton County, Georgia:

— solicitation to commit election fraud
— conspiracy to commit election fraud
— solicitation of a public officer to fail to perform duties
— solicitation to destroy ballots

If these charges are brought, they may or may not be folded into a larger racketeering indictment. In 2014-2015, Fulton County's district attorney, Fani Willis, as a lead prosecutor in the D.A.'s office, successfully brought racketeering charges against eleven of twelve teachers and other school officials for a 2009 standardized test cheating scheme. Another 23 teachers and administrators pleaded guily. (Better scores meant better job performance evaluations for the teachers.)

[N.E. Brigand]

I missed the reporting from 2021 that Charles Bausman, a far-right American expatriate in Moscow who founded the propaganda website Russia Insider in 2014 but returned to the U.S. in 2018 to live in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, participated in the events of January 6th and may have entered the Capitol that day.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Even though he is claiming that is limited to the defamation case against him, this is a BFD.

BREAKING overnight: Rudy Giuliani concedes in a court filing that he made “false” statements about Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss and no longer contests the factual allegations in their defamation lawsuit.

[N.E. Brigand]

I'm seeing Giuliani's move described as an attempt to dodge further discovery.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I think that is accurate so far as it goes, but the whole thing is odd. His attorney, Robert Costello, continues to claim that Giuliani can't provide further discovery because the government corrupted/wiped his devises when they seized them in the foreign representation investigation that ultimately was closed without charges filed against Giuliani (even though he is very likely to have committed those offenses). So why take this action? There is more to it than just avoiding further discovery.

[N.E. Brigand]

Weird. If the government extracted data from Giuliani's phones, and that extracted data was corrupted, shouldn't the original data still be intact on the phones?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

They claim the devises were "wiped clean." This is what they say:

After the seizure of the electronic devices in April 2021, the FBI turned those devices over to their electronic discovery provider, PAE. Id. at ¶ 12. The United States Attorney’s Office for the SDNY applied for and was granted a Special Master, Hon. Barbara Jones, a retired U. S. District Court Judge from the SDNY, to review all the documents seized for claims of privilege. Id. PAE performed the extraction of the electronic material from the devices and maintained that material on their relativity platform. Id. at 13. PAE would then provide that material to the Special Master, who had her own Relativity platform at her law firm, Bracewell, LLC. Id. Judge Jones would then contact Costello and inform him that she wanted him to review whatever portion of the electronic material that she would provide and make preliminary claims of privilege for any electronic document provided. Id. at ¶ 14. That electronic material would be provided directly from the Special Master to the designated electronic discovery vendor, TrustPoint. Id. Giuliani and his counsel never had control or custody of the material. Id.

Trustpoint would then send Costello sections of the electronic material, so that he could designate whatever communications he believed were covered by attorney client, work product or executive privilege. Id. at ¶ 15. Those identified communications would then be sent to Judge Jones for her ruling. Id. If there was a dispute between Judge Jones and Giuliani, the matter would be referred to Judge J. Paul Oetken, the sitting SDNY Judge who had authorized the search warrants. Id. Giuliani never needed to have Judge Oetken resolve a dispute. Id.

Costello personally reviewed more than 95 percent of the electronic materials that were provided to the Special Master to evaluate. Id. at ¶ 16. In reviewing the materials, he encountered numerous non-user generated files and what Costello referred to as “computer gibberish”. In addition, there were many emails that contained the header with the sender and recipient addresses, but no text in the body of the email. Id. at ¶ 17. With respect to this material, in 2021, Costello made inquiries of the Special Master’s electronic discovery people and they informed him that this was exactly how they received the electronic materials. Id. The Special Master’s lawyers informed Costello that they had made similar inquiries to the Government and that the Government reported that any errors in the production of the electronic data, would have occurred when PAE, the Government vendor, performed their extraction procedure. Id.

The above information and communications with the Special Master make clear that the suggestions made by Plaintiffs that Giuliani has spoliated evidence are false and not based upon any factual material. Id. at ¶ 18. What has been produced is what Mr. Giuliani received from the United States Government. Id. Giuliani has never possessed the electronic materials since they were seized in April 2021. Id. It was, and is, physically impossible for Giuliani to have spoliated any of this evidence as Plaintiffs suggest. Id. After the SDNY announced publicly that they were not bringing any charges against Giuliani following the Government’s review of 26 years’ worth of electronic evidence, the FBI returned the devices that they had seized. Id. at ¶ 19. A review of those devices found that they had been wiped clean by the vendor for the Government. Id

[N.E. Brigand]

If true, I think the vendor would be in big trouble. Isn't that destruction of evidence?