2020 Election: Predictions, Results and Reactions

[N.E. Brigand]

CNN: "Jan. 6 text messages wiped from phones of key Trump Pentagon officials." This was learned via the government's recent response to FOIA requests for those texts -- requests which the Dept. of Defense acknowledged on Jan. 15, 2021. This likely violates federal law, but who knows if anyone will be punished. The missing texts include those of Christopher Miller, who was then the Acting Secretary of Defense; Kash Patel, then the Chief of Staff at the Pentagon, and and Ryan McCarthy, who was Secretary of the Army at that time.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

There seems to have been an epidemic of text-wiping!

[RoseMorninStar]

All perfectly innocent and routine, of course. /s

[Sunsilver]

There seems to have been an epidemic of text-wiping!

The modern equivalent of erasing tapes!

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... er/557759/

[N.E. Brigand]

Per ABC, a federal grand jury has subpoenaed former White House counsel Pat Cipollone.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That is, potentially, a BFD.

[N.E. Brigand]

There has been an investigation underway for well over a year into whether Rudy Giuliani improperly solicited assistance from Ukrainian sources to influence the 2020 presidential election and help Donald Trump win. The scheme was real and it resulted in two of Giuliani's partners, Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, being sentenced to prison (albeit mostly for only tangentially related campaign finance crimes). But today the New York Times is reporting that Giuliani is unlikely to face charges. I'm a little confused because a special master has been reviewing Giuliani's phones for many months (in order to determine what information prosecutors could and could not see), and I hadn't heard that review was complete. That said, Fruman had pleaded guilty relatively quickly without agreeing to cooperate, and while Parnas appeared repeatedly on the media claiming he had a story to tell, prosecutors wouldn't agree to whatever deal he wanted, so he was found guilty at trial. Without cooperating witnesses, it's hard to prove a conspiracy.

[N.E. Brigand]

Per ABC, a federal grand jury has subpoenaed former White House counsel Pat Cipollone.

The grand jury has also subpoenaed Patrick Philbin, who worked under Cipollone as the Deputy White House Counsel.

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A lot of people still believe that the Jan. 6th insurrectionists were unarmed, so this new arrest is a helpful reminder:

[N.E. Brigand]

My gut feeling is that Fani Willis is going to eventually file charges against Trump. That is not based on any kind of solid reasoning, it is just a gut feeling (which of course goes against my normal cynicism).

Unless she is removed from office.

Per Yahoo, Trump supporters in Georgia have begun a campaign to get a referendum on the ballot.

They are unlikely to succeed...

But a source involved in the effort told Yahoo News that the aim is to use the recall campaign as a way to politically damage the Democratic district attorney, portraying her as a partisan actor who is ignoring soaring crime rates in Atlanta in order to target high-profile Republicans. A side benefit of that game plan, another source familiar with the campaign said, is to potentially influence a jury pool down the road should a case against Trump go to trial.

[Dave_LF]

"In our nation's 246 year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump," says Cheney. No not that Cheney, the other one.

[N.E. Brigand]

There has been an investigation underway for well over a year into whether Rudy Giuliani improperly solicited assistance from Ukrainian sources to influence the 2020 presidential election and help Donald Trump win. The scheme was real and it resulted in two of Giuliani's partners, Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, being sentenced to prison (albeit mostly for only tangentially related campaign finance crimes). But today the New York Times is reporting that Giuliani is unlikely to face charges. I'm a little confused because a special master has been reviewing Giuliani's phones for many months (in order to determine what information prosecutors could and could not see), and I hadn't heard that review was complete. That said, Fruman had pleaded guilty relatively quickly without agreeing to cooperate, and while Parnas appeared repeatedly on the media claiming he had a story to tell, prosecutors wouldn't agree to whatever deal he wanted, so he was found guilty at trial. Without cooperating witnesses, it's hard to prove a conspiracy.

Writing in The New Republic, Casey Michel notes that the Times story actually shows that Rudy Giuliani's overseas entanglements were deeper than had previously been known.

Giuliani had previously claimed to have no connections to the Kremlin-connected Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash, who has for years been fighting extradition to the U.S. on charges of bribery. The new reporting reveals that Firtash was paying for Giuliani's travel and hotels as the former New York mayor searched for supposed dirt on Joe Biden that would help Donald Trump win reelection. This included one trip on a private jet that all by itself cost $36,000.

[N.E. Brigand]

Per CNN, Donald Trump's legal team is in discussions with the Dept. of Justice about whether he can "shield conversations he had while he was president from federal investigators".

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I was going to post about that but decided not to. Hard to say how significant it is or if it is much ado about nothing.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Judge in Alex Jones trial won't prevent Sandy Hook lawyers from handing Jones' text messages to the Jan. 6 panel

Of course, we don't know if he really did have any relevant texts, but I certainly wouldn't be surprised if he did.

[N.E. Brigand]

Reuters reporters have found that:

"Matthew DePerno, the Republican nominee for Michigan attorney general led a team that gained unauthorized access to voting equipment while hunting for evidence to support former President Donald Trump’s false election-fraud claims, according to a Reuters analysis of court filings and public records."

So the guy who wants to be Michigan's top law enforcement official is apparently a criminal.

Update: I see that Michigan's current attorney general, Dana Nessel, who is running for reelection and thus would have a conflict of interest if her office investigated the reports about DePerno, her opponent, has called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to handle the matter.

[Dave_LF]

As I said before, I wanted to vote in the MI GOP primary to promote candidates who were at least sane, but there weren’t any.

[N.E. Brigand]

The new book by Susan Glaser and Peter Baker about the Trump administration, some of which is described in the "Russia Investigations" thread, also includes reporting about the reactions of President Trump's staff to his attempts to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 election. After the race had been called for Joe Biden on November 9th, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley that "The crazies have taken over." Pompeo and Milley have told others that they stayed on during this period to maintain stability until the transition -- they referred to this privately as their effort to "land the plane" (ominously the same phrase that Rod Rosenstein used when telling Trump that he would wrap up the Mueller investigation) but they feared that White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows might be attempting to "hijack it."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Meanwhile, lest we forget about the other investigations going on.



And



And

[Dave_LF]

I'd give the AP props for their photo choice, but he always kinda looks like that

giuliani.png (181.84 KiB) Viewed 1675 times

[RoseMorninStar]

I'd give the AP props for their photo choice, but he always kinda looks like that

You mean, like he's holding onto jail bars?