2020 Election: Predictions, Results and Reactions

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Meanwhile, the 1/6 Select committee has issued its first subpoenas, demanding that former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former "chief strategist" Steve Bannon testify before the committee on October 15 and that former Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications Dan Scavino and Kash Patel, the former chief of staff to then-acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller (who had previously served as an aide to Republican Rep. Devin Nunes) appear for depositions on October 14. The subpoenas also require production of documents from all four. I'm sure that they will immediately and fully cooperate (yeah right!)
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/23/politics ... index.html

In addition, the Biden administration is moving to release documents to the committee, though it unclear what limits it intends to place based on claims of executive privilege (and of course Trump will try to fight the release).
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/23/politics ... index.html

[N.E. Brigand]

In response to certain claims made today by the Cyber Ninjas, Maricopa Co. posted some useful information about common election misunderstandings.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

For what it is worth (I don't think it will happen.)

Massive New Report Determines Donald Trump at ‘Substantial Risk’ of Criminal Culpability Over Election Interference in Georgia

[RoseMorninStar]

Good article.
The lying and deception has to (should have) harsh and definitive consequences or this sort of criminality will be our future. The dysfunction and brokenness this behavior has brought about is bound to encourage more of the same and it is tearing the country apart, laying the groundwork for something other than a democracy.

[N.E. Brigand]

At a rally last night, Donald Trump said that as president, he called Georgia's governor, Brian Kemp, and asked him to call a special election, apprently to overturn the November election (it wasn't clear when exactly this happened). A president pressuring a governor to hold an election could be a crime, and Kemp should be called to testify about this conversation.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That probably wasn't included in the Brookings Institution report, since it hadn't happened yet. On the other hand, it was thoroughly predictable.

[N.E. Brigand]

According to the analysis reported here, the 625 people who have been arrested for participating in the January 6 insurrection represent only about 25% of those who could be charged under the standards being used to prosecute others who were at the Capitol that day. Here's how the report opens:

Last November, as then-President Donald Trump ramped up his dangerous lies about mass voter fraud, a man hopped into a Hummer bearing a QAnon sticker and headed to a Philadelphia vote-counting location to stop what he believed was an election that was being stolen. The QAnon obsessive, along with a co-founder of Vets for Trump, were arrested by Philadelphia police, who found them in possession of an AR-style rifle and a samurai sword.

Two months later, in the nation’s capital, the same QAnon follower stormed the U.S. Capitol, entering the building alongside dozens of fellow conspiracy theorists who had bought into Trump’s lies about the outcome of the 2020 election. Now, nine months after the Jan. 6 attack, he’s one of hundreds of Trump supporters who were captured on video violating federal law that day, but who haven’t yet faced federal charges for their conduct.

Federal investigators have repeatedly been cited as saying that 800 people could face charges, but in a budget request to Congress, the FBI said that "approximately 2000 individuals are believed to have been involved with the siege." This reporting puts the number at closer to 2,500. Even if prosecutors wanted to charge all those people, they apparently do not have the resources to do so (and at the current pace, it would take another three years before they did).

And that figure of 2,500 insurrectionists represents just those whose behavior is the same as the 625 people who have been arrested. It's only a fraction of the people who broke the law that day:

Most of the thousands of people who passed police barricades and were on restricted grounds at the Capitol on Jan. 6 will never be charged. On the west side of the building alone, according to an analysis Carnegie Mellon University researchers conducted for The Washington Post, there were more than 9,400 people. Officers were outnumbered more than 58 to 1.

In other words, possibly 15,000 or more people were engaged in criminal behavior at the Capitol on January 6.

I find that particularly striking in light of one federal judge's decision earlier this week to impose a light sentence to an insurrectionist on the grounds that the government hadn't charged most people arrested for rioting last summer in protests for racial justice in D.C.

[N.E. Brigand]

Steve Bannon has refused to cooperate with a subpoena from the committee investigating January 6.

He's doing so because former President Trump has claimed executive privilege over Bannon's testimony.

Bannon hasn't worked for the President since August 2017.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm going to make a bold and out-of-character prediction. The select committee is going to aggressively seek criminal charges against Bannon (and Meadows, Scavino and Patel, who all are likely to equally snub the committee) AND the Justice Department will equally aggressively pursue those charges. Wishful thinking? Perhaps, but you know me well enough to know that I am very conservative in my expectations of such things. I think this is going to be different.

Of course, it will still probably drag out in the courts long enough for the House to switch to GOP control and that will be that.

[N.E. Brigand]

I hadn't previously seen this video from June of a host on OAN apparently calling for his own execution. How bizarre.

(This week we learned that OAN's founder claims the network came into existing at the behest of AT&T executives.)

[N.E. Brigand]

In a Defense Sentencing Memorandum about sentencing, the attorney for one of the January 6 defendants flatly refers to the events of that day as a "a coup attempt--fomented intentionally by right wing actors who used data mining and psychological manipulation."

She's trying to use that argument to get a lesser sentence for her client, whom she sees as a mere pawn of those right wing actors.

Even so, we now have a Jan. 6 insurrectionist apparently admitting (via his lawyer) what the day was really about.

[Dave_LF]

lol

bounty.png (9.7 KiB) Viewed 2096 times

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The House has voted to hold Steven Bannon in criminal contempt of Congress and has referred it to the Dept. of Justice, which now decides whether to pursue the case. Nine Republicans joined all of the Democrats, the two GOP members of the Select Committee, and seven others, including two who did not vote for Trump's impeachment (Nancy Mace of SC and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania). Three GOP members who voted for impeachment did not vote for the contempt referral.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I doubt anything will come of this other than more partisan back and forth, but it is interesting.

EXCLUSIVE: Jan. 6 Protest Organizers Say They Participated in ‘Dozens’ of Planning Meetings With Members of Congress and White House Staff

[RoseMorninStar]

There just have to be consequences, otherwise it was nothing less than a dress rehearsal.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Wall Street Journal yesterday published a letter from former President Trump in which he claimed the 2020 election was stolen. In response to criticism about the decision to print the letter, today the Journal editorial board wrote that they "trust our readers to make up their own minds" about what Trump wrote but also said what he said is "bananas."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Here's the editorial board's piece (which I mostly can't read because it is behind a paywall.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facts- ... 1635449578

It's not clear if they are actually saying that his claims are bananas, or just that it is news what he says even if what he says are bananas. However, they do say "The progressive parsons of the press are aflutter that we published" Trump's letter, but what they don't say is that among those who were outraged that they published the letter was the WSJ's own news division.

[N.E. Brigand]

According to the analysis reported here, the 625 people who have been arrested for participating in the January 6 insurrection represent only about 25% of those who could be charged under the standards being used to prosecute others who were at the Capitol that day. Here's how the report opens:

Last November, as then-President Donald Trump ramped up his dangerous lies about mass voter fraud, a man hopped into a Hummer bearing a QAnon sticker and headed to a Philadelphia vote-counting location to stop what he believed was an election that was being stolen. The QAnon obsessive, along with a co-founder of Vets for Trump, were arrested by Philadelphia police, who found them in possession of an AR-style rifle and a samurai sword.

Two months later, in the nation’s capital, the same QAnon follower stormed the U.S. Capitol, entering the building alongside dozens of fellow conspiracy theorists who had bought into Trump’s lies about the outcome of the 2020 election. Now, nine months after the Jan. 6 attack, he’s one of hundreds of Trump supporters who were captured on video violating federal law that day, but who haven’t yet faced federal charges for their conduct.

Federal investigators have repeatedly been cited as saying that 800 people could face charges, but in a budget request to Congress, the FBI said that "approximately 2000 individuals are believed to have been involved with the siege." This reporting puts the number at closer to 2,500. Even if prosecutors wanted to charge all those people, they apparently do not have the resources to do so (and at the current pace, it would take another three years before they did).

And that figure of 2,500 insurrectionists represents just those whose behavior is the same as the 625 people who have been arrested. It's only a fraction of the people who broke the law that day:

Most of the thousands of people who passed police barricades and were on restricted grounds at the Capitol on Jan. 6 will never be charged. On the west side of the building alone, according to an analysis Carnegie Mellon University researchers conducted for The Washington Post, there were more than 9,400 people. Officers were outnumbered more than 58 to 1.

In other words, possibly 15,000 or more people were engaged in criminal behavior at the Capitol on January 6.

I find that particularly striking in light of one federal judge's decision earlier this week to impose a light sentence to an insurrectionist on the grounds that the government hadn't charged most people arrested for rioting last summer in protests for racial justice in D.C.

In a court proceeding today, federal prosecutors said that between 2,000 and 2,500 people breached the Capitol on January 6.

[N.E. Brigand]

In a new book, Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia Secretary of State who is a conservative Republican, says that he believed then and believes now that President Trump's comments in their infamous Jan. 2 phone call constituted a "threat" toward him.

He also says that the Fulton County D.A.'s office has yet to interview him in their investigation of whether Trump illegally interfered in the 2020 election.

[RoseMorninStar]

It gives a person some hope, that there are those who stand up for what is right and refuse to go with the flow in spite of (what I would imagine to be) intense pressure and possibly even threats. This should not be swept under the rug.