2020 Election: Predictions, Results and Reactions

[N.E. Brigand]

Within an hour of that Reuters story being published yesterday, an InfoWars host named Owen Shroyer announced on air that he had been informed that there was a warrant out for his arrest for his participation in the events of January 6 and that he would be surrendering to authorities on Monday.

The day before the insurrection, Shroyer said this at a rally in D.C.: "Americans are ready to fight. We’re not exactly sure what that’s going to look like perhaps in a couple of weeks if we can’t stop this certification of the fraudulent election ... we are the new revolution! We are going to restore and we are going to save the republic!" And on an InfoWars broadcast that week, Shroyer said he feared the consequences for the nation "if we do not get this false certification of Biden stopped this week ... Everybody knows election was stolen ... are we just going to sit here and become activists for four years, or are going to actually do something about this ... whatever that cause or course of cause may be?" And at another rally a few weeks earlier, in which Roger Stone, joined by members of the Proud Boys, urged the crowd to "never surrender" regarding the election results, Shroyer said, "We got stabbed in the back by the Supreme Court tonight. This was never their revolution. This is our revolution!"

The charging documents include a picture of Shroyer on Jan. 6 standing in a restricted area just outside the Capitol building. Shroyer had entered into a Deferred Prosecution Agreement nearly a year earlier after previous misconduct at the Capitol, one that specifically prohibited him from engaging in certain behavior within a specific distance of the Capitol, so he may be in a tougher spot than others charged with trespassing.

Something that interests me about that photo the government provided of Shroyer at the Capitol is that he's standing right behind InfoWars' owner, Alex Jones, who played a big role in organizing the rally at which Donald Trump spoke that day. Curiously, the Reuters story quoted a "former senior law enforcement official" as saying, "there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages."

[Sunsilver]

The people who monitor Washington's tunnels saw an uptick in traffic just prior to the Jan. 6 insurrection:

Brent Stirton/Getty Images // WashingtonTunnels.com

Former President Donald Trump's lies about the 2020 election saw a gruesome culmination when a mob of his extremist supporters stormed the United States Capitol in hopes of preventing Congress from nationally certifying then-President-elect Joe Biden's victory.

These rioters shattered windows, ransacked offices, beat police officers, and smeared excrement across the wall. The failed insurrection resulted in the deaths of multiple people.While the vast majority of them acted spontaneously—prompted by Trump to march to the Capitol just minutes before—other insurrectionists appeared to have planned for the riots in advance.

Photos from the devastating event saw some rioters enter the building with tactical precision. One had flexicuffs like those used in mass arrest situations. A far-right militia, the Oath Keepers, had corresponded through numerous texts ahead of and during the riots, the FBI later discovered.

Now, an NBC NEWS4 report is adding further credence to fears that some of the Capitol Rioters had prepared in advance.

WashingtonTunnels.com is curated by Elliot Carter, a longtime D.C. resident who once interned on Capitol Hill. The site not only details the history of D.C.'s many underground tunnels, pipes, and transit rails, but also provides detailed maps of them.

In the days ahead of the insurrection—when Trump and his allies were calling on supporters to rise up and fight on January 6—WashingtonTunnels saw a major uptick in traffic, prompting Carter to notify the FBI.

It was just another alarming new detail of the conditions leading up to the riots.

https://nofilmschool.com/soviet-lotr?fb ... hkMLGlYxlg

This begs the question: WHY didn't they see this as a huge red flag, and WHY weren't they better prepared??

[N.E. Brigand]

Yikes. Two days ago the Republican-controlled Arizona state senate announced that the much-postponed report on the "audit" of 2020 election results in Maricopa County, for which they had contracted a firm called Cyber Ninjas, was being delayed yet again because the firm's owner and two other people at the company were ill with Covid. (That's three of five they said was overseeing the audit -- which itself was news, because to date there had been no public indication that anyone else but Cyber Ninjas' owner managing the process, while the state senate had apparently been under the belief that there were nine people on the team, so the project either gained or lost four people in the stroke of one announcement.)

And now today, Covid strikes again, this time touching the events of January 6. A lawyer named John Pierce represents seventeen different individuals charged for their actions during the D.C. insurrection that attempted to overturn the election results. Pierce has been involved in various conservative causes in the past few years, and is best known for representing Kyle Rittenhouse, the young man from Illinois who traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin in August 2020 and killed two people there while, he claims, trying to keep the peace (there have been allegations that Pierce was not fully transparent about the use of funds raised for Rittenhouse's legal defense). Today Pierce filed to represent an eighteenth January 6 client, but by proxy: a colleague appeared in court to say that Pierce himself was not there because he "is in the hospital, we believe, with COVID-19, on a ventilator, non-responsive."

- - - - - - - - - -
A New York Times reporter notes that Ryan Marshall, the lawyer who appeared today in place of Pierce, "is awaiting trial in Pennsylvania on multiple charges of theft, fraud & conspiracy related to a prior job as a judicial law clerk."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

There is so much about that latter paragraph that is yikes-worthy (the former paragraph too, but I don't really have anything to say about that). As Marcy Wheeler notes in the Empty Wheel story that you linked to, it would ne nearly impossible for an experienced criminal defense attorney to handle those cases and Pierce is not a criminal attorney, he is (like me) a civil attorney who is not qualified to handle any of these cases (let alone Kyle Rittenhouse's defense, which is one of several reasons why he was fired from that representation). So what is Pierce up to (or was up to do; it doesn't sound like he is up to much right now)? Or perhaps the more proper question is: who is Pierce trying to protect.

I note that the judge who refused to accept the appearance for Shane Jenkins is Amit Mehta, the same judge who recently ruled that the House Oversight committee is entitled to get some of Trump's tax returns (which reminds me, I should look into what if anything has happened with that; it is probably stayed pending appeal).

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Sidney Powell, Lin Wood and several other lawyers who worked on Trump-aligned lawsuits seeking to challenge the results of the 2020 election were sanctioned by a Michigan judge yesterday for their frivolous lawsuits. The judge also referred them to the disciplinary bodies of the states where they are licensed to practice.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/25/politics ... index.html

[RoseMorninStar]

What does that amount to V? Is it a slap on the wrist or are such measures enough to make a difference? The Judge was spot on, imo, that the spectacle is all about influencing public opinion and perceptions, not justice.

[Dave_LF]

[elengil]

That's absolutely brilliant!

[Inanna]

Ohmigod. Maybe they will repeat it in the weekend edition - the print one I subscribe to.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

And the next shoe to drop.

Seven US Capitol Police officers sue former President Trump, Stop the Steal organizers over January 6 riot

[N.E. Brigand]

The police officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt during the January 6 insurrection, whose conduct that day was recently upheld a second time in an internal Capitol Police investigation (following an earlier Dept. of Justice investigation that reached the same conclusion), has spoken with NBC News and given them permission to reveal his identity, which was previously undisclosed. Lt. Michael Byrd says that his actions "saved countless lives" by preventing the mob from reaching members of Congress. While it's unfortunate that he had to resort to violence to save lives (and this was the first time that he'd ever discharged his weapon in a 28-year career), I think he's probably right about that. "It needs but one foe to breed a war," as someone once said.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

"It needs but one foe to breed a war,"

Master Warden.

[N.E. Brigand]

Politico has some new reporting about Rep. Jim Jordan, who has said that he spoke to President Trump on Jan. 6 but doesn't remember exactly when (and won't share the details of what they spoke about). According to the article, Jordan spoke to the president at least twice that. One one of those calls, made from a safe room to which some members of Congress had been evacuated, he was joined by Rep. Matt Gaetz and they "implored Trump to tell his supporters to stand down." Jordan won't confirm on the record. Keeping in mind some earlier discussions about sourcing, it wouldn't shock me if he or Gaetz were actually a source for this story, trying to get ahead of anything that comes out in the Select Committee's investigation.

[River]

The police officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt during the January 6 insurrection, whose conduct that day was recently upheld a second time in an internal Capitol Police investigation (following an earlier Dept. of Justice investigation that reached the same conclusion), has spoken with NBC News and given them permission to reveal his identity, which was previously undisclosed. Lt. Michael Byrd says that his actions "saved countless lives" by preventing the mob from reaching members of Congress. While it's unfortunate that he had to resort to violence to save lives (and this was the first time that he'd ever discharged his weapon in a 28-year career), I think he's probably right about that. "It needs but one foe to breed a war," as someone once said.

The Babbitt shooting weirds me out to this day. Officer Byrd was behind a barricaded but broken door. There was this landing. A crowd of rioters recording with their phones, a pack of police in riot gear, and then this woman comes charging the barricade while the rioters whoop and holler and record with their phones and the police in riot gear do nothing. The shot goes off, she hits the ground. The rioters keep whooping and hollering and recording with their phones. Maybe they would have put their phones away if she'd managed to breach the barricade but they didn't put their phones away to render any aid. It's the riot police who grab her and get to work on trying to save her, but they failed. It's the whooping and hollering that haunts me. Like it was some sort of game. Like none of them understood what they'd just seen. Were they all insane?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yikes. Two days ago the Republican-controlled Arizona state senate announced that the much-postponed report on the "audit" of 2020 election results in Maricopa County, for which they had contracted a firm called Cyber Ninjas, was being delayed yet again because the firm's owner and two other people at the company were ill with Covid. (That's three of five they said was overseeing the audit -- which itself was news, because to date there had been no public indication that anyone else but Cyber Ninjas' owner managing the process, while the state senate had apparently been under the belief that there were nine people on the team, so the project either gained or lost four people in the stroke of one announcement.)

And now today, Covid strikes again, this time touching the events of January 6. A lawyer named John Pierce represents seventeen different individuals charged for their actions during the D.C. insurrection that attempted to overturn the election results. Pierce has been involved in various conservative causes in the past few years, and is best known for representing Kyle Rittenhouse, the young man from Illinois who traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin in August 2020 and killed two people there while, he claims, trying to keep the peace (there have been allegations that Pierce was not fully transparent about the use of funds raised for Rittenhouse's legal defense). Today Pierce filed to represent an eighteenth January 6 client, but by proxy: a colleague appeared in court to say that Pierce himself was not there because he "is in the hospital, we believe, with COVID-19, on a ventilator, non-responsive."

- - - - - - - - - -
A New York Times reporter notes that Ryan Marshall, the lawyer who appeared today in place of Pierce, "is awaiting trial in Pennsylvania on multiple charges of theft, fraud & conspiracy related to a prior job as a judicial law clerk."

The latest on this bizarre aspect of this whole bizarre situation. Not only is Ryan Marshall indicted for multiple felonies, he is not even a licensed attorney. And other associates of Pierce deny Marshall's claim that Pierce is non-responsive on a ventilator due to Covid. So it is unclear what exactly is going on.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/st ... d=msedgntp

[RoseMorninStar]

Erm.. perhaps this belongs in 'Whisky' So bizarre.

[N.E. Brigand]

Conservative election-disputing lawyer Sidney Powell cuts short an interview with the Autralian Broadcasting Corporation when they confront her with basic facts about the Smartmatic and Dominion voting machine companies. Just a remarkable two minutes that certainly won't help her if she tries to appeal the sanctions judgement against her last week.

[N.E. Brigand]

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, has urged telecommunications companies not to comply with subpoenas for phone records from the House Select Committee investigating the insurrection. He warns that once Republicans are back in power, they "will not forget."

[RoseMorninStar]

That sounds like a threat.

[N.E. Brigand]

Yesterday, Reuters published a troubling story about the investigation into the January 6 insurrection, in which it was reported that "the FBI has so far found no evidence that he or people directly around [President Trump] were involved in organizing the violence," according to some current and former law enforcement issues.

For what it's worth, Rep. Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and Rep. Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, who are respectively the Chair and Vice Chair of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 Insurerction, issued a statement in which they say the Committee asked the FBI and other Executive Branch agencies about this Reuters story, and about claims by Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader whose phone records are among those subpoenaed by the Committee, who cited that story as evidence that Donald Trump had "no involvement" in the Insurrection. Thompson and Cheney say that based on the responses they received, such claims of exoneration for Trump are "baseless."