2020 Election: Predictions, Results and Reactions

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Weissmann is right, this letter is very illuminating. I had not previously heard that Gingrich was this heavily involved but I'm not at all surprised.

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump was asked yesterday about people who have been charged with crimes for their actions in January 6th; he responded that he's met with them, has been financially supporting them, and likely would pardon them if he was reelected in 2024.

At a rally tonight, Donald Trump said again that he probably would pardon the insurrectionists if he again were president.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[Sunsilver]

Good! Those in power need to be held accountable!

[Dave_LF]

It's Couy Griffin, a New Mexico County Commissioner. The judge found that his actions on 1/6 violated section 3 of the 14th amendment. Quoting from the thread:

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment…bars any person from holding federal or state office who took an ‘oath…to support the Constitution of the United States’ as an ‘officer of any State’ and then ‘engaged in insurrection or rebellion’ or gave ‘aid or comfort’ to insurrectionists.

This is the first time a judge has ruled that 1/6 was legally an "insurrection or rebellion," which I'd have to imagine has a ton of implications if it's allowed to stand. Which presumably means it won't be allowed to stand without a heckofa fight.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yesterday, Judge Amit Mehta denied a request by Oathkeepers founder Stewart Rhodes to delay his trial for seditious conspiracy -- which is scheduled to begin in two weeks -- because he replaced his attorneys. Judge Mehta was not pleased.

Judge lays into Oath Keepers founder for his ‘bewildering’ attempt to delay trial on Jan 6 charges

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[RoseMorninStar]

The blatant lying really needs to be addressed.

[N.E. Brigand]

Today was the first day of the bench trial for Cuoy Griffin, the founder of "Cowboys for Trump" and a county commissioner in New Mexico, whose lawyer managed to convince the federal judge on the case to uphold Griffin's attempts to get the Secret Service to testify as to the location of Vice President Mike Pence during the insurrection. . . . In essence, Griffin was trying to "graymail" the government -- i.e., to force them to drop the charges in order not to have to reveal sensitive information. However, during the course of the day, the Capitol Police gave prosecutors permission to share this video with Griffin, and the Secret Service agent did testify as to Pence's location -- and this appears to have convinced the judge that Griffin did enter a specially restricted area. We don't know for sure yet, because the trial, which was scheduled to last just one day, will continue in the morning. Perhaps most interestingly, the agent also testified that after a time, the insurrectionist crowd, initially focused on the Capitol's west side, began to grow on the building's east side, and "that’s where our motorcade was." A number of people have pointed out that after radio host Alex Jones and others exhorted the crowd to move to the east side of the Capitol with the false claim that President Trump, who has spoken earlier at the Ellipse by the White House, was going to make a second appearance in front of the Capitol's east side. Now we may know why Jones did that. (And Jones had plenty of communication with Trump's people.)

Griffin's attorneys this morning tried a different approach, arguing that the law defines a "restricted building or grounds" as, among other places, "the building or grounds where the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is temporarily visiting," and that because Pence, as the President of the Senate, has an office in the Capitol, he can't have been visiting temporarily. Griffin's lawyers also argued that Griffin didn't know he was in a restricted area because he was never explicitly told by law enforcement that he couldn't be there. And yet this picture, in which he climbs up to the Capitol portico using a barricade as stairs, suggests he should have known:



And the judge agreed he should have known: he rejected those arguments and found Griffin guilty of entering a restricted area. However, the judge found Griffin not guilty of disorderly conduct while he was there. Yesterday the judge ruled that the government could not introduce into evidence some videos that they had only recently obtained showing Griffin's activity in the Capitol. They had been in the possession of an associate of Griffin, and the judge said yesterday that the government screwed up in not obtaining the videos earlier (in time for the defense to prepare). I suppose it's possible that if the judge had seen them, he might have found Griffin guilty on the second count too. Griffin will be sentenced at a later date. While the maximum for the charge is a year in jail, he may get off without serving any more time. Griffin spoke outside the courtroom after the trial today and per reports, he pushed some January 6th conspiracy theories that are new to me, including the claim that neither Ashlii Babbitt nor Brian Sicknick are dead.

Earlier this week, Cuoy Griffin, a New Mexico county commissioner who was convicted for his actions in the January 6th insurrection, became the first person since 1869 to have a judge bar him from holding government office for having violated the third section of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

This provision was last applied for members of the Confederacy following the Civil War.

Edit: My apologies for not seeing the earlier posts on this. (I did search for "Cuoy" before posting and didn't see anything more recent than what I posted in June, but I should just have read this thread closely!)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Cuoy Griffin's removal from office is discussed a few posts above.

[N.E. Brigand]

Although I only just encountered it today, this running list was started more than a year ago, but it's been updated pretty often (most recently yesterday) and is a useful reference item. It was created in response to nay-sayers who claimed that it was wrong to describe the events of Jan. 6th as an "armed insurrection" and lists weapons used that day by the attackers, as cited in court documents.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Thanks! That's a helpful resource.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[N.E. Brigand]

Mother Jones has obtained audio of Steve Bannon on Oct. 31, 2020 discussing election strategy with Guo Wengui, the exiled Chinese billionaire on whose yacht Bannon had been arrested earlier that year. The article is titled "Bannon Bragged That He Used Porn to Help Smear Hunter Biden." Bannon praised Guo's "editorial creativity" in mixing apparently genuine explicit content from Hunter's laptop -- which Bannon says he gave to Guo (apparently having received it from Rudy Giuliani?) -- with "false claims about the material":

First, [Guo] told [his staff who were posting the material online] to say the files included images of Hunter Biden with underage Chinese girls. There is no evidence at all supporting this allegation. Second, Guo told subordinates to claim that the Chinese government had obtained the material and used it to blackmail Hunter and his father, Joe Biden. That, too, was a lie, people involved in publishing the material told me.

In the recordings, Bannon also says -- more than a week before the election -- that the lies Guo spread about Hunter Biden were keeping Donald Trump close enough in the polls that Joe Biden would not be able to win in a blowout, which meant that Trump could adopt his backup "strategy" of claiming that there was fraud and declaring victory even if he was behind in the votes. Bannon went on: "So my point is, any peaceful resolution of this [election] is probably gone."

Here is a long story in New York magazine about Hunter Biden's laptop, mostly as understood through the eyes of Trump allies who tried to use its contents to affect the 2020 election, many of whom -- apparently including Steve Bannon -- have since decided it wasn't worth pursuing further. As far as I can tell, there's nothing in the story about the contents of the laptop that you haven't encountered before. But I was struck by one paragraph relating the views of a Fox News staffer who at one point was tasked with examining the material:

She came to believe the contents of the laptop exposed a corruption that went far beyond partisan interest. “If this was all Don Jr., I would have gone harder, because it would be a story about how this person says that they’re a populist while they’re in bed with the CCP, right?” she said. “I just find it repulsive to capitalize off of your political power, especially in a foreign country. How dare you?”

Hard to imagine anyone looking at the Trump family's dealings and thinking that they weren't trying to capitalize off of political power with foreign countries.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

While attention has been on the espionage and obstruction investigation, the DoJ's January 6 investigation is also heating up.

DOJ PREPARES TO PULL MULTIPLE JANUARY 6 THREADS TOGETHER

[N.E. Brigand]

Today was the first day of the bench trial for Cuoy Griffin, the founder of "Cowboys for Trump" and a county commissioner in New Mexico ... [before] Judge Trevor McFadden ... [who] found Griffin guilty of entering a restricted area. However, the judge found Griffin not guilty of disorderly conduct while he was there.

Judge Trevor McFadden, a federal judge in D.C. overseeing a number of the January 6th cases, issued an order today in which he "declines to toll under the Speedy Trial Act until the government confirms that discovery is substantially complete" in the case of Nicholas Rodean of Maryland, who is charged with Obstruction of an Official Proceeding and Aiding and Abetting ... essentially the judge is ruling that they should just stop arresting so many people -- and that's not a problem DOJ can easily solve.

Same judge, more difficulty for the prosecution in a January 6th case. Today in another bench trial, Judge Trevor McFadden found Matthew Martin of New Mexico, who later referred to January 6th as a "magical day" whose events he was thrilled to have been part of, not guilty of the four misdemeanor counts related to his having entered the Capitol that day. ... Judge McFadden has repeatedly indicated that he feels the Dept. of Justice was being unfairly selective in its decision to prosecute at least some of January 6th defendants while failing (under Bill Barr's leadership, mind you) to prosecute various Portland rioters for what he considers to be equivalent behavior. The Dept. of Justice over the past six months has pointed out in filings what they see as clear legal differences between the two situations (e.g., many rioters in Portland were not within a specially restricted area); as far as I can tell, he has ignored those arguments. Given that apparent bias on his part, and the fact that he's a Trump appointee, the Dept. of Justice should probably count itself lucky that he did rule, like most of the other D.C. circuit federal district judges, that a number of January 6th defendants can be charged with obstruction of an official proceeding. But if the Dept. of Justice does charge Donald Trump for his part in the insurrection, I think they better hope that they don't draw McFadden as the judge.

I believe there have been seven January 6th cases that have gone to trial prior to this week. Five were jury trials, and the defendants in those cases were found guilty. Two were bench trials (i.e., the defendants opted to have a judge rather than a jury determine their guilt or innocence), both with the same judge presiding, and as noted above, one such defendant was found not guilty while the other was found guilty of one of two minor charges, and the judge in general is giving the government a harder time on than many of his peers in the D.C. circuit as regards January 6th cases. Now we have had a third bench trial, before the same judge, Trevor McFadden, of a father and son from Delaware, respectively named Kevin and Hunter Seefried, who were apparently among the first rioters to enter the Capitol on January 6th, and Judge McFadden found them both guilty of the most serious charge they faced, obstruction of an official proceeding, which is a felony, as well as of four misdemeanor counts for entering a restricted area and disorderly conduct.

Today saw yet another bench trial before Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, of January 6th insurrectionists. In this case, McFadden found three defendants, Patrick McCaughey III of Connecticut, Tristan Chandler of Florida, and David Mehaffie of Ohio guilty of a total of fourteen felonies (seven just for McCaughey), including assault of a police officer, but McFadden did find them not guilty on some charges, including obstruction of an official proceeding in the case of Chandler and Mehaffie.

[Sunsilver]

Thanks! That's a helpful resource.

I just read (most) of the list of weapons confiscated. One of the invaders SHARPENED the end of his flagpole!!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This is big news.

[Dave_LF]

They're no Four Seasons Total Landscaping, but...



If there's evidence of a crime on his phone *right now*, it's probably something he did pretty recently, right?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Not necessarily, unless he has deleted texts they would still be there, and emails can probably can be retrieved indefinitely.