And the Randy Rainbow version.
So… an improvement, then? Movin’ on up!
Basically reading a statement he had no hand in writing and in fact, disagreed with in essence.
Pure damage control by his handlers.
And couldn’t even pronounce the words, even with the help of a teleprompter.
I’d love to have been a fly on the wall as Trump’s staffers tried to convince him to proclaim publicly that what happened on Jan 6 was wrong.
Because that happened.
And look at what he was forced to say - “You’re not part of our movement, you’re going to be punished, yadda yadda yadda”, but now, he’s talking about pardoning all these people if he ever becomes president again.
Right on.
Mind boggling hubris.
Thirded. I no longer work for the Yavapai County elections department, but many of the folks I knew back then are still there and several of them are now working for the Maricopa elections department. I might not have liked their politics, but I will defend their integrity against all comers.
I also found it extremely personally offensive.
The Guardian has a sort of good news/bad news analysis of the proposed charges by ex-US attorneys (that’s what it said…I assume this is a capitalization error and it meant “Former DoJ prosecutors” as opposed to “guys who once had a US law license”).
Good news is that “obstruction of an official proceeding” seems like a slam dunk; they’d just need to prove that Trump tried to pressure Pence into not certifying Biden’s electors, even after he’d been told that what he was asking Pence to do was illegal. That seems proven by information already in the public record.
Apparently, however, the Supreme Court has been reluctant to interpret “defrauding the US” more broadly than as “directly stealing money from the US”.
Obtaining a conviction on “making false statements” with regard to the conspiracy to submit fake electoral slates would regard proving that Trump was personally involved in said conspiracy (as opposed to “just being prepared for when the courts overturn the crooked Biden vote theft, which we totally thought was going to happen”). I’m sure he was, and someone (Pence?) might be willing to testify to that effect, but thus far it arguably hasn’t been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Likewise, protected free speech only becomes “incitement to insurrection” when there is a clear and present danger of violence. Trump’s inflammatory language at and leading up to the rally is only criminal if it can be proven that Trump knew that there was actually an organized conspiracy to use the rally as a pretext for an invasion of the Capitol. Which of course he fucking did, but thus far the details of exactly how he communicated with the Proud Boys et al haven’t been discovered as far as we know.
Sometimes I wonder what the conservative reaction would be if, in an alternate universe, Joe Biden had attended a violent racial justice protest, and in order to rile up the crowd, he made up fake stories of cops murdering POC for about an hour, and then he told the crowd to “March down to the police station and let those murdering cops know that justice is here and they will never kill another black man again, and the crowd set the police station on fire and killed a bunch of cops.
Think anyone would be screaming “protected speech”? I dont think so.
I think he told them from the podium with cameras running. And we now know that he knew they were armed, and didn’t care because they “weren’t there to hurt him”.
We have testimony that shows that Trump knew the danger that his followers posed, and knew what was going to happen from his words. He refused for hours to do anything to stop the rioters despite multiple pleas from people, even his own side. The people who attacked did so on Trump’s word, they said as much. And when Trump finally, belatedly told them to go home, they did.
I don’t think that is at all true. An “insurrection” does not have to include an organized conspiracy, in fact I think conspiracy is a separate crime altogether. And as demonstrated, Trump knew very well that there was a clear and present danger of violence. The committee did a very good job showing that. That was one of the points of this whole thing.
Perhaps the “and others” refer to those who Trump was organizing with. People like the rarely-mentioned Roger Stone. He was all over this shit, yet not included in the referrals?
ETA: never mind. Never take a phone call and have dinner between starting a post and actually posting it.
I’m not a lawyer and your case seems persuasive to me, I’m just quoting the article. Believe me, if I were on the jury, I’d vote to convict before the trial even started, but probably all that means is that I shouldn’t be on the jury.
I was happy to learn in the FQ thread I just opened that, should it come to that, it will be a Washington, DC jury hearing these cases.
Interesting thing from the committee:
Apparently Cassidy Hutchinson was told to “forget” certain things about her testimony by Stefan Passantino, who was Trump’s ethics attorney**
The committee report notes the lawyer did not tell his client who was paying for the legal services.
Yes, she did get another attorney before her testimony. Good for her. I guess she did not want conspiracy charges. Passantino, on the other hand, should be up on criminal charges, as well as the mystery person who paid for his “legal services” of obstruction of justice. Wonder who that might have been?
**I’m sorry, but this phrase just made me shoot milk out my nose
Me, too.
If anyone ever flaps their gums at me about “vote fraud,” I immediately suggest the person go volunteer to be an election worker a few times. It’s the best way I know of to disavow people of their misconceptions about how elections work – and how hard it is to muster enough “fake” votes to swing an election.
Also to take note of how seriously most elections workers take doing their job with integrity and in an ethical way irrespective of their personal politics, as you pointed out.
The few who don’t get sussed out pretty quick.
Thinking further, though; if that Guardian article is right, and there’s a charge carrying significant prison time which it should be trivially easy to convict Trump of, why not swing for the fences and try to convict him of anything you think a jury might buy? Worst case scenario, Trump still gets led away in handcuffs and fitted for an orange jumpsuit, and not even he can spin “But I got acquitted of almost all the charges!” as a win. Best case scenario, maybe he goes away for 25 years instead of 5.
This is a key point. There’s a lot of stuff that’s out there in public, and as discussed above, that information is sufficient to convict him on at least a couple of charges.
But we also know that there were interviews conducted that the public haven’t seen yet, but that the committee is well aware of, and which will form part of the record forwarded to the DoJ. That still secret information could contain almost anything.
Now it’s “Wait and See”. It’s already obviously bad for Trump, but there’s a good chance it’s going to get worse.
Quite possibly they did but being the smartest person in the room (just ask him) he rejected the advice. After all, between election day and 1/6 how many people told him he’d lost and to get over it? Not all of them to be sure (I’m lookin’ at you, Meadows) but a large portion did.
What i recall, from the various hearings, as well as from this week’s summary report, is that yes, this is true, but as Trump kept doubling down on his preferred narrative, he was tuning those people out, and spending his time with the clown car of sycophants like Giuliani and Sydney Powell.