Georgia prosecutor is interested in getting testimony from Flynn and Gingrich

Detailed investigation of Donald Trump’s attempted election stealing in Georgia and the climax of a special grand jury meeting on the House Jan. 6 committee

A quickening special counsel probe, now focusing on the alleged attempt to steal Georgia’s election, the climax of the House January 6 committee and a new trial of pro-Trump Oath Keepers extremists underscore the breadth of attempts to secure accountability over one of the darkest days in modern American history. These new signs of a net possibly closing around Trump and his allies come a month after voters sent a signal of disapproval with his obsession over the 2020 election by repudiating many midterm candidates in swing states who bought his claims of voter fraud.

The District Attorney for Fulton County has moved to get the testimony of the out-of-State witnesses from the special grand jury meeting in Atlanta.

Flynn and Powell made outrageous suggestions about reversing the election during the heated Oval Office meeting a few weeks after Trump pardoned Flynn.

The petition for Gingrich’s testimony relies on “information made publicly available” by the U.S. House committee that’s investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

It is necessary that witnesses who don’t live in Georgia give testimony, so that judges in States where they live can order them to do so. She filed petitions Friday that are a start to issuing subpoenas.

The latest significant developments out of a special grand jury in Georgia probing Donald Trump’s election-stealing effort in the state are ramping up intrigue over a question the entire political world wants answered: Will the ex-president be indicted?

Sheriff’s Office in Georgia: A Case Study of the Flynn’s Cooperation with a U.S. Senator and a Civil Adviser

Flynn didn’t reply to email or phone calls seeking comment, and his lawyer didn’t reply to an email seeking comment. Gingrich’s attorney declined to comment on the questions. Herschmann couldn’t immediately be reached.

One month from Saturday, she is going to take a monthlong break from public activity in the case that’s related to the election.

The potential witnesses are seeking to be called in November after the election. The process of getting out-of-state witnesses to give testify can take a while, so after pausing, she is putting the wheels in motion for activity to resume.

The petitions were signed off on by the judge who is overseeing the special grand jury.

He worked for the Trump campaign before joining the Justice Department during the final weeks of the administration. Despite the fact that election-related matters are not part of the Civil portfolio he spent some of his time helping Clark with his attempts to overturn the election.

The petition seeking Flynn’s testimony says he appeared in an interview on conservative cable news channel Newsmax and said Trump “could take military capabilities” and place them in swing states and “basically re-run an election in each of those states.”

He also met with Trump, attorney Sidney Powell and others at the White House on Dec. 18, 2020, for a meeting that, according to news reports, “focused on topics including invoking martial law, seizing voting machines, and appointing Powell as special counsel to investigate the 2020 election,” Willis wrote.

She stated that Herschmann had multiple discussions with people connected to the Trump campaign related to their efforts to influence the results of the November 2020 elections in Georgia and elsewhere. Specifically, he had a “heated conversation” with Eastman “concerning efforts in Georgia,” she added.

She said Penrose was a cyber investigations, operations and forensics consultant who worked with Powell and others associated with the Trump campaign.

He also communicated with Powell and others regarding an agreement to hire data solutions firm SullivanStrickler to copy data and software from voting system equipment in Coffee County, about 200 miles southeast of Atlanta, as well as in Michigan and Nevada, Willis wrote. Penrose did not immediately respond to an email and phone message seeking comment.

He was involved in the effort to pressure an elections worker who had been the subject of false claims about election fraud in Fulton County. He could not be reached for comment.

The Committee on Investigating the January 6, 2021, Insurrection: Criminal Referrals to the Judicial Special Grand Jury

Special grand juries are impaneled in Georgia to investigate complex cases with large numbers of witnesses and potential logistical concerns. They can compel evidence and subpoena witnesses for questioning and, unlike regular grand juries, can also subpoena the target of an investigation to appear before it.

The final report of the grand jury can be used to recommend action. The district attorney may ask a regular grand jury for an indictment.

The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection will hold its final public meeting on Monday, when it’s expected to announce criminal referrals to the Justice Department.

That so many Americans fell for the lie that the election was stolen and were willing to engage in acts of violence in furtherance of it is a national shame, and it’s unclear how to solve this problem — all the facts in the world don’t seem to sway people who are deeply committed to their own conclusions.

The committee is looking at three potential and rarely tried criminal charges against the former president, including insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the federal government, sources told CNN last week. The committee weighed referrals of Trump allies like John Eastman and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark who were involved in the fake election scheme. Republican lawmakers who disobeyed committee subpoenas will be subject to legal sanctions, according to an announcement on Sunday by the panel.

“We are obligated to seek answers directly from the man who set this all in motion,” said Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the panel’s top Republican. Every American deserves to be given the answers so we can act to protect our republic.

Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson said that Trump tried to replace will of the voters with his will to remain in power, in an October hearing. “He is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on Jan. 6.”

Ethics Committee Hearings on the Fort McNair Detention Center at Trump’s Behaviour: Joe Biden, Jeffrey Rosen, and the wife of Mike Pence

It is unclear whether the ethics committee’s referrals of House members will proceed in the new year, as Republicans are poised to take control of the House.

The footage from Fort McNair where Congress took refuge was aired by the committee.

In its highly produced hearings, the committee – with its seven Democrats and two Republicans who split with their own party to take part – painted scenes of horrific violence and intense efforts by Trump to steal Joe Biden’s presidency.

The footage also showed two phone calls between Pelosi and then-Vice President Mike Pence, who took on an impromptu leadership role on January 6, coordinating the emergency response.

The new footage showed Schumer dressing down then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. During their heated phone call, Schumer implored Rosen to intervene with Trump and tell the mob to stop. During the call, Pelosi told Rosen that the pro-Trump rioters were “breaking the law… at the instigation of the President of the United States.”

In August, CNN reported that the wife of Senate Minority LeaderMitch McConnell met with the committee. In her letter of resignation in the early months of 2021, Chao expressed her opinion on the attack and provided new insight into her thinking.

The events made it impossible for me to continue because of my personal values and philosophy. I arrived in this country as an immigrant. I believe in this country. I believe that the transfer of power is peaceful. I believe in democracy. She said it was a decision she made herself.

An Attempt to Tell Mark Meadows ‘We Lost the Election’: Hutchinson Explains a Call to the Senate Judiciary Committee

In new testimony to the committee, Cassidy Hutchinson, the former top aide to Trump White House chief of staff MarkMeadows gave anecdotes of Trump acknowledging he had lost the election.

I looked at Mark and I knew he couldn’t think we were going to pull it off. Like, that call was crazy.’ He shook his head when he looked at me. He was like, “You know, he knows it’s done.” He knows he lost. We are going to keep trying. Hutchinson told the committee what he had said.

Hutchinson also said that she witnessed a conversation between Meadows and Trump where he was furious the Supreme Court had rejected a lawsuit seeking to overturn the election result.

Mark says the President said he didn’t want people to know we lost. This is gross. Figure it out. We need to figure it out. I don’t want people to know that we lost. Hutchinson said.

Summary of the Committee on Investigating Russian Vice President Mike Pence During the January 6th Insurrection: Preliminary Report

Along the way, the committee showed more details about what it had learned in the 1,000-plus witnesses interviews conducted over the 18-month investigation, including tidbits it hadn’t released publicly previously, such as Trump lawyer Eric Herschmann’s call with Rudy Giuliani the morning of January 6, and that Trump and his inner circle targeted election officials at least 200 times.

One Secret Service agent sent a message at 12:36pm on January 6 about the number of weapons found so far. Could be sporty after dark.

The communications adviser shared a link to a pro-trump website containing hundreds of threatening comments about killing lawmakers if they certified Joe Biden as the winner of the electoral vote.

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff said in Thursday’s hearing that that the Secret Service received alerts of online threats made against Vice President Mike Pence ahead of the Capitol insurrection, including that Pence would be “‘a dead man walking if he doesn’t do the right thing.’”

“The Committee’s principal concern was that the President actually intended to participate personally in the January 6th efforts at the Capitol, leading the attempt to overturn the election either from inside the House Chamber, from a stage outside the Capitol, or otherwise,” the summary of the report reads. “There is no question from all the evidence assembled that President Trump did have that intent.”

The committee said it obtained a memo from the National Archives which it presented for the first time on Thursday.

The public should not view the Vice President as having decided on questions regarding electoral votes before all the facts are known.

The committee revealed emails from Tom Fitton, president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, from before the 2020 presidential election that say Trump should declare victory regardless of the outcome.

She wasn’t expected to be a central piece of the hearing that was solely focused on Trump, despite members of the panel telling them for months they wanted to hear from Thomas.

But her absence was notable considering the panel did use testimony from several other high-profile witnesses who had been interviewed since the committee’s most recent hearing earlier this summer.

The Donald Trump Equation of State: Political, Legal and Political Difficulties During the First Two Years of Running in the White House

The special legal tangle surrounding Trump means that the election will be marred by controversy that will drag the FBI and the Justice Department down into a political morass. (President Joe Biden is also facing a special counsel investigation over his handling of documents from his time as vice president, and former Vice President Mike Pence, who’s eying a 2024 bid, is under DOJ review for similar issues.) It is the same area as the Hillary Clinton email flap, investigations into the Donald Trump campaign links with Russia during the White House bid, and false claims of voter fraud in 2020.

At a time when he’s on a collision course with the Biden administration, the courts and facts, Trump dropped his clearest hint yet of a new White House run.

It was already strange that Trump was in the political scene. One-term presidents typically fade fairly fast into history. But it is a testament to the firm hold he maintains over much of the GOP that he’s still a key player nearly two years after losing reelection. While there is talk that Trump has enough juice left in his tank, it seems like it is time to move on from his political and legal troubles.

Those controversies also show that given the open legal and political loops involving the ex-President, a potential 2024 presidential campaign rooted in his claims of political persecution could create even more upheaval than his four years in office.

And while fierce differences are emerging between Democrats and Republicans over policy on the economy, abortion, foreign policy and crime in the 2022 midterms – while concerns about democracy often rank lower for voters – there is every chance the coming political period revolves mostly around the ex-President’s past and future.

Some people in Washington, DC, New York, Georgia, Florida and across the United States are interested in what Trump says about the legal issues facing the former president, his business and his allies.

The Ex-President’s Campaign against the Trump Organization and a Damned Candidate for the Presidership of the American House of Representatives

In Arizona, one of the ex-president’s favorite candidates, is raising doubts about the election system again and is a notorious spreader of voter fraud. Lake told AZTV7 on Sunday that he was afraid it might not be fair.

There’s a rising prospect next month’s election will install a Republican majority in the House that will effectively mean a return of Trumpism to political power given the hold the ex-President maintains over the House GOP. Republicans are considering impeachment of Biden in order to rough him up for a possible confrontation with Trump in less than two years.

Republicans are likely to expand their presence in Washington after the elections. Some of the candidates are running on a platform of fraudulent statements in order to get elected, raising questions about whether they will accept the results if they lose their races.

The trial of the Trump Organization will start in New York on Monday. The ex-President hasn’t been personally charged but the trial could impact his business empire and prompt fresh claims from him that he is being persecuted for political reasons that could inject yet another contentious element into election season. In a separate civil case, New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, has filed a $250 million civil suit against Trump, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization, alleging that they ran tax and insurance fraud schemes to enrich themselves for years.

Democrats have tried to bring Trump back to the forefront. President Joe Biden equated MAGA followers with “semi-fascism” and some campaigns have tried to scare critical suburban voters by warning pro-Trump candidates are a danger to democracy.

Investigating the prosecutors’ actions against the ex-president and former president: Why the DOJ is so concerned about the food fight, and why we do not want to prosecute anybody

Before voters head to the polls, inflation and spikes in gasoline prices would be a much bigger concern than the party in control of Washington would like you to know.

The ex-president told supporters at a Texas rally on Saturday that he’ll probably have to run for president again.

It is likely to take multiple days, and will be done with a level of rigor and discipline and seriousness that it deserves, according to Cheney.

The food fight that happened during his first debate with Joe Biden isn’t going to happen this time. This is a far too serious set of issues.

It would be difficult for the former President to dictate terms of the exchanges and how his testimony would be used if he gave video testimony over many days or hours.

Several former prosecutors believe the facts exist for a potentially chargeable case. But Garland will have to navigate the politically perilous and historic decision of how to approach the potential indictment of a former President.

If Biden was to be charged over a bigger stack of documents and conduct that is questionable, the ex-president would cause a lot of protest among his supporters. Even though the sitting president has protections from prosecution because of Justice Department guidance, it may be hard to prosecute just one of them because of their presidential races in 2024 and the following year.

It is not clear whether the Justice Department will take any action. Since Trump announced another run for the presidency, the DOJ appointed special counsel Jack Smith to lead the department’s investigations into the former president.

The potential move of indicting a former president is one of the reasons why the Justice Department is putting seasoned prosecutors in its investigations.

“They can crank up charges on almost anybody if they wanted to,” said one defense attorney working on January 6-related matters, who added defense lawyers have “have no idea” who ultimately will be charged.

Special Counsel Timing in the Bounds on Mueller’s and Durham’s Investigations into Right-wing Extremists and Prosecutors

Special counsels are not immune from political attacks. Both former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe came under withering criticism from their opponents.

Top Justice officials have looked to an old guard of former Southern District of New York prosecutors, bringing into the investigations Kansas City-based federal prosecutor and national security expert David Raskin, as well as David Rody, a prosecutor-turned-defense lawyer who previously specialized in gang and conspiracy cases and has worked extensively with government cooperators.

Sources close to the situation have said that Rody has left the Sidley Austin partnership to become a senior counsel at the DOJ in the criminal division in Washington.

The January 6 investigations are handled by the DC US Attorney’s Office, but their sedition case against right-wing extremists is still going to trial.

The January 6 investigations team has several prosecutors who have moved to the team from other departments, one of which was a high-ranking fraud and public corruption prosecutor.

Progressives have been irritated with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s methodical (read: slow) pace of pursuing charges against Trump. The special counsel will decide whether to bring charges or not.

When Trump declared his candidacy last month, the DOJ was already under enormous pressure to investigate and it is unlikely that Monday’s events will add to that burden. But at the same time, if Garland were to disregard multiple referrals, he would be certain to infuriate Democrats who already think the department has been slow to pursue Trump.

Any partisan element of our decision making about cases will be avoided. “That is what I’m intent on ensuring that the Department decisions are made on the merits, and that they’re made on the facts and the law, and they’re not based on any kind of partisan considerations.”

Garland’s decisions go beyond Trump. People briefed on the situation say the investigation of Hunter Biden is nearing an end. The investigative decision on the case of Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz is expected to be made in the near future.

One former Justice Department official with some insight into the thinking surrounding the investigations said they will not charge until they are ready to. “But there will be added pressure to get through the review” of cases earlier than the typical five-year window DOJ has to bring charges.

Questions about Georgia are complicated by the fact that Thursday’s excerpts came from a grand jury report that was only partially released. Such a document is, by definition, one-sided since witnesses do not testify alongside counsel or have a chance to rebut any accusations. The rights of people who may or may not be charged in the case were not taken into account when releasing the rest of the report. The recommendations of perjury prosecutions are not binding, but they give a small step towards the issue of whether there would be criminal accountability for an attempt to subvert democracy.

The hurdles investigators will face in attempting to build a case against the former president will become clearer as they learn more about Trump’s involvement in trying to block the election.

The people who found the classified documents may have given a statement to the grand jury. But the ex-president is being investigated not just for possible violations of the Espionage Act, but also for potential obstruction of justice related to the documents.

The outcome of the intelligence review of those documents may determine if criminal charges will be filed, according to one source familiar with the Justice Department’s approach.

Two people familiar with the investigation say that a judge ordered a Trump adviser to testify for the grand jury investigating Mar-a-Lago.

The immunity granted by the DC District court on any information brought up in the investigation moves the DOJ closer to charging the case.

The Congressional Committee on Investigating the 2020 January 6 U.S. Capitol Attack: Twenty-One Years After the Oath Keepers: Report on the Progress of the Investigating Committee

The committee did not give any additional information regarding the correspondence they received from the former President and his counsel.

Committee vice chair Liz Cheney, who sacrificed a career in the House GOP to try to bring Trump to account, left no doubt of the committee’s ultimate purpose – one she is unlikely to relinquish even when it is extinguished by the incoming House GOP majority – to prevent the ex-president from ever getting near the Oval Office ever again.

The broad document request even asked for all documents and communications relating or referring “in any way” to members of the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, or other extremist groups from September 1, 2020, to the present. The panel’s document request spans 19 different categories.

Multiple federal and state investigations are ongoing regarding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, his handling of sensitive government documents and his family business.

Trump, who has launched his 2024 campaign for the White House, denies any criminal wrongdoing. He frequently promotes the false notion that he won the election in Georgia because he thinks he is politically biased.

In addition, several others are named as being participants in the conspiracies the committee is linking to Trump, including then-DOJ attorney Jeffrey Clark and Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, as well as Trump-tied lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Rudy Giuliani.

Could the act of sending criminal referrals to the DOJ risk furthering the perception of politicization of separate investigations into the aftermath of January 6?

Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, told reporters recently how members evolved toward the idea of issuing criminal referrals as the panel’s investigation played out.

While we are not looking for people to investigate for criminal activities, we couldn’t overlook some of them, and that’s when we looked at the body of evidence.

The committee made its criminal referrals public after Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin spoke about how the justice system is not a system where foot soldiers go to jail.

“The gravest offense in constitutional terms is the attempt to overthrow a presidential election and bypass the constitutional order,” Raskin told reporters. A whole host of statutory offenses, which are similar to the one described, support the gravity and magnitude of that violent assault on America.

Sessions in the House Select Committee on Subpoenas for a Special Counsel to Overturn the 2020 Election and the US Capitol Attack

Two Republicans volunteered to join the panel, including Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who was the third highest ranking House Republican at the time. They both brought GOP staff members along with them who worked for the committee.

The congressman did not show up for the testimony that he had been subpoenaed to give. A lawsuit he filed challenging the subpoena was unsuccessful, but the Justice Department opted not to bring criminal charges for his lack of cooperation.

Raskin also suggested Thursday that previous referrals to DOJ for contempt of Congress would not impact how the panel handles these criminal referrals.

“We obviously did contempt of Congress referrals earlier and there’s a whole statutory process for making that happen,” he said. We will show you in detail the reasons why we are making certain kinds of referrals.

The judge in California ordered him to turn over the emails from the period around January 6, 2021, which he tried to keep secret from the House select committee.

The testimony showed how the committee walked through the legal theory that was put forward by Eastman that had been roundly rejected by Trump’s team and that was nevertheless embraced by the former President.

Clark used the Fifth Amendment more than one hundred times in his deposition. Federal investigators have raided Clark’s home as part of their own criminal investigation.

The panel dedicated much of a June hearing to Clark’s role in Trump’s attempts to weaponize the Justice Department in the final months of his term as part of the plot to overturn the 2020 election and stay in power.

The committee was particularly focused on the efforts of Pennsylvania Republican Scott Perry, who connected Clark to the White House.

CNN has previously reported on the role that Perry played, and the committee in court filings released text messages Perry exchanged with Meadows about Clark.

In a deposition that was played at the hearing, a former aide said that he wanted Mr. Jeff Clark to take over the Department of Justice.

The panel had a meeting with Giuliani in May for more than nine hours and his was a lead architect of the attempt to overturn the 2020 election results.

Special counsel Jack Smith has subpoenaed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger as part of the Justice Department’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the US Capitol attack on January 6, 2021.

They were hired to search Trump’s Bedminster golf club, Trump Tower in New York, an office location in Florida and a storage unit in Florida last October, months after the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago. Though they did not decline to answer any questions, it is not known what amount of information they gave the grand jury.

One thing is for sure. The DOJ is doing everything they can to beat the clock. Smith doesn’t have years because the campaign season is underway and it takes time to mount a prosecution. This may help explain the reappearance of two of his former White House lawyers to the grand jury.

The insurrection of January 6: Trump’s call to the Georgia secretary of state and the threats he received after winning the January 2 election

There is damning information currently in the public realm. On Jan. 2, 2021, Trump spoke with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and told him to “find” the votes he needed to win. If Raffensperger didn’t do Trump’s bidding, he could face criminal penalties. Trump said the ballots were corrupt during a phone call with Raffensperger. “And you’re going to find that they are — which is totally illegal, it is more illegal for you than it is for them because, you know what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. You cannot allow that to happen. It is a risk to you and your lawyer. And that’s a big risk.”

Trump lambasted his fellow Republican for rejecting his claims of election fraud and for refusing to say that they won the election in Georgia, according to excerpts of the call.

“The people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry. And there’s nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated,” Trump said in one part of the call.

The Georgia Republican has already spoken with the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, and he testified publicly this summer about the threats he received after standing up to Trump.

Setting up Smith’s office takes time despite Attorney General Garland assuring that his appointment won’t slow the probes. Smith’s team is still working to find a permanent physical office location but has begun changing over email addresses for staffers who had previously been using their usual Justice Department accounts.

But each sign that once slow burning efforts to work through the trauma of the post-election period are heating up brings a parallel warning that the future threat to truth and democracy remains acute. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, for instance – a key force in the incoming GOP House majority that is likely to try to shut down or obstruct investigations into Trump – is embroiled in yet another controversy over the insurrection.

The mob that smashed into the capitol would have been armed if she had her way, said the Georgia Republican. She insisted that she was joking, despite the criticism from the White House. The ex-president’s voter fraud has been on the rise recently and his call for the abolition of the Constitution is a sign that his second term will be anything but easy if he is elected in 2020.

Even though many Americans are concerned with feeding their families and paying rent at a time when inflation is high, there is no shortage of Congressional support for Trump in his bid to overturn the presidential election. Trump’s campaign of lies is having a negative impact. Even after Republicans won the House last month, a new CNN/SSRS poll published Monday found that only 34% of Republican-aligned adults are even somewhat confident that elections reflect the will of the people – down from 43% in October.

“It’s been over 700 days since the Washington Post published the full hour audio … of that highly incriminating phone call – 700 days for the DOJ to finally get around to subpoena him. When does it happen? Under Jack Smith.

If Trump’s legal team believed that Smith’s appointment after a period of time abroad meant he was less likely to be influenced by the politicized aftermath of January 6 attack, then they were guilty of wishful thinking.

Preet Bharara, a former US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that Smith’s appointment and his assembling of a high-powered team of experienced prosecutors represented bad news for Trump.

If there was a chance the Justice Department was going to charge, they would leave their former positions in government and private practice. And I think it’ll happen in a month,” he said.

Attorney General Garland vows that no one is above the law and that investigations will take the evidence into account. It would take considerable time for any trials as they are reality of the legal process. It would be best for any proceedings to take place before the conclusion of the White House race because of the risk of a prosecution of a former president.

“We’re now coming up against a timeframe in which it is a challenge to finish either case, if it is brought, to finish it before the election,” said CNN legal analyst Jennifer Rodgers on “Newsroom” on Monday.

On January 6, if they can, they will probably bring a case on the documents side, since it will probably take more time.

Smith is following legal procedures and the political context makes it more important for the DOJ to show Americans that it had no choice but to go to the home of an ex-president.

The House January 6 committee wants to make its case for the future before the incoming majority takes over next year, so it will likely examine the actions of the former president.

Yet the committee is not in control of the ultimate fate of its work. If Trump and his allies are referred to the DOJ, it would be a major moment, but they cannot force the DOJ to open a case against a former president who will be in office until after the next election.

The opinion of the select committee that the former president should be indicted is supported by a mountain of evidence, so prosecutors will not be influenced by it. One reason prosecutors were keen to get the testimony and other materials from the panel was because they believed it would be useful to the DOJ investigation.

That’s yet another reason why the turn of the year and the early months of 2023 are beginning to look like a moment of reckoning for both Trump and those who are investigating him.

The final committee report could include additional charges proposed for Trump, according to the source. It will provide justification from the committee’s investigation for recommending the charges.

The committee said that Trump believed that he was above the law, not bound by our constitution and its explicit checks on presidential authority.

According to Rep. Lofgren, the committee has been very careful in drafting the recommendations, and tethering them to the facts that have been uncovered.

When we talk about what the code sections are and the bottom line recommendation, we needed to make sure people were aware of the facts, as well as how to vote on it.

Congressional Investigation of the January 6 March Attack on the U.S. Capitol, a Homogeneous Witness, and an Integral Democrat

There could be other categories of referrals to the Justice Department, as well as to the Federal Election Commission, House Ethics Committee, and bar associations. The Justice Department is conducting a separate investigation for the January 6 attack.

The full report of the committee will be released on Wednesday, as well as transcripts of committee interviews, after the executive summary was released on Monday.

The expected move by the January 6 committee to formally ask the Department of Justice to prosecute former President Donald Trump over his role in the US Capitol insurrection will make history, whether or not charges are ever brought.

The plight of two former Georgia election workers who were accused of rigging the results by Giuliani and others in pro- Trump circles has been highlighted by lawmakers.

Often, it was Republicans – some who were with Trump in the West Wing on January 6 – who courageously testified about his assault on the Constitution, including Cassidy Hutchinson. The ex-aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows recalled, “It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. The Capitol building was being defaced over a lie.

Section 1512 (c) (2) of Title 18 of the US code makes obstruction, influence, or impede of an official proceeding a crime, according to the committee. According to what the panel presented, that seems exactly what Trump did, by working together with others to undermine the will of voters ahead of the mob attack on Congress.

“This is someone who in multiple ways tried to pressure state officials to find votes that didn’t exist. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a member of the January 6 committee said on CNN on Sunday that the person who tried to interfere with a joint session was someone who wanted a mob to attack the Capitol. “If that’s not criminal, then I don’t know what it is.

Do Republicans Really Care about Trump’s 2024 Insurrection? Sen. Adam Kinzinger, R. Jay Cheney, D.L. Murdoch, J. Robertson Greene and the Associated Press

Will an impression that Trump is being hounded by any referrals nearly two years after he left office help unite Republicans to his misfiring 2024 campaign?

And do Americans as a whole, at a time of national strain amid high inflation and the aftermath of a once-in-a-century pandemic, really care about events that rattled US democracy nearly two years ago?

GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who, like Cheney, served on the committee in defiance of his party and will not be returning to Congress, explained his actions in seeking to hold Trump to account in his retirement speech on the House floor last week.

“Every American must consider this,” Cheney said at one of the committee’s public hearings, in July. Can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made on January 6 be trusted with authority in our nation again?

The sacrifice of her career in congress may be in vain due to the fact that many Republicans refused to acknowledge the ex-president’s conduct. The public’s fascination with accountability was not apparent during the hearings, like it was with the Senate Watergate hearings in the 70s, which helped lead to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Conservative media can distort events on January 6 in order to make them seem better than they really are.

Still, Americans rejected many of Trump’s midterm candidates in swing state races who had amplified his false claims of 2020 election fraud, suggesting some desire to protect American democracy.

It is impossible to quantify how the committee’s work affected voters in November. But it kept evidence of Trump’s insurrection in the news all this year, even as the ex-president launched a new campaign seen by many observers as a way to cast the probes into his conduct as politically motivated persecution. This is especially valuable as some pro-Trump Republicans, like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, escalate their attempts to distort what happened in the unprecedented attack on the Capitol.

“This is a massive investigation that the committee has undertook. A former federal prosecutor told CNN that there was a lot of evidence and witnesses in the case.

The report and the detail in it will give a path to the DOJ. The Department of Justice is playing catch-up and that detail will put a lot of pressure on them, even though they are late.

If nothing else, future generations will be able to judge the determination of the panel members, especially its two Republicans, and the courage of witnesses who told the truth to try save democracy.

The 2020 Committee on Investigations of Russian Pesach Papers: a report on Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election

“Unfortunately we now live in a world where a lie is Trump’s truth, where democracy is being challenged by authoritarianism,” the Illinois Republican said.

I fear the great experiment will fall into the ash heap of history if our elected leaders do not search for a way out.

These are serious accusations, but the committee has spent months interviewing witnesses, evaluating the evidence and putting together a full story about what happened that day and what happened after.

The recommendations match the allegations the House select committee made against Trump and his elections attorney John Eastman in a previous court proceeding seeking Eastman’s emails.

In addition to criminal referrals, Thompson told reporters last week that the panel could issue five to six categories of referrals beyond criminal referrals such as ethics referrals to the House Ethics Committee, bar discipline referrals and campaign finance referrals.

He said that any referrals would include supporting evidence and that individuals would not be named to more than one category. A public presentation will be part of the meeting on Monday.

GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, one of two Republicans on the committee who will be retiring at the end of this Congress, told CNN, “It would be nice if the last thing I was doing was something a little less dramatic,” but he emphasized that the report will “be one of the most important things we do.”

Once the final report is released on Wednesday, Thompson has said the panel will start releasing transcripts from the more than 1,000 interviews the panel conducted throughout its investigation.

It’s long. Thompson told NPR the final report could be hundreds of pages long. For context, the 2019 report from special counsel Robert Mueller on Russian interference in the 2016 election was roughly 400 pages.

Committee member Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., told NPR she came away from reading the Jan. 6 report “shocked by the breadth and depth of this plan to create a big lie and pull every lever of government to corrupt an election.”

“We’ve seen petty criminals who’ve been charged with misdemeanors for trespassing be held accountable, but not the masterminds of this, who really did try to corrupt the government and its processes,” Luria said.

“We’re not piling on existing prosecutions,” Rep. Jamie Raskin said of upcoming criminal referrals. We want to make sure the crimes of the most serious gravity are attended to.

A Committee on ‘Fake Electors’: Report on the ‘House Ethics’ Committee ‘Tilted to Overturn the 2020 Presidential Election’

The committee has laid out evidence against the people who pushed the strategy to derail the certification of the election.

New York Democratic Rep.-elect Dan Goldman, a former House impeachment lawyer, said the panel could have criminal evidence that the Justice Department would not have without a referral. The panel could be considering referrals for witness intimidation, obstruction of justice and false statements made under oath, Goldman suggested.

“They want to make sure the Department of Justice also evaluates all of the evidence that they’ve uncovered, to be sure that they’re including everything in evaluating whether or not a crime was committed and the charges should be brought,” Goldman said.

NPR obtained a small portion of a draft script for the Monday meeting that shows the panel intends to accuse lawyers John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro of being tied to the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The original architect of the fake electors plan is Kenneth Chesebro, identified by the committee as a pro-Trump attorney. “The fake elector plan emerged from a series of legal memoranda written by an outside legal advisor to the Trump Campaign: Kenneth Chesebro,” the report says.

“They could be subject of both criminal referrals, but also referrals to their state bar association to review whether or not they should continue to have their bar license if they are making blatant misrepresentations in court filings or otherwise,” Goldman said.

The committee also referred four Republican House members — Kevin McCarthy of California, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs of Arizona — to the House Ethics Committee for failure to comply with subpoenas.

McCarthy denied last week that he and his colleagues might face criminal referrals. We did not do anything wrong.

CNN Live coverage of the 2021 January riot and the role of the prosecutor in determining the outcome of the case against the ex-president

More than 500 defendants have been found guilty of their alleged roles in the January 6, 2021, riot, according to the Justice Department. Four people were killed in the attack, including rioter Ashli Babbitt who was shot by a Capitol police officer, two members of the crowd who suffered heart attacks, and one who died of an overdose. DOJ says 140 officers were injured that day and five officers died in the months after the riot – one of strokes and four by suicide.

CNN’s special coverage of the meeting, anchored by Jake Tapper and Erin Burnett, will begin at 12 p.m. ET. It will stream live without requiring a cable log-in via CNN.com, CNN OTT and mobile apps, or CNNgo from 12 p.m. ET to 5 p.m. ET.

The referral is a symbolic measure. It does not require the Justice Department to act, and regardless, Attorney General Merrick Garland has already appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, to take on two probes related to Trump, including the January 6 investigation.

Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said that he has “every confidence that the work of this committee will help provide a road map to justice, and that the agencies and institutions responsible for ensuring justice under the law will use the information we’ve provided to aid in their work.”

Parlatore insisted Trump and his team “were not looking to overturn the will of the people, only to ensure that the will of the people was accurately counted,” adding that Trump was “absolutely opposed” to the violence that took place at the US Capitol.

One potential defense if Trump is charged is that the ex-president fully believed there was election fraud in Georgia and elsewhere, and that he was seeking to protect the integrity of an election. Even though an election audit in Georgia confirmed Biden’s victory, the actions of Republican election officials, who said there was insufficient fraud to overturn the results, contributed to a reasonable doubt about whether Trump really won. The conclusions of the special grand jury further cement that impression.

It was stressed that Trump knew the election was not stolen but continued to push baseless claims about voter fraud in an effort to stop Joe Biden.

The montage went step-by-step through Trump’s efforts to block his election loss, showed how his attacks upended the lives of election workers and played body-cam footage of officers attacked by rioters.

The Democratic Causal Committee on Peculiar Voter Fraud and Election Result Violation: The Case for a No-go Theorem

It is important to remember how this all started. Republicans were not allowed to serve on the panel because of partisan squabbling, but House Democrats would give their slots to GOP lawmakers who voted to overturn the results. Republicans decided not to participate.

To be sure, Cheney and Kinzinger are outliers in their conference because they are anti-Trump. The committee is stacked with Trump detractors in the core of Trump’s critique. Still, even if they oppose Trump, Cheney and Kinzinger are still deeply conservative Republicans. Kinzinger is retiring and Cheney lost her primary this summer.

Kinzig was the one who said how his GOP colleagues were abetting Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. He highlighted evidence that Trump wanted top Justice Department officials to “put the facade of legitimacy” on his voter fraud claims so “Republican congressmen … can distort and destroy and create doubt” about the 2020 election results.

Democrats will forever be able to say that the panel findings are bipartisan, even though Trump and his allies say otherwise.

Thompson said the committee’s full report will come out later this week. This will be a historical document that will be studied for generations. Never before has a sitting president tried to steal a second term.

The big question is whether the portions will include any bits of information that shed new light on what Trump himself did two years ago and whether the special grand jury concluded that the former president committed any crimes.

The most urgent framing of a perennial question about Trump is: Will he ever face accountability for his rule-breaking conduct? The question is acute as the norm crushed this time nearly wiped out US democracy.

The issue of accountability gets to the core of Raskin’s comment about foot soldiers – since many of those who were in the mob that trashed the Capitol have been convicted and jailed already. Since he became the President, Trump has avoided paying political and legal prices as the ultimate example of a ringleader who skips past judgement. Former special counsel Robert Mueller, for example, unearthed a trove of information apparently showing Trump obstructed the Russia investigation but decided not to make a finding that the then-president committed crimes. Most Republicans in the Senate found reason not to convict Trump when he was impeached twice.

Trump should be charged with giving aid or comfort to an insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding, fraud and making false statements, according to the panel. The committee argued in its executive summary that the central cause of January 6 was former President Donald Trump. … None of the events of January 6 would have happened without him.”

The DOJ has its own investigation into the events surrounding the insurrection and will have to weigh whether the case stands up as well in a court of law as it seemed to in the Capitol Hill committee room on Monday afternoon.

“The Justice Department has to go so much further on every single one of these people who was touched and interviewed and seen by the committee in any way,” former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe said on CNN on Monday.

It is impossible to get a full picture of all of the evidence because the committee featured little cross examination of witnesses and used Curated Video Excerpts to make its most strident case. Some witnesses may have been favorable to Trump and that could be used against him in his court of law.

CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said that Trump’s lawyers would “go through every word of this, that is their job, that is their right. They are going to look for any inconsistencies, they are going to look for any basis to attack the potential witnesses against them, preferably in court. That is what defense lawyers do.

The Justice Department is facing difficulties because of the involvement of a former president and the nature of the insurrection. A good defense team could seek to puncture a prosecution by reframing Trump’s true intent and muddying the question of what he honestly believed about whether or not there was fraud in the 2020 election. They could say he was exercising his free speech rights in telling his supporters to save their country. Special counsel Jack Smith and Garland would have to satisfy themselves before laying charges that there was a substantial likelihood of obtaining a conviction if they decided to prosecute, after considering the likely thrust of Trump’s defense.

Rod Rosenstein, who served as deputy attorney general in the Trump Justice Department, told CNN that the most serious referral would likely be against the First Amendment, because they accuse Trump of giving aid and comfort to an insurrection.

“The Department would have to prove that the president’s comments were directed at inciting imminent lawless action. They would have to prove that he intended for the mob to engage in violent activity. That would be a challenge to prosecute him under that charge.

One way that the committee’s graphic depiction of Trump’s aberrant behavior could help Smith is by preparing the public – at least the portion that does not simply defend Trump whatever he does – for the grave possibility that a former president could go on trial. Attempted coups are, after all, more akin to fragile developing world democracies and dictatorships.

No man who would behave that way at that moment in time could ever be considered for any authority in our nation again. The Wyoming Republican said on Monday that he is not suitable for any office.

When Did President Donald J. Filipovic Come to Washington, D.C., in the Era of the 2016 Black Hole Insurrection?

Editor’s Note: Jill Filipovic is a journalist based in New York and author of the book “OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind.” Follow her on Twitter @JillFilipovic. The opinions expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.

The conclusion is extraordinary and completely necessary two years after the president sent a message to his supporters that he would come to Washington, D.C., to take over the presidency.

The committee found a shocking attack on American democracy, one that the nation has not fully comprehended. How strong are our democratic institutions if those who try to level them can just walk away without being held accountable? Can a democracy thrive if attempts to topple it are simply washed away?

The former president and others have been referred by the committee to the Department of Justice for assisting or aiding an insurrection. The panel calls on congressional committees of jurisdiction to create a “formal mechanism” for evaluating whether those individuals who violate that section of the 14th Amendment should be barred from future federal or state office.

The committee points out that when the riot began, Trump didn’t make any calls for security assistance, he refused to call off his supporters, and he didn’t ask for help.

The committee says it gathered evidence indicating that Trump “raised roughly one quarter of a billion dollars in fundraising efforts between the election and January 6th. Those solicitations persistently claimed and referred to election fraud that did not exist.”

The Last American President: In Honor of the Day Liz Cheney Celebrated the Fourth Rebirth of our Nation’s Democracy, America’s First Democracy

Liz Cheney talked about the events of that day. The peaceful transfer of power between the president and the secretary of State has been a feature of the American tradition since George Washington turned the office of the president over to John Adams.

In America’s proud democratic history, no President has ever done what Trump did: try to install himself in office by disputing the results of a free and fair election, Cheney said.

There are legal and political solutions to the fact a former President would encourage his followers to subvert American democracy and break our national tradition of peaceful handover.

Now, any criminal charges are in the hands of prosecutors. But the future of the Republican Party — its fealty to democracy, to the country, and to truth itself — is in the party’s own hands. They can move forward by telling the truth, seeking accountability, and trying to regain some integrity. Or they can try and move forward with the man who ruined their lives.

Allowing a former leader to destroy the nations trust in elections and democratic processes is worse. If there is no penalty, what will prevent others from doing the same in the future?

There is no evidence that Trump regrets his actions. He was going to replay his election fraud claim if he’d lost his favored candidates, and he continued to spread the lie about the 2020 election. He is running for President again, and if he wins, he may use his power to destroy American democracy as we know it.

The US Justice System is Not a System of Justice: On the Second Anniversary of the November 11th Intifads at the Columbine Mosaic

In the age of Trump, parts of the Republican Party have been hollowed out for conspiracy theorists, racists, antisemites, liars, religious extremists and adherents to the cult of MAGA.

The GOP has become so intellectually bankrupt that it didn’t even bother with a platform in the last presidential election, instead essentially saying that its policy positions are whatever Trump wants. Some Republican politicians, and voters, seem to be fine with an America run by a despot, as long as it’s their guy.

But other Republicans understand just how big a monster they’ve created and don’t like where this horror story is going. They should demand that the US justice system does its job.

There is no perfect playbook for how to handle such a situation. Truth and reconciliation are what nations that have experienced trauma need. They don’t paper over and forget what happened.

The January 6 committee’s findings, and its referral to the Department of Justice, are the first step. Taking the case to another vaunted American institution — our justice system, where defendants are presumed innocent and the prosecution must build a case for guilt beyond a reasonable doubt — is the necessary next one.

A divided populace and millions of Americans purposely not paying attention to the evidence presented by the committee, two weeks ahead of the second anniversary of the riot, make that the state of American politics.

“Ours is not a system of justice, where foot soldiers go to jail and the masterminds and ringleaders get a free pass,” said committee member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., announcing the referrals.

Five Takes Away from the Final Jan 6 Committee-Hearing a Republican Candidate for the Preliminary White House

All are close allies of Trump, and their resistance in the face of the rules has been emblematic of the antagonistic style of U.S. politics that was growing even before Trump came on the scene.

McCarthy might be the next speaker since Republicans control the ethics committee in the next congress, so it’s unclear if anything happens to them.

That’s been obvious to some of us who’ve covered Trump for a while, but it’s been confirmed by Hope Hicks, a former communications adviser in the Trump White House who was very close to Trump.

In taped testimony, which we heard from for the first time Monday, Trump’s aide said she told him that false claims of fraud were damaging his legacy.

“He said that no matter what happens, nobody will care about my legacy, the only thing that matters is the win,” Hicks said.

“He was—he had—usually he had pretty clear eyes,” said Bill Stepien, the Trump 2020 campaign manager, according to written testimony released in a report by the committee. “Like, he understood, you know — you know, we told him where we thought the race was, and I think he was pretty realistic with our viewpoint, in agreement with our viewpoint of kind of the forecast and the uphill climb we thought he had.”

Stepien added: “We’d have to, you know, relay the news that, yeah, that tip that someone told you about those votes or that fraud or, you know, nothing came of it. It’s easier to tell the president about crazy allegations than it is to tell the truth. It’s hard to tell him on the back end that it was not true.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/20/1144303656/5-takeaways-from-the-final-jan-6-committee-hearing

The Cannon Report on Trump’s ‘Trump Hate’ Testimony, and why we don’t care about his legacy

One of Trump’s campaign lawyers, Alex Cannon, in a mid-to-late November phone call with former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, said, per the report, that he found nothing “sufficient to change the results in any of the key States.”

The former president likes to say that these are not those who were “NeverTrump” or “Trump Haters.” In fact, the opposite is true in most of the testimony that’s been aired by the committee.

It’s no secret that the country is divided politically and partisanship, particularly among Republicans, has become entrenched. People have watched despite the primary evidence, which was testimony from Republicans in support of Trump.

The committee recognizes that other news outlets have discouraged viewers from watching the hearings and that millions of other Americans have not yet seen the evidence addressed by it.

There is evidence that shows those who watched were moved. Before the hearings, just 48% of independents in an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll said they thought Trump was to blame a “great deal” or “good amount” for what happened that day. The percentage blaming Trump spiked after several hearings.

They do not have to act on what the Jan. 6 committee recommends, though investigators are paying close attention to the details of its findings. But don’t expect to hear much about the special counsel’s progress, as the DOJ tends to stay pretty quiet, if not wholly silent, on the details of ongoing investigations until they present them in court.

Politically, it’s going to be up to voters to choose. Trump will likely retain support with his base. Republicans have been the least likely to pay attention to these hearings. Trump is the front-runner for the GOP nomination.

Many of his preferred candidates, and some of the election deniers, lost in swing states while he was in legal trouble. So whether it’s because of the chaos that often surrounds him, the threat he presents to U.S. democracy and faith in its elections, or simply because his brand is not a winner in competitive states where Republicans likely need to win to take over the White House and Congress, Trump is at his most vulnerable point since winning the presidency six years ago.

The DOJ Insurrection Committee: Report of a Public Hearing on the Jan. 6 Incident at the U.S. Capitol

And the members of this committee — some of whom won’t be returning to Congress because of the wrath, or potential wrath, of Trump’s base — certainly hope voters respond.

Special counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee parts of the DOJ’s investigation into the insurrection, sent a letter to the committee earlier this month requesting all of the information from the panel’s investigation, one of the sources told CNN.

The handover comes during a key week for the committee. During its final public meeting, the committee voted to refer President Donald Trump to the DOJ on at least four criminal charges. The panel is slated to release its full final report on Wednesday.

The committee obtained text messages and other records from top aides to the president that showed their knowledge of Vice President Mike Pence’s involvement with a conservative lawyer.

Garland, who is in charge of charging decisions, will make the ultimate decision on whether to bring charges or not.

Nearly two years after the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the Democratic-led House committee investigating the attack is set to release its full report Thursday.

In a statement released Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., praised the committee’s work, but did not outline what she sees as the next steps for the referrals of the four House members.

The committee has reached important conclusions and I agree with them. The United States of America was founded on the principle that no one is above the law. “This bedrock principle is absolutely true and justice must be done,” Pelosi said.

The Committee on the Senate Judgment Investigation of a Political Committee Action Against the Donald J.C.T.Peelman

The Electoral Count Act has bipartisan backing and is being attached to a spending bill that is moving through Congress.

The committee says it also has the evidence to refer Eastman on the obstruction charge, and it names him as a co-conspirator in other alleged criminal activity lawmakers have gathered evidence on.

The committee outlines 17 findings from its investigation that underpin its reasoning for criminal referrals, including that Trump knew the fraud allegations he was pushing were false and continued to amplify them anyway.

They found no evidence of widespread fraud in the election despite the former president’s claims, and they think criminal charges should be brought.

“For example, the Trump Campaign, along with the Republican National Committee, sent millions of emails to their supporters, with messaging claiming that the election was ‘rigged,’ that their donations could stop Democrats from ‘trying to steal the election,’ and that Vice President Biden would be an ‘illegitimate president’ if he took office,’” the summary states.

The committee raised concerns that attorneys paid by Trump’s political committee or allied groups were incentivized to protect the former president, saying, “lawyers who are receiving such payments have specific incentives to defend President Trump rather than zealously represent their own clients. The Department of Justice and the Fulton County District Attorney have been provided with certain information related to this topic.”

A witness was told that she can tell the Committee that she doesn’t remember facts, even though she was paid for her services by a Trump-aligned group. The witness raised her concerns with her lawyer, and she was told they did not know what she knew. They don’t know that you can recall some of these things. The report summary says you saying, “I don’t recall” is an acceptable response.

When it came to a specific issue that reflected negatively on Trump, the lawyer told his client. We don’t want to go there. We don’t want to talk about that.”

The report points the finger at two Trump appointees at the Justice Department who the committee believes abused their positions and acted unethically.

Committee Summary: The Importance of the Mueller Investigation into the Investigation of a White House Interaction with the FBI, the Secretary of State, and the Interior Department

In another instance, Trump had an angry conversation with Pence in which he referred to the then-vice president as “The P word,” according to a committee interview with Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff, Julie Radford.

“This was an intentional choice by Jeff Clark to contradict specific Department findings on election fraud, and purposely insert the Department into the Presidential election on President Trump’s behalf and risk creating or exacerbating a constitutional crisis,” the summary states.

There is a case for why the prosecutions should go beyond those who physically breached the Capitol, according to the section outlining the referrals.

“If President Trump and the associates who assisted him in an effort to overturn the lawful outcome of the 2020 election are not ultimately held accountable under the law, their behavior may become a precedent and invitation to danger for future elections,” the summary says. “A failure to hold them accountable now may ultimately lead to future unlawful efforts to overturn our elections, thereby threatening the security and viability of our Republic.”

Like Freeman and Moss, other officials who faced Trump’s ire received death and rape threats and an avalanche of phone calls and emails, and some of them feared for their safety.

The evidence that Trump allies sought pardons as the administration drew to a close shows that they knew their conduct was legally problematic, the committee argues.

CNN previously reported that the testimony tied Gaetz’s pardon request to a separate DOJ investigation and that Hutchinson disagreed, saying Gaetz and others asked “blanket” pardons for participants at the meeting.

The report puts in one place intelligence assessments before January 6 from the federal government, including key messages that law enforcement had seen among Trump supporters on online forums.

For example, on January 3, 2021, Department of Justice officials received an intelligence summary of plans to “occupy the Capitol” and “invade” the Capitol on January 6. According to testimony from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist predicted on a National Security Council call that the Capitol could be the target of violence.

The panel believes Tony Ornato failed to adequately serve as the White House’s middleman when it came to security updates.

The committee writes that it has significant concerns about the testimony and vows to release his transcript publicly. Ornato did not recall conveying the information to Hutchinson or a White House employee with national security responsibilities, according to the report.

Ornato did not recall if he spoke toMeadows about the threat landscape going into January 6, but he said he would have made sure he was watching the demos that he received. So he most likely was getting all this in his daily brief as well.”

Hope Hicks, Trump’s former communications director, texted spokesman Hogan Gidley as the violence was unfolding on January 6 that she had “suggested…several times” on January 4 and 5 that Trump should publicly state that January 6 remain peaceful. Hicks also testified that Herschmann advised Trump to make a preemptive public statement ahead of January 6 calling for there to be no violence that day. No such statement has ever been made.

By the time of Trump’s rally on January 6, the committee says testimony it received indicates that the former president had received a security briefing and that the Secret Service mentioned that there were prohibited items being confiscated from individuals trying to attend.

The committee was not able to corroborate a secondhand account from former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson that she was told Trump lunged at his lead Secret Service agent while in his presidential SUV on January 6 and tried to grab the steering wheel because he was angry he wasn’t being taken to the Capitol.

I remember him saying that he would like to walk in the march and ride in the presidential limo if he’d need it, and then also saying that he’d like to ride in the presidential limo.

Another intent the committee’s report summary seeks to prove is that Trump’s call to his supporters to go the Capitol during his rally speech was pre-planned.

For example, the committee notes that MyPIllow CEO Mike Lindell had a text with rally organizers on January 6. … It can’t happen because I will be in a lot of trouble with the national park service and other agencies, and President Obama is going to be very upset about that.

President Trump didn’t contact any top national security officials during the day. Not at the Pentagon, nor at the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the F.B.I., the Capitol Police Department, or the D.C. Mayor’s office,” the committee writes. “As Vice President Pence has confirmed, President Trump didn’t even try to reach his own Vice President to make sure that Pence was safe.”

Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the committee he had this reaction to Trump, “You know, you’re the Commander in Chief. There is an assault happening on the Capitol of the United States of America. And there is nothing? No call? Nothing? Zero?

“No photographs exist of the President for the remainder of the afternoon until after 4 p.m. President Trump appears to have instructed that the White House photographer was not to take any photographs,” the committee writes, citing testimony from former White House photographer Shealah Craighead.

The Mueller investigation of Donald J. McCarthy during the January 6, 2016 riots: A summary of the investigation and the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination

In the aftermath, on the evening of January 6, Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale told Katrina Pierson, one of the rally organizers, that that he felt guilty helping Trump win, the report states..

McCarthy reached out to Trump’s family for help during the riots, as his son in-law and former White House senior adviser said he was scared.

In a text to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote, “Mark I was just told there is an active shooter on the first floor of the Capitol Please tell the President to calm people This isn’t the way to solve anything,” according to the summary.

He asked the White House employee – whose identity the panel kept anonymous “to guard against the risk of retaliation” – if they had watched his rally speech on television. The White House employee responded, “Sir, they cut it off because they’re rioting down at the Capitol.”

The summary acknowledges the obstacles that the House committee faced and says the Justice Department has the tools to remove those obstacles.

More than 30 witnesses refused to give testimony on the basis of their Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. They included individuals central to the investigation, such as Eastman, Clark, Chesebro, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn and others.

The panel zeroes in on the section of the Constitution that states an individual who has taken an oath to support the Constitution but has “engaged in an insurrection” or given “aid or comfort to the enemies of the Constitution” can be disqualified from office.

The House Select Committee on Crime Scene Investigations. I. The report of the committee on November 3, 2020 to the inauguration of President Biden

In the report that the committee released Thursday, there weren’t many new bombshells, but the committee focused on laying out the detail of its work across its investigation.

The most comprehensive account of what happened in two months between Election Day on November 3, 2020 and the inauguration of Biden was offered in the report.

It’s a narrative that expands upon the public hearings of the summer, walking readers through various schemes Trump orchestrated and the help he had from friends and allies.

While the main headlines were all about Trump, the final report showed a picture of how the attack on Congress was carried out as well as factors that contributed to American discourse.

The committee also interviewed leaders of agencies who were directing law enforcement response, such as the Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser and police force heads.

The select committee also says it interviewed 24 witnesses and reviewed 37,000 pages of documents for a review of the response of the DC National Guard, which attempts to explain the delayed response of the force to the Capitol.

The committee was told, for instance, that commander of the DC National Guard, Major Gen. William Walker, “strongly” considered deploying troops to the US Capitol on the afternoon of January 6 without approval from his superiors even if it meant he would have to resign the next day.

“Engel did not characterize the exchange in the vehicle the way Hutchinson described the account she heard from (deputy White House chief of staff Tony) Ornato, and indicated that he did not recall President Trump gesturing toward him,” the panel wrote.

There are more transcripts expected in the committee’s final days from other witness testimony, teasing out evermore details in the hours before the committee is dissolved, as is expected in the new Congress.

Several parties will be eagerly awaiting their release, including GOP lawmakers and Trump himself, who is still facing legal scrutiny on several fronts related to his role in the January 6 insurrection and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Investigating Democratic Corrupt Practices: CNN Observations of a Prosecutor-Collider During the 2020 Capitol Attack

He is adding two longtime associates who have specialized in public corruption cases, according to a person familiar with the matter: Raymond Hulser, the former chief of the DOJ’s public integrity section, and David Harbach, who conducted cases against former Sen. John Edwards and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell.

The expansion gave the office more power to examine broad conspiracy cases and determine the avenues of the investigation, another source said. The department has more than 20 prosecutors and senior advisers who are investigating Trump and his allies.

CNN was able to observe Harbach getting his bearings in the DC courthouse on Thursday and talk to another special counsel prosecutor about a case that had been in progress.

Smith himself sent subpoenas to election officials in seven battleground states and received a trove of material. Included in the response from Michigan’s secretary of state is an email from a county official who was reporting two voicemails they received in December 2020 from individuals seeking access to voting equipment. A person said they were working for Trump’s legal team, the clerk wrote.

“POTUS expectations are to have something intimate at the ellipse, and call on everyone to march to the capitol,” rally organizer Katrina Pierson wrote in an email days before the Capitol attack.

Donald Trump Jr. told investigators that his father did not use email or text messaging. According to Trump Jr., he was not sure what the other messaging apps were.

The style of ambiguous asks used by Trump made it difficult for state officials to upend the election results. “One thing I do remember is that he never, ever, to the best of my recollection, ever made a specific ask,” said Michigan’s former Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey. “It was always just general topics.”

“It was pretty obvious that the ex-president was the center of this conspiracy, but he was certainly assisted by many others, including … Mark Meadows and the like,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who served on the committee.

According to the evidence collected by the committee, a lot of the state-based operatives were uneducated about what was in store for them. Some testified that they were under the idea alternate electors were being prepared as a contingency plan in case Trump won and changed the outcome in their state.

After the last prominent election challenge petered out on December 11th of 2020, top Trump campaign officials distanced themselves from the effort.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/politics/january-6-justice-department-jack-smith-trump-investigation/index.html

Evidence from Mark Meadows, the Ex-President, and a Former White House aide who worked on the Trump Electoral Commission’s investigation

For those who continued working on the scheme with Congress’ certification in mind, “DOJ would have a much easier case to prove,” said Ryan Goodman, a New York University School of Law professor and former Department of Defense general counsel.

A memo outlining the plan on December 9 suggests those advisers saw the alternate electors crucial not only in the event of a court ruling that reversed Trump’s electoral loss, but if a “state legislature” or “Congress” deemed the Trump electors as the valid ones.

Meadows repeatedly comes up in the committee’s investigation, with evidence showing his involvement on some level in every gambit to overturn the election. The most important evidence came from the thousands of text messages Meadows gave to the committee before he stopped cooperating with the investigation.

According to testimony that a former White House aide gave to the committee, Meadows and Giuliani were involved in discussions about putting forward fake ballots for the delegates to the Electoral College.

Hutchinson testified before the committee that between December 2020 and mid-January 2021, Meadows burned documents in his fireplace around a dozen times.

The Department of Justice and the Fulton County District Attorney may now be able to access witness testimony and records unavailable to the Committee, for example testimony from President Trumps Chief of Staff MarkMeadows and others who invoked their Fifth Amendment rights.

Timothy Parlatore, one of Trump’s attorneys said that the president had committed no crime and that there should be no prosecutions related to him.

The two individuals, who were hired to search four of Trump’s properties last fall months after the FBI executed a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago resort over the summer, were each interviewed for about three hours in separate appearances last week. The extent of information they offered the grand jury remains unclear, though they didn’t decline to answer any questions, one of the sources familiar with the investigation said.

The investigators are looking at an electronic paper trail, if there is one, by trying to get access to computers.

From the outside, it appears as if Biden and Pence were far more cooperative with the DOJ and the FBI after some classified documents were found at their properties than Trump has been. The ex-president claimed that presidential documents that belonged to the federal government when he left office belonged to him, and it took a search warrant to get into Mar-a-Lago. But voters might find it hard to understand nuanced legal differences between the two cases – a factor the House Republican counter-attack based on Biden’s documents made more likely.

The Mueller investigation of the Mar-a-Lago investigation as evidenced by the special counsel for the investigation of a martingale insurrection

Special counsel Jack Smith and his prosecutors have been using a federal grand jury to question witnesses about the Mar-a-Lago investigation.

The former president, who was impeached twice and accused of fomenting an insurrection, kicked off his first two state campaign tour on Saturday in an attempt to make a political comeback.

Then on Monday, Trump’s potential exposure – in two of his multiple strands of legal peril – appeared to grow, foreshadowing a campaign likely to be repeatedly punctuated by distractions from criminal investigations.

Still, Trump is a master of leveraging attempts to call him to account, legally and politically. He believes that he is being political targeted by Justice Department investigations and that there are rogue Democratic prosecutors.

“We’re going to stop the appalling weaponization of our justice system. This is a justice system that has never been done before. It’s all investigation, investigation,” the ex-president said on the trail over the weekend.

This message may appeal to some of Trump’s base voters who had already bought into his claims of a “deep state” conspiracy against him and who feel disengaged from the federal government. It’s a technique where a strongman leader argues that he is taking the heat so that his followers do not have to, that is common to the authority theories of demagogues.

Those discoveries allowed Trump to claim that he was being unfairly singled out, even if the cases have significant differences. It will be difficult for Trump to argue that he inadvertently took documents from the government due to his claim that it was his and not the government.

Fresh indications of the momentum in the Trump documents special counsel probe followed the latest sign of a lopsided approach to the controversy over classified material by House Republicans, who are hammering Biden over documents but giving Trump a free pass.

House Oversight Chairman James Comer was, for example, asked by CNN’s Pamela Brown this weekend why he had no interest in the more than 325 documents found at Trump’s home but was fixated upon the approximately 20 classified documents uncovered in Biden’s premises by lawyers and an unknown number also found during an FBI search of the president’s home this month.

The two probes into Biden and Trump’s retention of documents are not one and the same. There is no overlap between them. But they will both be subject to the same political inferno if findings are made public.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/31/politics/trump-documents-grand-jury-2024-campaign/index.html

Robert Birchum’s plea agreement with the Fulton County Superior Court on a classified document furor: A report after a lower-rank citizen of the air force

As the political fallout from the classified documents furor deepened on Monday, the country got a reminder of the treatment that can await lower-ranking members of the federal workforce when secret material is taken home.

Robert Birchum served in the Air Force for more than 30 years and previously held top secret clearance. According to his plea agreement, he stored hundreds of files that contained information marked as top secret, secret or confidential classified outside of authorized locations. A plea agreement stated that “the defendant’s residence was not a location authorized to store classified information, and the defendant knew as much.”

The special grand jury heard testimony from people still claiming to have seen election fraud, as well as from poll workers who said it had taken place.

The report’s introduction and conclusion will be made public on Thursday, after Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ordered the limited release earlier this week.

An excerpt from the report said that the recommendations on indictments and relevant statutes, including their votes by the grand jurors, were set forth for the court. “This includes the votes respective to each topic, indicated in a ‘Yea/Nay/Abstain’ format throughout.”

The decision Monday comes after a Jan. 24 hearing where District Attorney Fani Willis’ office argued against publishing the report and a consortium of media outlets said it should be published with no redactions.

In his order McBurney said that parts of the report should be shared with the public but others need to be kept out of the public eye.

The special purpose grand jury’s decision on the report of an investigation that did not publish a single indictment, but instead recommended multiple indictments

Unlike a regular grand jury that only meets for a short period, this body only spent eight months interviewing more than 70 witnesses and gathering evidence, though it did not have the power to issue indictments.

Jurors voted to have that report made public, but the judge had questions about the applicability of prior precedents that have generally barred such reports from outlining alleged crimes without an indictment.

McBurney found that the uniqueness of the special purpose grand jury left him with a decision that “is not that simple,” calling the investigation “entirely appropriately a one-sided exploration” that means it would not be fair to have that exploration made public outside of a court setting if and when indictments are issued.

“We have to pay attention to the rights of the future defendants”, he said. “We want to make sure that everyone is treated fairly, and we think for future defendants to be treated fairly, it’s not appropriate at this time to have this report released.”

Though the work of the special grand jury was largely conducted behind closed doors, relevant public court filings have given clues as to potential targets of the investigation who might have broken laws. Those details include:

Willis, a Democrat, has not brought any charges in the investigation at this time. At a hearing last month on whether or not to publicise the report, she indicated that her decision would be imminent and said that the special grand jury had recommended multiple indictments.

The Georgia grand jury is expected to rule out a criminal investigation of the Trump-Biden 2020 campaign in Washington, DC, on Sept. 24

Trump lost his election to Joe Biden in 2020, by over 12,000 votes. The former president has insisted that there was nothing problematic about his activities contesting the election.

Cunningham added to CNN that “there is no doubt that whatever (the report is) referring to is either conduct that was done directly by Donald Trump or done on his behalf.”

He said the cross section of citizens that’s been working on this for nine months concluded that some of what was done on the former president’s behalf was a crime. I think that is significant.

The Georgia probe was set off by an hourlong phone call from Trump to the Georgia Secretary of State, who was supposed to find enough votes for Trump to win the state. Trump has referred to it as a “perfect” phone call.

The special grand jury, barred from issuing indictments, penned their final report as a culmination of its seven months of work, which included interviewing 75 witnesses, from Giuliani to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Its final report is likely to include some summary of the panel’s investigative work, as well as any recommendations for indictments and the alleged conduct that led the panel to its conclusions.

A grand jury in Fulton County would make the decisions if one of the people were charged in the case.

There are no witnesses or details about the witness testimony that was heard by the grand jury in the pages released Thursday.

Will Trump Be Indicted? The Fulton County Commission’s Report on Trump’s 2021 Call to the Georgia Election Officials During the First Presidential Campaign

Will Trump be indicted, that’s the most pressing question stemming from the Fulton County investigation. The excerpts from the report did not move the ball forward in answering the question. Trump’s name – or the name of any subject of the investigation or witness – wasn’t mentioned.

The implications were higher than expected. The 2024 presidential campaign is already kicking into gear, and Willis’ decision on charging Trump could potentially scramble the Republican primary field.

Trump did not testify before the panel. In a statement Thursday, his campaign again touted his “perfect” phone calls to Georgia election officials, saying he did nothing wrong.

The grand jury also reviewed physical and digital evidence, as well as the testimony from investigators and the input of team of assistant district attorneys who outlined for the grand jury the applicable statutes and procedures.

“The majority of this Grand Jury used their collective best efforts, however, to attend every session, listen to every witness, and attempt to understand the facts as presented and the laws as explained,” the excerpts said.

Totaling just nine pages – three of which contained no substantive information – the portions released Thursday were short and didn’t provide extensive information on the investigation’s findings.

It’s time for Donald Trump and his associates to be held responsible for their actions of lying about the election. It is time for his supporters to look at the truth and re-enter the community.

I want to do this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state,” Trump said, according to a transcript of the call that took place on January 2, 2021.

The Special Grand Jury and the Case of Biden in Fulton County, Georgia, During the December 2018 January 6, 2021 Atmospheric Attack

They should read the book of the special grand jury. It seems highly unlikely that every member of this jury was a liberal Democrat. In Fulton County, Biden won 76.2% of the vote in 2020, but he was outnumbered by Trump supporters and people who usually vote for the Republicans. Those voters were able to set aside their partisan interests, know the importance of the task they were given, and behave accordingly. They gave the evidence a fair read; they made recommendations that were, hopefully, based on the information before them and not on partisan interests. They were tasked with assessing the evidence before them and deciding if it supported criminal charges.

They were asked to assess whether it’s possible that a former president and his allies had leveraged an attack on American democracy, or whether that president was telling the truth when he said the election was stolen.

That’s a much nobler conclusion than the one we’ve seen from members of the GOP, many of whom have largely opposed any efforts to determine responsibility for election-fraud lies, and have instead often doubled down on those lies.

The January 6, 2021 attack at the US Capitol shocked the nation and caused many deaths. Republicans have mostly opposed the efforts to get to the bottom of what happened.

If average people selected for a special grand jury can complete this task with honesty and integrity, surely it’s not asking too much for Republican officeholders to approach their roles with similar gravity: To declare that the election was free and fair, and to ask that those who may have broken the law or lied be held accountable.

Some legal analysts have concluded that the atmospherics of the case and the signals being sent by Willis mean that some indictments are likely – though of course charges do not mean that someone will be convicted at trial.

Thomas Dupree, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the George W Bush administration, told CNN on Thursday that he believed there would be indictments for perjury or other crimes.

Norm Eisen, a former diplomat and legal and ethics expert, told CNN on Thursday that the conclusion was a possibly important building block in any case against Trump. The finding “goes right to the core of what Donald Trump has been claiming happened in Georgia. Eisen said on CNN’s Newsroom that it repudiates him.

It established a basis for bringing charges when it came to solicitation of election fraud. This is another nail in the coffin that was already full of them.”

Still, Alberto Gonzales, who served as attorney general in the Bush administration, cautioned that it would be wrong to get “terribly excited” by Thursday’s events in Georgia or to over-interpret them.

Georgia law says a felony has been committed if someone solicits, requests, commands, Importunes, or otherwise attempts to cause the other person to engage in such conduct. According to the authors of the report, evidence shows that Trump committed such acts between Election Day, 2020, and January 6, 2021, when Congress delayed its certification of the election.

The foreperson of the Atlanta-based grand jury that investigated former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election told CNN on Tuesday that the panel is recommending multiple indictments and suggested “the big name” may be on the list.

Emily stated that it would be very hard to do this for eight months and not have a whole list of recommended indictments. “It’s not a short list. It is not.

Some names that you wouldn’t expect are on that list. But the big name that everyone keeps asking me about – I don’t think you will be shocked.”

Special Grand Jury Foreperson ebof: What did the DA tell us about the investigation? A spokesperson declined to comment on the indictments

Kohrs declined later Tuesday to disclose exactly how many indictments the special grand jury recommended be brought as part of the investigation, saying only that she believes it is more than 12.

I believe so, when Kate asked me if the number of people was more than a dozen. That’s probably a good assumption.”

She said she has heard the president on the phone a few times. CNN reported that one more call by Trump to a Georgia state official was part of the investigation.

She believed that the prosecutors acted in a non partisan fashion and tried to keep the proceedings fair despite being accused of being a liberal witch hunt.

“I don’t believe there was bias on the part of the DA’s team,” she told CNN in the phone interview. I know that they were always very worried about accidentally coloring their opinions one way or the other. They told us that they didn’t want any of their opinions to affect any of our opinions, or any of their additional knowledge to affect our knowledge.”

“Personally, I hope to see her take almost any kind of decisive action, to actually do something,” Kohrs said. “There are too many times in recent history that seem to me like someone has gotten called out for something that people had a problem with, and nothing ever happens.”

How often do things actually happen? I would want to see something happen. Don’t make me take back my faith in the system,” Kohrs said. If the whole thing just disappears, I would be disappointed. That is the only thing that would make me sad.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/21/politics/fulton-county-trump-grand-jury-foreperson-ebof/index.html

The Associated Press, CNN’s Tim Heaphy, and the High-Callout Special Counsel to the Secret Service of the January 6 Capitol Reaction

The foreperson was surprised by the friendly demeanor of some witnesses, such as former White house national security adviser Michael Flynn, even when he invoked privilege and declined to answer questions.

“Some of those people fought not to be there, but once they were there, they were willing to have a conversation, and I respect the hell out of that,” Kohrs said. Flynn was very nice to me in person. He was a very nice man. He was definitely interesting. But I don’t recall him saying anything earth-shattering.”

The strategy that the grand jury saw from several of the most prominent witnesses, including the president’s White House chief of staff, was the use of the Fifth Amendment.

The source said that the former chief of staff to Mike Pence appeared before the grand jury. The Associated Press reported his appearance.

Timothy Heaphy told CNN’s Kate Bolduan on “Erin Burnett OutFront” that “unless there is information inconsistent, which I don’t expect, I think there will likely be indictments both in Georgia and at the federal level.”

They were present for very important events. The special counsel will want to hear the president’s explanation of what happened on January 6. He said that they had communications with him about the events leading up to the Capitol riot.

The special counsel has a massive amount of evidence already in-hand that it now needs to comb through, including evidence recently turned over by the House January 6 committee, subpoena documents provided by local officials in key states and discovery collected from lawyers for Trump allies late last year in a flurry of activity, at least some of which had not been reviewed as of early January, sources familiar with the investigation told CNN at the time.

Smith will not stop because of his family relationship, according to Heaphy. “He believes that the law entitles him to all of that information, and he’s determined to get it.”