Trump enters the stage

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The New York Times

Opinion

Trump’s Lackeys Must Also Be Punished
The rule of law has to apply to everyone, including those in power.

Jan. 10, 2021

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Senator Marco R
Never trust politicians. They are craven. It’s an occupational attribute.

Sure, there are some who are good people, tell the truth most of the time and chose careers in politics for the right reason — public service rather than personal aggrandizement.

But, politics as a genre is about power, and power corrupts.

The higher up the political ladder a politician climbs, generally speaking, the more vicious they have likely had to be and the more viciousness they have had to endure. Also, they have had to shake more and more dirty hands to raise the obscene amounts of money now needed to run campaigns, and they have likely had to make unsavory compromises in service of their own advancement.

Now, I can name some politicians who I think have largely avoided these pitfalls, but their numbers are few. I do not seek to draw a false equivalence between the political parties in America. While I find all politicians suspect, the utter moral collapse of Republican conscience and character under Donald Trump still stands out as an outrageous aberration.

Republican politicians by and large knew how lacking in every aspect Trump was, not just in experience but also character, morality and intellect. Many said as much before he was elected.

Ted Cruz called Trump “utterly amoral,” a “serial philanderer” and “a narcissist at a level that I don’t think this country has ever seen.” He also said of Trump:

“This man is a pathological liar. He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth.”

Lindsey Graham said:

“He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. … He’s the ISIL man of the year.”

Marco Rubio said, “We’re on the verge of having someone take over the conservative movement who is a con artist,” and called Trump the most “vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency.”

All of this was true. When these people were Trump’s opponents in the quest for the nomination, none of them shied away from telling the truth about him. Now they have been cowed into obsequiousness.

Trump didn’t change, but his relationship to power did: when he won, he had it, and the Republicans swarmed to him like moths to a flame, or more like vultures to a corpse.

Power, in politics, changes everything. Politicians are desperate for power the way a drowning person is desperate for air. But in politics, there are levels of proximity: The closer you are the stronger you are. You can possess the power or simply be in proximity to it.

Republicans in Washington turned their backs on everything they believed. Trump had created a mob. He had recruited traditional conservatives into it. He was in full control of it.

To a politician, a mob can look like a movement. It can look like power. So, they caved to that which they could consort with; they feigned ignorance of the ways they had accurately derided Trump so that one day they might harness the white nationalist throngs he had unleashed.

They put their personal ambitions over the preservation of America. Maybe they thought that whatever damage Trump did would be repairable, so they would simply trudge through it until his time in office was at its end.

Well, it is now at its end and he seems to be doing more damage than ever — or as much damage as ever.

The insurrection at the U.S. Capitol was a shocking thing to behold. But so much of what has occurred during the Trump presidency has been shocking. Some days I fear that I’m going to lose my capacity to be shocked.

And Trump still has 10 more days in office. There is no telling what he might attempt to do in those days, while he still holds that awesome power of the U.S. presidency.

Even if he leaves office without further damage, the damage he has done is lasting and many of the people who blindly support him will persist.

We may be getting rid of Trump, but we are not getting rid of Trumpism. The aftertaste of this presidency will linger.

Now we have to ask a very serious question: What do we do now as a society and as a body politic? Do we simply turn the page and hope for a better day, let bygones be bygones? Or do we seek some form of justice, to hold people accountable for taking this country to the brink?

I say that we must prosecute all people who have committed crimes and punish all those who have broken rules. The rule of law can’t simply be for the common man; it must also be for the exalted man. Because only then will the ideas of fairness and justice have meaning."

© 2021 The New York Times Company

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The chief of the National Guard Bureau, Gen. Daniel Hokanson, said up to 15,000 National Guard troops have been approved to meet current and future requests for the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden on Jan. 20.

CNN reported earlier Monday that the Pentagon plans to have 10,000 National Guard troops in DC by Jan. 16 as troops already earmarked for the inauguration begin to arrive, according to a senior defense official.

Currently, there 6,200 National Guard members who have already been mobilized in the wake of the Capitol being stormed by pro-Trump rioters.

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Live TV
LIVE UPDATES
House pushes for Trump’s removal after deadly Capitol riot
By Meg Wagner, Melissa Macaya, Mike Hayes and Melissa Mahtani, CNN
Updated 1:37 PM ET, Tue January 12, 2021

House pushes for Trump’s removal after deadly Capitol riot What you need to know
The House is expected to vote today on a measure calling for President Trump to be removed from office through the 25th Amendment following last week’s deadly Capitol attack.
House Democrats also plan to vote tomorrow to impeach Trump, charging him with “incitement of insurrection.” Read the full resolution here.
Law enforcement agencies are on high alert as they continue to investigate the Capitol riot. The FBI warns “armed protests” are being planned around the US, and Congress has been briefed on new threats against the Capitol ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.
1:32 p.m. ET, January 12, 2021
Senior Republican staffer resigns in letter condemning GOP colleagues for role in Capitol riot
From CNN’s Jamie Gangel
Jason Schmid, a widely respected and senior Republican staffer on the House Armed Services Committee, resigned Tuesday following the Jan. 6th insurrection at the US Capitol.

In a strongly worded resignation letter, he condemned members of his own party who “chose to put political theater ahead of the defense of the Constitution and the Republic.”

“The sad, incontrovertible truth is that the people who laid siege to the Capitol were and continue to be domestic enemies of the Constitution of the United States. A poisonous lie that the election was illegitimate and should be overturned inspired so called ‘patriots’ to share common cause with white supremacists, neo-Nazis and conspiracy theorists to attack the seat of American government,” Schmid wrote in his resignation letter.
He continued: “Anyone who watched those horrible hours unfold should have been galvanized to rebuke these insurrectionists in the strongest terms. Instead, some members whom I believed to be leaders in the defense of the nation chose to put political theater ahead of the defense of the Constitution and the Republic.”

Members of the committee have been very moved by Schmid’s resignation letter, according to a source familiar with those conversation. This person added that it speaks to the concerns being talked about amongst Republicans following the Capitol Hill attack.

In his letter Schmid directly condemned House and Senate Republicans who objected to the legally certified electoral college votes of several states.

“The decision to vote to set aside legitimate electors harmed the ability of every service member, intelligence officer, and diplomat to defend the nation and advance American interests,” Schmid writes. “Congressional enablers of this mob have made future foreign conflict more likely, not less.”

He also calls on the committee to hold the Department of Defense accountable.

“It is vitally important that the Committee hold the Department of Defense accountable for bringing any participants to justice. These extremist influences are a grave threat to our ability to defend the nation, and they must be expelled from the force immediately. I deeply regret some members may no longer have the credibility needed to accomplish this work,” Schmid writes.

1:43 p.m. ET, January 12, 2021
Senate Democratic leader says Capitol rioters should be put on a no-fly list

Pool
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer is demanding that anyone who stormed the US Capitol last week be placed on the Transportation Security Administration’s no-fly list as a way to contain possible future threats.

“These individuals are a threat to the homeland as defined by the law,” Schumer said at a news conference. “And they should be placed on the no-fly list.”

He continued:
“With so many questions about safety and the worry about future possible threats, the least we can do is make the skies, the inauguration, the Capitol and the country safer.”

Hear what else he said about possible threats:
1:37 p.m. ET, January 12, 2021
GOP lawmaker removed from Harvard advisory committee following election claims
From CNN’s Rachel Janfaza

Rep. Elise Stefanik Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images/FILE
GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York was removed from the Harvard Institute of Politics Senior Advisory Committee Tuesday for her role in perpetuating baseless claims about voter fraud in the November 2020 election.

The decision comes following calls from students and alumni – including a petition signed by nearly a thousand Harvard affiliates – to remove Stefanik from the committee.
Pleas for Stefanik to step aside had been brewing since the election, but this specific petition was started early last week in the wake of the insurrection at the Capitol on Wednesday, when Stefanik objected to the certification of the election results, even after the violence.

“I spoke with Elise and asked her to step aside from the Senior Advisory Committee. My request was not about political parties, political ideology, or her choice of candidate for president. Rather, in my assessment, Elise has made public assertions about voter fraud in November’s presidential election that have no basis in evidence, and she has made public statements about court actions related to the election that are incorrect,” Douglas Elmendorf, dean of faculty at the Harvard Kennedy School, said in a letter to the Senior Advisory Committee of the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School Tuesday.
“Moreover, these assertions and statements do not reflect policy disagreements but bear on the foundations of the electoral process through which this country’s leaders are chosen,” Elmendorf added.

According to the letter, Stefanik was asked to step aside from the committee, but declined that offer and therefore was therefore removed from the committee.

Megan Corrigan and Jacob Carrel – both students at Harvard Law School – were in a group chat texting as the violence at the Capitol unfolded.

“We were both aware Rep. Stefanik had this position at the Institute of Politics, and we felt that with her continued support of these false claims of election fraud she was enabling this violence. And we felt like she should no longer be a part of our institution or hold such a high position within our Institute of Politics,” Corrigan, a 28-year-old second year law student at Harvard Law School and an author of the petition, told CNN.

“She continued and objected after the violence… and from there, the petition just took off, even faster than we imagined,” Corrigan added.

In addition to the petition, undergraduates also shared an infographic on social media which explained why they believed Stefanik “should not be an IOP senior advisor.”
“Through her promise to oppose the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election, Rep. Stefanik has demonstrated that she is not suitable to advise our student center any longer,” the students wrote.

“We were so happy that the University heard us and took this step to hold her accountable this morning,” Corrigan told CNN Tuesday.

Stefanik responded to the Institute of Politics’ decision Tuesday with a statement on Twitter in which she said, “The decision by Harvard’s administration to cower and cave to the woke Left will continue to erode diversity of thought, public discourse, and ultimately the student experience.”
But, according to Coorigan, “This isn’t a free speech issue. This is a case of legislative action taken contrary to our Democracy.”

1:15 p.m. ET, January 12, 2021
House Democrat says the security situation around the Capitol has improved significantly
From CNN’s Daniella Diaz
Chair of the House Administration Committee Zoe Lofgren told reporters after a briefing with the acting Capitol Police Chief and Acting Sergeant-at-Arms she feels security at the Capitol has improved.

When asked about the expected attacks on the US Capitol and lawmakers, “Go look at social media, and you’ll see there’s people who are unhinged and looking into overthrowing the government and you know, we saw them last week.”

1:17 p.m. ET, January 12, 2021
Trump advised to denounce violence to reduce legal liability, sources say
From CNN’s Jim Acosta

Trump exits the White House on Tuesday, January 12. Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Advisers and lawyers speaking with Trump over the last few days have encouraged the President to lower his rhetoric and denounce violence in order to reduce his legal liability for the deadly insurrection at the Capitol last week, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.

“Lawyers have been recommending a deescalation of rhetoric, not just for the good of the country, but also to reduce the risk of legal jeopardy,” one source familiar with the discussions said.
The sources said Trump has been told in the days following the siege at the Capitol that he could be charged with inciting violence by local and federal authorities and be sued by relatives of the victims who were harmed in the insurrection.

“He absolutely can be sued,” a separate source said, reflecting concerns among Trump’s advisers that the president’s actions have once again put himself in legal jeopardy.

As he left the White House for a trip to the border, Trump told reporters he did not want to see further violence. But he did not accept any responsibility for his own role in instigating the storming of the Capitol.

Trump has still not displayed remorse for the violence on Capitol Hill. He continues to tell his advisers that the election was stolen from him.

“Trump has created his own reality,” one of the sources said.

The other source contacted by CNN said Trump would not be shielded from prosecution once he leaves office, something the president is aware of as well.

1:09 p.m. ET, January 12, 2021
Senate should start hearings on Biden’s DHS pick to ensure security, inaugural committee co-chair says
From CNN’s Adrienne Vogt

Rep. Cedric Richmond CNN
Democratic Rep. Cedric Richmond, a co-chair of President-elect Joe Biden’s inaugural committee, said Senate hearings for Biden’s homeland security chief pick need to happen as soon as possible to ensure safety on Inauguration Day.
“The biggest failure that I’ve seen so far is that the United States Senate has not held hearings on the new secretary of homeland security, Mr. [Alejandro] Mayorkas, who would, at 12:01, be responsible for a whole-of-government approach to making sure these capitols are safe around the country and to make sure DC is safe,” Richmond told CNN’s John King.
It’s “irresponsible to the American public,” he added.

Members of Congress have been briefed on a series of new threats against lawmakers and the Capitol itself. According to a member of Congress who was among those briefed late Monday, thousands of armed pro-Trump extremists are plotting to surround the US Capitol ahead of Biden’s inauguration.
Richmond said the inauguration organizers have included many digital components to the ceremony and are coordinating with officials to keep the ceremony secure.

1:24 p.m. ET, January 12, 2021
FBI has received over 100,000 digital tips from the public related to last week’s riot at the US Capitol
From CNN’s Jessica Schneider
According to the FBI’s Washington Field Office, the FBI has received more than 100,000 digital media tips as of Tuesday morning.

The digital media tips are sent in from people who have documented the rioting and violence at the US Capitol last week.

The FBI continues to urge people across the country to submit information, photos and videos that could be relevant to the ongoing investigation.

Scenes from the day a pro-Trump mob broke into the US Capitol:

12:43 p.m. ET, January 12, 2021
First two Capitol riot defendants indicted in Washington, including man alleged to have bombs
From CNnKatelyn Polantz
The Justice Department on Tuesday filed its first federal grand jury indictments against two defendants linked to the Capitol riot, including against an Alabama man alleged to have parked a truck filled with homemade bombs, guns and ammo two blocks from the Capitol.
Both men were arrested last week and their criminal allegations were made public shortly after the riot. The indictments formalize the charges the men, after they were arrested under criminal complaint.

Lonnie Leroy Coffman of Alabama appears to be the most serious defendant of more than 20 known federal defendants so far. He is currently detained and is set to appear before a judge this afternoon.

According to the new indictments, Coffman faces 17 criminal counts, largely for possession of multiple weapons including ammunition, shotgun shells and various guns, including a shotgun, a rifle, 3 pistols and 11 Molotov cocktails without registration in Washington, DC, on Jan. 6, according to the indictment.

Another man, Mark Jefferson Leffingwell, faces seven counts related to violence inside the Capitol building. He is released from detention at this time.

Neither have entered a plea in court.

12:49 p.m. ET, January 12, 2021
Rep. Raskin calls for Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment: This is the road to reconciliation
From CNN’s Maureen Chowdhury

House Rules Committee
Rep. Jamie Raskin, of Maryland, a Democrat, is leading the efforts to encourage the House to vote on a resolution calling for Vice President Mike Pence and President Trump’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment.
Raskin argued that the move would be a road to reconcile the country and parties following the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.

“All we have to ask is whether the President lived up to the most basic and minimal expectations for his duties of office,” Raskin said during his remarks at the House hearing on the resolution.

“Can you imagine any other president in our history encouraging and fomenting mob violence against the Congress of the United States? Against our people? That’s the question. And if you’re with me and you can’t imagine any other president doing that and you think he failed the basic duties of offices then I think the Vice President has a duty to act,” Raskin said.

Raskin saluted Vice President Pence’s actions on January 6 to move ahead with the certification of the electoral results despite facing “enormous, phenomenal, unprecedented pressure” from President Trump.

Raskin encouraged Pence to “stand up again."

“This is the road to reconciliation," Raskin said, addressing those members of Congress who he said “foolishly” voted to object the electoral results even after the US Capitol was attacked.

"It is the Vice President himself who is the key actor and it’s the President’s own Cabinet who make up the key actors… They can help to lead us out of the nightmare that we’ve been plunged into by this sequence of events. They can transfer, peacefully, the powers of the President to Vice President Mike Pence for the remainder of this term so that we can have a peaceful transition of power,” Raskin explained.

Hear his strong words for President Trump:
View More
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and Melissa Mahtani, CNN
Updated 1:37 PM ET, Tue January 12, 2021

House pushes for Trump’s removal after deadly Capitol riot What you need to know
The House is expected to vote today on a measure calling for President Trump to be removed from office through the 25th Amendment following last week’s deadly Capitol attack.
House Democrats also plan to vote tomorrow to impeach Trump, charging him with “incitement of insurrection.” Read the full resolution here.
Law enforcement agencies are on high alert as they continue to investigate the Capitol riot. The FBI warns “armed protests” are being planned around the US, and Congress has been briefed on new threats against the Capitol ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.
1:32 p.m. ET, January 12, 2021
Senior Republican staffer resigns in letter condemning GOP colleagues for role in Capitol riot
From CNN’s Jamie Gangel
Jason Schmid, a widely respected and senior Republican staffer on the House Armed Services Committee, resigned Tuesday following the Jan. 6th insurrection at the US Capitol.

In a strongly worded resignation letter, he condemned members of his own party who “chose to put political theater ahead of the defense of the Constitution and the Republic.”

“The sad, incontrovertible truth is that the people who laid siege to the Capitol were and continue to be domestic enemies of the Constitution of the United States. A poisonous lie that the election was illegitimate and should be overturned inspired so called ‘patriots’ to share common cause with white supremacists, neo-Nazis and conspiracy theorists to attack the seat of American government,” Schmid wrote in his resignation letter.
He continued: “Anyone who watched those horrible hours unfold should have been galvanized to rebuke these insurrectionists in the strongest terms. Instead, some members whom I believed to be leaders in the defense of the nation chose to put political theater ahead of the defense of the Constitution and the Republic.”

Members of the committee have been very moved by Schmid’s resignation letter, according to a source familiar with those conversation. This person added that it speaks to the concerns being talked about amongst Republicans following the Capitol Hill attack.

In his letter Schmid directly condemned House and Senate Republicans who objected to the legally certified electoral college votes of several states.

“The decision to vote to set aside legitimate electors harmed the ability of every service member, intelligence officer, and diplomat to defend the nation and advance American interests,” Schmid writes. “Congressional enablers of this mob have made future foreign conflict more likely, not less.”

He also calls on the committee to hold the Department of Defense accountable.

“It is vitally important that the Committee hold the Department of Defense accountable for bringing any participants to justice. These extremist influences are a grave threat to our ability to defend the nation, and they must be expelled from the force immediately. I deeply regret some members may no longer have the credibility needed to accomplish this work,” Schmid writes.

1:43 p.m. ET, January 12, 2021
Senate Democratic leader says Capitol rioters should be put on a no-fly list

Pool
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer is demanding that anyone who stormed the US Capitol last week be placed on the Transportation Security Administration’s no-fly list as a way to contain possible future threats.

“These individuals are a threat to the homeland as defined by the law,” Schumer said at a news conference. “And they should be placed on the no-fly list.”

He continued:
“With so many questions about safety and the worry about future possible threats, the least we can do is make the skies, the inauguration, the Capitol and the country safer.”

Hear what else he said about possible threats:
1:37 p.m. ET, January 12, 2021
GOP lawmaker removed from Harvard advisory committee following election claims
From CNN’s Rachel Janfaza

Rep. Elise Stefanik Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images/FILE
GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York was removed from the Harvard Institute of Politics Senior Advisory Committee Tuesday for her role in perpetuating baseless claims about voter fraud in the November 2020 election.

The decision comes following calls from students and alumni – including a petition signed by nearly a thousand Harvard affiliates – to remove Stefanik from the committee.
Pleas for Stefanik to step aside had been brewing since the election, but this specific petition was started early last week in the wake of the insurrection at the Capitol on Wednesday, when Stefanik objected to the certification of the election results, even after the violence.

“I spoke with Elise and asked her to step aside from the Senior Advisory Committee. My request was not about political parties, political ideology, or her choice of candidate for president. Rather, in my assessment, Elise has made public assertions about voter fraud in November’s presidential election that have no basis in evidence, and she has made public statements about court actions related to the election that are incorrect,” Douglas Elmendorf, dean of faculty at the Harvard Kennedy School, said in a letter to the Senior Advisory Committee of the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School Tuesday.
“Moreover, these assertions and statements do not reflect policy disagreements but bear on the foundations of the electoral process through which this country’s leaders are chosen,” Elmendorf added.

According to the letter, Stefanik was asked to step aside from the committee, but declined that offer and therefore was therefore removed from the committee.

Megan Corrigan and Jacob Carrel – both students at Harvard Law School – were in a group chat texting as the violence at the Capitol unfolded.

“We were both aware Rep. Stefanik had this position at the Institute of Politics, and we felt that with her continued support of these false claims of election fraud she was enabling this violence. And we felt like she should no longer be a part of our institution or hold such a high position within our Institute of Politics,” Corrigan, a 28-year-old second year law student at Harvard Law School and an author of the petition, told CNN.

“She continued and objected after the violence… and from there, the petition just took off, even faster than we imagined,” Corrigan added.

In addition to the petition, undergraduates also shared an infographic on social media which explained why they believed Stefanik “should not be an IOP senior advisor.”
“Through her promise to oppose the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election, Rep. Stefanik has demonstrated that she is not suitable to advise our student center any longer,” the students wrote.

“We were so happy that the University heard us and took this step to hold her accountable this morning,” Corrigan told CNN Tuesday.

Stefanik responded to the Institute of Politics’ decision Tuesday with a statement on Twitter in which she said, “The decision by Harvard’s administration to cower and cave to the woke Left will continue to erode diversity of thought, public discourse, and ultimately the student experience.”
But, according to Coorigan, “This isn’t a free speech issue. This is a case of legislative action taken contrary to our Democracy.”

1:15 p.m. ET, January 12, 2021
House Democrat says the security situation around the Capitol has improved significantly
From CNN’s Daniella Diaz
Chair of the House Administration Committee Zoe Lofgren told reporters after a briefing with the acting Capitol Police Chief and Acting Sergeant-at-Arms she feels security at the Capitol has improved.

When asked about the expected attacks on the US Capitol and lawmakers, “Go look at social media, and you’ll see there’s people who are unhinged and looking into overthrowing the government and you know, we saw them last week.”

1:17 p.m. ET, January 12, 2021
Trump advised to denounce violence to reduce legal liability, sources say
From CNN’s Jim Acosta

Trump exits the White House on Tuesday, January 12. Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Advisers and lawyers speaking with Trump over the last few days have encouraged the President to lower his rhetoric and denounce violence in order to reduce his legal liability for the deadly insurrection at the Capitol last week, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.

“Lawyers have been recommending a deescalation of rhetoric, not just for the good of the country, but also to reduce the risk of legal jeopardy,” one source familiar with the discussions said.
The sources said Trump has been told in the days following the siege at the Capitol that he could be charged with inciting violence by local and federal authorities and be sued by relatives of the victims who were harmed in the insurrection.

“He absolutely can be sued,” a separate source said, reflecting concerns among Trump’s advisers that the president’s actions have once again put himself in legal jeopardy.

As he left the White House for a trip to the border, Trump told reporters he did not want to see further violence. But he did not accept any responsibility for his own role in instigating the storming of the Capitol.

Trump has still not displayed remorse for the violence on Capitol Hill. He continues to tell his advisers that the election was stolen from him.

“Trump has created his own reality,” one of the sources said.

The other source contacted by CNN said Trump would not be shielded from prosecution once he leaves office, something the president is aware of as well.

1:09 p.m. ET, January 12, 2021
Senate should start hearings on Biden’s DHS pick to ensure security, inaugural committee co-chair says

Rep. Cedric Richmond CNN
Democratic Rep. Cedric Richmond, a co-chair of President-elect Joe Biden’s inaugural committee, said Senate hearings for Biden’s homeland security chief pick need to happen as soon as possible to ensure safety on Inauguration Day.
“The biggest failure that I’ve seen so far is that the United States Senate has not held hearings on the new secretary of homeland security, Mr. [Alejandro] Mayorkas, who would, at 12:01, be responsible for a whole-of-government approach to making sure these capitols are safe around the country and to make sure DC is safe,” Richmond told CNN’s John King.
It’s “irresponsible to the American public,” he added.

Members of Congress have been briefed on a series of new threats against lawmakers and the Capitol itself. According to a member of Congress who was among those briefed late Monday, thousands of armed pro-Trump extremists are plotting to surround the US Capitol ahead of Biden’s inauguration.
Richmond said the inauguration organizers have included many digital components to the ceremony and are coordinating with officials to keep the ceremony secure.

1:24 p.m. ET, January 12, 2021
FBI has received over 100,000 digital tips from the public related to last week’s riot at the US Capitol
From CNN’s Jessica Schneider
According to the FBI’s Washington Field Office, the FBI has received more than 100,000 digital media tips as of Tuesday morning.

The digital media tips are sent in from people who have documented the rioting and violence at the US Capitol last week.

The FBI continues to urge people across the country to submit information, photos and videos that could be relevant to the ongoing investigation.

Scenes from the day a pro-Trump mob broke into the US Capitol:

12:43 p.m. ET, January 12, 2021
First two Capitol riot defendants indicted in Washington, including man alleged to have bombs
From CNnKatelyn Polantz
The Justice Department on Tuesday filed its first federal grand jury indictments against two defendants linked to the Capitol riot, including against an Alabama man alleged to have parked a truck filled with homemade bombs, guns and ammo two blocks from the Capitol.
Both men were arrested last week and their criminal allegations were made public shortly after the riot. The indictments formalize the charges the men, after they were arrested under criminal complaint.

Lonnie Leroy Coffman of Alabama appears to be the most serious defendant of more than 20 known federal defendants so far. He is currently detained and is set to appear before a judge this afternoon.

According to the new indictments, Coffman faces 17 criminal counts, largely for possession of multiple weapons including ammunition, shotgun shells and various guns, including a shotgun, a rifle, 3 pistols and 11 Molotov cocktails without registration in Washington, DC, on Jan. 6, according to the indictment.

Another man, Mark Jefferson Leffingwell, faces seven counts related to violence inside the Capitol building. He is released from detention at this time.

Neither have entered a plea in court.

12:49 p.m. ET, January 12, 2021
Rep. Raskin calls for Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment: This is the road to reconciliation
From CNN’s Maureen Chowdhury

House Rules Committee
Rep. Jamie Raskin, of Maryland, a Democrat, is leading the efforts to encourage the House to vote on a resolution calling for Vice President Mike Pence and President Trump’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment.
Raskin argued that the move would be a road to reconcile the country and parties following the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.

“All we have to ask is whether the President lived up to the most basic and minimal expectations for his duties of office,” Raskin said during his remarks at the House hearing on the resolution.

“Can you imagine any other president in our history encouraging and fomenting mob violence against the Congress of the United States? Against our people? That’s the question. And if you’re with me and you can’t imagine any other president doing that and you think he failed the basic duties of offices then I think the Vice President has a duty to act,” Raskin said.

Raskin saluted Vice President Pence’s actions on January 6 to move ahead with the certification of the electoral results despite facing “enormous, phenomenal, unprecedented pressure” from President Trump.

Raskin encouraged Pence to “stand up again."

“This is the road to reconciliation," Raskin said, addressing those members of Congress who he said “foolishly” voted to object the electoral results even after the US Capitol was attacked.

"It is the Vice President himself who is the key actor and it’s the President’s own Cabinet who make up the key actors… They can help to lead us out of the nightmare that we’ve been plunged into by this sequence of events. They can transfer, peacefully, the powers of the President to Vice President Mike Pence for the remainder of this term so that we can have a peaceful transition of power,” Raskin explained.

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POLITICO

CONGRESS

Liz Cheney will vote to impeach Trump
The House plans to hold an impeachment vote Wednesday, as Trump rejected any blame for the deadly riot at the Capitol.

Rep. Liz Cheney, speaks with reporters at the Capitol in Washington.

01/12/2021 01:50 PM EST

Updated: 01/12/2021 05:46 PM EST

UPDATE:

Rep. Liz Cheney, the No. 3 House Republican, will vote to impeach President Donald Trump for his role in inciting a deadly insurrection at the Capitol last week.

“There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution,” Cheney said in a statement announcing her decision.

Cheney is the highest ranking Republican to publicly voice support for impeachment.

ORIGINAL STORY:

The House will take its first formal step toward removing President Donald Trump Tuesday, with Democrats warning he presents a grave and immediate threat to the nation despite having just a week left in office.

Democrats’ push to force Trump out — first with a vote later Tuesday calling on Vice President Mike Pence to take unilateral action and then an impeachment vote Wednesday — is barreling to the floor at unprecedented speed.

“This is a solemn day,” House Rules Chair Jim McGovern said as his panel moved quickly to tee up the resolution intended to pressure Pence. The Massachusetts Democrat, who was steps away from the doors as rioters attempted to pound their way into the chamber last Wednesday, rebuked Trump for urging his supporters to march on the Capitol where their insurrection temporarily halted certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s win.

“He called together an angry mob, he filled them with falsehoods and false hope. And then he sent them to the U.S. Capitol,” McGovern said. “It is past time for the vice president to do the right thing here.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said they will only move ahead to impeach Trump if Pence continues to ignore their party’s increasingly urgent demands to remove the president. But down Pennsylvania Avenue, Pence has offered no public indications that he is considering the notion. And Trump has remained defiant even as a growing faction of his party has blamed him for Wednesday’s violence.

In his first public remarks since the deadly riots, Trump showed no remorse for his involvement, calling his speech last Wednesday encouraging protesters to march to the Capitol “totally appropriate.” Instead, he lashed out at the Democrats’ impeachment efforts.

“This impeachment is causing tremendous anger, and you’re doing it and it’s really a terrible thing that they’re doing,” Trump told reporters Tuesday. “For Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to continue on this path, I think it’s causing tremendous danger to our country and it’s causing tremendous anger.”

Tensions remained high on Tuesday as many Democrats and Republicans returned to work for the first time since Wednesday’s siege.

In a meeting of the normally mild-mannered Rules Committee, multiple Democrats became enraged as Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) repeatedly refused to acknowledge that Biden won the election fairly.

“I’m glad that all it took for you to call for unity and healing was for our freedom and democracy to be attacked,” McGovern fired back at Jordan, a Trump ally, as he and others grew increasingly furious. “But for the several months, the gentleman from Ohio and others have given oxygen to the president’s conspiracy theories.”

“All of us should do some soul searching on five dead Americans,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said in his own fiery response to Jordan, adding: “This president is not up to the job for the next eight days and a lot of danger still faces us.”

Even before Trump’s comments Tuesday, the Democrats’ effort to remove the president for an unprecedented second time left some concerned on Capitol Hill about the potential divisiveness of the step.

Lawmakers of both parties are worried the impeachment vote will again inflame the pro-Trump mob who stormed the Capitol last week and terrorized lawmakers and staff and which resulted in dozens of injuries and five deaths, including a police officer.

Only compounding those concerns, Democrats received an alarming security briefing Monday night that left members and staff shaken, with Capitol officials warning of “retribution” plots from Trump supporters.

Pelosi and her leadership team held another security briefing on Tuesday with the acting heads of Capitol Police and the House Sergeant-at-Arms. One of the biggest concerns is next week’s inauguration ceremonies, which a growing number of lawmakers are privately considering skipping.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Joint Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, said it was “working around the clock” to secure the event, and appeared to rule out the idea of relocating it to a different, perhaps indoors, location.

“We will be swearing in President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2021,” the planning committee wrote.

But Democrats, including Pelosi, say they have no choice but to deliver a firm rebuke against Trump. The vast majority of House Democrats say they are prepared to press ahead with impeachment even as some worry about returning to the Capitol.

And many Democrats are increasingly encouraged, hoping that a dozen House Republicans will ultimately support the impeachment effort.

“I hope we will have a dozen, at least. You know, I think we’ll have somewhere in that range. I hope we have many more,” Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), a lead author of the article of impeachment against Trump, told CNN Tuesday.

The mounting strife within the House GOP Conference was on full display in a two-hour conference call on Monday, where lawmakers sparred over the fallout from the riot.

GOP leadership is not planning to whip votes among the conference, a move that comes amid bubbling frustrations among House Republicans over Trump’s role in spurring Wednesday’s violence.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy isn’t putting his thumb on the scale. And POLITICO first reported Monday that House GOP Conference Chair Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who is considering supporting impeachment, is framing it as a “vote of conscience” rather than a political vote.

Still, many of Trump’s allies have continued to defend him, making clear that the base of the congressional GOP will reject both of Democrats’ efforts this week.

“I think this resolution is misguided and inappropriate for the legislative branch to pursue,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who was among more than 130 Republicans who opposed certification of the 2020 election this week. “Vice President Pence’s record of sound judgment at times of crisis should speak to all of us on this issue.”

The resolution the House will vote on later Tuesday, introduced by Raskin, would call on Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment — deeming the president unfit for office and removing him if a majority of the Cabinet or a commission appointed by Congress agrees.

“It’s very clear that the president did not discharge the proper duties of office,” Raskin said.

With Pence showing no desire to invoke the 25th Amendment, the House is all but certain to impeach Trump Wednesday. The question then turns to the Senate and when it will begin a trial.

Pelosi and her leadership team discussed over the weekend delaying sending the article of impeachment over to the Senate so as not to immediately trigger a trial that could derail Biden’s agenda and Cabinet confirmations in his first critical weeks.

But top Democrats have since begun coalescing around a plan to immediately send over the article, with Biden himself floating the idea that the Senate could focus on the trial in the morning and consider Cabinet nominees in the afternoon. (During Trump’s first impeachment trial, the Senate began proceedings in the afternoon each day, allowing for other Senate action.)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell circulated a memo late last week saying the earliest a Senate trial would begin would be Jan. 19, the day before Biden’s inauguration. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the incoming majority leader, has looked into the option of reconvening the chamber earlier under emergency powers but the move would require buy-in from McConnell, who is unlikely to agree to it.

In a memo outlining his priorities as majority leader Tuesday, Schumer did not mention the impeachment trial specifically, instead saying that the Senate will “continue to take action to address these events — including action to mitigate and hopefully remove the immediate and ongoing danger President Trump poses to our country.”

Pelosi declined to comment on the potential timeline as she entered the Capitol Tuesday.

“That is not something I will be discussing right now as you can imagine,” Pelosi told reporters. “Take it one step at a time.”

© 2021 POLITICO LLC

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Trump still unrepentant and doubles down :

President Donald Trump doubled down Tuesday on the incendiary rhetoric that incited the Capitol riot, warning darkly that it was dangerous to the United States for him to be impeached for his conduct.

Trump also claimed that his inflammatory comments at a rally shortly before the invasion of the halls of Congress by thousands of his supporters on Wednesday were not harmful.

“People thought what I said was totally appropriate,” Trump told reporters when he was asked what his personal responsibility was for the violence.

The riot came after he and his family members urged supporters at a rally to fight with him to reverse Joe Biden’s Electoral College win.

In his comments before departing for Texas on Tuesday, Trump again used the type of language that critics say fueled the mob, calling the planned impeachment by the Democratic-led House “really a continuation of the greatest witch hunt in politics.”

“It’s ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous,” Trump said in his first comments to the media since the riot, which killed a Capitol police officer and left at least four other people dead.

“This impeachment is causing tremendous anger, and you’re doing it, and it’s really a terrible thing that they’re doing,” Trump said, apparently blaming reporters for his looming impeachment.

“For [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi and [Senate Democratic leader] Chuck Schumer to continue on this path, I think it’s causing tremendous danger to our country, and it’s causing tremendous anger,” he said.

The president then added, “I want no violence.”

“As far as this is concerned, we want no violence, we want absolutely no violence,” Trump said.

But he did not explicitly condemn the actions by the mob of his supporters at the Capitol, who were motivated to protest against and prevent congressional confirmation of Biden’s election as the next president.

Schumer later said, “Donald Trump should not hold office one day longer, and what we saw in his statement today is proof positive of that.”

Trump, who has been banned from a slew of social media platforms since last week because of his comments, also said in his comments: “I think Big Tech has made a terrible mistake.”

In an apparent reference to his ban on Twitter and elsewhere, Trump said it is “very, very bad for our country and that’s leading others to do the same thing.”

“And it causes a lot of problems and a lot of danger. Big mistake. They shouldn’t be doing it,” the president said.

“But there’s always a counter move when they do that. I’ve never seen such anger as I see right now, and that’s a terrible thing.”

Asked whether he would resign before the end of his term next week, Trump did not answer.

Trump addressed his supporters’ invasion of the Capitol later Tuesday, at the start of a speech in Alamo, Texas, on the U.S.-Mexico border. Again, he did not take any responsibility for inciting the crowd, and he did not outright condemn the violence.

“Millions of our citizens watched on Wednesday as a mob stormed the Capitol and trashed the halls of government. As I have consistently said throughout my administration, we believe in respecting America’s history and traditions, not tearing them down. We believe in the rule of law, not violence or rioting,” Trump said.

“Now is the time for our nation to heal, and it’s time for peace, for calm,” he added in the speech. “Respect for law enforcement, and the great people within law enforcement — so many are here — is the foundation of the MAGA agenda. And we’re a nation of law, and we’re a nation of order.”

Trump’s looming impeachment, like his first one, directly stems from his actions seeking to prevent Biden from becoming president.

House Democrats first impeached Trump in late 2019 for pressuring the president of Ukraine that summer to announce that country was investigating Biden and his son Hunter over purported misconduct. While leaning on Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Trump was withholding military aid to Ukraine, which was battling pro-Russian forces, even though the aid was already approved by Congress.

On Wednesday, the riot interrupted a joint session of Congress confirming Biden’s election victory. His win was later confirmed early Thursday in a proceeding overseen by Vice President Mike Pence.

Three members of Trump’s Cabinet have resigned in the wake of last Wednesday’s riot: Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and Chad Wolf, who had been acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

The District of Columbia’s attorney general said Monday that he will investigate whether to criminally charge Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr., the president’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., for inciting the riot with their statements at the White House rally just before Trump’s supporters invaded the Capitol.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., reportedly told GOP caucus members on the same day that Trump bore some responsibility for the riot.

Trump warns of ‘tremendous danger’ if he is impeached, doesn’t take responsibility for Capitol

[Meno2 (Meno_)]

Opinion, Analysis, Essays

HOT TAKE

Removing Trump through impeachment or the 25th Amendment is warranted. But this is better.
The benefit of the 14th Amendment is that it allows Democrats to hold Trump accountable without the need for support from Republican senators or Mike Pence.

By Max Burns, Democratic strategist

There’s a better way to stop President Donald Trump than impeachment and the 25th Amendment — and it’s one that even has some Republican support. Though rarely used and often overlooked, the 14th Amendment could be the key to preventing a president who contributed to a domestic terrorist attack from ever receiving a position of public office again.

The 14th Amendment was crafted in times of division not entirely unlike our own.

The president of the United States meets all the criteria for being permanently barred from public office under even a rigid originalist reading of the third section of the 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War as a way to expel public officials who sided with Confederate insurrectionists over the union. The 14th Amendment’s text plainly states that “no person shall … hold any office, civil or military,” who, “having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid and comfort to the enemies thereof.”

The benefit of the 14th Amendment over impeachment is that it allows Democrats to hold Trump accountable without the need to gather a bipartisan supermajority of senators, which lawmakers say is unlikely because Republican obstruction has defined nearly every effort to bind Trump to the rule of law. It also bypasses the challenge of invoking the 25th Amendment, which requires the support of Vice President Mike Pence. The main drawback — the 14th Amendment’s lack of a removal clause — could be remedied through well-deserved impeachment, though Trump’s departure in a week will make this issue moot.

Democrats are making a mockery of the Constitution
Invoking the 14th Amendment could well garner more Republican support. On Monday evening, GOP Rep. Tom Reed of New York published an op-ed in The New York Times making his case for avoiding impeachment. “Work with us on constitutionally viable alternatives,” Reed pleaded. Those include “censure, criminal proceedings, and actions under the 14th Amendment.”

It’s fair to be skeptical of Reed, especially in light of most GOP leaders’ dogged unwillingness to admit an inkling of responsibility for a crisis of their own making. But there’s an underlying point that should be carefully considered: The 14th Amendment was crafted in times of division not entirely unlike our own.

The imminent threat of anti-government violence to post-Civil War legislators accounts in part for the stark clarity with which they wrote the 14th Amendment, especially the section governing what ought to be done with seditionists. Its Republican authors, like Rep. John Bingham of Ohio, witnessed the ruinous outcome of sedition carried to its logical extreme. They understood the solemn value of an oath, in this case the oath of office sworn by our federal officials to defend the Constitution and the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. On Jan. 6, too many Republicans didn’t honor their oaths — none more so than the president.

“The language in Section Three applies to anybody who has made an oath to the Constitution and then violates that oath,” Eric Foner, a Civil War historian and Columbia University professor emeritus, told The Washington Post. “It’s pretty simple.”

We want to hear what you THINK. Please submit a letter to the editor.
In an op-ed for The Post, Foner laid out the straightforward mechanics of a 14th Amendment charge: Legislators file a resolution, then both chambers vote. In that sense, it would be a triumph of the regular democratic process — the process Trump’s thugs tried to undermine — that delivers a final defeat to the president’s stained legacy.

The case for applying the language to Trump may also be clearer than that of impeachment, because the 14th Amendment’s permanent ban on future public service emphasizes for all future generations the severity of Trump’s treachery and doesn’t require the Senate to take a separate vote, as during the impeachment process.

That’s not to say there won’t be challenges to invoking the 14th Amendment. Any effort to hold Trump accountable is likely to face strong Republican opposition, though the extremity of Trump’s conduct seems to be fracturing party loyalties. The GOP will also likely challenge the application of such a rarely used piece of legal machinery. The Supreme Court will almost certainly be called to weigh in on the inevitable flood of Republican lawsuits.

These legal debates would eat up time Democrats are loath to spend on the outgoing Oval Office occupant during the critical first weeks of the Biden administration. Realistically, pursuing this path would also rule out an already unlikely impeachment conviction in the Senate, yet with Democrats moving forward on the early stages of impeachment, leadership might be uninterested in shifting approaches.

Wednesday’s riots show why Trump needs to be removed from office before Jan. 20
But our country faces a challenge unlike any it has faced in over a century and a half. Sworn officials, including the president of the United States, engaged in a public and preening show of force against the operations of government. Democrats must take the action that can be applied most quickly and effectively, and the 14th Amendment is the legal remedy that accomplishes that end.

Here’s the fastest, easiest way to keep Trump from ever holding office again
It can be dispiriting to see that the threat of violent antidemocratic terrorism is as real in our enlightened modernity as it was in the wake of the Civil War. But the parallels mean that a constitutional amendment from the 1800s speaks clearly to our present moment. If Congress is wise, it will make use of the tyranny-fighting tools left to us by our political ancestors in the 14th Amendment to hold Trump accountable for his indefensible disloyalty.

© 2020 NBC UNIVERSAL

[promethean75]

youtu.be/d3XSI_xwvss

[Meno2 (Meno_)]

@promethean75

https://youtu.be/d3XSI_xwvss

youtu.be/N3T6r8-5WhE

youtu.be/JmJXPy7wCIg

[Meno2 (Meno_)]

POLITICS & POLICY

"Republican senators shouldn’t flub this chance to show Trump his actions have consequences
Last February, some in the GOP believed impeachment without conviction was enough to teach the president a lesson. They need to learn from that mistake.

Image: President Trump departs Washington on travel to Texas at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland

By Michael Conway, former counsel, U.S. House Judiciary Committee

When historians debate who was the worst president in U.S. history, Donald Trump will be chosen hands down — in no small part because he is the only president to have been impeached twice. But whether he will become the first president to be convicted remains an open question.

Seldom in life does anyone get a second chance to rectify a grievous failure, but passage by the House on Wednesday of an article of impeachment against Trump affords every Republican senator that chance (except for Mitt Romney of Utah, who did vote to convict Trump on one count the first time). They must all decide now whether to protect our democracy from Trump and future would-be autocrats or to be enablers and apologists for what can now fairly be called the worst presidential misconduct in our history.

Why should the Senate convict Trump this time? Just ask Benjamin Franklin
Republican senators who voted to acquit Trump in February — in a hollowed-out trial without witnesses — misread the president, completely seemingly convinced that impeachment alone might temper his actions. Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Mike Braun, R-Ind., indeed, famously predicted that Trump would be chastened by being impeached; that has clearly not been the case.

Meanwhile, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., acknowledged that the actions for which Trump was impeached the first time — asking Ukraine’s president to investigate Joe Biden while withholding aid to Ukraine — were inappropriate, but he contended that the voters should judge Trump’s conduct rather than the Senate by convicting him in an impeachment trial nine months before the election.

Republicans can now vote to protect the Constitution and convict Trump, or they can be forever viewed as complicit in his attack on democracy.

In the months between Trump’s acquittal and Election Day, Senate Republicans’ failure to remove Trump caused immense harm as the Covid-19 pandemic raged, killing tens of thousands of Americans. Trump tried to falsely discredit mail-in balloting and the overall integrity of states’ election systems while retaliating against brave public officials who testified — under subpoena — in the House impeachment proceedings.

Then, when the voters, in fact, decided in the November election that Trump should be replaced by Biden, Trump launched a baseless attack on the integrity of the electoral system and the Electoral College, finally culminating in a violent attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 intended to disrupt the formal counting of the electoral votes by Congress.

Trump was never going to learn from impeachment. His purges prove it.
Collins, Braun and Alexander could not have been proven more wrong that Trump would be chastened or that he would let the voters determine his fate. Rather, Trump’s Senate enablers not only allowed Trump to escape the consequences of his abuse of power by their near-unanimous vote to acquit in February; they essentially signaled that he could violate the Constitution with no fear of consequence.

And so, for the last year, Trump has sped through the Republicans’ green light by seizing unfettered power in ways that his loyalists may not have envisioned, risking even the safety of Republican elected officials and his own vice president in his efforts to remain in the White House past the end of his sole legal term in office.

Our democracy is under attack, and the attacker-in-chief resides for five more days in the White House.

Republican senators — who were in justifiable fear for their safety and, indeed, their lives when Trump instigated an armed insurgent attack on the Capitol last week — now have a choice. They can vote to protect the Constitution and convict Trump, or they can be forever viewed as complicit in his attack on democracy.

At best, Trump is clueless about the criminal culpability of his repeated abuse of power — though, given what we know about his news consumption habits and the warnings of his lawyers, that seems unlikely; at worst, he remains defiant in his belief that, as president, he is above the law.

Last week’s riots show why Trump needs to be removed from office before Jan. 20
The latter seems more likely: Trump this week defended his fiery rhetoric at the Jan. 6 rally (in which he entreated his supporters to be “strong” in marching to the Capitol, where the electoral votes were to be counted) as “totally appropriate.”

But it was there that a Capitol Police officer was murdered, other law enforcement officials were injured, a woman trying to violently breach the Speaker’s Lobby was shot dead, three other protesters died, a crowd chanted to hang Vice President Mike Pence and elected representatives hid in fear. Our Capitol was desecrated.

The mob action was designed to stop, if not overturn, a lawful and fair presidential election by keeping Trump in power; if it had succeeded, it would have been an unconstitutional coup.

Trump’s Senate enablers allowed Trump to escape the consequences of his abuse of power by their near-unanimous vote to acquit last February.

The criminal justice system, though slow, will inexorably bring to justice those criminally responsible for the riots, property destruction, physical violence, threats and deaths. But impeachment is the sole remedy to condemn for all time Trump’s support of an insurgency against the United States government. If the Senate convicts Trump, a simple Senate majority can bar him from ever again holding any federal office.

The founders knew well the opprobrium that impeachment and conviction by the Senate would entail. Much has been written about the breadth of the presidential pardon power, but the Constitution expressly states that the president “shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offences against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.” In Federalist 69, Alexander Hamilton argued that this limit on the pardon power would be a strong deterrent to those who might plot treason.

Here’s the fastest, easiest way to keep Trump from ever holding office again
The late Rep. Peter Rodino, D-N.J., who chaired the Judiciary Committee in 1974 when it approved three articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon, said our constitutional system was “stressed” by impeachment — but the president, ultimately, was held accountable for his actions.

Republicans should know Trump doesn’t care about impeachment if there are no consequences
And unlike Trump, Nixon resigned when Republican congressional leaders told him that he would likely be convicted in a Senate impeachment trial.

We want to hear what you THINK. Please submit a letter to the editor.
As grave as it was, Nixon’s misconduct in Watergate pales in comparison to Trump’s efforts to incite a mob in an insurrection to overturn a lawful presidential election. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-ranking Republican member of the House, was blunt in her condemnation: “There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United State of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”

Her powerful condemnation should be a clarion call to others in her party. Our democracy is under attack, and the attacker-in-chief resides for five more days in the White House — and he has made clear his intention to try to hold that office again. Duty demands that he be convicted by the Senate and, by a Senate vote, barred from ever again holding the power of the presidency. His enablers have one last chance to do the right thing or be relegated to the gallery of Trump’s disgraced accomplices.

They should not be fooled that Trump will be chastened by the judgment of history. He clearly doesn’t care."

Michael Conway was counsel for the House Judiciary Committee in the impeachment inquiry of President Richard Nixon in 1974. In that role, he assisted in drafting the committee’s final report to the House in support of the three articles of impeachment adopted by the committee. Conway is a graduate of Yale Law School.

© 2020 NBC UNIVERSAL

[Ecmandu]

It’s evil shit. Propaganda ministers are kinda smart though. Overthrow the government by radicalizing two sides, and then claim that imprisoning trump (After intentionally doing this) will incite more violence, therefor trump should just get off.

It’s ridiculous and disgusting.

How many people are keenly aware of how many trillions of dollars are invested by the elites to work on brainwashing and propaganda think tanks that are outside public view ?? Almost nobody.

The only thing left for ordinary citizens is to use logic to detect and debunk it.

[Meno2 (Meno_)]

@Ecmandu

It’s evil shit. Propaganda ministers are kinda smart though. Overthrow the government by radicalizing two sides, and then claim that imprisoning trump (After intentionally doing this) will incite more violence, therefor trump should just get off.

It’s ridiculous and disgusting.

How many people are keenly aware of how many trillions of dollars are invested by the elites to work on brainwashing and propaganda think tanks that are outside public view ?? Almost nobody.

The only thing left for ordinary citizens is to use logic to detect and debunk it.

what would an ordinary citizen think of this further provocation, looking at it from a ’ healing’ wanna be objective position?

Mike Lindell, chief executive of My Pillow, stands outside the West Wing of the White House.

Photographer snaps pictures of notes near West Wing

Fri 15 Jan 2021 20.57 EST

My Pillow founder and Trump supporter Mike Lindell was photographed entering the West Wing of the White House on Friday, carrying notes which seemed to advocate the imposition of martial law.

Donald Trump will be replaced as president in five days’ time, by Joe Biden. Trump continues to baselessly claim his election defeat by the Democrat was the result of electoral fraud.

The president has now said he disavows the violence he incited at the US Capitol last week when he urged a mob of his supporters to march on the building. The resulting deadly attack on the Capitol led to his second impeachment.

Amid proliferating reports of plots to kidnap and kill lawmakers, and with further demonstrations by Trump supporters reportedly planned around inauguration day, Trump remains at the White House unable to use social media and apparently estranged from many of his closest advisers.

Lindell has risen to prominence among allies urging the president on in his attempts to deny reality. On his Facebook page on Friday, the mustachioed seller of sleep aids wrote: “Keep the faith everyone! We will have our president Donald Trump 4 more years!’

Later a Washington Post photographer caught images of Lindell in which parts of notes he carried were visible. Among visible text were the words “Insurrection Act now as a result of the assault on the”, “martial law if necessary” and “Move Kash Patel to CIA Acting”.

The notes also referred to Sidney Powell, an attorney and conspiracy theorist involved in Trump campaign lawsuits meant to overturn election results in battleground states, almost all of which have been unsuccessful.

@MyPillowUSA CEO Michael Lindell shows off his notes before going into the West Wing at the White House on Friday, Jan 15, 2021 in Washington, DC. pic.twitter.com/AY6AyJNSyE

The notes seemed to advocate naming an attorney named Colon, described as “up to speed on election issues” and seemingly based at “Fort Mead”, to a national security role. A current LinkedIn page indicates that a Frank Colon is currently senior attorney-cyber operations for the 780th Military Intelligence Brigade, based at Fort Meade, Maryland.

Trump allies, among them the political dirty trickster Roger Stone, have previously advocated the imposition of martial law in the event of electoral defeat.

Kash Patel is a Trump loyalist who after the election was moved to the Department of Defense, where he has been accused of obstructing the transition to Biden.

The White House pool reporter said Lindell refused to answer questions about his visit on Friday.

Earlier, apparently in error, Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani tweeted a message in which he claimed to be “working with the FBI to expose and place total blame on John and the 226 members of antifa that instigated the Capitol ‘riot’”.

It was not clear which “John” Giuliani meant. The FBI has rubbished Republican claims that leftwing groups, collectively known as “antifa”, were to blame for the attack on the Capitol. Giuliani himself addressed Trump supporters before the riot, telling them he wanted “trial by combat”.

The message Giuliani tweeted ended: “I can see what I can do with Kash, I wish I had.”

Biden has picked a senior diplomat, Bill Burns, for CIA director, replacing Gina Haspel.

CNN’s chief White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, said he had spoken with Lindell, who confirmed he had met briefly with Trump and was told to give his documents to White House aides. “Lindell also claimed the phrase ‘martial law’ did not appear on the document despite photos,” Acosta tweeted.

© 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

------>

Trump impeachment sets up politically perilous Senate trial, possibly threatening Joe Biden’s agenda
John Fritze
Courtney Subramanian
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – The historic impeachment of President Donald Trump for his role in last week’s violence at the U.S. Capitol added a gargantuan dose of uncertainty Wednesday to President-elect Joe Biden’s first days in office as leaders of both political parties began to game out how – and when – to hold a Senate trial.

With days remaining until Biden is inaugurated and Democrats take control of the Senate, attention shifted quickly to questions over the timing of an impeachment trial – a rare spectacle that promises to consume American politics for weeks and challenge assumptions about how Washington will transition out of the Trump era.

“There will be an impeachment trial in the United States Senate; there will be a vote on convicting the president for high crimes and misdemeanors; and if the president is convicted, there will be a vote on barring him from running again,” said Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Schumer, who will presumably become majority leader later this month, did not specify when that trial will take place.

House Democrats galloped toward the second impeachment of Trump after the president whipped up a crowd outside the White House with claims of a stolen election. A mob went on to storm the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, interrupting the count of Electoral College votes and creating a day of chaos that left five dead
Sta

But there were signs neither side was in as much of a rush to begin the trial, a messier process that could bar Trump from seeking the presidency again. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., declined to say when she would send the impeachment article to the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the chamber would not return to Washington until Jan. 19. Biden is set to be sworn in Jan. 20.

“It’s a risky political move,” said Michael Gerhardt, a University of North Carolina law professor who wrote a book on impeachment in 2018.

More:Senate impeachment trial likely won’t begin until after Biden sworn in

More:Trump impeachment imminent as debate ends in the House, voting begins

Senate Democrats must decide if they want to eat up time in Biden’s first weeks with a trial that could slow his agenda to address the deadly coronavirus pandemic, stall Cabinet nominations he’ll want to have confirmed quickly and keep the focus on a divisive ex-president even as he tries to cast himself as a uniting force. Republicans, meanwhile, must decide if this is the moment to make a clean break with Trump.

Biden, who has not taken a position on impeachment, has sought to walk a middle line, suggesting the Senate could “bifurcate” its schedule to spend part of the day on his nominees and part of the day on the potentially wrenching impeachment trial.

Gerhardt and others predicted a trial ultimately would not begin until after Democrats take control of the chamber, possibly long after. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., the third-ranking House Democrat, suggested last week that leaders could wait until 100 days after Biden moved into the White House to send the impeachment article to the Senate.

Pelosi waited nearly a month after the House impeached Trump in late 2019 to send the articles to the other chamber. The Senate, which is required to begin the trial as soon as the articles of impeachment are received, took about three weeks to consider the charges, which stemmed from allegations Trump improperly sought Ukraine’s help to boost his reelection chances. The Senate acquitted Trump in early February.

On Wednesday, Pelosi offered no indication about how long she would wait this time.

“We’re seeing members of Congress really struggle,” Gerhardt said of the timing questions. “They’re struggling because they’re politically accountable – they know they’re going to be politically responsible for their decision.”

Trump will leave office Jan. 20, but the push to impeach him was in part about relinquishing his longstanding grip on the Republican Party. White House aides long hinted that Trump could continue his political rallies, influence which candidates and policies gained traction with the GOP base, and possibly run for president again in 2024.

Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who worked on Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign, said any Republican who spends time pondering what it may mean for midterm elections in 2022 or the presidential race in 2024 is missing the point.

“I think the lesson from the last couple of elections – including Trump’s – is voters want politicians who are less calculating and more principled. They’re sick of politics as usual,” he said. “Nobody knows what the world will look like in two or four years from now, and I think the only thing that is clear here is what happened last week was unacceptable.”

The president offered little reaction to the proceedings in the days leading up to the House vote. Deprived of Twitter and other social media, Trump urged his supporters in a statement Wednesday to take part in “NO violence” and “NO lawbreaking.”

Adding to the uncertainty of a Senate trial: White House Counsel Pat Cipollone would presumably not be able to represent Trump once he leaves office, as he did during the first impeachment trial. The president would need to build an entirely new legal team if the Senate proceeds with its trial.

Kevin Madden, former adviser to Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said that although the Republican Party is fracturing in real time, the divisions existed long before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol: those who are devoted to defending the rule of law and democratic institutions and those who are devoted to the president.

“If he’s impeached and then removed, that means he’s an afterthought as far as 2024, and then the party begins rebuilding Jan. 21,” he said.

But Republicans are unlikely to be unified in the waning days of Trump’s presidency, Conant said, pointing to the 147 Republicans who still voted to overturn Biden’s win hours after they were forced into hiding by a mob of pro-Trump rioters.

“There are a lot of Republicans in Congress who remain loyal to Trump, even if that means the party is destined to be a minority party,” Conant said. “Clearly there’s a disagreement on strategy, but there’s an even bigger disagreement on principles.”

Trump’s hold on the party has changed over the past two weeks, said Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist and vocal critic of the president, creating a window for Republicans to make a clean break.

Among the blows Republicans suffered last week was the loss of two Senate races in Georgia, handing Biden Democratic control of both chambers. Some faulted the president for pushing claims of election fraud, a theme that may have discouraged some Georgia Republicans from going to the polls in the Senate race.

McConnell reportedly told aides earlier this week that he’s open to Trump’s impeachment and “that he is pleased that Democrats are moving to impeach, believing it would make it easier to purge him from the party,” according to a New York Times report.

The Kentucky Republican said in a statement Wednesday that he’s still weighing whether to vote to impeach Trump but said “there is simply no chance that a fair or serious trial” could take place before Biden’s inauguration next week.

“For McConnell, his best course of action is to diminish Donald Trump’s hold on the party going forward,” said Longwell, who supports Trump’s impeachment. “I think his signal yesterday – as Liz Cheney did – is to encourage as many Republicans to vote for impeachment as possible.”

[Meno2 (Meno_)]

As Trump leaves the stage, Republicans grapple with new conspiracy caucus

"Washington(CNN)Donald Trump may be leaving the White House in a few days, but the umbrella of conspiracy theories he inspired are only just arriving in Washington.

The chief theory known as QAnon – that the US government is run by a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles only Trump can expose – began nearly four years ago as a fringe movement in the dark corners of the internet. Now QAnon has adherents in positions of power within the Republican Party and in the halls of Congress.

The January 6 domestic terror attack on the US Capitol was the violent manifestation of that movement and its attendant theories – including that the 2020 election was stolen. Thousands of its adherents, steeped in years of conspiracy theories espoused by Trump, stormed the Capitol ready for violence – seemingly certain they were the ones liberating the country. Many displayed clothing and paraphernalia associated with the movement. One of the more conspicuous rioters, wearing a horned helmet and carrying a six-foot spear, is known online as the “QAnon Shaman.”

“There is a violent anarchy to QAnon that is baked into it,” said Mike Rothschild, the author of a book examining and debunking some of the most prominent conspiracy theories.

How deep into the GOP’s infrastructure QAnon has penetrated is an open question. So too is how Trump’s departure from the presidency and banishment from most social media will affect the reach of conspiracy within the Republican Party.

“This stuff has always been part of the stew,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist in Washington. "Trump just turned up the heat and brought it to the surface.

The value of courting QAnon, to the extent Republican leaders like Trump considered it, was in delivering votes from a disaffected, passionate base of support. The risk of doing so was that they’d get a seat at the table.

The House Republican conference now includes two QAnon adherents, freshman Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. While Greene has walked back her support and said the QAnon candidate label “doesn’t represent me,” she has praised “Q” as a patriot and spread baseless conspiracy theories linked to the movement. And though Boebert has claimed she’s not a follower and worked to distance herself from the conspiracy theorists, she has said of QAnon, “I hope that this is real.”

Now that they’re there, it’s going to be much harder to dislodge them.

“You can’t just push QAnon followers away,” said Rothschild. “We’ve seen, certainly in the Georgia runoff, where these margins are thin, you can’t piss off 1 or 2% of your constituents.”

A QAnon caucus
QAnon devotion will linger within the GOP long after Trump leaves office.

For one thing, it’s already in the party’s farm system. In the 2020 election, dozens of Republican candidates for local races all over the country flirted with the conspiracy theory. Dozens more held adjacent views and carried on other Trump-inspired conspiracy theories, from railing against the alleged fraud of mail-in ballots to wearing masks. Many of these candidates lost races in Democratic-leaning districts, but others, such as the Q-curious Dave Armstrong of the Wisconsin state assembly, won comfortably.

And now, some of these conspiracy-minded politicians have moved up to the major leagues in Washington.

“It’s like Trump looked for the most gullible members, found the Freedom Caucus, and decided even they weren’t up for the job so he cooked up this mutated QAnon caucus,” said one GOP operative.

So far, there’s been close to zero pushback against QAnon candidates from national party leaders – no denial of campaign funding or threats to revoke committee assignments. There’s recent precedent for doing so, when House Republicans in 2019 stripped Iowa Rep. Steve King of his committee assignments over his defense of white nationalism. King lost the GOP primary in 2020 in large part because of his banishment by the GOP conference.

No such fate yet awaits Greene and Boebert. In fact, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, defended both of his new members after their elections in November.

“Give them an opportunity before you claim what you believe they have done, and what they will do,” McCarthy, the top-ranking House Republican, said to reporters. (The GOP operative described McCarthy as “playing footsie” with the QAnon-supporting politicians.)

Others, including Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, have voted against official condemnations of the conspiracy theory. Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona has dabbled in conspiracy theories that have been interpreted by QAnon supporters as signals of his allegiance, which he has denied. A staff member for newly-elected Rep. Bob Good of Virginia was among those in Washington on January 6 – along with her husband, a local Republican Party chairman.

There are plenty of Republicans in the conference disturbed by the prominence of “fellow travelers” of these conspiracy theorists and the long-term impact this will have on the party.

“If leadership doesn’t hold certain members accountable, there’s going to be a real problem,” one Republican House member told CNN this week.

Mia Love, a former Republican representative from Utah and a CNN contributor, said failure to deal decisively with toxic members puts the unity of the GOP conference at risk.

“Kevin, who I adore, who I have a lot of respect for, the only advice I can give him, if he wants to preserve the conference, he needs to deal with this,” Love said.

While the actual members of Congress who are aligned with QAnon is relatively small, the influence of the broader conspiratorial mindset is not. In the end, 147 Republican members in both the House and the Senate, including McCarthy, voted to object and overturn the election results following the assault on the Capitol. That’s 56% of all Republicans in Congress.

“It’s not just that there are some voters that get into this theory and so politicians don’t push back. People who are in power embrace it,” said Seth Masket, a professor of political science at the University of Denver. “It seems to be a path to success in the Republican Party.”

‘Everything became about everything’
The centrality of Trump to the QAnon theory cannot be overstated, which is why it’s an open question as to the movement’s staying power. As long as he was the President, however, party leaders have essentially welcomed conspiracy theorists into the coalition.

Across the GOP, the emergence of QAnon candidates was either gently condemned or tolerated. While Republican House leaders opposed Greene in the competitive GOP primary in Georgia and condemned offensive comments she made about Black people and Jewish donors to the Democratic Party, the National Republican Campaign Committee ended up spending thousands of dollars to support her election. The NRCC also backed Boebert’s general election campaign, and both were supported by Trump.

Whether the conspiracy survives in the next few years as a force in the party depends in part on how much Trump remains on the scene. For years, the President has been a crucial actor in the narrative of QAnon, and experts say it’s not certain how believers will factor him in once he’s no longer President.

Emerging in far-right online forums in mid-2017, QAnon presented itself as an outlet for Trump supporters seeking a unifying explanation for setbacks or disappointments in the administration. By the time the coronavirus pandemic was in full swing, QAnon had absorbed much of the far-right conspiracy theories and concerns, says Rothschild.

“With the pandemic, everything became about everything,” he told CNN. “It turns into Bill Gates, it turns into China, it turns into 5G. This all sort of mushes together and it becomes impossible to separate.”

Once Trump began ramping up in his own false conspiracy theorizing about a “stolen election,” there was a ready and willing community of people online ready to subsume those lies and act on them. Republican and conservative allies of the President amplifying his false election claims gave more legitimacy to a movement of people who did not just believe in a conspiracy – they were preparing to fight against it.

But the January 6 assault on the Capitol showed Republicans and the country the consequences of tolerating conspiracy theories without fully understanding them or justifying the threat of danger from them. For some, it was a wake-up call that the contagion had spread and could not be contained.

But enough of a wake-up call? The slipperiness of “support” for QAnon means politicians – even Greene and Boebert – maintain the plausible deniability that they aren’t aligned with the violent end of QAnon.

“To the extent it shows up in Congress, it’s mostly in the form of ‘just asking questions’ or ‘providing a voice’ on behalf of constituents,” said Donovan. “For those where this is a vocal constituency there’s little incentive to confront the people who are voting for you. So I suspect it will be laissez-faire in most cases until another instance where it rears its head and can’t be ignored.”

© 2021 Cable News Network. A Warner Media Company. All Rights Reserved.

[Meno2 (Meno_)]

@Meno_

As Trump leaves the stage, Republicans grapple with new conspiracy caucus

"Washington(CNN)Donald Trump may be leaving the White House in a few days, but the umbrella of conspiracy theories he inspired are only just arriving in Washington.

The chief theory known as QAnon – that the US government is run by a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles only Trump can expose – began nearly four years ago as a fringe movement in the dark corners of the internet. Now QAnon has adherents in positions of power within the Republican Party and in the halls of Congress.

The January 6 domestic terror attack on the US Capitol was the violent manifestation of that movement and its attendant theories – including that the 2020 election was stolen. Thousands of its adherents, steeped in years of conspiracy theories espoused by Trump, stormed the Capitol ready for violence – seemingly certain they were the ones liberating the country. Many displayed clothing and paraphernalia associated with the movement. One of the more conspicuous rioters, wearing a horned helmet and carrying a six-foot spear, is known online as the “QAnon Shaman.”

“There is a violent anarchy to QAnon that is baked into it,” said Mike Rothschild, the author of a book examining and debunking some of the most prominent conspiracy theories.

How deep into the GOP’s infrastructure QAnon has penetrated is an open question. So too is how Trump’s departure from the presidency and banishment from most social media will affect the reach of conspiracy within the Republican Party.

“This stuff has always been part of the stew,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist in Washington. "Trump just turned up the heat and brought it to the surface.

The value of courting QAnon, to the extent Republican leaders like Trump considered it, was in delivering votes from a disaffected, passionate base of support. The risk of doing so was that they’d get a seat at the table.

The House Republican conference now includes two QAnon adherents, freshman Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. While Greene has walked back her support and said the QAnon candidate label “doesn’t represent me,” she has praised “Q” as a patriot and spread baseless conspiracy theories linked to the movement. And though Boebert has claimed she’s not a follower and worked to distance herself from the conspiracy theorists, she has said of QAnon, “I hope that this is real.”

Now that they’re there, it’s going to be much harder to dislodge them.

“You can’t just push QAnon followers away,” said Rothschild. “We’ve seen, certainly in the Georgia runoff, where these margins are thin, you can’t piss off 1 or 2% of your constituents.”

A QAnon caucus
QAnon devotion will linger within the GOP long after Trump leaves office.

For one thing, it’s already in the party’s farm system. In the 2020 election, dozens of Republican candidates for local races all over the country flirted with the conspiracy theory. Dozens more held adjacent views and carried on other Trump-inspired conspiracy theories, from railing against the alleged fraud of mail-in ballots to wearing masks. Many of these candidates lost races in Democratic-leaning districts, but others, such as the Q-curious Dave Armstrong of the Wisconsin state assembly, won comfortably.

And now, some of these conspiracy-minded politicians have moved up to the major leagues in Washington.

“It’s like Trump looked for the most gullible members, found the Freedom Caucus, and decided even they weren’t up for the job so he cooked up this mutated QAnon caucus,” said one GOP operative.

So far, there’s been close to zero pushback against QAnon candidates from national party leaders – no denial of campaign funding or threats to revoke committee assignments. There’s recent precedent for doing so, when House Republicans in 2019 stripped Iowa Rep. Steve King of his committee assignments over his defense of white nationalism. King lost the GOP primary in 2020 in large part because of his banishment by the GOP conference.

No such fate yet awaits Greene and Boebert. In fact, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, defended both of his new members after their elections in November.

“Give them an opportunity before you claim what you believe they have done, and what they will do,” McCarthy, the top-ranking House Republican, said to reporters. (The GOP operative described McCarthy as “playing footsie” with the QAnon-supporting politicians.)

Others, including Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, have voted against official condemnations of the conspiracy theory. Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona has dabbled in conspiracy theories that have been interpreted by QAnon supporters as signals of his allegiance, which he has denied. A staff member for newly-elected Rep. Bob Good of Virginia was among those in Washington on January 6 – along with her husband, a local Republican Party chairman.

There are plenty of Republicans in the conference disturbed by the prominence of “fellow travelers” of these conspiracy theorists and the long-term impact this will have on the party.

“If leadership doesn’t hold certain members accountable, there’s going to be a real problem,” one Republican House member told CNN this week.

Mia Love, a former Republican representative from Utah and a CNN contributor, said failure to deal decisively with toxic members puts the unity of the GOP conference at risk.

“Kevin, who I adore, who I have a lot of respect for, the only advice I can give him, if he wants to preserve the conference, he needs to deal with this,” Love said.

While the actual members of Congress who are aligned with QAnon is relatively small, the influence of the broader conspiratorial mindset is not. In the end, 147 Republican members in both the House and the Senate, including McCarthy, voted to object and overturn the election results following the assault on the Capitol. That’s 56% of all Republicans in Congress.

“It’s not just that there are some voters that get into this theory and so politicians don’t push back. People who are in power embrace it,” said Seth Masket, a professor of political science at the University of Denver. “It seems to be a path to success in the Republican Party.”

‘Everything became about everything’
The centrality of Trump to the QAnon theory cannot be overstated, which is why it’s an open question as to the movement’s staying power. As long as he was the President, however, party leaders have essentially welcomed conspiracy theorists into the coalition.

Across the GOP, the emergence of QAnon candidates was either gently condemned or tolerated. While Republican House leaders opposed Greene in the competitive GOP primary in Georgia and condemned offensive comments she made about Black people and Jewish donors to the Democratic Party, the National Republican Campaign Committee ended up spending thousands of dollars to support her election. The NRCC also backed Boebert’s general election campaign, and both were supported by Trump.

Whether the conspiracy survives in the next few years as a force in the party depends in part on how much Trump remains on the scene. For years, the President has been a crucial actor in the narrative of QAnon, and experts say it’s not certain how believers will factor him in once he’s no longer President.

Emerging in far-right online forums in mid-2017, QAnon presented itself as an outlet for Trump supporters seeking a unifying explanation for setbacks or disappointments in the administration. By the time the coronavirus pandemic was in full swing, QAnon had absorbed much of the far-right conspiracy theories and concerns, says Rothschild.

“With the pandemic, everything became about everything,” he told CNN. “It turns into Bill Gates, it turns into China, it turns into 5G. This all sort of mushes together and it becomes impossible to separate.”

Once Trump began ramping up in his own false conspiracy theorizing about a “stolen election,” there was a ready and willing community of people online ready to subsume those lies and act on them. Republican and conservative allies of the President amplifying his false election claims gave more legitimacy to a movement of people who did not just believe in a conspiracy – they were preparing to fight against it.

But the January 6 assault on the Capitol showed Republicans and the country the consequences of tolerating conspiracy theories without fully understanding them or justifying the threat of danger from them. For some, it was a wake-up call that the contagion had spread and could not be contained.

But enough of a wake-up call? The slipperiness of “support” for QAnon means politicians – even Greene and Boebert – maintain the plausible deniability that they aren’t aligned with the violent end of QAnon.

“To the extent it shows up in Congress, it’s mostly in the form of ‘just asking questions’ or ‘providing a voice’ on behalf of constituents,” said Donovan. “For those where this is a vocal constituency there’s little incentive to confront the people who are voting for you. So I suspect it will be laissez-faire in most cases until another instance where it rears its head and can’t be ignored.”

© 2021 Cable News Network. A Warner Media Company. All Rights Reserved.

The question that may pop up in anyone’s mind, is can the opposite side develop a conspyratorial invalidation , built on many preceeding layers of conspiracy.

So in this view hunt for conspiracy can be induced as efforts to conflate and extend the breath and reach of the cause, of it, thereby reducing the whole process to a single contention

And that is exactly is what’s pleaded here, in essence, to a Single Arbiter. How to stop the madness, or, is it?

[Meno2 (Meno_)]

Trump to flee Washington and seek rehabilitation in a MAGA oasis: Florida

President Trump takes a question from a member of the media at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., on Dec. 24, 2019. (Andrew Harnik/Associated Press)

President Trump will leave Washington this week politically wounded, silenced on social media and essentially unwelcome in his lifelong hometown of New York.

By migrating instead to Palm Beach, Fla., Trump plans to inhabit an alternative reality of adoration and affirmation. The defeated president will take up residence at his gilded Mar-a-Lago Club, where dues-paying members applaud him whenever he eats meals or mingles on the deck. He is sure to take in the same celebratory fervor whenever he plays golf at one of the two Trump-branded courses nearby.

[Meno2 (Meno_)]

Indian Times

America wakes up to a new dawn as Trump nightmare draws to close

WASHINGTON: The United States will wake up to history on Wednesday with inauguration of its oldest ever President, followed by the swearing in of its first female vice-president, and the first of Black and Indian heritage.
Joe Biden, 78, and Kamala Harris, 56, will be take oath of office amid unprecedented security during an uncommon pandemic, with the event boycotted by a defeated one-term President who falsely believes he was robbed of the election.
The terrifying thought of an armed attack on the inauguration ceremony of the incoming President by rogue extremists in a military that some experts suspects may be infected and infiltrated with pro-Trump white supremacists has resulted in Washington DC turning into a ghost town. The Capitol area where Biden will take oath of office is a virtual fortress.
Graceless and declasse are among words being used to describe the decision of Trump and his wife Melania to shun the inauguration ceremony and associated events, including a tea the outgoing First Lady traditionally hosts for the incoming. Instead, the Trumps will flee the White House at 830 a.m on a last ride on Air Force One to their home in Florida, leaving the White House chief usher Timothy Harleth to welcome the 46th US President and the new First Lady Dr Jill Biden.
Harleth is a Melania Trump appointee, and like many Trump appointees, is dissociating himself from the rancor and bitterness being exhibited by the couple.
The petulance has already met its comeuppance with the Pentagon reportedly declining to give the departing President an outsized military send-off he desired. Instead, a gaggle of die-hard supporters and flunkies are being summoned to stage a farewell at the Andrews Air Force base, with a private 21-gun salute. The White House itself has largely emptied out.
Anthony Scaramucci, one such former supporter who was briefly the White House communications director, said he had received what appeared to be a mass mail to supporters to turn up for a farewell at the Andrews Air Force base.
Trump will be the first President in more than 150 years – and fourth overall – to willfully boycott his successor’s inauguration. The last President to do so was Andrew Johnson, who didn’t attend Ulysses S. Grant’s inauguration in 1869.

Vice-president Mike Pence, who broke with Trump in declining to subvert election results and a constitutional succession, will attend the inauguration. He also reportedly phoned Kamala Harris, who will succeed him as the country’s 49th vice-president to congratulate her on her win. While Biden will be sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts, Harris will be administered oath of office by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina to become a Supreme Court judge.
Harris, who is expected to be one of the most consequential and powerful vice-presidents in US history, will move into the designated vice-presidential house at the Naval Observatory couple miles from the White House, along with her husband Doug Emhoff, who will be the nation’s first “Second Gentleman.” Harris’ family from India are not coming for the inauguration given the travel restriction due to pandemic.
So embittered is Trump that he is unlikely to leave a welcoming letter that departing Presidents leave on the Resolute Desk for the incoming President.
Barack Obama welcomed Trump with a letter that read: “Congratulations on a remarkable run. Millions have placed their hopes in you, and all of us, regardless of party, should hope for expanded prosperity and security during your tenure,” adding, “we are just temporary occupants of this office. That makes us guardians of those democratic institutions and traditions – like rule of law, separation of powers, equal protection and civil liberties – that our forebears fought and bled for. Regardless of the push and pull of daily politics, it’s up to us to leave those instruments of our democracy at least as strong as we found them.”
George H.W Bush, after a hard-fought election, concluded his letter to Bill Clinton saying, “Your success now is our country’s success. I am rooting hard for you.”
Trump, historians are assessing even without the benefit of hindsight, is leaving America in tatters, at least socially and politically. “After four exhausting years of raging tweets, lies, ‘fire and fury’ rants and orders for far-right extremists to ‘stand back and stand by,’ it’s almost over,” one analyst wrote with obvious relief.
Some of his own cabinet members and aides who enabled his most egregious excesses have turned on him – Trump Attorney General Bill Barr among them. Barr said in a tv interview that Trump’s allegations of election fraud and his claims that the Presidency was stolen from him precipitated the storming of the Capitol, but he would leave it to investigators to determined whether Trump and his cohorts instigated the riots.
Barr reportedly told Trump in December that his widespread voter fraud claims were “bulls**t” and the legal team he was assembling was “clownish.”
Trump is leaving office with an approval rating of 34 per cent according to a Gallup poll, one of the lowest for an outgoing President, his average of 41 per cent being a record low for any President in the modern era. He never reached 50 per cent during his tenure, with 49 per cent his best in the early days of the pandemic.

Ho ho! Paragliding Santa Claus gets entangled in power lines, rescued

Delhi’s 80-year-old ‘Baba ka Dhaba’ owner Kanta Prasad opens new restauran

It is a sad moment for the U.S and the whole world that a great leader like Trump is going home. He should be given a special position called “President of the World” !

Copyright © 2021 Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd.
All rights reserved.

[MagsJ (..a chic geek)]

_
America needs to stop making Trump the scapegoat… stat!

[Meno2 (Meno_)]

@MagsJ

_
America needs to stop making Trump the scapegoat… stat!

Lol! He was perfectly typecast.

[MagsJ (..a chic geek)]

@Meno_

@MagsJ

_
America needs to stop making Trump the scapegoat… stat!

Lol! He was perfectly typecast.

…and now is every President that came before him, as in being a parody of their former selves.

[Meno2 (Meno_)]

Capitol Riot

Inside the Siege

Notable Arrests
Capitol Police in Crisis
‘A Total Failure’: The Proud Boys Now Mock Trump

Members of the far-right group, who were among Donald Trump’s staunchest fans, are calling him “weak” as more of them were charged for storming the U.S. Capitol.

After the presidential election last year, the Proud Boys, a far-right group, declared its undying loyalty to President Trump.

In a Nov. 8 post in a private channel of the messaging app Telegram, the group urged its followers to attend protests against an election that it said had been fraudulently stolen from Mr. Trump. “Hail Emperor Trump,” the Proud Boys wrote.

But by this week, the group’s attitude toward Mr. Trump had changed. “Trump will go down as a total failure,” the Proud Boys said in the same Telegram channel on Monday.

As Mr. Trump departed the White House on Wednesday, the Proud Boys, once among his staunchest supporters, have also started leaving his side. In dozens of conversations on social media sites like Gab and Telegram, members of the group have begun calling Mr. Trump a “shill” and “extraordinarily weak,” according to messages reviewed by The New York Times. They have also urged supporters to stop attending rallies and protests held for Mr. Trump or the Republican Party.

The comments are a startling turn for the Proud Boys, which for years had backed Mr. Trump and promoted political violence. Led by Enrique Tarrio, many of its thousands of members were such die-hard fans of Mr. Trump that they offered to serve as his private militia and celebrated after he told them in a presidential debate last year to “stand back and stand by.” On Jan. 6, some Proud Boys members stormed the U.S. Capitol.

But since then, discontent with Mr. Trump, who later condemned the violence, has boiled over. On social media, Proud Boys participants have complained about his willingness to leave office and said his disavowal of the Capitol rampage was an act of betrayal. And Mr. Trump, cut off on Facebook and Twitter, has been unable to talk directly to them to soothe their concerns or issue new rallying cries.

The Proud Boys’ anger toward Mr. Trump has heightened after he did nothing to help those in the group who face legal action for the Capitol violence. On Wednesday, a Proud Boy leader, Joseph Biggs, 37, was arrested in Florida and charged with unlawful entry and corruptly obstructing an official proceeding in the riot. At least four other members of the group also face charges stemming from the attack.

“When Trump told them that if he left office, America would fall into an abyss, they believed him,” Arieh Kovler, a political consultant and independent researcher in Israel who studies the far right, said of the Proud Boys. “Now that he has left office, they believe he has both surrendered and failed to do his patriotic duty.”

The shift raises questions about the strength of the support for Mr. Trump and suggests that pockets of his fan base are fracturing. Many of Mr. Trump’s fans still falsely believe he was deprived of office, but other far-right groups such as the Oath Keepers, America First and the Three Percenters have also started criticizing him in private Telegram channels, according to a review of messages.

Last week, Nicholas Fuentes, the leader of America First, wrote in his Telegram channel that Mr. Trump’s response to the Capitol rampage was “very weak and flaccid” and added, “Not the same guy that ran in 2015.”

On Wednesday, the Proud Boys Telegram group welcomed President Biden to office. “At least the incoming administration is honest about their intentions,” the group wrote.

Mr. Kovler said the activity showed that groups that had coalesced around Mr. Trump were now trying to figure out their future direction. By losing his ability to post on Twitter and Facebook, Mr. Trump had also become less useful to the far-right groups, who counted on him to raise their profile on a national stage, Mr. Kovler said.

Mr. Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, could not be reached for comment. A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment.

ImageEnrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys, led a contingent of the group in Washington last month.
Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys, led a contingent of the group in Washington last month.Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
The Proud Boys were founded in 2016 as a club for men by Gavin McInnes, who also was a founder of the online publication Vice. Describing themselves as “Western chauvinists,” the group attracted people who appeared eager to engage in violence and who frequently espoused anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic views. The group had supported Mr. Trump since he assumed office.

The change toward Mr. Trump happened slowly. After November’s election, the group’s private Telegram channels, Gab pages and posts on the alternative social networking site Parler were filled with calls to keep the faith with the president. Many Proud Boys, echoing Mr. Trump’s falsehoods, said the election had been rigged, according to a review of messages.

The Proud Boys urged their members to attend “Stop the Steal” rallies. One Nov. 23 message on a Proud Boys Telegram page read, “No Trump, no peace.” The message linked to information about a rally in front of the governor’s home in Georgia.

As Mr. Trump’s legal team battled the election result with lawsuits, the Proud Boys closely followed the court cases and appeals in different states, posting frequent links in their Telegram channels to news reports.

But when Mr. Trump’s legal efforts failed, the Proud Boys called for him on social media to use his presidential powers to stay in office. Some urged him to declare martial law or take control by force. In the last two weeks of December, they pushed Mr. Trump in their protests and on social media to “Cross the Rubicon.”

“They wanted to arm themselves and start a second civil war and take down the government on Trump’s behalf,” said Marc-André Argentino, a researcher who studies the far right and a Ph.D. candidate at Concordia University. “But ultimately, he couldn’t be the authoritarian they wanted him to be.”

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Then came the week of the Capitol storming. On Jan. 4, Mr. Tarrio was arrested by the Metropolitan Police on suspicion of burning a Black Lives Matter banner torn from a Black church in Washington. He was thrown out of the city by a judge the next day.

But nearly 100 other Proud Boys, who had been encouraged by leaders like Mr. Biggs, remained in Washington. According to court papers, Mr. Biggs told members to eschew their typical black-and-yellow polo shirts and instead go “incognito” and move about the city in “smaller teams.”

On the day of the riot, Mr. Biggs was captured in a video marching with a large group of Proud Boys toward the Capitol, chanting slogans like, “Whose streets? Our streets.”

Though prosecutors said Mr. Biggs was not among the first to break into the Capitol, they said he admitted to entering the building for a brief time. They also said he appeared to wear a walkie-talkie-style device on his chest, suggesting he was communicating with others during the incursion.

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In an interview with The Times hours after the attack, Mr. Biggs said he and other Proud Boys arrived at the Capitol complex around 1 p.m. when the crowd in front of them surged and the mood grew violent. “It literally happened in seconds,” he said.

Prosecutors have also charged Dominic Pezzola, a Proud Boy from Rochester and a former Marine; Nicholas Ochs, founder of the Proud Boys’ Hawaii chapter; and Nicholas DeCarlo, who runs a news outfit called Murder the Media, which is associated with the group.

After the violence, the Proud Boys expected Mr. Trump — who had earlier told his supporters to “fight much harder” against “bad people” — to champion the mob, according to their social media messages. Instead, Mr. Trump began distancing himself from his remarks and released a video on Jan. 8 denouncing the violence.

The disappointment was immediately palpable. One Proud Boys Telegram channel posted: “It really is important for us all to see how much Trump betrayed his supporters this week. We are nationalists 1st and always. Trump was just a man and as it turns out an extraordinarily weak one at the end.”

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Some Proud Boys became furious that Mr. Trump, who was impeached for inciting the insurrection, did not appear interested in issuing presidential pardons for their members who were arrested. In a Telegram post on Friday, they accused Mr. Trump of “instigating” the events at the Capitol, adding that he then “washed his hands of it.”

“They thought they had his support and that, ultimately, Trump would come through for them, including with a pardon if they should need it,” said Jared Holt, a visiting research fellow at the Atlantic Council’s DFR Lab. “Now they realize they went too far in the riots.”

Some Proud Boys now say in online posts that the group should “go dark” and retreat from political life by cutting its affiliation to any political party. They are encouraging one another to focus their energies on secessionist movements and local protests.

“To all demoralized Trump supporters: There is hope,” read one message in a Proud Boys Telegram channel on Wednesday. “There is an alternative. Abandon the GOP and the Dems.

© 2021 The New York Times Company