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| credit. D. Fitzsimmons |
Significant developments this week are several. First, the House Select Committee issued three more subpoenas to organizers of "Stop the Steal" rallies about the January 6th Insurrection. These are in addition to the eleven already outstanding. The Committee will have to take steps to enforce the subpoenas issued to former White House staffers including his former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Steve Bannon his former chief political advisor because Herr Trumpillini has instructed them to defy legal process. The Committee's chair has said they will use criminal referrals for contempt of Congress. One glitch in that plan is that Dan Scavino, former deputy head of White House communications, cannot be located for service of his subpoena to testify. US Person finds that a little strange; he is not a homeless individual and uses the Internet regularly. Criminal contempt could not be more overdue in view of the stone wall the regime erected during the two impeachment efforts. It must be clear to committee members by now that they are dealing with an attempted coup d'état by Herr Trumpillini and his gang.
The Senate Judiciary Committee dropped a bombshell this week. It revealed in its interim report the intense effort by the would-be dictator to pressure the Department of Justice into supporting his systematic, mendacious claims that the election was fraudulent. He held eleven meetings with DOJ leaders between November 3rd and January 20th when Joe Biden was sworn in. The report implicates Mark Meadows and former DOJ acting head of the civil division, Jeffery Clark, in the effort to force cooperation" with the "Big Lie" and thereby discredit the election result. It should be noted that the "Big Lie" continues to this day, with the tacit endorsement of the entire party of insurrection since they have refused to disavow the compulsive lying of their party leader. In the minority report of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Repugnants essentially conclude Trump did nothing wrong because his attempted coup failed. Another example of the fanciful circular reasoning they used to thwart two impeachment attempts in the Senate.
On January 3td Herr Trumpillini wanted to install co-conspirator Clark as acting head of DOJ. Clark was willing to participate in a plan formatted by John Eastman, a right wing lawyer and academic, to subvert the election by contesting results on the grounds of fraud at the certification of the Electoral College vote. Trump was attracted to Eastman when he saw him appear on Fox TV. Top leaders of the DOJ present at the meeting where the deranged president floated his choice of Clark as Attorney General refused to participate, threatening to resign en masse. US Attorney B J Pak of Atlanta actually did resign under pressure from Trump because he refused to investigate the Georgia election results. Trump told top Justice Department officials that Mr. Pak was a never-Trumper, and he blamed Mr. Pak for the F.B.I.’s failure to find evidence of mass election fraud there. Soon after the January 3rd confrontation with DOJ top officials, Trumpillini contacted acting Assistant US Attorney Patrick Donoghue to ask him to look into reports that Homeland Security had taken possession of a truck load of ballots outside Atlanta. This was after the December 1st announcement by AG Barr that DOJ had found no evidence of voter fraud significant enough to change the election results in Trump's favor.
What the report shows clearly is that the former guy was totally invested in subverting elections results he could not accept by direct and repeated participation in the "Big Lie" propaganda offensive. One committee member described Trump as "being in up to his neck". The evidence produced so far shows he possessed the criminal intent to subvert democracy. On December 14th Trumpillini emailed a set of talking points claiming non-existent voter fraud in Michigan to Jeffery Rosen who was acting Attorney General after Bill Barr resigned the same day. He also sent a purported examination of Dominion Voting System problems in Michigan. For the next three weeks he continued to pressure DOJ into investigating these and other specious claims of fraud. Mr Rosen, Donoghue, and Pak all testified that the former president was not seeking legal advice, but pressuring them to subvert the Constitution in violation of their oaths of office.
This active effort to subvert democracy was joined by Congressman Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.(R) , a member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus. Perry called Richard Donoghue, acting Deputy Attorney General to demand investigation of debunked election fraud allegations in his state. He complained the agency was not doing enough to investigate election fraud. Perry requested Clark's participation in the regime's efforts to undermine the election results. He took him to a meeting in the Oval to discuss voter fraud and recommended to Donoghue that Clark become more involved in DOJ's handling of fraud investigations. The Judiciary Committee is interested in obtaining testimony from Clark, and has referred his activity on behalf of Trumpillini to the DC Bar disciplinary office.
The House Select Committee continues to collect evidence of the conspiracy within the White House and GOP sycophants to illegally keep Trump in power beyond January 20th. One truly unsettling aspect of this alarmingly dangerous putsch attempt is that Der Leader would do it again, if given the chance. He continues to publicly claim the election of Joe Biden was fraudulent, dong further damage to our government's credibility; as a private citizen he is obstructing Congress by encouraging his former staff to defy subpoenas. Fortunately we may invoke the 14th Amendment, if we are wise enough to use it, to put an end to his neurotic dreams of autocratic power.
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| credit: D. Castellejos |