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| credit: Ramirez, Las Vegas Review-Journal |
More: A second state has joined Michigan in referring the fake elector certificates to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation. New Mexico's attorney general Hector Balderas told reporters he has also referred the matter to the DOJ saying it was part of protecting the fundamental democratic right to vote. Trump lost New Mexico by 11 percentage points. Significantly, as this aspect of the "Green Bay Sweep" has played out in the press, local party members are pointing to Trump election lawyers as the source of the fake document idea. A participant in the Arizona fake certifications said she exchanged text messages with members of Congress about the documents and met with Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows. Giuliani and his motley crew of unethical lawyers that held press conferences to spread the Big Lie in the media, have all been served with subpoenas from the J6 Committee. Numerous members of the mob that attacked the Capitol on January 6th say they were there because Trump told them to go. Is it necessary to repeat that Trump's criminal attempt to overthrow our democratic government is without parallel in US history.
Update: {18/01/22}Just when you thought all the corrupt insanity has been revealed, the rabbit hole gets deeper. Rachel told us this week that a set of interstate documents, suspiciously similar to each other, was used to attempt a deception against state officials certifying their Electoral College votes to be sent to Washington, DC for counting on January 6th at the Capitol. This most clearly occurred in Michigan were there is videotape of Trumpists posing as duly certified electors for the former guy try to gain access to the state capitol. This in spite of the fact that the state was awarding its votes to Biden based on the popular vote count. The motive for this charade is unclear at this point, but it smells enough for the Michigan attorney general to refer the matter to the US Attorney for the Western District of Michigan for further investigation. US Person thinks this is appropriate because what we have here are initial indications of a coordinated plot at the national level to install, against the popular will, Trump electors that presumably would have presented their forged certificates when objections were raised to counting Michigan electors for Biden. This attempted fraud using forged documents to overturn the election results took place in seven swing states including Michigan. The phony certificates were exposed by the oversight group American Oversight The J6 Committee will definitely want to talk to these poseurs too.
The Department of Justice has, at last, charged participants in the Insurrection of January 6th with the crime no one in DC apparently wanted to say out loud--"seditious conspiracy". Members of the far-right extremist group Oath Keepers and its founder Stewart Rhodes, were charged with a federal crime that carries a stiff maximum penalty of twenty years in prison. The question now is whether the J6 Committee or the DOJ can find enough evidence to connect Der Leader to the conspiracy. Right now, it is not looking good for the former guy who gloated over the televised results of his incitement in the White House and ignored pleas to intervene for three hours. The mob was central to the planned effort to stop or delay the counting of Electoral College votes. The new indictment by DOJ reads, "The purpose of the conspiracy was to oppose the lawful transfer of presidential power by force, by preventing, hindering or delaying by force the execution of the laws governing the transfer of power, including the Twelfth and Twentieth Amendments to the Constitution"
Rhodes was a key actor in the staging and coordination of the attack. His group stored weapons at a Virginia Comfort Inn near the Capitol as part of their so-called "quick reaction force". Oath Keepers used a military style "stack" formation to assault the Capitol building dressed in tactical gear. These are not your casual protesters, but an organized, armed militia that poses a present threat to democracy. Two of the men also charged were photographed with Roger Stone, a Trumpist confidant, who has refused to testify before the Committee on Fifth Amendment grounds. The Committee faces some hard decisions on whether to issue subpoenas to members of Congress that were complicit in mob violence.
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| credit: S. Sack, Star Tribune |