#House select committee on January 6 Insurrection

[carolinemillerbooks]

New Post has been published on Books by Caroline Miller

New Post has been published on https://www.booksbycarolinemiller.com/musings/the-outer-limits-of-democracy/

The Outer Limits Of Democracy

The man had fallen near an electrified rail of a Chicago subway.  Unconscious, he lay convulsing on the bare track. People on the platform above looked down, stunned.  A few whipped out their cell phones to record the incident. One African American, Anthony Perry, age twenty, made a different choice. He leaped onto the track, avoiding the hotline, and saved the unconscious man. That evening the media blazed with reports of his heroism. If members of Congress had a quarter of his courage and selflessness, our democracy would be less endangered. To be specific, we have a Republican Party that lacks a moral compass, showing, instead, a marked propensity for criminal intent.  Fearing the National Rifle Association, (NRA) for too long, our weak-kneed leaders have been willing to witness the mass murder of children and innocent bystanders rather than pass meaningful gun regulations. Only recently, embarrassed by the blood running in our streets, have a few Republicans joined with Democrats to propose modest reforms. Now they expect the public to applaud though they’ve done nothing to keep assault rifles off the streets and allowed a stronger House bill to languish. Congress’s fear to tackle the assault rifle issue is puzzling. Most voters want meaningful gun regulation. A few might fall back upon the shibboleth of state rights, but it’s a bogus excuse. Have we learned nothing from the public’s long skirmish with the cigarette industry? Commerce that flows from coast to coast doesn’t respond to patchwork regulations. That job belongs to the federal government. Sadly, reason, logic, and courage have no purchase when they conflict with vested interests. Republican Liz Cheney’s values are an exception. Her participation in the House Select Committee investigation of the January 6 insurrection may end her political career, but she chose to do what was right for the country. Look for no similar moral compass from Fox news reporters.  They refused to cover the hearing though it proved our former president, Donald Trump, not only encouraged the January 6 insurrection but instigated it with a 7-point plan. The newscasters justified their blackout believing  that few cared about the facts. Dereliction of duty has become the new norm in our democracy. Moral outrage is common.  Moral behavior is in short supply.  Too many assume corruption has little effect upon freedom. The assumption is false and marks the end of its existence.  Pity those who live long enough to see the fruits of this corruption. In truth, each of us is culpable. To mistake freedom for self-indulgence is dangerous. Many of us are willing to turn a blind eye to corruption if it serves our purpose.  Sometimes, we knowingly elect criminals if they do our bidding. The rising tide of self-interest makes fools of us all. Like harlots, we give our affection to those who pander to our ambitions. Politicians who pretend difficult problems like the rising tide of inflation are easily fixed are liars. No ready solution exists because the causes–the supply chain problem the pandemic created. and the Ukraine war– are beyond the control of a single nation. If we wish to recover our economy, we must close our ears to siren songs. We must stop playing Russian roulette between the political parties at each election as if change for the sake of change made a difference.       Twenty million Americans watched the House Select Committee’s first report on the January 6 insurrection.  “Twenty million!”  The headlines shout as if that number were extraordinary. Yet, we are a nation of 329.5 million. Where were the remaining 300 million during the hearing? How many among that number still believe the 2020 election was rigged? As voters, too often we mistake our self-interest for freedom, preferring quick response strategies to long-term solutions.  Like the children of the marshmallow experiment, we prefer a dollar in our pocket today to $10  at the end of the year. But the freedom to pursue personal happiness is a fragment of the whole. Our primary obligation isn’t to ourselves.  Our obligation is to each other. Without social cohesion, we live in a jungle of individual appetites–a place where no one would dream of leaping across an electrified subway line to save the life of another. As citizens of this democracy, we must be wary. Without a moral compass, we will soon reach the outer limits of our democracy. John F. Kennedy pointed us in the right direction decades ago.  Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.  Have we listened? We still have time to save our nation. We can begin by voting a Democratic ticket up and down the November ballot.

[reportwire]

House Committee Reveals More of Arizona’s Role in January 6 Attack on Capitol

House Committee Reveals More of Arizona’s Role in January 6 Attack on Capitol

Familiar names and faces continue to pop up in public hearings of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, as federal prosecutors continue to slowly peel the curtain back on Arizona’s integral role in the unrest. On Tuesday, in the seventh public hearing, U.S. Representative Stephanie Murphy, a Florida Democrat, revealed new information about the…

[bloodpen-to-paper]

So to recap (July 2022 edition) we got:

- 4th of July shooting in Highland Park + a shooting in Chicago

- anyone with a uterus has less rights than an assault rifle in the U.S.; right-wing Scotus can get hit by a plane

- Edit: Native Americans have been added to the list of people with less right than an assault rifle in the U.S.

- a third of the British Parliament resigning from various government positions cause of how much everyone hates Boris Johnson

- Edit: Boris Johnson has now resigned cause of how much everyone hates Boris Johnson

- Shinzo Abe, former Prime Minister of Japan, got shot while giving a speech

- Edit: *Former Former Prime Minister... he got Lincoln’d

- a far-right French politician accidentally pinned the assassination of Shinzo Abe on popular video game designer Hideo Kojima, which a major Greek news outlet relayed, only furthering the idea that Kojima did it

- the war in Ukraine is still going on

- the state of Canada can be summarized by this image:   https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/862558639735046146/995130724791365652/unkown.png

- Hunter Biden got trending on twitter for the hundredth time and nobody gives a shit seriously who gives a shit conservatives get him trending for literally breathing why is this still happening-

- Edit: ... Users of the well known “incel” website 4chan supposedly hacked the iPhone of U.S. President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden and allegedly exposed the both of them as pedophiles, among many other things. Sweet shitting Christ almighty, if this is true, I have been proven incorrect in possibly the most cursed way imaginable, and it is a testament to my willpower and spite that I have not fallen in alcoholism from this news piece alone 

- Baymax is a Leftist

- the U.S. House Select Committee began holding live public hearings for the January 6 insurrection and no one noticed

- Kazuki Takahashi, the creator of the popular anime and playing card game Yu-Gi-Oh!, passed away (R.I.P., may he finally be free to kick Shinzo Abe’s ass without consequence in that great dueling arena in the sky...)

- the Argentinian economic minister has resigned (an announcement that was made not through any official news outlets, but via a Tweet) following an inflation crisis that is crippling the country, but all you’ll find on Twitter is people excited about the new futbol jersey for the next World Cup (no one is surprised by this)

- Elon Musk backed out of his deal to purchase Twitter for $44 billion; it was believed he didn’t know the meaning of the term “pulling out” so this was quite the surprise

- Edit: Twitter is now suing Elon Musk for not buying Twitter

- the President of Sri Lanka (not to be confused with the Prime Minister, because they apparently have both) pulled a Ted Cruz and has fled the country after citizens stormed the presidential palace in a mass riot following the announcing of the country being officially bankrupt (which the Prime Minister, not to be confused with the President, totally didn’t cause via corruption in office). The citizens involved in the protest then stormed the house of the PM, and took a swim in his pool promptly before sacking and burning the place, thus proving the month of July is truly a Hot Girl Summer

Edit: Both the PM and President of Sri Lanka have agreed to resign their positions; that is two world leader resignations and one former world leader assassination in one week; I now have the sudden urge to drink myself into 2040

[kp777]

Julia Conley

Common Dreams

May 17, 2024

"This behavior is disqualifying for a Supreme Court justice," said one critic.

U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin was among those on Friday who called for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's recusal from cases related to the 2020 election after The New York Timesreported the justice flew an upside-down flag outside his home in the days leading up to President Joe Biden's inauguration.

The display of an inverted flag officially symbolizes "dire duress" according to the U.S. code, and has been used at various times by people across the political spectrum to signify distress over U.S. policy and disapproval of the government.

At the time Alito's family displayed the flag, just over a week after then-President Donald Trump urged his supporters to riot at the U.S. Capitol when lawmakers were certifying the election results, the "Stop the Steal" movement had embraced the symbol to show their belief that the election had been stolen for Biden—despite all evidence to the contrary.

Alito told the Times on Friday that he "had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag" and that "it was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor's use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs."

But Durbin (D-Ill.) said the display on January 17, 2021—and for several days before that—clearly created "the appearance of bias."

"Justice Alito should recuse himself immediately from cases related to the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection, including the question of the former president's immunity in U.S. v. Donald Trump, which the Supreme Court is currently considering," said the senator.

The news of Alito's upside-down flag comes after numerous reports about ethical breaches by right-wing Supreme Court justices including Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas.

Both of the justices have accepted luxury travel and have had other financial transactions with right-wing operatives who have been involved in cases before the court, and Thomas has drawn condemnation for continuing to serve on a case regarding documents being turned over to the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack after it was revealed that his wife had supported efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

In the coming weeks, the court is set to rule on Trump's claim that he has immunity in his federal election interference case and in a separate case regarding whether January 6 defendants should be charged with obstructing an official proceeding.

Despite four ongoing criminal cases, Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee to face Biden in November.

"The court is in an ethical crisis of its own making, and Justice Alito and the rest of the court should be doing everything in their power to regain public trust," said Durbin. "Supreme Court justices should be held to the highest ethical standards, not the lowest."

The senator added that the latest reporting offers new proof that Congress must pass the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency (SCERT) Act, which would create an enforceable code of conduct for the high court.

Indivisible co-executive director Ezra Levin applauded Durbin's call and said the news about Alito's flag "just confirms what we already knew: that the Supreme Court is stacked with far-right, partisan justices intent on using the bench to institutionalize MAGA extremism."

"This behavior is disqualifying for a Supreme Court justice," said Levin. "Alito is not an impartial arbiter of the law, especially when Donald Trump is involved. His brazen actions underscore the urgent need for increased congressional oversight of the court as well as structural reforms to restore its legitimacy."

Levin also called on Durbin to use his committee leadership position to "rigorously investigate corruption on the court and lead efforts to expand the court to unrig the MAGA supermajority."

Devin Ombres, senior director for courts and legal policy at the Center for American Progress, said Alito's display of the flag was a "matter-of-fact admission of his partisan sympathy with Donald Trump's 'Stop the Steal' movement, which led to the violent insurrection on January 6."

"His pathetic excuse that his wife hung the flag as part of a political dispute with a neighbor is even more damning because he's admitting it was a partisan act," said Ombres. "It's unacceptable that Alito now sits in judgment of whether Trump's actions deserve the imprimatur of presidential immunity. Chief Justice John Roberts and the other justices must demand Alito's recusal from any case related to the January 6 insurrection. If Alito had any sense of propriety or humility, he would resign."

[mariacallous]

Two days before the January 6 insurrection, the Trump campaign’s plan to use fake electors to block President-elect Joe Biden from taking office faced a potentially crippling hiccup: The fake elector certificates from two critical battleground states were stuck in the mail.

So, Trump campaign operatives scrambled to fly copies of the phony certificates from Michigan and Wisconsin to the nation’s capital, relying on a haphazard chain of couriers, as well as help from two Republicans in Congress, to try to get the documents to then-Vice President Mike Pence while he presided over the Electoral College certification.

The operatives even considered chartering a jet to ensure the files reached Washington, DC, in time for the January 6, 2021, proceeding, according to emails and recordings obtained by CNN.

The new details provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the chaotic last-minute effort to keep Donald Trump in office. The fake electors scheme features prominently in special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal indictment against the former president, and some of the officials who were involved have spoken to Smith’s investigators.

The emails and recordings also indicate that a top Trump campaign lawyer was part of 11th-hour discussions about delivering the fake elector certificates to Pence, potentially undercutting his testimony to the House select committee that investigated January 6 that he had passed off responsibility and didn’t want to put the former vice president in a difficult spot.

These details largely come from pro-Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who was an architect of the fake electors plot and is now a key cooperator in several state probes into the scheme. Chesebro pleaded guilty in October to a felony conspiracy charge in Georgia in connection with the electors’ plan, and has met with prosecutors in Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, who are investigating the sham GOP electors in their own states.

Chesebro is an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal election interference indictment against Trump.

CNN has obtained audio of Chesebro’s recent interview with Michigan investigators, and exclusively reported earlier this month that he also told them about a December 2020 Oval Office meeting where he briefed Trump about the fake electors plan and how it ties into January 6.

An attorney for Chesebro declined to comment. A spokesman for the special counsel’s office did not reply to a request for comment for this story.

‘A high-level decision’

Emails obtained by CNN corroborate what Chesebro told Michigan prosecutors: He communicated with the top Trump campaign lawyer, Matt Morgan, and another campaign official, Mike Roman, to ferry the documents to Washington on January 5.

From there, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and a Pennsylvania congressman assisted in the effort to get the documents into Pence’s hands.

“This is a high-level decision to get the Michigan and Wisconsin votes there,” Chesebro told Michigan prosecutors. “And they had to enlist, you know, a US senator to try to expedite it, to get it to Pence in time.”

Chesebro also discussed the episode with Wisconsin investigators last week when he sat for an interview with the attorney general’s office as part of a separate state probe into the fake electors plot, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

Wisconsin prosecutors asked about the episode “extensively,” the source said, noting Chesebro discussed how a Wisconsin GOP staffer flew the certificate from Milwaukee to Washington and then handed it off to Chesebro.

The firsthand account from Chesebro’s perspective helps fill in the narrative behind the effort to hand-deliver elector slates to Pence, which is vaguely referenced in Smith’s federal indictment.

Trump pleaded not guilty to the charges, which include conspiring with Chesebro and others to obstruct the January 6 certification proceeding. Before Chesebro’s guilty plea in Georgia, his attorneys reached out to Smith’s team. As of this week, he has not heard back from federal prosecutors, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

Federal investigators have spoken with several individuals involved in the scramble with the phony elector certificates, according to a source familiar with the matter. This includes interviews with Trump staffers who were tapped to fly the papers to DC, and some fake electors who knew of the planning.

A spokesperson for the Trump campaign did not reply to a request for comment.

Asked about the episode, a spokesperson for Johnson pointed to his previous comments, where he said, “my involvement in that attempt to deliver spanned the course of a couple seconds,” and that, “in the end, those electors were not delivered.”

‘Day-by-day’ coordination

According to the recordings of Chesebro’s sit-down with Michigan prosecutors, he explained how a legal memo he wrote for Wisconsin transformed into a nationwide operation, where Trump lawyers were “day-by-day coordinating the efforts of more than a dozen people with the GOP and with the Trump campaign.”

On January 4, 2021, Morgan sent an email to Chesebro and Roman asking for confirmation that all of the Trump elector slates had been received by Congress, according to the documents obtained by CNN.

Roman responded that the Michigan certificate had been mailed on December 15 but was still “in transit” at a US Postal Service facility in DC. Wisconsin’s certificate also had apparently not arrived.

Chesebro told prosecutors that Morgan was “freaked out” when the campaign realized the phony certificates from Michiganwere still in the mail.

That same day, Morgan weighed in over email asking Chesebro and Roman to rethink how they would deliver the certificates to Pence.

“As I thought about this more, a courier will not be able to access the Capitol to deliver a sealed package,” Morgan wrote on January 4, according to emails obtained by CNN “You will probably need to enlist the help of a legislator who can deliver to the appropriate place(s). I strongly recommend you guys discuss a revised delivery plan with Rudy (Giuliani) to make sure this gets done the way he wants.”

‘Can we charter a flight?’

Roman was concerned the Wisconsin documents wouldn’t reach Washington in time.

“Can we charter a flight? The only available commercial from MKE (Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport) to DCA (Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport) arrives at 2130 tomorrow night,” Roman wrote to Chesebro on January 4 at 11:24 p.m.

The job of physically flying the elector documents to Washington fell to two people: A Trump campaign staffer and a Wisconsin GOP official, according to the emails and what Chesebro told prosecutors.

The Wisconsin GOP official who had that state’s elector documents landed after 10 a.m. on January 5 at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, according to the emails.

Trump campaign aide Michael Brown flew with the Michigan certificates to Washington National Airport with a scheduled arrival around 1 p.m., according to emails obtained by CNN.  A source familiar with the matter told CNN that Brown flew to DC from Atlanta, because the Trump staffers who had custody of the Michigan ballots were in Georgia for the Senate runoffs.

The campaign booked and paid for Brown’s flight on Southwest Airlines, the source said. Federal campaign finance records indicate that a pro-Trump super PAC paid the airline on the day of Brown’s flight for travel related to election “recount” efforts.

Trump Hotel meetup

The emails show that Brown and the Wisconsin GOP official were instructed to meet Chesebro at the Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington to hand off the fake elector certificates. Chesebro said in an email that he’d keep the ballots in his hotel room safe until it was time to pass them along.

Wisconsin Republican Party officials were annoyed at the request to courier the fake elector certificates to Washington. “Freaking trump idiots want someone to fly original elector papers to the senate President,” a Wisconsin GOP official wrote to then-state party chairman Andrew Hitt on January 4, according to the January 6 committee report.

Hitt – who has provided information to federal investigators about the efforts to get the fake elector certificates to Washington, according to a source familiar with the matter – told the January 6 committee that the couriering ended up being overkill, because the original documents that the state party had mailed to Washington actually made it in time.

Getting the certificates inside the Capitol

The documents still had to be hand-delivered to Pence’s Senate office in the Capitol.

The electors plot – as envisioned by Chesebro and other Trump allies – was that Pence could reject Biden’s legitimate electors and recognize Trump’s “alternate electors” on January 6, while lawmakers tallied the electoral votes from each state. Per federal law, the certificates need to be physically presented on the floor of Congress during the joint session, while lawmakers tally the electoral votes.

Chesebro told investigators that Roman connected him with an aide for a Pennsylvania GOP lawmaker that he believed was Rep. Scott Perry to turn over the documents. Chesebro wasn’t certain which congressman the staffer worked for – and the January 6 report says a staffer for a different Pennsylvania Republican, Rep. Mike Kelly, helped shuttle the documents that day.

“I had the Wisconsin stuff. [Trump campaign aide] Mike Brown had the Michigan stuff. We walked to the Longworth Office Building, and the guy with Perry, or whatever his name is, and some other fellow, that were like staff members of the House, took them and said, ‘We’re going to walk them over to the Senate and give it to a Senate staffer,’” Chesebro told Michigan prosecutors, according to the audio obtained by CNN.

“I don’t know why logistically we didn’t take it directly to Johnson. But that’s how we did it,” he added.

Kelly and Perry’s offices did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.

Brown did not comment for this story. CNN previously reported that he testified in June to Smith’s grand jury in the Trump election subversion probe.

CNN previously reported that Roman sat for a proffer interview with Smith’s team before Trump was indicted.  He was also indicted in the sweeping Georgia election racketeering case, in connection with the fake electors scheme, and has pleaded not guilty.

Roman’s attorney did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The details from Chesebro put a finer point on how members of Congress, including a sitting US senator, were involved in making sure the electoral certificates for Trump ended up in Pence’s hands.

The January 6 committee first revealed last year Johnson’s involvement in trying unsuccessfully to deliver the fake elector certificates to Pence, who announced on the morning of the joint session that it would be unconstitutional to do what Trump wanted and unilaterally overturn the election results.

The committee revealed text messages during their hearings last year that Johnson aide Sean Riley sent to Pence aide Chris Hodgson, saying that Johnson “needs to hand something to VPOTUS please advise.”

“What is it?” Hodgson asked.

“Alternate slates of electors for MI and WI because archivist didn’t receive them,” Riley responded.

“Do not give that to him,” Hodgson said.

‘F**k these guys’

In his Michigan interview, Chesebro also dished on some of the internal disagreements among the Trump lawyers, campaign officials and other allies, who clashed over the purpose of the electors’ plan and how far to take things on January 6.

Chesebro has maintained – then, and now – that the plan was a lawful move to preserve Trump’s legal rights.

Even before the Trump electors met in their state capitals on December 14, 2020, to cast their fake ballots and sign the certificates, Chesebro heard about concerns from some of the electors about possible legal jeopardy, according to emails and text messages reported by the Detroit News and obtained by CNN.

Chesebro added hedging language for the faux certificates from Pennsylvania and New Mexico in response to those concerns. He proposed to Roman and Morgan that they add the contingency caveats to the paperwork for all seven states in the plan. But Roman rejected the idea, according to the emails.

“F**k these guys,” Roman texted Chesebro on December 12, 2020.

By this time, the Trump campaign had essentially cleaved in two. Top officials who had managed day-to-day activity for Trump up to the election, including in court, say they ceded responsibility to Rudy Giuliani and others, such as Chesebro, according to congressional testimony transcripts. Roman effectively switched teams to work under Giuliani’s structure, according to the testimony from Morgan and others.

A spokesperson for Giuliani did not reply to a request for comment.

‘It really went south on me’

Chesebro told Michigan investigators that his own emails show that Morgan remained deeply involved, including in the final hours before January 6, to ensure that the certificates reached DC.

“I don’t have a really warm feeling toward, at least, the top Trump lawyers that did this, hid from me what they were doing and then lied to Congress about me. So, it’s been really difficult,” Chesebro said.

In his congressional testimony, Morgan said he knew of the elector plan but wanted to distance himself from the effort, delegating the work to others, including those under Giuliani.

Morgan told the January 6 committee last year that he initially believed the electors were only meant to be used as a contingency. The electors, he believed, should meet in their state capitals and cast their electoral votes but “not necessarily submit” the certificates to Congress unless “we prevailed” in court.

Morgan told the committee that the plan changed in December, saying it morphed from a “cast-and-hold” operation and had “shifted to cast-and-send.” And that’s when Morgan told the committee that he backed out, testifying that he directed an aide to “email Mr. Chesebro politely to say, ‘this is your task. You are responsible for the Electoral College issues moving forward.’”

“This was my way of taking that responsibility to zero,” Morgan told the committee, later adding that he “moved on” after that email was sent.

Morgan explained that he was concerned that the new plan to try to count the fake electors on January 6 “would make the Vice President’s life harder, and I didn’t want to be a part of that.”

“Mr. Morgan stands by his congressional testimony,” his defense attorneys told CNN in response to his emails and Chesebro’s statements to investigators.

Ultimately, on the eve of the joint session of Congress, Morgan helped get the ballots in place, according to the emails and according to Chesebro, who blamed his legal troubles squarely on the Trump campaign’s legal team.

“I could have avoided all this,” Chesebro vented to Michigan prosecutors. “It’s been a real lesson in not working with people that you don’t know and are not sure you can trust, because it really went south on me.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jack Wheatley at MMFA:

Right-wing media figures were immediately outraged following the news Thursday afternoon that War Room host and close Trump ally Steve Bannon was ordered by a D.C. judge to report to prison on July 1. Bannon was found guilty on two charges of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a House Select Committee subpoena investigating the January 6 insurrection. Soon after the news broke Thursday, allies of Bannon began rehashing familiar attacks against the judicial system and the right’s supposed political enemies, similar to the right-wing media outrage that followed the felony conviction of former President Donald Trump. On X, formerly known as Twitter, and on their own programs, conservative media personalities have shown their support for Bannon while also leveraging the news into a call to action for conservatives to “fight” and join in “a spiritual battle” against a system they claim has been hijacked by Democratic interests who want to “jail their political opponents.”

[...]

Calls for action and retribution

In responses to the news about the War Room host, some in the conservative media echo chamber called for action and retribution against “Biden Democrats” and “the other side." [...]

Comparisons to Hunter Biden, Anthony Fauci, Merrick Garland

Another way right-wing personalities and pundits are framing this news is by making bad faith comparisons to their political enemies for alleged wrongdoings that they claim are similar, particularly those of Hunter Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. 

Cry more, right-wingers! MAGA media figures turned their anger-meter up to 100 over the jailing of Stephen Bannon.

[carolyn-magazine]

This is a letter I wrote to my Secretary of State in regard to the disqualification of Donald J. Trump, and any others, from holding public office, per the United States Constitution, Amendment 14, Section 3.

[Disclaimer: this letter has been altered by me to remove the name of this state's Secretary of State in case anyone else would like to copy and send it to their Secretary of State or Lieutenant Governor. [Note: In Some States the Lieutenant Governor also serves as the Secretary of State and/or Chief Election Officer]

Dear Secretary of State [insert name] ,

In addition to serving as Secretary of State of [insert state], you also serve as Chief Election Officer. As a proud resident of [insert state], I am aware that you stand by the wisdom of The United States Constitution, as we all should. I implore you to please read, and take into serious consideration, the below information.

I am writing to your offices urging a formal review of whether Donald J. Trump, and any others, are barred from the ballot in this state by way of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. That Amendment disqualifies from the ballot any person who “shall have engaged” in an “insurrection.”

For such a disqualification, there is no requirement that Trump or any person be first convicted of any crime - as the Congressional Research Service notes.

Additionally, last year after a trial in New Mexico, a judge ruled that Jan. 6 was an “insurrection” within the meaning of the 14th Amendment and that Otero County Commissioner Cuoy Griffin was removed from office and disqualified from the ballot for “engaging” in that attack. Mr. Griffin is also prohibited from ever holding an elected position in the state of New Mexico.

Donald Trump’s actions - as detailed in the final report of the “Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack” - far exceed the actions of Griffin in terms of “engaging” in the Jan. 6 insurrection. While that New Mexico ruling is not binding in this or any other state, it is persuasive in its reasoning, and I urge your offices to read it.

Recently, conservative legal scholars (former Federal Judge on the Court of Appeals 4th circuit, J. Michael Luttig, and Professor Emeritus at Harvard Law School, who taught Constitutional Law at Harvard for nearly five decades, Laurence Tribe) have recently penned articles reaching the conclusion that given Trump’s conduct, the US Constitution does in fact bar Trump from the ballot.

Article VI of The United States Constitution reads, "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any state to the Contrary notwithstanding."

Amendment 14, Section 3 of The United States Constitution reads, "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."

As Americans, we should always take the Constitution seriously, and most people do, including Donald Trump, as we've witnessed him repeatedly standing by the 1st and 5th amendments.

We can't pick and choose which amendments are legally binding because each one is considered part of the supreme law of the land, as stated above in Article VI of The Constitution.

The time is now to review if Trump, or anyone for that matter, has done just that, and is barred from the ballot - well before the 2024 election.

George Santayana once famously wrote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." 

We must learn from History and there is a reason why Section 3 of the 14th Amendment was written into The Constitution - as a way to prevent our democracy from being destroyed.

Thank you for considering this issue that is vitally important to protecting our Republic.

Sincerely,

[insert your name here]

References

https://www.senate.gov/about/origins-foundations/senate-and-constitution/constitution.htm

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/donald-trump-constitutionally-prohibited-presidency/675048/

https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:VA6C2:d5f3903a-9ef1-413d-8b62-d42d1e8f44a5

https://nmpoliticalreport.com/2022/09/06/nm-judge-orders-couy-griffin-to-be-removed-from-otero-county-commission-bars-him-from-holding-any-office-in-the-future/

https://www.c-span.org/video/?507774-1/president-trump-video-statement-capitol-protesters

https://iep.utm.edu/santayan/

https://youtu.be/5Aaqz4qiQYM?si=ls1xrwNcKcFZrVMd

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday released security video from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, using footage provided exclusively to him by Speaker Kevin McCarthy to portray the riot as a peaceful gathering.

Carlson acquired the tapes as part of a deal for McCarthy, R-Calif., to win the Speaker’s gavel. When McCarthy was struggling to gather the votes to lead the House, Carlson used his program to list two “concessions” he could make to win over far-right Republicans.

“First, release the January 6 files. Not some of the January 6 files and video — all of it,” Carlson, the most-watched host on cable news, said after McCarthy faced three failed votes. “So that the rest of us can finally know what actually happened on January 6, 2021.”

In the two months since McCarthy won the gavel, he has granted both. Carlson announced in late February that McCarthy had given him exclusive access to 44,000 hours of security video from the deadly riot before he unveiled some clips of the video on his show Monday night.

Carlson focused Monday’s segment on promoting former President Donald Trump’s narrative by showing video of his supporters walking calmly around the U.S. Capitol. He asserted that other media accounts lied about the attack, proclaiming that while there were some bad apples, most of the rioters were peaceful and calling them "sightseers," not "insurrectionists."

“The footage does not show an insurrection or a riot in progress,” Carlson told his audience Monday. “Instead it shows police escorting people through the building, including the now-infamous ‘QAnon Shaman.’”

He continued: "More than 44,000 hours of surveillance footage from in and around the Capitol have been withheld from the public, and once you see the video, you’ll understand why. Taken as a whole, the video does not support the claim that Jan. 6 was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim."

Video that Carlson didn’t air shows police and rioters engaged in hours of violent combat that resulted in injuries to hundreds of police officers. Two pipe bombs were also planted nearby but were not detonated.

Nearly 1,000 people have been charged in connection with the Capitol attack. About 140 officers were assaulted that day, and about 326 people have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or employees, including 106 assaults that happened with deadly or dangerous weapons. About 60 people pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement.

Carlson also said on his show Monday that Democrats lied about the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. He played video that he said showed Sicknick walking around inside the Capitol after the mob attacked him. “They knew he was not murdered by the mob, but they claimed it anyway,” he said.

Sicknick died of natural causes on Jan. 7, the day after he engaged with rioters outside the Capitol. An autopsy report determined that he died of a stroke at the base of the brain stem caused by a blood clot. Capitol Police have said Sicknick returned to his office after the riot and collapsed. Two men have been sentenced to prison for spraying him with a chemical irritant during the melee, and Sicknick’s family has contended that the fighting with rioters contributed directly to his stroke.

McCarthy’s controversial decision to hand over Jan. 6 video to Carlson is a new twist for one of the most scrutinized events in American history, which has produced countless hours of social media video, a sweeping Justice Department criminal investigation, a House Select Committee probe and a bipartisan impeachment of then-President Donald Trump alleging “incitement of insurrection.”

The video’s release after two years, on Fox News in prime time, highlights the influence of Carlson, who has downplayed and promoted conspiracy theories about Jan. 6, and the far right over the slim new House majority.

Carlson also said at the top of his show Monday that Fox had checked with Capitol Police before it aired any of the video.

“Their reservations were minor,” he said, saying Fox blurred a door inside the Capitol in response to the agency's request.

U.S. Capitol Police is not commenting publicly on the security video released by Carlson, but a Capitol Hill source familiar with the matter told NBC News on Monday that “the police thought there was an agreement" with the Committee on House Administration, not with Carlson's show, that Capitol Police would be given the opportunity to review all the clips that Fox was planning to air Monday night.

But "the show only allowed the police to review one clip late this afternoon and then did not allow them to review any of the other clips.”

NBC News has reached out to the Committee on House Administration for comment.

Carlson said he plans to air additional video on his show Tuesday night.

The episode presents thorny politics for McCarthy who, in releasing the video to Carlson, is reigniting a national debate over the failed insurrection that cost his party seats in the midterm election — and looms over the 2024 presidential contest as Trump leads the GOP field in pursuit of a comeback.

“Electorally, it’s not to their advantage to be on the side of insurrectionists. But hasn’t stopped them before,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii.

McCarthy’s actions have sparked criticism from members of both parties and demands from news outlets, including NBC News, for access to the video. Some lawmakers say the video could be taken out of context to create a false narrative of what happened that day. Others worry it could expose the identities of police officers who defended the Capitol and subject them to harassment. And numerous Republicans say that security information should be protected and that all media should have equal access.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, the former chairman of the Jan. 6 Committee, said in a statement after Monday's show that it was a “dereliction of duty for Kevin McCarthy to give Tucker Carlson carte blanche access to sensitive U.S. Capitol security surveillance footage from one of the darkest days in the history of our democracy.”

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said the video “should have been reviewed to make sure that they would not be used in a way that could harm law enforcement” before it was disclosed to anyone.

“I don’t quite know what Speaker McCarthy had in mind,” he said. “I think it’s appropriate to provide information to the public generally and not just to one network.”

McCarthy defended his decision, saying that he had accounted for security concerns and that his office had “worked with Capitol Police” to ensure that security concerns were “taken care of.”

“He’ll have an exclusive, then I’ll give it out to the entire country,” McCarthy said, adding that Carlson’s team is “not interested” in showing sensitive security video, such as images of exit routes. “We’re working through that. We worked with the Capitol Police, as well. So we’ll make sure security is taken care of.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a recent letter to colleagues that McCarthy’s decision “laid bare that this sham is simply about pandering to MAGA election deniers,” accusing Carlson of using “his platform to promote the Big Lie, distort reality, and espouse bogus conspiracy theories about January 6.”

Some Republicans believe it is a mistake to reopen the Jan. 6 discussion, particularly after Trump-backed election deniers faced midterm defeats up and down the ballot in swing states.

“The 2022 election was a categorical rejection of election denialism. It cost Republicans the Senate and nearly kept them from winning back the House,” said Republican strategist Ken Spain, a former aide on the GOP’s House campaign arm. “With a razor-thin majority, House Republicans can’t waste a minute looking backward.”

Trump’s allies are looking for one thing on the video: vindication.

“We heard for two years how incredibly important this Jan. 6 committee was, how important all the evidence they collected was,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who mounted the first Senate objection to 2020 results that forced a vote, turning a sleepy ritual into a rallying point for Trump and his ardent followers. “Let’s see it. Let’s see the whole video.”

Hawley said that among the people at the Capitol, “I think the overwhelming majority were peaceful.” He added: “My friends on the left are melting down about this. ‘We can’t have that!’ Well, why can’t we? I thought it was critical that it all be put out there.”

“What’s on the tapes? I don’t know, but I’m interested to see them,” he said.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said the Jan. 6 security video “should be made public” or at least made available for “congressional oversight” because “that’s a very dramatic thing that happened one day in our country’s history.”

“What’s been investigated would be such a small percentage of it that a lot could be learned,” he said.

The release of some of the Jan. 6 security video comes two years after the attack, in which Trump supporters violently breached the Capitol in an attempt to overturn his 2020 defeat. Trump, who on Monday night praised Carlson on Truth Social for airing the newly accessed footage, has persisted in his fabricated claims that the election was stolen from him, despite failing to produce evidence of substantial fraud. He has also persisted in defending many of the rioters as patriots.

In his letter to colleagues last month, Schumer warned that Carlson would use any clips from the riot to advance his own narrative. “If the past is any indication, Tucker Carlson will select only clips that he can use to twist the facts to sow doubt of what happened on January 6 and feed into the propaganda he’s already put on Fox News’ air, which, based on recent reports, he may not even believe himself,” Schumer wrote.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Joel Pett, Lexington Herald Leader

* * * *

DUPLICITY DECEIT AND DECEPTION, SIMMERED TO PERFECTION IN A RICH BROTH OF HYPOCRISY

TCinLA

We knew it all along from its founding in1996 that Faux Propaganda Channel was as phony as a $7 bill, but seeing it in black-and-white on the page in the Dominion lawsuit filings really puts things in a different perspective, on a different level of reality. So, allow me to congratulate Faux Prop for following up their public exposure that they knowingly lied to their audience about the 2020 election with a demonstration of knowingly lying to their audience about the insurrection on January 6, 2021.

For all the time he has had his show on Faux Prop, which is now the number one show on cable TV, it has been self-evident that Tucker Carlson doesn’t believe most of the bullshit he spouts on his show. We can now enjoy that obvious truth more widely:

“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait. I hate him passionately.” — Tucker Carlson to his producer, January 4, 2021

"That's the last four years. We're all pretending we've got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it's been is too tough to digest. But come on. There isn't really an upside to Trump." — Tucker Carlson to his producer on January 4, 2021

“I hate him passionately. … What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.” — Tucker Carlson to his producer on November 16, 2021

“The whole thing seems insane to me. And Sidney Powell won’t release the evidence. Which I hate.” – Tucker Carlson to his producer on November 16, 2021 on the eve of touting the bogus claims about Dominion

And then this last Monday night, Tucker Carlson initiated his bizarre shitshow of revisionism by insisting the violent Insurrection we all watched in real time, really wasn’t an Insurrection at all.

“Taken as a whole, the video record does not support the claim that January 6th was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim. The footage does not show an insurrection or a riot in progress. Instead it shows police escorting people through the building." – Tucker Carlson introducing his show on Monday March 6, 2023

The text messages and emails from Carlson that were revealed by Dominion Voting systems in their filing supporting a summary judgement against Faux Prop reveal the wildly pro-Trump stance Carlson and the network cultivated has been nothing more than a theatrical performance. Carlson, despite his long defense and promotion of Trump, even to publicly advising him on national security issues, has never been a real Trumper; he just played the role. His support of Trump and Trump-adjacent issues has been from convenience; or when not convenient, a demonstration of how much he fears Trump.

As the Atlantic’s David Graham put it regarding Monday night’s shitshow: “That Tucker Carlson thinks his viewers are stupid is not new, though his first swing at spinning unseen footage of the January 6 insurrection provides a fresh test of just how credulous they are.”

But Tucker’s bullshit convinced at least one idiot: Unreconstructed Afrikaner shitbird Elon Muck; his response being further proof that he is actually the opposite of the “genius” the tinny toy owners think he is. Following Monday night’s show, Muck went on another bizarre Twitter rant in which he attacked members of the House Select Committee that investigated the Insurrection last year. Demonstrating what a braindead boob he is, Muck un-ironically accused them of “misleading the public” while lashing himself to debunked conspiracy theories about the response of the FBI and law enforcement to the Insurrection. He specifically said Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney withheld evidence: “Besides misleading the public, they withheld evidence for partisan political reasons that sent people to prison for far more serious crimes than they committed. That is deeply wrong, legally and morally.” (We really need to stick this fuckwit in one of his tinny toys, stuff it in one of his toy rockets, and fire it into the sun, since unfortunately we can’t put him in a time machine and send him back to be thrown out that top story window by his school mates in South Africa back when he was 12.)

While Muck was demonstrating what a worthless piece of something one scrapes off their shoe he is, the family of Brian Sicknick - the officer who died the day after defending the Capitol - issued a scathing statement after Carlson tried to downplay the injuries Sicknick suffered at the hands of the traitors:

“The Sicknick family is outraged at the ongoing attack on our family by the unscrupulous and outright sleazy so-called ‘news’ network of Fox News who will do the bidding of Trump or any of his sycophant followers, no matter what damage is done to the families of the fallen, the officers who put their lives on the line, and all who suffered on Jan 6th due to the lies started by Trump and spread by sleaze slinging outlets like Fox.”

Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger issued a rare statement ripping “offensive” and “misleading” statements about the attack:

“Last night an opinion program aired commentary that was filled with offensive and misleading conclusions about the January 6 attack,” Manger wrote, adding that Carlson’s show didn’t reach out to the police department “to provide accurate context.”

While the feral bedwetters of the House Republicans were pulling up their plastic pants, Mitch McConnell and other Senate Republicans quickly distanced themselves from Quiverin’ Qevin’s goatfuck:

Senator Thom Tillis told reporters: “I think it’s bullshit. I was here. I was down there, and I saw maybe a few tourists, a few people who got caught up in things. But when you see police barricades breached, when you see police officers assaulted, all of that ... if you were just a tourist you should’ve probably lined up at the visitors’ center and came in on an orderly basis.”

McConnell explicitly endorsed the Capitol Police chief: "I want to associate myself entirely with the opinion of the chief and the Capitol Police about what happened on January 6. It was a mistake, in my view, for Fox News to depict this in a way that’s completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks.”

North Dakota Republican Senator Kevin Cramer said that to put what happened “in the same category as … permitted peaceful protest is just a lie.”

Mitt Romney called it “dangerous and disgusting” and compared it to Alex Jones’s portrayal of the Sandy Hook massacre.

South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds said, “I thought it was an insurrection at that time. I still think it was an insurrection today.”

Number Two Senate Republican John Thune said, “I think it was an attack on the Capitol. … There were a lot of people in the Capitol at the time that were scared for their lives.”

The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols thinks the whole thing will backfire:

“As counterintuitive as it might be, perhaps the best thing for American democracy would be for Carlson to keep bumbling his way through more January 6 footage and to keep images of the insurrection in front of millions of viewers for as long as possible.

“If that’s how McCarthy and Carlson intend to restore the image of the GOP as a normal political party, who are any of us to argue with such public-relations geniuses?

“I’m not sure longtime Fox News critics and observers could have imagined a day like Tuesday ever coming to pass. The cable news net’s lies, fabrications, bamboozlement, and misinformation all came home to roost in spectacular fashion.”

The best indication that young Tuck’ms has royally fucked the pooch in front of the world came from how Faux Prop started eating its own yesterday: last night Bret Baier - the “straight news” guy whose texts released by Dominion show believes that the network needed to use more than “mere facts” in determining if Trump had really lost the election - got together with Chad Pergram to counter-program Carlson’s second shitshow. It started with footage touting Carlson’s “new” surveillance video, but then ends with clips by Pergram in Congress quoting the Senators. The segment ends with a hilarious closing from Baier: “And to be clear, no one here at Fox News condones any of the violences that happened on January 6.”

No one deserves the public ass-kicking they’re getting more than the propagandist personalities, the “straight news” hosts, and the assorted gargoyles employed at the Faux Propaganda Channel.

However, Carlson’s antics demonstrate something larger and more important:

Republicans have created a 2024 trap for themselves with the way they are treating the January 6 Insurrection.

According to the feral bedwetters:

There was no insurrection on January 6, and also the people facing criminal charges stemming from January 6 are political prisoners.

This is Trump’s line that he started taking the afternoon of January 6. The party let him do it and said nothing. After doing so, they were forced to agree with him.

And that is a problem for 2024.

What does DeSantis say about January 6? Does he say Ashli Babbitt was a martyr? Does he say the people in the DC jail are political prisoners?

The Republican base says January 6 was a legitimate protest, that Ashli Babbit is a martyr, and that the DC Prison Choir are political prisoners.

What does DeSantis say if he’s the candidate in 2024 and what does that do to him with all the rest of the voters who know what they saw on January 6?

By covering for Trump after January 6, Republicans made it much harder for any other candidate to draw a contrast between themselves and Trump on this today. Worse, they gave Trump the ability to call out any Republican who doesn’t support him.

Watching Republicans try to deal with January 6 for the next 18 months is going to be a much better show than watching Faux Prop try to convince us there’s nobody in that building across the street from 30 Rock but the chickens.

Thats Another Fine Mess

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

A text exchange between Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff Julie Radford and White House aide Hope Hicks reveals their anger over then-President Donald Trump’s actions on January 6, 2021, hurting them professionally, according to newly released documents collected by the House select committee investigating the Capitol Hill insurrection. “In one day he ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local Proud Boys chapter,” Hicks wrote to Radford on January 6, 2021. “And all of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed. I’m so mad and upset. We all look like domestic terrorists now.”

Hicks added: “This made us all unemployable. Like untouchable. God I’m so f***ing mad.”

Radford responded by texting, “I know, like there isn’t a chance of finding a job,” and indicating she already lost a job opportunity from Visa, which sent her a “blow off email.

I don't feel bad for them. They stuck with Trump as he kidnapped kids, banned trans people from the military, tried to blackmail Ukraine, called COVID-19 a hoax, and so many other things. But their careers were jeopardized?

Boo fucking hoo.

[yourreddancer]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

July 15, 2022 (Friday)

A late news dump tonight: the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol has subpoenaed from the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) the text messages between agents on January 5 and January 6, 2021, that it learned Wednesday had been deleted. 

Chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) told Secret Service director James Murray, who recently announced his upcoming resignation, that the committee wants all the texts by July 19, 2022.

Politico legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney noted that this is the first time the committee has subpoenaed an agency in the executive branch, at least publicly.That joins other legal news today. 

Trump confidant Steve Bannon tried again today to get his trial for contempt of Congress dismissed, arguing that because the court has refused to let him subpoena members of Congress, he cannot have a fair trial. That trial is due to start Monday.

Fani Willis, the Fulton County, Georgia, prosecutor, today told the chair of the Georgia Republican Party, David Shafer, as well as two state senators, that they could be indicted for their participation in the attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.

And the Department of Justice requested that the first defendant from the January 6 insurrection to be convicted at trial, Guy Reffitt, be sentenced to 15 years in prison. This is an upward adjustment of sentencing guidelines because the department is asking the judge to consider Reffitt’s actions as terrorism, since the offense for which he was convicted “was calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct.” 

Reffitt was a leader of the Texas Three Percenters militia gang, which calls for “rebellion” against the federal government. He came to Washington, D.C., for January 6. He attacked U.S. Capitol Police officers and encouraged others to do so before entering the Capitol armed with a handgun, where he targeted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and then–Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). 

A camera on his helmet recorded Reffitt’s words that day. “I’m taking the Capitol with everybody f*cking else,” Reffitt told the people around him. “We’re all going to drag them m*therf*ckers out kicking and screaming. I don’t give a sh*t. I just want to see Pelosi’s head hit every f*cking stair on the way out. (Inaudible) F*ck yeah. And Mitch McConnell too. F*ck ‘em all. They f*cked us too many g*dd*mn years for too f*cking long. It’s time to take our country back. I think everybody’s on the same d*mn wavelength. And I think we have the numbers to make it happen…. [W]e’ve got a f*cking president. We don’t need much more. We just get rid of them m*therf*ckers and start over.”

Afterward, he boasted, “We took the Capital [sic] of the United States of America and we will do it again.” Back in Texas, Reffitt deleted a thread of messages between him and another planner—the FBI was able to recover it—and threatened to hurt his teenaged children if they reported him. Reffitt has a history of domestic violence, including threatening his wife with a gun.

  The hefty sentence request for Reffitt is likely to convince others implicated in the insurrection to cooperate.The timing of today’s legal news highlights that the prosecution of those who tried to destroy our government is imperative to uphold the rule of law.

On this date in 1870, Congress voted to readmit Georgia to the United States after the Civil War. So far as the people living through that era thought, this ended Reconstruction, which they conceived of as the reconstruction of the U.S. government. And that was it. 

While there were military tribunals for those who had committed war crimes– most of them concerning the treatment of prisoners of war—there was never a legal reckoning for even the leaders of those who had tried to destroy the nation, although their efforts had led to the deaths of 620,000 soldiers and sailors and cost the country more than $5 billion. 

In an attempt to be magnanimous, U.S. officials gave former Confederates no reason to abandon their loyalty to their failed nation. They clung to it through Lost Cause mythology, convincing themselves that theirs was the true version of America despite their defeat, and that their cause was noble. Georgia’s return to the Union depended on the state’s ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing Black men the right to vote, but within a year of Georgia’s readmission, white southerners were already undermining Black voting. Within a decade, they had regained control of their states and were pushing their Black neighbors into second-class citizenship.

Without any cost for adherence to the Lost Cause, there was no reason for Confederate symbols to disappear. They have continued to play an astonishingly large role in our society, and not just in the South. They have inspired those eager to dismantle the government ever since the Civil War. They have made a spectacular comeback since the 1980s until finally, on January 6, 2021, the Confederate battle flag flew in the U.S. Capitol.

This time, though, there is a chance to change the story. Prosecutions have January 6 participants like Reffitt trying to hide their actions, and jail time will almost certainly dampen the enthusiasm of those who were happy to be part of an insurrection until they discovered there was a legal cost. While U.S. leaders after the Civil War thought their best hope of building a nation based on racial equality was to avoid prosecutions, scholars who study the restoration of democracy after an authoritarian crisis are very clear: central to any such restoration is enforcing the rule of law.

[mariacallous]

According to Tucker Carlson, the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was not an attempted putsch but instead “mostly peaceful chaos”: The “overwhelming majority” of rioters “were not insurrectionists,” he insisted. “They were sightseers.” The Fox News host’s revisionist take on Jan. 6, aired following the decision of Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy to share 41,000 hours of Capitol Police footage exclusively with Carlson’s team, has so far received widespread condemnation from the Capitol Police, the Justice Department, the White House, and Republican and Democratic members of Congress alike. Among the voices criticizing Carlson’s attempted rewriting of history have been staffers formerly on the Jan. 6 committee. 

“I served as a senior professional staff member on the January 6th Select Committee and helped write its final report,” wrote Tom Joscelyn in Politico. “I got a close look at some of the video evidence that Carlson obtained—and his manipulation of the audience was immediately obvious to me.” In a PBS interview, former senior investigative counsel James Sasso rejected Carlson’s claim that Jan. 6 was not an insurrection as “objectively not true.” Sasso went on, “There’s nothing to hide in the footage. There’s nothing to hide in the interviews that we had with defendants. We put out all of our transcripts. We have backed it up.” And Timothy Heaphy, the committee’s chief investigative counsel, told MSNBC, “This narrative that this was largely a peaceful protest with people waving flags and taking smiling selfies is just wrong.”

These responses to Carlson are only three of many public comments made by former Jan. 6 committee staffers in the months since the committee closed its doors on Jan. 3, 2023. Staffers have written guest essays in the New York Times and articles in Lawfare; they’ve appeared on podcasts; they’ve given television interviews; and one, Sasso, even made an appearance on the NPR quiz show “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!” (Asked by host Peter Sagal if “there’s anything that you know, but you couldn’t prove, but you’re going to tell me anyway,” Sasso responded, “If I told you that, I would be in a lot of trouble.”) 

The interviews and writing by former staffers are particularly notable because the Jan. 6 report was such an incomplete and fragmentary document. Now, a look at what these staffers have said publicly—and what they haven’t—reveals key points about what the report did and didn’t contain. And it suggests what issues, and controversies, will remain important for the country to address going forward.

The flood of interviews and writing by former Jan. 6 investigators is particularly striking when compared to the relative silence following other major investigations of Trump. The Mueller probe, for example, was famously a black box. Even in the years since the special counsel closed up shop, relatively few people involved have spoken publicly about their experiences. “Where Law Ends,” a bomb-throwing account by former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, is a major exception—but even that was published in September 2020, a year and a half after the release of the Mueller report. Likewise, the two impeachment proceedings against Trump saw plenty of after-action commentary by the House managers prosecuting the impeachment and senators acting as the jury, but little from the staff working behind the scenes. 

Perhaps, though, there’s simply more for staffers to talk about in this instance. Rather than providing a comprehensive record of everything the committee uncovered, the Jan. 6 report frames the story of the insurrection narrowly around the figure of Donald Trump—a decision that, according to reporters, was driven chiefly by Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.). This approach has the advantage of telling a clear, direct story about Trump’s responsibility for the insurrection, but at the cost of leaving out—or even distorting—other parts of the story. The Washington Post, for example, has published a lengthy draft memo written by staffers investigating the role of social media in the insurrection, little of which made it into the final document.

That’s not to say that the report sought to cover up the committee’s other work—after all, as many staffers have emphasized, the committee has made available an extraordinary amount of raw investigative material for the public to sort through. But it does mean that former staffers have a lot to talk about. And their public comments provide a useful road map for a broader understanding of the committee’s work. 

Many staffers have acknowledged the report’s limited scope directly, with greater or lesser degrees of willingness to criticize the committee’s final decision-making on what to include in the final report. The report “could only tell part of the story,” Sasso wrote in the New York Times. Writing in Just Security and Tech Policy Press, Dean Jackson, Meghan Conroy, and Alex Newhouse—all staffers who worked on the committee’s social media probe—argued, “The report’s emphasis on Trump meant important context was left on the cutting room floor.” Still, Jackson told me in a Lawfare Podcast conversation that he understood the reasoning behind the committee’s choices:

I am not a decision maker in the ultimate findings of Congress. That role belongs to the elected representatives on the committee, and they had a decision early in their work together, they were going to work by consensus to the extent possible. And when you have a committee as diverse … Liz Cheney to [Democratic representative] Adam Schiff, the band of consensus might be rather narrow.

Notably, Schiff (D-Calif.) himself has suggested some dissatisfaction with the report’s focus on Trump, hinting at some of what might have been left out of the final document in the name of consensus. In a New York Times essay published after the report’s release, he wrote that “one line of effort to overturn the election is given scant attention” in the report: the role of Republican members of Congress in pushing to upend the vote. Schiff’s curious use of the passive voice—who gave scant attention to this issue?—reflects the delicate dance that those involved in the committee’s work have performed in order to gently indicate dissatisfaction with the report without pointing fingers at anyone in particular.

Members of the committee’s color-coded “red” and “purple” teams—the first investigating the planning of the Jan. 6 rallies and the “Stop the Steal” movement, and the second investigating extremism and social media—have been particularly open in sharing their thoughts. The portrait of Jan. 6 that emerges from their writing and public commentary is richer and more complicated than the published report’s insistence that “the central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others followed.” 

Jackson, Conroy, and Newhouse, all members of the purple team, argue that, “[w]hile Trump played an instrumental role in driving the attack, right-wing networks—comprised of everyone from mainstream talking heads to extremist armed groups—drove the mass spread of conspiracy theories and far-right content on social media.” In their view, major social media platforms played a crucial role in allowing this spread by failing to implement content moderation policies that would have required cracking down on the far right—often because executives feared political backlash from Republicans. Violent rhetoric also spread across smaller “alt-tech” platforms like Gab and Parler, which lacked the will or the means to limit such posts. This doesn’t mean that social media is a but-for cause of the insurrection, but it does indicate that the spread of extremist ideas across the internet, and the failure of social media companies to respond adequately, is a crucial part of the story of Jan. 6. 

Jacob Glick, who served as investigative counsel for the committee and conducted depositions of rioters and members of extremist groups, argued in Lawfare that the insurrection should be understood as the culmination of “a monthslong trend toward political violence … spurred on by pandemic-related health restrictions and, later, Black Lives Matter protests.” These previous events, together with Trump’s rhetoric about a stolen election, helped extremist groups recruit combatants to fight a “continuing war against leftist radicals and their collaborators,” which “reached a new phase” with the supposedly stolen 2020 election. In this sense, Glick wrote, Jan. 6 must be understood as part of “a larger, even more disturbing pattern”—a story about an “emboldened vigilante wing of the far-right that is held in thrall to bigotry and paranoia, which poses a threat to the rule of law that runs deeper than an old man’s dangerous vanity.”

Likewise, in the New York Times, Sasso wrote, “Other political, social, economic and technological forces beyond the former president had a hand, whether intentionally or not, in radicalizing thousands of people into thinking they needed to attack the seat of American democracy.” In his telling, key to Jan. 6 was a broader loss of faith in democratic institutions across American life, such that for both violent extremists and otherwise ordinary Americans present at the insurrection, “a stolen election was simply the logical conclusion of years of federal malfeasance.”

A key part of the Jan. 6 story left out of the committee’s report—or, in some instances, actively misrepresented by the committee’s presentation of events—involves the failures of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to anticipate and prevent the violence. This was the province of the committee’s “blue” team, which was largely absent from the final document—reportedly to the frustration of staffers who worked on this prong of the investigation. Heaphy, the committee’s chief investigative counsel, spoke to this omission in an interview with NBC. Trump “was the proximate cause” of Jan. 6, he told reporters, but “law enforcement had a very direct role in contributing to the security failures that led to the violence.” He explained, “There was a lot of advance intelligence about law enforcement, about carrying weapons, about the vulnerability of the Capitol. The intel in advance was pretty specific, and it was enough, in our view, for law enforcement to have done a better job.”

Yet Heaphy then walked back his comments after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) seized on them to blame former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for the violence, arguing that the committee had covered up information about law enforcement failures in order to protect Pelosi. Speaking to the New York Times, Heaphy said, 

Law enforcement had specific intelligence about potential violence directed at the joint session of Congress, and didn’t accurately assess and operationalize that. But some people have mischaracterized that as me saying that it’s law enforcement’s fault, that law enforcement could have prevented this or that the congressional leadership should have. That’s just wrong.

On Twitter, he wrote, “We need a reasoned discussion about how law enforcement gathers and assesses intelligence about domestic violent extremism in this country. That discussion should be unencumbered by politics or false characterizations of the committee’s findings.” But the dustup is itself a demonstration of how political differences among Jan. 6 committee members seem to have constrained what the committee was willing to say in its report in the service of seeking consensus about how best to tell the story. Members reportedly cut material about law enforcement and intelligence failures in order to focus more narrowly on Trump himself. A harsh statement to the Washington Post by a Cheney spokesman in November 2022, which argued that “[s]ome staff have submitted subpar material for the report that reflects long-held liberal biases about federal law enforcement,” hints at why some of the material on law enforcement might not have made the cut. 

Ironically, though, the spat over Heaphy’s NBC interview suggests that the committee’s decision-making may have undercut its own credibility by opening itself up to charges that members downplayed the true scope of responsibility for Jan. 6. Even before the committee published its final report, a group of Republican members of the House published their own report on security failures in the run-up to Jan. 6 and pointed the finger at Pelosi—an indication of how discussions of law enforcement failures had already become a locus of partisan disagreement. It’s more difficult to have the “reasoned discussion” about countering domestic violent extremism that Heaphy feels is necessary now that any such discussion will become mired in the auxiliary debate over why the committee did or didn’t include certain material in the final report. 

“When you make mistakes, ideally, you’ll learn from them,” Heaphy told NBC of failures by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Along these lines, the Jan. 6 staffers who have spoken publicly have often emphasized that the work of responding to the insurrection is not yet done. This follows naturally from the (sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit) argument that the causes of Jan. 6 run wider and deeper than Trump himself: If greater societal forces are at play, then preventing another insurrection will require more than simply keeping the former president out of the Oval Office. 

Jackson, Conroy, and Newhouse—the purple team investigators—argue that “greater transparency in the realm of social media is essential” for public understanding of how private companies govern the digital public square. They call for “a host of pro-democracy and counter-extremism reforms both on and offline.” Writing with Mary B. McCord of Georgetown’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, Glick made the case for an effort to counter far-right paramilitary groups, many of which were present on Jan. 6. Sasso argued for reforms that would help revitalize public faith in democracy, from campaign finance reforms to “tackling economic inequality and reinvesting in communities devastated by globalization and technological changes.”

This idea of work left unfinished also emerges in how former staffers talk about their own sense of responsibility in speaking out. “The final report from the committee told one piece of the story,” said Newhouse in a podcast interview. “I think our roles here, myself and my colleagues in the coming months, the coming years, is to try to help tell the rest of the story, to try to fill in the gaps.” His fellow staffers expressed similar views. In our Lawfare Podcast conversation, Jackson told me, “I do think there’s a responsibility to talk about it.” Often, staffers have positioned this process of speaking out as a collaborative effort, pointing to the trove of material released by the committee in addition to the final report. The committee, Sasso wrote, “released many of our documents publicly and archived the rest so that historians, political scientists, sociologists and many others can scrutinize our findings in ways we could not, examining the causes and consequences of Jan. 6 with a longer time horizon than we had.” 

(This argument can also be less collaborative and more accusatory. In a podcast discussion with Yahoo reporters Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman, former committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) bristled when Isikoff pressed him on the committee’s failure to dig further into law enforcement and intelligence failures. “We laid out the facts the best that we could,” Raskin said. “Where is your profession? Have the journalists figured out who was the person who dropped the ball?”)

For all the work that remains to be done, the existence of the committee’s publicly accessible archive is, in a sense, a source of hope. It’s a commitment to the idea that the work can be done by engaged experts, journalists, and everyday people interested in digging through the documents. Kristin Amerling, who served as chief counsel and deputy staff director to the committee, commented at a Georgetown event that “the committee not only assiduously footnoted the various findings it made throughout the report, but it made every effort to provide the public the underlying information so that the public can draw their own conclusions and evaluate the basis of the committee’s findings.”

Likewise, there’s also an optimism to the idea that the existence and availability of these documents might help Americans understand the truth of what happened on Jan. 6, even amid lies like Carlson’s. “I’m really glad that all of our transcripts have been released,” Heaphy told the New York Times. “So if anyone thinks that we misled or shaded or hid facts, it’s all out there.” At a panel discussion following the news that Tucker Carlson would be broadcasting Jan. 6 footage, Sandeep Prasanna, a former investigative counsel for the committee, expressed a similar hope. This documentation, he said, ensures that, “regardless of whether someone is out there right now slicing and dicing surveillance footage to achieve whatever partisan or conspiratorial ends there may be, there is a factual record of what happened out there.”