The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, Jeff Carter said:

Dodgy never-acted-on legal advice does not really constitute a cogent “plan”, and claims that it “outlined a coup d’état” is simply a manifestation of the hyper-partisan “news reporting” discussed earlier in context of Fox News.

John Eastman, author of the infamous letter, was not in the Trump Administration, but had been a recognized constitutional scholar. I gather Eastman is somewhat disgraced now.

As a non-lawyer, my take is his reasoning was strained, in his advice to Trump. As you say, as of now it appears Eastman wrote a letter, and sent it to Trump Administration, they read it...and then what? 

Meanwhile, the Biden Administration has been prosecuting the 600-odd people who occupied the Capitol on Jan. 6. Not one---repeat, not even one---has been charged with colluding or conspiring with anyone in the Trump Administration, and only a very few with conspiring with each other. Remember, everything these people said on a phone, or texted or e-mailed has been captured by the federal panopticon. 

As of now, there is zero evidence anyone who occupied the Capitol had ties to the Trump Administration. 

An interesting aside, the LA Times has declared the Oathkeepers played a "crucial" role the Jan. 6 occupation, yet many observers say the top guy at the Oathkeepers appears to have been a federal asset, as was Enrique Tarrio at the Proud Boys, and the mysterious video'ed instigator Ray Epps. 

If the Jan. 6 scrum turns out to have been instigated by federal plants, assets and infiltrators...well, it would not be the first time. 

Keep an open mind. 

 

 

 

[Denny Zartman]

7 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

Trump's personal opinions had no bearing on the certification

You said Pence overturning the election was something that could not happen. Trump clearly believed otherwise, and certainly his state of mind is relevant, since he 1. has been accused of formenting the riot, 2. was the person that stood to benefit from any disruption in the process of confirming Biden's win, and 3. was the head of the executive branch that includes the Vice President. What powers the President believed the Vice President had in regard to election certification is certainly relevant.

7 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

as far as I know, there are no rules or laws which mandate that the certification process must proceed at an exact time or else the election is voided. 

Then I'll ask a second time: why did Pence not want to leave the Capitol on January 6th, if, as you believe, he could come back at any time and legally certify the election?

Edited November 15, 2021 by Denny Zartman

[Denny Zartman]

Quote

Around this time, Kellogg ran into Tony Ornato in the West Wing. Ornato, who oversaw Secret Service movements, told him that Pence’s detail was planning to move the vice president to Joint Base Andrews.

“You can’t do that, Tony,” Kellogg said. “Leave him where he’s at. He’s got a job to do. I know you guys too well. You’ll fly him to Alaska if you have a chance. Don’t do it.”

Pence had made clear to Giebels the level of his determination and Kellogg said there was no changing it.

“He’s going to stay there,” Kellogg told Ornato. “If he has to wait there all night, he’s going to do it.”

Ornato, through a spokesman, denied having this conversation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/07/15/jan-6-i-alone-can-fix-it-book-excerpt/

Quote

Short then revealed that Pence was warned that the Capitol might have to be vacated for several days — further postponing the Electoral College certification of Joe Biden’s victory — to clear the building.

“There were concerns that there could have been explosive devices,” Short explained.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/former-vp-pence-e2-80-99s-chief-of-staff-reveals-new-details-about-evacuation-deployment-of-nat-e2-80-99l-guard-during-capitol-insurrection/ar-BB1dOmDz

-

The rioters were trying to prevent the certification of the election. Keith Kellogg was a senior official in the Trump White House. Both Kellogg and Pence recognized that once Pence was taken away, he may not have been allowed to return. It's just fiction to pretend that removing Pence's ability to certify the election was not the goal of Trump and the rioters on January 6th.

Conservatives used to be all about the Constitution. Congress was trying to do its Constitutional duty by certifying the election starting on January 6th. And those that used to lecture us endlessly about the Constitution are now like "Eh, do it whenever. There's no law against it that I know of."

[Denny Zartman]

Quote

QUESTION:

Do Electoral College votes have to be certified by January 6? What happens next?

ANSWER:

The date is fixed for January 6 but has been changed before. In order for the date to be changed, lawmakers must pass new legislation.

SOURCES:

U.S. Code Title 3, Section 16

U.S. Code Title 3, Section 17

Congressional Research Service Report

The United States Consitution

Michael Thorning, Associate Director of the Bipartisan Policy Center

PROCESS:

The January 6th date has been set in the Constitution, but the date for the count has been changed several times before. The Congressional Research Service cited the 2013 count when January 6 fell on a Sunday, so the new date was pushed to January 4. 

According to U.S. Code Title 3, Section 17, each objection can take up to two hours, meaning even before the events of today unfolded, it was possible for the objections to last well into the morning hours.

RELATED: VERIFY: Can the Vice President invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump?

Under U.S. Code Title 3, Section 16, the joint session from Congress to certify votes "is to continue until the count is completed and the result announced." 

The code goes on to say that recesses are also limited "if the process of counting the votes and announcing the results becomes time-consuming." 

There is no mention of how to proceed in the event of an emergency like what unfolded Wednesday. Lawmakers were able to reconvene and continue the certification process Wednesday night.

Micheal Thorning, associate director for the Bipartisan Policy Center, said the Electoral Count Act requires Congress to "begin counting the electoral votes on January 6, but it need not end that day."

"The statute recognizes that this process could be lengthy and imagines the process could take in excess of five days in some cases," he continued. "The statute does not provide a deadline to complete the counting but requires that the joint session not be dissolved until then and until the results are announced. Even if the counting went beyond January 20th, when a president and vice president’s term would end, the presidential line of succession would be activated. In such a case, the Speaker of the House would likely be the first officer to become acting president until the Electoral College process is completed and a president declared."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/verify-what-happens-next-if-electoral-college-votes-arent-certified-on-january-6/ar-BB1cxiUt

[Matt Allison]

Danny- yep, exactly. The plan was to not allow the certification to happen on the 6th, as they believed that would then open up an entire new realm of legal avenues they could use to delay the transfer of power.

Check this out; a new wrinkle given what we now know:

https://twitter.com/clearing_fog/status/1459977979409285121?s=20

[Joe Bauer]

Step back just for one minute here.

Look at what Trump wanted and incited on January 6th.

A physically intimidating attack on our Capital building full of almost all of our Congress, their aides and scores of Capital policemen and women.

Put the events of that day into their proper perspective.

A mob attack to try to subvert the most sacred Democratic and Constitutional institution principles our entire society is based on!

The "Man" and his cohorts wanted this to happen!

Incited and encouraged it!

Talk about high crimes and misdemeanors?

Trump U.S. Constitution subverting brain trust buddy and partner in grift crime ( absconded his "Build The Wall" donation funds ) Steve Bannon boasted the day before Jan. 6th ... "all hell's going to break loose tomorrow."

A simple off-the-wall lucky prediction guess?

Imagine someone well known in the media saying the same thing a day before 9/11/2001?

There doesn't need to be a social media mention smoking gun record by the mob members or communication to nefarious behind the scene higher up others to know that the mob members were guided by others. They didn't come up with the idea of storming the Capital building spur of the moment and on their own.

And Trump watching this frighteningly shocking violent insurrection action for 1 or two hours on TV like the rest of us little people and not doing anything to stop it by that time is...well...if you don't know, what's the use in even trying to explain it's true reality highest crime importance?

Trying to separate and dissipate blame from the Trump camp simply because of a lack of actual pre-attack social media and telephone records communication between the mob members and nefarious higher ups is a weak diversionary waste of time effort imo.

These higher up insurrection encouraging and enabling guys ( Trump - Bannon, et al. ) should all be in jail!

And you know it.

 

Edited November 15, 2021 by Joe Bauer

[Andrew Prutsok]

Obviously it wasn't a coup attempt because Trump immediately dispatched troops and guardsmen to protect the Capitol, right?

[Jeff Carter]

12 hours ago, Denny Zartman said:

The rioters were trying to prevent the certification of the election.

Well, according to the “Eastman memo”, to the extent anyone takes it seriously, the “coup plan” was actually dependent on the certification process moving forward, at which time the scheme to swap out electors from various states would be enacted.

Pence received exactly the same heavy security as Pelosi, to which she said she never felt in danger. Whether the Secret Service wanted to move him to Andrews or not, the eventual certification of the election was never endangered either. The MSM accounts are filled with emotive adverbs and phrases such as “harrowing” or “terror at the Capital” which - as field tested at Fox News - trigger response at a level below rational dispassionate discourse.

Certainly Trump is a malignant narcissist, and his continuing promotion of an alleged “stolen election” is astonishingly irresponsible. Beyond that, a cynical observer might say this boils down to a dispute between rival factions of millionaires over who gets to craft the next round of tax cuts for their friends and “donors”.

[W. Niederhut]

Jeff,

     Once you've dug yourself into a deep hole, stop digging.

     It's obvious that you haven't really studied the film or witness testimony about January 6th, including the harrowing experiences of members of Congress, many of whom had to barricade themselves in their offices and/or hide under desks.  (Either that or you are deliberately misrepresenting the facts.)

    And your weekend timing in claiming that there was no coup plot was particularly absurd given the new reports about Mark Meadows and the Ellis Memo.

Edited November 15, 2021 by W. Niederhut

[Steve Thomas]

I thought this Thread might be appropriate for this:

1) Integralism

There was a throwaway line in something Jean-Claude Perez told Fensterwald in 1982. He said that,

“post 1962, Souetre was part of an ultra-right, ultra-Catholic splinter group which included four men named Pichon, Lefevre, Bourget, and Grossouvre. Group called Integraliste
http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/S%20Disk/Souetre%20Jean%20with%20aka%27s/Item%2011.pdf

p. 4.

(Albert Lefevre, by the way, was the one man I could find that both stood trial with Souetre in December, 1961 and who escaped with him from the Camp at St. Maurice L'Ardoise in February, 1962.)

From Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integralism

Integralism is an ideology according to which a nation is an organic unity. Integralism defends social differentiation and hierarchy with co-operation between social classes, transcending conflict between social and economic groups. It advocates trade unionism (or a guild system), corporatism, and organic political representation instead of ideological forms of representation. Integralism claims that the best political institutions for given nations will differ depending on the history, culture and climate of the nation's habitat. Often associated with blood and soil conservatism, it posits the nation or the state or the nation state as an end and a moral good, rather than a means.[1]

The term integralism was coined by the French journalist Charles Maurras, whose conception of nationalism was illiberal and anti-internationalist, elevating the interest of the state above that of the individual and above humanity in general.[1]

Although it is marked by its being exclusionary and particularistic, and there has been consideration of its historic role as a sort of proto-fascism (in a European context)[1] or para-fascism (in a South American context),[2] this link remains controversial, with some social scientists positing that it combines elements of both the political left and right.[3]

Catholic Integralism does not support the creation of an autonomous "Catholic" state church, or Erastianism (Gallicanism in French context). Rather it supports subordinating the state to the worldwide Catholicism under the leadership of the Pope. Thus it rejects separation of the Catholic Church from the state and favours Catholicism as the proclaimed religion of the state.[5]

Catholic Integralism appeals to the teaching on the subordination of temporal to spiritual power of medieval popes such as Pope Gregory VII and Pope Boniface VIII. But Catholic Integralism in the strict sense came about as a reaction against the political and cultural changes which followed the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.[6

(Where have we heard “Blood and Soil” recently?)

Steve Bannon's criminal indictment is the best thing that's ever happened to him

by Heather Digby Parton, Salon https://www.rawstory.com/u/heather_digby_parton_salon

November 15, 2021

https://www.rawstory.com/steve-bannon-s-criminal-indictment-is-the-best-thing-that-s-ever-happened-to-him/

 

“Bannon tried to make himself into a kingmaker during the 2018 primaries but saw dismal results so he spent the next couple of years wandering around the world, connecting up with leaders of other authoritarian regimes, acting as something of an alt-right entrepreneur. Nothing much came of it, at least institutionally. Bannon's ballyhooed global far-right movement he branded with an exceptionally catchy name, "The Movement," failed to ever get off the ground. Likewise, his hopes to start a far-right Catholic political academy in an 800-year-old monastery in Italy were thwarted last March when The Council of State ruled against it after years of court battles. Bannon was designing the curriculum for the Academy for the Judeo-Christian West for Catholic activists in which, as The New Yorker's Ben Munster put it, "a new class of right-wing 'culture warriors' would be trained."”

 

“Bannon's philosophy has been written about quite a bit, including by yours truly, because it is extremely radical and very, very weird. It's all wacky mysticism mixed with antediluvian, pre-enlightenment, authoritarianism posing as nationalism based upon the writings of an obscure French writer named René Guénon from the early 20th century and the teachings of one of his followers (and Mussolini adviser) Julius Evola. (If you're interested in going deep, these articles will fill you in.) The school of thought is called "Traditionalism" and it is like no tradition you've ever heard of. But Bannon is not alone with this philosophy. It's held by members of far-right leaders' inner circles throughout Europe and in places like Brazil and Russia. If there is an intellectual rationale for Trumpism beyond the Dear Leader cult of personality, this "traditionalism" is it.”

Inside the Secret, Strange Origins of Steve Bannon’s Nationalist Fantasia

“The chief strategist of Trump’s triumph reveals his strange brew of intellectual influences, including a French-Egyptian Muslim occultist guru, and his apocalyptic view of history.”

By Joshua Green Vanity Fair July 17, 2017

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/the-strange-origins-of-steve-bannons-nationalist-fantasia

 

Steve Thomas
 

 

[Jeff Carter]

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Jeff,

     It's obvious that you haven't really studied the film or witness testimony about January 6th, including the harrowing experiences of members of Congress, many of whom had to barricade themselves in their offices and/or hide under desks.  (Either that or you are deliberately misrepresenting the facts.)

    And your weekend timing in claiming that there was no coup plot was particularly absurd given the new reports about Mark Meadows and the Ellis Memo.

You are misrepresenting my position. I fully agree the events of 1/6 constituted a major and serious breach of security, but it was not a fundamental “attack on democracy”. This framing has been largely manufactured by the corporate media to increase partisan division and rancour, very successfully if one consults the past few months on this thread.

By definition, dodgy legal advice does not amount to a “coup” attempt. A coup is an “unlawful” (or “unconstitutional”) seizure of power. Using legal gambits based on interpretations of legal statutes is technically best described these days as “lawfare”. The election in 2000 was a result of lawfare supported by the Supreme Court, and was entirely legal. Trump’s lawyers were trying to find legal avenues to reversing electoral results, but their schemes were obviously hare-brained and were never acted upon.

[W. Niederhut]

12 minutes ago, Jeff Carter said:

You are misrepresenting my position. I fully agree the events of 1/6 constituted a major and serious breach of security, but it was not a fundamental “attack on democracy”. This framing has been largely manufactured by the corporate media to increase partisan division and rancour, very successfully if one consults the past few months on this thread.

By definition, dodgy legal advice does not amount to a “coup” attempt. A coup is an “unlawful” (or “unconstitutional”) seizure of power. Using legal gambits based on interpretations of legal statutes is technically best described these days as “lawfare”. The election in 2000 was a result of lawfare supported by the Supreme Court, and was entirely legal. Trump’s lawyers were trying to find legal avenues to reversing electoral results, but their schemes were obviously hare-brained and were never acted upon.

The Eastman and Ellis Memos establish that Trump was conspiring to sabotage the certification of Biden's election on January 6th.

Secondly, although Trump is desperately fighting to stonewall the investigation, there is ample evidence that Trump and his inner circle actively incited the violent attack on Congress during the certification proceedings.

You have dodged the facts that I posted for you over the weekend, including the fact that Congressman Mo Brooks (R-Alabama) wore body armor on January 6th, while urging the Trump mob to, "March down to the Capitol and kick some ass!"  Trump, Giuliani, and others also actively incited the attack on the Capitol on January 6th.

And Trump watched the attack on television for three hours, repeatedly ignoring requests for intervention.

His interim SecDef, Chris Miller, refused for three hours to send the National Guard to the Capitol.

And the Secret Service, apparently, attempted to remove Pence to Andrews AFB.

[Ron Bulman]

FYI.

Bannon Surrenders On Contempt Charges: "Focus On Signal, This Is All Noise" | Video | RealClearPolitics

[Matt Allison]

14 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

FYI.

Bannon Surrenders On Contempt Charges: "Focus On Signal, This Is All Noise" | Video | RealClearPolitics

Very much looking forward to him being charged with seditious conspiracy along with the others.

[Matt Allison]

Frank Scavo was arrested later that month.  4 charges against him, new federal filing today.