What did Donald Trump know about getting thumped in the 2020 election and when did he know it? According to a whole bunch of testimony from his top aides and advisers: everything, right away.
- The House January 6 Committee's Monday hearing was devoted to puncturing the myth that Trump simply believed he'd won, and to demonstrating instead that he either knew full well he'd lost, or remained "willfully blind" to the truth in order to pursue a premeditated scheme to steal a second term. The story began, the committee recounted, before the election, with Trump's announcement that he'd only accept the results if he won.
- Trump's campaign manager Bill Stepien supplemented that reminder, testifying that he and others repeatedly told Trump that most absentee votes would be counted late after polls closed. Former Fox News editor Chris Stirewalt, who was fired for correctly calling Arizona for President Biden, said his team cautioned viewers about this "red mirage" because “the Trump campaign and the president had made it clear that they were going to try to exploit this anomaly." (Contemporaneous reporting backs this up.)
- Stepien was supposed to testify in person, but withdrew Monday morning when his wife went into labor. His pre-recorded deposition also included his recollection of election night in 2020, when Trump ignored the consensus guidance of his campaign advisers, in favor of his (apparently drunk as shit) (see gif) criminal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who advised him to declare victory and call the late-counted votes fraudulent. Former Attorney General and reliable Trump lackey Bill Barr testified that after election night, Trump showed no “indication of interest in what the actual facts were" and instead bounced from one debunked conspiracy theory to the next.
|
|
Of course, pretending to believe lies doesn't free anyone to go on a vigilante fraud spree.
- The committee demonstrated that in the weeks between the election and the insurrection, "President Trump and his allies raised nearly $250 million" for a so-called "Election Defense Fund" that didn't actually exist, and only documented spending $7.2 million of that money. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) said the committee has evidence that Trump and his family benefited personally from money donated in the name of election defense. For instance: Donald Trump, Jr.'s fiance Kimberly Guilfoyle received $60,000 for introducing him at the "Stop the Steal" rally.
- A mountain of evidence that Trump knew he was spreading lies and that he stood to profit personally by selling lies should be of interest to the Justice Department. After the hearing, Attorney General Merrick Garland said, '"I am watching and I will be watching all the hearings ... I can assure you that the January 6 prosecutors are watching all the hearings as well."
In a key sense, it doesn't really matter whether Trump really knew he lost. Even if we assume Trump truly believed he'd won, it didn't give him the right to extort Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to manufacture votes, or solicit fraudulent election documents from fake electors. The committee's central success Monday was demonstrating how even that weak defense is bullshit.
|
|
|
Crooked’s newest podcast, Mother Country Radicals is out now! In this 10-episode series, host Zayd Ayers Dohrn takes us back to the 1970, when his parents and their young friends in the Weather Underground Organization declared war on the United States government. You can listen to the first three episodes of Mother Country Radicals right now, wherever you get your podcasts.
|
|
|
A group of 20 senators—10 Democrats and 10 Republicans—formed in the aftermath of the school gun massacre in Uvade, TX, has signed off on an outline for modest gun regulations. Those rules, if enacted, would create a federal grant program to encourage states to adopt red-flag laws; close the so-called "boyfriend loophole" by extending prohibitions on gun ownership to all domestic violence perpetrators, not just married ones; and add juvenile justice and mental health records to federal background checks of buyers under 21 for the first time. It would not increase the minimum ownership age for assault rifles to match the minimum age for handgun ownership from 18 to 21 to match. It also does not come with a guarantee of success. Though 10 Republicans would be enough to overcome a filibuster if all 50 Democrats agree with the final legislative language, Republicans have left themselves room to renege. “The details will be critical for Republicans, particularly the firearms-related provisions,” one GOP aide told the Washington Post. “One or more of these principles could be dropped if text is not agreed to.”
|
|
|
Life can be overwhelming, and many people are burned out without even knowing it. Symptoms of burnout can include lack of motivation, feeling helpless or trapped, detachment, fatigue, and more.
We associate burnout with work, but that’s not the only cause. Any of our roles in life can lead us to feel burned out, and BetterHelp online therapy wants to remind you to prioritize yourself. Talking with someone can help you figure out what’s causing stress in your life.
BetterHelp is customized online therapy that offers video, phone and even live chat sessions with your therapist, so you don’t have to see anyone on camera if you don’t want to.
It’s much more affordable than in-person therapy and you can be matched with a therapist in under 48 hours.
What A Day is sponsored by BetterHelp and readers of this newsletter get 10 percent off their first month at BetterHelp.com/crooked.
|
|
|
The Fed may increase interest rates substantially this week.
Police in Coeur d'Alene, ID, arrested 31 members of the Nazi group Patriot Front for conspiracy to riot after discovering them packed into the back of a U-Haul with riot gear near a gay pride celebration.
In other Nazis: Following a tip from fellow online bigots, the Proud Boys kind of Nazis stormed a drag queen story hour event at a library in the Bay Area, where they tormented and threatened the host and freaked out children who were there to listen to children's stories.
The DC Circuit Court's Office of Disciplinary Counsel has charged Rudy Giuliani with initiating frivolous proceedings in court and engaging in prejudicial conduct stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election; the court's Board on Professional Responsibility will now determine what if any ethics sanctions (such as disbarment or suspension of his license to practice in Washington) he should face.
Trump-loyal election deniers appear to have breached the voting system in Coffee County, GA, after Trump lost the state, part of an established pattern of abuses by Trump-approved Big Lie adherents across the country.
In other Georgia liars, Georgia's Republican Senate candidate has repeatedly claimed to be a former law-enforcement officer, including an FBI agent, despite it not being true at all.
Insurrectionist Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano has hired insurrectionist lawyer Jenna Ellis (who somehow hasn't been disbarred) as his senior legal adviser.
Pennsylvania state Republicans have begun seeking cosponsors to impeach Philadelphia's twice-elected District Attorney Larry Krasner, part of an ongoing multi-state effort to scapegoat Democrats for a national violent-crime wave that began under Donald Trump, in a bet Democrats will be too scared to fight back against a bad-faith effort to manufacture propaganda.
Profile in courage Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said he won't take a position on Nazi Proud Boys taking over the Miami-Dade GOP until "you ask me about the Communists and Socialists that are part of the local Democratic party," which doesn't even rise to the level of whataboutism, because it's just a lie.
Republicans keep trying to hide that their hidden agenda remains gutting Social Security and Medicare, keep accidentally admitting it.
A male mastodon was killed in a presumably vicious fight with another male mastodon during mating season over 13,000 years ago in what is now Indiana. Sorry to this mastodon.
|
|
|
An ammunition shortage, and the slow pace of new arms shipments, combined with fewer Russian failures, have allowed the pendulum to swing back in Russia's favor as the forces invading Ukraine continue to gain territory in the eastern Donbas region. Ukrainian forces report that they are running out of ammunition and suffering many more casualties per day than they were earlier in the war. Complicating matters further, the weapons shortage is in part a consequence of Ukraine emptying the Soviet-era weapons systems that made up most of its arsenal before the war, and that can't be restocked. Ukrainian forces are in the process of swapping out for (and learning how to use) long-range western systems, but those systems are only just coming online and the western allies haven't committed enough of them to be on par with Russia's much greater firepower.
|
|
|
Did you know that the U.S. Postal Service is replacing its mail trucks and instead of opting for clean air and going electric, it’s going with a gas-guzzling mail truck that gets an astounding 8.6 miles per gallon? We may as well deliver the mail with Hummers!
If the Postal Service bought 100% electric mail trucks instead, we could:
- Save 110 million gallons of fuel per year
- Create more clean energy jobs
- Reduce air pollution in every community
- Save money on truck maintenance
The Postal Service has an opportunity to reverse course and upgrade to electric vehicles in order to cut dangerous air pollution across the country and help put us on a path to an all-electric future.
Send a letter to the Postal Service for a change and tell them to buy 100% electric mail trucks.
The legal team at Earthjustice is in court to challenge USPS’ failure to consider the environmental justice impacts of buying combustion mail trucks that will deliver pollution to every neighborhood in the country. Take action at Earthjustice.org/crooked and send the message that mail delivery in this country should be electric for our health and for our future.
|
|
|
|
|
