Arizona taxpayers could be on the hook for a $9 million bill after GOP subpoenas routers: report

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On Monday night, Bill Gates, a Republican member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, revealed on CNN that the Republican-controlled Arizona Senate has had Maricopa County officials served with a new subpoena seeking their routers for its audit of the 2020 election.

Appearing on CNN, Gates stated, “Right before I came on here, the board of supervisors received another subpoena from the state Senate ordering us to turn over the routers, in addition to some other information. And they threaten us in these papers that if we do not turn those over by Aug. 2. So that’s next Monday, then we could be held in contempt.”

According to the Washington Post’s Joseph Marks, that could run the bill associated with the audit, seeking evidence that Donald Trump had the 2020 election stolen from him, up to $9 million. Continue reading.

‘Kraken’ lawyers attempt to avoid sanctions by citing Trump’s claim of election fraud: report

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According to a report from Forbes, lawyers who brought lawsuits attacking the 2020 presidential election results in Michigan by alleging voter fraud are attempting to use Donald Trump’s words to avoid sanctions.

On the evening before House select committee opens hearings into the Jan 6th Capitol riot that was inspired by accusations that the election was stolen from Trump, the so-called “Kraken” attorneys, including one-time Trump attorney Sidney Powell, made a new filing.

According to the report, the attorney representing the lawyers, Donald Campbell, asserted that, because Donald Trump also made election fraud claims, the attorneys were within their rights to make the same claims. Continue reading.

New Lincoln Project ad blasts corporate donors who bankrolled ‘murderous violence on Jan. 6’

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As a House select committee begins its investigation into the Capitol insurrection, a new ad from the conservative Lincoln Project targets corporations and CEOs who allegedly “helped financed the very structure that led to the murderous violence on Jan. 6.”

“Who funds the politicians trying to cover up the assault on America’s Capitol?” the ad’s narrator asks, following a clip of former president Donald Trump falsely claiming that insurrectionists were “hugging and kissing the police.” 

The answer, according to the ad, includes “leaders of the most respected and successful companies in America,” such as Koch Industries, Cigna, AT&T, and R.J. Reynolds. Continue reading.

VIDEO: Flynn Jokes About Assassination While Brandishing Assault Rifle

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Former Trump administration National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has made more than his fair share of disturbing, jaw-dropping remarks– like telling the former guy he should impose martial law to hold a new election or suggesting a Myanmar-like coup at a QAnon conference in May. But he seemed to reach a new low when he joked about using a newly gifted assault rifle to carry out an assassination in the nation’s capital. 

“We were trying to come up with a rifle that we thought was appropriate for a general, so we went with an old-school Woodland camouflage…one of our top-quality guns,” said Jason Parker, a gun company employee who gifted the weapon to Flynn.

“Maybe I’ll find somebody in Washington, D.C.,” Flynn replied, prompting an uproar of chuckles.  Continue reading.

Donald Trump finally has the obsequious press he always wanted

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It’s an ecosystem in which his false election claims spread unchecked

Fox News didn’t carry Donald Trump’s speech in Arizona this weekend. It’s not hard to figure out why. One could easily have predicted that the former president would say all of the false and potentially lawsuit-spawning things that he ended up saying, and, given that it unfolded on Saturday evening, it’s not as though it was going to yield billions of viewers.

But the speech didn’t need to air on Fox. Before it began, his newly appointed spokeswoman, Liz Harrington, hyped the fact that the speech would instead be carried on the small galaxy of Trump-loyal networks that have emerged in the past few years. For those interested in hearing Trump say the same things he’s been saying for nine months but with a new set of incorrect or misleading details, there was plenty of opportunity to do so.

This is how it works now. Trump has a relatively small footprint in the mainstream media and conversation, including on Fox News. But on the remote media fringes where accuracy dies in obsequiousness, Trump’s message is as loud as it has ever been. Continue reading.

A group of Republican lawmakers now want to openly defend the Capitol rioters

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The U.S. Dept. of Justice arrested and charged over 500 people who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, many in a coordinated effort to overturn a free and fair election. DOJ expects to charge about 100 others as well.

“The investigation and prosecution of the Capitol Attack will likely be one of the largest in American history, both in terms of the number of defendants prosecuted and the nature and volume of the evidence,” the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. wrote in March, when the list of people to be charged was estimated at about 400, The Washington Post reported at the time.

On Tuesday, as the newly-minted U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack launches, holding its first day of events, four far right wing House Republicans – some of whom has been linked to white nationalists – will be holding a different type of event. Continue reading.

Jan. 6 select committee to push forward with subpoenas

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Officers testifying ask for answers on which public officials were involved

After hearing hours of gripping testimony from four police officers who endured grave physical and emotional wounds during the Capitol attack, the Jan. 6 select committee members will have time to digest those accounts before the next hearing, which could happen at some point in August.

“It sets the right tone for the work of this committee,” Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said of the four officers’ stories. “But it also says that there is significant work that we have to do over the next few months.”

It’s unclear what the exact focus of the panel will be in the second hearing, but when Thompson asked the officers what they need to see from this inquiry, they relayed that they wanted to know what role elected officials had in it. Continue reading.

‘Kraken’ lawyer Sidney Powell gets schooled after claiming ‘hundreds’ of Jan. 6 attackers are in jail

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Sidney Powell revealed Sunday that she will be joining the legal team helping “hundreds” of Jan. 6 attackers who are currently in prison and asked for money to support them.

The problem, however, is that there aren’t “hundreds” of people in jail for the Jan. 6 insurrection. Far from it, in fact. BuzzFeed justice reporter Zoe Tillman explained, there are just 66 in custody, with a few waiting for a detention hearing. A whopping 478 were allowed to go home awaiting trial.

It’s unclear the degree to which Jan. 6 attackers are willing to accept Powell’s help as she failed to win so many lawsuits around the 2020 election for former President Donald Trump. She and ally Lin Wood are both facing sanctions in Michigan for what some said was a reckless filing filled with inaccuracies. Continue reading.

Michael Flynn Boasts Maybe He’ll ‘Find Somebody In Washington’ With His New AR-15

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Michael Flynn Boasts Maybe He’ll ‘Find Somebody In Washington’ With His New AR-15

Disgraced Trump administration figure Michael Flynn boasted on Sunday that maybe he’ll “find somebody” in Washington with a new assault-style rifle given to him at California church.

Flynn, the former national security adviser pardoned by Donald Trump for lying about his Russia contacts, made the jaw-dropping remark after he was gifted the gun at the “Church of Glad Tidings” in Yuba City, California. Church members roared with laughter and clapped when Flynn suggested hunting humans in the nation’s capital.

“We were trying to come up with a rifle that we thought was appropriate for a general, so we went with an old-school Woodland camouflage … one of our top-quality guns,” said Jason Parker, who works for a gun company. The weapon he presented to Flynn appeared to be a Woodland Camo AR-15. Continue reading.

Political Spending At Trump Properties Plunges Sharply

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The number of federal political committees that have spent money in the first half of 2021 at Trump Organization properties has dropped dramatically from the same period two years ago, Federal Election Commission filings show. Those continuing to spend: a smaller circle of loyal supporters of former President Donald Trump and candidates jockeying for his favor in contested Republican primaries.

During the first six months of 2021, 27 federal committees have reported spending $348,000 at Trump Organization properties, with the Republican National Committee accounting for more than half the total. That’s a steep decline from the 177 committees that did so during the 2019-2020 election cycle or the 78 committees that spent more than $1.6 million at Mar-a-Lago, the Trump International Hotel in Washington and other company sites in the first half of 2019, filings show.

Of course, that spending came in the run-up to a presidential election in which Trump was the incumbent. The biggest spenders in 2019 were the RNC and Trump’s own political committees raising money to support his campaign. Continue reading,