Tag: Trump attempt to steal a second term

77 Days: Trump’s Campaign to Subvert the Election

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Hours after the United States voted, the president declared the election a fraud — a lie that unleashed a movement that would shatter democratic norms and upend the peaceful transfer of power.

By Thursday the 12th of November, President Donald J. Trump’s election lawyers were concluding that the reality he faced was the inverse of the narrative he was promoting in his comments and on Twitter. There was no substantial evidence of election fraud, and there were nowhere near enough “irregularities” to reverse the outcome in the courts.

Mr. Trump did not, could not, win the election, not by “a lot” or even a little. His presidency would soon be over.

Allegations of Democratic malfeasance had disintegrated in embarrassing fashion. A supposed suitcase of illegal ballots in Detroit proved to be a box of camera equipment. “Dead voters” were turning up alive in television and newspaper interviews. Continue reading.

After The Riot: Inside A Secret Militia’s Telegram Chat Room

When the FBI arrested Edward “Jake” Lang on Jan. 16 for his alleged role in the U.S. Capitol attack, court documents show agents had followed a seemingly straightforward trail from his public social media to collect evidence. “THIS IS ME,” Lang wrote over one video that showed an angry mob confronting police officers outside the Capitol. The same post showed him trashing a police riot shield.

The government charged Lang with committing assault and other crimes, but the account of his activities spelled out in court papers doesn’t mention how the 25-year-old spent the 10 days between the riots and his capture: recruiting militia members to take up arms against the incoming Biden administration by way of an invitation-only group on the messaging app Telegram.

“Everyone needs to get 5 patriots in this group tonight that’s the goal 🙌🏻🇺🇸🗽,” Lang wrote in a chat on Jan. 9, one of more than 2,500 messages obtained by ProPublica. “We need each person to go out and fight for new members of this Militia like our lives depend on it.” Continue reading.

Text Messages Show Top Trump Campaign Fundraiser’s Key Role Planning the Rally That Preceded the Siege

Caroline Wren, a Trump fundraiser, is listed as a “VIP Advisor” in a National Park Service permit for the Jan. 6th rally at the Ellipse. Text messages and a planning memo show the title downplays the active role she played in organizing the event.

In the week leading up to the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, D.C., that exploded into an attack on the Capitol, a top Trump campaign fundraiser issued a directive to a woman who had been overseeing planning for the event.

“Get the budget and vendors breakdown to me and Justin,” Caroline Wren wrote to Cindy Chafian, a self-described “constitutional conservative,” in a Dec. 28 text message obtained by ProPublica.

Wren was no ordinary event planner. She served as a deputy to Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, at Trump Victory, a joint presidential fundraising committee during the 2020 campaign. The Justin mentioned in her text was Justin Caporale, a former top aide to first lady Melania Trump, whose production company helped put on the event at the Ellipse. Continue reading.

Lincoln Project demands Rudy Giuliani retract “textbook act of defamation”: “Refuse at your peril”

Lincoln Project demands Rudy Giuliani retract “textbook act of defamation”: “Refuse at your peril”

Former New York City Mayor Rudy was put on notice that he must retract his allegations that the Lincoln Project was responsible for organizing the fatal Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

On Friday, Giuliani blamed the Lincoln Project for the riots by Trump supporters during an appearance on Steve Bannon’s podcast.

Giuliani suggested that insurrection was a false flag operation, saying that it was “wolves in sheep’s clothing” that were behind the insurrection. Continue reading.

First on CNN: Trump’s impeachment defense team leaves less than two weeks before trial

Former President Donald Trump’s five impeachment defense attorneys have left a little more than a week before his trial is set to begin, according to people familiar with the case, amid a disagreement over his legal strategy. 

It was a dramatic development in the second impeachment trial for Trump, who has struggled to find lawyers willing to take his case. And now, with legal briefs due next week and a trial set to begin only days later, Trump is clinging to his election fraud charade and suddenly finds himself without legal representation.

Butch Bowers and Deborah Barbier, who were expected to be two of the lead attorneys, are no longer on the team. A source familiar with the changes said it was a mutual decision for both to leave the legal team. As the lead attorney, Bowers assembled the team. Continue reading.

‘A world of denial’: Conservative writer blasts GOP voters for being ‘delusional’

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Conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin has made no secret of the fact that on January 20, she was delighted to see President Joe Biden sworn into office and former President Donald Trump exit the White House. Rubin was hoping — not expecting, but hoping — that the GOP would abandon Trumpism after Trump was voted out of office. Instead, Rubin laments in a column published this week, Republicans are doubling down on it. And she argues that a party that has been overtaken by dangerous extremists and insurrectionists must be kept away “from the levers of power.”

Trump is facing a second impeachment trial following the violent insurrection on January 6, when a violent mob of pro-Trump insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol Building in the hope of preventing Congress from certifying Biden’s Electoral College victory in the 2020 presidential election. Yet many Republicans, Rubin notes, are still unwavering Trump supporters.

“The vast majority of Republicans prefer to live in a world of denial, even at the price of refusing to hold the instigator of a domestic terrorist attack responsible,” Rubin laments. “The party’s base, at this point, is as delusional as Republican ‘leaders’ who refuse to convict Trump for instigating the assault and who treat conspiracy-monger Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) as a member in good standing.” Continue reading.

Ghosts of our unsettled past

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The House managers walked quietly through Statuary Hall to present the single article of impeachment against former president Donald Trump to the Senate. Americans have now become deeply familiar with this civics lesson, one that features members of the House striding slowly through the hall as though they are part of a funeral procession. What once seemed so rare and arcane has now become a sad hum in the background — the contrails of an administration that the country may take a generation to shake.

The former president was impeached for a second time in the House of Representatives, most recently for “engaging in high Crimes and Misdemeanors by inciting violence against the Government of the United States.” In other words, he egged on the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol early this month. And so on Monday evening, with the Capitol blessedly quiet and calm, one could hear the footfalls of the legislators on the stone floor as they walked two by two, solemnly focused on their task. A few camera shutters clicked, but mostly there was an eerie silence in a space that has been the location of so much tumult, so many emotions in such a short span of time.

The impeachment managers moved though a room filled with the ghosts of our distant past and the fresh memories of our troubled present. Continue reading.

The GOP’s answer to its post-Trump blues: More Trump

For a moment, it looked like the Republican Party was getting some distance from the former president. Not anymore.

For a moment, it looked like Donald Trump might be losing his iron grip on the GOP. In the wake of the deadly Capitol riot, 10 House Republicans joined Democrats in their vote to impeach him. Several other Republicans openlysuggested at least censuring the president. 

Not anymore.

Local and state Republican parties are censuring Republicans for disloyalty in states across the country. The lawmakers who broke with him are weathering a storm of criticism from Trump-adoring constituents at home, with punitive primary challenges already taking shape. In Washington, party leaders who once suggested Trump bore some responsibility for the Jan. 6 violence are backtracking. Continue reading.

Senate GOP signals it’s likely to acquit Trump for second time

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Senate Republicans seem ready to hand former President Trump his second acquittal in an impeachment trial in a little more than a year after just five GOP senators on Tuesday rejected a motion that the trial was unconstitutional. 

Most GOP senators haven’t formally announced how they will vote on convicting Trump, and, in a shift from 2020, most are not rushing to defend him after a mob, egged on by the then-president, sacked the Capitol.

But Tuesday’s vote, which sidelined the effort from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), sends a clear signal to everyone in Washington that the trial is highly unlikely to end with a Trump conviction vote. Continue reading.

‘Evil was in my house’: New audio exposes pro-Trump attorney’s disturbing arguments with ex-associates

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Known for his lawsuits with fellow conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell, Atlanta-based Lin Wood is among the far-right attorneys who tried to help former President Donald Trump overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election — and he even proposed, in a December 1 tweet, that Trump “declare martial law.” Law & Crime has been reporting on Wood’s legal battle with three former law partners, and the website has posted some older audio that sheds light on that case.

Law & Crime reporter Adam Klasfeld explains, “Long before becoming the face of former President Donald Trump’s post-election conspiracy theories, lawyer Lin Wood had been embroiled in an acrimonious spat with his former lawyers, who claimed to have caught his ‘erratic, hostile, abusive, and threatening’ behavior on tape. Several of those recordings became public for the first time on Tuesday with the release of Law &Crime’s new podcast, ‘Objections.'”

The three former law partners that Klasfeld is referring to are Nicole Wade, Jonathan Grunberg and Taylor Wilson, who left the firm L. Lin Wood, P.C. and started their own firm, Wade, Grunberg & Wilson, LLC. In a legal brief, the attorneys allege that Wood physically attacked Grunberg and Wilson.

Klasfeld notes, “Wood’s former law partners claimed they had him caught on tape confessing to assaulting them, threatening them in profane rants, and asserting that he may be ‘Christ coming back for a second time in the form of an imperfect man.'” Continue reading.