First They Guarded Roger Stone. Then They Joined the Capitol Attack.
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Business
New York Investigating Loans Made to Trump Properties: DJ
By
February 13, 2021, 10:47 AM PST
New York prosecutors are investigating financial dealings around some of Donald Trump’s Manhattan properties, Dow Jones reported, citing people familiar.
- All of the loans in question were made by subsidiaries of Ladder Capital Corp., a real-estate investment trust based in New York
- According to property records, Ladder Capital has lent Donald Trump more than $280 million for four Manhattan buildings since 2012
- The prosecutors are said to be looking at loans that were taken out for the Fifth Avenue Trump Tower, 40 Wall St., Trump International Hotel and Tower, and Trump Plaza
- Lawyers for the Trump Organization and the Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment to DJ
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Thread on the authoritarian streak confronting America going forward.
And this
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The conspiracy-fueled attack of a DC pizzaria was some 4 year ago, and the gunman is about to be released from prison, which is spurring on more ‘chatter’ that this adds to the amped up domestic terrorism situation.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/02/16/pizzagate-qanon-capitol-attack/?arc404=true
Pizzagate’s violent legacy
The gunman who terrorized a D.C. pizzeria is out of prison. The QAnon conspiracy theories he helped unleash are out of control.
Four years later, thousands of people would follow Welch’s fevered path to Washington, drawn from across the country by an ever more toxic stew of disinformation and extremism, including Pizzagate’s successor: QAnon.
This time, instead of a pizzeria, they would target the U.S. Capitol.
The Jan. 6 siege would lead to five deaths, more than 200 arrests and the second impeachment of Donald Trump. Its brazenness would shake faith in American democracy.
Above all, it would reveal how conspiracy theories had spread under a president who often promoted them, growing from Welch’s trip to Washington shortly after the 2016 election to the hundreds who stormed the Capitol to keep Trump in office, some proudly wearing T-shirts with the QAnon motto: “Where we go one, we go all.”
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Leading House Democrat sues Donald Trump under a post-Civil War law for conspiracy to incite US Capitol riot
Former President Donald Trump and attorney Rudy Giuliani are being accused of conspiring with the far-right groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to incite the January 6 insurrection in a civil lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court by the Democratic chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee that cites a post-Civil War law designed to combat violence and intimidation by the Ku Klux Klan.
The lawsuit, filed by Mississippi Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson in his personal capacity, is the first civil action filed against the former President related to the attack at the US Capitol and comes days after the Senate acquitted Trump in his impeachment trial.
If it proceeds, it would mean the former President and others would be subject to discovery and depositions, potentially exposing details and evidence that weren’t released during the Senate impeachment trial.
RELATED: This is Trump’s heaping list of legal problems post-impeachment
Thompson points to Trump’s words and tweets in the months leading up to the insurrection to accuse Trump and Giuliani of mobilizing and preparing their supporters for an attack to prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 election results on January 6.
The lawsuit cites a scarcely used federal statute passed after the Civil War that was intended to combat violence from the Ku Klux Klan; it allows civil actions to be brought against people who use “force, intimidation, or threat” to prevent anyone from upholding the duties of their office.
The NAACP is backing the lawsuit and helping to represent Thompson in court.
“As part of this unified plan to prevent the counting of Electoral College votes,” the lawsuit states, “Defendants Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, through their leadership, acted in concert to spearhead the assault on the Capitol while the angry mob that Defendants Trump and Giuliani incited descended on the Capitol. The carefully orchestrated series of events that unfolded at the Save America rally and the storming of the Capitol was no accident or coincidence. It was the intended and foreseeable culmination of a carefully coordinated campaign to interfere with the legal process required to confirm the tally of votes cast in the Electoral College.”
The former President and many Republicans argued the impeachment trial was unconstitutional because he is no longer in office. As such, Thompson notes Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s speech Saturday where the Kentucky Republican seemed to encourage litigation against Trump.
“We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation,” McConnell said after voting to acquit Trump. “And former presidents are not immune from being accountable by either one.”
CNN has reached out to attorneys for Trump and Giuliani for comment on this lawsuit.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been briefed on the lawsuit, a source tells CNN.
Says Trump’s words spurred the riots
Thompson’s lawsuit ties Trump’s repeated refusal to accept the election results in the weeks after November 3 to the threats of violence against elected officials like Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, accusing Trump of endorsing the threats rather than denouncing them. The lawsuit also alleges that Trump’s refusal to directly condemn the Proud Boys during the first Presidential debate in September encouraged their violent plans leading up to January 6.
The lawsuit links the hours-long standoff at the Capitol directly to Trump’s rally earlier in the day where the former President told his supporters, “…if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Trump also said, “You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”
Giuliani, the lawsuit alleges, also riled up the crowd by continuing to talk about unfounded allegations of widespread voter fraud and telling supporters on January 6: “Let’s have trial by combat.”
The lawsuit accuses Trump of delaying the delivery of his speech to the crowd at the Ellipse on January 6 as a way to give the Proud Boys time to get to the Capitol and overcome the police presence there, though there is no evidence provided that Trump’s speech was delayed or that any delay was intentional.
In addition to Trump and Giuliani, the lawsuit names the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers as defendants.
Several members of these far-right groups have been charged for their involvement in the riot. The Justice Department has charged more than a dozen Proud Boys so far for storming the Capitol, and recently brought conspiracy charges against a group of five people associated with the group. DOJ also indicted three members of the Oath Keepers in late January, including one member, Jessica Watkins, whose attorney told the judge last week that she believed she was following directions from Trump.
KKK statute
The legal underpinnings of the lawsuit could face an uphill battle in court, since the KKK statute has not been widely used.
“It was specifically meant to provide federal civil remedies for federal officers who were prevented from performing their duties by two or more individuals, whether federal marshals in the post-Civil War South, federal judges in un-reconstructed lower courts; or federal legislators,” University of Texas Law professor and Supreme Court analyst Stephen Vladeck explained.
“It’s not at all hard to see how that provision maps onto what happened on January 6 – where, quite obviously, two or more people conspired to prevent the Joint Session of Congress from performing its constitutional function of certifying President Biden’s Electoral College victory. The harder question is whether Trump himself can be connected to that conspiracy,” Vladeck said.
Attorney Joseph Sellers, who is representing Thompson, said that the specific purpose of the statute was to provide a remedy against efforts to interfere with Congress’ duties.
“The fact that there’s very little precedent [involving this section of the statute] is a reflection of how extraordinary the events were that give rise to this lawsuit,” Sellers said.
Other members of Congress, including Democratic Reps. Hank Johnson of Georgia and Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey intend to join the lawsuit as plaintiffs, according to a statement that accompanied the lawsuit.
“While the majority of Republicans in the Senate abdicated their responsibility to hold the President accountable, we must hold him accountable for the insurrection that he so blatantly planned,” Thompson said in the statement. “Failure to do so will only invite this type of authoritarianism for the anti-democratic forces on the far right that are so intent on destroying our country.”
House Homeland Security chairman, Bennie G. Thompson, sues Trump and Giuliani, accusing them of inciting Capitol riot
The Proud Boys and Oatkeepers are also named.
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No surprises there…
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is examining communications between right-wing extremists who breached the Capitol and Roger J. Stone Jr., a close associate of former President Donald J. Trump, to determine whether Mr. Stone played any role in the extremists’ plans to disrupt the certification of President Biden’s electoral victory, a person familiar with the matter said on Saturday.
Should investigators find messages showing that Mr. Stone knew about or took part in those plans, they would have a factual basis to open a full criminal investigation into him, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing inquiry. While that is far from certain, the person said, prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington are likely to do so if they find that connection.
Mr. Stone, a self-described fixer for Mr. Trump, evaded a 40-month prison term when the former president commuted his sentence in July and pardoned him in late December. Mr. Stone had been convicted on seven felony charges, which included obstructing a House inquiry into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election, lying to Congress and witness tampering. But that pardon does not protect Mr. Stone from future prosecutions.
Justice Department officials have debated for weeks whether to open a full investigation into Mr. Stone, the person said. While Mr. Stone spoke at an incendiary rally a day before the attack, had right-wing extremists act as his bodyguards and stood outside the Capitol, those actions themselves are not crimes.
But the F.B.I. also has video and other information to suggest that in the days leading to and including the day of the assault, Mr. Stone associated with men who eventually stormed the building and broke the law, said the person familiar with the inquiry. That has given investigators a window to examine communications to see whether Mr. Stone knew of any plans to breach the complex.
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Here comes Donny…
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[quote=“dragonfly9, post:891, topic:5470”]
Here comes Donny…
My goal is to avoid any stories about the former pres. If everyone stops reading & watching, the media will stop reporting on him.
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He is relevant unfortunately…
Many of us would wish that too…
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Another Trump era pettiness undone.
Feds drop legal battle over Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe’s reservation status
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Trump offering North Korean despot Kim Jong-un a ride home on Air Force One should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody.
Trump loves dictators.
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Another installment of Heather Cox Richardson, who is a History Professor and can pull together a lot of the twists and turns within the Republican Party, and how they continue to push “The Big Lie.”
Yes, my mouth dropped hearing what Rep Scalise said (or did not say) about Biden winning the Presidency. The R’s are denying it…they continue pushing this agenda…and marking 2022 as a way to get back.
They also want to hold up Merrick Garland’s nomination and attach to it that Gov Andrew Cuomo be investigated.
Worth a read.
On ABC’s This Week this morning, Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA) refused to admit that Democrat Joe Biden had legitimately won the 2020 presidential election.
It’s hard to overestimate how dangerous this lie is. It convinces supporters of the former president that they are actually protecting American democracy when they fight to overturn it. Jessica Watkins is one of 9 members of the right-wing paramilitary group the Oath Keepers indicted for their actions on January 6. Yesterday, her lawyer told the court that Watkins behaved as she did because she believed that then-President Donald Trump would use the military to overturn what he falsely insisted was the rigged election.
“However misguided, her intentions were not in any way related to an intention to overthrow the government, but to support what she believed to be the lawful government. She took an oath to support the Constitution and had no intention of violating that oath…."
Watkins claims she was given a VIP pass to the pro-Trump rally, had met with Secret Service agents, and was charged with providing security for the leaders marching to the Capitol from Trump’s January 6, 2021, rally.
Supporters of the former president are portraying the deadly attack on the Capitol on January 6 as a legitimate expression of anger over an election in which states did not follow their own rules. This is a lie that the Trump wing hopes will resurrect their lost power. Politico’ s Gabby Orr and Meridith McGraw report that Trump is planning to “exact vengeance” on the Republicans who have turned against him, running his own candidates in 2022 to undercut them. Earlier this week, he met with Scalise.
Trump’s big lie is deeply cynical, and yet it is falling on the ears of voters primed to believe it.
Republican Party leadership launched the idea that Democrats could not win an election legitimately all the way back in 1986. They began to examine the made-up issue of voter fraud to cut Democrats out of the electorate because they knew they could not win elections based on their increasingly unpopular policies.
In 1986, Republicans launched a “ballot integrity” initiative that they defended as a way to prevent voter fraud, but which an official privately noted “could keep the black vote down considerably.” In 1993, when Democrats expanded voter registration at certain state offices—the so-called Motor Voter Law-- they complained that the Democrats were simply trying to enroll illegitimate Democratic voters in welfare and unemployment offices.
In 1994, Republicans who lost elections charged that Democrats only won through
voter fraud, although then, as now, fraud was vanishingly rare. In 1996, House and Senate Republicans each launched year-long investigations into what they insisted were problematic elections, one in Louisiana and one in California. Keeping investigations of alleged voter fraud in front of the media for a year helped to convince Americans that voter fraud was a serious issue and that Democrats were winning elections thanks to illegal voters.
In 1998, the Florida legislature passed a voter ID law that led to a purge of voters from the system before the election of 2000, resulting in what the United States Commission on Civil Rights called “an extraordinarily high and inexcusable level of disenfranchisement,” particularly of Democratic African American voters.
After 2000, the idea that Democrats could win only by cheating became engrained in the Republican Party as their increasing rightward slide made increasing numbers of voters unhappy with their actual policies. Rather than moderating their stance, they suppressed the votes of their opponents. In 2016, Trump operative and self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” Roger Stone launched a “Stop the Steal” website warning that “If this election is close, THEY WILL STEAL IT.” The slogan reappeared briefly in 2018, and in 2021, it sparked an attack on our government.
The idea that Democrats cannot legitimately win an election has been part of the Republican leadership’s playbook now for a generation, and it has worked: a recent survey showed that 65% of Republicans believe the 2020 election was plagued by widespread fraud, although election officials say the election was remarkably clean.
Republican lawmakers are going along with Trump’s big lie because it serves their interests: claiming fraud justifies laws to suppress Democratic votes. Alice O’Lenick, a Republican-appointed election official in Gwinnett County, Georgia, endorsed restrictive measures, saying, “they have got to change the major parts of [laws] so we at least have a shot at winning.”
But that is not the only story right now.
Tomorrow, the Senate Judiciary Committee will begin the nomination process for Biden’s prospective attorney general, Merrick Garland. While he was still Judiciary Committee chair, Lindsey Graham (R-SC) seemed curiously resistant to holding a hearing for Garland.
Now, Trump Republicans have made their demands clear in a letter to new Judiciary Committee chair Dick Durbin (D-IL). It is signed by all but two of the Republicans on the committee, illustrating that the Republican contingent on the Senate Judiciary Committee is made up of Trump supporters. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Charles Grassley (R-IA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John Cornyn (R-TX), Mike Lee (R-UT), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) want Garland “to commit the Department of Justice” to investigating New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, for his handling of the coronavirus in his state.
Garland, 68, is well-known as a moderate centrist, who made headlines when he oversaw the prosecution of the Oklahoma City bombers in 1995-1997. On Saturday, he released his opening statement to the committee.
He reaffirmed that the attorney general should be the lawyer for the people of the United States, not for any one individual. He noted that 2020 was the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Department of Justice (DOJ), created during the Ulysses S. Grant administration to protect the rule of law in the southern states where, at the time, Ku Klux Klan members were murdering their Black neighbors to keep them from exercising their rights.
The rules developed in those years are the foundation for the rule of law, Garland wrote in apparent criticism of the previous president’s DOJ. We need the Justice Department to be independent from partisan influence, including that coming from the White House. We need it to provide clear guidelines for FBI intelligence operations. We need it to treat the press respectfully and to be as transparent as possible. We need it to respect the professionalism of the DOJ’s career employees, and to have clear guidelines for prosecutors.
Garland went on to outline what he sees as the crucial mission he would undertake as Attorney General: guaranteeing the equal justice to all Americans promised 150 years ago and still elusive. “Communities of color and other minorities still face discrimination in housing, education, employment, and the criminal justice system; and bear the brunt of the harm caused by pandemic, pollution, and climate change,” he wrote.
He pledged to protect Americans from abuse from those who control our markets, “from fraud and corruption, from violent crime and cybercrime, and from drug trafficking and child exploitation” while also being ever-mindful of terrorist attacks.
Then Garland took head-on the big lie: “150 years after the Department’s founding, battling extremist attacks on our democratic institutions remains central to its mission.”
“If confirmed,” he wrote, “I will supervise the prosecution of white supremacists and others who stormed the Capitol on January 6—a heinous attack that sought to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected government.”
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Notes:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/21/politics/oath-keepers-vip-security-capitol-riot/index.html
https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20489414-sjc-testimony-garland
https://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/25/us/gop-memo-tells-of-black-vote-cut.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/30/trump-republican-party-voting-reform-coronavirus
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/13/business/stop-the-steal-disinformation-campaign-invs/index.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/20/trump-republican-party-midterms-470370
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/20/politics/read-merrick-garland-opening-statement/index.html
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More on the Big Lie…from Brian Stelter CNN
Rinse and repeat
The Big Lie about Trump winning the election, and Biden “stealing” it, largely lives on because some people want to believe it and because a constellation of Trump propaganda sources pump out a diet of dishonest info that props it up. But it is also important to see how the Big Lie is still being rinsed and repeated on respectable TV shows.
Matt Negrin , a longtime critic of public affairs shows, called out ABC’s booking of Rep. Steve Scalise on Sunday: “He was rewarded with 10 minutes of airtime and pushed the lie again,” Negrin wrote. “The networks are actively helping Republicans spread this lie.”
Negrin also pointed out that election-denying lawmakers have been welcomed on other network TV shows in recent weeks, and said that "the only Sunday show that doesn’t book these Big Liars is ‘SOTU’ " on CNN .
ABC reps would say Scalise was challenged, again and again, by host Jon Karl . They’d say viewers saw how Scalise evaded the questions and saw how Karl held him accountable. They’d say that Monday’s “GMA” is airing an exclusive interview with a police officer who defended the Capitol on 1/6. They’d say that all of this is part of a news outlet’s mission. But are those defenses persuasive to you when democracy is on the line?
The new "Lost Cause"
Garry Kasparov wrote in reaction to Negrin: “This is like giving air time to people selling bleach as a miracle cure, except even more dangerous.” He said that “denying the integrity of the 2020 election is the new Lost Cause” and "the media will be partly responsible if it takes root."
“Somehow,” CNN’s Jim Sciutto observed, “acknowledging the truth today – on Jan 6 and the election – has become an outlier position in GOP and beyond.”
Agree or disagree?
" The greatest threat of misinformation and disinformation is domestic, currently spearheaded by the leaders of a political party and platformed daily by a media outlets pressured into ‘both sides-ism’ via decades of bad-faith pressure," Jared Holt of Right Wing Watch wrote…
A "classic disinfo campaign"
Researcher Kate Starbird wrote Sunday: “The ‘big lie’ (claiming massive voter fraud in 2020 election) has multiple features of a classic disinfo campaign, including: designed to sow doubt (rather than convince of a single explanation), pushes multiple (even conflicting) narratives, functions to undermine democracy .”
“This isn’t about finding a coherent narrative,” Starbird wrote. “It’s about creating doubt via throwing voter fraud spaghetti at the wall. And quite unsurprisingly, the next move is to use these same false and misleading narratives for future voter suppression , making it harder for people to vote next time.” CNN’s Zach Wolf recently wrote about that…
https://view.newsletters.cnn.com/messages/1613963917284c4ff4960c354/raw
https://view.newsletters.cnn.com/messages/1613963917284c4ff4960c354/raw
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Supreme Court won’t halt Trump tax record turnover
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At today’s hearings on Capitol Hill, it seemed like a hearty exchange and blame game. Contentious words and everyone dodging responsibility.
Officials in charge of security for the Capitol on Jan. 6 on Tuesday blamed poor intelligence and a sluggish response from the federal government for the deadly riotthat threatened the peaceful transfer of power.
Former Capitol Police chief Steven Sund testified at a joint Senate committee hearing on security and intelligence failings leading up to the riot that intelligence reports compiled from information from the Capitol Police, FBI, Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security and the D.C. Metropolitan Police showed “the level of probability of acts of civil disobedience/arrests” on Jan. 6 ranged from “remote” to “improbable.”
"In addition, the daily intelligence report indicated that ‘the secretary of homeland security has not issued an elevated or imminent alert at this time,’” Sund testified.
“Without the intelligence to properly prepare, the USCP was significantly outnumbered and left to defend the Capitol against an extremely violent mob,” he said.
That’s despite significant online chatter and numerous media reports that protesters were targeting the electoral vote count during the joint session of Congress. Asked about a Jan. 5 threat report from the FBI’s field office outside Norfolk, Va., that detailed specific calls online for violence at the Capitol, including that protesters be ready to fight and show up ready for war, Sund testified it had gone to an intelligence official in the Capitol Police and that he had not seen it.
Robert Contee, acting chief of the Washington, D.C. police, said he had not seen the memo, which was “not fully vetted,” on Jan. 6 either.
“What the FBI sent, ma’am, on Jan. 5 was in the form of an email,” he said, adding that he would think a warning "that something as violent as an insurrection at the Capitol would warrant a phone call or something."
The former House and Senate sergeants-at-arms, who also testified at the hearing, said they also did not see the FBI memo.
National Guard delay
Contee also said he and Sund called the National Guard for help shortly after the mob stormed the building and was dismayed by the response he received from the Army.
“At 2:22 p.m., a call was convened with, among others, myself, leadership of the Capitol Police, the D.C. National Guard, and the Department of the Army,” Contee said. “I was stunned at the response from Department of the Army, which was reluctant to send the D.C. National Guard to the Capitol. While I certainly understand the importance of both planning and public perception — the factors cited by the staff on the call — these issues become secondary when you are watching your employees, vastly outnumbered by a mob, being physically assaulted.”
“I was able to quickly deploy MPD and issue directives to them while they were in the field, and I was honestly shocked that the National Guard could not — or would not — do the same,” he added.
Sund said in his prepared remarks that Army Lt. General Walter Piatt said on the conference call that he didn’t like “the visual of the National Guard standing a line with the Capitol in the background” and would rather Capitol Police officers be pulled from other posts to handle the protesters.
Sund added later that the “first 150 members of the National Guard were not sworn in on Capitol grounds until 5:40 p.m., four-and-a-half hours after I first requested them and three-and-a-half hours after my request was approved by the Capitol Police Board.”
In his opening statement, Sund also blamed former House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving and former Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael Stenger for the sluggish response.
Sund said he had tried to enlist the National Guard for help in the days before the riot, but “Irving stated that he was concerned about the ‘optics’ of having National Guard present and didn’t feel that the intelligence supported it.”
Sund also asked Stenger for help ahead of time. “Instead of approving the use of the National Guard, however, Mr. Stenger suggested I ask them how quickly we could get support if needed and to ‘lean forward’ in case we had to request assistance on January 6,” he said.
Sund said the pair were also slow to respond during the riot.
"I notified the two sergeant-at-arms by 1:09 p.m. that I urgently needed support and asked them to declare a state of emergency and authorize the National Guard," Sund said. "I was advised by Mr. Irving that he needed to run it up the chain of command. I continued to follow up with Mr. Irving, who was with Mr. Stenger at the time, and he advised that he was waiting to hear back from congressional leadership, but expected authorization at any moment."
Irving pushed back against Sund’s account, saying he did not recall speaking to him at that time, had no record of any phone calls or text messages from Sund, and never said he had to run Sund’s request up the chain of command.
He also denied that he’d voiced any concern about "optics."
“That is categorically false," Irving said. ‘Optics,’ as portrayed in the media, did not determine our security posture; safety was always paramount when evaluating security for January 6. We did discuss whether the intelligence warranted having troops at the Capitol, and our collective judgment at that time was no, the intelligence did not warrant that.”
Republicans defend witnesses
Sund, Stenger and Irving all resigned after the riot, which left five people dead including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. Police officers were able to regain control of the building with help from the National Guard and federal law enforcement officers after several hours, and the vote counting was completed. More than 200 people have been criminally charged.
Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican who some Democrats have blamed for inciting the violence by announcing he would challenge the legitimacy of some states’ electors during the vote count, defended Sund, Stenger and Irving during his question period.
The Missouri senator noted that retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, whom House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has tasked with leading a review of the U.S. Capitol’s security, had called Capitol Police leadership “complicit” in the attack because of the poor response. He asked the trio if they were complicit, and they responded, “Absolutely not.”
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