March 29, 2024 / by 

 

Donald Trump’s Contemptuous Leaking

A month ago, I noted that several stories about Trump’s engagement of a firm to search for additional stolen documents were wildly inconsistent.

WaPo and CNN both have stories about searches by a professional firm on additional Trump properties, looking for stolen classified documents.

In addition to at least three paragraphs that are affirmatively misleading (one that does not push back on a bullshit quote about how cooperative Trump has been, one that described Trump’s outright obstruction as a “breakdown … in trust,” and one that claims Trump is trying to avoid another high profile search when the further search was ordered by Chief Judge Beryl Howell) WaPo describes only searches of Bedminster and, later, Trump Tower.

Trump’s legal team hired an outside firm to carry out the search of his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., and, more recently, Trump Tower in New York, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

In one paragraph, it describes that Trump’s lawyers told DOJ they did not turn up more documents, but in a follow-up, WaPo describes an attestation that may or may not apply to just Bedminster.

I did the post because of the inconsistency, but also because, in the past, when we’ve seen aggressive pitches from Trump like this (his cover story about putting a lock on the storage facility where he had stashed his stolen documents is another example), it has generally been an attempt to get ahead of something really damning.

Two days later, WaPo seemed to report that Trump had managed to get through whatever damning bit he was trying to hide. It stated as fact that Chief Judge Beryl Howell would not hold Trump in contempt.

A federal judge on Friday declined to hold former president Donald Trump’s office in contempt for not fully complying with a May subpoena to return all classified documents in his possession, according to people familiar with the proceedings.

U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell told Justice Department lawyers and Trump’s legal team to come to an agreement themselves over what actions or assurances by Trump’s office would satisfy the government, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sealed court proceedings.

“The President and his counsel will continue to be transparent and cooperative,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement to The Washington Post.

But a report from Alan Feuer yesterday describes that Howell has not yet made a decision about whether to hold Trump in contempt or not.

At a court hearing held behind closed doors last month, Judge Howell put off ruling on the government’s contempt request. The judge has still not issued a decision, according to the people familiar with the matter.

As Feuer describes it, on Wednesday, Howell ordered Trump to share the names of the people who did the search with DOJ. Trump had tried to shield those names — purportedly out of concern about leaks, which has consistently been a bullshit line Trump’s lawyers have used. But it’s more likely his team was concerned that the PIs would have to appear before the grand jury themselves.

A federal judge has ordered lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump to give the government the names of the private investigators who searched Mr. Trump’s properties late last year for any remaining classified documents, part of what appeared to be a step by the Justice Department toward questioning the investigators about their efforts, two people familiar with the matter said.

The order, issued on Wednesday by Beryl A. Howell, the chief judge of the Federal District Court in Washington,

[snip]

The more recent spat began when prosecutors asked Mr. Trump’s lawyers for the names of the investigators who searched the storage facility and other Trump properties — among them, Mar-a-Lago; Mr. Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J.; and Trump Tower in New York.

According to the people familiar with the matter, the lawyers offered to make the investigators available for questioning but wanted their identities shielded by a protective order, out of concern that the government might leak the information to the news media.

It’s certainly possible Trump worries that allowing an independent interview of these people will disclose areas where they were not permitted to search (or other games like the others Trump already got caught playing).

Whatever it is, though, this suggests that Trump continued to bullshit the press after his first attempts to do so regarding the follow-on searches.

And the lies to the press aren’t going to keep Trump from being held in contempt (and then jailed until he complies with a subpoena).


Norm Pattis’ Sandy Hook Fuckup May Roil January 6 Investigation

Connecticut judge Barbara Bellis suspended Alex Jones’ lawyer, Norm Pattis, for sending the medical information of Connecticut Sandy Hook plaintiffs to lawyers from both sides of the Texas Sandy Hooks lawsuit.

“Simply put, given his experience, there is no acceptable excuse for his misconduct,” Judge Barbara Bellis said in a court decision released Thursday.

Pattis is one of the state’s most well-known defense attorneys. He said he plans to appeal the decision.

“We cannot expect our system of justice or our attorneys to be perfect but we can expect fundamental fairness and decency. There was no fairness or decency in the treatment of the plaintiffs’ most sensitive and personal information, and no excuse for the respondent’s misconduct,” Bellis wrote.

She goes on to say that because of this, the court agrees with the Disciplinary Counsel’s recommendation to suspend Pattis from practicing law for several months.

As Pattis noted in a statement to NBC, however, he’s not just Alex Jones’ attorney. He’s also one of two lawyers representing Joe Biggs in the Proud Boys case, which is in the final day of voir dire today. And he represents Jones sidekick Owen Shroyer, who is tentatively due to plead guilty at the end of the month.

The Proud Boy defendants are already asking for a delay of their trial so they can read the January 6 Committee transcripts (though note they’ve had 16 of those transcripts since early December). But this decision seems likely to cause a delay, because the case really is difficult for one attorney to manage, but Judge Tim Kelly will want to avoid any claim by Biggs that he was no competently represented by Pattis.

Update: Here’s the ruling, which among other things describes how it happened that Pattis shared such highly confidential information — after blowing the protective order early in the case!


Shrug: Beau Harrison’s Renewed Memory about Trump’s Lunge

One trick of trying to map the DOJ investigations into Trump onto the testimony available from the January 6 Committee is that so many Trump associates could be witnesses on so many aspects of the investigation.

I noted, for example, how Alex Cannon is a direct witness to matters pertaining to the stolen documents, Trump’s Big Lie, Trump’s misuse of money raised to combat voter fraud, and the effort to take care of Cassidy Hutchinson. When Stephen Miller appeared before a grand jury twice in eight days, did he appear on different issues, or the same? When the two Pats, Cipollone and Philbin, split a long day in grand jury rooms, were they both exclusively in a January 6 grand jury, or did they also testify before the stolen documents one?

And when three Trump aides — Dan Scavino, William Russell, and Beau Harrison– appeared before a grand jury on December 1, did they all appear before the same grand jury and for the same prong of the investigation? Their subpoenas were first reported in a NYT article that revealed the focus on Trump’s use of PAC financing. All three continued their association with Trump after he left the White House. But that doesn’t mean their testimony only relates to the financial part of the investigation. Beau Harrison’s two interviews with J6C reveal why.

I’m not aware that an interview with Russell has been released (more on him here).

Scavino refused to cooperate with J6C, for which DOJ declined to prosecute him, though the J6C report did focus on how Scavino has been paid by Save America PAC.

[F]rom July 2021 to the present, Save America has been paying approximately $9,700 per month to Dan Scavino,171 a political adviser who served in the Trump administration as White House Deputy Chief of Staff.172 Save America was also paying $20,000 per month to an entity called Hudson Digital LLC. Hudson Digital LLC was registered in Delaware twenty days after the attack on the Capitol, on January 26, 2021,173 and began receiving payments from Save America on the day it was registered.174 Hudson Digital LLC has received payments totaling over $420,000, all described as “Digital consulting.”175 No website or any other information or mention of Hudson Digital LLC could be found online.176 Though Hudson Digital LLC is registered as a Delaware company, the FEC ScheduleB listing traces back to an address belonging to Dan and Catherine Scavino.177

That leaves just Beau Harrison’s two J6C appearances (April 7, 2022; August 18, 2022).

Harrison played an Advance role in the White House and was one of several witnesses with incomplete memories about January 6 who reported to Deputy Chief of Staff Tony Ornato. In fact, Harrison shared a small office with Ornato (parts of whose unpersuasive testimony I tweeted about here).

Three things stick out about Harrison’s testimony. First, Trump’s Executive Assistant Molly Michael (who is a known witness in the stolen documents prong of the investigation and who was interviewed by the committee on March 24, 2022) named Harrison in her list of people who was employed by Save America PAC.

And how many other people from the White House staff did go onto Florida to work with him, your current colleagues or otherwise associated with the former President?

A A small handful

Q Who else was on that list besides you, Ms. Michael?

A Someone that works for the First Lady, Hayley D’Antuono.

Q Okay. She was in the White House and now works in Florida for the First Lady, correct?

A Yes.

Q Okay. Who else?

A Someone that worked in operations named Beau Harrison.

Q Okay. Mr. Harrison works for – he’s actually engaged to Ms. D’Antuono, right?

A That’s correct.

Q Okay. And what’s his role currently down in Florida?

A He continues in an operations role.

Q Okay. Are they all, like you, employed by the Save America PAC?

A Yes.

When asked about Save America in his second interview in August, here’s how Harrison answered.

Q Has anyone told you to not provide certain information, even if it’s the answer to a question that the select committee poses?

A No.

Q And then just a final set of questions. Are you receiving any assistance from anyone or entity to help cover your legal costs related to the select committee only, nothing else?

A Yes. I’m not personally — I’m not personally paying for legal representation.

Q Do you know who is, who’s covering those costs?

A Not specifically, which may be something I probably should know, but that I don’t Know.

Q Do you know what the Save America PAC is?

A Yes

Q Do you know if they have any role in helping to cover your legal costs or find somebody who would cover your legal costs?

A They — I don’t know if they are covering them. They are associated with — with whoever — whoever it may be that is.

Q Do you have a contact there who — who you talk to about issues related to this?

A The only — the only time it’s ever come up — or the only contact, you know, related to this would be when I got the initial phone call, whenever, you know, whenever, a couple months ago. whenever it was. And I contacted Justin Clark.

Like Cassidy Hutchinson, Justin Clark helped arrange for a lawyer. Like Cassidy Hutchinson, Stefan Passantino represented Harrison, including in this second interview.

A far more important part of Harrison’s testimony pertains to Trump’s reported request to be taken to the Capitol on January 6. Though the final J6C report focused closely on the story Cassidy Hutchinson first relayed about Trump lunging in his limo when informed he couldn’t be driven to the Capitol, it makes no mention of Harrison’s testimony on the issue.

In his first interview, Harrison claimed not to remember much of anything unusual about the day. The security alerts he elevated to Mark Meadows, including Ashli Babbit’s shooting, were just normal security alerts, per that testimony. Though he played a security liaison role, there was virtually nothing unusual about the day when Trump’s mob attacked the Capitol.

In that first appearance, over and over, Harrison denied recalling details of Trump’s interest in going to the Capitol. After explaining that he learned of Trump’s call to walk to the Capitol from Twitter, Harrison provided these answers about specific knowledge of discussions of Trump going to the Capitol.

Q Do you know whether Mr. Ornato or anybody else talked to the Secret Service or anyone about making arrangements for the President to goto the Capitol that day?

A I mean, I think that — again, I don’t know this for fact or specifics, but remember, you know, the – kind of the understanding was If for whatever reason it were to come up, it should be directed as with any game-time decision, it should be directed to the Secret Service, to, you know, Bob Engel or Robert Engel, you know, if that could happen.

Q Okay. And after the President said he was going to march or even shortly before, but on that day of January 6th, are you aware of those conversations or communications happening with the Secret Service or otherwise?

A No.

In his second interview, however, Harrison had a much clearer memory of Bobby Engel stopping in the office he shared with Tony Ornato than he did before Cassidy Hutchinson testified publicly in June (after she got a new lawyer to replace Passantino). In his revised memory, Harrison said that Bobby Engel described Trump “shrugg[ing] off” the instructions from Secret Service that he would not be taken to the Capitol.

Q When the President came back, do you remember Bobby Engel ever coming to your office or the office you shared with s Mr. Ornato?

A Yes

Q Tell us about that. What was he there for? What happened? What did you guys talk about?

A So as Bobby Engel normally would do, so, you know, the limo would drop off, depending on where the President was, if they were arriving on the south grounds, you know, if the President was going up to the residence, it would stop at the portico there, you know, kind of the center of the residence. If he was going the — the President was going back to his office, they would pull forward. And, you know, he could walk. There’s a little pathway from. you know, you’ve probably seen that. There was a, you know, a pathway from the drop point to the corner of the, you know, the door of the in between the Oval Office and the Rose Garden that he would use. Tony — or Bobby would be in the car with him and would, obviously, he wouldn’t go back into the Oval Office. But he would continue through the West Wing back through his office in the EEOB. You know, one of the common things that he would do would be he would, you know, pop in our office and just kind of give us an update of how the trip went or what — really anything.

And so when they got back that afternoon, again, I don’t remember the time, when they got back. I remember Bobby popped into our office. It was the three of us — Tony, Bobby, myself. And he gave an update of, you know, kind of the events there at the Capitol.

I have a memory of Bobby saying that, before the President went onstage there at the offstage announce area, you know, the whole question of should he go up to the Capitol, should he go up to the Capitol. That was kind of getting tossed around. A lot of it was — was getting directed back to Bob Engel as kind of the deciding, you know, with the events in real time, you know. Anything like that would go — would run through Bobby.

I remember Bobby, you know, saying, hey, you know, we can’t do that. You know, we have no plan for that. There are no plans to do — to do that. You know, we couldn’t — we couldn’t secure that in this amount, short amount of time, on and on like, you know, as we talked about last time. You know, further than, that he said the President went on stage, gave his remarks. And this is Bobby told Tony and myself that, you know, he was like — it was almost like he had to ask. And then when he was told that, hey, you can’t go to the Capitol, he was like, you know, kind of, again, shrugged it off and was like, all right, at least I asked. And that was it.

Now, there are a lot of ways in which this (and other parts of his) testimony conflicts with what Harrison had already said, what Engel testified to later, what records subsequently shared with the committee (and so far more readily available to DOJ) revealed.

But it’s not this conflict that I find most interesting. It’s the conflict between what Tony Ornato had to say about talking to Harrison and what Harrison had testified to months earlier.

When Liz Cheney asked Ornato whether he had spoken to anyone after Hutchinson’s testimony, he admitted speaking to the Secret Service people about Hutchinson’s testimony, but claimed that a conversation he had with Harrison was about real estate.

Ms. Cheney. Anyone else from the administration?

The Witness. I have talked to [Beau] Harrison, who has left the — Trump’s — at this point, but nothing about any testimony or anything of that nature. It was more about real estate and him moving to the area.

Ms. Cheney. Did you speak with the Secret Service spokesperson following Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony?

The Witness. I recall, that day after Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony, going to the Secret Service Counsel and being in his office and then the Secret Service spokesperson asking me about what my recollection was of that story. And I relayed that that is not a story I recollect and I don’t recall that story happening and the first time hearing it is when she had said it.

Harrison told the story differently. In an exchange just after Passantino piped in to make sure the record reflected Harrison saying that Trump “shrugged it off” rather than “shrugged his shoulders” in response to being told he couldn’t go to the Capitol, Harrison assured the committee he would know if this kind of conflict had taken place.

Q Uh-huh. so I think [redacted] had asked you about there was public reporting about a heated argument that occurred in the — and I’ll take it in two parts. First the heated argument, did you hear anything to that effect?

A No.

Q And how about what, as you said, you described, you saw Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony on TV. Is that — I want to make sure heard you correctly. Was that the first time you heard that testimony in terms of what occurred in the vehicle, as she said, relayed by Mr. Engel?

A Yes. Her — the story that was — the story that was told during her public testimony was the first I had heard of you know, anything like that being described.

Q Was there any kind of discussion, putting aside the testimony, but the days following, did you learn of anything that occurred that was more than just a back and forth of as you’re describing, of can I go and I guess Mr. Engel saying no? Was there anything in that range of more of a request, anger, heated 6 argument, altercation, anything?

A No.

Q Did you see —

A I would — I’m sorry

Q That’s okay.

A I would also add that, if something like had been described had occurred, I percent would have known about it and would have heard that.

Q And why do you say that?

A Because that is something that would have, you know — that’s — that’s the report that Bobby would share when he got — when he got back. You know, that would fall into the, hey, how’d it go and he’d be like, oh, you know. like, you know, this — this — let me tell you. But —

Q If it was shared only with Mr. Ornato, would Mr. Ornato have shared that with you?

A If it was shared with Tony, yes, Tony would have shared it with me.

Harrison similarly assured the committee, even less convincingly, that there’s no way Trump’s limo was left running to keep open the possibility of a trip to the Capitol without him knowing.

But then the committee asked Harrison, three months before Ornato would answer the same question, whether he had spoken to Ornato about this.

In addition to explaining that he’s “kind of a big brother” to Ornato’s son, Harrison revealed that Ornato called Harrison immediately after (during, maybe!?!?) Hutchinson’s testimony.

Q What about with Tony Ornato, have you talked to him about January 6th or anything that happened on January 6th before your testimony today?

A The only — the only, you know, time that we — again. Tony and I are personal friends and have talked about — you know, I’m — I’m kind of a big brother to his son and to, you know — he — we’re personal friends. The only thing that we’ve talked about on this matter is during Cassidy’s testimony, he just — he basically said, can you — you know, can you believe this? And — and that was that. You know, nothing further — nothing further. you know, was — was discussed on the matter of — aside from the fact of like, you know. where is this coming from?

Q How did he say that to you? Did he call you? Did he send you a text message?

A I believe it was a phone call. And — and I think it was more of, you know, he was like, did I — you know, did I miss something or am I — am I — you know, clearly this did not happen, but how — how is this being — you know, where is this story even coming from or, you know, where could this even, you 12 know, be coming from.

Q In that conversation, did he — he told you it didn’t happen? What portion of the testimony did he say didn’t happen in that phone call with you?

A I –well, I mean, as it was described when — you know, the whole — the whole story of — the whole story of Bob Engel returning to our office, you know, and going into the — going into the — you know, the story about the President being irate and, you know, the President grabbing Bob Engel’s neck and grabbing for the steering wheel, you know, that was the part he was like, you know — like, did that happen? Did the — you know, did that — did — was that even discussed? Was that — did that ever come up? And at that point I said —

Q In that —

A I’m sorry, go ahead.

Q Go ahead. I’m sorry. I cut you off right before you were about to say what you said in response.

A And I’m saying, no, you know, the first — the first I had even — I have ever even heard of this was. you know, just this afternoon, this afternoon when it was being described, you know, that way on TV.

Q In that conversation, did Mr. Ornato kind of relay his recollection of the events to you?

A That, I don’t remember. But, I mean, I don’t think he went, you know, play by play of what happened. I think it was mainly just kind of just, you know, kind of shock as to, you know, getting associated with and being the kind of the source of that type of information.

Harrison and Ornato could — and one day may — testify in defense of Trump at some trial. On the issue of whether he responded angrily when told he could not going to the Capitol, their testimony might just present a conflicting account to that of Hutchinson and others (and some documentary records).

But on the issue of the conversation that Harrison had with Ornato, there’s a dramatic conflict, real estate versus a direct response to Hutchinson’s testimony, possibly even as she testified.

And that’s what I mean about how interlocking all these issues are. Sure, Harrison may have been interviewed about being paid out of funds originally raised based on false claims of voter fraud.

But it’s hard to separate those payments from his evolving testimony about that shrug.

Update: At the very end of Ornato’s testimony, after learning Engel’s testimony conflicted with his and learning that Hutchinson had shared Signal texts Ornato had sent her, he described speaking to both Engel and Harrison during Hutchinson’s testimony, a clear conflict with his earlier answer about real estate.

A No, sir. The only time I had reached out to Mr. Engel was when Cassidy Hutchinson was testifying during her – as she was testifying, and I was I wasn’t watching it, was called to put it on, and I was shocked and surprised of her testimony and called Mr. Engel and asked him, What’s she talking about? And his response was, I don’t know.

And then I then proceeded to say I said, Let me listen to the rest of this now. I have no idea And that was the only time I had — I had reached out to Mr. Engel. I actually reached out to Mr. Harrison as well, because I knew Beau was in my office. And I said, Beau, what’s she talking about? And Beau said the same thing. He said, I don’t know. I don’t remember her being in your office. that was just shocked and surprised at – of the testimony, and I did reach out 9 during her testimony, I believe, to the both of them to ask that. ~ But, at that point, after I~ my head settled down, I didn’t discuss it any further.


How the January 6 Committee Investigation Maps onto DOJ’s Known Investigation

I’m going to attempt to do a live post mapping what we’re learning from the January 6 Committee investigation onto what we know about the multi-prong DOJ investigations. Before I do so, however, I want to point out several ways this matters, by showing how the multiple investigations intersect and how testimony to J6C may be useful for DOJ.

Ken Klukowski’s two interviews

I raised one example in this thread on Ken Klukowski, the lawyer who wrote the memo associated with John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark meant to justify a late-December DOJ intervention in Georgia. Klukowski is one of four people (and three lawyers) involved in a grand jury proceeding partially unsealed in December. By May 2022, DOJ had shown probable cause that one of his email accounts would include evidence of a crime, but DOJ also spent much of last summer working through the dicey privilege problems posed by an investigation involving a bunch of lawyers.

We now know the grand jury matters were unsealed after such time as DOJ first got some of the J6C transcripts, per this filing in the Proud Boys case, which shows DOJ passed on 16 Proud Boy transcripts before December 8.

Klukowski sat for two interviews with J6C — one on February 15, 2022, when he came off as a cooperative witness, and one on June 10, when the committee asked him about a bunch of documents involving John Eastman that Judge David Carter had released, some under a crime-fraud exception. At least during the interviews, Klukowski was represented by lawyers from Matt “Big Dick Toilet Salesman” Whitaker’s firm; see this exchange from Justin Caporale’s interview about how Matt Schlapp arranged for the defense of some Trump flunkies via the firm, and this reference to funding going to Schlapp from the J6C Report. In Klukowski’s second interview, the one discussing documents that had been liberated in part under a crime-fraud exception, one of Klukowski’s lawyers objected to the possibility that Klukowski might have to reassert privilege claims under oath. Whether these transcripts are part of why DOJ unsealed the grand jury materials or not, the two transcripts show how liberating the Eastman communications undercut much of what Klukowski had originally said about his involvement. And because he had already testified, this second interview provided useful backtracking on his earlier interview. The two transcripts may serve as useful tools in further breaching the privilege claims of these three lawyers, if not obtaining cooperation from one or several of them.

Alex Cannon’s two interviews

Alex Cannon is another example. Trump whisperers Josh Dawsey and Maggie Haberman have given him good press for his role in the stolen documents case. In February 2022, they tell us, Cannon refused to certify that Trump had turned over the the documents the President took from the White House.

Shortly after turning over 15 boxes of government material to the National Archives in January, former President Donald J. Trump directed a lawyer working for him to tell the archives that he had returned all the documents he had taken from the White House at the end of his presidency, according to two people familiar with the discussion.

The lawyer, Alex Cannon, had become a point of contact for officials with the National Archives, who had tried for months to get Mr. Trump to return presidential records that he failed to turn over upon leaving office. Mr. Cannon declined to convey Mr. Trump’s message to the archives because he was not sure if it was true, the people said.

[snip]

The conversation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Cannon took place after officials at the archives began asking Mr. Cannon, following the return of the 15 boxes, whether additional classified material was at Mar-a-Lago. It was when Mr. Cannon raised this with Mr. Trump that Mr. Trump told him to tell the archives he had given everything back, the people familiar with the discussion said.

At the time, the various investigations related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by Mr. Trump’s supporters were ramping up, with a number of requests for documents, the people familiar with the discussion said. Mr. Cannon told people that he was concerned that if Mr. Trump was found to be withholding material related to Jan. 6, he would be in a worse situation, according to people familiar with the discussions.

But Cannon’s two transcripts (April 13 and August 18, 2022) put that seeming scrupulousness in different light. Much of the first one establishes how, because of the jobs he was given as a campaign lawyer, he was in a position to understand that the claims made in fundraising emails sent after the election conflicted with the evidence showing no significant vote fraud. At the very end of that first interview, though, investigators asked Cannon why he was claiming privilege over discussions with Jared Kushner about forming a PAC when he was working with a campaign that should not legally coordinate with such a PAC (to say nothing of Cannon’s admitted inexperience on campaign finance law).

In that first interview, Cannon agreed that money raised after the election would have to be spent on recounts or debt retirement. His second interview (which took place ten days after the Mar-a-Lago search) focused more closely on how money raised in the guise of fighting vote fraud was actually spent. In it, Cannon bristled when investigators suggested campaign money could only be spent on debt retirement or recounts.

Then in Cassidy Hutchinson’s September interviews (September 14 and 15) — the two focused on attempts to obstruct her testimony — she described how Cannon first helped set her up with Trump lawyer Stephen Passantino, and then tried to get her several jobs. Hutchinson also described how Passantino claimed that Cannon (as well as Eric Herschmann, another person heroically portrayed in Maggie stories) was involved in the manipulation of stories with Maggie Haberman.

When J6C made its referrals, it made clear that DOJ was already aware of efforts to tamper with Hutchinson’s testimony. Hutchinson started cooperating with DOJ shortly after her solo J6C testimony, in July. So even before the raid on Mar-a-Lago, then, DOJ likely understood that Cannon’s role was more complex than you might understand from reading a Maggie Haberman story. Importantly, Cannon’s role in allegedly tampering with Hutchinson’s J6C testimony would span the time when (per Maggie’s reporting) he heroically refused to certify Trump’s February 2022 production and the time in May 2022 when Trump’s team tried to find ways to stave off further investigation. These strands overlap temporally.

That puts Cannon’s role as a witness in much different light, because it would give him different visibility — and criminal exposure — on several different things: Trump’s document theft, Trump’s lies about vote fraud, Trump’s efforts to tamper with witnesses, and Trump’s spending of money raised to combat vote fraud.

And that’s important background when you consider CNN’s reporting about the financial side of DOJ’s investigation, which described that “in recent months” an existing year-long investigation into the financing of the attack has shifted (like the J6C focus has) to how money raised purported in support of election integrity actually got spent.

Another top prosecutor, JP Cooney, the former head of public corruption in the DC US Attorney’s Office, is overseeing a significant financial probe that Smith will take on. The probe includes examining the possible misuse of political contributions, according to some of the sources. The DC US Attorney’s Office, before the special counsel’s arrival, had examined potential financial crimes related to the January 6 riot, including possible money laundering and the support of rioters’ hotel stays and bus trips to Washington ahead of January 6.

In recent months, however, the financial investigation has sought information about Trump’s post-election Save America PAC and other funding of people who assisted Trump, according to subpoenas viewed by CNN. The financial investigation picked up steam as DOJ investigators enlisted cooperators months after the 2021 riot, one of the sources said.

When Cannon refused to certify Trump’s production in February 2022, he had personal exposure in January 6. Refusing to certify documents because withholding some might amount to obstruction is far less heroic than the Trump whisperers have made out. But in ensuing months, as the complexity of Cannon’s role has become clear, it would provide DOJ many angles for DOJ to persuade Cannon to cooperate.

Other privilege claims

The grand jury release last month made me realize just how complex it is to investigate suspected crimes in which at least 12 lawyers were involved. But the transcripts should help DOJ pierce other privilege claims as well. For example, multiple witnesses were asked and mocked the idea that their own conversations with Jenna Ellis — who is a lawyer whose name was on many of the subpoenas DOJ has sent out but was often described as playing a spokesperson role — might be privileged. The same is true of lawyer Boris Epshteyn, described as playing a logistics, not legal role.

So in the same way that DOJ seemed to focus on emails involving Scott Perry with the Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, and Klukowski seizures, the J6C testimony will provide many more levers to use to chip away at attorney-client privilege claims (on top of what seems to be a slew of subpoenas that will partly serve the same purpose).

At some point in recent weeks, Jack Smith returned to the US to oversee the investigation he has been leading since November. The belated sharing of J6C transcripts will likely provide a big boost to that investigation.


Proving Trump’s Corrupt Purpose: The Forgotten Unpermitted March

It’s an object of blind faith among TV lawyers that DOJ must prove that Donald Trump knew he lost the election to be able to charge him under 18 USC 1512(c)(2). That blind faith seems to come from several places. It was part of David Carter’s opinion — which applied 9th Circuit precedentfinding that Trump and John Eastman had the corrupt intent necessary such that Eastman’s communications about efforts to pressure Trump were crime-fraud excepted.

A person violates § 1512(c) when they obstruct an official proceeding with a corrupt mindset. The Ninth Circuit has not defined “corruptly” for purposes of this statute.222 However, the court has made clear that the threshold for acting “corruptly” is lower than “consciousness of wrongdoing,”223 meaning a person does not need to know their actions are wrong to break the law. Because President Trump likely knew that the plan to disrupt the electoral count was wrongful, his mindset exceeds the threshold for acting “corruptly” under § 1512(c). President Trump and Dr. Eastman justified the plan with allegations of election fraud— but President Trump likely knew the justification was baseless, and therefore that the entire plan was unlawful.

Although Dr. Eastman argues that President Trump was advised several state elections were fraudulent,224 the Select Committee points to numerous executive branch officials who publicly stated225 and privately stressed to President Trump226 that there was no evidence of fraud. By early January, more than sixty courts dismissed cases alleging fraud due to lack of standing or lack of evidence,227 noting that they made “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations”228 and that “there is no evidence to support accusations of voter fraud.”229 President Trump’s repeated pleas230 for Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger clearly demonstrate that his justification was not to investigate fraud, but to win the election: “So what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.”231 Taken together, this evidence demonstrates that President Trump likely knew the electoral count plan had no factual justification.

Many TV lawyers seem to exist in a Green Room bubble, largely insulated from familiarity with the actual DOJ investigation, where they reinforce each other’s blind faith. Stunningly, few of these actual lawyers have paid attention to the long debate over obstruction as DOJ has actually applied it to January 6, not even the December 12 DC Circuit hearing on DOJ’s appeal of a Carl Nichols opinion sharply limiting its application. The TV lawyers rely far more on the Carter opinion than on the Amit Mehta one that — while applying a lower civil standard and addressing an earlier and therefore thinner body of claims — nevertheless was written by a judge who had already written a long 1512 opinion directly relevant to January 6. That is, most TV lawyers’ analysis of any potential case against Trump largely stems from a Ninth Circuit standard, not the hotly debated standard specifically addressing January 6, and largely stems from the white collar crimes Trump is alleged to have committed with John Eastman, not any of his other potential criminal exposure.

It will likely be a few weeks before we learn how the DC Circuit will rule, but my read of the hearing is that Trump appointee Greg Katsas was strongly opposed to DOJ, Trump appointee Justin Walker started out not quite as strongly opposed, but seemed to grow increasingly peeved by defense attorney Nick Smith’s minimization of the uniqueness of January 6, and Biden appointee Florence Pan (who presided over her share of January 6 cases before being elevated to the DC Circuit) favored DOJ’s views. But it’s more complex than that: The Republican judges seemed inclined to overturn DOJ not on the basis before them — whether 1512(c)(2) had to have a documentary component — but on the definition of corrupt purpose, precisely the basis on which TV lawyers rely on Carter’s opinion. Anything could happen: Katsas and Walker could rule against DOJ on the Nichols appeal, only to have DOJ appeal to the full DC Circuit. While procedurally unusual, Katsas and Walker suggested they might remand to Nichols to consider the corrupt purpose definition, in which case it’ll come back on appeal. Or Walker and Pan could rule narrowly for DOJ, with the defendants appealing, possibly directly to the Trump-heavy SCOTUS.

As I alluded in this post, no matter how the DC Circuit rules, it’s likely the ruling would still permit charges against Trump, even while roiling all the cases against the mobsters. That’s because with Trump, there’s a documentary component to his obstruction of the vote certification — the fake elector certificates that Trump associates were flying into DC — that is more attenuated for the mobsters; Trump would meet Nichols’ standard even while the mobsters arguably would not. And with Trump, if Walker were to write an opinion that sided with Pan on the documentary issue but argued for a much more stringent standard on corrupt purpose, requiring a personal benefit to the corruption, it would still apply to Trump. There’s no more obvious example of corruptly chasing a personal benefit than trying to remain President by obstructing the votes from being counted even though Joe Biden had received more votes. It’s probably in this latter scenario where the blind faith claim by TV lawyers that DOJ needs to prove that Trump knew he lost would come into play; because DOJ would likely appeal such an outcome in any case, it’s still more likely that DOJ would be dealing with the standard that most DC District judges have adopted.

That’s why I often return to Dabney Friedrich’s standard, because it is fairly stringent — starting from an analysis of whether someone engaged in otherwise illegal activity. It’s a higher standard than Judge Carter used, but not unlikely to be where we end up for the application of obstruction to January 6.

There are still multiple ways to get there with Trump:

  • Conspiring to making false statements (or even a forgery) to the Federal government with the fake elector certificates, which would require proving that Trump knew of the efforts to deliver those certificates
  • Ordering Mike Pence to do something Trump knew to be illegal, rejecting the certified votes, which would require proving Trump knew the request was illegal
  • Aiding or abetting the violence on January 6, an allegation bolstered by J6C’s focus on Trump’s awareness that his mob was armed when he told them to march on the Capitol
  • Conspiring to obstruct the vote certification by occupying the Capitol, which would require showing that Trump entered into an agreement with people like Alex Jones and Ali Alexander and through them with the Proud Boys and others or by treating his multiple calls to the mob as entering into a conspiracy and his tweet targeting Pence during the riot as ratification of it

The latter description is one of the ways that Judge Mehta ruled that Trump might have conspired with the mob on January 6.

But, as I laid out here, Mehta focused on another element to get to find it plausible that Trump bore responsibility for the attack, which is a fifth way Trump might have exposure: the unpermitted march.

President Trump also allegedly participated directly in the planning. He was involved in decisionmaking about the speaking lineup and music selection. Thompson Compl. ¶ 69. And, critically, to the surprise of rally organizers, President “Trump and his campaign proposed that the rally include a march to the Capitol,” even though the permit they had obtained did not allow for one. Id. ¶¶ 69, 90 (alleging that the permit expressly provided: “This permit does not authorize a march from the Ellipse”).

[snip]

[T]he President ended his speech by telling the crowd that “we fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Almost immediately after these words, he called on rally-goers to march to the Capitol to give “pride and boldness” to reluctant lawmakers “to take back our country.” Importantly, it was the President and his campaign’s idea to send thousands to the Capitol while the Certification was underway. It was not a planned part of the rally. In fact, the permit expressly stated that it did “not authorize a march from the Ellipse.”

[snip]

That is why the court determines, as discussed below, that Giuliani’s and Trump Jr.’s words are protected speech. But what is lacking in their words is present in the President’s: an implicit call for imminent violence or lawlessness. He called for thousands “to fight like hell” immediately before directing an unpermitted march to the Capitol, where the targets of their ire were at work, knowing that militia groups and others among the crowd were prone to violence.

Absent a claim of incitement, asking his followers to march to the Capitol would, generally, be legal. But even before you include the incitement, if Trump knew that he was asking his followers to do something that was not permitted, it would add one more prong showing corrupt purpose.

Mehta relies on this part of his judgment on Bennie Thompson’s own complaint, citing parts of the amended complaint filed in April 2021.

69. After Defendant Trump decided he would speak at the Save America rally on January 6, he became more actively involved in decisions concerning the event, including the speaking lineup and even the music that would be played. Defendant Trump and his campaign proposed that the rally include a march to the Capitol. An organizer of the Save America rally later told reporters he was surprised to learn that the even would involve a march from the Ellipse to the Capitol. Before the White House became involved, he said, the plan had been to stay at the Ellipse until the counting of the Electoral College votes was completed.

[snip]

90. The permit obtained for the Save America rally expressly provided: “This permit does not authorize a march from the Ellipse.” Defendant Trump nevertheless instructed the angry crowd to march from the Ellipse to the Capitol for the purpose of “fight[ing] like hell,” and therefore directed the crowd to take action outside the bounds of what the permit authorized.

That complaint was written in April, before J6C was constituted, much less before it got a ton of witness testimony about how the march came about.

The January 6 Report focuses on the march — particularly, in other sections, on Trump’s desire to participate in it — but it only addresses the issue of permitting of the march (as opposed to other events) in an appendix. [links added]

Within a few days, the White House began to take a more direct role in coordinating the rally at the Ellipse.421 In a December 29th text to Wren, Caporale wrote that after the President’s planned speech there “maybe [sic] a call to action to march to the [C]apitol and make noise.”422 This is the earliest indication uncovered by the Select Committee that the President planned to call on his supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol. But it wasn’t the last. On January 2nd, rally organizer Katrina Pierson informed Wren that President Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, had said the President was going to “call on everyone to march to the [C]apitol.”423 Inside the White House, the President’s intent was well-known. CassidyHutchinson, an aide to Meadows, recalled in her testimony that she overheard discussions to this effect toward the end of December or early January. One such discussion included an exchange between Meadows andRudolph Giuliani that occurred on January 2nd.424 Hutchinson understood that President Trump wanted to have a crowd at the Capitol in connection with what was happening inside—the certification of the electoral count.425 Hutchinson also recalled that President Trump’s allies in Congress were aware of the plan. During a call with members of the House FreedomCaucus, the idea of telling people to go to the Capitol was discussed as a way to encourage Congress to delay the electoral college certification and send it back to the States.426 On January 4th, WFAF’s Kylie Kremer informed Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow and an ally of President Trump, that “POTUS is going to have us march there [the Supreme Court]/the Capitol” but emphasized that the plan“stays only between us.”427 The “Stop the Steal” coalition was aware of the President’s intent. OnJanuary 5th, Ali Alexander sent a text to a journalist saying: “Ellipse thenUS capitol [sic]. Trump is supposed to order us to the capitol [sic] at the end of his speech but we will see.”428

6.14 “WELL, I SHOULD WALK WITH THE PEOPLE.”

President Trump wanted to personally accompany his supporters on the march from the Ellipse to the U.S. Capitol. During a January 4th meeting with staffers and event organizer Katrina Pierson, President Trump emphasized his desire to march with his supporters.429 “Well, I should walk with the people,” Pierson recalled President Trump saying.430 Though Pierson said that she did not take him “seriously,” she knew that “he would absolutely want to be with the people.”431 Pierson pointed out that President Trump “did the drive-by the first time and the flyover the second time”—a reference to the November and December 2020 protests in Washington, DC.432 During these previous events, President Trump made cameo appearances to fire up his supporters. Now, as January 6th approached, the President again wanted to be there, on the ground, as his supporters marched on the U.S. Capitol. The President’s advisors tried to talk him out of it. White House Senior Advisor Max Miller “shot it down immediately” because of concerns about the President’s safety.433 Pierson agreed.434 But President Trump was persistent, and he floated the idea of having 10,000 National Guardsmen deployed to protect him and his supporters from any supposed threats by leftwing counter-protestors.435 Miller again rejected the President’s idea, saying that the National Guard was not necessary for the event. Miller testified that there was no further conversation on the matter.436 After the meeting, Miller texted Pierson, “Just glad we killed the national guard and a procession.”437 That is, President Trump briefly considered having the National Guard oversee his procession to the U.S. Capitol. The President did not order the National Guard to protect the U.S. Capitol, or to secure the joint session proceedings. Although his advisors tried to talk the President out of personally going, they understood that his supporters would be marching.438 Pierson’s agenda for the meeting reflected the President’s plan for protestors to go to the U.S. Capitol after the rally.439 But President Trump did not give up on the idea of personally joining his supporters on their march, as discussed further in Chapter 7.

[snip]

At no point was any permit granted for a march from the Ellipse to the Capitol. The President planned to announce that march “spontaneously.”114

422. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Deposition of Justin Caporale, (Mar. 1, 2020), p. 44; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Caroline Wren Production), REVU_0644 (December 29, 2020, text messages with Justin Caporale).

423. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Katrina Pierson, (Mar. 25, 2022), pp. 79-82; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Caroline Wren Production), REVU_0181 (January 2nd email from Katrina Pierson to CarolineWren and Taylor Budowich).

424. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Cassidy Hutchinson, (Feb. 23, 2022), pp. 32-33, 41; Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Continued Interview of Cassidy Hutchinson, (June 20, 2022), pp. 107-08, 135.

425. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Cassidy Hutchinson, (Feb. 23, 2022), p. 42.

426. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Cassidy Hutchinson, (Feb. 23, 2022), pp. 44-45, 47, 52-54; Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Continued Interview of Cassidy Hutchinson, (June 20, 2022), p. 87.

427. Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Kylie Kremer Production), KKremer5447, p. 3 (January 4, 2021, text message from Kylie Kremer to Mike Lindell at 9:32 a.m.).

428. Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Ali Alexander Production), CTRL0000017718, p. 41 (January 5, 2021 text message with Liz Willis at 7:19 a.m.).

429. See Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Katrina Pierson, (Mar. 25, 2022), pp. 120-21.

430. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Katrina Pierson, (Mar. 25, 2022), p. 121.

431. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Katrina Pierson, (Mar. 25, 2022), p. 121.

432. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Katrina Pierson, (Mar. 25, 2022), p. 121.

433. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Deposition of Max Miller, (Jan. 20, 2022), pp. 91-92.

434. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Katrina Pierson, (Mar. 25, 2022), p. 123.

435. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Katrina Pierson, (Mar. 25, 2022), pp. 121-26.

436. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Deposition of Max Miller, (Jan. 20, 2022), pp. 98-99.

437. Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, (Max Miller Production) Miller Production 0001, p. 1 (January 4, 2021, text message from Max Miller to Katrina Pierson).

438. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Katrina Pierson, (Mar. 25, 2022), p. 121.

439. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Katrina Pierson, (Mar. 25, 2022), p. 95; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Katrina Pierson Production), KPierson0180, at 180, 196-97 (January 4, 2021, President TrumpMeeting Agenda).

While the report shows that Trump was directly involved in several meetings about plans to march to the Capitol, it doesn’t address whether he was told that there not only wasn’t a permit for the march, but that the National Park Service had specifically prohibited such a march. And several people did know that.

Justin Caporale, the guy at Event Strategies whom the report describes the White House selecting to put on the event, described the decision not to formally plan for the march this way.

Q Understood, and I appreciate that. Let’s move on. Mr. Caporale, during the planning for the January 6th event, did you hear anyone suggest that rally-goers should march or walk to the Capitol following the President’s speech?

A In the early days of the planning around that end-of-December timeframe, you know, it was discussed that it would include a march. And after consulting and working with the National Park Service, we decided not to move forward with planning, you know, a march from the Ellipse to anywhere.

Q When you say “it was discussed,” who were those discussions with?

A The National Park Service.

Q Sorry, it sounded like you said it was discussed that there might be a march, and then you had consultations with the Park Service. Were there discussions about a march before you brought it up with the Park Service?

A There were — I don’t recall the exact discussions, no. But I remember talking with the Park Service about it during the permit and application process under the general question of, you know, what is the vision for your event.

Q Let’s go ahead and take a look at exhibit 3, and this might refresh your recollection a little bit. Exhibit 3 are your text messages with Caroline Wren. And if we go to page 7, she sends you an image with a question right there in the middle. And we can zoom in a little bit. This is December 29th, about 2:00 in the afternoon. She writes, any updates from WH on your end? And you write back later that evening, schedule proposal will work its way around tomorrow. Noon seems to be a good time. Then maybe a call to action to march to the Capitol and make noise. Did you have conversations with people in the White House about having a call to action to march to the Capitol and make noise? A No, not to my recollection.

Q So where did you get this information that you sent to Caroline Wren about a call to action to march to the Capitol and make noise?

A I would really view my response at 10:50 as two separate conversations. 14 So, the scheduling proposal will work its way around about noon, noon seems to be a 15 good time, that was in reference to any updates from the White House on your end. 16 And then maybe a call to action to march to the Capitol and make some noise is referring 17 to the discussions we as planners were having with the National Park Service to see if that 18 would be something that would even be possible given the timeframe that we had to 19 plan. 20 Q So my question is, whose idea was it to have a march to the Capitol and 21 make noise?

A I don’t recall whose idea it came from. It was, again, conversations with 23 the client at that point. You know, their event was branded, March for Trump, and it 24 had been for the year leading up to it. So, it was part of those natural discussions, well, 25 should we, you know, submit a permit for a march and coordinate that end of things.

Q I think we’ve established that by this point you had been in touch with folks 2 from the White House. That text message you sent to your parents was December 27th, 2 days before, and this is the same day, December 29th, that you’re texting Max Miller about Women for America First submitting the permit for the Ellipse. Was anybody in5 the White House conveying to you plans about having a call to action to march to the Capitol and make noise at this time?

A No, sir.

Q Why don’t we take a look then at exhibit 15. This is from — this is a text message that you produced. KP is Katrina Pierson, and the other person on the thread is Taylor Budowich. And on January 3rd, at 10:10 in the morning, Ms. Pierson texts, 11 “WH has not approved these speakers. I was asked to modify, and I’ll send over a new draft to you guts” — I think it’s a typo for “guys” — “and POTUS.” And then she writes, “POTUS expectations are intimate and then send everyone over to the Capitol.” So by this time, were you aware that the White House, or representatives from the White House, were considering sending rally-goers to the Capitol following the President’s speech?

A My awareness was limited to, you know, receiving a text message like this. But I was, you know, never given official instructions by my client or anybody to coordinate a march, to plan a march, and we didn’t.

Q Okay. You say you were never given any instructions from your client to plan or coordinate a march?

A No.

Q So what was the December 29th message to Caroline Wren about a call to action to march to the Capitol and make noise about?

A I’m sorry, if I can, let me be a little bit more clear. So in the text message that you’re referring to earlier in late December, that’s when the conversations were happening between myself and the client, is do we want to include a request for a march in our permit process. During that late December time period, we would host calls with National Park Service every morning that included, you know, members of Metro PD and Park Police, all the relevant authority members in the permitting process. Sometime in that late December, I don’t remember the exact date, it became very clear that, given the timeframe we had to plan, you know, the manpower that it would take and the resources that it would take, that we — we were not going move forward with planning a march. So in that time period, you know, we decided, the client decided that they no longer wanted to pursue that, and that we would focus our attention on the event on the Ellipse and in our permitted area. And that’s what we did.

As the report noted, Caporale redacted his own December 29 description of a call to action in a text to Caroline Wren.

One of his close friends and contacts at the White House who was present for a January 2 meeting between Katrina Pierson and Mark Meadows at which the possibility of using 10,000 National Guards to make the march possible was floated and rejected claimed he simply didn’t hear that part of the conversation. He and Caporale are both among the Trumps staffers represented by former Acting Attorney Matt “Big Dick Toilet Salesman” Whitaker’s law firm, a topic about which one of the attorneys in question got really confrontational.

It’s unclear whether Caporale’s reference to a client was to Caroline Wren or Kylie Kremer, but the latter specifically said she chose not to apply for a permit for a march because she couldn’t do it truthfully.

Now, I think that that is important because when I had this conversation and took over the permitting process for January 6th, Marissa made it very clear that if you are putting something on a document that you know to be invalid, that’s a major issue because this is a Federal Government form that you’re filling out and you’re willingly putting something that is not truthful. So I was horrified when I found that out because it was the opposite of what Cindy had told me, and that’s one of the main reasons that we decided from that point not to pursue the marching permit because there was no way, whatever those current COVID restrictions were — I don’t know if it was 50 people or 500 people — whatever they were at that time, there was no way that I was going to put our organization’s name and my name on a permit that I knew would greatly exceed that number and then face potential ramifications.

[snip]

Q So was the plan at this point — and I know I’ve asked this before. I’m going to ask you probably each iteration. Was there a plan to march to SCOTUS or the Capitol Grounds at this point when you were planning at the Ellipse?

A I don’t believe so because I believe before I filed those permits, the numbers that were used were as accurate and the best of my ability, and that is when I told you that I believe I was told by Marissa, I guess it could have been Deborah Deas, but I believe it was Marissa telling me specifically about the numbers and how, you know, you can’t lie on an application like that even knowing which was a red flag to me because, clearly, she probably told Cindy that too.

Here’s how she explained a text to Mike Lindell confiding there would be a march but asking him to keep it under wraps.

Q I know this jumps ahead of where we just were, Ms. Kremer, so I’ll give you a second to read this message, the longer one that you sent Mr. Lindell on January 4th of 2021. The part that I’m going to ask you specifically about is where you say: This stays only between us. We’re having a second stage at the Supreme Court after the Ellipse. POTUSs going to have us march there, the Capitol. It can also not get out about the march because I will be in trouble with the National Park Service and all agencies, but POTUS is going to call for it in quotes – it looks like, unexpectedly. Only myself and Katrina know full story of what is actually happening, and we’re having to appease many by saying certain things.

So the first question is, how did you know that President Trump was going to have people march to the Capitol after his speech at the Ellipse?

[snip]

A Because — right. Because I – I, we, Women for America First, are not responsible and giving people the directive to go and march. People are able to do whatever they want. So, if they want to come to the Ellipse and come to the event that is presented by Women for America First and then they want to go to an event with, let’s say, Jericho March or “Stop the Steal” or whatever, people are free to make their own decisions. And that was a conversation that had continuously been had with NPS, that other events were being permitted and that we could not control any sort of, you know, when do you leave, when do you stay because that was something that was discussed about an exit plan, right, of how do we talk – or how do we plan to get all of these people that are coming to D.C., what is the plan for them to leave? And so that was something that was confusing in the process to me too,

Wouldn’t it make it easier if there was a permit to march because then things could be more controlled? There could be more law enforcement, and NPS and whoever these different agencies that I was speaking with, both on Zoom calls and then also individual conversations that were being had, it did not make sense to me. But I was being continuously told by NPS that we could not have a permit to march, and if we did or promoted a march, then the Ellipse permit would be revoked, or we would not officially get the final one.

Here’s how she tried to claim she learned about the march from social media.

So, when I’m talking about that and saying about social media, it’s not specifically from Trump social media that the President and/or his staff were tweeting out. It was social media of people from anywhere talking about what had previously happened. Obviously, there was going to be a joint session in Congress. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out, if the first event is at the Ellipse, that they’re going to go to the second location, putting pressure on Members of Congress to say: Hey, we’re here. We’re watching. I mean, the fact that this is news that NPS and everybody else were putting pressure on me, saying there should be no marching, I mean, I had this conversation with them multiple times. It was obvious what was going on

Q Ms Kremer

A and that people were going to go and leave.

Later in her testimony, she specifically denied learning from Pierson — who had just met with Trump and Mark Meadows the day before — that Trump would call for a march.

So, Ms. Kremer, we know that Katrina Pierson spoke with folks at the White House, including Mark Meadows, on January 2nd, which is days before the text message we are looking at that you sent to Mr. Lindell, about the President’s participation in the Ellipse rally. We know that she received guidance about what the President hoped would happen at the Ellipse rally. And we know that that guidance included that the President wanted to send people from the Ellipse to the Capitol. In that text message, you say, “only me and Katrina know the real plan or know the truth about what we tetyingto do. So, when you say that the President is going to announce unexpectedly, encourage people, in quotes, “unexpectedly” to go down to the Capitol, that’s because: Katrina told you that, right?

A No a

Q So Katrina never told you that the President had hoped to send people to the White House before you sent this text message to Mr. Lindell?

A I–to my best recollection, I do not believe that that specific directive was told to me via Katrina.

There’s good reason to believe that the reference to the Guard — Trump’s proposal that 10,000 National Guard could protect him and his followers — was actually pitched as a solution to the one the Park Service kept raising: there was no way to properly staff a march of this size, short of Trump calling out an army.

This is not an issue the available evidence clarifies. It raises more questions about the veracity of certain witnesses than others.

But it is squarely among the things that recent subpoenas sought to address.

 


Ali Alexander Asked for 5-Minute Updates on Trump’s Actions on January 6

Amid the release of the January 6 Committee transcripts, I’ve been vacating a bit. But I wanted to do a post on what I have been reading.

Let’s start with the fact that at 12:19PM on January 6, Ali Alexander texted Caroline Wren with a request that she update him every five minutes on POTUS’ plan to walk to the Capitol.

At 12:19 p.m. you ask Ms. Wren — so I’m assuming this is after you’ve left The Ellipse — if POTUS is walking and for her to give you an update every 5 minutes. So at 12:19 pm. on January 6th, was it your understanding that President Trump was going to come to the Capitol?

This reference is not mentioned in the final report.

Caroline Wren is the fundraiser (she reported to Kim Guilfoyle during the campaign) who arranged for Publix heir Julie Fancelli to provide $3 million in support of the rally. She provided J6C a good deal of records regarding her involvement and provided testimony that — while it shaded her knowledge of threats of violence and pitched some dodgy fundraising as a normal approach to finance — more closely resembled the truth than a lot of other witnesses. She is one of five women, along with the Kremers, Katrina Pierson, and Cindy Chafian, whose in-fighting has dominated the coverage of the planning for January 6, undoubtedly distracting from some other key players. Pierson described her as aligned with Alex Jones and the others, though in her testimony, Wren provided not unreasonable explanations for her ties to Alex Jones and Roger Stone, not least that Fancelli had donated money believing that crazies like Jones and Stone would have a big role.

It wasn’t that she was close to Jones and Stone, it’s that she was trying to meet the expectations of the donor who had paid for the whole thing.

As you no doubt know, Ali Alexander is the Roger Stone protégé who ran Stop the Steal. His December 9 testimony, at which he was represented by the lawyer who helped a Roger Stone protégé stall the Mueller investigation for a year, Paul Kamenar, is epic, hilarious, and not very honest. At times he shaded or lied to protect Roger Stone, various members of Congress, and Alex Jones. He explicitly said that he distanced himself from the White House during the post-election period so no one could blame Trump for any threats (described as political pressure, not violence) Alexander made against them.

So whenever I’m talking to a State legislator or someone, and saying this is the political fallout, I don’t want anyone to think President Trump told this kid to come up and threaten me.

He seems to suggest in his testimony that they funded buses through Turning Point to hide Stop the Steal’s involvement. His explanations for why he got the permit for his own rally under a cover name are epic.

He invented a bullshit line in response to a question about his Signal texts relating to January 6.

Q don’t recall in your production. Please correct me if I’m wrong. Did we get any Signal chats you from?

A I provided one with Charlie Kirk. ~ They auto-disappeared. That’s like a data retention policy. So don’t -in response to the committee’s investigation on the Capitol attack, and then as you guys widened it, in my opinion, to cover legally permissible events that I wanted to cooperate with this committee about like January 6th, I don’t recall having any in my possession from Signal. Most of what I did was verbal. Some of what did is in text message.

Perhaps a result, while J6C had an extended discussion about a Signal chat with Oath Keepers Alexander was privy to (one that referenced 13 people who had already been indicted by that point), they did not raise the Friends of Stone Signal chat at all during that interview.

In short, Alexander’s testimony was not all that helpful for understanding his central role in January 6.

But both Alexander and Wren provided some telephony texts to the committee, and as a result, this text was available to ask Alexander about.

At 12:19 PM on January 6, Alexander asked Wren to give him updates every five minutes on Trump’s progress. In response to the question about the text, Alexander bullshitted a bit until he explained, simply, that Wren was at the Ellipse.

A One, really appreciate you pointing out this text. This is helpful. I’s also helpful that | use the word “walking,” and you characterized it as marching before you read out the quote. And my understanding is informed by a lot of things, you know, my race, my faith, my profession. And professionally, I’m sorry to bore you guys, but professionally, in my interactions with observing Secret Service over the years, observing Democrat nominees and Republican nominees and Presidents is, something like thats just not allowed to happen  But I do know that we live in interesting times. ~ And if it were to happen, I would like an advance notice. And, again, I’m sorry. I saw the faces, but I’m sorry if my answer is weird. Trying to be helpful.

Q So based upon this text, you were asking Ms. Wren, because you presume she would know if President Trump was going to walk to the Capitol?

A She was physically at The Ellipse, and I wasn’t.

Q All right.

This seemed to satisfy investigators, and they moved into where Alexander headed from there (Alexander seems to have obscured his actions during the Ellipse speech with conflicting claims, first, that he was able to move in and out of the VIP section, but also that Secret Service was limiting the number of people who were permitted to leave with him and Alex Jones via what he described as a special exit).

This text is, in my opinion, really significant. The J6C Report does not provide a very satisfying answer about the genesis of the request, which Alex Jones said came from the White House, for him to lead the march from the Ellipse to the Capitol. In significant part, it concludes that when Alexander and Jones told others they were in contact with the White House — including the request to lead the march to the Capitol — they were using shorthand for Wren, in spite of wild obfuscation from Alexander about it, his obvious ties to Stone, and his bullshit answer about how he knew what “POTUS wants.”

Q May just ask, Mr. Alexander, was there anyone other than Caroline Wren a who you were talking to at the time who claimed to be speaking on behalf of the White House that you can remember whether about this or any other aspect of that event?

A Oh man, that.

Q On behalf of the White House.

A Well, you said White House, and I haven’t said White House at all.

Q On behalf – replaying what the President’s plans were.

A There was a lot of chatter and in these situations, sometimes you’ll hear something third party and it is credible and sometimes not. ~ And, you know, as a professional in this space, somebody — what I will say is unique about Donald J. Trump to politics is everyone thinks they are his adviser, that everyone thinks they know exactly what he’s saying. It has been very widely reported that that, you know, the last thing said in his ear is the thing he’ll do. And, so, if I gave you a specific answer, it wouldn’t be doing you justice or me justice. My main point of contact with what I’m calling Trump world was Caroline Wren regarding what I consider the scope of the committee, and that’s January 6th.

To be sure, Alexander did attribute the request to Wren (though could not date it).

Q And the plan — we talked about right when we started the deposition about how you walked, marched, whatever you want to call it, from the Ellipse to the Capital, and that when it actually happened you were with Alex Jones and Owen Shroyer. Am I right?

A [Nonverbal response]

Q When did you come to know that you were going to make that movement, walk with them, those two particular men? Was it just the morning of January 6th, or had that always been the plan, that the three of you together would walk up there?

A There was no plan for Owen to walk with us.

Q okay.

A I don’t know when there was a plan. I wouldn’t even call it a plan. The idea that Roger Stone, myself, and Alex Jones would go at the end of Trump’s speech and position ourselves at the front of the overflow crowd and figuring out how logistically that worked so we didn’t have to go out the same exit as everybody was something that Caroline Wren first proposed to me — don’t know when — and I thought, okay, cool idea.

Q But before the morning of the 6th?

A Certainly we talked about the idea, yeah.

Q Okay. And did you ever talk with Mr. Jones about this before the morning of the 6th, this plan to march or walk, whatever you call it?

A I’m not sure

Q Is it possible you did and you just don’t remember?

A It’s possible.

Q Is Mr. Jones someone you would speak to on the phone, only in person, or what was the nature of the relationship?

A Yeah, would speak on the phone. I appeared on his show a few times. I could call a security guard if couldn’t get ahold of his head of security. I could call if didn’t get ahold of Alex.

Q Is that Tim Enlow?

A I know his name is Tim.

Q Okay. And for the record, E-n-l-o-w. And what do you remember before January 6th about Mr. Jones telling you, if you do remember anything, about walking from the Ellipse to the Capitol? Do you remember him saying anything about that event?

A No

Q All right. So you’ve never heard it from his lips to you that he spoke with someone in the White House or Trump about him walking from the Ellipse to the Capitol?

A don’t recall anything like that.

Q Okay. Now, are you aware that he said publicly that that happened, that he had that he was told by Trump to walk from the Capitol from the Ellipse to the Capitol?

A I’m not aware of that. Alex is prone to exaggeration and/or could have been referencing Caroline Wren.

Q Understood. When it comes to Mr. Stone, do you know — he has said publicly that he was told, whether by Trump or the White House, that he was going to lead or be a part of leading the walk from the Ellipse to the Capitol. Are you aware that he said that publicly?

A I believe so.

Q All right. Did he ever talk to you about that before January 6th, what his thoughts or what his beliefs were about what was going to happen in terms of that march?

A Not to the best of my recollection.

Q So whether anybody –whether Trump or the White House told him that he was going to be part of that march?

A Again, I think this was an idea, as best that I understood it, that originated with Caroline, pinged off me, I said okay, and then was given to Alex and Roger, if it was given to them at all. I could have given –I could have talked to them about it.

Q That’s why we’re asking.

A Okay. Yeah, l don’t know.

Q We’re trying to understand.

A Yeah. And don’t know what the play byplay of all of that was.

The Report doesn’t rely on any of this blather from Alexander for its conclusion that Wren is probably the one who requested that Jones et al lead the mob to the Capitol. They rely primarily on Wren, and an Alex Jones broadcast that should be treated with the same reliability as his claims that Sandy Hook victims were crisis actors.

It is likely that both got that idea from Caroline Wren, a Republican fundraiser who helped organize the Ellipse event.111 Jones texted Wren at 12:27 p.m., asking when he should leave the Ellipse and begin the march.112 While Wren originally expected Jones, Roger Stone, and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn to march to the Capitol, Stone did not attend the Ellipse rally and so he was not present to accompany Jones on the march as planned.113 Additionally, while President Trump was delivering his speech, Wren askedFlynn if he was going to march with Jones. Flynn responded, “Hell, no. It’s freezing.”114

While Stone and Flynn did not march, Jones and Alexander led others to the Capitol, though it is not clear how many people followed them.115

112. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Deposition of Alexander Jones, (Jan. 24, 2022), Ex. 13 at 0:29 (Excerpt from The Alex Jones Show on Jan. 7, 2022); Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Caroline Wren Production), REVU_000475 (Jan. 6, 2021, Alex Jones text message to Caroline Wren); Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Caroline Wren Production), REVU_000484 (Jan. 5, 2021, Tim Enlow text message to Caroline Wren).

113. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Deposition of Caroline Wren, (Dec. 17, 2021), p. 244.

114. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Deposition of Caroline Wren, (Dec. 17, 2021), p. 244.

Perhaps they found Wren more credible than Alexander, which she is. Except according to her version, it would be impossible for Alexander to have floated the idea to Stone and Jones, because in her telling, he was added on at the last minute, and not because he was a key part of Jones’ retinue, but because he had a rally to run.

Q But, at some point, you have conversations with Alex Jones or All Alexander, right, about how are you going to get them out of the VIP area so they can get to the Capitol?

A Right

Q And what do those discussions include?

A Alex wanted to go with Roger Stone. Ali wasn’t really a part of that Ali — so now — I didn’t really get the sense that Ali and Alex like knew each other very well or — like, it was never a group text. Like, the conversations were kind of isolated. So I  just never — they may be very good friends, they might not know each other. So — but Alex Jones’ expectation was that he and Roger Stone would lead a march from the Ellipse to their rally at the Capitol. That also was Ali’s rally or something. And — but ~ and they’d asked about like directions or things to do. And those were things I never could get or did get answers to. [my emphasis]

I won’t get into all the ways that this testimony is inconsistent with the relationship that Wren described that she had with Alexander, or the reasons why.

Just understand, for the moment, that the J6C conclusion that the White House requested this probably came from her is not consistent with the documentary or testimonial record and comes in the face of Jones and Stone refusing to cooperate and the fact that everyone was lying about Signal text communications, including known “group texts” of the sort that Wren disavows possibility of.

More importantly, because J6C was so determined to come up with some conclusion about who directed Jones to lead the mob to the Capitol, it ignored several things.

First, even ignoring Roger Stone’s likely role in all this, Alexander told J6C he had another White House source: Garrett Ziegler. In fact, his attribution of stuff to Wren came specifically with a disavowal of Ziegler’s role in all this.

The person that talked to was Caroline Wren, and to make a duplicative effort to me would seem a waste of resources or my time. I talk to hundreds of people probably a day. I mean, I was like the busiest person in America. I know some people don’t like that, but a lot of other people love it. And another gentleman I talked to at the White House was — and we did talk about election integrity, but I don’t recall talking about the 6th – Garrett Ziegler, who worked for Mr. Navarro. And I know we talked about election integrity. I don’t recall talking to him about the 6th or the 5th. And I don’t see how he would be in any authority to kind of do anything like that.

Alexander did attribute his understanding of events about January 6 in December to Ziegler, however.

Q So, on December 19th, what people from the White House were you in contact with?

A I don’t know who I was referencing. Mary [sic] — maybe it was Garrett Ziegler.

Q I don’t see Garrett Ziegler in any of your productions. Was it a phone call –

A We

Q I was going to say was it a phone call, was it a text message, or was it an email?

A I believe having the phone call with him. I don’t remember receiving any emails from him.

Ziegler, recall, was the guy who let Mike Flynn and Sidney Powell into the White House on December 18, hours before Trump first tweeted about the January 6 event that Alexander was (per his own testimony) already planning.

In spite of the possibility that Ziegler was another White House contact with Alexander during this period, in his own deposition — scheduled in July, at a time when J6C would have had a much clearer idea of the problems with Alexander’s testimony, especially — no one asked him about Alexander (or Jones or Stone), at all. To be sure, Ziegler invoked the Fifth about everything. He wouldn’t have answered any questions in any case. But neither in Alexander’s deposition nor in Ziegler’s do they pursue the possibility that he might have had a more central role in this than they let on (though there are a few others that’s true of as well).

What I’m interested in is the more alarming possibility: that Alexander’s request for five minute updates on Trump played a part in execution that day.

As noted above, the report does not mention that Alexander asked Wren for five minute updates on the movements of the President.

It also does not mention that at 12:59, Wren texted Alexander and told him “POTUS not walking.”

Q Thats fine. We saw a text message earlier you saw where Caroline Wren told you

A What time was it at?

Q 12:59, POTUS not walking. Do you remember that?

J6C uses this to establish that when Alex Jones used the promise that Trump would speak on the East side of the building to lure people to form a second front, Alexander, at least, had the expectation Trump would not come (though that overstates things — this text would have been before the confrontation in the limo and this text could have meant only that Trump was not walking but might ride to the Capitol).

But they ignore another possibility: that Alexander and Jones and Owen Shroyer (the latter of whom now shares an attorney with Joe Biggs) were relaying updates to people at the Capitol.

The report does lay out, for example, how much traffic was passing between the Jones group and the Proud Boys based on the limited telephony call records they managed to obtain (though it rather infuriatingly doesn’t provide the times of these communications).

Proud Boys were among the crowd Jones gathered during his march. Matthew Walter, president of a Tennessee chapter of the organization,122 was near the National Mall with two other Proud Boys from Tennessee and decided to join Jones.123 Other, more prominent members of the Proud Boys appear to have been in contact with Jones and Shroyer about the events of January 6th and on that day. Records for Enrique Tarrio’s phone show that while the attack on the Capitol was ongoing, he texted with Jones three times and Shroyer five times.124 Ethan Nordean’s phone records reflect that he exchanged 23 text messages with Shroyer between January 4th and 5th, and that he had one call with him on each of those days.125 Records of Joseph Biggs’s communications show that he texted with Shroyer eight times on January 4th and called him at approximately 11:15 a.m. on January 6th, while Biggs and his fellow Proud Boys were marching at and around the Capitol.126

122. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Deposition of Matthew Walter, (Mar. 9, 2022), p. 78.

123. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Deposition of Matthew Walter, (Mar. 9, 2022), p. 75.

124. Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Google Voice Production, Feb. 25, 2022).

125. Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Verizon Production, Nov. 19, 2021).

126. Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (AT&T Production, Nov. 24, 2021).

And this summary of communications does not include comms using other than telephony (like Signal texts or radios).

At the very least, the information Wren passed to Alexander may have influenced Jones’ decision to hold up at Freedom Plaza for a period, before continuing on to the Capitol. But given the solid evidence that former Infowars employee Biggs was coordinating with this group, it seems likely that Alexander’s information got shared with those modulating the attack on the Capitol.

In other words, it’s not just that someone asked Alex Jones to lead the mob to the Capitol. It’s not just that, when he arrived, Alex Jones moved them to the East side where hundreds played a role in the second major front of the attack. But it’s that Jones and Alexander easily could have relayed information from those handling Trump to those handling the mob at the Capitol.

For a year, I’ve been describing how the relationship between the Proud Boys and Alex Jones’ crew was a pivot between the mob and the President, one through which DOJ could charge a conspiracy with those who attacked cops and stormed the Capitol. That’s all pending the outcome of the Proud Boy Leader trial, opening arguments for which start this week. It’s a complex trial and I have no idea what to expect.

As J6C releases transcripts, we’ve learned that Jones’ role was even more central than I imagined. While J6C doesn’t focus enough on the role of the Stop the Steal events in posing a real threat to legislators who ignored Trump, the transcripts do reveal more details about how Alexander deployed that threat. Jones was central to Julie Fancelli’s decision to fund the event. According to Alexander, about a third of the mob were Jones’ fans. In spite of months of effort, J6C was never able to explain how or who gave the order to Jones to lead the mob to the Capitol (and the Ziegler silence and the Stone disinterest are not the only gaps in their efforts to explain it so far).

J6C’s failure to answer that question was largely attributable to the efforts, by virtually all those personally involved, to obstruct the investigation. DOJ has some, but not unlimited, tools to overcome such obstruction (including several cooperating witnesses from both primary militia conspiracies and full exploitation of several phones involved, including those of Enrique Tarrio and Owen Shroyer).

Jones’ (and Alexander’s and Stone’s) roles look just as important to understanding the plan on January 6 as they did a year ago. But there’s even more reason to believe that Jones was not just a dumb guy with a megaphone leading sheep to slaughter. Jones and Alexander were in a position to help those kicking off the attack account for the involvement — or not — of the President.

Back-up material

Ali Alexander: Live tweet; December 9, 2021 transcript

Julie Fancelli: Live tweet; February 18, 2022 transcript

Alex Jones: January 24, 2022 transcript

Charlie Kirk: May 24, 2022 transcript

Roger Stone: December 17, 2021 transcript

Caroline Wren: Live tweet; December 17, 2021 transcript

Garret Ziegler: Post; July 19, 2022 transcript


The Money Trail Stuck in an Appendix of the January 6 Report

Several weeks before the January 6 Committee released its report, CNN published a somewhat overlooked report describing the investigation that Jack Smith has inherited. Among other things, it revealed that (as Merrick Garland had promised) DOJ was following the money.

Another top prosecutor, JP Cooney, the former head of public corruption in the DC US Attorney’s Office, is overseeing a significant financial probe that Smith will take on. The probe includes examining the possible misuse of political contributions, according to some of the sources. The DC US Attorney’s Office, before the special counsel’s arrival, had examined potential financial crimes related to the January 6 riot, including possible money laundering and the support of rioters’ hotel stays and bus trips to Washington ahead of January 6.

In recent months, however, the financial investigation has sought information about Trump’s post-election Save America PAC and other funding of people who assisted Trump, according to subpoenas viewed by CNN. The financial investigation picked up steam as DOJ investigators enlisted cooperators months after the 2021 riot, one of the sources said.

Given the report that DOJ already has a robust investigation into the money trail, was a bit surprised that the January 6 Committee not only didn’t refer Trump for financial crimes — an easier way to look smart than referring him for inciting insurrection when DOJ has charged no one with insurrection — but relegated the financial part of the report to an appendix. I thought that choice was especially odd given that the false claims Trump made about the Big Lie were repurposed in campaign ads. But among other things, because Alex Cannon (he of the good Maggie Haberman press on the stolen document case) happened to be assigned both to debunking claims of voter fraud generally and he was part of the ad approval process (but as someone who had been doing vendor relations for Trump golf courses until shortly before he moved to the campaign,  he was totally unprepared to deal with campaign finance law), you have a witness otherwise exposed in DOJ investigations who recognized the fundraising claims could not be substantiated.

Q Okay. Did you have discussions with anyone within the campaign about the inflammatory tone of the post-election emails?

A Yeah. mean, I did mention it to Justin Clark.

Q What did you say to him?

A That, you know, I just didn’t love the messaging, something along those lines.

Q What was the issue you had with the messaging?

A I think it’s just some of it seemed a little over the top to me.

Q Because you had just spent weeks researching and looking and trying to figure out what was verifiable and what wasn’t right?

A Yes, maam.

Q You had had face-to-face conversations with Mark Meadows, with Peter Navarro, with the Vice President. You’d been told to your face you’d been accused of) being an agent of the deep state in response to telling people the truth about what you were seeing in terms of election fraud that was verifiable or would be admissible in court, hadn’t you?

A Yes

Q And, in response to all of the truth that you were propounding to people, you watched for weeks as the ton of these email got stronger and more inflammatory, raising millions — hundreds of million dollars off of theories that you had spent weeks debunking and denying because you had found that they were not verifiable, right?

A I can see how you would draw that conclusion.

As one of the J6C hearings had noted — and as the appendix lays out in more depth — Trump continued to fundraise until the riot kicked off on January 6.

Within the campaign, there was a really junior staffer who got fired, seemingly because he refused to make false claims in ads.

In that meeting, as Coby addressed the staff and expressed that the digital team would continue to work, Ethan Katz, an RNC staffer in his early twenties, rose to ask a question: 130 How were staffers supposed to tell voters that the Trump Campaign wanted to keep countingvotes in Arizona but stop counting votes in other States (like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Michigan)? 131

Katz said that Coby provided an answer without substance, which caused Katz to reiterate his question. His question made clear that the Campaign’s position was wildly inconsistent.132 Allred and Boedigheimer corroborated that Katz confronted leadership.133

Katz also recalled that, shortly after the election, Allred directed him to write an email declaring that President Trump had won the State of Pennsylvania before anyone had called Pennsylvania for either party.134 Katz believed the Trump Campaign wanted to send this email out to preempt apotential call that was likely to be in former Vice President Biden’s favor.135 He refused to write the email. Allred was stunned, and instead assigned it toanother copywriter.136 Allred confirmed that Katz expressed discomfort at writing such an email and that she relied on another copywriter.137 On November 4, 2020, the Trump Campaign sent out an email preemptively and falsely declaring that President Trump won Pennsylvania.138 Katz was fired approximately three weeks after the election.139 In aninterview with the Select Committee, when Allred was asked why Katz, her direct report, was fired, she explained that she was not sure why because TMAGAC was raising more money than ever after the election, but that the decision was not hers to make.140

The RNC simply stopped echoing all the claims Trump was making.

Allred and Katz both received direction from the RNC’s lawyers shortly after the election to not say “steal the election” and instead were told to use “try to steal the election.”94 Allred also recalled that, at some point, theRNC legal team directed the copywriters not to use the term “rigged.”95

After the media called the election for former Vice President Joe Biden on Saturday, November 7, 2020, the RNC began to quietly pull back from definitive language about President Trump having won the election and instead used language of insinuation. For example, on November 10, 2020, Justin Reimer, RNC’s then-chief counsel, revised a fundraising email sent to the Approvals Group to remove the sentence that “Joe Biden should not wrongfully claim the office of the President.”96 Instead, Reimer indicated the email should read, “Joe Biden does not get to decide when this election ends. Only LEGAL ballots must be counted and verified.”97 Both Alex Cannon and Zach Parkinson signed off on Reimer’s edits.98

On November 11, 2020, Reimer again revised a fundraising email sent to the Approvals Group. This time, he revised a claim that “President Trump won this election by a lot” to instead state that “President Trump got 71 MILLION LEGAL votes.”99 Once again Cannon and Parkinson signed off on Reimer’s edits.100 Also on November 11, 2020, Jenna Kirsch, associate counsel at the RNC, revised a fundraising email sent to the Approvals Group to, among other things, remove the request “to step up and contribute to our critical Election Defense Fund so that we can DEFEND the Election and secure FOUR MORE YEARS.”101 Instead of “secure FOUR MORE YEARS,” Kirsch’s revised version stated a contribution would “finish the fight.”102 Once again Cannon and Parkinson signed off on these edits for the Trump Campaign.103 Regarding the change to finish the fight, Zambrano conceded, “I would say this a substantive change from the legal department.”104 Kirsch made numerous edits like this, in which she removed assertions about “four more years.”105 Such edits continued into late November 2020.

Even so, the fundraising emails from both the campaign and the RNC got more and more incendiary in the weeks after the election, so much so that the direct mail services for both, Iterable and Salesforce, rejected some ads for Terms of Service violations, and actually shut down RNC ads for a brief period after the attack.

The Select Committee interviewed an individual (“J. Doe”) who worked at Salesforce during the post-election period during which TMAGAC was sending out the fundraising emails concerning false election fraud claims.147 Doe worked for Salesforce’s privacy and abuse management team, colloquially known as the abuse desk.148 An abuse desk is responsible for preventing fraud and abuse emanating from the provider’s user or subscriber network.

Doe indicated to the Select Committee that, as soon as early 2020, they recalled issues arising with the RNC’s use of Salesforce’s services and that a“deluge of abuse would’ve started in June-ish.”149 Doe noted that Salesforce received a high number of complaints regarding the RNC’s actions, which would have been primarily the fundraising efforts of TMAGAC.150 In the latter half of 2020, Doe noticed that the emails coming from the RNC’s account included more and more violent and inflammatory rhetoric in violation of Salesforce’s Master Service Agreement (“MSA”) with the RNC, which prohibited the use of violent content.151 Doe stated that, near the time of the election, they contacted senior individuals at Salesforce to highlight the “increasingly concerning” emails coming from the RNC’s account.152 Doe explained that senior individuals at Salesforce effectively ignored their emails about TMAGAC’s inflammatory emails 153 and Salesforce ignored the terms of the MSA and permitted the RNC to continue touse its account in this problematic manner.154 Doe said, “Salesforce very obviously didn’t care about anti-abuse.”155

[snip]

Further, J. Doe, the Salesforce employee interviewed by the Select Committee, provided insight into the action that Salesforce took after the attack. Doe explained that after they became aware of the ongoing attack, they (Doe) took unilateral action to block the RNC’s ability to send emails through Salesforce’s platform.227 Doe noted that the shutdown lasted until January 11, 2021, when senior Salesforce leadership directed Doe to remove the block from RNC’s Salesforce account.228 Doe stated that Salesforce leadership told Doe that Salesforce would now begin reviewing RNC’s email campaigns to “make sure this doesn’t happen again.”229

Remember: The RNC successfully fought a subpoena from the J6C, which kept Salesforce information out of the hands of the Committee. They would have no such opportunity with a d-order from DOJ, though, and those records would show the same kind of awareness at Salesforce as Twitter and Facebook had that permitting Trump’s team to abuse the platform contributed to the violence.

After raising all this money, Trump reportedly then used it for purposes not permitted under campaign finance laws.

There was even a hilarious exchange from a Cannon deposition about how, as a lawyer working for the campaign, he could claim privilege over a discussion with Jared Kushner about setting up a PAC that could not coordinate with the campaign.

The appendix in the report has more details about where the funds eventually ended up — for example, in Dan Scavino’s pocket, or that of Melania’s dress-maker, or legal defense in investigations of these very crimes.

For example, from July 2021 to the present, Save America has been paying approximately $9,700 per month to Dan Scavino,171 a political adviser who served in the Trump administration as White House Deputy Chief of Staff.172 Save America was also paying $20,000 per month to an entity called Hudson Digital LLC. Hudson Digital LLC was registered in Delaware twenty days after the attack on the Capitol, on January 26, 2021,173 and began receiving payments from Save America on the day it was registered.174 Hudson Digital LLC has received payments totaling over $420,000, all described as “Digital consulting.”175 No website or any other information or mention of Hudson Digital LLC could be found online.176 Though Hudson Digital LLC is registered as a Delaware company, the FEC ScheduleB listing traces back to an address belonging to Dan and Catherine Scavino.177

[snip]

Through October 2022, Save America has paid nearly $100,000 in “strategy consulting” payments to Herve Pierre Braillard,195 a fashion designer who has been dressing Melania Trump for years.196

[snip]

From January 2021 to June 2022, Save America has also reported over $2.1 million in “legal consulting.” Many firms perform different kinds of practice, but more than 67% of those funds went to law firms that are representing witnesses involved in the Select Committee’s investigation whowere subpoenaed or invited to testify.

CNN’s report notes that on the financial side of the investigation, DOJ has acquired some cooperating witnesses (the Report hints at who those might include — and Cannon seems to have exposure on the obstruction side of the investigation even while getting good press for refusing to certify Trump’s production to NARA on the stolen document side).

On top of being an entirely different kind of crime, the financial trail may be one area where it is easier to show pushback on Trump’s false claims.

But J6C didn’t include that in its referrals, perhaps in part because Trump relied on the advice of one of the main GOP campaign finance firms, Jones Day, for some of the later financial decisions.

In any case, it turns out (as with many parts of the investigation) DOJ has quietly been investigating this for some time. Which may make the financial side of the Trump’s claims a key part of proof available about his campaign’s awareness that he was lying.


Michigan’s Fake Electors’ Transcripts Limn Black Holes into January 6

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Back in January this year I looked at Michigan’s fake electors who signed a false certification of election claiming Trump won in November 2020.

All of the signatories were key members of the Michigan GOP. Two in particular were subpoenaed by the House January 6 Committee for documents and testimony: Kathy Berden, who at the time was MIGOP’s national committee person to the Republican National Committee, and Mayra Rodriguez, then MIGOP’s 14th District chair for Grosse Pointe Farms.

Among the documents the J6 Committee released earlier this week were the transcripts for these two individuals’ testimony.

Rodriguez took the Fifth Amendment more than 20 times, refusing to answer questions put to her.

Berden pled the Fifth Amendment more than 70 times.

While pleading the Fifth Amendment means only that one does not wish to incriminate themselves, refusing to provide answers in any way related to rather simple questions which might be answered by others or by other evidence can only cast doubt on one’s credibility.

The number of times each witness pled the Fifth may not be indicative of a specific problem with one witness over the other, but one might wonder if Rodriguez’s earlier testimony affected questioning of Berden a few weeks later.

The transcript for Rodriguez’s testimony was 31 pages. Berden’s testimony came in at 28 pages.

Pleading the Fifth more often may have shortened the volume of material transcribed for Berden.

Here’s a comparison of the two MIGOP fake electors’ testimony — limited to and focusing on one question in particular — which may hint at directions in which the J6 Committee was headed.

Witness: Mayra Rodriguez

Witness: Kathy Berden

Subpoenaed January 28, 2022

Subpoenaed January 28, 2022

Testified February 22, 2022 – total 28 pages

Testified March 11, 2022 – total 31 pages

Question regarding compliance with subpoena for documents

Q: Okay. So did you search for documents? Did you look in your email, for example, for any documents that are responsive to the select committee’s subpoena?

A: Yes. I looked through my emails. I couldn’t find anything.

Q: Okay. And did you look through text messages that you may have had to look for documents responsive to the subpoena?

A: I would not have received a text. So did not look through my texts.

Q: Okay. Not even a text about, like, planning or organizing or showing up at a certain date or time?

A: I don’t believe that I received a text.

Q: Okay. What about saved documents, hard copy documents, if you had any, did you look for those?

A: Yeah. I received nothing.

Question regarding compliance with subpoena for documents

Q: Okay. Part of the subpoena asks you to produce documents to the select committee that were responsive to a schedule, a number of requests that accompanied the subpoena. Did you search for documents or provide documents to your attorneys to search and produce to the select committee?

A: Yes.

Q: Okay. And did that include documents, if any, that would’ve come from your email accounts?

A: Yes.

Q: All right. I understand you have an email account that involves your name as well as [email protected]. Was that one of the email accounts you provided your attorneys with access or searched for responsive documents?

A: Yes.

Q: Okay. And I understand you have a phone number ending in [redacted]?

A: I do.

Q: Okay.

A: I’m sorry.

Q: Did you — that’s quite all right. Nope. Thank you, Ms. Berden.

Did you look at the phone that uses that number for any responsive documents or messages to provide to the select committee?

A: Hmmm?

Mr. Columbo: May we take a moment for just a second, [redacted]

[redacted] Yes, of course.

Mr. Columbo: Ms. Berden is about to explain that, you know, we conducted a forensic examination on her behalf. So you can go ahead, but, you know, you’re getting into maybe things that are technical that happened with her permission and on her behalf.

BY [REDACTED]

Q: Okay. Understood. Was the phone that uses that phone number, did you provide that or allow this examination that Mr. Columbo just mentioned?

A: Yes.

Q: Okay. Very well. And how about any hard copy documents? Did you review or look for any hard copy documents that you may have that could be responsive to the select committee’s subpoena?

A: I can’t think of what a hard copy is.

Mr. Columbo: Thing like papers.

The Witness: Oh, I — yes.

Mr. Columbo: I guess, do you want to ask for clarification?

The Witness: Clarification, please.

[redacted] Yeah, of course.

Mr. Columbo: She wants to know what you meant by hard copy.

BY [REDACTED]

Q: Yeah, sure. I guess, I’ll — the best way to do this would be by providing an example. So we’re going to be talking about several electoral college vote certificates that you signed. I imagine a hard copy of that, of actual paper, physical copy exists somewhere in the world. So did you look to see whether you had any physical copies of documents or physical documents that would be responsive to the select committee’s subpoena?

A: I provided whatever they asked.

Q: Okay. Excellent. And we did receive one audio voicemail and one image of an address label from your attorneys, and I’ll plan to go over those with you today.

There are two things in this brief partial comparison which stand out to me.

— Rodriguez was direct and concise; she is an attorney, which may have helped her form her responses. She was interviewed before Berden, which may have shaped Berden’s later interview, but not by much.

— Berden was far from direct and concise; it’s not clear if she was deliberately waffling or if she was truly as unclear about the nature of the materials the subpoena requested. The format of the hearing over Webex may have contributed to the sense she wasn’t responding directly. A lack of instruction and guidance by her attorney may have been another factor, as it makes no sense she did not understand what she was supposed have furnished since the attorney’s office did the forensic examination of her devices and other materials for her.

— Rodriguez was asked about Berden specifically, where Berden was asked about Rodriguez in the aggregate along with other electors (transcript p. 10, 18). Rodriguez didn’t take the Fifth in relation to questions asked about Berden, but did plead the Fifth about other persons.

The big takeaway for me from these transcripts was an email address. Rodriguez wasn’t asked about a specific email address, understandably since she wasn’t the MIGOP’s national committee woman.

However, Berden had an [email protected] account based on the inquiry by the committee.

Why was Berden using a Gmail address instead of an RNC.com domain email address?

~ ~ ~

One other topic which caught my eye was the difference in communications. Some of this difference could be related to their different roles in the MIGOP, could also be related to age and expectations of how they communicate, or it could reflect a difference in what investigators already knew about communications within the conspiracy and these fake electors.

The investigators asked Rodriguez about text messages.

Q: Okay. And did you look through text messages that you may have had to look for documents responsive to the subpoena?

A: I would not have received a text. So I did not look through my texts.

Q: Okay. Not even a text about, like, planning or organizing or showing up at a certain date or time?

A: I don’t believe that I received a text.

Q: Okay. What about saved documents, hard copy documents, if you had any, did you look for those?

A: Yeah. I received nothing.

Q: All right. And as we go through this, I’ll ask you certain planning or organizing that happened. And if you do think of anything, like you have an email or a text message that you can recall as we’re going through this, I would just ask that you let us know about that. And then we can work with Mr. Blake to get any responsive documents that you end up having.

And I would ask, to the extent that you haven’t already looked through your text messages for any responsive documents, that you do so there as well.

The certainty with which Rodriguez answers is odd and interesting since the investigators asked Berden about all documents but not about text messages in the way they did Rodriguez.

Further, there’s an immaculate handoff of the fake election certificate.

Investigators didn’t nail down in her deposition how Rodriguez was notified and by whom that a fake slate of electors would sign a fake certification. She had nothing in her documents, nothing by text. She doesn’t need plead the Fifth about how she came to be involved; she only pleads when it comes to the reason she was supposed to participate. She doesn’t know any key persons and doesn’t have to take the Fifth as to whether she knows them, but she was still somehow in the loop to participate in the fake slate.

Rodriguez knows there are no-shows for the fake elector slate, but knows nothing of why — we don’t learn from her why two intended electors including the former secretary of state Terri Lynn Land aren’t part of the fake slate. She does plead the Fifth when it comes to who arranged for their replacements though she knows nothing of who organized the December 14 meeting place and time for the meeting of fake electors.

Rodriguez pled the Fifth when asked if she had “any paperwork that you brought with you, namely electoral college vote certificates or affidavits?” The implication is that she has papers at this point, but she had nothing responsive later to the committee’s subpoena whether hard copy or digital.

Again, this is an implication since she refused to confirm this, but it looks as if Rodriguez had documents at the signing on December 14. Was her problem with this question that she doesn’t want to reveal she had them on arrival, or that she received them from others for her signature that day, or something else?

On page 14 Rodriguez says she didn’t “didn’t speak with anyone from out of state.” Yet on page 15 she says she was told to leave her phone in her car on December 14, she says when asked who instructed her, “It would have been a MIGOP staff member.” She volunteers the name Tony Zammit when asked which MIGOP staffer it might have been. This person may have been MIGOP’s Communications Director at the time. (Their identity needs to be solidified because there is a Tony Zammit who ran for a Wisconsin state assembly seat in 2016.)*

Rodriguez then takes the Fifth when asked if Zammit had the documents for the fake electors’ certification.

Okay, then.

There was a consciousness about phones in relation to the day the electors both fake and genuine signed their respective fake and real certification of election. As indicated above, Rodriguez had to leave her phone in the car.

Berden, however, isn’t asked about her phone’s location on December 14. She’s asked instead about a photograph of a mailing address which was found on her phone, produced and submitted to the committee the day before her testimony; Berden takes the Fifth as to why she took the photo.

The context of this question about the photo followed questions about the fake certification mailed to the National Archivist with Berden’s mailing address on it. She’d taken the Fifth about that as well.

Berden’s memory goes fuzzy about a voicemail she received from her sister-in-law who’d called to say, “I have a couple that’s very interested in going to the meeting in Washington, D.C, on January 6th.” She doesn’t recall what that was about but she recalls she didn’t “didn’t answer — re-answer her phone message.” And of course she takes the Fifth as to whether she knew about anything going on in D.C. on January 6.

Berden’s attorney mentions the investigators have the information as to when Berden received that call from her sister-in-law because they’d furnished metadata to the committee “via the electronic vendor.”

It felt like Berden’s attorney was trying to dig his client out of a hole at that point. It was pretty deep after she knew so little, pled the Fifth so much, with the little nits like the voicemail and photo proving she knew far more.

~ ~ ~

In spite of the immaculate handoff and all the stringent avoidance of self incrimination, these two witnesses and likely targets did offer up some details about the conspiracy, while the transcript gives us a peek at a bread crumb trail to find and follow the documents.

Does an [email protected] account explain consistencies and inconsistencies between the states which attempted to field fake electors, and why there are few responsive documents in hard or digital copy?

Does the same [email protected] account suggest communications between conspirators may have been conducted through foldering in a shared account?

Did the MIGOP’s office itself play a larger role — in other words this was not a rogue program run by crackpot party members but the entirety of the state party was involved in some way with only a few lone holdouts?

__________

* Sentence in parentheses added after publication; it had been dropped during editing.


December 27: The January 6 Committee’s Blind Spots

The January 6 Committee Report is out.

As many people have pointed out, the report focuses on Donald Trump, telling the story about how he riled up a mob with The Big Lie and then did nothing as they launched a terrorist attack on the Capitol and those within in, especially Trump’s Vice President.

But even in telling a story about Donald Trump, the report has glaring blind spots. Some of those blind spots were created by the limits on the Committee’s investigative authorities, some were created by the Committee’s (perhaps resultant) limited understanding of the attack.

To demonstrate those blind spots, I wanted to show what the report includes in the body of the report about December 27 (some of these may be out of order and I need to clean it up, but this will be a useful demonstration). Here are things that happened on December 27, 2020:

  • Bernie Kerik publicly attacks Pat Toomey for opposing fraud (the Report ties this attacks to physical threats against officials opposed to Trump’s fraud)
  • Mark Meadows continues to pressure Georgia
  • Doug Mastriano speaks to Trump and feeds members of Congress bullshit
  • Trump attempts to get Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Donoghue to endorse his fraud message and — failing that — threatens to replace Rosen
  • With Trump’s blessing, Louie Gohmert files suit against Mike Pence
  • Trump pardons Stone and they talk about January 6
  • Trump gets more involved in planning January 6, which leads to a plan to have his supporters march on the Capitol and then a plan for him to march
  • The FBI creates a system to collect threats related to the “election certification” on January 6 by using a tag, “CERTUNREST

Some of these events (such as the Louie Gohmert lawsuit) were obviously in the work before December 27, but this provides a good read of where the parallel strands of the attack were on that particular day.

But given what we know, the far most important event of the day was the increased involvement by the White House in January 6. This was the moment the plans for January 6 started becoming a plan for a coup.

As you look at what gets included in the report, however, you get a sense of how little the Committee learned about how that happened.

In one section, the report notes that that’s the day Trump pardoned Roger Stone and — probably at the same face-to-face meeting at Mar-a-Lago — discussed plans for January 6, including a plan for Trump to speak.

In another section, the report notes that a former staffer named Justin Caporale was asked to get involved in planning the day and also that during a dinner with Jr and Kimberly Guilfoyle, Guilfoyle called Carolyn Wren and learned about the busses and other plans for the day. That’s what led to an increased White House focus on January 6. But because the Committee couldn’t get the comms from key participants, they can’t tell you how much planning happened or with whom.

The report doesn’t provide a timeline for how those three events happened: Stone, Caporale, Wren (indeed, this is one area where the report’s selectivity about when to include metadata for communications and when not to is infuriating, because we can’t even make that timeline now). We learn only that Wren texted Guilfoyle at 7:10PM. That obscurity is especially troubling, because Wren was in touch with people who were in touch with Stone, and the report actually relies on a story about Stone for part of its narrative about the Guilfoyle-Wren conversation. (The report’s discussion of the ties between Alex Jones, Wren, the militias, and Stone, is particularly weak; while that is no doubt a reflection of the limited tools the committee had to obtain materials from those who did not cooperate, the committee also eschewed primary sources that would have provided background that would be critical to that story.) It admits that non-cooperation from Meadows, Dan Scavino, and Caporale thwarted the Committee’s own efforts to build out this timeline. Elsewhere, it calls into question of the key witnesses involved, including both Max Miller and Tony Ornato, on whose its awareness of expanded planning relies.

We simply don’t know how it happened that the plans for January 6 began to focus much more on an attack on the Capitol.

We do know the FBI finally recognized it as a threat. We do know that members of Congress were overtly attacking the election (and Pence), in the form of the lawsuit against Pence.

And we know that the most important detail of the longest passage involving December 27 (as well as significant focus in the executive summary), of the discussions between Trump and top DOJ officials, involved the instruction, “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressmen.” He said that, though, on a day when people like Kerik were beginning to ratchet up the pressure, with implicit threats, against GOP members of Congress who would refuse to go along.

The report focuses far more on proving that Trump was pushing fraudulent claims than laying out how Trump’s plans turned to a coup.

All that work on the Big Lie is important (and accessible to a committee without the ability to serve warrants for content). It is largely a measure of the cooperation the committee got — from Jeffrey Rosen but not from Stone, access to Cassidy Hutchinson’s second-hand knowledge of these events because Caporale was limiting his own cooperation and Meadows and Scavino provided none.

But it should come with a focus on the blind spots that remain, which happen to be the blind spots about the people who could have coordinated Trump’s own plans with those of the armed mob.

Update: This, from the deposition of Robert Peede, describe the calls referred to in the report. Peede was with Trump in Mar-a-Lago at the time of these calls.

5:16PM: Robert Peede to Max Miller (10 minutes)

5:51PM Trump tweet

6:19PM: Peede to Miller (3 minutes)

6:22?PM: Miller to Justin Caporale (<10 minutes)

Miller to Peede (2 minutes)

Peede to Ornato (3 minutes)

7:10: Wren to Guilfoyle text


Bernie Kerik attacks a Member of Congress opposed to Trump’s fraud

On December 27th, Kerik suggested that Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) was “corrupt” and said that “for any Pennsylvania official to certify their vote, it’s malfeasance and criminal.”290 That was entirely consistent with Kerik’spast tweets about the election, one of which apparently called public officials “who betrayed” President Trump “spineless disloyal maggots.”291 It wasn’t just rhetoric, however, because, as described below, people showed-up outside certain officials’ home—sometimes menacingly—and, of course, showed up at the Capitol on January 6th.

[snip]

Mark Meadows pressures Georgia

Four days later, Meadows texted Deputy Secretary of State Fuchs, in which he asked, “[i]s there a way to speed up Fulton county signature verification in order to have results before Jan 6 if the trump campaign assist[s] financially.”242 Fuchs wrote in response that she “Will answer ASAP.”243

[snip]

Doug Mastriano feeds bullshit to Trump and others in Congress

Mastriano also sent emails indicating that he spoke with President Trump on December 27th, 28th, and 30th, along with files that President Trump had requested or that he had promised to him.267

[snip]

Trump attempts to get Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Donoghue to buy his fraud message and — failing that — threatens to replace Rosen

On December 27, 2020, President Trump called Acting Attorney General Rosen once again. At some point during the lengthy call, Rosen asked that Acting Deputy Attorney General Donoghue be conferenced in.116 According to Donoghue’s contemporaneous notes, Trump referenced three Republican politicians, all of whom had supported the President’s election lies and the“Stop the Steal” campaign.117 One was Representative Scott Perry. Another was Doug Mastriano, a State senator from Pennsylvania who would later beon the grounds of the U.S. Capitol during the January 6th attack.118 President Trump also referenced Representative Jim Jordan from Ohio, praising him as a “fighter.”119 Representatives Perry and Jordan had often teamed up to spread lies about the election. The two spoke at a “Stop the Steal” rally in front of the Pennsylvania State capitol in Harrisburg, just days after the November election.120 The pair also pressed their conspiratorial case during interviews with friendly media outlets.121

President Trump made a “stream of allegations” during the December 27th call.122 As reflected in his notes, Donoghue considered the call to be an“escalation of the earlier conversations,” with the President becoming more adamant that “we weren’t doing our job.”123 President Trump trafficked in “conspiracy theories” he had heard from others, and Donoghue sought to “make it clear to the President these allegations were simply not true.”124 Donoghue sought to “correct” President Trump “in a serial fashion as he moved from one theory to another.”125

The President returned to the discredited ASOG report, which former Attorney General Barr had already dismissed as complete nonsense. ASOG had claimed—based on no evidence—that the Dominion voting machines in Antrim County, Michigan had suffered from a 68 percent error rate. As noted above and in Chapter 1, that was not close to being true.

Bipartisan election officials in Antrim County completed a hand recount of all machine-processed ballots on December 17, 2020, which should have ended the lies about Dominion’s voting machines.126 The net difference between the machine count and the hand recount was only 12 out of 15,718total votes.127 The machines counted just one vote more for former Vice President Biden than was tallied during the hand recount.128 Donoghue informed the President that he “cannot and should not be relying on” ASOG’s claim, because it was “simply not true.”129 This did not stop the President from later repeating the debunked allegation multiple times, including during his January 6th speech at the Ellipse.130

Acting Deputy Attorney General Donoghue debunked a “series” of other conspiracy theories offered by President Trump during the December 27th call as well. One story involved a truck driver “who claimed to have moved an entire tractor trailer of ballots from New York to Pennsylvania.”131 There was no truth to the story. The FBI “interviewed witnesses at the front end and the back end of” the truck’s transit route, “looked at loading manifests,” questioned the truck driver, and concluded that there were no ballots in the truck.132

President Trump then returned to the conspiracy theory about voting inDetroit. Former Attorney General Barr had already debunked the claim that a massive number of illegal votes had been dumped during the middle of the night, but the President would not let it go. President Trump alleged that someone “threw the poll watchers out,” and “you don’t even need to look at the illegal aliens voting—don’t need to. It’s so obvious.”133 The President complained that the “FBI will always say there’s nothing there,”because while the Special Agents (“the line guys”) supported him, the Bureau’s leadership supposedly did not.134 This was inconsistent with Donoghue’s view.135 But President Trump complained that he had “made some bad decisions on leadership” at the FBI.136

President Trump also “wanted to talk a great deal about Georgia, [and] the State Farm Arena video,” claiming it was “fraud staring you right in the face.”137 President Trump smeared Ruby Freeman, a Georgia election worker who was merely doing her job, as a “Huckster” and an “Election scammer.”138 President Trump said the “networks,” meaning the television networks, had “magnified the tape and saw them running them [ballots] through repeatedly.”139 The President repeated the lie that Democrats had “[c]losed the facility and then came back with hidden ballots under thet able.”140 He suggested that both Rosen and Donoghue “go to Fulton County and do a signature verification.” They would “see how illegal it is”and “find tens of thousands” of illegal ballots.141

President Trump “kept fixating” on the supposed suitcase in the video.142 But Acting Deputy Attorney General Donoghue debunked the President’s obsession. “There is no suitcase,” Donoghue made clear.143 Donoghue explained that the DOJ had looked at the video and interviewed multiple witnesses. The “suitcase” was an official lock box filled with genuine votes.144 And election workers simply did not scan ballots for former Vice President Biden multiple times.145 All of this was recorded by security cameras.146

In response to what President Trump was saying during the conversation, Rosen and Donoghue tried to make clear that the claims the President made weren’t supported by the evidence. “You guys must not be followingthe internet the way I do,” the President remarked.147 But President Trump was not finished peddling wild conspiracy theories.

The President pushed the claim that Pennsylvania had reported 205,000more votes than there were voters in the state.148 “We’ll look at whether we have more ballots in Pennsylvania than registered voters,” Acting AttorneyGeneral Rosen replied, according to Donoghue. They “[s]hould be able to check that out quickly.”149 But Rosen wanted President Trump to “understand that the DOJ can’t and won’t snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election. It doesn’t work that way.”150 “

I don’t expect you to do that,” President Trump responded. “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressmen.”151

Donoghue explained this “is an exact quote from the President.”152

“We have an obligation to tell people that this was an illegal, corrupt election,” President Trump told the DOJ team at another point in the call.153 President Trump insisted this was DOJ’s “obligation,” even though Rosenand Donoghue kept telling him there was no evidence of fraud sufficient tooverturn the outcome of the election. “We are doing our job,” Donoghue informed the President. “Much of the info you’re getting is false.”154

The call on December 27th was contentious for additional reasons. President Trump did not want to accept that the Department of Justice wasn ot an arm of his election campaign. He wanted to know why the Department did not assist in his campaign’s civil suits against States. There was asimple answer: There was no evidence to support the campaign’s claims of fraud.155

Donoghue and Rosen also “tried to explain to the President on this occasion and on several other occasions that the Justice Department has a very important, very specific, but very limited role in these elections.”156 The States “run their elections” and DOJ is not “quality control for the States.”157 DOJ has “a mission that relates to criminal conduct in relation tofederal elections” and also has “related civil rights responsibilities.”158 But DOJ cannot simply intervene to alter the outcome of an election or support a civil suit.159

When President Trump made these demands on December 27th, it wasalready crystal clear that the Department of Justice had found no evidence of systemic fraud.160 The Department simply had no reason to assert that the 2020 Presidential contest was “an illegal corrupt election.”161

“People tell me Jeff Clark is great” and that “I should put him in,” President Trump said on the call. “People want me to replace the DOJ leadership.”162 Donoghue responded “[S]ir, that’s fine, you should have the leadership you want, but understand, changing the leadership in the Department won’t change anything.”163

The President did not really care what facts had been uncovered by theDepartment of Justice. President Trump just wanted the Department to saythe election was corrupt, so he and the Republican Congressmen could exploit the statement in the days to come, including on January 6th. Andwhen Rosen and Donoghue resisted the President’s entreaties, he openly mused about replacing Rosen with someone who would do the President’s bidding. 4.8

CONGRESSMAN SCOTT PERRY CALLS DONOGHUE

Toward the end of the December 27th call, President Trump asked Donoghue for his cell number.164 Later that day, Representative Perry called Donoghue to press the President’s case.165

[snip]

Donoghue took notes during his conversation with Representative Perry and provided those notes to the Select Committee.169 The notes reflect that when Representative Perry called Donoghue on December 27th, Representative Perry explained that President Trump asked him to call and that he, Representative Perry, did not think DOJ had been doing its job on the election.170 Representative Perry brought up other, unrelated matters and argued that the “FBI doesn’t always do the right thing in all instances.”171 Representative Perry also brought up Jeff Clark. He said he liked him andthought that Clark “would do something about this,” meaning the electionfraud allegations.172

On the evening of December 27th, Representative Perry emailed Donoghue a set of documents alleging significant voting fraud had occurred inPennsylvania.173 One document asserted that election authorities had counted 205,000 more votes than had been cast.174 Representative Perry also shared this same claim on Twitter the following day.175 President Trump kept raising the same claim. Sometimes there was an alleged discrepancy of 205,000 votes, other times it was supposedly 250,000 votes.176 Either way, it was not true.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Donoghue forwarded Representative Perry’s email to Scott Brady, who was the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania at the time.177 As Brady soon discovered, there wasno discrepancy.178 President Trump’s supporters came up with the claim by comparing the Pennsylvania Secretary of State’s website, which reportedthe total number of votes as 5.25 million, to a separate State election registry, which showed only 5 million votes cast.179 The problem was simple: Pennsylvania’s election site had not been updated.180 The totals for four counties had not yet been reported on the election site. Once those votes were counted on the site, the totals matched. This was simply not an example of fraud, as President Trump, Representative Perry and others would have it.

With Trump’s blessing, Louie Gohmert files suit against Mike Pence

One of President Trump’s congressional allies, Representative Louie Gohmert (R–TX), pushed a version of Eastman’s theory in the courts. OnDecember 27, 2020, Representative Gohmert and several of the Trump Campaign’s fake electors for the State of Arizona (including Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward) filed suit against Vice President Pence in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.67 As Ward explained to Marc Short in a phone call the day the suit was filed, President Trump was aware of the lawsuit and had signed off on it: “We wouldn’t have done that without the president telling us it was okay,” she told him.68

In the suit, the Plaintiffs alleged that there were “competing slates” of electors from five States.69 They asked the court to rule that portions of theElectoral Count Act of 1887 were unconstitutional and that “the TwelfthAmendment contains the exclusive dispute resolution mechanisms” for determining an objection raised by a Member of Congress to the electors submitted by any State.70 Essentially, Representative Gohmert was askingthe court to tell Vice President Pence that he was prohibited from followingthe procedures set forth in the Electoral Count Act. Much like Eastman’s theory, the Gohmert plaintiffs asserted that the Vice President has the “exclusive authority and sole discretion” to determine which electoral votes to count.71

Although the Gohmert suit was premised on the same theory Eastman advocated, Eastman did not agree with the decision to file suit. Eastman argued that filing a suit against the Vice President had “close[ ] to zero” chance of succeeding, and there was a “very high” risk that the court would issue an opinion stating that “Pence has no authority to reject the Bidencertified ballots.”72

Trump pardons Stone and they talk about January 6

In July 2020, President Trump granted Stone clemency after he was convicted of lying to Congress and other charges.243 Then, on December 23rd, President Trump pardoned Stone.244 Several days later, at a dinner onthe evening of December 27th, Stone thanked President Trump. In a post on Parler, Stone wrote that he “thanked President Trump in person tonight forpardoning me” and also recommended to the President that he “appoint a special counsel” to stop “those who are attempting to steal the 2020 election through voter fraud.” Stone also wrote that he wanted “to ensurethat Donald Trump continues as our president.”245 Finally, he added: “#StopTheSteal” and “#rogerstonedidnothingwrong.”246 The Select Committee has learned that Stone discussed the January 6th event with the President, likely at this same dinner on December 27th.247 The President told Stone he “was thinking of speaking.”248

Trump gets more involved in planning January 6

On the evening of December 27th, President Trump boosted the upcoming event on Twitter: “See you in Washington, DC, on January 6th. Don’t miss it. Information to follow!”415 The Select Committee learned that this tweet came after the White House spoke with a former Trump staffer, Justin Caporale, who was asked to help produce the Ellipse rally.416 That same evening, the President had dinner with Donald Trump, Jr., and his girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle,417 who spoke with rally organizer Caroline Wren during the meal.418 Wren also texted Guilfoyle talking points that described her ambitions for the event, saying that “buses of people are coming in from all over the country to support you. It’s going to be huge, we are also adding in programming the night of January 5th.”419

After Guilfoyle’s call with Wren, there was a series of calls among the senior White House staff,420 likely underscoring the seriousness of the White House’s interest in the event.

Within a few days, the White House began to take a more direct role incoordinating the rally at the Ellipse.421 In a December 29th text to Wren, Caporale wrote that after the President’s planned speech there “maybe [sic] a call to action to march to the [C]apitol and make noise.”422

This is the earliest indication uncovered by the Select Committee that the President planned to call on his supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol. But it wasn’t the last. On January 2nd, rally organizer Katrina Pierson informed Wren that President Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, had said the President was going to “call on everyone to march to the [C]apitol.”423

Inside the White House, the President’s intent was well-known. Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Meadows, recalled in her testimony that she overheard discussions to this effect toward the end of December or early January. One such discussion included an exchange between Meadows andRudolph Giuliani that occurred on January 2nd.424 Hutchinson understood that President Trump wanted to have a crowd at the Capitol in connection with what was happening inside—the certification of the electoral count.425 Hutchinson also recalled that President Trump’s allies in Congress were aware of the plan. During a call with members of the House FreedomCaucus, the idea of telling people to go to the Capitol was discussed as a way to encourage Congress to delay the electoral college certification and send it back to the States.426

On January 4th, WFAF’s Kylie Kremer informed Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow and an ally of President Trump, that “POTUS is going to have us march there [the Supreme Court]/the Capitol” but emphasized that the plan“stays only between us.”427

The “Stop the Steal” coalition was aware of the President’s intent. OnJanuary 5th, Ali Alexander sent a text to a journalist saying: “Ellipse thenUS capitol [sic]. Trump is supposed to order us to the capitol [sic] at the endof his speech but we will see.”428


290. Bernard B. Kerik (@BernardKerik), Twitter, Dec. 27, 2020 11:53 a.m. ET, available at https:// twitter.com/bernardkerik/status/1343238609768501253. 291. Bernard B. Kerik (@BernardKerik), Twitter, Dec. 13, 2020 1:05 a.m. ET, available at https:// twitter.com/bernardkerik/status/1338001989846888448.

[snip]

242. Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Mark Meadows Production), MM014152 (December 27, 2020 text message at 5:18 p.m. from Mark Meadows to Jordan Fuchs). 243. Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Mark Meadows Production), MM014153 (December 27, 2020 text message at 5:20 p.m. from Jordan Fuchs to Mark Meadows).

[snip]

117. Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events07282021-000735. 118. Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events07282021-000735; Ryan Deto, “Sen. Mastriano and Former State Rep. Saccone among TrumpSupporters who Occupied U.S. Capitol,” Pittsburgh City Paper, (Jan. 6, 2021), available at https://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/sen-mastriano-and-former-state-rep-sacconeamong-trump-supporters-who-occupied-us-capitol/Content?oid=18690728; Erin Bamer, “Mastriano Defends Protest Appearance; Other GOP Lawmakers Say Little,” York Dispatch, (Jan. 7, 2021), available at https://www.yorkdispatch.com/story/news/2021/01/07/ mastriano-at-no-point-did-he-storm-us-capitol/6579049002/. 119. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), pp. 47-50; see also Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021- 000735.

120. Dan Geiter, “Rally to ‘Stop the Steal’ of the 2020 Election” PennLive, (Nov. 5, 2020) availableat https://www.pennlive.com/galleries/J3FJ24LCKVCT5OW3U2TJ6BV4RE/. 121. See, e.g., Scott Perry for Congress, “#StopTheSteal,” Facebook, November 6, 2020, available at https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=406418637058079. 122. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), pp. 47-48, 53.

123. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Hearing on the January 6th Investigation, 117th Cong., 2d sess., (June 23, 2022), available at https://www.govinfo.gov/committee/house-january6thSelect; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021-000739 (December 27, 2020, handwritten notes from Richard Donoghue about call with President Trump). 124. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Hearing on the January 6th Investigation, 117th Cong., 2d sess., (June 23, 2022), available at https://www.govinfo.gov/committee/house-january6thSelect; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021-000739 (December 27, 2020, handwritten notes from Richard Donoghue about call with President Trump). 125. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Hearing on the January 6th Investigation, 117th Cong., 2d sess., (June 23, 2022), available at https://www.govinfo.gov/committee/house-january6thSelect; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021-000739 (December 27, 2020, handwritten notes from Richard Donoghue about call with President Trump). 126. “Hand Audit of All Presidential Election Votes in Antrim County Confirms Previously Certified Results, Voting Machines Were Accurate,” Michigan Secretary of State, (Dec. 17, 2020), available at https://www.michigan.gov/sos/resources/news/2020/12/17/hand-audit-of-allpresidential-election-votes-in-antrim-county-confirms-previously-certified-result. 127. “Hand Audit of All Presidential Election Votes in Antrim County Confirms Previously Certified Results, Voting Machines Were Accurate,” Michigan Secretary of State, (Dec. 17, 2020), available at https://www.michigan.gov/sos/resources/news/2020/12/17/hand-audit-of-allpresidential-election-votes-in-antrim-county-confirms-previously-certified-result. 128. “Hand Audit of All Presidential Election Votes in Antrim County Confirms Previously Certified Results, Voting Machines Were Accurate,” Michigan Secretary of State, (Dec. 17, 2020), available at https://www.michigan.gov/sos/resources/news/2020/12/17/hand-audit-of-allpresidential-election-votes-in-antrim-county-confirms-previously-certified-result. 129. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Hearing on the January 6th Investigation, 117th Cong., 2d sess., (June 23, 2022), available at https://www.govinfo.gov/committee/house-january6thSelect; Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of RichardPeter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), p. 60; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021-000739 (December 27, 2020, handwrittennotes from Richard Donoghue about call with President Trump). 130. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Hearing on the January 6th Investigation, 117th Cong., 2d sess., (June 23, 2022), available at https://www.govinfo.gov/committee/house-january6th?path=/browsecommittee/chamber/house/committee/january6th. 131. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Hearing on the January 6th Investigation, 117th Cong., 2d sess., (June 23, 2022), available at https://www.govinfo.gov/committee/house-january6thSelect; Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of RichardPeter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), p. 60. 132. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Hearing on the January 6th Investigation, 117th Cong., 2d sess., (June 23, 2022), available at https://www.govinfo.gov/committee/house-january6thSelect; Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of RichardPeter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), p. 60; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021-000739 (December 27, 2020, handwrittennotes from Richard Donoghue about call with President Trump). 133. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), p. 55; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021-000737 (December 27, 2020, handwritten notes from Richard Donoghue about call with President Trump). 134. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), p. 55; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021-000737 (December 27, 2020, handwritten notes from Richard Donoghue about call with President Trump). 135. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), p. 55. 136. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), pp. 55-56; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021-000739 (December 27, 2020, handwritten notes from Richard Donoghue about call with President Trump). 137. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Hearing on the January 6th Investigation, 117th Cong., 2d sess., (June 23, 2022), available at https://www.govinfo.gov/committee/house-january6thSelect. 138. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), p. 54; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021-000739 (December 27, 2020, handwritten notes from Richard Donoghue about call with President Trump). 139. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), p. 54; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021-000739 (December 27, 2020, handwritten notes from Richard Donoghue about call with President Trump). 140. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), p. 54; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021-000739 (December 27, 2020, handwritten notes from Richard Donoghue about call with President Trump).

141. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), p. 64; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021-000741 (December 27, 2020, handwritten notes from Richard Donoghue about call with President Trump). 142. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), p. 60. 143. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), p. 60. 144. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), pp. 60-61. 145. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), pp. 60-61. 146. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), pp. 60-61. 147. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), pp. 54-55; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021-000737 (December 27, 2020, handwritten notes from Richard Donoghue about call with President Trump). 148. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), pp. 54, 58; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021-000737, HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021-000738 (December 27, 2020, handwritten notes from Richard Donoghue about call with President Trump). 149. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), pp. 54, 58; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021-000737, HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021-000738 (December 27, 2020, handwritten notes from Richard Donoghue about call with President Trump). 150. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), pp. 54, 58; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021-000737, HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021-000738 (December 27, 2020, handwritten notes from Richard Donoghue about call with President Trump). 151. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), p. 58; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021-000738, HCORPre-Certification-Events-07282021-000739 (December 27, 2020, handwritten notes fromRichard Donoghue about call with President Trump). 152. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), p. 58. Trump also mentioned the possibility of the DOJ saying the “election is corrupt or suspect or not reliable” during a public press conference. “We told him we were not going to do that,” Donoghue explained. Id. at p. 59.

153. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), p. 62; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021-000740 (December 27, 2020, handwritten notes from Richard Donoghue about call with President Trump). 154. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), p. 60; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021-000739, HCORPre-Certification-Events-07282021-000740 (December 27, 2020, handwritten notes fromRichard Donoghue about call with President Trump). 155. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), p. 61. 156. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Hearing on the January 6th Investigation, 117th Cong., 2d sess., (June 23, 2022), available at https://www.govinfo.gov/committee/house-january6thSelect. 157. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Hearing on the January 6th Investigation, 117th Cong., 2d sess., (June 23, 2022), available at https://www.govinfo.gov/committee/house-january6thSelect. 158. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Hearing on the January 6th Investigation, 117th Cong., 2d sess., (June 23, 2022), available at https://www.govinfo.gov/committee/house-january6thSelect. 159. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Hearing on the January 6th Investigation, 117th Cong., 2d sess., (June 23, 2022), available at https://www.govinfo.gov/committee/house-january6thSelect. 160. Donoghue testified before the Select Committee: “There were isolated instances of fraud. None of them came close to calling into question the outcome of the election in any individual state.” Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Hearing on the January 6th Investigation, 117th Cong., 2d sess., (June 23, 2022), available at https://www.govinfo.gov/committee/house-january6thSelect. 161. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), p. 62; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-Certification-Events-07282021-000740 (December 27, 2020, handwritten notes from Richard Donoghue about call with President Trump). 162. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), p. 62. 163. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), p. 62. 164. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), p. 65. 165. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), pp. 72-75. 166. Dan Gleiter, “Rally to ‘Stop the Steal’ of the 2020 Election,” Penn Live, (Nov. 5, 2020), available at https://www.pennlive.com/galleries/J3FJ24LCKVCT5OW3U2TJ6BV4RE/. 167. Letter from the Office of Rep. Lance Gooden and Signed by 26 other Members of Congress to the President of the United States, Dec. 9, 2020, available at https://www.politico.com/ f/?id=00000176-4701-d52c-ad7e-d7fdbfe50000.

168. Motion for Leave to File Amicus Brief by U.S. Representative Mike Johnson and 125 other Members, Texas v. Pennsylvania, 592 U.S. ____ (Dec. 10, 2020) (No. 155, Orig.), available at https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163550/ 20201211132250339_Texas%20v.%20Pennsylvania%20Amicus%20Brief%20of%20126%20 Representatives%20–%20corrected.pdf. 169. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), pp. 72-73; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-CertificationEvents-07262021-000705, HCOR-Pre-CertificationEvents-07262021-000706, (Dec. 27, 2020, handwritten notes). Donoghue’s handwritten notes from the call are dated Dec. 28, 2020, but he confirmed the call took place on Dec. 27. 170. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), pp. 72-73; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-CertificationEvents-07262021-000705, HCOR-Pre-CertificationEvents-07262021-000706, (Dec. 27, 2020, handwritten notes). 171. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), pp. 72-73; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-CertificationEvents-07262021-000705, HCOR-Pre-CertificationEvents-07262021-000705, (Dec. 27, 2020, handwritten notes). 172. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), p. 73; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-CertificationEvents-07262021-000705, HCORPre-CertificationEvents-07262021-000706, (Dec. 27, 2020, handwritten notes). 173. Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-CertificationEvents06032021-000001 – HCOR-Pre-CertificationEvents-06032021-000018. 174. Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Department of Justice Production), HCOR-Pre-CertificationEvents06032021-000008. 175. RepScottPerry (@RepScotPerry), Twitter, Dec. 28, 2020 6:01 p.m. ET, available at https:// twitter.com/RepScottPerry/status/1343693703664308225. 176. See Chapter 1. 177. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), pp. 74-75. 178. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), pp. 75-76. 179. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021), pp. 75-76.

[snip]

67. Complaint, Gohmert et al. v. Pence, 510 F. Supp. 3d 435, (No. 6:20-cv-0660), (E.D. Tex. Dec. 27, 2020), ECF No. 1. 68. Mike Pence, So Help Me God (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2022), p. 443. 69. Complaint, Gohmert et al. v. Pence, 510 F. Supp. 3d 435, (No. 6:20-cv-0660), (E.D. Tex. Dec. 27, 2020), ECF No. 1. 70. Complaint, Gohmert et al. v. Pence, 510 F. Supp. 3d 435, (No. 6:20-cv-0660), (E.D. Tex. Dec. 27, 2020), ECF No. 1. 71. Complaint, Gohmert et al. v. Pence, 510 F. Supp. 3d 435, (No. 6:20-cv-0660), (E.D. Tex. Dec. 27, 2020), ECF No. 1.

[snip]

244. Amita Kelly, Ryan Lucas, and Vanessa Romo, “Trump Pardons Roger Stone, Paul Manafort And Charles Kushner,” NPR, (Dec. 23, 2020), available at https://www.npr.org/2020/12/23/ 949820820/trump-pardons-roger-stone-paul-manafort-and-charles-kushner. 245. PatriotTakes[American flag] (@PatriotTakes), Twitter, Dec. 28, 2020 3:50 a.m. ET, available at https://twitter.com/patriottakes/status/1343479434376974336. 246. PatriotTakes[American flag] (@PatriotTakes), Twitter, Dec. 28, 2020 3:50 a.m. ET, available at https://twitter.com/patriottakes/status/1343479434376974336; See also Ali Dukakis, “Roger Stone Thanks President Trump for Pardon in Person,” ABC News, (Dec. 28, 2020), available at https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/roger-stone-president-trump-pardon-person/story?id= 74940512. 247. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Kristin Davis, (August 2, 2022), p. 41; Documents on file with Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, (Kristin Davis Production), CTRL0000928609, p. 7 (December 30, 2020, text message from Kristin Davis toChris Lippe at 6:05 p.m.). 248. Documents on file with Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Kristin Davis Production), CTRL0000928609, p. 7 (December 30, 2020, text message from Kristin Davis to Chris Lippe at 6:05 p.m.).

[snip]

415. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump), Twitter, Dec. 27, 2020 5:51 p.m. ET, available at https://www.thetrumparchive.com (archived). 416. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Deposition of Justin Caporale, (Mar. 1, 2022), pp. 20-21. 417. See Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Donald Trump, Jr., (May 3, 2022), p.30; Anthony Man, “At Trump Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Roger Stone Thanks President for Pardon,” Orlando Sun Sentinel, (Dec. 28, 2020), available at https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/ elections/fl-ne-roger-stone-thanks-trump-pardon-20201228-2ejqzv6e7vhyvf26cxz6e6jysastory.html. 418. Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, (AT&T Production, Dec. 17, 2021). 419. Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Caroline Wren Production), REVU_000444, pp. 1-3 (December 27, 2020, text message from Caroline Wren to Kimberly Guilfoyle at 7:10 p.m.). 420. As revealed in the phone records for the personal cell phones of Max Miller and Anthony Ornato. See Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, (Verizon Production, Dec. 17, 2021); Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Verizon Production, Sep. 23, 2022). The Select Committee also subpoenaed the phone records for the personal cell phones of Robert Peede, Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino, and Justin Caporale. They each filed lawsuits to block the respective phone companies’ production of the phone records, which were still pending at the time of writing. Thus, there may have been additional relevant phone calls among or involving these four of which theSelect Committee is not aware. 421. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Deposition of Max Miller, (Jan. 20, 2022), pp. 36-37. 422. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Deposition of Justin Caporale, (Mar. 1, 2020), p. 44; Documents on file with the Select Committeeto Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Caroline Wren Production), REVU_0644 (December 29, 2020, text messages with Justin Caporale). 423. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Katrina Pierson, (Mar. 25, 2022), pp. 79-82; Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Caroline Wren Production), REVU_0181 (January 2nd email from Katrina Pierson to CarolineWren and Taylor Budowich). 424. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Cassidy Hutchinson, (Feb. 23, 2022), pp. 32-33, 41; Select Committee toInvestigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Continued Interview of Cassidy Hutchinson, (June 20, 2022), pp. 107-08, 135. 425. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Cassidy Hutchinson, (Feb. 23, 2022), p. 42.

426. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Cassidy Hutchinson, (Feb. 23, 2022), pp. 44-45, 47, 52-54; Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Continued Interview of Cassidy Hutchinson, (June 20, 2022), p. 87. 427. Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Kylie Kremer Production), KKremer5447, p. 3 (January 4, 2021, text message from Kylie Kremer to Mike Lindell at 9:32 a.m.). 428. Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Ali Alexander Production), CTRL0000017718, p. 41 (January 5, 2021 text message with Liz Willis at 7:19 a.m.).

[snip]

41. See Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Informal Briefing by Steve Jensen, (Nov. 18, 2021). In an email sent by the FBI to the Select Committee on November 8, 2021, the FBI stated that on December 27, the FBI created a system to collect threats related to the “election certification” on January 6 by using a tag, “CERTUNREST.” Despite making multiple requests for the number of guardians that were tagged prior to January 6, the FBI did not provide a precise number. The FBI identified several dozen guardians opened in advance of January 6th that included a reference to January 6, Washington D.C., and either the U.S. Capitol or a specific threat of violence.

 


Where Is The J6 Committee Beef?

From the Washington Post up all night desk:

Many close observers of the Jan. 6 committee are still looking for testimony transcripts, particularly with key White House advisers and campaign aides. Transcripts involving most of those names are still unreleased — and have been promised in the coming days. Many days of testimony by Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson are not yet out, nor are transcripts for Trump’s family, lawyers and top campaign advisers. The committee talked to a remarkable number of people, and their exact words will be closely examined when the transcripts are released — including by Republicans looking for ammunition against the report.

Yeah, where are those?? It is Christmas weekend and they have released a whopping 34 of their supposed 1,000 or so transcripts. Why are they dribbling them out when their work is done? Have they given it all to the DOJ yet? My understanding is no, but cannot confirm that. DC, including DOJ, are going into holiday mode and this goofy Committee is still playing keep away. Why? What the hell are they doing? This is just ridiculous.

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Originally Posted @ https://www.emptywheel.net/2020-presidential-election/page/47/