Are Donald Trump’s lies about voter fraud inspired by the Capitol shooting? The case for a new house of congress that does not recommend the level of the Justice Department

The panel’s hearings have taken place with closed-door testimony and harrowing scenes of the attack on the Capitol, but the committee once again relied on video to make its case against Trump.

Armed with new witness interviews and unreleased footage of the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, the panel is planning to argue that Mr. Trump’s lies about widespread voter fraud inspired far-right extremists and election deniers who present a continuing threat to American democracy.

This could all become academic anyway. The issue is likely to drag on for a long time due to the possibility of a Trump legal challenge to the subpoena, which would likely be one of the first acts of a new Republican House majority.

CNN’s John King said they were trying to make the case that Trump is Oz. “He presents himself as all powerful, but when you look, it’s actually a little guy behind a curtain trying to pull a machine.”

Contempt. The full house of congress, which is currently controlled by democrats, could vote to hold him in contempt of congress if they wanted to, something it has done with other uncooperative witnesses.

Given its tone and direction, it would be something of a surprise if the panel did not recommend the House refer Trump, among other aides, to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution when it wraps up. Such a step would be merely symbolic, however, as the committee has no power to level charges itself. And the DOJ is not compelled to act on any recommendations. Its own investigations would have to resolve the question of whether professional prosecutors agreed with the conclusions of Congress acting in its constitutional oversight role.

What Happened to the 45th President of the United States in February 2017? George Conway and the National Archives Against a Response from the Trump Administration

“None of that is going to happen,” the Trump critic and conservative lawyer George Conway predicted during an appearance on CNN Thursday. A marker is being laid. This is about triggering a response (from Trump).”

When Trump tried to stop the National Archives from giving information to the committee, the Supreme Court already made it clear that he was a former president.

From the moment that conservative retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig warned in a June committee hearing that Trump and supporters still posed “a clear and present danger to American democracy,” it’s been clear the panel believes that Trump was in the middle of an alleged election-stealing conspiracy. With that in mind, it would be surprising if the 45th president, who earned his second impeachment over the insurrection, was not referred to the DOJ for the possibility of criminal action.

People who invoked the Fifth Amendment and refuse to testify rather than elaborate on their communications with Trump on January 6, 2021, were pointed out by Cheney.

Most recently, in 1974, Gerald Ford testified voluntarily as president before a House subcommittee about his decision to pardon former President Richard Nixon.

President Thomas Jefferson declined to appear at former Vice President Aaron Burr’s trial for treason even though he was subpoenaed by then-Chief Justice John Marshall. Some documents were provided by Jefferson. Burr was found not guilty.

What Happened to the First Attorney General’s Deposition on January 6, 2012, Revealed by Judicial Surveillance

The Supreme Court did rule New York investigators could get access to the financial documents. A criminal trial will take place this month on charges of violating tax laws.

He was forced to comply with subpoenas from the New York Attorney General as part of her inquiry into his business practices. He invoked the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination during that deposition.

According to James’ application for a preliminary injunction, there is every chance that Trump and his company will engage in similar fraudulent conduct if the case goes to trial.

The January 6 committee, which is currently comprised of Democrats and Republicans, will have less than three months to issue a final report after Republicans regain control of the House.

That means the January 6 committee must plan to wrap up all of its work by January 3, 2023, when the next Congress begins and the January 6 committee may be no more.

She said that they are obligated to seek answers from the person who initiated the event. “And every American is entitled to those answers, so we can act now to protect our republic.”

“[Trump] tried to take away the voice of the American people in choosing their president and replace the will of the voters with his will to remain in power,” Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said in an October hearing. The story of what happened on January 6 consists of only one person.

CNN Observations of the 2016 Insurrection Commission Hearings: Jonathon Hutchinson, Matteo Pelosi, and Mike Pence

CNN has obtained additional footage from Fort McNair that wasn’t shown by the committee. CNN will air the exclusive footage on Thursday night. After leaving the Capitol, congressional leaders immediately gathered at Fort McNair and began working the phones, trying to figure out what was going on at the capitol as they frantically attempted to quell the insurrection.

In its highly produced hearings, the committee – with its seven Democrats and two Republicans who split with their own party to take part – painted scenes of horrific violence and intense efforts by Trump to steal Joe Biden’s presidency.

The footage also showed two phone calls between Pelosi and then-Vice President Mike Pence, who took on an impromptu leadership role on January 6, coordinating the emergency response.

Schumer was shown dressing down the Attorney General. During their heated phone call, Schumer implored Rosen to intervene directly with Trump, and tell Trump to call off the mob. During the call, Pelosi said that the pro-Trump rioters were breaking the law at the order of the president.

The committee met with the wife of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, as reported by CNN in August. Although she decried the deadly attack in her resignation letter, she has largely stayed out of the public eye, with her recent comments to the committee giving fresh insight into her thinking.

“And at a particular point, the events were such that it was impossible for me to continue, given my personal values and my philosophy. I came as an immigrant to this country. I believe in the country it’s in. I believe in the peaceful transfer of power. I believe in democracy. She said that she made the decision on her own.

Hutchinson’s testimony had been some of the most damning against Trump during the summer hearings, as she provided detailed accounts about Trump’s actions on the day of January 6.

“I remember looking at Mark, and I said ‘Mark, he can’t possibly think we’re going to pull this off. Like, that call was crazy.’ And he looked at me and just started shaking his head. And he’s like, ‘No, Cass, you know, he knows it’s over. He knows he lost. But we’re going to keep trying,’” Hutchinson told the committee.

“It’s dizzying for the public to see this kind of chaos surrounding a candidate for president,” Hutchinson told CNN’s Brianna Keilar. It is problematic and reflective of all of the challenges that go with a Trump candidacy.

The president told Mark that he didn’t want people to know we lost. This is not right. Figure it out. We need to figure it out. Hutchinson said that she did not want the public to know that they had lost.

The Secret Service Committee on Elections and the House Select Committee on Investigations of the Pence/McKenna-Biden Insurrection

In roughly three months since the last January 6 committee hearing, the panel has obtained more than 1 million records from the Secret Service, and the panel revealed some of what they learned during Thursday’s hearing.

On January 6, one Secret Service agent texted at 12:36 p.m., according to the committee, “With so many weapons found so far; you wonder how many are unknown. Could be good at sports after dark.

The committee subpoenaed Meadows for documents and testimony in September of last year, and he handed over more than 2,000 text messages he sent and received between Election Day 2020 and Joe Biden’s inauguration. The text messages show how the Trump family and top GOP officials discussed what to say about the election and the insurrection in the middle of it.

The lawmaker said that the Secret Service was warned of online threats against Vice President Mike Pence and that he would die if he didn’t change his mind.

“It was a premeditated plan by the President to declare victory no matter what the actual result was,” committee member Rep. Zoe Lofgren said during Thursday’s hearing. “We also interviewed Brad Parscale, President Trump’s former campaign manager. He told us he understood that President Trump planned as early as July that he would say he won the election, even if he lost,” she added.

After their conversation on November 3, 2020, Jacob drafted a memo to Short, which the committee said it obtained from the National Archives and presented for the first time on Thursday.

“It is essential that the Vice President not be perceived by the public as having decided questions concerning disputed electoral votes prior to the full development of all relevant facts,” the memo reads.

The committee also revealed new emails conservative legal activist Tom Fitton sent to two Trump advisers a few days before the election. One email contains a draft statement for Trump to declare victory on Election Night.

Despite the fact that the committee wanted to hear from Thomas, they downplayed the significance of her testimony following her interview and it was clear ahead of Thursday that she was not expected to be a central part of the hearing.

Her absence was notable because the panel has used testimony from several famous people since its most recent hearing.

When Mike Pryor (R-Newton) was in Washington, DC, during the February 6 Appointment he Left the US Capitol

The House January 6 committee voted to subpoena him after laying bare his depraved efforts to overthrow the 2020 election and his dereliction of duty as his mob invaded the US Capitol.

But the developments that could hurt Trump the most happened off stage. They reflect the extraordinary legal thicket surrounding the ex-President, who has not been charged with a crime, and the distance still left to run for efforts to account for his riotous exit from power and a presidency that constantly tested the rule of law.

Prosecutors, investigators and lawmakers in Washington, DC, New York, Georgia, Florida and across the United States are among those who will be interested in what Trump has to say about the myriad legal issues facing the former president, his business and his allies.

“We’ve gotta be concerned about the precedent that we would create that would allow any target of offense of a federal criminal investigation to go into district court and to have a district court entertain this kind of petition, exercise equitable jurisdiction (that allows a court to intervene) and interfere with the executive branch’s ongoing investigation,” Pryor told Trump lawyer James Trusty.

The court denied his emergency request, which could have delayed the case. No dissents were noted, including from conservative justices Trump elevated to the bench and whom he often seems to believe owe him a debt of loyalty.

For all the political drama that surrounds the continuing revelations over one of the darkest days in modern American history on January 6 it’s the showdown over classified documents that appears to represent the ex-president’s most clear cut and immediate threat of true criminal exposure

The former President wanted to know why the panel waited so long to call him. He is on thin ice in his criticism due to the obstruction and attempts to prevent former aides from testifying. And it is not unusual for investigators to build a case before approaching the most prominent potential target of a probe.

A man who worked for Vice President Mike Pence leaving a courthouse in Washington, DC. Short had been compelled to testify to the grand jury for the second time, according to a person familiar with the matter, CNN’s Pamela Brown reported. Another Trump adviser, former national security aide Kash Patel, was also seen walking into an area where the grand jury meets. The reporters were not told what he was doing.

On Wednesday evening, CNN’s Brown reported that an employee of the club said that they were told by the former president to move boxes out of a storage room after a subpoena for classified documents. The FBI also has surveillance footage showing a staffer moving the boxes.

This development is troubling since it might suggest a pattern of deception that plays into the obstruction of justice charge. The FBI told a judge on the initial search warrant that there was evidence of obstruction at the resort.

The lawyer for Donald Trump in the second impeachment said on CNN that the Mar-a-Lago incident was not a case of obstruction of justice.

They are not the only probes connected to Trump. There is also the matter of yet another investigation in Georgia over attempts by the former President and his allies to overturn the election in a crucial 2020 swing state.

First Trump Sensitivity to the Unselect Committee: What Happens If the Select Committee is Not requesting a President to Testify?

One of the days when the seriousness of a crisis can be gauged by the vehemence of the rhetoric he uses is on Thursday.

First Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich mocked the unanimous 9-0 vote in the select committee to subpoena the former President for documents and testimony.

“Pres Trump will not be intimidate(d) by their meritless rhetoric or un-American actions. Budowich wrote on the social networking site that Trump-endorsed candidates will sweep the midterms, and America First will be restored.

The former President took to his Truth Social network to respond to the accusations against him, though he did not answer them, in hopes of provoking a reaction from his supporters.

Why wasn’t the Unselect committee asking me to testify months ago? They waited until the end of their last meeting to answer this question. The Committee is a disgusting thing. Trump wrote.

According to David A. Warrington, an attorney for the Trump organization, separation of powers does not permit Congress to compel a President to testify.

The 2016 GOP Peculiar Action Committee Against Donald Trump (Reck) Sen. Elizabeth Cheney: Trump, the Democrats, and the Partisans

But the committee’s Republican vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney, said the investigation was no longer just about what happened on January 6, but about the future.

A lawmaker who lost her congressional seat this summer to a Trump-aligned candidate said that it was pointless trying to excuse or justify the actions of a former President.

But as the panel wrapped up what was likely the last of its evidentiary hearings on Thursday, it was not at all clear that it had persuaded the jury. Americans who blamed Mr. Trump for their rampage got away from four months of hearings and evidence with more evidence for their opinion, while those who didn’t start out in his camp stayed where they were.

The relatively little movement in public opinion since the hearings opened in June, at least as measured by an array of polls, underscored the calcification of American politics in recent years. Many voters have been locked into their viewpoints, seemingly immune to contrary information. Mr. Trump’s supporters for the most part have remained loyal to him, brushing off the congressional investigation as the partisan exercise he claims it to be.

Whatever its immediate impact on Trump, the 2024 presidential race and the Justice Department, the culmination of the committee’s work marks a pivot in history when Americans faced a choice whether to confront an unprecedented effort by an aberrant commander in chief to overrule the voice of the people and the chain of peaceful transfers of power from one president to the next.

The rule of law, free elections, and accountability are in jeopardy because of the movement of former President Donald Trump.

Trump dropped his clearest hint yet Saturday of a new White House run at a moment when he’s on a new collision course with the Biden administration, the courts and facts.

Trump’s current prominence on the political scene was already highly unusual. A one-term president does not last very long in history. His hold on the GOP is a testament to the fact that he is still a key player almost two years after losing reelection. And while there is growing talk about whether his thicket of legal and political controversies could convince some GOP primary voters it’s time to move on, Trump still seems to have plenty of juice.

If there were to be a presidential campaign tied to the ex-President’s claims of political persecution, it could cause more upheaval than the four years he was in office.

Despite fierce differences between Democrats and Republicans over policy on the economy, abortion, foreign policy and crime, there is still likely to be an emphasis on the past of a former President during the coming political period.

A Republican majority in the House will mean a return of Trumpism to politics, given that the ex-president holds the House GOP in high regard. Some leading “Make America Great Again” Republicans are already speaking of a possible drive to impeach Biden and have already signaled they will use their powers to investigate to rough up Biden for a possible clash with Trump in 2024.

The Donald Trump Organization, the Trump Tax Fraud and Grand Yarceny Trial, and the Election of Kari Lake: Two Cases in the Cross-Country

One of the ex- President’s favorite candidates, the GOP gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake, is once again raising doubts about the election system. It probably is not going to be completely fair, according to Lake.

The New York Post reported last week that one of the most powerful pro- Trump Republicans had said that impeachment of Biden was on the table. South Carolina GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, however, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” Sunday she did not want to see tit-for-tat impeachment proceedings after Trump was twice impeached. She said that she was against the process being weaponized. But when asked whether Biden had committed impeachable offenses, she said: “That is something that would have to be investigated.”

An already pro-Trump Republican presence in Washington is likely to expand after the midterms. If the scores of Trump-endorsed candidates lose their races in a few weeks, will they accept the results?

On another politically sensitive front, the Trump Organization’s criminal tax fraud and grandy larceny trial begins in Manhattan on Monday. The ex-President hasn’t been personally charged but the trial could affect his business empire and prompt fresh claims from him that he is being persecution for political reasons. In a separate civil case, New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, has filed a $250 million civil suit against Trump, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization, alleging that they ran tax and insurance fraud schemes to enrich themselves for years.

Democrats have made their own attempts to return Trump to the political spotlight. The campaigns of some pro- Trump candidates have tried to scare suburban voters by warning them that the pro- Trump candidates are a danger to democracy.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/24/politics/donald-trump-circus-analysis/index.html

The Defenders of the Proud Boys: Documents to the Committee on the Ethics of White House Deliberations in the Run-Up to the 2020 Election

But raging inflation and spikes in gasoline prices appear to be a far more potent concern before voters head to the polls, which could spell bad news for the party in power in Washington.

The ex-President told supporters at a rally in Texas on Saturday regarding the possibility of a new White House bid, “I will probably have to do it again.”

Cheney told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that it might take multiple days, but it will be done with a level of seriousness that it deserves.

“This isn’t going to be, you know, his first debate against Joe Biden and the circus and the food fight that that became. This is a far too serious set of issues.”

It would be hard for the former President to dictate the terms of the exchanges and control how his testimony might be used, if video testimony was used more frequently in the future.

Garland and the DOJ can be sure of a moment of truth if it dawns on them. The decision to prosecute or not to prosecute the former president will likely cause a political chain reaction. Given that the ex-president’s movement has already shown it sees violence as a legitimate tool to express a political grievance, things could get especially dangerous.

A decision to charge an ex-president running for a non-consecutive second White House term would undoubtedly cause a firestorm. If there is evidence of a crime, sparing him from accountability is a bad sign to future presidents.

“This isn’t a situation where the committee is going to be dependent on Donald Trump in terms of his efforts to create a circus,” Cheney said.

That being said, there is a strong chance the former president will not produce the documents by the end of the day. The committee has been lenient when it comes to deadlines in the past, at least when there’s ongoing communication with a subject’s legal team.

The committee sought documents from Sept. 1, 2020 to the present on the president’s communications with the groups like the Proud Boys, as it seeks a historical record of the run-up to the election.

The committee’s order contains high-profile people such as Roger Stone, Stephen Bannon, and Michael Flynn.

The White House’s Explicit Committee on Correlated Subpoenas in the Mar-a-Lago Secrecy: A High-Sensitivity Approach

“The committee has been working in a very collaborative way and I would anticipate we won’t have disagreements about that,” she said. “But we’ll have to make those decisions as we come to it.”

On the same day that the House committee ordered Trump to turn over the documents and testify, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols sentenced Steve Bannon, Trump’s political advisor, to four months in prison for criminal contempt of Congress after failing to comply with a different committee subpoena.

The lawsuit filed by Trump is located in the Southern District of Florida and was one of the methods used to obtain a special master who will review records seized during the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago.

The suit filed Friday evening contends that, while former presidents have voluntarily agreed to provide testimony or documents in response to congressional subpoenas in the past, “no president or former president has ever been compelled to do so.”

Warrington said Trump had engaged with the committee “in a good faith effort to resolve these concerns consistent with Executive Branch prerogatives and separation of powers,” but said the panel “insists on pursuing a political path, leaving President Trump with no choice but to involve the third branch, the judicial branch, in this dispute between the executive and legislative branches.”

The letter also outlined a sweeping request for documents, including personal communications between Trump and members of Congress as well as extremist groups. The nine member panel extended its deadline this week because Trump’s response was due last week.

“I think that he has a legal obligation to testify but that doesn’t always carry weight with Donald Trump,” committee vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said during an event last week.

The company and Donald Trump deny any wrongdoings and have maintained their innocence. A couple of lawsuits brought by Trump’s niece and former attorney were dismissed this week.

The Mar-a-Lago documents are about the handling of classified material. The Justice Department investigation continues into whether documents from the Trump White House were illegally mishandled when they were brought to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after he left office. A federal grand jury in Washington has been empaneled and has interviewed potential witnesses to how Trump handled the documents. The National Archives, charged with collecting and sorting presidential material, has previously said that at least 15 boxes of White House records were recovered from Mar-a-Lago, including some classified records.

It is commonplace for Trump to have a hard time on the same day in simultaneously running cases because of his large legal exposure.

But Tuesday’s developments marked the first time that the legal chaos and jeopardy that surround him has come fully into focus since he declared his third bid for the Republican presidential nomination last week. It’s the first test of whether the swirling courtroom peril facing him on multiple fronts will detract from his capacity to mount a credible campaign and whether it will put off GOP primary voters who may consider an alternative candidate.

The outgoing governor of Arkansas, who is considering running for president in the future, told CNN on Tuesday that the turmoil surrounding Trump could be a bad thing for GOP voters.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled No Tax Returns for a Secretary of State in the Presidency of a Majority Party

Brady said that by giving the majority party in either chamber of congress nearly unlimited power to make public the tax returns of political enemies, they are opening a dangerous new political battleground where no citizen is safe.

The committee wants the returns to look into the case for changes to tax laws when there is a sitting president. The power of a chief executive could make it problematic for them to be aware of conflicts of interests or obligations owed to them. A lower court found that the committee had a legitimate purpose in seeing the returns. With a few weeks left before the House is controlled by Republicans, it is not clear how long Democrats would have to watch the returns or change the law.

The Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Richard Neal, said that the Supreme Court had upheld a vital norm. The principle of oversight was upheld after the Magna Carta, today just as it was after. This rises above politics, and the committee will now conduct the oversight that we’ve sought for the last three and a half years.”

The top Republican on the committee said that the court’s decision would mean no one could be safe from a majority political party.

Will the tax returns fight affect how presidential candidates deal with their financial records in the future? By releasing them, they could not just reestablish a modern tradition of transparency for presidents. They could be able to beat Trump.

A panel of judges from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals expressed skepticism of Trump’s arguments for why he was entitled to a special master and sift through the material from his Florida resort. A key question at issue here is whether Trump, as a former president, is entitled to the kind of judicial intervention that could slow countless routine legal cases involving other Americans if it were widely adopted.

Everything else about this is indistinguishable except for the fact that a former president is involved.

The judge rebuked Trusty for the way he called the FBI search of Trump’s property a raid. Do you think that a raid is the correct term for the execution of a warrant? Grant asked. Trusty apologized for using the “loaded term.”

Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel at the Department of Defense, told CNN’s Burnett the court could decide to overrule Judge Aileen Cannon, who appointed the special master, in what would be a severe blow to the ex-president.

Any such move could significantly speed up the documents case after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to oversee it last week.

It might also offer the prospect of clarity to the public, who must now evaluate yet another unprecedented political scenario involving Trump. The former president’s multiple legal challenges have slowed both cases, but Tuesday offered signs that each could be moving closer to resolution.

The Commission on Senate Judgment Appeals: Referrals for Contempt of Congress and Possible Charges for 2020 Election Overturning Attorney General Michael Eastman

In addition to criminal referrals, the panel may issue other categories of referrals — to the Federal Election Commission, the House Ethics Committee, and bar associations to discipline attorneys.

Criminal referrals will come in the form of a letter from Thompson to the Justice Department making the case for prosecution. The referrals are symbolic and not legal weight and are part of a longer list of recommendations.

Bennie Thompson said that committee members will meet on Sunday to make a decision on criminal referrals.

We just couldn’t overlook some of the people we looked at because we didn’t want to investigate them for criminal activities.

Jamie Raskin, a Democrat member of the committee, explained that the system of justice is not the one where foot soldiers go to jail.

The attempt to overthrow a presidential election is a grave offense, according to Raskin. The gravity and magnitude of the violent assault on America are supported by a host of statutory offenses.

Of the committee’s nine members, four won’t be returning to Congress. Besides Cheney and Kinzinger, Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy of Florida is retiring, while Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia was one of the handful of House Democratic incumbents who lost their seats in the 2022 midterms last month.

The House committee voted to refer the matter to the Justice Department for criminal contempt of Congress after Meadows refused to testify and refused to turn over other documents. The Justice Department declined to indict him on a contempt of court charge because of his high level position and claims of executive privilege.

Raskin also suggested Thursday that previous referrals to DOJ for contempt of Congress would not impact how the panel handles these criminal referrals.

“We obviously did contempt of Congress referrals earlier and there’s a whole statutory process for making that happen,” he said. “But you know we will explain our decisions in detail – why we are making certain kinds of referrals for certain people and other kinds for others.”

The panel presented new information regarding Eastman’s role as a central figure in the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Eastman was integral to the intense pressure campaign that Trump directed at then-Vice President Mike Pence to compel Pence to help carry out a plan to overturn the election results.

In the hearing, the committee heard about how Eastman put forward a legal theory, that was rejected by the White House and the Trump team, but was embraced by the former President, in which he claimed that Pence could block certification of the election.

The former DOJ official had been referred to court for criminal contempt after he refused to answer the questions at his previous deposition. The referral was never sent to DOJ because on the day the committee voted on the contempt referral, Clark’s lawyer informed the committee that he planned to invoke his Fifth Amendment right to not answer questions on the grounds it may incriminate him.

The panel dedicated much of a June hearing to Clark’s role in Trump’s attempts to weaponize the Justice Department in the final months of his term as part of the plot to overturn the 2020 election and stay in power.

The committee in particular zeroed in on the efforts of Rep. Scott Perry, the Pennsylvania Republican, who connected Clark to the White House in December 2020.

CNN has previously reported that the committee in court filed information about the text messages Perry had withMeadows about Clark.

“He wanted Mr. Clark – Mr. Jeff Clark to take over the Department of Justice,” Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Meadows aide, said about Perry in a clip of her deposition that was played at that hearing.

Giuliani, a one-time personal attorney of Trump, met with the panel in May for more than nine hours.

The allegations against Trump and his elections attorney were made in a previous court proceeding, as well as the recommendations under consideration. A judge had agreed with the House, finding it could access Eastman’s emails about his 2020 election work for Trump because the pair was likely planning to defraud the US and engaging in a conspiracy to obstruct Congress, according to that court proceeding.

But each sign that once slow burning efforts to work through the trauma of the post-election period are heating up brings a parallel warning that the future threat to truth and democracy remains acute. A key member of the incoming GOP House majority that is likely to try to shut down or obstruct investigations into Trump is mired in controversy over the insurrection.

The Georgia Republican said that if she had her way, the mob that smashed into the Capitol would have been armed. She then rebuffed White House condemnations of her comments by insisting she was joking. This came days after the ex-president stepped up his voter fraud falsehoods by demanding the termination of the Constitution in a sign of how his potential second term might unfold if he wins the 2024 election and returns to the White House.

CNN reported on Sunday that Smith is going ahead with investigations into Trump’s role in an attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power in 2020, and his apparent lack of storage of classified documents at his Florida residence. Smith was able to subpoena the Secretary of State of Georgia to find out why he was on the other side of the phone call that was intended to convince him to vote against Biden. Smith has issued a variety of grand jury subpoenas since Thanksgiving including ex-Trump adviser Stephen Miller.

“It’s been over 700 days since the Washington Post published the full hour audio … of that highly incriminating phone call – 700 days for the DOJ to finally get around to subpoena him. When does it happen? Under Jack Smith.”

Goodman also suggested that Trump’s legal team was guilty of wishful thinking if they believed that Smith’s appointment after a period spent abroad meant he was less likely to be influenced by the politicized aftermath of the January 6 attack and that a fresh mind would lean against indictments.

The man who was the US Attorney in New York when Smith was named said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the appointment of Smith was bad news for Trump.

It was not unlikely that they would leave their former positions in both government and private practice if there was a chance the Justice Department would charge them. He thinks that it will happen in a month.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has vowed that no one is above the law and that investigations will go where the evidence leads. But the reality of the legal process means that any trials would take considerable time to prepare and conduct. The prospect of a prosecution of a former president and current presidential candidate is so politically explosive that it would be optimal for any proceedings to take place well before the climax of the 2024 White House race.

“We’re now coming up against a timeframe in which it is a challenge to finish either case, if it is brought, to finish it before the election,” said CNN legal analyst Jennifer Rodgers on “Newsroom” on Monday.

“So, I think they will bring a case on the documents side, if they can, as soon as they can,” Rodgers said, adding that any case on January 6 would probably take more time.

While Smith is following legal procedures, the political context makes it even more incumbent on the DOJ to demonstrate to Americans that it had no choice, for instance, to mount an unprecedented search at an ex-president’s home.

The DOJ is unlikely to be influenced by the opinion of the select committee, even though there is a lot of evidence that the president should be indicted. Still, the volume of testimony and other documents that have been amassed by the panel could be useful to the DOJ’s investigation, which is one reason prosecutors have been keen to get hold of its testimony and other materials for months.

The turn of the year and the early months of 2023 are just beginning to look like a time of turmoil for the president and those who are investigating him.

The final House report could include charges against Trump, says a source. It will provide justification from the committee investigation for recommending the charges.

A spokesman for Trump decried the committee as akangaroo court that held “show trials by Never Trump partisans who are a stain on this country’s history.”

The committee has been careful in their crafting of recommendations and has uncovered facts that are important, said a member of the committee.

We spent a lot of time looking at the code sections and their bottom line, but the important thing is that people are aware of what we are doing.

The Mueller Select Committee on Insurrection and the Investigation of the 2016 U.S. Capitol Violation-Theoretical Insights

The Justice Department has largely focused on criminal statutes related to the violence, for obstructing a congressional proceeding and in some limited cases for seditious conspiracy, when charging defendants in connection with the attack on the US Capitol.

The committee will hold its final public meeting on Monday and the panel’s full report will be released Wednesday, according to Thompson. The Mississippi Democrat said the panel will approve its final report Monday and make announcements about criminal referrals to the Justice Department, but the public will not see the final report until two days later.

Nearly two years removed from the violent attack on the US Capitol, the House select committee tasked with finding out exactly what happened is about to show its hand.

“We will also be considering what’s the appropriate remedy for members of Congress who ignore a congressional subpoena, as well as the evidence that was so pertinent to our investigation and why we wanted to bring them in,” the California Democrat told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

The five House Republicans referred by the panel were all subpoenaed by the House Ethics committee, but refused to cooperate.

The impact of referrals to the House may not be known until the Department of Justice is done investigating Trump.

“Censure was something that we have considered. Ethics referrals is something we have considered,” Schiff said Sunday, noting that the committee will disclose its decision Monday.

Schiff reiterated Sunday that he believes there is evidence that Trump committed criminal offenses related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

“This is someone who, in multiple ways, tried to pressure state officials to find votes that didn’t exist. This is someone who tried to interfere with a joint session, even inciting a mob to attack the Capitol. He said he didn’t know what the word was if that was not criminal.

Schiff told Tapper that Donald Trump’s acts match the statute in regards to charges of insurrection.

“I think the president has violated multiple criminal laws. And I think you have to be treated like any other American who breaks the law, and that is, you have to be prosecuted,” he said.

The 2020 Capitol Reaction Committee Revisited: What Comes After the Boundary Event and What Can We Expect to Learn from the January 6 Committee

We will not know everything that will happen from the January 6 committee this week, but here is what we know about what is expected, what isn’t, and where this could lead.

But whether the department brings charges will depend on whether the facts and the evidence support a prosecution, Attorney General Merrick Garland – who will make the ultimate call on charging decisions – has said.

Judges have used the term “insurrection” to describe the January 6 attack on Congress’ certification of the 2020 presidential election. But the Justice Department has not opted to bring the charge in its hundreds of US Capitol riot cases.

Section 1512 (c) (2)of Title 18 of the US code makes obstruction of an official proceeding a crime, according to the committee. Based on what the panel presented, that seems exactly what Trump did, with a cocktail of schemes apparently aimed at thwarting the will of voters in the run-up to the mob attack on Congress.

He said the panel had weighed whether or not it was better to criminally refer members of Congress to the federal government or if it was better to police its own.

Such congressional mechanisms could include censure and referrals to the House Ethics Committee. (Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the chair of the January 6 committee, has previously said the panel could issue five to six other categories of referrals besides criminal ones to the DOJ.)

It’s important to remember how this all started. While there was partisan squabbling over which Republicans would be allowed to serve on the panel, House Democrats were willing to give committee slots to GOP lawmakers who had literally voted to overturn the 2020 results. Instead, Republicans boycotted.

A Capitol Police officer told how she had slipped on spilled blood during the melee caused when the ex-president’s mob smashed its way into the Capitol. A mother and daughter working as election workers in Georgia said that they were racist threats after Rudy Giuliani accused them of vote stealing. Rusty Bowers, the outgoing Republican speaker of the Arizona state House, testified that Trump’s calls for him to meddle with the election were “foreign to my very being.”

Often, it was Republicans – some who were with Trump in the West Wing on January 6 – who courageously testified about his assault on the Constitution, including Cassidy Hutchinson. The former aide to the White House chief of staff said it was unpatriotic. It was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.”

The committee claimed in its hearings that Trump was involved in a plot to subvert the election in Congress. The committee claimed Trump incited a vicious attack on the Capitol when the failed efforts did not succeed after Mike Pence refused to use his powers. The committee argued that his cowardice as the violence raged amounted to destruction of his oath of office and of his duty to protect Congress, the Constitution and the rule of law.

Will an impression that Trump is being hounded by any referrals nearly two years after he left office help rally Republicans to his misfiring 2024 campaign?

Do Americans care about the events that rattled our democracy nearly two years ago at a time of high inflation and the aftermath of a once-in-a-century pandemic?

Why Did Adam Kinzinger Disregard the 2019 U.S. Senate Watergate On January 6? The Case of the Electoral Count Act

GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who, like Cheney, served on the committee in defiance of his party and will not be returning to Congress, explained his actions in seeking to hold Trump to account in his retirement speech on the House floor last week.

Her effective sacrifice of her career in the House GOP may be in vain due to the refusal of many of the Republicans to acknowledge the ex-president’s conduct. There was little sense in the public’s fascination with this act of accountability, for instance, as evidenced by the Senate Watergate hearings of the 70s that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Today’s polarized times and the power of conservative media to distort what really happened on January 6 may help explain this dichotomy.

Still, Americans rejected many of Trump’s midterm candidates in swing state races who had amplified his false claims of 2020 election fraud, suggesting some desire to protect American democracy.

Why does this matter?: This is the culmination of a lengthy investigation into the attack on Jan. 6. The committee is expected to provide its assessment of some of the weaknesses in the electoral system, which members argued enabled Trump and his associates to go as far as they did in reversing the results of the 2020 presidential election. Reforming the Electoral Count Act is one of the policy recommendations that will be made by the panel.

This was a huge investigation that the committee undertook. A former federal prosecutor told Pamela Brown on CNN that there were huge amounts of evidence and witnesses being identified.

“I think it’s the detail that accompanies the referrals themselves and the report that will give a roadmap to DOJ. The DOJ has been late to this party and are playing catch-up but that detail could be very helpful to them and they will put a lot of pressure on them as well.

Future generations will be able to judge the determination of the panel members and the courage of witnesses who told the truth if nothing else.

The Commission on Investigations of the Investigation of a New U.S. Senator’s Cometary Against President Donald J.C. Thompson

“Unfortunately we now live in a world where a lie is Trump’s truth, where democracy is being challenged by authoritarianism,” the Illinois Republican said.

“If we, America’s elected leaders, do not search within ourselves for a way out, I fear that this great experiment will fall into the ash heap of history.”

Through blockbuster hearings, interviews with some of the former president’s closest allies and court battles to free up documents, the committee sought to tell the definitive narrative of what happened in the lead up to and on January 6.

The recommendations match the allegations the House select committee made against Trump and his elections attorney John Eastman in a previous court proceeding seeking Eastman’s emails.

He said any referrals presented on Monday would include supporting evidence and that individuals will not be named to more than one category. The panel’s work will be summarized in a public presentation during Monday’s meeting.

GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, one of two Republicans on the committee who will be retiring at the end of this Congress, told CNN, “It would be nice if the last thing I was doing was something a little less dramatic,” but he emphasized that the report will “be one of the most important things we do.”

Once the final report is released on Wednesday, Thompson has said the panel will start releasing transcripts from the more than 1,000 interviews the panel conducted throughout its investigation.

The Select Committee ”Wake Up” to Come Down and Tell Me What I’m Having to Say About The Russian Interference Investigation”

What’s next: The select committee will dissolve at the end of the current Congress. Several members of the panel will not return to the House in 2023. Democratic and Republican Representatives are Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Elaine Luria of Virginia.

It’s long. Thompson told NPR the final report could be more than a thousand pages long. For context, the 2019 report from special counsel Robert Mueller on Russian interference in the 2016 election was roughly 400 pages.

Committee member Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., told NPR she came away from reading the Jan. 6 report “shocked by the breadth and depth of this plan to create a big lie and pull every lever of government to corrupt an election.”

The masterminds of this case are not held accountable for their actions because they tried to corrupt the government and its processes.

“We’re not piling onto existing prosecutions,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said of upcoming criminal referrals. “We’re wanting to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks and the crimes of the most serious gravity are attended to.”

The evidence was laid out by the committee against those they say pushed a strategy to derail the certification of the election.

Goldman said that the panel could get criminal evidence from the Justice Department without a referral. The panel could be considering referrals for witness intimidation, obstruction of justice and false statements made under oath, Goldman suggested.

For example, during one of the panel’s final hearings, Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney raised concerns of witness tampering tied to Trump, but it’s unclear if the panel will pursue a related referral.

Goldman said the Department of Justice wants to make sure that all of the evidence they uncover is included in their evaluation of whether or not a crime was committed.

NPR obtained a small portion of a draft script for the Monday meeting that shows the panel intends to accuse lawyers John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro of being tied to the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Eastman was a Trump ally who helped lead the effort to overturn President Biden’s win, while Chesebro has been considered a central figure in the scheme pushing for a slate of fake Trump electors in various states won by Biden.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/19/1143415487/the-jan-6-committee-is-about-to-have-its-last-hearing-heres-what-to-expect

Investigating the Investigative Report of the Charlottesville rioting attack at the Las Vegas Polaroid Observatory. Rep. J. C. Goldman

“They could be subject of both criminal referrals, but also referrals to their state bar association to review whether or not they should continue to have their bar license if they are making blatant misrepresentations in court filings or otherwise,” Goldman said.

The ethics panel will not investigate any new cases with the congressional session finished and Republicans in charge of the House.

McCarthy denied that he and his colleagues would face criminal referrals at a press conference last week. We did not do anything wrong.

More than 900 people have been charged with crimes related to the attack. In just about all 50 states, law enforcement have arrested people for rioting.

CNN will have special coverage of the meeting at 12 p.m. It will stream live without requiring a cable log-in via CNN.com, CNN OTT and mobile apps, or CNNgo from 12 p.m. ET to 5 p.m. ET.

Chairman Bennie Thompson said that he was sure the work of the committee would give a road map to justice, and that the agencies and institutions responsible for ensuring justice under the law would use the information they got from it.

A House Ethics Committee Hearing on Trump’s “Fake Shuffling” Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election: Why the Cheney and Kinzinger Panels are Staggering

Donald Trump didn’t hold that faith. He lost the 2020 election and knew it. But he chose to try to stay in office through a multi-part scheme to overturn the results and block the transfer of power,” Thompson said. The mob he summoned to Washington were armed and angry and he told them to fight like hell. There is no doubt about this.

Trump “oversaw” an effort to put forward fake slates of electors in seven states that he lost, and it was argued by the panel that he was actively working to subvert electoral college ballots to congress and the national archives.

The members of the Board made it clear that Trump knew the election was not stolen and that he continued to push allegations about voter fraud in order to upend Joe Biden’s victory.

The montage went step-by-step through Trump’s efforts to block his election loss, showed how his attacks upended the lives of election workers and played body-cam footage of officers attacked by rioters.

The panel referred to the House Ethics Committee on Monday, and one of the four subpoenaed GOP lawmakers that was there was vociferously proclaiming that the committee was a partisan sham. Rep. Troy Nehls, a Texas Republican who boycotted the committee, called it a “partisan witch hunt.”

To be sure, Cheney and Kinzinger are outliers in their conference because they are anti-Trump. And that is the core of Trump’s critiques of the committee – that it is stacked with Trump haters. Still, even if they oppose Trump, Cheney and Kinzinger are still deeply conservative Republicans. Neither is returning to Congress next year – Kinzinger is retiring and Cheney lost her primary this summer.

During Monday’s hearing, Kinzinger described how his House GOP colleagues were complicit in Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. He highlighted evidence that Trump wanted top Justice Department officials to “put the facade of legitimacy” on his voter fraud claims so “Republican congressmen … can distort and destroy and create doubt” about the 2020 election results.

Democrats will be able to accurately claim that the panel’s findings and conclusions are bipartisan, no matter what Trump and his allies say.

Thompson said the committee’s full report will come out later this week. This is a historical document that will be studied for a long time. Never before has a sitting president attempted to steal a second term.

These upcoming releases will provide fodder to Trump’s critics. It will allow for a key demand from some of Trump’s supporters, that the panel reveal the full context of its interviews. (Up until this point, the panel has been very selective about which snippets of witness interviews got played at public hearings.)

The most urgent framing of a perennial question about Trump is: Will he ever face accountability for his rule-breaking conduct? The question is especially acute given that the norm crushed this time almost toppled US democracy.

The issue of accountability is important since many of those who trashed the Capitol have already been convicted and jailed. And since winning the White House in 2016, Trump repeatedly avoided paying political and legal prices as the ultimate example of a “ringleader” who skips past judgment. Former special counsel Robert Mueller, for example, unearthed a trove of information apparently showing Trump obstructed the Russia investigation but decided not to make a finding that the then-president committed crimes. The first president to be impeached twice was Trump, but most Republicans in the Senate found reasons not to convict him.

The DOJ investigation into the events surrounding the insurrection is ongoing and will have to decide if it stands up in a court of law as it seemed on Monday afternoon.

“The Justice Department has to go so much further on every single one of these people who was touched and interviewed and seen by the committee in any way,” former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe said on CNN on Monday.

It is difficult to see the full picture of the evidence, because the committee used little cross examination and used video excerpts to make its most strident case. McCabe noted that some witnesses might have made statements that were favorable to Trump or that were exculpatory in some way that would surely be used by his lawyers in court.

According to Honig, Trump’s lawyers would “Go through every word of this,” that is their job. They are going to look for any inconsistencies, they are going to look for any basis to attack the potential witnesses against them, preferably in court. Defense lawyers do that.

One particular complication for the Justice Department is that the nature of the insurrection and the involvement of a former president makes this an unprecedented case. A good defense team could seek to puncture a prosecution by reframing Trump’s true intent and muddying the question of what he honestly believed about whether or not there was fraud in the 2020 election. They could say that he was just exercising his free speech rights by telling his supporters to fight. Jack Smith has to satisfy himself before laying charges of attempting to get a conviction if he and Garland decided to prosecute in light of the likely thrust of Trump’s defense.

Rod Rosenstein, who served as deputy attorney general in the Trump Justice Department, told CNN’s Erin Burnett that the most serious referral – accusing Trump of giving aid and comfort to an insurrection – would likely come up against a First Amendment defense.

The Department has to prove that the president was inciting imminent lawless action. They would have to prove that he intended for the mob to engage in violent activity. That would be a problem to bring that charge against him.

With the DOJ already facing enormous pressure of investigating Trump, it is hard to say that Monday’s events will add to the burden. But at the same time, if Garland were to disregard multiple referrals, he would be certain to infuriate Democrats who already think the department has been slow to pursue Trump.

In the event that DOJ agrees with one of the lesser charges, the political earthquake caused by a prosecution may not be much different from if Smith believed that Trump aided an insurrection. America has never known a scenario in which the administration of a sitting president indicted a successor who is engaged in a bid to topple him. Trump is also facing the possibility of charges in another Justice Department investigation into the Mar-a-Lago resort if no case is made over January 6.

One way that the committee’s graphic depiction of Trump’s aberrant behavior could help Smith is by preparing the public – at least the portion that does not simply defend Trump whatever he does – for the grave possibility that a former president could go on trial. These coups are very similar to fragile developing world democracies and dictatorships.

“No man who would behave that way at that moment in time can ever serve in any position of authority in our nation again. Wyoming Republican said on Monday that he is not suitable for any office.