Judge in Trump conspiracy case links Jan. 6 to history of racist violence On Friday, Federal District Judge Amita Mehta ruled that a civil suit alleging a conspiracy to foment the Jan. 6 insurrection could proceed. In an extremely thorough and detailed 112-page ruling, Mehta concluded that the plaintiffs had made a “plausible” case that former President Trump himself was at the center of a conspiracy to stop the peaceful transfer of power. While plausibility is not the same as proven, Mehta’s ruling is the first time such a finding has been made in an official proceeding. It brings the nation one step closer to learning the truth about Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. It keeps alive an important avenue for holding him accountable for his actions. And it paves the way for the work of the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. This suit was brought by several Democrats in Congress and U.S. Capitol Police officers. It alleges that Trump violated 42 U.S. Code § 1985, the so-called Ku Klux Klan Act. In so doing, it artfully and evocatively links the Jan. 6 insurrection with the shameful post-Civil War history of white supremacist violence. Congress passed the Klan Act in 1871 to provide legal remedies against vigilante groups trying to prevent newly freed slaves from exercising their rights and trying to intimidate officials protecting Black civil rights. Section 1 of the Act prohibits conspiring “to prevent, by force, intimidation, or threat, any person from accepting or holding any office, trust, or place of confidence under the United States, or from discharging any duties thereof… or to injure him in his person or property on account of his lawful discharge of the duties of his office, or while engaged in the lawful discharge thereof.” That description all too accurately fits the events of Jan. 6. The invocation of the Klan Act suggests that by trying to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election, Trump and his allies were, in effect, channeling their white supremacist predecessors. They were seeking to nullify the Black vote that had played a critical role in Biden’s victory. That Jan. 6 insurrectionists carried Confederate flags only drives home their intent. Mehta’s decision also reminds us of the important role an independent judiciary plays in the battle to preserve a civic order in which facts matter and no one can defy the law with impunity. It represents a stark counterpoint to the efforts Trump made throughout his time in office to promote what political scientist Javier Corrales calls “autocratic legalism.” The former president regularly attacked judges with whose rulings he disagreed and accused them of partisanship. He tried, as Corrales notes is typical of autocrats, to “erode the impartiality of the law” and “use and abuse the law to protect” himself and his allies. Trump previously accused Judge Mehta of making “crazy” and partisan rulings befitting an “Obama-appointed judge.” But there seems nothing crazy or partisan about Friday’s ruling. In fact, at the same time that Mehta painstakingly reviewed the evidence against Trump, he delivered a victory to the president’s son, Donald Trump, Jr., and Rudy Giuliani by dismissing claims made against them. The judge was also well aware of the momentousness of allowing the suit against the former president to proceed. “To deny a president immunity from civil damages is no small step,” Mehta wrote. “The court well understands the gravity of its decision. But the alleged facts of this case are without precedent, and the court believes that its decision is consistent with the purposes behind such immunity.” Mehta framed the almost unimaginable fact that an incumbent president tried to undo the results of an election in light of the well-established principles of civil conspiracy. He did an especially important service to the public and to the Jan. 6 Committee by debunking the popular misunderstanding that to be guilty of conspiracy people need to meet “secretly to hatch a plan to violate the law.” The kinds of conspiracies that the law prohibits do not “require such a degree of deliberation, formality and coordination. In fact a civil conspiracy requires only an express or “tacit” agreement to “participate in an unlawful act or a lawful act in an unlawful manner.” It is enough, the judge wrote that members of the conspiracy “‘in some way or manner, or through some contrivance … came to a mutual understanding to try to accomplish a common and unlawful plan.’” The judge detailed the steps that Trump took to “‘prevent, by force, intimidation or threat’” congressional certification of Biden’s election to the presidency. He was clear and direct in laying out the evidence that suggests the plausibility of the plaintiffs’ contention that Trump and his allies “created the conditions that would enable the violence” that happened on Jan. 6. The president’s role was, as Mehta puts it, “multifaceted.” His co-conspirators included the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and “others who entered the Capitol … with the intent to disrupt the certification of the Electoral College vote through force, intimidation or threats.” This multifaceted role included Trump’s months-long lies about election fraud and corruption, his invitation to supporters to come to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 to be “wild,” his direct involvement in planning that event, his speech to his supporters assembled there, and his response — or lack thereof — to events as they unfolded later that afternoon. In a particularly damning part of his opinion, Mehta notes that it was “the president’s 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.” Here Mehta seems to point the way to an answer to the question that Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) has said is crucial to the Select Committee: “Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress's official proceeding to count electoral votes?” As the distinguished historian Carlo Ginsburg once noted, “Evidence, like clue or proof, is a crucial word for the historian and the judge.” Whatever the outcome of the civil case against Trump or of the Jan. 6 Committee’s work, those judges, like Mehta, who respect evidence serve history. Establishing a record that memorializes Trump’s effort to undo the Constitution and that exposes his blatant efforts to distort the truth about the election serves history — and may also serve to strengthen the current fragile state of our democracy. Friday’s decision is but a first step in what will undoubtedly be a long legal process. But nothing that comes next will make what Judge Mehta said go away. https://thehill.com/opinion/judicia...ase-links-jan-6-to-history-of-racist-violence ---------- wrbtrader
A senior Times journalist has been caught on tape admitting his paper overreacted to the Capitol riot. https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/03/13/the-new-york-times-mask-has-slipped/ But in the recordings of a private conversation, he describes that day very differently. ‘It was, like me and two other colleagues who were there, who were outside [the Capitol] and just having fun.’ And he also does not seem to think it was an insurrection: ‘they [the left] were making too big a deal. They were making this into some organised thing that it wasn’t.’ Rosenberg doesn’t just undercut the liberal-left narrative on the Capitol riot. He also dishes major dirt about the behaviour of certain colleagues that day. ‘But like all these colleagues who were in the building, and they’re young and are like: “Oh my God, it was so scary.” I’m like, “fuck off…” [The Times] is not the kind of place I can tell somebody to man up, but I kind of want to be like, “Dude, come on. Like, you were not in any danger.”’
We now have a very interesting growing conflict...Supreme Court Justice Thomas wife (Ginni Thomas)...pushed to overturn election results in her communication with Mark Meadows via text messages... While her husband (Supreme Court Justice Thomas) refuses to recuse himself from any election court cases nor from any cases in the future that his activist wife is actively involved with...the rabbit hole gets deeper. Just as interesting, the Supreme Court exempted themselves which allows them to decide on court cases involving their own family members unlike the ethical rules for Federal Judges that are not allowed to do such... What the Fuck !!! Reminder - Trump often referred to some of the Supreme Court Justices as "My Court" and he expected allegiance to him. Another reminder - Justice Clarence Thomas was the only justice to vote for Trump in the first January 6th court case that came before the court. Simply, what influences did his wife have on his court decision ??? America truly does not understand how deep the rabbit hole goes involving the Insurrection on Democracy and on our U.S. Constitution. It will be scary if the January 6th Committee discovers more text that shows the involvement of the Supreme Court Justices themself or in a cover-up to protect the involvement of their loved ones (family members) that had more involvement beyond "text messages". ---------- January 6 committee has text messages between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows By Ryan Nobles, Annie Grayer, Zachary Cohen and Jamie Gangel, CNN Updated 3:54 AM ET, Fri March 25, 2022 (CNN) The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 riot has in its possession more than two dozen text messages, 29 in total, between former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, a conservative activist and the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, according to multiple sources familiar with the messages. These text messages, according to sources, took place between early November 2020 and mid-January 2021. Thomas recently revealed that she attended the pro-Trump rally that preceded the US Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, but says she "played no role" in planning the events of that day. The text messages, reviewed by CNN, show Thomas pleading with Meadows to continue the fight to overturn the election results. "Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!! ... You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America's constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History," Thomas wrote on November 10, 2020. CNN first reported that the text messages were in the committee's possession. The Washington Post first described their content. Thomas regularly checked in with Meadows to encourage him to push claims of voter fraud and work to prevent the election from being certified. Meadows often responded. On that same day as the previous text, he wrote: "I will stand firm. We will fight until there is no fight left. Our country is too precious to give up on. Thanks for all you do." On November 24, 2020, Meadows promised he wasn't done battling on then-President Donald Trump's behalf and evoked his faith as a source of strength. "This is a fight of good versus evil. Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues. I have staked my career on it. Well at least my time in DC on it." Thomas wrote to Meadows on November 19, 2020, "Sounds like Sidney and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud. Make a plan. Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down." Attorney Sidney Powell, who worked on Trump-aligned lawsuits seeking to challenge the results of the 2020 election, was also referred to by herself as "The Kraken" in reference to the ancient mythological sea creature. By the end of November, Thomas was getting increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress of the attempt to find a path to overturn the results. On November 24, 2020 she wrote: "I can't see Americans swallowing the obvious fraud. Just going with one more thing with no frickin consequences... the whole coup and now this... we just cave to people wanting Biden to be anointed? Many of us can't continue the GOP charade." The committee is in possession of only one text from the month of January 2021, four days after the riot on Capitol Hill. Thomas wrote to Meadows that she was angry with then-Vice President Mike Pence for not taking the steps necessary to block the certification of the election results. "We are living through what feels like the end of America. Most of us are disgusted with the VP and are in a listening mode to see where to fight with our teams. Those who attacked the Capitol are not representative of our great teams of patriots for DJT!! Amazing times. The end of Liberty," Thomas wrote. Thomas' messages reflected a belief that the legal challenges presented by a group of conservative lawyers helping the campaign were valid. She attempted to convince Meadows to put his faith in the hands of Powell, who had spent the weeks following the election claiming to have mountains of evidence of fraud that never materialized. The content of the text messages may be of interest to the committee's investigation, because it asked Meadows in a subpoena to turn over "both documents and your deposition testimony regarding these and other matters that are within the scope of the committee's activity." The revelation of text messages between Thomas and Meadows, both key allies of Trump, comes as progressives and some legal ethics experts see her activism as a potential conflict of interest for Thomas' work on some Supreme Court cases. Meadows turned over thousands of text messages before he stopped cooperating with the committee. The texts have proven to hold a treasure trove of information about what was going on in the White House in the days leading up to the insurrection, and what people in Trump's orbit were thinking. The text messages in the committee's possession are only part of the tranche of documents that Meadows provided to the committee during the short period of time he was cooperating with their investigation. They do not necessarily represent the sum total of communication between Thomas and Meadows during that period of time. There is also the possibility some messages were not turned over due to privilege claims. Meadows and Thomas are longtime friends, both of whom have been active in conservative causes for decades. While Thomas has been actively involved in politics, she says she has been careful to distance her activity from her husband. "But we have our own separate careers, and our own ideas and opinions too. Clarence doesn't discuss his work with me, and I don't involve him in my work," she recently told the Free Beacon. The work of the January 6 select committee has already come before the Supreme Court. In January, the court did not stand in the way of the release of thousands of documents from the Trump White House despite the former President suing to keep them secret under executive privilege. The vote on the matter was 8-1, with only Thomas dissenting. CNN reached out to both Meadows' attorney and Thomas directly for comment and have yet to hear back. A spokesperson for the committee declined to comment. This story has been updated with additional developments Thursday. https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/24/politics/ginni-thomas-mark-meadows-text-messages/index.html ---------- wrbtrader
Federal judge: 'More likely than not that President Trump' committed crimes to stay in power A federal judge on Monday ordered Trump attorney John Eastman to turn emails over to the Jan. 6 Committee. The judge also said that the former president likely committed crimes while trying to stay in power. In his 44-page ruling, Judge David O. Carter of the Central District of California said both then-President Donald Trump and Eastman likely knew that a plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election was illegal but went ahead with it anyway. "Dr. Eastman and President Trump launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history," the judge wrote. "Their campaign was not confined to the ivory tower—it was a coup in search of a legal theory. The plan spurred violent attacks on the seat of our nation’s government, led to the deaths of several law enforcement officers, and deepened public distrust in our political process." Carter noted that it was "more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021."
Over 7 hours of disappearing Trump phone records makes Nixon's tapes 'look like nothing': Harvard law professor
“I have no idea what a burner phone is, to the best of my knowledge I have never even heard the term,” Trump told the Post in a statement. A lie that brazen is even now a little, wow. Even @Buy1Sell2 is saying "wow, how can I flip this?, I'll just have to bury my head again, how often can I do this for my king? "