Saturday, October 05, 2024

Jack Straw's filing

Jack Smith's filing this week laid out how Donald Trump planned and plotted the January 6th violence in order to stop the election results from being made official so that he could hang onto power even though he lost the election.   USA TODAY quotes from the filing:


When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office. With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (the ‘targeted states’). His efforts included lying to state officials in order to induce them to ignore true vote counts; manufacturing fraudulent electoral votes in the targeted states; attempting to enlist Vice President Michael R. Pence, in his role as President of the Senate, to obstruct Congress’s certification of the election by using the defendant’s fraudulent electoral votes; and when all else had failed, on January 6, 2021, directing an angry crowd of supporters to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification.

 

The filing has very disturbing information and it also highlights some grand stupidity.  Charles P. Pierce (ESQUIRE) notes:



Let’s hear another big cheer for Rudy Giuliani, who managed to go from America’s toughest prosecutor to America’s Dumbest Conspirator. In December 2020, Giuliani was in Michigan, trying to get a fake-electors scheme under way there. According to Smith’s report, Giuliani texted to an unidentified someone:

So I need you to pass a joint resolution from the legislature that states the election is in dispute, there’s an ongoing investigation by the legislature, and the Electors sent by Governor Whitmer are not the official electors of the state of Michigan and do not fall within the Safe Harbor deadline under Michigan law.
Alas for crime, Giuliani entered the wrong number into his phone and so the text went into the ether, only to be plucked by Smith and his team.


Shawn Musgrave (THE INTERCEPT) attempts to identify some of the redacted names while Shirin Ali (SLATE) zooms in on some details:


In the months leading up to the 2020 election, Trump privately told his advisers, campaign staff, and former Vice President Mike Pence’s staff that he did not plan to accept the results; instead, “he would simply declare victory before all the ballots were counted and any winner was projected,” Smith wrote.

This was evident in Trump’s public comments at the time, as he began to plant seeds of doubt in the country’s voting process and refused to give a straight answer when asked if he would accept the election results. For instance, Trump publicly claimed universal mail-in voting was “inaccurate” and “fraudulent”—despite voting by mail in the primaries himself. During his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Trump proclaimed that “the only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election.”

Three days before the election, according to the special counsel’s motion, a “private political advisor” (the name is redacted) who had been working on Trump’s campaign told a gathering of Trump supporters that the former president was going to declare victory no matter what. “That doesn’t mean he’s the winner, he’s just going to say he’s the winner,” the adviser said. The adviser also explained that mail-in ballots would mostly favor Biden, and because they take longer to count, it would create an opening for Trump to dispute the election. “And so they’re going to have a natural disadvantage and Trump’s going to take advantage of it—that’s our strategy. He’s going to declare himself a winner.”

 

It was planned all along.  This was not happenstance, this was not someone who was actually a bystander to some horrible events.  Donald Trump actively plotted for violence to take place.  He intended it to take place. Democracy did not matter to Donald Trump.  The voters will did not matter to Donald Trump.  The republic did not matter to Donald Trump.  The safety of people did not matter to Donald Trump.  All that mattered to Donald was retaining the title of president -- a title the American people voted to strip him of.


At THE NATION, Chris Lehmann observes:

 

The chronology in the filing’s finding of fact makes it clear just how manic and deranged Trump was in seeking to cling to the presidency—to the point of deliberately dismissing the actual outcome of the election. During Trump’s months-long crusade to discredit the balloting, without a shred of evidence, one White House staffer overheard him telling his nepo-adjutants Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.”

That was the de facto motto of the whole unfounded assault on a free and fair election. As election officials in downtown Detroit continued to count ballots the day after the election, a group of GOP protesters, high on bogus “stop the steal” rhetoric, tried to break into the building and disrupt the count. An operative at the scene texted a Trump campaign official—whose identity is redacted in the filing, but who appears to be the campaign’s elections operations director, Mike Roman. That campaign official had initially parried an earlier text indicating that the counting was legitimate with the directive, “Find a reason it isn’t.” Now told that the confrontation could explode into another “Brooks Brothers riot”—the Roger Stone–orchestrated campaign op that stymied a critical recount effort in Florida after the 2000 election—the official replied, “Make them riot. Do it!!!”

That was the Trump team’s ethos on January 6 as well, as Smith’s filing makes painfully clear. As frantic White House officials sought to get Trump to issue a statement telling the January 6 rioters to stand down, Trump instead churlishly repaired to the White House dining room to watch TV and tweet. This was when he issued the fateful tweet excoriating his vice president, Mike Pence, for lacking the “courage” to throw out the election results and anoint Congress with nonexistent powers to overturn the ballots of 81 million Americans. In no time flat, Pence’s Secret Service detail was forced to evacuate him from the Capitol, since, per Smith’s filing, “the defendant personally posted the tweet…at a point when he already understood the Capitol had been breached.” When another White House aide informed Trump of Pence’s evacuation as rioters came within 40 feet of his location, Trump’s reply was “So what?”

Whatever else this is, it’s clearly not the conduct of a US president honoring his constitutional oath or carrying out the duties of his office. As Smith’s filing points out, the president has no designated role in overseeing or certifying election results—for the obvious reason that doing so represents a howling conflict of interest.


Dropping back to the March 6th snapshot:


When the legal cases against him began to get play, that clarified his role behind the scenes and, no, it's not stretch to see him as the ringleader.  


But there were other issues there as well and the press, and the lawyers and the Congress elected to ignore them.

Let's drop back to January 20, 2017.
 
 
 
 


What a sad and poorly dressed family.  But the key take away is that Donald took the oath of office.  He was sworn in as president.

This is the oath they all have to take:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

You saw the video, Donald took the oath.

Donald then broke the oath.

He took an oath to uphold the Constitution.  He broke that oath.  Article II is part of the Constitution:


  • Clause 2 Electors

  • Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

  • Clause 3 Electoral College Count

  • The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.

  • Clause 4 Electoral Votes

  • The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.


Click on anything you need to in order to expand the above.  He broke it.  He came up with fake electors, he plotted and schemed.  Every thing he did to try to avoid leaving office was illegal and unconstitutional.  The Constitution outlines the process.  It did not permit him to do what he did.  What he did was actually treason.  

That's a strong word and it's one I don't toss around lightly because it carries the penalty of death.  But his actions qualify as treason.  He put himself above the country and that's not allowed.  And that's what should have been hammered home.

Is he fit to serve?  Four years earlier when he was presumably more aware of his surroundings, he was ready to destroy democracy to hold onto a second term.  He broke his oath to the Constitution.  Clearly, he is not fit for office.

They didn't hit on it.  They didn't cover it that way.  Maybe they just don't care about what's termed the supreme law of the land?  

Must be because the media ignored that aspect, the attorneys did, the Congress did.  

It is your first duty in office, to take the oath of office.  And you fail at keeping that oath then you have no business running for office again.


Holly Brewer (THE NEW REPUBLIC) observes:


Some of the strongest evidence in the brief focuses on the connections between Trump’s efforts to dispute the election, despite the overwhelming evidence that he had lost, and his threats against Mike Pence, as Trump repeatedly tried to force his vice president not to play his official role and in effect block the transition of power to a new president. But Smith is careful in his characterizations, distinguishing between Trump’s role as president and his role as a candidate: The brief argues that none of Trump’s attempts to pressure Pence should be regarded as “official” acts within the role accorded the president in terms of elections; instead, these were Trump’s campaign decisions, as a private citizen.

The most shocking evidence, as many news outlets highlighted on Wednesday, came in the connections between a series of Trump’s tweets, which Smith carefully shows are “private” acts, and Trump’s orchestration of a pressure campaign against Pence to not count the votes. Trump threatened Pence that he would be hated by hundreds of thousands of people, and then issued a tweet calling them to the U.S Capitol to protest. Finally, on January 6, when Pence had not yielded to such pressure, Trump tweeted a message at 2:24 p.m. that essentially sicced the crowd on him—and then, when warned by an aide of the danger Pence was in, responded, 


The economy? Latest jobs report shows a big increase.  Greg Sargent (THE NEW REPUBLIC) reports: 


As the clock crept toward midnight on Thursday evening, Donald Trump unleashed two all-caps social media missives that neatly captured the sophistication of his arguments on the economy. One vomited forth a bunch of scattershot promises to end taxes on untold numbers of people while falsely pushing the idea that Trump delivered the largest tax cut in U.S. history. The other raged that Kamala Harris will end “FRACKING,” featuring a video depicting her as a radical socialist who will destroy American energy production, and concluding: “Only President Trump will bring back Trump’s strong economy.”

In a case of spectacular bad timing, only eight hours later, we learned that in September, the economy added a stunning 254,000 new jobs, far surpassing expectations.

This is the last jobs report before the early voting really gets underway. While there will be one more on Friday, November 1, it will come too late to have any real political effect. By contrast, the surprising nature of today’s report will prompt many days of positive headlines about jobs—including from local news outlets, which independents tend to read—that will keep on mitigating Harris’s leading vulnerability against Trump: economic approval numbers.

I’m not sure people appreciate the magnitude of one of Harris’s biggest achievements in this campaign: fighting Trump to a near-draw on the economy. There is a telling number buried in a new Cook Political Report poll of the seven key battleground states: Harris is now dead even with Trump on which candidate likely voters trust on “getting inflation under control.” In August, Cook’s polling found Trump leading by six points on this question; now each candidate has 47 percent.


Regarding this news, the Democratic Party issued the following:


Job Growth Remains Strong Under Biden-Harris Administration as Reports Show Trump’s Project 2025 Agenda Would Cause Recession, Send Inflation Soaring, and Slow Growth 

In response to today’s jobs report, DNC National Press Secretary ⁨Emilia Rowland⁩ released the following statement:

“Today the American economy marks its 45th month of consecutive job growth under the Biden-Harris administration, with the creation of over 16 million jobs since the start of their term. The contrast couldn’t be starker: Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans continue to push their Project 2025 agenda that would cost America 3.1 million jobs, give giant tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations, end the ACA, cut overtime and make it harder for workers to organize, and impose a national sales tax that would raise costs by nearly $4,000 per year. Trump left office with the worst jobs record since Herbert Hoover and America can’t afford to go back. Americans deserve a president who will fight for the middle class and give everyone a chance to succeed — and that’s Kamala Harris.”

NEW: September’s jobs report shows the 45th consecutive month of job growth under the Biden-Harris administration as unemployment remains low.

Heather Long, Washington Post: “JUST IN: A strong jobs report. The US economy added 254,000 jobs in September. That’s way above expectations and a nice bounce from 159,000 in August. (Both July & August revised up)

Unemployment rate: 4.1%. (Down from 4.2% in August)

Wages: +4% in past year (vs. 2.5% inflation)”

New York Times: “Despite all the hand-wringing, the U.S. labor market remains impressively strong.

“Businesses reported adding 254,000 jobs in September, the government reported on Friday. The number far surpassed forecasts and was the strongest monthly gain since March.”

Washington Post: “Employers added 254,000 jobs in September, reflecting a stronger than expected labor market.”

The contrast in economic visions couldn’t be starker, and majorities of Americans say that Democratic policies are fighting for the middle class while MAGA Republicans only fight for the ultra-wealthy and big corporations.  

The Harris-Walz campaign’s New Way Forward will spur job growth, build up the middle class, boost small businesses, and invest in entrepreneurs.

A New Way Forward for the Middle Class: “Goldman Sachs estimates the biggest boost to the U.S. economy from a Vice President Harris win. They estimate that job growth will be higher and inflation lower than if Donald Trump is elected. A Harris victory would lead to between 10,000 and 30,000 more new jobs per month than if Trump is elected.”

Reuters: “Under Harris, job growth would be 10,000 a month higher than if Trump wins with a divided government, and 30,000 higher than with a Republican sweep, Goldman estimates.”

Axios: “The paper, titled ‘A New Way Forward for the Middle Class,’ says that Harris will ‘call on Congress to pass the first-ever federal ban on price gouging.’

“‘The bill will set rules of the road to make clear that big corporations can’t unfairly exploit consumers during times of crisis to run up excessive corporate profits on food and groceries.’”

Politico: “In her speech, Harris reiterated her support for several other major economic efforts, including a federal ban on corporate price-gouging, expanding tax credits for new small businesses, extending the child tax credit and pledging to build 3 million new homes to address the housing shortage.”

Politico: “Harris’ proposal, released on Tuesday, calls for significantly expanding the tax deduction for start-up expenses from $5,000 to $50,000, while also setting the goal of 25 million new small-business applications during her first term, according to a Harris campaign official granted anonymity to describe details of the plan. The plan also proposes reducing barriers to getting occupational licenses and developing a standard tax deduction for small businesses.”

Donald Trump left office with the worst jobs record of any president in modern American history and his MAGAnomics tax scam – which his Project 2025 agenda would extend – incentivized companies to ship jobs overseas, and screw over American workers. 

Reuters: “How offshoring rolled along under Trump, who vowed to stop it”

The Guardian: “‘He pulled the wool over our eyes’: workers blame Trump for moving jobs overseas” 

“Promises to save US manufacturing and prevent American jobs moving abroad were a key part of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. But since Trump took office in January 2017, nearly 200,000 jobs have been moved overseas, based on Trade Adjustment Assistance certified petitions.”

Politico: “Trump hails ‘manufacturing miracle’ as factories bleed jobs”

Washington Post: “President Trump took office at the crest of the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. He leaves presiding over the worst labor market in modern U.S. history, as an already-sputtering economic recovery has turned negative.”

Fortune: “Trump to leave office with the worst jobs record since Herbert Hoover”

Wall Street Journal: “President Trump’s trade war against China didn’t achieve the central objective of reversing a U.S. decline in manufacturing, economic data show, despite tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese goods to discourage imports.”

New York Times: “After Years of Growth, Automakers Are Cutting U.S. Jobs”

Bloomberg: “The Offshoring of U.S. Jobs Increased on Trump’s Watch”

Trump has been clear that he would send new, good-paying manufacturing jobs overseas by repealing the Biden-Harris Inflation Reduction Act — which has already helped spur over 330,000 clean energy jobs – and his Project 2025 plans would cost the U.S. millions of  jobs, send inflation soaring, and raise taxes on everyone but the wealthy elite.

Axios: “Trump’s inflation bomb: How his second-term plans could make it worse”

Wall Street Journal: “Economists Say Inflation Would Be Worse Under Trump Than Biden”

USA Today: “Under a Trump administration, inflation would rise from 3% this year to 3.5% in 2025, compared to 2.4% under Harris, the Moody’s analysis shows. At the end of a Trump tenure the U.S. would have 3.1 million fewer jobs than under Harris and a 4.5% unemployment rate, a half percentage point higher.”

The Guardian: “They were billed as a ‘middle-class miracle’ but according to a new book Donald Trump’s $1.5tn tax cuts have helped billionaires pay a lower rate than the working class for the first time in history.”

Politico: “Donald Trump pledged Thursday to rescind any ‘unspent’ funds under the Inflation Reduction Act should he be elected in November — potentially upending key parts of the Democrats’ climate law and its benefits to Republican-led communities.”

Center for American Progress: “Project 2025’s tax plan includes an ‘intermediate tax reform’ that includes changes to tax brackets and corporate tax cuts that would shift the tax burden toward middle-income households. And the ‘fundamental tax reform’ it proposes would replace all individual income and corporate taxes with consumption taxes.”

Congressional Republicans are doing Trump’s bidding and railing against affordable health care and pushing for tax cuts for billionaires. 

NBC News: “The former president made a similar promise in 2016. The following year, he endorsed a Republican-led bill to undo a substantial portion of the law, repealing the ACA’s subsidy extensions and regulations in an attempt to lower costs on the open market. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected that it would have rescinded insurance coverage for about 23 million people. It also threatened protections for pre-existing conditions.”

CNN: “At the dinner, hosted by billionaire investor John Paulson, Trump told the crowd that one of his core issues for a second term would be extending the sweeping tax cuts that congressional Republicans approved in 2017. While the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reduced taxes for most Americans, the rich benefited far more than others.”

Axios: “GOP lawmakers cautiously open to Trump’s ACA repeal push”

“What they’re saying: Two top Senate Republicans signaled they could be open to a revived effort.

“‘I think Obamacare has been one of the biggest deceptions on the American people,’ said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). ‘I mean just look at your health care premiums.’ But he added he would ‘be interested to hear exactly how’ Trump would approach repeal.

“Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who’s in line to run the Finance Committee if the GOP retakes the Senate, said he’s open to plans that were similar to the 2017 repeal and replace bills.”

Semafor: “What exactly goes into that package is still an open question, however. As [Mike Johnson] mentioned, the core of any bill would be addressing the individual tax cuts passed under Trump that are scheduled to sunset in 2025, and are estimated to cost trillions to fully renew.”


Sorry about the delay in this but I was four paragraphs in on something I was writing re: THE NATION when I realized that was actually a good topic for Ava and my piece at THIRD.  So I pulled those paragraphs and had to start over.  This originally posted in bits as I wrote it but it's complete now.


The following sties updated:






 
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