Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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Defiant
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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Octavious
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Octavious »

I'm assuming he can just appeal again? Because why not? ;)
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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Let him appeal to the highest authority in-person.
It's almost as if people are the problem.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Holman »

Octavious wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 7:44 pm I'm assuming he can just appeal again? Because why not? ;)
Can you appeal a Supreme Court ruling?

(Or is that the joke?)
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Octavious »

It's Trump he never seems.to run out of appeals lol. I'm sure he's in a good mood today.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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Isgrimnur wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 7:47 pm Let him appeal to the highest authority in-person.
So... he'll call Putin?
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Kraken »

Blackhawk wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 9:53 pm
Isgrimnur wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 7:47 pm Let him appeal to the highest authority in-person.
So... he'll call Putin?
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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When darkness veils the world, four Warriors of Light shall come.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by malchior »

If you have access, this piece in the New Yorker is a real eye-opener. It details the close ties of Clarence Thomas's wife to all the players at the heart of the events of 1/6. That includes ties to Eastman (who wrote the memo about the 7 electors), Stewart Rhodes (Oathkeeper's leader now indicted for seditious conspiracy), and Mark Meadows (former Congressman and Trump's Chief of Staff). She also coordinated buses and transportation for 1/6. Good lord. And probably of no significance but Thomas was the lone dissenter against releasing Trump's records to the 1/6 committee.

New Yorker
In December, Chief Justice John Roberts released his year-end report on the federal judiciary. According to a recent Gallup poll, the Supreme Court has its lowest public-approval rating in history—in part because it is viewed as being overly politicized. President Joe Biden recently established a bipartisan commission to consider reforms to the Court, and members of Congress have introduced legislation that would require Justices to adhere to the same types of ethics standards as other judges. Roberts’s report, however, defiantly warned everyone to back off. “The Judiciary’s power to manage its internal affairs insulates courts from inappropriate political influence,” he wrote. His statement followed a series of defensive speeches from members of the Court’s conservative wing, which now holds a super-majority of 6–3. Last fall, Justice Clarence Thomas, in an address at Notre Dame, accused the media of spreading the false notion that the Justices are merely politicians in robes. Such criticism, he said, “makes it sound as though you are just always going right to your personal preference,” adding, “They think you become like a politician!”

The claim that the Justices’ opinions are politically neutral is becoming increasingly hard to accept, especially from Thomas, whose wife, Virginia (Ginni) Thomas, is a vocal right-wing activist. She has declared that America is in existential danger because of the “deep state” and the “fascist left,” which includes “transsexual fascists.” Thomas, a lawyer who runs a small political-lobbying firm, Liberty Consulting, has become a prominent member of various hard-line groups. Ginni Thomas’s political activism has caused controversy for years. For the most part, it has been dismissed as the harmless action of an independent spouse. But now the Court appears likely to secure victories for her allies in a number of highly polarizing cases—on abortion, affirmative action, and gun rights.

Many Americans first became aware of Ginni Thomas’s activism on January 6, 2021. That morning, before the Stop the Steal rally in Washington, D.C., turned into an assault on the Capitol resulting in the deaths of at least five people, she cheered on the supporters of President Donald Trump who had gathered to overturn Biden’s election. In a Facebook post that went viral, she linked to a news item about the protest, writing, “love maga people!!!!” Shortly afterward, she posted about Ronald Reagan’s famous “A Time for Choosing” speech. Her next status update said, “god bless each of you standing up or praying.” Two days after the insurrection, she added a disclaimer to her feed, noting that she’d written the posts “before violence in US Capitol.” (The posts are no longer public.)

Later that January, the Washington Post revealed that she had also been agitating about Trump’s loss on a private Listserv, Thomas Clerk World, which includes former law clerks of Justice Thomas’s. The online discussion had been contentious. John Eastman, a former Thomas clerk and a key instigator of the lie that Trump actually won in 2020, was on the same side as Ginni Thomas, and he drew rebukes. According to the Post, Thomas eventually apologized to the group for causing internal rancor. Artemus Ward, a political scientist at Northern Illinois University and a co-author of “Sorcerers’ Apprentices,” a history of Supreme Court clerks, believes that the incident confirmed her outsized role. “Virginia Thomas has direct access to Thomas’s clerks,” Ward said. Clarence Thomas is now the Court’s senior member, having served for thirty years, and Ward estimates that there are “something like a hundred and twenty people on that Listserv.” In Ward’s view, they comprise “an élite right-wing commando movement.” Justice Thomas, he says, doesn’t post on the Listserv, but his wife “is advocating for things directly.” Ward added, “It’s unprecedented. I have never seen a Justice’s wife as involved.”
Edit:

Wanted to drop in this crazy nugget because it is WTF time in the SCOTUS.
Another organizer of the January 6th uprising who has been subpoenaed by the congressional committee, Ali Alexander, also has long-standing ties to Ginni Thomas. Like Fletcher, Alexander spoke at a rally in Washington the night before the riot, leading a chant of “Victory or death!” A decade ago, Alexander was a participant in Groundswell, a secretive, invitation-only network that, among other things, coördinated with hard-right congressional aides, journalists, and pressure groups to launch attacks against Obama and against less conservative Republicans. As recently as 2019, Ginni Thomas described herself as the chairman of Groundswell, which, according to documents first published by Mother Jones, sees itself as waging “a 30 front war seeking to fundamentally transform the nation.” As Karoli Kuns, of the media watchdog Crooks and Liars, has noted, several Groundswell members—including Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, the fringe foreign-policy analyst—went on to form the far-right flank of the Trump Administration. (Both Bannon and Gorka were eventually pushed out.) According to Ginni Thomas’s biography in the Council for National Policy’s membership book, she remains active in Groundswell. A former participant told me that Thomas chairs weekly meetings.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Skinypupy »

Jenna Ellis thinks the reason the Jan 6 committee subpoenaed her is because "they can't date her"
The former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis has a theory about why she was subpoenaed by the January 6 panel investigating the Capitol riot.

"The committee is just mad they can't date me," Ellis tweeted on Wednesday.

Ellis tweeted the comment after she and three other former Trump lawyers — Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Boris Epshteyn — were subpoenaed by the January 6 committee.

Only the best people. :lol:
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Carpet_pissr »

Since she is definitely not as hot as she apparently thinks she is if she's serious, I can only assume she's trolling here. Apparently it worked! These people are PROS, I'm telling ya (at trolling).
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Zarathud »

This is what happens when you hang around too much with Rudy Giuliani.

The House committee doesn’t want to date her — they want to find out if she’s fucking over American bureaucracy. Justice is blind.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Skinypupy »

Carpet_pissr wrote: Fri Jan 21, 2022 3:19 pm Since she is definitely not as hot as she apparently thinks she is if she's serious, I can only assume she's trolling here. Apparently it worked! These people are PROS, I'm telling ya (at trolling).
Oh, it's entirely a troll.

It just amuses me that she went with the mean girl "I'm so hot" option, instead of something easier.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Carpet_pissr »

Skinypupy wrote: Fri Jan 21, 2022 4:27 pm
Carpet_pissr wrote: Fri Jan 21, 2022 3:19 pm Since she is definitely not as hot as she apparently thinks she is if she's serious, I can only assume she's trolling here. Apparently it worked! These people are PROS, I'm telling ya (at trolling).
Oh, it's entirely a troll.

It just amuses me that she went with the mean girl "I'm so hot" option, instead of something easier.
Huh. I hate myself for even thinking about it as much as I have, but she might actually be trying to elicit some kind of "Oh, you're not that hot, honey" remark from some dude on the commission, then let all hell break loose.

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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Alefroth »

No one on the commission, dude or otherwise, is falling for it.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Skinypupy »

Interesting development.

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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by malchior »

It's not surprising. In fact, I personally suspect Barr ran for the hills to get away from the real coup attempt (the fake electoral slates, pressure on Pence, etc.). He sent the letter to resign on 12/14/2020 citing his last day as 12/23/2020. That resignation letter was sent on the same exact day that Guiliani is reported to have convened the 7 fake elector groups -- side note what is a group of seditionists called anyway? That's a hell of a coincidence.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Skinypupy »

True, but I figured he would just give the committee the finger like everyone else.

Seems like his MO to protect the MAGA cause, even if he didn’t want to personally be part of the coup.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

"has been talking" - was he under oath or did he just show up to answer questions? He strikes me as the kinda dude that would cooperate to the degree that it moves the cross hairs off him but doesn't actually help the investigators. Maybe I'm just cynical, but for him to seemingly finally eject after it was clear he could have been somehow implicated seems rather telling.
Maybe next year, maybe no go
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Grifman »

Smoove_B wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 4:49 pm "has been talking" - was he under oath or did he just show up to answer questions? He strikes me as the kinda dude that would cooperate to the degree that it moves the cross hairs off him but doesn't actually help the investigators. Maybe I'm just cynical, but for him to seemingly finally eject after it was clear he could have been somehow implicated seems rather telling.
I don't think they do one without the other. Asking someone questions without them being under oath wouldn't necessarily be worth much.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

Yeah, it's not like people would ever speak to Congressional committees and not be under oath.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by malchior »

It is illegal to make false statements to Congress anyway in any context. I was also going to say 'under oath' sounds great but in the end lying to Congress is rarely prosecuted. Even when it does happen it hardly ever ends with a conviction. Remember when Roger Clemmons was prosecuted for lying to Congress about substance abuse? That ended in mistrial then acquittal. The Imperial Presidency also often covers it up - Bush pardoned most of the Iran-Contra guys.

In any case, the boil down is this isn't a serious cudgel for people who want to do the nation harm. It only restrains honest people. Congress has little power to protect itself since it depends on the other 2 branches to enforce truthfulness. And in particular the Executive has shown in several cases that they'd rather enjoy some time limited autocracy rather than cooperate with Congress. The Trump administration and many GOP members since are essentially flipping the People a finger right now and won't even show up anymore.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Alefroth »

Ok Newt.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... ittee-jail
Calling the members of the 6 January committee “wolves [who] are going to find out that they’re now sheep”, he said that if Republicans take Congress in November, “this is all going to come crashing down … they’re the ones who in fact, I think, face a real risk of jail for the kinds of laws they’re breaking”.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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I’m just impressed Newt was able to pull his tongue out of Trump’s ass long enough to release a statement. :shock:
Covfefe!
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Alefroth »

hepcat wrote: Mon Jan 24, 2022 10:14 pm I’m just impressed Newt was able to pull his tongue out of Trump’s ass long enough to release a statement. :shock:
Trump has to shit sometime.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by disarm »


Alefroth wrote:
hepcat wrote: Mon Jan 24, 2022 10:14 pm I’m just impressed Newt was able to pull his tongue out of Trump’s ass long enough to release a statement. :shock:
Trump has to shit sometime.
With so much of it coming out of his mouth, I wouldn't be so sure Image
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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I'm glad the image link is broken, aren't I?
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Grifman »

Heh, Eastman’s university just threw him under the bus:

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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by El Guapo »

What does it mean that the university "backs" the subpoena for documents on its server? If they're on the university server don't they just...turn them over? What does voicing support for the subpoena mean?
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by malchior »

El Guapo wrote: Wed Jan 26, 2022 10:15 am What does it mean that the university "backs" the subpoena for documents on its server? If they're on the university server don't they just...turn them over? What does voicing support for the subpoena mean?
It could mean a couple of things: they looked at them and saw bad stuff directly and likened it to contraband, or perhaps it could be "this guy hijacked our resources to promote a bad thing and we disavow it".
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by LawBeefaroni »

El Guapo wrote: Wed Jan 26, 2022 10:15 am What does it mean that the university "backs" the subpoena for documents on its server? If they're on the university server don't they just...turn them over? What does voicing support for the subpoena mean?
Given today's climate, I assume that "backing" a congressional subpoena means that you aren't ignoring it.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by malchior »

LawBeefaroni wrote: Wed Jan 26, 2022 10:56 am
El Guapo wrote: Wed Jan 26, 2022 10:15 am What does it mean that the university "backs" the subpoena for documents on its server? If they're on the university server don't they just...turn them over? What does voicing support for the subpoena mean?
Given today's climate, I assume that "backing" a congressional subpoena means that you aren't ignoring it.
Yeah or pound sand. Send your nonexistent Congress investigators to get 'em.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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I took it as them preemptively saying that they will accept and honor it. Likely they want an excuse to distance themselves from it and are asking them to please give them the opportunity.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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Blackhawk wrote: Wed Jan 26, 2022 5:37 pm I took it as them preemptively saying that they will accept and honor it. Likely they want an excuse to distance themselves from it and are asking them to please give them the opportunity.
What they are saying is that the emails are on their server, and hence belong to the university. Hence Eastman’s claims of privilege or any other rights don’t matter because the emails aren’t his. And they are willing to turn them over to the committee.
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Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Zarathud »

I expect those emails violated University policy and that activity should not have been conducted through the account. So the University is not going to defend this garbage, and resent being involved even to the extent they’re cooperating and releasing the emails.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by LordMortis »

Zarathud wrote: Wed Jan 26, 2022 8:50 pm I expect those emails violated University policy and that activity should not have been conducted through the account. So the University is not going to defend this garbage, and resent being involved even to the extent they’re cooperating and releasing the emails.
^^^
This.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Kurth »

Grifman wrote: Wed Jan 26, 2022 7:11 pm
Blackhawk wrote: Wed Jan 26, 2022 5:37 pm I took it as them preemptively saying that they will accept and honor it. Likely they want an excuse to distance themselves from it and are asking them to please give them the opportunity.
What they are saying is that the emails are on their server, and hence belong to the university. Hence Eastman’s claims of privilege or any other rights don’t matter because the emails aren’t his. And they are willing to turn them over to the committee.
Usually, when you get a subpoena, the next step is to talk to the party that served it and let them know if it's something the receiving party is going to cooperate on or fight (move to quash). As I read this, telling the committee Chapman "back's the subpoena" means that they are reviewing the documents and will make a production. But they're still going to review the docs for relevance, privilege, etc.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Grifman »

The fake electors are invited to Congress to tour the Capitol, courtesy of the January 6 committee:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/28/politics ... index.html
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Grifman »

It’s really weird that Republicans that were worried about election voting fraud seem to have no problem with fraudulent electoral votes.
Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions. – G.K. Chesterton
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by TheMix »

Grifman wrote: Fri Jan 28, 2022 11:24 pm It’s really weird that Republicans that were worried about election voting fraud seem to have no problem with fraudulent electoral votes.
Cue... Yellowking, I think... It's always projection.

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