Capitol Insurrection / rebellion thread

[Ripster42]

Doesn't matter how many people told him it was bullshit. If he "honestly" believe it, he's got legal grounds to stand on that "he believed it despite everyone else telling him he's wrong."

I'm no legal expert, but from what little I know it seems like he's got a fairly solid defense against fraud. Because he usually does.

@cubby Pretty sure it doesn't matter what he says he believes, because a jury can decide for themselves whether or not he's telling the truth when he says that's what he believes. An insanity defense would be just as viable in this case, because he would literally have become detached from reality in the face of all of those people telling him it didn't happen, and, again, his AG saying that he didn't care if any conspiracy was true or not. I recognize you're not a trumper, but bilbur's testimony is a direct refutation to the defense you're proposing for trump.

[Edge-]

I don't think that "whether he believed it was stolen or not" matters in this case... the "Election Defense Fund" that they said all this money was going into didn't exist. It just went into their SuperPAC and was spent on all sorts of random things. That's straight up fraud (probably!)

Fine print matters. For example -

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKBN27R309

Donations under $8K automatically go to the "Save America" PAC and RNC fund.

With extensive earlier reporting on how little of the money raised for the "Election Defense Fund" actually being spent on that - https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/v...f-2fac647ea53d

With earlier reporting confirming that no "Election Defense Fund" entity actually existed, it was all just branding (which remains shady, but legal) - https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...9f8_story.html

According to the fine print in the latest fundraising appeals, 75 percent of each contribution to the joint fundraising committee would first go toward the Save America leadership PAC and the rest would be shared with the party committee to help with the party’s operating expenses. This effectively means that the vast majority of low-dollar donations under the agreement would go toward financing the president’s new leadership PAC, instead of buttressing efforts to support the party or to finance voting lawsuits.

As I said above, the fine print matters.

[Ripster42]

As I said above, the fine print matters.

Sure does. It doesn't solve the wire fraud problem. That earlier reporting was done before sworn testimony was given about how many times trump was told that his claims were false. You can't knowingly solicit money from people to fix a problem that you know doesn't exist. If you tell people a bunch of kids have cancer, and that you're going to split the donated money between funding those kids' cancer treatment while the other 95% of it goes into your bank account, and there's not actually any kids with cancer, you're still going to jail, even though you told people that you were going to keep 95% of the money anyway.

[Edge-]

Sure does. It doesn't solve the wire fraud problem. That earlier reporting was done before sworn testimony was given about how many times trump was told that his claims were false. You can't knowingly solicit money from people to fix a problem that you know doesn't exist. If you tell people a bunch of kids have cancer, and that you're going to split the donated money between funding those kids' cancer treatment while the other 95% of it goes into your bank account, and there's not actually any kids with cancer, you're still going to jail, even though you told people that you were going to keep 95% of the money anyway.

You can if you simply claim that no matter how many people told you, no matter how many presentations about it you received, you still believed the election was fraudulent. Which Trump can and will do if it comes to it, as he's still doing in public today.

In my experience, fraud is fairly narrowly defined in these instances. And as long as the fine print was there when people donated, it's very much, "You're shit outta luck, and the person you gave the money to is laughing all the way to the bank."

[Ripster42]

You can if you simply claim that no matter how many people told you, no matter how many presentations about it you received, you still believed the election was fraudulent.

Again, only if the jury believes you. And, again, you'd have a better chance with the insanity defense after the litany of people who testified they told him so.

There's no fine print that says "we know there actually wasn't any fraud during the election." The fine print isn't going to excuse the crime here. The only thing that will save him is that he was formerly a president, if, indeed, he does avoid jail.

[Edge-]

Again, only if the jury believes you.

This assumes it would make it to court to begin with, and honestly I'm fairly skeptical. Beyond that, if the whole jury believes you. Just one person can hold that up.

And, again, you'd have a better chance with the insanity defense after the litany of people who testified they told him so.

Disagree. Trump has been consistent on this point. IIRC he acknowledged he lost once, but it was while complaining about fraud, but beyond that he's been consistent in his public statements that he believes he won the election and that fraud was committed.

Because again: It doesn't necessarily matter how many experts and smart people told him he was wrong. If he can convince a single person on the jury he honestly believed that - and honestly I'd believe him here - he's in the clear.

There's no fine print that says "we know there actually wasn't any fraud during the election." The fine print isn't going to excuse the crime here. The only thing that will save him is that he was formerly a president, if, indeed, he does avoid jail.

Fine print had to do with where the money was going and which organization was spending it, covering Trump and the campaign from any liability since it was made "clear" to donors that most of their money would be going to other organizations before the "Election Defense Fund".

Because we all read the fine print : |

[Endus]

You can if you simply claim that no matter how many people told you, no matter how many presentations about it you received, you still believed the election was fraudulent. Which Trump can and will do if it comes to it, as he's still doing in public today.

Ignorantiam juris non excusat, and all that.

If you should've known better, you can still be found legally responsible. Otherwise, you'd escape literally any legal charges by just saying "golly gosh darn it, I just didn't know!"

Clearly, that isn't how it actually works. If you start randomly shooting a gun at some dude, and kill him, you don't get to claim you though the gun would be filled with blanks, not unless you had a darn good reason to think so, that you can substantiate, like a film set armorer handing you a gun and saying so. This is especially not true if you keep that shit up when people tell you it's wrong; if anyone's telling Trump there's no fraud and it's not being investigated and he just chooses to "not believe them", he's accepting that responsibility, right there. It's like if you fired the gun at a tree, and it exploded as the bullets slammed into it, and someone said "holy shit, stop shooting, the bullets are live rounds", and you said "nah, I don't believe they are, I believe they're blanks!" and then shoot a guy. Yeah, no, that'd be negligent manslaughter at a minimum.

[Ripster42]

This assumes it would make it to court to begin with, and honestly I'm fairly skeptical. Beyond that, if the whole jury believes you. Just one person can hold that up.

As I said, the only thing that is going to save him, if he avoids jail, if that he was president.

Disagree. Trump has been consistent on this point. IIRC he acknowledged he lost once, but it was while complaining about fraud, but beyond that he's been consistent in his public statements that he believes he won the election and that fraud was committed.
Because again: It doesn't necessarily matter how many experts and smart people told him he was wrong. If he can convince a single person on the jury he honestly believed that - and honestly I'd believe him here - he's in the clear.

1 person disagreeing doesn't get you a not guilty. And it doesn't matter how consistent trump has been (spoiler alert, he's had several freudian slips admitting he lost), we're at the "reasonable person" standard, which is why you'd have as good of a chance with the insanity defense.

Fine print had to do with where the money was going and which organization was spending it, covering Trump and the campaign from any liability since it was made "clear" to donors that most of their money would be going to other organizations before the "Election Defense Fund".

Because we all read the fine print : |

There are no kids with cancer. It doesn't matter what the split was.

[Masark]

They really have no incentive to diminish the scope of checks and balances that the judicial branch has over the executive branch.

Uhh, did you not notice their ruling in Egbert v. Boule the other day?

[PhaelixWW]

Uhh, did you not notice their ruling in Egbert v. Boule the other day?

That... literally has nothing to do with what I said.

[Edge-]

https://wreg.com/news/nation-and-wor...ampaign-aides/

Giuliani is big-mad that Trump staffers would "lie" about him being absolutely hammered on election night and drunkenly suggesting Trump just claim victory.

“I am disgusted and outraged at the out right lie by Jason Miller and Bill Steppien,” Giuliani tweeted, misspelling the former campaign manager’s last name.

“I was upset that they were not prepared for the massive cheating (as well as other lawyers around the President) I REFUSED all alcohol that evening. My favorite drink..Diet Pepsi,” Giuliani wrote on Twitter.

“Is the false testimony from Miller and Steppien because I yelled at them? Are they being paid to lie?” he added in a follow-up tweet.

Gotta wonder...why would these people all lie about each other so much, apparently? I mean, wouldn't you want to have trust and good relationships with the people you work with?

Seems weird that Republicans surround themselves with liars who all seem to hate each other.

- - - Updated - - -

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-b2101004.html

Trump thinks the delay of today's hearing is about "ratings", ignoring that the ratings have been pretty gangbusters thus far. They're getting Sunday Night Football levels of viewers, and many more than watching Fox.

But predictably, the only thing that largely matters to Trump is popularity. Ratings. How many people are watching. The content doesn't matter, because the number of people watching determines the truthiness of a thing, apparently.

[Paranoid Android]

Kimberly Guilfoyle was paid $60,000 speaking fee for Ellipse rally intro, Jan. 6 committee member says

Ahh the grift.

So this was thrown into the larger inquiry of Trump's taking $250 million in campaign funds and nobody knows where it went.

Besides the grift I want to once more wish I could have a conversation with these people and understand how not just the Trumps but many of the rich are not you fantasy of "they works so hard this is why they are rich". As this example shows she got $60k for 2 minutes while if we did the $15 minimum wage it would take a person almost 2 years to get this. It has been reported that these were people not contributing big dollar donations, roughly $17 per person. Sad that these people have this much hate and fear they give away the little hard earned money they have so Kimberly can go shopping or I guess use on a 2nd mortgage home.

[Cthulhu 2020]

It's truly horrifying what he did (yet again), and even (somehow) worse, the majority of the GQP believes Trump's lies re the election.

And Trump could still run and win in 2024.

I'm highly doubting a Trump victory. Sure, he was big in 2016-2020. But think about how he became big. There were other Republicans who were front runners and Donald Trump was the nobody "joke" candidate. He was a background character. Then one day he said a bunch of shockingly racist shit and said he'd build a wall between the US and Mexico, and that absolutely fired up the base to go out and vote. On top of the, Vladdy daddy spent hundreds of millions on political ads for Trump.

In 2024 what does Trump have? The racist shock value has already been used. He could say something ridiculously racist and the shock value wouldn't hit nearly as hard as it did back then. Being ridiculously racist is the norm among the right now. They've mostly dropped the mask. Before 2016 they all had the mask on, and the other Republican candidates were milquetoast. 2024 is going to see a lot of people saying racist shit because it worked for Trump, so why not me too?

That and Trump has almost completely faded into irrelevance in the modern day. The only reason his name is still so common is that the insurrection investigation is an ongoing thing. That and we're probably going to find out about the other thousands of crimes he committed during his presidency over the next few decades.

[Kaleredar]

I'm highly doubting a Trump victory. Sure, he was big in 2016-2020. But think about how he became big. There were other Republicans who were front runners and Donald Trump was the nobody "joke" candidate. He was a background character. Then one day he said a bunch of shockingly racist shit and said he'd build a wall between the US and Mexico, and that absolutely fired up the base to go out and vote. On top of the, Vladdy daddy spent hundreds of millions on political ads for Trump.

In 2024 what does Trump have? The racist shock value has already been used. He could say something ridiculously racist and the shock value wouldn't hit nearly as hard as it did back then. Being ridiculously racist is the norm among the right now. They've mostly dropped the mask. Before 2016 they all had the mask on, and the other Republican candidates were milquetoast. 2024 is going to see a lot of people saying racist shit because it worked for Trump, so why not me too?

That and Trump has almost completely faded into irrelevance in the modern day. The only reason his name is still so common is that the insurrection investigation is an ongoing thing. That and we're probably going to find out about the other thousands of crimes he committed during his presidency over the next few decades.

They're gambling big on people going "Well inflation and gas prices are high under Biden! We never had inflation and high gas prices under Trump! Fuck all the talk, things must have been better under Trump! We should vote him back in and inflation and gas prices will be lower again!" ...and forgetting everything else that happened under Trump.

Which of course assumes that gas prices and inflation are still issues more than two years from now.

[Edge-]

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/15/polit...ing/index.html

A federal judge on Wednesday refused to throw out the charges against Steve Bannon for contempt of Congress, sending the former Donald Trump adviser to trial next month.

Judge Carl Nichols of the DC District Court rejected Bannon's motion to dismiss the case against him, including his arguments that the House select committee's subpoenas were illegal and that he was protected by the secrecy of the presidency because he had been in contact with Trump at the end of his administration.

Courts told Bannon nah.

- - - Updated - - -

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/proud-b...anuary-6-2021/

In the week leading up to the Jan. 6 Capitol assault, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio received a nine-page memo titled "1776 Returns" that laid out detailed plans to occupy congressional office buildings to protest the counting of the Electoral College votes from the 2020 presidential election.

The memo, which was filed in court as part of a recent motion made by one of Tarrio's co-defendants, outlined a goal to "maintain control over as select few, but crucial buildings in the DC area for a set period of time, presenting our demands in unity."

"We must show our politicians We the People are in charge," the memo said. Targeted buildings allegedly included the three Senate and House office buildings, the Supreme Court of the United States, and CNN —to "at least egg doorway," according to the filing.

"There was no plan to take over the government! Just the Capitol building and adjoining offices in their entirety and the SCOTUS building."

However, nowhere in the document is there a suggestion that violence should be used against police, members of Congress or their staff or other Capitol personnel.

Ah, at least they were smart enough to not explicitly write about the violence required to take and hold these buildings. I guess.

"Use Covid to your advantage," the document advised. "Pack huge face masks and face shields, protect your identity."

The Proud Bois don't seem like they were proud of what they were doing. And like they are pretty sure they knew it would be illegal.

Participants around the city should pull fire alarms at various locations like Walmart, hotels, and museums to distract law enforcement if necessary, according to the document.

Huh, and plans to cause chaos throughout the city to divert law enforcement resources...this is sounding more like a terror plot.

Once inside, the entire group would then present its list of demands and perform sit-ins in certain senators' offices, the filing says.

Something they can do at any time, actually. And something many activists, including disability activists, have done and been arrested for because they have conviction in their beliefs.

The manual advised readers to use large trucks or a large caravan of cars to block intersections to make traversing the city more difficult. "Now is the time to reach out to truckers or bikers for Trump for these roadblocks," a note reads.

Oh, and they just wanted overall chaos downtown, too.

According to the portion of the memo meant for external distribution, participants were to demand a new election be conducted on Jan. 20, 2021, monitored by the National Guard.

"Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Mike Pence & Bill Gates," it says, "We the people are watching you.

"Rand Paul & Ron DeSantis...We the people love you."

Ignoring that this is blatantly unconstitutional, and ignoring that Bill Gates has literally nothing to do with any of this...

Sure is weird that they're big fans of Republicans Ron DeSantis and Rand Paul? I bet those two won't be bragging about the Proud Bois love for them.

The lawyer for one of the Proud Bois sure has thoughts though -

"[A] proposal to occupy office buildings is a time-tested protest activity," Rehl's legal team pointed out. "There is no indication that the government has ever charged any protestors who have actually occupied buildings with the felony conspiracies charged in the instant case."

Man, if only this was a plan existing in isolation without anything more, he might have a point. Might.

[cubby]

Man who carried Confederate flag in US Capitol and son found guilty of felonies.

The man who was captured parading through the US Capitol with a large Confederate flag during the January 6, 2021 riot, was -- along with his son -- found guilty by a federal judge on Wednesday of obstructing an official proceeding, a felony.

Good - I was hoping this one wouldn't slip through.

- - - Updated - - -

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/15/polit...ing/index.html



Courts told Bannon nah.

- - - Updated - - -

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/proud-b...anuary-6-2021/



"There was no plan to take over the government! Just the Capitol building and adjoining offices in their entirety and the SCOTUS building."



Ah, at least they were smart enough to not explicitly write about the violence required to take and hold these buildings. I guess.



The Proud Bois don't seem like they were proud of what they were doing. And like they are pretty sure they knew it would be illegal.



Huh, and plans to cause chaos throughout the city to divert law enforcement resources...this is sounding more like a terror plot.



Something they can do at any time, actually. And something many activists, including disability activists, have done and been arrested for because they have conviction in their beliefs.



Oh, and they just wanted overall chaos downtown, too.



Ignoring that this is blatantly unconstitutional, and ignoring that Bill Gates has literally nothing to do with any of this...

Sure is weird that they're big fans of Republicans Ron DeSantis and Rand Paul? I bet those two won't be bragging about the Proud Bois love for them.

The lawyer for one of the Proud Bois sure has thoughts though -



Man, if only this was a plan existing in isolation without anything more, he might have a point. Might.

I'm still wondering if the RICO route is either available and/or going to be used.

[Paranoid Android]

Another post where this could go into three different threads.

Researchers combed through 45 million tweets that sowed doubt on the 2020 election. Here are the "top spreaders":

Official link to study/website: https://techpolicy.press/researchers...2020-election/



Alright so surprising by this study the top award goes to actor, James Woods! Who would have thunk.

No the combination of Trump and Musk/Twitter thread is good ole Donald at #6. Now he didn't crack top 5, but again as President and the guy who could whip up the base the most about a stolen election, is a pretty good reason for his ban on Twitter.

[Edge-]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...ack-justified/







More polling on the Jan 6 attack. Results are self explanatory -

25% of Republicans believe the attack was justified, with another 25% being "unsure". The other 50%-ish believe it was not, though that's notably lower than the Democrat, Independent, and "didn't watch" subgroups.

A majority, well over 55%, of Republicans believe it WASN'T a conspiracy to overturn the election. Despite that being the literally stated goal/intent of most attendees.

And finally, a vast majority of Republicans, nearly 75%, believe that the attack was done by "leftists trying to make Trump look bad."

Republicans continue to be extremists that live in a world of pure imagination.

- - - Updated - - -

https://thehill.com/policy/national-...isconceptions/

“I can’t wait to clear up misconceptions,” Thomas told The Daily Caller. “I look forward to talking to them.”

I'm not sure what "misconceptions" there are about the text messages and emails we can read because they were released publicly but hey, maybe she'll surprise us.

It'd be funny if she just went and lied a lot under oath and got in trouble for it, though.

- - - Updated - - -

https://www.businessinsider.com/john...hearing-2022-6

Eastman apparently asked Giuliani to be put on the pardon list after Jan. 6

Why did Trump surround himself with so many people asking for pre-emptive pardons? It's almost like they're worried that they knowingly engaged in illegal activities.9

[Ripster42]

Eastman apparently asked Giuliani to be put on the pardon list after Jan. 6

The memes are already out.

[CastletonSnob]

Is there any chance the Jan 6 hearings will change any Trump supporters' minds?