Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) offered to hand-deliver certificates of fake electors to Vice President Mike Pence as part of the Trump campaign’s broader effort to overturn the 2020 election result, according to evidence released by the House Jan. 6 committee.
In texts obtained by the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, a Johnson staffer approached a top aide to the vice president requesting that Pence and Johnson meet for Johnson to deliver fake electors’ votes for Michigan and Wisconsin, which the Trump campaign had also instructed the fake electors send to the National Archives.
“Do not send that to him,” the Pence aide told the Johnson staffer, rejecting the senator’s request that Pence participate in the ruse to contest the election.
A Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) staffer texted a Mike Pence staffer stating Johnson wished to give fake Michigan and Wisconsin electors' votes to Pence on January 6th.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) offered to deliver fake electors to Vice President Pence, House Jan. 6 committee says in video at hearing https://t.co/oYZGFCzDhJ
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 21, 2022
The taped deposition of Ronna Romney McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, was played on Tuesday. (January 6 Committee Interview)
The head of the Republican Party testified to the House select committee that former President Donald Trump called her as part of an effort to use fake electors to support him.
The new detail links Trump directly to efforts to put forward rogue, alternate slates of electors in states that he lost, even though his top lawyers in the White House and the campaign knew the approach wasn’t legally sound.
“Essentially, he turned the call over to Mr. [John] Eastman, who then proceeded to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent electors,” Ronna Romney McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, said in her taped deposition. “My understanding is the campaign did take the lead, and we just were helping them in that role.”
She noted that the electors were being pulled together in case Trump legal challenges succeeded in blocking Biden wins.
The campaign wasn’t entirely on board, however.
Some of the top officials in the Trump campaign and White House believed the fake electors plan wasn’t legal, and left the push to lawyers like Eastman and Rudy Giuliani who had swarmed after the election, the committee said.
In an interview with the committee, Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to the White House chief of staff, confirmed to the committee that lawyers with the White House counsel said the plot was not legally sound. She said former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani were involved in the meeting.
“Nevertheless,” Rep. Adam Schiff said, “the Trump campaign went forward with the scheme anyway.”
Two top campaign lawyers, Matt Morgan and Justin Clark, said in their taped depositions that they told Trump lawyers pushing the fake electors scheme they didn’t want to take part.
“You just get after it. I’m out,” Clark told the House, about a conversation he had with another lawyer who backed the fake electors plan, Kenneth Chesebro. “I don’t think this is appropriate. This isn’t the right thing to do.”
Morgan described directing another campaign official to tell Chesebro: “This is your task. You are responsible for the Electoral College issues moving forward. This was my way of taking that responsibility to zero.”
Before Tuesday, it wasn’t known that Clark had spoken to the House select committee.
A source familiar with Clark’s testimony says he testified “a while back” and that Trump is likely not pleased his former lead campaign attorney is shown saying essentially his campaign didn’t have a case to back up Trump’s lies.
Clark still works with Trump. Last year he directed witnesses the House had subpoenaed to preserve executive privilege, and he represented Trump in his unsuccessful appeal to try to stop the release of White House documents from the National Archives.
Notable-> it happened quickly, but the committee showed RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel acknowledging that former President Trump himself was directly involved in the fake elector plot.
IMPORTANT: RNC Chairwoman Ronna MCDANIEL indicated that Trump *called her* (not the other way around) and connected her to John EAstman to help coordinate false sets of electors. Shows Trump's direct hand in the effort. https://t.co/VRDn6hGjp0
The committee play a clip of Ronna McDaniel's deposition, in which she said Eastman asked the RNC to help with the fake electors scheme pic.twitter.com/GCaupSo5s8
RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel on fake electors scheme, which she called "contingent" electors: "My understanding is the campaign did take the lead and we were just helping." https://t.co/TnjeFtmqQd
NEW: RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel reveals the RNC helped the Trump campaign with their scheme to have fake electors meet and cast votes for Trump in states he had lost. #January6thCommitteeHearingspic.twitter.com/rNQptAlreY
Don’t give Mike Pence too much credit. He went on Larry Kudlow’s show to let the world know that he still wants to court the MAGA base. Absolutely shameful. Twitter naturally ERUPTED after his remarks. Jordy breaks it down!
Inflation is worldwide, it is not just a US problem. It is part due to the pandemic supply shortages and slow ramping up of businesses, and due to a large part of price gouging. These large corporations lost a lot of money during the pandemic shutdowns and they intend to make that up now plus increase profits as much as possible. But this is Fox and their a political media arm of the Republican party so they have to attack Biden with every lie they can. One last thing, Larry Kudlow is not only a Catholic, but he belongs to a hardline sect. Pence also claims to be highly religious, but appereently has no issues with out right lying. Hugs.
Fox Business Network host Larry Kudlow took President Joe Biden to task for his economic policies during an interview with Mike Pence on Monday, where he asked the former vice president if he’s ever seen a president who “commits so many falsehoods.”
Both Kudlow and Pence served in the administration of Donald Trump, who, according to the Washington Post, uttered more than 30,000 falsehoods during his four years as president.
Kudlow criticized Biden because “he won’t take the blame” for inflation and other ills in the country.
“Have you ever seen a president who refuses to accept blame, and I want to add to that, commits so many falsehoods?” Kudlow asked Pence. “I’m being very polite here, calling it falsehoods – falsehoods, you know, on any given day. He’s out there saying stuff that just ain’t true. Have you ever seen anything like that?”
Pence replied that he had not.
“Never in my lifetime,” said the former vice president. “I said today that there has never been a time in my life where a president was more disconnected from the American people than we see today.”
Among the 30,000+ falsehoods Trump told as president, perhaps none was bigger than his baseless claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. After that November’s election, Trump spent two months telling supporters the contest had been rigged.
He repeated his outlandish claim on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, at a rally in Washington, D.C., where he told attendees to “show strength” and march to the Capitol, where Pence was set to preside over certification of the 2020 election.
A riot ensued at the Capitol, delaying certification for several hours. Some rioters chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!” after a gallows had been erected outside the Capitol. The marauders came within 40 feet of him that day.
Trump was also quick to deflect blame during his tenure as president. As the United States lagged behind other countries in Covid testing early in the pandemic, Trump declared, “I don’t take responsibility at all.”
A resident of Oak Harbor was arrested Friday after expressing his desire to kill members of the LGBTQIA+ community on social media, according to the Oak Harbor Police Department and court documents.
Tyler Dinsmoor, 27, was arrested without incident and transported to the Island County Jail. According to court documents, Dinsmoor posted on social media that he “might not make it through this f** month,” and he “was 9mm away from fedposting two f****** at home depot yesterday.”
‘Fedposting’ is Internet slang for anything posted online that shows a premeditated planning of criminal activity. Dinsmoor started focusing on the Anacortes Pride Parade that is scheduled to be held on June 18 and was asking people to “talk me out of it.”
A woman renting a property near Dinsmoor heard him openly express his desire to murder gay people. She noticed the words “Bible Bigot” painted on his truck and heard him shout, “It used to be legal to kill gay people!”
Regardless of context, the woman (who’s lesbian) told her kids not to go outside. She later saw Dinsmoor with a weapon. She also found out from another neighbor that Dinsmoore had pointed a gun at a Black man who was trying to return a fishing pole.
Mehta has screenshots of Dinsmoor’s horrifying Gab posts and notes that he appears to be linked to a “death to gays” church.
Dinsmoor has so far raised over $18,000 on the Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo. Here’s his pitch:
Tyler Dinsmoor is a God fearing man, who was arrested on June 17th, 2022 by 7 different law enforcement agencies and is being held on a $1M bail. His crime? Hurting the feelings of a homosexual, and he is being charged with a hate crime because of this. I started this fund for fellow Gabbers and frens to chip in for Tyler’s legal defense. This is a slippery slope we have been dealing with for quite a while now, and it’ll eventually happen to all of us.
A GiveSendGo campaign for Tyler Dinsmoor, the man who was arrested after threatening to kill LGBTQ people at a Pride parade, has raised over $17,000 so far.
A GiveSendGo campaign for Tyler Dinsmoor, the man who was arrested after threatening to kill LGBTQ people at a Pride parade, has raised over $17,000 so far.
Committee also expected to probe Trump’s pressure on officials in crucial states to corruptly reverse his election defeat
If Donald Trump was involved in the fake electors scheme, the former president may face a criminal investigation. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP
The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is expected to show at its fourth hearing on Tuesday that Donald Trump and top advisers coordinated the scheme to send fake slates of electors as part of an effort to return him to the White House.
The panel is expected to also examine Trump’s campaign to pressure top officials in seven crucial battleground states to corruptly reverse his defeat to Joe Biden in the weeks and months after the 2020 election.
At the afternoon hearing, the select committee is expected to focus heavily on the fake electors scheme, which has played a large part in its nearly year-long investigation into Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the election at the state level.
Liz Cheney’s condemnation of Trump’s lies wins over Democrats
Read more
The panel will show how the fake electors scheme – which may have been illegal – was the underlying basis for Trump’s unlawful strategy to have his vice-president, Mike Pence, refuse to certify Biden’s win in certain states and grant him a second term.
If the 2020 election cycle had been like any other, when the electoral college convened on 14 December 2020 and Democratic electors attested to Biden’s victory over Trump, that would have marked the end of any post-election period conflict.
But that year, after the authorized Democratic electors met at statehouses to formally name Biden as president, in seven battleground states, illegitimate Republican electors arrived too, saying they had come to instead name Trump as president.
The Trump electors were turned away. However, they nonetheless proceeded to sign fake election certificates that declared they were the “duly elected and qualified” electors certifying Trump as the winner of the presidential election in their state.
The fake electors scheme was conceived in an effort to create “dueling” slates of electors that Pence could use to pretend the election was in doubt and refuse to formalize Biden’s win at the congressional certification on 6 January.
And, the select committee will show, the fake election certificates were in part manufactured by the Trump White House, and that the entire fake electors scheme was coordinated by Trump and his top advisers, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows.
“We will show evidence of the president’s involvement in this scheme,” congressman Adam Schiff, the select committee member leading the hearing alongside the panel’s chairman, Bennie Thompson, and vice-chair, Liz Cheney, said on CNN on Sunday.
Members of Trump’s legal team insist this is a distorted characterization of the scheme, saying the so-called alternate slates were put together and signed in case the states did re-certify their election results for Trump and they needed to be sent right away to Congress.
But that explanation is difficult to reconcile given that the Trump lawyer John Eastman admitted in a 19 December 2020 the Trump slates were “dead on arrival” if they were not certified, and yet still pushed Pence to reject Biden’s slates even though Trump slates were still not certified.
The fake electors scheme is important because it could be a crime. The justice department is investigating whether the Republicans who signed as electors for Trump could be charged with falsifying voting documents, mail fraud or conspiracy to defraud the United States.
If Trump was involved in the scheme, and the justice department pursues a case, then the former US president may also have criminal exposure. At least one federal grand jury in Washington is investigating the scheme and the involvement of top Trump election lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani.
The select committee is also set to closely focus on Trump’s pressure campaign on leading Republican state officials in the weeks and months after the election, according to a committee aide who previewed the hearing on a briefing call with reporters.
‘A one-sided witch-hunt’: angry Trump lashes out at January 6 hearings
Read more
Among other key flash points that the panel intends to examine include Trump’s now-infamous 2 January 2021 call with Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger – who will testify live at the hearing – when Trump asked him to “find” votes to make him win the election.
“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said during the conversation, a tape of which was obtained by the Washington Post and House investigators working for the select committee.
The select committee will describe Trump pressuring other state officials to investigate election fraud claims his own White House and campaign lawyers knew were false, relying on testimony from the Arizona house speaker, Rusty Bowers.
And the panel will additionally hear testimony from Shaye Moss, a Georgia election worker in Fulton County, who was falsely accused by Giuliani and others of sneaking in “suitcases” of ballots for Biden – a conspiracy theory debunked by election officials.
Former Missouri Governor/accused sexual predator/U.S. Senate hopeful Eric Greitens released a new campaign ad today in which he gleefully talks about murdering people, specifically members of his own party who don’t fall in line with his extreme right-wing views.
“We are sick and tired of the Republicans in Name Only surrendering to Joe Biden & the radical Left. Order your RINO Hunting Permit today!” Greitens, who is currently leading the race to become the GOP nominee to represent his state in the Senate, tweeted this morning, along with the violent video.
“Today, we’re going RINO hunting,” he says in the video before cocking his gun. “The RINO feeds on corruption and is marked by the stripes of cowardice.”
He is then joined by an Army swat team and storms into a single family home with smoke bombs and AR-15s rifles.
“Join the MAGA crew,” Greitens says. “Get a RINO permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.”
The ad is disturbing on a number of levels.
Not only because it features a U.S. Senate candidate encouraging acts of violence and murder on the heels of two high-profile mass shootings, but also because Greitens was once accused of blindfolding a woman, tying her to an exercise machine, stripping her naked, and taking her picture then using it as blackmail.
In addition to that, his ex-wife is currently suing him for custody of their children and says he is prone to violence and aggression, exhibited “unstable and coercive” behavior during their marriage, and would threaten to commit suicide if she didn’t show “specific public political support” for him.
Here’s what folx are saying about the ad on Twitter…
The Eric Greitens ad just released doesn't scratch the surface.
He once held a woman hostage, took pictures of her naked while she was tied up, without her consent, threatened to release the pics if she ever spoke of their affair, and then forced her to perform oral sex on him.
— charlotteclymer@mastodon.social (@cmclymer) June 20, 2022
Eric, this ad is unacceptably irresponsible to the point it would be disqualifying… Except, apparently, with the GOP base… It's not cute, it's not funny, it's irresponsible and I question your judgement in making it.
Conservative here…I wouldn't support this sort of messaging.#rethink
— Justice for William Foster (@RetroRaider70) June 20, 2022
Eric Greitens a member of the Navy Reserves has violated DOD policy by identifying himself as a “SEAL” and using military uniforms without a disclaimer.
Contact the Naval Inspector General Hotline at NAVIGHotlines@navy.mil or (800)522-3451 and report this abuse. https://t.co/hSZB6VIqLa
In the wake of the recent mass shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo, Congress appears to be making some progress on legislation to address gun violence.
Last week, Democrats and Republicans agreed to a bipartisan framework on legislation to address mental health and school safety, and to make it more difficult for young people to obtain guns.
Missouri’s Republican primary is scheduled for August 2, 2022. Most polls have Greitens leading in a crowded field of nearly two dozen candidates.
The taped deposition of Ronna Romney McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, was played on Tuesday. (January 6 Committee Interview)
Scottie's Playtime 