Any martial law would need smoking gun(s)... 780+ pages to Select Committee from National Archives - Daily Kos
Trumpian stonewalling the National Archives finally got breached, despite a three month delay. It appears to have yielded a documents tranche far bigger than the number of pages.
Likely we’ll know more about the plan to invoke martial law on 6 January 2021. It won’t resemble the TV-series Designated Survivor, although its opening theme of martial law could serve as a “fourth season” in 2020. That real life US election year contained the possibility that Trump would seize ballot boxes, blaming something, something ... “foreign influence”, similar to the TV show’s plot being a domestic sedition plot fomented by rich RWNJs.
xSupreme Court gets one right: It won’t block release by National Archives of the mass of presidential papers sought by the Jan 6 committee that Trump moved heaven and earth to keep hidden. THIS IS HUGE.
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) January 19, 2022Flynn, in a laterNewsmax interview, said that Donald Trump had "options" to maintain the integrity of the election. "The president has to plan for every eventuality because we cannot allow this election and the integrity of our election to go the way it is,'' Flynn said.
"He could immediately on his order seize every single one of these machines around the country on his order. He could also order, within the swing states, if he wanted to, he could take military capabilities and he could place them in those states and basically rerun an election in each of those states. It's not unprecedented," Flynn added.
"These people out there talking about martial law like it's something we've never done," Flynn told Newsmax. "Martial law has been instituted 64 times. I'm not calling for that. We have a constitutional process. ... That has to be followed. But I will tell you I'm a little concerned about Chief Justice John Roberts at the Supreme Court. We can't fool around with the fabric of the Constitution of the United States.
"Clearly there is a foreign influence that is tied to this system and it goes back to China, likely gets to Russia, likely goes to Iran," he said talking about the Dominion voting machines. "There's been problems all over the country with them."
In his new book, "Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show," Jonathan Karl writes that Flynn and Powell tried to enlist Trump's post-election appointee Ezra Cohen-Watnick to help overturn the election. According to Karl, Flynn called Cohen-Watnick, who previously worked for him at DIA and whom Flynn had hired in the first month of the Trump administration to staff the National Security Council, to return from the Middle East "immediately because there were big things about to happen."
In "Betrayal," Flynn is quoted telling Cohen-Watnick: "We need you ... there was going to be an epic showdown over the election results."
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Some critics have suggested that Flynn be arrested for sedition or even treason, that all of the plotters and even January 6 protestors who attacked police and forcibly entered the Capitol be charged with the same. What is clear is that Flynn, in his public statements, never called for martial law. He repeated others' calls and said he wasn't calling for it himself. What he said to President Trump, and what he actually said to Watnick-Cohen or Kash Patel, is still a mystery.
xHere's Michael Flynn on Newsmax saying that Trump could order "military capabilities" to swing states and "rerun an election in each of those states."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 18, 2020
"People out there talk about martial law like it's something that we've never done. Martial law has been instituted 64 times." pic.twitter.com/KNmiAGGiPFThe fifth DNI,Dan Coats, the sixth DNI,John Ratcliffe, and acting DNIsJoseph Maguire,Richard GrenellandLora Shiao, all served between March 16, 2017 and January 21, 2021, during the administration of PresidentDonald Trump.
Dec 20, 2020 Trumpdismissed reports of themartiallawdiscussion as 'fake news' in a tweet Sunday, but two people familiar with the matter told CNN that the theplanwas argued in the Oval Office
(December 18, 2020) At the White House on Friday, President Trump held what may have been his most deranged meeting yet. In it, the president raged at his loyalists for betraying him, and discussed taking extralegal measures to overturn the election.
The meeting, first reported by the New York Times, included lawyer and conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell, convicted felon Michael Flynn, and Rudy Giuliani. One plan floated at the meeting was for Trump to appoint Powell as a “special counsel” overseeing allegations of voter fraud. Powell’s voter fraud claims are so fantastical she has been mocked even by other far-right legal conspiracy theorists. Andrew McCarthy, a former birther and author of one book titled How Obama Embraces Islam’s Sharia Agenda and another calling for his impeachment on multiple counts, has described Powell’s vote-fraud claims as “loopy.”
Trump also reportedly brought up Flynn’s proposal, which he has expounded on cable news, to impose martial law and direct the military to hold a new election. “At one point in the meeting on Friday, Mr. Trump asked about that idea,” reports the Times.
Political scientists have debated whether it is accurate to describe Trump’s efforts to overturn the election as a “coup,” an “autogolpe,” or neither. Trump’s interest in deploying the military to cancel an election he clearly lost certainly seems to resolve that debate, at least in terms of his intent.
There is no reason to believe Trump commands the power to actually implement any of these wild ideas. Trump’s best chance to steal the election was to have the decisive voting margin in the Electoral College determined by the counting of mail-in ballots that were mailed before, but arrived after Election Day. This would have let him either persuade the Republican-controlled Supreme Court to invalidate those decisive ballots, or Republican-controlled state legislators to disregard their state’s voting results and appoint pro-Trump electors to represent their state.
But the election was not close enough for him to pursue either strategy, whatever chance he had for some kind of Bushv.Gore replay has passed. The measures he is now contemplating lie outside the normal framework for resolving election disputes, and would require, at minimum, almost uniform levels of GOP support.
Trump does not have that. Indeed the striking thing is that he is veering to positions so extreme and self-defeating that even his loyalists have blanched. Perhaps the most alarming fact about the Friday meeting is that Giuliani, who has spent months spreading fantastical claims of imagined voter fraud, became a quasi-voice of reason. Giuliani has proposed using the Department of Homeland Security to seize and examine voting machines — a move the Department has resisted — but even Giuliani opposes appointing a nutter like Powell.
One theme running through Trump World reporting in recent weeks is that the president has increasingly tuned out any advisers or friends who try to reason him toward accepting defeat. Friday’s meeting devolved into a loyalty contest, with “yelling and screaming,” and competing lawyers “often accusing each other of failing to sufficiently support the president’s efforts,” reports Politico.
xxI’ve been covering Donald Trump for a while. I can’t recall hearing more intense concern from senior officials who are actually Trump people. The Sidney Powell / Michael Flynn ideas are finding an enthusiastic audience at the top. https://t.co/NxjC0sUrzI
— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) December 19, 2020I have a theory:
— MINDF©️K (@gal_suburban) January 20, 2022
Taking what we know about the actions of the Trump admin & external players pushing the #BigLie, working to overturn a free & fair election, I have noticed a few things & from those emerged w/a potential option they were setting up to keep Trump in office.
/1We know that in Sept 2018 Trump signed an Executive Order that gave him the authority to essentially nullify an election if the Office of the Director for National Intelligence deemed there to be foreign interference.
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/2https://twitter.com/gal_suburban/status/1483739145038184451EO "In recent years, the proliferation of digital devices & internet-based comms has created significant vulnerabilities & magnified the scope & intensity of the threat of foreign interference..."
/3 EO: "Not later than 45 days after the conclusion of a US election, the Director of National Intelligence shall conduct an assessment of any info indicating that a foreign gov...has acted w/the intent or purpose of interfering in that election."
/4 EO (ii) if any foreign interference involved activities targeting infrastructure of, a political org, campaign, or candidate, extent such activities affected the security or integrity of that infrastructure incl; unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration or falsification of"
/5 That report ordered by the Sept 2018 Exec Order would have been due to officials in Trump admin on Dec 18 2020 (45 days after the Nov 3 election).
However, on Dec 16 2020 the ODNI Dir Strategic Comms notified the public the deadline would not be met.
/6 xhttps://twitter.com/gal_suburban/status/1483739211710799872Just 1 week before the ODNI was due, and prior to the delay being announced, Trump signed another Executive Order.
Dec 10 2020: Rebranding US Foreign Assistance To Advance American Influence
/7 xhttps://twitter.com/gal_suburban/status/1483537878558908418?s=20A quick explanation of USAID & why I believe these 2 EO's were meant to work together.
USAID aims to promote democratic & resilient societies, support free & fair elections, bolster civil society & protect human rights helping countries develop good governance. (Founder: JFK)
/8 Jul 2020: One of the loyal Trump WH liaisons backed by McEntee is William Maloney, who now works w/the US Agency for Int'l Development (USAID). The dept that focuses on providing foreign aid to countries around the world w/a budget of nearly $40Billion. cnbc.com/2020/07/10/usa…
/9A reminder about John McEntee
xhttps://twitter.com/gal_suburban/status/1459735857980653574/10
Merritt Corrigan, the new USAID deputy WH liaison, has previously published online posts, such as one on Twitter, that said “our homo-empire couldn’t tolerate even one commercial enterprise not in full submission to the tyrannical LGBT agenda,” propublica.org/article/new-tr…
/11 USAID got a new “religious freedom adviser” w/long history of making & promoting anti-Islam comments.
Mark Kevin Lloyd accused Obama of ties to the Muslim Brotherhood & says people who believe Islam is a peaceful religion don’t understand history.
archive.ph/SUkzA
/12 May 2020 State Dept bid for US global pandemic response powers
“It is a power grab" leading aid org exec said “An attempt to do what people have long suspected this admin has wanted to do, which is to hobble USAID & concentrate control at State Dept.” devex.com/news/exclusive…
/13 The USAID's ACTING Director for Democracy, Rights & Governance during the time of the Executive Orders and the @January6thCmte Attempted Coup was RICK GUY.
devex.com/news/trump-app…
/14Guy criticized election officials, media & a voting machine manufacturer & repeated unfounded claims of a conspiracy to rig the election against Trump.
“Monopoly media outlets colluded & actively interfered in the 2020 US presidential election"
syracuse.com/politics/2021/…
/15While the Executive Order surrounding USAID seems somewhat mundane, my theory is that changing the branding to the American Flag, or similar would allow for appearances of a less militarized force doing the bidding of Trump & team.
xhttps://twitter.com/gal_suburban/status/1483537887035600897/16
So now that you see the 2 EOs being discussed & the timing, I'll explain my theory.
When the ODNI Report was delayed 16 Dec, it was the NEXT day that Mike Flynn was on Newsmax w/Greg Kelly xhttps://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1339730530661789696/17
Then, on 18 Dec 2020 you have the group including Sydney Powell, Patrick Byrne, Rudy Guliani and others that discussed seizing voting machines and martial law while arguing over the powers the Sept 2018 EO provided. xhttps://twitter.com/DempseyTwo/status/1397991138536177664/18
Could they have been fighting over their plan unraveling to use Sept 2018 EO in combination w/the Dec 2020 EO to 1st nullify the results in swing states using ODNI Report re: foreign interference & deploying not military, but USAID to re-run elections?
axios.com/trump-oval-off…
/19• • •
xDespite every attempt by Trump to delay and obstruct, documents are being delivered already. https://t.co/EudaMs0YPa
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) January 20, 2022A majority of justices refused to intervene and disturb lower court decisions that had cleared the way for the National Archives to turn over the collection of contested documents to the committee. Only Justice Clarence Thomas noted a dissent from the court’s decision, indicating he would have granted Trump’s request for a longer-term injunction blocking the committee from getting the documents as the legal fight went forward.
The only thing stopping the Archives from turning over the documents to the committee at this point was a temporary order from a federal appeals court from December that had kept the documents in limbo while Trump tried to convince the justices to step in. That lower court injunction was set to expire once the Supreme Court ruled on Trump’s latest motion.
The Trump-era White House records at issue include presidential diaries, schedules, call logs, handwritten notes, drafts of speeches and correspondence, proposed talking points, “a draft Executive Order on the topic of election integrity,” a memo about potential legal action the federal government could take to challenge President Joe Biden’s wins in key states (the Justice Department filed no such case), and an email chain that involved a state official “regarding election-related issues,” according to descriptions of the documents submitted as part of the legal fight.
xUpdate: The Jan. 6 select committee says it "has already begun to receive records that the former President had hoped to keep hidden."
— Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) January 20, 2022
Previously on the SCOTUS order rejecting Trump's last-ditch bid to block the committee from getting his admin records: https://t.co/22z4DibQhY pic.twitter.com/6IKaykUmTw
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Between Tish James' filing and SCOTUS's 4-page ruling, I'd say it was a bad 24 hours for Donald J Trump.
— emptywheel (@emptywheel) January 19, 2022
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Trump loses his fight to keep key records about Jan. 6 away from scrutiny, queuing up the Jan. 6 Committee to receive reams and reams of records integral to their investigation. Score one for transparency.
— Brandi Buchman (@Brandi_Buchman) January 20, 2022
Details about tonight's decision from SCOTUS:https://t.co/kolNNP6IS5
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Thanks again to @CapehartJ and @TheSundayShow for having me on this past weekend. https://t.co/SJEc3FSTnF
— Barbara F Walter (@bfwalter) January 19, 2022
So there it is. The walls are crumbling. Trump’s long-standing and widely reported actions will result in dire consequences — just as his opponents long foresaw. Until, ... something else emerges as the new source of Trump’s inevitable downfall.
But you never know! Hope necessarily springs eternal. Maybethisjam, the one Letitia James just moved forward, will be the one, final, wriggle-proof jam. If not? Well, nevertheless,
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It only took about four months to the documents from the National Archives. That’s really fast.
— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) January 20, 2022
source: https://www.dailykos.com/story/2022/1/19/2075692/-Any-martial-law-would-need-smoking-gun-s-780-pages-to-Select-Committee-from-National-Archives
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