Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

T R E 4 5 O N

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

In after Baud. Damn.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Insurrectionists Open Thread: A Night At the Willard

Insurrectionists Open Thread: A Night At the Willard

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Hunter Walker is a reputable reporter, and I truly hope his latest scoop results in further investigation and meted consequences. But let’s not overlook the investigation the Washington Post dropped over the weekend — “Ahead of Jan. 6, Willard hotel in downtown D.C. was a Trump team ‘command center’ for effort to deny Biden the presidency”:

… The Jan. 6 rally on the Ellipse and the ensuing attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob would draw the world’s attention to the quest to physically block Congress from affirming Joe Biden’s victory. But the activities at the Willard that week add to an emerging picture of a less visible effort, mapped out in memos by a conservative pro-Trump legal scholar and pursued by a team of presidential advisers and lawyers seeking to pull off what they claim was a legal strategy to reinstate Trump for a second term.

They were led by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani. Former chief White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon was an occasional presence as the effort’s senior political adviser. Former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik was there as an investigator. Also present was John Eastman, the scholar, who outlined scenarios for denying Biden the presidency in an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 4 with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

They sought to make the case to Pence and ramp up pressure on him to take actions on Jan. 6 that Eastman suggested were within his powers, three people familiar with the operation said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Their activities included finding and publicizing alleged evidence of fraud, urging members of state legislatures to challenge Biden’s victory and calling on the Trump-supporting public to press Republican officials in key states.

The effort underscores the extent to which Trump and a handful of true believers were working until the last possible moment to subvert the will of the voters, seeking to pressure Pence to delay or even block certification of the election, leveraging any possible constitutional loophole to test the boundaries of American democracy…

In seeking to compel testimony from Bannon, the congressional panel investigating Jan. 6 this week cited his reported presence at the “ ‘war room’ organized at the Willard.” The House voted Thursday to hold Bannon in contempt of Congress after he refused to comply with the committee’s subpoena.

The committee has also requested documents and communications related to Eastman’s legal advice and analysis…

The three people familiar with the operation described intense work in the days and hours leading up to and even extending beyond 1 p.m. on Jan 6, when Congress convened for the counting of electoral votes.

In those first days in January, from the command center, Trump allies were calling members of Republican-dominated legislatures in swing states that Eastman had spotlighted in his memos, including Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona, encouraging them to convene special sessions to investigate fraud and to reassign electoral college votes from Biden to Trump, two of the people familiar with the operation said.

On Jan. 2, Trump, Giuliani and Eastman spoke to 300 state legislators via a conference call meant to arm them with purported evidence of fraud and galvanize them to take action to “decertify” their election results. “You are the real power,” Trump told the state lawmakers, according to a Washington Examiner report. “You’re the ones that are going to make the decision.”…

After the violence began, Trump used his Twitter account to ask his supporters to “Stay peaceful,” but notably did not tell them to go home until 4:17 p.m., when he tweeted a video of himself addressing the Capitol rioters. “I know your pain. I know your hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us,” he said. “We have to have peace. So go home. We love you, you’re very special.”…

ICYMI:

Reader Interactions

41Comments

  3. 3.

    debbie

    Also, Gosar’s talk about a blanket pardon shows he knew the insurrection was a criminal act, not some righteous defense of the Constitution.  ?

  5. 5.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Everyone who was in that room is an enemy of the Constitution of the United States.  Indict, try, convict and imprison every last one of these fucking traitors.

  6. 6.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @debbie: The Weird Sisters?  “By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.”  Except, in this timeline, he’s dumb and tacky too.​

  7. 7.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @debbie:

    Really hard to tell on the iPhone, but the middle one (blonde) looks a lot like Greene, and the brunette in the white watch cap on the far end bears a resemblance to Boebert. But possibly I’m throwing out those names just because I so desperately want there to be incontrovertible evidence that they were active participants.

  10. 10.

    bbleh

    Contra Kilgore Trout, this is very useful stuff.  Gosar et al. will be asked repeatedly about it, which will embarrass them.  And when (certainly) they deny it, it’ll feel like a betrayal to the goons.  It’s a club and a wedge.

  11. 11.

    Mart

    Stephen K. Bannon still a Republican thought leader with an influential podcast after being arrested on a billionaire Chinese expats yacht for stealing money from rubes who donated to a bullshit privatized border wall grift. Planning the soft coup while out on $5M bail. And later pardoned by Trump for his work to start the steal. And the lame-stream news still reports on his fascist brain farts like they mean something.

  13. 13.

    Adam L Silverman

    @debbie: Gosar may have either Parkinson’s or Lewy Body Dementia based on his inability to control his physical movements. It would also explain his general and specific incoherence.

  15. 15.

    Adam L Silverman

    Walker’s reporting is important, but…

    The real issue with what he is reporting is actually getting the subtext right. What he’s reporting is clearly conspiring  by these people, the question is conspiring to do what? Protest the electoral count in the House and Senate? Have protestors provide support for that? Or where the members of Congress and staff fully aware of what Trump, Giuliani, Meadows, Eastman, the nebbish at DOJ who wanted to be named Attorney General, etc were really up to?
    If I had to guess, I’d say Biggs, Brooks, and maybe Greene might have been deeply involved. I’m pretty sure Boebert is too dumb to fix a sandwich. And you couldn’t include Cawthorne because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut to save his life.
    Walker’s reporting is important, but it raises as many questions as it answers.
  17. 17.

    Suzanne

    Gosar is THE WORST.

    Just a side note: When you’re wondering why the fuck Kyrsten Sinema just may be the best you can expect out of Arizona, remember that Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs are also from there and she has to compete in those places.

  18. 18.

    Adam L Silverman

    @SiubhanDuinne: It’s neither of them. The blonde’s hair is too long, the wrong shade, and her body shape is different from Greene’s flabby fit. The brunette isn’t Boebert.

  20. 20.

    Almost Retired

    I am sure there were similar meetings held in the luxury suites at the Hotel Adlon 88 years ago.

  22. 22.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    I am with Killgore there is not going be a wow smoking gun in this. As with Russiagate, these clowns are so fucked in the head that they are just doing random shit that only shockers calling what they did “planning” is a overstatement and the sheer amount of prescription drugs taken in that hotel room. And then people died because of their bullshit.

  25. 25.

    Jeffro

    I want to know who lined up the Oath Keepers and 3 Percenters for 1/6.

    I want to know who told the Oath Keepers and 3 Percenters exactly where the weak points were in the Capitol’s defenses (the un-reinforced windows).

    I want everyone who funded the 1/6 rally publicly named, shamed, and wherever possible, banned from public service and/or their places of employment.  A Supreme Court justice’s wife was one of the major funders and organizers!  And that same justice feels free to lecture the country about partisan attacks on the Court!

    I’d also like our more imaginative columnists, pundits, and reporters to remind the country (frequently!) that given the assortment of violent, well-armed goons that attacked our Capitol, 1/6 could easily have ended with the executions of the VP and Speaker on the Capitol steps…all at the incitement of the outgoing POTUS.

  30. 30.

    Adam L Silverman

    @debbie: He ran her campaigns for office and they’ve been thick as thieves for a long time. He’s also a submissive swinger, so…

  31. 31.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Gosar may have either Parkinson’s or Lewy Body Dementia based on his inability to control his physical movements. It would also explain his general and specific incoherence.

    According to Wikipedia, it’s arthritis and a couple of compressed discs. Article says nothing about LBD or Parkinsonism Dunning-Kruger.

    Gosar has arthritis and has had two compressed vertebrae in his back that have required surgery to correct.[133] He cites years of hunching over for long periods while a dentist as the cause, as well as genetics and a history of playing rugby.[133]

    In my most horrific nightmares, I can’t imagine having Paul Gosar as my dentist. Even if Laurence Olivier played him.

  36. 36.

    dww44

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Their incompetence makes them no less guilty of planning to overthrow an election and subvert our democracy and they should pay for it.  Maybe be a lesson to other dummies in their ranks that being dumb is no excuse and doesn’t grant an automatic get out of jail card free either. And, if Stone and Bannon end up undoing those ill gotten pardons of theirs, then so much the sweeter the revenge.  Makes up a bit for what we’ve endured for 5 years.​
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  37. 37.

    Mike G

    If they uncover all this dirty stuff then no punishment comes of it, it will embolden the worst and piss off the rest of us even more.

    Comity-General Garland needs to find a backbone stat.

  38. 38.

    Chris T.

    Arthritis and compressed vertebrae won’t cause the symptoms Gosar displays. For those you need full blown brain-level neurological issues. I can’t say what they are without seeing test results, but any of several kinds of dementia would fit.

  41. 41.

    evodevo

    @SiubhanDuinne: It was January, granted, but why are they all bundled up to the eyeballs in a HOTEL ROOM?  Looks like they knew they were involved in a shady meeting to me…

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