The revelations in this CNN reporting aren’t totally new — we knew Republican operatives put forward fake slates of electors for Trump; they did so openly. Cooper’s description of the effort as a “clown car on fire” is apt in the context of Giuliani’s idiotic post-election loss stunts, including the “Four Seasons” fiasco, and the ridiculous antics of deranged Trump cultists like Sidney “Kraken” Powell, the Pillow Guy, etc.
As we also know, Republican establishment figures were involved in the plot, including Federalist Society members like John Eastman who’ve been embedded in Republican administrations for decades. The new reporting confirms what we’ve long suspected — top campaign officials were up to their eyebrows in the plot to overturn the election by submitting fake slates of electors, and Pence, Trump, etc., all knew it and directly reacted to it as the plot unfolded.
What’s critical now is to ensure broader public understanding that this wasn’t just a vanity project to spare a demented egomaniac blushes over his humiliating defeat. It was a bona fide attempt to overturn the people’s right to choose their president by removing the rightful victor and substituting the twice-impeached, two-time popular vote loser:
Washington (CNN)Trump campaign officials, led by Rudy Giuliani, oversaw efforts in December 2020 to put forward illegitimate electors from seven states that Trump lost, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the scheme.
The sources said members of former President Donald Trump’s campaign team were far more involved than previously known in the plan, a core tenet of the broader plot to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory when Congress counted the electoral votes on January 6.
Giuliani and his allies coordinated the nuts-and-bolts of the process on a state-by-state level, the sources told CNN. One source said there were multiple planning calls between Trump campaign officials and GOP state operatives, and that Giuliani participated in at least one call. The source also said the Trump campaign lined up supporters to fill elector slots, secured meeting rooms in statehouses for the fake electors to meet on December 14, 2020, and circulated drafts of fake certificates that were ultimately sent to the National Archives.
There were seven states that submitted fake electors. In two of those states — Pennsylvania and New Mexico — the certificates included hedging language stating that the fake electors were “electors in waiting” in case a court or process overturned the legitimate electors. But in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin, the certificates falsely state that the Trump operatives were the legitimate electors.
That’s a massively consequential lie on an official document, and the people involved should be prosecuted under any applicable state and federal law for forging those documents. Maybe they will:
“Under state law, I think clearly you have forgery of a public record, which is a 14-year offense, and election law forgery, which is a five-year offense,” Michigan Attorney general Dana Nessel, a Democrat, told MSNBC last week, about the fake certificates signed by pro-Trump electors.
Meshawn Maddock, co-chair of the Michigan GOP, is one of the people who should be charged. State party leaders are already meeping about “political prosecution,” even though Maddock and her fellow forgery enthusiasts haven’t been charged yet.
It’s possible that the sheer clownishness of the plot — from the “carnival barker” former POTUS on down — makes it harder to take the attempt to subvert democracy seriously. Let’s hope that doesn’t enter into the charging decisions of state and federal officials, and let’s hope the upcoming January 6 committee hearings air every bit of dirty laundry — in context — to underscore the stakes. It was a clown car on fire, as Cooper noted, but it was also deadly serious, and the consequences must be commensurate.
Open thread.
MLR rebates, negative premiums and option values
Baud
If the fake certificates were written in crayon, I can see a court saying it wasn’t criminal. Interesting legal issue.
cope
You emphasize the important point that the whole “Stop The Steal” business wasn’t/isn’t about the former president* at all but an unwritten plank of the GOP platform. Efforts of these types will intensify in the future I suspect.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and ultimately convincing twelve doughty citizens that it isn’t “just politics”, which has been and always will be one of the great obstacles to fighting trumpism in the courts
that’s a big part of it, adjacent to the “How can it be a crime if he keeps telling us he’s doing it?” part. There’s some kind of disconnect in the minds of ‘reasonable people’ that such a cartoonish oaf can actually be dangerous, that he’s such a cheap crook he can’t possibly be a threat to our august Constitution.
The Dangerman
What if their plan succeeded? It was never going to be:
Step 1: Overturn election
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Live happily ever after
laura
I’m still a waiting and a hoping that Cleta Mitchell is/was involved in this particular state based plot.
Emptywheel’s net site and twitter feed are really good, well sourced fonts of info on J6 shenanigans.
Matt McIrvin
@The Dangerman: Prosecute a whole lot of Democrats for election fraud, presumably.
The Moar You Know
Today’s life lesson: free legal advice is worth exactly what you paid for it.
ETA: I find nothing about this “clownish” and it’s a damn shame Cooper phrased it that way. They were dead serious and had a pretty good, all encompassing plan.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Matt McIrvin:
Or so they hoped, presumably. I don’t think it would’ve played out that way for them
cmorenc
Important historical perspective: In none of the below situations did successful insurrectionist takeovers of a country have any more proportional support within its residents than the hard-core Trump supporters who tried to overturn the 2020 election currently currently do within the US – in fact, probably less. In each case, what they were able to do is to seize key positions of disproportionate leverage to their numbers, and subvert or overthrow existing institutions:
1) The American Revolution against Britain in 1776;
2) Lenin-communist takeover of Russia in 1917
3) Nazi takeover of Germany in the 1930s.
Consider especially the last example: Hitler/Nazi takeover of Germany – during their initial rise, Hitler was regarded outside Germany as a clownish figure leading a thuggish clown car on fire. In all three cases, the takeovers were during troubled times of broader discontent within those societies, but only a factional minority supporting the figures who succeeded in overthrowing previous institutions and taking control.
Trump is no Hitler, but he certainly is a would-be “Cheeto Mussolini”.
UncleEbeneezer
Great summary. I’ve been following this story through several attorneys I follow and there has definitely been more attention to it over the past several days with many of them making public calls for DoJ to investigate, if it isn’t already. I definitely think this will be part of the story that the House Committee will tell when it has public hearings in the next couple months.
OT- Singer Meatloaf is dead at 74 due to Covid. Apparently he was a rabid anti-vax Trump supporter. But I haven’t been able to quickly find any confirmation of that (though he definitely seems like the type and was a Gobal Warming Denialist).
“Singer manager Michael Green confirmed that the meatloaf died Thursday night. A knowledgeable source tells TMZ … he was supposed to attend a business dinner earlier this week for the show he’s working on-“I’ll do anything for love.” -But the dinner was canceled because he got seriously ill with COVID.”
pajaro
Wasn’t it in Lansing where the fake set of “electors” tried to get into the statehouse to hold a meeting to “certify” Trump’s election?
I agree that the tough thing about recognizing the criminality of all of this is that it was done, in significant respects, in the open.
...now I try to be amused
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Oh gawd yes. A random jury would have 3-4 Trumpists on it. However, I gather attorneys prefer jurors who are ignorant of the case and don’t have a strong opinion about the defendant, then think about the difficulty they had finding 12 people who had been living under a rock for the O.J. Simpson murder trial. This could be worse.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@UncleEbeneezer:
When are these idiots going to learn?
UncleEbeneezer
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Never. How about “Never?” – Nancy Pelosi
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Great point. Trump’s sheer brazenness works to insulate him from consequences. “It was a perfect phone call,” etc.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@UncleEbeneezer: how you go from the set of Rocky Horror to shrieking out the national anthem on a state with trump….
@Betty Cracker: I’ve been going nuts listening to Schiff’s book, specifically how new evidence kept dropping like bombs while the managers were presenting their case, and Lisa Murkowski could still mewl about how she couldn’t vote to convict because the process was partisan
SFAW
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Yes, no doubt the DoJ and Mitch McConnell would have reined them all in before things went too far.
Sure Lurkalot
Two things I’m more than tired of:
That Trump’s and his cronies’ transgressions were just violations of norms and customs and so no real laws were broken and
That maybe just maybe laws were broken but what was Trump’s intent, by, for example, begging and threatening for votes in Georgia? Without knowing that, he just may be as pure as the driven snow.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@SFAW:
No, I’m saying a lot of outraged people would’ve revolted. Not a happy ending for us, but neither would it necessarily end well for them
Matt McIrvin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “Liberals are the tight-assed prigs now” (because we’re not fond of date rape, gross sexism and racism, rolling coal, spreading disease, etc.) is a thing I’ve been hearing for decades. I can totally see the path.
Cameron
@cmorenc: I’d say he’s more like Idi Amin.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@cmorenc:
and by the Krupps, the Farbens and the von Thyssens as a half-mad dog who could be loosed upon the Communists and Socialists and then…. put away
MazeDancer
Excellent summary.
Media won’t care until Rudy flips.
But Rudy may claim not mentally fit. Or have a “heart attack” or “stroke” complete with complicit EMS/Cops.
Kay
I was suprised by this. I saw the initial reporting of the fake certificates and did not think it was that big a deal- just silly stuff by rank and file Trumpists- like “I proclaim this A DOCUMENT!” :)
I didn’t realize it was elected state lawmakers acting at the direction of the Presidents low quality hires.
I watched an interview with one of the insurrectionist state lawmakers and he was having a bit of a nervous breakdown when asked about it, which also changed my opinion.
dlw32
We need names and charges. Everyone should know who forged official documents in an attempt to overthrow the election. The people who did this should not be allowed near authority so large as a HOA. Ever.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: Jake Hoffman? I’m no fancy big city attorney, just a simple country certified-dumb-guy-on-the-internet, but that looks like consciousness of guilt to me.
Frank Wilhoit
This is why you can’t ever let anyone off the hook, because once you do that the first time, then any subsequent use of [what used to be] legitimate power becomes arbitrary. To an infant, any use of power is arbitrary anyway. Now we have those two things converging: legitimacy is out the window and cannot be incrementally restored.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Maybe Omnes can weigh in.
jonas
TMZ reporting comedian Louis Anderson is dead at 68. Had been battling lymphoma, apparently. Man, the comedy world is taking some serious hits over the past couple of weeks.
Matt McIrvin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Here’s the thing: we are likely to find out sooner or later. They’re going to get in power, if not in 2022-2024 then at some point after that, and they will be vindictive about this stuff. I would expect some kind of attempt at legal revenge for keeping Trump out in 2020, with a “voter fraud” theme.
Baud
@Frank Wilhoit:
Anything can happen incrementally. I would posit that the hostility to incremental improvements over the years has helped contribute to the current situation. But that’s a discussion for another thread.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
But ” consciousness of guilt” of what? Rank and file Trumpsters are definitely guilty of falling for a conman, but that’s not a crime. I didn’t think it was evidence of a conspiracy involving the Trump Administration, GOP State lawmakers and GOP Party leaders, because I didn’t think they planned, prepared and submitted the fake docs. Now it seems like they did.
I always knew they intended the coup to succeed and were dead serious. From the day he wouldn’t concede I knew it. I think the question was would anyone be able to prove it.
Oddly I think this is one where media got it right. They presented it as a real threat at the time, and it was, indeed, a real threat. I think (larger, multi-national) business interests saw it as a real threat too, which gets mentioned less but was obviously true at the time.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: I’m just a simple cheesehead. We need Steve in the WTF.
Dorothy A. Winsor
They were talking about the issue of intent on Chris Hayes last night. The claim is that in order to convict, TFG would have to be knowingly advocating fraud and know it was wrong. But since he does everything out loud, he must have thought he was okay.
Lawyers?
dexwood
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: how you go from the set of Rocky Horror to shrieking out the national anthem on a state with trump….
That’s a tender subject.
Geminid
@SFAW: I am interested in the role McConnell played the night of January 6, when the Senate reconvened and completed the counting and certification of the electoral votes. Could McConnell have obstructed this? Did he try to?
McConnell’s loyalties are clearly to the Republican party. He seems much more ambivalent when it comes to Trump, though. I just remember being relieved when the count was completed and I want to know the back story..
Sebastian
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
There comes a point where it all comes crashing down and Murkowski’s strategy backfires, which when she is being held responsible for not protecting the United States of America.
We are approaching this point very soon. I keep repeating myself but I am still of the firm opinion that the Senate will have less senators very soon:
Graham, Cruz, Tuberville, and Hawley might be in serious trouble very soon.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
And yet a bunch of them recently resumed donating millions to election objectors
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I was trying to remember where I heard something along those lines, was that a lawyer arguing that trump can present as a defense that he genuinely believed the election in GA was stolen from him?
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeah that guy would know everything about consciousness of guilt.
Kay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
True. They would worry about a collapse though- not good for them. Hey, they want to “return to normal”. Thinking about bad things makes them sad and anxious.
TriassicSands
Don’t forget, wasn’t Powell’s defense that nobody should have taken her seriously?
barbequebob
Republicans speak with great authority about electoral fraud because they are almost always the ones doing it.
catclub
If, and only if, the some of the forgers are convicted and sentenced for federal crimes. Which I doubt will happen. Then maybe.
Geminid
@Kay: That is an interesting point about the larger business interests. They value institutional stability, and their leaders probably look down on Trump as a tinhorn. And when they speak, most Republican Senators listen.
Mike in NC
Meatloaf dead at 74 from Covid? He was a has-been but I could totally picture him at a rally wearing a red MAGA cap and hugging Trump.
Yarrow
@jonas: I feel like when Bowie and Prince checked out in 2016. Did they know what was coming? What did Betty White, Bob Saget, Sydney Poitier, and now Louie Anderson know about 2022?
TriassicSands
@barbequebob:
Don’t miss James Hohmann’s column today in the Post in which he declares that the GOP will win “fair and square” in November.
It’s surprising the Post could fit that column in among all the declarations of Biden’s failure.
Kay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I tink it’s important to recall at the time though. A lot of them thought it was poison. DeVos ran away and so did Barr. Republicans denounced it. That many of them have gone from denoucing it to actually encouraging it just means they have the attention span of gnats. They are no longer in fight or flight mode but they recognized the threat, all right, and they know Republicans better than anyone.
catclub
@cmorenc: I know that unemployment in Germany was 48% when Hitler got his chance. I would not be surprised if Russia was in similarly bad shape. The US revolution, a minority of rich guys who did not like being taxed? I have no idea.
Given those precedents, similarity to 2 and 3 is not there.
realbtl
@dexwood: The dashboard light lied.
Kay
@Geminid:
But wholly self interested though, so can’t be relied upon. The moment the threat receded not paying taxes, cheap labor and avoiding or ignoring regulations again became more important. They’ll always be a day late and a dollar short.
scav
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Interesting counterpoint to watch His Flobablob insist his party recognition system sincerely didn’t activate when surrounded by nibbles, suitcases of booze and loud music and, even more sincerely, insists his belief the letter of the law was manifestly followed in same.
catclub
Betty White was 100 and Sidney Poitier was 94. Maybe they knew that people don’t live forever.
Brachiator
It is unfortunate that the press was not digging deeper into this earlier. I give Pence a little credit for ultimately not going along with this thing even though he may have known about parts of it.
The wider involvement of GOP figures is troubling on a number of levels. I sometimes think that post Watergate, conservatives came to regret abandoning Nixon and decided that retaining power at all costs was worth it. That they would attempt to traitorously prop up a slimeball like Trump is somewhat astounding. They have no standards, and obviously no sense of honor.
I think that most Democrats, liberals, progressives and independents understand this and were appalled by what happened.
Many conservatives don’t care. Some are stupid or misguided and believe the lies, mainly because they want to. Some are blind to the truth and honestly believe that any white man who mumbles the right words about love of America must be a “good guy,” must be their kind of guy.
And there are those who would welcome a Trump autocracy. His resentment is their resentment. They would love to watch their Dear Leader at work, especially if it meant crushing the hopes and dreams and lives of women and nonwhite people.
Betty Cracker
@barbequebob: I don’t go looking for it, but every single incidence of voter fraud (submitting mail-in ballots with fake signatures) and election fraud (bribing people to mount fake campaigns, enrolling citizens in a party without their knowledge) I’ve seen was perpetrated by Republicans to benefit Republicans. Every single one. That supports your projection theory.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mike in NC: funny, I remembered this as being a trump rally, but it was the Romney campaign in 2012. If you want to see Mitt Romney’s “Maybe I should try one of those good stiff drinks they’re always talking about” face, fast forward to 25 seconds
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
There goes my Friday night.
In all seriousness, I hear this, too, and I have no good response. Like, we’re talking about people who see being destructive as fun.
catclub
@Betty Cracker:
Also, people who have houses in two districts so vote in both.
The Moar You Know
Intent: brought up as a mitigating factor by rich, well connected people who are stone-cold fucking guilty. Accepted as a mitigating factor by a “justice” system that has a vested interest in keeping rich, well-connected people out of the nation’s prison system.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Trump is cunning though, and the way he has managed to convince 70% of Republicans that the election was stolen is very specific- they think the balloting accomodations for covid either benefitted Democrats or led to fraud. That’s the difference between this and their ordinary fraudulent fraud claims. He added covid spice to the existing paranoid brew. Even “mainstream” Republicans believe this. They say it.
Geminid
@Kay: They might have gone along with the steal if the thief hadn’t been as lazy and incompetent as they knew Trump to be. That may be why Bill Barr bailed out.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: There was some polling on this a while back that suggested Republicans are far more alarmed about the state of democracy than non-Republicans, and that’s because they believe Trump’s lies about the election being stolen. Non-Republicans who follow politics closely may have a sufficient level of alarm about what happened, but if the polling was accurate, most non-Republicans thought the 1/6 riot was terrible and that Trump’s behavior was awful, but they don’t believe it was and is a serious threat to democracy. I’m hoping the upcoming 1/6 committee hearings can change that. We’ll see.
Chief Oshkosh
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Exactly. Old films of Mussolini show that he was really a clown. It’s hard to see how anyone took him seriously. And yet…
FWIW, his journal (diary?) really confirms that the guy was a total fucking moron. But like Trump, he had this one weird trick — he really knew how to appeal to the worst of human nature.
piratedan
@TriassicSands: I don’t know what it is… but it seems like there is a significant portion of the Beltway press that has its fingers in its ears going “lalalalalLALALALALALALAL, I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!!!!!!!!!” when it comes to the Jan 6th commission and what we all heavily suspect is true about how certain members of Congress were deeply involved in what took place and the potential LEGAL ramifications. Now whether Garland has the stones to convict and prosecute these folks remains to be seen.
Still unsure how this remains a back burner story in our media really causes me some serious concern about how complicit the media is with the events that transpired.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay:
not necessarily the same thing. Just as examples: Lindsey Graham, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz may say it, Marsha Blackburn, Tommy Tuberville and (maybe) Ron Johnson believe it. Rand Paul is another one where I have trouble seeing the lines between crazy, stupid and cunning.
satby
@TriassicSands: and she lost using that as a defense.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
One of my unproven* speculations is that a bunch of GOP snow birds are voting in two states.
* I think a couple have been caught.
Josie
@Geminid:
“That may be why Bill Barr bailed out.”
This is a good point. I’ve never believed he had a moral issue with the whole thing.
ETA: The man wouldn’t know moral if it slapped him in the face.
Kay
@Geminid:
Trump doesn’t operate in isolation. What they saw was that no governor or statehouse or judge or major mainstream media figure was going along with it, so it was unlikely to succeed. All they needed was one of those in the contested states. They just needed one break in the wall. It could have gone very, very differently if there hadn’t have been D governors in either MI, WI, or PA.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@Kay: Do Republicans really believe TFG won, or is this some way to “own the libs”? Or do they even care, as long as it hurts the Democrats?
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I mean GOP voters. Not Trump crazies. Just GOP voters. They focus on the covid accomodations because that’s the difference between 2020 and 2016. That’s how he’s able to go from the 30% GOP base to the whole Party believing it.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: Just like with “getting government off your back,” “freedom” in general, etc.: It’s never really about being pro-or anti-fun, it’s about WHO gets to have fun at WHOSE expense.
Kay
@Boris Rasputin (the evil twin):
They say they “don’t know” because “so many states” changed rules for covid. They started at a place where they thought Trump would win in a landslide. They wildly underestimated Biden, so that’s the context and they’ve been primed by GOP elites for two decades now to consider all Democratic voters as possible felons. It wasn’t that far a jump. Trump doesn’t create anything. He takes what exists and exploits it.
cmorenc
@catclub:
WADR, you are dead wrong about that. History doesn’t repeat along neatly exact parallels, but rather it strongly rhymes like an epic poem.
No matter that the actual economy and employment situation in the US are currently quite healthy compared to historical US post-WW2 standards – a majority of the current population feel very insecure and discontented and alienated from their government, as if they are but a step from falling into an abyss. Those are the sorts of conditions that make existing institutions more fragile and vulnerable to each of the three listed radical takeovers.
The Moar You Know
@Boris Rasputin (the evil twin): the few Republicans I still know – a number getting less all the time – genuinely believe that 2020 was stolen.
Kay
There are tens of thousands of these people. People who have finally been made whole on the public service loan forgiveness promise they relied on when they took jobs that paid less than the private sector. They can’t get the wages they gave up back. The United States needed to hold up their end of the deal.
It would be a great little ad campaign for Biden. The truth is it was a long battle involving lawsuits and all kinds of efforts, but he’s getting it done and no one else did. It’s really cute. They post their statement with the zero balance with all these happy emojis :)
The Moar You Know
@cmorenc: I agree. Hell, I’m one of those people too. Government is by the people, for the people, supposedly, but what we have in America in 2020 is not that.
Chief Oshkosh
@Boris Rasputin (the evil twin):
I hear you, but I think it’s pointless to ponder. Who cares what they may or may not really think? Just assume the worst.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Many Americans, including maybe the Beltway press, really have a kind of “it can’t happen here” attitude towards America. They fundamentally believe that America is so special and so exceptional that democracy could never be subverted. They believe that their elected leaders, especially if they are white guys, are all 100 percent Rotary Club certified patriots.
Unfortunate bottom line. If the GOP leadership refuses to condemn Trump, and continues to lie for him and to protect him, the gullible GOP base will never accept that Trump was a step away from becoming an autocrat.
burnspbesq
@Kay:
Arguing that obvious violations of the general Federal false-statement statute (18 USC 1001) are not a big deal is a common tactic of your scummier-than-average white-collar defense lawyers. It’s a first cousin to the argument that “they only charged the defendant with conspiracy and wire fraud because they knew they couldn’t prove any real crimes.”
It’s bullshit, and I would expect you not to fall for it.
Sebastian
@Baud:
At this point, I’d say that’s a given. Is there a way to access voter rolls who voted and do some sleuthing?
I am happy to spend some time on it but I don’t even know where to begin.
SFAW
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Yeah, that Occupy Wall Street crowd would have reversed things right TF away.
Starboard Tack
@Suzanne:
They’re Mr. Hyde and Trump is the potion.
TriassicSands
Which just proves that our judicial system can’t take a joke.
She just got the wrong judge.
What is amazing is that a lawyer would actually try to make that argument in a court of law. Powell demonstrated a lack of integrity and professionalism so great that I find it hard to believe she remained “un-disbarred” for an entire career.
WaterGirl
@The Moar You Know: They don’t care about intent when you are stealing a loaf of bread to feed your children.
They don’t care about your intent if your buddy asks you to give them a ride to the convenience store for a six-pack and that person pulls a gun and robs the store.
The laws are mostly written to protect the wealthy and powerful.
Paul in KY
@Baud: Sometimes, in the way one can look at Hitler’s various tactical errors in WWII and wonder ‘was he trying to lose/destroy Germany?’, you look at the nimrods running this show and you think ‘did they really want to overturn it or was it all a setup for the Big Grift’?
He has a ‘grievance’ he can now milk for years from his fool followers. I hope it is taken as serious as a heart attack & they all go away for many, many years.
TriassicSands
@Brachiator:
I’m constantly amazed at the apparent lack of genuine concern shown by the Post and Times concerning the Republican (not solely Trump) threat to democracy. Bothsiderism is still strong in both papers.
Edmund Dantes
@Baud: all the Villages captures so far have been that variety. Snowbirds voting in both.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
No, intent is an element of the first crime and usually the second. It’s just easier to prove in those examples and (more to your point) juries and judges are less likely to draw inferences against a defendant who is not a rich white conservative guy.
Geminid
@Sebastian: I don’t know any more about voter rolls than you, except that I recall political scientist Rachel Bitecofer saying after last fall’s Virginia election that she hoped to do a deeper analytical dive this February, when the state would put up data as to who voted. So I think the information is made available. But I’ve never tried looking it up myself.
Paul in KY
@dexwood: He was a multi-millionaire, so he has some ‘not crazy/evil’ reason to be GOP-inclined.
Brachiator
@TriassicSands:
I agree with you, but I don’t see this as an example of “bothsiderism.”
Beltway media see themselves as part of the Establishment. They believe that they would endure even under an autocracy. They don’t believe that they would ever be stifled the way that the press is under most dictatorships.
Geminid
@Kay: The people pressing for wider forgiveness of student loans could be talking these programs up too. It wouldn’t kill Elizabeth Warren to mention them. She would still have good arguments for more general forgiveness, and in the meantime help some of the people she’s looking out for.
Miss Bianca
@dexwood: I don’t think being on the set of “Rocky Horror” is any indication of stability or political moderation. See the case of *cough* Susan Sarandon *cough*.
Baud
@Geminid:
From what I’ve seen (admittedly very little), they are fixed on total loan forgiveness or bust.
Still, someone should make sure normies with student loan debt know about this program.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud:
Yup, maximalism becomes an end in itself, as does the whole “stroke of a pen!” idea of “boldness”
Geminid
@Baud: You are correct, but their arguments would be more honest if they mentioned these programs. Some also value student loan forgiveness as a wedge issue to peel voters away from Biden. But Elizabeth Warren is making a choice between building her personal brand or helping her President, and helping some of the people that she says she cares about. And she is not being totally honest and transparent with the people she claims to want to help.
My estimation Warren has really dropped this past year. I mean, here is a bankruptcy expert ignoring programs that can reduce or eliminate the debt of those most stressed by it. And here is a Democrat, who can help her President and doesn’t. Sure, this might detract from her argument. But maybe her argument is not as good as she makes it out to be.
Brachiator
@dexwood:
Some day soon there will be a production of The Trumpy Horror Show.
Baud
@Geminid:
Interesting. I have seen or heard much from Warren this year, partly because of choices I’ve made.
Geminid
@Miss Bianca: I hear Susan Sarandon has teamed up with L’Oriole to put out a new glistening eye shadow. She’s calling it “Crocodile Tears.”
catclub
@The Moar You Know: people _say_ they are discontented but they re-elect their congresscritters 95+% of the time. I think there is a disconnect. They also say they distrust congress, but their congresscritter is fine.
dww44
@burnspbesq: this is a story where the RMS show was doing some digging that resulted in a few good nuggets. She didn’t expose Guliani but her folks were looking for connections and highlighting them early on in the story. And every Republican official who signed one should be held accountable and pay a very public price. They should not be allowed to slink off into the night.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid: it’s some kind of corollary to Mo (I think?) Udall’s old line about the only cure for presidential ambition being embalming fluid. Warren seems to have decided the problem with her failed presidential campaign was she didn’t go far enough off the rails. I hoped and expected she would follow the Ted Kennedy model.
catclub
@Starboard Tack:
I disremember reading that Dr Jekyll was sane and controlled (a scientist!), while Mr Hyde appeared after he Jekyll took the potion.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid: I hope there are no conflicts of interest from her partnerships with Big Pharma and Murdoch family!
catclub
@dww44:
Richard M Stallman, not just a crack GNU programmer!
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: That’s bullshit. Warren has specifically mentioned those programs and praised the admin for making progress, but she says more needs to be done.
Baud
@catclub:
It makes sense. Congress critters represent different geographic areas. No reason someone should have up their rep because they hate who other districts are sending. The one place it’s odd is when states have split Senators.
WaterGirl
@…now I try to be amused: The week when OJ was being chased and in the days that followed, I was in Wisconsin at a lake house with no TV, no email and no internet
I would have been perfect for the jury.
Layer8Problem
@catclub: I was gonna say Root Mean Square but I like yours better.
No name
Watergirl, please check yesterday’s Covid thread for a link that might be Amir’s Facebook page…it is near the end of the comments.@WaterGirl:
Bill Arnold
@SFAW:
You do not know what people would do. Occupy Wall Street was amusing, but carefully non-violent and non-destructive.
WaterGirl
@Baud: If that’s the case, then how does the felony murder thing come into play, even if you didn’t know that you were going to be an unwitting accomplice to a crime you didn’t even know was going to be committed?
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: I guess I missed the tweets where Warren mentions these programs, and provides details of how people can qualify. I just catch the almost constant tweets where she calls on the President to forgive a trillion plus dollars by executive order. Although she did stop those for like three days to highlight voting rights.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Felony murder means a murder occurs while you’re commiting a felony. So while you don’t have intent for the murder, the prosecution (usually) has to prove intent for the underlying felony.
WaterGirl
@No name: Yes, the commenter who wrote that had contacted me and I suggested that she post that in the Covid thread and see what others thought.
I am not a Facebook person, so I am not in a position to poke around, and Amir Khalid appears to be a common name, so I have no idea how we know a Facebook account would be his. Unless there is much talk about guitars! And talk of his beloved Bianca.
satby is a pretty good sleuth and she knows her way around Facebook, and I know she cares about Amir, but I have no idea if she would have any interest in doing some sleuthing on this. If not satby, than maybe someone else?
WaterGirl
@Baud: But, but… That’s not how they do it on TV, which is where I got my law degree!
edit: the dermatologist – that I did tech support for on the side while I worked at the university – had a cartoon up at the front desk that showed somebody at a doctor’s office saying saying something like:
“I already know what I have from the internet, I’m just here for a second opinion.”
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: Your premise that it’s all about personal brand-building is crap, IMO, but judging from my Twitter feed, you’re hardly alone in throwing ill-informed brickbats at Warren, something I find mystifying since she has been a team player for the Biden admin. If you spend five seconds on Google, you’ll find that Warren is genuinely engaged on the student debt issue and has been for ages. Chuck Schumer also supports the proposal to cancel debt by executive order, but for some reason, he’s rarely vilified for it.
...now I try to be amused
@Yarrow:
A friend of mine died of cancer in his mid-40s in 2000. After 9/11 and a critical mass of Americans went insane I thought of him and said: “At least you didn’t have to witness this.”
NotMax
@WaterGirl
“…and a Western omelet.”
:)
Brachiator
@WaterGirl:
That is funny. And kinda true.
TriassicSands
@Brachiator:
I wasn’t saying that was an example. I was pointing out that it is still rampant in both papers. Sorry for any confusion. Despite all that has happened, the papers continue to cling to their tried and true approaches that have helped normalize the GOP’s authoritarian behavior.
Kay
@Geminid:
Warren does mention PSLF. She really is an expert on household debt. I read her in a bankruptcy course before she was a political figure.
I have a kind of Right wing objection to making loan forgiveness contingent on a public service job. I think people should work where they want to work, and people who work in the private sector should have affordable college too. I hate these complex, morally-tinged evaluations of “worth”. If they’re getting loan forgiveness because they have a lower pay rate than the private sector, well, why do they have a lower pay rate than the private sector? I think all work should be valued. If you want to go to college for a liberal arts degree and then open a hot dog stand that’s fine with me. Great! I’m excited about it. I hope your hot dog stand is thriving.
Kay
@Geminid:
I’m for two years free college for anyone, but if you want to sell “affordable repayment plans” in a way that might persuade Warrenites, tell them “income based repayment plans” operate like a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, because they do.
They could tweak those so they work exactly like a Chapter 13 bankruptcy specific to student loans and no one other than the debtors would even notice. just don’t tell Republicans. No idea how this got by them, but don’t tip them off :)
Kay
@Geminid:
Well, better than a Chapter 13, really since you don’t have to take the hit of a bankruptcy. But the terms are worse. Longer.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: I am criticizing Warren. And I am questioning her good faith, and whether she is undermining Joe Biden on this issue instead of helping him. That is not “vilifying” her in my book.
But I will spend some time looking her and student loans up and reevaluate my judgment. I will also check out Warren’s Twitter feed and see if my second hand sources are balanced or are being selective.
But Speaker Pelosi has said that a general forgiveness of student loans requires an act of Congress, and I think she is right on that point and Warren and Chuck Schumer are wrong.
Kay
They belatedly realized that about half of BBB is “kitchen tables issues” so now they have to do this “acute versus chronic” work around to their criticism.
“Not THOSE kitchen table issues! The acute ones!” Guffaw.
sab
@Kay: I really hope a lotbof these government officials filing fake documents get charged. Republican election officials who did do their jobs had their lives and families threatened. They needed to be brave just to do their jobs properly.
There needs to be nervousness on both sides, so there is significant risk to doing your public job deceitfully. We already have the laws on the books.
NotMax
@Kay
You lost me at “Nate Silver.” Wankerus maximus.
//
Kay
@NotMax:
I always defended him! Now he’s this horrible, all purpose pundit. That wasn’t his value! We have plenty of those! I feel it was a business error :)
Good Christ. “Remarks on National Healing” is EXACTLY how that woulda gone down too. We would have been ordered to “heal”. I wonder if people would have gone along.
No name
@WaterGirl: Thank you! I wish I had better sleuthing skills.
J R in WV
@Baud:
We own property out in AZ, with friends from here in WV we went out to AZ with tools and built a small home out there. The same friends mostly who helped build the house in WV back in 1991-94, actually.
It never even occurred to me to vote twice using both addresses!!
Would never happen, as I would discontinue my registration in WV before registering to vote in AZ.
But I’m a life-long yellow dog democrat, which means I would vote for the yellow dog sleeping on the porch before I would vote for a Republican. Not at all inclined towards cheating in an election, unlike some.
dexwood
@Miss Bianca:
@Brachiator:
@Paul in KY:
My “That’s a tender subject” line was a quote from Rocky Horror. At the dinner table, Rocky was asked where the Meatloaf character was and that was Rocky’s reply since they were dining on him. Just riffing on what Jim said.
OGLiberal
@UncleEbeneezer: I would do anything for love…but I won’t get vaxxed!
cmorenc
@The Moar You Know:
Speaking of a justice system with a vested interest in keeping rich people out of prison, there are notable (albeit inconsistent) exceptions where the actions of an occasional rich person here or there threaten to undermine the wealth or safety of other rich people.
1) Martha Stewart for blatantly trading on inside information and Bernie Madoff for pyramid-scheme stock investment fraud. However, Senator Richard Burr and (forget the name) former female senator from Georgia seem so-far scott-free for trading on info they only had access to as legislative committee members acting in that capacity.
2) Jeffrey Epstein because well, the stench from sexually abusing underage girls was so overwhelming.
Probably there are other categories as well where far too inconsistently rich folks become too criminally repulsive to the larger community of rich folks that they lose their protective bubble. Trump’s bubble may yet burst now that commerce Republicans already got what the want from him (tax cuts).
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: I don’t know enough about the law to have an informed opinion on whether it’s Pelosi or Warren who is correct on loan forgiveness, so I’ll spare you an argument from authority. I also don’t know if Warren has ever tweeted about existing loan forgiveness programs (and I don’t buy the notion that she has an obligation to do so), but I know she’s addressed it in other venues and said it’s a good start but not sufficient. There’s nothing wrong with a senator pressuring a president of her own party to advocate for a favored policy. That’s basic politics, IMO.
All that said, there’s a faction on Twitter that constantly slams Warren for any daylight between her positions and the Biden admin’s, as if she’s a traitor in our midst. That’s as dumb and counterproductive as the Bernie snake emoji-tweeters, IMO. The Biden admin has real enemies who are actively trying to bring down the presidency, including a couple of so-called Democrats. Warren isn’t one of them.
geg6
@Baud:
Those of us who work in the field have been doing that very thing.
artem1s
all the nefarious pre-insurrection doings by McCarthy and Jordan were always going to be a problem in proving intent. Forging an official document. There is no other way to interpret that. Every state AG that brings charges strengthens the DoD’s case.
FBI Special Agent Michael Casper:
In thirteen years with the Bureau, I’ve discovered that there’s no amount of money, manpower or knowledge that can equal the person you’re looking for being stupid.
President Josiah Bartlet:
God, well… Some of the stupidest criminals in the world are working right here in America. I’ve always been very proud of that.
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
Yeah, I was just about to type the same thing. Just saw her on something the other night saying exactly that.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
One of the many reasons that I avoid Twitter, except for some postings here, and absolutely avoid FaceBook.
Warren and Sanders have been loyal soldiers with respect to the Biden administration. It’s ridiculous that any idiots would have anything negative to say about her.
But it says something, I guess, that these dopes don’t understand that the Republicans are the problem, not other Democrats.
geg6
@Geminid:
Maybe quit following tweets and actually follow the news.
This is why I hate twitter. The people who are on it constantly and use it to buttress their arguments aren’t getting the full picture. Just the very, very, very tiny world of twitter. Which is not the real world. It’s not even adjacent to the real world.
geg6
@Kay:
Anyone who follows the “analysis” of Nate Silver is going to never get anything right ever. He’s an idiot. He may be some kind of statistics savant (I have no idea and care even less because I don’t trust polling as it is currently done by pretty much every polling outfit), but other than that, he’s an idiot on every other subject. Most especially about politics.
Anonymous At Work
What’s great about this revelation is that attorney-client privilege does not protect EXACTLY this conduct. Guiliani will get CRUCIFIED if he tries to protect Trump, Trump will be forced to admit to criminal conspiracy by backing Rudy or (more likely) dump his criminal co-conspirator by the roadside, and courts should routinely and roundly reject every attempt to shield these activities.
Oh, and Justice Department, with referral for prosecution in hand, will have more time than Jan 6th commission to pursue the converted dumpster fire.
Brachiator
@geg6:
It’s funny. A lot of traditional pundits don’t understand polling or statistics. But Silver is a lazy and uninformed pundit. Some of his stat work is very good, however. But he sometimes misses other aspects of the political picture.
...now I try to be amused
@Brachiator:
So Nate Silver is a victim of the Peter Principle, eh?
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: I am probably lumping Warren in wulith the advocates of student loan forgiveness that have shown in other contexts that they have it in for the Biden administration. They definitely erase the existing programs for relief. But you are right to correct me about Warren as I’ve based some, not all, of my judgements on information selected by others.
As to the legal question of across the board student loan cancellation, it just seems that writing a trillion dollars of debt would require an act of Congress. It also occurs to me, though, that Speaker Pelosi also is considering the political dimension. This is an action that would cut both for and against Democrats. Proponents act like reaction would be all positive, but I am not so sure and the Speaker and the President may have their too. The little bit of polling I’ve seen is mixed, with more people opposing cancellation of all debt than favoring, with a majority in the middle favoring cancelling all debt for some people, some debt for some people, and some debt for all people (which is where I fall).
But I would tread cautiously here. If this was a clear question of justice and equity I would not care about political cost, but that is not the case with this issue.
Geminid
@geg6: I get almost all of my information by looking up news reporting. But I always appreciate advice.
As to twitter, it is true that there are a lot of people out there with axes to grind, and there is always a danger of selective reporting so it is best read critically. But it is an influential medium, and it’s worth it to me to look up Elizabeth Warren’s tweets to gauge how she is treating this issue, because for better or for worse that is as influential as anything else she does. My error was not doing this in the first place, but now I am.
lowtechcyclist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Makes you cry.
lowtechcyclist
Indeed. Not to mention, the next people to try this (and there will be next people to try this) will have little reason to believe anything bad will happen to them as a result.
So we need to have their asses nailed to the wall this time, so that fewer people are willing to be part of the inevitable next time.
Charge them with everything they can be charged with, go for the maximum allowable sentences (consecutively, not concurrently), and lock ’em up for a good long time.
One guy in Texas is facing the possibility of 20 years for trying to vote while on parole (which shouldn’t even be a crime: if they’re not afraid to let you walk the streets, they should not be afraid to give you a freakin’ ballot). These folks tried to bring down the government. They should get a way longer sentence than whatever the Texas guy gets.