"This mobilization was not hidden away in the dead of night." Pp. 12-18 of House trial brief are key

[highplainsdem]

Link to the PDF of the House impeachment trial managers' trial brief:

https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/house_trial_brief_final.pdf?utm_campaign=5706-519


Section I. B there -- President Trump Encourages His Followers to Come to Washington on January 6, 2021 and “Fight” to Overturn the Election Results -- on pages 12-18 describes how Trump incited the insurrection.

But the fact that "this mobilization was not hidden away in the dead of night" is the most important point here, because it lays out the knowledge Trump would have had of his supporters' preparations for violence, especially via the White House monitoring of pro-Trump forums.

From page 16:

This mobilization was not hidden away in the dead of night. It was widely discussed on
websites—such as TheDonald.win—that, as confirmed by a former White House staff member,
were “closely monitored” by President Trump’s social media operation. These sites hosted
hundreds of posts about plans for the attack on the Capitol, with detailed discussions of weaponry
and directions to “find the tunnels” and “arrest the worst traitors.” At TheDonald.win, one poster
stated: “If Congress illegally certifies Biden, … Trump would have absolutely no choice but to
demand us to storm Congress and kill/beat them up for it.” Another poster wrote: “[Trump] can
order the NAT guard to stand down if needed. unfortunately he has no control over the Capitol
Police... but there are only around 2k of them and a lot are useless fat asses or girls.” In their
posts, extremists made it clear that they were prepared to fight at President Trump’s direction.

-snip-

The next two paragraphs describe media reports on that trend on social media, and the warnings from DC's mayor, a Capitol Police intelligence report, and an FBI warning, as well as related arrests made by DC police on the two days before the insurrection.

But Trump's social media operation -- especially Dan Scavino -- will be key here.

Here's a 2019 Politico article on how closely Scavino monitors social media for Trump, including TheDonald when it was on Reddit, before it morphed into TheDonald.win.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/16/trump-scavino-1327921

There's no way Scavino would have been unaware of the plans for violence. Or that he would have failed to tell Trump about them.

[musette_sf]

1. K&R

[UpInArms]

2. from the Politico link

Scavino — who regularly monitors Reddit, with a particular focus on the pro-Trump /r/The_Donald channel — has helped craft some of Trump’s most memorable social media moments.

[wishstar]

3. Stop the Steal and "Storm the Capitol" on Jan 6 and violent threats were all over rightwing posts

[SledDriver]

4. I think the most telling thing is that while all of this was going down on 1/6

there was no effort to relocate the POTUS out of the city, or move him to a secure location. You would think they would have evacuated him on Marine One to AF1 and out of harm's way while an angry mob was laying siege to the Capitol building.

But no, I don't remember any mention of that. Almost like they knew what was going on but weren't worried about the POTUS's safety?