The Republicans Who Wanted Pardons for Their Trump Coup Actions

[Nevilledog]

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Amanda Carpenter
@amandacarpenter
·
Jun 25, 2022
Again. Trump was not “poorly advised.” He orchestrated it all.

Kyle Griffin
@kylegriffin1
NBC News: Rep. Mo Brooks told reporters he had multiple conversations directly with Trump about presidential pardons.

"The president and I had an oral communication," Brooks said, referring to talks about pardons "He said put it in writing. So, I put it in writing." @NBCNews

Amanda Carpenter
@amandacarpenter
·
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thebulwark.com
The Republicans Who Wanted Pardons for Their Trump Coup Actions
Former DOJ officials tell the Jan. 6th Committee how they stood up to Trump, while congressional Republicans worried about their criminal culpability.
12:58 PM · Jun 25, 2022

https://www.thebulwark.com/the-republicans-who-wanted-pardons-for-their-trump-coup-actions/

In late 2020, Donald Trump instructed a top Justice Department official to “Just say [the election] was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”

Trump gave this command on Dec. 27, 2020—nearly eight weeks after Election Day and almost two weeks after the Electoral College met and confirmed Joe Biden’s victory—to then-Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, who revealed it in testimony before the House January 6th Committee yesterday. The revelation, confirmed in Donoghue’s contemporaneous notes, shows just how serious the former president was about overturning the election.

With that simple order, Trump’s plot becomes clear. He wanted Department of Justice (DOJ) officials to lie about the election, creating a pretense that Republican members of Congress could use to reject Electoral College votes for Biden.

And for two reasons, we now know that Trump’s plan carried criminal liability:

(1) The only man at the Department of Justice willing to carry out Trump’s schemes—former Trump environmental lawyer Jeffrey Clark—had his home searched on Wednesday by the feds. Law enforcement won’t confirm the reason for the raid, but it is almost certainly connected to his efforts to alter the election results.

(2) The Jan. 6th Committee revealed yesterday that Republican members of Congress secretly sought pardons from Trump for their actions to help him overturn the election. As committee member Adam Kinzinger pointed out, “The only reason I know to ask for a pardon is because you think you’ve committed a crime.”

Let’s discuss each of these in turn.

*snip*

[tblue37]

1. He was repeatedly advised there was no fraud; he was repeatedly advised that his intended actions

would be illegal. He just ignored that advice because it didn't get him what he wanted. Instead, he went looking for advice that would satisfy his own ambitions.

[leftyladyfrommo]

2. That's what he's always done. And it always worked until

he went too far.