Capitol attack panel investigates Trump over potential criminal conspiracy

[demmiblue]

Source: The Guardian

The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack is examining whether Donald Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy on 6 January that connected the White House’s scheme to stop Joe Biden’s certification with the insurrection, say two senior sources familiar with the matter.

The committee’s new focus on the potential for a conspiracy marks an aggressive escalation in its inquiry as it confronts evidence that suggests the former president potentially engaged in criminal conduct egregious enough to warrant a referral to the justice department.

House investigators are interested in whether Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy after communications turned over by Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows and others suggested the White House coordinated efforts to stop Biden’s certification, the sources said.

The select committee has several thousand messages, among which include some that suggest the Trump White House briefed a number of House Republicans on its plan for then-vice president Mike Pence to abuse his ceremonial role and not certify Biden’s win, the sources said.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/08/capitol-attack-committee-donald-trump-white-house-stop-biden-win

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Link to tweet

[Achilleaze]

1. Republican traitors deserve justice

Bring it on. See what the facts are, and what the evidence confirms. Then lock the Republican traitors up.

They have disgraced themselves. They are a danger to America and decent, honest folk everywhere.

[Escurumbele]

4. The people deserve justice, the republican traitors deserve for justice to make them accountable

for their crimes.

Lets be optimistic that many of them, including trump, his kids, and other members of his gang, will be indicted and jailed in 2022

[dalton99a]

2. Kick

[Lonestarblue]

3. I just finished reading another article in The Guardian, by Sidney Blumenthal.

It’s an excellent read and lays out how Trump and several key Republican operatives secretly started planning to overturn the 2020 election a year before it was even held. Their actions surely qualify as conspiracy to commit insurrection. Blumenthal says that ALEC was a key player, along with Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society. I may just be uninformed, but Republicans seem to have many secret or near-secret organizations while I cannot think of a single secret Democratic political organization. The closest one I could think of is People for the American Way, and they are hardly secret. George Soros is a bid Democratic donor, but the goals of his organization are not secret.

“More than a year before the election of 2020, in August 2019, conservative operatives in closely connected rightwing organizations began preparing a strategy for disputing election results. A “Political Process Working Group” focused on “election law and ballot integrity” was launched by Lisa Nelson, the CEO of the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), heavily funded by the Koch brothers’ dark money syndicate, the Donors Trust.

Nelson is also a member of the secretive Council on National Policy (CNP), composed of more than 400 rightwing Republican leaders, a roster that includes Ginni Thomas, the ubiquitous rightwing zealot and wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, and Leonard Leo, vice-president of the conservative Federalist Society and the Judicial Crisis Network, “a $250m dark money operation” to pack the federal courts and deny Democratic appointments to the bench, according to the Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehead.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/06/capitol-attack-coup-attempt-trump-far-right-republicans

[llashram]

5. no doubts in my mind

that this article is true. Along with just the fact that trump wanted Pence to do an illegal unconstitutional thing with the electoral vote count. I just hope to see trump, his grifter family and nazi advisors SHAMED and shown prison cells.

[llashram]

7. no doubts in my mind

that this article is true. Such wide-ranging RW complicity with trump in trying to overturn the 2020 election results. I'm amazed at the spiderweb intricacy of local and national RW individuals allied with powerful fascists now revealed in America.

Along with just the fact that trump wanted Pence to do an illegal unconstitutional thing with the electoral vote count. I just hope to see trump, his grifter family and nazi advisors SHAMED and shown prison cells.

[PJMcK]

6. Hey, Trump!

Are ya nervous?

Ya outta be.

[Botany]

8. TFG oversaw a criminal conspiracy on 1/6/21 to stop Joe Biden's certification with the insurrection.

Lock him up.

Turn the evidence of this over to the DoJ ASAP and then keep on investigating.

The smoking gun:

[bucolic_frolic]

9. I suggest that everything that happened that day was not random, and likely not rogue

It was not opportunism. In my view it was planned.

[Botany]

12. "In my view it was planned."

Such as an attack on the senate parliamentarian's office where the kept the electoral college votes?



Or prior to 1/6/21 removing the panic buttons from underneath the desk of Congressional Democrats?

I hope Merrick Garland goes through with his "follow the money" pledge and they lock the Koch Brother,
the Judicial Crisis shits, and all those other right "dark money" groups and people.

[Evolve Dammit]

15. and the Publix heiress

[NullTuples]

10. Some useful definitions; it would seem both clearly apply. But will Garland do it?

Sedition
According to Title 18, second 2384 of the Code of Laws of the United States, sedition can meet any of three conditions.

If two or more people in any place subject to U.S. jurisdiction:

conspire to overthrow, put down, or destroy by force or wage war against the government
forcefully oppose government authority, preventing, hindering or delaying the execution of any law of the U.S.
seize, take, or possess any U.S. property contrary to its laws
Immediacy is an important element in sedition. Advocating the use of force against the government some time in the future is not considered sedition; such speech is protected by the First Amendment.

The Justice Department determines what constitutes sedition. Last September, for instance, Attorney General Bill Barr encouraged prosecutors to charge Black Lives Matter protesters with sedition if they were believed to have caused violent crimes, such as taking a federal courthouse or other federal property by force. The charge of sedition, he continued, did not “require proof of a plot to overthrow the U.S. Government.”

Insurrection
While sedition is organized incitement to rebellion or civil disorder against the state’s authority, insurrection involves actual acts of violence against the state or its officers.

Only the attorney general can bring charges of insurrection, which is defined by Title 18, section 2383 of the U.S.C.:

Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

Elsewhere (title 10, chapter 13, section 254), the U.S. Code allows the president to “immediately order the insurgents to disperse and retire peaceably to their abodes within a limited time.” If the insurrectionists don’t comply, the president can then call out the military and National Guard to suppress civil disorder and insurrection.

From: https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2021/01/treason-sedition-and-insurrection-whats-the-difference/

[Hekate]

11. KnR

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

13. Well nice, but unless he's actually

brought to justice, an investigation is nearly meaningless.

It's not as though there's actually any doubt that he did everything possible to overturn the election, and when that failed, incited the riot.

[Mr.Bill]

14. I used to think the most over-used word in government

was "bi-partisan". I think it has been surpassed by "investigation".

Sadly, I think they have both taken on the meaning "nothing is going to happen".