Thursday’s j6 hearings will be about Mike Pence being pressured in January 2021 with a bogus argument fronted by John Eastman and and Steve Bannon. The Select Committee hearing won't answer why Rep. Loudermilk's guest had four cellphones to document stairwells and security checkpoints in the Capitol. However, we may get a bit closer to whether John Eastman went and got himself a great f*cking criminal defense attorney, now that we know that there are even more emails between Ginni Thomas and John Eastman.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol has obtained email correspondence between Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and lawyer John Eastman, who played a key role in efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to block the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, according to three people involved in the committee’s investigation.
Eastman, who once served as clerk for Clarence Thomas at the Supreme Court, outlined scenarios for denying Biden the presidency in legal memos and in an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 4 with Trump and Pence, The Post and other outlets have previously reported. Eastman has said that Trump was his client at the time.
Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ordered Eastman to release numerous documents to the committee, rejecting privilege claims Eastman had asserted. In April and May, Eastman turned over more than 1,000 documents to the committee.
In a 26-page ruling last week, Carter addressed another 599 documents that Eastman sought to shield. Carter ruled that more than 400 of those documents were protected by attorney-client or other privilege and should not be released.
www.washingtonpost.com/...
WASHINGTON — A lawyer advising President Donald J. Trump claimed in an email after Election Day 2020 to have insight into a “heated fight” among the Supreme Court justices over whether to hear arguments about the president’s efforts to overturn his defeat at the polls, two people briefed on the email said.
The lawyer, John Eastman, made the statement in a Dec. 24, 2020, exchange with a Wisconsin lawyer and Trump campaign officials over whether to file legal papers that they hoped might prompt four justices to agree to hear an election case from Wisconsin.
“So the odds are not based on the legal merits but an assessment of the justices’ spines, and I understand that there is a heated fight underway,” Mr. Eastman wrote, according to the people briefed on the contents of the email. Referring to the process by which at least four justices are needed to take up a case, he added, “For those willing to do their duty, we should help them by giving them a Wisconsin cert petition to add into the mix.”
The Wisconsin lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, replied that the “odds of action before Jan. 6 will become more favorable if the justices start to fear that there will be ‘wild’ chaos on Jan. 6 unless they rule by then, either way.”
Their exchange took place five days after Mr. Trump issued a call for his supporters to attend a “protest” at the Ellipse near the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, the day Congress would certify the electoral vote count confirming Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. “Be there. Will be wild!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter.
The previously unreported exchange is part of a group of emails obtained by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol by a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters.
Mr. Chesebro’s comment about the justices being more open to hearing a case if they fear chaos was striking for its link to the potential for the kind of mob scene that materialized at the Capitol weeks later.
www.nytimes.com/...
including a man seen threatening lawmakers a day later
Thursday, Jun 16, 2022 · 3:23:30 PM +00:00 · annieli
WaPo’s Philip Bump worries about the “three-hour tour” aspect of the Insurrection being reported on. He shouldn’t worry because today’s Jacobs/Luttig revelations will be a BFD. It’s not a choice between clarity and uncertainty, because unfortunately, the worst POTUS in this nation’s history might still skate because something, something… the Presidency (see Nixon’s resignation speech).
“For one thing, it’s not entirely clear what we learned from the new revelations. It may be the case, as it often is, that clarity is less damning than uncertainty.”
We need to know what weaknesses existed and who facilitated the effort to overrun the Capitol. But we should remember that the primary trigger for the day’s violence was always Donald Trump.
For one thing, it’s not entirely clear what we learned from the new revelations. It may be the case, as it often is, that clarity is less damning than uncertainty.
Take the Proud Boys document. We’ve known for a while that Proud Boys were active participants in the day’s violence, with video footage clearly showing individuals from the organization involved in the early stages of the riot. The House select committee probing the riot has planned a hearing focused specifically on what members of the group did. Committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) told CNN’s Jake Tapper that the committee had witnesses who could testify to communication between the group and people in Trump’s orbit. One such link is known: Trump’s longtime adviser Roger Stone has public ties to both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. But Thompson may be referring to communication linked to a report that came out last year, indicating that the FBI had evidence of a communication between a person “associated with the White House,” as the New York Times put it, and a member of the Proud Boys.
[...]
One of the important undercurrents to the riot at the Capitol was the extent to which it blended wish fulfillment, self-importance and actual danger. There was military cosplaying and expressions of violent hostility that would have been impotent outside of the context of tens of thousands of other people doing the same thing. The Proud Boys was an organization of tough guys and wannabe tough guys; it’s not clear which wrote the newly revealed document, but it’s fairly clear that what the group did on Jan. 6 didn’t match up with what the document outlines.
The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake has a similarly cautious assessment of the footage from Loudermilk’s tour. What does it actually show? What did those who participate even do? Did they participate in the tour to scout out the Capitol — or to say they’d scouted out the Capitol? Was it a regular tour for some people who were in town or a nefarious effort to case the joint — or an overstimulated Trump supporter engaging in the functional equivalent of putting together a detail-light nine-page document about overthrowing the government?
www.washingtonpost.com/...
