January 6th Update: Everything in a nutshell up to Hearings 7 (Mobs and Militia Strike Teams Assemble) and 8 (Dereliction of Duty)
January 6th Update: Everything in a nutshell up to Hearings 7 (Mobs and Militia Strike Teams Assemble) and 8 (Dereliction of Duty)
Plus, 'Lost Not Stolen' Conservatives Do Exist, and US Secret Service 'Accidentally' Completely Destroys Device Data from January 6th After Formal Request
In This Issue:
January 6th Committee Hearing Update
Summary of the Committee’s plot findings up to the two most recent hearings (7 and 8)
In Re the Seventh Hearing (Mobs and Militia Strike Teams Assemble)
In Re the Eighth Hearing (Dereliction of Duty)
US Secret Service is reported to have destroyed device data relevant to the January 6th time period 11 days after an Office of Inspector General requested preservation.
Poem
Out-And-About Photo
January 6th Committee Hearing Update
The United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack is adjourned till September. Two more Committee hearings (7 and 8) have taken place since the last issue posted, which featured Cassidy Hutchinson, the assistant to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
The seventh hearing included testimony from White House Counsel Pat Cippollone, as well as Stephen Ayres, who pled guilty to misdemeanor charges related to January 6th, and Jason Van Tatenhove, the former national media director for the Oath Keepers (several members have already been charged with seditious conspiracy related to January 6th).
The eighth hearing focused on the actions, or rather purposeful inaction, taken by Donald Trump on the Day of January 6th. It had plenty more Republicans and people with military and national security backgrounds talking about dereliction of duty.
Summary of the Committee’s plot findings up to the two most recent hearings (7 and 8)
In repeated statements prior to both 2016 and 2020 elections it was evident that DJT was not going to publicly concede a Presidential election if he lost, and planned to blame it on phantom fraud allegations. Recently leaked audio of Steve Bannon prior to the 2020 election accurately outlined DJT’s post-election behavior:
**Bannon was also convicted today related to Contempt of Congress, for failure to turn over documents and failure to appear. Bannon now faces 2 years in jail.
Post election, the Trump Campaign filed 64 lawsuits seeking to overturn election results in six ‘battleground’ states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. As the Conservative led group Lost Not Stolen point out in their report, The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election:
Of the 64 cases brought by Trump and his supporters, twenty were dismissed before a hearing on the merits, fourteen were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before a hearing on the merits, and 30 cases included a hearing on the merits. Only in one Pennsylvania case involving far too few votes to overturn the results did Trump and his supporters prevail.
That report also has a great breakdown of state and claim, with refutations for each from a staunch conservative perspective. Highly recommend it, just for the reference tables alone.
By December 18th, these legal efforts had largely run their course, which were unsuccessful. From a legal perspective, these efforts were so poorly constructed that they resulted in sanctions and suspensions. The court system was not the only avenue DJT was pursuing in an effort to overturn the election. The former President and co., were calling up Republicans in the targeted states, even trying to get them to falsely “find 11,780 votes” or otherwise pressure them to overturn their State’s results. These efforts were most often refused by State and other officials for a lack of substantive basis (no evidence).
Throughout this time period the Department of Justice under Attorney General Barr was looking into these claims made in court, and more, including claims made in films like 2000 Mules. Barr (and others in different departments) reported back to DJT that these claims are virtually all without merit or are being overstated. Undeterred by lack of evidence, because, “you guys may not be following the Internet the way I do,” DJT gets friendly with an attorney named John Eastman that offers him a way to potentially remain in power.
The ‘plan’ involved Mike Pence declaring that he has powers as Vice President to ‘decertify’ the electoral results from individual states. It involved finding people to pose as electors from the battleground states. It also involved creating documents that falsely attest to these people being the actual electors acting under the authority of the individual battleground states, and even sending those documents to the National Archives. Fake electors themselves are now subject of criminal investigations related to their participation in that scheme. The ideal gist of it was that during the certification on January 6th, Vice President Pence would declare the actual electors from the battleground states as invalid, and replace them with the fake electors, which would then ‘make’ DJT the President again.
Pence was supposed to cite the ‘stolen election’ as the reason for going with the decertification and phony elector scheme. However, it appears most in the White House did not believe the election had been stolen, including Vice President Pence. The plot was illegal on its face according to the Electoral Count Act of 1887. This legal conclusion appears to have been well known, and wide spread at the White House during that time period. However, DJT chose to go with Eastman’s cunning plan of do illegal shit and then just claim the law is unconstitutional if it gets to the Supreme Court. Eastman nonetheless privately conceded to other attorneys that it would likely lose unanimously at the Supreme Court if challenged. Eastman’s response to the SCOTUS concern was that he thought SCOTUS would not even consider the matter due to a ‘political question’ deference. In essence the plan proposed Vice President invoke new powers and then decide, without any evidence, to not recognize a State’s slate of electors and pick an alternate slate of electors of his own choosing. The ability to overturn elections on a whim: autocracy.
Throughout all of this, DJT was consistently looking to further create doubt in the public consciousness about the 2020 election results. Acting Attorney General Rosen, who took over after Attorney General Bill Barr resigned in late December 2020, refused to sign a bogus investigation letter about vague electoral fraud claims. This refusal to participate, caused an attempted removal of Rosen at DoJ, but this threat by DJT was thwarted by the counter-threat of mass resignations from Assistant Attorney Generals nationwide that got wise to the plot.
A last chance and single point of failure emerges: Vice President Mike Pence. The question becomes, will he or won’t he? The plan expressed in DJT’s tweet the morning of January 6th:
The most recent hearings since last posting here are 7 and 8, and they focus on the forces and pressures that were to be deployed to impact that choice. A choice that neither Vice President Mike Pence, or White House Counsel Pat Cippollone, thought the Vice President had any right to make in the first place.
In Re the Seventh Hearing (Mobs and Militia Strike Teams Assemble)
Donald Trump expressed interest in an Executive Order to seize voting machines from battleground states and appoint Sidney Powell (who was part of the 64 lawsuits of not happening) as Special Counsel. White House Counsel Pat Cippollone, testified that he and others talked DJT out of it. Pat Cippollone also corroborated the tense atmosphere in the White House described by Cassidy Hutchinson’s prior testimony.
There was testimony from a Twitter employee that the social media platform was concerned about the potential for violence on January 6th, but also relished being the favorite digital media platform of the President of the United States:
“If Donald Trump were any other user on Twitter he would have been permanently suspended a very long time ago.”
An aggressive media campaign in mid-late December for a January 6th rally makes clear to people “TRUMP WANTS TO SEE YOU.” The Committe also showed social media chatter among those interested in attending the rally with phrases like:
“Is the 6th D-Day? Is that why Trump wants everyone there?”
“It 'will be wild' means we need volunteers for the firing squad.”
Previously nonaligned groups of armed militia, white supremacists, and conspiracy theorists were coming together in a “blended ideology.” They created channels on digital media platforms to discuss “pre-operational intelligence” (what are you wearing, where are you meeting up, etc).
The leadership of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers have since been charged with seditious conspiracy. Both retired General Mike Flynn and Roger Stone, who had each received a pardon and commutation of sentencing months earlier from DJT for their prior criminal activity, were directly interfacing with these groups. Even appearing on stage the night of January 5th getting people motivated for the 6th. The night of January 5th included members of these groups going around D.C. yelling at police “Give us 1 hour, just 1 hour!”
The Committee introduced us to former True Believers Jason Van Tatenhove and Stephen Ayres. Each provided a human face to getting wrapped up in the Oath Keepers or storming the Capitol.
Van Tatenhove started with the Oath Keepers back with the Bundy Standoff in 2014. However, he left the group due to concerns he had with the vision of the Oath Keepers:
“doesn't necessarily include the rule of law, includes violence, includes trying to get their way through lies, deceit, and perpetration of violence... swept up in the moments... and I admit I was swept up too.”
“…straw that broke the camels back... walked into a grocery store... Eureka, Montana, group of core members... having a conversation in that public area and they were talking about how the holocaust was not real.”
“Told my wife and kids that I have to walk away at this point.”
As for how Ayers, a supervisor at a cabinet company, wound up inside the Capitol building on January 6th?
“For me personally... pretty hardcore into the social media, facebook... all of the websites... I felt like I needed to be down there.”
“I had some friends that were coming down, and hopped on with them at the tail-end when I found out.”
This led to an interesting series of questions about how Ayers understood the world then and currently.
How did that make you feel [trump said stolen]?
"I was very upset... that's basically what got me to come down here."
Still believe [stolen election]?
"Not so much now... started doing my own research and everything, something like that too big/impossible to keep quiet... All the lawsuits being shot down."
Does it make a difference to you, that President Trump had no evidence of widespread fraud?
"Oh, definitely. Who knows, I may not have come down here."
Why did you decide to march toward the capitol?
"Well basically the President... told everyone to head on down, and we basically just followed what he said."
How did you feel?
"I'm angry, after everything that was said... already put out in tweets... angry, so were most of the people there."
Did you think the President would be marching with you?
"Yeah, I think everyone did... I believed it."
There is some other interesting testimony with Van Tatenhove regarding the aims of Stewart Rhodes and the Oath Keepers for January 6th.
"What it was gonna be, was an armed revolution... this could have been the spark that would have started a new civil war."
"…call things for what they are. He's [Stewart Rhodes] a militia leader, with grand visions of being a paramilitary leader, and the insurrection act would have given him a path forward for that."
There is more to explore regarding such movements and those attracted to them for another series of posts I am preparing. One thing to recognize is that a lot of people within the White House that day immediately had regrets:
In Re the Eighth Hearing (Dereliction of Duty)
Yesterday’s nearly three-hour prime-time hearing focused on what former President Donald Trump was doing during the hours that the Capitol had been breached. After being deposited by the Secret Service at the White House, he then sat in the Dining Room adjacent the Oval Office watching Fox News. Prior to his speech at the ellipse he had been made aware that components of the crowd were armed. Previous hearings go into more detail about the armaments (included pistols, knives, pepperspray, brass knuckles, etc).
Call records from the White House are missing for January 6th from 11:06AM to 6:54PM. However, calls have been pieced together thanks to recipients that have come forward to disclose the President contacted them and still wanted them to ‘decertify’ or kick things back to certain states. The idea being to either just go for it on the Senate floor, or assist in buying more time to find accomplices at the state level.
Staff, family, and advisors, testified to urging DJT to call off the mob and use clear language that it needed to leave the Capitol immediately. They also testified to asking him to call in reinforcements to assist the police in securing the Capitol and protecting the Congress people and Vice President. Individual One chose not to assist those trapped at the Capitol and did not lift a finger except to tweet his displeasure at Vice President Mike Pence.
Within two minutes after that tweet the attack on the Capitol escalated further, and included the chant ‘Hang Mike Pence.’ This was apparently much to the pleasure of the former President, and to the displeasure of his Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and White House Counsel Pat Cippollone, who were both trying to get DJT to call off the mob.
Mark Meadows: “You heard him Pat… he [Trump] thinks he [Pence] deserves it.”
While watching it all unfold on Fox News cable television in the dining room, DJT would not tweet for the mob to disperse, and instead told them to “stay peaceful” even though a riot had been declared by police officers by 1:49 PM.
A couple hours later, Vice President Mike Pence effectively took executive control of the United States of America. After being in contact with the Secretary of Defense and others, the National Guard was mobilized at Mike Pence’s directive. News of the mobilization was broadcast on Fox News at 3:58 PM. By 4:03 PM, evidently seeing the writing on the wall, President Donald J. Trump went to the Rose Garden and recorded this off-the-cuff speech. This was done instead of a scripted speech that would have condemned the violence and would have made no mention of loving the mob and thinking they were “very special.” A take from the below recording was tweeted out at 4:17 PM:
A lot of the crowd then heeded his message to depart the Capitol grounds (testimony was also given by Stephen Ayres that that tweet was what personally got him and others around him to leave). A couple hours later, another tweet was released by DJT that seemed proud of what could be accomplished with a little bit of organized street violence, complicit members of Congress and police, some fraudulent documentation, and a mob of the paranoid and easily persuadable:
Former National Security Counsel member Matthew Pottinger, testified in person regarding the chaos that day caused on an international level. Other countries wondering who was in charge. Trump White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews worked with Kayleigh McEnany and the communications team that day to craft messaging for DJT that would hopefully defuse the mob, which DJT scrapped for the cede nothing and rile ‘em up approach. Both Potter and Matthews resigned following the events of that day.
The next day, January 7th, DJT was persuaded to record another speech addressing “things and events that happen.” The January 6th Committee obtained those recordings, complete with outtakes. In the outtakes you can see his understanding of speech and rhetoric: DJT is unwilling to say the election is over, and wants to downplay yesterday’s actions by the mob. Even wanting the word “yesterday” itself ommitted.
The remainder of the eighth hearing were statements and conversations about duty and obligation between the Committee members and those called to give testimony, which were mostly Republican or had a military background (as the Committee likes to do).
Throughout these eight hearings we have seen the Committee’s favored approach is to lay out the evidence and let testimony from those inside the White House, State Government, election system, and elsewhere, speak for itself. Presentation coming most often in the form of testimony from Republican and former DJT appointees. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed just prior to the most recent eighth hearing, this may be having some effect on other Republicans:
The two-day poll, finished hours before a scheduled eighth hearing of the congressional probe, showed that 40% percent of Republicans now believe Trump is at least partly to blame for the deadly riot, up from 33% in a poll conducted six weeks ago.
At least partly, yeah, I would say so. Especially as so many people around him during that time period apparently thought and said so as well.
Regarding the recent comments from Attorney General Merrick Garland, they are completely in keeping with my prior expectations about Department of Justice’s (often understandably) cautious approach.
“We do not do our investigations in public. This is the most wide-ranging investigation and the most important investigation that the Justice Department has ever entered into...We have to get this right.”
One is only left to wonder how far along any such Department of Justice investigations are, and I still think that Georgia may well go first with its state charges in any potential criminal prosecutions (and if not Georgia, some other state first). Federal level prosecutions generally have a lower risk tolerance for convictions, so they are inclined to let states prosecute their charges first before potentially tacking on any federal charges later.
US Secret Service is reported to have destroyed device data relevant to the January 6th time period 11 days after an Office of Inspector General requested preservation.
If I nuked a lot of on-hold device data at my last firm regarding something of this magnitude, I would imagine that the partners would have had my head and limbs severed from my torso. Those bits would then be placed on different faces of the pyramid atop the tower on 2nd Avenue here in Seattle — to serve as both a warning to others — as well as for the Falcon that nests up there to feed its young. Circle of life as they say in the legal discovery and IT/Technology world.
Claiming a migration is planned in advance does not make any of this sound any better. Especially when your migration involves deletion of all data. When your organization is to perform a hold, and it does not comply with that hold, that is not a good sign either way one tries to spin it. No ‘planned migration’ that I have ever seen or experienced would be an excuse to not comply with such a hold. After some suggestions that maybe the data could be retrieved using forensic recovery tools, turns out no it is gone:
The U.S. Secret Service has determined it has no new texts to provide Congress relevant to its Jan. 6 investigation, and that any other texts its agents exchanged around the time of the 2021 attack on the Capitol were purged, according to a senior official briefed on the matter.
By historical standards, the last administration had a lot of churn in personnel, and also lack of personnel (some roles going unfilled for far longer than is the norm). One reason for the churn was the winnowing down of staff on the basis of loyalty to DJT. Government has processes and approvals to go through, but when it comes to picking out a Secret Service detail the President has comparitively more leeway to pick who he wants for his detail.
We heard from last night that US Secret Service members in the VP Pence detail stuck in the Capitol building were calling their families and saying goodbye during the storming of the Capitol. From Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony, we are told that what thwarted DJT’s surprise plan to go to a second stage near the Capitol was that he got into a car with Secret Service rather than actually walk with the crowd. Secret Service deemed the Capitol grounds too insecure by the time DJT’s speech at the ellipse had concluded, and in an effort to get them to turn the car to the Capitol DJT allegedly assaulted the Secret Service.
Two potential reasons for wanting data gone, from a departmental CYA perspective: 1) potentially very personal or embarassing messages being sent from Secret Service phones, and 2) potentially whatever the DJT loyalist cadre of Secret Service had that could have shed more light on criminal acts committed by the former President. The Vice President also had reservations about Secret Service that day:
Tim Giebels, the lead special agent in charge of the former vice president’s protective detail, reportedly “twice asked Pence to evacuate the Capitol” to which Mr Pence refused, The Post said.
“I’m not leaving the Capitol,” he reportedly told Mr Giebels. “The last thing the vice president wanted was the people attacking the Capitol to see his 20-car motorcade fleeing. That would only vindicate their insurrection.”
As the chaos continued to unfold, Mr Pence was said to have been ordered to leave the office and was escorted to a “subterranean area that rioters couldn’t reach” and towards an armoured limousine.
Mr Pence then reportedly outright refused to get into the vehicle, saying his security detail would ignore his demand not to leave the building and would instead “take off” against his wishes.
“I’m not getting in the car, Tim,” Mr Pence replied. “I trust you, Tim, but you’re not driving the car. If I get in that vehicle, you guys are taking off. I’m not getting in the car.”
Poem for 2022.07.22
Sol sits in the west
Poplar leaves rustle in waves
Dappled ground-shade shifts
Out-and-About Photo for 2022.07.22
Mirrored: Mirror on the Walnut Tree. From a barbecue.
[2022.09.19 Headline Style and Formatting Updates (Link-ablity and Site Consistency)]