2020 Election Fallout 15: More Information Is Being Revealed About The Big Lie

[Cartmann99]

 

[Cartmann99]

White House records turned over to House show 7-hour gap in Trump phone log on Jan. 6

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Internal White House records from the day of the attack on the U.S. Capitol that were turned over to the House select committee show a gap in President Donald Trump's phone logs of seven hours and 37 minutes, including the period when the building was being violently assaulted, according to documents obtained by CBS News' chief election & campaign correspondent Robert Costa and The Washington Post's associate editor Bob Woodward.

The lack of an official White House notation of any calls placed to or by Trump for 457 minutes — from 11:17 a.m. to 6:54 p.m. — on Jan. 6, 2021 means there is no record of the calls made by Trump as his supporters descended on the U.S. Capitol, battled overwhelmed police and forcibly entered the building, prompting lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence to flee for safety.

The 11 pages of records — which consist of the president's official daily diary and the White House switchboard call log — were turned over by the National Archives earlier this year to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.

The records show that Trump was active on the phone for part of the day, documenting conversations that he had with at least eight people in the morning and 11 people that evening. The gap also stands in stark contrast to the extensive public reporting about phone conversations he had with allies during the attack.

The House panel is now investigating whether Trump communicated that day through backchannels, phones of aides or personal disposable phones, known as "burner phones," according to two people with knowledge of the probe, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. The committee is also scrutinizing whether it received the full log from that day.

The records show that former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon — who said on his Jan. 5 podcast that "all hell is going to break loose tomorrow" — spoke with Trump twice on Jan. 6.

A spokesman for the committee declined to comment.

In a statement Monday night, Trump said, "I have no idea what a burner phone is, to the best of my knowledge I have never even heard the term."

A Trump spokesperson said that Trump had nothing to do with the records and had assumed any and all of his phone calls were recorded and preserved.

For more, read The Washington Post story co-written by Costa and Woodward.

 

[Howl]

and Asha continues: "They (esp lawmakers and Pence) will kick and scream but there’s no leg to stand on, legally, to block subpoenas for records so clearly related to the investigation and which were deliberately being obscured by WH and Trump. U.S. v. Nixon would be exactly on point."

@Cartmann99, Asha's tweet must be referencing this gap!  I just opened Twitter and it was the first tweet in the queue; I was getting ready to "Submit reply" when you posted. 

[Cartmann99]

New documentary from PBS about the 2020 election:

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[47of74]

A Branch Trumpvidian is heading to prison. 

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Concluding one of the more unnerving cases surrounding January 6, a man who brought multiple firearms, Molotov cocktails and other weapons near the US Capitol that day was sentenced to 46 months behind bars on Friday.

Lonnie Coffman, 72, parked his truck -- filled with 11 Mason jars filled with gasoline and Styrofoam, several unregistered firearms, hundreds of rounds of ammo, a stun gun, machetes and a crossbow with bolts -- a few blocks from the Capitol on January 6.

"He had almost a small armory in his truck, ready to do battle," Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said before sentencing Coffman to several months above what prosecutors had recommended. 

During the sentencing, Kollar-Kotelly said she didn't think "in all my years as a judge I've had such a collection of weapons" in a case, adding that Coffman "spent two tours in Vietnam so he certainly knows what napalm can do," in reference to the combined Styrofoam and gasoline found in the mason jars.

Up to me he would’ve gotten 10 years at the least.  Which at his age would almost be a life sentence. 

[GreyhoundFan]

A helpful analysis: "Large parts of the Jan. 6 ‘gap’ have already been filled"

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For much of this week, the political world has considered an unexpected detail about the day of the Capitol riot last year: Who was President Donald Trump talking to as the day unfolded?

Normally, presidential conversations, even relatively informal ones, are logged by staff in a formal calendar. Yet, as The Washington Post reported Tuesday, there was a gap in Trump’s call log for Jan. 6, 2021, that lasted for more than seven hours. For a president known to spend inordinate amounts of time on the phone, that seemed unlikely. So what was missing?

In the days that followed, we’ve learned a lot about the specific practices of the White House (and, specifically, the Trump White House) both that day and in general. It’s been confirmed, for example, that the call log we published earlier this week is the full log; there are no missing pages or anything similar. The people we know he spoke with on the phone are all of the calls that were logged. We also learned that Trump’s executive assistant was out most of the day, perhaps contributing to unrecorded conversations.

But it’s also worth noting that Trump was not simply missing for that entire seven-hour period. In fact, several hours are fully accounted for — times during which Trump might understandably have not been making calls anyway.

What we know Trump was doing

We’ve walked through what we know Trump was doing during that period, a stretch that ran from about a quarter past 11 in the morning until a bit before 7 p.m. The timeline below will provide a rough guide to the six important segments of the day.

1. Before the rally: 11:17 a.m. to 11:38 a.m.

The official call log shows Trump’s last call on record, with Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), ending at 11:06. Annotations on his daily calendar, though, shows the call at 11:17 a.m. with Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.). This is where the “gap” starts — though the calendar also notes a call with Vice President Mike Pence at 11:20 a.m. This call would become rather infamous.

Trump had just met or was still meeting with a large group, including members of his family and adviser Stephen Miller, with whom he spoke for about half an hour earlier in the morning. Miller wrote many of Trump’s speeches and it’s likely this was a subject of conversation, given that Trump was about to leave the White House to address the crowd that he’d summoned to Washington.

2. The rally: 11:38 a.m. to 1:19 p.m.

Trump left the White House at 11:38 a.m. and got to the rally venue at the Ellipse at 11:41 a.m. (It’s not far.) He spent some time backstage, as captured in a video apparently shot by Donald Trump Jr. At 11:55 a.m., he went out to the stage.

It’s useful to point out that, during this period, many of the individuals he might have wanted to speak with were in his immediate presence. It’s not clear how many of the prior speakers were still there — including attorneys John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani — but it’s easy to imagine they might have stuck around to speak with the president.

At about noon, Trump began speaking and continued for more than an hour. At 1:17 p.m. he left for the White House and arrived two minutes later.

3. The first gap: 1:19 p.m. to 4:03 p.m.

When Trump got back to the White House, the first quiet period began — though, here too, we do know some of what happened.

When he arrived, the Capitol had not yet been breached, but thousands of people were surrounding the building. At 2:24 p.m., shortly after the first rioters got inside, he tweeted an excoriation of Pence: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”

Two minutes later he used a White House line to call Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), though he was trying to reach Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.). It’s not clear why this call wasn’t in the log or the diary. He was connected to Tuberville, who would later recall he told Trump that Pence had been evacuated.

At some point after the tweet, and presumably after the call, Pence’s national security adviser, Keith Kellogg, came to speak to the president, finding Trump watching cable-news coverage. According to the book “Peril” by The Post’s Bob Woodward and CBS News’s Robert Costa (the reporters who first reported on the seven-hour gap), Kellogg pressed Trump to tweet something aimed at calming the crowd.

“Trump blinked and kept watching television,” Woodward and Costa write. “Kellogg looked around and realized the West Wing was nearly empty. [Chief of Staff Mark] Meadows was in his office, but Trump was essentially alone. National security adviser Robert O’Brien was in Florida. [Senior adviser Jared] Kushner was not there.”

Other reporting from the Wall Street Journal’s Michael Bender in his book “Frankly, We Did Win This Election” reinforces Trump’s isolation as the riot unfolded.

The president, he wrote, “ignored the public and private pleas of his advisers, both current and former, who begged him to quell the riots. Terrified Republican lawmakers called White House aides and the president’s children, pleading for help. Kellyanne Conway — who had received calls from D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s office asking for her help in convincing Trump to call in the National Guard — phoned a close personal aide to the president, relaying the mayor’s request and adding that she, too, felt Trump needed to calm his supporters. The mayor twice personally implored Meadows for help.” Trump himself was seemingly difficult to contact.

At 2:38 p.m., though, Trump tweeted a call for the crowd to “support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement!” (It’s useful to note here that Trump was a very slow tweeter, taking several minutes to compose a message.)

A few minutes later at 2:44 p.m., Ashli Babbitt was shot near the House chamber, an incident audible to those inside. At some point between then and 3:05 p.m., Trump spoke with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). (McCarthy mentioned the call during a Fox News interview at 3:05 p.m.)

Costa and Woodward described the call, during which McCarthy told Trump that someone had been shot.

“Trump did not seem to grasp the gravity of the situation,” they write. “He never asked about McCarthy’s safety. And one remark stood out: ‘Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.’ ” This comment was later confirmed by a Republican member of Congress.

At 3:13 p.m., another tweet. It read, in part: “I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence!”

4. The first video: 4:03 p.m. to 4:17 p.m.

With violence still wracking the Capitol, Trump went out to the Rose Garden to film a video message to his supporters. It took several minutes. Afterward, he returned to the Oval Office and, at 4:17 p.m., the video was tweeted out.

5. The second gap: 4:17 p.m. to 6:27 p.m.

For the next several hours, it’s not clear what Trump was doing, with two exceptions.

At 6:01 p.m., he again tweeted about the violence — this time, quite sympathetically. “These are the things and events that happen,” it began, “when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long.” He encouraged his supporters to “[g]o home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

It was poorly received. So the White House filmed another video, this time a formal one that involved Trump reading from a teleprompter from behind a lectern. That statement was both much less enthusiastic about the rioters and, for the first time, acknowledged that there would be a transfer of power to Joe Biden on Jan. 20. It’s not clear how long it took to script and record, but that occurred during this period.

Eventually, Trump went upstairs to his private residence.

6. Calls resume: 6:27 p.m. to 7:10 p.m.

About half an hour after returning upstairs, the call log resumes with his trying to reach Dan Scavino, the adviser who handled his social media feed. At 7:01 p.m., he called White House counsel Pat Cipollone.

At 7:10 p.m., the second video was released. Ensconced safely in the White House, Trump spent the next several hours on the phone.

 

[Cartmann99]

Rest of thread is under the spoiler.

Spoiler

 

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[Howl]

 

[Howl]

Seth Abramson is on a twitter tear about Ali Alexander.  

For the unroll, click below:

Here’s what I will say about this breaking news regarding Ali Alexander: Congress must familiarize itself with every Periscope video Alexander ever recorded, and every interview he ever did with Alex Jones that was recorded in either audio or video. This material is stunning.

[47of74]

Iowa Branch Trumpvidian Doug Jensen doesn't want his initial interview admitted into evidence

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Newly released court documents in the federal case against Doug Jensen, the Des Moines man seen at the front of the United States Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021, spell out his actions in the days after and how the FBI identified him.

The documents were filed in response to Jensen's motion to have an interview he did on Jan. 8, 2021, withheld. Federal prosecutors say the interview was voluntary and he offered to show FBI agents his cell phone, and for those reasons and more, the court should allow both of them in the case.

"As soon as he arrived back in Des Moines, he went to see his wife. She was scared because of all the news coverage Jensen was receiving, and she told him to go take care of the problem," prosecutors state.

On the morning of Jan. 8, Jensen walked six miles to the Des Moines Police Department because his car was broken down. Prosecutors say Jensen showed up saying, "I think I'm probably wanted," based on his participation to "overtake the Capitol" after the president spoke. At this time, no arrest warrant was filed for Jensen, authorities had no plan to make an arrest, and a formal FBI investigation was not yet opened, according to prosecutors.

 

[AlmostSavedAtTacoBell]

19 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Rest of thread is under the spoiler.

  Hide contents

 

 

I am always amused at criminals who use text messages instead of old school verbal phone calls to communicate their criminal plans. At least with verbal communication if both sides concoct the same story and stick to it, unless there are recordings there is no way to prove the conversation wasn’t because Mark Meadows makes amazing homemade lasagna and Jr. called him for the recipe because Kimberly couldn’t stop talking about how much she loved it and he wanted to surprise her by making it for her. 

[Howl]

1 hour ago, AlmostSavedAtTacoBell said:

there is no way to prove the conversation wasn’t because Mark Meadows makes amazing homemade lasagna and Jr. called him for the recipe because Kimberly couldn’t stop talking about how much she loved it and he wanted to surprise her by making it for her. 

Any possibility Kimberly is currently considering her options, one of them being making phone calls to arrange to move out in the middle of the day while Jr. is off in search of Peruvian marching powder? 

[fraurosena]

We know George, we know...

 

[fraurosena]

Just so you know:

 

[47of74]

Some good news

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A jury in Washington, DC, on Monday found an ex-Virginia police officer guilty on all six charges he faced for his actions around the US Capitol attack on January 6, 2021.

Thomas Robertson, a former sergeant of the Rocky Mount police in Virginia, faced charges including impeding law enforcement officers, obstructing an official proceeding, entering and remaining in restricted grounds and tampering with evidence.

The jury heard from multiple witness during the trial last week, including Washington police officers who were there during the attack, federal agents and Robertson's former police colleague and co-defendant who testified as part of a plea deal with the government.

Robertson has been awaiting his trial in jail since July, after investigators said they found a rifle and bomb-making material in his home and learned that he bought another 37 guns on the internet after his original arrest in January 2021.

Had my way this fuck stick would never have another day as a free person ever again and would be treated like the terrorist scum he is.  I don't think we'll get that lucky though.

[Cartmann99]

BUSTED: ‘Stop the Steal’ organizer Amy Kremer hit with another big campaign finance fine

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Prominent Donald Trump supporter Amy Kremer was slapped with another fine by the Federal Elections Commission, Forbes reported Tuesday.

"Women Vote Smart PAC and its treasurer Amy Kremer now owe the Federal Election Commission at least $49,000 in past-due fines for failing to submit financial reports. The FEC disclosed the latest fine, $11,800 for not filing the 2021 mid-year report, on Friday," Zach Everson reported. "Women Vote Smart violated FEC rules from its launch. Founded in May 2016 as Women Vote Trump, it changed names the following month after the FEC pointed out that using a candidate’s name violated campaign-finance rules."

Kremer, along with her daughter Kylie Kremer, was subpoenaed by the House Select Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol. In that case, the subpoena focused on the women's work for a different organization, Women for America First.

 

[47of74]

Judge Reggie Walton wasn't having any BT bullshit about following orders

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A January 6 rioter who claimed he was following "presidential orders" when he stormed the US Capitol and stole liquor and a coat rack was convicted Thursday on all charges by a jury in Washington, DC.

Dustin Thompson, a 38-year-old exterminator from Ohio, faced six charges -- obstructing an official proceeding, theft of government property, illegally entering the Capitol, illegally protesting in the Capitol, and two counts of disorderly conduct in the Capitol.

As he sent Thompson immediately to jail pending sentencing, Walton said, "You make your bed, you lie in it." Thompson then took off his tie, belt and jacket, and was handcuffed behind his back by a deputy US marshal and escorted out of the courtroom.

The most severe charge that Thompson was convicted of -- obstruction of an official proceeding, a felony -- carries up to 20 years in prison. He will be sentenced in July.

 

[Audrey2]

1 hour ago, 47of74 said:

Judge Reggie Walton wasn't having any BT bullshit about following orders

 

Now I wonder how these BTs who are getting convicted of storming the capital are feeling about voting rights being restored to felons. We know there are big about denying voting rights to people, and there are states where if you have a felony you don't get to vote any more.

[47of74]

2 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

Now I wonder how these BTs who are getting convicted of storming the capital are feeling about voting rights being restored to felons. We know there are big about denying voting rights to people, and there are states where if you have a felony you don't get to vote any more.

I think that the right to vote should be absolute for every adult US citizen and not be something that can be abridged or denied for any reason.  Along with making voter suppression a capital offense.

[Dandruff]

6 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

Now I wonder how these BTs who are getting convicted of storming the capital are feeling about voting rights being restored to felons. We know there are big about denying voting rights to people, and there are states where if you have a felony you don't get to vote any more.

I'd guess they consider themselves wrongfully incarcerated vs. felons, so this wouldn't affect their views on voting rights for felons.

 

[Cartmann99]

CNN Exclusive: 'We need ammo. We need fraud examples. We need it this weekend.' What the Meadows texts reveal about how two Trump congressional allies lobbied the White House to overturn the election.

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In the weeks between the 2020 election and the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, almost 100 text messages from two staunch GOP allies of then-President Donald Trump reveal an aggressive attempt to lobby, encourage and eventually warn the White House over its efforts to overturn the election, according to messages obtained by the House select committee and reviewed by CNN.

The texts, which have not been previously reported, were sent by Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Texas to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. The text exchanges show that both members of Congress initially supported legal challenges to the election but ultimately came to sour on the effort and the tactics deployed by Trump and his team.

"We're driving a stake in the heart of the federal republic," Roy texted Meadows on January 1. That text was first released in December by the House select committee and described as being written by a House Freedom Caucus member. Roy's authorship has not been previously reported.

When situated in the overall timeline of events between the election and January 6, the series of texts from Lee and Roy provide new details about how two Trump allies went from fierce advocates of the former President's push to overturn Joe Biden's win to disheartened bystanders. By January 3, Lee was texting Meadows that the effort "could all backfire badly."

But shortly after the election, both men were encouraging Trump to keep fighting.

 

[Howl]

Interesting times for Sen. Mike Lee from Utah; many of his texts are coming out and he was in the thick of all the skullduggery. 

On the home front back in Utah, Evan McMullin is campaigning for Lee's  Senate seat, running as an Independent. 

The Utah Republican primary is in June and Mike Lee has three opponents, but one guy only has $111 in his campaign coffers, so I think he can be safely discounted. Mike Lee has out raised his primary opponents by a significant degree.  There is also a Democratic candidate, Kael Weston, who doesn't seem like a strong contender. 

I would not discount Evan McMullin, I'd call him a gentle conservative with a actual platform who could easily pick up the votes of conservative leaning Democrats and disaffected Mormons who are tired of the crazy -- there have to be some of those. 

McMullin also picked up a ready made family by marrying a widow with a passel of kids, so he finally ticked that box a few years ago. 

[fraurosena]

 

Imagine having to sit through 9.5 hrs of this...