THE GUARDIAN
"House Capitol attack panel ready to urge prosecution of Trump aides, says Schiff"
Martin Pengelly in New York
11 OCTOBER 2021
The House select committee investigating the deadly assault on the US Capitol on 6 January is prepared to urge federal prosecution of former aides to Donald Trump who refuse to comply with subpoenas, a key panel member said.
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, strategist Steve Bannon and Pentagon aide Kash Patel are defying subpoenas for documents and testimony, under instruction from the former president.
Amid fears that the panel will not take legal action to enforce its will, Adam Schiff, a member of the panel as well as chairman of the House intelligence committee, spoke to CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday.
The 6 January committee, he said, “wants to make sure that these witnesses come in and testify, and we are prepared to go forward and urge the justice department to criminally prosecute anyone who does not do their lawful duty”.
Schiff also greeted a decision by the Biden administration not to invoke executive privilege over documents pertaining to the Capitol attack.
The riot, around which five people including a police officer died, followed a rally near the White House at which Trump exhorted followers to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat.
Schiff said he hoped the House committee would see such materials “very soon”.
“I applaud the Biden administration for not asserting executive privilege,” he said, “not trying, because it’s protecting its own prerogative, to deprive the American people of the full facts."
"So hats off to the administration.
“We should I think get those documents soon because the sitting president has the primary say on executive privilege.”
On Friday, in a letter announcing their client’s decision not to comply with his subpoena, attorneys for Bannon attempted to assert executive privilege themselves.
Observers pointed out that executive privilege applies to communications involving the president the White House wishes to keep confidential – but though Trump was then in power, Bannon was not working for him.
Trump repeated the lies about electoral fraud which fuelled the attack at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday.
Two senior state Republicans, Senator Chuck Grassley and Governor Kim Reynolds, stood with him.
Referring to a Senate judiciary committee majority report this week about how Trump pressured his acting attorney general before the Capitol attack, Schiff said: “We saw Grassley [the senior Republican on the judiciary committee] in Iowa yesterday, unable to condemn the president’s effort to to get the justice department to overturn the election.”
Referring to Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the House Republican whip, Schiff pointed to “another Republican leader unable to acknowledge that the election wasn’t stolen”.
On Fox News Sunday, Scalise refused three times to say if he believed the election was stolen.
“It’s these personal capitulations that are putting our country at risk,” Schiff said, adding that the Republican party “is now an autocratic cult around Donald Trump … not interested in governing”.
Trump’s Iowa rally was part of a shadow campaign.
The former president remains eligible to run for the White House because enough Republican senators stayed loyal in his second impeachment trial, for inciting the Capitol attack, to stave off conviction.
But Trump has not formally declared a run.
Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press, the Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat, said the American people should see Trump aides testify under oath in Congress.
“When you consider that these were Trump appointees,” he said, of events before the 6 January rally outlined in the Senate judiciary committee report, “people who are willing to go right to the chalk line, and in my view, even over it, when those folks saw this as outlandish and illegal and something that they don’t quit before they participate in, that shows how berserk this had gotten.”
Referring to Jeffrey Clark, a senior justice department lawyer whose willingness to help Trump was outlined in the Senate report, Whitehouse said: “We then go on to the further question of, ‘OK, how was this organised?'"
"Was this really just one little guy in the Department of Justice with a wild idea?’"
"I doubt it.”
Observers including the comedian Bill Maher have warned of a “slow-moving coup”, shorthand for processes by which Republicans at state levels have since 2020 moved to change voting and electoral laws and to install sympathetic officials in positions which monitor and certify elections.
The former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, author of a tell-all book about her former boss, also appeared on NBC.
She said that if Trump “does run again in 2024, he’ll have no guardrails because he will never have to worry about re-election, so he will do whatever he wants."
"He will hire whomever he wants."
"And I think that includes people of the 6 January mind … imagine who he could put into the DoJ in 2024, knowing he’s got no consequences there.”
Asked if Trump would “destroy the democracy”, Grisham said: “I think it will be a very terrifying time.
“I think it will be nothing but revenge, retribution and how he can benefit himself."
"There will be pardons happening."
"I think there will be very draconian policies that go way too far."
"So I believe if he is re-elected it will be a really, really scary time.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... hp&pc=U531
THE MAGA-MAN DONALD TRUMP
Re: THE MAGA-MAN DONALD TRUMP
CNN
"Analysis: Pressure on January 6 panel ratchets up amid new explosion of Trump election lies"
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
12 OCTOBER 2021
The House's US Capitol insurrection probe is fast turning into a race against time, up against Republican efforts to delay an accounting on ex-President Donald Trump's coup attempt after losing the 2020 election even as he preemptively begins undermining the next one.
It's hardly a shock that members of Trump's orbit are seeking to evade accountability and the rule of law.
But it represents a problem for the committee nonetheless, as potential witnesses seek to drag out the process as long as possible.
They do so in the knowledge that Republicans who have high hopes in the midterm elections would almost certainly shut down probes into January 6 if they reclaim the House.
The select committee's members are showing fresh urgency, warning that Trump acolytes who diss subpoenas face criminal referrals, a move that would put the Biden administration's Justice Department in the hot seat.
"We're not messing around," Rep. Adam Schiff of California, a Democratic member of the committee, told CNN's Ryan Nobles on Tuesday, emphasizing that the Department of Justice would be put in a position to make a critical choice on criminal referrals against Trump's associates because "unlike the last administration, no one is above the law."
"And so we intend to move quickly."
Another Democratic member of the committee, Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia, said, "You will see the committee moving quickly" on CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" on Tuesday.
And the committee's Republican vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, told CNN the panel "is completely in solidarity" on moving fast to pursue criminal contempt charges for those who evade subpoena deadlines.
"Every single person on the committee recognizes how important it is for us to make sure that we enforce our subpoenas and that we do so expeditiously," Cheney said.
The sense that time is finite reflects the fact that the committee -- the final manifestation of a formal accounting process that pro-Trump Republicans tried to strangle -- is the last chance to provide an official historic record and to find the truth about January 6 before Americans next vote in a national election next year.
Leaders of the Democrat-heavy panel previously pledged to complete the probe by early next spring, before the midterm campaign consumes Washington.
First, the committee faces several important deadlines this week, including for a list of Trump associates already served with subpoenas, as it seeks to find out what the ex-President was saying and doing on January 6 and in the days leading up to his attempt to steal President Joe Biden's election victory.
Former Trump political guru Steve Bannon is due to provide a deposition and documents by Thursday but has said he will not cooperate, arguing that he is bound by "executive privileges belonging to President Trump."
The claim is potentially dubious since Bannon was not a White House official in January and does not appear to fall under traditional interpretations of executive privilege -- a concept meant to secure the confidentiality of official advice to a president.
Another Trump associate, Kash Patel, a former Pentagon official, has a deposition scheduled for Thursday.
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is scheduled to be deposed on Friday.
Both men are said by Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, and Cheney to be "engaging" with the committee.
Meadows, however, sought to politicize the investigation further on Monday, telling Laura Ingraham on Fox News that looking into the worst attack on American democracy in generations represented an effort by Democrats to "talk about anything other than the economy."
A fourth Trump official, former deputy White House chief of staff Dan Scavino, also has a Friday deadline for a deposition.
Another group, made up of lesser-known Trump associates and activists -- including some involved in organizing the rally in Washington that Trump turned into a festival of incitement -- faced a Wednesday deadline.
Many appear unlikely to comply.
Biden Justice Department on the spot
Democrats have a couple of advantages now, compared with their halting efforts to compel testimony from Trump officials during the last administration.
For one, House Democrats have spent years investigating Trump and his administration, impeaching him twice.
They're familiar with the distraction of his political attacks, legal stalling tactics and the smoke-and-mirrors posturing that come from his inner circle.
They also now have a Department of Justice that is no longer under the 45th President's thumb.
It took two years and a prolonged legal battle, for example, to compel former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify to the House Judiciary Committee about incidents recorded in former special counsel Robert Mueller's report into Russian election interference.
His appearance, this June, belatedly confirmed that Trump had asked him to fire Mueller, but it came long after the information had lost political salience.
Now that Democrats control the administration, the select committee has a reasonable expectation of action if it decides to hold witnesses who refuse subpoenas in criminal contempt of Congress and refer them to the Justice Department after a vote in the full House.
That would test the willingness of the department under Attorney General Merrick Garland -- who has been criticized by some Democrats for not sufficiently pursuing Trump officials -- to take enforcement action.
"If people don't provide the documents they're compelled to, we intend to take up criminal contempt and refer to the Justice Department and we expect that it will be prosecuted," Schiff said Tuesday.
"The former President ... is still out pushing the big lie."
"The same big lie that led people to attack this building and beat police officers and put our lives at risk."
"So yes, we feel a sense of urgency."
A comment that epitomizes GOP appeasement of Trump
A criminal referral may concentrate the minds of witnesses.
But it does not rule out possible attempts to contest the issue in court.
Trump may also test arguments about executive privilege, meaning a familiar cycle of delays, judgments and appeals could still unfold and eat up the committee's precious time.
Bannon and Trump might even welcome the spotlight of a court battle to highlight their claims that yet again the ex-President is being unfairly pursued by an elite establishment deep state, a message that resonates with his supporters.
It remains unclear whether the committee will seek testimony from members of Congress allied with the former President, even including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican who spoke to Trump by phone on January 6 as the insurrection unfolded.
But the sense of a ticking clock is being intensified by expanding GOP efforts to bury the outrage of the worst attack in 200 years on the seat of US democracy.
Last week, for instance, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa portrayed Trump as the victim of a Democratic-led Senate committee that revealed new details about what can now objectively be described as a coup attempt by the former President.
Then Grassley gleefully accepted Trump's reelection endorsement at a lie-filled rally in the Hawkeye State on Saturday.
Grassley is far from the first Republican to seek to whitewash the Capitol insurrection.
The House GOP, for example, is now largely an arm of Trump's autocratic political aspirations.
On "Fox News Sunday" this week, the House Republican minority whip, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, refused to say that Biden had legitimately won an election in which there was no evidence of widespread fraud.
McCarthy, blasted by Schiff on CNN on Tuesday as the ringleader of a bunch of "insurrectionists in suits and ties," did everything he could to thwart any kind of congressional investigation.
But Grassley's rally appearance, in which he said he wouldn't be "too smart" if he declined the backing of Trump, since the former President is supported by 91% of Iowa Republicans, was the most tangible example yet of how the GOP -- even in the person of a senator long respected on judicial issues -- is suppressing the truth about January 6 to maximize its chances of power in 2022.
Grassley's comment also epitomized the entire attitude of the GOP, a party that once boasted about triumphing over Soviet totalitarianism, toward Trump.
None of his abuses of power -- not even seeking to overthrow an American democracy that has prevailed for nearly 250 years -- qualifies as a sufficient reason to walk away from his reflected political glory.
As Cheney, one of two Republican members of the House select committee, put it in a tweet rebuking Scalise: "Perpetuating the Big Lie is an attack on the core of our constitutional republic."
There is little hope that even an expansive report on the insurrection will change the minds of millions of Republicans who are convinced that the last election was stolen from Trump and of conservative media propaganda networks.
But at least there will be an accurate, institutionalized version of the truth, which will provide voters confronted with the whitewashing tactics of the GOP running into the next election a chance to find out what really happened.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... hp&pc=U531
"Analysis: Pressure on January 6 panel ratchets up amid new explosion of Trump election lies"
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
12 OCTOBER 2021
The House's US Capitol insurrection probe is fast turning into a race against time, up against Republican efforts to delay an accounting on ex-President Donald Trump's coup attempt after losing the 2020 election even as he preemptively begins undermining the next one.
It's hardly a shock that members of Trump's orbit are seeking to evade accountability and the rule of law.
But it represents a problem for the committee nonetheless, as potential witnesses seek to drag out the process as long as possible.
They do so in the knowledge that Republicans who have high hopes in the midterm elections would almost certainly shut down probes into January 6 if they reclaim the House.
The select committee's members are showing fresh urgency, warning that Trump acolytes who diss subpoenas face criminal referrals, a move that would put the Biden administration's Justice Department in the hot seat.
"We're not messing around," Rep. Adam Schiff of California, a Democratic member of the committee, told CNN's Ryan Nobles on Tuesday, emphasizing that the Department of Justice would be put in a position to make a critical choice on criminal referrals against Trump's associates because "unlike the last administration, no one is above the law."
"And so we intend to move quickly."
Another Democratic member of the committee, Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia, said, "You will see the committee moving quickly" on CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" on Tuesday.
And the committee's Republican vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, told CNN the panel "is completely in solidarity" on moving fast to pursue criminal contempt charges for those who evade subpoena deadlines.
"Every single person on the committee recognizes how important it is for us to make sure that we enforce our subpoenas and that we do so expeditiously," Cheney said.
The sense that time is finite reflects the fact that the committee -- the final manifestation of a formal accounting process that pro-Trump Republicans tried to strangle -- is the last chance to provide an official historic record and to find the truth about January 6 before Americans next vote in a national election next year.
Leaders of the Democrat-heavy panel previously pledged to complete the probe by early next spring, before the midterm campaign consumes Washington.
First, the committee faces several important deadlines this week, including for a list of Trump associates already served with subpoenas, as it seeks to find out what the ex-President was saying and doing on January 6 and in the days leading up to his attempt to steal President Joe Biden's election victory.
Former Trump political guru Steve Bannon is due to provide a deposition and documents by Thursday but has said he will not cooperate, arguing that he is bound by "executive privileges belonging to President Trump."
The claim is potentially dubious since Bannon was not a White House official in January and does not appear to fall under traditional interpretations of executive privilege -- a concept meant to secure the confidentiality of official advice to a president.
Another Trump associate, Kash Patel, a former Pentagon official, has a deposition scheduled for Thursday.
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is scheduled to be deposed on Friday.
Both men are said by Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, and Cheney to be "engaging" with the committee.
Meadows, however, sought to politicize the investigation further on Monday, telling Laura Ingraham on Fox News that looking into the worst attack on American democracy in generations represented an effort by Democrats to "talk about anything other than the economy."
A fourth Trump official, former deputy White House chief of staff Dan Scavino, also has a Friday deadline for a deposition.
Another group, made up of lesser-known Trump associates and activists -- including some involved in organizing the rally in Washington that Trump turned into a festival of incitement -- faced a Wednesday deadline.
Many appear unlikely to comply.
Biden Justice Department on the spot
Democrats have a couple of advantages now, compared with their halting efforts to compel testimony from Trump officials during the last administration.
For one, House Democrats have spent years investigating Trump and his administration, impeaching him twice.
They're familiar with the distraction of his political attacks, legal stalling tactics and the smoke-and-mirrors posturing that come from his inner circle.
They also now have a Department of Justice that is no longer under the 45th President's thumb.
It took two years and a prolonged legal battle, for example, to compel former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify to the House Judiciary Committee about incidents recorded in former special counsel Robert Mueller's report into Russian election interference.
His appearance, this June, belatedly confirmed that Trump had asked him to fire Mueller, but it came long after the information had lost political salience.
Now that Democrats control the administration, the select committee has a reasonable expectation of action if it decides to hold witnesses who refuse subpoenas in criminal contempt of Congress and refer them to the Justice Department after a vote in the full House.
That would test the willingness of the department under Attorney General Merrick Garland -- who has been criticized by some Democrats for not sufficiently pursuing Trump officials -- to take enforcement action.
"If people don't provide the documents they're compelled to, we intend to take up criminal contempt and refer to the Justice Department and we expect that it will be prosecuted," Schiff said Tuesday.
"The former President ... is still out pushing the big lie."
"The same big lie that led people to attack this building and beat police officers and put our lives at risk."
"So yes, we feel a sense of urgency."
A comment that epitomizes GOP appeasement of Trump
A criminal referral may concentrate the minds of witnesses.
But it does not rule out possible attempts to contest the issue in court.
Trump may also test arguments about executive privilege, meaning a familiar cycle of delays, judgments and appeals could still unfold and eat up the committee's precious time.
Bannon and Trump might even welcome the spotlight of a court battle to highlight their claims that yet again the ex-President is being unfairly pursued by an elite establishment deep state, a message that resonates with his supporters.
It remains unclear whether the committee will seek testimony from members of Congress allied with the former President, even including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican who spoke to Trump by phone on January 6 as the insurrection unfolded.
But the sense of a ticking clock is being intensified by expanding GOP efforts to bury the outrage of the worst attack in 200 years on the seat of US democracy.
Last week, for instance, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa portrayed Trump as the victim of a Democratic-led Senate committee that revealed new details about what can now objectively be described as a coup attempt by the former President.
Then Grassley gleefully accepted Trump's reelection endorsement at a lie-filled rally in the Hawkeye State on Saturday.
Grassley is far from the first Republican to seek to whitewash the Capitol insurrection.
The House GOP, for example, is now largely an arm of Trump's autocratic political aspirations.
On "Fox News Sunday" this week, the House Republican minority whip, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, refused to say that Biden had legitimately won an election in which there was no evidence of widespread fraud.
McCarthy, blasted by Schiff on CNN on Tuesday as the ringleader of a bunch of "insurrectionists in suits and ties," did everything he could to thwart any kind of congressional investigation.
But Grassley's rally appearance, in which he said he wouldn't be "too smart" if he declined the backing of Trump, since the former President is supported by 91% of Iowa Republicans, was the most tangible example yet of how the GOP -- even in the person of a senator long respected on judicial issues -- is suppressing the truth about January 6 to maximize its chances of power in 2022.
Grassley's comment also epitomized the entire attitude of the GOP, a party that once boasted about triumphing over Soviet totalitarianism, toward Trump.
None of his abuses of power -- not even seeking to overthrow an American democracy that has prevailed for nearly 250 years -- qualifies as a sufficient reason to walk away from his reflected political glory.
As Cheney, one of two Republican members of the House select committee, put it in a tweet rebuking Scalise: "Perpetuating the Big Lie is an attack on the core of our constitutional republic."
There is little hope that even an expansive report on the insurrection will change the minds of millions of Republicans who are convinced that the last election was stolen from Trump and of conservative media propaganda networks.
But at least there will be an accurate, institutionalized version of the truth, which will provide voters confronted with the whitewashing tactics of the GOP running into the next election a chance to find out what really happened.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... hp&pc=U531
Re: THE MAGA-MAN DONALD TRUMP
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR OCTOBER 12, 2021 AT 6:32 PM
Paul Plante says:
If I were to ask my little granddaughter what made the 2020 presidential election unique in our history of presidential elections, and thus, a truly historical event like the contested presidential election of 1824, where on February 9, 1825, the House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams as President following an inconclusive Electoral College result, where according to its own history of the event, the House performed the constitutionally prescribed role of deciding the 1824 presidential election, it would be that in this case, it was Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi ALONE who decided the 2020 presidential election, handing the position to Joseph Biden, citing special circumstances as her justification, as we clearly saw in an article in THE HILL entitled “Pelosi sets up call on election challenge: ‘No situation matches Trump presidency’” by Joseph Choi on 01/03/21, where we had as follows:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a Sunday letter told her Democratic colleagues they would discuss the process for expected challenges to the Electoral College results from House Republicans during a call on Monday.
“Over the years, we have experienced many challenges in the House, but no situation matches the Trump presidency and the Trump disrespect for the will of the people,” Pelosi wrote in her letter.
Pelosi outlined a plan for the Democratic lawmakers as they prepare to certify the Electoral College votes this week.
More than 100 House Republicans are expected to challenge the results of the election in various battleground states, and a dozen Senate Republicans have vowed to do so.
She said the result would end with President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris being “officially declared the next President and Vice President of the United States,” but acknowledged this declaration might have to take place in “the middle of the night.”
end quotes
And so we had the political overthrow of American president Donald J. Trump by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, something which has never before occurred in our history as a nation, that being the Speaker of the House taking into her own hands deciding the outcome of a presidential election in this nation because people, no situation matched the Trump presidency, and if that is not a reason to overthrow a sitting American president, then nothing will be, and where will our democracy be then?
And again, the word “overthrow” as used in here, when used as a noun, as I am using it, means “a removal from power; a defeat or downfall,” which is exactly what happened to Trump just months after Joe Biden made the highly toxic political speech in the original post denouncing Trump on 31 August 2020, which I aver is the direct cause of the violence at the Capitol on 6 January 2021 that Nancy Pelosi is calling an insurrection, violence clearly provoked by Joe Biden, which is now being blamed on the Republican party, just as the Communists were blamed en masse by Adolph Hitler for the Reichstag Fire and were placed in concentration camps as a result, which takes us to the question of does history really matter?
In this HOUR OF DIRE NEED in the United States of America today as a result of what Nancy Pelosi calls an insurrection at the Capitol on 6 January 2021, and if anyone should know what an insurrection is, it would be Nancy, because she is the one who makes the laws saying what an insurrection is, should we really be looking into our own national history, or world history, for that matter, for comparisons, like the Reichstag Fire in Germany that resulted in the end of DEMOCRACY in Germany, for the good of the nation, of course, as is the case again here in the United States of America, and its replacement by a dictatorship?
Shouldn’t we just trust Nancy?
Isn’t that why we have her in there as Speaker of the House in the first place – to protect us from presidents like Donald Trump?
And if the Constitution had to be set aside, just this once, of course, because no situation in our entire history as a nation has ever matched the Trump presidency, shouldn’t we just accept that as the way things really had to be, this time, which is different than all the other times?
And if it is necessary for Nancy Pelosi to suppress the Republican party the way Hitler suppressed the German Nationalist Party, along with the Communist Party and Social Democrats “who threaten the security of the state,” like Nancy says the Republicans threaten the security of the United States of America, and again, she would know these kinds of things, which is why she is the Speaker of the House of Representatives instead of somebody else, don’t we have a duty to believe her and support her, as GOOD AMERICANS?
If it is necessary to suspend our Constitutional rights for a time, and RULE OF LAW, while Nancy makes sure the insurrection of 6 January 2021 can never happen again, isn’t it our duty as GOOD AMERICANS to not question her, or to cast doubt on what her motives might be?
And in the meantime, if for the good of the nation, Nancy in her wisdom deems it necessary to create a Malicious Practices Act that makes it a crime to speak out against the new Biden government or criticize its leaders, and makes even the smallest expression of dissent a crime, so that those accused of “gossiping” or “making fun” of government officials like Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden can be arrested and sent to prison or a concentration camp, shouldn’t we be happy and feel blessed that we have someone in power over us who loves us so much she would suspend our Constitutional rights to protect us until she can finally end the threat and menace the Republicans mean to our democracy?
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/o ... ent-444349
Paul Plante says:
If I were to ask my little granddaughter what made the 2020 presidential election unique in our history of presidential elections, and thus, a truly historical event like the contested presidential election of 1824, where on February 9, 1825, the House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams as President following an inconclusive Electoral College result, where according to its own history of the event, the House performed the constitutionally prescribed role of deciding the 1824 presidential election, it would be that in this case, it was Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi ALONE who decided the 2020 presidential election, handing the position to Joseph Biden, citing special circumstances as her justification, as we clearly saw in an article in THE HILL entitled “Pelosi sets up call on election challenge: ‘No situation matches Trump presidency’” by Joseph Choi on 01/03/21, where we had as follows:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a Sunday letter told her Democratic colleagues they would discuss the process for expected challenges to the Electoral College results from House Republicans during a call on Monday.
“Over the years, we have experienced many challenges in the House, but no situation matches the Trump presidency and the Trump disrespect for the will of the people,” Pelosi wrote in her letter.
Pelosi outlined a plan for the Democratic lawmakers as they prepare to certify the Electoral College votes this week.
More than 100 House Republicans are expected to challenge the results of the election in various battleground states, and a dozen Senate Republicans have vowed to do so.
She said the result would end with President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris being “officially declared the next President and Vice President of the United States,” but acknowledged this declaration might have to take place in “the middle of the night.”
end quotes
And so we had the political overthrow of American president Donald J. Trump by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, something which has never before occurred in our history as a nation, that being the Speaker of the House taking into her own hands deciding the outcome of a presidential election in this nation because people, no situation matched the Trump presidency, and if that is not a reason to overthrow a sitting American president, then nothing will be, and where will our democracy be then?
And again, the word “overthrow” as used in here, when used as a noun, as I am using it, means “a removal from power; a defeat or downfall,” which is exactly what happened to Trump just months after Joe Biden made the highly toxic political speech in the original post denouncing Trump on 31 August 2020, which I aver is the direct cause of the violence at the Capitol on 6 January 2021 that Nancy Pelosi is calling an insurrection, violence clearly provoked by Joe Biden, which is now being blamed on the Republican party, just as the Communists were blamed en masse by Adolph Hitler for the Reichstag Fire and were placed in concentration camps as a result, which takes us to the question of does history really matter?
In this HOUR OF DIRE NEED in the United States of America today as a result of what Nancy Pelosi calls an insurrection at the Capitol on 6 January 2021, and if anyone should know what an insurrection is, it would be Nancy, because she is the one who makes the laws saying what an insurrection is, should we really be looking into our own national history, or world history, for that matter, for comparisons, like the Reichstag Fire in Germany that resulted in the end of DEMOCRACY in Germany, for the good of the nation, of course, as is the case again here in the United States of America, and its replacement by a dictatorship?
Shouldn’t we just trust Nancy?
Isn’t that why we have her in there as Speaker of the House in the first place – to protect us from presidents like Donald Trump?
And if the Constitution had to be set aside, just this once, of course, because no situation in our entire history as a nation has ever matched the Trump presidency, shouldn’t we just accept that as the way things really had to be, this time, which is different than all the other times?
And if it is necessary for Nancy Pelosi to suppress the Republican party the way Hitler suppressed the German Nationalist Party, along with the Communist Party and Social Democrats “who threaten the security of the state,” like Nancy says the Republicans threaten the security of the United States of America, and again, she would know these kinds of things, which is why she is the Speaker of the House of Representatives instead of somebody else, don’t we have a duty to believe her and support her, as GOOD AMERICANS?
If it is necessary to suspend our Constitutional rights for a time, and RULE OF LAW, while Nancy makes sure the insurrection of 6 January 2021 can never happen again, isn’t it our duty as GOOD AMERICANS to not question her, or to cast doubt on what her motives might be?
And in the meantime, if for the good of the nation, Nancy in her wisdom deems it necessary to create a Malicious Practices Act that makes it a crime to speak out against the new Biden government or criticize its leaders, and makes even the smallest expression of dissent a crime, so that those accused of “gossiping” or “making fun” of government officials like Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden can be arrested and sent to prison or a concentration camp, shouldn’t we be happy and feel blessed that we have someone in power over us who loves us so much she would suspend our Constitutional rights to protect us until she can finally end the threat and menace the Republicans mean to our democracy?
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/o ... ent-444349
Re: THE MAGA-MAN DONALD TRUMP
REUTERS
"U.S. Jan. 6 panel to advance contempt charges if subpoenas not followed - Cheney"
13 OCTOBER 2021
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol will move criminal contempt charges against those who do not comply with its subpoenas, Representative Liz Cheney, the panel's vice chair, said on Tuesday.
The committee late last month subpoenaed four members of former President Donald Trump's administration.
They were Trump's former chief of staff Mark Meadows, former White House adviser Steve Bannon, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino and former Defense Department official Kash Patel.
The committee has already threatened criminal contempt charges against Bannon for refusing to cooperate with the inquiry into the attack, in which a mob of Trump's supporters stormed the seat of the U.S. government.
Those subpoenaed will have the opportunity to cooperate, but if they do not, the committee will enforce its subpoenas, Cheney, a Republican, told reporters at the U.S. Capitol.
She leads the committee along with its chairman, Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson.
"In general, people are going to have to appear, or, you know, we will move contempt charges against them," Cheney said.
She said the entire committee was in agreement on that point.
Cheney said the committee expected to have depositions from Meadows and Patel later this week.
"We'll see if they show up."
"If they show up, we'll be prepared," she said.
The riot took place as Congress was meeting to certify Democrat Joe Biden's election victory, delaying that process for several hours as then-Vice President Mike Pence, members of Congress, staff and journalists fled.
More than 600 people now face criminal charges stemming from the event.
House Democrats formed the committee over objections from Trump's fellow Republicans in the House.
Cheney is one of two Republicans on the committee.
(Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Peter Cooney)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... d=msedgntp
"U.S. Jan. 6 panel to advance contempt charges if subpoenas not followed - Cheney"
13 OCTOBER 2021
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol will move criminal contempt charges against those who do not comply with its subpoenas, Representative Liz Cheney, the panel's vice chair, said on Tuesday.
The committee late last month subpoenaed four members of former President Donald Trump's administration.
They were Trump's former chief of staff Mark Meadows, former White House adviser Steve Bannon, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino and former Defense Department official Kash Patel.
The committee has already threatened criminal contempt charges against Bannon for refusing to cooperate with the inquiry into the attack, in which a mob of Trump's supporters stormed the seat of the U.S. government.
Those subpoenaed will have the opportunity to cooperate, but if they do not, the committee will enforce its subpoenas, Cheney, a Republican, told reporters at the U.S. Capitol.
She leads the committee along with its chairman, Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson.
"In general, people are going to have to appear, or, you know, we will move contempt charges against them," Cheney said.
She said the entire committee was in agreement on that point.
Cheney said the committee expected to have depositions from Meadows and Patel later this week.
"We'll see if they show up."
"If they show up, we'll be prepared," she said.
The riot took place as Congress was meeting to certify Democrat Joe Biden's election victory, delaying that process for several hours as then-Vice President Mike Pence, members of Congress, staff and journalists fled.
More than 600 people now face criminal charges stemming from the event.
House Democrats formed the committee over objections from Trump's fellow Republicans in the House.
Cheney is one of two Republicans on the committee.
(Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Peter Cooney)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... d=msedgntp
Re: THE MAGA-MAN DONALD TRUMP
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR OCTOBER 13, 2021 AT 8:49 PM
Paul Plante says:
And stop the presses here, people, because as we can clearly see from a CNN article entitled “Analysis: Pressure on January 6 panel ratchets up amid new explosion of Trump election lies” billed as “Analysis” by Stephen Collinson on 12 October 2021, we are having a CHANGE OF NARRATIVE here by the Pelosi-ite WITCH HUNTERS including the Virginia’s own very tough-talking Elaine Luria, who is looking to roll some heads herself, to wit:
The House’s US Capitol insurrection probe is fast turning into a race against time, up against Republican efforts to delay an accounting on ex-President Donald Trump’s coup attempt after losing the 2020 election even as he preemptively begins undermining the next one.
end quotes
Is everyone catching that?
The official line now coming out of DEMOCRAT CENTRAL is that what took place on 6 January 2021 was not only an insurrection, which is bad enough, but a coup attempt, as well, which makes it even worse, and consequently gives the Democrats a much better narrative to destroy Trump and the Republicans with as the Democrats seek to firm up their one-party rule here in the United States of America, now that they control not only the Congress, but the administration, as well, which takes us back to that story, as follows:
It’s hardly a shock that members of Trump’s orbit are seeking to evade accountability and the rule of law.
end quotes
Evade accountability and the rule of law?
That is what the Pelosi-ite WITCH HUNTERS are doing here as they trample RULE OF LAW as established by several United States Supreme Court decisions on limitations of congressional power into the sludge and muck of the swamp that is Washington, D.C., which some wag termed a waste of really good swampland in what used to be a part of Virginia.
SEVENTH GRADE CIVICS QUESTION: Can the United States House of Representatives act in a judicial capacity?
For an answer, let’s go to United States v. Icardi, 140 F. Supp. 383 (D.D.C. 1956), U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (D.D.C. 1956), April 19, 1956, where we have as follows:
There is a question as to the propriety of the report’s Conclusions, which state there is “probable cause” for charging Icardi and LoDolce with murder and embezzlement, but that they are not subject to prosecution under existing civil law or under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
The use of this language indicates the functioning of the subcommittee as a committing magistrate.
As to the report’s final Recommendations, which suggest that legislative amendments to the Federal Criminal Code be recommended to the Judiciary Committee, the court finds this portion of the subcommittee’s report was an exercise of a bona fide legislative function.
The validity of this latter recommendation, however, cannot cure the invalidity of the subcommittee’s adjudication of crime contained in the report’s Statement of Facts.
end quotes
The Pelosi-ite WITCH HUNTERS, however, as we can clearly see from the CNN article, are in fact serving in the capacity of committing magistrates to adjudicate the serious federal crime of insurrection, and according to the Supreme Court, as if that matters anymore, by doing so, they are way off the reservation and firmly over into UNCONSTITUTIONAL TERRITORY, which takes us back to Icardi as follows:
Although the subcommittee’s report was made after Icardi’s testimony, its contents are relevant to show that body’s conception and exercise of its authority and functions.
Chairman Cole testified that the subcommittee already had in its possession sufficient information on which to base its report to the Congress, including Icardi’s prior statements on many occasions, and that the purpose of asking Icardi’s appearance before the subcommittee was to give him an opportunity to tell his side of the story.
Chairman Cole further testified that, to the best of his recollection, before asking Icardi to testify, he discussed with his colleague and counsel for the subcommittee the calling of Icardi, putting him under oath, and the possibility of a perjury indictment as the result of Icardi’s testimony.
It is unnecessary for the court to determine for which purpose Icardi’s testimony was sought or obtained, since neither affording an individual a forum in which to protest his innocence nor extracting testimony with a view to a perjury prosecution, is a valid legislative purpose.
end quotes
Does the WITCH HUNTERS special committee have a valid legislative purpose as it must to be held to be a CONSTITUTIONAL EXERCISE OF CONGRESSIONAL AUTHORITY?
According to the Supreme Court, again, if that matters any more now that the DEMOCRATS have tossed RULE OF LAW into the toilet, no they clearly do not, since they have been UNCONSTUTIONALLY CONSTITUTED to investigate crimes, which is not their function, given they are not a court of law, which again takes us back to Icardi:
While a committee or subcommittee of the Congress has the right to inquire whether there is a likelihood that a crime has been committed touching upon a field within its general jurisdiction and also to ascertain whether an executive department charged with the prosecution of such crime has acted properly, this authority cannot be extended to sanction a legislative trial and conviction of the individual toward whom the evidence points the finger of suspicion.
On the basis of all the evidence before it, the court therefore finds, as a matter of law, that at the time the subcommittee questioned the defendant Icardi it was not functioning as a competent tribunal.
There are, however, limitations upon the investigative power of the legislature which must be considered in any determination of materiality.
The investigation must be to aid in legislation. McGrain v. Daugherty, supra, 273 U.S. at *389 page 178, 47 S. Ct. 319.
“Similarly, the power to investigate must not be confused with any of the powers of law enforcement; those powers are assigned under our Constitution to the Executive and the Judiciary.” Quinn v. United States, 349 U.S. 155, 161, 75 S. Ct. 668, 672, 99 L. Ed. 964.
end quotes
Well, they used to be anyway.
Stay tuned!
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/r ... ent-445034
Paul Plante says:
And stop the presses here, people, because as we can clearly see from a CNN article entitled “Analysis: Pressure on January 6 panel ratchets up amid new explosion of Trump election lies” billed as “Analysis” by Stephen Collinson on 12 October 2021, we are having a CHANGE OF NARRATIVE here by the Pelosi-ite WITCH HUNTERS including the Virginia’s own very tough-talking Elaine Luria, who is looking to roll some heads herself, to wit:
The House’s US Capitol insurrection probe is fast turning into a race against time, up against Republican efforts to delay an accounting on ex-President Donald Trump’s coup attempt after losing the 2020 election even as he preemptively begins undermining the next one.
end quotes
Is everyone catching that?
The official line now coming out of DEMOCRAT CENTRAL is that what took place on 6 January 2021 was not only an insurrection, which is bad enough, but a coup attempt, as well, which makes it even worse, and consequently gives the Democrats a much better narrative to destroy Trump and the Republicans with as the Democrats seek to firm up their one-party rule here in the United States of America, now that they control not only the Congress, but the administration, as well, which takes us back to that story, as follows:
It’s hardly a shock that members of Trump’s orbit are seeking to evade accountability and the rule of law.
end quotes
Evade accountability and the rule of law?
That is what the Pelosi-ite WITCH HUNTERS are doing here as they trample RULE OF LAW as established by several United States Supreme Court decisions on limitations of congressional power into the sludge and muck of the swamp that is Washington, D.C., which some wag termed a waste of really good swampland in what used to be a part of Virginia.
SEVENTH GRADE CIVICS QUESTION: Can the United States House of Representatives act in a judicial capacity?
For an answer, let’s go to United States v. Icardi, 140 F. Supp. 383 (D.D.C. 1956), U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (D.D.C. 1956), April 19, 1956, where we have as follows:
There is a question as to the propriety of the report’s Conclusions, which state there is “probable cause” for charging Icardi and LoDolce with murder and embezzlement, but that they are not subject to prosecution under existing civil law or under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
The use of this language indicates the functioning of the subcommittee as a committing magistrate.
As to the report’s final Recommendations, which suggest that legislative amendments to the Federal Criminal Code be recommended to the Judiciary Committee, the court finds this portion of the subcommittee’s report was an exercise of a bona fide legislative function.
The validity of this latter recommendation, however, cannot cure the invalidity of the subcommittee’s adjudication of crime contained in the report’s Statement of Facts.
end quotes
The Pelosi-ite WITCH HUNTERS, however, as we can clearly see from the CNN article, are in fact serving in the capacity of committing magistrates to adjudicate the serious federal crime of insurrection, and according to the Supreme Court, as if that matters anymore, by doing so, they are way off the reservation and firmly over into UNCONSTITUTIONAL TERRITORY, which takes us back to Icardi as follows:
Although the subcommittee’s report was made after Icardi’s testimony, its contents are relevant to show that body’s conception and exercise of its authority and functions.
Chairman Cole testified that the subcommittee already had in its possession sufficient information on which to base its report to the Congress, including Icardi’s prior statements on many occasions, and that the purpose of asking Icardi’s appearance before the subcommittee was to give him an opportunity to tell his side of the story.
Chairman Cole further testified that, to the best of his recollection, before asking Icardi to testify, he discussed with his colleague and counsel for the subcommittee the calling of Icardi, putting him under oath, and the possibility of a perjury indictment as the result of Icardi’s testimony.
It is unnecessary for the court to determine for which purpose Icardi’s testimony was sought or obtained, since neither affording an individual a forum in which to protest his innocence nor extracting testimony with a view to a perjury prosecution, is a valid legislative purpose.
end quotes
Does the WITCH HUNTERS special committee have a valid legislative purpose as it must to be held to be a CONSTITUTIONAL EXERCISE OF CONGRESSIONAL AUTHORITY?
According to the Supreme Court, again, if that matters any more now that the DEMOCRATS have tossed RULE OF LAW into the toilet, no they clearly do not, since they have been UNCONSTUTIONALLY CONSTITUTED to investigate crimes, which is not their function, given they are not a court of law, which again takes us back to Icardi:
While a committee or subcommittee of the Congress has the right to inquire whether there is a likelihood that a crime has been committed touching upon a field within its general jurisdiction and also to ascertain whether an executive department charged with the prosecution of such crime has acted properly, this authority cannot be extended to sanction a legislative trial and conviction of the individual toward whom the evidence points the finger of suspicion.
On the basis of all the evidence before it, the court therefore finds, as a matter of law, that at the time the subcommittee questioned the defendant Icardi it was not functioning as a competent tribunal.
There are, however, limitations upon the investigative power of the legislature which must be considered in any determination of materiality.
The investigation must be to aid in legislation. McGrain v. Daugherty, supra, 273 U.S. at *389 page 178, 47 S. Ct. 319.
“Similarly, the power to investigate must not be confused with any of the powers of law enforcement; those powers are assigned under our Constitution to the Executive and the Judiciary.” Quinn v. United States, 349 U.S. 155, 161, 75 S. Ct. 668, 672, 99 L. Ed. 964.
end quotes
Well, they used to be anyway.
Stay tuned!
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/r ... ent-445034
Re: THE MAGA-MAN DONALD TRUMP
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR OCTOBER 14, 2021 AT 8:47 PM
Paul Plante says:
And once again, to be clear in here, when I use the term “contemporary history,” regardless of what the academics might try to call it, I am referring to documented events that have taken place within the memory of living men, and women, of course, as the author used the term in the Preface of World Wars And Revolutions by Walter Phelps Hall, PhD, of Princeton, copyrighted 1943, which contemporary history in that case was that period of time between June 28, 1914, when Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand was shot at Sarajevo in the Balkans and 1943, when WWII was raging in Europe, detailing the events which occurred between those two dates as an explanation of how WWII came to be, despite a belief at the end of WWI that there would never be another world war, to wit:
WHY WAR WAS THOUGHT OUTMODED
On June 28, 1914, an Austrian archduke was shot at Sarajevo in the Balkans and within five weeks the greater part of Europe was at war.
Four years later, the German Reich, hampered by impotent allies, lamed by empty stomachs, hammered by Foch’s armies, ceased to be.
The German High Command had lost their war; and many, blinded by victory and confused by rejoicing well-nigh universal, believed all war banished from the world.
Instead, within one generation, in a short twenty years, a murkier and more murderous hurricane than that of 1914 came roaring out of Central Europe, to sweep every ocean, to engulf continents.
The war of 1914-18, the first World War, burst on a relatively unsuspecting world.
Few even of the statesmen of that day were convinced of its coming.
True, in 1911, 1912, and in 1913 there had been little wars involving European countries.
That trifling and semi-comic conflict between Italians and Turks in 1911, involving Libyan oases, did not really threaten Europe’s peace; and the two Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, though bloody enough to satisfy Tamerlane, seemed far away from the main currents of European civilization.
Certain savants held that these might even be considered harbingers of coming world peace, since in less enlightened times such frontier wars might well have involved one or more of the great powers, all of whom were now too sagacious to draw the sword.
end quotes
But obviously as we can see from our perspective many years later, the so-called “great powers” were not sagacious, at all, and so we had another world war, which brings us up to the beginning of the contemporary American history I am going to rely on here, a history which begins with Martin Dies Jr. (November 5, 1900 – November 14, 1972), like Nancy Pelosi and the majority of her WITCH HUNTERS including Virginia’s own tough-talking Elaine Luria, a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives, who served as the first chairman of the Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities (HUAC) from 1937 through 1944 (Seventy-fifth through Seventy-eighth Congresses), and the United States Supreme Court case of John T. WATKINS, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES of America, 354 U.S. 178, which is especially relevant today as it was just announced on the news that Nancy’s WITCH HUNTERS are going to hold Steve Bannon, a common American citizen, not a member of the Trump administration, in CONTEMPT, a serious misdemeanor, to demonstrate exactly how far off the reservation Nancy Pelosi and her WITCH HUNTERS are now straying, as they take RULE OF LAW in this country and stuff it down the toilet to replace it with RULE OF NANCY, instead.
By way of background, Dies and Samuel Dickstein created the House Committee Investigating Un-American Activities, initially nicknamed the Dies Committee, later becoming HUAC in 1946.
Dies was its first chairman, serving for seven years from 1938 to 1944, and like Nancy Pelosi and her WITCH HUNTERS are doing again today, he declared a crusade against what he termed “right-wing subversives” in the government, and other organizations nationwide.
As to Samuel Dickstein (February 5, 1885 – April 22, 1954), like Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin and Elaine Luria, as good a Democrat as they come, he was a Democratic Congressional Representative from New York (22-year tenure), a New York State Supreme Court Justice, and a Soviet spy (isn’t history just great) who played a key role in establishing the committee that would become the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which he used to attack fascists.
Dickstein was named in the 1990s as a Soviet agent in the Venona project materials and in 1999, authors Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev learned that Soviet files indicate that Dickstein was a paid agent of the NKVD, but a good Democrat through and through, nonetheless.
And here is where we have a great story from out of the annals of Democrat history involving Shirley Temple and Hollywood to show just how far out of control these rabid Democrat WITCH HUNTERS like Nancy Pelosi’s crew can go.
Now, while there had been earlier Congressional hearings on communist and Nazi activity, such as by Hamilton Fish in 1932 and McCormack and Dickstein in 1934, the Dies Committee hearings captured greater public attention and scrutiny and in 1938, the Committee was criticized for including Shirley Temple, who was 10 years old at the time, on a list of Hollywood figures who sent greetings to the leftist Communist-owned French newspaper, Ce Soir.
The Roosevelt Administration mentioned the attacks when Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, stated: “They have found dangerous radicals there led by little Shirley Temple.”
Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins added that Shirley Temple was born an American Citizen and should not have to debate such “preposterous revelations”.
To bring this to a close before it gets overlong, the Supreme Court case of Watkins is directly relevant to what is occurring today in the United States of America with these Pelosi-ite WITCH HUNTERS running amuck and trampling the rights of each and every one of us, because this isn’t just about Trump, into the muck and slime of the Washington, D.C. swamp, for this following language, to wit:
In the decade following World War II, there appeared a new kind of congressional inquiry unknown in prior periods of American history.
Principally this was the result of the various investigations into the threat of subversion of the United States Government, but other subjects of congressional interest also contributed to the changed scene.
This new phase of legislative inquiry involved a broad-scale intrusion into the lives and affairs of private citizens.
It brought before the courts novel questions of the appropriate limits of congressional inquiry.
Abuses of the investigative process may imperceptibly lead to abridgment of protected freedoms.
Kilbourn v. Thompson teaches that such an investigation into individual affairs is invalid if unrelated to any legislative purpose.
That is beyond the powers conferred upon the Congress in the Constitution.
United States v. Rumely makes it plain that the mere semblance of legislative purpose would not justify an inquiry in the face of the Bill of Rights.
The critical element is the existence of, and the weight to be ascribed to, the interest of the Congress in demanding disclosures from an unwilling witness.
We cannot simply assume, however, that every congressional investigation is justified by a public need that overbalances any private rights affected.
To do so would be to abdicate the responsibility placed by the Constitution upon the judiciary to insure that the Congress does not unjustifiably encroach upon an individual’s right to privacy nor abridge his liberty of speech, press, religion or assembly.
We have no doubt that there is no congressional power to expose for the sake of exposure.
The public is, of entitled to be informed concerning the workings of its government.
That cannot be inflated into a general power to expose where the predominant result can only be an invasion of the private rights of individuals.
end quotes
And yet, especially in the case of Bannon, that is exactly what these Pelosi-ite WITCH HUNTERS are doing, and as reviled as Bannon may be by some, the fact is that he is an American citizen, not a member of the executive branch of our government, and what these Pelosi-ite WITCH HUNTERS can get away with doing to him can in turn be done to any of us, and that should be a matter of concern to every LOYAL AMERICAN out there regardless of political affiliation, so please, stay tuned.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/o ... ent-445642
Paul Plante says:
And once again, to be clear in here, when I use the term “contemporary history,” regardless of what the academics might try to call it, I am referring to documented events that have taken place within the memory of living men, and women, of course, as the author used the term in the Preface of World Wars And Revolutions by Walter Phelps Hall, PhD, of Princeton, copyrighted 1943, which contemporary history in that case was that period of time between June 28, 1914, when Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand was shot at Sarajevo in the Balkans and 1943, when WWII was raging in Europe, detailing the events which occurred between those two dates as an explanation of how WWII came to be, despite a belief at the end of WWI that there would never be another world war, to wit:
WHY WAR WAS THOUGHT OUTMODED
On June 28, 1914, an Austrian archduke was shot at Sarajevo in the Balkans and within five weeks the greater part of Europe was at war.
Four years later, the German Reich, hampered by impotent allies, lamed by empty stomachs, hammered by Foch’s armies, ceased to be.
The German High Command had lost their war; and many, blinded by victory and confused by rejoicing well-nigh universal, believed all war banished from the world.
Instead, within one generation, in a short twenty years, a murkier and more murderous hurricane than that of 1914 came roaring out of Central Europe, to sweep every ocean, to engulf continents.
The war of 1914-18, the first World War, burst on a relatively unsuspecting world.
Few even of the statesmen of that day were convinced of its coming.
True, in 1911, 1912, and in 1913 there had been little wars involving European countries.
That trifling and semi-comic conflict between Italians and Turks in 1911, involving Libyan oases, did not really threaten Europe’s peace; and the two Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, though bloody enough to satisfy Tamerlane, seemed far away from the main currents of European civilization.
Certain savants held that these might even be considered harbingers of coming world peace, since in less enlightened times such frontier wars might well have involved one or more of the great powers, all of whom were now too sagacious to draw the sword.
end quotes
But obviously as we can see from our perspective many years later, the so-called “great powers” were not sagacious, at all, and so we had another world war, which brings us up to the beginning of the contemporary American history I am going to rely on here, a history which begins with Martin Dies Jr. (November 5, 1900 – November 14, 1972), like Nancy Pelosi and the majority of her WITCH HUNTERS including Virginia’s own tough-talking Elaine Luria, a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives, who served as the first chairman of the Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities (HUAC) from 1937 through 1944 (Seventy-fifth through Seventy-eighth Congresses), and the United States Supreme Court case of John T. WATKINS, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES of America, 354 U.S. 178, which is especially relevant today as it was just announced on the news that Nancy’s WITCH HUNTERS are going to hold Steve Bannon, a common American citizen, not a member of the Trump administration, in CONTEMPT, a serious misdemeanor, to demonstrate exactly how far off the reservation Nancy Pelosi and her WITCH HUNTERS are now straying, as they take RULE OF LAW in this country and stuff it down the toilet to replace it with RULE OF NANCY, instead.
By way of background, Dies and Samuel Dickstein created the House Committee Investigating Un-American Activities, initially nicknamed the Dies Committee, later becoming HUAC in 1946.
Dies was its first chairman, serving for seven years from 1938 to 1944, and like Nancy Pelosi and her WITCH HUNTERS are doing again today, he declared a crusade against what he termed “right-wing subversives” in the government, and other organizations nationwide.
As to Samuel Dickstein (February 5, 1885 – April 22, 1954), like Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin and Elaine Luria, as good a Democrat as they come, he was a Democratic Congressional Representative from New York (22-year tenure), a New York State Supreme Court Justice, and a Soviet spy (isn’t history just great) who played a key role in establishing the committee that would become the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which he used to attack fascists.
Dickstein was named in the 1990s as a Soviet agent in the Venona project materials and in 1999, authors Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev learned that Soviet files indicate that Dickstein was a paid agent of the NKVD, but a good Democrat through and through, nonetheless.
And here is where we have a great story from out of the annals of Democrat history involving Shirley Temple and Hollywood to show just how far out of control these rabid Democrat WITCH HUNTERS like Nancy Pelosi’s crew can go.
Now, while there had been earlier Congressional hearings on communist and Nazi activity, such as by Hamilton Fish in 1932 and McCormack and Dickstein in 1934, the Dies Committee hearings captured greater public attention and scrutiny and in 1938, the Committee was criticized for including Shirley Temple, who was 10 years old at the time, on a list of Hollywood figures who sent greetings to the leftist Communist-owned French newspaper, Ce Soir.
The Roosevelt Administration mentioned the attacks when Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, stated: “They have found dangerous radicals there led by little Shirley Temple.”
Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins added that Shirley Temple was born an American Citizen and should not have to debate such “preposterous revelations”.
To bring this to a close before it gets overlong, the Supreme Court case of Watkins is directly relevant to what is occurring today in the United States of America with these Pelosi-ite WITCH HUNTERS running amuck and trampling the rights of each and every one of us, because this isn’t just about Trump, into the muck and slime of the Washington, D.C. swamp, for this following language, to wit:
In the decade following World War II, there appeared a new kind of congressional inquiry unknown in prior periods of American history.
Principally this was the result of the various investigations into the threat of subversion of the United States Government, but other subjects of congressional interest also contributed to the changed scene.
This new phase of legislative inquiry involved a broad-scale intrusion into the lives and affairs of private citizens.
It brought before the courts novel questions of the appropriate limits of congressional inquiry.
Abuses of the investigative process may imperceptibly lead to abridgment of protected freedoms.
Kilbourn v. Thompson teaches that such an investigation into individual affairs is invalid if unrelated to any legislative purpose.
That is beyond the powers conferred upon the Congress in the Constitution.
United States v. Rumely makes it plain that the mere semblance of legislative purpose would not justify an inquiry in the face of the Bill of Rights.
The critical element is the existence of, and the weight to be ascribed to, the interest of the Congress in demanding disclosures from an unwilling witness.
We cannot simply assume, however, that every congressional investigation is justified by a public need that overbalances any private rights affected.
To do so would be to abdicate the responsibility placed by the Constitution upon the judiciary to insure that the Congress does not unjustifiably encroach upon an individual’s right to privacy nor abridge his liberty of speech, press, religion or assembly.
We have no doubt that there is no congressional power to expose for the sake of exposure.
The public is, of entitled to be informed concerning the workings of its government.
That cannot be inflated into a general power to expose where the predominant result can only be an invasion of the private rights of individuals.
end quotes
And yet, especially in the case of Bannon, that is exactly what these Pelosi-ite WITCH HUNTERS are doing, and as reviled as Bannon may be by some, the fact is that he is an American citizen, not a member of the executive branch of our government, and what these Pelosi-ite WITCH HUNTERS can get away with doing to him can in turn be done to any of us, and that should be a matter of concern to every LOYAL AMERICAN out there regardless of political affiliation, so please, stay tuned.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/o ... ent-445642
Re: THE MAGA-MAN DONALD TRUMP
REUTERS
"Anti-Trump Republicans to back vulnerable Democratic lawmakers in 2022 congressional races"
By Tim Reid
OCTOBER 14, 2021
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A group of anti-Trump Republicans on Thursday will endorse a slate of Democratic lawmakers facing tough races in next year’s midterm elections, in a bid to stop the Republican Party from retaking control of Congress.
The officials, dismayed that most elected Republicans now embrace former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, told Reuters they are also backing vulnerable Republicans, including Representative Liz Cheney, who have rejected Trump’s voter fraud allegations.
The Renew America Movement (RAM), formed by centrist Republicans after a mob of Trump supporters stormed Congress on Jan. 6 to try to stop lawmakers from certifying Democratic President Joe Biden’s election victory, concedes that Trump and his conspiracy theories now have an iron grip on the party.
According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll from August, 30% of U.S. adults agreed that the “2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.”
That included 61% of Republicans, 19% of independents and 10% of Democrats.
Trump, for his part, has endorsed several candidates mounting primary challenges to Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach him on a charge of inciting insurrection in a fiery speech ahead of the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.
He has also backed a challenger to Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, one of seven in her party who voted to convict Trump on the charge.
He was ultimately acquitted by the Senate.
RAM, whose leadership includes former Republican Governors Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey and Bill Weld of Massachusetts, said supporting moderate candidates is vital to safeguarding American democracy.
“With the mounting threats to our democracy and Constitution, we need people who work proactively to lead their party and the country away from the political extremes,” Joel Searby, the group’s national political director, told Reuters.
RAM will endorse and in many cases campaign for 11 moderate Democrats, nine moderate Republicans and one independent running for the House of Representatives and Senate in the November 2022 elections, the officials said.
Democrats have a narrow majority in the House, while the Senate is tied 50-50.
Party insiders are increasingly nervous about losing both chambers next year, which would derail Biden’s agenda.
The lawmakers to be backed by RAM include Representative Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, all Democrats locked in close contests.
The group is also supporting Republican House members such as Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger from Illinois, who are among a handful of elected Republicans to denounce Trump and his baseless voter fraud claims.
Trump’s allegations were rejected by dozens of courts, state election officials and members of his own administration.
Reporting by Tim Reid; Editing by Soyoung Kim and Peter Cooney
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKBN2H41BH
"Anti-Trump Republicans to back vulnerable Democratic lawmakers in 2022 congressional races"
By Tim Reid
OCTOBER 14, 2021
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A group of anti-Trump Republicans on Thursday will endorse a slate of Democratic lawmakers facing tough races in next year’s midterm elections, in a bid to stop the Republican Party from retaking control of Congress.
The officials, dismayed that most elected Republicans now embrace former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, told Reuters they are also backing vulnerable Republicans, including Representative Liz Cheney, who have rejected Trump’s voter fraud allegations.
The Renew America Movement (RAM), formed by centrist Republicans after a mob of Trump supporters stormed Congress on Jan. 6 to try to stop lawmakers from certifying Democratic President Joe Biden’s election victory, concedes that Trump and his conspiracy theories now have an iron grip on the party.
According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll from August, 30% of U.S. adults agreed that the “2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.”
That included 61% of Republicans, 19% of independents and 10% of Democrats.
Trump, for his part, has endorsed several candidates mounting primary challenges to Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach him on a charge of inciting insurrection in a fiery speech ahead of the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.
He has also backed a challenger to Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, one of seven in her party who voted to convict Trump on the charge.
He was ultimately acquitted by the Senate.
RAM, whose leadership includes former Republican Governors Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey and Bill Weld of Massachusetts, said supporting moderate candidates is vital to safeguarding American democracy.
“With the mounting threats to our democracy and Constitution, we need people who work proactively to lead their party and the country away from the political extremes,” Joel Searby, the group’s national political director, told Reuters.
RAM will endorse and in many cases campaign for 11 moderate Democrats, nine moderate Republicans and one independent running for the House of Representatives and Senate in the November 2022 elections, the officials said.
Democrats have a narrow majority in the House, while the Senate is tied 50-50.
Party insiders are increasingly nervous about losing both chambers next year, which would derail Biden’s agenda.
The lawmakers to be backed by RAM include Representative Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, all Democrats locked in close contests.
The group is also supporting Republican House members such as Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger from Illinois, who are among a handful of elected Republicans to denounce Trump and his baseless voter fraud claims.
Trump’s allegations were rejected by dozens of courts, state election officials and members of his own administration.
Reporting by Tim Reid; Editing by Soyoung Kim and Peter Cooney
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKBN2H41BH
Re: THE MAGA-MAN DONALD TRUMP
THE HILL
"Jan. 6 panel to pursue criminal contempt referral for Bannon"
BY REBECCA BEITSCH
10/14/21
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol plans to refer former Trump White House strategist Stephen Bannon to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution after he refused to appear for a slated deposition.
Bannon informed the committee last week that he would refuse to comply with the subpoena, citing a yet-to-be-filed suit from former President Trump claiming documents and testimony sought by the committee are covered by executive privilege.
The law allows for Congress to refer a noncompliant witness to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution, which could result in jail time, a fine or both.
“Mr. Bannon has declined to cooperate with the Select Committee and is instead hiding behind the former President’s insufficient, blanket, and vague statements regarding privileges he has purported to invoke."
"We reject his position entirely."
"The Select Committee will not tolerate defiance of our subpoenas, so we must move forward with proceedings to refer Mr. Bannon for criminal contempt."
"I’ve notified the Select Committee that we will convene for a business meeting Tuesday evening to vote on adopting a contempt report,” Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said in a statement.
“The Select Committee will use every tool at its disposal to get the information it seeks, and witnesses who try to stonewall the Select Committee will not succeed.”
Following a vote from the House, a referral would put the ball in the Justice Department's court, requiring the executive branch to determine how aggressive it wants to be in pursuing Bannon.
The decision to act would likely be made by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., and lawyers at the highest levels of the main Justice Department.
Lawyers would need to determine if there’s probable cause — a likely determination given that experts say Bannon's and Trump's executive privilege claims have little merit — and whether the case can be proved in court.
The department could take into consideration the gravity of the situation, in that officials would be charging an aide to a former president of the opposite party.
The Department of Justice declined to comment.
Bannon and his attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lawmakers on the committee have been increasingly vocal in recent days that there should be criminal repercussions for defying the committee.
“We are completely of one mind that if people refuse to respond to questions without justification that we will hold them in criminal contempt and refer them to the Justice Department,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told The Washington Post earlier this week.
“We intend to enforce our subpoenas, and the first step will be for us to pursue criminal contempt,” Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) said during an appearance on MSNBC.
“What that means is that the committee will put together a report and refer it to the House floor."
"There will be a vote, then it goes to the Department of Justice."
"I fully expect this Department of Justice to uphold and enforce that subpoena."
"I think this Department of Justice believes that nobody is above the law.”
Bannon was subpoenaed by the committee along with three other Trump aides.
Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Kashyap Patel, the chief of staff to then-acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, are reportedly “engaging” with the committee, while Dan Scavino, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for communications, was only recently able to be located and served.
“We’re grateful to the many individuals who are voluntarily participating and to witnesses who are complying with subpoenas, including several who met the deadline to begin producing materials to the Select Committee,” Thompson added in his statement.
Experts have been highly skeptical that Trump’s executive privilege claims will carry much weight with the Justice Department as they debate whether to file criminal charges on Bannon.
“First of all, the executive privilege applies to a sitting president, not former presidents, because the focus is on the national security interests of the country."
"It's a very limited doctrinal privilege,” Rep. Jaime Raskin (D-Md.), one of the nine lawmakers on the committee, told reporters last month.
“In any event, even if the court were to weigh the public's overwhelming interest in getting at the truth of events, versus the interest in national security, in this case both factors are on the side of disclosure."
"The public has an interest in knowing everything about the attack on our democracy, and that truth-seeking function will improve national security."
"So national security argues for disclosure, not for secrecy.”
The Biden administration also recently agreed to waive executive privilege claims to a tranche of documents the committee already requested — a sweeping request covering a number of people in Trump’s orbit.
“This is just the first set of documents, and we will evaluate claims of privilege on a case-by-case basis, but the president has also been clear he believes it to be of the utmost importance for both Congress and the American people to have a complete understanding of the events of that day to prevent them from happening again,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said when the first batch was approved last week.
If the Justice Department is hesitant to pursue criminal charges against Bannon, the committee could also file its own civil suit asking a judge to hold Bannon in contempt, a move that could also mean jail time.
“[Attorney General Merrick] Garland has demonstrated that he is one to show quite a bit of restraint, quite a bit of respect toward separation of powers."
"He has stated part of his mission is to restore public confidence and independence of the Justice Department, so I don’t know that he’s going to be terribly aggressive here,” Barbara McQuade, who served as a U.S. attorney during the Obama administration, previously told The Hill.
“It’s the less aggressive approach that might be effective,” she said of a civil suit.
“Prosecutors in general and Garland in particular tend to look for the path of least resistance."
"I don’t need to use the nuclear weapon if the conventional weapon will work.”
—Updated at 3:52 p.m.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5767 ... for-bannon
"Jan. 6 panel to pursue criminal contempt referral for Bannon"
BY REBECCA BEITSCH
10/14/21
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol plans to refer former Trump White House strategist Stephen Bannon to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution after he refused to appear for a slated deposition.
Bannon informed the committee last week that he would refuse to comply with the subpoena, citing a yet-to-be-filed suit from former President Trump claiming documents and testimony sought by the committee are covered by executive privilege.
The law allows for Congress to refer a noncompliant witness to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution, which could result in jail time, a fine or both.
“Mr. Bannon has declined to cooperate with the Select Committee and is instead hiding behind the former President’s insufficient, blanket, and vague statements regarding privileges he has purported to invoke."
"We reject his position entirely."
"The Select Committee will not tolerate defiance of our subpoenas, so we must move forward with proceedings to refer Mr. Bannon for criminal contempt."
"I’ve notified the Select Committee that we will convene for a business meeting Tuesday evening to vote on adopting a contempt report,” Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said in a statement.
“The Select Committee will use every tool at its disposal to get the information it seeks, and witnesses who try to stonewall the Select Committee will not succeed.”
Following a vote from the House, a referral would put the ball in the Justice Department's court, requiring the executive branch to determine how aggressive it wants to be in pursuing Bannon.
The decision to act would likely be made by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., and lawyers at the highest levels of the main Justice Department.
Lawyers would need to determine if there’s probable cause — a likely determination given that experts say Bannon's and Trump's executive privilege claims have little merit — and whether the case can be proved in court.
The department could take into consideration the gravity of the situation, in that officials would be charging an aide to a former president of the opposite party.
The Department of Justice declined to comment.
Bannon and his attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lawmakers on the committee have been increasingly vocal in recent days that there should be criminal repercussions for defying the committee.
“We are completely of one mind that if people refuse to respond to questions without justification that we will hold them in criminal contempt and refer them to the Justice Department,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told The Washington Post earlier this week.
“We intend to enforce our subpoenas, and the first step will be for us to pursue criminal contempt,” Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) said during an appearance on MSNBC.
“What that means is that the committee will put together a report and refer it to the House floor."
"There will be a vote, then it goes to the Department of Justice."
"I fully expect this Department of Justice to uphold and enforce that subpoena."
"I think this Department of Justice believes that nobody is above the law.”
Bannon was subpoenaed by the committee along with three other Trump aides.
Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Kashyap Patel, the chief of staff to then-acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, are reportedly “engaging” with the committee, while Dan Scavino, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for communications, was only recently able to be located and served.
“We’re grateful to the many individuals who are voluntarily participating and to witnesses who are complying with subpoenas, including several who met the deadline to begin producing materials to the Select Committee,” Thompson added in his statement.
Experts have been highly skeptical that Trump’s executive privilege claims will carry much weight with the Justice Department as they debate whether to file criminal charges on Bannon.
“First of all, the executive privilege applies to a sitting president, not former presidents, because the focus is on the national security interests of the country."
"It's a very limited doctrinal privilege,” Rep. Jaime Raskin (D-Md.), one of the nine lawmakers on the committee, told reporters last month.
“In any event, even if the court were to weigh the public's overwhelming interest in getting at the truth of events, versus the interest in national security, in this case both factors are on the side of disclosure."
"The public has an interest in knowing everything about the attack on our democracy, and that truth-seeking function will improve national security."
"So national security argues for disclosure, not for secrecy.”
The Biden administration also recently agreed to waive executive privilege claims to a tranche of documents the committee already requested — a sweeping request covering a number of people in Trump’s orbit.
“This is just the first set of documents, and we will evaluate claims of privilege on a case-by-case basis, but the president has also been clear he believes it to be of the utmost importance for both Congress and the American people to have a complete understanding of the events of that day to prevent them from happening again,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said when the first batch was approved last week.
If the Justice Department is hesitant to pursue criminal charges against Bannon, the committee could also file its own civil suit asking a judge to hold Bannon in contempt, a move that could also mean jail time.
“[Attorney General Merrick] Garland has demonstrated that he is one to show quite a bit of restraint, quite a bit of respect toward separation of powers."
"He has stated part of his mission is to restore public confidence and independence of the Justice Department, so I don’t know that he’s going to be terribly aggressive here,” Barbara McQuade, who served as a U.S. attorney during the Obama administration, previously told The Hill.
“It’s the less aggressive approach that might be effective,” she said of a civil suit.
“Prosecutors in general and Garland in particular tend to look for the path of least resistance."
"I don’t need to use the nuclear weapon if the conventional weapon will work.”
—Updated at 3:52 p.m.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5767 ... for-bannon
Re: THE MAGA-MAN DONALD TRUMP
CNN
"US Capitol Police officer indicted on obstruction of justice charges in connection with January 6"
By Katelyn Polantz, Christina Carrega and Jessica Schneider, CNN
October 15, 2021
(CNN) - A US Capitol Police officer was indicted on obstruction charges in connection to the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.
According to the indictment, Michael A. Riley told a contact online to remove posts showing the person was in the Capitol building that day.
Riley's arrest is notable among the more than 600 Capitol riot cases in that he becomes the first police officer on duty on Capitol Hill on January 6 charged with allegedly attempting to help a rioter.
The 50-year-old was arrested Friday and appeared in court on a video feed from a holding cell.
He has not yet entered any plea and is not being detained pending trial, but will be barred from possessing any guns as he awaits trial.
He is scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday.
Prosecutors allege that on the day after the insurrection, Riley sent a private message on Facebook to a person who had posted selfies and videos about being in the Capitol, and whom Riley had been in fishing-related Facebook groups with.
"im a capitol police officer who agrees with your political stance," Riley allegedly wrote to the person, according to the indictment.
"Take down the part about being in the building they are currently investigating and everyone who was in the building is going to charged."
"Just looking out!"
"Im glad you got out of there unscathed We had over 50 officers hurt, some pretty bad," Riley also messaged to the person that day.
In mid-January, Riley told the person to "Get off of social media."
"Theyre arresting dozens of people aday. Everyone that was in the building, engaged in violent acts, or destruction of property...and theyre all being charged federally with felonies," Riley allegedly wrote.
They also spoke on the phone, prompting the person Riley communicated with to tell others about being in touch with "capitol police" and to anticipate trespassing charges.
Riley has been placed on administrative leave, USCP Chief Tom Manger said.
"Obstruction of Justice is a very serious allegation."
"The Department was notified about this investigation several weeks ago."
"Upon his arrest, the officer was placed on administrative leave pending the completion of the case."
"The USCP's Office of Professional Responsibility will then open an administrative investigation," Manger said in a statement.
Riley had worked with the Capitol Police for 25 years, the indictment said.
He was in the K-9 unit on January 6, though he was not on duty inside the Capitol building during the attack, prosecutors say, and responded to reports of an explosive device on Capitol Hill that day.
Riley then deleted his own Facebook direct messages on January 20, his indictment says.
Riley indicated in a final message on January 21 he was angry with the person after seeing video of the person smoking marijuana in the Capitol and "acting like a moron," the indictment says.
"Michael Riley has served honorably as a United States Capitol Police officer for over 25 years."
"We look forward to fighting the charges brought against him in court," Riley's attorney David Benowitz said in a statement on Friday.
Man wanted to start 'a revolution' on January 6
The man whom Riley allegedly warned is Jacob Hiles, according to a person familiar with the case and descriptions in court records.
Hiles was not named in the indictment, which referred to a person who was arrested on January 19 and was asked by the FBI about communicating with Riley, according to the allegations.
Hiles, of Virginia, said on social media that he traveled to Washington, DC, while thinking about starting "a revolution," according to investigators.
In selfies from January 6 found by the FBI on social media, Hiles wore a gaiter mask and ski goggles and a sweatshirt that said "F*ck Antifa."
He had also posted on his Facebook page, "Feelin cute ... might start a revolution later," tagging himself on Capitol Hill, according to documents supporting his arrest.
Hiles was arrested on January 19 and released from custody with an order to stay away from Washington.
In September, he pleaded guilty to one federal charge, of parading or demonstrating inside the Capitol, according to court records.
Hiles attended the pro-Trump "Stop the Steal" rally with his cousin from Ohio, and the pair marched to the Capitol after Trump spoke, according to court records.
He has agreed to pay $500 for damage to the Capitol and could face a maximum of six months in prison when he is sentenced in December.
"Mr. Hiles has done everything he can to be cooperative throughout this entire investigation," defense attorneys Charles Haskell and Alex Bell told CNN.
"Mr. Hiles is receiving no benefit in exchange for his cooperation and he intends to do everything he can to put this incident behind him."
CNN's Whitney Wild contributed to this report.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/15/politics ... index.html
"US Capitol Police officer indicted on obstruction of justice charges in connection with January 6"
By Katelyn Polantz, Christina Carrega and Jessica Schneider, CNN
October 15, 2021
(CNN) - A US Capitol Police officer was indicted on obstruction charges in connection to the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.
According to the indictment, Michael A. Riley told a contact online to remove posts showing the person was in the Capitol building that day.
Riley's arrest is notable among the more than 600 Capitol riot cases in that he becomes the first police officer on duty on Capitol Hill on January 6 charged with allegedly attempting to help a rioter.
The 50-year-old was arrested Friday and appeared in court on a video feed from a holding cell.
He has not yet entered any plea and is not being detained pending trial, but will be barred from possessing any guns as he awaits trial.
He is scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday.
Prosecutors allege that on the day after the insurrection, Riley sent a private message on Facebook to a person who had posted selfies and videos about being in the Capitol, and whom Riley had been in fishing-related Facebook groups with.
"im a capitol police officer who agrees with your political stance," Riley allegedly wrote to the person, according to the indictment.
"Take down the part about being in the building they are currently investigating and everyone who was in the building is going to charged."
"Just looking out!"
"Im glad you got out of there unscathed We had over 50 officers hurt, some pretty bad," Riley also messaged to the person that day.
In mid-January, Riley told the person to "Get off of social media."
"Theyre arresting dozens of people aday. Everyone that was in the building, engaged in violent acts, or destruction of property...and theyre all being charged federally with felonies," Riley allegedly wrote.
They also spoke on the phone, prompting the person Riley communicated with to tell others about being in touch with "capitol police" and to anticipate trespassing charges.
Riley has been placed on administrative leave, USCP Chief Tom Manger said.
"Obstruction of Justice is a very serious allegation."
"The Department was notified about this investigation several weeks ago."
"Upon his arrest, the officer was placed on administrative leave pending the completion of the case."
"The USCP's Office of Professional Responsibility will then open an administrative investigation," Manger said in a statement.
Riley had worked with the Capitol Police for 25 years, the indictment said.
He was in the K-9 unit on January 6, though he was not on duty inside the Capitol building during the attack, prosecutors say, and responded to reports of an explosive device on Capitol Hill that day.
Riley then deleted his own Facebook direct messages on January 20, his indictment says.
Riley indicated in a final message on January 21 he was angry with the person after seeing video of the person smoking marijuana in the Capitol and "acting like a moron," the indictment says.
"Michael Riley has served honorably as a United States Capitol Police officer for over 25 years."
"We look forward to fighting the charges brought against him in court," Riley's attorney David Benowitz said in a statement on Friday.
Man wanted to start 'a revolution' on January 6
The man whom Riley allegedly warned is Jacob Hiles, according to a person familiar with the case and descriptions in court records.
Hiles was not named in the indictment, which referred to a person who was arrested on January 19 and was asked by the FBI about communicating with Riley, according to the allegations.
Hiles, of Virginia, said on social media that he traveled to Washington, DC, while thinking about starting "a revolution," according to investigators.
In selfies from January 6 found by the FBI on social media, Hiles wore a gaiter mask and ski goggles and a sweatshirt that said "F*ck Antifa."
He had also posted on his Facebook page, "Feelin cute ... might start a revolution later," tagging himself on Capitol Hill, according to documents supporting his arrest.
Hiles was arrested on January 19 and released from custody with an order to stay away from Washington.
In September, he pleaded guilty to one federal charge, of parading or demonstrating inside the Capitol, according to court records.
Hiles attended the pro-Trump "Stop the Steal" rally with his cousin from Ohio, and the pair marched to the Capitol after Trump spoke, according to court records.
He has agreed to pay $500 for damage to the Capitol and could face a maximum of six months in prison when he is sentenced in December.
"Mr. Hiles has done everything he can to be cooperative throughout this entire investigation," defense attorneys Charles Haskell and Alex Bell told CNN.
"Mr. Hiles is receiving no benefit in exchange for his cooperation and he intends to do everything he can to put this incident behind him."
CNN's Whitney Wild contributed to this report.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/15/politics ... index.html
Re: THE MAGA-MAN DONALD TRUMP
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR OCTOBER 15, 2021 AT 8:05 PM
Paul Plante says:
And to see the slippery slope we are now on, as the Democrats seek to cement and solidify their tyrannical one-party rule on us, to our detriment as a FREE PEOPLE under RULE OF LAW, which has to be abolished if the Democrats hope to keep their grip on us, let us go back to the CNN article entitled “Analysis: Pressure on January 6 panel ratchets up amid new explosion of Trump election lies” billed as “Analysis” by Stephen Collinson on 12 October 2021, where we have as follows:
But it (RULE OF LAW) represents a problem for the committee nonetheless, as potential witnesses seek to drag out the process as long as possible.
end quotes
And let us be very clear here, people – ANYONE hauled before Congress does not automatically lose their CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS to defend themselves from CONGRESSIONAL OVERREACH and CONGRESSIONAL DESPOTISM by some kind of decree of the Democrats in charge of the House of Representatives, and as we see from any number of United States Supreme Court cases on the subject, they have every right to challenge the process, even if that (BOO HOO HOO) “drags out the process” as long as it takes to seek the justice they will not find before the rabid Pelosi-ite WITCH HUNTERS committee in the House of Representatives, where the majority of us have no representation, at all.
Consider, for example, the case of John T. WATKINS, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES of America, Supreme Court, 354 U.S. 178, No. 261, argued March 7, 1957, decided June 17, 1957, Mr. Chief Justice WARREN delivering the opinion of the Court, to wit:
This is a review by certiorari of a conviction under 2 U.S.C. § 192, 2 U.S.C.A. § 192 for ‘contempt of Congress.’
The misdemeanor is alleged to have been committed during a hearing before a congressional investigating committee.
It is not the case of a truculent or contumacious witness who refuses to answer all questions or who, by boisterous or discourteous conduct, disturbs the decorum of the committee room.
Petitioner was prosecuted for refusing to make certain disclosures which he asserted to be beyond the authority of the committee to demand.
The controversy thus rests upon fundamental principles of the power of the Congress and the limitations upon that power.
end quotes
Ah, but how that phrase “limitations upon that power” chaffs and galls these rabid Pelosi-ite WITCH HUNTERS who see themselves as having a license to now trample on the CIVIL RIGHTS of American citizens as was the case in Watkins, supra, because of the violence unleashed at the Capitol on 6 January 2021, that was stoked by and as a result of a HATE SPEECH by Democrat presidential contender Joe Biden on 31 August 2020.
Getting back to that toxic narrative CNN is peddling under the guise of “analysis,” we have:
They do so in the knowledge that Republicans who have high hopes in the midterm elections would almost certainly shut down probes into January 6 if they reclaim the House.
end quotes
Oh, really!
So CNN is now able to read people’s minds so it can ascribe nefarious motives to their actions to try them and convict them in the COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION?
How about they are challenging the Pelosi-ite WITCH HUNTERS because they live in a FREE COUNTRY, not yet the FASCIST TYRANNY the Democrats are trying to impose on us through one-party rule, where they still have that right!
Getting back to the “analysis,” which is analysis from the perspective of the RULING DEMOCRATS, we have:
The select committee’s members are showing fresh urgency, warning that Trump acolytes who diss subpoenas face criminal referrals, a move that would put the Biden administration’s Justice Department in the hot seat.
end quotes
And why is it, people, that this “fresh urgency” we are hearing about in here is now being shown by the Pelosi-ite WITCH HUNTERS?
Ah, yes, people, you nailed it – the 2022 CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS!
The Democrats hoped to have these Republicans tried, convicted and hung by early 2022, in order to influence the 2022 CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS in their favor, by essentially outlawing the opposition, as Adolph Hitler did in 1933 in Germany, when thanks to the Reichstag Fire, he was able to end DEMOCRACY in the Weimar Republic along with the Weimar Republic itself, to replace it with a dictatorship with him in charge, which is essential history EVERY high school student here in the United States of America should be cognizant of, which takes us back to some real tough talk from these WITCH HUNYERS, to wit:
“We’re not messing around,” Rep. Adam Schiff of California, a Democratic member of the committee, told CNN’s Ryan Nobles on Tuesday, emphasizing that the Department of Justice would be put in a position to make a critical choice on criminal referrals against Trump’s associates because “unlike the last administration, no one is above the law.”
“And so we intend to move quickly.”
end quotes
Except that is so not true, people – Adam Schiff himself is above the law, as are his fellow WITCH HUNTERS, and that is what makes them so dangerous to civilized society here in the United States of America, keeping in mind that the smarmy little pencil neck congressman from Disneyland had his chance to hang Trump high in his first impeachment by the Democrats, and Adam FAILED to do it, because his case was nothing but cobwebs and smoke, but being above the law, here is Adam back for another bite at the apple, which takes us to Virginia’s own Elaine Luria who is making a cameo appearance here and getting some good press or herself in the process to impress the voters back home in Virginia with all congresswoman Elaine is doing for the cause of liberty and justice for all, er, well, okay, not everybody, because that wouldn’t be fair to the Democrats who want to look up and see the soles of Trump’s shoes as he swings from the DEMOCRAT LYNCHING TREE, to wit:
Another Democratic member of the committee, Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia, said, “You will see the committee moving quickly” on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront” on Tuesday.
end quotes
Let’s get those hands in the air and together for Elaine!
Getting back to the tough talk, the story continues, as follows:
And the committee’s Republican vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, told CNN the panel “is completely in solidarity” on moving fast to pursue criminal contempt charges for those who evade subpoena deadlines.
“Every single person on the committee recognizes how important it is for us to make sure that we enforce our subpoenas and that we do so expeditiously,” Cheney said.
The sense that time is finite reflects the fact that the committee — the final manifestation of a formal accounting process that pro-Trump Republicans tried to strangle — is the last chance to provide an official historic record and to find the truth about January 6 before Americans next vote in a national election next year.
Leaders of the Democrat-heavy panel previously pledged to complete the probe by early next spring, before the midterm campaign consumes Washington.
end quotes
And there, people, is what this whole MEDIA CIRCUS is all about, right there in those two sentences – it is about influencing the 2022 congressional elections in their favor by any means possible!
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/r ... ent-446166
Paul Plante says:
And to see the slippery slope we are now on, as the Democrats seek to cement and solidify their tyrannical one-party rule on us, to our detriment as a FREE PEOPLE under RULE OF LAW, which has to be abolished if the Democrats hope to keep their grip on us, let us go back to the CNN article entitled “Analysis: Pressure on January 6 panel ratchets up amid new explosion of Trump election lies” billed as “Analysis” by Stephen Collinson on 12 October 2021, where we have as follows:
But it (RULE OF LAW) represents a problem for the committee nonetheless, as potential witnesses seek to drag out the process as long as possible.
end quotes
And let us be very clear here, people – ANYONE hauled before Congress does not automatically lose their CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS to defend themselves from CONGRESSIONAL OVERREACH and CONGRESSIONAL DESPOTISM by some kind of decree of the Democrats in charge of the House of Representatives, and as we see from any number of United States Supreme Court cases on the subject, they have every right to challenge the process, even if that (BOO HOO HOO) “drags out the process” as long as it takes to seek the justice they will not find before the rabid Pelosi-ite WITCH HUNTERS committee in the House of Representatives, where the majority of us have no representation, at all.
Consider, for example, the case of John T. WATKINS, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES of America, Supreme Court, 354 U.S. 178, No. 261, argued March 7, 1957, decided June 17, 1957, Mr. Chief Justice WARREN delivering the opinion of the Court, to wit:
This is a review by certiorari of a conviction under 2 U.S.C. § 192, 2 U.S.C.A. § 192 for ‘contempt of Congress.’
The misdemeanor is alleged to have been committed during a hearing before a congressional investigating committee.
It is not the case of a truculent or contumacious witness who refuses to answer all questions or who, by boisterous or discourteous conduct, disturbs the decorum of the committee room.
Petitioner was prosecuted for refusing to make certain disclosures which he asserted to be beyond the authority of the committee to demand.
The controversy thus rests upon fundamental principles of the power of the Congress and the limitations upon that power.
end quotes
Ah, but how that phrase “limitations upon that power” chaffs and galls these rabid Pelosi-ite WITCH HUNTERS who see themselves as having a license to now trample on the CIVIL RIGHTS of American citizens as was the case in Watkins, supra, because of the violence unleashed at the Capitol on 6 January 2021, that was stoked by and as a result of a HATE SPEECH by Democrat presidential contender Joe Biden on 31 August 2020.
Getting back to that toxic narrative CNN is peddling under the guise of “analysis,” we have:
They do so in the knowledge that Republicans who have high hopes in the midterm elections would almost certainly shut down probes into January 6 if they reclaim the House.
end quotes
Oh, really!
So CNN is now able to read people’s minds so it can ascribe nefarious motives to their actions to try them and convict them in the COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION?
How about they are challenging the Pelosi-ite WITCH HUNTERS because they live in a FREE COUNTRY, not yet the FASCIST TYRANNY the Democrats are trying to impose on us through one-party rule, where they still have that right!
Getting back to the “analysis,” which is analysis from the perspective of the RULING DEMOCRATS, we have:
The select committee’s members are showing fresh urgency, warning that Trump acolytes who diss subpoenas face criminal referrals, a move that would put the Biden administration’s Justice Department in the hot seat.
end quotes
And why is it, people, that this “fresh urgency” we are hearing about in here is now being shown by the Pelosi-ite WITCH HUNTERS?
Ah, yes, people, you nailed it – the 2022 CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS!
The Democrats hoped to have these Republicans tried, convicted and hung by early 2022, in order to influence the 2022 CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS in their favor, by essentially outlawing the opposition, as Adolph Hitler did in 1933 in Germany, when thanks to the Reichstag Fire, he was able to end DEMOCRACY in the Weimar Republic along with the Weimar Republic itself, to replace it with a dictatorship with him in charge, which is essential history EVERY high school student here in the United States of America should be cognizant of, which takes us back to some real tough talk from these WITCH HUNYERS, to wit:
“We’re not messing around,” Rep. Adam Schiff of California, a Democratic member of the committee, told CNN’s Ryan Nobles on Tuesday, emphasizing that the Department of Justice would be put in a position to make a critical choice on criminal referrals against Trump’s associates because “unlike the last administration, no one is above the law.”
“And so we intend to move quickly.”
end quotes
Except that is so not true, people – Adam Schiff himself is above the law, as are his fellow WITCH HUNTERS, and that is what makes them so dangerous to civilized society here in the United States of America, keeping in mind that the smarmy little pencil neck congressman from Disneyland had his chance to hang Trump high in his first impeachment by the Democrats, and Adam FAILED to do it, because his case was nothing but cobwebs and smoke, but being above the law, here is Adam back for another bite at the apple, which takes us to Virginia’s own Elaine Luria who is making a cameo appearance here and getting some good press or herself in the process to impress the voters back home in Virginia with all congresswoman Elaine is doing for the cause of liberty and justice for all, er, well, okay, not everybody, because that wouldn’t be fair to the Democrats who want to look up and see the soles of Trump’s shoes as he swings from the DEMOCRAT LYNCHING TREE, to wit:
Another Democratic member of the committee, Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia, said, “You will see the committee moving quickly” on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront” on Tuesday.
end quotes
Let’s get those hands in the air and together for Elaine!
Getting back to the tough talk, the story continues, as follows:
And the committee’s Republican vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, told CNN the panel “is completely in solidarity” on moving fast to pursue criminal contempt charges for those who evade subpoena deadlines.
“Every single person on the committee recognizes how important it is for us to make sure that we enforce our subpoenas and that we do so expeditiously,” Cheney said.
The sense that time is finite reflects the fact that the committee — the final manifestation of a formal accounting process that pro-Trump Republicans tried to strangle — is the last chance to provide an official historic record and to find the truth about January 6 before Americans next vote in a national election next year.
Leaders of the Democrat-heavy panel previously pledged to complete the probe by early next spring, before the midterm campaign consumes Washington.
end quotes
And there, people, is what this whole MEDIA CIRCUS is all about, right there in those two sentences – it is about influencing the 2022 congressional elections in their favor by any means possible!
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/r ... ent-446166