1/6 Commission Thread Cont...

[GMDino]

Old Newt knows how to threaten and rile up the base...lol.

This is just a 30 second way of chanting "lock her up" when we know no one will be locked up.

Newt Gingrich said this morning that people serving on the J6 Committee are going to go to jail if Republicans take over Congress after the next election. pic.twitter.com/OFhWdbEPdq

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) January 23, 2022

 

[GMDino]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/04/us/politics/republicans-jan-6-cheney-censure.html

Quote:G.O.P. Declares Jan. 6 Attack ‘Legitimate Political Discourse’

The Republican National Committee voted to censure Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for participating in the inquiry into the deadly riot at the Capitol.

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Representative Liz Cheney has said Republican leaders “have made themselves willing hostages” to former President Donald J. Trump.Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times

By Jonathan Weisman and Reid J. Epstein
Published Feb. 4, 2022Updated Feb. 5, 2022, 12:04 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON — The Republican Party on Friday officially declared the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and events that led to it “legitimate political discourse,” and rebuked two lawmakers in the party who have been most outspoken in condemning the deadly riot and the role of Donald J. Trump in spreading the election lies that fueled it.

The Republican National Committee’s voice vote to censure Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois at its winter meeting in Salt Lake City culminated more than a year of vacillation, which started with party leaders condemning the Capitol attack and Mr. Trump’s conduct, then shifted to downplaying and denying it.

On Friday, the party went further in a resolution slamming Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger for taking part in the House investigation of the assault, saying they were participating in “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”

After the vote, party leaders rushed to clarify that language, saying it was never meant to apply to rioters who violently stormed the Capitol in Mr. Trump’s name.


“Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger crossed a line,” Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, said in a statement. “They chose to join Nancy Pelosi in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol.”

But the censure, which was carefully negotiated in private among party members, made no such distinction, nor is the House committee investigating the attack examining any normal political debate. It was the latest and most forceful effort by the Republican Party to minimize what happened and the broader attempt by Mr. Trump and his allies to invalidate the results of the 2020 election. In approving it and opting to punish two of its own, Republicans seemed to embrace a position that many of them have only hinted at: that the assault and the actions that preceded it were acceptable.

It came days after Mr. Trump suggested that, if re-elected in 2024, he would consider pardons for those convicted in the Jan. 6 attack and for the first time described his goal that day as subverting the election results, saying in a statement that Vice President Mike Pence “could have overturned the election.”
On Friday, Mr. Pence pushed back on Mr. Trump, calling his assertion “wrong.”

“I had no right to overturn the election,” Mr. Pence told the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization, at a gathering in Florida.







Read the full resolution
[url=https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/02/04/us/rnc-jan6-resolution.html]The Republican National Committee’s resolution censures Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.
READ DOCUMENT 2 PAGES

The day’s events, which were supposed to be about unity, only served to highlight Republicans’ persistent division over Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, as their leaders try to move forward and focus attention on what they call the failings of the Biden administration. More than a year later, the party is still wrestling with how much criticism and dissent it will tolerate.

“Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol,” Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, wrote on Twitter. “Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost.”

He did not mention that the party chairwoman who presided over the meeting and orchestrated the censure resolution, Ms. McDaniel, is his niece.

The censure was also condemned by Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, who, like Mr. Romney, voted to remove Mr. Trump from office for inciting insurrection on Jan. 6, and Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, also a Republican, who called Friday “a sad day for my party — and the country.”

Republican National Committee members defended the measure, describing people who have been questioned by the Jan. 6 committee as victims in a broader Democratic effort to keep focus on the attack at the Capitol.
“The nominal Republicans on the committee provide a pastiche of bipartisanship, but no genuine protection or due process for the ordinary people who did not riot being targeted and terrorized by the committee,” said Richard Porter, a Republican National Committee member from Illinois. “The investigation is a de facto Democrat-only investigation increasingly unmoored from congressional norms.”



The Jan. 6 committee, which has seven Democratic members, has interviewed more than 475 witnesses, the vast majority of whom either volunteered to testify or agreed to without a subpoena. It has no prosecutorial powers, and is charged with drawing up a report and producing recommendations to prevent anything similar from happening again.


The party’s far-right flank has long agitated to boot Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger out of the House Republican Conference for agreeing to serve on the panel, a push that Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, has tried to brush aside. And the formal censure, approved by the state party chairs and committee members who make up the Republican National Committee, is sure to stir up those efforts again.





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The Republican Party declared the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and events that led to it as “legitimate political discourse.”Credit...Jason Andrew for The New York Times
“We need to move on from that whole discussion and, frankly, move forward and get the House back in 2022,” said Representative Mike Garcia, a California Republican facing a difficult re-election campaign in a newly configured district.

Most House Republicans tried to ignore the actions of the party on Friday, refusing to answer questions or saying they had not read the censure resolution. Representative Dan Crenshaw, Republican of Texas, called it “dumb stuff,” while Representative Mark Green, Republican of Tennessee, lamented the distraction from “this abysmal administration’s record.”

Democrats, however, were incensed at the resolution’s language.

“The Republican Party is so off the deep end now that they are describing an attempted coup and a deadly insurrection as political expression,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the special House committee investigating the Capitol attack. “It is a scandal that historians will be aghast at, to think that a major political party would be denouncing Liz Cheney for standing up for the Constitution and not saying anything about Donald Trump’s involvement in the insurrection.”

In his own defense, Mr. Kinzinger said: “I have no regrets about my decision to uphold my oath of office and defend the Constitution. I will continue to focus my efforts on standing for truth and working to fight the political matrix that’s led us to where we find ourselves today.”

The resolution spoke repeatedly of party unity as the goal of censuring the lawmakers, saying that Republicans’ ability to focus on the Biden administration was being “sabotaged” by the “actions and words” of Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger, which indicate “they support Democrat efforts to destroy President Trump more than they support winning back a Republican majority in 2022.”


Normally, the party stays out of primary fights, but the resolution will make it easier for the Republican apparatus to abandon Ms. Cheney and throw its weight and money behind her main G.O.P. challenger, Harriet Hageman.

It declares that the party “shall immediately cease any and all support of” both lawmakers “as members of the Republican Party for their behavior, which has been destructive to the institution of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Republican Party and our republic, and is inconsistent with the position of the conference.”

Mr. Kinzinger has already announced he will not seek re-election, as have some other House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump for inciting the attack on the Capitol. Ms. Cheney, however, has vowed to stand for re-election.





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Representative Adam Kinzinger has announced that he will not seek re-election, as have some other House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
Earlier this week, the Wyoming delegation to the Republican National Committee submitted a so-called “Rule 11” letter, formalizing party support for Ms. Hageman. The existence of the letter was reported by The Washington Post.

The letter allows the Republican National Committee to send resources to the Wyoming branch of the party to spend on Ms. Hageman’s behalf — essentially designating her as the party’s presumptive nominee. The designations are common in Republican politics, but typically are used to support incumbents who may be facing token primary challengers.

Ms. Cheney, who faces an uphill battle in her re-election bid against a Republican Party aligned with Mr. Trump, said party leaders “have made themselves willing hostages” to Mr. Trump.

This was January 6th.
This is not “legitimate political discourse.” pic.twitter.com/lKgbVyVcJr

— Rep. Liz Cheney (@RepLizCheney) February 4, 2022

 

[GMDino]

Justice Thomas is tainted.

28 USC 455(b): A judge "shall disqualify himself... where ... he knows that he ... or his spouse ...has a financial interest in the subject matter ... or any other interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding." https://t.co/TDUbGDO5ut

— Jeff Blattner (@theblatt) March 24, 2022

 

[BigPapaKain]

(03-24-2022, 10:40 PM)GMDino Wrote: Justice Thomas is tainted.

28 USC 455(b): A judge "shall disqualify himself... where ... he knows that he ... or his spouse ...has a financial interest in the subject matter ... or any other interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding." https://t.co/TDUbGDO5ut

— Jeff Blattner (@theblatt) March 24, 2022

 

Much shock. Very surprise.

[NATI BENGALS]

What's it called when the executive branch and legislative branch conspire to steal an election and the judicial branch votes to cover it up?




I call it treason. What do you call it?

[GMDino]

Let's be fair:  I'd bet half of all cars in Alabama are filled like this.  Right? 

https://apnews.com/article/capitol-siege-crime-prisons-alabama-presidential-elections-0f96785c9cbf3b98281f0a5522e99bdd

Quote:An Alabama man who parked a pickup truck filled with weapons and Molotov cocktail components near the U.S. Capitol on the day of last year’s riot was sentenced Friday to nearly four years in prison.


U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said she still hasn’t heard an explanation for why Lonnie Leroy Coffman had “almost a small armory in his truck, ready to do battle.” She sentenced Coffman to three years and 10 months in prison, giving him credit for the more than one year he already has served since his arrest.


Coffman, 72, of Falkville, Alabama, said he never intended to hurt anybody or destroy any property. He said he drove to Washington alone “to try to discover just how true and secure was the (2020 presidential) election.”


“If I had any idea that things would turn out like they did, I would have stayed home,” he wrote in a handwritten letter to the judge.

More than 770 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot, when supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump stormed the building in an effort to disrupt lawmakers’ formal certification of his reelection defeat. Five people died and scores of Capitol Police officers were seriously injured.


[*]Over 240 participants in the attack have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors punishable by a maximum of six months imprisonment. More than 130 have been sentenced. Coffman is one of nine defendants whose prison sentence exceeds one year. [url=https://apnews.com/article/capitol-siege-steve-bannon-merrick-garland-adam-schiff-subpoenas-7051b957a80ef6a5f84016124b00682f][/url]


[*]Coffman, a Vietnam War veteran who served in the U.S. Army, pleaded guilty in November to possession of an unregistered firearm and carrying a pistol without a license. He was carrying a loaded handgun and revolver without a license as he walked in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, according to prosecutors. He isn’t accused of entering the Capitol or joining the mob during the riot that day.
[*]
When Coffman parked his truck a few blocks from the Capitol on the morning of Jan. 6, it contained a handgun, a rifle, a shotgun, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a crossbow, machetes, a stun gun and a cooler containing eleven mason jars with holes punched in the lids, according to prosecutors. Each jar contained a mixture of gasoline and Styrofoam, which are components of the homemade incendiary devices called Molotov cocktails, prosecutors said.
[*]
Law enforcement officers found the cache of weapons and ammunition when they searched Coffman’s truck. They had been sweeping the area after pipe bombs were found near the headquarters of the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee. Later, investigators also found Molotov cocktail components at Coffman’s home in Alabama.
[*]
“Possession of so much dangerous weapons in our nation’s capital is uniquely offensive to our cherished, democratic political traditions,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Friedman said.

Handwritten notes found inside the vehicle included a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln that said, “We The People Are The Rightful Masters Of Both The Congress And The Courts, Not To Overthrow The Constitution But To Overthrow The Men Who Pervert The Constitution.”
[*]
The notes included a list of “good guys” and “bad guys,” with a federal judge named in the latter category, and contact information for a member of a Texas militia group known as the “American Patriots,” prosecutors said.
[*]
“The handwritten notes also included an address for a reported gathering place in Texas called ‘Camp Lonestar,’ where militia groups had reportedly sought to patrol the border looking for illegal aliens,” prosecutors wrote.
[*]
Investigators had previously identified Coffman as an armed participant at Camp Lonestar, according to prosecutors.
[*]
Coffman, a retired machine operator, had travelled to Washington in December 2020 and tried to drive to the home of a U.S. senator who isn’t named in a court filing by prosecutors. He also called the senator’s office in an effort to “help with the election fraud he saw.”
[*]
“A staff member at the Senator’s office recorded that the defendant seemed ‘unbalanced’ or ‘not 100% there’ during the call, but did not seem threatening,” prosecutors wrote.
[*]
Prosecutors recommended a prison sentence of approximately three years and six months. Defense attorney Manuel Retureta said a prison term wouldn’t be appropriate given Coffman’s age and medical condition.
Coffman didn’t have a criminal record before this case.
[*]
“At my age, one of the most precious (things) we possess is time, and I have wasted almost a whole precious year,” he wrote in his letter to the judge.

[GMDino]

So no more "lock her up" chants?

Real whiplash experience on criminal justice within the GOP over the last few days, between “defense attorneys are evil” and “if you have kids you can’t go to jail” https://t.co/2X0CnUFzEn

— Jane Coaston (@janecoaston) April 6, 2022