The Rogues' Gallery

Who’s who in Jack Smith’s massive Trump election interference filing

The special counsel’s filing that argues Trump isn’t immune from prosecution offered many details about his allies and advisers.

In attempting to convince a federal judge to allow prosecutors to move forward with their election interference case against Donald Trump, special counsel Jack Smith on Wednesday unspooled events that featured a diverse cast of characters in the president’s orbit in late 2020 and early 2021. Some were longtime Trump allies, some were outside lawyers hired to take on the legal issues, and some were state officials from around the country who the special counsel alleged were on the receiving end of Trump’s wrath as his efforts to subvert the election failed.

Few of the participants were named in Smith’s 165-page brief. Five alleged co-conspirators were identified only as CC1 through CC6. Others are listed as P1 through P77. But The Post was able to identify many of them through their job descriptions, or because the actions described match activity that already was public through media reports or a House committee’s investigation of the Jan. 6 attack.

The brief argues that all of their actions were “unofficial,” not related to Trump’s functions as president — critical, because of a Supreme Court ruling that gave him broad immunity from prosecution for official acts. It provides many behind-the-scenes looks into how the plan to reverse the election unfolded, and then collapsed.

Here are some of those key players:

Stephen K. Bannon

Stephen K. Bannon told a private gathering that “what Trump’s going to do is just declare victory,” which the president then did. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
The podcaster and longtime adviser to Trump joined the Trump campaign a month before the 2020 election. Prosecutors allege that shortly before Election Day, Bannon told a private gathering that “what Trump’s going to do is just declare victory.” Trump did that not long after the polls were closed.

After the election was called for Joe Biden, Bannon told another Trump supporter that he had recommended Trump fire his current lawyers and hire former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, because “if Giuliani was not in charge, this thing is over,” the prosecution brief alleges. Trump announced his changes the next day.

Prosecutors say that Trump and Bannon began having daily contact starting in mid-December 2020, and that Bannon’s podcast on Dec. 14 “focused on spreading lies about [Trump’s] fraudulent electors,” the scheme to submit a second set of electors from contested states such as Pennsylvania and Arizona to support Trump. The prosecutors argue that Bannon was using the podcast to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to stop the certification of Biden’s election.

Trump spoke to Bannon on Jan. 5, 2021, the prosecution filing alleges, followed by a podcast in which Bannon said “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow.” Later that night, Trump and Bannon spoke again, followed soon after by a public statement from Trump asserting that “the Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act.” Trump knew that was false because Pence had repeatedly told him he did not have the authority to intervene, prosecutors allege.

Bannon’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Rudy Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani was surprised when conservative officials in Arizona stood behind their election results, according to Smith’s brief. (Sarah Silbiger for The Washington Post)
Much of Giuliani’s work on behalf of Trump happened publicly in front of cameras or in legislative hearings. But it was in closed-door meetings with Republicans in Arizona and elsewhere that he expected he would have success — and was surprised when conservative officials stood behind their election results, according to Smith’s brief.

In late November 2020, Trump and Giuliani called Rusty Bowers, then the speaker of the Arizona House, asking him to replace Arizona’s legitimate electors for Biden with illegitimate Trump electors, the brief states. Bowers was skeptical, and Giuliani told him, “We’re all kind of Republicans and we need to be working together,” the brief alleges. Bowers asked Giuliani for evidence of election fraud but never got any, it says.

Giuliani next tried his luck in Georgia, where he wielded the video of election workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman inside State Farm Arena in Atlanta and argued they were committing fraud, according to the brief. Georgia officials told him there was no fraud, but Giuliani continued to criticize the two women publicly. They later sued him and were awarded a $148 million judgment.

Giuliani also spread false claims to legislators in Michigan and Pennsylvania, the brief says, and then became involved in the scheme to organize and submit slates of Trump electors in six states. On Dec. 10, he instructed another lawyer to send directions to the phony electors on “how best to mimic the manner” of valid electors, “along with fraudulent certificates of vote,” the government alleges.

On Jan. 6, Giuliani called senators after the Capitol riot and continued to urge them to delay the certification and to “object to every state,” according to a voicemail left for one senator described in the brief. He falsely claimed Pence’s refusal to intervene was surprising and that Trump needed more time for state legislatures to reverse their votes, the brief states.

Giuliani has been disbarred in New York and Washington for his actions in the case, and he has been indicted in Georgia and Arizona.

Responding to the filing, Giuliani spokesman Ted Goodman said: “This is blatant election interference by Jack Smith, a person with a long track record of weaponizing the law for political gain.”

John Eastman

Eastman, the former dean of the Chapman University School of Law in Orange, Calif., is credited with helping devise the plan to submit a second set of electors from the contested states where Biden had been declared the victor. On Dec. 6, 2020, prosecutors allege, Eastman and Trump called Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chair, to help coordinate the actions of the illegitimate electors, which McDaniel agreed to do.

But prosecutors say Eastman deceived the illegitimate electors by telling McDaniel their votes would only be used if ongoing litigation was resolved in favor of Trump. Though Trump won no lawsuits, his supporters tried to use the fake electors’ votes on Jan. 6.

Eastman also outlined a plan on Dec. 23 for Pence to declare Trump the winner on Jan. 6, “because of the ongoing disputes” in the contested states, the brief states, and to do so without consulting Congress or the courts. Though Eastman had written two months earlier that the law did not allow that, he wrote another memo on Jan. 3, 2021, advocating for Pence to send elector slates back to their state legislatures, then later “conceded that no court would support it,” prosecutors allege.

Eastman spoke at the “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, saying that Pence must return the electoral votes to the states, though he knew there was no legal basis for it, which prosecutors said served to spike the crowd’s anger. Later that night, after the Capitol riot had been quelled, Eastman emailed Pence’s counsel Greg Jacob and said “I implore you to consider one more relatively minor violation” of the law and adjourn Congress for 10 days, according to the filing. Pence declined.

Eastman was subsequently disbarred in California, which he is appealing, and he faces state criminal charges in Georgia and Arizona. His lawyers did not return a request for comment.

Kenneth Chesebro

Kenneth Chesebro helped devise the plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, Smith's brief says. (Alyssa Pointer/Getty Images/Pool/AP)
Kenneth Chesebro is an attorney who helped devise the plan to reverse the 2020 results by having Republicans cast electoral votes for Trump in states he lost.

A day before electors in every state were to meet, Chesebro sent a memo to Giuliani arguing Pence could use fraudulent electoral votes to create the illusion that the election’s outcome was in doubt and push for negotiations that would result in Biden’s defeat, prosecutors allege.

On Dec. 16, 2020 — two days after the electors gathered — Chesebro and others met with Trump in the Oval Office, where Trump complained about a conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who had ruled against him, prosecutors allege. As the group left the meeting, Trump spoke privately with Chesebro, according to prosecutors.

Three days later, Trump urged his supporters to come to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 for a “wild” protest. Chesebro sent word of Trump’s tweet to James Troupis, a Trump attorney who participated in the Oval Office meeting with Chesebro. “Wow,” Chesebro wrote to Troupis, according to prosecutors’ filing. “Based on 3 days ago, I think we have unique understanding of this.”

Later, Chesebro hand-delivered copies of the paperwork for the would-be electors from Michigan and Wisconsin to congressional aides, prosecutors allege. On the morning of Jan. 6, Chesebro consulted with Troupis as Troupis tried to get the paperwork into the hands of Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) so he could pass it on to Pence, according to Wednesday’s filing and other documents. The idea fizzled when an aide to Pence said he wouldn’t accept the paperwork.

Chesebro, who has not been charged in the federal case, pleaded guilty in 2023 to conspiring to file false documents in a Georgia case over the attempt to overturn the election. He faces separate charges of conspiring to commit forgery in Wisconsin over his election activities in that state. He has not had to enter a plea in that case.

Chesebro did not respond to a request for comment.

Doug Ducey

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey asked for President Donald Trump to produce evidence of voter fraud. It never arrived. (Susan Walsh/AP)
As the Arizona governor in 2020, Doug Ducey (R) played a key role in certifying the election results in a state that Trump had lost by a mere 10,457 votes. Unlike other Republicans around the nation, Ducey has publicly downplayed his private interactions with the former president and his allies after the 2020 election.

In the days after the election, after Fox News projected Trump’s loss, the president called Ducey to ask what was happening with vote counting in the swing state, according to the filing. Ducey walked Trump through the number of votes that still needed to be counted and described to the president that he was in “the ninth inning, two outs” and that Trump “was several runs down,” prosecutors allege in the filing. Trump raised claims of “election fraud” and the governor asked him to send evidence, the filing says.

“We’re packaging it up,” Trump replied, according to the filing. The evidence did not arrive, and Trump and his allies continued to exert pressure on the governor, the filing says.

On Nov. 30, 2020, the same day the governor signed the state’s certificate of ascertainment formally declaring Biden’s electors as the rightful electors for the state, he got a call from Trump and Pence, the filing alleges. The governor told them he had certified the election. Trump again brought up his claims of fraud; Ducey again asked to see the evidence, according to the filing.

The evidence never arrived, prosecutors allege, and Trump later attacked the governor publicly. A spokesperson for Ducey did not immediately comment on the filing.

Chris Carr

Much of the attention devoted to Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in Georgia has focused on his public pressure campaign on two top Republicans in the state: Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. But Smith’s filing calls attention to a phone call Trump made to a third high-ranking Republican: Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, who is identified as P26 in the redacted court brief.

According to federal prosecutors, Trump called Carr on Dec. 8, 2020, about a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) that asked the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out election results in Georgia and three other key states on claims of fraud. The brief says Carr was warned ahead of time by Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) that Trump had heard Carr was “whipping,” or lobbying, other state attorneys general against filing amicus briefs in support of the lawsuit.

“I hope you’re not talking to your AGs and encouraging them not to get on the lawsuit,” Trump allegedly told Carr on the call, according to Smith’s filing.

Carr told Trump he was not calling other AGs, but if they did call, he told them he wasn’t seeing evidence of election fraud in Georgia, according to the brief. Trump allegedly told Carr to check again “because we’re running out of time,” the brief states.

Prosecutors say Carr tried to get off the phone by “thanking” Trump and telling him he’d voted for him twice and “appreciated” him. “Yeah, I did a hell of a job, didn’t I?” Trump allegedly replied.

Mike Roman

Mike Roman served as the director of Election Day operations for Trump’s 2020 campaign and played a role in having Republicans meet as presidential electors in states Trump lost. He and others on Trump’s team sought to spread confusion as votes were being counted in Detroit, according to Wednesday’s filing.

When a colleague told him a batch of votes heavily favoring Biden were valid, Roman texted “find a reason it isnt” and asked for litigation options, according to the filing. When the colleague said the scene at the counting center could develop into something akin to the “Brooks Brothers riot” from the 2000 election in Florida, Roman responded, “Make them riot,” prosecutors allege.

In December 2020, as Trump’s campaign was urging Republicans to meet as electors in states he lost, Roman bemoaned that Pennsylvania Republicans had grown “squishy,” the filing alleges.

“Whoever selected this slate should be shot,” he wrote to a colleague, according to the filing. The Pennsylvania Republicans added caveats to their paperwork that said they should be considered electors only if a court made such a finding. That prospect raised concerns from Roman, who told a colleague, “if it gets out we changed the language for PA it could snowball,” according to the court filing.

Roman is not charged or listed as a co-conspirator in the federal case but he is separately being prosecuted in three states for his election activities.

He faces conspiracy and other charges in Arizona; racketeering and other charges in Georgia; and conspiracy to commit forgery in Wisconsin. He has pleaded not guilty in Arizona and Georgia and has not had to enter a plea yet in Wisconsin. An attorney for him was not immediately available.

Eric Herschmann

Eric Herschmann represented Trump in his first impeachment and started working in the White House in August 2020. He served as a liaison between Trump and his campaign, passing on information and repeatedly alerting him that the campaign’s theories about voting fraud were bunk.

Trump disregarded the warnings, according to prosecutors. When Herschmann told Trump that Giuliani couldn’t prove claims of fraud in court, Trump responded, “The details don’t matter,” according to Wednesday’s filing.

On Jan. 4, 2021, Herschmann went over one of Eastman’s memos with him line by line, and Eastman acknowledged no court would agree with him, according to prosecutors. Herschmann told Trump of Eastman’s admission, and Trump said “Other people disagree” without saying who those people were, according to prosecutors.

Herschmann later told congressional investigators that he told Eastman to “get a great effing criminal defense lawyer. You’re going to need it.”

Herschmann did not respond to a request for comment.

Sidney Powell

A onetime federal prosecutor turned private attorney, Sidney Powell filed lawsuits challenging the outcomes in multiple states after the 2020 election. On Nov. 14, 2020, as Trump and co-conspirators espoused false claims about the security and accuracy of voting machines in various states, Trump announced that she would assist his campaign’s legal efforts, according to the filing.

Days later, in response to a document critical of vote-counting machines that was shared with her on the president’s behalf, she responded that the information “MUST GO IN ALL SUITS IN GA AND PA IMMEDIATELY WITH A FRAUD CLAIM THAT REQUIRES THE ENTIRE ELECTION TO BE SET ASIDE in those states and machines impounded for non-partisan professional inspection,” according to the filing.

Powell took part in a Nov. 19 news conference on behalf of Trump and his campaign at the Republican National Committee headquarters, where she “made false and factually impossible claims” about the nation’s election infrastructure, the filing alleges. After Trump saw the news conference, he said that Powell had appeared “unhinged,” the filing says.

On Nov. 20, Trump had a call with Powell on speakerphone while Dan Scavino and Hope Hicks listened, according to the filing. When Trump mentioned a segment from Fox News that described how Powell did not produce evidence of her claims to them, Trump put the call on mute, deriding her claims as “crazy,” the filing alleges.

When Trump was told by an attorney that the claims were unreliable and should not be included in litigation, Trump agreed, saying he had seen nothing to substantiate Powell’s allegations, according to the filing. Though Trump distanced himself from her, he continued to publicly support her claims, the filing alleges.

Boris Epshteyn

Boris Epshteyn, a Republican strategist, lawyer and top Trump adviser, has been a steady fixture at the former president’s side, dating back to when he began acting as a surrogate for Trump’s 2016 campaign. In April, Epshteyn was among more than a dozen Trump allies indicted in Arizona on charges tied to alleged efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss in that state. The charges stem from Epshteyn’s alleged role overseeing a plan to use pro-Trump electors to overturn Biden’s victory in key battleground states. Epshteyn has pleaded not guilty to nine felony charges. Smith’s redacted brief sheds some additional light on the role Epshteyn allegedly played.

Identified as CC6, Epshteyn is mentioned more than 30 times in the document — allegedly joining Giuliani, then Trump’s personal attorney, in advising Trump on the morning of Nov. 4, 2020, to “just declare victory,” according to the brief, even as the outcome of the election remained uncertain. The brief pointedly describes Epshteyn as one of the “private political operatives” advising Trump — not one of his private attorneys or other legal advisers.

Epshteyn did not respond to a request for comment.

Prosecutors put Epshteyn at the center of executing what the brief calls the Trump elector “conspiracy,” coordinating with campaign staff and lawyers including Giuliani, Eastman and Chesebro.” It cites a January 2021 text thread between Epshteyn and Chesebro as evidence of how “conspirators attempted to keep the full nature of the fraudulent elector plan secret.”

In the thread, Epshteyn tells Chesebro, “Careful with your texts on text groups” and tells the lawyer to only communicate with him and Eastman about the elector plan. “I’m probably a bit paranoid,” Epshteyn wrote, according to the brief. “A valuable trait,” Chesebro responded.

Coup Attempt Update

Former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis barred from practicing in Colorado for three years

DENVER (AP) — Colorado legal officials on Tuesday approved an agreement with Jenna Ellis, a onetime attorney for former President Donald Trump, barring her from practicing law in the state for three years after she pleaded guilty to helping Trump try to overturn the 2020 election.

Ellis tearfully pleaded guilty to felony charges of aiding and abetting false statements in Fulton County, Georgia, in October. She was one of 18 co-defendants of Trump who were charged in a sweeping case over the former president’s campaign to reverse President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in Georgia.

Ellis was previously censured in Colorado for making false statements over the 2020 election, including that the election was “stolen” from Trump. Those falsehoods were part of a sustained campaign by Trump allies that helped lead to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The latest case was brought by Colorado legal authorities after Ellis’ Georgia plea. The case contends that Ellis “caused significant actual harm in a variety of ways. It undermined the American public’s confidence in the presidential election process.”

A Colorado native who occasionally practices in her home state, Ellis is based in Florida and could not immediately be reached for comment. She is the latest of a swath of people charged or disciplined for helping Trump try to overturn his 2020 loss.

Jenna Ellis Complains Donald Trump Hasn't Given Co-Defendants 'One Dime'

Former Donald Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis is denouncing the ex-president for failing to give his co-defendants "one dime" after his criminal conviction in New York reportedly resulted in a fundraising windfall.

Ellis, who served on Trump's legal team during his ill-fated 2020 presidential campaign, lashed out at the former president in a series of posts to X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday. She was responding to an article from right-wing news outlet The Post Millennial on Trump boasting that his campaign had raised $400 million since he became a felon last week.

Trump was the lone defendant in New York, where a jury found him guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to boost his 2016 election chances by covering up hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Ellis was among 18 co-defendants indicted alongside Trump in the pending Fulton County, Georgia, election subversion case, while there are also two co-defendants in the former president's federal election subversion case.

"$400M reportedly raised. And still not ONE DIME given to anyone else indicted," Ellis wrote. "Incredible."

Ellis went on to insist that her complaint was not about herself, while lamenting that Trump's co-defendants "are going bankrupt" and claiming that former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows had "spent everything he has on legal fees."

"A lot of regular people need help in their defenses, not just the billionaire," wrote Ellis.

Newsweek reached out for comment to Trump's office via email on Friday.

Ellis is among four Trump co-defendants in the Georgia case who pleaded guilty to some charges last year after reaching agreements to cooperate with prosecutors. Fellow ex-Trump lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell also took plea deals, as did bail bondsman Scott Hall.

While appearing in Fulton County court to plead guilty, Ellis said that she had "deep remorse" for her part in attempting to overturn Trump's loss to President Joe Biden in 2020.

"I failed to do my due diligence," Ellis said. "I believe in and I value election integrity. If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges. I look back on this whole experience with deep remorse."

Some Trump supporters who had donated to a legal fund for Ellis angrily demanded their money back after she pleaded guilty. A page to support Ellis' defense on the "Christian crowdfunding" website GiveSendGo had raised over $200,000 by the time she struck a deal with prosecutors.

Ellis was a supporter of the now-defunct Republican presidential primary campaign of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. In recent X posts, she has mocked Trump for his disastrous speech at the Libertarian National Convention and his campaign's seemingly inflated attendance numbers for a New York City rally.

Today's Keith

The "Appeal to Heaven" flag − a white flag with a green pine tree in the center − was used during the American Revolution. It has become a symbol for Christian Nationalism. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), has hung the flag outside his congressional office.

Hey There, Rudy

Rudy Giuliani, you've been served. Oh, and Happy Birthday

Rudy Giuliani, you’ve been served.

After weeks of evading agents, making light of his indictment by a state grand jury and generally acting like a jackass, America's self-proclaimed and thoroughly bankrupt "mayor" has been served with a summons to appear in Arizona to face felony charges of fraud, forgery and conspiracy.

Giuliani was in Palm Beach, Fla, on Friday evening, throwing himself an early 80th birthday bash. Naturally, he was posting pictures of his party on social media, taunting Attorney General Kris Mayes as he has for several weeks now.

“If Arizona authorities can’t find me by tomorrow morning: 1. They must dismiss the indictment; 2. They must concede they can’t count votes,” he wrote, alongside a picture of him surrounded by young women.

A little later, around 11 p.m. in Florida, just as his 75 guests finished singing Happy Birthday, Giuliani got what many in America might consider the best gift of all.

“The final defendant was served moments ago,” Attorney General Kris Mayes announced, in reply to Giuliani’s since-deleted taunt. “Rudy Giuliani, nobody is above the law.”

Giuliani was at the center of the plot to overturn Arizona’s vote in 2020.

Maybe you recall hearing about the Nov. 22, 2020, phone call, when Donald Trump and Giuliani called then House Speaker Rusty Bowers, claiming to have evidence of widespread fraud and pressuring him to convene the Legislature to replace Biden electors with Trump electors.

Fortunately, Bowers, R-Mesa, is a guy with scruples. He asked for the evidence, believing you ought to have actual proof that an election was stolen before disenfranchising the state's voters.

Or maybe you recall that Nov. 30, 2020 legislative “hearing” in a downtown Phoenix hotel, at which Giuliani claimed, among other things, that “a few hundred thousand” of the state’s four to five million “illegal aliens” voted. (Given that the state’s total population is only 7.2 million, I suppose that makes five out of seven of us are here illegally.)

Maybe you recall the Dec. 1, 2020, meeting, when Giuliani met with Bowers at the state Capitol to try again to overturn our vote and the speaker again asked for the evidence. “We don’t have the evidence,” Giuliani conceded, “but we have lots of theories.”

You know who does apparently have evidence of fraud? Mayes.

And on April 24, she presented enough of it to convince a state grand jury to indict Giuliani and 17 others, including Arizona’s 11 fake electors.

On Friday evening, the 18th of those 18 was served with a summons to return to Arizona.

Happy Birthday, Rudy.

Believe me when I say, we can’t wait to see you.

Slow Are The Wheels Of Justice

It was almost two years ago that Steve Bannon told the House Jan6 Select Committee to shove it. And the guy has yet to spend one fucking minute in lockup.

When they bitch about a "2-tiered justice system", they mean rich fuckers walk around free while everybody else rots away in a jail cell awaiting trial.

How the Gateway Pundit sees it:

How normal people see it:

Appeals court upholds Steve Bannon's conviction for contempt of Congress

Bannon, an ex-aide to former President Donald Trump, was sentenced to four months in prison, but the trial judge allowed him to remain free pending appeal.

WASHINGTON — A three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has upheld Steve Bannon’s conviction on two counts of contempt of Congress.

Bannon was convicted after a trial in 2022 and sentenced to four months in prison. The trial judge, however, stayed Bannon’s sentence, allowing him to remain free pending his appeal.

Bannon still has the option of asking the full bench of the D.C. Circuit to hear his case, or he can petition the U.S. Supreme Court for review.

An order issued by the D.C. Circuit said the judges' mandate will not officially take effect until seven days after further appeal attempts are resolved. That means Bannon is unlikely to have to report to prison immediately.

Bannon, who was an aide to former President Donald Trump, was convicted in July of 2022 when a jury found him guilty of two contempt of Congress charges for failing to comply with a subpoena for documents and testimony issued by the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection.

Arguing before the appeals court last fall in an effort to overturn the four-month prison sentence, Bannon's attorney asserted that his client couldn't comply with those subpoenas because Trump had invoked executive privilege. In addition to jail time, Bannon was fined $6,500.

NBC News has reached out to Bannon's lawyers for comment.

Let's Get This Straight

These assholes are not hostages.

They're insurrectionists, thugs, and terrorists. They're scummy little go-bots who've been bamboozled into thinking they're the good guys, and they're doing something patriotic.

Mens Rea

Mens rea is defined in law as the criminal intent to commit a crime and is established by the prosecution in order to prove the guilt of an offender in a criminal trial.

There are four types of mens rea

• acting purposely
• acting knowingly
• acting recklessly
• acting negligently.

The Jan6 trial likely hinges on Trump's mindset at the time, and whether or not the jury buys Trump's "George Costanza Defense" (ie: It's not a lie if you really believe it).

Today's Beau

An excellent point. Haley's not correcting the record because she's trying to co-opt the "issue" and make it her own.

They'll show Trump as a doddering old fool who may be on the brink of a total breakdown, rather than tell their base voters the truth about Jan6.

A Chip In The Big Game

Glenn Kirschner is a little antsy. What's taking so long? Why does it seem like DOJ isn't moving against obvious law-breakers?

My contention is that there's a boatload of sharpsters and hucksters playing their little Intrigue At The Palace games. So it's going to be a while before we get enough of those assholes outa there, so we can start to see something close to "normal" again.

It's Not - But It Is - What We Tho't

In spite of this nerd's maddening difficulty landing the fucking plane, he does finally get around to the point:

The idiots who fucked up the Capitol trying to shitcan American democracy are racist assholes who are scared to death of brown people.

Soak that one in. All these hyper-macho faux-big-dick "alpha" males can't stand the competition, so they'll burn down their own shit rather than see it shared with people they can't admit are out-working them.

Meritocracy my dyin' ass.

Jennifer Rubin

1. Conspiracy to defraud
2. Conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding
3. Obstruction of an official proceeding
4. Conspiracy to deprive people of the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted.

Opinion

Jack Smith’s case got stronger over the past month

When a federal grand jury in D.C. indicted former president Donald Trump in August, the four charges stemming from his attempted coup were tightly drawn, based on easily provable facts many Americans witnessed with their own eyes. Though most of the attention since then has focused on his legal appeals, the factual case appears to be much stronger than originally recognized.

The first hint came in early December when special counsel Jack Smith filed a document laying out some of his evidence. “Smith alleges that a Trump ‘Campaign Employee’ — also identified as Trump’s ‘agent’ — sought to cause a riot to disrupt the centralized vote counting in Detroit on Nov. 4, 2020,” Tom Joscelyn, Norman L. Eisen and Fred Wertheimer observed in Just Security. “That goes beyond allegations of merely exploiting violence by third-parties to raise a new level of alleged wrongdoing.” Smith also cited some of Trump’s post-indictment statements sympathetic to the convicted rioters as evidence of Trump’s corrupt intent. Even Trump’s statement on Tuesday promising “bedlam” if he loses smacks of the same threats of violence that brought us Jan. 6, 2021.

Joscelyn, Eisen and Wertheimer laid out some of the stunning evidence:

The Justice Department alleges that a “Campaign Employee” — a person who is also described both as an “unindicted conspirator” and Trump’s “agent” — attempted to cause violence to “obstruct the vote count” at the TCF Center in Detroit, Michigan. In the weeks following the presidential election, Trump repeatedly and falsely claimed that there had been election fraud at the TCF Center — the central location where Detroit’s votes were tallied. But the special counsel turns Trump’s lies back against him, writing that “in truth [Trump’s] agent was seeking to cause a riot to disrupt the count.” It is worth repeating: Smith alleges that a Trump Campaign Employee sought to cause a riot — not just use violence by third-parties.
As the Just Security authors pointed out, Trump continued to lie about the Detroit vote counting even after his own attorney general, William P. Barr, told him the allegations were nonsense. “Evidence of the defendant’s post-conspiracy embrace of particularly violent and notorious rioters is admissible to establish the defendant’s motive and intent on January 6 — that he sent supporters, including groups like the Proud Boys, whom he knew were angry, and whom he now calls ‘patriots,’ to the Capitol to achieve the criminal objective of obstructing the congressional certification,” Smith wrote.

Smith also revealed in the December filing key evidence regarding Trump’s phone. As CBS News reported, an expert “specifically identified the periods of time during which the defendant’s phone was unlocked and the Twitter application was open on January 6.” First, this evidence might suggest Trump purposely used his own phone to make calls, perhaps to avoid detection. (That indicates awareness he was engaged in wrongful conduct.) Second, such evidence might help corroborate what we learned just a few days ago from ABC News.

The newest revelation, perhaps the most significant, also related to Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021. “Many of the exclusive details come from the questioning of Trump’s former deputy chief of staff, Dan Scavino, who first started working for Trump as a teenager three decades ago and is now a paid senior adviser to Trump’s reelection campaign,” ABC News reported. “Scavino wouldn’t speak with the House select committee that conducted its own probe related to Jan. 6, but — after a judge overruled claims of executive privilege last year — he did speak with Smith’s team.”

These events preceded Trump’s furious tweet at 2:24 p.m., essentially egging on the crowd to go after Pence. The new evidence bolsters other testimony that family members, lawmakers and aides failed to get him to call off the mob. The obvious conclusion: Trump intended to stop the vote count and was not about to halt the violence.

Moreover, Luna allegedly will provide evidence about a draft tweet Trump showed him that read: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away from great patriots. … Remember this day for forever!” Even a nonlawyer like Luna knew this could be an admission he was “culpable” or even directing the violent mob.

Not too long ago, skeptical commentators opined that Smith would have a hard time tying Trump to the violence or proving the element of intent needed for the four counts: conspiracy to defraud, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to deprive people of the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted. Not only have we learned Trump was repeatedly told there had been no fraud, but now we have potent eyewitnesses and forensic evidence of Trump’s alleged willingness to stop the electoral vote count at any cost.

Just Security’s model prosecution memo explained the required element of intent. “Regardless of their beliefs about the election outcome, [Trump and his associates] also knew that the means by which they pursued their objective were deceptive and inconsistent with established law. And there is no end-justifies-the-means safe harbor under § 371 for conspirators who deceitfully obstruct a lawful government function, even if they subjectively believe that their cause is justified.” That he not once but twice (in Michigan and D.C.) was eager to reap the benefits of violence certainly should constitute proof of his “deceitful” obstruction of the proceedings.

These revelations remind us why Trump’s lawyers are throwing up every legal excuse (including the preposterous and unsustainable position that the president has absolute immunity from prosecution) and using every stalling technique they can dream up to avoid going to trial. Smith has clear statutory grounds for the indictment. And he has evidence — more than we previously knew — from witnesses close to Trump that will help him prove the most difficult element in any crime: intent. If Smith gets to trial, he should have more than enough evidence to clear the bar of beyond a reasonable doubt.

Today's Today

A long-ish think-piece from WaPo.

How the GOP’s rewriting of Jan. 6 paved the way for Trump’s comeback

Pressure from family members and advocates for accused rioters was amplified by online influencers and right-wing media figures, leading lawmakers to minimize, excuse and deny the violence and rehabilitate Trump

Donald Trump spent the days after Jan. 6, 2021, privately fuming about the election and his media coverage. Leaving office with an approval rating below 40 percent, he skipped Joe Biden’s inauguration and retreated to Mar-a-Lago. He was banned from posting on Twitter and avoided public appearances.

The next month, he accepted an invitation to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, his first post-presidential speech. On the drive, Trump seemed surprised that the roads again closed for his motorcade, an adviser said. A rapturous reception appeared to lift his spirits, the adviser said. Still, his speech made no mention of the event that prompted his isolation: the deadly attack by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol.

In those early months of lying low, Trump himself was not the main driver in rewriting Republicans’ collective memory of Jan. 6.

Attempts to minimize, excuse or deny the violence of that day began with people returning home from the mob and intensified with family members of rioters, including the mother of a woman killed at the Capitol. Their cause became championed by pro-Trump writers Julie Kelly and Darren Beattie, and amplified by prominent right-wing media figures. The grass-roots and media pressure then spread from far-right lawmakers such as Reps. Paul A. Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene to take over the Republican mainstream.

This changing view of Jan. 6 among Republicans offered Trump a lifeline, paving the way for his political comeback. By October 2021, when he claimed “the insurrection took place on November 3, Election Day,” rather than on Jan. 6, he was merely repeating a meme that was already widely circulating on Facebook.

“There were other people planting the seeds, and then Trump comes to harvest them,” said Jared Holt, an extremism researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, of the rewriting of Jan. 6. “It’s canon at this point.”

Now, on the third anniversary of the nation’s first interruption to the peaceful transfer of power since the Civil War era, Republicans’ attitudes about Jan. 6 are increasingly unmoored from other Americans, and Trump holds a commanding lead in the race for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination.

The share of Republicans who said the Jan. 6 protesters who entered the Capitol were “mostly violent” dipped to 18 percent from 26 percent in December 2021, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll. More than half of independents and about three-quarters of Democrats, on the other hand, believe the protesters were “mostly violent,” numbers that have remained largely unchanged over time, the poll found.

The percentage of Republicans who hold Trump responsible for the attack dropped from 27 percent to 14 percent, compared with 56 percent of independents and 86 percent of Democrats. More than a third of Republicans said they believe the FBI definitely or probably organized and encouraged the attack — a conclusion contradicted by an extensive congressional investigation and more than 725 completed federal prosecutions.

More than 1,000 people have been charged in the Capitol breach. The Post-UMD poll found a majority of Americans believe the events of Jan. 6 were an attack on democracy and should never be forgotten. Trump faces his own criminal prosecution in Washington and Georgia for his efforts to overturn the election, trials his advisers have tried to delay — and fear could alienate him from voters he needs in a general election.

“When I resigned on Jan. 6, if you would have told me that people would have been whitewashing the events of the day or spreading all kinds of conspiracy theories, I would not have believed you,” said Sarah Matthews, who was a deputy press secretary in Trump’s White House. “We all saw the footage. We saw these people violently attacking police officers. To whitewash and downplay the events is so frustrating because if they took place in any other country, we would be calling it a coup attempt.”

Given the total bullshit that Trump spreads every day, plus the specific bullshit known as Lost Cause, I don't know how anybody would be surprised. Frustrated sure - but not surprised.

It's classic Daddy State doctrine.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung accused Biden of trying to distract from his record and criticized him for the prosecutions of Trump. “The fact is that Biden is the real threat to democracy by weaponizing the government to go after his main political opponent and interfering in the 2024 election,” he said.

(The federal charges against Trump were brought by special counsel Jack Smith in accordance with Justice Department rules against White House influence. There is no evidence of coordination with the two cases brought by local prosecutors.)

Trump is holding two rallies in Iowa on Saturday ahead of the caucuses there Jan. 15. His remarks are expected to focus on contrasting his and Biden’s records on the economy and immigration, and it is not clear if he will mention the anniversary.

Biden confronted the subject head-on Friday in a speech in Pennsylvania, near the Revolutionary War campground at Valley Forge. His reelection campaign is preparing to frame the likely general-election rematch as a choice between democracy and authoritarianism.

“When the attack on Jan. 6 happened, there was no doubt about the truth,” he said. “As time has gone on, politics, fear, money all have intervened. And now these MAGA voices who know the truth about Trump and Jan. 6 have abandoned the truth and abandoned democracy. They made their choice. Now the rest of us — Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans — we have to make our choice.”

(11:01 is where Biden says Trump is a sick fuck)

A thought: the 1,200 MAGA thugs arrested and charged with various crimes on Jan6 are basically acting as human shields for Trump. Because, as always, the people up front in the trenches take the pounding while REMFs like Trump hang back, waiting to take credit if the plan works, or duck responsibility and target blame onto everybody else if it doesn't.

In a speech Friday night, Trump accused Biden of “pathetic fearmongering.”

‘Outlier … conspiracy theorist or whack job’

Congress was still meeting through the night to certify the electoral college results as the thousands of Trump supporters who’d gathered on the National Mall started leaving Washington and returning home. Though disappointed that they hadn’t ultimately changed the outcome of the election, many of the demonstrators were still thrilled by what they’d experienced. They texted friends and posted on Facebook about what they’d seen, often reporting joyful scenes and, for those who never approached the Capitol steps, no sign of violence.

Some participants speculated that the violence could have been instigating by anti-Trump interlopers. Others spoke up to refute those suspicions: They were proud to claim responsibility for what they had done. Then some of those self-incriminating social media posts started showing up in warrants and indictments. The FBI posted wanted photos of people in the mob, and amateur online sleuths started hunting them down. Others were turned in by family members and co-workers.

The Jan. 17 arrest of Couy Griffin, a New Mexico county commissioner known in the Make America Great Again movement as the founder of Cowboys for Trump, caught the attention of Julie Kelly, a writer for the pro-Trump website American Greatness. Griffin was charged with entering a restricted area and disorderly conduct.

Because there was no evidence that Griffin assaulted police officers or damaged property, Kelly questioned why he was detained. “His real crime, of course, is that he’s a supporter of Donald Trump,” she wrote on Feb. 4, 2021. “He is, for all intents and purposes, a political prisoner.”

Griffin was released on bond the next day. He was later convicted and sentenced to 14 days, which he’d already served.

“I was being considered an outlier, to put it nicely,” Kelly said in an interview. “Conspiracy theorist or whack job, to put it more accurately, how I was portrayed.”

At that time, even Trump was still denouncing the violence. In a Feb. 28 Fox News interview, he defended his rally before the riot as “a love fest,” but as for the siege of the Capitol, he said, “I hate to see it. I think it’s terrible.”

The biggest exception was Tucker Carlson, then the host of the nation’s most-watched cable news show, on Fox News. In March, he invited Kelly on to question what caused the death of Officer Brian D. Sicknick, who died the day after fighting the mob, including being attacked with bear spray. (The D.C. medical examiner later concluded that Sicknick died of natural causes after two strokes, but that “all that transpired on that day played a role in his condition.” Sicknick’s assailant, Julian Khater, pleaded guilty in 2022.)

“The details of that day matter, Carlson said, “because they’re being used as a pretext for changing this country.” Carlson did not respond to requests for comment.

Carlson also took an interest in another fatality connected to the attack: that of Ashli Babbitt, the Trump supporter who was shot trying to enter the lobby of the House chamber while lawmakers were evacuating. In the months after the riot, far-right communities online started portraying her as a martyr and trying to identify and harass the officer who shot her, according to Holt’s research for the Atlantic Council.

In June, Carlson brought on Babbitt’s widower, who repeated the call to identify the officer who killed her. “The silence is deafening,” he said.

Babbitt’s mother, Micki Witthoeft, started holding a nightly vigil outside the D.C. jail where Jan. 6 defendants were being held, either while being arraigned, awaiting sentencing after conviction, or because a judge found them too dangerous to release before trial. The inmates started a tradition of singing the national anthem every night at 9.

One of the defendants in the jail was Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, an Army reservist from New Jersey who gained notoriety for wearing a Hitler-style mustache. He was charged and later convicted of charges including obstruction of an official proceeding, and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building.

His aunt, Cynthia Hughes, asked the judge to release Hale-Cusanelli pending trial, arguing that he wasn’t dangerous. The judge, Trump appointee Trevor McFadden, disagreed and denied bond. Hughes started a fund called the Patriot Freedom Project to raise money for the lawyers and families of Jan. 6 defendants. Hughes declined to comment.

One night that summer, Kelly was standing in her kitchen in suburban Chicago when she got a call from the jail. She used her daughter’s cellphone to record the prisoners singing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” then posted it online. “That started to get attention,” Kelly said.

‘It came from the grass roots’

That spring, the pressure from activists and right-wing media started getting back to Congress.

At first, the main voice was Gosar (R-Ariz.), who had appeared at “Stop the Steal” rallies leading up to Jan. 6. In the months after, Gosar used his time at congressional hearings to question former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen about Babbitt’s death, claiming she was “executed,” demanding that FBI Director Christopher A. Wray identify the officer who shot her, and falsely insisting that there were “zero” firearms among the mob.

Witthoeft said in an interview that when she began approaching members of Congress about her daughter, Gosar was the only one who would meet. “One of my first meetings, I was told by a staffer that Jan. 6 was a political football that no one wanted to touch,” she said.

But other lawmakers soon started getting involved. In May, Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.), who on Jan. 6 helped barricade the doors of the House chamber, spoke at a hearing to deny there ever was an insurrection and suggested the rampaging mob looked like “a normal tourist visit.” Greene (R-Ga.) and Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) tried to visit the Jan. 6 defendants in the D.C. jail. They were turned away.

“It came from the grass roots,” said a former senior House Republican leadership aide. The aide said most Republicans who had been at the Capitol “knew exactly what happened, knew how wrong it was, and knew that Donald Trump was responsible” but shifted after hearing from constituents.

Over time, about a dozen members of Congress became reliable allies, said Witthoeft, who said she began to regularly talk to congressional staff members, along with activists, documentary filmmakers and others. “People do return our phone calls now, people will open our doors and take meetings with us,” she said.

By mid-2021, online rumors accusing left-wing agitators of instigating the Capitol riot had fizzled out. In their place, Darren Beattie, a former speechwriter for Gaetz and the Trump White House who’d gone on to found a pro-Trump website called Revolver News, started publishing articles suggested a different source of subterfuge: the FBI.

Beattie focused on a man named Ray Epps, who appeared in videos urging on the mob and whom Beattie suspected of being an undercover operative. Justice Department leaders have repeatedly confirmed that Epps never worked for or with them. In 2023, Epps pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct.

Beattie was a frequent guest on former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, one of the most influential talk shows in the MAGA movement. In June 2021, he found an even bigger audience on Carlson’s show. (Epps is now suing Fox News, alleging defamation.) Clips from the show were shared online by Greene and Gaetz, and Gosar read one of Beattie’s articles into the official congressional record.

“It took the media by storm,” Beattie said in an interview.

Carlson followed up in November with “Patriot Purge,” a multipart movie on Fox News’s streaming arm that drew on Beattie’s work and other unsubstantiated allegations to portray the riot as a staged feint to discredit Trump and his supporters. Two longtime Fox News commentators, Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes, quit the network in protest. The network stood by Carlson at the time. (He was abruptly terminated in 2023.)

By the time Congress marked the attack’s first anniversary, Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) was the only Republican who attended a moment of silence on the House floor. Gaetz and Greene held their own news conference where Gaetz promoted Beattie’s “fed-surrection” claims.

That night on Carlson’s show, the host pressured Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) to walk back his description of Jan. 6 as “a violent terrorist attack” during a Senate hearing the day before.

“By no definition was it a terror attack, that’s a lie,” Carlson told Cruz, who had been one of the leading lawmakers trying to block the 2020 election results in Congress.

Cruz maintained that he was referring to people who attacked police officers, not other protesters. “That being said, Tucker, I agree with you, it was a mistake to say that,” Cruz said.

‘He became more engaged’

In June 2021, one of Trump’s assistants called Witthoeft, Babbitt’s mother. “Would I want a call from the president?” Witthoeft recalled the assistant asking.

A week later, Trump called. During the 30-minute conversation, Witthoeft said, Trump acknowledged that her daughter died in support of him and was complimentary of Babbitt. Witthoeft said she pushed Trump to talk more about what she termed “the political prisoners” of Jan. 6 — people who were being held in detention after being charged with crimes.

While Witthoeft described Trump as a “real gentleman,” she said he had been slow in the early days of 2021 to embrace the issue. She said she asked the president to keep saying her daughter’s name. “I think President Trump was a good leader. But he’s one man,” she said. “For everyone to wait for him to save the day, the past three years could have been better spent.”

After that call, Trump became increasingly defiant in his defenses of Jan. 6. In July, he joined calls to identify the officer who shot Babbitt and described her in a Fox News interview as “innocent.” He said the defendants were being treated unfairly and repeated the falsehood that there were no guns at the riot. In October, he recorded a video message to mark Babbitt’s birthday, calling her a “truly incredible person” whose memory would live on “for all time.”

Trump’s escalating identification with the cause of Jan. 6 defendants coincided with his own deepening criminal jeopardy — and his moves toward a new presidential campaign. In August 2021, the FBI conducted a court-approved search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to recover classified documents improperly taken from the White House. Trump began portraying the investigation as politically targeted, in step with the Jan. 6 defendants, for whom he adopted Kelly’s term — “political prisoners.”

Later that month, Trump met at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., with Kelly and Hughes, the Patriot Freedom Project founder. Kelly recalled she told Trump that his supporters frequently said to her: “We were there for him on Jan. 6. Where is he for us?”

Trump asked how he could help, she said. She pointed to Hughes, who was raising money for the defendants and their families. “From that point on he became more engaged,” Kelly said.

Trump also renewed attacks against Mike Pence, his vice president, who had refused to help Trump overturn the election on Jan. 6. In the days after the attack, Trump had expressed what Pence thought was genuine contrition over the attack, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation. For months, the two men occasionally spoke, and Trump even invited Pence to come see him at Mar-a-Lago. But with Trump’s shift, the former vice president grew frustrated and resigned to what he saw as the futility of the relationship. Now, the two men haven’t spoken in years, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private interactions.

In January 2022, Trump first floated pardoning Jan. 6 defendants. His rallies for that year’s midterms featured a video showing clips from Carlson and other right-wing media hosts repeating the conspiracy theories suggesting the attack on the Capitol was staged. He also gave an extended interview to Beattie.

“You’re right about Epps,” Trump told him of the man Beattie falsely accused of being an undercover operative.

At a September 2022 rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., he recognized Hughes to stand and be applauded. “What a job,” he said. “We all appreciate it.” Trump also recorded a video message that was played at a fundraiser for Hughes’s group.

That month, he also called into the nightly vigil outside the D.C. jail. “I just want to tell everybody that’s listening, we’re with you,” he said.

In early 2023, Trump allies began producing a track of the inmates singing the national anthem, mixed with a recording of Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. He played the finished song — “Justice for All,” featuring the “J6 Prison Choir” — to open the first campaign rally of his 2024 campaign, in Waco, Tex., in March 2023. The song jumped to No. 1 on iTunes.

The next month, Trump dropped into a diner while campaigning in Manchester, N.H. The crowd inside started calling out that there was a “J6er” present. She was Micki Larson-Olson, who had been recently released after serving a 180-day sentence for unlawful entry onto public property. Trump called her over, hugged her and signed the backpack she said she was wearing that day.

By May, Trump expanded his pardon pledge, now promising to “most likely” grant clemency to “a large portion” of Jan. 6 defendants. “And it’ll be very early on,” he said in a CNN town hall.

At a rally in Durham, N.H., last month, he went further than Kelly’s phrase for the Jan. 6 defendants.

“I don’t call them prisoners,” he said. “I call them hostages. They’re hostages.”

And So To Michigan

If I'm a local politico, and I get a call from POTUS and the national chair of the GOP, I think my answer to the "Tell us about the phone call" question is going to have quite a bit more detail than "Gosh, I don't really remember."

I swear to Pete - all these fucking jerks have gotten so used to getting away with the scam, they think we're all as stupid as the average rube who swallows every little turd that floats down from DumFux News.

Trump recorded pressuring Wayne County canvassers not to certify 2020 vote

Then-President Donald Trump personally pressured two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers not to sign the certification of the 2020 presidential election, according to recordings reviewed by The Detroit News and revealed publicly for the first time.

On a Nov. 17, 2020, phone call, which also involved Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, Trump told Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, the two GOP Wayne County canvassers, they'd look "terrible" if they signed the documents after they first voted in opposition and then later in the same meeting voted to approve certification of the county’s election results, according to the recordings.

"We've got to fight for our country," said Trump on the recordings, made by a person who was present for the call with Palmer and Hartmann. "We can't let these people take our country away from us."

McDaniel, a Michigan native and the leader of the Republican Party nationally, said at another point in the call, "If you can go home tonight, do not sign it. ... We will get you attorneys."

To which Trump added: "We'll take care of that."

Palmer and Hartmann left the canvassers meeting without signing the official statement of votes for Wayne County, and the following day, they unsuccessfully attempted to rescind their votes in favor of certification, filing legal affidavits claiming they were pressured.

The moves from Palmer, Hartmann and Trump, had they been successful, threatened to throw the statewide certification of Michigan's 2020 election into doubt.

The revelation of the contents of the call with the former president comes as he faces four counts of criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States and its voters of the rightful outcome of the election. Efforts to prevent certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s 154,000-vote victory in Michigan are an integral part of the indictment.

The call involving Trump, McDaniel, Hartmann and Palmer occurred within 30 minutes of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers meeting ending on Nov. 17, 2020, according to records reviewed by The News.

The recordings further demonstrated the direct involvement of Trump, as an incumbent president, with Republican officials in Michigan in a bid to undermine Biden's win and how some details of his efforts had remained secret as he launched a campaign to win back the White House in 2024.

Neither Palmer nor McDaniel and Trump, through spokespeople, disputed a summary of the call when contacted by The News. Hartmann died in 2021.

The News listened to audio that was captured in four recordings by someone present for the conversation between Trump and the canvassers. That information came to The News through an intermediary who also heard the recordings but who was not present when they were made. Sources presented the information to The News on the condition that they not be identified publicly for fear of retribution by the former president or his supporters.

The timestamp of the first recording was 9:55 p.m. Nov. 17, 2020. The time was consistent with Verizon phone records obtained by a U.S. House committee that showed Palmer received calls from McDaniel at 9:53 p.m. and 10:04 p.m.

Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, said Trump's actions "were taken in furtherance of his duty as president of the United States to faithfully take care of the laws and ensure election integrity, including investigating the rigged and stolen 2020 presidential election."

"President Trump and the American people have the constitutional right to free and fair elections," Cheung said.

Allegations that the 2020 election was "stolen" remain unproven. In Michigan, a Republican-controlled state Senate committee investigated the claims and found no evidence of widespread fraud.

Palmer acknowledged to The News that she and Hartmann took the call from Trump in a vehicle and that other people entered the vehicle and could have heard the conversation. She said she could not, however, identify who entered the vehicle or might have heard the conversation.

Palmer told The News repeatedly that she didn't remember what was stated on the phone call with McDaniel and Trump.

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has said she stands by her past push for an audit of the election in Michigan.
“What I said publicly and repeatedly at the time, as referenced in my letter on Nov. 21, 2020, is that there was ample evidence that warranted an audit," McDaniel said in a statement.

But Jonathan Kinloch, who was a Democratic member of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers in November 2020, said what happened on the call with Trump was "insane."

“It’s just shocking that the president of the United States was at the most minute level trying to stop the election process from happening," said Kinloch, a Wayne County commissioner.

Monica Palmer, Wayne County Board of Canvassers chair in 2020, said at the time that her vote to certify the election was contingent on an audit of out-of-balance counting boards.
Despite the urging from McDaniel to seek an audit or not sign the certification, Michigan law required county canvassers across the state to prepare a statement of the votes in their counties and advance the findings to the Secretary of State's office.

About 18% of Michigan's population resides in Wayne County, and there were about 878,000 votes cast there for the November 2020 election.

Palmer previously said she left the Nov. 17, 2020, Wayne County Board of Canvassers meeting prior to physically signing the certification. As she was leaving, Trump called out of a "genuine concern for my safety," Palmer told reporters three years ago.

Back then, she described the contents of the Nov. 17, 2020, call with Trump as "Thank you for your service. I’m glad you're safe. Have a good night.”

The segments of the call reviewed by The News didn’t include those comments.

However, in the days after the call on Nov. 17, 2020, Palmer and Hartmann publicly attempted to rescind their votes and said "intense bullying and coercion" plus bad legal advice forced them to agree to certify the election after they had voted no.

'Never know what happened'

During an interview in September 2021, Palmer told the U.S. House's Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol that she couldn't recall the exact words that Trump used on the call and whether he raised issues related to the election.

The recordings reviewed by The News, which covered four minutes of a longer exchange that could have lasted no more than 11 minutes, according to phone records, clearly showed that Trump was focused on the 2020 election.

Trump said Republicans had been "cheated on this election" and "everybody knows Detroit is crooked as hell," according to the recordings.

McDaniel said if Hartmann and Palmer certified the election without forcing an audit to occur, the public would "never know what happened in Detroit."

"How can anybody sign something when you have more votes than people?" Trump asked the canvassers, according to the recordings.

About 13 hours after the call, Trump posted on social media about Wayne County, again saying there were more votes than people.

"The two harassed patriot canvassers refuse to sign the papers," Trump added, referring to Hartmann and Palmer.

Trump's statement about there being more votes than people was inaccurate. There were only out-of-balance precincts in Detroit where there were mismatches between the number of ballots counted and the number of voters tracked. The absentee ballot poll books at 70% of Detroit's 134 absentee counting boards were initially found to be out of balance without explanation, an outcome that was not unusual for the largest city in Michigan.

In addition, Trump performed better in Detroit in 2020 than 2016, with his percentage of votes rising from 3% to 5%, and the Republican receiving 5,200 more votes in 2020 than four years earlier, according to the city's official results.

Jonathan Brater, Michigan's election director, said in an affidavit that the overall difference citywide in absentee ballots tabulated and names in poll books in Detroit was 150. There were "fewer ballots tabulated than names in the poll books," Brater said.

"If ballots had been illegally counted, there would be substantially more, not slightly fewer, ballots tabulated than names in the poll books," Brater said.

A call at night

The high-profile Wayne County canvassers meeting drew a national spotlight as supporters of Trump publicly urged the board not to certify the election based on unproven allegations of widespread fraud focused on vote counting in Detroit, a Democratic stronghold that's located in Wayne County.

Hartmann and Palmer initially voted to block the certification of the county's election, withholding the votes needed to approve certification. But later in the meeting, they changed course and supported certifying the election based on the condition that an audit take place of some precincts within Wayne County.

Later, Hartmann and Palmer refused to sign the official certification paperwork and publicly acknowledged they received a call from Trump and McDaniel.

Palmer and Hartmann participated in the call inside a vehicle that was parked outside the county's election department building on East Jefferson Avenue in Detroit, Palmer said. Hartmann was sitting next to Palmer during the call, she said.

Kinloch said Hartmann and Palmer left the meeting room on the night of Nov. 17, 2020, and never came back to sign the official statement of the votes for Wayne County.

The Michigan Bureau of Elections later told county officials the vote that occurred and the signatures of the chair or vice chair of the four-member canvassing board and the county clerk were the only things necessary to advance the certification to the State Board of Canvassers, Kinloch said.

The state board certified the 2020 presidential election on Nov. 23, 2020, solidifying Biden's victory in Michigan.

During the Nov. 17, 2020, call, Trump specifically told the Republican canvassers they'd look "terrible" if they signed the certification after initially voting against certification.

Chris Thomas, a lawyer who served as Michigan's elections director for more than three decades, said the Republican canvassers in Wayne County had no legal reason to block certification of the election.

It's pretty unfortunate, Thomas said, that Republican leaders offered to give them something, legal protection, for not doing their jobs.

"Offering something of value to a public official to not perform a required duty may raise legal issues for a person doing so," Thomas said.

Uh-Oh

Breaking down the $148 million Giuliani verdict

Local reporter covering appellate courts in Washington and Richmond.
Here’s how a jury got to that number when deciding what Rudy Giuliani owes two Georgia poll workers for falsely accusing them of helping to steal the 2020 election:

Ruby Freeman was awarded $16,171,000 for the damage done to her reputation.

Her daughter, Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, was awarded $16,998,000 for the damage to her reputation.

Each woman was awarded $20 million for the emotional distress caused by Giuliani’s defamation.

Finally, Giuliani was fined $75 million in punitive damages for defaming them.

It'll be appealed, and eventually, it'll prob'ly get whittled down considerably. But the numbers are generally based on estimates of the defendant's net wealth, and future earning potential.

I think the significance lies in the (apparent) fact that the jury had no patience with any of the bullshit stories of "fraud" and "stolen election".

This could bode very badly for whoever's next on the docket - whether it's a similar defamation trial in civil court, or the felonies the various bad actors are going to be tried for in criminal court(s).

And this is how this kinda crap usually ends - somebody gets sued and it just stops.

Juries of 12 regular everyday Americans look at it and say no - we're not putting up with any more of this shit.