We were called Trailer Trash. But ain't none of my kin ever been arrested for showing his dick to a group of teenaged girls at a bowling alley, or for running over a neighbor's mailbox. And we didn't show up on camera gettin' all handsy on date night at the local theater, and we were never involved in an actual fist fight between a man and his wife.
Just what the fuck is up with these fuckin' people?
Lauren Boebert involved in physical fight with ex-husband in Colorado restaurant
U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert and her ex-husband, Jayson Boebert, are the subjects of an investigation after a physical fight between the two on Saturday evening.
The incident happened at a restaurant in Silt, a town in Lauren Boebert's congressional district, according to The Daily Beast. The outlet reported that Jayson Boebert called the police to the scene, claiming he was a victim of domestic violence.
However, an aide to Lauren Boebert denied these allegations, asserting that the congresswoman did not engage in any form of domestic violence.
According to an aide of Lauren Boebert, the lawmaker had gone to Jayson Boebert’s house to pick up one of their sons, The Daily Beast reported. During this visit, there was a physical interaction where Lauren Boebert allegedly pushed Jayson Boebert away as he attempted to hug her.
Later that evening, the situation escalated when they met at the Miner’s Claim restaurant. The aide described Jayson Boebert’s behavior at the restaurant as aggressive and disrespectful. It was reported that a physical altercation of indeterminate severity occurred at the restaurant. As described by the aide, anti-LGBTQ+ far-right Colorado Republican tried to keep Jayson Boebert back, which involved putting her hand on his face and nose.
Following this altercation, Jayson Boebert called the police, alleging that he was a victim of domestic violence, according to The Daily Beast. In response, Lauren Boebert also contacted the police, denying any domestic violence and expressing her willingness to speak with an officer at the restaurant. Although the police arrived at the scene, they did not arrest anyone. The congresswoman was then reportedly driven home by a friend.
Silt Police Chief Mike Kite confirmed the incident and investigation in a conversation with The Advocate.
“We were called to the Miner's Claim restaurant in town, and it involved Lauren and her ex-husband,” Kite said. Kite explained that his department is seeking additional witnesses and that investigators are reviewing videos.
In August 2022, neighbors in Garfield County called 911 over concerns about Jayson Boebert’s behavior, including allegations of driving under the influence and damaging property. Additionally, their children were accused of speeding in the neighborhood, leading to a confrontation. No charges were filed, and the incident was resolved among the involved parties.
Lauren Boebert was caught in a compromising position during a family-friendly musical production of Beetlejuice in Denver at a packed theater in September. Security camera footage showed Lauren Boebert and her companion, Quinn Gallagher, being disruptive, vaping, and engaging in public sexual behavior, leading to their removal from the theater. At first, Lauren Boebert and aides denied that she had been disruptive and vaped in the theater but later admitted to some bad behavior, blaming it on stress and her recent divorce. However, she did not address the mutual fondling caught on camera.
Lauren Boebert recently announced her decision to run for reelection in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District, switching from the 3rd District, where she has held office since 2021. This move has been widely viewed as an attempt to avoid challenging reelection odds in the 3rd District, where she faced notable challenges from Republican and Democratic opponents. In the 2022 midterms, Boebert narrowly defeated Democrat Adam Frisch by fewer than 600 votes.
Lauren Boebert cited her “personal life” as one of the main reasons behind her decision to switch districts, referring to her divorce in May 2023, The Durango Heraldreports. She described the move as a “fresh start” and claimed it was the right decision for her and her supporters. Critics and opponents have been vocal about this decision, with some accusing her of trying to evade tough competition and questioning her commitment to her constituents.
The Advocate contacted a spokesperson for Lauren Boebert but did not immediately hear back.
There's a lot of talk (mostly from the wingnut right) about pardoning Trump, so we can "heal the nation's wounds and move on."
Some things:
No POTUS can pardon him if he's convicted for state crimes
Republicans seem to be tacitly admitting he's guilty of the federal charges, and that they expect he'll be on his way to prison before the year is out, but they won't say so in public.
When Republicans are willing to look the other way, or rationalize Trump's criminal actions, doesn't that mean the GOP is soft on crime?
NRA civil trial threatens to shake up gun rights organization even with leader’s resignation
Wayne LaPierre, two other current and former NRA leaders and the organization itself are facing a lawsuit that alleges they violated nonprofit laws and misused NRA funds to finance their lavish lifestyles.
Wayne LaPierre’s civil trial, slated to begin Monday in New York, still threatens to unravel the National Rifle Association despite his resignation from the powerful and prominent gun rights group.
LaPierre, 74, had led the NRA for more than 30 years as the organization’s executive vice president. He announced his departure Friday as jury selection neared an end.
He, along with two other current and former NRA leaders and the organization as a whole are fending off a lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James in 2020 that alleges they violated nonprofit laws and misused millions of dollars of NRA funds to finance lavish lifestyles for themselves.
The jury will spend the next six weeks in a Manhattan courtroom hearing testimony from roughly 120 witnesses.
If the jurors find the individual defendants liable, they will recommend the amount of money that each defendant would have to repay the NRA.
They would have also been tasked with recommending whether LaPierre should be ousted from the helm of the group, which is now moot.
But the trial outcome may still have important ramifications, according to Shannon Watts, who founded the gun safety group Moms Demand Action in 2012 in part to challenge the gun lobby.
State Supreme Court Judge Joel Cohen, who has the final say over monetary damages and remedies, could determine whether the defendants should be permanently barred from serving on the board of any charity in New York and whether an independent monitor should oversee the NRA’s finances.
“It was never just about Wayne LaPierre,” Watts said, adding that the organization “needs to be taken down at the studs.”
In his announcement, LaPierre said he has been a “card-carrying member” of the NRA for most of his adult life and that he would “never stop supporting the NRA and its fight to defend Second Amendment freedom.”
“My passion for our cause burns as deeply as ever,” LaPierre said. He cited health reasons for his exit, which will take effect Jan. 31.
James touted LaPierre’s resignation as “an important victory.”
“LaPierre’s resignation validates our claims against him, but it will not insulate him from accountability,” she said in a statement. “We look forward to presenting our case in court.”
A ‘personal piggy bank’
The lawsuit alleges that LaPierre diverted millions of dollars away from the group’s charitable mission for his personal use of private jets, expensive meals, travel consultants, private security and trips to the Bahamas for him and his family.
The attorney general claims LaPierre spent more than $500,000 of the NRA’s assets to fly himself and his family members to the Bahamas. From May 2015 to April 2019, the NRA incurred over $1 million in expenses for private flights on which LaPierre was not a passenger, according to the lawsuit.
LaPierre received more than $1.2 million in expense reimbursements from 2013 to 2017, the lawsuit alleges.
The other defendants are also accused of violating nonprofit laws and internal policies as they enriched themselves, the suit says, contributing to the NRA’s loss of more than $64 million in three years.
They are Wilson “Woody” Phillips, a former NRA treasurer and chief financial officer, and John Frazer, the corporate secretary and general counsel.
Joshua Powell, a former chief of staff and executive director of general operations, was also a defendant. But he told NBC News on Friday evening that he had officially settled the case against him. The attorney general’s office confirmed the settlement in a statement Saturday.
At a news conference announcing the lawsuit in 2020, James, a Democrat, accused the four defendants of using the NRA as a “personal piggy bank.”
None of the defendants has been criminally charged as part of James’ lawsuit.
Potential key moments
The defendants have collectively named 86 witnesses, a court filing shows. The plaintiffs named 36 witnesses, including former NRA higher-ups.
One of them is Oliver North, a former NRA president who was in a heated battle with LaPierre when he left the group in 2019. North had reportedly attempted to remove LaPierre from NRA leadership after he began investigating possible financial improprieties.
Another key witness for the plaintiffs is Chris Cox, the NRA’s longtime top lobbyist before he was pushed out of the group in 2019 amid leadership turmoil.
The testimonies from the two former NRA insiders, who have not yet spoken publicly, could reveal details that may be especially eye-opening to current NRA members, according to Justin Wagner, senior director of investigations with Everytown for Gun Safety, a national gun violence prevention nonprofit.
“This is a monumental moment in the organization’s history,” said Wagner, who is also a former prosecutor in the New York attorney general’s office.
“The main witnesses to the NRA’s mismanagement are adamant gun rights supporters,” he added. “I think those firsthand accounts will really be impactful at trial.”
The plaintiffs have asked for two hours to deliver their opening statements Monday, a court filing shows. The remarks come after failed attempts by the defendants to dismiss the lawsuit, change the court venue and countersue. The NRA also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
James initially set out to dissolve the NRA as part of her suit. However, Cohen dismissed that effort in 2022, saying her complaint “does not allege the type of public harm that is the legal linchpin for imposing the ‘corporate death penalty.’”
The lawsuit also targets the NRA as a whole. The organization has operated as a nonprofit charitable corporation in New York since 1871. Its assets are required by law to be used in a way that serves the interests of its membership and advances its charitable mission.
In the last few years, the NRA has been considerably weaker, with less influence in the political sphere and fewer members, Watts and Wagner said.
Membership fell to 4.2 million from nearly 6 million five years ago, The New York Times reported. Membership dues dropped by $14 million from 2021 to 2022, according to an audit filed as part of the lawsuit.
The NRA did not respond to a request for comment about the trial. In 2020, the group said in a statement that the lawsuit was a “baseless, premeditated attack” on the NRA and on Second Amendment freedoms.
LaPierre previously called the investigation an “unconstitutional, premeditated attack aiming to dismantle and destroy the NRA.”
In a statement Friday, a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office said they “look forward to proving our case and ensuring all charities in New York adhere to the rule of law.”
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.
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.”
You can bet on the Supreme Court’s abject partisanship
Happy new year! To start us off in 2024, I will look at the Supreme Court’s constitutional conundrum, pick the distinguished person of the week and share my thoughts on two movies.
What caught my eye
By any objective reading of the Constitution, four-times-indicted former president Donald Trump should be disqualified from holding office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court will have a hard time reversing the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision applying Section 3, but that doesn’t mean it won’t.
The president is undoubtedly an “officer” under Section 3. (That the word “officer” is used to refer to subordinate appointees in the appointments clause in the body of the Constitution is utterly irrelevant to its use more than 150 years later to protect the Union from former Confederates.) In any event, the phrase “hold any office” sweeps in the presidency. (As the Colorado Supreme Court noted: “The Constitution refers to the Presidency as an ‘Office’ twenty-five times.”)
The Colorado court’s evidentiary hearing also confirmed that Trump had “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same [the Constitution], or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” Its exacting discussion on pages 97-103 of its ruling reiterated that “the record amply established that the events of January 6 constituted a concerted and public use of force or threat of force by a group of people to hinder or prevent the U.S. government from taking the actions necessary to accomplish the peaceful transfer of power in this country. Under any viable definition, this constituted an insurrection.”
In addition, contrary to Trump apologists, there is no requirement in the text requiring a conviction before the disqualification. Had the framers intended to make that a precondition, they surely would have said so. (The conviction of former Confederates was not a required under Section 3.)
And finally, arguments that the 14th Amendment is not “self-executing” (i.e., requiring an act of Congress) are plain wrong. Individuals routinely bring suits directly under the due-process and equal-protection clauses of Section 1. As with Section 1, Congress may write enforcement legislation for Section 3, but none is necessary.
An honest originalist would be compelled to agree with the Colorado Supreme Court. Our democracy disallows certain candidates for president — e.g., foreign-born people, insurrectionists. As constitutional scholar Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” “I have got a colleague who’s a great young politician, Maxwell Frost. He’s 26. He can’t run for president. Now, would we say that that’s undemocratic? Well, that’s the rules of the Constitution. If you don’t like the rules of the Constitution, change the Constitution.” If the Constitution is to mean anything, originalists tell us, its text must be followed even if the outcome is politically dicey. (Certainly, allowing an insurrectionist back on the ballot to do it again would be more problematic.)
And yet, few expect the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority, so profoundly lacking in credibility, to follow Section 3’s clear mandate, any more than they expect Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself, given his wife’s alleged involvement in the coup plot. How, then, do the justices get out of doing what the Constitution says they must?
First, the Supreme Court could concoct some novel definition of “insurrection” so it can categorize the attempted coup as something less than the “insurrection” Section 3 requires. Despite the Colorado court’s ample historical research demonstrating that Trump’s action fits squarely within the word’s meaning, the right-wing justices could simply make up a new definition. I would not put it past them.
Second, the court could duck the case on the grounds that it lacks jurisdiction to contravene a state’s ruling on qualifications for a primary, essentially putting off a decision until Trump becomes the Republican nominee. That said, very few court watchers expect the majority would countenance a hodgepodge of conflicting rulings, with some states allowing him on the ballot and others not. (By the way, unleashing utter chaos among states is precisely what the court did on abortion, but this court is no model of consistency.)
Finally, a related argument would be that states alone have the duty to determine qualifications. The only federal role comes when Congress can challenge electors. “Under Article II, Section 1, each state is authorized to appoint presidential electors ‘in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct,’” Colorado’s Supreme Court noted. “Absent a separate constitutional constraint, then, states may exercise their plenary appointment power to limit presidential ballot access to those candidates who are constitutionally qualified to hold the office of President.” Those enamored with the (rejected) independent state legislature doctrine might agree, but I suspect this partisan majority will not allow any state to exclude Trump from the ballot.
Bottom line:
The partisan majority on the court could duck the question, deeming it premature or a matter for the states, thereby enraging their right-wing patrons, though that is highly unlikely. Alternatively, it could fashion a definition of insurrection to suit its purposes or blatantly defy Section 3’s clear language (e.g., invent a requirement for a criminal conviction). Right-wing justices’ contortions will confirm the utter lack of credibility that now defines the court.
Let's just say the Roberts Court will probably be looking to carve this thing down to the sliveriest sliver that anybody ever saw.
Did you ever play Mumbly Peg with a guy who was bound and determined to make you eat dirt? Yeah - kinda like that.
Conventional wisdom says Roberts has to protect the court's already-damaged public image. And maybe that's what carries the day, and we'll get a ruling that's "true to the Originalist view". Which means the 14th amendment stands as written, and Trump can't be president.
That's what makes the most sense to me. The trial court in Colorado found, on the facts, that Trump did engage in an insurrection, and left it to the CO Supreme Court (which affirmed the lower court's finding as to the facts) to decide on the law - that Section 3 of A14 means Trump can't be on the ballot.
My first guess is that they'll weasel their way into a 5-4 decision that "let's the voters decide".
I think Roberts would have to be that 4th vote on the dissenting side, which would pretty much tar him permanently as a Chief Justice In Name Only.
Supreme Court says it will decide if Trump qualifies for Colorado ballot
The Supreme Court said Friday it will decide whether former President Donald Trump’s name can appear on primary-election ballots, a case that ensures the justices will play a central role in shaping this year’s presidential election.
The decision to review the case from Colorado at oral argument in early February comes after that state’s top court disqualified the Republican frontrunner, finding Trump engaged in an insurrection before and during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Friday’s announcement puts the justices in a pivotal, potentially uncomfortable position with echoes of the court’s involvement in the 2000 election when its decision assured victory for President George W. Bush, polarized the nation and damaged the court’s reputation as an independent institution.
The court’s brief order scheduled oral argument for Feb. 8, and came the day before the third anniversary of the Capitol riot.
Legal scholars and state election officials have urged the court to quickly settle the question of Trump’s eligibility as a candidate and to ensure all states follow the same policy ahead of this year’s primary voting. Trump holds a wide lead over other Republican contenders, with the Iowa caucus less than two weeks away and state primaries starting Jan. 23.
The Colorado decision was the first time a court found a presidential candidate could be barred from the ballot because of a provision of the post-Civil War 14th Amendment. The provision prevents insurrectionists from holding office and was designed to keep Confederates from returning to power.
Aye there's the rub - the Thomas/Alito faction could bail on a "traditional originalist view" (I don't know what the fuck that might means, I just made it up - you think any of this is following any kinda logical pattern?).
Anyway, they push it all the way down to a decision not to make a decision, because the original intent of the authors of A14 was to bar Confederates from returning to Congress. It had nothing to do with a sitting POTUS. It doesn't apply.
Hey - ya heard it here first.
Similar arguments have been made to keep Trump off the ballot elsewhere. While those challenges have failed in some states, like Michigan and Minnesota, they are pending in Illinois, Oregon, Massachusetts and elsewhere. Maine’s top election official last month barred Trump from that state’s ballot, an order Trump has appealed in state court.
Both Colorado and Maine temporarily put their decisions to bar Trump as a candidate on hold, meaning the former president’s name will stay on the primary ballots until the legal issues are resolved. Colorado and Maine hold primaries on March 5, but ballots are printed — and mailed to military and overseas voters — weeks before then.
The public already views the Supreme Court through a partisan lens, with Democrats expressing little confidence in the court and Republicans saying the opposite, and the question of whether Trump should be kept off the ballot has the potential to further polarize those views.
“It throws them right into the political thicket,” Stanford law professor Michael W. McConnell said of the court. “There is no way they can decide the case without having about half the country think they are being partisan hacks.”
In part for that reason, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., an ardent institutionalist, is likely to look for consensus through a narrow ruling that seeks unanimity or avoids a partisan split on a court with a 6-3 conservative majority that includes three justices nominated by Trump.
Constitutional scholars are divided on whether it would be good for democracy to bar Trump from the ballot, or whether such a move, even if legally sound, is politically too dangerous. Many of them say they expect the justices to try to find a way to decide the case without addressing the underlying question of whether Trump engaged in insurrection.
The justices have several paths to resolve the case in a way that keeps Trump’s name on the ballot without dealing with the question of insurrection.
In urging the justices to invalidate the Colorado decision, and give voters the opportunity to select the candidate of their choosing, the former president’s lawyers and the Colorado Republican Party have made multiple arguments. States, they say, have no authority to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment without the passage of federal legislation. They also contend that Section 3 applies to those who took oaths to serve in Congress or a state legislature, but not to serve as president. In addition, Trump’s lawyers say he did not engage in an insurrection.
If a majority of justices agree with Trump on any one of those arguments, the court could allow the former president’s name to remain on the ballot.
Attorneys for the six Colorado voters who challenged Trump’s eligibility have said the Constitution’s language barring insurrectionists from office is clear; that it applies to presidents; and does not require an act of Congress to be enforced. They urged the justices in a filing Thursday to abide by the finding from Colorado’s top court that the former president intentionally incited his supporters to violence on Jan. 6, 2021, to disrupt the certification of the election — and exacerbated the attack while it was ongoing.
Of the nine sitting justices, only Justice Clarence Thomas was on the bench when the court issued its 2000 decision about the vote count in Florida in Bush v. Gore. But his colleagues are certainly mindful of the lasting impact the ruling had on the court’s image.
Years after she retired, the late Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, for one, expressed misgivings that the court had gotten involved in the case, acknowledging the ruling “gave the court a less than perfect reputation.”
“No doubt they have learned some lessons from that," said McConnell, a former federal appeals court judge. “They do not want to be in a position where they look like they’ve decided an American election.”
