Chronicles of a Stillborn Zombie Coup

[L'Emmerdeur]

Fake court. Fake jury!! Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs (Oath Keepers leader and Oath Keepers Florida head respectively) found guilty of seditious conspiracy. Others guilty of obstruction of official proceedings.

'Oath Keepers Boss Stewart Rhodes Convicted in Jan. 6 Trial'

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes has been convicted of seditious conspiracy for planning an armed rebellion in an attempt to stop the electoral certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory over Donald Trump.

Rhodes, along with one other member of the far-right militia, was found guilty on Tuesday of the rare Civil War-era charge in the most significant trial yet over the Jan. 6 insurrection. In addition to the seditious conspiracy charge, he and several other defendants faced charges including conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging their duties.

[Svartalf]

Fake court and all that, but will they know the insides of a real prison?

[L'Emmerdeur]

There will be appeals of course. If they manage to get a Trumpist judge, righteousness will likely triumph--no prison. Barring that, if the bulbous sweaty one gets back in office he says he'll pardon the lot.

[Scot Dutchy]

Fake court and all that, but will they know the insides of a real prison?

Doubt it. With all the privileges they will have a good life; a nice bumboy, waited on hand and foot etc.
You know how corrupt America is.

[aufbahrung]

They are learning. Soon they will return and democracy might not triumph next time. In the fullness of human history fairplay has always been a rare thing in the upper echelons of power. Removing the pretence of the peoples right to choose which millionaire rules over them will hardly be a change from my jaundiced remaining eye. Open power struggles of the unelected elites made visible to all might even be a more open form of governance when all is said and done?

[L'Emmerdeur]

The January 6 Committee has referred multiple accusations of criminal acts by the former president to the US Dept. of Justice. Now Attorney General Garland can take his time considering them. Meanwhile, they've issued a batch of 'introductory material,' including an executive summary. About 100 pages of laying out the case, 50 pages of footnotes citing source material. Will no doubt get the same treatment as the Mueller report.

'Introductory Material to the Final Report of the Select Committee'

... Trump lawyers and supporters, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, Phil Waldron, and Michael Flynn, all invoked their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination when asked by the Select Committee what supposed proof they uncovered that the election was stolen. Not a single witness--nor any combination of witnesses--provided the Select Committee with evidence demonstrating that fraud occurred on a scale even remotely close to changing the outcome in any State.

[Brian Peacock]

So, now the US has the full account of the Jan 6 debacle when is it likely to see some real accountability?

I imagine the right wing thinktanks, their stooges and fellow travellers, will be peddling obfuscatory talking points about the report, recontextualising its text, and setting the narrative by Friday morning at the latest. And the non-wingnuts will set to debunking their claims and assertions, and in so doing make them the focus of the national debate.

To trend or not to trend, that is the question.

[L'Emmerdeur]

The full report of the committee is out. 800+ pages of it. I note that they didn't change the place-holder date of 'December 00, 2022' on the cover page.

'Final Report Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol'

Plenty of synopses available; take your pick. One example--

'What we learned from the January 6 committee report'

The committee laid out just how much effort Trump and his allies put into schemes to convince state and local officials to overturn the election. According to the report, “between the November election and the January 6th insurrection, President Trump or his inner circle engaged in at least 200 apparent acts of public or private outreach, pressure, or condemnation.”

This tally does not count other efforts by Trump campaign staffers to contact state legislators, which included efforts to contact 190 Republican elected officials just in Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan. The Trump campaign also put on a full-scale whip operation to organize its efforts to select fake electors and ensure they convened on December 14, when the Electoral College met, so they would have an alternate avenue to challenge the election results.

For a sense of how invested the former president personally was in his efforts, Trump tried to speak with Brad Raffensperger “at least 18 times” before that infamous January 2 phone call where he asked the Georgia secretary of state “to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”

[BarnettNewman]

Not sure what the military bods were thinking here - would officers on the ground be swayed by their commander-in-cheif making a TV appeal for representatives to be taken into protective custody and driven to a secret location for their own protection etc, counter to the orders of their immediate superiors? Wouldn't something like that have to be organised well in advance? Are they admitting that Trump could/would have abused the chain of command and already had something in place?

In the absence of further explanation it all seems a bit conspiratorial to me.

Whatever the explanation, most excuses for people’s behaviour on Jan 06 only makes them look worse.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Tero]

[Tero]

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Greg Locke, a far-right Christian nationalist pastor in Tennessee who has railed against COVID-19 restrictions and supported Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election, prayed for a power outage during a protest against a drag performance in Knoxville on Thursday evening.

“I pray that when that show starts tonight, the electricity would turn itself off, and the sound would glitch, and the lights would go out, and it would be such a debacle that this theater in Tennessee would recognize we should have shut this thing down long before we even got to this point,” Locke said, as his street sermon across the street from the Tennessee Theatre reached a fevered crescendo.

[Brian Peacock]

[Tero]

CNN
—
Two busloads of migrants were dropped off in front of Vice President Kamala Harris’ residence in Washington, DC, on Christmas Eve in 18 degree weather, a law enforcement source told CNN. The source said there was no one from any organization or aid group on the ground to receive them in front of the Naval Observatory, where the vice president’s home is located.

[Brian Peacock]

Wrong thread Tero.

[L'Emmerdeur]

The January 6 committee has posted the report in a more accessible format, and includes an interactive timeline of the Trumpist attack on the US Capitol.

Final Report

Timeline