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From CNN:

Former President Donald Trump and a right-wing lawyer were part of a "criminal conspiracy" to overturn the 2020 presidential election, the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot alleges in a court filing Wednesday.

The filing is part of an attempt to convince a judge to allow the panel access to emails from lawyer John Eastman, who is claiming attorney-client privilege. The committee said he helped to orchestrate the plot.

The filing is the most extensive release to date from the House's January 6 investigators as they try to obtain Eastman's emails -- and comes well before the House select committee releases its final report on its findings on Trump. House members have also signaled they may make a criminal referral to the Justice Department about Trump, depending on their findings, and the House's arguments Wednesday could be seen as a preview of a case that could be made by federal prosecutors.

In the 61-page court filing on Wednesday, lawyers for the House wrote: "Evidence and information available to the Committee establishes a good-faith belief that Mr. Trump and others may have engaged in criminal and/or fraudulent acts, and that Plaintiff's legal assistance was used in furtherance of those activities."

It would appear that the House Committee is inching closer to a criminal referral to Justice...

Alleged means there is a mountain of evidence.

This whole thing feels like an investigation into whether or not the sky is blue. We all observed it.

The only reason this is an investigation is because there are a ton of idiots in a cult claiming the sky is red.

Moksha wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 03, 2022 9:00 am

Alleged means there is a mountain of evidence.

Not necessarily, especially when dealing with politics. Alleged could mean weak evidence plus political innuendo against someone who has a good chance at winning in 2024, not to mention the chances of the republicans taking back Congress in 2022. Further, if they had the goods at this point, why not just make the criminal referral already? But, let's see what they find. Perhaps the walls are finally closing in after 6 years.

Dr Exiled wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 03, 2022 2:28 pm

Alleged could mean weak evidence plus political innuendo against someone who has a good chance at winning in 2024, not to mention the chances of the republicans taking back Congress in 2022.

Sounds like Murphy's Law regarding the perversity of the universe. I would like to think Americans had been paying attention to the news, but that gets obscured with all the noise. This would be a big boost for Putin.

Dr Exiled wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 03, 2022 2:28 pm

Moksha wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 03, 2022 9:00 am

Alleged means there is a mountain of evidence.

Not necessarily, especially when dealing with politics. Alleged could mean weak evidence plus political innuendo against someone who has a good chance at winning in 2024, not to mention the chances of the republicans taking back Congress in 2022. Further, if they had the goods at this point, why not just make the criminal referral already? But, let's see what they find. Perhaps the walls are finally closing in after 6 years.

Very good point. Just a couple of weeks ago we saw Durham outline a criminal conspiracy for which he has little, if any, evidence. We should view this with the same level of skepticism.

Res Ipsa wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 03, 2022 3:42 pm

Dr Exiled wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 03, 2022 2:28 pm

Not necessarily, especially when dealing with politics. Alleged could mean weak evidence plus political innuendo against someone who has a good chance at winning in 2024, not to mention the chances of the republicans taking back Congress in 2022. Further, if they had the goods at this point, why not just make the criminal referral already? But, let's see what they find. Perhaps the walls are finally closing in after 6 years.

Very good point. Just a couple of weeks ago we saw Durham outline a criminal conspiracy for which he has little, if any, evidence. We should view this with the same level of skepticism.

Of course.

The single most damning email exchange in the new January 6 committee filing

Buried in a court filing late Wednesday from the January 6 committee is an explosive email exchange between Greg Jacob, a top lawyer for then-Vice President Mike Pence, and John Eastman, a lawyer who was working with then-President Donald Trump's legal team, that absolutely nails the culpability of Eastman in the events of that terrible day.

The email exchange began on January 5, with Eastman attempting to push the idea that Pence had the constitutional authority to reject certain electors from swing states when the votes were counted in Congress the next day.

On January 6 at 12:14 pm ET, as it was becoming increasingly clear that there was a Trump-inspired riot brewing at the US Capitol, Jacob was unequivocal in his rejection of Eastman's theories.

"I have run down every legal trail placed before me to its conclusion, and I respectfully conclude that as a legal framework, it is a results-oriented position that you would never support if attempted by the opposition, and essentially entirely made up," Jacob wrote Eastman. "And thanks to your BS, we are now under siege."

To which Eastman responds: "The 'siege' is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so the American people can see for themselves what happened."

In his next response, Jacob drops the hammer: "The advice provided has, whether intended or not, functioned as a serpent in the ear of the President of the United States, the most powerful office in the entire world. And here we are."

Jacob went on:

"Respectfully, it was gravely, gravely irresponsible for you to entice the President with an academic theory that had no legal viability, and that you well know we would lose before any judge who heard and decided the case. And if the courts declined to hear it, I suppose it could only be decided in the streets. The knowing amplification of that theory through numerous surrogates, whipping large numbers of people into a frenzy over something with no chance of ever attaining legal force through actual process of law, has led us to where we are."

Yes, that's it exactly.

Eastman's infamous memo -- in which he outlined how Pence could overturn the Electoral College results -- was, as Jacob rightly noted, the stuff of debate in a law school class, maybe, but certainly not the framework on which an election should be decided.

And Jacob nails the role the memo -- and Eastman more generally -- played in the run-up to January 6. He handed a drowning man a rope. Trump, in the days and weeks after the election, was desperate to find something, anything that would allow him to make the case that a) he hadn't really lost and b) he could stay on as president.

It was during that same time period that Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to urge him to overturn the results. "All I want to do is this," Trump told Raffensperger. "I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state." Trump was engaged in similar pressure campaigns in other swing states as well.

What's so incredibly damning about the Jacob-Eastman email exchange is that the former is utterly convinced that the latter knows that what he is doing is wrong -- and is doing it anyway, with disastrous consequences for the party.

The image of Eastman as Iago pouring his poison in the ear of Trump's Othello is a powerful one. Especially when you consider that Jacob wasn't some lawyer working for Democrats. He was the chief counsel to the Republican vice president of the United States.

That fact makes his accusations against Eastman all the more powerful.

Eastman is going to go through some things.

Update:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/email-shows- ... 30774.html

The Washington Post and CNN reported Monday evening that the email, written by Trump campaign Georgia operations director Robert Sinners, instructed the fake electors to tell security at the state capitol that they had appointments with two state senators.

“I must ask for your complete discretion in this process,” Sinners wrote.

“Your duties are imperative to ensure the end result — a win in Georgia for President Trump — but will be hampered unless we have complete secrecy and discretion,” Sinners wrote.

The Post reported that the email was sent on Dec. 13, 2020, and instructed the electors not to “mention anything to do with Presidential Electors or speak to the media.”

Makes Trump’s call to Raffensperger to “find” 11,000 more votes a little clearer. -_-

- Doc