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Jack Smith Asks for Three Weeks

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Jack Smith just requested and got a consent motion to file a status report “or otherwise inform” Judge Tanya Chutkan of what they’re going to do with the January 6 case.

As a result of the election held on November 5, 2024, the defendant is expected to be certified as President-elect on January 6, 2025, and inaugurated on January 20, 2025. The Government respectfully requests that the Court vacate the remaining deadlines in the pretrial schedule to afford the Government time to assess this unprecedented circumstance and determine the appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy. By December 2, 2024, the Government will file a status report or otherwise inform the Court of the result of its deliberations. The Government has consulted with defense counsel, who do not object to this request.

If that “otherwise inform” is a report, it would be done in plenty of time for Dick Durbin to hold a hearing.

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When Special Counsels Finish Up, They Must Write Reports

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A bunch of outlets are reporting that, given Trump’s election, Jack Smith is in discussions about how to wind down the two cases against Trump

“Oh, it’s so easy. It’s so easy,” Trump said when asked by conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt whether he would “pardon yourself” or “fire Jack Smith” if reelected.

“I would fire him within two seconds,” Trump said.

The discussions between Smith and DOJ leadership are expected to last several days.

Justice Department officials are looking at options for how to wind down the two criminal cases while also complying with a 2020 [sic] memo from the department’s Office of Legal Counsel about indictments or prosecutions of sitting presidents.

They’re not mentioning a fairly obvious detail. According to governing regulations, when a Special Counsel finishes his work, he must write a report to the Attorney General.

Closing documentation. At the conclusion of the Special Counsel’s work, he or she shall provide the Attorney General with a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions reached by the Special Counsel.

So if Smith is totally done, he has to write a report.

These reports that Smith is engaged in these discussions come as Bill Barr and others are yapping their mouths about Smith simply dismissing the cases. By telling the press that Smith is already working on shutting down the cases, Smith pre-empts any effort from Trump to offer another solution — and does so before Trump files his response to the immunity brief on November 21.

In other words, this may be no more than an effort to get one more bite at the apple, to describe what Smith found, which would be particularly important if there are still undisclosed aspects of the case, as I suggested there might be.

Where things get interesting, though, is Trump’s co-conspirators, people like Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon. Those guys could be prosecuted, as Roger Stone was after Mueller finished up. Trump would order his Attorney General to dismiss the cases — they’re never going to be prosecuted. But it would impose a political cost right at the beginning of his administration.

Update: NYT’s version of this notes that they are trying to preserve the appeal in the 11th Circuit. Of course Walt Nauta is still on that appeal.

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Trump Sold Grievance and America Liked What He Was Selling

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Once Trump got everyone hooked on his grievance drug, Merrick Garland was never going to make a difference.

I have tried, over and over, to explain how the investigation into Trump and his co-conspirators proceeded. More recently, I’ve explained how you couldn’t have charged Trump with insurrection — the only thing that would have disqualified him from running — until after May 2023, and had Jack Smith done so, it would have ended up exactly where we are here, with John Roberts delaying everything until after the election.

No effort to explain the process — the two years of exploiting phones, the months of January 6 Committee delay, the ten months of privilege fights, the month Elon Musk stole, or the eight months John Roberts bought Trump — none of that has mattered, of course. People needed an explanation for their own helplessness and Merrick Garland was the sparkle pony they hoped would save them.

But nothing Merrick Garland would have done would have mattered anyway.

That’s because since January 2017, since Trump learned that Mike Flynn had been caught undermining sanctions on the phone with Sergey Kislyak, Trump has used every effort to hold him accountable as a vehicle to sell grievance.

This is the core premise of the Ball of Thread podcast I’ve been doing with LOLGOP.

Rather than being grateful when learning that FBI was investigating four of his close campaign advisors had monetized their access to him — rather than imagining himself as the victim of the men who snuck off and met with Russian spies — Trump made himself the victim of the FBI. He invented a claim he was wiretapped, and then kept inventing more and more such false claims. And then he (possibly on the advice of Paul Manafort, whose associate Oleg Deripaska funded HUMINT before the Democrats did) used the dossier as stand-in for the real Russian investigation. It wasn’t the Coffee Boy yapping him mouth that led to the investigation into those trying to monetize access, this false story tells, it was the dossier Russia filled with disinformation, a guaranteed way to discredit the investigation. Once you convince people of the lie that the FBI really did investigate a candidate based off such a flimsy dossier, it becomes easy to target all those involved, along the way gutting the Russian expertise at FBI.

Then Bill Barr came in and used the authority of the Attorney General to lie about what the investigation found; almost no media outlets have revisited the findings once it became clear that Barr didn’t even bother learning what the report said. While trying to kill Zombie Mueller — the parts of the investigation that remained after Mueller finished — Barr’s DOJ literally altered documents in an attempt to put Joe Biden at the genesis of the investigation into Donald Trump, yet another attempt to replace the actual investigation, the Coffee Boy and campaign manager and National Security Advisor and personal lawyer and rat-fucker who were found to have lied to cover up the 2016 Russian operation, with a storytale in which Democrats are the villains.

John Durham never bothered to learn what the report actually said either. Had he done so, it would have been far harder to criminalize Hillary Clinton for being a victim of a hack-and-leak operation, along the way taking out still more expertise on Russia.

And while Barr was criminalizing people, he followed Rudy’s chase for dick pics in an effort to criminalize Hunter Biden and his father.

Do you see the genius of this con, Donald Trump’s most successful reality TV show ever?

Vast swaths of America, including at least half the Supreme Court, and millions of working class voters, really believe that he — the guy who asked Russia to hack his opponent some more — was the victim.

And that’s how a billionaire grifter earns the trust of the working guy.

For the most part, the press just played along, repeating Trump’s claims of victimhood as if they were true.

It’s also the problem in thinking that if only Trump faces legal consequences, he’ll go away, he’ll be neutralized.

We saw this every time he faced justice. The first impeachment. The second one. The New York trials. Each time, his grievance became a loyalty oath. Each time, he sucked more and more Republicans into the con. Each time he made them complicit.

The hatred of and for Trump by Rule of Law is what made him strong, because he used it to — ridiculously!! — place himself into the role of the little guy, the target of those mean elites.

We’ll have decades, maybe, to understand why Trump resoundingly won yesterday. Some of it is inflation (and the unrebutted claims it is bigger than it is), which makes working people angry at the elites, people they might imagine are the same people persecuting Trump.

For many, though, it’s the appeal of vengeance.

Trump has spent nine years spinning a tale that he has reason to wreak vengeance on Rule of Law. The greatest con he ever pulled.

So even if DOJ had charged Trump, two months before Merrick Garland was confirmed (though all three of the charges people imagine would be easy — incitement, the call to Brad Raffensperger, and the fake electors plot — have been unsuccessful in other legal venues), even if DOJ had convicted Trump along with the earliest crime scene defendant in March 2022, even if Trump hadn’t used the very same means of delay he used successfully, which would have still stalled the case past yesterday’s election, it still wouldn’t have disqualified him from running.

It still would be the centerpiece of his manufactured tale of grievance.

It still would be one of the elements he uses to make working people think he’s just like them.

You will only defeat Trumpism by destroying that facade of victimhood. And you will not achieve meaningful legal victories until you do that first.

I know we all need an easy way to explain this — an easy culprit for why this happened.

But it’s not Merrick Garland, because years before he came on the scene, Trump had already convinced everyone that any attempt to hold him accountable was just another attempt by corrupt powers to take him down.

Trump sold the country on grievance and victimhood. And in the process he made half the country hate Rule of Law.

Update: This is a good summary of how Trump lures in people attracted to grievance.

The Republican Party has been the party of the Low-Trust voter for a very long time. It’s the party that wants to get rid of institutions, of any of the bonds that connect us all together. The Democratic Party is the party of institutions, the party of Good Governance. It’s the party of trusting other Americans to make good choices for you. There is very little that the Democrats can do to appeal to the Low-Trust voter, and you saw what that means for the future of our politics last night. I would go so far as to say that we’re seeing the effects of a realignment of what partisanship is. The GOP is the party of the perpetual outsider and the Low-Trust voter, the people calling for things to be torn down. The Democrats are the insiders, the institutionalists. That’s why you saw realignment of people like Liz Cheney and Vermont Governor Phil Scott, people who still think the government matters even if they disagree on how it should be doing things.

I don’t know what you can do to win back the Low-Trust voters.

[snip]

I don’t know how you build back trust in the government. Things like FEMA in disasters are supposed to be able to do that, but the post-hurricane situation in North Carolina, where outside agitators went in to try to destroy that trust, and people on the Internet went out of their way to spread lies about how the Federal government had abandoned Asheville, are just examples of how everything can be used to pop out more Low-Trust voters.

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Jack Smith’s Delicate Treatment of BadgerPundit Kenneth Chesebro

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As I’ve said a few times, when I was hunting for Lee Chatfield, I found Kenneth Chesebro.

There is a transcript in the mostly sealed Appendix I to Jack Smith’s immunity brief that must be Chesebro’s. Several passages describing events in which Chesebro was involved cite a transcript, spanning from roughly GA 97 to GA 103, that appears between Lee Chatfield and probable Pat Cipollone transcripts (GA 55-56 is someone whose name appears alphabetically between Bowers and Cannon; this may be Trump campaign staffer Michael Brown).

On December 16, [Chesebro] traveled to Washington with a group of private attorneys who had done work for the defendant’s Campaign in Wisconsin for a photo opportunity with the defendant in the Oval Office.315

[snip]

Later that morning, [Chesebro] worked with another attorney for the defendant, who contacted a U.S. Senator to ask him to obtain the fraudulent Wisconsin and Michigan documents from the U.S. Representative’s office and hand-deliver them to the Vice President.408

315 Documentary evidence, Presidential Daily Diary, GA 100-101

408 Documentary evidence, GA 55-56, GA 102-103, Chris Hodgson [Compare to full transcript]

That would mean that this section, which suggests the co-conspirators deliberately lied to fake electors, is sourced partly to Chesebro too (GA 517-518 is part of an at least 6-page section describing the fake elector involvement of someone whose name appears alphabetically between Raffensperger and Scavino, which hypothetically could be Mike Roman, but nothing marks it as necessarily him).

In practice, the fraudulent elector plan played out somewhat differently in each targeted state. In general, the co-conspirators deceived the defendant’s elector nominees in the same way that the defendant and [Eastman] deceived [Ronna McDaniel] by falsely claiming that their electoral votes would be used only if ongoing litigation were resolved in the defendant’s favor.282

282 Documentary evidence, GA 97-98, GA 517-518.

It’s not terribly surprising that Jack Smith got an interview with Chesebro. After all, Chesebro made a great show of cooperating in various state investigations — at a minimum, Georgia, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan, as CNN laid out last December. But as CNN also reported, the veracity of his testimony came into question by February, when CNN caught Chesebro covering up a Twitter account he had.

So Jack Smith appears to have gotten an interview with Chesebro, but Chesebro may not be terribly reliable.

Perhaps for that reason, there are a great many things involving Chesebro that are not sourced to that transcript. Chesebro’s plotting about the fake electors plot, for example, is always sourced to the documents themselves.

More interestingly, this passage — describing that Chesebro followed Trump’s public instructions to go to DC, but also describing that he collected copies of the fake Michigan and Wisconsin elector certificates and handed them off to Congressman Mike Kelly — is sourced entirely to documentary evidence.

Meanwhile, [Chesebro] who had traveled to Washington as directed by the defendant’s public messages, obtained duplicate originals of the fraudulent certificates signed by the defendant’s fraudulent electors in Michigan and Wisconsin, which they believed had not been delivered by mail to the President of the Senate or Archivist.389 [Chesebro] received these duplicates from Campaign staff and surrogates, who flew them to Washington at private expense.390 He then hand-delivered them to staffers for a U.S. Representative at the Capitol as part of a plan to deliver them to Pence for use in the certification proceeding.391

Similarly, the description of Chesebro’s participation in the mob is sourced exclusively to documentary evidence.

Among these was [Chesebro] who had attended the defendant’s speech from the Washington Monument, marched with the crowd to the Capitol, and breached the restricted area surrounding the building.449

There’s a problem with Chesebro’s testimony on this point, of course: If he ferried fake elector certificates, then he wasn’t responding to Trump’s public tweeting about January 6. He was responding to the instructions of other plotters.

Which makes the way Smith sourced this passage, describing a December 16 meeting with Trump that Reince Priebus also attended, more interesting.

On December 16, [Chesebro] traveled to Washington with a group of private attorneys who had done work for the defendant’s Campaign in Wisconsin for a photo opportunity with the defendant in the Oval Office.315 During the encounter, the defendant complained about Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice [Brian Hagedorn] who two days earlier had cast the deciding vote in rejecting the defendant’s election challenge in the state.316 As the group was leaving, the defendant spoke directly—and privately—to [Chesebro]. 317 As late as early January, the conspirators attempted to keep the full nature of the fraudulent elector plan secret. On January 3, for instance, in a private text message exchange, [Boris Epshteyn] wrote to [Chesebro] “Careful with your texts on text groups. No reason to text things about electors to anyone but [Eastman] and me.” [Chesebro] responded, “K,” and followed up, “I’m probably a bit paranoid haha.” [Epshteyn] wrote, “A valuable trait!”318

315 Documentary evidence plus Chesebro

316 Probably Reince Priebus

317 Probably Reince Priebus

318 Documentary evidence

That is, Smith relies on Chesebro for the claim that this meeting was a photo op. But he doesn’t include Chesebro’s claims about what he said privately to Trump; he relies solely on what is likely Reince Priebus witnessing, but not participating in, that conversation.

Rather than describing what Chesebro claimed he and Trump said to each other, Smith relies on what Chesebro told another lawyer (likely Jim Troupis), afterwards. As soon as Chesebro saw Trump’s tweet announcing the January 6 rally, he texted someone else and boasted that “we” had a “unique understanding” of Trump’s December 19 Tweet calling people to DC.

The defendant first publicly turned his sights toward January 6 in the early morning hours of December 19. At 1:42 a.m., the defendant posted on Twitter a copy of a report falsely alleging fraud and wrote, ““. . . Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”319 When [Chesebro] learned about the Tweet, he sent a link about it to another of the Wisconsin attorneys who had met with the defendant in the Oval Office on December 16 and wrote, “Wow. Based on 3 days ago, I think we have unique understanding of this.”320

319 Trump tweet

320 Documentary evidence

Chesebro has testified about the December 16 meeting. TPM got his testimony to Michigan prosecutors. He described to them that he told Trump that the real deadline for certification was January 6.

Chesebro traveled to Washington to meet with Trump on Dec. 16 alongside a coterie of other Trump campaign attorneys.

Three years later, in the interview with Michigan prosecutors, Chesebro recalled the meeting with Trump: “The marching orders were, don’t say anything that would make [Trump] feel more positive than he did at the beginning of the meeting.”

He did not follow that advice. Chesebro told prosecutors that he began to speak with Trump after listening to the President talk on speakerphone with Newt Gingrich about something to do with Georgia voting machines. Then, the conversation turned to Trump’s chances in Arizona.

Chesebro did exactly what he had been told not to do: give Trump a sense of hope. He recalled telling Trump that the “real deadline” was Jan. 6. He was later admonished by former White House chief of staff Reince Preibus because, as Chesebro put it later to prosecutors, “the vibe that I had given him was some ground for optimism.”

Chesebro himself compared the meeting to a widely reported and infamous late-night encounter, two days later on Dec. 18, between Trump, Sidney Powell, former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, and the White House counsel’s office, saying that it was “sort of unauthorized.”

If Chesebro reliably told Jack Smith the same thing, it might strengthen the obstruction case. As it is, Jack Smith argues that the riot happened, Trump did nothing to stop it, and then he opportunistically targeted Mike Pence as his mob was hunting him down. He stops well short of saying he summoned the mob to overrun Congress.

Chesebro’s apparent unreliability may be preventing Jack Smith from taking the next step, showing that Trump heard from Chesebro on December 16 that there was still one more step to certification on January 6, which led him — less than three days later — to summon his mob. But if Chesebro’s testimony were more reliable, then he would not simultaneously be explaining that he ferried a second set of fake Michigan and Wisconsin certificates to DC but also simply showed up on January 6 in response to Trump’s Tweets. And it might change the import of the way he shadowed Alex Jones.

Still, as it is, Chesebro is central to the continued viability of 18 USC 1512(c)(2) and (k) charges. Under Fischer, there must be an evidentiary component to the obstruction charge. And in Chesebro, you have the sole member of the conspiracy who joined the mob on January 6 having earlier ferried fake elector certificates to members of Congress in hopes that Mike Pence would use the certificates to throw out Joe Biden’s votes.

If this ever goes to trial, Chesebro’s role — and possible testimony — may be key. But thus far, at least, it doesn’t appear that his testimony is reliable enough to build the case on.

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How to Read the Immunity Appendix

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I’m still working through a deeper dive of the appendix to his immunity brief that Jack Smith released on Friday.

But I thought I’d share how I’m reading it, as I’ll need to refer back to that when I write up some of the interesting things I’ve found.

The appendix was released in four volumes:

Volume I: GA 1 through GA 722

Volume II: GA 723 through GA 965

Volume III GA 968 through GA 1503

Volume IV: GA 1503 through GA 1885

There are also a bunch of GA 1900 references in the immunity brief; those are to video and other multimedia, but we don’t get them.

But what we’ve got may be better understood in sections:

GA 1 through at least GA 653: Most of Volume I consists of interview transcripts arranged in alphabetical order, Barr to Wren, in what is visible. Once you understand that that section is in alpha order, it helps to substantiate whether citations in the immunity brief are to one or another person. For example, it seems highly likely that the GA 97 to 102 range is Kenneth Chesebro, because citations to those pages describe stuff he was involved with, and those pages appear between the visible Rusty Bowers and Justin Clark sections, and after material that must be from Georgia Attorney General Christopher Carr and former MI House Speaker Lee Chatfield. I’ll return to both Chesebro and Chatfield tomorrow.

These transcripts are generally truncated, including just the pages necessary to substantiate the material in the brief — though there are transcripts in there, such as that of Ronna Not-Romney McDaniel in the GA 323 to GA 342 range, that cover the full range of activities in which she played a part.

There are people, like former MI Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, whose only citations are to January 6 transcripts (and so are visible). There are far more people (like Chatfield, Chesebro, and McDaniel) whose only citations are to DOJ interviews, so are sealed. But some people, starting from Bill Barr, have citations to both J6C and DOJ transcripts. In general, the DOJ transcripts appear to come after the J6C ones (though I’m not sure that’s the case with Jason Miller).

GA 654 through GA 722: The balance of the first volume may also be transcripts, but it’s not in obvious order. Although one or several Eric Herschmann interviews appear from around GA 190 through GA 238 in the alpha order section, a great deal of GA 654 through GA 722 is also Herschmann-related material (including the blacked out pages starting at GA 709). There’s a lot of Herschmann in this brief, and I thought prosecutors did a less compelling job of explaining why those were unofficial than the Mike Pence material.

I had considered whether this section consists of more sensitive files, and it may. But it’s not the sensitivity I first considered: that of Executive Privilege (or grand jury versus interview transcripts). Mike Pence’s interviews appear starting at least by GA 413, between the visible Jason Miller and Katrina Pierson transcripts.

GA 723 through GA 771: The first 50 pages of Volume II are from the President’s Daily Diary, which documents all of the President’s calls and meetings. That the section tracked calls involving Trump was already evident from this footnote, which substantiates Steve Bannon’s near-daily phone calls with Trump resuming in mid-December:

And footnote 546 identifies GA 742 as PDD explicitly.

GA 772 to GA 965: The rest of that volume is Tweets and other social media, by Trump and by others. One interesting aspect of this volume is the type of Tweet. For example, it appears prosecutors attempted to include both the legal process version and the screen cap of all of Trump’s Tweets, but they don’t always do that. Trump’s RTs, in particular, appear to have been difficult to reproduce; remember that, because Trump’s account was suspended, there were some difficulties in reconstituting parts of it. There’s a bunch obtained from the Trump Twitter archive, suggesting they may not have been preserved at Twitter. There’s also just the text of the Mike Pence courage Tweet and his “sacred landslide” Tweet, which may come from a dump of the phone (and serve to substantiate that it was written with that phone). And there are a bunch of what appear to be text versions of Trump’s Tweets or Team Trump disseminations of them, the latter of which prosecutors point to to substantiate their argument that these are campaign, as opposed to Presidential, Tweets. If this ever goes to trial, how these got used will often say as much as the actual content included.

The other two volumes provide all the other kinds of backup to the immunity brief, largely documentary evidence.

This documentation generally follows the structure of the immunity brief itself, though obviously there’s a lot of overlap, particularly between Trump’s pressure on state parties and his fake elector plot. That may explain why prosecutors broke the Volumes where they did.

In addition to some random stuff (not included in my table), Volume III has the state-focused evidence.

GA 966 to GA 999: Forming the conspiracy

GA 1000 to GA 1236: Pressuring states to help deceive

GA 1245 to GA 1502: Fake Electors plot

Volume IV picks up from the effort to pressure Pence to throw out the votes and includes January 6. But it also includes a bunch of things — like campaign advertising and funding records — in there to substantiate an argument that Trump was acting in his role as a candidate, not as President.

GA 1503 to GA1663: Pressure Pence

GA 1664 to GA 1684: January 6

GA 1685 to GA 1869: Prove this is Unofficial

So Volume III and IV both have the same type of evidence: documentary backup. But rather than showing what happened, there’s a part of Volume IV that aspires to show that what happened amounted to campaign activity.

With that as a framework, one can figure out almost all of what is in the appendix in sealed form, based off the footnotes. And while none of the good stuff — the dickish comments Mike Roman made while on a conference call trying to tamp down a revolt from Pennsylvania’s fake electors, for example — are unsealed in the appendix, those two pages of text messages that appear at GA 1407 and 1408 do appear in the text itself.

We can’t see most of what’s in the appendix. But understanding how it works does provide some insight about the investigation.

Update: Corrected post to reflect beginning of Volume II as entries from the Presidential Daily Diary.

Witnesses

Update: Here’s a list of my best guesses for the interviews included in Volume I. I’m fairly certain about the identity of the people listed here; I’m fair less certain about where they begin and end. I’ve bolded the people I’m pretty certain have both sealed and unsealed content. I’ve italicized the people who, I think, have only unsealed content. The rest have just sealed content.

This is very rough!!!

GA 2-6: A cop who will testify about the riot.

GA 7-13: Bill Barr, sealed and unsealed.

GA 15: A Chapman/Shirkey related witness.

GA 20: Rusty Bowers.

GA 55-56: A lawyer who worked with Chesebro to deliver fake certificates.

GA 58-59: Probably Alex Cannon, testifying to the quasi campaign role Herschmann had.

GA 62-67: GA Attorney General Christopher Carr.

GA 70-82: Former MI Speaker of the House Lee Chatfield.

GA 97-103: Kenneth Chesebro.

GA 105-122: Pat Cipollone, testifying about things he wasn’t involved in, as well as efforts to get Trump to do something on January 6.

GA 126-?: Justin Clark has both sealed and sealed content. His testimony may extend to where Kellyanne Conway’s begins.

GA 160: Kellyanne Conway. [May be an unsealed only.]

GA 164-5: A fake elector.

GA 166: White House valet.

GA 170: Ruby Freeman.

GA 173: Details of the targeting of PA electors.

GA 175: Details of the riot; possibly Pence’s Secret Service.

GA 180: Stephanie Grisham.

GA 184-189: WI Supreme Court Judge Hagedorn.

GA 190: Vincent Haley, testifying about adding attacks on Pence back into speech.

GA 194 – ??: Where Eric Herschmann begins and ends is tough to tell, but it’s roughly from GA 194 through GA 238.

GA 246-259: Hope Hicks.

GA 261: Chris Hodgson.

GA 266: Greg Jacob. It’s unclearhow much of this is Jacob, but at least through 283.

GA 295-296: Chris Krebs.

GA 297: Amy Kremer.

GA 310-319: Nick Luna.

GA 320: Tom Marino (he dropped off as a fake elector in PA).

GA 323 through 359: It’s unclear how much of this is Ronna McDaniel, but her testimony covers a range of topics.

GA 361 to 368: Mark Meadows. This may go further.

GA 374 until around 397: Jason Miller.

GA 399-406: The then SAC of the Washington Field Office Secret Service office.

GA 405-406: This may be Stephen Miller (in which case the SAC’s last name is Miller too).

GA 411-467: It’s unclear where Mike Pence begins and ends (and where Pat Philbin begins, but something like this.

GA 476: Pat Philbin.

GA 481: Katrina Pierson.

GA 488-495: Fake elector.

GA 497-501: I think this is Reince Priebus.

GA 513: Brad Raffensperger.

GA 517-523: Fake electors.

GA 525-541: Dan Scavino.

GA 550-551: Al Schmidt.

GA 553-578: Mike Shirkey.

GA 578-588: Marc Short.

GA 600: There may be a senior campaign advisor besides Bill Stepien in here.

GA 609: Bill Stepien. [If there is sealed testimony, it may only be a page.]

GA 616-633: Larry Tabas.

GA 634-642: Ross Worthington.

GA 643: Caroline Wren.

After Wren, there may be someone who was involved in calls to Doug Ducey.

 

 

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Trump’s GOP Is Running on a Platform of Freeing Seditionists and Cop Assailants

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I’m halfway done my first review of the materials Jack Smith released today.

All of us who have followed this have concluded there’s not any new news (though the presentation of it reveals certain things about Smith’s investigation).

So why did Trump’s lawyers wail and wail about releasing these materials before the election?

Just days ago, after all, Trump’s lawyers argued that releasing these materials would alter the election.

It may be this:

As the appendix documents, on March 11, 2024, Trump posted to Truth Social that, along with closing the border and DRILL, BABY, DRILL, his first priority, Day One, was to free the seditionists and cop assailants who had fought for him on January 6.

Prosecutors cited that post to support their argument that Trump ratified the violence that day.

As the Government identified in its Rule 404(b) notice, ECF No. 174-1 at 8-9, the Government will introduce some of the defendant’s numerous statements that post-date his time as President in which he has blamed Pence and approved of the actions of his supporters who breached the Capitol and obstructed the certification proceeding,722 thus providing evidence of his intent on January 6.

The defendant’s endorsement of the violent actions of his supporters on January 6, and his sentiment that they were justified in threatening Pence—all made while the defendant was a private citizen after the end of his term in office—are probative of his intent during the charged conspiracies.

722 See, e.g., GA 1970 at 17:37 (Video of Trump Interview 07/10/2021); GA 1926 at 1:15:30 (Video of Conroe Rally 01/29/2022); GA 1971 at 15:51, 16:42 (Video of Trump Interview 02/01/2022): GA 1962 at 48:29 (Video of Trump at Faith and Freedom Coalition 06/17/2022); GA 1966 at 09:30 (Video of Trump Interview 09/01/2022); GA 1973 at 43:07 (Video of Waco Rally 03/25/2023); GA 1694 (Transcript of CNN Town Hall 05/10/2023); GA 1964 (Video of Trump Campaign Statement 2024); GA 1967 at 45:18 (Video of Trump Interview 08/23/2023); GA 1965 at 56:10, 57:11 (Video of Trump Interview on Meet the Press 09/17/2023); GA 1935 at 35:50, 01:16:16 (Video of Greensboro Rally 03/02/2024); GA 967 (Donald J. Trump Truth Social Post 03/11/2024); Isaac Arnsdorf and Maeve Reston, 7rump claims violence he inspired on Jan. 6 was Pence’s fault, WASH. PostT, (Mar. 13, 2023, 8:09 p-m.), https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/13/trump-pence-iowa/. [my emphasis]

The GOP candidate for President has a criminal docket. And in that criminal docket, today, the government included a post promising to free seditionists and cop-assailants with the same urgency with which Donald Trump promises to close the border. “My first acts,” the GOP standard-bearer stated, would include freeing the people who assaulted the Capitol on January 6.

This was the proposal back in March, one of the first things Trump did after Nikki Haley conceded. And since that time, the entire GOP has fallen into line behind that plan.

The Republican Party’s candidate for President is running on a platform of freeing cop assailants and seditionists.

There’s nothing new in this appendix. But that post does clarify things considerably.

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Jack Smith’s Appendix

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Sorry it has taken me so long to post the appendix to Jack Smith’s immunity briefing. The four sections are here:

Volume I

Volume II

Volume III

Volume IV

There’s virtually nothing new here. Trump’s temper tantrum was little more than a public wail that if people saw already-public documents about his plotting to run fake electors, it would swing the election.

That said, there are a few things we can confirm from the structure of all this, which I’ll write up over the weekend.

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Jack Smith Takes Up the Aid and Abet Theory Endorsed by Judge Amit Mehta in 2022

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Back in February 2022, 32 months ago, think I was the only one who made much of Judge Amit Mehta’s ruling that Trump might plausibly be on the hook for abetting the assaults of cops at the Capitol on January 6.

Halberstam v. Welch remains the high-water mark of the D.C. Circuit’s explanation of aiding-and-abetting liability. The court there articulated two particular principles pertinent to this case. It observed that “the fact of encouragement was enough to create joint liability” under an aiding-and-abetting theory, but “[m]ere presence . . . would not be sufficient.” 705 F.2d at 481. It also said that “[s]uggestive words may also be enough to create joint liability when they plant the seeds of action and are spoken by a person in an apparent position of authority.” Id. at 481–82. A “position of authority” gives a “suggestion extra weight.” Id. at 482.

Applying those principles here, Plaintiffs have plausibly pleaded a common law claim of assault based on an aiding-and-abetting theory of liability. A focus just on the January 6 Rally Speech—without discounting Plaintiffs’ other allegations—gets Plaintiffs there at this stage. President Trump’s January 6 Speech is alleged to have included “suggestive words” that “plant[ed] the seeds of action” and were “spoken by a person in an apparent position of authority.” He was not “merely present.” Additionally, Plaintiffs have plausibly established that had the President not urged rally-goers to march to the Capitol, an assault on the Capitol building would not have occurred, at least not on the scale that it did. That is enough to make out a theory of aiding-and-abetting liability at the pleadings stage.

I noted at the time that Judge Mehta — whose ruling on Trump’s susceptibility to lawsuit for actions taken as a candidate would largely be adopted in the DC Circuit’s opinion on the topic — was presiding over a number of the key assault cases where the since-convicted defendants described being called to DC or ordered to march to the Capitol by Trump before they started beating the shit out of some cops.

He also presided over the Oath Keeper cases.

That’s interesting background to Jack Smith’s response to Trump’s supplement to his motion to dismiss his indictment.

As I expected, Smith noted that Trump’s frivolous supplement didn’t even mention the language in the superseding indictment alleging that Trump willfully created false evidence.

Beyond that critical flaw, the defendant’s supplement ignores entirely that the superseding indictment includes allegations that involve the creation of false evidence. As construed by Fischer, Section 1512(c)(1) covers impairment of records, documents, or objects by altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing them, and Section 1512(c)(2) covers the impairment (or attempted impairment) of records, documents, and objects by other means—such as by “creating false evidence.” 144 S. Ct. at 2185-86 (citing United States v. Reich, 479 F.3d 179 (2d Cir. 2007) (Sotomayor, J.)). In Reich, for example, the defendant was convicted under Section 1512(c)(2) after he forged a court order and sent it to an opposing party intending to cause (and in fact causing) that party to withdraw a mandamus petition then pending before an appellate court. 479 F.3d at 183, 185-87. Just as the defendant in Reich violated Section 1512(c)(2) by “inject[ing] a false order into ongoing litigation to which he was a party,” id. at 186, the superseding indictment alleges that the defendant and his co-conspirators created fraudulent electoral certificates that they intended to introduce into the congressional proceeding on January 6 to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. See ECF No. 226 at ¶¶ 50-66.

That’s the primary reason I didn’t even treat Trump’s filing with much attention: it ignored how differently situated Trump is than the Fischer defendants.

But I’m most interested in the way Smith rebuts Trump’s argument that he bears no responsibility for the riots at the Capitol. He adopts that same aid and abet theory that Judge Mehta endorsed back in 2022.

Contrary to the defendant’s claim (ECF No. 255 at 7) that he bears no factual or legal responsibility for the “events on January 6,” the superseding indictment plainly alleges that the defendant willfully caused his supporters to obstruct and attempt to obstruct the proceeding by summoning them to Washington, D.C., and then directing them to march to the Capitol to pressure the Vice President and legislators to reject the legitimate certificates and instead rely on the fraudulent electoral certificates. See, e.g., ECF No. 226 at ¶¶ 68, 79, 82, 86-87, 94. Under 18 U.S.C. § 2(b), a defendant is criminally liable when he “willfully causes an act to be done which if directly performed by him or another would be” a federal offense. See, e.g., United States v. Hsia, 176 F.3d 517, 522 (D.C. Cir. 1999) (upholding a conviction for willfully causing a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001). [my emphasis]

Smith then repeats that language of “willfully caus[ing]” people to storm the Capitol.

As described above, the superseding indictment alleges that the defendant willfully caused others to violate Section 1512(c)(2) when he “repeated false claims of election fraud, gave false hope that the Vice President might change the election outcome, and directed the crowd in front of him to go to the Capitol as a means to obstruct the certification,” ECF No. 226 at ¶ 86, by pressuring the Vice President and legislators to accept the fraudulent certificates for certain states in lieu of those states’ legitimate certificates. Those allegations link the defendant’s actions on January 6 directly to his efforts to corruptly obstruct the certification proceeding and establish the elements of a violation of Section 1512(c)(2), which suffices to resolve the defendant’s motion to dismiss on statutory grounds. [my emphasis]

Note that this reliance on an abetting theory of liability for the riot explains DOJ’s effort to sustain some select 1512(c)(2) charges against crime scene defendants. Smith will want to closely tie Trump to the actions of key crime scene defendants.

But that depends on sustaining at least some of those key cases. But they’ve already taken at least some steps to do that. In at least one case, cooperating Oath Keeper Jon Schaffer, they’ve done an addendum to the statement of facts to sustain the plea under Fischer.

Perhaps relatedly, the nature of Schaffer’s cooperation remains redacted in the government sentencing memo asking for probation for Schaffer.

For over a year, Trump’s team has been trying to disavow his mob, and for almost a year, prosecutors have promised to show how Trump obstructed the vote certification through the actions of specific rioters.

At trial, the Government will prove these allegations with evidence that the defendant’s supporters took obstructive actions at the Capitol at the defendant’s direction and on his behalf. This evidence will include video evidence demonstrating that on the morning of January 6, the defendant encouraged the crowd to go to the Capitol throughout his speech, giving the earliest such instruction roughly 15 minutes into his remarks; testimony, video, photographic, and geolocation evidence establishing that many of the defendant’s supporters responded to his direction and moved from his speech at the Ellipse to the Capitol; and testimony, video, and photographic evidence that specific individuals who were at the Ellipse when the defendant exhorted them to “fight” at the Capitol then violently attacked law enforcement and breached the Capitol.

The indictment also alleges, and the Government will prove at trial, that the defendant used the angry crowd at the Capitol as a tool in his pressure campaign on the Vice President and to obstruct the congressional certification. Through testimony and video evidence, the Government will establish that rioters were singularly focused on entering the Capitol building, and once inside sought out where lawmakers were conducting the certification proceeding and where the electoral votes were being counted. And in particular, the Government will establish through testimony and video evidence that after the defendant repeatedly and publicly pressured and attacked the Vice President, the rioting crowd at the Capitol turned their anger toward the Vice President when they learned he would not halt the certification, asking where the Vice President was and chanting that they would hang him. [my emphasis]

As I’ve said, I think Jack Smith may believe he has the evidence to prove Trump more actively incited violence, but was prevented from indicting that before the election. But for now, Smith is making it explicit that he is adopting the theory of liability that Judge Mehta ruled was at least plausible, years ago.

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Machine for Fascism: The Two Stephens

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When I saw the news that Trump is planning a rally at Madison Square Garden — as the Nazis did in 1939 — I checked the date to see whether that was before or after Steve Bannon gets out of prison.

Bannon is due to get out on October 29; the rally is two days earlier, on October 27. On the current schedule, Bannon will be released nine days before the election, but not soon enough to attend what will undoubtedly be a larger version of the Nazi rant that Trump put on in Aurora the other day. Unless something disrupts it, Bannon will start trial for defrauding Trump supporters on December 9, days before the states certify the electoral vote.

This is the kind of timing I can’t get out of my head. According to FiveThirtyEight, Kamala Harris currently has a 53% chance of winning the electoral college. That’s bleak enough. But based on everything I know about January 6, I’d say that if Trump loses, there’s at least a 10% chance Trump’s fuckery in response will have a major impact on the transfer of power.

Experts on right wing extremism are suggesting the same thing. Here’s an interview Rick Perlstein did with David Neiwert back in August on the political violence he expects. Here’s a report from someone who infiltrated the 3 Percenters, predicting they would engage in vigilanteism.

Will Jack Smith unveil charges about inciting violence amid election violence?

As I wrote in this post, I suspect that Jack Smith considered, but did not, add charges when he decided to supersede Trump’s January 6 indictment. As I wrote, there is negative space in Smith’s immunity filing where charges on Trump’s funding for January 6 (and subsequent suspected misuse of those funds) might otherwise be.

More tellingly, there are four things that indicate Jack Smith envisioned — but did not yet include — charges relating to ginning up violence. As Smith did in a 404(b) filing submitted in December, he treated Mike Roman as a co-conspirator when he exhorted a colleague, “Make them riot” and “Do it!!!” Newly in the immunity filing, he treated Bannon as a co-conspirator, providing a way to introduce Steve Bannon’s prediction, “All Hell is going to break loose tomorrow!” shortly after speaking with Trump on January 5.  But Smith didn’t revise the indictment to describe Roman and Bannon as CC7 and CC8; that is, he did not formally include these efforts to gin up violence in this indictment. What appears to be the same source for the Mike Roman detail (which could be Roman’s phone, which was seized in September 2022; in several cases it has taken a year to exploit phones seized in the January 6 investigation) also described that Trump adopted the same tactic in Philadelphia.

The defendant’s Campaign operatives and supporters used similar tactics at other tabulation centers, including in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,21 and the defendant sometimes used the resulting confrontations to falsely claim that his election observers were being denied proper access, thus serving as a predicate to the defendant’s claim that fraud must have occurred in the observers’ absence.22

Even more notably, after saying (in that same December 404(b) filing) that he wanted to include Trump’s endorsement and later ratification of the Proud Boys’ attack on the country to “demonstrate[] the defendant’s encouragement of violence,” Smith didn’t include them in the immunity filing whatsoever — not even in the section where the immunity filing described Trump’s endorsement of men who assaulted cops. If I’m right that Smith held stuff back because SCOTUS delayed his work so long it butted into the election season, it would mean he believes he has the ability to prove that Trump deliberately stoked violence targeting efforts to count the vote at both the state and federal level, but could not lay that out until after November 5, after which Trump may be in a position to dismiss the case entirely.

And the two Stephens — Bannon, whose War Room podcast would serve to show that Trump intended to loose all Hell on January 6, and Miller, who added the finishing touches to Trump’s speech making Mike Pence a target for that violence — appear to have a plan to do just that, working in concert with Elon Musk.

The two Stephens say Trump must be able to stoke violence with false claims as part of his campaign

As I laid out in June, just as Bannon was reporting to prison, both Stephens were arguing that they had a right to make false claims that had the effect of fostering violence.

Bannon filed an emergency appeal aiming to stay out of prison arguing he had to remain out so he could “speak[] on important issues.”

There is also a strong public interest in Mr. Bannon remaining free during the run-up to the 2024 presidential election. The government seeks to imprison him for the four-month period immediately preceding the November election—giving an appearance that the government is trying to prevent Mr. Bannon from fully assisting with the campaign and speaking out on important issues, and also ensuring the government exacts its pound of flesh before the possible end of the Biden Administration.

No one can dispute that Mr. Bannon remains a significant figure. He is a top advisor to the President Trump campaign, and millions of Americans look to him for information on matters important to the ongoing presidential campaign. Yet from prison, Mr. Bannon’s ability to participate in the campaign and comment on important matters of policy would be drastically curtailed, if not eliminated. There is no reason to force that outcome in a case that presents substantial legal issues.

That claim came just after he had given a “Victory or Death” speech at a Turning Point conference.

In the same period, Stephen Miller attempted to intervene in Jack Smith’s efforts to prevent Trump from making false claims that the FBI tried to assassinate him when they did a search of his home governed by a standard use-of-force policy, knowing full well he was gone. (Aileen Cannon rejected Miller’s effort before she dismissed the case entirely.)

Miller argued that the type of speech that Smith wanted to limit — false claims that have already inspired a violent attack on the FBI — as speech central to Trump’s campaign for President.

The Supreme Court has accordingly treated political speech—discussion on the topics of government and civil life—as a foundational area of protection. This principle, above all else, is the “fixed star in our constitutional constellation[:] that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics[ or] nationalism . . . or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.” W. Va. State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 642 (1943) (Jackson, J.). Therefore, “[d]iscussion of public issues and debate on the qualifications of candidates” are considered “integral” to the functioning of our way of government and are afforded the “broadest protection.” Buckley, 424 U.S. at 14.

Because “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open” debate enables “the citizenry to make informed choices among candidates for office,” “the constitutional guarantee has its fullest and most urgent application precisely to the conduct of campaigns for political office.” Id. at 14-15 (citations omitted). Within this core protection for political discourse, the candidates’ own speech—undoubtedly the purest source of information for the voter about that candidate—must take even further primacy. Cf. Eu v. S.F. Cnty. Democratic Cent. Comm., 489 U.S. 214, 222-24 (1989) (explaining that political speech by political parties is especially favored). This must be especially true when, as here, the candidate engages in a “pure form of expression involving free speech alone rather than expression mixed with particular conduct.” Buckley, 424 U.S. at 17 (cleaned up) (contrasting picketing and parading with newspaper comments or telegrams). These principles layer together to strongly shield candidates for national office from restrictions on their speech.

Miller called Trump’s false attack on the FBI peaceful political discourse.

Importantly, Miller dodged an argument Smith made — that Trump intended that his false claims would go viral. He intended for people like Bannon to repeat his false claims. In disclaiming any intent to incite imminent action, Miller ignored the exhibit showing Bannon parroting Trump’s false claim on his War Room podcast.

It cannot be said that by merely criticizing—or, even as some may argue, mischaracterizing—the government’s actions and intentions in executing a search warrant at his residence, President Trump is advocating for violence or lawlessness, let alone inciting imminent action. The government’s own exhibits prove the point. See generally ECF Nos. 592-1, 592-2. 592-3, 592-5.

Note, Bannon did this with Mike Davis, a leading candidate for a senior DOJ position under Trump, possibly even Attorney General, who has vowed to instill a reign of terror in that position.

But that was the point — Jack Smith argued — of including an exhibit showing Bannon doing just that.

Predictably and as he certainly intended, others have amplified Trump’s misleading statements, falsely characterizing the inclusion of the entirely standard use-of-force policy as an effort to “assassinate” Trump. See Exhibit 4.

Back in June, Bannon said he had to remain out of prison because he played a key role in Trump’s campaign. And Miller said that even if Bannon deliberately parroted Trump’s false incendiary claims, that was protected political speech as part of Trump’s campaign.

Miller helps eliminate checks on disinformation and Nazis on Xitter

But this effort has been going on for years.

A report that American Sunlight released this week describing how systematically the right wing turned to dismantling the moderation processes set up in the wake of the 2016 election points to Miller’s America First Legal’s role in spinning moderation by private actors as censorship. Miller started fundraising for his effort in 2021.

[F]ormer Trump Senior Advisor Stephen Miller[] founded America First Legal (AFL). 6 An unflinchingly partisan organization, the home page of AFL’s website claims its mission is to “[fight] back against lawless executive actions and the Radical Left,” 7 which it accomplishes through litigation. AFL has, to date, engaged in dozens of efforts to silence disinformation research through frivolous lawsuits and collaboration with Jordan and the House Judiciary Committee’s harassment of researchers. In a digital age where social media is more prevalent than ever and social media platforms have more power than ever, AFL’s efforts to politicize legitimate efforts to combat disinformation – by social media platforms and independent private-citizen researchers – have significantly damaged the information environment. To fully realize these efforts and their impacts, we explore the founding and operations of AFL.

[snip]

After its launch in early 2022, AFL began its line of litigation with a series of FOIA requests relating to the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). These requests marked a noticeable uptick in conservative claims about censorship. AFL’s FOIA requests alleged these government agencies improperly partnered with social media platforms and asked for content around Hunter Biden’s laptop to be removed. 22 In its FOIA request to CISA, AFL writes 23 :

On March 17, 2022, the New York Times revealed that “[Hunter] Biden’s laptop was indeed authentic, more than a year after … much of the media dismissed the New York Post’s reporting as Russian disinformation.” When the story was first accused of being disinformation, X/Twitter suspended the New York Post’s account for seven days, and Facebook “’reduc[ed]’ the story’s distribution on its platform while waiting for third-party fact checkers to verify it.” This was just one of many instances where social media companies censored politically controversial information under the pretext of combatting MDM even when the information later became verified.

Then, as now, AFL offered no evidence to support its claim that any federal agency coerced, pressured, or mandated that social media platforms remove any such laptop-related content. As this report will cover in depth, social media platforms have their own, robust content moderation policies in regards to false and misleading content; as private companies, they implement these policies as they see fit.

The American Sunlight report describes how some of the key donations to AFL were laundered so as to hide the original donors (and other of its donations came from entities that had received the funds Trump raised in advance of January 6).

But as WSJ recently reported, Musk started dumping tens of millions into Miller’s racist and transphobic ads no later than June 2022.

In the fall of 2022, more than $50 million of Musk’s money funded a series of advertising campaigns by a group called Citizens for Sanity, according to people familiar with his involvement and tax filings for the group. The bulk of the ads ran in battleground states days before the midterm elections and attacked Democrats on controversial issues such as medical care for transgender children and illegal immigration.

Citizens for Sanity was incorporated in Delaware in June 2022, with salaried employees from Miller’s nonprofit legal group listed as its directors and officers.

There are questions of whether Miller grew close to Musk even before that.

In the lead-up to Musk’s purchase of Xitter, someone — there’s reason to believe it might be Stephen Miller — texted Musk personally to raise the sensitivities of restoring Trump, whom the person called, “the boss,” to Xitter.

And one of Musk’s phone contacts appears to bring Trump up. However, unlike others in the filings, this individual’s information is redacted.

“It will be a delicate game of letting right wingers back on Twitter and how to navigate that (especially the boss himself, if you’re up for that),” the sender texted to Musk, referencing conservative personalities who have been banned for violating Twitter’s rules.

Whoever this was — and people were guessing it was Miller in real time — someone close enough to Elon to influence his purchase of Xitter was thinking of the purchase in terms of bringing back “right wingers,” including Trump.

Yesterday, the NYT reported on how the far right accounts that Musk brought back from bannings have enjoyed expanded reach since being reinstated. Some of the most popular accounts have laid the groundwork for attacking the election.

As the election nears, some of the high-profile reinstated accounts have begun to pre-emptively cast doubt on the results. Much of the commentary is reminiscent of the conspiracy theories that swirled after the 2020 election and in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 riot.

Since being welcomed back to the platform, roughly 80 percent of the accounts have discussed the idea of stolen elections, with most making some variation of the claim that Democrats were engaged in questionable voting schemes. Across at least 1,800 posts on the subject, the users drew more than 13 million likes, shares and other reactions.

Some prominent accounts shared a misleading video linked to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, that used shaky evidence to claim widespread voter registration of noncitizens. One of the posts received more than 750,000 views; Mr. Musk later circulated the video himself.

But it’s more than just disinformation. Xitter has played a key role in stoking anti-migrant violence across the world. In Ireland, for example, Alex Jones’ magnification of Tommy Robinson’s tweets helped stoke an attack on a shelter for migrants.

As with mentions of Newtownmountkennedy, users outside of Ireland authored the most posts on X mentioning this hashtag, according to the data obtained by Sky News. 57% were posted by accounts based in the United States, 24.7% by Irish users. A further 8.8% were attributed to users based in the United Kingdom.

While four of the top five accounts attracting the most engagement on posts mentioning this hashtag were based in Ireland, the fifth belongs to Alex Jones, an American media personality and conspiracy theorist. Jones’s posts using this hashtag were engaged with 10,700 times.

Jones continued to platform Robinson as he stoked riots in the UK.

Several high-profile characters known for their far-right views have provided vocal commentary on social media in recent days and have been condemned by the government for aggravating tensions via their posts.

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who operates under the alias Tommy Robinson, has long been one of Britain’s most foremost far-right and anti-Muslim activists and founded the now-defunct English Defence League (EDL) in 2009.

According to the Daily Mail, Robinson is currently in a hotel in Cyprus, from where he has been posting a flurry of videos to social media. Each post has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, and shared by right-wing figures across the world including United States InfoWars founder Alex Jones.

And Elon Musk himself famously helped stoke the violence, not just declaring civil war to be “inevitable,” but also adopting Nigel Farage’s attacks on Keir Starmer.

On Monday, a spokesperson for UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer addressed Musk’s comment, telling reporters “there’s no justification for that.”

But Musk is digging his heels in. On Tuesday, he labeled Starmer #TwoTierKier in an apparent reference to a debunked claim spread by conspiracy theorists and populist politicians such as Nigel Farage that “two-tier policing” means right-wing protests are dealt with more forcefully than those organized by the left. He also likened Britain to the Soviet Union for attempting to restrict offensive speech on social media.

In the UK, such incitement is illegal. But it is virtually impossible to prosecute in the United States. So if Elon ever deliberately stoked political violence in the US, it would be extremely difficult to stop him, even ignoring the years of propaganda about censorship and the critical role some of Musk’s companies play in US national security.

Bannon’s international fascist network

The ties to Nigel Farage go further than Xitter networks.

In a pre-prison interview with David Brooks (in which Brooks didn’t mention how Bannon stands accused of defrauding Trump’s supporters in his New York case), Bannon bragged about turning international fascists into rocks stars.

STEVE BANNON: Well, I think it’s very simple: that the ruling elites of the West lost confidence in themselves. The elites have lost their faith in their countries. They’ve lost faith in the Westphalian system, the nation-state. They are more and more detached from the lived experience of their people.

On our show “War Room,” I probably spend at least 20 percent of our time talking about international elements in our movement. So we’ve made Nigel a rock star, Giorgia Meloni a rock star. Marine Le Pen is a rock star. Geert is a rock star. We talk about these people all the time.

And in August, Bannon’s top aide, Alexandra Preate, registered as a foreign agent for Nigel Farage. She cited arranging his participation in:

  • A March 2023 CPAC speech
  • Discussions, as early as August 2023, about a Farage speech at RNC
  • A January 2024 pitch for Farage to speak at a Liberty University CEO Summit that was held last month
  • Talks at “Sovereignty Summits” in April through July
  • April arrangements for a May 1 talk at Stovall House in Tampa, Florida
  • Discussions in May about addressing CPAC in September
  • May 2024 media appearances on the Charlie Kirk Show, Fox Business Larry Kudlow show, Bannon’s War Room, Seb Gorka Show, Newsmax, WABC radio
  • More discussions about Farage’s attendance at the RNC
  • Early August discussions about an upcoming trip to the US

That is, Preate retroactively registered as Farage’s agent after a period (July to August) when he was spreading false claims that stoked riots in his own country.

Preate also updated her registration for the authoritarian Salvadoran President, Nayib Bukele (which makes you wonder whether she had a role in this fawning profile of Bukele).

Miller serves as opening act for Trump’s Operation Aurora

Before Trump’s speech in Aurora, CO the other day — at which he spoke of using the Alien and Sedition Act against what he deemed to be migrants — Stephen Miller served as his opening act, using the mug shots of three undocumented immigrants who have committed violent crimes against American women to rile up the crowd, part of a years-long campaign to falsely suggest that migrants are even as corrupt as violent as white supremacists.

Stephen Miller started laying the infrastructure to improve on January 6 from shortly after the failed coup attempt (and he did so, according to the American Sunlight report, with funds that Trump may have raised with his Big Lie). In recent weeks, Trump — with Miller’s help — has undermined the success of towns in Ohio and Colorado with racial division and has led his own supporters hard hit by hurricanes to forgo aid to which they’re entitled with false claims that Democrats are withholding that aid.

By targeting people like North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper and Kamala Harris, Trump is targeting not just Democrats, but also people who play a key role in certifying the election.

If Cooper and Harris were incapacitated before they played their role in certifying the election, they would be replaced by Mark Robinson and whatever president pro tempore a Senate that is expected to have a GOP majority after January 4 chooses, if such a choice could be negotiated in a close Senate in a few days.

And all the while, the richest man in the world, who claims that he, like Steve Bannon and Donald Trump, might face prison if Vice President Harris wins the election, keeps joking about assassination attempts targeting Harris.

We have just over three weeks to try to affect the outcome on November 5 — to try to make it clear that Trump will do for America what he has done in Springfield, Aurora, and Western North Carolina, deliberately made things worse for his own personal benefit. But at the same time, we need to be aware of how those efforts to make things worse are about creating a problem that Trump can demand emergency powers to solve.

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