Trump's attempted coup and R congress people

Washington CNN —
Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin said Sunday that former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen revealed in testimony this weekend “frightening” information about what had occurred at the Justice Department during the waning days of the Trump administration.

“He told us a lot, seven hours of testimony. And I might quickly add: this was done on a bipartisan basis – Democratic staff and Republican legal staff asking questions during this period of time,” Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” of the panel’s interview with the former DOJ official.

“It really is important that we ask these questions, because what was going on in the Department of Justice was frightening from a constitutional point of view,” he added. “To think that (former Attorney General) Bill Barr left, resigned after he announced he didn’t see irregularities in the election, and then his replacement was under extraordinary pressure – the President of the United States, even to the point where they were talking about replacing him, that pressure was on.”

Rosen and Richard Donoghue, the acting deputy attorney general from late December 2020 until the end of former President Donald Trump’s term, provided to the panel detailed accounts of a tumultuous period in late December and early January during which a senior Justice Department lawyer sought to deploy the department’s resources in support of false voting fraud claims by Trump, according to a source familiar.

Pressed by Bash on what Rosen revealed during his testimony to the Senate committee, Durbin said he couldn’t yet divulge any details, but that “ultimately, there will be a report.”

Rosen met with the committee for more than six hours on Saturday, while Donoghue met with them for about five hours Friday, the source said, adding that Rosen also sat with the Justice Department Inspector General’s investigators Friday.

Rosen spoke of numerous interactions with Jeffrey Clark, a Trump-appointed environment law chief at the DOJ, but much of the focus of his testimony was on five episodes in which Clark went out of the chain of command to push the fraud claims. That included the January 3 White House meeting where Trump had the two men vie for the attorney general’s job before deciding not to replace Rosen with Clark.

Asked by Bash whether Trump tried to get Rosen to overturn election results, Durbin replied: “It was not that direct, but he was asking him to do certain things related to states’ election returns, which he refused to do.”

“He was being asked by the White House, the leadership in the White House, to meet with certain people who had these wild, bizarre theories of why that election wasn’t valid. And he refused to do it,” the chairman said.

Both Rosen and Donoghue told the investigators that they don’t know whether Clark was acting at Trump’s behest or orchestrating a plot he concocted himself. The men testified that in their interactions with Trump, he didn’t order them to do anything illegal and eventually accepted their advice that the Justice Department couldn’t take actions to claim fraud when it had no evidence of it.

Durbin’s committee had previously reached out to Clark for an interview, even before Rosen and Donoghue spoke with its members, and his team is still in discussions with the panel, according to a person familiar with Clark.

The senator told Bash on Sunday that he would like for Clark to testify but said he’s not sure the lawyer would be willing to be interviewed.

“We’re going to do our best to ask Mr. Clark to come in and tell the story from his point of view,” Durbin said. “(Attorney General) Merrick Garland has opened the door and said, ‘We’re waiving all privilege here.’ So he may decide for personal reasons or other reasons he doesn’t want to testify. But I hope he will.”

New revelations expose future threat Trump poses

A burst of new disclosures exposing the extraordinary efforts by ex-President Donald Trump to steal power after his election defeat constitute a grave warning about the future and his potential bid to recapture the White House.

The audacity of the former President’s attempts to subvert the law by weaponizing the Justice Department not only underscores how close the United States came to a full blown constitutional crisis this year. It also emphasizes that any attempt by Trump to use a war chest already worth $100 million to try to recapture the White House in 2024 would represent a mortal threat to democracy and the rule of law from a leader who was undeterred even by his own first impeachment.

New revelations emerging from Senate testimony, about a Trump Justice Department loyalist’s alleged behind-the-scenes efforts to call into question elections in states the ex-President lost, also render the continued GOP whitewashing of history about Trump’s crimes against the Constitution even more blatant and dangerous.

Timeline: What Georgia prosecutors are looking at as they investigate Trump’s efforts to overturn the election

This staggering trend of attacks against US democracy is being exacerbated by GOP efforts in the states to restrict voting by minorities and Democrats and to make it easier to overturn future election results. Trump was unable to flout the will of voters in 2020. Some election experts fear that he – or another like-minded Republican strongman – could succeed in the future.

And ultimately, the flood of shocking new disclosures means that a potential new White House campaign by Trump in 2024 would come with the most grave implications for American democracy in decades. Given Trump’s record of impunity, a new administration could be stocked with loyalists who would not balk at abuses of power – like his efforts to overturn the election, which were blocked this time around by officials in the Justice Department and in GOP-led states.

’Frightening’ maneuvering at Trump’s Justice Department.
The latest evidence of Trump’s anti-democratic mendacity came in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday and Saturday by two top former senior Justice Department officials.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that the testimony lifted the lid on “frightening” maneuverings at the department after November’s election.

Another Democrat, Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, told CNN’s Manu Raju that after hearing Saturday’s testimony from former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, he was struck by “how close the country came to total catastrophe” earlier this year.

Both Rosen, and the other official – Richard Donoghue, then the acting deputy attorney general – put another Trump-appointed official, Jeffrey Clark, at the center of an effort to help the then-President undermine the election results and to potentially oust Clark’s bosses who were resisting Trump’s efforts.

A source familiar said the testimony provided new details about a January 3 White House meeting in which Trump had Rosen and Clark effectively audition for the job of acting attorney general. The President eventually decided not to replace Rosen with Clark. Rosen and Donoghue both testified that Trump did not order them to do anything illegal and eventually accepted the Justice Department could not claim voter fraud when there was no evidence that it took place.

ABC News first reported that Clark – a Trump-appointed environmental law chief at the department – drafted a letter that he asked Rosen to send to Georgia state legislators to say they should convene to examine irregularities in the election. The New York Times said Clark’s letter called on legislators to void Biden’s victory citing false claims the department was probing accusations of fraud in the Peach State.

Durbin told CNN’s Dana Bash that he could not yet comment on details of the testimony but that there would be a report. He also said he would like Clark to testify about his role. Clark’s lawyer declined to comment to CNN.

The Illinois senator said that he was surprised by “just how directly, personally involved the President was, the pressure he was putting on Jeffrey Rosen.” He added: “It was real, very real. And it was very specific. This President’s not subtle when he wants something, the former President. He is not subtle when he wants something.”

Asked by Bash whether Trump tried to get Rosen to overturn election results, Durbin replied: “It was not that direct, but he was asking him to do certain things related to states’ election returns, which he refused to do.”

“He was being asked by the White House, the leadership in the White House, to meet with certain people who had these wild, bizarre theories of why that election wasn’t valid. And he refused to do it,” the chairman said.

Durbin praised Rosen for standing firm against the ex-President’s anti-democratic schemes and laid out a scenario surrounding the resignation of ex-Attorney General William Barr that Trump considered and that mirrored the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre” of the Watergate scandal.

“The President was looking for a green light from an attorney general. Bill Barr reached a point where he couldn’t do it anymore. And Rosen stepped in, and he was not prepared to do it. And the President said, ‘we will find another one,’” Durbin said, in an apparent reference to Clark.

A timeline of gross abuses of power
The disclosures came just days after it emerged that notes written by Donoghue about a December 2020 call show that the ex-President pressured Rosen to declare that the election was fraudulent in a bid to help Republican members of Congress overturn Biden’s win.

“Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen,” Trump said on the call, according to Donoghue’s notes.
cont...

...
New details of the drama at the Justice Department are fleshing out the record of Trump’s final days in office after stunning revelations in a battery of new books about Trump’s behavior during that tumultuous period. In the most extraordinary new twist, Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker reported that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley feared that Trump might try to use the armed forces to stage a coup.

The patchwork of new details prove that Trump’s unhinged behavior after losing the election was not only more extreme than it appeared from the outside. The emerging timeline also suggests that Trump attempted one of the most sweeping crimes against the Constitution in US history. He tried to use presidential power to overturn the election in Georgia and elsewhere. He imposed huge pressure on career officials to go along with his corruption. And he called a mob to Washington, which, incited by his lies, staged an insurrection against Congress as it was in the act of certifying Joe Biden’s election victory. If Trump was still in power, new details of such abuses of power would undoubtedly merit a third impeachment.

The shocking disclosures of the past few weeks come as Trump appears to be at least preparing the groundwork for a future presidential campaign. The former President has already grievously damaged faith in the electoral system by convincing millions of his supporters that he was cheated out of power in a free and fair election that he clearly lost.

And the Republican Party’s failure to permit any consequences for his assault on democracy – and the efforts of many of its lawmakers and media propagandists to scrub history and to invent a completely new reality of the events surrounding the January 6 insurrection – are effectively clearing the way for his political rehabilitation.

The latest developments also undercut the arguments of Republican senators who were unwilling to convict the ex-President in his second impeachment trial earlier this year over the Capitol insurrection. The idea that the process was unnecessary since Trump was no longer in power and could do no more harm is now being contradicted by evidence of his strongman behavior and his attempts to rebuild his political career.

That effort to avoid a full accounting of the events of January 6 is one reason why the work of the recently launched House Select Committee on the attack on the Capitol is so crucial. The panel’s eventual report combined with recent work by the Senate Judiciary Committee offer the best chance to piece together an official record of one of the most fraught and tense transfers of presidential power in US history.

That a candidate who is guilty of such clear abuses of power and is possessed of such autocratic and anti-democratic impulses is a viable prospect for the presidential nomination of one of America’s major political parties is a commentary on the extraordinary current state of politics. It also means that whether or not he eventually runs, Trump’s legacy of epic political corruption will pose a dire threat to the democratic traditions most people saw as invulnerable to challenge.

The One Line That Exposes Trump's Real Plan To Overturn The 2020 Election

Rachel Maddow points to the one spot in acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue's handwritten notes on Donald Trump's call to acting-Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen that shows how Republican state legislatures sympathetic to Trump figured into Trump's plan to overturn the legitimate outcome of the 2020 election.

Facts So Far In Trump Coup Probe Suggest Criminal Referral Likely

Senator Richard Blumenthal, member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, talks with Rachel Maddow about indications so far that events surrounding Donald Trump's attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss could result in a criminal referral to the Department of Justice.

Trump Could Be In Trouble As More DOJ Officials Prepare To Testify Against Him

After former acting-Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen's 7-hour testimony this past weekend, experts are predicting that more and more current and former DOJ officials are going to come forward with damning info about Trump's efforts to overturn the election. This could easily spell serious trouble for the former President, assuming the info gathered is actually used to hold him accountable. Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

DIY-HP-LED said:

assuming the info gathered is actually used to hold him accountable.

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Why wouldnt it?

CatHedral said:

Why wouldnt it?

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It's text from the YouTube video.

I think it will be eventually, Garland doesn't want to get ahead of congress and the select committee that is investigating the highest levels of the conspiracy in the political realm. There is a ton of useful info coming out of the hearings and I'm sure indictments will be issued, after a grand jury goes through the matter. By then NY might have Trump himself on trial or under indictment in NY, he could even be in state prison by the time Garland moves on him with indictments. Donald would be incarcerated, discredited and muzzled while the feds fuck him over, let NY tie him to the bed by all fours first, then cornhole the fucker!

DIY-HP-LED said:

It's text from the YouTube video.

I think it will be eventually, Garland doesn't want to get ahead of congress and the select committee that is investigating the highest levels of the conspiracy in the political realm. There is a ton of useful info coming out of the hearings and I'm sure indictments will be issued, after a grand jury goes through the matter. By then NY might have Trump himself on trial or under indictment in NY, he could even be in state prison by the time Garland moves on him with indictments. Donald would be incarcerated, discredited and muzzled while the feds fuck him over, let NY tie him to the bed by all fours first, then cornhole the fucker!

Click to expand...

I anticipate the 1rpm train wreck that will be one indictment after another. I want to see him in court wearing orange and chrome steeel. I have been patient. I continue to be so.

DIY-HP-LED said:

Trump's acting attorney general revealed 'frightening' activity at Justice Department, Senate Judiciary chair says

Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin said Sunday that former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen revealed in testimony this weekend "frightening" information about what had occurred at the Justice Department during the waning days of the Trump administration.

www.cnn.com

Washington CNN —
Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin said Sunday that former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen revealed in testimony this weekend “frightening” information about what had occurred at the Justice Department during the waning days of the Trump administration.

“He told us a lot, seven hours of testimony. And I might quickly add: this was done on a bipartisan basis – Democratic staff and Republican legal staff asking questions during this period of time,” Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” of the panel’s interview with the former DOJ official.

“It really is important that we ask these questions, because what was going on in the Department of Justice was frightening from a constitutional point of view,” he added. “To think that (former Attorney General) Bill Barr left, resigned after he announced he didn’t see irregularities in the election, and then his replacement was under extraordinary pressure – the President of the United States, even to the point where they were talking about replacing him, that pressure was on.”

Rosen and Richard Donoghue, the acting deputy attorney general from late December 2020 until the end of former President Donald Trump’s term, provided to the panel detailed accounts of a tumultuous period in late December and early January during which a senior Justice Department lawyer sought to deploy the department’s resources in support of false voting fraud claims by Trump, according to a source familiar.

Pressed by Bash on what Rosen revealed during his testimony to the Senate committee, Durbin said he couldn’t yet divulge any details, but that “ultimately, there will be a report.”

Rosen met with the committee for more than six hours on Saturday, while Donoghue met with them for about five hours Friday, the source said, adding that Rosen also sat with the Justice Department Inspector General’s investigators Friday.

Rosen spoke of numerous interactions with Jeffrey Clark, a Trump-appointed environment law chief at the DOJ, but much of the focus of his testimony was on five episodes in which Clark went out of the chain of command to push the fraud claims. That included the January 3 White House meeting where Trump had the two men vie for the attorney general’s job before deciding not to replace Rosen with Clark.

Asked by Bash whether Trump tried to get Rosen to overturn election results, Durbin replied: “It was not that direct, but he was asking him to do certain things related to states’ election returns, which he refused to do.”

“He was being asked by the White House, the leadership in the White House, to meet with certain people who had these wild, bizarre theories of why that election wasn’t valid. And he refused to do it,” the chairman said.

Both Rosen and Donoghue told the investigators that they don’t know whether Clark was acting at Trump’s behest or orchestrating a plot he concocted himself. The men testified that in their interactions with Trump, he didn’t order them to do anything illegal and eventually accepted their advice that the Justice Department couldn’t take actions to claim fraud when it had no evidence of it.

Durbin’s committee had previously reached out to Clark for an interview, even before Rosen and Donoghue spoke with its members, and his team is still in discussions with the panel, according to a person familiar with Clark.

The senator told Bash on Sunday that he would like for Clark to testify but said he’s not sure the lawyer would be willing to be interviewed.

“We’re going to do our best to ask Mr. Clark to come in and tell the story from his point of view,” Durbin said. “(Attorney General) Merrick Garland has opened the door and said, ‘We’re waiving all privilege here.’ So he may decide for personal reasons or other reasons he doesn’t want to testify. But I hope he will.”

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is a subpoena negotiable or does he get the option? there used to be a time when served you had to answer..and show your ass to the court.

when did this all change? can we refer stare decisis now that Trump broke all the rules?

if the president doesn't have to do it why should i?; he works for ME.

CatHedral said:

I anticipate the 1rpm train wreck that will be one indictment after another. I want to see him in court wearing orange and chrome steeel. I have been patient. I continue to be so.

Click to expand...

this Friday is the 13th..Trump takes back over again..can't wait!

CatHedral said:

I anticipate the 1rpm train wreck that will be one indictment after another. I want to see him in court wearing orange and chrome steeel. I have been patient. I continue to be so.

Click to expand...

You won't see him in federal court, no TV there and I'm not sure about his state trial in NY, up to the judge I imagine. I think when they get the fucker in court and the prosecutor starts making his case and shitting on Donald, they will have to tie him to his chair and ball gag him. He'll squirm and grunt with his eyeballs bugged out. Once NY indicts him the judge owns his ass during the trial and that might include a gag order that Donald will probably violate.

I'm kinda hoping a thousand MAGATS lead by the GOP congress will try and storm the courthouse steps in NY, it won't end well for them. One other thing, since Donald has a large terrorist following and the judge and jury will receive hundreds of death threats during the trial, Donald will do his time in a maximum security facility in NY.

schuylaar said:

this Friday is the 13th..Trump takes back over again..can't wait!

Click to expand...

CatHedral said:

I anticipate the 1rpm train wreck that will be one indictment after another. I want to see him in court wearing orange and chrome steeel. I have been patient. I continue to be so.

Click to expand...

Interview w/Rep. Swalwell About Impeachment, Trump's Election Attacks, Enforcing Subpoenas & More

Here is Part 1 of my extended conversation with Congressman Eric Swalwell. We talked about all things justice:

- The Trump years and beyond
- Rep. Swalwell's impressions of Trump's first impeachment
- HIs book, Endgame: The Impeachments of Donald J. Trump
- The Need for a Presidential Crimes Commission
- Trump's continued corrupt attack on the election results
- The momentum that is building for accountability for Trump and his
criminal associates
- The question of whether Congress will decide to enforce their subpoenas
if future witnesses refuses to appear

Goldman: Trump Implemented A ‘Calculated, Premeditated Plan To Pressure The DOJ’

Daniel Goldman, who served as the House Impeachment Inquiry Majority Counsel for the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump, joins Ali Velshi to discuss why Donald Trump’s plan to fire Jeffrey Rosen and his abuse of power “wasn’t just a one-off.”

schuylaar said:

this Friday is the 13th..Trump takes back over again..can't wait!

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"Be there, will be wild!"

topcat said:

"Be there, will be wild!"

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'just say it was a tour and i'll handle the rest'.

Daniel Goldman Calls For A Criminal Investigation Into Trump

Former assistant U.S. attorney for SDNY Daniel Goldman says that he believes the January 6 is not enough and calls for the criminal investigation of Trump for real accountability.

Trump Crime? Bombshell New Testimony Reveals DOJ Pressure To Support 'Big Lie'

The former Georgia U.S. Attorney, who was forced to resign two days after Trump’s infamous call asking Georgia’s Secretary of State to find him votes, testified he resigned after DOJ officials warned him 'Trump intended to fire him for refusing to say that widespread voter fraud had been found' in the state, according to reporting by The New York Times. MSNBC’s Chief Legal Correspondent Ari Melber is joined by former federal prosecutor Paul Butler to discuss the latest update in the Senate probe on Trump’s campaign to overturn the 2020 election.