In the Spirit of Jefferson Davis (part seventeen)
Part seventeen.
June 15th proved
a Faught day on Capitol Hill. There had been a movement to award the
Congressional Gold Medal to the Police Officers, both Capitol and local, who
defended the Republic against the 1/6 attempted Coup. Despite the obviousness
of this move, it became mired in a three-month-long “standoff” between House and
Senate regarding should all Officers be Honored collectively, or should it be only
Officer Goodman who, though he wasn’t one of those who was beaten, battered,
hospitalized, or dead, did commit the day’s single most brilliant act of
heroism single-handedly. There were also arguments of the langue.
Finally, four Gold Medals were awarded, one to the Capitol
Police, one to the local Metropolitan Police, one to be displayed inside the
Capitol building along with a plaque that named all law enforcement agencies
who responded (there were lots), and a fourth one to the Smithsonian
Institution. But even this final awarding was marred by the Trump-cult, because
21 Republicans refused to grant the Honor due to the men and women who had
saved their lives from a mob of rabid Traitors.
Representative Greene stated, “I wouldn’t call
it an insurrection,” and also complained about the final language which referred
to the Capitol as “the temple of our American Democracy.” Said Greene,
“This is not a temple. That is for sure.”
Representative Massie echoed Greene’s quibble over
the “temple” and also said, “I think it was a mob but I don’t think it was an
insurrection. … They were protesting and I don’t approve of the way they
protested, but it wasn’t an insurrection. My goodness. Can you imagine what a
real insurrection would look like? … If they just wanted to give the police recognition,
they could have done it without trying to make it partisan.”
Representative Andrew Clyde was, almost, the
most outrageous, downplaying 1/6 as “acts of
vandalism” and suggested it was a “boldfaced lie” to call what happened that
day an “insurrection” because “Watching the TV footage of those who entered the
Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion
staying between the stanchions and ropes, taking videos, pictures,” Clyde said.
“You know, if you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th,
you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.”
There
just happens to be video of him on 1/6, terrified of the mob, helping barricade
the House Chamber doors.
Representative Adam
Kinzinger was enraged by his fellow Republicans and tweeted, “How you can vote
no to this is beyond me … Then again, denying an insurrection is as well … To
the brave Capitol (and DC metro PD) thank you. To the 21: they will continue to
defend your right to vote no anyway.”
Oh, but Greene, Massie,
and even Clyde weren’t the worst of the 21. That dishonor belongs to
Representative Gosar.
On Capitol Hill there were
on-going House hearings regarding the events of 1/6. The Impeachment hearing
were more significant, as was the more thorough investigation that took place
the next year, but these hearings were no same thing. They focused on the
Security failings, because the attempted Coup exposed how vulnerable the
Capitol was, and facilitated a huge shake-up in the Capitol Police force, and
charges in the Pentagon (though I admit I’m not knowledgeable about the latter)
Gosar enraged many when
he engaged in grotesque grand-standing while questioning FBI Director Christopher A. Wray.
Wray had a complicated history with Trump. He was appointed by
Trump in 2017 after Trump fired the previous Director, George Comey. Trump’s
stated reason for firing Comey was his alleged mishandling of the investigation
of Hillary Clinton’s unauthorized use of a private server for State Department business,
including Classified material, but that was transparently false; hell, Comey’s actions
on that case probably helped Trump get elected. Comey was really fired because
he wouldn’t play ball by undermining the Russia investigation. The scandal
Trump created by firing Comey actually strengthened the investigation, leading
to the appointment of Special Council Robert Muller, and when that
investigation was completed, it was damning to Team Trump indeed and put Trump
at risk of Impeachment, though Federal House Speaker Pelosi chose not to pull
the trigger on that one.
Then, in April 2020, just after Trump escaped his first impeachment
through an all-but party-line vote in the Senate (that was the one concerning
him blackmailing a foreign head-of-state to interfere in our elections), Trump
moved to fire Wray. The reason why was never fully clear except that Trump was
frequently angry at him; part of it, at least, was that Wray wasn’t sufficiently
critical of the Russia Investigation. Wray kept his job only because DoJ AG Barr
had threatened to resign in protest.
April was before the issues of the Election had
really heated up When that happened, Wray’s public statements were careful, but
careful statements could never be loyal enough to please the Trump-Cult. In
October 2020, as the Stop the Steal movement was gaining momentum, Wray issued
a statement, “We’ve been working for years as a community to build
resilience in our election infrastructure—and today that infrastructure remains
resilient. You should be confident that your vote counts. Early, unverified
claims to the contrary should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism. We
encourage everyone to seek election and voting information from reliable
sources—namely, your state election officials. And to be thoughtful, careful,
and discerning consumers of information online.” It also contained a recommendation
of, in effect, “If you see something, say something.”
Soon DoJ AG Barr would be fired, but somehow Wray
kept his job, and was still in his post more than a year after Trump left
office.
Now Gosar, a devoted acolyte
of that cult, had Wray in his metaphorical gun-sights.
“Do you approve of
lethal force against unarmed citizens, particularly a 110-pound woman, with no
warning, no use of nonlethal force prior and while lying in wait?”
Wray refused to “answer
a hypothetical.”
Gosar argued “that’s
actually what had happened.” He then insisted that Traitor and Terrorist Babbitt
had been "executed” and that “The Capitol Police officer that did that
shooting appeared to be hiding, lying in wait, and then gave no warning before
killing her."
His claims are entirely
false, explicitly contradicted by a video taken by her Insurrectionist comrades.
Gosar wanted to know why
the name of the Officer who shot Babbitt had not been released.
Wray didn’t know.
Obviously, this line of questioning sand-bagged him, because the answer is
pretty straight-forward. Though the law requires the release of the names of local
D.C. Metropolitan Police
Officers involved in serious Use-of-Force, that law does not apply to Capitol
Police Officers. Moreover, the unnamed Officer had already been subject
to months of death threats.
Gosar continued, “Outright
propaganda and lies are being used to unleash the national security state
against law-abiding U.S. citizens, especially Trump voters. The FBI is fishing
through homes of veterans and citizens with no criminal records and restricting
the liberties of individuals that have never been accused of a crime.”
Representative Liz Cheney responded to Gosar’s antics in an outraged
tweet, "It is disgusting and despicable to see Gosar lie about that day
and smear the men and women who defended us … On January 6, as the violent mob
advanced on the House chamber, I was standing near [Gosar] and helped him open
his gas mask."
The previous May (so two months after the attempted Coup),
Cheney had been removed from her leadership role in the House Republican Conference
and was then Censored from the Republican Party in her own State, Wyoming, because she denied the Big Lie
and voted to Impeach Trump the previous January (that was the second one,
regarding Inciting the Insurrection, which he also escaped because of a mostly
party-line vote in the Senate). It should be noted that Wyoming Republican Party
Chairman William “Frank” Eathorne is an Oath Keeper, though that wasn’t yet
public knowledge, and a participant in the 1/6 Demonstrations in Washington DC,
and would soon be suspected of being actively involved in the Coup. That same
month he would toy with the idea that Wyoming should secede from the USA.
Compare Cheney’s
punishment to Gosar’s getting a free walk. Since 1/6 there had been suspicion
that he was one of the Plotters, or at the very least, behaved so outrageously that
day he could be guilty of Incitement of the Insurrection that he now denies even
took place. Some members of the House were demanding the Ethics Committee open
an investigation of him. One week before this date, the Committee officially declined
to do so. (True, Gosar would eventually be Censored for posting a threatening video
Social Media targeting another House member and Biden, but that was an
unrelated to 1/6 and still months into the future.)
June
21st, with violent threats again Election Workers increasing,
generally coming from members of the Trump-cult, something needed to happen and,
on this date, it finally started to happen.
Election
Workers are vital cogs in our Democracy, but they really aren’t supposed to be
Heroes; other than the long hours during Election season and reams of
paperwork, it’s supposed to be a pretty laid-back job. If this, already
untenable, situation was allowed to deteriorate further, if one starts needing
a Navy SEAL’s skill-set to manage and monitor an election, those elections
simply won’t happen. There was a clear lack of interest by local or Federal Law
Enforcement to address this, so Federal Representative John Sarbanes introduced
a bill making it a Federal crime to intimidate, threaten or harass an Election Worker.
Not all of the bill was new law with new penalties: though some existing laws
didn’t seem to cover the issue adequately, others clearly did, but weren’t
being adequately enforced. Sarbanes was basically triple-underlining that Election
workers were important, calling attention to abuses that were slipping through
the cracks. Sarbanes stated, “I think we’re on a dangerous path. We want there
to be some effective and sustained push back on this kind of harassment.” It’s comparable
to anti-Stalking Laws, an issue Law Enforcement either hand their hands tied
on, or chose to ignore, until sometime after the first specific Anti-Stalking
Law was passed in California, at shockingly late date of 1990, a full decade
after Music Legend John Lennon was murdered by a stalker and nine years after
President Ronald Reagan was almost assassinated by one
I write
these words more than a year later, and it still hasn’t been voted on.
June
23rd, chairman of the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee Ed McBroom released the Committee’s
report on the various Trump-inspired charges of Election Fraud that had put so
many from that State on edge, and violence was always threatening.
“This investigation was
lengthy, thorough, and revealing. We found both real vulnerabilities and
resiliency within the state’s elections system. We also discovered the extent
to which our elections officials go to facilitate them. The committee’s report
goes into considerable detail on many of these issues, and I hope the public is
reassured by the security and protections already in place, motivated to
support necessary reforms to make it better, and grateful for our fellow
citizens who do the hard work of conducting our elections.
“I am confident in asserting
that the results of the November 2020 General Election in Michigan were
accurately represented by the certified and audited results.”
The Investigation was spurred by
OANN’s airing of the film, “The Big Rig” which was produced by millionaire many
times over and Big Lie Influencer Lindell, based on a book debunked even before
its publication by Powell-associate and one-time paramour of a Russian Spy Byrne.
It alleged that the Bad Guys (perhaps a nefarious cabal of Satan-worshipping
Cannibalistic Child-Sex-Traffickers) had used remote manipulation to switch 1,143 of the roughly
18,500 votes cast in Houghton County from Trump to Biden. The film asserted it
was all part of a broad plot to hack the election.
McBroom, not only a Republican,
but a notably Conservative one, concluded that the allegations were “made up … What
keeps on being postulated is something that is just not possible.”
Trump was not pleased, claiming the
report was a coverup and that McBroom was “really a Democrat.” The Michigan
voters would “not stand for Republican senators not to act on the crime of the
century.”
The response among the Trump cult
was not particularly positive. A few local Republican Committees around the
state passed resolutions censuring McBroom. He was “a servant Satan.” There were
death threats. One particularly colorful email read:
“Hey Ed McBroom, what’s it like to
sell your soul and fill your pockets??? U r a piece of crap. Everyone knows y
ur delaying the Michigan audit u p. o. s. Traitor TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR
TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR
TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR
TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR, bought man with a mouth full of Sorros dong.
Loser of the year. You are going on a one way trip to Guantanamo bay as soon as
the alliance grabs u...Hang by the neck until lifeless. U deserve it u loser.”
“Soros” refers to George Soros, and his being rich, an immigrant, Jewish, anti-Fascist
(he and his family spent much of WWII hiding from the Nazis in Hungary), and a
funder of Liberal causes, makes him the center-piece in most RWN Conspiracy
Masturbation, sort of a one-man Elders of Zion with newly-minted Protocols for World
Domination.
McBroom, a strongly religious man,
tried to console himself that his life and reputation were in the hands of God.
July 11th, Trump was a guest on FOX news. He
stated, "Who shot Ashli Babbitt? Why are they keeping that secret? Who was
the person that shot an innocent, wonderful, incredible woman, a military
woman?" He also praised Babbitt’s family, whom he said only wanted to know
"why this wonderful woman, young woman, who went to peaceful protest, was
shot."
By
the end of July, the Arizona Audit was still not completed, and the State Senate
was, again, warring with their fellow Republicans in Maricopa County. Senate
President Karen Fann and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Warren Peterson subpoenaed
routers and other materials form Maricopa for review, and Maricopa refused, challenging
her to enforce the subpoena with full knowledge that Fann didn’t have the votes
to hold the Board of Supervisors in contempt. Not only would none of the Democrats
support her, she had lost the faith of several Republicans as well.
Maricopa’s Board of
Supervisors Vice-Chairman Bill Gates told reporters that the new subpoenas an
act of “political theater” timed to coincide with Trump’s up-coming Arizona
rally. Trump had repeatedly demanded the State Senator to obtain the routers,
but he wasn’t POTUS anymore, so he shouldn’t be able to demand anything.
But their main point, he argued, was to distract from
the mounting problems facing the Audit. Gates further accused Cyber Ninjas’
owner Logan and other audit leaders of making false and unsubstantiated claims
in a briefing to Fann and Petersen. “This is trying to get the attention off of
them and the fact that their whole endeavor is crumbling, and to instead point
to Maricopa County and say that we’re the problem. We’re not the problem. It’s
people focused on conspiracy theories that’s the problem.”
July 23rd,
the day before his big rally, Trump attacked State Senator Boyer because he
didn’t support Fann’s repeated moves to hold the Maricopa County Supervisors in
contempt and have them arrested, and was guilty of doing, “everything in his
power to hold up the damning forensic audit of Maricopa County."
Boyer tweeted a reply, listing Trump’s unfulfilled
promise while in office, like failing to secure the border with Mexico and 1/6
violence. He Trump being banned from twitter, noting the it was an obstacle to
having a proper back-and-forth with him.
Fann tweeted an
attack on Boyer.
Boyer tweeted back
that Fann had Senators that the taxpayer cost would not exceed $150,000, and
then with-held that the rest of the money was likely coming from sources that
the Senate had just made illegal. "Had you told us it was an
inexperienced, partisan firm [meaning Cyber Ninjas], I wouldn't have been the
only one to object," Boyer tweeted.
Boyer told the
press, “I’ve always been a supporter of a legitimate audit. This is
illegitimate.”
July 24th, inside the Arizona Federal Theatre in Phoenix, Trump spoke to a rapturous
crowd that filled all five thousand seats. The event. "Rally
to Protect Our Elections," was hosted by Turning Point Action, part of Turning Point USA, run
Trump-Cultist Kirk, who had also organized seven buses to bring Terrorists and
Traitors to Washington D.C. on 1/6 through yet another group he rans, Students
for Trump.
Sitting in the third row was Michelle
Witthoeft, mother of Terrorist, Traitor, and so-called “martyr,” Ashli Babbitt.
Federal Representative Gosar introduced her to the crowd who chanted, “Ashli!
Ashli! Ashli!”
Landscape Designer Melissa Marsh had
traveled all-the-way from Northern California. She’d been a long-time fan of
FOX news, but she grew suspicious of the station, when they called Arizona for
Biden on Election Night. Since then, relied on Telegram and Big Lie Influencer Lindell
for information. “Mike Lindell has shown through data scientists and facts and
evidence of how the election is fraudulent, how the ballots are not matching up
… The media’s fake. It lies.”
Marketer Chris Park was more local, and insisted that FBI
informants had acted as Agent Provocateurs on 1/6. “That’s not an insurrection.
There was no actual violence that took place except for one person that got
shot at the hands of the people that were supposed to be there.”
Trump spoke for nearly two hours. “We’re gathered here in Phoenix
to show our support for election integrity and for the brave and unyielding
conservative warriors in the Arizona State Senate — thank you.”
When the results of the Audit come
in, “I think they’re going to be so horrible. They will be, in my opinion, the
results will be so outrageous … This is only the beginning of the
irregularities … We’re not talking about Arizona any more. We’re talking about
the United States of America … You’ve created a movement all over the country… Now
it’s turning out to be a revolution in this country … In
my opinion, there’s no way [the Democrats can] win elections without cheating. What
you’re doing here is incredible. The 2020 election was a total disgrace … I am
not the one trying to undermine American democracy; I’m trying to save American
democracy.”
He questioned
the legitimacy of future elections, like the 2022 Mid-terms and the 2024 POTUS,
he continued to tout his often-promised run in that race, and even implied he
could return to office before then.
He
called Democrats “radical left Marxist maniacs,” and complained, “Like it or not we are becoming a Communist county.” He listed a
litany of Biden’s failings, touted his own successes, specifically his handling
of the CV19 pandemic, which he, in fact, complexly failed with, but even at
this venue, did not recommend people get vaccinated.
He attacked Republicans who
didn’t support the Big Lie “weak” and “RINOs,” focusing on Governor Ducey, but also complaining about
Senate Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell, former Vice President Pence (“I only wish that my friend Mike Pence
had that additional courage to send the results back to the legislatures”), and
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Each alleged-villain he named drew
enthusiastic booes from the crowd, and the boos were especially when he celebrated
the recent Olympic loss of the “woke” U.S. women’s soccer team (they had “taken
the knee,” a statement of support of racial justice and Police reform movement,
and then were falsely accused of not standing for the National Anthem, a
falsehood that Trump has repeated spewed, and their “loss” was actually winner
the Bronze medal).
He took the time to praise his Attorney Giuliani, Chairperson of
the Arizona
Republican Party Ward (she and her husband
were Fake Electors), the Federal Representatives Biggs, Lesko and Gosar, and Kari
Lake, running for Governor with Trump’s endorsement. Lake was present and the only
person, except for Trump, who received a sustained ovation.
One
person present was booed, State Senator Michelle Ugenti-Rita, who wasn’t
supportive of the of the Audit and cut her remarks short because crowd booed
her the entire time she was on stage.
In the wake of Trump’s rally, the Harassment
and Threats of Arizona Officials, already on-going, escalated. A few days
later, Chief Operating Officer for the
Georgia Secretary of State Sterling, received this
letter:
“You sold out the state of Georgia and your country. You are
guilty of voter fraud. You need to confess your part in this fraud or be tried
for treason. You will not be able to walk the streets in peace or will your
family until you tell the truth!”
The Washington Post would
eventually quantify the problem demonstrating that since 1/6, public officials
in at least 17 states received hundreds of threats to their personal safety or that
of their families, the majority going to the six states that Trump focused his
attacks on the Certification of Election results. “The emails and calls often
spiked immediately after the former president and his allies raised new false
claims.”
August 2nd, Civil Division
Chief of the Maricopa County Attorneys’ Office, Thomas P. Liddy, sent a letter
to Senate President Fann, explaining the County’s position regarding her subpoena.
He argued that some of the requested materials had already been provided, like digital
images of the envelopes used to return early ballots, which contain the
affidavits that voters sign to affirm their identities. Other requested items, such
as the passwords that provide administrative access to the ballot tabulation
machines, have never been in the county’s possession. And finally, the security
concerns that drove the original Courtroom-spat between the County and the
Senate had escalated since, so the County was digging its heels in even harder
this time.
Of special importance
was Fann’s demand to get Maricopa’s routers, which were used by various county
agencies and departments, contained sensitive, confidential, information about
Maricopa County residents, and if turned over it would “severely disrupt”
County operations, costing millions of dollars
Fann had insisted the
routers needed to be examined to ensure that the County’s ballot tabulation
machines weren’t connected to the internet and weren’t sending or receiving
information during the Election.
Liddy pointed out that
all the Election technologies had already undergone a forensic audit conducted
by two companies accredited by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and that
there was no internet connection was already confirmed. In his carful,
lawyerly, language, he still managed to inject a patronizing tone, “Anyone with
sufficient knowledge and understanding of elections is able to confirm, through
a review of these logs or through an inspection of the tabulators, that the
equipment was not connected to the internet and had no wifi devices installed.”
Of course, Maricopa
wouldn’t provide the logs either. Fann wasn’t entitled, and they had already
been reviewed by more appropriate Authorities.
Dominion Voting
Systems also refused to comply. From them, Fann was demanding administrative
passwords for the devices they’d leased to Maricopa. Dominion argued that it
was not subject to the Senate’s subpoena authority. It’s worth noting that the
Conspiracy Masturbation that had so cruelly disrupted Dominion’s business had
long fallen apart, that Dominion was then-suing the worst offenders, and in
December and January, faced with iron-clad defamation cases, two FOX news networks, Newsmax, OANN and the magazine American Thinker publicly
debunked their own, earlier, lies.
In response, Fann and
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Warren Petersen issued another subpoena,
ordering the Maricopa Supervisors and representatives of Dominion to appear before
the Senate
August 3rd was
a big day that didn’t happen. Like gunslingers meeting on Main Street on High
Noon, Fann was to face-off in public with the Maricopa Supervisors and
representatives of Dominion. But the other gunslingers had spoken to their
Attorneys first, were confident that Fann had no bite behind her bark, and nobody
showed up with their spurs a-jangling. It was a Monday, so I certainly hope
that they all slept late and had breakfast in bed.
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