This is encouraging.

May Enrique Tarrio's prison cell be hell on earth. Let the toilet back up every night. Let the food smell worse.

May Trump follow Enrique Tarrio to this hellhole. Prison is the best place for traitors.

Proud Boys’ Enrique Tarrio gets record 22 years in prison for Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy

https://apnews.com/article/enrique-tarrio-capitol-riot-seditious-conspiracy-sentencing-da60222b3e1e54902db2bbbb219dc3fb #LetHimRot #GOPTreason #Jan6 #PoliticalViolence #TrumpTreason #RepublicansHateAmerica #MAGAsForPrison

Some things in life are priceless. For everything else, there's Mastercard.

#TrumpWillDieInPrison #GOP #Sentencing #Jan6 #Georgia #StolenSecrets #GOPTreason

These are typical, sleazy, disingenuous attacks by Republicans and people on the right who know they can't survive politically without lying early and often! This isn't about democracy or the health of our country, this is only about the power they and their donors want and their attempts to destroy our democracy and undermine it with lies to get their way! They have no integrity and they aren't interested in being public servants. They are addicted to money and power and are psychologically and emotionally sick and deranged! Yet the people they manipulate are oblivious to the ring they have put in their noses!

Jim Jordan spearheads 'cynical' and 'wildly partisan' GOP effort to chill anti-disinformation research - Alternet.org https://www.alternet.org/jim-jordan-2661568445/

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPLies
#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#GOPTreason

"A combination of universities and think tanks have been sounding the alarm about disinformation, warning that outright lies could influence the outcome of elections in the United States. But some Republicans, according to the New York Times, are not happy about their work — including House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (D-Ohio) and former Donald Trump aide Stephen Miller.

In an article published by the New York Times on June 19, journalists Steven Lee Myers and Sheera Frenkel report that Jordan and others GOP lawmakers are claiming that the anti-disinformation efforts are designed to suppress conservative speech online.

"The House Judiciary Committee, which in January came under Republican majority control, has sent scores of letters and subpoenas to the researchers — only some of which have been made public," Myers and Frenkel explain. "It has threatened legal action against those who have not responded quickly or fully enough…. Targets include Stanford, Clemson and New York Universities and the University of Washington; the Atlantic Council, the German Marshall Fund and the National Conference on Citizenship, all nonpartisan, nongovernmental organizations in Washington; the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco; and Graphika, a company that researches disinformation online."

In Louisiana, Miller, who heads the MAGA group America First Legal, has filed a class-action lawsuit against anti-disinformation researchers — making, Myers and Frenkel report, similar claims to Jordan on the House Intelligence Committee. The Trump ally has described his lawsuit as "striking at the heart of the censorship-industrial complex," but Miller's critics believe he is the one trying to silence those he disagrees with.

Jeff Hancock, founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab, views the GOP attacks on anti-disinformation researchers as disingenuous and misleading.

Hanocck told The Times, "We see it in the media, in the congressional committees and in lawsuits, and it is the same core argument, with a false premise about the government giving some type of direction to the research we do…. We have not only academic freedom as researchers to conduct this research, but freedom of speech to tell Twitter or any other company to look at tweets we might think violate rules."

Jameel Jaffer, who serves was executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at New York City's Columbia University, is critical of the Republican lawmakers as well.

Jaffer told the Times, "I think it's quite obviously a cynical — and I would say wildly partisan — attempt to chill research.""

It seems suitable to invoke the 14th amendment, which was written to make clear that the US would not honor the debts incurred by traitors, to prevent the traitors in the Republican party from destroying the country from within. #14thammendment #biden14thamendment #goptreason

REMINDER: The Republican National Committee is still being run by a future felon waiting to be investigated and charged. How's that working out?

#FireRonnaMcDaniel #IndictRonnaMcDaniel #GOPTreason #GOP

The mainstreaming of the Republican effort to suppress the vote. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/04/republican-effort-to-suppress-the-vote.html

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#GOPFascism
#GOPTreason

"It’s bad enough when a trio of voter suppression groups led by charlatans gets together at an annual secret conference that is sponsored, in part, by a group created by the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo to talk about all the ways they might make it harder for people to register or vote in future elections. But it is much worse when the participants in that secret conference also include secretaries of state and other top election officials from 13 Republican-led states, plus Don Palmer, a member of the United States Election Assistance Commission, plus counsels to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the House Administration Committee’s Republican staff, and a sitting Texas state senator. The entire conference—whose existence was revealed in a blockbuster report by the Guardian and Documented last week—shows that there is a thriving network of interlocking organizations working with elected and election officials to use unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud to try to mess with fair elections for partisan advantage.
...
Dark money donors capture the courts and the levers of government to make actual vote tallies irrelevant to who holds power. This story didn’t start in Tennessee or the Amarillo district court. For nearly two decades, we have been chronicling the actions of members of the Fraudulent Fraud Squad who have been active in perpetuating claims of voter fraud to make it harder for people to vote.
...
former President Donald Trump’s aborted Voter Fraud Commission. Documents from that commission later revealed a purposeful effort to generate enough smoke around nonexistent election shenanigans to cajole Congress into allowing states to require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. In other words, the commission was an elaborate search for a solution to a problem that never existed, but it made a play that has since been repeated elsewhere.
...
All of this voter suppression requires an infrastructure. To help support it, Heritage and PILF have teamed up with Leonard Leo’s Orwellian-named “Honest Elections Project” (HEP), headed by Jason Snead, to run a new conference for election officials and the representatives of Republican lawmakers. Leo, lest we forget, has been in charge of reshaping the federal courts, selecting Donald Trump’s judicial nominees, and figuring out how best to spend gobs of billionaire-donated money to reshape culture and democracy. The chillingly dishonest HEP not only supports these efforts to make voting harder but also the “independent state legislature theory,” ...
The election suppression noises are truly coming from inside the house.
...
this is no longer just a lobbying effort shored up with big, often untraceable money, coming from players outside the system. What’s no longer hidden is the involvement of lawmakers and their staffs, who say the quiet parts out loud. Their enthusiastic participation in these efforts shows that these groups are not offering false and exaggerated claims of voter fraud merely to raise funds or even to delegitimize Democratic electoral victories by convincing the Republican base that when Democrats win elections, it is inevitably by fraud. Instead, the conference is powerful evidence of coordination between the decades-old voter fraud–industrial complex and state and government officials who actually have the power to make rules over how elections are run. To put it in the simplest terms, the election suppression noises are truly coming from inside the house.
...
Finally, the very existence of this conference also highlights the coming together of the fringe elements of the Republican party with its allegedly saner mainstream."

Trump is guilty of treason. We will get there.

#NormalPeopleAreRepulsedByTrump #TrumpTreason #GOPTreason

The #GOP knows that Trump committed treason. What does that say about them?

#EndTheGOP #GOPTreason #GOPLiars #GOP #VoteBlueIfYouWantToLive

America has Ignored GOP Crimes to Seize the White House Long Enough - It’s Time to Put this One in Prison https://hartmannreport.com/p/america-has-ignored-gop-crimes-to

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPStealsPresidency
#GOPTreason

"It’s dizzying: in this one week we learn that there’s a witness to Reagan’s 1980 treason to seize the presidency, and that Donald Trump, who gave the Russians a spy in his first week in office (among other treasons), will be indicted for the crime that helped him avoid losing to Hillary Clinton. This is on top of Nixon’s well-documented treason with Vietnam and Bush’s explicit lies about Iraq.

It's now a certainty that the last legitimately elected Republican president who wasn’t a traitor to the United States was Dwight D. Eisenhower.
...
Republican candidates for president committing treason to get into or stay in the White House has been the norm since 1968: it’s time to seriously discuss the five-decade-long problem we have with treasonous and illegitimate GOP presidents.
...
Johnson spent most of late 1967 and early 1968 working back-channels to North and South Vietnam, and by the summer of 1968 had a tentative agreement from both for what promised to be a lasting peace deal they’d both sign that fall.
...
Nixon knew that if he could block that peace deal, it would kill VP Hubert Humphrey’s chances of winning the 1968 election.
...
Nixon promised South Vietnam’s corrupt politicians that he’d give them a richer deal when he was President than LBJ could give them then (just like Reagan would later do with the Iranians).
...
Nixon was never held to account for that treason, and when the LBJ library released the tapes and documentation long after his and LBJ’s deaths it was barely noticed by the American press.
...
Next up was Ronald Reagan.
...
Carter had reached a deal with newly-elected Iranian President Abdolhassan Bani-Sadr to release the fifty-two hostages held by students at the American Embassy in Tehran.
...
But behind Carter’s back, the Reagan campaign worked out a deal with the leader of Iran’s radical faction — Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini — to keep the hostages in captivity until after the 1980 Presidential election. Khomeini needed spare parts for American weapons systems the Shah had purchased for Iran, and Reagan was happy to promise them.
...
President Bani-Sadr :..
“Ayatollah Khomeini and Ronald Reagan had organized a clandestine negotiation, later known as the ‘October Surprise,’ which prevented the attempts by myself and then-US President Jimmy Carter to free the hostages before the 1980 US presidential election took place. The fact that they were not released tipped the results of the election in favor of Reagan.”

And Reagan’s treason — just like Nixon’s treason — worked perfectly.
...
Keeping his side of the deal, Reagan began selling the Iranians weapons and spare parts in 1981, and continued until he was busted for it in 1986, producing the so-called “Iran Contra” scandal.

But, like Nixon, Reagan was never held to account for the criminal and treasonous actions that brought him to office.
...
Bush’s attorney general, Bill Barr, suggested he pardon them all to kill the investigation, which Bush did.

The screaming headline across the New York Times front page on December 25, 1992, said it all:

“THE PARDONS; BUSH PARDONS 6 IN IRAN AFFAIR, ABORTING A WEINBERGER TRIAL; PROSECUTOR ASSAILS 'COVER-UP’”
...
Which brings us to George W. Bush, the man who was given the White House by five right-wing justices on the Supreme Court.
...
As the November 12th, 2001 article in The New York Times read:

“If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won.”
...
So, for the third time in 4 decades, Republicans took the White House under illegitimate electoral circumstances. Even President Carter was shocked by the brazenness of that one. And Jeb Bush and the GOP were never held to account for that crime against democracy.*
...
In 2016, Trump ally Kris Kobach and Republican Secretaries of State across the nation used Interstate Crosscheck to purge millions of legitimate voters — most people of color — from the voting rolls just in time for the Clinton/Trump election.
...
America has ignored GOP crimes to seize and hold the White House long enough.
...
It’s time, at long last, to put this one in prison."

So many republican pundits and consultants have been marketing DeSantis as the GOP solution to Trump's weakness. Desperately wanting to find a solution, and actually finding one, are two very different things. DeSantis, despite all his intense fascist posing, is so not ready for primetime and probably never will be.

Ron DeSantis, potential GOP standard-bearer, sounds out of his depth
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/23/desantis-fox-news-ukraine-criticism-incoherent/

#GOPTreason
#GOPLovesPutin
#DeSantisFascist
##DeSantisIncompetent

"Apparently no one told Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that if you’re going to wade into the deep waters of foreign policy, you should at least know how to dog paddle.

It turns out that the man many Republicans hope can run for president in 2024 as “Donald Trump without the baggage” is like a deer in headlights when asked, very politely, about the war in Ukraine. It’s not just that he’s unready for prime time. He can’t even handle “Fox & Friends.”

Appearing this week on that GOP-friendly morning show, DeSantis tried to take a Trumpist “America First” position about the war — questioning the level of U.S. military and economic aid President Biden and Congress have given to Ukraine while there are problems that need to be addressed here at home. He ended up sounding weak, ill-informed and incoherent.

I’m old enough to remember when it would have been out of bounds to criticize a U.S. president when he was on foreign soil — and unthinkable when the commander in chief was in a war zone. As DeSantis spoke, Biden was meeting in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, having endured a 10-hour train ride from the Polish border under threat of potential attack by Russian missiles.

But that was then, this is now. While what is left of the Republican establishment praised Biden’s bold gesture, the ascendant faux-populist wing of the party complained about Biden supposedly — all together, now — caring more about Ukraine’s borders than he cares about our own. This is worse than an apples-to-oranges comparison; more like apples-to-orangutans. But that’s where DeSantis went, claiming that “while he’s over there,” Biden has “not done anything to secure our own border here at home.”

For the record, it is not necessary to believe Biden’s handling of the U.S.-Mexico border crisis has been optimal, or even adequate, to support a policy of helping Ukraine defend itself against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal and unprovoked war of conquest. DeSantis must know this. I doubt his professors at Yale University and Harvard Law School let him get away with such sloppy thinking.

But imagine, for a moment, how his words must have brightened Putin’s day. His dream would be for Trump, who treated Putin the way a fanboy stans his idol, to return to the White House in January 2025. But to hear Trump’s principal (but still unannounced) opponent for the GOP nomination taking the isolationist line? That can give Putin only more reason to stay the course — keep bombing Ukrainian hospitals, playgrounds and power stations; keep murdering children and grandmothers — for two more years.

DeSantis was announcing his weakness, not just to Putin but also to China’s Xi Jinping, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and the mullahs in Iran. And in the same interview, DeSantis also showed that he either has not been paying attention to what is happening in Ukraine or does not understand what he has been seeing.
...
Perhaps the dumbest thing DeSantis said, though, was to imply that the war was basically no big deal. “The fear of Russia going into NATO countries and all that and steamrolling, you know, that has not even come close to happening,” he said. Now, why might that be? Maybe because the United States and NATO showed strength in coming to Ukraine’s aid. Maybe Russia now looks like what DeSantis called a “third-rate military power” because Western arms and intelligence helped Ukrainian forces decimate the Russian military, destroying perhaps half of its tanks.

DeSantis’s performance was bad on every level. Still, I can’t wait to hear what he has to say when someone informs him, psst, that Russia has a whole bunch of nuclear weapons."

It's hard to imagine how Greene's call for secession serves the interests of the oligarch's/obscenely wealthy, but it certainly serves Putin's desire to foment chaos and wreak havoc on our country and democracy. Are the oligarch's pulling her strings or is it Putin? She's not smart enough to accomplish much in the way of policy suggestions on her own. Unfortunately, the entire GOP has now become a disaster for democracy and our country. They are all either insane, in Putin's pocket or puppets for the obscenely wealthy who are making a play for eliminating the federal government as a force that can rebuke them, reign them in or make them not poison or impoverish all of us.

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Civil War https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/marjorie-taylor-greene-secession-civil-war/673142/

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#GOPArePutinsTools
#GOPRacists
#GOPFascists
#GOPTreason

"It was only a matter of time before Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene—a peddler of far-right conspiracy theories, a speaker at white-nationalist rallies, a supporter of political violence, and an all-around unhinged individual—would renew her call for secession.

The temptation of many people, eager to move past America’s political freak show, will be to ignore her comments and dismiss her as an outcast, a fringe figure, deranged but isolated. The less said about her, the better.

That’s unwise.

Greene is not just a member of Congress, not just a member of its Committee on Homeland Security; she has become a confidante of Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. He has “forged an ironclad bond” with Greene, according to The New York Times.
...
“If you’re going to be in a fight, you want Marjorie in your foxhole,” McCarthy told the Times. “When she picks a fight, she’s going to fight until the fight’s over. She reminds me of my friends from high school, that we’re going to stick together all the way through.” He’ll even stick together with those arguing for secession, apparently.

Greene is not alone in her views. She is giving voice to a widespread and growing sentiment in the Republican Party. Among Republicans in the South, for example, support for secession was 66 percent in June 2021, according to a Bright Line Watch/YouGov poll.
...
Last summer, thousands of Texas Republicans approved a platform that called on the state legislature to authorize a referendum on secession from the United States.
...
The Republican Party, forged a century and a half ago in the fight against secession, now finds the move worth contemplating.

Civil War–like secession isn’t going to happen in the United States, at least not anytime soon. But all of the emotions that are attached to a desire for secession—seething resentment, existential fear, an unforgiving spirit, contempt and hatred for those who disagree with you—are stoked by the kind of rhetoric employed by Greene and those who see the world as she does. Such language will further destroy America’s political culture and could easily lead to extensive political violence.
...
But I doubt that many Republicans, aside from courageous figures such as Utah Governor Spencer Cox and Liz Cheney, the former chair of the House Republican Conference, will call Greene out. (Senator Mitt Romney of Utah and former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan have shown integrity throughout the MAGA years as well.)
...
What the rest of us learned during the Trump era is that a party led by craven men and women—some of them cynical, others true believers, almost all afraid to speak out—will end up normalizing the transgressive, unethical, and moronic.

Trump did horrifying things at the end of his presidency, including attempting a coup and inciting a violent mob to attack the Capitol. The majority of Republicans tolerated what he did, to a degree that simply wouldn’t have happened at the beginning of his presidency. It took time for the corruption to fully take hold, for the party—lawmakers and the right-wing media complex—to fall completely into line.
...
Greene and McCarthy—one crazed, the other cowardly—embody a large swath of the modern-day GOP. Any party that makes room for seditionists and secessionists is sick and dangerous."

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPRacists
#GOPTreason
#GOPLies

@brianbeutler

The Corruption Runs Deep In This Rolling Clown Show https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/jim-jordan-weaponization-select-subcommittee via @TPM@twitter.com

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/TPM_dk/status/16

#GOPLies
#GOPCorruption
#GOPTreason

Just a few quotes from the article to make it even juicier!

"It’s Bad. Very Bad.
The House GOP’s brazenness, its lack of shame, and its full-throated embrace of interfering with ongoing criminal investigations has the effect of almost normalizing what is an extraordinary level of systemic corruption and abuse of power.

That would be true even if numerous House GOPers didn’t have vested personal interests in the investigations in question, but as we know an astonishing number of them are caught up in the investigations that they’re so loudly protesting and are now trying to sabotage.

As Greg Sargent noted yesterday, giving incoming Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) a select subcommittee to target the FBI and DOJ is basically creating a propaganda machine.

That resistance could serve as grist for Republicans and their allies in the right-wing media to scream “coverup” and paint investigations as corrupt. That could even be used to manufacture a fake rationale for impeaching Attorney General Merrick Garland, and for attempts to use an obscure House rule to defund investigations of Trump.

Jordan himself was deeply involved in Trump’s effort to subvert the 2020 election. But the list is long. Here is newly elected Rep. Daniel Goldman, the lead majority counsel in the first Trump impeachment, calling out Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), another GOP member already in DOJ’s crosshairs for his role in the election subversion effort:

"Goldman: A member from Pennsylvania had his cell phone seized pursuant to a court order finding probable cause that he committed a crime. Yet he's indicated that he wants to be on this subcommittee so he can undermine a criminal investigation into himself.."

Beyond Ridiculous
No one is happier about the House GOP’s new remit to investigate the investigators than Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT). The former Interior secretary was widely regarded as the most ethically challenged member of the Trump cabinet. Quite an achievement. He went on a Deep State rant on the House floor:

"Zinke: Despite the deep state's attempts to repeatedly stop me I stand before you as a duly elected member of the congress and tell you that a deep state exists… They want to wipe out the American cowboy"

You go, Robert!! Right on!! DeSantis and Cruz are both sleazy and that far too often exemplifies lawyers these days. Lawyers and their Bar Associations have to police themselves better and disbar more dangerous embarrassments!! Especially ones that threaten our democracy, as these two, among many others, clearly do!!

The shame of Harvard Law School - Robert Reich https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-shame-of-harvard-and-yale-law

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPTreason
@rbreich

"...What else do DeSantis and Cruz have in common? Both graduated from Harvard Law School (DeSantis, class of 2005; Cruz, class of 1995).

So, the two likeliest Republican candidates for president as Trump fades, who have both attacked the legal foundations of American democracy, are the products of the most prestigious law school in the nation.

Harvard Law School isn’t responsible for DeSantis or Cruz, of course. But the institution harbors the mythic ideal that it inculcates the future leaders of America with a sense of public duty to democracy and the rule of law. DeSantis and Cruz surely taint the mythic ideal.

These two Harvard Law grads also point up the inconvenient fact that Harvard Law School — like Yale Law, which I attended decades ago — is little more than a trade school that teaches students how to make money by winning cases for clients, but doesn’t impart a higher public duty to uphold and strengthen democracy and the rule of law.

Yet lawyers hold a public trust. Which is why the D.C. Bar association’s disciplinary counsel has called for disbarring Rudy Giuliani (NYU Law School class of 1968) after finding that Giuliani, as the attorney for then-President Donald Trump, pressed a baseless, failed legal challenge to the 2020 election results. And why a federal judge in Michigan has sanctioned Trump lawyer Sidney Powell (University of North Carolina School of Law class of 1978) for election-related litigation the judge found to be “abusive.”

In November, Harvard dropped out of the U.S. News & World Report rankings of law schools, which emphasize such crass things as the salaries of their graduates. As Harvard Law School Dean John Manning explained, the ranking “does not advance the best ideals of legal education or the profession we serve, and it contradicts the deeply held commitments of Harvard Law School.”

Okay, Dean Manning: What are the best ideals of legal education and the deeply held commitments of Harvard Law School?

If legal education and the legal profession have learned anything over the last two years and three months, shouldn’t it be that lawyers have a public duty to uphold and protect our system of self-government?

Both DeSantis and Cruz have rejected the rule of law. Both have undermined our democracy. Both exemplify the authoritarian idea now dominant in the Republican Party that law is nothing more than a tool to advance one’s ambitions. They are the shame of the legal profession — and of Harvard Law."

#GOPHypocrisy
#GOPConspiracies
#GOPDysfunction

RT @realpublicius@twitter.com

I'm sick and tired of

#GOPButthurt
#GOPParanoia
#GOPGreed
#GOPLies
#GOPTreason
#GOPCowardice
#GOPIdiocy

I'm sick and tired of the @GOP@twitter.com.

Period.

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/realpublicius/status/1618625511529525249

@billpascrell
White nationalist treasonous reactionary coup-attempting ignoramus GOP white dinosaurs 🦕 who dont know their ass from their elbow need to be shown their way to the boneyard of obscurity, where they belong.
Their rotting stench is stinking up what’s left of our republic.
#goptreason
#houseofrepresentatives
#PresidentBiden
#WEthePeople

@krisSacrebleu read your post and turned on CNN. Bummed I hadn’t caught it at the beginning as it’s almost over and won’t be replayed. We can never forget this atrocity #january6th #Insurrectionists #goptreason

Trump instigated the J6 insurrection to stay in power and out of jail. The GOP was all in because they wanted power and had given up on democracy.

Yes, January 6 Was a Heavily Armed Insurrection https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/01/january-6-armed-insurrection-congress-guns-trump-lie/

#GOPTreason
#GOPLies
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#TrumpTreason
#GOPLovesPower

"Two years after the January 6 disaster, evidence continues building that numerous extremists went to Washington that day armed with guns, tactical gear, and other weapons. The mass attack on Congress incited by Donald Trump was grisly and devastating: The Capitol Building was damaged and desecrated, scores of law enforcement agents were assaulted, a QAnon devotee was fatally shot while breaking into the Speaker’s Chamber, and several police officers took their own lives in the aftermath. Yet, that harrowing day held the potential for far greater bloodshed.

The final report from the House select committee on January 6 and court documents from federal prosecutions contain further evidence of Trump supporters who showed up with weapons and violent intent. The evidence is important to highlight amid a long-running disinformation campaign from the political right, including the lie that no one brought guns to DC to stop Joe Biden from becoming president. Trump and his allies have long deployed versions of that false claim to help depict the insurrection as a “lovefest,” a “normal tourist visit,” and other absurdities intended to cover up the violent siege and seditious conspiracies that Trump methodically encouraged and whipped up. To this day, the ex-president portrays January 6 offenders as “patriots” wrongly persecuted, and he has vowed pardons and a government apology for “many” of them if he is elected president in 2024.

FBI investigations revealed that some who stormed Congress were wary of DC’s strict gun laws and decided to leave their firearms behind or stashed them away from the Capitol. But many others were undeterred—and top White House officials reportedly knew before the assault that legions of diehard Trump supporters had arrived for the president’s speech at the Ellipse armed with various weapons. In explosive testimony to the House committee detailed in its final report, Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as a top aide to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, described the danger:

Cassidy Hutchinson told the Select Committee she heard that thousands of people refused to walk through magnetometers to enter the Ellipse because they did not want to be screened for weapons. According to Hutchinson, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations whose responsibilities included security-related issues, Tony Ornato, told the President that the onlookers “don’t want to come in right now. They have weapons that they don’t want confiscated by the Secret Service.” When he arrived at the Ellipse that morning, President Trump angrily said: “I don’t [fucking] care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. They can march to the Capitol from here.”

Among the tens of thousands of people who did go through the magnetometers, according to the report, the Secret Service confiscated “269 knives or blades, 242 canisters of pepper spray, 18 brass knuckles, 18 tasers, 6 pieces of body armor, 3 gas masks, 30 batons or blunt instruments, and 17 miscellaneous items like scissors, needles, or screwdrivers.”
...
A plot by a group of Oath Keepers, whose founder Stewart Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy in November, included an arsenal of guns stockpiled in a hotel across the river in Northern Virginia. Rhodes predicted “a bloody and desperate fight” if Biden were to be certified president, and at one point during planning for January 6 he messaged fellow Oath Keepers: “Conquer or Die. This needs to be our attitude.” A convicted co-conspirator testified that the Oath Keepers’ so-called quick reaction force was poised to use the arsenal stashed a few miles from the Capitol and intended to stop the certification of Biden “by any means necessary.”

Millions of Americans, meanwhile, continue to consume brazen lies about the violence and danger of January 6, whether from Fox News and other right-wing media or the disgraced former president himself. “Just to be clear on terms, an insurrection is when people with guns try to overthrow the government,” Tucker Carlson said on Fox in June. “Not a single person in the crowd on January 6 was found to be carrying a firearm. Not one.”
...
A far-right faction in the speaker fight has been led by Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, who helped spearhead the Trump plot to overturn the 2020 vote and stands with other election deniers in the House GOP."

The treasonous members of the Freedom Caucus are puppets of the Koch's and Peter Theil, among other oligarchs, who want to neuter the government so they face no regulations and have total power, control and even more money.

"With Trump running for President and the Freedom Caucus running the House"

How not to mark the 2nd anniversary of the day American democracy almost died https://robertreich.substack.com/p/how-not-to-mark-the-2nd-anniversary

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#FreedomCaucusTreason
#GOPTreason
#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPOligarchPuppets
#WantTheirSerfsBack

"Two years ago today the United States Capitol was attacked by a mob determined to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden as President.

Members of Congress most involved in that insurrection — those subpoenaed by the January 6 committee yet who ignored the subpoenas (Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Mo Brooks of Alabama), and others who have been linked to the insurrection (Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, and Louie Gohmert of Texas) — are members of the far-right Freedom Caucus.

They are on the verge of hijacking the Speakership, which means hijacking the House, hijacking Congress, and hijacking the American people.

In their pending deal with Kevin McCarthy, they will have the power to recall him at any time if he doesn’t hew to their demands. They’ll also get approval power over some plum committee assignments, including a third of the members on the influential Rules Committee, which controls what legislation reaches the floor and in what form. And spending bills would have to be considered under so-called open rules, allowing any member to put to a vote an unlimited number of changes that could gut or scuttle the legislation altogether.

Two years have passed, yet the top lawmakers in the US government who were most directly involved in the insurrection — Trump and his co-conspirators in Congress — have not been held accountable.

To the contrary, Trump is so far unopposed in seeking the Republican nomination for President, and his co-conspirators are wielding more influence over the U.S. government than ever before.

This is not the way to mark the second anniversary of the day American democracy almost died."

Part 2
There is something very disturbing about these freedom caucus members' support for Putin, attempts to destroy democracy, social security and whole agencies and their funding by Peter Theil and Koch.

"Is this all a continuation of Trump’s January 6th coup attempt and his desire to convert America from a democracy into a despotic strongman-rule nation aligned with Russia?"

Is the Anti-McCarthy Crowd in the Bag for the Billionaires, Putin, or Both? https://hartmannreport.com/p/is-the-anti-mccarthy-crowd-in-the

#GOPTreason
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPInBedWithRich
#PutinHatesDemocracy
#GOPInBedWithPutin
#GOPOligarchPuppets
#WantTheirSerfsBack

“It's becoming clear now: This is January 6th, Episode II. The Freedom Caucus is demanding debt default, which will spark a ~$15T global financial crisis. COVID was ~$4T. This will only help Putin and his BRICS+/GGC allies.”

Skeptical but curious, I plugged the names of each of the 20 Republicans who voted against McCarthy in the first vote yesterday into a search engine along with the word “Russia.” Here’s what I found about 15 of them:

Andy Biggs voted against legislation to document Russian war crimes in Ukraine, as did Paul Gosar and Scott Perry.

Matt Gaetz, Dan Bishop, Paul Gosar, Ralph Norman, and Scott Perry all voted against suspending normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus.

Dan Bishop, Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs, Paul Gosar, and Chip Roy all voted against a bill to ban imports of Russian oil and gas.

Those four also voted against legislation to strip Russia from “most favored nation status” by the World Trade Organization.

Paul Gosar and Matt Rosendale both voted against a resolution that reaffirmed US support for Ukrainian sovereignty.

John Brecheen is new to Congress, but when asked by his local newspaper about whether America should support Ukraine against the Russian invasion he replied, “My position is I would not have voted for funding of war.”

Michael Cloud tweeted: “The Biden Admin has ignored a year-long invasion at our southern border but is considering risking the lives of U.S. soldiers to protect Ukraine's border? Ukraine is thousands of miles away.”

Voting against Sweden and Finland joining NATO, a pet Putin peeve, were Michael Cloud, Andy Biggs, Dan Bishop, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Bob Good, Ralph Norman, and Chip Roy.

Eli Crane says of the US supporting Ukraine, “This is a war we shouldn’t be involved in,” and it will make the Afghanistan exit “look like child’s play.”

Matt Gaetz tweeted: “Today the House didn't organize. Biggest loser: Zelensky. Biggest winner: U.S. Taxpayers.” He also tweeted: “I’m more concerned with the US-Mexico border than the Russia-Ukraine border. Not sorry.”

Opposing US aid to Ukraine, Matt Gaetz told a CPAC audience: “Why should Americans have to pay the costs for freedom elsewhere when our own leaders won't stand up for our freedom here?”

Paul Gosar tweeted: “Ukraine is not our ally. Russia is not our enemy. We need to address our crippling debt, inflation and immigration problems. None of this is Putin's fault.”

Paul Gosar wrote an open letter to the White House asking President Biden to “refrain from participating in its annually recurring nuclear exercise ‘Steadfast Noon’ in conjunction with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to ‘prevent further escalation.’”

Paul Gosar tweeted: “Putin puts Russia first as he should.”

Mary Miller, Bob Good, Ralph Norman, Andy Biggs, and Matt Gaetz co-sponsored legislation to forbid any further delivery of military equipment to Ukraine.
...
Ralph Norman, who called for Trump to impose “Marshall law” to prevent Biden from being sworn in, first issued a statement on day one of the invasion of Ukraine condemning Russia but then voted “No” on US aid to Ukraine in September and continues to oppose such aid.
...
Matt Rosendale issued a statement saying: “The United States has no legal or moral obligation to come to the aid of either side in this foreign conflict.” He voted against a resolution “supporting the people of Ukraine.” He also introduced legislation blocking any US aid to Ukraine.

Byron Donalds voted against US aid to Ukraine.
...
While none of this proves that the anti-McCarthy forces are getting their marching orders from Putin, it does raise some significant questions about their commitment to the continuation of the current form and nature of our government. I think Dave Troy’s idea is worth taking seriously.

Because the outcome he contemplates is something both the rightwing billionaires and Putin could get behind."