Sunday, December 12, 2021

Capitol attack panel obtains PowerPoint that set out plan for Trump to stage coup


Hugo Lowell in Washington
Fri, December 10, 2021



Former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows turned over to the House select committee investigating the 6 January Capitol attack a PowerPoint recommending Donald Trump to declare a national security emergency in order to return himself to the presidency.

Related: Capitol attack committee issues new subpoenas to two ex-Trump aides

The fact that Meadows was in possession of a PowerPoint the day before the Capitol attack that detailed ways to stage a coup suggests he was at least aware of efforts by Trump and his allies to stop Joe Biden’s certification from taking place on 6 January.

The PowerPoint, titled “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 Jan”, made several recommendations for Trump to pursue in order to retain the presidency for a second term on the basis of lies and debunked conspiracies about widespread election fraud.

Meadows turned over a version of the PowerPoint presentation that he received in an email and spanned 38 pages, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The Guardian reviewed a second, 36-page version of the PowerPoint marked for dissemination with 5 January metadata, which had some differences with what the select committee received. But the title of the PowerPoint and its recommendations remained the same, the source said.

Senators and members of Congress should first be briefed about foreign interference, the PowerPoint said, at which point Trump could declare a national emergency, declare all electronic voting invalid, and ask Congress to agree on a constitutionally acceptable remedy.

The PowerPoint also outlined three options for then vice-president Mike Pence to abuse his largely ceremonial role at the joint session of Congress on 6 January, when Biden was to be certified president, and unilaterally return Trump to the White House.

Pence could pursue one of three options, the PowerPoint said: seat Trump slates of electors over the objections of Democrats in key states, reject the Biden slates of electors, or delay the certification to allow for a “vetting” and counting of only “legal paper ballots”.

The final option for Pence is similar to an option that was simultaneously being advanced on 4 and 5 January by Trump lieutenants – led by lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, as well as Trump strategist Steve Bannon – working from the Willard hotel in Washington DC.

The Guardian revealed last week that sometime between the late evening of 5 January and the early hours of 6 January, after Pence declined to go ahead with such plans, Trump then pressed his lieutenants about how to stop Biden’s certification from taking place entirely.

The recommendations in the PowerPoint for both Trump and Pence were based on wild and unsubstantiated claims of election fraud, including that “the Chinese systematically gained control over our election system” in eight key battleground states.

The then acting attorney general, Jeff Rosen, and his predecessor, Bill Barr, who had both been appointed by Trump, by 5 January had already determined that there was no evidence of voter fraud sufficient to change the outcome of the 2020 election.

House investigators said that they became aware of the PowerPoint after it surfaced in more than 6,000 documents Meadows turned over to the select committee. The PowerPoint was to be presented “on the Hill”, a reference to Congress, the panel said.

The powerpoint was presented on 4 January to a number of Republican senators and members of Congress, the source said. Trump’s lawyers working at the Willard hotel were not shown the presentation, according to a source familiar with the matter.

But the select committee said they did find in the materials turned over by Meadows, his text messages with a member of Congress, who told Meadows about a “highly controversial” plan to send slates of electors for Trump to the joint session of Congress.

Meadows replied: “I love it.”

Trump’s former White House chief of staff had turned over the materials to the select committee until the cooperation deal broke down on Tuesday, when Meadows’ attorney, Terwilliger, abruptly told House investigators that Meadows would no longer help the investigation.

The select committee announced on Wednesday that in response, it would refer Meadows for criminal prosecution for defying a subpoena. The chairman of the select committee, Bennie Thompson, said the vote to hold Meadows in contempt of Congress would come next week.

“The select committee will meet next week to advance a report recommending that the House cite Mr Meadows for contempt of Congress and refer him to the Department of Justice for prosecution,” Thompson said in a statement.



Trump’s White House Emailed About a PowerPoint on How to End American Democracy

Ryan Bort
Thu, December 9, 2021

Mark Meadows - Credit: AP

The House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the Capitol has obtained a trove of electronic messages from former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, including an email referring to a PowerPoint suggesting Trump could declare a national security emergency in order to delay the certification of the results of the 2020 election.

The revelation is the latest indication that Trump and his inner circle, including his allies in Congress, were very actively and very aggressively trying to overturn the results of the election, which Trump lost handily.

The PowerPoint presentation, which spanned 38 pages and was titled “Election fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN,” was part of an email sent on Jan. 5, the day before the attack on the Capitol. The email pertained to a briefing that was to be provided “on the hill.” Hugo Lowell of The Guardian tweeted slides from the presentation on Thursday detailing a conspiracy theory-laden plan for Vice President Pence to install Republican electors in states “where fraud occurred,” and for Trump to declare a national emergency and for all electronic voting to be rendered invalid, citing foreign “control” of electronic voting systems.

In the 13 months since the election, no evidence has emerged that foreign entities influenced the election, or that any significant fraud occurred.

The committee noted in a letter on Wednesday that Meadows had provided text messages in which he discussed a “highly controversial” plan to overturn the election results by appointing alternate electors in certain states. “I love it,” Meadows replied to the idea, which was sent to him by a lawmaker. Meadows discussed the same plan, which was described as a “direct and collateral attack,” in a separate email. The letter referenced the PowerPoint presentation, as well, but did not provide details of its contents.

The letter sent on Wednesday, which was addressed to Meadows’ attorney, explained that the committee had “no choice” but to move to hold Meadows in contempt of Congress for his refusal to comply with his subpoena. How, if Meadows is refusing to comply, did the committee get ahold of all of these damning documents from the former chief of staff? Meadows last week reached an agreement to cooperate, turned over the material, and then earlier this week changed his mind and is now stonewalling the committee. He’s now suing the committee in an attempt to block his subpoena.

It’s unclear what exactly inspired the reversal. Meadows says the committee was not respecting his claims of executive privilege, to which Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said the committee “tried repeatedly to identify with specificity the areas of inquiry” were subject to privilege, but Meadows wouldn’t cooperate. It’s also possible that Meadows decided to buck the committee after reports began to circulate that Trump was pissed at him for revealing a bunch of damning information about how the White House covered up details of Trump’s bout with Covid last year. It’s also possible that Meadows just isn’t very bright.

Regardless, the committee is now in possession of a trove of his documents indicating the extent of Trumpworld’s very real efforts to overturn the election results, efforts that culminated in a throng of supporters storming the Capitol in a violent attack that resulted in five deaths and dozens of injured police officers.

The material turned over by Meadows may be the tip of the iceberg. Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said last week that the committee is preparing to hold “several weeks” worth of public hearings that will tell the story of the riot at the Capitol in “vivid color.” She added on Thursday that the committee has met with nearly 300 witnesses, that it is conducting multiple depositions and interviews every week, and that it expects a ruling imminently on whether it can obtain Trump’s White House documents. “The investigation is firing on all cylinders,” she wrote.

Hours after Cheney teased an upcoming ruling on Trump’s executive privilege claim, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals struck it down.


January 6 committee releases documents detailing Trump’s plot to overthrow election by declaring bogus “National Emergency”

Jacob Crosse
WSWS.ORG

Earlier this week, the January 6 House Select Committee charged with investigating former President Donald Trump’s attempted coup released an explosive slide show presentation turned over to the committee by former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. The slide show revealed Trump’s and his co-conspirators’ systematic plan for overturning democratic forms of rule in the United States.

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows speaks with reporters outside the White House, Oct. 26, 2020, in Washington [Credit: AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File]

The presentation, dated January 5 and titled “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 Jan,” begins by citing false claims of “foreign interference” by China through Venezuela and Dominion Voting Systems software.

In response to the alleged “INFLUENCE and CONTROL” of “US Voting Infrastructure in at least 28 States as part of [an] ongoing globalist/socialist operation to subvert the will of United States Voters and install a China ally,” the slides describe in detail the multifaceted plot by Trump and his allies to declare a phony “National Security Emergency” in order to use US Marshals and the National Guard to seize election infrastructure nationwide and “declare electronic voting in all states invalid.”

After declaring the results invalid, the slides call for a “federalized” National Guard, under the command of a so-called “Trusted Lead Counter” appointed “with authority” from Trump to “direct the actions of select federalized National Guard units and support from [Department of Justice], [Department of Homeland Security] and other US government agencies.” These entities would “disqualify all the counterfeit ballots” (emphasis in original) and “then count all the remaining legal paper ballots.”

In a slide titled “Ballot Adjudication,” the document outlines the procedure for suspending the Constitution in order to facilitate the counting of “legal paper ballots.” After the National Guard finishes counting every so-called “legal” ballot in “5-10 days,” the ballots would then be approved by state legislators. Ballot exceptions, the document states, “will require an affirmative vote by the [Supreme Court of the United States] stating that Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 has been suspended. Otherwise all officials will follow the Constitution.”

The shoddy slide show presentation is a window into the thinking of an increasingly fascistic and desperate ruling class that is becoming further untethered from reality by the day. Its existence is further confirmation of the wide-ranging plot orchestrated by Trump, and supported by significant sections of the Republican Party, to overthrow the election of Biden and with it, what little remains of bourgeois democracy in the US. It is further proof that the storming of the Capitol on January 6, which the World Socialist Web Site alone warned the working class in the months following Trump’s electoral defeat, was not a spontaneous riot but the culmination of the dictatorial scheme orchestrated from the highest levels of the US government.

The presentation was part of a tranche of documents turned over by Meadows before he declared earlier this week that he would no longer be complying with the committee’s request. In a letter to Meadows’ lawyer Wednesday citing the presentation, Select Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (Mississippi-Democrat) wrote that the document was slated for distribution to those “on the hill,” that is, it was to be presented to members of Congress.

In the same letter to Meadows’ lawyer, Thompson noted that in the documents already turned over by Meadows to the committee, the former chief of staff is shown sending emails as early as November 7, 2020 suggesting Republican-controlled states send “alternate” slates of presidential electors to Congress on January 6.

Meadows also turned over to the committee “a November 6, 2020, text exchange with a Member of Congress apparently about appointing alternate electors in certain states as part of a plan that the Member acknowledged would be ‘highly controversial’ and to which Mr. Meadows apparently said, ‘I love it,’” Thompson said.

Thompson noted that in addition to the texts and slide show, Meadows turned over “a January 5, 2021, email about having the National Guard stand by.” This revelation is significant, given the ongoing cover-up within the Pentagon over the purposeful delay of sending National Guard soldiers to the besieged Capitol.

The plan to reject Biden electors and appoint new pro-Trump electors was further described in the presentation as part of three different “options” for Vice President Mike Pence on “6 JAN.”

These options included Pence unilaterally and illegally seating “Republican Electors over the objections of Democrats in states where fraud occurred.” Mimicking the arguments laid out previously in coup lawyers John Eastman’s and Jenna Ellis’s memoranda, the document also suggests that Pence “reject[s] the electors from States where fraud occurred causing the election to be decided by remaining electoral votes.”

The slide directed Pence to delay “the decisions in order to allow for a vetting and subsequent counting of all the legal paper ballots.”

The coup slide show is believed to have been written by retired Army Colonel Phil Waldron of the Allied Security Operations Group, according to professor and national security expert Karen Piper.

Waldron and co-owner of the Allied Security Operations Group, Russell Ramsland Jr., were frequent visitors at Trump’s Willard “war room” command center. The Washington Post previously noted that Waldron, who specialized in “psychological operations” with the Army, led a team of people that reported to Rudy Giuliani’s political crony, Bernard Kerik. This team allegedly provided Kerik with election data analysis supporting Trump’s fraudulent claims.

In a separate article by the Post they write that “to an extent not widely recognized, Ramsland and others associated with ASOG played key roles in spreading the claims of fraud. … They were circulated by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.), a staunch Trump ally who had been briefed by ASOG. And Ramsland’s assertions were incorporated into the “kraken” lawsuits filed by conservative lawyer Sidney Powell who the Post learned had also been briefed two years earlier by ASOG…”

Confirming the authenticity of the slide show in an interview posted this past June was the recently subpoenaed founder of the fascistic 1st Amendment Praetorian paramilitary group, Robert Patrick Lewis. In an interview with Doug Billing’s “The Right Side,” Lewis, who boasts of providing security to Flynn, describes the “national objectives” and “intelligence” he claimed to be “delivering to the White House, directly to the President.”

“That was stuff based on China’s influence in the United States and specific propaganda that we were outlining…”

A month prior, Lewis gave another interview in which he cited the Maricopa County recount, which was conducted in Arizona earlier this year by Trump partisans as an example of what “we” were “suggesting to Trump” his last week in office.

“It’s interesting how the Maricopa recount ... is extremely similar to what Patrick Byrne, General [Michael] Flynn and Sidney Powell suggested to President Trump there in the last week in the White House,” said Lewis.

“We said, ‘Bring the National Guard in, have a recount’ and livestream across the nation so that everybody can look and see that everything is above board.

“Minus the National Guard,” added Lewis. “Everything they (Byrne, Powell, Flynn) suggested is going on in Maricopa.”

There is no doubt that there remains a mountain of evidence left to uncover that will further implicate Trump, the Republican Party and elements of the police-intelligence-military apparatus in the coup.

Ranking member and one of two Republicans on the committee, Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, promised earlier this week that the committee will hold a series of hearings “next year” to lay out what has been uncovered, presumably after which the committee will wind down in preparation for the midterms.

Like the “bipartisan” 9/11 Commission that the Select Committee is modeled after, information revealing the widespread support for Trump’s coup within the Republican Party and the capitalist state as a whole will continue to be excluded and omitted. Despite claiming to have interviewed nearly 300 witnesses, the Select Committee has continued to hold hearings and depositions behind closed doors.

The chloroforming of the working class to the true danger of fascism by the Democrats, the pseudo-left and their media supporters continues. This coup memo was known to lawmakers and media sources, prior to Meadows turning it over to the committee.

In fact, the entire document was publicly tweeted out by current far-right Fox News host and former CBS correspondent Lara Logan on the morning of January 5.

The fact that its contents are only now being publicly broadcast by the committee and select news outlets, nearly a year after the coup and 10 months after Trump’s truncated second impeachment trial ended with his acquittal, is a testament to the scale of the ongoing bipartisan cover-up of Trump’s coup.





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