Dispatches

PROSECUTOR WHO LED CAPITOL RIOT INQUIRY SEES SEDITION CHARGES.

Evidence the government obtained in the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol most likely meets the bar necessary to charge some of the suspects with sedition, Michael R. Sherwin, the federal prosecutor who had been leading the Justice Department’s inquiry, said in an interview on “60 Minutes” (3/21), Dartagnan noted at DailyKos (3/21).

The last time federal prosecutors brought a sedition case was 2010, when members of a Michigan militia were accused of plotting to provoke an armed conflict with the government. They were ultimately acquitted, and the judge in the case said the Justice Department had not adequately proved that the defendants had entered a “concrete agreement to forcibly oppose the United States government,” the New York Times noted.

The statute on seditious conspiracy also says that people who conspire to “oppose by force the authority” of the government or use force “to prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any law of the United States” can be charged with sedition.

The government has charged some defendants in the Jan. 6 case with conspiring to derail the final certification of President Biden’s electoral victory.

“I personally believe the evidence is trending toward that, and probably meets those elements,” Sherwin said. “I believe the facts do support those charges. And I think that, as we go forward, more facts will support that.”

Sherwin personally witnessed the attack on the Capitol, dressed in running clothes and standing among the crowd at the time Trump told his supporters to march to the Capitol.

“Where it was initially pro-Trump, it digressed to anti-government, anti-Congress, anti-institutional,” Sherwin said. “And then I eventually saw people climbing the scaffolding. The scaffolding was being set up for the inauguration. When I saw people climbing up the scaffolding, hanging from it, hanging flags, I was like, ‘This is going bad fast.’”

Sherwin said his team had developed cases against 400 defendants. “And the bulk of those cases are federal criminal charges, and significant federal felony charges. Five, 10, 20-year penalties. Of those 400 cases, the majority of those, 80, 85%, maybe even 90, you have individuals, both inside and outside the Capitol, that breached the Capitol, trespassed. You also have individuals, roughly over 100, that we’ve charged with assaulting federal officers and local police officers. The 10% of the cases, I’ll call the more complex conspiracy cases where we do have evidence, it’s in the public record where individual militia groups from different facets: Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, Proud Boys, did have a plan. We don’t know what the full plan is, to come to D.C., organize, and breach the Capitol in some manner.”

The role of former president Trump is part of the investigation, “It’s unequivocal that Trump was the magnet that brought the people to D.C. on the 6th. Now the question is, is he criminally culpable for everything that happened during the siege, during the breach?” said Sherwin, a Trump appointee who is moving to another assignment in the Department of Justice.

“We have people looking at everything,” he said.

SOCIAL SECURITY STILL IN HANDS OF TRUMPERS, AND BIDEN NEEDS TO FIX THAT. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy isn’t the only Trump-era official wreaking havoc with and sabotaging a beloved institution, Joan McCarter wrote at DailyKos (3/22). Since 2019, when they were installed, Andrew Saul, the Social Security commissioner, and David Black, the deputy commissioner, have been working doggedly to undermine the system. Unsurprisingly, Saul was a big-time Republican donor, Black a former Bush administration staffer. The two have created a hostile work environment for staff at the Social Security Administration and politicized the Social Security disability program, trying to make benefits harder to get and more burdensome to keep by creating all sort of hoops for disabled people to jump through.

That’s not all they’ve done to harm the disabled. According to two inspector general complaints filed this year, Saul, Black and their deputies have put “illegitimate political pressure on administrative law judges to reduce the rate of Social Security disability case approval.” This is after a push by Trump and Saul to cut administrative law judges out of the loop in taking up standard cases, conducting hearings, and issuing decisions on applications for disability benefits—all responsibilities currently reserved for them—and hand them over to SSA lawyers.

Saul and Black have also run roughshod over SSA staff, leading Melissa McIntosh, president of the union representing the agency’s administrative law judges, to say they “have engaged in no-holds-barred union busting.” That includes “allegedly flouting contractual rights, discriminating against employees for protected union activities and denying unions information they have a right to receive.” Back in December, Association of Administrative Law Judges and the National Council of SSA Field Operations Locals (Council 220) declared “no confidence” in Saul and Black, and demanded their ouster. The council’s executive committees finding of “no confidence” was “unprecedented” according to a union statement, the result of “years of mismanagement and poor leadership.”

The two can be fired by Biden for cause, even though Saul’s term is supposed to end in 2025, McCarter noted. There’s certainly the appearance of ample cause for booting them, especially in the allegations the inspector general is investigating, that they’ve been pressuring judges to reduce disability approvals. There’s Supreme Court precedent for their firing, since the court handed down Seila Law v. CFPB last year, which struck down a federal law barring the president from firing directors of independent agencies over political disagreements. There are just two other independent agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that have a single director—Social Security and the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Which means Biden can oust Saul regardless of when his term is supposed to be up, and do it legally.

PROGRESSIVE DEMS DEMAND REPEAL OF ‘SELF-DEFEATING’ PAYGO LAW AS AUTOMATIC MEDICARE CUTS LOOM. The leadership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus is calling for permanent repeal of a 2010 law that is threatening to inflict deep, automatic cuts to Medicare and other safety net programs following passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in March, Jake Johnson reported at CommonDreams (3/22).

The House of Representatives—with the support of just 29 Republicans—approved legislation that would exempt the coronavirus relief package from a law known as statutory PAYGO which requires deficit spending to be offset by cuts to government programs. The Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act was enacted in 2010 with the support of the then-Democratic Congress and former President Barack Obama.

While PAYGO rules were waived in coronavirus relief bills approved during the Trump presidency, congressional Democrats’ use of the budget reconciliation process to pass the American Rescue Plan over unified Republican obstruction prevented inclusion of a waiver this time around, setting the stage for tens of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicare, farm subsidies, and other programs if the Senate fails to act.

“We’re pleased that the House voted today to waive statutory PAYGO for the American Rescue Plan Act to prevent damaging, self-defeating, and wholly unnecessary cuts to Medicare and other programs,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a statement. “We urge the Senate to follow the House’s lead and act swiftly to waive statutory PAYGO.”

But Jayapal stressed that the House bill—which also pushes off a separate 2% cut to Medicare set for April 1—is just a temporary solution to a problem that will continue cropping up without complete repeal of the 2010 law.

To pass the House bill, Senate Democrats will need the support of at least 10 Republicans as long as the 60-vote filibuster remains intact. But judging by overwhelming opposition to the PAYGO waiver bill among House Republicans—127 voted no—Senate Democrats could have difficulty obtaining the necessary votes.

A spokesperson for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), chair of the Senate Budget Committee, told NBC News in February that the Vermont senator will work to prevent the estimated $36 billion in Medicare cuts from taking effect. A fix must be passed by the end of the year.

FORMER TRUMP LAWYER SIDNEY POWELL ADMITS HER CLAIMS ABOUT DOMINION VOTING SYSTEMS CONSPIRACIES WERE UNBELIEVABLE. Faced with more than $1.3 billion in liabilities over her post-election conspiracy theories, former Donald Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell told a judge that the defamation lawsuit Dominion Voting Systems filed against her earlier this year should be dismissed because “no reasonable person” would believe that her well-publicized comments about an international plot against former President Donald Trump were “statements of fact.”

“Given the highly charged and political context of the statements, it is clear that Powell was describing the facts on which she based the lawsuits she filed in support of President Trump,” her attorneys wrote in a 54-page motion to dismiss, noting that Dominion characterized her theories as “wild accusations” and “outlandish claims,” Law&Crime reported (3/22).

“They are repeatedly labelled ‘inherently improbable’ and even ‘impossible,’” the motion to dismiss continues, referring to the conspiracy theories peddled by Powell, her law firm and her non-profit group Defending the Republic. “Such characterizations of the allegedly defamatory statements further support defendants’ position that reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact but view them only as claims that await testing by the courts through the adversary process.”

Signed by Powell’s lawyer Lawrence J. Joseph, the memo shows Powell’s legal strategy for attempting to jettison a potentially billion-dollar price tag over what came to be known as the “Kraken” lawsuits, named after the mythical, octopus-like creature depicted in the Hollywood blockbuster “Clash of the Titans.” In the movie, the monster was easily slain, and the four lawsuits filed by Powell and her co-counsel Lin Wood alleging a giant plot between voting companies and foreign powers to interfere with the election met with the same fate.

Powell claimed Dominion Voting Systems conspired with foreigners, including the late President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez, to steal victory from Trump. Her claims led to Dominion and its employees facing vicious harassment and trolling. At least one Dominion employee, Eric Coomer, was driven into hiding.

In her motion to dismiss, Powell does not argue that the statements were true. She claims they are not actionable because they are protected statements of political opinion.

When Powell repeated her conspiracy theories on Fox News, Fox Business Network and The Epoch Times, her lawyers claim, she was just informing the public about the ideas that she was advancing in her lawsuits.

In addition to potentially staggering liabilities, Powell may be fighting for her law license. The state of Michigan and the city of Detroit have both asked a federal judge to refer Powell for disbarment proceedings, arguing that she defrauded the court by lying about witnesses and violated rules of professional ethics in an attack on US democracy. Cataloguing Powell and Wood’s “lies,” “unhinged conspiracy theories,” and “fraud on the court,” Detroit created a detailed list of Powell and Wood’s courtroom and extrajudicial antics—such as pining for martial law, fundraising through shadowy dark-money entities, and marshaling a secret witness code-named “Spyder” who later told a reporter that the legal team made him submit a false declaration.

DEMS CALL OUT GQP HYPOCRISY AND MEDIA ENABLING IN BORDER CONTROVERSY. Republicans who silently watched former President Donald Trump tear innocent children from their parents because they were Hispanic immigrants now seem to be outraged at the current state of US immigration policy, and it only took a Democratic president to inspire such disgust, Lauren Floyd noted at DailyKos (3/21). “The border is getting wall-to-wall coverage on the Sunday news shows,” journalist Aaron Rupar tweeted.

NBC’s “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd was trending Sunday afternoon for his day-late, dollar-short attempt at balanced coverage of immigration. “It’s fair to call the deteriorating situation at the US-Mexican border a crisis — even if the Biden administration refuses to use that word,” Todd said on the show. “But it’s more than that: It’s a political crisis for the new president, with no easy way out.” Journalist Soledad O’Brien tweeted in response: “Chuck Todd continues to be terrible. And non-contextual.”

Historian Kevin Kruse attributed the renewed interest in immigration to an urgent GOP need to find fault in Biden‘s administration after Democrats successfully passed “a massive stimulus” and triggered an increase in COVID-19 vaccinations. “I honestly couldn’t tell you the last time I watched one of the Sunday morning shows on the major networks,” Kruse said. “I mean, I can read Republican press releases all on my own. I don’t need Chuck Todd saying ‘we’ll leave it there’ at the end.” 

In a fitting example of how spot-on Kruse was, increased media coverage of immigration seemed to synch up perfectly with a news release Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sent out (3/19). In the release, Abbott bragged that he “blasted” Biden‘s administration for the conditions of federally-run facilities for minors in Texas. “The Biden Administration has been an abject failure when it comes to ensuring the safety of unaccompanied minors who cross our border,” Abbott said. “The conditions unaccompanied minors face in these federally run facilities is unacceptable and inhumane. From a lack of safe drinking water in one location to a COVID-19 outbreak in another, the Biden Administration has no excuse for subjecting these children to these kinds of conditions.”

Former US Rep. Beto O’Rourke, of El Paso, asked simply in response to the governor’s news release: “You care about immigrants? The day before a white supremacist killed 23 people in El Paso (claiming there was a ‘Hispanic invasion of Texas’) you mailed a letter urging Republicans to ‘DEFEND TEXAS NOW’ from immigrants & ‘take matters into our own hands,’” O’Rourke added.

Former San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro called out Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on similar hypocrisy. McCarthy tweeted (3/15): “What’s happening at the border is more than a crisis. This is human heartbreak. And it was created by the policies of President Biden.” Castro responded: “In the last nine months of Trump’s presidency there was a 690% increase in unaccompanied minors encountered by CBP. There’s been a 61% increase under President Biden. How come we didn’t hear a peep from you until now?”

Sawyer Hackett, Castro’s senior adviser, critiqued a Washington Post article describing Biden’s more humane immigration policies as backtracking on “guardrails” to avoid winding up with “2 million people on our border.” Hackett condemned specifically the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), a Trump-administration policy to return US immigrants without “proper documentation” to Mexico or outside the states.

“I respect every journalist on this byline. But this is pure hot garbage, beginning to end,” he tweeted. “Let’s start with the premise of Biden ‘tearing down the guardrails’ on immigration. MPP isn’t a guardrail, metering (or limiting the number of immigrants who can seek asylum) isn’t a guardrail, disallowing children to seek asylum isn’t a guardrail. Trump should be arraigned on human rights crimes for using Title 42 on children.”

TEXAS CONGRESSMAN SPEAKS UP FOR LYNCHING. The House Judiciary Committee had scheduled a meeting on March 18 to discuss the rising number of violent crimes directed at Asian-Americans. Naturally, the events of March 16 in Atlanta put the topic into hyperdrive. Sitting in as ranking minority member, US Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) got things off to a flying flounder, Charles Pierce noted at Esquire.com (3/18).

“The case we are talking about here, the tragedy we just saw occur in Atlanta, Georgia. I would also suggest that the victims of cartels moving illegal aliens deserve justice. The American citizens in south Texas, they are getting absolutely decimated by what’s happening at the southern border deserve justice. The victims of rioting and looting in the street ... last summer deserve justice. We believe in justice.”

OK, so this is standard Republican duck-dodge-and-hide, but Roy was winding up for a twist ending that floored a number of people in Washington.

“There’s an old saying in Texas about ‘find all the rope in Texas and get a tall oak tree.’ You know, we take justice very seriously. And we ought to do that. Round up the bad guys. That’s what we believe. My concern about this hearing is that it seems to want to venture into the policing of rhetoric in a free society, free speech, and away from the rule of law and taking out bad guys.”

Pierce noted, “Even as a connoisseur of wingnut-speak, I have to admit that I didn’t expect a member of Congress, even a member of the current Republican caucus in the House, to use an allusion to lynching as a solution for hate crimes as opposed to a discussion of how hateful words can lead to hateful action. However, it was of a piece with how they’re trying to soften in memory the events of Jan. 6, because too many of them winked (or worse) at the violence.

Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) chimed in.

“To attack our society as systematically racist, a society that has produced the freest, most prosperous, harmonious multiracial society in human history, well, that’s an insult. And it’s flat-out wrong.”

Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) slapped Roy down hard, and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) manfully tried to explain to his colleagues why they were having the hearing in the first place.

“I am not a virus. And when you say things like that, it hurts the Asian-American community. This hearing is about Americans of Asian descent who are being targeted in the United States. It’s not about policing speech.”

Pierce concluded: “Not Being A Dick used to be a good political career move. Somehow, it isn’t anymore.”

“McCarthy has been calling for Swalwell to be removed from the Intelligence Committee for months over the Democrat’s previous relationship with Christine Fang. Axios reported that Fang helped fundraise for Swalwell during his 2014 reelection campaign and place an intern inside his office before leaving the country in 2015 amid a federal investigation into her actions. Fang also allegedly targeted a number of other high-profile Democrats in California.”

Unmentioned is the fact that Swalwell went to the FBI and was quite open about his connection to Fang, and that the FBI has cleared him of any possible security problems. This was transparently an attempt to retaliate for the Democratic majority’s move to boot Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene off her committee assignments. (There’s a move afoot now to have her expelled from the House entirely. This may cause McCarthy to combust spontaneously.) And this is all rather rich from a House leadership that spent years protecting Rep. Devin Nunes, who this week had a starring role in an intelligence report describing Russian ratfcking efforts in the 2020 elections. From MSNBC:

“A month earlier, at a House Intelligence Committee meeting, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) pressed Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) — the panel’s top GOP member — on whether the Republican had received anti-Biden information from Derkach. According to a transcript from the closed-door discussion, Nunes didn’t want to answer. It was against this backdrop that Maloney spoke [March 17] to MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace and said, ‘[T]he fact is that [Russian operatives] were so comfortable using people like Devin Nunes that Andriy Derkach — a known Russian asset — sent information to Devin Nunes at the Intelligence Committee. We literally had the package receipt.”

Pierce concluded, “The Democrats killed McCarthy’s attempt to remove Swalwell on May 18, but McCarthy’s weeklong floundering is further evidence that the Republicans have nothing to offer the country in terms of actual leadership. They’re white noise, nothing more.”

MAR-A-LAGO ‘PARTIALLY CLOSED’ AFTER COVID OUTBREAK. Former President Donald Trump’s Palm Beach club has been partially closed after staff members tested positive for the coronavirus., the Associated Press reported (3/19).

That’s according to several people familiar with the situation, including a club member who received a phone call about the closure Friday. A receptionist at the Mar-a-Lago club confirmed the news, saying it was closed until further notice, but declined to comment further.

A person familiar with club operations said that, out of an abundance of caution, the club had “partially closed” a section “for a short period of time” and quarantined some of its workers “out of an abundance of caution.”

Trump was hospitalized with COVID-19 last fall and has since been vaccinated against the virus.

Mar-a-Lago was the site of his first known exposure more than a year ago. A senior Brazilian official tested positive last year after spending time at Mar-a-Lago, where he posed for a photo next to Trump and attended a family birthday party.

The Trump White House was hit with several subsequent outbreaks after it flouted virus precautions by resisting mask-wearing and continuing to hold large events.

The club in Palm Beach has been a flurry of activity in recent weeks, hosting events and fundraisers, including one to benefit rescue dogs. Trump unexpectedly dropped by the event last week.

In January, Palm Beach County issued a warning to Mar-a-Lago’s management after a New Year’s Eve party that violated an ordinance requiring employees and guests to wear masks. Video of the party posted online by Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., showed that few of the 500 guests wore masks as they crowded the dance floor while rapper Vanilla Ice, Beach Boys co-founder Mike Love and singer Taylor Dayne performed. The club was told future violations would result in fines of $15,000.

The former president was not present at the party.

TRUMP SAID TO BE PLANNING RETURN TO SOCIAL MEDIA WITH HIS OWN ALT-TWITTER APP. There is new hope for all of the lost souls who are wandering aimlessly since their cult leader, Donald Trump, was banished from social media, News Corpse noted at DailyKos (3/21). According to Trump advisor Jason Miller, the former reality TV game show host, who temporarily occupied the White House, is plotting his return to the InterTubes on a platform built by, and featuring, himself. Is this the dawn of Kwitter?

There are reports that Trump was more crushed by his ouster from Twitter than from the presidency. That’s easy to believe considering the magnitude of his ego. As a malignant narcissist, Trump likely reveled in the instant feedback Twitter gave him for his pompous ponderings. And since his expulsion he has been uncharacteristically quiet. He has retreated to his Mar-a-Lago bunker with his tail between his legs to sulk and mutter under his breath about “fake” news “rigged” elections.

Or so we thought. Miller was interviewed by Howard Kurtz on his Fox News MediaBuzz program Sunday morning (3/21). And he had some news to break for forlorn StormTrumpers who have been nursing their wounds for the past four months.

Miller prefaced his bombshell news with a long-winded tribute to Trump’s “elegant” rhetoric. He made the preposterous claim that Trump’s press releases were getting “more play than he ever did on Twitter,” but without revealing how he arrived at that mythical statistic.

“I do think that we’re going to see President Trump returning to social media in probably about two or three months here with his own platform. And this is something that I think will be the hottest ticket in social media. It’s going to completely redefine the game and everybody is going to be waiting and watching to see what exactly President Trump does. But it will be his own platform.”

News Corpse commented, “Yeah, right! Trump, who has zero experience in technology enterprise, is going to produce ‘the hottest ticket in social media.’ Trump, whose prior businesses have suffered at least six bankruptcies; whose Atlantic City casino was just demolished; whose ‘university’ was shuttered due to fraud and corruption, and was ordered to pay restitution exceeding $25 million; whose private jet is in mothballs; whose hotels and golf courses are bleeding in debt; whose Mar-a-Lago resort is a COVID hot zone; and who is being pursued by prosecutors from Washington, New York, Florida, and Georgia.”

Miller went on say that Trumps Alt-Twitter (Kwitter) “will be big once he starts,” because “everyone wants him. He’s gonna bring millions and millions, tens of millions of people to this new platform.”

News Corpse noted, “Trump will undoubtedly bring some people to the platform. Which will be helpful to law enforcement as they continue to investigate the insurrectionists and violent militias that Trump has inspired. They will be the core of his user base and conveniently corralled there.”

From The Progressive Populist, April 15, 2021

Populist.com