Tag Archives: Select Committee

Trump’s Documents – Trump’s Crimes

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By now you are likely aware that Trump’s attempts to prevent the disclosure of emails and other documents related to his attempted coup on January 6 are failing across the board. This is clearly the correct outcome. The observations of one judge, in particular, have attracted some news attention but, as usual, have disappeared into the fog of astonishing disclosures about Republican obstruction and corruption in Congress and elsewhere.

I am therefore using this forum to share with you a few quotations from the March 28 opinion in Eastman v Thomson, the federal District Court opinion that heard Trump attorney John Eastman’s claims of attorney-client and work product privilege for a tranche of 111 emails demanded by the January 6 Select Committee. These messages related to Eastman’s role, and Trump’s actions, in Trump’s legal and political strategy regarding the results of the 2020 election. [NB: footnotes and citations, the bane of effective communication, have been omitted; my helpful headings are underscored & italicized; opinion points of emphasis bolded by me] [NB2: the opinion is 44 pages long; you can read the whole thing here, https://bit.ly/3tZ0tax , but the gist is set out below. I read it so you don’t have to.]

There Was No Election Fraud in 2020

In the months following the election, numerous credible sources–from the President’s inner circle to agency leadership to statisticians–informed President Trump and Dr. Eastman that there was no evidence of election fraud.

… after “dozens of investigations, hundreds of interviews,” the Department of Justice had concluded that “the major allegations [of election fraud] are not supported by the evidence developed.”

By early January, more than sixty court cases alleging fraud had been dismissed for lack of evidence or lack of standing.

Eastman’s Plan to Overturn the Election

Ultimately, Dr. Eastman conceded that his argument was contrary to consistent historical practice, would likely be unanimously rejected by the Supreme Court,38 and violated the Electoral Count Act on four separate grounds.

Knowing that his legal theories were invalid, Eastman addressed the mob that assembled on January 6 at Trump’s invitation:

We no longer live in a self-governing republic if we can’t get the answer to this question. This is bigger than President Trump. It is a very essence of our republican form of government, and it has to be done. And anybody that is not willing to stand up to do it, does not deserve to be in the office.

But,

Before the Joint Session of Congress began, Vice President Pence publicly rejected President Trump and Dr. Eastman’s plan.

Then, and then, they threw themselves on the railroad tracks …  [NB3: paraphrase of 1969 song, Along Came Jones]

Even as the rioters continued to break into the Capitol, President Trump tweeted at 2:24 pm: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”

As the attack progressed, Dr. Eastman continued to urge Vice President Pence to reconsider his decision not to delay the count.

The rampage on January 6 “left multiple people dead, injured more than 140 people, and inflicted millions of dollars in damage to the Capitol.”

As the House of Representatives later wrote, January 6, 2021 was “one of the darkest days of our democracy.”

 Refusal to Produce Documents to January 6 Select Committee

 Dr. Eastman declined to produce any documents or communications to the Select Committee and asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege against production.67 During his deposition, Dr. Eastman asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege 146 times.

 NB4: You know, the Fifth Amendment that says you don’t have to testify to facts that might incriminate you. The government must find someone else to incriminate you. Or some documents ….

 The plan proposed by Dr. Eastman’s memo involve actions by the Vice President without recourse to the courts.

Litigation was never Dr. Eastman’s motivation for planning the events of January 6, perhaps because, as he conceded, his legal theories would be rejected “9-0” by the Supreme Court.

The true animating force behind these emails was advancing a political strategy: to persuade Vice President Pence to take unilateral action on January 6.

Trump Committed Crimes

The crime-fraud exception applies when (1) a “client consults an attorney for advice that will serve [them] in the commission of a fraud or crime,” and (2) the communications are “sufficiently related to” and were made “in furtherance of” the crime. It is irrelevant whether the attorney was aware of the illegal purpose or whether the scheme was ultimately successful. The exception extinguishes both the attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine.

The Select Committee alleges that President Trump violated 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2), which criminalizes obstruction or attempted obstruction of an official proceeding.

President Trump attempted to obstruct an official proceeding by launching a pressure campaign to convince Vice President Pence to disrupt the Joint Session on January 6.

Together, these actions [meetings at White House, statements to the January 6 mob] more likely than not constitute attempts to obstruct an official proceeding.

Dr. Eastman does not dispute that the Joint Session is an “official proceeding.”

A person violates § 1512(c) when they obstruct an official proceeding with a corrupt mindset. The Ninth Circuit has not defined “corruptly” for purposes of this statute. However, the court has made clear that the threshold for acting “corruptly” is lower than “consciousness of wrongdoing,” meaning a person does not need to know their actions are wrong to break the law. Because President Trump likely knew that the plan to disrupt the electoral count was wrongful, his mindset exceeds the threshold for acting “corruptly” under § 1512(c).

President Trump and Dr. Eastman justified the plan with allegations of election fraud—but President Trump likely knew the justification was baseless, and therefore that the entire plan was unlawful.

President Trump’s repeated pleas for Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger clearly demonstrate that his justification was not to investigate fraud, but to win the election.

President Trump likely knew the electoral count plan had no factual justification.

The plan not only lacked factual basis but also legal justification.

Vice President Pence “very consistent[ly]” made clear to President Trump that the plan was unlawful, refusing “many times” to unilaterally reject electors or return them to the states.

Dr. Eastman argues that the plan was legally justified as it “was grounded on a good faith interpretation of the Constitution.”  But “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” and believing the Electoral Count Act was unconstitutional did not give President Trump license to violate it. Disagreeing with the law entitled President Trump to seek a remedy in court, not to disrupt a constitutionally-mandated process. And President Trump knew how to pursue election claims in court—after filing and losing more than sixty suits, this plan was a last-ditch attempt to secure the Presidency by any means.

The illegality of the plan was obvious.

… Court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.

… the evidence shows that an agreement to enact the electoral count plan likely existed between President Trump and Dr. Eastman.

President Trump likely knew that the electoral count plan was illegal.

President Trump continuing to push that plan despite being aware of its illegality constituted obstruction by “dishonest” means under § 371.

Dr. Eastman himself repeatedly recognized that his plan had no legal support.

Dr. Eastman admitted more than once that “his proposal violate[d] several provisions of statutory law….”

Dr. Eastman’s views on the Electoral Count Act are not, as he argues, a “good faith interpretation” of the law; they are a partisan distortion of the democratic process. His plan was driven not by preserving the Constitution, but by winning the 2020 election.

The evidence shows that Dr. Eastman was aware that his plan violated the Electoral Count Act. Dr. Eastman likely acted deceitfully and dishonestly each time he pushed an outcome-driven plan that he knew was unsupported by the law.

President Trump’s acts to strong-arm Vice President Pence into following the plan included meeting with and calling the Vice President and berating him in a speech to thousands outside the Capitol.

Based on the evidence, the Court finds that it is more likely than not that President Trump and Dr. Eastman dishonestly conspired to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.

Finally,

Dr. Eastman and President Trump launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history. Their campaign was not confined to the ivory tower—it was a coup in search of a legal theory.

At most, this case is a warning about the dangers of “legal theories” gone wrong, the powerful abusing public platforms, and desperation to win at all costs. If Dr. Eastman and President Trump’s plan had worked, it would have permanently ended the peaceful transition of power, undermining American democracy and the Constitution. If the country does not commit to investigating and pursuing accountability for those responsible, the Court fears January 6 will repeat itself.

Is It Too Late?

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On Sunday, January 2, 2022, the New York Times published an Editorial entitled “Every Day Is January 6 Now.” https://nyti.ms/3qKLbEH Rather than summarize it, I am going to quote liberally from it so that it’s clear who is speaking and what is being said. I may add some thoughts of my own here and there, clearly indicated, and, of course, at the end.

This is not to say that I think the Times is the final word on this or anything. I have, and will continue to, criticize the writing in the Times and other media whose careless and/or deliberate use of words takes news reporting into another realm. A recent example is this headline: “American officials scrambled to clarify Biden’s suggestion that Putin ‘cannot remain in power.’” https://nyti.ms/3NlwD8a Three co-authors are shown and, presumably, at least one editor reviewed the headline before publication. Drop the word “scrambled” and you have the same news: that officials offered clarifications of Biden’s statement. That is the fact, shorn of the authors’ nuances implying confusion and that Biden was making a proposal rather than some of the other possible interpretations of his remark. See https://bit.ly/3tKPiTa It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the Times was tilting the table against the President here. Why would it do that?

It’s likely part of the journalism philosophy that leads to “both sides-ing” stories. In any case, the practice is inconsistent with the editorial position of the Times on one of the most important issues of our time. Returning, then, to my main purpose here, I quote now extensively from the editorial of January 2, noting in passing that it is now March 28, another fact to which I will return at the end. Bear with me. This is really important. Really. [ As usual, the bolded text is my doing]

Jan. 6 is not in the past; it is every day.

It is regular citizens who threaten election officials and other public servants, who ask, “When can we use the guns?” and who vow to murder politicians who dare to vote their conscience. It is Republican lawmakers scrambling to make it harder for people to vote and easier to subvert their will if they do. It is Donald Trump who continues to stoke the flames of conflict with his rampant lies and limitless resentments and whose twisted version of reality still dominates one of the nation’s two major political parties.

In short, the Republic faces an existential threat from a movement that is openly contemptuous of democracy and has shown that it is willing to use violence to achieve its ends. No self-governing society can survive such a threat by denying that it exists. Rather, survival depends on looking back and forward at the same time….

The effort extended all the way into the Oval Office, where Mr. Trump and his allies plotted a constitutional self-coup.

We know now that top Republican lawmakers and right-wing media figures privately understood how dangerous the riot was and pleaded with Mr. Trump to call a halt to it, even as they publicly pretended otherwise. We know now that those who may have critical information about the planning and execution of the attack are refusing to cooperate with Congress, even if it means being charged with criminal contempt….

Over the past year, Republican lawmakers in 41 states have been trying to advance the goals of the Jan. 6 rioters — not by breaking laws but by making them. Hundreds of bills have been proposed and nearly three dozen laws have been passed that empower state legislatures to sabotage their own elections and overturn the will of their voters ….

Thus the Capitol riot continues in statehouses across the country, in a bloodless, legalized form that no police officer can arrest and that no prosecutor can try in court….

A healthy, functioning political party faces its electoral losses by assessing what went wrong and redoubling its efforts to appeal to more voters the next time. The Republican Party, like authoritarian movements the world over, has shown itself recently to be incapable of doing this. Party leaders’ rhetoric suggests they see it as the only legitimate governing power and thus portrays anyone else’s victory as the result of fraud — hence the foundational falsehood that spurred the Jan. 6 attack, that Joe Biden didn’t win the election….

Polling finds that the overwhelming majority of Republicans believe that President Biden was not legitimately elected and that about one-third approve of using violence to achieve political goals. Put those two numbers together, and you have a recipe for extreme danger….

Democrats aren’t helpless…. They hold unified power in Washington, for the last time in what may be a long time. Yet they have so far failed to confront the urgency of this moment — unwilling or unable to take action to protect elections from subversion and sabotage. Blame Senator Joe Manchin or Senator Kyrsten Sinema, but the only thing that matters in the end is whether you get it done. For that reason, Mr. Biden and other leading Democrats should make use of what remaining power they have to end the filibuster for voting rights legislation, even if nothing else.

Whatever happens in Washington, in the months and years to come, Americans of all stripes who value their self-government must mobilize at every level — not simply once every four years but today and tomorrow and the next day — to win elections and help protect the basic functions of democracy. If people who believe in conspiracy theories can win, so can those who live in the reality-based world.

Above all, we should stop underestimating the threat facing the country. Countless times over the past six years, up to and including the events of Jan. 6, Mr. Trump and his allies openly projected their intent to do something outrageous or illegal or destructive. Every time, the common response was that they weren’t serious or that they would never succeed. How many times will we have to be proved wrong before we take it seriously? The sooner we do, the sooner we might hope to salvage a democracy that is in grave danger.

[End of Times editorial]

Three months have passed since that editorial was published. We are now a year and three months past the January 6 attack on the Capitol and on American democracy. Here’s where we are:

  1. No main planners behind the January 6 insurrection (referring here to members of the Trump administration, members of Congress and Trump himself) have been indicted,
  2. Members of Congress and others continue to spit in the face of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol by defying demands, including subpoenas, for records and testimony.
  3. The Select Committee is moving at a pace that makes the tortoise in the famous tale look like War Admiral, the fourth winner of the Triple Crown. At this rate nothing of substance will have been accomplished by the mid-term elections of 2022.
  4. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice has not produced a single indictment of any of the principal conspirators behind January 6, or any indictments of those refusing to comply with lawful orders of the Select Committee, meaning that any indictment now almost certainly would not be tried before the 2024 elections.

I practiced law for 48 years, including conducting investigations of lying and highly resistant conspirators, and closely observed Watergate, the Clinton impeachment, and other sordid political matters. Strategies such as “run out the clock” are well-known by prosecutors. The statute of limitations has already run on at least one of Trump’s crimes. See https://shiningseausa.com/2022/02/18/trump-may-skate-obstruction-justice/

I understand the natural reluctance of prosecutors to bring cases they fear might lose and that might lead to judicial decisions with lasting negative effects on our politics. No one wants to be associated with losing a big case. But failing to bring a case that is justified by evidence, but where the law may be unclear, for fear of defeat is to be defeated already. You have beaten yourself and the country too. That’s where we seem to be now. We are defeating ourselves by allowing the primary perpetrators of the January 6 insurrection to escape swift justice.

Lawyers lose cases all the time. Every trial has a winner and a loser. It’s rare that losing a case has long-term consequences for the attorneys involved.

We’ve seen this before, as I noted in reviewing Andrew Weissmann’s remarkable analysis of the Mueller investigation in Where Law Ends: “rigid thinking and timidity in the face of threats from the subjects of the investigation led to catastrophic errors.” https://bit.ly/3uTJ7M7 Among the leading ones were decisions not to interview Trump’s children who worked in the White House throughout his term.

Even more egregious was the decision not to force Trump’s hand regarding testimony under oath. I almost fell over yesterday when reading in Jeffrey Toobin’s True Crimes and Misdemeanors [started before the 2020 election but only now being finished – more on that in a future post] that Aaron Zebley, Mueller’s chief of staff at the FBI and a senior member of the investigation team, committed one of the worst negotiating sins imaginable.

A meeting was held between Mueller’s people and Trump’s defense team, for the purpose of introducing Rudy Giuliani as the new lead defense lawyer. According to  Toobin, Giuliani wanted to,

nail down Mueller’s commitment that he would follow the DOJ’s Office Legal Counsel policy barring indictments of sitting presidents. Aaron Zebley volunteered that Mueller would. [True Crimes at 236]

It appears that Mueller got nothing in exchange for this astounding concession that removed one of the largest leverages that Mueller had. I would not have believed this happened were it not consistent with Weissmann’s descriptions of the influence Zebley exerted at critical moments in the investigation.

Successful investigations require maximum pressure. I don’t mean that the investigators should behave unreasonably or unfairly. That approach would likely backfire at some point. But there is no reason whatsoever to give away leverage without securing at least an equal value in some other form. As it happened, Trump himself was never placed under oath  for an interview, never answered many of the written questions posed to him and almost certainly lied in answering many others in which the self-declared “stable genius” claimed to not remember much of anything. See my series of posts about the Mueller investigation, beginning at https://bit.ly/3tLT2Us.

The Select Committee is run by politicians so there is perhaps even less reason to expect world-class investigative technique, but if something doesn’t change soon, the entire point will be lost. In what universe do leaders of a democracy, all sworn to follow the law and sustain the Constitution, walk free in the face of evidence that they conspired to overthrow the democratically constituted government?

I say ‘evidence’ recognizing we don’t have all of it. But if all the evidence would show they were innocent, is it plausible that so many members of Congress and of the Trump administration would refuse to cooperate, refuse to produce documents, and refuse to testify under oath? Enough is already known to warrant very aggressive and immediate action to bring the Republican dogs to justice. ALL of them.

As the New York Times astutely said back in January 2022,

Jan. 6 is not in the past; it is every day.

The White House and the Department of Justice had better wake up before it’s too late.

The Cat is Out of the Bag

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When it was revealed that General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, had intervened in anticipation that Trump might use the military to keep himself in office, strong backlash was heard from some in the military, present and former. They appeared to believe that it was wrong for Milley to move independently of the president who was his commander-in-chief, regardless of his fears that Trump might act to subvert the election with military force or start a nuclear conflict and declare martial law.

That position was, I thought at the time, unbelievably short-sighted and mindless. Accepting that chain-of-command is important, I thought, and still believe, that General Milley is an American hero for seeing a fundamental danger to the country and acting to prevent it.

Now come three other generals (retired) arguing that “The military must prepare now for a 2024 insurrection.” https://wapo.st/3e8J6vH “We are chilled to our bones at the thought of a coup succeeding next time.”

I am too, and so should you be. We are facing the most serious threat to our democracy since the Civil War.

The case made by the generals is compelling:

  • Many of the insurrectionist mob on January 6 were veterans or, even more remarkable, active-duty military;
  • The commander of the Oklahoma National Guard refused to compel COVID vaccination of his Guard members because the Governor of the state said he should not follow the President’s directive;
  • “The potential for a total breakdown of the chain of command along partisan lines … is significant should another insurrection occur. The idea of rogue units organizing among themselves to support the “rightful” commander in chief cannot be dismissed;”
  • The real possibility exists that state Guard units will follow their political preferences if their candidate loses the next election;
  • Access to state arms repositories might be loosened to aid insurrectionists prepared to do battle;
  • Often ignored, the distraction of a violent domestic conflict over the election with a divided military would make the U.S. vulnerable to attack by international enemies;
  • We have passed the stage of mere strong political disagreement and must urgently prepare for worst-case scenarios, by, among other things, holding the leaders of January 6 to full accountability for their actions;

The generals who have spoken out about the danger have made several compelling proposals for preventive measures:

  • An immediate civics review for all uniformed and civilian military regarding the Constitution they have sworn to uphold and on the subject of election integrity, the laws of war and how to deal with illegal orders;
  • Re-inform members about the “unity of command,” so there is no question about who is in command;
  • “identify, isolate and remove potential mutineers” and “propagandists who use misinformation to subvert the chain of command.”
  • war-game the next potential post-election coup attempt to identify weak spots, debrief the findings and act to prevent breakdowns in the military and in connected civilian agencies.

A major step in support of this pro-democracy agenda involves the military and Department of Justice acting aggressively and urgently to hold accountable those who participated in and/or led and/or conspired to induce the attack on the Capitol. Regardless of what led people to involve themselves in what was a blatantly and unquestionably unlawful assault on the government, minds are not going to be changed any time soon.

The remedy for now is to make clear that the penalties for such conduct will be administered severely and promptly. Military who participated should be expelled from the service. They have no excuse for violating their oaths of loyalty to the Constitution. Similarly, the January 6 House Select Committee must adopt a sense of urgency and work continuously until its mission is completed.

Simultaneously, the Department of Justice must, with equal urgency, complete its investigations and indict the leaders in Congress and the former White House (and associated advisors) and elsewhere who participated in, conspired to incite or aided-and-abetted the January 6 assault. It should not take a week or more to hold in contempt individuals who refuse to comply with subpoenas or who falsely claim the Fifth Amendment while simultaneously proclaiming their innocence and make false accusations about the process.

Among the other obvious dangers here is that these investigations will drag on, the TrumpPublican Party will regain full control of the Congress (not dependent on the cooperation of people like putative Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin) and activity to investigate and hold accountable will be halted. If that happens, you can kiss our democratic republic goodbye, perhaps for good. The authoritarian goals of the TrumpPublicans are to entrench their power permanently. Democracy is at stake. Time is running out. Politics as usual is not good enough. If we do not act in the face of the threat, we will deserve what we get.

Why Is Media Not Naming the Names?

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We now have reports of a 38-page PowerPoint document laying out a plan for Trump to declare a national emergency and continue in office. That’s 38 pages, not likely something just scrabbled together by some bozo whose mind is infected with conspiracy theories. But, whatever the case there, the document, or versions of it, apparently has been circulating on the internet for a while. Where on the internet, and when and by whom, is a bit fuzzy in the media reports.

What is significant about this report is not that such a PowerPoint exists. It has been clear throughout Trump’s presidency and during the coup attempt near its end that there are around the country numerous people, many holding public office and many just out there is the woods somewhere, who believe, without rational or evidentiary basis, that the election was stolen by various fraudulent means.

No, what is important here is that the document sets out [with the same excitement as the 8th item in food recipe] that members of Congress – both senators and House representatives – received briefings based on the document two days before the January 6 insurrection! https://nyti.ms/31Hho6N

But let’s back up. The title of the New York Times article is “Jan. 6 Committee Examines PowerPoint Document Sent to Meadows.” Sufficiently bland to be easily passed over. But, in case your interest is piqued, the summary deck beneath the headline seems further calculated to prime you to think nothing all that important is going on.

Mark Meadows’s lawyer said the former White House chief of staff did not act on the document, which recommended that President Donald J. Trump declare a national emergency to keep himself in power.

Well, of course, Meadows’ lawyer said that. What else was he going to say?

If you were still interested enough to read it, the article explains that the PowerPoint contained “extreme plans to overturn the 2020 election,” the idea being to have Trump declare a national emergency that would delay certification of Biden’s win. It relied upon claims that “China and Venezuela had obtained control over the voting infrastructure in a majority of states.”

We’ve heard about those types of claims before. FOX “News” and Trump’s team of lawyers promoted such claims repeatedly, without investigation or plausible evidence, and have been sued and sanctioned by courts for filing frivolous suits based on such nonsense.

As reported in NYT, the provenance of the PowerPoint is this:

Phil Waldron, a retired Army colonel and an influential voice in the movement to challenge the election, said on Friday from a bar he owns outside Austin, Texas, that he had circulated the document — titled “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN” — among Mr. Trump’s allies and on Capitol Hill before the attack. Mr. Waldron said that he did not personally send the document to Mr. Meadows, but that it was possible someone on his team had passed it along to the former chief of staff.

You can almost hear the theme song from the Twilight Zone playing in the background.

The actual author is unknown but “it is similar to a 36-page document available online, and it appears to be based on the theories of Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, a Texas entrepreneur and self-described inventor who has appeared with Mr. Waldron on podcasts discussing election fraud.”

More Twilight Zone.

NYT reports further that,

On Jan. 4, members of Mr. Waldron’s team — he did not identify them — spoke to a group of senators and briefed them on the allegations of supposed election fraud contained in the PowerPoint, Mr. Waldron said. The following day, he said, he personally briefed a small group of House members; that discussion focused on baseless claims of foreign interference in the election. He said he made the document available to the lawmakers.

NYT notes that Rudy Giuliani, sometimes known on Twitter as Rudy Colludy, has cited Waldron “as a source of information for his legal campaign.” That would likely be the “legal” campaign that led to Giuliani’s law license suspension in New York.

But wait, stop the music. Where in this article are the names of the House members and Senators who received these briefings two days before the insurrection and attempted coup at the U.S. Capitol? You won’t find them.

Why not? How can the New York Times, one of the country’s most prestigious newspapers report a story saying that members of Congress were briefed by private parties seeking to overturn the presidential election two days before the coup attempt that took lives and inflicted massive damage on the Capitol and there is no reference to the names of those members of Congress and no explanation as to why they are omitted?

And note how casually the article reports that Meadows, a founder of the ludicrously named Freedom Caucus and later Chief of Staff for Trump’s White House, has told the House Select Committee that “he had turned in the cellphone he used on Jan. 6 to his service provider, and that he was withholding some 1,000 text messages connected with the device.” Given Meadows’ central role in the effort to keep Trump in office despite having lost the election, could there be a clearer case of evidence tampering? Why would Meadows turn in the cell phone he used on January 6 if not to hide evidence it might contain? No plausible explanation appears in the article.

And at the same time the article gives Meadows a pass with this: “Even though Mr. Meadows did not appear to act on the PowerPoint….” Why? Because Meadows’ lawyer said so? Really? Meadows is clean because his lawyer says he is?

This article was written by seasoned award-winning reporters. Are they really content with this treatment? Were these details in the article but removed by editors?

Almost simultaneously, the Washington Post, my hometown rag, added more shocking details to the story. https://wapo.st/3lX90Xz Waldron is reported to have said he visited the White House multiple times after the election and “spoke with President Donald Trump’s chief of staff “maybe eight to 10 times.”” He also said he “briefed several members of Congress on the eve of the Jan. 6 riot.”

But, again, no names. No mention of efforts to get the names. Why not?

The names are particularly significant because,

The PowerPoint circulated by Waldron included proposals for Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6 to reject electors from “states where fraud occurred” or replace them with Republican electors. It included a third proposal in which the certification of Joe Biden’s victory was to be delayed, and U.S. marshals and National Guard troops were to help “secure” and count paper ballots in key states.

In short, the document set out a plan to overthrow the legitimate government, prevent the transfer of power and install Donald Trump as de facto dictator of the United States.

 These “briefings” of members of Congress are not casual affairs. Anyone who has practiced law/politics in Washington for any length of time will confirm how difficult it is to get direct access to members of Congress and especially to a group of them. Someone inside had to be helping arrange all of this and multiple staff would have known about it. Yet, here we are, almost a year from the January 6 attack and we’re just learning that members of Congress were briefed two days beforehand.

The WAPO report goes along with the “both sides” narrative by assuring us that,

it is not clear how widely the PowerPoint was circulated or how seriously the ideas in it were considered. A lawyer for Meadows, George J. Terwilliger III, said on Friday that there was no indication that Meadows did anything with the document after receiving it by email. “We produced it [to the committee] because it was not privileged,” Terwilliger said. A Meadows spokesman, Ben Williamson, declined to comment. Waldron said he was not the person who sent the PowerPoint to Meadows.

Nevertheless, the Post report recognizes that Meadows’ efforts to disappear himself in the post-coup investigation are fading in light of these revelations and the previously reveal fact that Meadows had personally “pressed senior Justice Department leaders to investigate baseless conspiracy theories about election fraud.”

According to Waldron, Meadows sought to help his group pursue their conspiracy theories about foreign interference, quoting Meadows as, “What do you need? What would help?” Of course, the Post also reports comments from an unnamed “person familiar with the matter” purporting to exonerate Meadows from any responsibility. Despite Meadows’ critical role in the White House, he is presented as someone who just received and passed around documents without paying attention to their content. If so, Meadows is monumentally incompetent or monumentally stupid.

Then there is the Giuliani connection.

Waldron said that he and Meadows “weren’t pen pals” and that their communication was often through Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, who sometimes asked him to “explain this to Mark” over the phone.

Unsurprisingly, “Giuliani did not respond to requests for comment.”

Waldron’s explanation of events included a claim of a meeting with Trump himself (November 25) and some Pennsylvania legislators in the Oval Office. Waldron also claimed to have briefed Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) “at the White House, in the chief of staff’s office, with Giuliani present.” Naturally, Graham also had nothing to say about that meeting. And Trump, of course, had no comment about the November 25 meeting.

Still, no disclosure of the attendees at the January 4 briefings. The Post did get one thing right,

The role played after the election by Waldron is another example of how the president aligned himself with a cast of fringe personalities as he worked to sabotage the U.S. democratic process

But the issue of members of Congress meeting with, and possibly conspiring with, a person like Waldron to overturn the election is a matter of the utmost national importance. The revelations in the New York Times and Washington Post articles about meetings in the days immediately leading to the attack are evidence suggesting that members of Congress knew about, likely approved of and possibly participated in the planning of the attack.

It is very hard to understand why the Times and WAPO would treat so cavalierly the issue of which members of Congress attended briefings about thoroughly debunked election fraud just two days before the deadly attack on the Capitol. These are FACTS, and the papers owe readers an explanation of why this information was so casually ignored.

Closing Note: I have been told that this post is uncomfortably close to the kinds of attacks Trump routinely levels against the mainstream media with his “fake news” trope. Not so, I say, because I am not saying the news reports are false, only that information crucial to complete reporting has been omitted without explanation. I want the media to tell the whole important truth and when it cannot find it, explain why not.