(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . MAGA: The Party of Treason and Sedition [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-10-03 Let’s just cut to the chase here: Special counsel Jack Smith has outlined new details of former President Donald Trump and his allies' sweeping and "increasingly desperate" efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, in a blockbuster court filing Wednesday aimed at defending Smith's prosecution of Trump following the Supreme Court's July immunity ruling. Trump intentionally lied to the public, state election officials, and his own vice president in an effort to cling to power after losing the election, while privately describing some of the claims of election fraud as "crazy," prosecutors alleged in the 165-page filing. "When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office," the filing said. "With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost." x It was so much worse than you remember pic.twitter.com/kOxEKl1c0M — Luke Zaleski (@ZaleskiLuke) September 27, 2024 Trump was setting the stage for January 6 BEFORE the 2020 Election As he did in 2016, Trump leaned into fraud allegations before his reelection bid, warning that August 2020 that "the only way we're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged." The L.A. Times writing about the documentary “Stop the Steal” Directed by Dan Reed (“The Truth vs. Alex Jones”), “Stopping the Steal” takes viewers back to July 2020, when the president’s popularity was slipping and the election was looming. “By late summer, President Trump starts to grease the wheels for excuses if he lost,” says Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served in 2020 as White House director of strategic communications and assistant to the president. And the film cuts to a summer presser where the former president proclaims, “These elections will be fraudulent. They’ll be fixed or rigged.” Roger the Ratfucker was active in the steal attempt A key player in all of this was Ratfucking scumbag Roger Stone. Stone has been a cancer on the United States for 50 years, an absolute, utter moral degenerate who has devoted his life to establishing a Right-wing dictatorship in America. “Fuck the voting, let’s get right to the violence.” Roger Stone, the day before the 2020 election. (You can read about Stone the Ratfucker in this article in RationalWiki.) x Jack Smith reveals that Trump planned to declare victory before the ballots were even counted in 2020. This is what Roger Stone advised him to do. 1/ pic.twitter.com/IqDJtFjoWH — Karen Piper (@PiperK) October 3, 2024 Rachel Bitecofer, bringing the receipts: x Jan 6th was plotted in advance and unleashed intentionally by Trump. It was, in fact, an insurrection. pic.twitter.com/ut6tBlEwdl — Rachel Bitecofer 🗽🦆🌴🥥🇺🇸 (@RachelBitecofer) October 2, 2024 Now, special counsel Jack Smith’s office is taking its shot, hoping to figure out exactly what went down in the Willard “war room” — and just how involved Trump himself was in the Willard-based efforts to stop the transfer of power to then president-elect Joe Biden. Special counsel investigators are grilling witnesses about the crucial Willard meetings, two people with knowledge of the investigation tell Rolling Stone. It could prove to be a fruitful line of questioning. One former senior Trump administration official, who stayed on through the Jan. 6 riot, simply refers to it as “the crime headquarters.” The Willard, a luxury hotel a block from the White House, became the site of what participants described as a “war room” for Trump-aligned lawyers and diehard MAGA operatives working to overturn the 2020 election. The summit took place in the days and hours before the certification of electoral college votes on Jan. 6, and participants included Trump advisers and allies such as Giuliani, John Eastman, Bernard Kerik, Boris Epshteyn, and Steve Bannon. TIMELINE OF TRUMP’S ELECTION LIES, RIGHT HERE. As authors Bob Woodward and Robert Costa recount in their book “Peril”: “‘You’ve got to call Pence off the [expletive] ski slopes and get him back here today. This is a crisis.’ Bannon said, referring to the vice president who was vacationing in Vail, Colorado. “Bannon told Trump to focus on January 6. That was the moment for a reckoning. “‘People are going to go ‘What the [expletive] is going on here?’ Bannon believed. ‘We’re going to bury Biden on January 6th, [expletive] bury him.’ “If Republicans could cast enough of a shadow on Biden’s victory on January 6, Bannon said, it would be hard for Biden to govern. Millions of Americans would consider him illegitimate. They would ignore him. They would dismiss him and wait for Trump to run again. “‘We are going to kill it in the crib. Kill the Biden presidency in the crib,’ he said.” x Remember when Steve Bannon predicted on his ‘War Room’ podcast that "all hell is going to break loose" on #January6th? Well - Bannon spoke to Trump just before starting that podcast. pic.twitter.com/KPf8abjc9P — Alexander Hamilton 🇺🇸 (@TheeThomasB) October 2, 2024 Mark Meadows (who has cooperated with Jack Smith) was determined to put the Orange Traitor back in office. TAKE A LOOK AT THE TEXT MESSAGES HE SENT ON 5 AND 6 JANUARY. Among those he was in contact with: SEAN HANNITY, MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE, JIM JORDAN, MO BROOKS. x They go down after Trump does. pic.twitter.com/snbk8Oc1Fn — Critical Bill76 🇺🇸🦅 (@CriticalBill76) October 3, 2024 Trump was INTIMATELY involved in the Fake Elector plot. x This is significantly worse than what we’ve heard before. Trump personally orchestrated the fake elector scheme. He called Senators after the violence to get them to reject the EC vote still. Smith has recordings of the messages. He is done. Chutkan and Smith aren’t playing. https://t.co/aJuWUh7zlI — Fred Wellman (@FPWellman) October 3, 2024 x 5) Mark MEADOWS (P21) and a WH lawyer (P9) exchanged messages on Dec. 3, 2020 confirming that a stat re dead voters was false. pic.twitter.com/XVfJzyfjFP — Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) October 2, 2024 "President Trump sat in his dining room and watched the attack on television while his senior-most staff closest advisers and family members begged him to do what is expected of any American president," Luria said. "When lives and our democracy hung in the balance, President Trump refused to act because of his selfish desire to stay in power." The committee played video clips of news coverage from Fox News, to show what Trump watched in real time as he tuned in from his dining room, just off from the Oval Office. He watched as his supporters, donning red caps and chanting his name, overwhelmed and outnumbered police as they flooded the Capitol grounds and attempted to breach the Capitol. Yes, Mike Pence’s Life Was in Danger on 6 January The House committee that investigated the attack said in its final report that “the President of the United States had riled up a mob that hunted his own Vice President.” With his remarks, Pence solidified his place in a broader debate within the Republican Party over how to view the attack. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, for example, recently provided Tucker Carlson with an archive of security camera footage from Jan. 6, which the Fox News host has used to downplay the day’s events and promote conspiracy theories. “Make no mistake about it, what happened that day was a disgrace,” Pence said in his Gridiron Dinner remarks. “And it mocks decency to portray it any other way.” Trump, meanwhile, has continued to spread lies about his election loss. He’s even spoken in support of the rioters and said he would consider pardoning them if he was reelected. Trump’s response to knowledge that Pence was in danger: SO WHAT? The mood among many Trump supporters on January 6 was celebratory. Trump confirms he would pardon January 6 rioters if he becomes president (video, if you can stand to listen to the Orange Shitgibbon). Just months after the January 6th insurrection, in March 2021, nearly three in ten Americans (29%) said the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. PRRI’s recent American Values Survey showed a similar percentage of Americans believe the election was stolen (32%) as of September 2023. Partisan beliefs in the “Big Lie” have changed little from 2021 (when 66% of Republicans, 27% of independents, and 4% of Democrats believed the 2020 election was stolen) to 2023 (63% of Republicans, 31% of independents, and 6% of Democrats). As of September 2023, six in ten white evangelical Protestants (60%) say the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, compared with 38% of white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants and white Catholics, 24% of Hispanic Catholics, 23% of religiously unaffiliated Americans, and 11% of Black Protestants. These views have remained largely unchanged since 2021. The vast majority of Americans who most trust far-right television news (92%) and two-thirds of those who most trust Fox News (65%) say the election was stolen. Around four in ten of those who do not trust TV news (38%) and 14% of those who most trust mainstream television news hold the same view. THERE IS NO LIE THEY WILL NOT TELL ABOUT ALL THIS At nearly the end of Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate came a simple but important question, directed at GOP candidate JD Vance, about certifying the presidential race. By dodging the question and attempting to portray January 2021 as a peaceful transfer of power, [my emphasis] Vance opened up a chasm between him and his Democratic opponent, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, about how differently the two see threats to democracy. AND TRUMP/MAGA IS GOING TO TRY ALL THIS AGAIN—ONLY MORE DETERMINEDLY Trump has repeatedly refused to commit to accepting the election results, declining multiple times to do so during a 27 June debate. He has suggested that Christians would “never have to vote again” if he wins. The anti-democratic sentiment has been echoed by other prominent conservatives, including Mike Howell, the director of the oversight project at the Heritage Foundation, who said earlier this year there was a “0% chance of a free and fair election”. “I’m formally accusing the Biden administration of creating the conditions that most reasonable policymakers and officials cannot in good conscience certify an election,” he said at a Heritage Foundation event this summer. The effort poses a challenge that again would test the strength of the US’s voting system and its democratic institutions. It could probably stretch from little-known county election officials to the Congress. From The Guardian article above: Trump's 2020 election challenges by the numbers [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/10/3/2274386/-MAGA-The-Party-of-Treason-and-Sedition?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/