For the love of Pete

Congressional allies of Donald Trump on Tuesday conflated standard FBI operating procedures with what they called an attempt by President Joe Biden's administration to assassinate the former president during a 2022 search of his Mar-a-Lago property for classified documents, even though the FBI specifically planned the search during a time when they knew Trump was hundreds of miles away in New Jersey.

[...]

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., wrote on X that the Justice Department and the FBI had plans to “assassinate” Trump “and gave the green light.”

  

She's going deeper into the insanity as each day passes.

Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., posted on X that President Joe Biden “ordered the hit on Trump at Mar-a-Lago,” Trump's residence in Palm Beach, Florida.

Trying to outcrazy each other.  These people are absolute bonkers. And they wield a mighty call to arms for MAGA idiots who are even more bonkers.

The posts came shortly after Trump, who was not at Mar-a-Lago on the day of the FBI search, wrote on Truth Social that he had been shown reports indicating “that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE.”

[...]

In a rare statement Tuesday night, the FBI said that it had followed standard procedure during the search of Trump's property and that no additional steps had been ordered.

“The FBI followed standard protocol in this search as we do for all search warrants, which includes a standard policy statement limiting the use of deadly force. No one ordered additional steps to be taken and there was no departure from the norm in this matter,” the statement said.

[...]

According to Justice Department policy, law enforcement officers are allowed to use force only when no other safe alternatives appear to exist. The policy further says deadly force is permitted only "when necessary, that is, when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person."

And he wasn't even there. And they planned it that way.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 07:27 pm:

Followers of former President Donald Trump were meant to be startled when they were sent an email Tuesday, addressed from “President Trump,” with this arresting subject line:

“They were authorized to shoot me!”

The preview line in the email did not back down.

“I nearly escaped death. Biden’s DOJ was locked and loaded for deadly force at Mar-a-Lago …”

  USA Today

Also...I understand he meant "narrowly", but "nearly escaped death" actually means he died.

It's a start

Couy Griffin, one of three commissioners in Otero county in southern New Mexico, was immediately removed from his position and cannot hold elected office again, Francis Mathew, a district judge in Santa Fe, wrote in his ruling.

The 14th amendment to the US constitution bars anyone who has participated in an insurrection from holding elected office. In June, Griffin was sentenced to 14 days in jail and a $3,000 (£2,604) fine for misdemeanor trespassing during the Capitol attack.

[...]

Earlier this year, Griffin sought to block Otero county, which voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in 2020, from certifying its official primary election results, citing concerns – which have been debunked – about voting machines.

The state supreme court eventually ordered the three-member commission to certify the election, which it ultimately did with a 2-1 vote. Griffin was the lone holdout.

“My vote to remain a no isn’t based on any evidence, it isn’t based on any facts. It’s only based on my own gut feeling, my own intuition, and that’s all I need,” he said at the time.

[...]

“Mr Griffin aided the insurrection even though he did not personally engage in violence. By joining the mob and trespassing on restricted Capitol grounds, Mr Griffin contributed to delaying Congress’s election certification proceedings.”

  Guardian

Good, now let's see that applied to the people who instigated the insurrection. Or in those words, "contributed to delaying Congress's election certification proceedings."

“This decision makes clear that any current or former public officials who took an oath to defend the US Constitution and then participated in the January 6th insurrection can and will be removed and barred from government service for their actions,” Noah Bookbinder, [CREW's] executive director, said in a statement.

[...]

An effort to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia congresswoman, from the ballot failed earlier this year. A similar effort seeking the removal of Arizona representatives Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar, as well as Mark Finchem, a Republican running to be Arizona’s top election official, also failed.

Try again.

Hmmm

Well, it couldn't have been up for more than a couple hours. And the Trump tweet scandal was a day old when he put it up.  I wonder who told him to take it down.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

GOP: Total bullshit all the time

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Republicans out of control - ongoing

Republican secretary of state nominee Mark Finchem, U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar and former GOP state legislator Anthony Kern must pay $75,000 in attorney’s fees to a former Democratic state lawmaker they sued after a judge said the lawsuit was “primarily for purposes of harassment.”

In February 2021, the three Republicans filed a lawsuit against Charlene Fernandez, then a Democratic legislator from Yuma, accusing her of defaming them by making disparaging remarks, connecting them to the violence of Jan. 6 and conspiring against them.

The lawsuit was a reaction to a letter sent by Fernandez and other Democratic lawmakers asking the FBI to investigate Finchem, Kern and Gosar’s connections to the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington, D.C.

The trio did not sue the 43 other Democratic legislators who also signed the letter.

[...]

Judge Levi Gunderson dismissed the case and said its defamation claims were baseless and Fernandez’s comments and the letter she signed were clearly protected by the First Amendment.

On Monday, Gunderson said that Finchem, Gosar and Kern must pay Fernandez’s legal fees because the lawsuit “was groundless and not made in good faith.”

In a scathing order, the judge wrote that the lawsuit — which included passages about the national political scene that are unrelated to Fernandez — was “written for an audience other than” the court in which it was filed.

  Az Mirror

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Oops

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Cawthorn update

Cawthorn, of course, was already voted out.  Let's see if the Supreme Court takes this up.  

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Barred from office

People who take part in insurrections against the US government can be barred from office, an appeals court said on Tuesday, reversing a ruling in favor of Madison Cawthorn, an extremist Republican politician from North Carolina.

[...]

The challenges cited the the 14th amendment to the US constitution, passed after the civil war.

It says: “No person shall … hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath … to support the constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

  Guardian

He lost anyway. So it's maybe unlikely that this will be taken to the Supreme Court where it might be expected the appeal decision will be overruled.

Hailing a “major victory”, Free Speech For People, the group which brought the case, said: “This ruling cements the growing judicial consensus that the 1872 Amnesty Act does not shield the insurrectionists of 6 January 2021 – including Donald Trump – from the consequences of their actions.”

[...]

It also brought cases against Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, two Arizona Republicans, Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, and an Arizona state representative, Mark Finchem. All have been unsuccessful.

I await appeals.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The McCarthy hits just keep on coming

Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, feared in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack that several far-right members of Congress would incite violence against other lawmakers, identifying several by name as security risks in private conversations with party leaders.

[...]

But Mr. McCarthy did not follow through on the sterner steps that some Republicans encouraged him to take, opting instead to seek a political accommodation with the most extreme members of the G.O.P. in the interests of advancing his own career.

  NYT

Well there's a surprise.

In the phone call with other Republican leaders on Jan. 10, Mr. McCarthy referred chiefly to two representatives, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Mo Brooks of Alabama, as endangering the security of other lawmakers and the Capitol complex. But he and his allies discussed several other representatives who made comments they saw as offensive or dangerous, including Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Barry Moore of Alabama.

[...]

After Jan. 6, Mr. Gaetz went on television to attack multiple Republicans who had criticized Mr. Trump, including Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a member of the leadership team.

Those comments by Mr. Gaetz alarmed Mr. McCarthy and his colleagues in leadership — particularly the reference to Ms. Cheney, who was already the target of threats and public abuse from Mr. Trump’s faction in the party because of her criticism of the defeated president.

[...]

“He’s putting people in jeopardy,” Mr. McCarthy said of Mr. Gaetz. “And he doesn’t need to be doing this. We saw what people would do in the Capitol, you know, and these people came prepared with rope, with everything else.”

Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican, suggested that Mr. Gaetz might be crossing a legal boundary.

“It’s potentially illegal what he’s doing,” Mr. Scalise said.

[...]

Speaking about rank-and-file lawmakers to his fellow leaders, Mr. McCarthy was sharply critical and suggested he was going to tell them to stop their inflammatory conduct.

“Our members have got to start paying attention to what they say, too, and you can’t put up with that,” he said, adding an expletive.

And yet, now they're all giving everybody a pass.

On Jan. 10, he urged his fellow G.O.P. leaders to keep a close eye on members like Mr. Brooks and Mr. Gaetz and asked them to alert him if they saw any potentially dangerous public communications.

Mr. McCarthy said it was particularly unacceptable for lawmakers to attack other lawmakers with whom they disagreed about the outcome of the 2020 election: “That stuff’s got to stop.”

“The country is too crazy,” Mr. McCarthy said. “I do not want to look back and think we caused something or we missed something and someone got hurt. I don’t want to play politics with any of that.”

And then he went down to Mar-A-Lago.

During the Jan. 10, 2021, phone call, Mr. McCarthy was speaking with a small group of Republican leaders, including Mr. Scalise, Ms. Cheney and Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, as well as a number of aides.

It was on this G.O.P. leadership call that Mr. McCarthy told his colleagues he would call Mr. Trump and tell him, “it would be my recommendation you should resign.”

[...]

The House minority leader has in recent days lied about and tried to downplay his comments: Last week, after The Times reported the remarks, Mr. McCarthy called the report “totally false and wrong.” After Mr. McCarthy’s denial, a source who had confidentially shared a recording of the call with the book’s authors agreed to let The Times publish parts of the audio. In the days since that recording has been made public, the Republican leader has repeated his denial and emphasized that he never actually carried out his plan to urge Mr. Trump to quit.

About time to admit this was not leaked by Liz Cheney, who has been getting the blame for it since the audio clip only has her and McCarthy on it.

On the leadership call, Mr. McCarthy, Mr. Scalise and others discussed several other lawmakers who had made provocative comments around Jan. 6, including Mr. Moore and Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas. Ms. Cheney, who was on the call, suggested Ms. Boebert was a security risk, pointing out that she had publicly tweeted about the sensitive movements of other lawmakers during the Jan. 6 evacuation.

[...]

On the Jan. 10 call, Mr. McCarthy said he planned to speak with Mr. Gaetz and ask him not to attack other lawmakers by name. The following day, in a larger meeting for all House Republicans, Mr. McCarthy pleaded with lawmakers not to “incite” but rather to “respect one another.”

Does he know his colleagues?

But in his determination to become speaker of the House after the 2022 elections, Mr. McCarthy has spent much of the last year forging a closer political partnership with the far right, showing little public concern that his most extreme colleagues could instigate bloodshed with their overheated or hateful rhetoric.

In recent months Mr. McCarthy has opposed punishing Republican members of Congress who have been accused of inciting violence, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and, most recently, Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, who posted an animated video on social media that depicted him killing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, the left-wing Democrat.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

They're still writing incriminating books

A former Trump White House official says he and right-wing provocateur Steve Bannon were actually behind the last-ditch coordinated effort by rogue Republicans in Congress to halt certification of the 2020 election results and keep President Donald Trump in power earlier this year, in a plan dubbed the “Green Bay Sweep.”

In his recently published memoir, Peter Navarro, then-President Donald Trump’s trade adviser, details how he stayed in close contact with Bannon as they put the Green Bay Sweep in motion with help from members of Congress loyal to the cause.

But in an interview last week with The Daily Beast, Navarro shed additional light on his role in the operation and their coordination with politicians like Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX).

“We spent a lot of time lining up over 100 congressmen, including some senators. It started out perfectly. At 1 p.m., Gosar and Cruz did exactly what was expected of them,” Navarro told The Daily Beast. “It was a perfect plan. And it all predicated on peace and calm on Capitol Hill. We didn’t even need any protestors, because we had over 100 congressmen committed to it.”

  Daily Beast

Continue reading.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The top of the list

Top names that are grist for the Jan 6 Committee mill:

Scott Perry (R-PA)

Jim Jordan (R-OH)

Mark Meadows (CoS, former congressman R-NC)

Andy Biggs (R-AZ)

Paul Gosar  (R-AZ)

Louie Gohmert (R-TX)

Richard Donoghue (DoJ official)

Stephen Miller (adviser)

Bill Stepien (campaign mgr)

Kayleigh McEnany (press sect'y)

Mo Brooks (R -AL)

Bill Barr (Atty Gen)

Doug Ducey (gov AZ)

Jeffrey Clark (DoJ civil div)

You can read about these folks and their connection to the coup attempt in this New York Times article.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Paul Gosar vying for worst Congressman position

He has some stiff competition, but I think he's knocking it out of the park.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Gosar censured

Background.

Well, good, but I think he should be kicked out of Congress.  

The vote was 223-207, largely along party lines. GOP Reps. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Liz Cheney of Wyoming voted with all Democrats to censure Gosar. Rep. David Joyce, R-Ohio, voted "present."

  ABC

Disgraceful.

"This is not about me," Ocasio-Cortez said in an impassioned floor speech. "This is not about representative Gosar. This is about what we're willing to accept. "

And that is exactly right. The GOP has become the most despicable body of slimeballs and enablers I have ever seen.

Gosar, speaking publicly about the video for the first time, which he said in an earlier statement was an attempt by his staff to reach a younger audience, said he doesn't condone violence but appeared to accept his fate as Democrats barrel towards the vote.

"I do not espouse violence or harm towards any member of Congress or Mr. Biden," Gosar said, notably not calling Biden "president."

Sure. And blame it on the staff.

And what is the "younger audience" he's aiming at?  Pre-teen boys?

"If I must join Alexander Hamilton, the first person attempted to be censored by this House, so be it. It is done," he added.

Did no one say, "You, sir, are no Alexander Hamilton" ?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

No surprise here

[S]ome of the planners of the pro-Trump rallies that took place in Washington, D.C., have begun communicating with congressional investigators and sharing new information about what happened when the former president’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Two of these people have spoken to Rolling Stone extensively in recent weeks and detailed explosive allegations that multiple members of Congress were intimately involved in planning both Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 events that turned violent.

Rolling Stone separately confirmed a third person involved in the main Jan. 6 rally in D.C. has communicated with the committee. This is the first report that the committee is hearing major new allegations from potential cooperating witnesses. [...] The two sources also claim they interacted with members of Trump’s team, including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who they describe as having had an opportunity to prevent the violence.

[...]

“I remember Marjorie Taylor Greene specifically,” the organizer says. “I remember talking to probably close to a dozen other members at one point or another or their staffs.”

[...]

These two sources also helped plan a series of demonstrations that took place in multiple states around the country in the weeks between the election and the storming of the Capitol. According to these sources, multiple people associated with the March for Trump and Stop the Steal events that took place during this period communicated with members of Congress throughout this process.

[...]

[In addition to Greene,] the pair both say the members who participated in these conversations or had top staffers join in included Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas).

  Rolling Stone

Exactly the list you would predict.

Gosar, who has been one of the most prominent defenders of the Jan. 6 rioters, allegedly took things a step further. Both sources say he dangled the possibility of a “blanket pardon” in an unrelated ongoing investigation to encourage them to plan the protests.

“Our impression was that it was a done deal,” the organizer says, “that he’d spoken to the president about it in the Oval … in a meeting about pardons and that our names came up. They were working on submitting the paperwork and getting members of the House Freedom Caucus to sign on as a show of support.”

[...]

The rally planner describes the pardon as being offered while “encouraging” the staging of protests against the election. While the organizer says they did not get involved in planning the rallies solely due to the pardon, they were upset that it ultimately did not materialize.

[...]

Rolling Stone has separately obtained documentary evidence that both sources were in contact with Gosar and Boebert on Jan. 6. We are not describing the nature of that evidence to preserve their anonymity

[...]

Nick Dyer, who is Greene’s communications director, said she was solely involved in planning to object to the electoral certification on the House floor. Spokespeople for the other members of Congress, who the sources describe as involved in the planning for protests, did not respond to requests for comment.

[...]

In another indication members of Congress may have been involved in planning the protests against the election, Ali Alexander, who helped organize the “Wild Protest,” declared in a since-deleted livestream broadcast that Gosar, Brooks, and Biggs helped him formulate the strategy for that event.

“I was the person who came up with the Jan. 6 idea with Congressman Gosar, Congressman Mo Brooks, and Congressman Andy Biggs,” Alexander said at the time. “We four schemed up on putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting so that — who we couldn’t lobby — we could change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body hearing our loud roar from outside.”

Planning the protests against the election isn't illegal. The problem is with planning the break-in.

The two potential witnesses plan to present to the committee allegations about how these demonstrations were funded and to detail communications between organizers and the White House. According to both sources, members of Trump’s administration and former members of his campaign team were involved in the planning. Both describe Katrina Pierson, who worked for Trump’s campaign in 2016 and 2020, as a key liaison between the organizers of protests against the election and the White House.

[...]

Both sources also describe Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, as someone who played a major role in the conversations surrounding the protests on Jan. 6.

[...]

“Meadows was 100 percent made aware of what was going on,” says the organizer. “He’s also like a regular figure in these really tiny groups of national organizers.”

[...]

While it was already clear members of Congress played some role in the Jan. 6 events and similar rallies that occurred in the lead-up to that day, the two sources say they can provide new details about the members’ specific roles in these efforts. The sources plan to share that information with congressional investigators right away. While both sources say their communications with the House’s Jan. 6 committee thus far have been informal, they are expecting to testify publicly.

That needs to be done ASAP, or perhaps - for the most political impact - closer to the 2022 elections.

Both of the sources made clear that they still believe in Trump’s agenda. They also have questions about how his election loss occurred. The two sources say they do not necessarily believe there were issues with the actual vote count. However, they are concerned that Democrats gained an unfair advantage in the race due to perceived social media censorship of Trump allies and the voting rules that were implemented as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Republicans and autocrats don't like it when people are able to vote.

Despite their remaining affinity for Trump and their questions about the vote, both sources say they were motivated to come forward because of their concerns about how the pro-Trump protests against the election ultimately resulted in the violent attack on the Capitol. Of course, with their other legal issues and the House investigation, both of these sources have clear motivation to cooperate with investigators and turn on their former allies.

I'm guessing the latter reason is a real one, while the former is B.S.

And both of their accounts paint them in a decidedly favorable light compared with their former allies.

Naturally.

“The reason I’m talking to the committee and the reason it’s so important is that — despite Republicans refusing to participate … this commission’s all we got as far as being able to uncover the truth about what happened at the Capitol that day,” the organizer says. “It’s clear that a lot of bad actors set out to cause chaos. … They made us all look like shit.”

No argument there.

“The breaking point for me [on Jan. 6 was when] Trump starts talking about walking to the Capitol,” the organizer says. “I was like. ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here.’ ”

“I do kind of feel abandoned by Trump,” says the planner. “I’m actually pretty pissed about it and I’m pissed at him.”

The organizer offers an even more succinct assessment when asked what they would say to Trump.

“What the fuck?” the organizer says.

I'd like to know what the fuck they expected. It's Trump.

Good point, Fred.

Heading into Jan. 6, both sources say, the plan they had discussed with other organizers, Trump allies, and members of Congress was a rally that would solely take place at the Ellipse.

If true, that puts Trump squarely in play for urging the Ellipse crowd to march on the Capitol.

A senior staffer for a Republican member of Congress, who was also granted anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation, similarly says they believed the events would only involve supporting objections on the House floor. The staffer says their member was engaged in planning that was “specifically and fully above board.”

“A whole host of people let this go a totally different way,” the senior Republican staffer says. “They fucked it up for a lot of people who were planning to present evidence on the House floor. We were pissed off at everything that happened.”

Thank Trump.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

It's not over.  It's ongoing.

The GOP G String

UPDATE:

NOT soon enough.

Indeed.

Funny, I thought "Anglo-Saxon political traditions" were monarchies

These people are reprehensible.

Read the whole thing here if you can stomach it.  I can't.

UPDATE:

In the 1920 publication “The Rising Tide of Color: The Threat Against White World Supremacy," Lothrop Stoddard made the same claims, warning that white Americans were being engulfed by the more "fertile" nonwhite races. Americans of “Anglo-Saxon origin,” he insisted, had to restrict immigration to preserve their country for “future generations who have a right to demand of us that they shall be born white in a white man’s land.”

  Kevin Kruse @ NYT

You might want to run that by the Native Americans.

This popular panic over immigration helped revive the Ku Klux Klan, which pressed the issue aggressively in the early 1920s.

[...]

The National Origins Act of 1924, a quota-based measure that drastically reduced immigration from southeastern Europe and banned all Asians from immigrating entirely, [...] was passed by overwhelming margins in both houses of Congress, with equally strong support from both parties. President Calvin Coolidge then signed the measure into law, marking a significant turning point in American history.

[...]

[T]he National Origins Act in turn served as a model for the “racial citizenship” laws that took root in Germany a decade later.

“The United States of the new world have come to understand the monstrous danger of the ‘great melting pot of races’ over the course of the last decades, and put a check on bastardization through draconian immigration law,” a Nazi Party publication noted in 1933. “To these circles of tribally related Americans we reach out our hand in friendship.”

[...]

History isn’t predictive, of course. But if the America First Caucus wants to argue what history has shown us, then let’s not ignore what it has shown us about their own arguments. We need to remember the dangerous ends and drastic horrors such arguments led us to before and might well lead us to again.

UPDATE:  I thought abortion was anathema to these people, but they aborted this insane launch.

Nick Dyer, Greene's spokesperson, told CNN in an email on Saturday afternoon the Georgia Republican is not "launching anything."

"The Congresswoman wants to make clear that she is not launching anything. This was an early planning proposal and nothing was agreed to or approved," he said in an email to CNN, referring to a flier promoting the caucus, obtained by Punchbowl News, that used inflammatory rhetoric.

He added that "she didn't approve that language and has no plans to launch anything."

This is a reversal from Friday, when her office said she would launch the caucus "very soon."

On Friday, amid news reports of the caucus, Dyer complained about the initial draft of the flier being leaked but confirmed to CNN in a statement that plans were in the works to form the group, which he said would be "announced to the public very soon."

Greene in a series of tweets Saturday afternoon also claimed that the staff-level draft proposal of her "America First" caucus is "from an outside group that I hadn't read." She also accused the media of creating "false narratives" and focusing on race to "divide the American people with hate through identity politics."

[...]

Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, a Republican, denied his involvement in plans to launch an "America First" caucus and wrote in a statement Saturday he will "continue to work on America First issues in the House Freedom Caucus."

  CNN

The House insurrectionists

[In] signaling either overt or tacit support, a small but vocal band of Republicans now serving in the House provided legitimacy and publicity to extremist groups and movements as they built toward their role in supporting Mr. Trump’s efforts to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election and the attack on Congress.

[...]

Nearly 150 House Republicans supported President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claims that the election had been stolen from him. But [Arizona Rep Paul] Gosar and a handful of other Republican members of the House had deeper ties to extremist groups who pushed violent ideas and conspiracy theories and whose members were prominent among those who stormed the halls of Congress in an effort to stop certification of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.

Their ranks include Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, who like Mr. Gosar was linked to the “Stop the Steal” campaign backing Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the election’s outcome.

Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado has close connections to militia groups including the so-called Three Percenters, an extremist offshoot of the gun rights movement that had at least one member who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory, whose adherents were among the most visible of those who stormed the building, and she appeared at a rally with militia groups.

Before being elected to Congress last year, Ms. Greene used social media in 2019 to endorse executing top Democrats and has suggested that the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., was a staged “false flag” attack. The liberal group Media Matters for America reported on Thursday that Ms. Greene also speculated on Facebook in 2018 that California wildfires might have been started by lasers from space, promoting a theory pushed by followers of QAnon.

Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida appeared last year at an event also attended by members of the Proud Boys, another extremist organization whose role in the Jan. 6 assault, like those of the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, is being investigated by the F.B.I.

It is not clear whether any elected officials played a role in directly facilitating the attack on the Capitol, other than helping to incite violence through false statements about the election being stolen from Mr. Trump. Officials have said they are investigating reports from Democrats that a number of House Republicans provided tours of the Capitol and other information to people who might have gone on to be part of the mob on Jan. 6. So far, no evidence has surfaced publicly to back up those claims.

[...]

An examination of many of the most prominent elected Republicans with links to right-wing groups also shows how various strands of extremism came together at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

[...]

Few Republicans have been more linked to extremist groups than Mr. Gosar.

“He’s been involved with anti-Muslim groups and hate groups,” said Mr. Gosar’s brother Dave Gosar, a lawyer in Wyoming. “He’s made anti-Semitic diatribes. He’s twisted up so tight with the Oath Keepers it’s not even funny.” Dave Gosar and other Gosar siblings ran ads denouncing their brother as a dangerous extremist when he ran for Congress in 2018. Now they are calling on Congress to expel him.

[...]

In the days after the 2020 election, Mr. Gosar and Mr. Biggs helped turn Arizona into a crucible for the Stop the Steal movement, finding common cause with hard-liners who until then had toiled in obscurity, like Ali Alexander. The two congressmen recorded a video, “This Election Is A Joke,” which was viewed more than a million times and spread disinformation about widespread voter fraud.

Mr. Alexander has said he “schemed up” the Jan. 6 rally with Mr. Gosar, Mr. Biggs and another vocal proponent of Stop the Steal, Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama. Mr. Alexander’s characterization of the role of the members of Congress is exaggerated, Mr. Biggs said, but the lawmakers were part of a larger network of people who helped plan and promote the rally as part of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the will of the voters.

[...]

After the election, Mr. Alexander emerged as a vocal proponent of the president’s stolen election claims, setting up a Stop the Steal website on Nov. 4 and making incendiary statements. On Dec. 8, he tweeted that he was willing to give up his life to keep Mr. Trump in office.

The Arizona Republican Party followed up, retweeting Mr. Alexander’s post and adding: “He is. Are you?” Mr. Alexander has since been barred from Twitter.

Ten days later, Mr. Gosar was one of the headliners at a rally in Phoenix that Mr. Alexander helped organize. Mr. Gosar used the rally to deliver a call to action, telling the crowd that they planned to “conquer the Hill” to return Mr. Trump to the presidency.

[...]

To some degree, the members of Congress have been reflecting signals sent by Mr. Trump.

During a presidential debate in October, he made a nod toward the Proud Boys, telling them to “stand back and stand by.” Two months earlier, Mr. Trump described followers of QAnon — several of whom have been charged with murder, domestic terrorism, planned kidnapping and, most recently, storming the Capitol — as “people that love our country,” adding that “they do supposedly like me.”

  NYT

“Conquer the Hill to return Mr. Trump to the presidency." Sounds like straight up insurrection to me.  You're not allowed to serve in office if you incite insurrection.  When will Gosar be thrown out of Congress?

..but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The "organizers"

THE HEAD OF the House Freedom Caucus, Republican Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, helped plan the January 6 event that culminated in a storming of the Capitol, according to Ali Alexander, a lead organizer of the gathering. Alexander, a pro-Trump personality, was an early founder of the “Stop the Steal” movement and helped bring together various right-wing factions around a mass event on January 6, aimed to coincide with objections to the counting of Electoral College votes.

Alexander made his claim in three separate livestreams in late December, adding that Reps. Paul Gosar of Arizona and Mo Brooks of Alabama were also involved. “We’re the four guys who came up with a January 6 event,” Alexander said. On December 8, the Arizona Republican Party boosted Alexander, asking supporters if they were willing to give their lives in the fight over the results of the presidential election.

  The Intercept

What the everloving fuck?  Soliciting martyrs, just like Islamic extremists.

Any and all congress people should be censured at the least, and removed, more appropriately, for fighting the election results. This is insane.

Biggs’s connection to Alexander was reported on Sunday by the Arizona Republic, which quoted his spokesperson, Daniel Stefanski, denying any connection to Alexander. “Congressman Biggs is not aware of hearing of or meeting Mr. Alexander at any point — let alone working with him to organize some part of a planned protest,” Stefanski said.

And if it had gone the way they wanted it to, he'd be crowing about being a part of it.

In a statement to The Intercept following publication, Brooks’s office denied the congressman incited violence, writing in part: “Congressman Brooks has no recollection of ever communicating in any way with whoever Ali Alexander is. Congressman Brooks has not in any way, shape or form coordinated with Ali Alexander on the January 6th ‘Save America’ rally. Congressman Brooks spoke at the ‘Save America’ rally at the invitation of the White House (the invitation was extended the day before), not anyone else.”

[...]

Alexander, who adopted a new name after pleading guilty to felony property theft in 2007 and felony credit card abuse in 2008, has been suspended from Twitter and other platforms for his role in organizing the January 6 event. As the Daily Beast reported, he has said he has been unfairly blamed for the violence on January 6, and has gone underground.

Did he think Congressmen were going to own up?

On December 21, Alexander made the same claim on a livestream. “We’re working closely with Congressman Mo Brooks, we’re working closely with Congressman Andy Biggs, and closely with, obviously, Congressman Paul Gosar, my great friend,” Alexander said. “I believe that the president should do something brave, I think the vice president should do something brave. I believe that that’s how we maintain the White House. … It’s a moral imperative to maintain the White House.”

[...]

“I’m the guy who came up with the idea of January 6 when I was talking with Congressman Gosar, Congressman Andy Biggs, and Congressman Mo Brooks. So we’re the four guys who came up with a January 6 event — #DoNotCertify — and it was to build momentum and pressure, and then on the day change hearts and minds of congresspeoples who weren’t yet decided, or saw everyone outside and said, ‘I can’t be on the other side of that mob,’” Alexander said a week before the event he predicted would bring more than a million people to Washington, D.C.

They itended a mob scene to threaten/intimidate Congress people. Thank god it blew up in their faces.

AT THE December 19 rally, two days before that claim, Alexander more clearly delineated the different roles Biggs and Gosar were playing. “Congressman Gosar has been the spirit animal of this movement, and he’s helped out where he could. He’s offered to call donors. We actually had our first D.C. march because he called me and he said, ‘You need to go to the Supreme Court.’ I said, ‘All right, my captain,’” Alexander told the audience at the Arizona State Capitol.

“One of the other heroes has been Congressman Andy Biggs. Now, when the good doctor Paul, now a friend, has been concentrating on the movement, Andy Biggs has been running ahead of him and whipping votes in Congress.

[...]

At the December 19 rally, Alexander also thanked Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward. “I want to thank Chairwoman Kelli Ward and the Arizona Republican Party. I work in seven states, and there is no party like the Arizona GOP Party, so let’s thank Kelli Ward,” Alexander said. Ward spoke at the rally.

“Let me tell you an open secret. The president watches these rallies, and he’s watching you today,” Alexander said, leading the crowd variously in “Fight for Trump,” “1776,” and “Christ is King” chants.

That day, Donald Trump posted to his since-suspended Twitter account: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

Gosar tagged Alexander on Twitter twice on January 6, and tagged him repeatedly in his posts throughout November and December.

[...]

Alexander’s contemporaneous claims have taken on new relevance as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has floated the possibility of expelling members of Congress who are found to have been involved in the riot.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, reads:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Do it.

Otherwise, they're going to pin this on Alexander and get away with it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Uh-oh

The right-wing political activist Ali Alexander says that Arizona Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs worked with him to plan pro-Trump rallies, including the one that ended with an attack on the Capitol.

At the time the mob was making its move on Wednesday, Alexander, a national “Stop the Steal” organizer, posted a video of himself saying, “I don't disavow this. I do not denounce this.”

[...]

[I]n late December Alexander told followers on Periscope that he, Biggs, Gosar and Mo Brooks of Alabama, three Republican members of Congress, were planning something big.

The CNN article noted that while Alexander did not call for violence, he said, “It was to build momentum and pressure and then on the day change hearts and minds of Congress peoples who weren’t yet decided or who saw everyone outside and said, ‘I can't be on the other side of that mob.’ ”

[...]

Gosar called Alexander “a true patriot.”

Biggs responded to the CNN article, saying through a spokesperson, “Congressman Biggs is not aware of hearing of or meeting Mr. Alexander at any point – let alone working with him to organize some part of a planned protest. He did not have any contact with protestors or rioters, nor did he ever encourage or foster the rally or protests.”

[...]

Biggs and Gosar constantly called into question the integrity of the election, in spite of the evidence, in spite of the affirmations by election officials from both parties, in spite of the certification of ballots by all 15 Arizona counties.

[...]

Biggs was among the hardcore Trump loyalists who met with the president prior to Jan. 6 to talk about challenging the Electoral College.

   Arizona Central

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Aftermath of an attempted coup - Part 5 /Trump aiders and abetters attempt to extricate themselves from the shit they stirred

It will be interesting to see how Trump attacks Mike Pence in the next couple of weeks.

Yeah, Mike. Too little, too late. You've been abetting Trump's incitement to violence for four years.

An attorney representing President Trump in one of his dozens of lawsuits challenging the 2020 election moved to withdraw from the case on Thursday, telling a federal court that the president used him to "perpetrate a crime."

Philadelphia-based attorney Jerome Marcus asked the court to allow him to withdraw, citing concerns over Pennsylvania's professional conduct standards for lawyers.

[...]

The case Marcus was involved in was one of the earliest election challenges that Trump filed and one of the most short-lived. Submitted just two days after the election, it sought to halt the vote counting in Philadelphia, accusing elections officials of illegally excluding Trump's poll watchers from observing the process. A federal judge denied Trump's motion for an emergency injunction on the same day that the lawsuit was filed.

[...]

Marcus wrote that "the client has used the lawyer's services to perpetrate a crime and the client insists upon taking action that the lawyer considers repugnant and with which the lawyer has a fundamental disagreement."

  The Hill

What? He just now figured that out? Didn't he read the lawsuits he was filing?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Fuck off back under your rock.  You have been instrumental in keeping Trump afloat by betraying YOUR office.

Yeah, not to mention, if he didn't know, he found out real quick and didn't say anything.

Only six Republican senators ultimately voted to sustain an objection raised by Cruz to Arizona’s electoral slate on Wednesday after 13 Republicans signaled before the polls closed in Georgia Tuesday that they would support such an objection. Only seven GOP senators supported a second objection raised by Hawley to Pennsylvania’s election results.

The drop-off in support was a reflection of Trump’s plummeting political stock after the loss of the Senate majority and his response to the rioting in the Capitol.

Many Republicans are scrambling to distance themselves from Trump after he publicly pressured Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally attempt to overturn the results of the presidential election at a joint session of Congress on Wednesday and then kept silent after a pro-Trump mobbed swarmed the Capitol and Senate chamber, sending lawmakers to secure rooms while police locked down the campus.

[...]

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who has been a strong Trump ally during his first term, late on Wednesday said [...] “I do think the president bears some responsibility. Certainly, he bears responsibility for his own actions and his own words and today in watching his speech, I have to admit I gasped,” Cramer said.

  The Hill

Apparently Senator Cramer has had his head in the sand for four years.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said Friday that Donald Trump should resign the presidency immediately and that if the Republican Party cannot separate itself from Trump, she isn’t certain she has a future with the party.

  Anchorage Daily News

What was that she said when she voted "no" on impeachment?  Oh yeah, she said she thought he'd learned his lesson.

Fox News contributor and formerWhite House press secretary Ari Fleischer has vowed to no longer “defend” President Trump following Wednesday’s pro-Trump riot that overtook the Capitol.

“At this point, I won’t defend him anymore,” Fleischer, who served in the George W. Bush administration and who voted for Trump in 2020, told The Associated Press.

“I won’t defend him for stirring the pot that incited the mob,” the GOP strategist added. “He’s on his own.”

[...]

Fleischer had previously vocalized support for Trump, writing in an October opinion piece for The Hill that he planned to cast his vote for the sitting president in the 2020 election, viewing the choice between Trump and Biden as “between a personally offensive outsider who signs good policies and a professionally offensive politician who will turn bad ideas into law.”

“Say what you will about Trump violating norms, he has never tried to redo the balance of power by irregular means,” Fleischer wrote at the time.

  The Hill

And where the Hell does Kellyanne Conway get off?  She's been one of Trump's biggest enablers.