Despicable, hateful bastard

 

What are Trump's rants claiming missing J6 evidence about?

In short, Trump lied about the destruction of evidence. He lied about not having the Secret Service information. He lied about Pelosi refusing his offer of 10,000 National Guard troops. And he lied about the evidence of this offer being in the “deleted” materials. The only true thing was that Reps. Thompson and Cheney kept their word to the Secret Service about protecting the identity of agents who testified.

  Aaron Rupar

Get the story here.

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

The Secret Service on January 6

Deleted from SS end...what about Oath Keepers?

“Following the (Oath Keepers) trial, the committee reached out to the Secret Service and a verbal briefing as provided to staff, which was specific to the comments made at trial,” said Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. “Today, the committee has followed up with a formal inquiry for records regarding that and January 6, which we will provide.”

[...]

[T]he agency said an agent from its protective intelligence division had “numerous” contacts with Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and other group members prior to Trump rallies in fall 2020, but that they were all part of common practice to inform the group of security protocols to follow.

[...]

The Secret Service found that multiple members of the organization, not just Rhodes, spoke to an agent in the protective intelligence division ahead of Trump rallies, the most recent conversation coming before a Dec. 12, 2020, rally.

  NBC

"Which we will provide." Perhaps they have those with the agency contact. But what about the messages that were erased from agents' phones?

Former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi, now an NBC News analyst, said, “It’s common, prior to events, for law enforcement to talk to potential protest groups, or with groups acting in some security role. But regular contact with a militia type group like Oath Keepers, especially if treating them as a legitimate security partner, raises lots of concerns.”

That, too.

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

Closer and closer

John Zimmerman, who appeared before a jury at the seditious conspiracy trial of five Oath Keeper members including the organization’s founder Stewart Rhodes, said that he witnessed a phone call between the group’s leader and someone he thought belonged to the Secret Service in September 2020. Zimmerman also said that Rhodes told him he had been in contact with the agency.

  The Hill

That would explain why agents wiped their phones.

Another Oath Keepers member has testified that Rhodes attempted to make contact with Trump following the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. The organization founder spoke with someone over the phone at that time, although it is unclear who was on the other end.

[...]

Oath Keepers lawyer Kellye SoRelle was in contact with former White House aide Andrew Giuliani the same month that Trump lost reelection.

Zimmerman said that he and others broke with the Oath Keepers organization because of controversial tactics Rhodes tried to use during a trip in November.

“He thought that we should dress up as elderly or be like a single parent pushing a baby carriage with some weapons in the baby carriage,” Zimmerman said of Rhodes’ alleged plan to lure members of ANTIFA or Black Lives Matter to attack the Oath Keepers, according to NBC.

Rhodes allegedly wanted the progressive organizations to attack his own group to create a reason for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would have authorized the then-president to deploy military forces to suppress violence.

[...]

“We are aware that individuals from the Oath Keepers have contacted us in the past to make inquiries,” the Secret Service told NBC.

“It is not uncommon for various organizations to contact us concerning security restrictions and activities that are permissible in proximity to our protected sites.”

Sure.

And...what about that contact with Andrew Giuliani? What was that?

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

January 6 revelations still coming

Former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.), who staffed the Jan. 6 Committee until April, said on Friday that the White House switchboard connected with the phone of a rioter at the U.S. Capitol during the insurrection.

“You get a real ‘a-ha’ moment when you see that the White House switchboard had connected to a rioter’s phone while it’s happening,” said Riggleman, former senior technical adviser for the committee, according to a clip from CBS’s upcoming episode of “60 Minutes.”

When asked by host Bill Whitaker to confirm that someone in the White House was calling an insurrectionist during the riot, Riggleman said: “On January sixth, absolutely.”

[...]

“I only know one end of that call. I don’t know the White House end, which I believe is more important,” he said.

“But the thing is, the American people need to know that there are link connections that need to be explored more.”

  The Hill

And, Riggleman needs to sell a book. But, thanks for letting us know it now. Can't wait for the next Jan 6 hearings.

A group of employees who work for the internal watchdog at the Department of Homeland Security are calling on President Biden to remove their boss, saying they’ve lost hope the “ship will right itself.”

The request comes after numerous congressional panels have asked DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari to step aside from various investigations after he failed to alert lawmakers in a timely manner that Secret Service text messages for Jan. 6 had been “erased.”

An anonymous letter shared by the Project on Government Oversight was signed by “concerned DHS OIG employees representing every program office at every grade level” who added that “for fear of retaliation, we cannot identify ourselves.”

  The Hill

UPDATE:

Well, lookie here

Ooooh.  Let me guess:  they gave him the "opportunity to resign"

According to Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who serves on the [January 6] panel, committee members have stressed their desire to speak with Ornato and he has retained private counsel. It’s not clear whether Ornato will end up testifying related to the claims from Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Sources told CNN that Ornato had been eligible for retirement since earlier this summer, and he had been discussing leaving the Secret Service since before Hutchinson’s testimony.

  CNN

Whatever.

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

UPDATE:

[...] just two days before his planned interview with January 6 investigators.

[...]

Ornato had finally agreed to an interview with Department of Homeland Security investigators on August 31 after multiple attempts to arrange one. According to a memo sent by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General to the head of the Secret Service, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and DHS general counsel, the inspector general had been attempting to interview Ornato since June 29 and spent all of July and much of August following up.

[...]

Ornato has indicated that he still intends to attend the interview, according to an email obtained by The Intercept, but since Ornato will be a private citizen, investigators won’t have testimonial subpoena authority to compel his cooperation.

  Intercept

Reminder of Secret Service behavior January 6

Pretty sure Biden and Harris would be safer if they could clean out the Secret Service and hire replacements.  Although I'm not sure where they'd get replacements that wouldn't also be Trumpy, such is a big portion of law enforcement.

The coverup

Career officials at the Department of Homeland Security’s office of the inspector general added language about the missing [Secret Service] texts to a mandatory report to the Hill, along with sharp criticism of the Secret Service. But that draft language didn’t make it into the final document, which is public.

And the DHS inspector general’s office didn’t tell Congress about the deleted Secret Service text messages until July.

[...]

The language that didn’t make it into the final report to Congress included specific detail about resistance the watchdog office faced in obtaining Secret Service texts during “this reporting period,” meaning Oct. 1, 2021, through March 31. Over that time period, “Secret Service has resisted OIG’s oversight activities and continued to significantly delay OIG’s access to records, impeding the progress of OIG’s January 6, 2021 review,” the draft text opens.

The draft language then said that Secret Service interviewees refused to provide documents directly to the inspector general’s office, which amounted to “resistance to OIG’s oversight activities, for which justification has not been provided.”

[...]

Unlike the text Congress received, the draft language also said explicitly that the Secret Service’s resistance to oversight was ongoing.

“As outlined above, during this reporting period, the Secret Service has resisted OIG’s oversight activities and delayed the results of its review of the events of January 6, 2021,” it concluded.

[...]

In the end, the document that went to the Hill included just two sentences on the topic.

“During the previous reporting period, we included information about Secret Service’s significant delay of OIG’s access to Secret Service records, impeding the progress of our January 6, 2021 review,” reads the report Congress received. “We continue to discuss this issue with Secret Service.”

[...]

Congressional aides have obtained the same documents that the Project on Government Oversight obtained, according to two people familiar with the materials.

  Politico

Can't wait until the September January 6 Committee hearings. I'm hoping IT experts will have recovered the texts.

Absurd

No organization serious about preserving records leaves it up to individual employees.  And this is the federal government where preserving records is not just a matter of seriousness, it's a matter of law.

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

UPDATE:

UPDATE  7/29:  Oh my.  Now the DHS.

Serious foul play

The Secret Service was to provide the January 6 Committee with deleted texts from January 5 and 6 today.

The U.S. Secret Service has determined it has no new texts to provide Congress relevant to its Jan. 6 investigation, and that any other texts its agents exchanged around the time of the 2021 attack on the Capitol were purged, according to a senior official briefed on the matter.

  WaPo

Full letter

Also...are governmental electronic devices not routinely backed up?  If not, why not?  They damned well should be.

Also...give those "replaced" devices to computer techs to retrieve the "erased" messages.

UPDATE 7/20:  Worse yet: they turned over ONE text message.

Ronald Rowe, the assistant director for the Office of Intergovernmental and Legislative Affairs for the Secret Service, said in the letter that the agency submitted a conversation between former US Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund and former Secret Service Uniformed Division Chief Thomas Sullivan, in which Sund requested assistance on Jan. 6.

Rowe said the agency advised that it did not have any additional records that satisfy the inspector general’s request for text messages, CNN reported.

  The Hill

UPDATE:  Even more damning...

UPDATE:

Thursday January 6 hearing

The problem is the Supreme Court.  We have six ultra-conservative, anti-democratic people who de facto rule the United States and a Congress half too like-minded and half too lame to do anything to correct the situation.

Deleted Secret Service texts to go to January 6 committee

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a member of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, said Sunday that deleted Secret Service texts sent the day before and day of the insurrection will be turned over to the panel by Tuesday.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) alleges that messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021 were erased as part of a planned system migration.

  The Hill

Sure.

“You can imagine how shocked we were to get the letter from the [DHS] Inspector General saying that he had been trying to get this information and that they had, in fact, been deleted after he’d asked for them,” Lofgren told Martha Raddatz on ABC’s “This Week.”

“I was shocked to hear that they didn’t back up their data before they re-set their iPhones,” the congresswoman added. “That’s crazy. I don’t know why that would be.”

It wouldn't be unless they were trying to hide something.

The committee subpoenaed the Secret Service for the deleted messages Friday and will likely receive the documents Tuesday.

[...]

It wouldn't be unless they were trying to hide something.

The committee subpoenaed the Secret Service for the deleted messages Friday and will likely receive the documents Tuesday.

We'll see.

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

Prime time January 6 hearing coming up

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack will hold what could be its final public hearing of the summer during prime time on Thursday, examining former President Trump’s three hours of inaction during the insurrection.

  Yahoo

Could be. I hope it's not the last one.  I'm enjoying them.  I'll have withdrawal.

Surely there will be another one on the Secret Service's part in the insurrection.

A notice from the panel does not formally announce any witnesses, but the hearing will kick off at 8 p.m. [ET] and review the 187 minutes between Trump leaving his “Stop the Steal” rally that day and his finally issuing a statement asking supporters who ransacking the Capitol to go home.

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

Speaking of the Secret Service

THE SECRET SERVICE erased text messages from January 5 and January 6, 2021, according to a letter given to the January 6 committee and reviewed by The Intercept. The letter was originally sent by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General to the House and Senate homeland security committees. Though the Secret Service maintains that the text messages were lost as a result of a “device-replacement program,” the letter says the erasure took place shortly after oversight officials requested the agency’s electronic communications.

[...]

“I’m not getting in the car,” Pence reportedly told the Secret Service detail on January 6. “If I get in that vehicle, you guys are taking off.” Had Pence entered the vice presidential limo, he would have been taken to a secure location where he would have been unable to certify the presidential election results, plunging the U.S. into uncharted waters.

  The Intercept

Did Pence realize his detail was comprised of Trump supporters?

[K]ey evidence in the form of the Secret Service’s electronic communications may never see the light of day. The Department of Homeland Security — the Secret Service’s parent agency — is subject to oversight from the DHS Office of Inspector General, which had requested records of electronic communications from the Secret Service between January 5 and January 6, 2021, before being informed that they had been erased.

[...]

A top Secret Service official allegedly involved in the attempt to spirit away Pence on January 6 remains in a leadership position at the agency [as the assistant director of the Secret Service’s Office of Training]. Tony Ornato, a Secret Service agent whom Trump made the unprecedented decision to appoint as his deputy White House chief of staff, reportedly informed Pence’s national security adviser, Keith Kellogg, on January 6 that agents would relocate the vice president to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. “You can’t do that, Tony,” Kellogg reportedly told Ornato. “Leave him where he’s at. He’s got a job to do. I know you guys too well. You’ll fly him to Alaska if you have a chance. Don’t do it.” (Ornato has denied the account.)

And he also denied the account Cassidy Hutchinson gave of him telling her about the incident with Trump in the car. He should be put under oath to answer questions.

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

US Secret Service Shame

Somebody needs to clean up the Secret Service. I'm not talking about the fact that some of them are Trump loyalists, although that needs to be addressed as well.

An employee of the Secret Service has returned to the United States from Israel after an alleged “physical encounter” led to his detention by Israeli police, the agency confirmed to The Hill.

[...]

The incident was first reported by CNN, which identified the member detained by police as part of the Secret Services Counter Assault Team, a highly-trained specialized tactical unit.

A source told the news network the employee assaulted a woman outside of a bar.

[...]

This incident comes months after two Secret Service employees were sent back to the U.S. from South Korea and placed on administrative leave after the employees allegedly got into a confrontation with a taxi driver in South Korea while they were apparently intoxicated.

  The Hill

Click the above graphic for the article.

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

Shakeup at the Secret Service

In a January interview with the committee, according to a person who described the exchanges, [Agent Tony] Ornato recounted various recollections of Jan. 6. that led panel members to question his version of events.

Murray’s decision to allow Ornato to serve as a political adviser to the president “crossed a major line” for the Secret Service since agents are “sworn to be above politics,” Carol Leonnig, a Washington Post reporter and author of “Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service,” wrote on Twitter. The book also describes Murray and Ornato as good friends.

Ornato’s political appointment was “approved by current director James Murray at Trump’s urging, a decision that infuriated current and former agents,” Leonnig wrote in her tweet.

[...]

When asked at the daily White House press briefing whether Murray’s departure was related to the revelations from the Jan. 6 committee’s hearings, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre denied any connection.

“This has been in talks for several months,” she said, noting that conversations around the director’s retirement had been ongoing since April.

  Politico

Uh-huh.

Not good

Senior Secret Service agents are reportedly prepared to testify that Donald Trump did not lunge for the wheel of his vehicle or physically attack the chief of his security detail after his speech near the White House on January 6 – as a former aide said he did in sworn testimony on Tuesday.

[...]

CNN and other outlets reported the pushback on the alleged Secret Service incident from Tony Ornato, who was also a deputy chief of staff in the Trump White House, and Robert Engel, who was Trump’s security chief.

[...]

Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post, author of two books on the Trump administration and a history of the Secret Service, Zero Fail, said: “Sources tell me agents dispute that Donald Trump assaulted any agent or tried to grab the steering wheel on Jan 6. They agree Trump was furious about not being able to go to Capitol with his supporters. They offer to testify under oath.”

[...]

[According to Cassidy Hutchinson's Tuesday testimony,] Trump allegedly told Engel: “I’m the fucking president. Take me up to the Capitol now.”

When he was turned down, Hutchinson said, Trump tried to seize the steering wheel. Engel grabbed his arm and said: “Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel. We’re going back to the West Wing. We’re not going to the Capitol.”

Hutchinson said “Trump then used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel and when Mr Ornato recounted the story to me he motioned towards his clavicles”. Questioned by Liz Cheney, the committee deputy chair, Hutchinson said Engel did not dispute the account when Ornato relayed it.

  The Guardian

The Committee should have known before taking Hutchinson's testimony public whether these people would back her up.

Former White House chief of staff MICK MULVANEY: “This is explosive stuff. … I know her. I don’t think she is lying.”

  Politico

I don't think she is, either. It seems much more likely that the Secret Service agents want to avoid any backlash in their employment for tattling on the president.

UPDATE:  Further evidence for the more likely scenario.

Hutchinson’s attorneys, Jody Hunt and William Jordan of Alston Bird, issued a statement on Hutchinson’s behalf Wednesday defending her testimony.

“Ms. Hutchinson stands by all of the testimony she provided yesterday, under oath, to the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol,” they said.

[...]

The Jan. 6 committee didn’t reach out to the Secret Service in the days before it aired explosive testimony about an alleged physical altercation between Donald Trump and his security detail on the day of the riot, according to an agency spokesperson.

[...]

“[W]e were not asked to reappear before the Committee in response to yesterday’s new information and we plan on formally responding on the record,” he wrote in an email. “We have and will continue to make any member of the Secret Service available.”

[...]

Earlier this year, the committee already asked the head of Trump’s detail on Jan. 6 — who was with Trump riding from the “Stop the Steal” rally to the White House that day — about that car trip. That agent, Robert Engel, gave testimony at the time that appears to be consistent with Hutchinson’s story but is not known to include the stunning details Hutchinson described.

  Politico

Let's get them into the hearings, under oath.

But here's a more troublesome bit:

With respect to the handwritten note’s authorship, a spokesperson for Trump White House attorney Eric Herschmann has disputed part of Hutchinson’s Tuesday testimony. She told the select panel that she wrote the note about a statement for Trump to give on Jan. 6 calling for rioters to leave the Capitol, at the direction of then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows after he met with Herschmann. (The statement in question was never issued.)

“The handwritten note that Cassidy Hutchinson testified was written by her was in fact written by Eric Herschmann on January 6, 2021,” said a spokesperson for Herschmann. “All sources with direct knowledge and law enforcement have and will confirm that it was written by Mr. Herschmann.”

[...]

“While we understand that she and Mr. Herschmann may have differing recollections of who wrote the note, what’s ultimately important is that both White House officials believed that the President should have immediately instructed his supporters to leave the Capitol building,” [a Jan. 6] spokesperson said.

Maybe they both wrote similar notes, but shouldn't that be easy enough to determine? I mean, it was hand written. There was some mention of a word that was crossed out, and perhaps Herschmann asked for the note and edited it.  The note was projected on the big screen behind the panel, and when asked, Hutchinson told the Committee at the hearing that it was her handwriting.  I don't think it's likely she would lie about that.

UPDATE:

The January 6 Committee posted a video of Trump leaving the ellipse in his limo.  It is being said that it shows him moving his hands toward the driver.  I can't make it out, only can see rapid movement inside the vehicle, but I feel sure the Committee has determined it backs up Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony.

UPDATE 7/1:

UPDATE 7/8:  Shakeup at the Secret Servivce

UPDATE 7/21:

January 6th hearing #6

I don't know why it was important to call a special hearing today to get Cassidy Hutchinson's live testimony on the record (perhaps there's something on the DOJ's schedule they're aiding*), but the thing that I'm going to remember about it - and I'm willing to bet I won't be the only one - is that Donald Trump had tantrums where he threw plates of food against the wall, and he tried to choke someone who told him he couldn't go to the Capitol with the insurrectionists.

Other notable points:

Renato is a former prosecuting attorney.  (As is @Popehat.)

Joyce Vance was also a federal prosecutor:

Aaron Rupar's coverage of the hearing with video clips begins here:

Full hearing here.

Unsurprising GOP reaction, dismissive - and plain wrong:

And the totally expected response of Donald Trump:

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

Previous hearing

UPDATE:

Read the thread here.

*UPDATE:  A more likely reason may be that Hutchinson was getting extreme pressure and/or threats:

This ought to make the July hearings viewer numbers rocket.

Next hearing (July 12)

UPDATE 6/29:  Not good.  It's being reported that the Secret Service agents involved in Hutchinson's story about Trump's actions in the limo are willing to testify in contradiction to her account.

UPDATE 7/8:  Shakeup at the Secret Servivce

Corruption and MAGA in the country's security agencies

I've been stewing on this for a couple of days not knowing how to present it. Every once in a while, we get a taste of a right-wing politically oriented faction in the FBI. This shouldn't be surprising if you think of the FBI as another law enforcement agency and realize how many right-wingers are attracted to those professions. But it's unnerving when you hear how deep it goes and what it could portend.

Here's one story today from the Secret Service:

The saga of Arian Taherzadeh and Haider Ali broke into public view with their rushed arrest last week on a single charge of impersonating law enforcement. Prosecutors suggested the men posed a national security threat and may have compromised at least four Secret Service agents and officers, including ones who protected First Lady Jill Biden and the White House complex.

[...]

Authorities say they continue to investigate possible bribery and extortion and the four Secret Service personnel have been placed on leave pending an internal investigation.

[...]

Lawyer Greg Smith, who represents Ali, said the facts didn't match the rhetoric in the case and pointed out that his client had been deemed "indigent" and unable to pay for private legal counsel, hardly the sign of a foreign intelligence operative.

Public defender Michelle Peterson, who represents Taherzadeh, said he had submitted to an interview that lasted more than five hours after he was arrested, and provided the government with plenty of information during that time.

"When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail," Peterson said, adding that authorities "jumped to the wildest conspiracy theories" based on scant evidence.

  NPR

So it's not unheard of that "authorities" would do that. I just don't think "authorities" have a handle on this kind of thing, and they always manage to hush up problematic situations, in large part because they police their own.

"At this point, there's been no showing that national security information was in fact compromised," the judge said. He added that both men are now "infamous" because of international publicity, making it unlikely they could attempt or pull off an effort to dupe other federal officers.

Among the items the defendants allegedly provided to the Secret Service personnel were luxury-style apartments. The tab came to more than $220,000, but only a tiny fraction of that rent has been paid, raising questions about whether the men were motivated more by "bravado" than a sinister national security purpose.

The judge said earlier this week that prosecutors likely had enough evidence to convict both men on the single felony charge. But, he added, neither posed a serious risk of flight or a broader danger to the community.

Seriously?

Okay, MAYBE it's nothing, but it's obvious we're going to downplay this. No surprise. If you don't already have a skeptical (and/or worrying) view of our national security agencies, you might take a listen to this Talking Feds podcast from a couple days ago. And then see how you sleep at night.

If you don't care to hear the latest political scandals about Ivanka and Jared, you can skip the first 15 minutes of that podcast.  

You can also read the essence of the conversation in Frank Figliuzii's April 2 column.

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