https://www.nationalmemo.com/capitol-riot-gallows

Trumpists Made Plans To Build Gallows Weeks Before Capitol Riot
Darrell Lucus
@DarrellLucus
May 30 | 2021
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos


One of the most enduring—and horrifying—sights of the January 6 insurrection was an actual gallows erected on the west side of the Capitol. People for the American Way's Right Wing Watch has revealed that plans to erect the gallows were underway almost as soon as Donald Trump issued his now-infamous call to arms on Twitter.

According to analysis from the nonprofit research group Advance Democracy, literally within hours of Trump calling for his followers to come to Washington on January 6 and "be wild," posters at TheDonald.win—successor to the r/The_Donald subreddit—took it as an order. One poster, CaptainChrisBacon, posted a picture asking, "Who Is Bringing The Gallows On January 6th, 2021?" The picture depicted the hanging of a Confederate war criminal—ironic given the number of Confederate flags on display at the insurrection.

Another poster, sunlessmage743, started a thread about the details of building a gallows, saying it could easily be done "with the right plan and the right people bringing pre cut materials to the site." Respondents were positively giddy. One claimed that the scene would be "so 1776." When user DJT2020 suggested they should also build a guillotine, user webthing offered to build it. User jc99ta mused that a guillotine could be used to slice watermelons when it wasn't being used to behead people.

Talk about a gallows dominated TheDonald.win for days afterward.

One user swiped Home Depot's logo to show just how easy it was to find the materials for a gallows. Another offered to bring a 500-foot paracord as a rope—and warned that they would be on the hunt for insufficiently loyal Republicans, as well as Black Lives Matter and "antifa." He initially backed off on using a paracord when told it could decapitate the person being hanged, but later mused that it would at least keep the person being hanged from thrashing about on the gallows. Among those on the list of targets were the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Maxine Waters, Chuck Schumer, and Mitt Romney.

There's more where these came from. Check out Advance Democracy's archive here.

These insurrectionists were dead serious about killing a lot of people. Consider that many of these sans-culottes were heavily armed, and some of them were carrying zip-ties. Simply put, these were not just "tourists." (I'm looking at you, Rep. Andrew Clyde.)

For the better part of the last three years, the Republicans have called Democrats an angry mob. And yet they believe it's too soon to investigate how an actual mob attacked the Capitol. This is yet more evidence that we need to get to the bottom of how this horror happened—with or without the GOP.

POLITICS 05/30/2021 06:00 am ET
The Secret Service Has To Protect Former Presidents — But What If They Are In Jail?
Donald Trump could be the first president to face jail or prison time, creating a dilemma for the officials charged with protecting him.
By S.V. Date


WASHINGTON ― If a former president ends up in jail, will Secret Service agents have to be in there with him?

It’s a question the agency has never had to confront before but may have to come up with protocols for soon, as investigators in New York state and Georgia scrutinize Donald Trump’s actions for possible criminal prosecution.



Secret Service officials declined to discuss the matter. “In order to maintain operational security, the U.S. Secret Service does not comment on the means and methods used to conduct the agency’s protective operations,” a spokesperson wrote in a statement.

Trump political adviser Jason Miller did not respond to a HuffPost query about whether Trump would waive his right to Secret Service protection if he wound up in the custody of state or federal law enforcement.

One longtime Trump confidant, though, doubted that he would do that, and said he is more likely to ask for additional protection behind bars than he receives right now. “He would probably double up,” the adviser said on condition of anonymity. “It would be an interesting situation.”

more...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-jail-secret-service_n_60aff72ee4b0ead27966342e

Justice Breyer’s new warning for Democrats couldn’t have come at a worse time
American democracy is in crisis. Breyer thinks now’s the time to scold his fellow liberals.
By Ian Millhiser May 29, 2021, 9:00am EDT


Justice Stephen Breyer — a Bill Clinton appointee who has served on the Supreme Court since 1994 — has chosen this moment to admonish liberals for failing to respect the rule of law.

He’s done so despite the fact that less than five months ago, a violent mob of former President Donald Trump’s supporters invaded the US Capitol in a vain attempt to keep Trump, who had just lost his bid for reelection, in office without an electoral mandate. In the months that followed, state-level Republicans loyal to Trump passed legislation that appears to serve no purpose other than to restrict voting. And now, Republican leaders are blocking a bipartisan investigation into the January 6 riots at the Capitol.

And yet, in the midst of what might be the greatest threat to liberal democracy in the United States since Jim Crow, Breyer warns that liberals are endangering the rule of law because a small minority of Democrats have suggested taking aggressive action to rein in the Supreme Court.

And Breyer is doing this at the same time that he’s urging Democrats to find common ground with a party that refuses to investigate an attack that endangered much of Congress.

more...

https://www.vox.com/22454648/justice-stephen-breyer-supreme-court-retirement-book-harvard-court-packing-voting-democracy

Levin Report
Report: Prosecutors May Use a Mafia Law Against Donald Trump that Comes With Up To 25 Years in Prison
Karmically, Trump is very screwed and coming back in his next life as a urinal cake. Legally? He might be pretty screwed there, too.
By Bess Levin
May 28, 2021


Just how screwed is Donald Trump? From a karmic perspective, let’s put it this way: The guy is coming back in his next life as a urinal cake. And not a nice urinal cake you’d find in the men’s room of a Madison Avenue office building—we‘re talking a truck stop urinal cake that’s seen things a family publication like ours can’t even print. But in this life, from a legal perspective, how screwed is he? On the one hand, he’s yet to actually be charged with a crime. On the other, there are four criminal investigations into him and prosecutors in one of them reportedly took the major step of a convening a grand jury to hear evidence and potentially come back with indictments. And according to experts, the kind of charges they’re likely considering come with a prison sentence of up to 25 years. As in two-and-a-half decades. As in, at the age of 74—75 next month!—Donald Trump could very well die in prison. And what a crying shame that would be!

Politico reports that former prosecutors and defense attorneys believe that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. could be exploring the possibility of arguing that Trump‘s entire business empire was a corrupt enterprise under a New York law known as “little RICO,” which was modeled after the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, originally used to crack down on the mafia. “I’m sure they’re thinking about that,” longtime Manhattan defense attorney Robert Anello told reporters Josh Gerstein and Betsy Woodruff Swan. “No self-respecting state white-collar prosecutor would forgo considering the enterprise corruption charge.” The state law can be used with proof of as few as three crimes involving a business or other enterprise and carries a minimum mandatory sentence of one to three years—and a maximum term of up to 25. “It’s a very serious crime,” said Michael Shapiro, a defense attorney who used to prosecute corruption cases in New York. “Certainly, there are plenty of things an organization or business could do to run afoul of enterprise corruption, if they’re all done with the purpose of enhancing the revenue of the enterprise illegally…it’s an umbrella everything else fits under.”

Per Politico:




more...

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/05/donald-trump-little-rico-charges

I suppose being dumb as a box of rocks doesn't matter if no one does anything about it.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/matt-gaetz-tells-fans-to-carry-out-armed-rebellion-against-government-if-neccessary?ref=home

Matt Gaetz Tells Fans to Carry Out ‘Armed Rebellion’ Against Government if Neccessary
PLAYING SOLDIER
Jamie Ross, News Correspondent
Published May. 28, 2021 5:56AM ET

Emails Tie Top Trump Exec Allen Weisselberg to Yet Another Trump Financial Scandal
These records show he was involved with the Trump inauguration committee now under investigation for major grifting.
David Corn
Washington, DC, Bureau ChiefBio | Follow



Allen Weisselberg is in the hot seat—and that’s bad news for Donald Trump and his family. Assorted news reports have identified Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, as a key figure in the criminal and civil investigations of the Trump business being conducted by the New York attorney general and the Manhattan district attorney, who recently empaneled a grand jury to review evidence against the Trump company, its executives, and possibly Trump. Moreover, the New York Times recently reported that Weisselberg himself is being criminally investigated for possible tax fraud, raising the prospect that investigators are looking to flip the longtime Trump executive into a cooperating witness. Now there’s more trouble for Weisselberg and Trump World. Previously unreported emails attached to a little-noticed court document filed earlier this month show that Weisselberg is tied to another Trump financial scandal: the Trump inauguration case, which is currently being investigated by the attorney general of Washington, DC.

In 2020, Karl Racine, the AG in the nation’s capital, filed a lawsuit against Trump’s inauguration committee and the Trump Organization, asserting that the inauguration committee, a nonprofit corporation, misused charitable funds to enrich the Trump family. The complaint, as the attorney general put it in a statement, accuses the Presidential Inauguration Committee (known as the PIC) of coordinating “with the Trump family to grossly overpay for event space in the Trump International Hotel.” The lawsuit notes that the PIC struck a contract with the Trump Hotel for $1.03 million, an amount that was allegedly far above the hotel’s own pricing guidelines. (At the time, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a top producer for the PIC, raised concerns with the president-elect, Ivanka Trump, and others about the prices the Trump Hotel was charging the inauguration committee for events to be held there. But according to Racine, the PIC still paid the Trump Hotel inflated fees.)

Racine also alleges that the PIC improperly used nonprofit funds to host a private party at the Trump Hotel for the Trump family that cost several hundred thousand dollars. The attorney general has essentially maintained that the Trump crew and its company exploited the 2017 presidential inauguration to engage in significant grifting. and he is looking to recoup the money the PIC paid to the Trump Hotel so these funds can be directed to real charitable purposes. (Federal prosecutors have also examined the committee’s financing. It is not clear if their inquiry has concluded.)

In April 2017—three months after Trump’s inauguration—the PIC was trying to sort out its financial reports, and though the Trump Organization was not officially involved in its operation except as a vendor, Weisselberg was brought into the effort.

“The Trump Organization is the parent company that controls the operations and finances of the Trump Hotel, so why would Allen Weisselberg, its CFO, be asked to participate in the audit pertaining to the finances of the PIC?” asks Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a lead cooperating witness in the inauguration scandal case.

more...

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/05/emails-tie-trump-exec-allen-weisselberg-to-inaugural-scandal-racine/

Someone needs to.

https://politicalwire.com/2021/05/27/paul-ryan-will-knock-trump-in-reagan-library-speech/

Paul Ryan Will Hit Trump In Reagan Library Speech
May 27, 2021 at 7:53 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 30 Comments

https://pressrun.media/p/how-the-media-needs-to-cover-marjorie

How the press needs to deal with Marjorie Taylor Greene
It's simple
Eric Boehlert
59 min ago

snip//

There’s a simple solution to this riddle — be far more aggressive when covering Greene and use the proper language to describe what she’s doing. What she wants is a ton of coverage that depicts her as somewhat controversial and antagonistic towards liberals and the media. What she likely doesn’t want are headlines labeling her a racist, anti-Semite, stalker, and an unstable buffoon, all of which are accurate. News outlets should use that language without reservation.

The only thing stopping news organizations from posting accurate headlines such as, “Anti-Semitic Republican Lies About Holocaust,” is the media fear of a GOP backlash.

When members of the press raise concerns about giving Greene too much time and attention, what journalists are really worried about is giving her too much time and attention within the narrow confines of how the Beltway press treats elected Republicans. They’re acknowledging that they’re boxed in, by their own design, and they’re not willing to rethink how to aggressively cover a public menace like Greene.

Right now, there’s too much tap dancing around the truth. “CBS Evening News” this week referred to her as a Republican “firebrand.” Webster’s dictionary defines firebrand as, “one that creates unrest or strife,” which in many political instances can be viewed as a redeeming quality.

snip//

Reporters, producers, and editors all understand the danger Greene poses. Just like reporters, editors and producers all understood the danger Trump posed to democracy for four years, yet spent their time playing pointless word games so as to not be accurate and honest. The question is will journalists learn from their Trump errors?

Also, the press should constantly stress Greene’s obvious QAnon roots in the straight news coverage. There’s lots of media mentions of Greene “conspiracies,” but that’s entirely inadequate in terms of describing her beliefs. The press needs to be transparent that the Republican member of Congress believes in a cult-like political movement that insists Democratic elites are murderous pedophiles who worship Satan, and that Trump is the chosen one sent to cleanse America’s sins. And also remind news consumers that the FBI has declared QAnon to be a domestic terrorism threat.

The GOP has crossed over into the abyss and the press needs to change the way it covers some of the party’s maniacs.

Scary Mommy on FB~

How 'bout if he gets sent to jail, fellas? Would that weaken mf45?

Senate GOP doubts grand jury charges would weaken Trump
By Alexander Bolton - 05/27/21 06:00 AM EDT


Senate Republicans see a special grand jury investigation into President Trump's business practices by Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. as more evidence that Democrats want to keep Trump in the spotlight to drag them down in the midterm election.

Republicans think the investigation will only further deepen partisan divisions over the former president and believe that even if he's indicted, it won’t diminish him as a political force in 2022 and beyond.

GOP lawmakers say a lot depends on what Vance is able to prove in court if he brings a criminal case against Trump, his business associates or the Trump Organization itself.

But they say it’s too early to assess whether a criminal indictment against Trump — or even a conviction — will inflict any serious damage on Trump’s popularity among Republican-leaning white working-class voters who are the core of his base.

more...

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/555644-senate-gop-doubts-grand-jury-charges-would-weaken-trump