January 21: A Stake in the Heart of the Federal Republic

1/21/22: Remember when your parents told you not to hang around with “that kid” because they’d be a bad influence? Or maybe the day you told your own kids something similar?

 

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If “POTUS allows this to occur…we’re driving a stake in the heart of the federal republic.” 

Anonymous member of the Freedom Caucus

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Based on growing evidence, Trump is the U.S. government’s “bad kid,” the one who pulled other bad kids into his orbit. No wonder he might want to be re-elected in 2024. He’s going to need that pardon power. 

Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani T. Willis is on his trail. She has concluded that the former president’s conduct related to a call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger may well have been criminal. In that infamous call, then-President Trump asked Raffensperger to “find” just enough votes to give him a win in the state – and gently hand over the state’s sixteen electoral votes.

Willis could bring Trump down.

 

Add in other calls and plots, and Trump may be open to multiple felony charges. Those could include racketeering, solicitation of election fraud, intentional interference with performance of election duties and conspiracy to commit election fraud. Other working parts to a solid case might include, but would not be limited to:

 

A.    Trump’s call to the chief investigator for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, asking her to find “dishonesty” in the election. 

B.     Sen. Lindsey Graham’s call to Raffensperger, asking if all mail-in ballots in counties with significant rates of ballot signature challenges could be thrown out.

 

C.    Rudolph Giuliani and other Trump lawyers pressing lawmakers in seven states to appoint second sets of electors (despite having proven no significant voter fraud). These electors would vote for Donald, recounts and dozens of court defeats be damned.

 

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IN RELATED NEWS, the House Select Panel has revealed evidence, indicating that if you witnessed events on January 6, 2021, you were not alone in despairing for our republican form of government. An unidentified member of the Freedom Caucus, an ally of Trump, warned White House Chief of Staff Meadows to tell him not to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the electoral vote. If “POTUS allows this to occur…we’re driving a stake in the heart of the federal republic.” 

Along with Ivanka Trump and others, Meadows has been subpoenaed. At first, he was cooperative. Now he says he’s not coming unless a judge drags him up to Capitol Hill by his ear. Meadows has been held in contempt by the U.S. House of Representatives – on a mostly partisan vote. 

Naturally, Rep. Jim Jordan, a rubber-stamp Trump apologist, defended Meadows, lashing out at Democrat colleagues in the House. “Mark Meadows is our former colleague,” Jordan yelped and yowled. “He is a good man and he is my friend. This is as wrong as it gets. You all know it. But your lust for power, your lust to get your opponents is so intense, you don’t care.” 

We would be remiss if we failed to mention that Jordan has also been subpoenaed. But the man who supported four investigations into Hillary Clinton’s role in the Benghazi affair, now has a different take. “Nah. Not feeling like testifying under oath,” he more or less says. 

Roger Stone? He was also called to testify – and having already been convicted of a felony for lying to Congress – he decided to show. Then he took the Fifth on every question he was asked. (See: 12/17/21.) 

For bonus fun, federal prosecutors now allege that members of the right-wing Oath Keepers brought plenty of weaponry to Washington D.C. on January 5, in preparation for the attack the following day. That included, at least “three luggage carts’ worth of gun boxes, rifle cases, and suitcases filled with ammunition” which they stashed at a Comfort Inn in Northern Virginia. A second group of four men “kept their rifles ready to go in a vehicle parked in the hotel lot.” 

Two Oath Keepers, James Dolan and Mark Grods, have already plead guilty in relation to these charges. 

One of the others charged, Edward Vallejo, allegedly posed in a podcast on the morning of Jan. 6. “The question is: Is there a shot heard round the world moment? The possibility definitely exists.” 

Vallejo and his pals were ready and willing to spill a little blood (of their fellow Americans) to water the tree of liberty. (See: 1/12/22.)

 

While Team Trump continues to flail away in an effort to find and prove massive voter fraud – or even medium-sized voter fraud – state and federal courts continue to hand individual members of the team stinging defeats. Today, Igor Fruman, associate of Rudy Giuliani in a supposed effort to “clean up corruption” in Ukraine (by digging up dirt on Hunter Biden) had his day in court. Fruman had already plead guilty to soliciting foreign campaign donations and at his sentencing learned he’ll be spending the rest of 2022 and the first weeks of 2023 in the slammer. 

One may assume that Mr. Fruman has been cooperative. Rudy’s other pal, Lev Parnas, also accused of soliciting campaign donations from foreigners, is staring down a sentence of 45 years in prison.

 

Part of Parnas’ problem may be that he actually did manage to donate $325,000 to Trump and other GOP campaign operations in 2018. One illegal donation, for $10,000, was made to Adam Laxalt, a Trump loyalist, who was running for governor of Nevada at the time. He didn’t win. But as Nevada Attorney General, Laxalt later filed several lawsuits in an attempt to overturn the 2020 vote and bestow Nevada’s six electoral votes on Donald J. Trump.