Mediaboss Marketing

"What's the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change," said one senior Republican official. "He went golfing this weekend. It's not like he's plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20. He's tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he'll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he'll leave."--- November 9, 2020,Washington Post

That senior Republican official is very lucky the journalist agreed to confer anonymity. It may be the most laughably incorrect prediction in history. The January 6 committee hearings are proving in meticulously laid out detail that Donald Trump plotted to prevent Joe Biden from taking power from the moment he lost the 2020 election. (Actually,he was laying the groundworklong before the election.)

Thursday's revelations came even before the fourth hearing began whennews brokethat the FBI had raided the home of Jeffrey Clark, the former Department of Justice (DOJ) official, and fierce Trump loyalist, whom Trump had wanted to install as acting attorney general in the days before the Capitol riot. It's unclear what crime they suspect Clark of committing but their suspicions were apparently strong enough to get a judge to issue a search warrant and presumably get the go-ahead from the highest levels of the DOJ. It may or may not be a coincidence that this warrant was served the day before the Jan. 6 committee was scheduled to publicly devote several hours to Trump's plot to enlist the DOJ in his corrupt plot to overturn the 2020 election, a plot in which Clark was intimately involved.

Once againthe witness testimony in the hearingcame from Republicans who had been appointed by Trump and had previously demonstrated fealty to him.

RELATED:Trump's unrelenting attacks against dissident Republicans continue with Rusty Bowers

Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, former Deputy Attorney General Richard Donohue and former assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel Steven Engel all testified on Thursday. Others from the administration appeared via video depositions, including members of the White House Counsel's office. They all testified to the fact that Donald Trump spent weeks pressuring, harassing and threatening them in an attempt to get them to investigate conspiracy theories and issue false statements about the 2020 election. These Republicans resisted every step of the way, making Trump more and more agitated.

"Just say the election was corrupt+ leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen," Trump exasperatedly instructed on one call,according to Donohue's handwritten notes.If that sounds familiar, it is a deafening echo ofthe demand Trump made to Ukrainian President VolodymyrZelenskywas that all he wanted was for him to hold a press conference announcing an investigation into Joe Biden. That's Trump's M.O.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Jeffrey Clark was an obscure DOJ official who served for most of Trump's term served as assistant attorney generalfor theEnvironment and Natural Resources Division. He was appointed acting head of theCivil Division in September 2020. He was hardly a TV star lawyer who Trump would say was from "central casting" but he was a hardcore Trumpist who suffers froma bad case of Fox News brain rotso he happily found himself in the middle of coup plotting after having been brought to Trump's attention by a fellow Pennsylvanian Republican Rep. Scott Perry.

Rosen testified that he was bewildered when Trump brought him up in passing on one of his phone calls but he soon found out that Clark was being groomed by the president to replace him if he didn't do Trump's bidding. Clark broke protocol by scheming with the White House throughout this period rather than going through the proper channels. Another lawyer who no one had mentioned before the hearing, Ken Klukowski, was scheming with Trump attorney John Eastman and Clark from within the Justice Department, where he had evidently been placed on December 15th to work under the radar. Klukowski drafted a letter the coup plotters wanted Attorney General Bill Barr to send to Georgia and other states saying the DOJ was "investigating various irregularities in the 2020 election for President of the United States," which was misleading at best. (At this point they would perfunctorily follow up on some of Trump's wild ravings but had long since determined there was no fraud that could have changed the outcome of the election.) This letter also recommended that the Georgia General Assembly convene a special session to approve a new slate of electors. It indicated that a set of fake Trump electors had already been transmitted to the U.S. Capitol.

What this means is that the plot was not really operating on separate tracks as previously assumed. We now know that the Department of Justice plot was entwined with the John Eastman fake electors - Mike Pence plot. The coup was more organized than we knew.

RELATED:Ringing the alarm for Merrick Garland: Department of Justice stands in real peril because of Trump

Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney said:

Had this letter been released on official Department of Justice letterhead, it would have falsely informed all Americans, including those who might be inclined to come to Washington on January 6th, that President Trump's election fraud allegations were likely very real.

At the time Klukowski and Clark drafted the letter, Rosen and Clark were listed as signatories. But they refused to sign it and they and Engel and several others were called to a meeting at the White House on January 3rd during which Trump said he planned to replace Rosen with Clark. In fact, the committee showed the White House call logs for that day which showed they were already referring to Clark as acting attorney general. The DOJ honchos all told Trump that Clark was unqualified for the job. Needless to say, Trump would not care about that --- he's the president who namedMatthew Whitaker,a man much less qualified than Clark, to be acting attorney general after he fired Jeff Sessions. He has long shown that his only criteria for hiring is loyalty to him. (Since they had all been Trump loyalists themselves perhaps that was an awkward realization.)

They had all agreed prior to the meeting that if Trump carried out this "Sunday Afternoon Massacre" they would quiten masse, taking a whole bunch of top DOJ officials with them. White House Counsel Pat Cippolone was quoted telling the president it was a "murder-suicide pact." Engel said the department would be a "graveyard." Trump would hardly care about any of that, of course. What likely caused him to back off was this argument by Engel:

“All anyone is going to think is that you went through two attorneys general in two weeks, until you found the environmental guy to sign this thing” pic.twitter.com/qaiFomOl8Q

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 23, 2022

So much for the M.O. The optics just wouldn't work.

That was the end of the DOJ portion of the plot but it didn't stop Trump from calling up Donohue shortly after the meeting to ask him to investigate a cockamamie rumor about a truck full of shredded ballots that were in the custody of an ICE agent down in Georgia.

The Clark coup plot may have been thwarted but nothing was going to stop Trump from pushing the Big Lie, no matter what. After all, January 6 was coming up and Trump knew it was going to be wild.

Read more:
Trump's coup was much more organized than we knew - Salon

Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren said former President Donald Trump tried to "accelerate" violence against his Vice President Mike Pence during the January 6 riot.

Lofgren is serving on the House select committee investigating January 6, when Trump supporters rioted at the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to force Congress to block the certification of President Joe Biden's 2020 election victory. Some Trump supporters made threats against vice presidentwho rejected plans to overturn the election resultschanting "Hang Mike Pence."

On the day of the rally, Trump posted several tweets attacking Pence for not blocking Biden's win.

"Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!" read one tweet.

During an appearance on CBS News' Face the Nation on Sunday, Lofgren said Trump not only failed to stop the violencebut that he actively made it worse.

"You know, when he sent out the tweet, attacking his vice president, he already knew that the violence was underway. The only conclusion you can reach is that he intended to accelerate that violence against the former vice president," said the California Democrat. "So, we're in a very rough time in America right now."

She condemned Trump for violence made against other elected officials in the United States she said he "unleashed" by not doing more to prevent it during the certification.

She also pointed to instances of violence or threats against lawmakers.

On Sunday, Representative Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, said a death threat against him and his family had been mailed to his house over his participation on the House committee and predicted there will be more political violence in the future.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, a right-wing activist berated Representative Dan Crenshaw, a Texas Republican, at the Texas GOP convention before clashing with members of the congressman's staff.

Others have also complained about Trump failing to quell violence among his supporters. Representative Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, said during the first televised committee hearing on June 9 that Trump allegedly approved of the "Hang Mike Pence" chants.

"Aware of the rioters' chants to 'hang Mike Pence,' the president responded with this sentiment: 'Maybe our supporters have the right idea'. Mike Pence 'deserves it,'" Cheney said.

Trump appeared to defend the chant in an interview with ABC News last November. Journalist Jonathan Karl pressed him about the "terrible chants," to which Trump responded that "the people were very angry."

Mary Trump, the former president's niece, said on MSNBC Saturday that Pence's death could have been the "excuse" her uncle needed to do something "absolutely radical" to stay in power and overturn the election results

Newsweek reached out to Trump's office for comment.

Follow this link:
Trump Tried to 'Accelerate' Violence Against Pence on Jan. 6: Zoe Lofgren - Newsweek

Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence will attend the joint 2022 Lincoln Day Dinner with the Peoria and Tazewell County Republican Central Committeesas a keynote speaker and special guest. The event will take place Monday at the Peoria Civic Center ballroom, 201 SW Jefferson St. Doors will open at 5:30 p.m., and the dinner will begin at 6:30 p.m.

"(U.S. President Joe Biden and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker's) radical left agenda are leading Illinois and America down a path of decay and decline," Pence stated last month in a news release from U.S. Rep. (IL-.18th) Darin LaHood"With conservative leaders like Darin LaHood and Esther Joy King in Congress, we can restore American energy independence, reestablish strong American leadership, and revive the economy that was the strongest in American history during the Trump-Pence administration. I look forward to joining Peoria and Tazewell conservatives to discuss our shared vision for the future of Illinois."

More in history: Abraham Lincoln defended 2 Peoria-area Underground Railroad coordinators in slavery case

According to LaHood, the Peoria-Tazewell Lincoln Day Dinner is one of the largest events in Illinois Republican politics, with Republican activists, leaders, officeholdersand prospective candidates from across Illinois coming to speak to voters.

Vice President Mike Pence is a conservative champion who has been on the frontlines to defend our Midwest values and promote Republican candidates across the country, said LaHood. I am honored that he will join us as the keynote speaker for the 2022 Peoria-Tazewell Lincoln Day dinner.

Past guests at Peoria and Tazewell County Lincoln Day dinners have included U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio, 4th District), former Secretary of Energy and former Texas governor Rick Perry, Republican National Committee National Finance Chair Todd Ricketts, and former Secretary of the Interior and U.S. Rep. (Mont.) Ryan Zinke.

Read the rest here:
Former Vice President Mike Pence will be in Peoria on Monday. Here are the details - Pekin Daily Times

Vice President Mike Pence is seen holding a phone watching President Donald Trump tell the angry mob at the Capitol to leave as his daughter Charlotte watches on January 6, 2021.January 6th House Select Committee Hearing

January 6 House Select Committee released photos of Mike Pence during the Capitol attack on Thursday.

Pence refused to leave the Capitol even though his life was in danger.

He remained in an loading dock beneath the Capitol building for hours until the attack ended.

When a pro-Trump mob took the Capitol by storm, former Vice President Mike Pence was swiftly moved from the Senate chamber

January 6th Select Committee Hearing

Before being escorted to safety, Pence was within 40 feet of the pro-Trump mob, CBS News reported.

He was transported to a loading dock beneath the Capitol

Vice President Mike Pence refused to evacuate during the January 6 Capitol Riot.January 6th Select Committee Hearing

In March, a Secret Service inspector named Lanelle Hawa said during an accused rioter's trial that Pence spent "several hours, approximately four or five hours" in the Capitol's underground loading dock throughout the attack.

"It's located underneath the Capitol building, sort of under the plaza on the Senate side," Hawa said.

"When we got down to the secure location, Secret Service directed us to get into the cars, which I did, and then I noticed that the vice president had not," Greg Jacob, then Pence's senior counsel, said at a Thursday public hearing. "I understood that the vice president had refused to get into the car."

Pence refused to evacuate during the January 6th Capitol attack despite being in danger

January 6th Select Committee Hearing

Pence declined to evacuate despite the mob's chants because he "did not want to take any chance that the world would see the vice president of the United States fleeing the United States Capitol," Jacob added.

The pro-Trump mob that stormed that Capitol chanted "Hang Mike Pence."

"Aware of the rioters chants to 'hang Mike Pence,'" Committee co-chair Rep. Liz Cheney said in her opening, "the president responded with this sentiment: 'Maybe our supporters have the right idea.' Mike Pence 'deserves it.'"

He remained in the loading dock until the riot was over watching the video Trump released hours into the attack telling rioters to go home.

Story continues

"Go home. We love you. You're very special," Trump said in the video.

The morning of the attack, Pence and Trump had an intense phone call

January 6th Select Committee Hearing

The morning of the attack, Pence and former President Donald Trump had an intense phone call, White House aides told the committee.

"I remember hearing the word 'wimp.' Either he called him a wimp I don't remember if he said, 'you are a wimp, you'll be a wimp' wimp is the word I remember," Nicholas Luna, a former assistant to Trump, said.

Ivanka Trump's chief of staff, Julie Radford, said that Ivanka Trump told her he called Pence "the P-word."

Trump, and his mob, wanted Pence to overturn the 2020 election results

January 6th Select Committee Hearing

Trump, and the mob of his supporters, wanted Pence to overturn the 2020 election results incorrectly claiming it was a Vice Presidential power.

Federal judge J. Michael Luttig told the committee Thursday that if Pence attempted the feat, it would have resulted in a "revolution."

Thursday's hearing exposed the unprecedented pressure campaign targeting Pence during the riots

January 6th Select Committee Hearing

Follow live updates of the hearings here.

Read the original article on Business Insider

More:
New photos show Mike Pence hiding in a secure location after he refused to evacuate the Capitol on Jan. 6 and the moment he saw Trump's video...

Neither former President Donald Trump nor former Vice President Mike Pence has declared he will make a run for the White House in 2024, but there has been enough speculation regarding both men that pollsters have gauged public opinion about a potential matchup.

So far, survey results indicate Pence would not fare well against Trump.

On Thursday, the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol is planning to focus on allegations that Trump tried to pressure Pence into not certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. Trump's alleged actions are being examined as one of the main potential causes of the riot, during which threats were reportedly made against Pence's life.

Pence and Trump have had a strained relationship since leaving the White House because of the former vice president's decision not to interfere with the certification of President Joe Biden's election victory. In the summer of 2021, Pence called January 6 "a dark day" during a Republican dinner and added that he and Trump may never see "eye to eye" on the event, according to an NBC News report from the time. Meanwhile, Trump said in an interview last month he was "very disappointed" in Pence for not supporting his claims of election fraud, which are not backed by any evidence.

While Trump continues to be a divisive figure in American politics, polls show he has a substantial edge over Pence. In a Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll conducted on May 18-19, 41 percent of registered Republican/independent voters said they would vote for Trump if the 2024 GOP primary "was held today," compared with 7 percent who said they'd support Pence.

A prior Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, from late January, also found Trump as the winner in a hypothetical GOP primary. The former president received 57 percent support from likely Republican primary voters in that survey, while Pence was supported by 11 percent.

Those January results nearly match the findings of a Reuters/Ipsos poll from earlier in the same month that found Trump had 54 percent in a hypothetical primary matchup to Pence's 8 percent.

Though Pence has not said he will run in 2024, he has also not ruled out the possibility. The New York Times recently reported that Pence was asked in April about a White House campaign in the next election cycle.

"We'll go where we're called," Pence reportedly said and added he and his wife would base the decision on prayer. "That's the way Karen and I have always approached these things."

Last month, Trump was asked during an interview on Fox Business about a potential showdown with Pence in 2024.

"If he ran, I mean, I wouldn't be concerned with that," Trump answered. "'People are very disappointed in Mike, and if he ran, I don't think that would be a problem."

If Pence ultimately decides to run, he could also face competition from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Though DeSantis also has not announced his candidacy, he's considered to be a popular choice among many voters, including tech billionaire Elon Musk, who offered his support this week.

In the May Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll, DeSantis garnered 12 percent of the vote in a hypothetical field of GOP candidates that included Pence and Trump. When likely GOP primary voters were asked whom they would support if Trump was not an option, 25 percent chose DeSantis, while 15 percent favored Pence.

See the original post here:
Mike Pence's Chances of Beating Donald Trump in 2024, According to Polls - Newsweek