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WASHINGTON A federal judge ruled on Monday that former President Donald J. Trump and a lawyer who had advised him on how to overturn the 2020 election most likely had committed felonies, including obstructing the work of Congress and conspiring to defraud the United States.

The judges comments in the civil case of the lawyer, John Eastman, marked a significant breakthrough for the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The committee, which is weighing making a criminal referral to the Justice Department, had used a filing in the case to lay out the crimes it believed Mr. Trump might have committed.

Mr. Trump has not been charged with any crime, and the judges ruling had no immediate, practical legal effect on him. But it essentially ratified the committees argument that Mr. Trumps efforts to block Congress from certifying Joseph R. Biden Jr.s Electoral College victory could well rise to the level of a criminal conspiracy.

The illegality of the plan was obvious, wrote Judge David O. Carter of the Central District of California. Our nation was founded on the peaceful transition of power, epitomized by George Washington laying down his sword to make way for democratic elections. Ignoring this history, President Trump vigorously campaigned for the vice president to single-handedly determine the results of the 2020 election.

The actions taken by Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman, Judge Carter found, amounted to a coup in search of a legal theory.

The Justice Department has been conducting a wide-ranging investigation of the Capitol assault but has given no public indication that it is considering a criminal case against Mr. Trump. A criminal referral from the House committee could increase pressure on Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to do so.

The judges ruling came as the committee was barreling ahead with its investigation. This week alone, people familiar with the investigation said, the panel has lined up testimony from four top Trump White House officials, including Jared Kushner, the former presidents son-in-law and adviser, whose interview was scheduled for Thursday.

The committee also voted 9 to 0 on Monday night to recommend criminal contempt of Congress charges against two other allies of Mr. Trump Peter Navarro, a former White House adviser, and Dan Scavino Jr., a former deputy chief of staff for their participation in efforts to overturn the 2020 election and their subsequent refusal to comply with the panels subpoenas. The matter now moves to the Rules Committee, then the full House. If it passes there, the Justice Department will decide whether to charge the men. A contempt of Congress charge carries a penalty of up to a year in jail.

But Judge Carters decision was perhaps the investigations biggest development to date, suggesting its investigators have built a case strong enough to convince a federal judge of Mr. Trumps culpability and laying out a road map for a potential criminal referral.

Judge Carters decision came in an order for Mr. Eastman, a conservative lawyer who had written a memo that members of both parties have likened to a blueprint for a coup, to turn over more than 100 emails to the committee.

A lawyer for Mr. Eastman said in a statement on Monday that he respectfully disagrees with Judge Carters findings but would comply with the order to turn over documents.

In a statement hailing the judges decision, the chairman of the House committee, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and its vice chair, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, said the nation must not allow what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, to be minimized and cannot accept as normal these threats to our democracy. Mr. Trump made no public statement about the ruling.

Many of the documents the committee will now receive relate to a legal strategy proposed by Mr. Eastman to pressure Vice President Mike Pence not to certify electors from several key swing states when Congress convened on Jan. 6, 2021. The true animating force behind these emails was advancing a political strategy: to persuade Vice President Pence to take unilateral action on Jan. 6, Judge Carter wrote.

One of the documents, according to the ruling, is an email containing the draft of a memo written for another one of Mr. Trumps lawyers, Rudolph W. Giuliani, recommending that Mr. Pence reject electors from contested states.

This may have been the first time members of President Trumps team transformed a legal interpretation of the Electoral Count Act into a day-by-day plan of action, Judge Carter wrote.

Mr. Eastman had filed suit against the panel, trying to persuade a judge to block the committees subpoena for documents in his possession. As part of the suit, Mr. Eastman sought to shield from release documents he said were covered by attorney-client privilege.

In response, the committee argued under the legal theory known as the crime-fraud exception that the privilege did not cover information conveyed from a client to a lawyer if it was part of furthering or concealing a crime.

The panel said its investigators had accumulated evidence demonstrating that Mr. Trump, Mr. Eastman and other allies could be charged with criminal violations including obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the American people.

Judge Carter, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton, agreed, writing that he believed it was likely that the men not only had conspired to defraud the United States but dishonestly conspired to obstruct the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.

Dr. Eastman and President Trump launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history, he wrote.

In deciding that Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman had more likely than not broken the law the legal standard for determining whether Mr. Eastman could claim attorney-client privilege Judge Carter noted that the former president had facilitated two meetings in the days before Jan. 6 that were explicitly tied to persuading Vice President Pence to disrupt the joint session of Congress.

Justice Department widens inquiry. Federal prosecutors are said to have substantially widened their Jan. 6 investigationto examine the possible culpability of a broad range of pro-Trump figures involved in efforts to overturn the election. The investigation was initially focused on the rioters who had entered the Capitol.

Investigating Trump's actions. Evidence gathered by the Justice Department and House committee show how former President Donald J. Trumps Be there, willbe wild! tweetincited far-right militants ahead of Jan. 6, while call logsreveal how personally involved Mr. Trump was in his attempt to stay in office before and during the attack.

Judge says Trump likely committed crimes. In a court filing in a civil case, the Jan. 6 House committee laid out the crimes it believed Mr. Trump might have committed. The federal judge assigned to the case ruled that Mr. Trump most likely committed feloniesin trying to overturn the 2020 election.

Virginia Thomass text messages. In the weeks before the Capitol riot, Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, sent several textsimploring Mark Meadows, President Trumps chief of staff, to take steps to overturn the election.The Jan. 6 House committee is likely to seek an interview with Ms. Thomas, said those familiar with the matter.

At the first meeting, on Jan. 4, Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman invited Mr. Pence and two of his top aides, Greg Jacob and Marc Short, to the Oval Office. There, Judge Carter wrote, Mr. Eastman presented his plan to Vice President Pence, focusing on either rejecting electors or delaying the count.

That meeting was followed by another, Judge Carter wrote, on Jan. 5, during which Mr. Eastman sought again to persuade Mr. Jacob to go along with the scheme.

Mr. Trump continued to pressure Mr. Pence even on Jan. 6, Judge Carter wrote, noting that the former president had made several last-minute appeals to Mr. Pence on Twitter. Mr. Trump called Mr. Pence by phone, Judge Carter wrote, and once again urged him to make the call and enact the plan.

While the House committee has no authority to directly bring charges against Mr. Trump, and Mr. Trump was not a party to the Eastman civil case, Judge Carters ruling on Monday underscored the persistent questions of whether Mr. Trump could face criminal culpability for both his business dealings and his efforts to reverse the outcome of the election.

Last week, The New York Times reported that a prosecutor in New York City who was investigating Mr. Trumps financial dealings believed the former president was guilty of numerous felonies in how he handled his real-estate and business transaction before taking office. The assessment of Mr. Trump by the prosecutor, Mark F. Pomerantz, came in a letter last month in which Mr. Pomerantz announced he was resigning from the Manhattan district attorneys office, which had stopped pursuing an indictment of Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump is also facing investigation from the district attorney in Atlanta who recently convened a special grand jury to help probe the former presidents attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.

That inquiry centers on Mr. Trumps actions in the two months between his election loss and Congresss certification of the results, including a call he made to Brad Raffensperger, Georgias secretary of state, to pressure him to find 11,780 votes the margin by which Mr. Trump lost the state.

The House committee has been seeking to assemble a definitive account of Mr. Trumps efforts to hold on to the White House and how they led to the assault on the Capitol. Among the documents the committee will now receive from Mr. Eastman is an email that sketched a series of events for the days leading up to and following Jan. 6, if Vice President Pence were to delay counting or reject electoral votes, Judge Carter wrote.

The email maps out potential Supreme Court suits and the impact of different judicial outcomes were Mr. Pence to enact the plan.

The committee will also get documents related to state legislators who were involved in the effort to persuade Mr. Pence not to certify some electoral votes. One of them, Judge Carter wrote, is a letter from the Republican members of the Arizona legislature to Mr. Pence. Two others are letters from a Georgia state senator to Mr. Trump.

The committee has already heard from more than 750 witnesses. John McEntee, the former presidents personnel chief, testified Monday; Anthony Ornato, the former White House chief of operations, was scheduled to testify Tuesday; and Matthew Pottinger, former deputy national security adviser, will do so at a later date, those familiar with the investigation said.

Both Mr. Navarro and Mr. Scavino have argued they are prevented from testifying by Mr. Trumps assertions of executive privilege, and that President Biden who waived executive privilege for both men does not have the authority to waive executive privilege over the testimony of a former presidents senior aide.

Read more:
Federal Judge Finds Trump Most Likely Committed Crimes Over 2020 Election - The New York Times

We have the no crying in politics rule in the Kemp house. But this is stuff that, if I said it, I would be taken to the woodshed and would never see the light of day, he said. I can assure you I can handle myself. And if theyre brave enough to come out from underneath that keyboard or behind it, we can have a little conversation if they would like to.

Georgia Republican leaders were now beyond hoping that President Donald Trump would tire of his obsession with Georgia.

Greg Bluestein with U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff.

Credit: File

Greg Bluestein with U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff.

Credit: File

Credit: File

This is the first time Trump has gone for more than a few days on message. We thought hed change the subject, but he didnt, said a Kemp confidant. As they watched the GOP civil war intensify, the Democratic campaigns couldnt deny a wash of optimism that the stars were aligning in their favor.

Im nervous. Im feeling almost too good about our chances. Which means something must be off, one Warnock aide texted fellow Democratic strategists. Loefflers advisers were growing increasingly pessimistic about her chances. In a December 29 text, one wrote: Its going to be real close. Real close. And if we lose, we know who to blame.

The Trump effect on the GOP electorate was so profound that Republicans had drafted an entire data set titled GOP NOT VOTING detailing seemingly reliable conservative voters who were deemed unlikely to cast ballots in the runoff.

It haunted us. I wanted to hit my head against the wall, said Chris Allen, one of Georgia U.S. Sen. Kelly Loefflers deputies.

While the senator was dreaming up new ways to prove her loyalty to Trump to keep his voters on board, she was beset by distractions from the president and his allies.

A week before the runoff, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani called a meeting with the Georgia Senate Republicans and their top operatives to level the latest in a string of phony claims. He had just weeks earlier starred in the second of two legislative hearings in the state to air false charges of fraud on Trumps behalf, at one point insisting that every single vote should be taken away from Biden.

At this private conference call, Giuliani told the senators that they didnt even need a special session they could unilaterally overturn the election.

Greg Bluestein with Gov. Brian Kemp

Greg Bluestein with Gov. Brian Kemp

As he droned on, Loeffler invented a reason to duck out after twenty minutes, citing a nonexistent media interview. A few minutes later, Georgia U.S. Sen. David Perdue also got off the line. Every day we were putting out fires, said one of Loefflers advisers. We were a hostage with every limb taped, a gun to our head, and a hairpin trigger.

The day before the runoff, Vice President Mike Pence was imploring Republicans to vote in the two runoff elections at a megachurch in the tiny town of Milner when he was interrupted by Trump supporters shouting at the vice president to do the right thing and stop the steal on January 6.

It feels like Im inside a tornado with all kinds of facts and falsehoods swirling around me, said Cade Parian, a west Georgia Republican. I dont know where the tornado is going to spit me out, but I hope like hell its with a majority in the US Senate.

Trumps trip to Dalton gave voters like Parian little relief. For weeks, just about every time Loeffler took questions from the media, she was asked whether she would join the GOP movement to block Bidens victory in Congress by challenging Electoral College certification. As she waffled on the issue, her aides privately warned allies that a pledge by the senator to contest the Electoral College results should be taken as a signal that her campaign had hit a new level of desperation.

As Trump traveled to Georgia, and Loefflers internal polling showed she continued to struggle with the partys base, that moment came in a six-sentence statement issued around 6:00 p.m. on the eve of the runoff.

Greg Bluestein with Stacey Abrams

Credit: file

Greg Bluestein with Stacey Abrams

Credit: file

Credit: file

Saying she had real concerns about the way the November election was conducted, Loeffler promised to vote to give President Trump and the American people the fair hearing they deserve.

Taking the stage a few minutes later, Loeffler announced the decision to an overjoyed audience. Thats right, she said, her voice straining to cut through the clamor. Were going to get this done.

Once again, and to no ones surprise, the Trump rally was more focused on the phony claims of election fraud than control of the U.S. Senate.

On giant TV screens draped by a towering American flag, the thousands bundled up at the Dalton airport were treated to videos touting more unsubstantiated claims of fraud.

Even the password for the balky WiFi signaled the true purpose of Trumps mission: SeeYouJan6! it read.

As Trump flew to Georgia, Perdue was still in quarantine at his Atlanta townhouse, watching anxiously from afar. He was given a chance to edit the presidents prepared remarks as Trumps jet neared, but he still couldnt look the president in the eye and tell him, point-blank, that he had to call on his supporters to set aside their misgivings about the November election and show up in force on Tuesday.

Trump triumphantly descended from the Marine One helicopter, which touched down behind a row of yellow school buses along the tarmac. Taking the stage with a smile, he warmed the crowd up with a lie. Hello, Georgia. By the way, there is no way we lost Georgia. Theres no way, he said immediately. That was a rigged election. But we are still fighting it.

BOOK EVENT

Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta Book Festival presents Greg Bluestein, author of Flipped: How Georgia Turned Purple and Broke the Monopoly on Republican Power in conversation with Bill Nigut, host and executive producer of Political Rewind on Georgia Public Broadcasting. 7:30 p.m. March 24. 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody.

More:
Flipped tells the inside story of how Georgia Republicans lost their dominance - The Atlanta Journal Constitution

Theres a lot thats terrible about Russian strongman Vladimir Putins brutal attempt to erase Ukraine from the map of Europe.

From the incalculable humanitarian disaster that has seen millions of Ukrainians flee their home country, to the appalling carnage on the streets of Mariupol that was devastatingly humanized with the death of a pregnant woman and her unborn baby, the costs of Putins unjustified war of conquest will be with us for decades to come.

But the truth also has become collateral damage these last weeks, as Putin has twisted language beyond meaning to justify his atrocities. Russian officials and conspiracy theorists have, for instance, promoted the baseless claim that the attack on the maternity hospital in Mariupol was staged, USA Today reported.

This week, Russian television news producer Marina Ovsyannikova was detained and fined for interrupting a broadcast, and accurately describing Putins action for what it is: A war. She could be imprisoned for saying whats obvious to the entire planet.

Republicans, suddenly realizing that democracy is worth defending, have stepped up to denounce Putin and defend the same democratic institutions they tried to undermine on Jan. 6.

Speaking at a closed-door fundraiser last week, former Vice President Mike Pence reportedly said there was no room in the GOP for Putin apologists. While he didnt mention his old boss, former President Donald Trump, by name, it was hard to escape who he was was talking about.

Trump has yet to explicitly condemn Putin, saying at a recent rally in South Carolina that Putin happens to be a man that is just driven, hes driven to put it together.

But by failing to step up to denounce Trump, and by failing to condemn the violence perpetrated at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, Republicans are abetting the same war on truth at home that theyre rightfully slamming Putin for conducting abroad.

And with their silence, they are allowing a pernicious rewriting of history to take root.

I didnt have to look further than my own inbox for proof.

One reader, taking exception to my description of the Capitol insurrectionists as a murderous horde, demanded to know how many people did the murderous horde murder?

When I pointed out the well-documented chants of Hang Mike Pence, (which the former president has defended), the presence of a gallows at the Capitol, and that intent mattered as much, if not more than, the actual act, he dismissed it, arguing, Nobody was going to hang anyone.

Federal prosecutors did not feel the same, alleging in the days after the attack that rioters intended to capture and assassinate elected officials. and certainly the law enforcement agents who transferred Pence to a secure location on the Capitol grounds, where he remained for four hours, were not being cavalier about the clear and present danger the former vice president and other lawmakers faced on that horrible day.

Another correspondent questioned my decision to refer to the events of Jan. 6 as the sacking of the Capital (sic).

The definition of sacking is looting, raiding, plundering and robbery. What recent events does that more accurately describe? Did any of those actions take place there? the reader asked, attempting the inevitable But Black Lives Matter deflection.

In fact, yes, all of that happened, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office in Washington, D.C., which has been prosecuting cases related to the insurrection.

The government continues to investigate losses that resulted from the breach of the Capitol, including damage to the Capitol building and grounds, both inside and outside the building, the office said in a statement posted to its official website. According to a May 2021 estimate by the Architect of the Capitol, the attack caused approximately $1.5 million worth of damage to the U.S. Capitol building.

More than 725 people were charged in the insurrection, according to federal prosecutors. Of that number, more than 225 people were charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees, including over 75 individuals who have been charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer, prosecutors said, adding that approximately 140 police officers were assaulted Jan. 6 at the Capitol including about 80 U.S. Capitol Police and about 60 from the Metropolitan Police Department.

A further 10 people were arrested and charged with allegedly assaulting journalists and destroying their equipment; roughly 640 people were charged with entering or remaining in a restricted federal building or grounds; 45 were charged with destruction of government property, and more than 30 were charged with theft of government property.

All of which sounds a whole lot like looting, raiding, plundering and robbery to me.

Again, thats what silence in the face of an attack on facts gets you. Thats what complicity in an assault on the very foundations of our democracy gets you.

The GOP cant have it both ways. If theyre going to attack Putins war on facts, they have to step up and stop the one at home.

Read more:
John L. Micek: Republicans can't have it both ways in the war on facts - Daily Citizen

That is happening already, as administration officials discuss speeding up visas for religious minorities and thousands of people who already have relatives in the United States, a process that normally takes years. Some Ukrainians are making a roundabout journey to reach Mexico, where they hope to cross over, and others are attempting to secure appointments at U.S. consulates in Europe to request tourist visas.

The federal government announced early this month that it would extend Temporary Protected Status to Ukrainians, enabling some 30,000 people who were in the United States as of March 1 to remain legally in the country for 18 months. But that does not help people waiting in makeshift shelters in countries neighboring Ukraine.

Refugee resettlement is a drawn-out bureaucratic process. It begins when a person is officially designated a refugee by the United Nations. Once assigned to the United States, applicants must pass interviews, background checks and medical exams. Winning approval and ultimately being relocated can take years, and former President Donald J. Trump downsized the refugee program, prompting arrivals to plunge precipitously.

For decades, the United States resettled more refugees than all other countries combined. About 3.5 million refugees have been admitted since 1975, though only a few thousand of those have come in the past five years. With conflicts brewing around the world, Democrats and Republicans have been at odds over whether the country should bear responsibility for people fleeing strife, and, if so, how many people to admit and from where.

Anti-refugee sentiment has been bubbling, and as a result, our refugee program is unable to meet this moment, said Ali Noorani, president of the National Immigration Forum, an advocacy organization.

In 2015 and 2016, Germany received about 800,000 Syrians seeking asylum after Angela Merkel, who was then the chancellor, made the decision to admit people escaping the war, and policymakers introduced measures to bolster the efficiency of refugee processing.

Around the same time in the United States, 31 governors most of them Republicans tried to block the resettlement of Syrians in their states, citing security concerns. Among them was former Vice President Mike Pence, when he was Indianas governor.

Continue reading here:
Ukrainians Are Trickling Into the U.S. to Warm Welcomes - The New York Times

He also made a second, subtler, but no less significant change to the script on Jan. 6, 2021, according to newly released documents and testimony. This previously unreported adjustment, further illustrating his pushback to the Trump-led gambit, involved a simple question that he asked each time a states electoral vote results were introduced: Are there any objections?

What sounded like boilerplate lingo actually served as an intentional emphasis by Pence on the federal law that lets members of Congress challenge presidential results the exact element of certification that Trump and attorney John Eastman sought to undercut.

Pences job that day was to oversee the counting of electoral votes before a joint session of Congress. The Constitution and the Electoral Count Act, the federal law thats governed the Electoral College process since 1887, required that Pence lead the crucial meeting of the House and Senate in his capacity as vice president.

During the lengthy session, which was interrupted for hours by a violent mob attack, Pence punctuated every states electoral votes with a question to lawmakers: Are there any objections? No vice president had added those words since Al Gore presided over his own defeat in 2001. Notably, Gore was the only one to have done it since at least 1937.

Pence embraced the long-dormant rhetoric in part as a rebuttal to Eastman, a close Trump ally, Pences counsel Greg Jacob told congressional investigators.

According to Jacobs testimony, as well as contemporaneous emails released by the Jan. 6 select committee, Eastman had spent several days before Jan. 6, 2021, pushing Pence and Jacob to embrace a fringe legal theory: That Pence could simply refuse to count some of Joe Bidens presidential electors. When it became clear that Pence would not go along, Eastman fell back on another proposal. Pence, he said, should declare the election in dispute and recess the session for 10 days, giving Republican-led state legislatures a chance to appoint new electors. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) assembled 10 GOP colleagues to embrace a similar push.

Mike Pences decision to craft and employ his own unprecedented language as he presided over the final step of the 2020 election reflected his resistance to a pressure campaign by then-President Donald Trump to subvert the process.

But Jacob pushed back, arguing that sending the election to the states to select new electors would violate the Electoral Count Acts provisions giving federal lawmakers the chance to decide which ones to count. In no previous election, he noted, even in ones with some disputed states, had Congress sought the input of state legislators to resolve disputes.

The Electoral Count Act, Jacob noted, says the vice president shall call for objections after each state, and Pence made the decision to explicitly add those calls to articulate his disagreement with Eastmans theory.

Jacob told the select committee last month that he debated this point with Eastman in the days before Jan. 6.

The Electoral Count Act says: You shall call for objections, Jacob told the committee. [T]he shalls were important to us, which was one of the reasons we had made sure that the transcript or the scripts for Jan. 6 had the call for objections because that was one of the things that the statute specifically required.

Matthew Seligman, an election law expert and Yale University fellow, said Pences decision to revive the objection language was prudent because for the first time in the statutes history, the ECAs procedures were under assault.

Prior vice presidents may not have felt the need to explicitly say out loud that members of Congress could object, Seligman said.

Out of every Electoral College session since 1937 the first one after the 20th Amendment moved the presidential inauguration from March to January Gore and Pence were the only vice presidents to call for objections after each state, according to a review of the Congressional Record.

Emails released by the select committee showed that Eastman and Jacob continued to debate the validity of congressional objections deep into the morning of Jan. 6. Jacob eventually accused Eastman of supporting made up legal theories that would never hold up in court, an exchange that grew heated as the pro-Trump mob closed in on the Capitol.

Pence had foreshadowed his plan to call for objections during public remarks meant to rally Trump supporters in the days before Jan. 6. While Trump was increasingly dialing up pressure on Pence, the then-vice president heartened Trump allies by assuring them that Well have our day in Congress. Well hear the objections.

Republican lawmakers aligned with Trump had worked on a plan to challenge the electors from a handful of states. The insurrection disrupted the proceedings just as an objection to Arizonas electors was being debated, and after the riot was contained, only one other challenge to Pennsylvanias electors was advanced for debate.

Before that day, Pence had strenuously avoided tipping his hand publicly about whether he would embrace any of Eastmans extreme proposals, though hed signaled it within the White House. He made his intentions public in a letter he issued moments before the Jan. 6 session began, in which he repeatedly referenced his plan to call for objections.

As presiding officer, I will ensure that any objections that are sponsored by both a Representative and a Senator are given proper consideration, and that all facts supporting those objections are brought before the Congress and the American people, Pence said. Those who suggest that raising objections under the Electoral Count Act is improper or undemocratic ignore more than 130 years of history.

Go here to read the rest:
Another Jan. 6 mystery revealed: Pence's second script rewrite - POLITICO