The House January 6 Select Committee dropped six more subpoenas last night on Trumplanders involved in the plot to overturn the election. Because they came here to kick ass and chew gum, but gum is banned in the House conference rooms. Probably!
The newest invitees for a little under-oath chitchat include three members of the Trump campaign. In a letter to campaign manager Bill Stepien , the Committee notes that he "supervised the conversion of the Trump presidential campaign to an effort focused on 'Stop the Steal' messaging and related fundraising," including "promotion of certain false claims related to voting machines despite an internal campaign memo in which campaign staff determined that such claims were false."
Similarly Jason Miller is invited to drag himself out the GETTR gutter to tell the Committee what went down on January 5 at the Willard Hotel when he huddled up with Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, and the rest of the treasonweasels before unleashing the mob on the Capitol.
In comparison to Stepien and Miller, recent college grad Angela McCallum was a relative nobody on the campaign. And yet she was given the moniker "national executive assistant of election day operations" and dispatched by somebody to leave a voicemail for at least one Michigan legislator urging them to approve an alternate slate of electors based on non-existent vote fraud. The Committee has that on tape, and the members would like to discuss it.
Outside the campaign, Michael Flynn , Bernie Kerik , and attorney John Eastman join the subpoena party.
"You reportedly attended a December 18, 2020 meeting in the Oval Office during which participants discussed seizing voting machines, declaring a national emergency, evoking certain national security emergency powers, and continuing to spread the message that the November 2020 election had been tainted by widespread fraud," reads Flynn's letter. Let's go out on a limb here and assume that Flynn is going to say that this is top secret executive privilege stuff. And dollars to doughnuts Kerik will claim attorney client privilege for his conversations with Rudy Giuliani about ratfucking the election.
As for Eastman and his infamous memos, the attorney will no doubt claim that he was acting as a lawyer and can't be forced to testify about his conversations with the president and his minions. But the Committee is ready for that one already.
"Although you served as an attorney for President Trump in his capacity as a candidate for re-election, you have made extensive public comments regarding your legal advice, including your direct discussions with President Trump," they write. "In fact, you have stated publicly that President Trump has authorized you to discuss the matters at issue, thus waiving any applicable attorney-client and attorney work product privileges." And then they cited the idiotic opinion piece that dipshit published in the Sacramento Bee titled "Here's the Advice I Actually Gave President Pence," along with his disastrous interview with the National Review, and two podcasts where he shot his fool mouth off.
Committee Chair Bennie Thompson issued this statement in the press release announcing the latest round of subpoenas:
In the days before the January 6th attack, the former President's closest allies and advisors drove a campaign of misinformation about the election and planned ways to stop the count of Electoral College votes. The Select Committee needs to know every detail about their efforts to overturn the election, including who they were talking to in the White House and in Congress, what connections they had with rallies that escalated into a riot, and who paid for it all. The Select Committee expects all witnesses to cooperate with our investigation as we work to get answers for the American people, recommend changes to our laws that will strengthen our democracy, and help ensure nothing like January 6th ever happens again.
All of which is bad news ... for Merrick Garland. Because there is no way on God's green earth that Flynn, Kerik, and Miller are going to cooperate with these subpoenas. As for the other three, well, McCallum is young and junior enough that she may not want to put up a fight. And perhaps Stepien's brush with the law in New Jersey's Bridgegate scandal scared him straight — anything's possible. Eastman has at least a colorable claim to privilege, although he hasn't shut up for 10 straight months, so who even knows what he'll do.
But some number of these people are going to join Steve Bannon in giving a big "fuck you" to the Committee, which will refer them to the Justice Department for prosecution. There's already intense pressure for the DOJ to indict Bannon, which will only be ratcheted up if Kerik, Flynn, and Miller join him in making a facially nonsensical claim of executive privilege "on the advice of counsel." All the while, the clock is ticking down to the midterms, when the GOP is hoping to take back the House and shitcan the whole investigation. And, PS, if you follow the breadcrumbs, it sure looks like the next round of subpoenas leads to Rudy Giuliani's door.
Sorry, AG Garland. Politics ain't beanbag, yaknow.
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Where is this life free of politics? I think it was called childhood.
Oh good! 6 more times Merrick Garland can do fuck all.