Oh boy, the US v Trump appendices have landed, all 1,889 pages of them. That’s a lotta evidence, more pages than the entire Lord of The Rings series. And hey, that’s Hitler’s birth year! Here’s links to volumes one, two, three and four, and the links are also in the headers below.
Most pages are redacted. What’s left is a wide-ranging collection of interviews, transcripts, even highlighted pages from Mike Pence’s book. Disappointingly for anyone who popped corn hoping for a bombshell, there’s not much new here, except for a cozy anecdote from a valet about how he tucked Putschy Poppy in front of the television with a remote on January 6, after he returned from an outing of an Ellipse speech and throwing a tantrum when the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him to the Capitol. Dejected, Trump sat and watched television, doomscrolled Twitter, and punched out a Tweet blaming Mike Pence as gas canisters were exploding on the Rotunda steps.
And there’s a “Stop the Steal” speech, which could be an early draft of Trump’s Ellipse speech before he added the paragraphs about Pence.
The appendix is supporting materials for the government’s strategy: to show Trump knew he lost, and everybody told him so, and nevertheless he and his band of clowns persisted. Which we all know, because we were there! But thanks to the Trump-loving Supreme Court wanting to give Treasontits every benefit of the doubt, the government must show that his rantings about FRAUD were not president stuff, instead they were about his loser ass campaigning to keep the job voters had just YER FIRED him for. Here’s the breakdown of what we got!
PREVIOUSLY!
Volume I
The newly released interview with the anonymous White House valet is on page 167, recounting how on January 6 at 1:21 p.m., Trump returned to the White House, hoping to watch his own speech, as was his habit. He was apparently bewildered to hear that the teevee had cut off coverage of his rant to show people rioting at the Capitol instead.
Said the employee:
“And he was like, ‘what do you mean?’”
“I said, ‘It’s like, they’re rioting down there at the Capitol. And he was like ‘Oh really?’ And then he was like, ‘All right, let’s go see.’”
So the employee took his coat, ensconced him in the Oval Dining Room, handed him the remote, and served him a Diet Coke. The transcript cuts off before the employee says if Trump immediately started watching the rioting on live TV, or re-lived watching himself siccing the mob on Mike Pence. “I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so.”
Volume One also has transcripts of interviews with the House January 6 Select Committee, which we have seen before. There’s the testimony of Bill Barr, name redacted for some reason, telling the committee about how outside people were “filling the president’s ear with all this stuff about fraud [...] they know how to push the president’s buttons and they’re telling him what he wants to hear, and he seems inclined to believe it or go along with it.”
Barr told Trump on November 23 that his nonsense about Dominion voting machines was “crazy.” “They can be easily checked, because they’re tabulation machines.” Yet on November 29, Trump went on Fox News to bitch that the Attorney General’s office was “missing in action” and had been ignoring all the so-called fraud. Pissed at having himself and his department thrown under the bus, Barr told an AP reporter that there was no fraud, then told minions to pack up his office because he knew he was going to get YER FIRED. (That AP article enraged Trump so much he threw ketchup, we later learned.)
The second redacted-but-we-know-who, Russell “Rusty” Bowers, speaker of the state House in Arizona, who was rung up by Trump and Rudy Giuliani, leaning on him to have an “official committee” meeting in the Arizona House about the 6,000, or 60,000, dead people and/or illegal aliens that they claimed voted in Arizona, or put out a statement that Trump won Arizona (he did not), or how about Bowers just decertify the election and certify an alternative slate of electors?
Bowers told them he had no authority to do any of that, that was not how anything worked, and also where was the proof? (Eventually Rudy came out with his corker, “We’ve got lots of theories — we just don’t have the evidence.”) Bowers ended up hanging up on them.
And that was how Bowers ended up beset by a mob of pro-Trump goons honking and screaming outside of his house at all hours! Including people riding by in a truck with a video sign that he was a pedophile, swats from fake emergency calls that he’d killed his wife, a threat from a Three-Percenter with a gun, somebody who cut his Christmas lights, and one of the protestors running over one of his neighbors. It is quite a read!
There’s also some pages of testimony from Justin Clark, Ruby Freeman, Philip Luelsdorff, Greg Jacob and Caroline Wren.
Volume II
A lot of Trump Tweets, and Re-tweets. “I WON THE ELECTION!” Lou Dobbs has breaking news from Sidney Powell! There were more ballots coming in from Pennsylvania than came out! Pennsylvania has 700,000 missing votes! RIGGED! UNCONSTITUTIONAL! HOAX! Democrats are hiding ballots! Signatures don’t match! So many Tweets. He is exhausting.
Volume III
Did you not buy Mike Pence’s So Help Me God when it came out in stores? Did anybody buy it but Mike Pence’s PAC and the government’s lawyers? Pence may have saved Democracy, but his prose does not exactly gallop. Anyway, starting on page 49, are some highlighted excerpts, and some interesting bits. Did Trump really say “These people cheated, and you want to play by Marquess of Queensberry rules”? It’s hard to imagine his wet little mouth hole making those words.
There’s also letters and statements from legislatures and other officials from Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, Maricopa County Arizona, saying some variation of they have no authority to overturn election results, they’re not gonna, and there was no big fat fraud.
Also some State of Nevada “Facts vs. Myths” (page 232) that the state secretary of state published to try to quell the insanity that was raging at the time, such as “The Nevada SOS sent private voter information to the Pakistani government.”
Volume IV
This starts out with John Eastman’s “Couping 4 Dummies” memo, which came out way back in September of 2021. It’s his six-part Democracy weight loss plan! At least Eastman is disbarred now.
Refresh your memory!
Step one: Pence, “or Senate Pro Tempore Grassley, if Pence recuses himself,” opens the Electoral College ballots.
Step two: Pence/Grassley gets to Arizona and announces there’s multiple slates of electors, what a surprise! He will set those aside and count the rest of the ballots.
Step 3: Well lookee here, there’s so many disputed ballots that Biden doesn’t have 270 yet!
Step 4: “Howls, of course, from the Democrats,” and they send the matter to the House.
Step 5": “someone — Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, etc. — should demand normal rules (which includes the filibuster). That creates a stalemate that would give the state legislatures more time to weigh in to formally support the alternate slate of electors.”
Step 6: Make the Democrats go and complain to the Supreme Court.
Redactions until page 37, where it’s a continuation of Eastman’s memo that we have already seen, where he opines that state legislatures have the “plenary power” to pick their own electors, and toss those votes for Biden in the Electoral College from the seven swing states right in the ol’ round file. The Electoral Count Act of 1887 is UNCONSTITUTIONAL, whine whine! Can you believe this moron, formerly a dean of a law school, actually wrote all this down? They are bad at crime.
Page 162, an email sent from the Trump press office to someone at Donald Trump dot com, dated January 6, 2021, at 1:57 p.m., of Trump’s statement that had been sent out the night of January 5:
January 5, 2021, Statement from President Donald J. Trump
“The New York Times report regarding comments Vice President Pence supposedly made to me today is fake news. He never said that. The Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act.
“The November 3rd election was corrupt in contested states, and in particular it was not in accordance with the Constitution in that they made large scale changes to election rules and regulations as dictated by local judges and politicians, not by state legislators. This means that it was illegal.
“Our Vice President has several options under the U.S. Constitution. He can decertify the results or send them back to the states for change and certification. He can also decertify the illegal and corrupt results and send them to the House of Representatives for the one vote for one state tabulation.”
This was, of course, a big fat lie, and Mike Pence never ever for one minute agreed that he had the power to act.
And on the next page, the text from January 6 at 10:36 a.m.: “We need to get a document on the Wisconsin electors to you for the VP immediately. Is there a staff person I can talk to immediately. Thanks, __.” We know from the House Select Committee (page 577) that this is from Jim Troupis to Senator Ron Johnson.
Page 166, more texts with names redacted, but that we know from the House Select Committee (page 575) is Senator Ron Johnson and Sean Reilly texting Jim Troupis:
“We have been informed the VP cannot accept any unsealed mail and I cannot hand it to him.”
“at a minimum you could read it into record. I am told he should have a sealed copy as well, but folks could not confirm it.”
On page 181, there’s an excerpt from a Trump “Stop the Steal” speech, poetically laid out in four- to six-syllable lines, where he lies about Republican poll watchers being kicked out in Fulton County. Is this a draft of his Ellipse speech before he added in ranting about Pence? There is much of the same language! You can compare it to the final version, there’s a DOJ transcript of that speech on page 148 of Volume 3.
Next, on page 182, there is Mike Pence’s statement from January 6 that he did not have the authority to single-handedly overturn the election, actually.
Page 190, the transcript of Trump’s CNN town hall in May, 2023, where Trump was still playing his greatest hits: He has no regrets from January 6, the protestors were peaceful, and everything was Nancy Pelosi’s fault, and Mike Pence’s fault, Antifa, Antifa, Antifa!
Page 202, pages from the Congressional Record, where the electoral votes finally started getting read at 11:35 p.m. on January 6.
Page 209, a transcript of a press briefing with Kayleigh McEnany from November 20, 2020, where she gives Trump credit for developing a Covid vaccine, and also refuses to say that Trump lost the election.
Pages 258-296, Trump campaign fundraising emails targeted towards a Georgia runoff RALLY, probably included to show how Trump used the word RALLY for campaigning, like he used RALLY for his speech at the Ellipse, because he was campaigning, not president-ing. Funny that Trump was very worried about his Georgia votes being fraud-stolen, but after Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue lost their Senate races — both Republicans at once! In Georgia! It was a crazy time! — Trump never mentioned their names again. A grand jury did though, and recommended criminal election interference charges for both of them, and also Michael Flynn and Lindsey Graham. Too bad that never happened!
Paged 304-307, a Trump budget and trip plan from January 4-6, showing his January 6 speeches described as a “MAGA Rally,” and campaign donors giving money to support his RALLY, and bus people to his RALLY.
Page 352, let’s talk about the the Hatch Act! The US Office of Special Counsel explained to Trump in November of 2020 that Hatch Act violating was going on. You can’t use the office of the presidency to campaign or influence elections, and Trump and his employees had been doing that, no shit. You don’t get to claim violating the Hatch Act is your official Presidential duty, stoopit!
Anyway, sorry to report, after many hours of scrolling and getting a neckache, that there’s no new barn-burners in there! Though there surely are some under all that government redactin’! Makes you wonder why Trump lawyers, John Lauro and that Crying Little Shit Todd Blanche, made such a loud-yet-pointless stink about its release. Getting paid by the word?
Still, it’s a lot of pages of evidence. And Trump and MAGA are still stupid mad it was released, and think Judge Chutkan should be shot from a clown cannon to the moon. But maybe one more January 6 headline will remind two undecided voters in Assmunch, PA, what a treasonous, sleazonous shit he is, and they’ll go vote. You never know!
OT: While I am seeking a new jerb, I've decided to enlist as a pro bono attorney for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. Immigrants in detention don't even have access to a public defender for immigration hearings, so they either attend the hearing without a lawyer (and lose), or they rely on volunteer legal representation.
The question of who removed the emergency panic buttons from the Congressional offices and who showed the rioters which windows to smash has never been answered.