Posted on 10/03/2024 3:15:26 PM PDT by RandFan
Trump showed disregard for Pence’s safety
It was previously known that Trump showed little regard for the safety of Vice President Mike Pence as a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol, but two new details revealed in Smith’s filing underlined that fact.
On Jan. 6, 2021, as rioters breached the Capitol in an apparent attempt to stop Congress’s certification of the Electoral College results, Trump took to Twitter — now known as X.
He condemned Pence for lacking “courage” because he refused to disrupt the certification by rejecting the official electoral votes for Biden in favor of certifying false slates of electors that would have swung the election in Trump’s favor.
In the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, Trump and his allies mounted a pressure campaign against Pence to convince him that he had authority to use his role as president of the Senate to block the election results.
The social media post — which Smith revealed in the filing was sent by Trump as he sat alone in his White House dining room, after he became aware the Capitol had been breached — was blasted out at the same time Pence was evacuated from his Senate office, with angry rioters nearby.
When an aide alerted Trump that the vice president had been taken to a secure location, he replied only, “So what?”
The new details add to a trove of evidence underscoring Trump’s apathy toward his vice president’s safety that day. Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson also told the now-disbanded Jan. 6 committee that Mark Meadows said Trump was flippant when told that crowds assembled near the Capitol were chanting “Hang Mike Pence.”
As former White House attorney Pat Cipollone approached the Oval Office to share that news, he bumped into Meadows.
“And Mark had responded something to the effect of, ‘You heard him, Pat, he thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong,’” Hutchinson testified.
Trump’s knowledge of false election claims The filing expands on earlier allegations from prosecutors that Trump was well aware that his claims the election was stolen were false.
They write that Trump was given “the unvarnished truth” about losing the election but continued to make false claims despite being told they were untrue by close campaign advisers.
Multiple aides told him he would be unable to mount successful legal challenges to the election and warned that Trump would be unable to prove his allegations in court.
“The details don’t matter,” Trump is said to have responded.
Other portions of the filing note Trump and allies “repeatedly changed the numbers in their baseless fraud allegations from day to day” and “made up figures from whole cloth.”
That includes baseless claims Trump promoted about noncitizens and dead people voting in elections.
Pence-Trump conversations
The filing fleshes out Pence’s pushback to Trump’s sustained campaign to get the vice president to buck his ceremonial duty to certify the election results.
Some examples are pulled from Pence’s book, including that Trump shouldn’t think of the election “as a loss – just an intermission” and that after pursuing all their legal options, they would need to “take a bow.”
The filing notes that during a call to Trump to wish him a merry Christmas on Dec. 25, Trump had sought to pressure him to reject his obligation to certify the votes, and Pence told him, “You know I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome.”
But prosecutors also secured five pages of Pence’s contemporaneous notes from his conversation with Trump and attorney John Eastman, who were pushing him to disregard the results.
During that meeting, Trump apparently said, “When there’s fraud, the rules get changed,” telling Pence to “be bold” and that “this whole thing is up to” him.
Trump also told Pence that he had the “r[igh]t to do whatever you want to do” and again falsely claimed to have won various states by hundreds of thousands of votes.
“The meeting concluded with Pence – firm and clear – telling the defendant, ‘I’m not seeing this argument working,’” the filing states.
Chaos at the polls
In the weeks after the election, Trump’s team sought to “create chaos” at polling places where votes were still being tabulated, Smith revealed in the filing.
One member of the campaign, unnamed and deemed a co-conspirator by prosecutors, allegedly attempted to create “confusion” at a Detroit polling center Nov. 4, when it became apparent that votes were increasingly going to Biden.
When a colleague at the center said as much, the Trump campaign employee told them to “find a reason it isn’t” going Biden’s way, even if it is, and give him “options to file litigation,” according to the filing.
The colleague suggested unrest would follow, to which the campaign employee replied, “Make them riot” and “Do it!!!”
Ronna McDaniel’s role
Details about the role of Ronna McDaniel — who chaired the Republican National Committee at the time — in the aftermath of the election also emerged in Smith’s new court papers.
During a meeting with Michigan GOP leaders, Trump dialed McDaniel into the call, despite her request not to participate on the advice of legal counsel who warned it could be viewed as lobbying, per the filing.
A month later, Trump spoke with McDaniel and asked her to promote a private report that claimed to identify flaws in the use of voting machines in a Michigan county. She resisted, telling the former president that she had discussed it with Michigan’s House Speaker, then Lee Chatfield (R), who gave a stark assessment: The report was “f‑‑‑ing nuts.”
“The Supreme Court already made their ruling on this matter.”
As I understand the ruling from reading here, the Supreme Court decision was not definitive, but merely a statement of the law along the lines I thought it should be.
I have not read it, only statements about it:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf
I got that link from:
https://conservativeinstitute.org/conservative-news/senate-democrats-say-presidential-immunity-ruling-allows-egregious-forms-of-wrongdoing.htm
Would someone please point out the items of illegality to me in this passage?
I find the results hard to believe, but I’ll let you read it yourself:
“He condemned Pence for lacking “courage” because he refused to disrupt the certification by rejecting the official electoral votes for Biden in favor of certifying false slates of electors that would have swung the election in Trump’s favor.”
Au contraire. Pence proceeded to certify false slates of electors - false, because they were based upon vote fraud. An honest count of honest votes would have made clear that Trump won the election. The Democrats fought tooth and nail to keep the courts from hearing the cases. Why? What did they have to hide? Why didn’t they encourage the court challenges in order to be able to say “told you so”?
“I don’t know why Garland would have hired him.”
Because he would do anything to get Trump that his masters ordered?
Votes were still "tabulated" weeks after the election because they were still being printed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.