Trumpist thugs are now almost routinely threatening members of Congress and their families, as well as other elected officials deemed not loyal enough to Señor Trumpanzee. And not just Democrats. After several incidents, police are now escorting lawmakers on and off airplanes. And Capitol Hill looks like a police state. The NRCC's legal counsel sent this out to all Republican members' chiefs of staff:
In an effort to further assist in addressing the threats against your bosses and their families in recent weeks, the NRCC legal team has looked at how campaign funds may be used to cover security costs.
If your boss is receiving threats due to their activities as a Member of Congress, you are permitted to use campaign funds to install or upgrade and monitor residential security systems that do not constitute structural improvements to your home. This would not be considered “personal use” under FEC guidelines.
Furthermore we have proactively requested an Advisory Opinion from the Federal Election Commission (“FEC”) as to whether campaign funds can be used to pay for private security services for your home and family even when you are not there and will keep you updated on any response.
In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions regarding the use of campaign funds for security. Any questions regarding the use of official funds or security at official offices and/or events should be directed to Nick Crocker at the Committee on House Administration.
One Republican, Peter Meijer (R-MI), who voted for impeachment, has a body guard detail, wears body armor and varies the way he travels from home to work, etc.
Yesterday, only 5 Republicans-- Susan Collins (ME), Mitt Romney (UT), Ben Sasse (NE), Pat Toomey (PA) and Lisa Murkowski (AK) voted to proceed with the impeachment trial when Trumpist Rand Paul tried to derail it. These are the ones-- including McConnell-- who voted to end it on the spot as though the insurrection and sacking of the Capitol-- which caused many of them to seek shelter and sit quietly with gas masks behind barricaded doors, was just a chance of fate and nothing more.
Yesterday, Seth Abramson published a powerful piece at Proof on the role in the coup attempt/insurrection of Trump and his innermost circle. 15 hours before the insurrection began, Trump's closest advisors met at Trump's private residence at Trump International Hotel down the street from the White House. It is unclear whether or not Trump himself was there. But these 8 criminals were:
Donald Trump Jr.
Eric Trump
Michael Flynn
Peter Navarro
Corey Lewandowski
David Bossie, the Mercer family representative in Trumpworld
Adam Piper, Republican Attorneys General Association executive director
Charles W. Herbster, Trump's top rural advisor
Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL)
Abramson dug up and reprinted a chilling Facebook post from Herbster, posted just hours before the mob stormed the Capitol:
Abramson:
That Herbster would have access to Trump’s inner circle is clear. But less clear is why the Trumps had invited, to a private residence outside the White House-- and on the eve of an insurrection-- (1) Michael Flynn, a man who that very day had organized a D.C. rally to protest the 2020 election, and would the next day conjoin his Jericho March with the Stop the Steal/March to Save America that Trump was to speak at; (2) Peter Navarro, a man who would later say on live television that he believed Trump had the unilateral authority to postpone Biden’s inauguration; (3) Tommy Tuberville, the U.S. senator who in a matter of hours Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani would be calling by telephone to demand that he fraudulently contest ten states’ Biden electors (far more than the five Giuliani had publicly declared contestable); (4) Adam Piper, who would in a matter of days would resign from the Republican Attorneys General Association when it was found that he had helped orchestrate robocalls advertising the Stop the Steal/March to Save America event; and (5) his former campaign manager and deputy campaign manager-- Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, respectively-- two men known for their bareknuckle politics and (in Lewandowski’s case) an alleged penchant for violence (see here, here, and here).
While of course there’s less question about why Don Jr. and Eric were at the January 5 meeting at their father’s Washington hotel, it’s useful to note that both men would speak alongside their father at the January 6 rally in D.C. that incited an insurrection, and that both (particularly the former) arguably uttered words during their speeches that helped incite that insurrection. Meanwhile, it remains unclear why Trump would have given his sons access to his private residence in Washington if he was not either planning to attend the meeting with them, planning to attend it via speakerphone-- a longtime practice of the president in dealing with sensitive meetings, and a practice for which he has become infamous-- or expecting his sons to debrief him immediately.
But the two men of most importance here, undoubtedly, are (1) the organizer of the Jericho March, and (2) the organizer of robocalls promoting the Stop the Steal/March to Save America-- as their presence at a private Team Trump strategy meeting the night before an armed insurrection affirms that the president’s inner circle was in fact coordinating with the very men who were at that moment busy creating an armed mob for Trump to command on January 6.
We don’t have to guess what these nine men discussed on the eve of the insurrection, however, as the Omaha World Herald has already reported on what Herbster and his compatriots were doing that night: “discuss[ing] how to pressure more members of Congress to object to the Electoral College results that made Joe Biden the winner.”
This seeming footnote in a mid-size newspaper may become one of the most startling revelations of the ongoing federal criminal investigation of the January 6 insurrection: it means that one of the organizers of the now-infamous Stop the Steal/March to Save America event met with Trump’s top advisers-- and possibly Trump himself-- on the night before the insurrection to discuss how to “pressure more members of Congress to object to the Electoral College results that made Joe Biden the winner”; it also means the organizer of the Jericho March, which had been timed to coincide with the Stop the Steal/March to Save America, also met with this corps of Trump advisers to discuss how to “pressure more members of Congress.” And for reasons we still don’t know-- but perhaps can guess at-- the nine (minimum) participants at the meeting had decided that they couldn’t meet in the White House.
Not only does this meeting appear to confirm that Trump’s team helped orchestrate the events of January 6, but that it participated in the calibration of those events to exert maximum “pressure” on members of Congress in the midst of them executing a grave constitutional duty. Moreover, it participated in that calibration in the presence of a member of the United States Senate, who was therefore-- we can now conclude, from the reporting of the Omaha World Herald-- working in private with the president’s team to advise Trump on how to generate that maximum “pressure.”
Moreover, it’s clear that the meeting participants did not anticipate that that pressure would come from political persuasion-- but from the large, angry gatherings that Flynn and Piper had personally helped foment. Indeed, how could a “peaceful” gathering of Trump voters standing well off Capitol property possibly have exerted “pressure” on members of Congress to “object” to state-certified Biden electors inside the building?
The answer is likely to be clear enough to federal investigators: the events Flynn and Piper orchestrated could only exert extraordinary pressure on members of Congress if the participants in those events illegally entered upon Capitol grounds.
While we cannot know if these co-conspirators discussed the possibility of violence on January 6, that they contemplated the crime that most of the January 6 insurrectionists have now been charged with-- Unlawfully Entering a Restricted Building-- is all but certain, as is the fact that the purpose of such entries was to put improper pressure on government officials to reverse course on a government action.
In simpler terms, the purpose of the January 5 meeting at the Trump International Hotel in D.C. was arguably seditious conspiracy-- as it appears to have been intended to promote and incite criminal acts by a mob whose purpose was to intimidate federal officials engaged in the certification of a democratically elected branch of government.
...According to the Omaha World Herald, “Herbster attended the rally where Trump urged supporters to march to the Capitol [the Stop the Steal/March to Save America], but said he left the area to fly home before the riot.” This remains unconfirmed, but if true, it suggests yet another top Trump adviser taking actions central to the events of January 6 but then conveniently deciding-- in advance of the march-- that he wanted to be far away as it was happening. (Note: Proof catalogues other such Trump advisers here.)
While it would be easy to think of Herbster as a mere attendee at the January 6 Trump speech that incited an insurrection-- if one who fled the scene immediately thereafter, for unknown reasons-- further details about Herbster’s relationship with Trumpworld suggest otherwise.
On December 13, 2020, just three and a half weeks before the insurrection, Herbster attended a Moms for America event with insurrectionist Mike Lindell, who was last seen carrying paperwork into the Oval Office urging then-President Trump to declare martial law and refuse to vacate the White House on January 20.
Here’s Herbster posing for a photograph with Lindell at the event, which Moms for America described as an “intimate” gathering for a “small group of guests”:
It turns out that the “intimate” December 13 gathering in Washington included more than just Herbster, Fletcher, insurrectionist Mike Lindell, and South Dakota’s GOP governor, Kristi Noem.
Also part of the “small group” that met in Washington was, according to an article in Breitbart, Rose Tennet, head of the Women for Trump group and a speaker at the January 5 Stop the Steal/Rally to Save America event that also featured Stop the Steal coordinators Alex Jones and Roger Stone. More importantly, the gathering featured Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), now known as one of the four chief organizers of the January 6 Stop the Steal/March to Save America event.
Also present was Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA), who the Erie Times-News has called “the last person in the House of Representatives to object to the certification of the Electoral College vote in Pennsylvania or any other state [on January 6]”-- noting that even after the insurrection Kelly thundered from the House floor, “I hate the idea of what we had to go through today, but if oaths don’t matter-- and we’ve all taken them-- and if the Constitution doesn’t matter, why do we even do it?” In his floor remarks on the certification of Biden’s victory, Kelly called the 2020 election “unconstitutional.”
But it gets still worse-- as someone else very important spoke at the self-admittedly “intimate” December 13 Moms for America event that Charles Herbster attended: Ali Alexander, a Stop the Steal coordinator currently on the run from law enforcement.
That Herbster, Lindell, Biggs, Alexander, and Tennet were all present at the same pro-Trump event in the nation’s capital on December 13-- it’s unknown who else they met with while there-- raises the possibility that Herbster was in touch with Alexander prior to the former’s meeting with Team Trump on January 5 at Trump International Hotel just hours before the insurrection. Federal officials will now need to question Herbster about whether he passed on to the president or his team any messages from or about Alexander, Alexander’s Stop the Steal/March to Save America co-organizer Andy Biggs, or Stop the Steal/Rally to Save America participant Tennet. These questions must be added, of course, to an even more foundational interrogation regarding what other topics the group of men at the January 5 meeting discussed.
Just so, given that Herbster was-- per his Facebook page--in regular contact with the whole Trump family throughout the month of December 2020, federal investigators will want to know both the substance of his conversations with the Trumps during this period and also whether he passed messages to them from known insurrectionists (or vice versa) in the critical five weeks leading up the January 6.
This is important and you should watch the whole video, the Wall street Journal having shown in great depth and detail the role of the Proud Boys in Trump's coup attempt.
And now, a question from investigative historian Eric Zuesse: "Is the U.S. actually a 'police state'?" He is certain the U.S. in very, much a police state already and one can only imagine what would have happened had Trump's fascist coup been successful. Zuesse:
[N]ot only does the U.S. lock up a higher percentage of its population than does any other country in the entire world, but it is also the only wealthy country whose police forces execute an abnormally high percentage of the country’s population. Certainly, therefore, if the phrase “police state” objectively means anything at all, then it applies to the United States of America.
Virtually all of the people whom the American criminal ‘justice’ system imprisons and executes are poor people, who, if they have violated any laws at all, have violated the types of laws that apply especially against the very poorest of Americans. (Only few Americans are in prison for convictions of “white collar” or upper-class crimes.) Furthermore, there appears to be a considerable amount of sheer racism that is involved, because the ethnic skew of Americans who become executed by police, and also of Americans who become imprisoned, both skews are intensely against black people. For example, on 31 December 2015, Britain’s Guardian bannered “Young black men killed by US police at highest rate in year of 1,134 deaths”, and reported that, “Young black men were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by police officers in 2015.” Most of those killings by police were not processed to any conclusion by American courts; but some were, and, of the 1,134 people killed by police in 2015, only 23% (255 of the 1,034) became ruled by a court as having been “justified.” The other 77% might not have been (even according to American laws, which are obscenely slanted in favor of police against anyone whom they arrest or try to arrest). That news-article didn’t say how many, if any, of the murderous police became convicted by any court, but only 23% of these 1,034 cases even were evaluated by a court as having not been murder by the police officer. So, the situation in the United States seems to fit very well a police state. It is non-accountability regarding individuals who exercise the power of the government, especially against the poor and minorities.
...On 22 June 2020, Britain’s Guardian headlined “‘State-sanctioned violence’: US police fail to meet basic human rights standards”, and reported on a study that had just been published by the Law School at the University of Chicago, which examined 20 big-city U.S. police departments, and it found that “not one met the minimum standards established by human rights law.” Furthermore, “Across Europe, policing policies are much more closely aligned with human rights directives.” The U.S. Government, at its federal level, was found to be grossly deficient in the very same measures, of accountability and rule-of-law, that that Government pontificates against, issues sanctions against, and invades. (Yet those European governments still ally with the U.S. regime, instead of condemn its aggressions.)
The U.S. actually is a “police state.” It is certainly the world’s leading police state.
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