Election integrity and the transfer of power

[Unagi]

https://mobile.twitter.com/Cernovich/st ... 1513269248

This is going to fuel the fire even more.

...Amazon announces that they will not deliver anything to Trump

Spoiler:

Not really

[Ralph-Wiggum]

If the House votes to impeach on Monday, can McConnell just sit on it until January 20?

[Unagi]

If the House votes to impeach on Monday, can McConnell just sit on it until January 20?

There is more to the ‘impeachment’ than just the vote for removal.

Specifically, keeping the impeached from running for elected position again.

[malchior]

If the House votes to impeach on Monday, can McConnell just sit on it until January 20?

There is more to the impeachment than just the removal.

The trial will not happen quickly but El Guapo made a good point earlier in the thread that McConnell could sit on it unless it *really* is needed. Still eventually a trial will happen if they get their act together and impeach him.

[Kraken]

If the House votes to impeach on Monday, can McConnell just sit on it until January 20?

Actually, he has to wait as things stand right now. The Senate's in recess. It has two pro forma sessions scheduled during which no new business can be discussed. To do so requires unanimous consent (ending recess, I'd guess). The earliest the Senate can take up impeachment is Jan. 20.

[Skinypupy]

Oh, this too.

https://mobile.twitter.com/edbott/statu ... 4503793665

[Zaxxon]

https://twitter.com/nhbaptiste/status/1 ... 90786?s=19

[malchior]

A reminder it could have been much worse.

https://mobile.twitter.com/RonanFarrow/ ... 6830780416

[Kraken]

Damned good thing he didn't have a plane.

[Daehawk]

I still remember the giveaway to me Trump was going to be a shitty Pres. All the stuff in the election warned me but it was the lies he kept on and on about the inauguration crowd size that gave it totally away. There was full photo proof he was lying but he insisted. Knew then not only was he a liar and stupid but evil and egotistical past sane.

[Jaymann]

[Archinerd]

From the New Yorker article;

He claimed that he had found the zip-tie handcuffs on the floor. “I wish I had not picked those up,” he told me. “My thought process there was I would pick them up and give them to an officer when I see one. . . . I didn’t do that because I had put them in my coat, and I honestly forgot about them.”

[Pyperkub]

In the end, Trump cost Republicans the Presidency, the Senate, and the House. The son of a bitch actually did it. He made America great again.

[Grifman]

From the New Yorker article;

He claimed that he had found the zip-tie handcuffs on the floor. “I wish I had not picked those up,” he told me. “My thought process there was I would pick them up and give them to an officer when I see one. . . . I didn’t do that because I had put them in my coat, and I honestly forgot about them.”

The zip ties are the least of his worries at the moment.

When he arrived at the Capitol, he said, he assumed he was welcome to enter the building.

Seriously, he expects us to believe that he didn't know the EC vote was going on, that just anyone can't walk onto the floor of the Capitol anytime they want to?

[Jaymann]

From the New Yorker article;

He claimed that he had found the zip-tie handcuffs on the floor. “I wish I had not picked those up,” he told me. “My thought process there was I would pick them up and give them to an officer when I see one. . . . I didn’t do that because I had put them in my coat, and I honestly forgot about them.”

The zip ties are the least of his worries at the moment.

When he arrived at the Capitol, he said, he assumed he was welcome to enter the building.

Seriously, he expects us to believe that he didn't know the EC vote was going on, that just anyone can't walk onto the floor of the Capitol anytime they want to?

Nevermind the throngs of cops outside fighting rioters at the barricades.

[Defiant]

https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/stat ... 9777045510

[malchior]

One thing that strikes me about that Ronan Farrow piece is that Brock *gave him an interview*. First, the second a reporter calls to ask for an interview maybe a quick Google is in order or perhaps, "Alexa who is Ronan Farrow? ... Oh hell no I should not talk to him." In that spirit I give Farrow a ton of credit in that he got this guy talking and ran down a relatively in-depth story like this in about 2 days.

But beyond the applause, that Brock gave an interview and essentially then confirmed he was at the scene of a crime and did crime things? Farrow's analysis that this guy lives in another world seems right. That is what concerns me. He seemingly believed he was there for a righteous reason. He was probably more than happy to have a voice because he not only thinks that what he did was right but necessary. My quick take is we can knock some of this over immediately but there is a long walk ahead. It seems that there is a trade off for stopping their communication channels, it stops the spread of more damage. However, we also might lose an ability to see their communications and identify the network. It is a hell of a conundrum to solve.

[malchior]

The Atlantic

Donald Trump still has 11 days in office.

Article II of the Constitution vests full executive power in the president, including the post of commander in chief of the armed forces. Since World War II, this has included the power to use nuclear arms—“the president’s weapons,” as nukes are called in the defense community—without contradiction or countermanding.

Read: The real Cuban missile crisis

No special exception limits the actions of lame-duck presidents. Trump will have the full panoply of his powers right up until noon on January 20. After the storming of the U.S. Capitol, even these final few days are too much of a risk to endure.

Trump is an unstable and desperate man who has incited violence against the government of the United States. He cannot be trusted with the keys to Armageddon, and so he must be removed by any legal and constitutional means available.

Since the insurrection on Wednesday, Trump has tried in his diffident and childlike way to calm the waters with a weak statement acknowledging Joe Biden’s win, an acceptance Trump apparently sees as a gracious willingness to compromise after his initial seditious insistence on fighting to the end. This change in tone, however, was merely Trump following his usual pattern, in which he says something horrifying, panics his staff—and his lawyers—and then is pushed out in front of the cameras to say he didn’t really mean any of it, while he winks and indicates that he meant every word of it.

And sure enough, just hours after his grudging act of contrition, Trump was back on Twitter with an all-caps exhortation to his followers to take him both seriously and literally. “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” he tapped out furiously, “will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

...

Congressional Republicans, for their part, are resisting calls to remove Trump, arguing instead that we should all just clench our teeth and tough it out. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, has called for impeachment if Trump does not resign. But she has also told her caucus that she has spoken with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to “discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike.”

This move is flatly unconstitutional. Pelosi has the right to ask questions as part of Congress's oversight, but she does not have the right to ask for options to circumvent the president's Article II powers. This is an unhealthy signal to the executive branch, and especially to the military, intelligence, and justice communities, to ignore the elected president and to function without an authority in power until Biden arrives.

This circumvention of the Constitution happened once before, albeit by a Cabinet officer rather than at the behest of a legislator. When Richard Nixon was in his final agony, rumored to be drinking heavily and having conversations with the portraits in the White House, Senator Alan Cranston phoned Defense Secretary James Schlesinger to warn about “the need for keeping a berserk president from plunging us into a holocaust.” Schlesinger told the U.S. military that any “unusual orders”—such as using nuclear weapons—should be verified by him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. What we didn’t know at the time was that the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, was in worse shape than Nixon. His health was failing, and he was addicted to sleeping pills. In October 1973, perhaps gambling that Nixon was too compromised to respond, Brezhnev threatened to send troops to the Arab-Israeli War then under way. Kissinger and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Thomas Moorer, decided to act. They issued a worldwide military alert—including elevating the ready status of U.S. nuclear forces—on the night of October 24.

The Soviets backed down. But it could have ended very differently.

We can’t keep hoping for the best or relying on those not in charge to keep Trump in line. Even one day more is too long for him to be in the White House. We escaped disaster over just a few days in 1962 and in the dark of an autumn night in 1973. Peace was kept, in part, by the presence of steady professionals such as Schlesinger and the Kennedy team, the likes of whom are nowhere to be found in Trump’s Washington.

We no longer have a margin for error. A second impeachment is the only reliable solution, and it should take place immediately.

[Kraken]

Reasons (cribbed from someone's FB post) to impeach and convict after the fact:

1. Loses his 200k+ pension for the rest of his life.
2. Loses his 1 million dollar/year travel allowance.
3. Loses lifetime full secret service detail
4. Loses his ability to run in 2024

#4 is the biggie, but the other reasons aren't trivial.

[LawBeefaroni]

Reasons (cribbed from someone's FB post) to impeach and convict after the fact:

1. Loses his 200k+ pension for the rest of his life.
2. Loses his 1 million dollar/year travel allowance.
3. Loses lifetime full secret service detail
4. Loses his ability to run in 2024

#4 is the biggie, but the other reasons aren't trivial.

Totally needs to lose all the trappings of a former President.

But not sure about #3. The Secret Service needs a truly horrifying detail to hold over agents to keep them in line. It's like an Air Force guy getting sent to guard a science lab in Antarctica. Behave or you get a tour with Trump!

In all seriousness, what does he get if he loses the "full secret service detail?" A smaller one? A stipend for private security? Nothing?

[Brian]

In all seriousness, what does he get if he loses the "full secret service detail?" A smaller one? A stipend for private security? Nothing?

[hepcat]

In all seriousness, what does he get if he loses the "full secret service detail?" A smaller one? A stipend for private security? Nothing?

[Jaymann]

Countdown to Biden inauguration as President:

11 DAYS

Agolf gets BANNED from Twitter and other social media platforms. He tries to re-roll but is squashed. Meanwhile the FBI is rounding up his LT's, but his minions are massing for another grief assault.

[Daehawk]

[Defiant]

In all seriousness, what does he get if he loses the "full secret service detail?" A smaller one? A stipend for private security? Nothing?

The freedom to commit crimes unwitnessed by federal agents?

[Jaymann]

They got Via Getty! He was hiding out under the alias of "Adam Johnson."

Manu Raju
@mkraju

Adam Johnson, 36, the man seen on video carrying Nancy Pelosi’s lectern during the mob riot of the U.S. Capitol, has been arrested in Pinellas County, Florida at the request of DOJ, a law enforcement official tells @evanperez, and will face charges related his role in the riot.

[Unagi]

Reasons (cribbed from someone's FB post) to impeach and convict after the fact:

1. Loses his 200k+ pension for the rest of his life.
2. Loses his 1 million dollar/year travel allowance.
3. Loses lifetime full secret service detail
4. Loses his ability to run in 2024

#4 is the biggie, but the other reasons aren't trivial.

Do his pardons hold ?

Specifically, can a President that is actively being impeached for Event X, Self-Pardon for Event X ?

[Kraken]

Reasons (cribbed from someone's FB post) to impeach and convict after the fact:

1. Loses his 200k+ pension for the rest of his life.
2. Loses his 1 million dollar/year travel allowance.
3. Loses lifetime full secret service detail
4. Loses his ability to run in 2024

#4 is the biggie, but the other reasons aren't trivial.

Do his pardons hold ?

Specifically, can a President that is actively being impeached for Event X, Self-Pardon for Event X ?

This question came up, in passing, earlier. As I understand it, one cannot be pardoned for crimes one was impeached and convicted over; the other interpretation is that one cannot be impeached for crimes one was pardoned of; this has never been tested. I'd like to believe that he can't self-pardon for treason, but who knows? Odds are that we'll find out eventually.

[Jaymann]

Agolf: I hereby pardon myself for not starting an insurrection, which would have been justified if I did, because I won the election, BY A LOT.

[Max Peck]

Reasons (cribbed from someone's FB post) to impeach and convict after the fact:

1. Loses his 200k+ pension for the rest of his life.
2. Loses his 1 million dollar/year travel allowance.
3. Loses lifetime full secret service detail
4. Loses his ability to run in 2024

#4 is the biggie, but the other reasons aren't trivial.

Do his pardons hold ?

Specifically, can a President that is actively being impeached for Event X, Self-Pardon for Event X ?

This question came up, in passing, earlier. As I understand it, one cannot be pardoned for crimes one was impeached and convicted over; the other interpretation is that one cannot be impeached for crimes one was pardoned of; this has never been tested. I'd like to believe that he can't self-pardon for treason, but who knows? Odds are that we'll find out eventually.

Doesn't it come down to the fact that pardons fall into the legal domain while impeachment is purely political? My impression is that a self-pardon would not prevent the impeachment/conviction but it could prevent federal criminal charges (but not state-level criminal charges, or civil litigation IIRC).

My follow-up question is "Since the District of Columbia is not a state, are all crimes committed in that jurisdiction considered federal or can someone be charged with the equivalent of State-level crimes?"

[Holman]

I'm still trying to get my head around cop behavior on Jan 6.

On the one hand, there's footage of cops opening the gate and waving protesters in, but there are also fights at the barricades, and then there's this:

(Pretty disturbing video)

https://twitter.com/joshscampbell/statu ... 11714?s=20

[El Guapo]

Reasons (cribbed from someone's FB post) to impeach and convict after the fact:

1. Loses his 200k+ pension for the rest of his life.
2. Loses his 1 million dollar/year travel allowance.
3. Loses lifetime full secret service detail
4. Loses his ability to run in 2024

#4 is the biggie, but the other reasons aren't trivial.

Do his pardons hold ?

Specifically, can a President that is actively being impeached for Event X, Self-Pardon for Event X ?

This question came up, in passing, earlier. As I understand it, one cannot be pardoned for crimes one was impeached and convicted over; the other interpretation is that one cannot be impeached for crimes one was pardoned of; this has never been tested. I'd like to believe that he can't self-pardon for treason, but who knows? Odds are that we'll find out eventually.

Doesn't it come down to the fact that pardons fall into the legal domain while impeachment is purely political? My impression is that a self-pardon would not prevent the impeachment/conviction but it could prevent federal criminal charges (but not state-level criminal charges, or civil litigation IIRC).

My follow-up question is "Since the District of Columbia is not a state, are all crimes committed in that jurisdiction considered federal or can someone be charged with the equivalent of State-level crimes?"

Yeah, my understanding is that the exception in the pardon power for cases of impeachments just means that a pardon does not prevent someone from being impeached and removed based on committing the relevant crime. But that the pardon would still prevent you from being criminally charged for what you were impeached on.

[Smoove_B]

https://twitter.com/navybook/status/1347908922292768771

Fascinatingly, the Defense Department is referring to Wednesday’s pro-Trump riot as “the January 6, 2021 1st Amendment Protests.” To be precise, and as others have pointed out, this is a memo issued by the office of the acting Defense Secretary, the fifth person appointed by President Trump to lead the Department of Defense.

[Max Peck]

Gaslighting to the bitter end.

[malchior]

Gaslighting to the bitter end.

It's well beyond gaslighting. The insurrection is inside the DOD. Danger levels remain extremely high.

[LawBeefaroni]

I'm still trying to get my head around cop behavior on Jan 6.

On the one hand, there's footage of cops opening the gate and waving protesters in, but there are also fights at the barricades, and then there's this:

(Pretty disturbing video)

https://twitter.com/joshscampbell/statu ... 11714?s=20

That is unbelievable. Not that they'd do that but they the cop was just left there in that door by fellow officers. There should have been batons and shields hammering down on the front lines of rioters. If not gas and rubber bullets. Fuck, 9mm JHP if necessary to get him out of there.

[Max Peck]

I'm still trying to get my head around cop behavior on Jan 6.

On the one hand, there's footage of cops opening the gate and waving protesters in, but there are also fights at the barricades, and then there's this:

(Pretty disturbing video)

https://twitter.com/joshscampbell/statu ... 11714?s=20

And yet, I can't help but feel that if those were not right-wing, white, pro-Trump protesters the police would have used a lot more force to hold that entrance. Under the specific circumstances we see in that video, the use of deadly force would have been justified (based on my decades-old military crowd-control training, not any pretense of knowledge about US police rules of engagement).

[msteelers]

The Atlantic

Donald Trump still has 11 days in office.

Article II of the Constitution vests full executive power in the president, including the post of commander in chief of the armed forces. Since World War II, this has included the power to use nuclear arms—“the president’s weapons,” as nukes are called in the defense community—without contradiction or countermanding.

Read: The real Cuban missile crisis

No special exception limits the actions of lame-duck presidents. Trump will have the full panoply of his powers right up until noon on January 20. After the storming of the U.S. Capitol, even these final few days are too much of a risk to endure.

Trump is an unstable and desperate man who has incited violence against the government of the United States. He cannot be trusted with the keys to Armageddon, and so he must be removed by any legal and constitutional means available.

Since the insurrection on Wednesday, Trump has tried in his diffident and childlike way to calm the waters with a weak statement acknowledging Joe Biden’s win, an acceptance Trump apparently sees as a gracious willingness to compromise after his initial seditious insistence on fighting to the end. This change in tone, however, was merely Trump following his usual pattern, in which he says something horrifying, panics his staff—and his lawyers—and then is pushed out in front of the cameras to say he didn’t really mean any of it, while he winks and indicates that he meant every word of it.

And sure enough, just hours after his grudging act of contrition, Trump was back on Twitter with an all-caps exhortation to his followers to take him both seriously and literally. “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” he tapped out furiously, “will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

...

Congressional Republicans, for their part, are resisting calls to remove Trump, arguing instead that we should all just clench our teeth and tough it out. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, has called for impeachment if Trump does not resign. But she has also told her caucus that she has spoken with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to “discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike.”

This move is flatly unconstitutional. Pelosi has the right to ask questions as part of Congress's oversight, but she does not have the right to ask for options to circumvent the president's Article II powers. This is an unhealthy signal to the executive branch, and especially to the military, intelligence, and justice communities, to ignore the elected president and to function without an authority in power until Biden arrives.

This circumvention of the Constitution happened once before, albeit by a Cabinet officer rather than at the behest of a legislator. When Richard Nixon was in his final agony, rumored to be drinking heavily and having conversations with the portraits in the White House, Senator Alan Cranston phoned Defense Secretary James Schlesinger to warn about “the need for keeping a berserk president from plunging us into a holocaust.” Schlesinger told the U.S. military that any “unusual orders”—such as using nuclear weapons—should be verified by him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. What we didn’t know at the time was that the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, was in worse shape than Nixon. His health was failing, and he was addicted to sleeping pills. In October 1973, perhaps gambling that Nixon was too compromised to respond, Brezhnev threatened to send troops to the Arab-Israeli War then under way. Kissinger and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Thomas Moorer, decided to act. They issued a worldwide military alert—including elevating the ready status of U.S. nuclear forces—on the night of October 24.

The Soviets backed down. But it could have ended very differently.

We can’t keep hoping for the best or relying on those not in charge to keep Trump in line. Even one day more is too long for him to be in the White House. We escaped disaster over just a few days in 1962 and in the dark of an autumn night in 1973. Peace was kept, in part, by the presence of steady professionals such as Schlesinger and the Kennedy team, the likes of whom are nowhere to be found in Trump’s Washington.

We no longer have a margin for error. A second impeachment is the only reliable solution, and it should take place immediately.

There’s a terrifying episode of Hardcore History about the presidents sole power over the US nuclear arsenal. On one hand, having more hands on the button would require too long of a response in emergency situations. During the Cold War, it was estimated that the president would have mere minutes to decide on what to do once Russian missiles were in the air.

But on the other hand, the power to destroy the entire world lies completely with one individual! Which absolutely nobody should feel good about.

The episode came out several years ago, it’s called The Destroyer of Worlds if anybody wants to not be able to sleep at night.

[Smoove_B]

But on the other hand, the power to destroy the entire world lies completely with one individual! Which absolutely nobody should feel good about.

And yet, McConnell circulated a memo last night to Senate GOP members indicating they're going to slow-roll the impeachment

In the memo, obtained by The Washington Post, McConnell’s office notes that the Senate will not reconvene for substantive business until Jan. 19, which means the earliest possible date that impeachment trial proceedings can begin in the Senate is the day before President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated.

..

Absent a unanimous agreement before Jan. 19 to formally begin acting on any articles of impeachment, the McConnell memo outlines an expected scenario should the House impeach Trump in the coming days:

●On Jan. 19, the Senate would receive a message from the House that it has appointed impeachment managers, and that the Senate would be ready to receive it.

●On Jan. 19 or 20, the House impeachment managers would exhibit the articles.

●On Jan. 20 or 21, the Senate would proceed to consideration of the impeachment articles at 1 p.m., and officially begin the trial. McConnell’s memo noted that the “Senate trial would therefore begin after President Trump’s term has expired — either one hour after its expiration on January 20, or twenty-five hours after its expiration on January 21.”

It's all still theater to them. Theater and optics.

[Kurth]

It took an hour and a half for the DOD to grant (former) Capitol Police Chief Sund’s urgent request for emergency assistance?

And then they put out a memo referring to 1/6 as “First Amendment Activities”?

I had hoped that DOD was relatively insulated from Trumpaloos, but this definitely makes me second guess that.

Also, after reading the Atlantic piece linked by malchior above, I’m left wondering whether there’s some Constitutional provision that prohibits Congress from working on weekends.