WASHINGTON (AP) – Rebels who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, have managed – even temporarily – to delay Joe Biden’s election certification to the White House.
Hours before that, Congressman Jim Jordan was trying to do the same thing.
At around midnight on Jan. 5, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, a close ally and friend, offered Jordan a legal justification for what President Donald Trump was publicly demanding: Vice President Mike Pence plays a ceremonial role. The driver of the election tally was, for some reason, insisting on authority to reject voters of the states Biden won.
“Pence must declare any votes he considers unconstitutional because he is not a voter,” Jordan wrote.
“I insist on it,” Meadows replied. “I’m not sure that’s going to happen.”
Exchange of Texts, Filed in Court April 22 A Congressional commission investigating the Jan. 6 uprising is in a surprising body of evidence showing the deep involvement of some House Republicans in a desperate attempt to stay in power and Trump. A review of the evidence reveals new details about how, even before the Capitol Hill attack began, some lawmakers directly participated in Trump’s campaign to change the outcome of free and fair elections.
This is the feedback announced by committee members on Jan. 6 as they prepare for public hearings in June. Republicans who conspired with Trump and rebels to attack the Capitol in accordance with their goals, if not violent mafia tactics, created a convergence that almost changed the country’s peaceful relocation.
“A significant number of House members and some senators appear to play more of a contagious role,” Benny Thompson, a Democrat who chairs the Jan. 6 committee, told The Associated Press last week. .
Since the investigation began last summer, the Jan.6 panel has been slowly gaining new details about what lawmakers were saying and doing in the weeks before the uprising. Members asked three GOP lawmakers – Jordan from Ohio, Congressman Scott Perry from Pennsylvania, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy from California – to testify voluntarily. Everyone refused. Other parliamentarians may be summoned in the next few days.
The January 6 commission has so far refrained from making statements to parliamentarians. Because of fear of the consequences of such an unusual move. But the lack of cooperation from MPs did not prevent the panel from gaining new information on its actions.
The court’s most recent motion, filed in response to the Meadows lawsuit, includes excerpts from more than 930 interviews conducted on Jan. 6. It includes information on several high-level meetings attended by nearly a dozen Republicans if where Trump’s allies wandered into the streets to give him another deadline.
Ideas include: nominating fake ballot papers in seven volatile states, declaring martial law and hijacking voting machines.
In early December 2020, some lawmakers attended a meeting at the White House attorney’s office, where the president’s attorneys informed them that the plan to draft a list of alternative voters he would declare victory was not. “justified by law”. One lawmaker, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, resigned. So were GOP representatives Matt Gates of Florida and Louis Gomert of Texas, according to testimony from Cassid Hutchinson, Trump’s former special assistant to the White House.
Despite the lawyer’s warning, Trump’s allies moved on. December 14, 2020
They declared themselves legitimate voters and presented fake election certificates to the university, declaring Trump the real winner of the presidential election in their states.
The “alternate voters” certificates were sent to Congress, where they were ignored.
The majority of MPs denied their involvement in the effort.
Georgian Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green testified at a hearing in April that she doesn’t remember White House conversations or messages sent to Meadows about Trump’s state of war.
Gohmert told the AP that he also doesn’t remember him attending and he’s not sure he can help the committee’s investigation. Georgia spokeswoman Jody Hayes denied the allegations in a statement released Friday stating that “similar and baseless allegations about Georgia’s foreign policy have been made more than once. Hayes is now running. for the position of Secretary of State in charge of state elections in Georgia.
Arizona spokesman Andy Biggs has not denied his public efforts to fight the election results, but he called recent reports of his deep involvement a lie.
In a statement Saturday, Arizona spokesman Paul Gossar reiterated his “serious” concerns with the 2020 election. “Discussions on election counting law are relevant, necessary and reasonable,” he added.
The request for comment from other parliamentarians was not immediately returned.
Less than a week after the White House meeting in early December, another plan emerged. In a meeting with members of the House Freedom Group and Trump White House officials, the discussion escalated into important actions they thought Pence could take on Jan.6.
The participants almost and personally, according to the committee’s testimony, were Hayes, Biggs, Gossar, Rep.
“How’s the conversation?” The committee asked Hutchinson, who frequently attended meetings held in December 2020 and January 2021.
“They thought he had the right to forgive me if what I was saying wasn’t true, but – the votes were sent to the states or to voters in the states,” Hutchinson said, referring to Pence.
Asked if there were lawmakers who disagreed with the idea that the vice president had such authority, Hutchinson said there was no objection from the Republican MP.
At another meeting about Pence’s potential role, Trump’s attorneys Rudy Julian, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, Perry and Jordan, as well as Greene and Lauren Bobert, a Republican recently elected to the House of Representatives. Colorado.
Communication between parliamentarians and the White House did not stop as Jan. 6 approached. On the second day of Christmas, Perry sent an unintentional message to Meadows.
“11 days to 1/6 and 25 days before the inauguration”, the text reads. “We have to leave!” Perry urged Meadows to call Jeffrey Clark, the assistant attorney general, who supported Trump’s efforts to fight the election results. Perry admitted he introduced Clark to Trump.
Clark clashed with Justice Department officials over his plan, sent a letter questioning the election results in Georgia and other war-torn countries, and called on the state legislature to investigate. It all ended in a dramatic meeting at the White House in which Trump considered taking Clark as Attorney General, but it backfired after senior Justice Department officials announced they would step down.
Pressure from lawmakers and the White House on the Justice Department on Jan.6 is among some areas of the investigation. Congressman Jamie Ruskin, a Democrat member of the Maryland panel, indicated that more revelations await us.
“When mobs broke our windows, bloodied our police and stormed the Capitol, Trump and his colleagues planned to overthrow Biden’s majority in the constituency and overthrow our constitutional mandate,” Raskin wrote in Twitter last week.
When the results of the jury’s investigation were released, Raskin predicted, “America will see how a coup and chaos took place.”
Source: Huffpost
