Hey look! Trump is dancing the chicken dance with Mark!

 

And delaying the electoral college vote would have done what? The point was to seat new delegates, and that would have overturned the election.

They are investigating that scheme was we speak!

 

Let's get back on topic shall we.

Congressman Raskin reveals what the Jan. 6 committee plans to do in future hearings

John Stoehr
April 26, 2022



Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) (Screen cap).


US Rep. Jamie Raskin, who led the second trial of Donald Trump, gave a talk last week at Georgetown University. The host was Jim Wallis of Sojourners. The occasion was the Maryland congressman’s book, Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy.

The event made news late last week. Raskin, who sits on the House committee investigating the J6 insurrection, revealed details not yet known. For instance, that Vice President Mike Pence told Secret Service agents, as they fled insurgents storming the US Capitol: “I'm not getting in that car until we count the Electoral College votes.”

I watched the whole talk. What emerged is much more important than a few scattershot details. Raskin tells the story of the insurrection. He created a picture of that day using what he called “circles of sedition.”

The outermost ring was protesters.

The next ring was violent insurgents.

The inner ring – “the scariest ring” – was Mike Pence.

The plan was for Pence to reject the electoral count, sending the election to the House, where the GOP had a majority of state delegates needed to win a “contingent election,” per the 12th Amendment.

Then plan, moreover, called for domestic terrorists like the Proud Boys to clash with “Antifa,” thus giving the impression of left and right going to war over the election, thus justifying Trump in declaring martial law.

Two problems, though.

Pence didn’t play along.

Antifa didn’t show up.

The following is a heavily edited transcript of the part of Raskin’s remarks about what the J6 committee is planning to do in future hearings. I trimmed and condensed it for clarity, length and impact:

The hearings will tell a story that will blow the roof off the House – story of the most heinous and dastardly offense ever organized by a president and his entourage in the history of the United States.

No president has ever come close to doing what happened here in terms of trying to organize an inside coup to overthrow an election and bypass the constitutional order. [No president has] who used a violent insurrection made up of domestic violent extremist groups, white nationalists, racist, fascist groups, in order to support the coup.

Think of what happened on that day in three circles of sedition.

There was a mass protest, called for 'wild purposes,' as the president put it, of tens of thousands of people that turned into a mob riot.

That was the outside ring.

The middle ring was the ring of the insurrection:

Domestic violent extremist groups, like the Proud Boys, who Donald Trump had told to “stand back and stand by” in the first presidential debate; the Oathkeepers, the Three Percenters, who have been charged with seditious conspiracy, which means conspiracy to overthrow the government; the QAnon networks, militia groups, Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations and white Christian nationalist groups.

The scariest ring was the [third] ring of the coup.

The insurrectionists were in charge of attacking officers, smashing our windows, breaking down our doors, interrupting the peaceful transfer of power and shutting down the counting of Electoral College votes.

But the [third] ring of the coup (and I know it's a strange word to use in American political parlance, because we don't have a lot of experience with coups in American history. This was not a coup directed at the president. It was a coup directed by the president against the vice president and against the Congress.

Donald Trump simply did not accept the results of the election. He was preparing his followers not to accept the results. He was going around the country saying the only way I can lose is if the election is stolen.

We know this was false. More than 60 federal and state judges across the land, including eight judges nominated by Donald Trump, rejected every allegation of electoral fraud and corruption advanced by them.

But they proceeded to try five or six different strategies to overthrow Joe Biden's majority in the electoral college.)

Finally, [the third ring of the coup] came down to January 6.

The idea was getting Pence to assert unilateral, extra-constitutional, unlawful powers to reject and repudiate Electoral College votes being sent in by the states, specifically, Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania.

Why?

They would lower Biden's total Electoral College votes] from 306 to below 270 … in order to activate the 12th Amendment, which says if nobody has a majority in the Electoral College, the contest shifts immediately to the House of Representatives for a so-called contingent election, where the House decides who will be president.

They understood under the 12th Amendment that it’s not voting one member, one vote. It’s one state, one vote. There were 27 state delegations for the GOP. There are 22 for the Democrats.

Even had they suffered the defection of [Liz Cheney], they would have had 26 votes in the bag to get the majority to seize the presidency.

[Because there would have been mass protests had the states decided who won], Trump likely would have invoked the Insurrection Act, as Trump's disgraced former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was urging him to do. Donald Trump would have declared martial law.

There would have been mass protests, but also the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers were running around saying, “Antifa, where are you?”

They clearly were looking for somebody to fight to create visual images of this being some kind of showdown between left and right.

It would have been Donald Trump's opportunity to come in and be the hero. It would have been his Reichstag moment: 'I'm going to save you from the insurrectionary chaos I unleashed against you.' …

That's what they were prepared to do. Donald Trump would return as the conquering hero, just ignoring the seven and a half million vote margin that Joe Biden had in his victory in the Electoral College.

[These three circles of sedition were linked] and we will be offering evidence to that fact. But they were coordinated most tightly by Trump and his inner circle, the inner entourage around him.

That’s the place we've had the most difficulty.

I mean, we've had more than 800 witnesses come forward to tell us what they saw, what they heard, what was going on with them.

These are witnesses on all sides.

These are officers and these are rioters. These are extremist insurrectionists. These are White House employees.

But the closer you get to Trump, the more they refuse to testify – and why isn't that enough alone to create a scandal in the country?

We have a guy like Mark Meadows who was the chief of staff to the president of the United States who now refuses to testify.

We also have a guy like Steve Bannon, who wasn't even an employee of the White House, but he's trying to assert executive privilege.

We've got a class of people who think they're above and beyond the rule of law. It's a really dangerous thing for a democracy to have a class of people that feels so entitled by their power, their wealth and their connections that they can just defy the rule of law like this.

The way to understand the [center ring] was to get Pence to play along. … I heard them chanting: 'Hang Mike Pence, hang Mike Pence.'

They meant it.

They had set up a scaffold and noose outside.

When his Secret Service agents were chased out by these neo-fascists, they ran down to some still undisclosed mysterious place in the Capitol. He uttered what I think are the six most chilling words:

'I'm not getting in that car.'

Pence’s Secret Service agents, presumably reporting to Trump's agents, were trying to spirit him off of the campus. And he said:

'I'm not getting in that car until we count the Electoral College votes.'

He knew exactly what this inside coup was going to do.

[The J6 committee has evidence that these three rings of sedition] were intertwined. They were most intertwined in the mind of Donald Trump, who was pulling the strings of essentially all of them.

He was playing to his crowds and turning them into a mob with the social media and with his speeches, where he said, 'You know, when there's cheating involved, all the rules are off. You can play by very different rules, and you got to fight and you got to fight like hell or you're not going to a country anymore,' and so on.

(We had robust bipartisan, bicameral majorities find [during Trump’s second impeachment trial in the Senate], as a matter of legislative fact, that he had engaged in incitement to violent insurrection.

He beat the constitutional odds for a conviction. But that was the most sweeping bipartisan vote in a presidential impeachment in history.

There have only been four. Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, Trump 1 and Trump 2. It was a 57 to 43 vote, yet he feels somehow vindicated that only 57 of 100 senators found he was the first president in the history of the United States to try to overthrow his own government).

The insurrection was used as a way to delay and prolong the proceedings, along with the [court] challenges to particular state Electoral College votes, to intensify the pressure on Mike Pence.

They thought that at a certain point he would break.

Once he broke … they could swing it through the 12th Amendment. …

At that point, it's anybody's guess what could have happened.

Martial law, civil war.

The beginning of authoritarianism.

https://www.rawstory.com/raskin-jan-6-committee-plans/

 

Lindsey Graham complained to a Capitol Police officer that they 'let people breach the Capitol' while they tried to outline an evacuation plan on January 6, book says

Bryan Metzger
Fri, April 29, 2022, 12:00 PM



Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina speaks at a press conference at the Capitol the day after the January 6 attacks.Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images

• 
  As senators hid from rioters on January 6, Graham interrupted a Capitol officer who was giving evacuation directions.
  
  
• "You're here to protect us," he reportedly told the officer. "You let people breach the Capitol."
  
  
• "Shut up, Lindsey!" replied Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio.
  

As senators gathered in a secure location amid the riot at the Capitol on January 6, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was apoplectic, even complaining to a Capitol Police officer that the security force "let people breach the Capitol."

That's according to reporting included in "This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future," a forthcoming book from the New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns.

After their evacuation from the Senate chamber, senators had been taken to the secure location of SH-216, the Senate Judiciary Committee room in the Hart Senate Office Building. A Capitol police captain reportedly announced to the group that they were hoping to evacuating them onto busses behind the building.

"Right now, the Capitol is breached," the captain said. "We need you to be patient and then we'll move you in orderly fashion."

Another office then began to speak, telling the senators that the plan "is to come here in SH-216, hold until we determine what the next step is going to be—"

But then, Graham interrupted the officers.

"The next step is to get 'em out!" said Graham. "Whatever force you need to do. You're here to protect us. This is the center of democracy. You let people breach the Capitol."

The outburst reportedly drew the ire of fellow senators.

"Shut up, Lindsey!" Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio reportedly yelled, as another person yelled to Graham that "there are no cameras — come on!"

Graham's office did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. It has previously been reported that the South Carolina Republican wanted officers to use guns on the rioters.

"What are you doing? Take back the Senate! You've got guns. Use them," he reportedly told the Senate sergeant-at-arms.

Graham, a one-time foe of former President Donald Trump, grew into becoming one of the president's closest allies and Senate confidantes, even after the riot.

But that didn't stop him from airing his frustrations with Trump that day.

"Trump and I, we've had a hell of a journey. I hate it to end this way, oh my god, I hate it," Graham said on the floor after the Senate reconvened following the attack. "From my point of view, he's been a consequential president... all I can say is count me out. Enough is enough. I've tried to be helpful."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/lindsey-graham-complained-capitol-police-180000263.html

 

'Nuff said about this committee...

Confirmed: Liz Cheney’s J6 Committee Is Now Holding Onto Evidence that FBI Was Running Operatives During the Jan. 6 Protests — WILL THEY LIE ABOUT THIS TOO?
By Jim Hoft
Published April 29, 2022



Veteran and former Green Beret Jeremy Brown (right) and the FBI agents who came to his home to recruit him as an operative on January 6. (left)

On Thursday afternoon, September 30th, at 3:45 PM Eastern the FBI raided Jeremy Brown’s home and arrested Jeremy. The charge is trespassing. The FBI sent 20 vehicles for his arrest. DHS and Pinellas County law enforcement were also present. The FBI was in Jeremy’s home for 5-and-a-half hours looking for evidence. The FBI searched his house, RV, and trailer. Then they arrested Jeremy and took him away. Jeremy’s family contacted The Gateway Pundit the next morning.

Jeremy Brown is a Green Beret and former Republican candidate for Congress in Florida’s 14th Congressional District. Brown served in the United States Army from 1992 to 2012 and reached the rank of Special Forces Master Sergeant.

Jeremy Brown NEVER entered the US Capitol on January 6. His actual crime was refusing to be an FBI informant as we describe below. Not only did Jeremy refuse to work as an FBI informant on January 6th, he went public with photos and audio of the conversations he had with the agents.

The FBI called Jeremy’s cellphone and asked for a meeting after trying to contact him at his house. Jeremy then met with the FBI agents at a restaurant in Ybor City in December. He told Brandon Gray that 38 seconds into the interview the FBI attempted to recruit him to spy on the Oath Keepers. As we reported months ago, Jeremy Brown refused to be an informant for the dirty FBI — They wanted him to be one of their operatives at the Jan. 6 Trump rallies. Jeremy refused to be an FBI informant so they stormed his home and arrested him on bogus misdemeanor charges months after the Jan. 6 protests.

Jeremy Brown did nothing wrong. His only “crime” was refusing to work as an informant for the FBI.
Jeremy has been confined on a misdemeanor charge for seven months now in a Florida jail. Recently, Liz Cheney’s January 6 Committee subpoenaed Jeremy Brown’s phone records. The Gateway Pundit has a copy of the January 6 Committee subpoena to Jeremy Brown.


The subpoena asks for Jeremy’s phone records from November 1, 2020 through January 31, 2021.



According to Brown’s family member, the documents were turned over to the committee by Verizon. That means Liz Cheney and her January 6 Committee are now holding on to evidence, including call records, of the FBI contacting US veteran Jeremy Brown to work as an operative on January 6 for the deep state.

So will they ever admit they are holding on to proof of the FBI’s role in the January 6 uprising?

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/20...i-running-operatives-jan-6-protests-will-lie/

 

Oath Keepers leader tried to contact Trump on Jan. 6

Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes attempted to contact former President Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, just hours after the group forced its way into the Capitol, pleading that he ask them to continue to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power.

The disclosure comes as a third member of the Oath Keepers struck a plea deal with the Department of Justice (DOJ), with William Todd Wilson of Newton Grove, N.C., pleading guilty to seditious conspiracy for his role in the riot alongside other members of the far-right militia group.

According to Wilson, Rhodes called an unidentified individual on speakerphone shortly after they left the Capitol asking to speak to Trump.

“Wilson heard Rhodes repeatedly implore the individual to tell President Trump to call upon groups like the Oath Keepers to forcibly oppose the transfer of power. This individual denied Rhodes’s request to speak directly with President Trump,” according to the court document.

“After the call ended, Rhodes stated to the group, ‘I just want to fight,'” the court document added.

The admission came in a statement of offense, which lays out the factual basis for a plea agreement.


The call indicates Rhodes was connected with those he at least believed would be able to relay such a message to Trump and that the former president might be willing to consider such extraordinary action.


It follows another recent court filing from DOJ showing members of the Oath Keepers were also in touch with the far-right Proud Boys.

The revelation also comes amid increasing criticism of the DOJ’s bottom-up approach to the investigation and doubts over whether such a method could lead to Trump.

The Jan. 6 committee has weighed whether its final report would include a criminal referral for charges, something the DOJ would then choose whether to act on.

But in a civil case, the committee has argued Trump broke the law in trying to block the certification of President Biden’s electoral victory, with a judge in the case largely agreeing, calling the effort “a coup in search of a legal theory.”

Wilson, who faces up to 20 years in prison for each of the two counts he pleaded guilty to, is the third Oath Keepers member to plead guilty to seditious conspiracy and obstruction charges in connection with the Capitol attack.



He was among those who pushed into the Capitol rotunda, allowing more people to enter the building.

Wilson had arrived in Washington, D.C., the day prior to the attack armed with a variety of weapons, including an AR-15-style rifle, a 9 mm pistol, up to 200 rounds of ammunition, pepper spray, a pocketknife and a large walking stick intended to be used as a weapon, the DOJ said.

Wilson tried to conceal incriminating evidence from being stored on his Apple iCloud account the next day, according to the DOJ, and later threw his cellphone into the Atlantic Ocean in what the department said was an effort to prevent authorities from finding evidence in his case.



https://thehill.com/policy/national...epers-leader-tried-to-contact-trump-on-jan-6/

 

So wait.
This whack job calls Trump.
Trump refused to talk with him.
Trump did not do what the whack job wanted.
Still Trump's fault.

That about cover it?

 

...blah...blah...blah...

 

Jan. 6 Committee Drops Request for Select Trove of Documents From Trump Lawyer

Lawyers for the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot said on Friday they would be dropping efforts to have close to 14,000 pages of documents they originally sought from conservative lawyer John Eastman.

The House select panel’s legal team said in court filings that after receiving 15,616 pages of documents from Eastman and a consolidated log highlighting 20,110 pages identified as being covered by attorney-client privilege, the committee would be dropping their requests to have 13,929 pages of documents handed over.

The committee’s lawyers said that their request for a separate 3,236 pages would be placed on hold but added that the panel “stands on its objections to the remaining 721 documents, totaling approximately 2,945 pages.”

The House select committee’s lawyers asked for those 721 contested documents to be reviewed by the court, suggesting an expedited briefing schedule should Eastman raise an objection, noting that public hearings would start next month.

“Without knowing which documents remain at issue, [Eastman] is unable to offer a position on the continuing need for discovery, an appropriate briefing schedule, or whether further narrowing of the disputed privilege issues may be possible. [Eastman] will file a prompt status with the Court upon receipt of the Bates numbers and preliminary review of remaining documents,” lawyers for Eastman responded on Saturday in a court filing obtained by Politico.
https://resistthemainstream.org/jan...-select-trove-of-documents-from-trump-lawyer/

 

80 ‘Suspicious Actors’ and ‘Material
Witnesses’ Under Scrutiny by Jan. 6
Defense Attorneys
Epoch Times, by Joseph M. Hanneman

Original Article

Posted By: earlybird, 5/7/2022 9:43:00 AM

Defense attorneys are seeking to identify and investigate 80 suspicious actors and material witnesses, some of whom allegedly ran an entrapment operation against the Oath Keepers on January 6, 2021, and committed crimes including the removal of security fencing, breaching police lines, attacking officers, and inciting crowds to storm into the Capitol. In a motion (pdf) and supplement (pdf) filed after 11 p.m. on May 5 in federal court in Washington, attorney Brad Geyer listed 80 people, some of whom he said could be government agents or provocateurs. The people are seen on video operating in a coordinated fashion across the Capitol grounds on January 6, the attorney alleged.

 

Fake Georgia electors cooperating with prosecutors investigating Trump's 2020 coup plot: report

Matthew Chapman
May 10, 2022



Former US President Donald Trump, pictured in Florida on September 11, 2021, saw his bogus fraud claims debunked by courtrooms, state governments and Congress across the United States (AFP/CHANDAN KHANNA)


On Tuesday, CNN reported that multiple people who served as fake GOP "electors" as part of a slate alleging former President Donald Trump won the state of Georgia are cooperating with prosecutors investigating the former president's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

"Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' office appears to be trying to determine whether the pro-Trump electors in Georgia had any knowledge that their actions may have been a component of a broader and potentially illegal plot to pressure election officials and overturn Joe Biden's victory, a source told CNN," reported Zachary Cohen and Sara Murray.

"The pro-Trump electors who have met with prosecutors in Georgia, including the state's Republican Party Chairman David Shafer, were reassured that they are currently considered witnesses, rather than subjects or targets, in the investigation — a notable distinction that suggests the Atlanta-area district attorney does not view their actions as criminal at this time, two of the sources told CNN," said the report. "The interviews with pro-Trump electors in Georgia, which have not been previously reported, are the first indication that the Fulton County DA has already begun looking into the matter — adding to an array of other probes by DOJ, the House Select Committee investigating January 6 and other states where alternate slates were put forward."

Willis has been investigating Trump's actions around 2020, which include placing a call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger demanding he "find" 12,000 extra votes to declare him the winner of the state. Raffensperger reportedly perceived that call as a threat and feared reprisal from Trump supporters — but refused to throw the election.

RELATED: Trump ally barred from overseeing elections in Colorado: report

The fake electors were part of a scheme conceived of by far-right attorney John Eastman, where former Vice President Mike Pence would declare states with the "alternate" electors to be disputed and not count them, throwing the election to Trump. Legal experts have said this scheme was illegal, and Pence himself believed he lacked the authority.

The investigation is one of several that create legal liability for Trump, although the former president appears to be dodging a major bullet as the Manhattan DA's investigation of his businesses looks to be winding down without charges against him.


https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-fake-electors/

 

THIS IS NOT A GOOD LOOK, MR. GRAHAM
Lindsey Graham on the day of 1/6: "... he [Biden] will unify the nation after the protest on January 6."
Biden is incapable of uniting a kindergarten class, and Graham is such a phony, self-serving ass that he makes RINOs and Democrats look good by comparison.
Graham has zero loyalty to anyone but himself and his only goal 24/7 is self-aggrandizement.
It'll be muy interesting to see how Graham spins this audio recording now that it's been released.
Graham badly needs to be defeated the next time he runs.

Unify Around Biden After Jan. 6, Saying He’s ‘Maybe the Best Person to Have, Right?’
By Cassandra Fairbanks
Published May 11, 2022



Newly-released audio shows Sen. Lindsey Graham telling a New York Times reporter that Joe Biden is “maybe the best person to have” and that he will unify the nation after the protest on January 6.

New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns gave the audio to CNN to promote their new book, This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future. The call reportedly took place as Capitol police were still trying to clear out the building.

“We will actually come out of this thing stronger. Moments like this reset. It’ll take a while. People will calm down. People will [say] ‘I don’t want to be associated with that.’ This is a group within a group. What this does, it’ll be a rallying effect for a while, where the country says, ‘We’re better than this,'” Graham told Martin.

Martin responded, asking, “and Biden will be better, right?”

“Totally, he’ll be maybe the best person to have, right? I mean, how mad can you get at Joe Biden?” Graham replied.

In a second recording, Graham criticized Trump saying, “He plays the TV game and he went too far here,” Graham said. “That rally didn’t help, talking about primarying Liz (Cheney.) He created a sense of revenge.”

The book claims that Graham threatened to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office during the protest.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/20...d-biden-jan-6-saying-maybe-best-person-right/

 

Trump lawyer John Eastman has set a 'strategic booby trap' to steal 2024 election: Jamie Raskin

Travis Gettys
May 11, 2022



Donald Trump appears during a rally Oct. 10, 2016, at Mohegan Sun Arena in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. (Matt Smith Photographer / Shutterstock.com)


Newly revealed emails indicate that former Trump lawyer John Eastman has already laid out a scheme for stealing the 2024 election, according to a political columnist, and the former president's loyalists are already jockeying for position to help carry it out.

The House select committee has obtained new emails that show Eastman pressing Pennsylvania GOP legislators to cast doubt over their state's vote totals and then certify a slate of Trump electors, and the Washington Post reported that the communications reveal the plot to steal the last election was even more nefarious than previously understood.

"This is extraordinary stuff," wrote Post columnist Greg Sargent. "Eastman advised that a state legislature should concoct a fig leaf justification for declaring the correct Biden electors certified by the governor invalid and certifying Trump electors instead."

It's been known that Eastman cooked up a scheme for Vice President Mike Pence to subvert the Electoral Count Act, but the new emails show him concocting a pretext for GOP-led state legislatures to invalidate Joe Biden's election win based on a complex -- but legally bogus -- formula to invalidate mail-in ballots.

READ MORE: Russia is 'losing and they know it' after Ukraine's 'stunning counterattack': Retired general

“Eastman’s view is that the legislature has absolute power in terms of picking presidential electors,” elections expert Richard L. Hasen told the Post.

That would give political bad actors "a path to steal an election" by “ignoring the will of the voters” or their own prior rules for picking electors, Hasen said, and Trump loyalists are already running for positions of authority over state elections, and that could put them in place to enact Eastman's scheme.

“This shows the country one more strategic booby trap that was improvised by Trump’s team that can sit there for use by bad-faith actors in future elections,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a member of the select committee.

NOW WATCH: Biden addresses inflation as enraged Mark Meadows admits his plan will 'help the American people'

https://www.rawstory.com/john-eastman-2657302716/

 

Legal expert: Eastman’s push to throw out Pennsylvania votes was conspiracy to defraud the US

Bob Brigham
May 11, 2022



White House photo


The efforts by Trump lawyer John Eastman to attempt to overturn the 2020 election in Pennsylvania, a former federal prosecutor explained on Wednesday.

"Even by the standards of other ideas promoted by the conservative lawyer John Eastman to keep President Donald J. Trump in the White House after his election loss in 2020, a newly revealed strategy he proposed to take votes from Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Pennsylvania stands out as especially brazen," The New York Times reported Wednesday. "Mr. Eastman pressed a Pennsylvania state lawmaker in December 2020 to carry out a plan to strip Mr. Biden of his win in that state by applying a mathematical equation to accepting the validity of mail ballots, which were most heavily used by Democrats during the pandemic, according to emails from Mr. Eastman released under a public records request by the University of Colorado Boulder, which employed him at the time."

The emails were sent to Republican state Rep. Russell Diamond.

"The emails were the latest evidence of just how far Mr. Trump and his allies were willing to go in the weeks after Election Day to keep him in power — complete with anti-democratic plans to install fake pro-Trump electors and reject the votes of Biden supporters. Mr. Eastman would go on to champion the idea that Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally block congressional certification of Mr. Biden’s Electoral College victory, an idea Mr. Pence rejected even as Mr. Trump was promoting the protests that turned into the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol," the newspaper reported.

On "MSNBC Prime," anchor Ali Velshi asked former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade about the new Eastman emails.

"Ali, I think this is just more evidence that is taking what was once a fuzzy picture and bringing it into focus," McQuade said. "What was this plot? I think we are now seeing what it was, it was an effort to reach out to some of these swing states -- if you can knock off a couple of them, you can change the outcome of the election and flip the outcome."

"One thing that is challenging to prove in any public corruption case, isn't so much the what happened part of it, that part can be relatively easy. It is the intent, was there criminal intent to commit a crime here? And I think one of these text messages is so powerful on this, the idea of needing cover, using it as cover. That, to me, is a really important piece of evidence to show that they knew what they were doing was fraudulent -- and that's the key to a case like this."

She also explained how this could be prosecuted.

"This is, again, as that fuzzy picture is coming into focus -- it seems to me the low most logical charge here is a charge called 'conspiracy to defraud the United States.' It makes it a crime for two or more people to agree to try to interfere with the proper functioning of any agency of the government," she explained. "And so, if it is interfering with the election, we have a number of different people, working on different fronts, to try to knock off a state here and a state there. And with the swing states, if you can flip just a couple of them, to go from the Biden column to the Trump column, that could be the difference on Election Day."

Watch the segment below or at this link:

https://www.rawstory.com/john-eastman-2657305817/