HINDSIGHT - WRITE SOMETHING WORTH READING ABOUT OR DO SOMETHING WORTH WRITING ABOUT
NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN BY HOWARD TULLMAN,
Companies such as AAA are being overtaken by technology. But they still have huge customer bases. The challenge: offer customers a new, differentiated product before that connection fades.
BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS@TULLMAN
The only survival path in the new digital age for many older
firms with huge customer bases such as cable television, local newspapers, and
the home alarm companies like ADT is for them to continually add new features
and functionality to their basic bundle of services. They need to do this
immediately, before millions of their customers -- who are accustomed to paying
fees that automatically renew monthly or annually-- figure out that they're
paying too much for what little value and utility they're actually getting from
their provider given the existence of so many largely "free"
alternatives.
These companies have a huge advantage in that they already
communicate with their customers on a regular basis through reports, billings,
newsletters, and email blasts so they have effectively zero incremental costs
of customer acquisition in terms of promoting new offerings. But, of course, these
kinds of tactical upgrades don't happen by themselves. And simply adding
"me-too" products that don't make a demonstrable difference to
customers doesn't help anyone's cause.
For many traditional product and service providers, the risks of
rejection are rapidly rising, because the mobile and digital world has moved
beyond the historical offerings of these companies and either improved upon or
entirely obviated any need for their products. In many cases, the mistakes
these companies made in failing to recognize, adapt, and move promptly to keep
up with the changing times are unrecoverable. Too many have simply been greedy
for too long - unwilling to impair today's cash flows to prepare for tomorrow. Kodak
"moments" are no longer captured on film, long distance charges are
history, bank checks and credit card scanners are quickly being
phased out, and it's far easier to catch Covid these days than a cab
at the corner. It's brutal to realize that you're a buggy whip.
Cutting the cord won't simply be a cable TV phenomenon for much
longer, even if cable is the all-time leading grudge buy and the current league
leader in getting dumped. Streaming packages like Netflix aren't too far behind. Nobody needs four
different streaming services. These days every consumer is looking to save
money, eliminate old and useless bundles, and free themselves from
"ghost" subscriptions. There's even an app called Truebill that
helps people tap and toss these unused and un-useful artifacts.
Interestingly enough, the likelihood that buyers in any given
market will wake up one day and drop a certain product or service is highly
variable and depends on a number of key factors. The key determinants include:
(a) how often purchases are made, (b) how frequently the consumer otherwise
interacts with the service, (c) how significant (emotionally or dollar-wise) the
amount of the purchase is, (d) how different or costly the service is compared
with other available offerings, and (e) how easy it is to switch. This is why
the cable providers were fat and happy for so many years since it was harder -
especially given exclusionary territorial protections - to dump your cable
service than to divorce your spouse. Life insurance is another one of these
areas where the insurers' basic philosophy is - no pun intended - to let
sleeping dogs lie until they die.
For other players, there are still opportunities to react and
respond to the oncoming changes in their particular marketplaces if they're
mentally prepared to take the necessary steps and make the required changes.
But the moves they make can't simply be more of the same. Sadly, our view of the future is too often limited in
perspective and limited as well in considered alternatives by our existing
reference points. Adding commoditized offerings readily available elsewhere to
increase weight and volume is really nothing more than an effort to build
bigger, boring bundles, which won't excite anyone. Even a big box of the
best candles is no match for a light bulb.
If the proffered responses are tepid and tentative, there's very
little chance of serious adoption by current customers and few realistic
prospects for material success. It makes sense to constantly be looking
for adjacencies and opportunities to land and expand and
to add new revenue streams to your base, but these enhancements and extensions
are likely to be only modest movers of the needle.
The example I most often use is the American Automobile
Association (AAA), which has around 57 million members nationwide. When I was
growing up, AAA provided two primary benefits. The first offering was TripTik,
which was basically a loosely bound set of sequential road maps that would show
you how to drive from Point A to Point B. It also served up information about
all the interstate attractions you might enjoy along the way as you and your
family shuttled from one set of Golden Arches to the next. The second service
was Roadside Assistance, which offered towing, flat tire changes and battery
boosts.
Both services made sense and provided real value at a reasonable
annual cost to millions of AAA "members" until the arrival of free
turn-by-turn navigation on every cellphone. Auto manufacturers then included
in-car guidance and emergency notification features as standard equipment.
Similarly, every upscale manufacturer has incorporated towing and other
roadside services in their basic support packages for owners along with the assurance
that they would be dealing with experienced support personnel from local
dealerships rather than some random tow truck guy.
Unfortunately, AAA's response has been mainly more of the same.
Offering home and renters insurance has basically been a bust with less than 1%
of their members signing up. Car loans, credit cards and mortgage
services haven't done much better and random travel services and purchase
discounts didn't make a dent. There were simply no compelling reasons
sufficient to overcome the consumers' eventual indifference. And, of course,
there was nothing new to see or offer. To move the needle in cases like this,
you've got to jump ahead and leapfrog the mass of commoditized competitors.
Porsche did it right by forming a partnership with Mile
Auto to offer pay-by-the-mile Porsche-branded auto insurance to
its high-end owners, whose annual mileage was always a tiny fraction of the national averages. This
was a clear benefit, a carefully differentiated offering, and a real savings
and service to its owners.
AAA needs to find similar prospective, rather than reactive,
solutions. A perfect example of a next generation offering that would be ideal
for them is a startup called SparkCharge which
provides EV charging anytime, anywhere. This enables customers to charge their
electric vehicles on demand and without the grief and hassles of finding the
"right" charging station, hoping that it's not occupied, and waiting
for the charge to be completed. They can be in a meeting, at a
restaurant, watching a movie or a ballgame and know that their vehicle is being
serviced at the same time.
It's a perfect fit for AAA's customers now and even more so in
the future and a great marketing channel for SparkCharge to reach millions of
precisely targeted prospects at little or no cost. There's nothing better or
smarter for a new business to do than to ride someone else's already-built rails.
The bottom line is that sticking more of the
same old stuff into your offerings might make your marketing people feel like
they're keeping busy and earning their keep, but it's not an effective
strategy. It's like talking back to the TV. It may make you feel better,
but it doesn't make a difference. If you've got nothing new, you've got nothing
going for you.
Sunday, June 26, 2022
3 Important Articles
Distinguished persons of the week: They did their jobs
Columnist|
June 26, 2022 at 7:45 a.m. EDT
After five hearings, the House Jan. 6 select committee has surprised, delighted and impressed defenders of democracy. The members have been entirely professional and thoroughly dedicated to pursuit of the truth. They managed to present concise and exquisitely planned “episodes" to tell the story of an astounding conspiracy to overthrow American democracy.
Plainly, the members — especially Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and
Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), who essentially sacrificed their future in the party
(at least the current GOP) — and the staff have demonstrated that, given the
right mission and the right people, lawmakers in defense of democracy can
uphold their oaths, investigate wrongdoing and educate the American people. (It
sure helped not to have MAGA Republicans on the committee to interrupt, disrupt
and obstruct the investigation.)
However, without Republican witnesses to cooperate — from White
House attorney Eric Herschmann to Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers to former
vice president Mike Pence’s staff to the three Justice Department lawyers who
testified Thursday — a full portrait of the coup attempt would be impossible.
They cooperated, told the truth and thereby assisted in uncovering the greatest
betrayal by former president Donald Trump and his cronies in American history.
(This makes Watergate look like a Boy Scout jamboree.)
And yet the people who will stand out to me, who showed courage above and beyond what ordinary Americans should be expected to do, were Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. As they related in their testimony, for doing their election duties honorably and competently, they were threatened and said they were defamed. Their lives and the lives of Freeman’s mother (whose house was targeted) were endangered; their careers were destroyed and their lives turned upside down. They lost the sense of safety and security all Americans are entitled to enjoy in their homes and communities.
Contrast their conduct with that of former officials and current
lawmakers who can return to comfy lives and lucrative careers but shirk their
obligation to testify in public (e.g., Pence, former White House chief of staff
Mark Meadows, former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, Republican House
members). They have chosen to deny calls for help, presumably just to preserve
their future in the GOP.
Unlike those cowering figures, Freeman and Moss went in front of
cameras — again exposing themselves to the wrath of the mob — and testified
about the traumatic events surrounding the attempt to overthrow the 2020
election.
Much of the country has been debating since Trump arrived on the
scene (and frankly, before) the ongoing threats to democracy from right-wing nationalists,
the vulnerability of our institutions and the dysfunction of our government.
Trump utterly failed the country; his successor is stymied by a
radicalized opposition determined to see him fail. The Senate is gridlocked by
a minority party wielding the filibuster to, among other things, preserve voter
suppression and subversion laws. The Supreme Court has been overtaken by rank,
radical partisans whose decisions cannot be defended on the merits and whose
public utterances and tone lack any semblance of “judicial temperament.” We
seem stuck because structural advantages for the minority (the Senate, the
electoral college, the right-wing Supreme Court) make real reform impossible.
But Freeman and Moss remind us that ultimately democracy depends
on our fellow Americans’ civic virtue, a nearly extinct phrase. Our system
cannot function without citizens who take their obligations seriously,
demonstrate strength of character and are willing to make sacrifices for the
common good. Just as our military serves selflessly, we need civilians to step
up to the plate in defense of truth and democracy, decency and decorum. We need
more people like Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss in public life if we are to muddle
through a dangerous and disturbing period in our history.
For their decency, courage, honesty and patriotism, we can say
well done, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. And thank you.
The Supreme Court radicals’ new precedent: Maximum
chaos
By Dana Milbank
Columnist|
June 25, 2022 at 1:28 p.m. EDT
Nobody should be surprised that the Supreme Court’s conservative justices on Friday jettisoned nearly 50 years of precedent upon precedent in overturning Roe v. Wade. Heck, they didn’t even honor their own precedent articulated 24 hours earlier.
In their opinion Thursday morning forcing New York and other densely populated states to allow more handguns in public, the conservative majority, led by Justice Clarence Thomas, argued that medieval law imposing arms restrictions — specifically, the 1328 Statute of Northampton — “has little bearing on the Second Amendment” because it was “enacted … more than 450 years before the ratification of the Constitution.”
Yet in their ruling Friday morning in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, setting women’s rights back half a century (and cracking the door to banning same-sex marriage and contraception), the conservative justices, led by Samuel Alito (who was also in the guns majority) and joined by Thomas, argued precisely the opposite. They justified abortion bans by citing, among others, “Henry de Bracton’s 13th-century treatise.” That was written circa 1250 and referred to monsters, duels, burning at the stake — and to women as property, “inferior” to men.
The right-wing majority’s selective application of history reveals the larger fraud in this pair of landmark rulings: Their reasoning is not legal but political, not principled but partisan.
Still, there is a commonality to the rulings. Both decisions foment maximum chaos and were delivered with flagrant disregard for the instability and disorder they will cause.
Ruth Marcus: The radical conservative majority’s damage to the Supreme Court cannot be undone
The high court was meant to be the guarantor of law and order. But the conservative justices, intoxicated by their supermajority, have abandoned their solemn duty to promote stability in the law and are actively spreading real-world disruption.
Worse, this invitation to disorder comes as the nation is trying to restore the rule of law after a coup attempt led by a president who appointed three of the five justices in the abortion majority. The spouse of a fourth — Ginni Thomas, Clarence’s wife — aggressively pushed state legislators and the White House to overthrow the election. Yet Thomas, the senior associate justice, has refused to recuse himself from related cases.
After decades of crocodile tears over imagined “judicial activism,” the conservative supermajority has shed all judicial modesty and embraced radicalism. The liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Stephen G. Breyer, wrote in their Dobbs dissent that the majority’s brazen rejection of stare decisis, respect for precedent, “breaches a core rule-of-law principle, designed to promote constancy in the law.”
Opinion: The Supreme Court’s radical abortion ruling begins a dangerous new era
Even Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who joined the gun ruling, scolded fellow conservatives for blithely overturning the Roe v. Wade super-precedent. “Surely we should adhere closely to principles of judicial restraint here, where the broader path the court chooses entails repudiating a constitutional right we have not only previously recognized, but also expressly reaffirmed,” Roberts wrote. The majority’s “dramatic and consequential ruling is unnecessary,” he said, “a serious jolt to the legal system” that could have been avoided with a narrower decision that would have been “markedly less unsettling.”
Alito,
in his (characteristically) sneering opinion in the abortion case, dismissed
Roberts as unprincipled and public opinion as an “extraneous” concern. He
likewise dismissed the pain the ruling would cause, writing that “this Court is
ill-equipped to assess ‘generalized assertions about the national psyche.’ ” He
washed his hands of answering the “empirical question” of “the effect of the
abortion right … on the lives of women.”
The dissent said the majority’s refusal to address real-world consequences “reveals how little it knows or cares about women’s lives or about the suffering its decision will cause.” It is a “radical claim to power,” the dissent went on, to assert “the authority to overrule established legal principles without even acknowledging the costs of its decisions.”
The liberals described the bedlam to come, with suddenly unanswered legal questions about rape, incest, threats to a mother’s life, interstate travel for abortion, morning-after pills, IUDs, in vitro fertilization. “The majority’s refusal even to consider the life-altering consequences of reversing Roe and Casey is a stunning indictment,” they wrote.
Molly Roberts: My pregnancy was unlucky. My abortion wasn’t.
Thomas’s gun ruling was much the same, 63 pages of a cherry-picked history of gun laws, with no concern for the real-life effect of allowing millions of people to carry handguns, with virtually no restriction, in the streets of New York or Los Angeles. Breyer, writing for the same liberal justices in dissent, upbraided the conservative majority for unleashing more guns “without considering the state’s compelling interest in preventing gun violence and protecting the safety of its citizens, and without considering the potentially deadly consequences of its decision.”
Alito added a concurring opinion to express contempt for Breyer’s points about gun violence, saying “it is hard to see what legitimate purpose can possibly be served” by his mentions of mass shootings and growing firearm mayhem.
The
radicals have cast off any pretense of judicial restraint. Now the chaos
begins.
Did Trump believe his big lie? It’s irrelevant to
proving his guilt.
Regardless
of whether he thought the election was stolen, the place to look for ‘criminal
intent’ is in any illegal acts in the aftermath
Perspective by Ryan Goodman, Norman Eisen and Barbara McQuade
June 22, 2022 at 6:17 p.m. EDT
Former prosecutors and other experts essentially agree that proving criminal intent poses one of the biggest legal challenges to indicting former president Donald Trump for his role in the attacks on the 2020 election. “Mens rea,” Latin for “guilty mind,” is required to convict. This generally means that the offender must have acted purposely, knowingly, recklessly or negligently in committing the criminal act.
It’s tempting, in assessing Trump’s state of mind, to focus on whether he genuinely believed his assertion that the presidential election was “stolen” — that he had beaten Joe Biden and that therefore his subsequent efforts were merely means well within his power aimed at setting things right. If you can prove that he did know that he lost the election — that it was not “stolen” from him — you go a long way toward clearing that criminal-intent hurdle.
Certainly, the House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is amassing evidence that Trump knew he had lost.
Numerous Trump aides and lawyers have attested to this before the committee.
But so what. For a number of the possible crimes the committee has identified, it doesn’t matter what Trump believed about the election. Focusing on that aspect misses the true test of criminal intent.
He still had no legal right to use forged electoral certificates or to pressure election officials in Georgia to “find 11,780 votes” that did not exist, or to engage in other extralegal means to try to hold onto power. That includes pressuring the vice president to assume powers he didn’t have. State and federal criminal laws prohibit these things. Vigilante justice is against the law, even if you (wrongly) believe you are a victim.
Trump is going back to Georgia. Did he break the law there?
The most recent hearings of the Jan. 6 committee provide plenty of evidence to prove that Trump and a cadre of his closest associates conspired to engage in electoral vigilantism.
First, soliciting state officials to violate their oaths of office in administering elections is a clear state crime across the country, including in Georgia. And Trump did not merely solicit Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes.”
Raffensperger wrote in his book, “Integrity Counts,” that he considered Trump to have been making a “threat” to do him harm, and he expanded on that in his testimony before the committee Tuesday. Were Trump’s lawyers to say at trial, “Yes, but our client thought he had won the election,” they would be laughed out of court.
If Trump’s lawyers were to deny the solicitation and the threat, the jury could simply listen for themselves to the full audio recording of the infamous phone call that Trump made to Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021. It’s a smoking gun in the hands of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who has been investigating Trump’s efforts in Georgia, where a special grand jury was seated last month.
It is also immaterial what was in Trump’s head regarding the outcome of the election when he participated in the audacious scheme to falsify alternate slates of electors and get them to Congress to gum up the certification of the election. “President Trump and his campaign were directly involved in advancing and coordinating the plot to replace legitimate Biden electors with fake electors not chosen by the voters,” Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the select committee, said at Tuesday’s hearing. The evidence provided by witnesses at the hearing backed that up. Arizona House Speaker Russell “Rusty” Bowers (R) testified that Trump and his lawyers repeatedly asked him to remove legitimate electors for Biden and substitute an illegitimate Trump slate. That testimony was supported by additional video testimony from Trump allies including White House and campaign aides and Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee. At Thursday’s hearing, top Trump Justice Department officials testified about Trump’s efforts to promote Jeffrey Clark to attorney general after they refused to sign his draft letter to Georgia election officials advancing the alternate-electors scheme.
What this all describes is the equivalent of submitting a fake verdict form in a judicial proceeding. Whether one truly believed that their preferred candidate won the election, or that the official verdict was flawed, is simply no defense.
The Jan. 6 committee gift-wrapped Trump for Merrick Garland. Is it enough?
It is no wonder so many prominent lawyers associated with Trump refused to participate, as shown repeatedly in testimony Tuesday and Thursday. Even if the lawyers were confident that Trump thought he won and could prove his state of mind in court, it would surely not have cured their misgivings about the illicit methods. Nor should it. Trump’s state of mind in that regard is irrelevant.
The alternate-electors scheme is being looked at by both the Justice Department and the Atlanta district attorney. District attorneys in other jurisdictions where phony certificates were cooked up should also investigate those responsible — including the former president.
Bowers’s testimony showing that Trump and his lawyers John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani engaged in a sustained effort to pressure him to betray his oath of office by taking extralegal steps to overturn the election results would be useful in any Georgia or federal prosecution to show a clear pattern of conduct. So would the testimony of the three Justice Department attorneys who appeared Thursday.
What Trump may or may not have believed about the election outcome was also beside the point when he pressured Vice President Mike Pence to violate his legal duties in the certification of the electoral votes. A lead Justice Department prosecutor told a court that to prove criminal obstruction, Trump would simply have to have known that Pence had a legal duty to recognize the results. As experts have said, the latest evidence presented by the select committee to prove that case is beyond compelling.
Indeed, with its investigatory powers, the Justice Department could develop the evidence even further. That includes considering whether to immunize Eastman, who promoted the idea to Trump that Pence and the state legislatures had powers that they didn’t have. That way Eastman couldn’t invoke his Fifth Amendment right to refuse to testify. He would be compelled to divulge evidence that would probably further incriminate the former president.
What’s more, with those same facts, federal prosecutors may also have a relatively easy case to prove that Trump conspired by “intimidation or threat” to impede an official from “discharging any duties” — a specific charge against both the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys regarding their involvement in the Jan. 6 attack. Marc Short, Pence’s former chief of staff, testified that the pressure on Pence was “painful” and that, based on the president’s statements, he anticipated a threat to the vice president’s safety. In fact, he went so far as to alert the Secret Service on Jan. 5, 2021.
The
criminal investigation by the Fulton County district attorney has long been
underway and, with a smaller nucleus of facts, may be the first to reach the
stage of indictments. The Justice Department has reportedly launched a multistate
criminal investigation of the false-electors scheme and has issued grand jury
subpoenas that seek communications with any “agent of Donald J. Trump.” The
investigatory powers of both state and federal law enforcement agencies are
substantial, but prosecutors need not make these cases more difficult than they
are. If they focus on Trump’s efforts to engage in vigilante justice, the
intent element of these cases is easily satisfied.
Friday, June 24, 2022
No One Is Above the Law, and That Starts With Donald Trump
No One Is Above the Law, and That Starts With Donald
Trump
June 24, 2022
By Richard
L. Hasen
Mr.
Hasen is the author of several books about elections and democracy. In 2020, he
proposed a 28th Amendment to
the Constitution to defend and expand voting rights.
In a 2019 ruling requiring
the former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify at a congressional hearing
about former President Donald Trump’s alleged abuses of power, Judge Ketanji
Brown Jackson declared that “presidents are not kings.” If we take that
admonition from our next Supreme Court justice seriously and look at the
evidence amassed so far by the House select committee on the Jan. 6 attack, we
can — and in fact must — conclude that the prosecution of Mr. Trump is not only
permissible but required for the sake of American democracy.
This week’s hearings showed us that Mr. Trump
acted as if he thought he was a king, not a president subject to the same rules
as the rest of us. The hearings featured extraordinary testimony about the relentless pressure to subvert the 2020
election that the former president and his allies brought against at
least 31 state and local officials in states he lost, like
Michigan, Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania. He or his allies twisted the arm
of everyone from top personnel at the U.S. Department of Justice to lower-level election workers.
The evidence and the
testimony offered demonstrates why Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Justice
Department should convene a grand jury now, if it hasn’t already, to consider
indicting Mr. Trump for crimes related to his attempt to overturn the results
of the election, before he declares his candidacy for president in 2024,
perhaps as early as this summer.
Although a Trump
prosecution is far from certain to succeed, too much focus has been put on the
risks of prosecuting him and too little on the risks of not doing so. The
consequences of a failure to act for the future of democratic elections are
enormous.
There’s no denying that prosecuting Mr.
Trump is fraught with legal difficulties. To the extent that charges
like obstructing an official proceeding or conspiring to defraud the United
States turn on Mr. Trump’s state of mind — an issue on which there is significant debate —
it may be tough to get to the bottom of what he actually believed, given his
history of lying and doubling down when confronted with contrary facts. And Mr.
Trump could try to shift blame by claiming that he was relying on his lawyers —
including John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani — who amplified the phony claims of
fraud and who concocted faulty legal arguments to overturn the results of the
election. Mr. Trump could avoid conviction if there’s even one juror who
believes his repeated lies about the 2020 election.
And yes, there are political
difficulties too. The “Lock her up!” chants against Hillary Clinton
at 2016 Trump rallies for her use of a personal email server while she was
secretary of state were so pernicious because threatening to jail political
enemies can lead to a deterioration of democratic values. If each presidential
administration is investigating and prosecuting the last, respect for both the
electoral process and the legal process may be undermined.
That concern is real, but if there has
ever been a case extreme enough to warrant indicting a president, then this is
the case, and Mr. Trump is the person. This is not just because of what he will
do if he is elected again after not being indicted (and after not being
convicted following a pair of impeachments, one for the very conduct under
discussion), but also because of the message it sends for the future.
Leaving Mr. Trump
unprosecuted would be saying it was fine to call federal, state and local
officials, including many who have sworn constitutional oaths, and ask or even
demand of them that they do his personal and political bidding.
The testimony from
the hearings reveals a coordinated and extensive plot to overturn the will of
the people and install Mr. Trump as president despite Joe Biden winning the
election by 74 Electoral College votes (not
to mention a margin of about seven million in
the popular vote). There was political pressure, and sometimes threats
of violence, across the board. Mr. Trump and his cronies
hounded poll workers and election officials to admit to nonexistent fraud or to
recount votes and change vote totals.
Wandrea Moss, known as Shaye, a former
Georgia election worker, testified Tuesday about the harassment and violent
threats she faced after Trump allies accused her and her mother of election
fraud. As The Associated Press reported, one of Mr.
Trump’s lawyers, Mr. Giuliani, pointed to surveillance video of the two women
working on ballot counting and “said the footage showed the women
‘surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they are vials of heroin or cocaine.’”
The “USB ports” turned out to be ginger mints.
It is no wonder that election workers
and election officials are leaving their offices in fear of violence and
harassment.
Former top Department of Justice
officials in the Trump administration testified on Thursday about pressure from Mr.
Trump, in collusion with a lower-level department official named Jeffrey Clark,
to issue a letter falsely claiming evidence of significant fraud in the
elections. We heard in Thursday’s hearing that Mr. Trump, in a meeting that
echoed his earlier role as boss on the television show “The Apprentice,” almost
fired the attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, to replace him with Mr. Clark, who
had no experience in either criminal law or election law.
The confirmation by the Department of
Justice under Mr. Clark of this “fraud” would have served as a predicate for
state legislators, also pressured by Mr. Trump and his allies, to “decertify” Biden
electors and conjure up a new slate of electors supporting Mr. Trump.
The pressure did not stop there. An
earlier committee hearing recounted severe pressure from Mr. Trump on Vice President Mike Pence to manipulate the
rules for Congress to count electoral votes, a plan that depended on members of Congress supporting
spurious objections to the Electoral College votes in states that Mr. Biden
won.
Mr. Trump also whipped up the
Jan. 6 crowd for “wild” protests and encouraged it to join him in pressuring
Mr. Pence to violate his constitutional oath and manipulate the Electoral
College count.
In his testimony on Tuesday before the Jan. 6 committee,
the speaker of the Arizona House, Rusty Bowers, described the intense barrage
coming at him from calls from Mr. Trump and his allies, and from Trump
supporters who protested outside his house and threatened his neighbor with
violence. But Mr. Bowers compared the Trump crew to the book “The Gang That
Couldn’t Shoot Straight” because they failed to come forward with a plausible
plan to overturn the election results in Arizona or elsewhere.
Seeing the group as bumbling, though,
minimizes the danger of what Mr. Trump and his allies attempted and downplays
how deadly serious this was: As Representative Adam Schiff, a member of the
committee, noted, the country
“barely” survived Mr. Trump’s attempt at election subversion, which could have
worked despite the legal and factual weaknesses in the fraud claims.
What if people of less fortitude than
Mr. Bowers and others caved? Consider Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of
state in Georgia, who also testified on Tuesday about pressure from the Trump
team. He described a direct phone call from a man who was then the sitting
president prodding him to “find” 11,780 votes to
flip Georgia from Mr. Biden to Mr. Trump. What if, instead of rebuffing Mr.
Trump, Mr. Raffensperger declared that he felt there were enough questions
about the vote count in Democratic counties in Georgia to warrant the
legislature’s appointment of new electors, as Mr. Trump had urged?
If even one of these officials had
cooperated, the dikes could have broken, and claims in state after state could
have proliferated.
There’s no question that Mr. Trump
tried to steal the election. Richard Donoghue, a top official at the Department
of Justice serving during the postelection period, testified on Thursday that
he knocked down with extensive evidence every cockamamie theory of voter fraud
that Mr. Trump and his allies raised, but to no avail. He testified that there
were nothing but “isolated” instances of fraud, the same conclusion reached by
the former attorney general, Bill Barr.
Mr. Bowers testified that
when he demanded evidence from Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Giuliani said he had theories,
but no evidence. The president appears to have known it too. According to Mr. Donoghue’s handwritten
notes of his conversation with Mr. Trump, when confronted with
the lack of evidence of fraud, the former president said, “Just say the
election was corrupt” and “leave the rest to me” and the Republican
congressmen. The president even talked about having
the federal government seize voting machines, perhaps in an attempt to rerun
the election.
The longer Mr.
Garland waits to bring charges against Mr. Trump, the harder it will be,
especially if Mr. Trump has already declared for president and can say that the
prosecution is politically motivated to help Democrats win in 2024. The fact
that federal investigators conducted a search for evidence at the home of Mr.
Clark shows that the department is working its way ever closer to the former
president.
What Mr. Trump did in
its totality and in many individual instances was criminal. If Mr. Garland
fails to act, it will only embolden Mr. Trump or someone like him to try again
if he loses, this time aided by a brainwashed and cowed army of elected and
election officials who stand ready to steal the election next time.
Mr. Trump was the
45th president, not the first American king, but if we don’t deter conduct like
this, the next head of state may come closer to claiming the kind of absolute
power that is antithetical to everything the United States stands for.
Thursday, June 23, 2022
Sykes - Trump Did This
Trump Did This
The lies, pressure, bullying, and threats.
Jun
22
The toplines:
· We were reminded of the surpassing importance
of honor and decency; and that sometimes just doing your job is heroic.
The
Republican Accountability Project @AccountableGOP
· There are smoking guns all around. Even before the Insurrection, there are
tapes (actual f**king tapes!) of Trump’s role in a massive
conspiracy to overthrow the election.
· As Georgia Secy of State Brad Raffensperger’s
testimony reminded us, Trump’s falsehoods about the election were not merely lies, but
easily and repeatedly refuted lies.
· Trump did this. All of it: the pressure, the bullying, the
threats, and yesterday we got a glimpse of the human toll. This deeply
malevolent and reckless man brought the full weight of the American presidency
to bear on low-level officials to violate their oaths, and to smear innocent
private citizens who were trying to do their duty.
· Trump was directly involved in the fraudulent
elector plot. Via the Wapo:
At one point in Tuesday’s hearing, the
committee shared evidence that Trump was pretty directly involved in the fake-elector plan. Republican National
Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said Trump, on a conference call,
introduced his lawyer John Eastman to talk about having the fake electors in
place as a contingency.
Sarah
Longwell: The Human Cost
Yesterday’s hearings were a stark and
infuriating reminder that Donald Trump’s lies have had a meaningful human
cost—and not just on those who were at the capitol when it was attacked by his
supporters.
Grandmothers, widows, election workers and
their families, have been abused and harassed because of conspiracy theories
perpetrated in service of Trump’s election lies. In a particularly enraging
moment, election worker Shaye Moss talked about Rudy Giuliani’s insane claim that
she and her mother were changing votes and exchanging USB drives. And explained
that the video feverishly circulating in right-wing circles as evidence of
vote-tampering was actually footage of her mother passing her a “ginger
mint.”
Obviously Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Jenna
Ellis, and the rest of the Kracken lunatics are incapable of shame. As are some
of the 147 Republicans who refused to certify the 2020 election. But I’ve got
to believe that there are many Republicans who—despite claiming they’re not
paying attention to the hearings—are watching the testimony of people like
Moss, Brad Raffensperger, and Rusty Bowers with a gnawing sense of dread.
Aware, perhaps with renewed clarity, that by carrying water for Trump’s lies,
they had a meaningful hand in unleashing devastation on many people’s lives.
Including Rusty Bowers daughter, who, we learned yesterday, was dying of a
terminal illness while her family was attacked because Bowers refused to betray
his oath.
I hope those realizations keep them up at
night.
Mona
Charen: Glimmers of Hope
The June 21 hearing was both a gut punch and a
bit of a silver lining. One feels a profound sense of shame on behalf of this
country for what the Raffenspergers, Bowers, Sterlings, and especially Shaye
Moss and Ruby Freeman were put through.
Did you notice the detail that Raffensperger’s
widowed daughter–in-law suffered a home invasion by the barbarians Trump
inspired? Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss were forced from their homes and had
their lives threatened and upended by the malicious lies Trump and his allies
told. The racist filth directed their way reflects the moral regress of the
Trump era.
Where is the silver lining? Every single
person on that panel, and many, many more did the right thing because they have
their heads screwed on straight and because they have working moral compasses.
Rusty Bowers, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, grew
emotional about his oath and his duty. It’s clear that even if he voted for
Trump (a mistake, in my judgment) at least he has his priorities right. He
worships God, not Trump.
Can’t say that for about a third of this
country.
Tim
Miller: We Need More Shayes
There have been a lot of powerful moments during
these hearings but the only person who has brought me to tears in my living
room is Shaye Moss.
Shaye is exactly the type of citizen that the
"national conservatives" claim they are fighting for. She's not part
of the woke elite. She doesn't dislike America. Before she was unfairly
cancelled from her job she was a public servant who believed in the promise of
America and worked a normal job in service to this country with dignity.
She did so in part because her grandmother had instilled in her American
values and a belief that "voting matters."
If she were white and blonde and if it was
some liberal professor unfairly targeting her, you could imagine Shaye as a
hero of the Tucker Carlson program, given a platform by the Daily Wire.
But as we all know Shaye Moss was not
valorized for her work-ethic or service to our country in these quarters.
Instead it was conservative media that vilified her. Based on a lie. A lie
perpetrated by the most powerful man in America who targeted her and demonized
her. He called her a "hustler" evoking the vile racist stereotypes
he so often traffics in. She was singled out for smears by the
president's drunk lawyer, a man who used to claim the mantle of America's
mayor. Not Shaye Moss's America.
As a result of this deliberate attack from the
Oval Office, Moss received the most despicable racist smears and threats. She
feared for her safety. People went to her grandmother's house to try to
complete a "citizen's arrest."
All of this harassment, her life upended,
simply because she was caught doing her job by one "important" man
who needed a scapegoat to soothe his wounded ego. A man happy to prey on an
unimportant, regular person to maintain power for himself.
Just thinking about what he put her through is
enough to make you wish someone could wipe that shit eating grin off his face
to be honest. But alas we have to be better than that.
We will have to settle for honoring Shaye
Moss, a great American who in front of the whole world put her own safety
at risk, testifying to the truth, without malice towards the powerful people
who did her wrong.
If only we had 300 million Shaye Mosses.
Amanda
Carpenter: Ron Johnson and the Mysterious Package
Senator Ron Johnson doesn’t know a few things.
Like how a package of fake slates of electors
for Michigan and Wisconsin showed up at his office on January 6th. Or why, at
12:37 p.m. that day, his Chief of Staff, who happens to be a former aide to Trump, texted
a staffer to then-Vice President Mike Pence asking for advice on how Johnson
should “hand” it to Pence.
Johnson says he never knew anything about any
of that. Not until the House January 6th Committee, which he opposes,
revealed the messages on Tuesday. All news to him! But he also
says it’s all a mystery that absolutely no one needs to bother themselves
solving. Huh.
CNN’s Manu Raju caught up with Johnson after
the hearings, and Johnson told him it was a “staff-to-staff exchange and I was,
basically unaware of it…we didn’t deliver it, and that’s the end of the story.”
When pressed, Johnson said, “I have no idea
who delivered it,” that he “had no knowledge of this,” and he was only “aware
we got something delivered that wanted to be delivered to the Vice President.”
(Apparently, the package had a mind of its own?)
He thinks these are all good reasons that
explain why there is “nothing to this.”
Except, well.
That seems a big problem, if not a
considerable national security risk, no?
Remember, the creation of fake slates of
electors from the seven swing states Trump lost was critical to Trump
lawyer John Eastman’s plan to overthrow the
election. His thinking was that if the seven states could transmit an alternate
slate of electors, it could serve as a pretense to create “uncertainty” to put
Pence in the position of declaring the presidency.
Johnson’s chief of staff told the Pence aide
that Johnson needed to give Pence the fake slates of electors because the
“archivist didn’t receive them.” At that point, Pence’s aide wrote back, “Do
not give that to him.”
Even if Johnson didn’t know what was going on,
Pence’s folks seemed to know they were about to be squeezed. How could that
be?
Were any other members of Congress and staff
members aware of mysterious packages of fake slates of electors floating around
Capitol Hill?
The timing is especially curious.
The message from Johnson’s Chief of Staff to
Pence’s aide was sent minutes before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gaveled in the
joint session of Congress to certify Joe Biden’s win. That also happened right
before Pence issued a public “Dear Colleague” letter stating he intended
to certify the election. The pressure on Pence, at that moment, was mounting.
And Pence’s staffer responded with urgency. The texts took place within a
minute.
The Jan. 6th Committee has not decided whether
it will ask to interview Johnson, but the relevant questions ask
themselves.
Why did Johnson’s Chief of Staff believe
Johnson would “hand” Pence fake electors? What did he think would happen if
Johnson did so?
Who delivered the package to Johnson’s
office?
What happened to the papers?
And, even if Johnson was this clueless,
doesn’t he have some obligation to work with the Committee to clear up these
questions? Despite Johnson’s efforts to shut them down, there’s definitely a
story here that needs to be told. Johnson’s resistance answering them is going
to be part of it.