THE TRUMP SCUM KEEPS RISING

 Dear Reader,

 
No Trump-related investigation would be complete without an investigative thread hitting a seeming evidentiary dead end, due either to the utter incompetence of every senior official involved or a massive coverup and attempt to obstruct justice (or both). Now, in the aftermath of The Case of the Dangling Pardons from the Russia probe and The Case of the Inappropriate Use of a Codename Server from Trump’s first impeachment, we reach our first big mystery in the January 6th investigation: the apparent deletion of all of the Secret Service’s text messages related to January 6th. Actually, let me correct that: the apparent deletion of all but one text (as in, one singular text message) leading up to January 6th from relevant Secret Service employees. The sheer preposterousness of this actually having happened could only be more cartoonish if the January 6th Committee ultimately discovers that the person responsible is the Secret Service caretaker who has been running around the agency wearing a ghost costume.
 
So, fellow sleuths, let’s take a look at the case. One January 16th, ten days after the January 6th attack on Congress, four House committees sent a letter to the Secret Service, along with several other agencies, asking them to preserve all records related to January 6th. Eleven days later, on January 27th, the agency proceeded with a “preplanned data migration” that would wipe all employees’ phones of any data. The agency claims that two days before the migration, it sent a letter to all of its employees advising them that it was their responsibility to save any records that were required to be preserved by law and provided instructions on how to do that. It now appears that literally no one followed directions, and here we are.
 
Let’s pull the Mystery Machine over for a moment, because if you’re like me, your head is already hurting. So first of all, preservation requests for data and documents (typically pertaining to potential litigation) are not unusual, particularly for large organizations like corporations or universities. They normally trigger some routine internal legal mechanisms, where (at least in my experience), the general counsel’s office will identify individuals or departments that may be in possession of the relevant information and send them a sternly-worded email instructing them not to delete anything and to contact one of the office attorneys if there are issues or questions. One imagines that, in such an instance, an organization-wide data migration might be flagged as potentially problematic and either halted or delayed, or at least additional steps taken to ensure – at the senior organizational level – that the requested information isn’t lost or deleted.
 
It should go without saying that this kind of protocol ought to also be expected from a government agency that is subject to congressional oversight. And folks, we’re not talking here about the Department of Agriculture. This is the Secret Service – a law enforcement agency that has an investigatory function as part of its mission. Its employees are trained in collecting and preserving data and evidence related to financial crimes. Quite apart from the preservation request, one imagines that the agency itself would understand that communications related to the worst attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812 might be important. After all, many of its agents were witnesses that day and might be called to testify about particular defendants…wouldn’t their observations that they shared with their colleagues potentially be relevant? Finally, it makes no sense that preserving these communications would be left to the discretion of each individual employee, without any further oversight, enforcement, or follow up. If you were a Secret Service agent who might be implicated in misconduct or a potential crime, “forgetting” to back up your data seems like a pretty convenient alibi.
 
But let’s not get carried away just yet. Government agencies, unlike most corporations, universities, or large private organizations, are also dense bureaucracies. Having worked in one of these “bureaus” myself, I tend to discount conspiracy theories that can just as easily be explained by colossal mismanagement. This is where we need to zoom out, and look at the bigger context. As Just Security’s Ryan Goodman has elucidated on Twitter, the text messages aren’t the only things related to January 6th that are missing. As the Secret Service data was being wiped clean, the following events were unfolding as well: 1) Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, reportedly burned documents in his office following a meeting with Representative Scott Perry after the election; 2) Meadows used the encrypted messaging app Signal to communicate with Perry and other members of Congress up to at least January 5th; 3) the White House photographer was instructed not to take photos of Trump as the attack was happening, despite her wanting to document the event for historical purposes; 4) White House phone logs show no records of Trump making or receiving calls from about 11am to 7pm on January 6th (despite testimony and reports that he spoke to people in that time on the phone); and 5) the text messages for former Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Chad Wolf, and Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli, are also missing for the relevant time period. This is what we in the FBI would call “a clue.”
 
The trail gets even fishier when we start taking a look at our roster of potential suspects. The Code of Federal Regulations places responsibility for “preventing the unlawful or accidental removal…or destruction of records” on the “heads of federal agencies.” Since the Secret Service falls under DHS, that would be Acting Secretary Wolf, except that he “abruptly quit” for mysterious reasons on January 11th, before the preservation request and data migration took place. Cuccinelli, as the Acting Deputy Secretary, would presumably be where the buck stopped next – as noted above, his communications are missing as well. But what about the legal department? Well, DHS’s general counsel under Trump, John Mitnick, was fired in September of 2019, and he was not replaced until October 2021, when Biden appointed the current GC, Jonathan Meyer – making it unclear who was running the show in that office for the two years in between, including on January 6th. And finally, the Trump-appointed DHS Inspector General, Joseph Cuffari, has been increasingly implicated in the scandal, after it was revealed that he didn’t investigate the agency’s compliance with the congressional request until February 2021 (after the data migration had taken place), halted an attempt by his office to subsequently try to recover the data, and failed to disclose to Congress that the requested info was missing for five months. Oh, and by the way Cuffari is himself under investigation by the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency for allegations of retaliation. Perhaps only coincidentally, he also bears a striking resemblance to Mr. Jenkins.
 
In short, the whole thing is, as my 13-year-old would say, “sus” (as in, “suspicious”). Whether we will ever see the lost texts remains to be seen (and seems unlikely), but we’ll learn who was responsible soon enough. It certainly looks more and more like an attempted cover up – and if it weren’t for those meddling congresspeople, they would have gotten away with it!
 
Stay Informed,
 
Asha

HOWARD TULLMAN JOINS LISA DENT FOR TUESDAY CHATS

 

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THESE SICK TRAITORS AND CRIMINALS NEED TO GO TO JAIL RIGHT BESIDES TRUMP, THEIR SCUMBAG LEADER, WHO DROVE THE WHOLE THING

 Arizona Officials Warned Fake Electors Plan Could ‘Appear Treasonous’ 

Politicians involved in Donald Trump’s effort to put forth electors to falsely claim he had won Arizona said doing so without first filing a legal challenge could look like a crime. 

 

By Maggie Haberman and Luke Broadwater 

Aug. 2, 2022, 5:06 p.m. ET 

Two Arizona Republicans recruited by allies of former President Donald J. Trump to join an effort to keep him in office after he lost the 2020 election grew so concerned about the plan that they told lawyers working on it that they feared their actions could be seen as treason, according to emails reviewed by The New York Times. 

Kelli Ward, the chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party, and Kelly Townsend, a state senator, were both said to have expressed concerns to Mr. Trump’s lawyers in December 2020 about participating in a plan to sign on to a slate of electors claiming that Mr. Trump had won Arizona, even though Joseph R. Biden Jr. had won the state. 

The scheme was part of a broader bid — one of the longest running and most complicated that Mr. Trump undertook as he sought to cling to power after losing the 2020 presidential election — to falsely manufacture a victory for him by creating fake slates of electors in battleground states who would claim that he had been the true winner. 

 

Some of the lawyers who undertook the effort doubted its legality, and the emails, which have not been previously reported, were the latest indication that other key players also knew they were on shaky legal ground, and took pains to create a rationale that could justify their actions. 

Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer working for Mr. Trump’s campaign, wrote in a Dec. 11, 2020, email to other members of the legal team that Ms. Ward and Ms. Townsend had raised concerns about casting votes as part of an alternate slate of electors because there was no pending legal challenge that could flip the results of Arizona’s election. 

“Ward and Townsend are concerned it could appear treasonous for the AZ electors to vote on Monday if there is no pending court proceeding that might, eventually, lead to the electors being ratified as the legitimate ones,” Mr. Chesebro wrote to the group, which included Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer. 

Mr. Chesebro wrote the word “treasonous” in bold. 

Image 

 

The use of the word underscored how well aware at least some of Mr. Trump’s allies were that they were undertaking truly extraordinary steps to keep him in office, so much so that they risked being seen as betraying their country. 

 

Ms. Ward, who pushed for the electors plan to be kept secret, ultimately joined the effort and signed a document that purported to be a “certificate of the votes of the 2020 electors from Arizona” and claimed that Mr. Trump had won the state’s 11 Electoral College votes. 

One person working on the plan, the Arizona-based lawyer Jack Wilenchik, conceded in emails that the Electoral College votes the campaign was working to organize “aren’t legal under federal law” and repeatedly referred to them as “fake,” The Times has reported. 

Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 Hearings 

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Making a case against Trump. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack is laying out a comprehensive narrative of President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Here are the main themes that have emerged so far from eight public hearings: 

An unsettling narrative. During the first hearing, the committee described in vivid detail what it characterized as an attempted coup orchestrated by the former president that culminated in the assault on the Capitol. At the heart of the gripping story were three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer. 

Creating election lies. In its second hearing, the panel showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers as he declared victory prematurely and relentlessly pressed claims of fraud he was told were wrong. “He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff,” William P. Barr, the former attorney general, said of Mr. Trump during a videotaped interview. 

Pressuring Pence. Mr. Trump continued pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing. The committee showed how Mr. Trump’s actions led his supporters to storm the Capitol, sending Mr. Pence fleeing for his life. 

Fake elector plan. The committee used its fourth hearing to detail how Mr. Trump was personally involved in a scheme to put forward fake electors. The panel also presented fresh details on how the former president leaned on state officials to invalidate his defeat, opening them up to violent threats when they refused. 

Strong arming the Justice Dept. During the fifth hearing, the panel explored Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging and relentless scheme to misuse the Justice Department to keep himself in power. The panel also presented evidence that at least half a dozen Republican members of Congress sought pre-emptive pardons. 

The surprise hearing. Cassidy Hutchinson, ​​a former White House aide, delivered explosive testimony during the panel’s sixth session, saying that the president knew the crowd on Jan. 6 was armed, but wanted to loosen security. She also painted Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, as disengaged and unwilling to act as rioters approached the Capitol. 

Planning a march. Mr. Trump planned to lead a march to the Capitol on Jan. 6 but wanted it to look spontaneous, the committee revealed during its seventh hearing. Representative Liz Cheney also said that Mr. Trump had reached out to a witness in the panel’s investigation, and that the committee had informed the Justice Department of the approach. 

A “complete dereliction” of duty. In the final public hearing of the summer, the panel accused the former president of dereliction of duty for failing to act to stop the Capitol assault. The committee documented how, over 187 minutes, Mr. Trump had ignored pleas to call off the mob and then refused to say the election was over even a day after the attack. 

 

In a later email, Mr. Wilenchik said that the rush to file the papers with the Supreme Court was “to give legal ‘cover’ for the electors in AZ to ‘vote’” on Dec. 14, 2020, the day the Electoral College was slated to gather and cast votes. 

Ms. Townsend ultimately did not sign the documents claiming that Mr. Trump had won the state’s election. 

Both Ms. Ward and Ms. Townsend have since received subpoenas from the Justice Department asking questions about the fake electors plan and demanding documents detailing communications with Mr. Trump’s legal team. 

Ms. Ward, Ms. Townsend, Mr. Wilenchik and Mr. Chesebro did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

 

Kelly Townsend, an Arizona state senator, ultimately did not sign documents claiming that Mr. Trump had won the state’s election.Credit...Bob Christie/Associated Press 

 

The push to organize slates of false electors involved hands-on work by Mr. Giuliani, who the emails indicate spoke with Ms. Ward and Ms. Townsend as the Trump campaign was apparently urging the electors to vote on Dec. 14. 

Mr. Chesebro sought assurances from Mr. Wilenchik that he would quickly file papers to the U.S. Supreme Court contesting a ruling by Arizona’s Supreme Court affirming Mr. Biden’s win in the state. 

“Reason is that Kelli Ward & Kelly Townsend just spoke to the mayor about the campaign’s request that all electors vote Monday in all contested states,” Mr. Chesebro wrote to Mr. Wilenchik, apparently referring to a conversation with Mr. Giuliani. 

He said that the concern from Ms. Ward and Ms. Townsend was that activating an alternate group of electors in favor of Mr. Trump “could appear treasonous” in the absence of a pending lawsuit. “Which is a valid point — in the Hawaii 1960 incident, when the Kennedy electors voted, there was a pending recount,” Mr. Chesebro added. 

He was referring to an instance that he and others were using as a foundation for their argument that they could put forward fake slates of electors. In 1960, the result of the election in Hawaii was unsettled as the Electoral College was close to meeting. The governor certified a slate of electors in favor of Richard M. Nixon, who claimed he had won as the recount continued. John F. Kennedy also formed a slate of electors. 

When the vote count was finished, Mr. Kennedy had won, and his slate of electors ultimately was certified. 

However, little about the 1960 incident resembled what happened in 2020. By the time the Electoral College met on Dec. 14, 2020, the votes had all been counted, Mr. Biden had been declared the winner and various courts had tossed challenges filed by Mr. Trump’s allies. 

 

In a follow-up email, Mr. Chesebro wrote that he no longer saw “cause for concern” because a legal action some of the group planned to file was “at the printer” and that the Supreme Court considers an action docketed whenever it is mailed. He wrote that it would be in the mail by the time the Electoral College met. 

Mr. Wilenchik filed the petition the same day, records show. (The Supreme Court denied the petition in February 2021. ) 

In the weeks after the election, Mr. Chesebro wrote a series of memos outlining a plan to send so-called alternate electors to Congress for the certification. A little more than two weeks after Election Day, Mr. Chesebro sent a memo to James Troupis, another lawyer for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin, laying out a plan to name pro-Trump electors in that state, which was also won by Mr. Biden. 

Mr. Chesebro also sent a Dec. 13, 2020, email to Mr. Giuliani that encouraged Vice President Mike Pence to “firmly take the position that he, and he alone, is charged with the constitutional responsibility not just to open the votes, but to count them — including making judgments about what to do if there are conflicting votes.” 

That idea became the basis for Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign against Mr. Pence in which the president attempted to convince his own vice president that he could block or delay the congressional certification of Mr. Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021. 

Mr. Chesebro also was involved in a Dec. 24, 2020, email exchange with John C. Eastman, the pro-Trump lawyer, over whether to file legal papers that they hoped might prompt four justices to agree to hear an election case from Wisconsin. 

In those emails, Mr. Chesebro argued that the “odds of action before Jan. 6 will become more favorable if the justices start to fear that there will be ‘wild’ chaos on Jan. 6 unless they rule by then, either way.” 

 

Their exchange took place five days after Mr. Trump issued a call for his supporters to attend a protest at the Ellipse near the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, the day Congress would certify the electoral vote count confirming Mr. Biden’s victory. “Be there. Will be wild!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. 

NEW COLUMN BY HOWARD TULLMAN

 

To Meet Tomorrow's Challenges, Business Needs More Truth Tellers

Young people need to hear you tell it like it is. Leaders like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg know this intuitively.

BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS@TULLMAN

Business seems to have turned a corner, and I couldn't be happier or more grateful. It's been a long time coming, but the days of management walking on eggshells to appease snowflakes, Millies, and other entitled employees could soon be ending. The timing couldn't be better. If the U.S. is planning to compete for the future on a global scale, employers have to get back to seriously taking care of business after enduring several soul-sucking and defeatist decades of political correctness, lip biting, and tongue holding.

Billions of dollars and millions of hours were wasted on frivolous and foolish efforts to make miraculously sweet lemonade out of life's lemons. 

If you didn't like working for a living or working at all, if being graded, evaluated, and judged was just too tough a test for your selfish little self, and if no one had ever bothered to tell you the hard truth about so many things in the real world, then just give us a moment or two, and we'll try to change our reality to meet your fantasies, insane expectations, and absurd entitlements. We'll do this because we "owe" it to you for ancient offenses, past sins, serious misconceptions of what makes the world go around, and other grievous errors for which we will promptly atone and beg your forgiveness in advance. All because we really like you, in large part, because you remind us of when we were young and equally stupid. 

Meantime, China and India are raising and training millions of "meat eaters"--serious, ambitious, diligent, and brutally hard-working individuals--who are grateful for the opportunities finally being afforded to them, willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead, and proud of the commitment, sweat and effort it's going to require for them to achieve their dreams.

They're not ashamed or apologetic about competing aggressively with their peers, wanting to better themselves and make a difference for themselves and their families, and working ceaselessly toward those ends rather than wishing or waiting for them to magically appear. They don't expect the world to hand them their future on a silver platter. They don't need time-outs, safe spaces, speech police, or security blankets to get on. They just need the chances that we take for granted.

Meanwhile, here at home, parents are raising millions of precious little flowers who need to be accepted and appreciated for what little they've achieved rather than expected and challenged to reach for better and bigger things. They're focused and fixated by trivialities and trumped-up traumas and concerns while the rest of the world rushes by them. They want to bring their whole selves to work, but they're not that excited about actually working once they get there. They've been taught and told that they've clearly got more important things to do and other places to be.

Watching college professors pontificate to their sadly deluded students about how using proper pronouns can increase productivity; how math, motivation, and measurement are somehow racist and prejudicial; and how "men" can get pregnant, and "women" can be whatever they like has been one of the most galling, painful, and perverse pageants of prideful pomposity, calculated ignorance, and stunning arrogance ever seen in this country.

I'm confident that millions of other CEOs and entrepreneurs agree that telling it like it is--outside of their soon-to-be-burst bubbles--is the best service and favor that we can do for our kids and our younger employees and, not incidentally, for our businesses as well. Serious businesses can't succeed on a fabulist foundation of half-truths about diversity and inclusion, false promises (which are quickly abandoned when the rubber hits the road), and made-up pithy mission statements, which no one lives up to.

The pendulum is hopefully turning back toward frankness, painful honesty, daily doses of reality, and actual authenticity which can only help all of us manage through what are likely to be several more years of ugly surprises, hard times, and do-nothing politicians aiming only to inflame and anger us. 

Companies need to give employees and--even more importantly--the newest grads a simple message about work: "You don't have to like it, you just have to do it." In a world of special cases, a million exceptions, tender sensibilities, and helicopter parents, this message has the special charm of being a one-size-fits-all solution. Sit down, shut up, and suck it up. When you come to work, be prepared, be honest, and be on time. Leave your angst, your affirmations, and your anxieties at home. Or feel free to "pretend you're working somewhere else," as Elon Musk says.

Mark Zuckerberg is even clearer in his no-nonsense approach in talking about changes coming to Meta, noting that, "Some of you might just say this place isn't for you. And that self-selection is okay with me."

Entrepreneurs and managers who think they can still try to be all things to all people are engaged in a fool's quest. Worse yet, they're most likely to be called out as phonies by the very people they're trying the most to please. These people are never grateful or satisfied because their demands are never-ending. Twisting yourself in knots and spinning around in circles trying to placate them (while the very words you speak stick in your craw) isn't productive and only wastes your time and energy. 

You can hope to be anything, but in the end, you can be only yourself. If you're true to yourself, your own upbringing and beliefs, and your own commitments to your work and your business, you'll discover that that's the best you can be for everyone else as well.

AUG 1, 2022