Happy Anniversary!

Hey, remember this?

This really happened - 5 years ago today

Just show that to any MAGA who said that "the police let them in."

But there's more to the story.

Namely this: 

A man who crushed D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges with a police shield on Jan. 6 was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in federal prison on Friday.

Patrick McCaughey III, who was dubbed #ThePinman by online sleuths, was present during some of the worst violence inside the lower west tunnel, the spot where presidents emerge during inauguration ceremonies. McCaughey was sentenced by Judge Trevor McFadden, a Donald Trump appointee who previously delivered the only full acquittal for a Jan. 6 defendant to date and has imposed more lenient sentences than other judges in the Capitol riot cases.

On the other hand:

In a speech on the Senate floor, U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, denounced President Trump’s decision to pardon January 6th insurrectionists, including those who violently assaulted law enforcement officers. In his remarks, Durbin read from an NPR article, describing in detail the crimes committed by the insurrectionists.

Including:

Durbin spoke about Patrick Edward McCaughey III’s violent assault on police officers on January 6. McCaughey was convicted for using a police riot shield to crush Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges in a metal doorframe to the point of Hodges bleeding and crying for help.

“‘If I were there much longer being assaulted in such a way, I knew that it was very likely I wouldn’t be able to maintain my consciousness,’ Hodges testified. ‘Your actions on January 6 were some of the most egregious crimes that were committed that day,’ federal judge Trevor McFadden told McCaughey before sentencing him to seven years in prison,’” Durbin read. 

Repeating his refrain, Durbin said, “Mr. McCaughey received a ‘full, complete, unconditional’ pardon from Donald Trump on Monday.”

So yea, Happy Anniversary. 

 

 

Remember This?

From the AP (only 34 or so days ago):

Former Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández, sentenced last year to 45 years in prison for his role in a drug trafficking operation that moved hundreds of tons of cocaine to the United States, was released from prison following a pardon from President Donald Trump, officials confirmed Tuesday.

Hernández was released Monday from U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton in West Virginia, a spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons told The Associated Press. The bureau’s online inmate records also reflected his release.

The release of Hernández — a former U.S. ally whose conviction prosecutors said exposed the depth of cartel influence in Honduras — comes just days after the country’s presidential election. Trump defended the decision aboard Air Force One on Sunday, saying Hondurans believed Hernández had been “set up,” even as prosecutors argued he protected drug traffickers who moved hundreds of tons of cocaine through the country.

He was found guilty in a court of law:

Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez was convicted on drug trafficking charges Friday in a Manhattan federal court.

Hernandez, who served as president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022, had been charged by U.S. authorities with drug trafficking and weapons offenses that linked him to tons of cocaine imported into the United States over the last two decades. Prosecutors say he accepted bribes from El Chapo's Sinaloa cartel and other drug networks to line his own pockets, finance his political campaigns, and commit electoral fraud to win two presidential elections.

In exchange, prosecutors say, he protected drug traffickers, including his own brother, Tony Hernandez, who was convicted of drug trafficking in the U.S. in 2019 and sentenced to life in prison.

He got a Trump pardon.

 

Guess Who Gets A Mention In Jack Smith's Testimony??

Starting on page 150 of the released testimony,  Representative Mary Gay Scanlon (PA-5th) asked special council Jack Smith this:

Can you just outline for us what actions President Trump, if any, took in Pennsylvania, a State that Joe Biden clearly won, in the 2020 Presidential election to overturn its results and gain the electoral votes for himself? 

And as part of the questioning, she asked this:

Well, I think it is one of the reasons that Pennsylvania's fake electors didn't get prosecuted, was because they pushed back and said, "We're not going to sign this unless you include language saying that this will only be used if there are court cases saying that we are the real electors." 

In your investigation, did you find that the people who were conspiring with the President to push this plan were telling electors one thing and then using their certificates in another way? 

Smith answered:

Yes. The electors were told that they would only be used in these circumstances. And as, you know, other ways of overturning the election fell away and as President Trump and his co-conspirators became more desperate, they came up with even more obviously illegal ways to try to stay in power.

And it eventually devolved to let's just say that these are the electors, regardless of whether any court has said so, the governor has said so, the people of the State and most have said so.

And they didn't go back to electors and say, "Hey, we're going to use your -- I know we told you we were only going to use this if you -- if we won a lawsuit." They just went ahead and used it. 

And then finally Rep Scanlon asked:

I mean, there were other efforts in Pennsylvania. We had the very famous Four16
Seasons Landscaping press conference, which is famous to this day. 

But there was also a meeting that Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano hosted in a hotel in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, around Thanksgiving weekend, between the certification in Pennsylvania and the presentation of the electors in D.C. 

So even though it was framed as a hearing, Giuliani attended that event and ended 
up speaking to promote some of these falsehoods about election fraud or missing votes or 
whatever and made it sort of a rally. Donald Trump even called into this event and claimed 
that he had won Pennsylvania by a lot. 

Are you familiar with that event? 

Didja see it? DIDJA SEE DOUG'S NAME?

Anyway, Smith had this to say about that meeting:

Well, I think they were calling them hotel hearings, and it's because they couldn't have hearings actually in the legislature. And so I don't think Pennsylvania was the only State where that happened.

There's obviously nothing illegal about having a political rally or having a meeting of people of one political party. Our case was about knowing the false fraud claims. 

Earlier in that same testimony, Smith had said this about whether the president knew that the election fraud claims were false: 

I also remember in Pennsylvania, the chair of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, a guy by the name of -- I think his name was Tabas -- very shortly after the election -- this is in, I want to say, mid- to early November -- disabused President Trump of the idea that the reason his vote total, his lead was going down, was because of fraud.  

And he explained again that's how -- we all knew that that's how this was going to work with absentee ballots in the State of Pennsylvania, which we had very strong evidence that Trump, in fact, had been briefed upon by his campaign staff. 

And yet they spread those false claims at Doug's hotel hearing in November of 2020.

The hearing on election irregularities in Gettysburg was historic. @PASenateGOP @SenatorArgall pic.twitter.com/DouU5fbkLs

— Senator Doug Mastriano (@SenMastriano) November 26, 2020

 Yes, Senator Mastriano. It was historic. But not for the reasons you might wish.

Let's Get Back To Work

From the BBC:

The US Congress has released the transcript of testimony by former Special Counsel Jack Smith, in which he defended his decision to lead two now-defunct criminal investigations into Donald Trump.

The transcript, released on New Year's Eve by the House Judiciary Committee, is 255 pages. It features questions from lawmakers, and Smith's robust defense of the attempts to prosecute Trump for illegally retaining classified documents after leaving office, and his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

And you can find it here. 

Let's see what's in those pages, shall we?

Early (pg 28) we find Smith testifying that:

We had an elector in Pennsylvania who is a former Congressman who was going to be an elector for President Trump who said that what they were trying to do was an attempt to overthrow the government and illegal. 

Later, he is asked about this former member of Congress:

To my recollection I think his name was Thomas Marino. He is a former U.S. Attorney and he is a former -- he's a Republican -- a former Congressman. And he had agreed to be an -- this is before the election -- agreed to be an elector for Donald Trump. And when he was presented with this idea of the fake elector scheme, my recollection of his reaction was that this was an attempt to overthrow the government and it was illegal. 

So who is  Thomas Marino?

He endorsed Trump in 2016.

And was co-chair of Trump's campaign in Pennsylvania.

He's also this guy: 

Marino was a member of the U.S. House from 2011 until 2019, when he abruptly resigned two weeks into his term. He has also served as U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. In 2017, Trump nominated him to be the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, but he withdrew from consideration after reports that he had crafted a bill that protected pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors and made it harder for the federal government to tackle the opioid crisis. 

That guy. That's the former Trump guy who said the fake elector scheme was an attempt to overthrow the government and that it was illegal.

There's 255 pages to the testimony.  This is not the last blog post about it. 

 

Merry Christmas!

From The Late Show, with Stephen Colbert

McCormick Monday

Another in an ongoing series:

Dear Senator McCormick;

I am a constituent of yours and I'd like to ask you a few questions. 

I'll point out again that you took an oath when you became Senator to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" and, as you know, that's basically the same oath all officers in the United States Army take.

I'll make this week's questions simple.

Did Secretary Hegseth (or anyone under his command) commit war crimes by ordering the destruction of any of those alleged cartel boats in the Caribbean? This would include the story as reported in the media of the killing the two people clinging to the already destroyed boat.

Then there's this from the AP:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth defended strikes on alleged drug cartel boats during remarks Saturday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, saying President Donald Trump has the power to take military action “as he sees fit” to defend the nation.

Does the president have the authority to use the military in such a way? What if one of those actions is a war crime or something otherwise unconstitutional?

I'll await your answer.

And I'll post here whatever your answer. 

McCormick Monday

Another in an ongoing series:

Dear Senator McCormick;

I am a constituent of yours and I'd like to ask you a few questions. 

You took an oath when you became Senator to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" and, as you know, that's basically the same oath all officers in the United States Army take.

According to The Conversation:

U.S. service members take an oath to uphold the Constitution. In addition, under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the U.S. Manual for Courts-Martial, service members must obey lawful orders and disobey unlawful orders. Unlawful orders are those that clearly violate the U.S. Constitution, international human rights standards or the Geneva Conventions.

Service members who follow an illegal order can be held liable and court-martialed or subject to prosecution by international tribunals. Following orders from a superior is no defense.

Again, as you know, recently a group of your congressional colleagues released a video that stated outright that members of the military can "refuse illegal orders."

In response:

President Trump accused a group of Democratic lawmakers of sedition in an outburst on social media Thursday morning and said their behavior was “punishable by death.”

He later added (in all caps) that this was:

SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!!  

So Senator, let me ask you: who is right?  Must members of the military disobey illegal orders? And if that is true, how is it treason to remind them of their obligations? 

You went to West Point, surely there was a class discussion or two on this topic. 

If, on the other hand, you agree with President Trump that this was sedition and treason punishable by death, can you explain to us why?

I'll await your answer.

And I'll post here whatever your answer.