Democracy Has Prevailed.

June 2, 2022

Peter Navarro Subpoenaed By DOJ about the "Green Bay Sweep" - Does That Echo In Doug Mastriano's Ears? UPDATED

Let's start with this reporting and then dig around a little. From the Washington Post:

Former Trump White House official Peter Navarro has been subpoenaed by the Justice Department as part of the probe into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.

Navarro, who was a trade adviser to Trump, revealed the subpoena Tuesday in a lawsuit he filed against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the bipartisan House committee investigating the attack.

“On May 26, 2022, two FBI special agents banged loudly on my door in the early morning hours to present me with a fruit of the poisonous tree,” a grand jury subpoena “commanding me to comply with the original … subpoena issued to me by the Committee dated February 9, 10 2022,” Navarro said in the 88-page complaint.

Then there's this from CNN:

The subpoena from the US Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, a copy of which CNN obtained on Tuesday, specifically requests "all documents relating to the subpoena dated February 9, 2022, that you received from the House Select Committee to investigate the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, including but not limited to any communications with former President Trump and/or his counsel or representatives."

And then here's the relevant part from the subpoena th 1/6 Committee subpoena:

For example, you, then a White House trade advisor, reportedly worked with Steve Bannon and others to develop and implement a plan to delay Congress’s certification of, and ultimately change the outcome of, the November 2020 presidential election. In your book you reportedly describe this plan as the "Green Bay Sweep"...

Rolling Stone summarize the sweep in Navarro's own words:

For the 2021 Green Bay Sweep, Navarro writes, Bannon played the role of Lombardi. The plan was to have members of the House and Senate raise challenges to the counts of Electoral College votes from six pivotal battleground states.

“The political and legal beauty of the strategy,” Navarro writes, is that the challenges would force up to two hours of debate per state, in each chamber of Congress. “That would add up to as much as 24 hours of nationally televised hearings,” Navarro writes. The hearings would enable Republicans to “short-circuit the crushing censorship of the anti-Trump media,” Navarro hoped, and broadcast their Big Lie that Democrats had stolen the election “directly to the American people.”

The goal was not to get the election overturned on Jan. 6. Instead, they aimed to create such a spectacle that Pence would be forced to exercise his authority as president of the Senate to “put the certification of the election on ice for at least another several weeks” while Congress and the state legislatures pursued the “fraud” allegations. The dark particulars for how Trump would remain in office after that are not spelled out, and Navarro did not immediately answer an email seeking clarification. But he writes that the Green Bay Sweep was the “last, best chance to snatch a stolen election from the Democrats’ jaws of deceit.”

It's that Green Bay Sweep that caught my eye - the part that says it was a delay tactic to allow "state legislatures" in those swing states to investigate the (and let me add here: non existent) fraud allegations, ultimately leading to the rejection of the Biden electors and an injection of Trump electors in order to hand Donald Trump (who lost the 2020 election) the Oval Office for another 4 years.

Hmm...do you see where I'm going with this?

Here - in the subpoena the 1/6 Committee sent to PA State Senator (and now GOP candidate for PA Governor) Doug Mastriano, there's this:

Based on publicly available information and information produced to the Select Committee, we believe that you have documents and information that are relevant to the Select Committee’s investigation. For example, we understand that you have knowledge of and participated in a plan to arrange for an alternate slate of electors to be presented to the President of the Senate on January 6, 2021, and we understand that you spoke with former President Trump about your post-election activities.

We understand you participated in these activities based on assertions of voter fraud and other asserted irregularities and based on a stated belief that under the U.S. Constitution the “state legislature has the sole authority to direct the manner of selecting delegates to the Electoral College.” We have an interest in understanding these activities and the theories that motivated them.

So DOJ subpoenaed Navarro looking for, among other things, anything about the plan (the "Green Bay Sweep") mentioned in the subpoena the 1/6 Committee sent to him.

Don't you think that, as part of their investigation, they're also looking at Mastriano's involvement with that plan? The 1/6 Committee has already subpoenaed Doug about it - a subpoena he's so far ignored, btw. See update below.

Senator, any comment? How involved were you with the "Green Bay Sweep" DOJ is investigating? 

UPDATE: Raw Story is reporting:

Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano has turned over evidence to the House Select Committee, including documents showing his arrangements for buses carrying to Donald Trump supporters to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021.

More later.