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The Trump Insurrection: How Donald J. Trump and the right incited insurrection and sedition and attempted a coup d'etat - Page 1
Videos of the riot and violent attack against the 117th United States Congress and the sacking of the United States Capitol.
Trump will be the only president to be impeached twice.
By Matt Naham

A pro- Trump lawyer who more than one year ago now pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit filing false documents, a felony, and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors against Georgia RICO case co-defendants, which includes the former president, has been “convicted of a serious crime” and, for that reason, should have his license to practice in New York “immediately” suspended, a court decided on Thursday.

Chesebro is an attorney who drafted a legal memo contemplating a scenario where then-Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6 could set aside legitimate electoral votes from “contested States” and replace those with “Trump-Pence electors.” That memo was featured prominently in the Jan. 6 Committee’s final report , which highlighted the lawyer’s communications to propel the fake elector scheme forward in Nevada, Arizona , Wisconsin , and elsewhere.

Senator Josh Hawley was challenged in his debate over his involvement in January 6th by challenger Lucas Kunce on the debate stage.
Story by Bart Jansen, Josh Meyer and Aysha Bagchi, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – A trove of new records released in the federal election-interference case against former President Donald Trump described how money was spent on Trump's "Stop the Steal" rally near the White House on Jan. 6, 2021.

The revelations were among 1,900 pages of evidence for federal charges against Trump that he tried to steal the 2020 election. The evidence also includes details of how his supporters spent election night at the White House and how Trump reacted to the riot at the Capitol.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is weighing the evidence to determine whether Trump is immune to federal charges, based on a Supreme Court ruling in July.

Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, opposed the release less than three weeks before the election as an example of prosecutors publishing “cherry-picked materials” that “would prejudice potential jurors and endanger potential witnesses” three weeks before the election.

But Chutkan ruled that keeping the documents confidential could also be considered election interference.

Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, called the release of evidence in the case interference in the election and said the case should be thrown out. He said “the entire case is a sham and a partisan” that “should be dismissed entirely.”
By Kathryn Watson

Washington — Former President Donald Trump insisted that the Jan. 6 attack, when his supporters stormed the Capitol and assaulted scores of law enforcement officers, was not a day of violence, but a "day of love" when "nothing" was "done wrong."

The Republican presidential nominee was asked about the assault on the Capitol at a Univision town hall on Wednesday, where a voter who said he used to be a registered Republican but was troubled by Trump's behavior during the riot said the former president could still win his vote.

"I want to give you the opportunity to try to win back my vote. OK?" said the voter. "Your — I'm going to say — action and maybe inaction during your presidency, and the last few years, sort of, was a little disturbing to me. What happened Jan. 6 and the fact that, you know, you waited so long to take action while your supporters were attacking the Capitol. ... I'm curious how people so close to you and your administration no longer want to support you, so why would I want to support you? If you would answer these questions for me I would really appreciate it, and give you the opportunity. You know, your own vice president doesn't want to support you now."

Trump responded by blasting former Vice President Mike Pence, saying he "totally disagreed with him on what he did," an apparent reference to Pence's refusal to reject the Electoral College votes after the 2020 presidential election. Pence has repeatedly — and accurately — said he had no constitutional authority to do anything but accept the results, withstanding repeated attacks from Trump and Trump's supporters.
By Melissa Quinn, Robert Legare

Washington — U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has made public a key filing from special counsel Jack Smith that includes evidence compiled in his investigation into former President Donald Trump's alleged efforts to subvert the transfer of presidential power after the 2020 election.

The highly anticipated 165-page filing provides the most comprehensive look at the evidence federal prosecutors have amassed in their case, which was upended by the Supreme Court's July decision finding Trump is entitled to some level of immunity from federal charges.

In the new brief, prosecutors argued that Trump's conduct was private in nature and therefore not covered by immunity. They reiterated the allegations against Trump and revealed new insights into the mountains of evidence they have collected over the course of the case.

The filing described how Trump and his aides allegedly planned to challenge the election results far in advance of Election Day and pressured Vice President Mike Pence to reject Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, 2021. In one striking passage, prosecutors said Trump replied, "So what?" when he was told that Pence could be in danger at the Capitol.

"When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office," Smith and his team wrote.
By Jordain Carney and Kyle Cheney

As then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi fled the Capitol after it was overrun by pro-Trump rioters on Jan. 6, 2021, she grilled her top staffer on a key question: Where was the National Guard?

“You're going to ask me — in the middle of the thing when they’ve already breached the inaugural stuff — ‘should we call … the National Guard?’” Pelosi asked her chief of staff Terri McCullough incredulously while they rode in an SUV that would take them to Fort McNair. “Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?”

The interaction was shown in a video shot by the former speaker’s daughter, documentarian Alexandra Pelosi, and recently provided to congressional investigators by HBO upon a request by Republicans pushing to undermine the findings of the previous Jan. 6 select committee. The roughly 45 minutes of footage, reviewed by POLITICO, captures extensive conversations among congressional leaders as they struggled to comprehend their rushed evacuation from the Capitol and deal with the immediate fallout.

Though clips of the speaker’s conversations that day were shown as part of the previous panel's work, and in a separate documentary by Alexandra Pelosi, much of what was handed over recently to a House Administration subcommittee has never been released. HBO didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Story by Heather Digby Parton

With all the violence and vandalism on Jan. 6, it's easy to forget that Trump and his henchmen's real game plan was to send the election to the House and let them decide the winner as the Constitution anticipated would happen in case of a tie. This was to be accomplished by submitting competing sets of electors to the VP who would throw up his hands and say that he didn't know how to count the votes so Congress would have to decide the election. According to Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, they had hoped that in the event Pence didn't cooperate, having the mob storm the Capitol could have caused a delay which would have allowed Justice Samuel Alito time to stop the certification but they were thwarted when Speaker Nancy Pelosi reconvened Congress that night. (There is no word on whether Justice Alito had been apprised of his role but it's not a stretch to think he would have been happy to oblige considering his history of flying insurrectionist flags during that period.)

Had they persuaded Pence to twist the constitutional process for a tie vote into a process for resolving (fake) competing slates of electoral votes and had the House of Representatives taken it up, Trump would have won because votes are counted by state delegation and there are more Republican delegations than Democratic. There was a whole group of Republicans ready and willing to declare Trump the winner and let the courts and anyone else try and stop them under this unprecedented, unconstitutional plot. This was the coup.

Essentially, they were willing to stretch their undemocratic electoral college advantage in controlling rural, lower-populated states to an even more undemocratic electoral advantage in the House to steal the election. If Pence had cooperated, they might have pulled it off. It's obvious that the framers made a huge error with this silly process of having the House delegations decide the election in case of a tie. It should be the popular vote winner. (It should be the popular vote winner in all cases but for some reason, we seem to be stuck with this antediluvian artifact of a compromise that should have been fixed over a century ago.)

The people who constructed gallows on the west front of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, have never been identified. CBS News obtained new video showing people moving pieces into place before dawn. Scott MacFarlane has more.
MSNBC

Republican strategist Karl Rove tore into former President Trump this week over Trump saying he would pardon January 6 rioters.
Story by Kyle Cheney

ACalifornia judge on Wednesday recommended the disbarment of John Eastman, calling to revoke the law license of one of Donald Trump’s top allies in his failed last-ditch gambit to subvert the 2020 election.

Judge Yvette Roland, who presided over months of testimony and argument about the basis of Eastman’s fringe legal theories, ruled that the veteran conservative attorney violated ethics rules — and even potentially criminal law — when he advanced Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results based on weak or discredited claims of fraud.

Though Eastman may appeal Roland’s decision, including to the state Supreme Court, the ruling forces his law license into “inactive” status while any review is pending, meaning he can no longer practice law in California.

“Given the serious and extensive nature of Eastman’s unethical actions, the most severe available professional sanction is warranted to protect the public and preserve the public confidence in the legal system,” Roland ruled.

Roland’s 128-page opinion was a lacerating rebuke of Eastman’s conduct and his subsequent lack of remorse. She concluded that he made knowingly flimsy claims of fraud and irregularities in legal filings on Trump’s behalf, including his brief for Trump in a Supreme Court fight.
Opinion by Daniel Hodges, opinion contributor

When I received my acceptance letter almost a decade ago to the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C., my imagination raced with the intense, life-or-death scenarios I would be confronted with on a regular basis in order to protect and serve the residents of our nation’s capital.

But even while contemplating such scenarios, I never imagined what I experienced on Jan. 6, 2021, or that I would be one of a few dozen officers standing in between former President Donald Trump’s authoritarian dreams and American democracy. The attack on the Capitol, perpetuated by a mob commanded by Trump, was and still is an existential threat to both my city and the country at large.

The world looked on in horror as thousands of Trump’s most loyal followers overran police barricades, stripped law enforcement officers of our equipment and savagely beat us. They looked us in the eyes and called us — the ones protecting the Capitol — traitors.
Story by Joe DePaolo

Former Vice President Mike Pence seethed over former President Donald Trump calling imprisoned Jan. 6 rioters “hostages” at a rally on Saturday.

In an interview on Face the Nation Sunday, CBS’ Margaret Brennan played a clip of Trump lauding the rioters as “unbelievable patriots” and denouncing their imprisonment.

“You see this spirit from the hostages?” Trump said Saturday at a rally in Ohio. “And that’s what they are os hostages. They’ve been treated terribly and very unfairly, and you know that, and everybody knows that. And we’re going to be working on that soon. The first day we get into office, we’re going to save our country, and we’re going to work with the people to treat those unbelievable patriots. And they were unbelievable patriots.”

Pence — who, on Friday, announced he will not endorse Trump’s 2024 candidacy — sounded off on the president he served under for four years.

“I think it’s very unfortunate at a time that there are American hostages being held in Gaza,” Pence said. “That the president or any other leaders would refer to people that are moving through our justice system as hostages. And it’s just unacceptable!”
Story by Steve Benen

About a month after the Jan. 6 attack, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson scoffed at those alarmed by the riot. “This didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me,” the Wisconsin senator said. “I mean ‘armed,’ when you hear ‘armed,’ don’t you think of firearms?”

In the months and years that followed, GOP lawmakers such as Arizona’s Paul Gosar and Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene also questioned whether the insurrectionists had guns.

As recently as last week, Donald Trump himself used his social media platform to insist, while responding to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, “The so-called ‘Insurrectionists’ that he talks about had no guns. They only had a Rigged Election.”

Such rhetoric has long been foolish, but the GOP voices who’ve questioned whether the rioters were armed looked quite a bit worse late last week. NBC News reported on John Emanuel Banuelos, who allegedly fired two gunshots at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and who was arrested by federal authorities on Friday.

NBC News’ report added, “While numerous rioters were armed with guns on Jan. 6, none were known to have actually fired their weapons; Banuelos is the first to be charged with doing so.”
John Emanuel Banuelos was previously identified by NBC News as a Jan. 6 rioter who told police he had a weapon that day. New footage appears to show him firing it.
By Ryan J. Reilly

WASHINGTON — Newly unearthed footage from Jan. 6, 2021, appears to show a rioter — a man identified in an NBC News story nearly two years ago — firing a gun into the air outside the Capitol during the attack.

Online sleuths who have aided in hundreds of Jan. 6 prosecutions say he is the same man they identified to the FBI who is currently individual No. 200 on the bureau’s Capitol Violence page, which he first appeared on three years ago. Videos and photographs from the Capitol on Jan. 6 showed him with what appears to be a gun in his waistband. As NBC News previously reported, that man, John Emanuel Banuelos, told Salt Lake City police that he was at the Capitol and had been captured on film with a gun. “I was in the D.C. riots,” he told the investigators, according to a police transcript. “I’m the one in the video with the gun right here.”

Banuelos has not been arrested or charged in connection with Jan. 6; the Salt Lake City police had arrested him in connection with the fatal stabbing of 19-year-old Christopher Thomas Senn in a park on July 4, 2021. “Man, should I just tell the FBI to come get me or what?” he asked Salt Lake City police officers, according to a police transcript. Weeks later, Banuelos called an investigator with the department and “talked about going where Donald Trump sent him,” apparently referencing the Capitol, according to a police record. The Salt Lake City DA’s office did not pursue a case against Banuelos, who claimed self-defense in Senn’s death.
Story by Rohan

Judge Royce C. Lamberth initially sentenced James Little in 2022 to 60 days in prison and three years of probation for his participation in the Jan 6 insurrection. After an appeals court ruled the combined prison-probation sentence illegal, Lamberth sentenced Little to another two months behind bars.

Back and forth
Little initially pleaded guilty to illegally parading at the Capitol on Jan 6, 2021. However, his public defenders argued that Judge Lamberth’s sentence, which combined prison time and probation for a single charge, was illegal.

Gears turning
The US Court of Appeals for DC decided in August 2023 that Little’s public defenders were correct. “Probation and imprisonment are alternative sentences that cannot generally be combined,” the court ruled. “The district court could not impose both for Little’s petty offense.”
Story by Jonathan Nicholson

One House member texted his wife what he feared was a final goodbye. One recalled the look of pure hatred in the attackers’ eyes. Another would never forget the whine of a hundred gas masks, all operating at once.

For some House Democrats who were in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and experienced the insurrection from a unique vantage point — being the target of the attack — those were the memories that stood out shortly afterward.

Prior to Jan. 6, the U.S. Capitol had not been sacked since the War of 1812. But on that day, a pro-Donald Trump mob, many of whom marched to the Capitol directly from his speech urging them to “fight like hell,” clashed with police, broke into the building, and chased lawmakers and then-Vice President Mike Pence into hiding. The riot lasted for hours, with the mob arriving at the Capitol shortly before 1 p.m. and police clearing the building around 6 p.m. Five people died.

While the attack inspired bipartisan revulsion at the time, that consensus has eroded ahead of its three-year anniversary Sunday. Now, some on the right say too much has been made of the violence, pointing to protesters who walked into the Capitol well after the first groups of attackers.
Story by Philip Bump

The riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, required multiple catalysts. One was the willingness of some of those present to engage in violence: small-scale violence like upending barriers or aggressive violence like attacking law enforcement with blunt objects. Another was the mass of people who were surrounding the building and its defenders, a mass that pressed forward against those barriers and which fed into the energy of the moment.

This development was anticipated by some of those engaged in explicit violence. In private chats from the days before the riot, members of the right-wing group Proud Boys discussed whether “the normies” — that is, other protesters — and other attendees were “going to push through police lines and storm the capitol buildings.” On the day of the riot, members of the group engaged to “ril[e] up the normies.” The thousands of people who walked from President Donald Trump’s speech south of the White House to the Capitol that day were a force multiplier.
Story by Chris D'Angelo

The group that organized the pro-Donald Trump rally in front of the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, knowingly misled government officials about plans for attendees to march on the U.S. Capitol, according to a new investigation from the Interior Department’s internal watchdog.

The report, published Monday by Interior’s Official of Inspector General, includes text messages from Kylie Kremer ― the rally’s organizer, and a representative of the group Women for America First ― and one potential event speaker. The Interior report does not name the individuals, but the exchange between Kremer and Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO and Trump ally, was previously made public by the House Jan. 6 select committee.

“This stays only between us, we are having a second stage at the Supreme Court again after the ellipse. POTUS is going to have us march there/the Capitol,” Kremer wrote to Lindell on Jan. 4. “It cannot get out about the second stage because people will try and set up another and Sabotage it. It can also not get out about the march because I will be in trouble with the national park service and all the agencies but the POTUS is going to just call for it ‘unexpectedly.’”
Story by Gabriella Ferrigine

Former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., in her upcoming book "Oath and Honor," disclosed the moment she learned of former President Donald Trump's plot to paint his loss of the 2020 presidential election as fraudulent, calling it "a very dangerous and chilling moment." MSNBC's Rachel Maddow read an excerpt from the book, detailing a phone call made two days before the deadly Capitol attacks in which the former president's legal team allegedly discussed the fake elector scheme. Cheney, who noted that Trump's attorneys were unaware that she was listening in on the call, also observed that former Vice President Mike Pence was acting in cooperation with the plans at that time.
Story by Arthur Delaney

WASHINGTON ― House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Tuesday that Republicans are blurring faces in security footage from inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to protect rioters from prosecution. “We have to blur some of the faces of persons who participated in the events of that day because we don’t want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ,” Johnson said at a press conference.

The Department of Justice has long had access to the footage and has used it in some of the roughly 1,200 criminal cases against people linked to the riot, which saw participants fight police and storm the Capitol building. Johnson’s comment is a remarkable statement of sympathy for supporters of then-President Donald Trump who illegally entered a restricted federal building as part of a violent attack on Congress.

Though prosecutors already have the video, blurring people’s faces could prevent amateur investigators from sending tips to the FBI. Online sleuths have previously used social media and facial recognition software to help the government track down a number of suspects.

Unsealed texts from GOP Congressman Scott Perry reveal Perry had a "vast web of contacts" who he was talking to about efforts to overturn the election, including top Republicans. MSNBC’s Ari Melber reports and is joined by Senior Mueller Prosecutor Andrew Weissmann.
By Euronews with AP

Tarrio, who led the neofacist Proud Boys group as it became a force in mainstream Republican circles, had pleaded with the judge for leniency. Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was sentenced Tuesday to 22 years in prison for orchestrating a failed plot to keep Donald Trump in power after the Republican lost the 2020 election, capping the case with the stiffest punishment that has been handed down yet for the US Capitol attack.

Tarrio, 39, pleaded for leniency before the judge imposed the prison term topping the 18-year sentences given to Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and one-time Proud Boys leader Ethan Nordean for seditious conspiracy and other convictions stemming from the 6 January 2021 riot.

Tarrio, who led the neofacist group as it became a force in mainstream Republican circles, lowered his head after the sentence was imposed, then squared his shoulders. He raised his hand and made a “V” gesture with his fingers as he was led out of the courtroom in orange jail garb.
Story by Thom Hartmann

There was, it increasingly appears, a conspiracy involving some in the most senior levels of the Trump administration to end American representative democracy and replace it with a strongman oligarchy along the lines of Putin’s Russia or Orbán’s Hungary.

This would be followed, after the January 20th swearing-in of Trump for a second term, by a complete realignment of US foreign policy away from NATO and the EU and toward oligarchic, autocratic nations like Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and Hungary.

As the possibility of this traitorous plan becomes increasingly visible, the GOP, after a frantic two weeks of not knowing what to say or do, has finally settled on a response to Trump’s theft of classified information: “Hillary did the same thing, and she didn’t go to jail!” I heard the comparison made at least a half-dozen times this weekend on various political shows.
Story by Amanda Marcotte

Monday night, "The Beat with Ari Melber" on MSNBC rolled out another set of intriguing videos from "A Storm Foretold," a Danish documentary that follows Donald Trump's close aide and friend Roger Stone, both during the election and through the insurrection of January 6, 2021. Stone is an intriguing character in Trump's plot to overthrow democracy, especially as he's closely connected with the leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. He maintained a group chat called "Friends of Stone," in which many now-convicted insurrection leaders — recently found guilty of leading the Capitol riot, often under severe "seditious conspiracy" charges — kept in communication.

The documentary isn't available in the U.S. and the tapes have not been turned over to American law enforcement, because director Christoffer Guldbrandsen feels it violates journalistic ethics to do so. (Don't be hard on the guy, who was so devoted to this project that he ended up having a heart attack from the stress.) Last week, Melber's show released a video showing Stone detailing the fake electors scheme to his lackeys on November 5, 2020 — before the major news networks called the election. That proves, yet again, that the coup plan predates the election and was not, as Trump apologists claim, merely a reaction to a "sincere" belief that the election was stolen.
Story by Robert Legare

Washington — The FBI is asking for the public's help in locating a one-time member of the Proud Boys and defendant in a case linked to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol after he failed to show up for his sentencing Friday in Washington, D.C., according to court filings and public statements.

Christopher Worrell was convicted of seven counts at a bench trial in May, including obstruction of an official proceeding and assaulting officers. Prosecutors alleged he sprayed law enforcement officers with pepper spray gel during the attack as they defended the north side of the Capitol against a large group of rioters.

"Mr. Worrell did, in fact, spray his Sabre Red Maximum Strength Pepper Gel at a line of law enforcement officers protecting the Capitol. Of course, no one can doubt that he did actually spray that pepper gel," Judge Royce Lamberth wrote in explaining his decision to convict Worrell in May.
Story by Joe Conason

Now that former President Donald Trump has been indicted not once but twice for attempting to steal the 2020 presidential election, his apologists say he was merely pursuing his constitutional right to contest the results. They insist that he truly believed his campaign was undone by massive voter fraud and that all the post-election machinations carried out by him and his cronies were innocent and sincere.

Unfortunately for them, evidence continues to emerge showing not only that their claims of fraud were fabricated -- and ruled to be false in 61 lawsuits -- but that Trump had planned to carry out a conspiracy against democracy well before the election results were even fully tabulated.

Nobody should be surprised to learn that the latest confirmation of the Trump's campaign's nefarious intent features Roger Stone, the veteran dirty trickster and pardoned felon, who must have coined his "Stop the Steal" slogan while peering into a mirror. If there was an attempted "steal," he was one of the perps.

In exclusive video obtained by "The Beat with Ari Melber," Trump adviser and ally Roger Stone is seen pushing a plot to overthrow the 2020 Election. Melber interviews Christoffer Guldbrand, the documentary filmmaker who reported on Stone and recorded the footage, and attorney John Flannery, about the tape's significance amidst probes and cases indicting Trump and allies for trying to steal the election.
By Shawna Mizelle, CNN

Washington CNN — An internal Trump campaign memo from December 2020, made public Tuesday by The New York Times, reveals new details about how the campaign initiated its plan to subvert the Electoral College process and install fake GOP electors in multiple states after losing the 2020 presidential election.

In the December 6, 2020, memo, pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro laid out the plan to put forth slates of Republican electors in seven key swing states that then-President Donald Trump lost. The memo then outlines how then-Vice President Mike Pence, while presiding over the Electoral College certification on January 6, 2021, should declare “that it is his constitutional power and duty, alone, as President of the Senate, to both open and count the votes” from the GOP electors.

Chesebro conceded in the memo that this idea was a “controversial” long shot that would “likely” be rejected by the Supreme Court – but nonetheless promoted the strategy. He wrote that despite the legal dubiousness, “letting matters play out this way would guarantee that public attention would be riveted on the evidence of electoral abuses by the Democrats and would also buy the Trump campaign more time to win litigation that would deprive Biden of electoral votes and/or add to Trump’s column.”
By Robert Costa, Kathryn Watson

Washington — A newly revealed memo authored by a Trump-allied attorney laid out a sweeping strategy for organizing Trump supporters to serve as fake electors in the wake of the 2020 election, shining new light on the origins of an alleged scheme that is central to the most recent indictment of former President Donald Trump.

The six-page memo dated Dec. 6, 2020, was authored by attorney Kenneth Chesebro and circulated among Trump campaign lawyers and associates, two people familiar with the matter tell CBS News. The New York Times obtained and published the memo for the first time on Tuesday.

The document, signed by "K.C.," was one of a series of memos crafted by Chesebro and John Eastman, a conservative attorney, that formed the proposed legal basis for the ultimately unsuccessful fake elector scheme. The indictment alleges the plan "evolved over time from a legal strategy to preserve the Defendant's rights to a corrupt plan to subvert the federal government function by stopping Biden electors' votes from being counted and certified."
It’s the fourth indictment in five months for former President Donald Trump.
Dylan Stableford and Yahoo News Staff

Former President Donald Trump and 18 others have been indicted by a grand jury in Georgia on criminal charges stemming from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s long-running investigation into their attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in that state.

Speaking after the indictment was unsealed late Monday, Willis said the defendants have until noon on Aug. 25 to surrender. Trump has been charged with 13 counts — including a charge of violating Georgia's RICO (or Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act. It’s the fourth indictment in five months for Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination.
David Knowles Senior Editor

Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, was charged Monday with multiple felonies stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia and other battleground states. While Meadows is just one player in the alleged conspiracy laid out by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, the passages in the indictment bearing his name are noteworthy. Meadows made an appearance in front of the grand jury in Georgia but refused to answer questions, citing his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

The indictment alleges that Meadows and Trump met “on or about the 20th day of November 2020,” with Michael Shirkey, leader of the Michigan state Senate, Michigan Rep. Lee Chatfield and others. During the meeting, Trump allegedly “made false statements concerning fraud” in the 2020 election. A day later, per the indictment, Meadows “sent a text message to United States Representative Scott Perry from Pennsylvania,” asking for the phone number for the speaker and leader of that state’s legislature. Both of those contacts, the indictment states, were “in furtherance of the conspiracy” to overturn the election.
By Andy Sullivan, Joseph Ax and Sarah N. Lynch

Aug 14 (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Donald Trump was hit with a sweeping fourth set of criminal charges on Monday when a Georgia grand jury issued an indictment accusing him of efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. The charges, brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, add to the legal woes facing Trump, the front-runner in the race for the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election.

The sprawling 98-page indictment listed 19 defendants and 41 criminal counts in all. All of the defendants were charged with racketeering, which is used to target members of organized crime groups and carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.

Among the other defendants were Mark Meadows, Trump's former White House chief of staff, and lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman. "Trump and the other defendants charged in this indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump," the indictment said.
Story by Marita Vlachou

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a member of the now-defunct House Jan. 6 committee, described what she found particularly “unsettling” in the indictment accusing Donald Trump of conspiring to subvert his 2020 election defeat.

Lofgren told CBS News said she was surprised to learn from the indictment that Trump’s confidantes were seriously considering invoking the 1792 Insurrection Act, which would have authorized him to deploy the military against Americans to stay in power.

“I didn’t realize how close we came to Trump ordering the military into American cities,” Lofgren said. “That’s pretty chilling. If he had succeeded there would have been demonstrations.” “Very unsettling,” she continued.
Story by Tatyana Tandanpolie

Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer connected to then-President Donald Trump, first outlined a scheme to install false slates of electors to overturn the 2020 election in a previously secret internal campaign memo prosecutors have signaled forms a key segment in the timeline of the Trump team's effort's transformation into a criminal conspiracy.

The existence of the Dec. 6, 2020, memo was revealed in Trump's latest criminal indictment last week, though details about its contents were unclear. The New York Times obtained a copy of the communication, which shows that Chesebro knew at the outset that he was presenting "a bold, controversial strategy" that the Supreme Court would "likely" reject in the grand scheme.

He argued that the plan would home in on claims of voter fraud and "buy the Trump campaign more time to win litigation that would deprive Biden of electoral votes and/or add to Trump's column." The strategy would have involved the false Trump electors going through the same motions in mid-December as real electors. On Jan. 6, Vice President Mike Pence could then count those slates of votes rather than the certified ones for President Joe Biden.
Story by Komal Banchhor

Donald Trump's political action committee, Save America, has recently come under scrutiny as it prepares to disclose an astounding $40.2 million spent on legal expenses in the first half of 2023. As mentioned by Mint, the former President's legal battles have been mounting, and the staggering figure allocated for his defense, raises questions about the financial stability of his campaign.

According to Bloomberg, the $40.2 million expenditure was intended to defend not only Donald Trump but also his advisers and associates. The filing, scheduled for Monday, is expected to shed light on the specifics of these expenses. The anonymous sources familiar with the matter have confirmed this information, indicating the accuracy of the report.
Story by Jennifer Bendery

Jeffrey Clark, a former top Justice Department official under Donald Trump, was prepared to use the Insurrection Act to stay in power despite Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election, according to Tuesday’s federal indictment of the former president.

The indictment reveals a stunning Jan. 3, 2021, exchange between Clark, who is referred to as Co-Conspirator 4, and deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin. Philbin had previously warned Clark in December that “there is no world, there is no option in which you do not leave the White House [o]n January 20th.” He made the point again on Jan. 3 in an effort to dissuade Clark from assuming the role of acting attorney general under a fraudulent Trump presidency.

Philbin warned Clark that if Trump tried to stay in office despite no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, there would be “riots in every major city in the United States.” Clark replied, “Well, [Phibin], that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”
Veuer

Donald Trump was recently indicted yet again, this time on 4 charges related to the January 6th insurrection and attack on our nation’s capital. One of those charges was related to the former President attempting to install uncertified electors in swing states. Veuer’s Tony Spitz has the details.
MSNNBC

Rachel Maddow highlights parts of the second federal indictment of Donald Trump that show Trump and his acolytes accepting the likelihood of violence in the course of seizing power that Trump failed to earn in the 2020 election and willing to use military force against the American people to enforce their will.
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