The GOP Tried to Intimidate DOJ Into Doing Nothing About Jan. 6, and it Worked
June 23, 2023This content comes from the latest installment of our weekly Breaking the Vote newsletter out of VICE News’ D.C. bureau, tracking the ongoing efforts to undermine the democratic process in America. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday.
Thanks for your bullshit
John Eastman, the Federalist Society-bred legal eagle of Donald Trump’s attempted coup, might get disbarred. He’s on trial in front of a California judge on an 11-count complaint alleging that his public statements, his advice, and his two memos mapping out how Mike Pence could help steal the election mean he should lose his license to practice law.
Eastman’s trial so far is pretty much a rehash of stolen-election mythology, how courts and election administrators debunked it, and how Eastman helped push the “fake elector” scheme in Georgia, in the Oval Office, and beyond.
Eastman’s defense (so far) is that his advice to Trump, Pence, and state legislators was, in the end, normal lawyer stuff. It may have been unprecedented and controversial, his lawyers say, but it was legit legal advice—not counseling a conspiracy he knew was illegal.
Eastman runs the risk that federal prosecutors will indict him in the Special Counsel probe of Jan. 6 and the coup attempt. The Jan. 6 committee certainly thought that when they referred Eastman for charges (page 105.) But it turns out that were it not for John Eastman, we might not be talking about federal indictments for Trump and other coup plotters at all.
This week the Washington Post confirmed what many legal experts and accountability-philes had suspected in the many months after the insurrection: DOJ avoided even investigating Trump and his lieutenants in the coup plot for over a year, even while public evidence mounted that Jan. 6 was not just a spontaneous riot, but the culmination of a planned coup.
In those days of 2021 and early 2022, before dual Special Counsel investigations and grand juries, there was widespread worry that bad-faith claims of DOJ bias by the Trumpist GOP had cowed AG Merrick Garland into inaction. Now we know that’s exactly what happened!
Read all about it. The Jan. 6 committee’s emerging evidence of criminal activity made the public ask, repeatedly, where was DOJ? Privately, the revelations embarrassed DOJ officials.
But this is where Eastman comes in. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ruled in a Jan. 6 committee-related lawsuit in March, 2022 that Eastman’s emails included evidence of a likely criminal conspiracy with Trump. Press reports and an insider book revealed Eastman’s Oval Office advocacy for a block-and-switch plan where Pence would reject duly chosen electors and allow GOP-led swing states to replace them with fake ones.
Not until all this, according to this week’s report, did DOJ begin to stir and open a criminal probe. Garland and his deputies didn’t want to invite more GOP accusations of political bias or fan the MAGA machine with the idea of real accountability for Trump.
Trumpist Republicans know their propaganda worked, at least for a while. It’s precisely why, now that the law is coming down on Trump, they’ve launched a full-on blitz against DOJ and any other agents of accountability in sight.
Censuring leaders of Trump’s impeachment? Check. Moving to actually expunge impeachment? Check. Pretending tax and gun violations by Hunter Biden deserve the exact same charges as mishandling dozens of national security secrets, obstruction and false statements? Sure. Pledging to impeach Joe Biden? Definitely, though for exactly what, no one knows. Attacks on Jack Smith and his family? You betcha. All this week.
Trumpist Republicans helped stave off accountability for Trump’s attempted coup for more than a year. Now, potential indictments are still outstanding. Potential jurors are watching. The MAGA GOP are trying their hardest to further intimidate DOJ, or at least lay the political groundwork for corrupt pardons or interference later.
Speaking of intimidation: Greg Jacobs, Pence’s former counsel, testified at Eastman’s disciplinary hearing this week about how he was getting a coffee in the Capitol on Jan. 6 when he heard the smash of a nearby window. It was Proud Boy Dominic “Spazzo” Pezzola breaking through with that stolen police shield. Jacobs, shaken, was quickly ushered with others onto the Senate floor by security personnel who said it was the only way to guarantee their safety.
Jacobs says that was the moment he fired off a now-famous email unearthed by the Jan. 6 committee. It was to John Eastman. “Thanks to your bullshit we are now under siege,” he wrote.
Imagine the irony if Eastman’s bullshit winds up being the little thing that convinced the Justice Department to stop being intimidated by the people who are still trying to steal an election.
Jack Smith has the ball rolling. Sign your friends up for Breaking the Vote!
Read below about how Georgia officials have formally dismissed the bogus claims of election fraud that Trump and his media allies used to sic threats on election workers. And it’s a great time to say CONGRATS to VICE’s Alexis Johnson and Madeleine May, who won a 2023 Cronkite Award for their Breaking the Vote coverage of the MAGA faithful who threatened election workers in Georgia and beyond.
Here’s their award-winning piece, and you can also check out the awards ceremony.
To peach is own
Hey, do you live in Fulton County? Get a jury summons this week? You could be in the pool for DA Fani Willis’s widely expected case against the attempt to overturn the election in Georgia. Hope you make it to voir dire!
John Eastman’s disbarment trial probably won’t wrap up until next week. But for all the testimony about his role in the coup attempt, the most remarkable part was happening away from the courtroom in California.
While Eastman was defending efforts to get Georgia legislators to rescind Donald Trump’s loss and appoint fake electors, things were going quite differently back in the Peach State.
There was some good news! A board that Georgia Republicans created in 2021 and gave the power to take control of county election authorities decided not to do that in Fulton County, home of Atlanta. The worry among voting advocates was that subversion-minded Republicans could use the board to grab power from Fulton County officials, especially after the MAGA propaganda campaign around Fulton County’s election.
That propaganda included now-infamous claims that Fulton election workers had spirited ballots into tabulation centers in “suitcases.” It’s one of the key claims Trump boosted to advance his lies about Georgia’s results and to sic his supporters on election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss. The board voted finally to dismiss that claim, among others, officially putting that little piece of voting disinformation to rest.
Stay, as we love to say, tuned in Fulton County. Hot crime summer continues.
Richer for it
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer also testified in Eastman’s disciplinary hearing Thursday. Shortly after he finished came news that Richer is suing Kari Lake. Richer says he’s sick of the failed GOP governor candidate lying about him and his role in the 2022 election, so he’s suing her for defamation.
The male tase
A Jan. 6 rioter who pleaded guilty to jamming a stun gun into the neck of DC Police Off. Michael Fanone was sentenced to 12 ½ years in prison by a federal judge this week. Danny “DJ” Rodriguez pleaded guilty earlier this year to several charges, including obstructing an official proceeding and assaulting a police officer. After Jan. 6 he bragged to friends that he “tazzed [sic] the fuck out of the blue.” US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced Rodriguez to 151 months in prison, calling him a “one-man army of hate.”
Loyal and committed
A federal judge says that Oath Keepers attorney Kellye SoRelle isn’t competent to stand trial on Jan. 6-related charges and instead must be treated for mental illness. SoRelle was an attorney for the Oath Keepers and also the girlfriend of founder and convicted seditionist Stewart Rhodes. She was supposed to go on trial on four federal counts including obstruction. But US District Judge Amit Mehta, who presided over the Oath Keepers trials, ruled SoRelle wasn’t competent to understand the charges against her or to aid in her own defense.
“Trump won!”
— Jan. 6 rioter Daniel “DJ” Rodriguez after being sentenced for 12 ½ years in prison for assaulting a police officer with a stun gun, and other charges.
Stay classy-fied — Speaking of illegally retaining defense information in violation of the Espionage Act… A former FBI agent was just sentenced to nearly four years in prison for keeping classified documents at her home in Kansas. Kendra Kingsbury pleaded guilty to taking and keeping hundreds of classified documents in her private residence, which DOJ stressed was a very inappropriate place to be keeping sensitive national defense information.
“Kingsbury put national security at risk by retaining classified information in her home that would have, if in the wrong hands, revealed some of the government’s most important and secretive methods of collecting essential national security intelligence,” DOJ said, to no one in particular.
Shot, Chase — Virginia GOP Sen. Amanda Chase once got censured for praising Jan. 6 rioters. She openly trafficked conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, as well as the 2021 GOP governor primary, which she lost. She once described herself as “Trump in heels.” Now, Chase is a loser again. She got ousted in her GOP state Senate primary on Tuesday. Surprise, she’s not conceding, claiming the election was stolen.
Eric-rolled — Eight GOP-led states have now left the Electronic Registration Information Center, aka ERIC, the non-profit organization designed to make it easier for states to maintain accurate and up-to-date voter rolls. ERIC has a long history of bipartisan cooperation and thus has become the target of Trumpist disinformation and conspiracy theories. Alaska just did ERIC a solid by staying in the fold. Now the question is, will these GOP states form their own version of ERIC? Even if they wanted to, could they?
Happy mothers prey — On Tuesday VICE News’s David Gilbert published the story on how “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty is making common cause with right-wing extremists like the Proud Boys and even adopting their penchant for online harassment. On Thursday, the Moms for Liberty Chapter of Hamilton County, Ind. quoted Adolf Hitler at the top of their newsletter. What timing!
(BTW… the quote the Moms for Liberty chapter parked at the top of their newsletter is the same one MAGA GOP Rep. Mary Miller paraphrased in her infamous Capitol Hill speech the day before Jan. 6. Just so you know! Have a great weekend.)
It’s not the law’s fault that Trump broke it.
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