Category Archives: Donald Trump

Almost three months ago, I was subpoenaed by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. to appear before the grand jury investigating Donald Trump.I was asked to testify about the 2015 cover story I wrote chronicling his decades-long fixation with our net worth estimate. My colleague Chase Peterson-Withorn was also subpoenaed, for a related story on the value of the former presidents Trump Tower apartment.

Weve been fighting these subpoenas ever since. They set a dangerous precedent: How do we keep an autonomous press when journalists suddenly must testify for or against the subjects they cover? Or manage the chilling effect, when sources of information on matters of public interest worry whether reporters could be dragged into a courtroomor when journalists hold back, fearful of the resources needed to lawyer up?The mundanity in this circumstance his fixation with his Forbes ranking is well known, and weve already shared the information the prosecutors seek with the entire world through our reporting, with the subject himself transparently doing the talking makes it all the more alarming.

After months of objections, on Wednesday, the judge overseeing this grand jury process ordered us to testify, but limited the scope to simply confirm the accuracy of what was in the coverstory andthe article about the apartment. Andso,yesterday we did just that. I testified for about 20 minutes; Peterson-Withorn followed for about five minutes.

To be clear, the original story transparently reported what Trump told us six years ago. We revealed no new information during the testimony. If we were sitting on anything newsworthy, we would have already shared that with our readers. In that same spirit of reader-first transparency, we feel its appropriate to share what we discussed with the grand jury yesterday.

I was questioned by Mark Pomerantz, the former federal prosecutor who Vance brought in to lead the case. Pretty much every question was a simple yes or no. Under oath, I confirmed the following:

Those are the facts. Well leave it to others to dissect what this means, or doesnt, for Vances case. We will, instead, put a spotlight on what seems to be a creeping use of subpoenas to undermine a free press. Yesterday,around the same timeI testified, Forbes agreed to become a signatory for a Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press letter urging the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack to withdraw its subpoena of a freelance photojournalist, seeking three months of her phone records. Reporters and prosecutors both serve the public, but in different ways. The latter shouldnt trample on the efficacy of the former.

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Forbes Testified Before The Trump Grand Jury Yesterday Here's Why We Fought Their Subpoena - Forbes

WASHINGTON Two days after Christmas last year, Richard P. Donoghue, a top Justice Department official in the waning days of the Trump administration, saw an unknown number appear on his phone.

Mr. Donoghue had spent weeks fielding calls, emails and in-person requests from President Donald J. Trump and his allies, all of whom asked the Justice Department to declare, falsely, that the election was corrupt. The lame-duck president had surrounded himself with a crew of unscrupulous lawyers, conspiracy theorists, even the chief executive of MyPillow and they were stoking his election lies.

Mr. Trump had been handing out Mr. Donoghues cellphone number so that people could pass on rumors of election fraud. Who could be calling him now?

It turned out to be a member of Congress: Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, who began pressing the presidents case. Mr. Perry said he had compiled a dossier of voter fraud allegations that the department needed to vet. Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department lawyer who had found favor with Mr. Trump, could do something about the presidents claims, Mr. Perry said, even if others in the department would not.

The message was delivered by an obscure lawmaker who was doing Mr. Trumps bidding. Justice Department officials viewed it as outrageous political pressure from a White House that had become consumed by conspiracy theories.

It was also one example of how a half-dozen right-wing members of Congress became key foot soldiers in Mr. Trumps effort to overturn the election, according to dozens of interviews and a review of hundreds of pages of congressional testimony about the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6.

The lawmakers all of them members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus worked closely with the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, whose central role in Mr. Trumps efforts to overturn a democratic election is coming into focus as the congressional investigation into Jan. 6 gains traction.

The men were not alone in their efforts most Republican lawmakers fell in line behind Mr. Trumps false claims of fraud, at least rhetorically but this circle moved well beyond words and into action. They bombarded the Justice Department with dubious claims of voting irregularities. They pressured members of state legislatures to conduct audits that would cast doubt on the election results. They plotted to disrupt the certification on Jan. 6 of Joseph R. Biden Jr.s victory.

There was Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the pugnacious former wrestler who bolstered his national profile by defending Mr. Trump on cable television; Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, whose political ascent was padded by a $10 million sweepstakes win; and Representative Paul Gosar, an Arizona dentist who trafficked in conspiracy theories, spoke at a white nationalist rally and posted an animated video that depicted him killing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York.

They were joined by Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas, who was known for fiery speeches delivered to an empty House chamber and unsuccessfully sued Vice President Mike Pence over his refusal to interfere in the election certification; and Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama, a lawyer who rode the Tea Party wave to Congress and was later sued by a Democratic congressman for inciting the Jan. 6 riot.

Mr. Perry, a former Army helicopter pilot who is close to Mr. Jordan and Mr. Meadows, acted as a de facto sergeant. He coordinated many of the efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office, including a plan to replace the acting attorney general with a more compliant official. His colleagues call him General Perry.

Mr. Meadows, a former congressman from North Carolina who co-founded the Freedom Caucus in 2015, knew the six lawmakers well. His role as Mr. Trumps right-hand man helped to remarkably empower the group in the presidents final, chaotic weeks in office.

In his book, The Chiefs Chief, Mr. Meadows insisted that he and Mr. Trump were simply trying to unfurl serious claims of election fraud. All he wanted was time to get to the bottom of what really happened and get a fair count, Mr. Meadows wrote.

Congressional Republicans have fought the Jan. 6 committees investigation at every turn, but it is increasingly clear that Mr. Trump relied on the lawmakers to help his attempts to retain power. When Justice Department officials said they could not find evidence of widespread fraud, Mr. Trump was unconcerned: Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen, he said, according to Mr. Donoghues notes of the call.

On Nov. 9, two days after The Associated Press called the race for Mr. Biden, crisis meetings were underway at Trump campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va.

Mr. Perry and Mr. Jordan huddled with senior White House officials, including Mr. Meadows; Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser; Bill Stepien, the campaign manager; and Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary.

According to two people familiar with the meetings, which have not been previously reported, the group settled on a strategy that would become a blueprint for Mr. Trumps supporters in Congress: Hammer home the idea that the election was tainted, announce legal actions being taken by the campaign, and bolster the case with allegations of fraud.

At a news conference later that day, Ms. McEnany delivered the message.

This election is not over, she said. Far from it.

Mr. Jordans spokesman said that the meeting was to discuss media strategy, not to overturn the election.

On cable television and radio shows and at rallies, the lawmakers used unproved fraud claims to promote the idea that the election had been stolen. Mr. Brooks said he would never vote to certify Mr. Trumps loss. Mr. Jordan told Fox News that ballots were counted in Pennsylvania after the election, contrary to state law. Mr. Gohmert claimed in Philadelphia that there was rampant voter fraud and later said on YouTube that the U.S. military had seized computer servers in Germany used to flip American votes.

Mr. Gosar embraced the fraud claims so closely that his chief of staff, Tom Van Flein, rushed to an airplane hangar parking lot in Phoenix after a conspiracy theory began circulating that a suspicious jet carrying ballots from South Korea was about to land, perhaps in a bid to steal the election from Mr. Trump, according to court documents filed by one of the participants. The claim turned out to be baseless.

Mr. Van Flein did not respond to detailed questions about the episode.

Even as the fraud claims grew increasingly outlandish, Attorney General William P. Barr authorized federal prosecutors to look into substantial allegations of voting irregularities. Critics inside and outside the Justice Department slammed the move, saying it went against years of the departments norms and chipped away at its credibility. But Mr. Barr privately told advisers that ignoring the allegations no matter how implausible would undermine faith in the election, according to Mr. Donoghues testimony.

And in any event, administration officials and lawmakers believed the claims would have little effect on the peaceful transfer of power to Mr. Biden from Mr. Trump, according to multiple former officials.

Mainstream Republicans like Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said on Nov. 9 that Mr. Trump had a right to investigate allegations of irregularities, A few legal inquiries from the president do not exactly spell the end of the Republic, Mr. McConnell said.

On Dec. 1, 2020, Mr. Barr said publicly what he knew to be true: The Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread election fraud. Mr. Biden was the lawful winner.

The attorney generals declaration seemed only to energize the six lawmakers. Mr. Gohmert suggested that the F.B.I. in Washington could not be trusted to investigate election fraud. Mr. Biggs said that Mr. Trumps allies needed the imprimatur, quite frankly of the D.O.J., to win their lawsuits claiming fraud.

They turned their attention to Jan. 6, when Mr. Pence was to officially certify Mr. Bidens victory. Mr. Jordan, asked if the president should concede, replied, No way.

The lawmakers started drumming up support to derail the transfer of power.

Mr. Gohmert sued Mr. Pence in an attempt to force him to nullify the results of the election. Mr. Perry circulated a letter written by Pennsylvania state legislators to Mr. McConnell and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader, asking Congress to delay certification. Im obliged to concur, Mr. Perry wrote.

Mr. Meadows remained the key leader. When disputes broke out among organizers of the pro-Trump Stop the Steal rallies, he stepped in to mediate, according to two organizers, Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lynn Lawrence.

In one case, Mr. Meadows helped settle a feud about whether to have one or two rallies on Jan. 6. The organizers decided that Mr. Trump would make what amounted to an opening statement about election fraud during his speech at the Ellipse, then the lawmakers would rise in succession during the congressional proceeding and present evidence they had gathered of purported fraud.

(That plan was ultimately derailed by the attack on Congress, Mr. Stockton said.)

On Dec. 21, Mr. Trump met with members of the Freedom Caucus to discuss their plans. Mr. Jordan, Mr. Gosar, Mr. Biggs, Mr. Brooks and Mr. Meadows were there.

This sedition will be stopped, Mr. Gosar wrote on Twitter.

Asked about such meetings, Mr. Gosars chief of staff said the congressman and his colleagues have and had every right to attend rallies and speeches.

None of the members could have anticipated what occurred (on Jan. 6), Mr. Van Flein added.

Mr. Perry was finding ways to exert pressure on the Justice Department. He introduced Mr. Trump to Mr. Clark, the acting head of the departments civil division who became one of the Stop the Steal movements most ardent supporters.

Then, after Christmas, Mr. Perry called Mr. Donoghue to share his voter fraud dossier, which focused on unfounded election fraud claims in Pennsylvania.

I had never heard of him before that day, Mr. Donoghue would later testify to Senate investigators. He assumed that Mr. Trump had given Mr. Perry his personal cellphone number, as the president had done with others who were eager to pressure Justice Department officials to support the false idea of a rigged election.

Mark Meadows. Mr. Trumps chief of staff, who initially provided the panel with a trove of documents that showed the extent of his rolein the efforts to overturn the election, is now refusing to cooperate. The House voted to recommend holding Mr. Meadows in criminal contempt of Congress.

Republican congressmen. Scott Perry, Jim Jordan, Andy Biggs, Paul Gosar, Louie Gohmert and Mo Brooks, working closely with Mr. Meadows, becamekey in the effort to overturn the election. The panel has signaled that it will investigate the role of members of Congress.

Fox News anchors. Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Brian Kilmeade texted Mr. Meadowsduring the Jan. 6 riot urging him to persuade Mr. Trump to makean effort to stop it. The texts were part of the material that Mr. Meadows had turned over to the panel.

Mr. Donoghue passed the dossier on to Scott Brady, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, with a note saying for whatever it may be worth.

Mr. Brady determined the allegations were not well founded, like so much of the flimsy evidence that the Trump campaign had dug up.

On Jan. 5, Mr. Jordan was still pushing.

That day, he forwarded Mr. Meadows a text message he had received from a lawyer and former Pentagon inspector general outlining a legal strategy to overturn the election.

On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all the electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence, the text read.

On Jan. 6, Washington was overcast and breezy as thousands of people gathered at the Ellipse to hear Mr. Trump and his allies spread a lie that has become a rallying cry in the months since: that the election was stolen from them in plain view.

Mr. Brooks, wearing body armor, took the stage in the morning, saying he was speaking at the behest of the White House. The crowd began to swell.

Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass, Mr. Brooks said. Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America?

Just before noon, Mr. Pence released a letter that said he would not block certification. The power to choose the president, he said, belonged to the American people, and to them alone.

Mr. Trump approached the dais soon after and said the vice president did not have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution.

We will never give up, Mr. Trump said. We will never concede.

Roaring their approval, many in the crowd began the walk down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol, where the certification proceeding was underway. Amped up by the speakers at the rally, the crowd taunted the officers who guarded the Capitol and pushed toward the buildings staircases and entry points, eventually breaching security along the perimeter just after 1 p.m.

By this point, the six lawmakers were inside the Capitol, ready to protest the certification. Mr. Gosar was speaking at 2:16 p.m. when security forces entered the chamber because rioters were in the building.

As the melee erupted, Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, yelled to his colleagues who were planning to challenge the election: This is what youve gotten, guys.

When Mr. Jordan tried to help Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, move to safety, she smacked his hand away, according to a congressional aide briefed on the exchange.

Get away from me, she told him. You fucking did this.

A spokesman for Mr. Jordan disputed parts of the account, saying that Ms. Cheney did not curse at the congressman or slap him.

The back-and-forth was reported earlier by the Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker in their book I Alone Can Fix It.

Of the six lawmakers, only Mr. Gosar and Mr. Jordan responded to requests for comment for this article, through their spokespeople.

Mr. Perry was recently elected leader of the Freedom Caucus, elevating him to an influential leadership post as Republicans could regain control of the House in 2022. The stolen election claim is now a litmus test for the party, with Mr. Trump and his allies working to oust those who refuse to back it.

All six lawmakers are poised to be key supporters should Mr. Trump maintain his political clout before the midterm and general elections. Mr. Brooks is running for Senate in Alabama, and Mr. Gohmert is running for Texas attorney general.

Some, like Mr. Jordan, are in line to become committee chairs if Republicans take back the House. After Jan. 6, Mr. Jordan has claimed that he never said the election was stolen.

In many ways, they have tried to rewrite history. Several of the men have argued that the Jan. 6 attack was akin to a tourist visit to the Capitol. Mr. Gosar cast the attackers as peaceful patriots across the country who were harassed by federal prosecutors. A Pew research poll found that nearly two-thirds of Republicans said their party should not accept elected officials who criticize Mr. Trump.

Still, the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack appears to be picking up steam, voting this week to recommend that Mr. Meadows be charged with criminal contempt of Congress after he shifted from partly participating in the inquiry to waging a full-blown legal fight against the committee.

His fight is in line with Mr. Trumps directive to stonewall the inquiry.

But the committee has signaled that it will investigate the role of members of Congress.

According to one prominent witness who was interviewed by the committee, investigators are interested in the relationship between Freedom Caucus members and political activists who organized Stop the Steal rallies before and after the election.

Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said the panel would follow the facts wherever they led, including to members of Congress.

Nobody, he said, is off-limits.

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Meadows and the Band of Loyalists: How They Fought to Keep Trump in Power - The New York Times

Mark Meadows, it seems, is now a bellwether of American democracy. Late Tuesday night, the House of Representatives, on a mostly party-line vote, recommended holding Donald Trumps former White House chief of staff to be in criminal contempt of Congress, and referred his case to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. Since Sunday, members of the House select committee investigating Trumps role in the January 6th insurrection have unveiled text messages that they say show that Meadows played a more significant role in helping him try to overturn the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election than was previously known. They also issued a fifty-one page document detailing the questions they had planned to ask Meadows, who abruptly stopped cooperating with the panel last week. Investigators would like Meadows to explain an e-mail he wrote the day before the attack to an unidentified individual, indicating that the National Guard was on standby to protect pro Trump people. They would like to ask him about his communications with an organizer of the Stop the Steal rally that preceded the crowds assault on the Capitol, who told Meadows that things have gotten crazy and I desperately need some direction. Please. And they would like to know why Meadows responded to a member of Congresss warning that it would be controversial to ask Republican legislators in some states to reverse the election by saying, I love it.

Some of the messages revealed by the committee show that Meadows, as well as Donald Trump, Jr., and several Fox News hosts, denounced the violence that day and pushed Trump to make a public statement calling for the rioters to leave the Capitol. But last Wednesday, Meadows, who is himself a former congressman, from North Carolina, announced that he was no longer coperating with the committee on the grounds that his communications with then President Trump are protected by executive privilege. He also filed a lawsuit against the panel, arguing that he was both being illegally coerced into violating the Constitution and having his right to privacy violated. By then, though, Meadows had handed over to the committee nine thousand pages of e-mails, texts, and other documents that he contends were not subject to executive privilege. Those documents have given the investigation new momentum.

Members of the committee said that they think Meadows changed his mind after Trump berated him for disclosing in his recent memoir, The Chiefs Chief, that Trump had tested positive for COVID before his first debate with Joe Biden during the 2020 campaign. Many people have speculated its because of a backlash from Donald Trump, Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, who serves on the committee, told me, adding, The rule of law applies despite Donald Trumps tantrums. A congressional staffer, who asked not to be named, said that Meadowss initial coperation with the investigation undermines his current legal claim that the committee is engaging in overreach. I think he got buyers remorse, the staffer said. He is putting himself in a difficult position.

Raskin said he believes that the events of January 6th involved three rings of participants. An outer ring consisted of the thousands of Trump supporters who attended the morning rally and, in many cases, sincerely believed his false claim that the election had been stolen from him. A middle ring consisted of certain members of the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and other far-right groups who acted as a frontal guard that conducted an organized assault on the Capitol. A third ring consisted of Trump and a small number of loyalistsincluding Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, and John Eastman, the lawyer who drafted a plan for Vice-President Mike Pence to reject Electoral College votes for Bidenwho operated out of a suite in the Willard Hotel, a few blocks from the White House. Raskin described their actions around the events of January 6th as unprecedented in American history. After Pence declined Trumps demand that he alter the election results, Trump dispatched a mob to block the certification of his defeat. This was an attempted coup by the President against the Vice-President and the Congress, Raskin said.

The problem, of course, is that Democrats have had high hopes that Trump would face a reckoning for his misdeeds before, in the Mueller investigation and in the Presidents two sets of impeachment proceedings. Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, praised the work of the January 6th committee, and said that fully uncovering Trumps role remains vital. But he cautioned that political leaders and journalists should not focus solely on producing a January 6th smoking gun, reminiscent of the secret Oval Office recordings that brought down President Richard Nixon. So much of the media has been obsessed with the idea that a document will emerge that shows everything, Nyhan said. I worry that we lose the forest for the trees.

Nyhan, who is also a co-director of Bright Line Watch, notes that both U.S. politics and the ways in which Americans receive their information have changed radically over the past fifty years, contributing to the current deep polarization. According to opinion polls, seventy-eight per cent of Republicans believe that Biden was not legitimately electedan increase from seventy per cent in April. Nyhan believes the committees findings, like past investigations of Trump, are unlikely to sway his fervent base. Meanwhile, Republican leaders, particularly House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, are standing by as Trump purges the G.O.P. of opponents. He is doing what politicians do, Nyhan said, of McCarthy. He is going along with the energy in his party. Nyhan feels it is equally important for Democrats to immediately enact reforms that will prevent either party in the future from attempting such radically anti-democratic acts as overturning an electionand that they should start building public support for such measures now, rather than wait for a smoking-gun moment to do so. Historically, Nyhan points out, authoritarian regimes have emerged by gradually subverting the independence of rival centers of powersuch as the legislature, the courts, and the mediaand concentrating power in their own hands. The story of democratic erosion in other countries is that it happens invisibly, you dont have this tanks-in-the-streets moment, Nyhan added. There are elected governments who operate with impunity, whose opponents dont have a level playing field to compete upon.

Observers, however, say it is unlikely that Republicans will support any Democrat-backed election-reform effort. In October, they filibustered the For the People Act, a sweeping Democratic proposal that would have revamped election systems nationwide. Nyhan said that Democrats should consider eliminating or changing the filibuster in order to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, a watered-down election-reform bill endorsed by Senator Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, which currently has some bipartisan support in the Senate. It includes measures that would make it more difficult for state legislators to dismiss election results certified by nonpartisan state officialsa tactic Trump tried to use in 2020. Nyhan also called for reform of the Electoral Count Actan obscure and poorly drafted 1887 law that describes how Congress should count the electoral votesbefore Democrats potentially lose their control of the Senate and House in next years midterm elections. The Electoral Count Act is terrifying, Nyhan said, referring to the statutes vagueness. Its Chekhovs gun.

Raskin said the committee recognizes the full scope of the danger and will produce a fine-grained portrait of the events that lead to January 6th and the assault on American democracy. In addition, the committee may propose detailed reforms to prevent a future insurrection. I really thought it was over with January 6th, yet there was an immediate attempt to begin an Orwellian whitewash of the events, he said, emphasizing that we need to win this struggle politically. Forcing Trump to face legal consequences for his actions, though, clearly continues to tantalize Democrats. The real issue is whether American democracy can strengthen itself against the fascist impulses he has unleashed, Raskin said, noting, I still have high hopes that Donald Trump will have his reckoning with the law.

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Is There a Smoking Gun in the January 6th Investigation? - The New Yorker

Former President Donald Trump is unhappy with his ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows because he wrote in his new book about Trump's appearance while he was sick with COVID-19, according to a Washington Post report published on Wednesday.

Meadows wrote that Trump had "red streaks" in his eyes and "his hair was a mess" while he was ill in bed at the White House. Meadows also described Trump as wearing a T-shirt, which was "the first time I had seen him in anything other than a golf shirt or a suit jacket."

"This guy is talking about what I look like, in my bedroom," Trump recently complained to an advisor, according to The Post.

Meadows had gone to Trump's bedroom to convince him to go to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he could receive further treatment for COVID-19. Trump was hesitant, but ultimately agreed, according to Meadows.

These scenes are from Meadows' book "The Chief's Chief," which came out last week and has sparked national headlines with new revelations that Trump tested positive for coronavirus on September 26, 2020, three days before his first presidential debate against then-Democratic candidate Joe Biden information that was not revealed to the public at the time. Meadows, worried that it could've been a false-positive result, advised Trump to take a second test, which came back negative, Meadows wrote. Trump proceeded to attend a campaign rally, the debate, and other events, potentially coming in contact with some 500 people, The Post found.

But days later, when Trump's aide Hope Hicks and first lady Melania Trump tested positive, Trump got tested again, and the result was positive, which he announced on October 1. He was taken to Walter Reed the next day.

Meadows praises Trump and portrays him in a positive light in the book, but some of its content has upset the former president. In a statement earlier this month, Trump said that the "story of me having COVID prior to, or during, the first debate is Fake News. In fact, a test revealed that I did not have COVID prior to the debate." The Post also previously reported that Trump was "furious" that Meadows included the anecdote in his book.

"The president's right. It's fake news," Meadows told Newsmax in response to Trump's statement. He did not, however, mention a specific report.

"If you actually read the book, the context of it, that story outlined a false positive. He literally had a test, he had two other tests after that that showed he didn't have COVID during the debate, and yet the way that the media wants to spin it is certainly to be as negative about Donald Trump as they can possibly can, while giving Joe Biden a pass," Meadows said.

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Trump annoyed by Meadows calling his hair 'a mess' when he had COVID-19 - Business Insider

Founder and CEO of My Pillow, conservative political activist and conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell (C) listens to former U.S. President Donald Trump addresses supporters during a "Save America" rally at York Family Farms on August 21, 2021 in Cullman, Alabama.

Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell told CNBC he is ready to go broke pushing the false claim that the election was stolen from Donald Trump while proclaiming that the election system needs extensive changes.

Lindell said he has spent $25 million of his own money since Election Day to fuel his campaign. And he plans to keep spending to continue his crusade going into the 2022 midterm elections.

"I will keep spending it because there is no tomorrow. We lose our country. We either only have two paths: either it gets changed before the 2022 election or we lose our country forever. I will spend every dime I have," Lindell told CNBC during a nearly hourlong interview Wednesday. "I will spend whatever it takes."

Trump himself has continued to spread the lie that the election was rigged against him.

Efforts like Lindell's are likely to continue encouraging mistrust among Trump supporters in the election system. His comments also underscore the intensity driving Trump's allies and supporters as the former president considers whether to run again and as the nation prepares for the 2022 midterm elections. A Reuters/Ipsos poll from May showed that a majority of Republicans surveyed still believe Trump, a Republican, actually defeated now-President Joe Biden, a Democrat, over a year ago.

Lindell's comments also come after the House voted to refer Trump's then-chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to the Justice Department for criminal contempt, for stonewalling the committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. A mob fueled by false election claims made by Trump and his allies stormed Capitol Hill that day.

The House select committee investigating the insurrection told CNBC that it is interested in the funding of events that led up to the day. Lindell is linked to Women for America First, the main group that helped organize the pro-Trump rally in Washington that preceded the Capitol invasion.

"The sources and destinations of funding for events leading up to the violence of January 6th are key areas of interest for the Select Committee," a Jan. 6 committee aide told CNBC late Wednesday.

Lindell has said he believes that China had a role in interfering with the election. A government report declassified by the Director of National Intelligence earlier this year said there was no proof that foreign actors attempted to alter technical aspects of the voting process. William Barr, one of Trump's former attorneys general, said there was no widespread voter fraud during the 2020 election. The election-rigging claims have also been rejected by several courts.

Lindell has a net worth of about $50 million, according to data from website Celebrity Net Worth. Lindell's crusade to make changes to the election system has weighed on his company's revenue, he said. MyPillow lost $80 million in sales after retailers pulled his products off the shelves over his election claims, Lindell said.

Lindell said the $25 million he spent so far on his effort to fight the legal election results went in part toward what he says are lawyers, cyber investigators and his cyber symposium earlier this year.

He estimated that $500,000 of the total went toward lawyers representing him in lawsuits related to his false claims, such as the $1.3 billion suit by voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems and a $1.6 billion countersuit brought by MyPillow against Dominion.

Lindell said some of the money is being used to help hire lawyers for people such as Tina Peters, a Republican county clerk in Colorado who has questioned the integrity of the election.

Lindell declined to provide names of the lawyers and investigators that he has assembled to be part of this larger effort.

Read more of CNBC's politics coverage:

He also said money went toward a network of organizations aligned with his stance on the election.

Lindell recently discussed this network of groups, called Cause of America, on his online channel Lindell TV. Leaders of another organization with similar stances on the 2020 election, called the U.S. Election Integrity Plan, appear next to Lindell during their announcement in a video discussing their new plans.

"We are in 44 states now. We're doing canvassing efforts. I'll give an example. In Florida, we canvassed 10,000 people's names, and 2,600 of them were phantom voters," Lindell told CNBC. "Phantom voter" is a term used to describe a ballot allegedly cast by a dead person.

Cause of America's website says it is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization "focused on election integrity." It goes on to say that the "organization exists to enable and facilitate grassroots citizen action to conduct, control, manage, monitor, and verify their elections on local, state, and national levels."

It features a picture of Lindell holding an American flag. The website also says the group is "about building a network of individuals, organizations, and partners who can learn from each other and work together to solve the most pressing issue facing our nation free and fair elections."

Lindell's efforts have drawn the attention of the House select committee that is investigating the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Lindell has denied having any role in what happened that day.

Investigators discussed with at least one witness whether Lindell helped fund a group that led in organizing a rally that preceded Trump supporters' attack on Congress, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

The leaders of Women for America First have previously told associates that Lindell was a financial supporter of the organization, multiple people familiar with the matter said. The group's leaders, who are under scrutiny by the select committee, claimed to people that Lindell spent between $250,000 and $600,000 to fund the organization, these people said.

Women for America First were permit holders for the Jan.6 rally in Washington. It was at their rally where Trump called on his supporters to march on Capitol Hill as lawmakers were attempting to certify the election for Biden. The Jan. 6 committee has subpoenaed leaders of the group, including Cynthia Chafian, who submitted the first permit application on behalf of Women for America First, and Amy Kremer and Kylie Jane Kremer, who are seen as the group's founders.

Lindell denied he was a donor to Women for America First, but he confirmed that MyPillow paid $100,000 to the organization for a sponsorship ad on the group's bus, which traveled to various pro-Trump rallies across the country from November 2020 until mid-December that year. Pictures of the Women for America First bus show the MyPillow sign on the side of the vehicle. That group later organized what it called a "caravan" to Washington on Jan. 5.

The bus tour was called "March for Trump," and it went several places including Iowa, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., in December. Many of the speakers at the stops made unsubstantiated claims about the election, such as that the vote was "stolen" and that the election was an act of "treason."

Lindell told the December crowd in Washington that he was in touch with Trump's legal advisors, such as Sidney Powell, after the election.

"I talked to Sidney Powell last night and she put, right now it's in the Supreme Court, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Georgia and that's the real lawsuits. That the stuff that Texas had was not the one that we were all working on," Lindell told the crowd.

A spokesman for Women for America First did not respond to requests for comment.

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MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell says he spent $25 million to push false pro-Trump election claims: 'I will spend whatever it takes' - CNBC

Cheneys statement includes precise terminology from the criminal obstruction statute. And she's not the only one pondering the matter: Its become the subject of intense debate in the cases of dozens of Jan. 6 rioters whom prosecutors allege obstructed Congress effort to count electoral votes on Jan. 6.

To convict someone of that crime, a jury must determine that a defendant took an obstructive action, affected an official proceeding and acted with corrupt intentions. There are several obstruction statutes in the criminal code, but the one deployed by prosecutors in Jan. 6 cases is among the most severe, carrying a whopping 20-year maximum sentence.

Some defendants have challenged DOJs claim that the Jan. 6 session of Congress meets the legal definition of an official proceeding but a Trump-appointed federal judge, Dabney Friedrich, rejected that claim in a recent opinion. Several other U.S. District Court judges are considering the same question in other Jan. 6 cases.

Cheneys suggestion that inaction could lead to a violation of the obstruction statute is among the broadest interpretations of that law. Among the variables that judges in obstruction cases must consider is whether the law in question could apply to someone like Trump, whose specific actions on Jan. 6 may have technically been lawful even if they were done with the corrupt intent of interfering with Congress.

Friedrich called such scenarios closer questions than the matter of whether those who broke into the Capitol could be charged with obstruction, suggesting Trump's actions fall into more of a gray area.

Nonetheless, Cheney has been careful to frame the question as necessary for the Jan. 6 committees legislative judgments. Trump has mounted numerous legal campaigns against congressional investigations by claiming they lack a true legislative purpose and instead amount to a shadow law enforcement effort.

Courts have long held that Congress is not permitted to investigate for the sake of law enforcement. But lawmakers are permitted to share the results of its probes with the Justice Department if they believe they have uncovered evidence of a crime.

Its unclear if DOJ is looking at any aspects of the conduct by Trump or his allies related to Jan. 6. The department has indicted Trump associate Steve Bannon for contempt of Congress after he defied a subpoena from the select committee.

Other members of the Jan. 6 panel have stopped short of specifying the criminal elements of obstruction when discussing Trumps conduct. But they've acknowledged that it's on their radar.

Its clearly one of the things on the mind of some of the members of the committee, said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.).

Raskin added that a series of text messages sent to Meadows on Jan. 6, revealed in public this week by Cheney, have heightened the relevance of the obstruction statute. The messages showed frantic efforts by close Trump associates from aides to lawmakers to Fox News hosts to his own eldest son to get the then-president to call off the rioters as they swarmed the Capitol. Trump did not act for hours amid the bedlam.

Other lawmakers see the question of obstruction as part of their larger investigation into what Trump was doing as the Capitol was under attack.

I think that we're trying to understand those 187 minutes that he didn't say anything what that means. And we're trying to put some more light on that. I personally am not drawing any conclusions on where that takes us, said panel member Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.).

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Jan. 6 investigators mull whether Trump violated obstruction law - POLITICO

People are stupid.

That subject line, in an email Wednesday from Donald Trump, grabbed my attention more than other fundraising messages I get several times a day from the ever-grifting former president.

Stupid people, the email said, are those who dont believe there was massive Election Fraud in 2020. To solve that fraud, Trump needed $45 from patriots like me desperately.

The man is desperate all right.

Opinion Columnist

Jackie Calmes

Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.

And yet, this losers 13-month-old delusion that he won reelection is fully embraced by millions of Americans and one of our two major parties. In fealty to his Big Lie, Republicans in 19 states have passed laws making it harder to vote and solidifying their partys control over elections, and now theyre putting partisans in local offices charged with certifying results. The prospect of chaos in the 2022 and 2024 elections is real.

Every week brings fresh evidence of Trumps danger to democracy and this week was no different. Newly disclosed text messages from yet-to-be-named House Republicans to Mark Meadows, Trumps final White House chief of staff, documented their real-time terror about the Jan. 6 insurrection they now downplay and of their collusion in schemes to overturn Joe Bidens election.

For the mainstream media, the challenge has been to convey the seriousness of this crisis to a public exhausted by politics and polarization. Covering the lie of the year like politics as normal wont cut it.

Yet as the weeks developments underscored, the far-right media ecosystem Fox News and its imitators propelled Trumps con from the start and continues to drive it. Its audience, full of the election deniers most in need of truth, gets the alternative news it wants. For them, any reporting from the mainstream media is discredited after years of Trumps anti-press rants.

Not surprising that Fox News, Newsmax and One America News didnt broadcast the public hearing Monday night of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Their viewers didnt see Rep. Liz Cheney and other members read aloud some text messages Meadows received amid the siege from frightened Republican lawmakers and Donald Trump Jr., begging Meadows to get the commander in chief to stop the attack. The pleaders included Fox celebrities Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade.

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank read what he aptly called a particularly chilling text to Meadows from a House Republican, lamenting the failure of the scheme to throw out millions of Biden votes: Yesterday was a terrible day. We tried everything we could in our objection to the 6 states. Im sorry nothing worked.

When Fox News finally did address the hearing on Tuesday, its hosts dismissed the texts and attacked the messengers, chiefly Cheney, a popular target for its anchors because shes stood up to Trump, which got her bounced from the House Republican leadership team in May and the Wyoming Republican Party last month.

Real journalists would have noted that the Republicans plaintive texts contradicted their efforts since Jan. 6 to play down the violence and oppose a bipartisan investigation. A real news network would have been embarrassed to have its stars exposed as such hypocrites, pleading with the White House based on the fact that the rioters were Trump loyalists and then suggesting otherwise to viewers.

Ingraham texted Meadows during the insurrection, Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy. Hours later, she was on air suggesting a discredited theory that the siege was the work of people who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement, including perhaps antifa sympathizers.

The disclosure of the text messages came just a day after Chris Wallace, a respected longtime Fox News anchor, announced he was leaving. It was regrettable that he left without offering any criticism of the network, unlike two longtime conservative contributors, including my colleague Jonah Goldberg, when they recently resigned in protest.

Fox News is not the same place it was when Wallace joined it 18 years ago. Even then, its fair and balanced slogan was easily mocked. But in recent years, Fox News has become a truth-defying partisan propaganda operation led by Tucker Carlson. It is unabashedly in league with the first president ever to reject the peaceful transfer of power a former president who, Cheney suggests, could be criminally liable for his role in disrupting Congress constitutionally required count of the electoral college votes.

Cheney gets the last word, from her speech to the House Tuesday night:

Whether we tell the truth, get to the truth, and defend ourselves against it ever happening again, is the moral test of our time.

Her estranged Republican colleagues, and their enablers in conservative media, seem determined to fail that test.

@jackiekcalmes

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Calmes: Bigger holes keep appearing in the 'big lie' - Los Angeles Times

Pelosi: 'Never forgive' Trump, lackeys for Jan. 6

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Wednesday she would "never forgive" former President Trump and "his lackeys and his bullies that he sent to the Capitol for the trauma" that was exerted to staff during the Jan. 6 riot. (Dec. 8)

AP

As a House committee continues its investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and former President Donald Trump goes on a speaking tour, debunked narratives about the deadly insurrection are resurfacing on social media.

Reports show military and law enforcement officials were unprepared and slow to respond to the riot. Trump has repeatedly attemptedto blame that onHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.,claiming sherejected his request to deploy 10,000 National Guardtroops to the Capitol ahead of his Stop the Steal rally.

Trumps claim is one of many efforts by Republicans and supporters of the former president to shift blame and downplay the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol that resulted in four deaths and led to more than 600 arrests.

Trump Says Pelosi Turned Down His Request For 10,000 National Guard Troops For Jan. 6 Rally…!!! reads the caption of a Dec. 13 Facebook video that accumulated more than 4,000 views within a couple days.

The video included in the post shows Trump speaking to a crowd on Dec. 11 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he claimed he recommended 10,000 National Guard troops be deployed because he knew the crowd size was going to be "enormous."

I recommended 10 but I said do whatever they want, theyre running the Capitol, they know what theyre doing, Trump says in the video. And the Capitol police knew about it, she (Pelosi) knew about it, and they turned it down because they said it didnt look good.

But Trumps claim was debunked by fact-checkers in March, after he first made the statementduring a Fox News appearance, and its still not true. There is no evidence Trump made any formal request about deploying 10,000 National Guard troops before the rally.

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USA TODAY reached out to Trumps spokesperson and the Facebook page thatshared the video for additional comment.

A government memo about the events leading up to Jan. 6, statements from Pelosis office and the Pentagon and testimony from the former House sergeant-at-arms show Trump did not request 10,000 troops ahead of the rally.

Drew Hammill, Pelosi's spokesperson, told USA TODAY that Pelosis office was not consulted or contacted regarding any request for the National Guard ahead of Jan. 6,and he noted the speaker of the House does not have the power to reject that type of request.

Claims that Pelosi was in charge of Capitol security on Jan. 6 have been previously debunked by USA TODAY.The Capitol Police are overseen by the Capitol Police Board and committees from the Senate and House of Representatives.

Fact check: Post falsely claims Pelosi is blocking Capitol Police officers from testifying

Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby had previously looked into Trumps claim and told The Washington Post in March that we have no record of such an order being given.

A timeline from the Department of Defense only mentions an agreement made on Jan. 4 about potentially providing 340 District of ColumbiaNational Guard members at the request of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to support traffic control points and to deploy a quick reaction force if additional support is requested by civilian authorities.

Additionally, when asked by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, during a Feb. 23 Senate hearingif discussions took place on Jan. 4 with congressional leadership about bringing in the National Guard,former House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving said he "had no follow up conversations."

"It was not until the sixth that I alerted leadership that we might be making a request," Irving said. "And that was the end of the discussion."

More:Capitol riot misinformation persists: False claims continue to circulate on Facebook

While Trump never formally requested 10,000 National Guard troops, then-acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller told Vanity Fair that Trump brought up the figure in conversation on the night before Jan. 6.

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that Pelosirejected Trump's request for 10,000 National Guard troops to be deployed before Jan. 6. Pelosi's office said the speaker was not contacted about deploying the National Guard prior to the rally, and the Pentagon has previously stated that there is no record of the request. A timeline from the Department of Defenseabout the events leading up to Jan. 6 does not include any mention of a request for 10,000 National Guard members. The former House sergeant-at-arms said he did not have any discussions with congressional leaders about the National Guard until the day of the riot.

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app, or electronic newspaper replica here.

Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

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Fact check: Trump repeats false claim that Pelosi rejected request for National Guard ahead of Jan. 6 - USA TODAY

NEW YORK (AP) After a dozen years in office, one piece of unfinished business remains for Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. before he retires at the end of the month: Will the prosecutor known for his caution go out with a bang by bringing criminal charges against Donald Trump?

Vance, who has spent more than two years investigating the former president, has been coy about whether hell seek Trumps indictment or leave the decision to the next district attorney, Alvin Bragg, a fellow Democrat who takes over Jan. 1.

I really cant talk about the Trump case, so Im not going to talk about the Trump case, Vance said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. But I think its pretty clear that our investigation is active and ongoing.

Vance, 67, has continued to pursue Trump over his business practices even as hes packing up to leave the job hes held since 2010.

After charging the Trump Organization and one of its executives with tax fraud last June, Vance convened a new grand jury that could potentially bring a fresh indictment in what could be a legacy-cementing moment. No former president has ever been charged with a crime.

But a rush to get the case done before Jan. 1 might also be out of character for a prosecutor who holds few news conferences, does few interviews and is known for a methodical approach.

While Vance is perhaps best known for overseeing Harvey Weinsteins landmark #MeToo rape conviction last year, hes also been criticized for hesitating to bring potentially risky cases involving the powerful.

In any event, Vance said he has no future political aspirations and little to gain by grabbing the spotlight.

Im not running for office again, so politically its meaningless to me, he told The AP. I have had no sense that politics has been involved in my mind or the mind of anyone in this office.

Vance, the son of the late former U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance Sr., presided over sizable change in the district attorneys office, where he oversaw a staff of 500 lawyers with an annual budget of about $125 million.

Like other Democratic prosecutors in the city, he eased off of the iron-fisted approach to quality-of-life crimes that was once a hallmark of criminal justice in the city.

Vance ended most prosecutions for possessing and smoking marijuana and for jumping subway turnstiles, slashing the cases handled by his office by nearly 60% though some activists said he didnt go far enough.

He also re-examined cases involving wrongful convictions. Last month, Vance went to court to overturn the convictions of Muhammad Aziz and the late Khalil Islam, who he said had wrongfully spent years in prison for the 1965 assassination of civil rights leader Malcolm X.

Vance also made good on pledges to tackle cold cases, sending a man to prison in what had been one of the citys most notorious unsolved crimes, the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz.

Yet Vance has also battled criticisms that he had a two-tiered system of justice one for everyday New Yorkers, another for the rich and famous.

His career-defining win last year in the Weinstein case came only after he declined a chance to pursue similar charges in 2015 after a model accused the movie mogul of groping her breast. Vance said there wasnt enough proof of a sexual assault.

In 2011, Vance dropped rape charges against the French financier Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then the head of the International Monetary Fund, because of concerns about the credibility of the accuser.

Vance investigated Trumps two eldest children over potential fraud in a hotel project a decade ago, but declined to bring charges.

In 2016, his office struck a deal that let a prominent gynecologist accused of sexually abusing patients avoid prison a case that has since been reopened in the face of public outcry.

Vance, speaking to the AP, said his office has prosecuted many people of power and authority, that his office has taken on thousands of sex crimes cases, and that he often defers to the expertise of his career sex crimes prosecutors on charging decisions.

Still, he acknowledged the criticism and outlined steps his office has taken, including bringing in an outside consultant to take a hard look at how its sex crimes bureau operates.

To those folks who, who criticize our decisions, I would say that we I think we have learned a great deal from the #MeToo movement, Vance said. Of course we havent done perfectly and youre going to make people unhappy in this job, just by the nature of the job and the decisions you make. That happens from time to time and it has happened to me from time to time. What I can simply commit to is that the efforts of our lawyers have always been to try to get the right result.

Trumps view on Vance is that hes just another Democrat out to get him in a partisan witch hunt.

New York is dying before our very eyes, and all the Democrat Prosecutors are focused on is how we can get and punish Donald Trump, the former president said in his latest missive Wednesday.

The district attorneys investigation, which initially began as an examination of hush-money payments paid to women on Trumps behalf, has expanded into an inquiry into whether the presidents company misled lenders or tax authorities about the value of its properties.

The June indictments allege the Trump Organization and its CFO, Allen Weisselberg, evaded taxes on lucrative fringe benefits paid to executives. Prosecutors didnt charge Trump, but they did note that he signed some checks at the center of the case.

Vance sought Trumps personal tax records as part of the investigation, eventually winning them through a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Shortly after the court decision, he announced he wouldnt seek reelection.

Vance told the AP he only ever planned on serving two or three four-year terms a relative cup of coffee compared with his predecessors Robert Morgenthau, who was in office for 34 years, until he was 90, and Frank Hogan, who stuck around for 31 years.

I did not want to be D.A. forever and I wanted to have another chapter or two after I left this job, Vance said.

In the process, he also avoided a potential primary fight with progressive Democrats who said his criminal justice reforms didnt go far enough.

In many ways, hes sort of old school and to his credit, methodical, New York Law School professor Rebecca Roiphe said. He may not have been the best at managing public relations, and I dont think he was the best at managing his office making sure that his principles and policies and commitments made their way to every courtroom and to every D.A. but I do think hes a decent prosecutor who was trying to do the right thing in most of these situations.

As D.A., Vance took an interest in global efforts to prevent cyberattacks, gun violence and sex trafficking issues he says he wants to continue working on in the private sector after his retirement.

Vance has also used an $800 million slush fund bankrolled by Wall Street settlements to provide police officers with smartphones, build neighborhood gyms, and help reduce a national backlog in the testing of rape kits, an effort that brought him national attention and praise from Law & Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay.

Vance assesses himself modestly, saying he took what was already perhaps the greatest 20th century district attorneys office in the country and made it one of the greatest of the 21st century.

The next two weeks will show whether Vance is content with his legacy as it stands, or intends to take one more shot at rewriting his place in the history books.

___

Follow Michael Sisak on Twitter at twitter.com/mikesisak

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DA's last big decision: Whether to charge Trump - Associated Press

Pence allies have long believed that Trump played a role in Gohmerts legal strategy, and they've indicated that Trump was frustrated that the Justice Department intervened to defend his vice president against Gohmerts suit. But what remains unknown is just how involved Trump was in Gohmerts legal strategy. A spokesperson for the former president did not respond to a request for comment.

And while its unclear whether the Jan. 6 select panel is probing the genesis of Gohmerts suit which was quickly rejected by federal district and appellate courts in Texas one committee member described it as an important episode in the runup to the violence at the Capitol.

Its a significant detail in that it was part of a plan to isolate and coerce Pence, said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.).

A litany of new details about Trumps pressure campaign against Pence have emerged in recent weeks. Those include memos from Trump attorneys John Eastman and Jenna Ellis that lay out fringe legal rationales for halting certification, as well as proof of further public and private force exerted by Trump himself. Gohmerts suit is rarely mentioned in the publicly available pre-Jan. 6 timetable.

Gohmerts goal, outlined in the suit, was to force Pence to ignore the 130-year-old law that governs the final certification of presidential elections and instead wield total authority over the proceedings. Pence ultimately decided that he lacked this power and his role was almost entirely ceremonial. He revealed his final decision on Jan. 6, shortly before a pro-Trump mob ransacked the Capitol amid chants that he was a "traitor" and should be hanged.

In this Jan. 6, 2021, file photo, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, second from left, works beside Vice President Mike Pence during the certification of Electoral College ballots in the presidential election, in the House chamber at the Capitol in Washington. Shortly afterward, the Capitol was stormed by rioters determined to disrupt the certification. | J. Scott Applewhite, File/AP Photo

As for why Gohmert led the suit, Powell has publicly indicated that one reason was because Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has jurisdiction over his home state of Texas. Alito, Powell argued, might have bought more time for pro-Trump forces to reverse the results by blocking Pence from certifying Bidens victory. (Theres no evidence Alito was considering this).

The Capitol riot worked in Powell's favor but also against it, in her stated view: It delayed a last-ditch Jan. 6 attempt to seek Supreme Court consideration of Gohmert's suit but also provided more time for Alito to weigh the suit that afternoon. The decision by Pence and congressional leaders to keep certifying votes after the riot dealt a mortal blow to Gohmerts legal fight, Powell said.

Had [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi not rushed, the outcome of the case could have been different, and the President as well," Powell wrote on her website in September.

Powell did not respond to requests for comment for this story but told POLITICO in September that she was not speaking with the President in that time frame around Gohmert's suit. She did, however, famously meet with Trump in the Oval Office on Dec. 18 along with Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn and other advisers working to help Trump stay in power.

Gohmert, who is now running for Texas attorney general, has said little about his lawsuit. His office declined multiple requests for comment.

The Texan made headlines at the time, though, after the district court rejected his court challenge. He said the effect of the court decision would leave street violence as the only option to contest the election.

"In effect, the ruling would be that youve got to go to the streets and be as violent as antifa and BLM, Gohmert said on Newsmax on Jan. 1.

One aspect of Gohmerts legal fight that went unnoticed at the time but is relevant in hindsight: One of Pences Justice Department defenders was Jeffrey Clark, then acting assistant attorney general.

In recent months, House and Senate investigators have revealed that Clark was marshaling allies inside DOJ who might help him deploy the department in support of Trumps bogus claims of voter fraud. He pressured department leaders to issue a letter calling into question the results in multiple states, a push that then-Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen resisted. Trump came within inches of removing Rosen and installing Clark as acting attorney general, but relented amid a promise of mass resignations.

Rosen told congressional investigators that he viewed Clarks role in the Gohmert suit as a sign that Clark had begun to come back into the fold, only to realize later that his colleague was still in contact with Trump about taking over the department.

A source familiar with Rosens thinking said that even in hindsight, its not clear Clarks involvement with the Pence suit was improper.

The outcome in that case was correct, and theres no evidence even in hindsight so far that Clark tried to do anything sketchy on that front, the source said.

But its unclear whether Pence ever realized that Clark while simultaneously fending off Gohmerts case was in talks with Trump about effectively commandeering the DOJ on the president's behalf. The Senate investigation of Clarks actions showed that one day after his name first appeared in the Pence case, he told Rosen that Trump would be making him acting attorney general within hours.

An attorney for Clark declined to answer questions about Clarks involvement in the Gohmert lawsuit.

Mr Clark has taken a strong stance to protect President Trumps Executive Privilege, attorney Harold MacDougald said. "He will continue to do so.

The Jan. 6 committee has already voted to hold Clark in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify but has deferred asking the House to send the matter to the Justice Department while it awaits Clarks return for a deposition as soon as this week. Clarks attorney has indicated that his client intends to plead the Fifth, and the panel has indicated that it expects Clark to do so on a question-by-question basis.

On Wednesday, Clarks former deputy Ken Klukowski was seen heading into an interview with Jan. 6 committee investigators.

In revisiting the Gohmert case, POLITICO reached out to each of the lawyers involved, including Powell associates Howard Kleinhendler, Julia Haller and Lawrence Joseph. Joseph was one of the attorneys who crafted Texas failed legal effort later joined by Trump with a brief signed by Eastman to get the Supreme Court to invalidate election results in four key states Biden won.

I do not talk about litigation with the media unless a client directs me to do so, which has not happened, Joseph said in an email.

A fourth attorney, Texas-based William Lewis Sessions, also declined to comment and copied Gohmerts House email address on the reply.

The areas of interest you have indicated are ones for which I either have no knowledge or which I believe are protected by a privilege, he said. The person who would have the best knowledge is Representative Gohmert, who was one of my clients.

Gohmert did not respond to this email or a subsequent one.

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The Jan. 6 puzzle piece that's going largely ignored - POLITICO