No One Is Above The Law

 

Inmate P01135809

Questions About Giuliani and Ellis Mugshots

First, Rudy Giuliani:

Now, Jenna Ellis:

And now some context:

Three of Donald Trump’s key election lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, surrendered Wednesday on charges in the Georgia election subversion case. 

That happened yesterday. 

A little more than a THOUSAND DAYS AGO, this happened:

And some context:

Having failed to gain traction in court, President Donald Trump’s campaign brought its case challenging Pennsylvania’s election results to a state Senate hearing Wednesday in Gettysburg, where it repeated its unfounded claims of widespread fraud to a welcoming audience of Republican legislators.

Addressing members of the state Senate Majority Policy Committee in a proceeding that played out like a campaign rally — with firebrand speeches from GOP lawmakers and whooping cheers from dozens of supporters — Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani pressed his baseless case that the election had been stolen and the truth covered up by “Big Tech,” the media, and the courts.

“I know crooks really well,” he told the panel, gathered in a conference room of the Wyndham Gettysburg hotel. “You give them an inch and they take a mile. And you give them a mile and they take your whole country.”

Then, with Trump attorney Jenna Ellis holding a cell phone to a microphone, the president himself addressed the crowd from Washington.

That was the meeting hosted by failed GOP candidate for PA Governor, State Senator Doug Mastriano. Jenna Ellis went on to become Doug's "senior legal advisor" for that failed campaign. In the picture, that's Jenna holding up the cell phone to the microphone so that the enthralled can hear their master's voice.

This event is even listed as "Act 8" from the Georgia indictment:

     On or about the 25th day of November 2020, RUDOLPH WILLIAM LOUIS GIULIANI and JENNA LYNN ELLIS appeared, spoke, and presented witnesses at a meeting of Pennsylvania legislators in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. During the meeting, RUDOLPH WILLIAM LOUIS GIULIANI made false statements concerning fraud in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Pennsylvania and solicited, requested, and importuned the Pennsylvania legislators present at the meeting to unlawfully appoint presidential electors from Pennsylvania. During the meeting, JENNA LYNN ELLIS solicited, requested, and importuned the Pennsylvania legislators present at the meeting to unlawfully appoint presidential electors from Pennsylvania. DONALD JOHN TRUMP joined the meeting by telephone, made false statements concerning fraud in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Pennsylvania, and solicited, requested, and importuned the Pennsylvania legislators present at the meeting to unlawfully appoint presidential electors from Pennsylvania. These were overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy. [Bolding and CAPS in original.]

BTW, Jenna Ellis is quoted as saying that "Doug Mastriano is the Donald Trump of Pennsylvania.”

Will any of Pennsylvania's political reporters be asking Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano for a comment on the indictment/arrest/mug shot of either Rudy Giuliani or Jenna Ellis?

$200,000 - And That's Not All!

From the NYTimes:

A judge in Atlanta set bail for former President Donald J. Trump at $200,000 on Monday in the new election interference case against him, warning Mr. Trump not to intimidate or threaten witnesses or any of his 18 co-defendants as a condition of the bond agreement.

And see that last part? It's here in the agreement:

The Defendant shall perform no act to intimidate any person known to him or her to be a codefendant or witness in this case or to otherwise obstruct the administration of justice. This shall include, but is not limited to, the following: 

a. The Defendant shall make no direct or indirect threat of any nature against any codefendant; 

b.. The Defendant shall make no direct or indirect threat of any nature against any witness including, but not limited to, the individuals designated in the Indictment as an unindicated co-conspirators Individual 1 through Individual 30; 

c. The Defendant shall make no direct or indirect threat of any nature against any victim; 

d. The Defendant shall make no direct or indirect threat of any nature against the community or to any property in the community; 

e. The above shall include, but are not limited to, posts on social media or reposts of posts made by another individual on social media;

And then there's this part:

The Defendant shall not violate the laws of this State, the laws of any other state, the laws. of the United States of America, or any other local laws.

I'm absolutely sure Donald J. Trump will have absolutely no problem with these restrictions.

Absolutely none. Nope.

 

 

Indicted! (For A FOURTH Time) - Some Local (PA) Connections

You can read the indictment here.

Of course, I'm looking for local connections.

Hey, found one! Here it is:

Act 8. 

     On or about the 25th day of November 2020, RUDOLPH WILLIAM LOUIS GIULIANI and JENNA LYNN ELLIS appeared, spoke, and presented witnesses at a meeting of Pennsylvania legislators in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. During the meeting, RUDOLPH WILLIAM LOUIS GIULIANI made false statements concerning fraud in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Pennsylvania and solicited, requested, and importuned the Pennsylvania legislators present at the meeting to unlawfully appoint presidential electors from Pennsylvania. During the meeting, JENNA LYNN ELLIS solicited, requested, and importuned the Pennsylvania legislators present at the meeting to unlawfully appoint presidential electors from Pennsylvania. DONALD JOHN TRUMP joined the meeting by telephone, made false statements concerning fraud in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Pennsylvania, and solicited, requested, and importuned the Pennsylvania legislators present at the meeting to unlawfully appoint presidential electors from Pennsylvania. These were overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy. [Bolding and CAPS in original.]

And look! Here's another one that follows right after:

Act 9.

     On or about the 25th day of November 2020, immediately after the meeting of Pennsylvania legislators in Gettysburg , Pennsylvania, where RUDOLPH WILLIAM LOUIS GIULIANI and JENNA LYNN ELLIS appeared, spoke , and presented witnesses, DONALD JOHN TRUMP invited a group of the Pennsylvania legislators and others to meet with him at the White House. Later that day, DONALD JOHN TRUMP, MARK RANDALL MEADOWS, RUDOLPH WILLIAM LOUIS GIULIANI, JENNA LYNN ELLIS and unindicted co-conspirators Individual 5 and Individual 6, whose identities are known to the Grand Jury, met with the group of Pennsylvania legislators at the White House and discussed holding a special session of the Pennsylvania General Assembly. These were overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy. [Bolding and CAPS in original.]

A few things you should've noticed about these "overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy" to keep Trump in power in 2020:

• That was State Sen Doug Mastriano's meeting in Gettysburg.
  
• Mastriano was one of the Pennsylvania legislators at that meeting in the White House.
  
• Jenna Ellis later joined Doug Mastriano's legal team during his campaign for Governor of Pennsylvania.

According to the State of Georgia, Doug Mastriano was part of the conspiracy. 

Any comment for the blog, Senator?

More to come.

So What Happened, Senator, On January FIFTH?

On CNN's "State of the Union" former Vice President Mike Pence was asked whether Donald Trump asked him to overturn the 2020 election and this was part of his answer:

The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone. But, look, in the days before, the president was talking about us rejecting votes. Then, late in the process, his lawyers suggested that we return votes to the states.

But, frankly, the day before January 6, if memory serves, they came back, his lawyers did, and said, we want you to reject votes outright. This -- they were asking me to overturn the election. I had no right to overturn the election. I know we did our duty that day, and I couldn't be more encouraged, whether it's here in New Hampshire, in Iowa or all across the country, how many people come up to me and express their appreciation for the stand that we took.  

Last December, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported:

According to the committee, Trump spoke to Mastriano on Jan. 5, then told the White House operator that Mastriano would be “calling in for the Vice President.”

It’s unclear if that call happened. Mastriano did send two emails on behalf of Trump the night of Jan. 5. One was signed by state legislators from across the country and asked Pence to delay ratifying the election for 12 days.

We wrote about this earlier this year and still Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano has yet to explain (or even mention, as far as I know) his phone call to the White House on January 5 - the day before January 6.

In the middle of Trump's pressure campaign to get Pence to overturn the election, Doug calls the White House, talks to Trump for a few minutes and then Trump tells the then VP's office for them to expect a call from Doug.

What did Doug Mastriano say to Donald Trump the day before Trump's mob stormed The Capitol?

Did Doug talk to Mike Pence that night? What did they talk about?

Questions still unanswered.

 

 

Does Doug Mastriano Have An Explanation For This?

We'll start here:

A hot mic picked up State Sen. Devlin Robinson (R-Allegheny) calling a first responder from Pennsylvania Task Force 1 a "d*ck" during a committee meeting on Tuesday.

Robinson leaned over to Mastriano and said "Yeah, this guy looks like a dick." pic.twitter.com/XVgrfHUevM

— The Keystone (@TheKeystone) August 2, 2023

And some context from PoliticsPa:

Two Pennsylvania state lawmakers are in the hot seat after they were caught on a live microphone and on video making a disparaging remark about a Philadelphia Fire Department captain.

The Senate Veterans Affairs and Emergency Preparedness Committee, chaired by Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Franklin), held a hearing in Coraopolis that focused on legislation introduced by Sen. Devlin Robinson (R-Allegheny). The proposal was to create a Pennsylvania Task Force Urban Search and Rescue team, based in Allegheny County, to assume primary coverage in the western part of the state.

And then:

As [Capt. Ken] Pagurek was walking to his seat, Robinson leaned over to Mastriano and made a disparaging remark about Pagurek. Mastriano, as seen on the video, could be seen laughing at the comment.

Doug can be heard laughing, too. Give a listen.

State Sen Robinson has issued an apology for calling the guy a dick:

pic.twitter.com/LwOAi2ARXc

— Senator Devlin Robinson (@SenRobinsonPA) August 3, 2023

State Sen Doug Mastriano, as far as I can tell, has not yet apologized for laughing.

 

One Thing To Remember About Jeffrey Clark (Pennsylvania Edition)

Ok, let's start here:

Donald Trump’s team was aware that, if he refused to leave office after the 2020 election, it could spark a mass wave of civil unrest. But the man Trump sought to appoint as attorney general had an easy answer for that, according to the new indictment of the former president: invoke the Insurrection Act.

The indictment lists six as-of-yet unindicted co-conspirators. Co-Conspirator 4 is described as “a Justice Department official who…attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud.” The indictment later refers to this individual as the man Trump intended to put “in charge of the Justice Department.” The description matches Jeffrey Clark.

And:

This same Deputy White House Counsel now “tried to dissuade” Co-Conspirator 4 from taking the post of Acting Attorney General. The counsel again made clear his conviction that there had not been meaningful fraud in the election. And he warned that there would be “riots in every major city in the United States” if Trump attempted to remain in office, against the will of the electorate.

Co-Conspirator 4 had an answer for the Deputy White House Counsel, the indictment alleges, that was equally disturbing and glib: “Well,” he said, “that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”

Connecting the dots, that's what Jeffrey Clark said. Rolling Stone sums it up:

But the current indictment alleges that the Insurrection Act was considered as a means to use the power of the military — or perhaps even informal militias — to suppress the righteous outrage of American voters at the theft of an election — by the thief himself, with the guidance and cheer-leading of his hand-picked lackey at the Department of Justice. 

And here's the thing for Pennsylvanians to keep in mind whenever they see the name Jeffrey Clark pop up in the discussion of Trump's coup attempt;

Pennsylvania Congressman Scott Perry introduced Clark to Trump:

The President raised, among others, debunked claims about voting machines in Michigan, a truck driver who allegedly moved ballots from New York to Pennsylvania, and a purported election fraud at the State Farm Arena in Georgia.None of the allegations were credible, and Rosen and Donoghue said so to the President.At one point during the December 27th call in which Donoghue refuted President Trump’s fraud allegations, Donoghue recorded in handwritten notes a request President Trump made specifically to him and Acting Attorney General Rosen: “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressmen.”Donoghue explained: “[T]he Department had zero involvement in anyone’s political strategy,” and “he wanted us to say that it was corrupt.”“We told him we were not going to do that.”

At the time, neither Rosen nor Donoghue knew the full extent to which Republican Congressmen, including Representative Scott Perry, were attempting to assist President Trump to overturn the election results.

The Committee’s investigation has shown that Congressman Perry was working with one Department of Justice official, Jeffrey Clark, regarding the stolen election claims. Perry was working with Clark and with President Trump and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows with this goal: to enlist Clark to reverse the Department of Justice’s findings regarding the election and help overturn the election outcome.

After introducing Clark to the President, Perry sent multiple text messages to Meadows between December 26th and December 28th, pressing that Clark be elevated within the Department. Perry reminded Meadows that there are only “11 days to 1/6.... We gotta get going!,” and, as the days went on, one asking, “Did you call Jeff Clark?”

 Jeff Clark was where he was because Scott Perry got him there.

Something for every Pennsylvanian to remember.

 

 

TRUMP INDICTED! AGAIN - AGAIN!

As we all know by now, this happened yesterday:

Donald Trump was indicted on felony charges Tuesday for working to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the violent riot by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol, with the Justice Department acting to hold him accountable for an unprecedented effort to block the peaceful transfer of presidential power and threaten American democracy.

The four-count indictment, the third criminal case against Trump, provided deeper insight into a dark moment that has already been the subject of exhaustive federal investigations and captivating public hearings. It chronicles a months-long campaign of lies about the election results and says that, even when those falsehoods resulted in a chaotic insurrection at the Capitol, Trump sought to exploit the violence by pointing to it as a reason to further delay the counting of votes that sealed his defeat.

You can read the indictment here. 

It opens with this:

The Defendant, DONALD J . TRUMP, was the forty-fifth President of the United States and a candidate for re-election in 2020. The Defendant lost the 2020 presidential election. 

And sums things up rather nicely a few paragraphs down:

The purpose of the conspiracy was to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct the federal government function by which those results are collected, counted, and certified.

And the indictment lays out "three criminal conspiracies." Here they are:

a. A conspiracy to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and
deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function
by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and
certified by the federal government, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371;

b. A conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 congressional
proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are
counted and certified ("the certification proceeding"), in violation of 18
U.S.C. § 1512(k);and

c. A conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one's vote counted, in
violation of 18 U.S.C. § 241.

Not surprisingly, our own "swing state" of Pennsylvania show up more than a few times.

Like here on page 5:

The Defendant's conspiracy to impair, obstruct, and defeat the federal government function through dishonesty, fraud, and deceit included the following manner and means... 

b. The Defendant and co-conspirators organized fraudulent slates of electors in seven targeted states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin), attempting to mimic the procedures that the legitimate electors were supposed to follow under the Constitution and other federal and state laws. This included causing the fraudulent electors to meet on the day appointed by federal law on which legitimate electors were to gather and cast their votes; cast fraudulent votes for the Defendant; and sign certificates falsely representing that they were legitimate electors. Some fraudulent electors were tricked into participating based on the understanding that their votes would be used only if the Defendant succeeded in outcome-determinative lawsuits within their state, which the Defendant never did. The Defendant and co-conspirators then caused these fraudulent electors to transmit their false certificates to the Vice President and other government officials to be counted at thecertification proceeding on January 6.

Those pesky "fake electors" again, amirite?

And this on page 8:

The Defendant widely disseminated his false claims of election fraud for months, despite the fact that he knew, and in many cases had been informed directly, that they were not true. The Defendant's knowingly false statements were integral to his criminal plans to defeat the federal government function, obstruct the certification, and interfere with others' right to vote and have their votes counted. He made these knowingly false claims throughout the post-election time period, including those below that he made immediately before the attack on the Capitol on January 6:

b. The Defendant asserted that there had been 205,000 more votes than voters in Pennsylvania. The Defendant's Acting Attorney General and Acting Deputy Attorney General had explained to him that this was false.

So Trump was told the "more votes than voters in Pennsylvania" thing was false? And he went with it anyway?

Huh.

By the way, this was a falsehood that State Senator Doug Mastriano also pushed.

But on page 19 there's this:

On November 25, the day after Pennsylvania's Governor signed a certificate of ascertainment and thus certified to the federal government that Biden's electors were the legitimate electors for the state, Co-Conspirator 1 orchestrated an event at a hotel in Gettysburg attended by state legislators. Co-Conspirator 1 falsely claimed that Pennsylvania had issued 1.8 million absentee ballots and received 2.5 million in return. In the days thereafter, a Campaign staffer wrote internally that Co-Conspirator l's allegation was "just wrong" and "[t]here's no way to defend it." The Deputy Campaign Manager responded, "We have been saying this for a while. It's very frustrating."

Ah, yes. The indictment is mentioning Doug Mastriano's "hearing" in Gettysburg, isn't it?

Yes, it is. Take a look:

WHAT: At the request of Senator Doug Mastriano (R-Adams/Cumberland/Franklin/York), the Senate Majority Policy Committee is holding a public hearing Wednesday to discuss 2020 election issues and irregularities. The hearing will feature former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

By the way, Rudy Giuliani is far more likely than not Co-Conspirator I.

State Senator Doug Mastriano should be asked about these connections to Donald Trump's coup attempt.

What did he know? When did he know it?

As for Donald Trump: 

Lock him up!

Lock him up!

Lock him up!