Tag: testify

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Senator Mike Lee Says He Reached Out To State Legislators Re 2020 Elections To Clarify Rumors, Not To Influence Them

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Senator Mike Lee(R-UT) appeared on Fox News Sunday(06/19/22) to discuss the floundering bipartisan gun control negotiations currently going on in the Senate in the wake of the horrific shooting at Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, which left 19 children and two of their teachers dead. The interview then turned to the January 6th investigation, and specifically, Senator Lee’s alleged involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. When host Shannon Bream asked Senator Lee about claims that he was involved in the scheme to create fake Trump electors in the states, Senator Lee gave a very interesting response. He said he reached out to legislators in various states only to clarify certain rumors about efforts to withdraw or reallocate electors, but denied ever trying to influence any of them to create fake electors for Trump.

The question now is whether the January 6th Committee will take Sen. Lee’s assertion as the truth, or dig deeper to find out whether he did indeed pressure state legislators on Trump’s behalf, conduct that constitutes a crime in most states.

Host Shannon Bream(video at 6:04):“Your own text messages have come up with respect to Mark Meadows. They’ve been highlighted. Here’s what the Salt Lake Tribune said about that…’New court filings raise questions about Sen. Mike Lee’s involvement in attempts to overturn the 2020 election.’ Your response?”

Senator Mike Lee:“Well, first of all,look, I knew how bad Joe Biden would be as President. I knew what a disaster he would be in the Oval Office, and there were some uncertainty in the wake of the election. As we approached the end of December, there were rumors that continued to circulate, suggesting that some states were going to be reallocating, withdrawing and reallocating their electoral votes. Because Congress has a role in that, and I as a Senator would be required to certify those, I wanted to find out. So I communicated with Mark Meadows to try to find out whether the rumors were true. I couldn’t get answers, so I reached out to state lawmakers in various states, not trying to influence anyone, simply trying to find out whether the rumors were true. The rumors weren’t true, no state had any intention of withdrawing it’s slate of electoral votes, that made it an easy decision on my part to vote to certify the results of the election.”

There’s no other way to interpret Senator Lee’s remarks on Fox News Sunday other than(I’ll be happy to stand corrected of course), he admits reaching out to state legislators in various states regarding electoral college votes, but that his outreach was only limited to his desire to clarify some rumors. He never influenced any of the state legislators to come up with a scheme to create fake electors for Trump.

Any reasonable person presented with Senator Lee’s explanation–that his outreach to state legislators was only limited to clarifying some electoral college rumors–will take issue with it, and at the very least, would be inclined to apply some “trust but verify” principle to it. Hopefully, this is exactly what the January 6th Committee will do with Senator Lee’s explanation.

Asked whether he would sit down and talk to the January 6th Committee if asked, Sen. Lee responded:“Oh sure…I’d always be willing to talk if they want to talk.”

Bottom line folks, efforts by Senator Mike Lee and his sidekick Senator Ted Cruz(R-TX) to overturn the 2020 election results, deserve further scrutiny by the mainstream media, now that the January 6th investigation is heating up. Hopefully the January 6th Committee will take Senator Lee up on his offer to sit down with them, because something tells me his explanation, that he reached out to legislators in various states only to clarify some rumors, will be debunked. The Committee should do the same for Senators Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham(R-SC), who have similar charges leveled against them. Simply put, the public is hungry for suit-and-tie insurrectionists to also face the music for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

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Is It Time To Hold Fox News Accountable Over Its Role In The January 6th Insurrection?

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An interesting segment on MSNBC’s Katie Phang Show(06/11/22) delved into the burning question among members of the public, as to whether Fox News should be held accountable for what many believe, was an incitement by some of its leading hosts towards the violent insurrection at the Capitol on 01/06/2021. This question is resurfacing because a former senior editor at Fox News, one Chris Stirewalt, who was known to openly criticize the network’s super close ties to the Trump administration and its far right extremist backers, is set to testify at the January 6th Committee’s second public hearing set for Monday(06/13/22). It is expected that Stirewalt will draw a direct connection between some of the leading insurrectionists and Fox News’ hosts. Katie Phang’s guest Danielle Moodie, who hosts the Woke AF Podcast, thinks Fox News should absolutely be held accountable for it’s role in the January 6th insurrection.

Host Katie Phang:“One of the witnesses on Monday, we know, is Chris Stirewalt. He was fired from Fox after calling Arizona for Biden. He’s also been known to say Fox News is an arm of the Republican Party. Do you think the committee is going to start zeroing in on the White House’s[Trump’s] interactions with the network Fox News?”

Danielle Moodie:“I would love for them to do that. I would love for the Department of Justice to do that, I’d love for the FCC to do that, I mean the reality here is that Fox News for the longest time, is the propaganda arm, it is a dangerous entity, and so I think it is incredibly important for them not to just look at this and say, ‘Oh well, freedom of speech, we can’t touch it’. We have to see how all of these pieces fit together, and I think that without Fox News, you wouldn’t have the kind of amplification of the insurrection, and replacement theory, and all of the things that we know that these militias…and the Trump base holds dear, and so yes, I think that they absolutely should be zeroing in on Fox at some point, and I hope it’s soon.”

Bottom line folks, we can complain about the rise of White nationalism and other far right violent extremist groups all we want, but unless we are willing and able to confront the Fox News engine that we know, powers all these dangerous groups, then we might as well start preparing for the next, possibly successful insurrection. If the January 6th Commitee is serious about its stated goal of preventing another violent insurrection, then as Danielle Moodie correctly points out, it necessarily has to deal with the role of Fox News in the 2021 insurrection, and potentially, a future one. Put another way, it’s about time Fox News’ freedom of speech defense got put to the test. Incitement to violence is a well known exception to a freedom of speech claim.

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Kurt Bardella: 2022 Midterms Might Be The Last Free And Fair Elections We Have. WHOA!!

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MSNBC’s Katie Phang show(05/21/22) did a segment on WaPo’s bombshell revelation that Ginni Thomas’ involvement in the effort to overturn the 2020 election results was much more than has been previously reported. The conversation then turned into how ruthlessly Republicans would have dealt with a similarly situated liberal justice. Guest Kurt Bardella slammed the perennial weakness by congressional Democrats, who he said always played defense as opposed to the attack-minded Republicans. Bardella then made a startling assertion, telling host Katie Phang that if the January 6th Select Committee doesn’t go on the offense by making top Trump officials testify in public like Republicans did Hillary Clinton during Benghazi, then “this[2022 midterms]might be the last free and fair elections we have.”

MSNBC host Katie Phang(video at 5:11): “Kurt I saw you tweeting about how you were surprised that Democrats didn’t immediately start investigations into the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic as soon as they got into power. Now we see the January 6th Committee is apparently fine with not even getting him to testify…What will it take for the Dems to go on the offensive?”

Kurt Burdella: “I just think back to the Benghazi Select Committee, when Republicans didn’t blink to bring up Hillary Clinton to testify for more than 11 hours and face that type of grilling. I don’t know how you can have a system that has Secretary Clinton at the time having to do that, but you let Donald Trump, and people like Mike Pence, and Ginni Thomas, and Rudy Giuliani, and Steve Bannon, and Mark Meadows avoid that type of public setting. It’s such a parity and I’m telling you, we’re seeing right now, at this very second, Republicans campaign for the midterms on the idea that they are going to do this to the Biden administration. That they are not going to hesitate to use the reins of power to go after the president’s son…to try to impeach the president, to try to impeach the DHS secretary…Democrats are about to get a lesson on how to wield power, whether they like it or not, if they don’t step up right now because they are the last line of defense of stopping Republicans from hijacking democracy. It’s not about 2024 Katie, it’s about 2022 because I promise you, if Republicans are allowed to regain a congressional majority, they will not certify a Democrat win in 2024…This check and balance that we are about to see with the January 6th Select Committee is perhaps the last guardian of defense that we have of our democracy and our process, and if we don’t get answers from everybody who was involved, especially at the very top, this might be the last free and fair elections we have.”

As outlandish as Kurt Bardella’s assertion sounds, rank and file Democrats know it is absolutely true. A lot of the crazy things we’ve witnessed from Trump Republicans are rooted in their belief that Democrats will never muster enough courage to hold them accountable in any meaningful way–all bark no bite. Let’s hope the January 6th Select Committee breaks this expectation of weakness by Republicans, by holding them accountable through lengthy public testimonies, under oath. If the January 6th Select Committee fails to hold Trump and his top lieutenants accountable, then as Bardella correctly points out, democracy as we know it, will be dead this year, not in 2024, and Dem weakness will be partly to blame. This of course, also apples to President Biden’s Department of Justice.

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