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‘Here We Go’: Legal Experts Discuss New DOJ Request for Transcripts From Jan. 6 Committee for ‘Criminal’ Investigation

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The U.S. Dept. of Justice has formally requested transcripts from the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, saying their extensive interviews “may contain information relevant to a criminal investigation we are conducting.” The House Select Committee has conducted interviews with more than 1000 people, including former Trump associates and even his family members.

The New York Times, which broke the story Tuesday, reports the request comes “as Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appears to be ramping up the pace of his painstaking investigation into the Capitol riot,” and calls it “the clearest sign yet of a wide-ranging inquiry at the Justice Department.”

Also telling is that the request came from Kenneth A. Polite Jr., the assistant attorney general for the criminal division, and Matthew M. Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

But House Select Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) says not so fast, according to The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell:

Former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega suggests Chairman Thompson’s remarks may be to ensure no one thinks there was coordination behind the scenes:

“DOJ will get what it needs from the January 6 committee. There might have to be some negotiation, maybe even grand jury subpoenas, but the committee doesn’t want to be seen as working hand in glove with DOJ.”

Meanwhile, Glenn Kirschner, a federal prosecutor for 30 years who is now a popular NBC News and MSNBC legal analyst notes the Dept. of Justice may get access to a wealth of testimony that it might not have been able to obtain otherwise:

“Whether this was always the DOJ plan (& whether the J6 committee knew it or not), important info has been developed by the [January 6 Committee] that would not have been developed had the witnesses been subpoenaed to the grand jury (as they would have pled the 5th).”

(In March, Kirschner concluded that Donald Trump “will be charged” after remarks Attorney General Merrick Garland made.)

National security and civil liberties expert and journalist Marcy Wheeler also suggests this may have been the plan all along, and implies it is a smart strategy:

“And YES, it allowed Jan 6 to interview people against whom DOJ did not and/or would never get probable cause a crime had committed to share evidence,” she adds.

But former federal and state prosecutor Elie Honig, now a CNN legal analyst, is less complimentary of Garland and DOJ, calling the request for access to transcripts “an obvious and overdue move.”

MSNBC legal analyst Daniel Goldman, the well-known former Lead Counsel for the House Impeachment Inquiry, and a former Assistant U.S. Attorney for SDNY agrees it’s wise for the Jan. 6 Committee to focus on its own work and deal with DOJ after the public hearings.

Former U.S. Attorney and national security prosecutor Barb McQuade, now a well-known MSNBC and NBC News legal analyst and law professor summed up what many appear to be thinking: “Here we go.”

 

 

 

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Trump Campaign Furious Walz Using Trump’s Own ‘Reckless, Dangerous Rhetoric’ Against Him

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16 hours ago

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October 14, 2024

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The Trump campaign lashed out at Minnesota Governor Tim Walz on Monday after the Democratic vice presidential nominee quoted the Republican presidential candidate who repeatedly over the weekend has been saying he would like to use the U.S. military against American citizens.

As NCRM reported, the Republican presidential nominee said he thinks the U.S. Armed Forces should be used against Americans who oppose him, called his critics “the enemy from within,” and declared they are more dangerous than America’s greatest foreign adversaries, including Russia, China, and North Korea.

“I always say we have the outside enemy, so you can say China, you can say Russia, you can say, Kim Jung-Un,” Trump told supporters at an Aurora, Colorado rally on Friday. But, he added: “It’s the enemy from within, all the scum that we have to deal with that hate our country. That’s a bigger enemy than China and Russia,” he said as the audience cheered.

READ MORE: MAGA Furious After Kamala Harris Agrees to Fox News Interview

Then, on Sunday, Trump told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo of his desire to use armed forces against Americans on Election Day.

“I think the bigger problem are the people from within, we have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary by the military.”

Trump War Room, the official social media account of the Trump campaign, posted video of Walz on Monday speaking with supporters.

“Donald Trump over the weekend was talking about using the U.S. Army against people who disagree with him,” Walz had said. “Just so you’re clear about that, that’s you. That’s what he’s talking about. This is not some mythical thing out there. He called it the ‘enemy within.'”

The Trump War Room social media account wrote: “Tim Walz peddles a disgusting lie that President Trump will use the U.S. Army against his political opponents: ‘That’s you, that’s what he’s talking about.’ This is reckless, dangerous rhetoric,” the campaign stated. “Tim should be ASHAMED of himself.”

READ MORE: ‘Is He OK?’: Trump’s Dark of Night Rage Posting Backfires

See the videos below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Fascist to the Core’: Trump’s Top General Slams Ex-President as ‘Most Dangerous Person’

 

 

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MAGA Furious After Kamala Harris Agrees to Fox News Interview

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17 hours ago

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October 14, 2024

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The right wing freakout is in full force after Fox News announced Vice President Kamala Harris will sit down for an interview with then network’s chief political anchor Bret Baier on Wednesday in the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania.

It will be the Democratic presidential nominee’s first official Fox News interview, after entering the race in July, less than three months ago.

“While Trump became the first major presidential nominee to back out of the traditional pre-election ’60 Minutes’ interview, Kamala Harris has agreed to sit down with Fox News for an interview this week,” noted Zeteo News’ Justin Baragona.

“Harris has upped her media appearances recently, having sat down with Stephen Colbert, 60 Minutes‘ Bill Whitaker and Howard Stern, among other personalities,” Deadline reports. “But she’s also been urged by some supporters to make an appearance on Fox News, populated by voices on the right, even though Baier is on the network’s news side. With an average of 2.3 million viewers, Special Report has ranked among the most watched cable news programs.”

READ MORE: ‘Is He OK?’: Trump’s Dark of Night Rage Posting Backfires

Trump recently did pull out of a previously agreed-to interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” and has refused to do any more debates with Harris after losing the first one on ABC News. Before that debate Trump had suggested a condition of him participating in the ABC debate would be Harris had to agree to two others, which she did. Next week she will appear in a CNN town hall, which originally was to be a debate until Trump pulled out.

“As of today, it has been **one month** since Trump’s been interviewed by a mainstream media outlet,” noted Harris campaign spokesperson Ian Sams, “as he has backed out of 60 Minutes and refuses to debate again.”

“Meanwhile Harris is willing to even go on Fox,” he added.

During the 2024 campaign Trump has done virtually no interviews with mainstream media outlets, avoiding The New York Times, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, and MSNBC. He did sit down with NBC News’s “Meet the Press” for Kristen Welker’s first interview as the show’s new moderator last year in September.

READ MORE: ‘Fascist to the Core’: Trump’s Top General Slams Ex-President as ‘Most Dangerous Person’

The Nation’s John Nichols commented that Trump is “running scared.”

Trump supporters “swarmed all over Fox’s Bret Baier today like he was a Capitol Police Officer on J6 after he posted on Twitter that he will be interviewing Kamala Harris this Wednesday,” MeidasTouch News reports. “Baier received 2,200 comments on his tweet announcing the interview in just the first hour after he posted it.”

“Most of the MAGA comments to Baier follow a consistent theme – that they lost all faith in Baier after his tough interview embarrassed Trump last year, and that they expect him to go into this interview with guns blazing to win back their favor. They also mentioned some of the previous Harris interview conspiracies – that her earrings were airpods where she was getting the answers, that she was given the questions ahead of time, that Baier and Fox called the 2020 election too early for Biden, etc.,” MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski reported.

Journalist Mike Rothschild, who has written books on right wing conspiracy theories, observed: “This is smart from the VP. She has nothing to lose by appearing on the news arm of Fox News (as opposed to the screeching infotainment arm) and if she breaks through to a fraction of their viewership, it’s worth it. It’s almost like the Harris campaign knows what it’s doing.”

The news Harris will appear on Fox News comes on the heels of one of that outlet’s former top hosts, Geraldo Rivera, denouncing Donald Trump and endorsing the Vice President’s run for President.

READ MORE: Elon Musk’s X Engaged in a ‘Pattern of Election Interference’ to Help Trump: Reports

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‘Violently Authoritarian’: Alarm Over Trump’s Threat to Use Military Against Americans

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22 hours ago

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October 14, 2024

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Donald Trump over the weekend repeatedly said he wants to use the U.S. military against Americans who oppose him, called his critics “the enemy from within,” and declared they are more dangerous than America’s greatest foreign adversaries, including Russia, China, and North Korea.

“I always say we have the outside enemy, so you can say China, you can say Russia, you can say, Kim Jung-Un,” Trump told supporters at an Aurora, Colorado rally on Friday (video below). But, he added: “It’s the enemy from within, all the scum that we have to deal with. that hate our country. That’s a bigger enemy than China and Russia,” he said as the audience cheered.

On Sunday, Trump told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo of his desire to use armed forces against Americans on Election Day.

“I think the bigger problem are the people from within, we have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary by the military.”

READ MORE: ‘Fascist to the Core’: Trump’s Top General Slams Ex-President as ‘Most Dangerous Person’

Pointing to those remarks, constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe says, “Just think what this means for the 2028 election if Trump & Vance are in control as of January 20, 2025.”

In both events Trump had been talking about undocumented immigrants before switching his target to American citizens.

AFP called his remarks against U.S. citizens a “sinister election-related threat.” Rolling Stone called it a “a fascist plan to deploy military forces against U.S. citizens who oppose him on election day.” HuffPost described his remarks as “echoing similar language used by Nazis,” and HuffPost legal/justice reporter Brandi Buchman warned the “level of danger that people face if he is ever allowed near office again cannot be understated.” The New Republic declared Trump went “Full Dictator.”

“Trump as President and Commander in Chief would seek to wage war on the American people,” warned historian and professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert on fascism and authoritarianism. She adds, “our armed forces could have a new authoritarian role: domestic repression. ‘Handling’ the Leader’s enemies=violence.”

Attorney and former federal and state prosecutor Eric Lisann responded, writing: “Trump has already requested military equipment and protection for him now, as a mere candidate. He will gut the military of its finest leaders, many of whom have identified the historic threat he poses to the country, and turn it into his personal guard.”

The popular historian and professor Heather Cox Richardson called Trump’s attack on his political opponents, “the full leap to authoritarianism.”

“Trump’s full-throated embrace of Nazi ‘race science’ and fascism is deadly dangerous,” she added, noting his “campaign seems to be deliberately pushing the comparisons to historic American fascism by announcing that Trump will hold a rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on October 27, an echo of a February 1939 rally held there by American Nazis in honor of President George Washington’s birthday.”

RELATED: Trump’s Upcoming Madison Square Garden MAGA Rally Sparks Comparisons to 1939 Nazi Event

And historian Steven A. Woodbridge wrote: “Pointing to the ‘enemy within’ is a classic strategy used by those with authoritarian tendencies many times in the past & it would appear nothing has changed. This man is a clear threat to democracy.”

Journalist Ahmed Baba warned, “Trump’s rhetoric is growing more violently authoritarian. His migrant fear-mongering is increasingly racist and now he’s once again saying he’ll deploy the military against people he disagrees with. Trump’s insane authoritarianism is the most important story of this election.”

Watch the videos below or at this link:

READ MORE: Trump Campaign an ‘Influence Operation’ Says Former State Dept. Official — Experts Agree

 

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