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Pence Bombshell Resurfaces Old Questions About Grassley and January 6

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An ABC News bombshell report revealing then-Vice President Mike Pence had, at one point, decided to not preside over the January 6 joint congressional session to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election is once again bringing up questions about remarks U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) had made one day before the event, which some interpreted as him announcing he, and not the Vice President, would be presiding over the proceedings. Grassley later denied the claim.

The ABC News report includes conversations Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team had in closed-door sessions with Pence, including the former vice president’s notes they obtained from the National Archives.

“According to sources, one of Pence’s notes obtained by Smith’s team shows that, days before Pence was set to preside over Congress certifying the election results on Jan. 6, 2021, he momentarily decided that he would skip the proceedings altogether, writing in the note that there were ‘too many questions’ and it would otherwise be ‘too hurtful to my friend.’ But he ultimately concluded he had a duty to show up,” ABC News reported.

The report added that their “sources said, with the pressure on Pence mounting, he concluded on Christmas Eve — just for a moment — that he would follow Trump’s suggestion and let someone else preside over the proceedings on Jan. 6.”

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“Speaking with Smith’s team, Pence insisted his loyalty to President Trump at the time never faltered — ‘My only higher loyalty was to God and the Constitution,’ sources described Pence as telling them.”

“‘Not feeling like I should attend electoral count,’ Pence wrote in his notes in late December. ‘Too many questions, too many doubts, too hurtful to my friend. Therefore I’m not going to participate in certification of election.'”

ABC’s report is prompting questions about U.S. Senator Grassley’s remarks on January 5, 2021, when he said he would be presiding over the Senate the following, fateful day.

Back in September, the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake revisited that event, which in 2021 sparked rumors and speculation.

“Asked whether former president Donald Trump’s legal team had any discussions about Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) presiding over the certification of the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021, rather than Vice President Mike Pence, [Trump coup memo author John] Eastman declined to answer, citing attorney-client privilege with Trump,” The Post reported, referring to Eastman’s legal testimony in a disbarment proceeding. “The moment drew renewed attention to one of the bigger unanswered questions about Jan. 6: How extensive was the effort to get Pence to step aside?”

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“While Grassley has denied any outreach about whether he would preside on Jan. 6, an email obtained by the [U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack] shows that one of his staff members asked Pence’s office on Dec. 23, 2020, about such a scenario.”

“‘ … Is there any reason to believe that your boss will not preside over the electoral college vote count,’ Grassley aide James Rice wrote, as recounted in Jan. 6 committee transcripts, ‘leaving my boss in the spot as [president pro tem]?'”

“Pence aide Paul Teller responded that ‘it’s not a zero percent chance of that happening.'”

But The Post concluded, “the suggestion that this was a concerted effort to get rid of Pence remains unsubstantiated.”

In October of 2022, the Des Moines Register also looked that that event from January 5.

“As the counting of electoral votes neared, reporters asked Grassley how he planned to vote on election certification, the Iowa newspaper reported.

“’If the vice president isn’t there, and we don’t expect him to be there, I will be presiding over the Senate and obviously listening to the debate without saying anything,’ [Grassley] said on a call with agriculture reporters Jan. 5, 2021. ‘You’re asking me how I’m going to vote. I’m going to listen to that debate on what my colleagues have to say during that debate and decide how to cast my vote after considering the information before me.'”

The Register added, “Taylor Foy, a spokesperson for Grassley, quickly issued a clarification to the media the same day, saying Grassley was talking about possibly presiding over the Senate debate if Pence happened to step out. The House and Senate needed to meet separately to consider objections to the electoral count in individual states before convening a joint session of Congress.”

READ MORE: Trump Serves Up ‘Sarcastic’ Reason Why He Uses Obama’s Name Instead of Biden’s

Regardless of the Grassley issue, many have served up sharp criticism of Pence after learning he at one point had decided to not execute his constitutional responsibilities, even if he ultimately did perform his duty.

“A regular Profile in Courage,” presidential historian Michael Beschloss sarcastically declared.

“I myself would never want to upset a good friend who wishes to see me hung by an angry armed mob,” conservative attorney George Conway said mockingly.

“The most important takeaway from the ABC News story re: Pence hedging on whether he should preside over the counting of the Electoral College votes on January 6, is that the pressure campaign on Pence to unlawfully and unilaterally upend the election was not entirely ineffective,” observed professor of law Anthony Michael Kreis.

“Remember that Mike Pence, who didn’t want to carry out the Constitutional oath he took that ended with the words ‘So Help Me God’ shamelessly titled his book about the events ‘So Help Me God.’ The man’s always been a shameless fraud,” declared political scientist David Darmofal.

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The 27 Words the NSA Is Scrubbing From Its Websites: Report

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The National Security Agency (NSA), a largely clandestine global intelligence-gathering and counterintelligence organization that “prevents and eradicates threats to U.S. national security systems,” is reportedly undergoing a massive “purge” on its public and private websites and internal network, eliminating any site that contains any of a list of 27 words — despite possibly including mission-related work. The operation is an effort to comply with President Donald Trump’s order to eliminate any so-called “DEI” programs or language.

Trump has called DEI — diversity, equity, and inclusion — “illegal,” and in his January 21 executive order alleged that DEI “policies not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws, they also undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system. Hardworking Americans who deserve a shot at the American Dream should not be stigmatized, demeaned, or shut out of opportunities because of their race or sex.”

According to Popular Information, on Monday the NSA, which is under the U.S. Department of Defense, “is planning a ‘Big Delete’ of websites and internal network content that contain any of 27 banned words, including ‘privilege,’ ‘bias,’ and ‘inclusion.’ The ‘Big Delete,’ according to an NSA source and internal correspondence reviewed by Popular Information, is creating unintended consequences.

READ MORE: ‘Stomach Turning’: Trump Defends His J6 Pardons as ‘Great for Humanity’

Popular Information’s Judd Legum and Rebecca Crosby report that “the dragnet is taking down ‘mission-related’ work. According to the NSA source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media, the process is ‘very chaotic,’ but is plowing ahead anyway.”

A memo announcing the 27 banned words “acknowledges that the list includes many terms that are used by the NSA in contexts that have nothing to do with DEI. For example, the term ‘privilege is used by the NSA in the context of ‘privilege escalation.’ In the intelligence world, privilege escalation refers to ‘techniques that adversaries use to gain higher-level permissions on a system or network.'”

Efforts to comply with Trump’s anti-DEI orders are not limited to the NSA.

“Since Trump took office, thousands of web pages across various federal agencies have been altered or removed entirely. Federal agencies have taken down or edited resources about HIV, contraceptives, LGBTQ+ health, abortion, and climate change. Some web pages have later come back online ‘without clarity on what had been changed or removed.” Popular Information also reported.

“An analysis by the Washington Post of 8,000 federal web pages ‘found 662 examples of deletions and additions’ since Trump took office. The analysis found that words like diversity, equity, and inclusion were removed at least 231 times from the websites of federal agencies, including the Department of Labor, the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Transportation.”

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A quick search of the NSA’s public website for the word “transgender” came up with only one hit, a page titled, “50 Years of Pride: Celebrating NSA’s Committment {sic] to Promoting Respect, Individuality, Diversity, and Equality.” That link led to an error page that stated: “The page you are looking for might have been moved, renamed, or may be temporarily unavailable.”

But a search for pages with the words “Diversity,” “Privilege,” and “Pronouns” resulted in numerous positive hits.

Legum posted the list of 27 banned words to social media. They include, Anti-Racism, Racism, Allyship, Bias, DEI, Diversity, Confirmation Bias, Equity, Feminism, Gender, Gender Identity Inclusion, Inclusive, and All-Inclusive, among others.

READ MORE: ‘Bring Him Back’: JD Vance Wants Musk to Rehire 25 Year Old DOGE ‘Kid’ After Racist Posts

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‘Stomach Turning’: Trump Defends His J6 Pardons as ‘Great for Humanity’

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President Donald Trump aboard Air Force One on Sunday announced that the nearly 1600 people he pardoned after they had been convicted of January 6-related crimes did not assault anyone but had been assaulted by the U.S. government, and his granting those pardons on his first day back in office was “a great thing for humanity.”

Trump was sitting next to a large map of what he announced is now the “Gulf of America,” and had signed an executive order requiring that new designation as the plane flew over what has, for hundreds of years, been called the Gulf of Mexico. Some observers have noted that Trump is also attempting to reshape the narrative of the January 6 insurrection and attack on the U.S. Capitol by claiming that those convicted of crimes were actually victims.

Reminded by a reporter that he had planned to honor first responders at the Super Bowl, President Trump was asked why he would pardon people who had assaulted first responders.

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“I pardoned people that were assaulted themselves. They were assaulted by our government,” Trump insisted, despite countless hours of footage of people he pardoned attacking the U.S. Capitol, and some of them attacking law enforcement officers.

“I pardoned J6 people who were assaulted by our government. That’s who assaulted — and they were treated unfairly, there’s never been a group of people in this country outside of maybe one instance that I can think of, but I won’t get into it, that were treated more horribly than the people of J6,” Trump insisted.

“I didn’t assault, they didn’t assault. They were assaulted, and what I did was a great thing for humanity.”

Just days after Trump handed down the pardons, The New York Times reported that even some of his close allies “opposed granting clemency to those rioters found guilty of violent crimes, especially the more than 600 who were convicted of assaulting or resisting police officers. Of those defendants, nearly 175 used a dangerous or deadly weapon, prosecutors say.”

On January 20, via a presidential proclamation, Trump announced he was commuting the sentences of 14 of some of the worst January 6 offenders, and granting “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”

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Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, called the pardons “an attempt to rewrite history and erase an attack on the Constitution and the country.”

Critics are blasting President Trump’s remarks on Sunday, including his claim the people he pardoned had been assaulted by “our government.”

“This administration & the GOP are completely rewriting the events of January 6. The president is doing it here. They pretend all the evidence, footage, confessions, & documents just don’t exist, that we didn’t see it happen. It’s an authoritarian move, & it should terrify us all,” observed T. Kenny Fountain, an associate professor whose bio says he researches extremism, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and disinformation.

Noted political scientist and professor of politics Larry Sabato called Trump’s remarks “Absolutely stomach-turning.”

Journalist Jim Acosta wrote simply, “Disgraceful.”

Award-winning investigative reporter Phil Williams posted video from January 6 and wrote, “These people were all pardoned.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

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‘People Are Really Angry’: Fury Over Musk and DOGE Triggers Spike in Calls to Congress

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Members of Congress say they are being flooded with calls from angry constituents about President Donald Trump’s Director of the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, and what he is doing inside the federal government.

“Senators’ phone systems have been overloaded, lawmakers said, with some voters unable to get through to leave a message. The outpouring of complaints and confusion has put pressure on lawmakers to find out more about Musk’s project, heightening tensions between the billionaire tech mogul and the government,” The Washington Post reports.

Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska “said the Senate’s phones were receiving 1,600 calls each minute, compared with the usual 40 calls per minute. Many of the calls she’s been receiving are from people concerned about U.S. DOGE Service employees having broad access to government systems and sensitive information. The callers are asking whether their information is compromised and about why there isn’t more transparency about what is happening, she said.”

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On Monday, the Office of U.S. Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ) said, “We’re receiving reports of phones being offline across the Senate. Our office is immediately at work to address the issue and get our phones online again.”

U.S. Senator Tina Smith (D-MN) called it, “a deluge on DOGE”

“Truly our office has gotten more phone calls on Elon Musk and what the heck he’s doing mucking around in federal government than I think anything we’ve gotten in years. … People are really angry,” she told The Post.

On social media, Senator Smith added, “Musk is unpopular because Americans can see that he’s running rampant inside the federal government and no one believes he’s doing this to help us — he’s doing it to help himself. That’s what corruption looks like. I’ve been getting more calls into my office in the last week than any time I can remember. People are mad about it and they should be.”

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“We can hardly answer the phones fast enough. It’s a combination of fear, confusion and heartbreak, because of the importance of some of these programs,” U.S. Senator Angus King (I-ME) told The Post, saying “he’s been hearing from constituents ‘constantly’ on DOGE and Musk.”

The surge of telephone calls appears to have been going on all week.

“Callers are getting busy signals and voicemail inboxes are full at many U.S. Senate offices as people try to reach out and voice their opinions on President Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks, executive orders and moves to dismantle various federal programs,” the Associated Press reported on Wednesday. “The influx of phone calls — which some in the Senate say are at unprecedented volumes — come as Trump and ally Elon Musk are working to shrink the federal government during the president’s first weeks in office. They are shuttering agencies, temporarily freezing funding and pushing workers to resign, all while staffers with Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency infiltrate departments in a stated effort to root out fraud and abuse.”

READ MORE: Pam Bondi Quietly Disbands DOJ Task Force Targeting Russian Oligarchs

 

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