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December 31, 2020
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MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell ridiculed former Vice President Mike Pence for appearing on a "network you probably don't watch and haven't heard of" and claiming that he won his lawsuit trying not to appear before the grand jury.
The station was Newsmax, and Pence spoke to former Fox host Greta van Susteren, saying, "So, I — I can tell you — I'm pleased that the court accepted our argument and recognized that the Constitution's provision about speech and debate does apply to the vice president. But the way they sorted that out and the requirements of my testimony going forward are a subject of our review right now. And I'll have more to say about that in the days ahead."
Pence can spin it any way he wants, but it seems the court decided he must speak to the grand jury about what he and Trump discussed ahead of Jan. 6. The judge in the case agreed that a vice president has "some" protection under the "speech and debate clause."
"It is entirely possible when we see this ruling, if we do, that the judge really did not grant Mike Pence the ability to avoid answering any questions that the prosecutors actually want to ask him," explained O'Donnell. "All of the questions that we know prosecutors would want to ask are about conversations already reported in several books that Mike Pence had with Donald Trump in the White House or on the phone. None of those conversations took place inside the Capitol, which might be one of the ways that Judge James Boasberg is willing to consider the possibility that Mike Pence might be able to take some protection using the speech and debate issue about communication inside the Capitol. That phrase 'inside the Capitol' appears in The New York Times report of what the judge said about the speech and debate protection."
The way that Americans will know if the ruling doesn't become public, O'Donnell said, is that we will see Mike Pence walk into the courthouse to testify in a federal criminal trial of Donald Trump's. It will be difficult to explain how he "won" his case, but somehow still must appear before the grand jury.
See the comments from O'Donnell below or at the link here.
Sorry, Mike Pence, you lost www.youtube.com
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Donald Trump's lawyers motioned for a summary judgment in the E. Jean Carroll case. If approved, it would mean that the judge would look at nothing more than the evidence presented and the statements given and make a ruling based on that.
In a new filing on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan denied Trump's motion.
"The contrasts between Mr. Trump’s assertions in his Carroll I answer and his October 12 statement show that a reasonable juror could find that his statement had a different effect on a reader than his denials and affirmative defense in his answer," the judge wrote. "For one, 'a reasonable juror could find that [Mr.] Trump was complaining of a far broader and more corrosive conspiracy than anything that was at issue in Carroll I in October 2022,' including based on his statements that Ms. Carroll 'completely made up a story' that is a 'Hoax' and 'changed her story from beginning to end [(in an interview where she was promoting her book)]. .. to suit the purposes of CNN and And [erson] Cooper,' along with his comments about the judiciary and Ms. Carroll's counsel."
The judge explained that the court doesn't decide whether Trump's statement is or isn't "fair and true."
IN OTHER NEWS: ‘Horrified’: Oath Keeper juror reacts to defendant’s ‘stunt’ that aimed to evoke sympathy
The Court need not and does not now decide the ultimate issue of whether Mr. Trump's statement is or is not a "fair and true."
"It suffices for the purpose of denying summary judgment that a reasonable jury could find so as a matter of fact. For the foregoing reasons, Mr. Trump's motion for partial summary judgment is denied," the 22-page document closes.
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Jeff Sharlet is a prominent expert on far-right extremism in the United States. His investigations have exposed the beliefs of the group that owned the so-called National Prayer Breakfast, the C Street group and "The Family."
Speaking to MSNBC on Tuesday, Sharlet revealed his latest project: exploring the increase in right-wing violence in the U.S.
In a recent Vanity Fair excerpt from his latest book, he describes seeing Boebert in her short Daisy Dukes and her assault rifle. "I am the militia," she told him. The subtitle of his book is "Scenes from a slow civil war."
Another man Sharlet interviewed went by David G. "Things are going down the hole. Fast," he told Sharlet.
"How will I know when things are going down the hole?" Sharlet asked him.
"You get into the city areas, you will see the people," David G. explained. Which people? The "instigators." David G. said. Sharlet would see them fighting in the streets.
"When I say it's going down the hole fast, I'm talking about that. I'm talking about those of us who have less tolerance for the instigators ... So some will resort to, let's just say, other methods," said David G.
During Sharlet's appearance on MSNBC this evening, host Chris Hayes brought up the notion that Americans are "arming" themselves "for the struggle to come."
"I've been reporting on right-wing movements in the United States for 20 years," said Sharlet. "And traveling back and forth across the country since Jan. 6th, I've seen more guns than in all the years before that. And it's not just places like Shooter's Grill, which is sort of leading with guns. But churches — churches that have their own militia. The first militia church I went to, I thought, was a fluke. And then I started to realize churches were arming up with the expectation of civil war. And I think that's different than the gun culture of the past. The doomsday prepper of the fringe has become a mainstay of right-wing culture."
Sharlet confessed that he, like Hayes, has been testing using phrases like "civil war" and "fascism."
"I'm cautious. History moves slowly," he said. "And yet, I think you could call it a kind of cold war, but there are casualties. In Nashville, Tennessee, there were casualties. Women who have a lack of reproductive rights are casualties. Those places are making casualties. And in terms of the gun culture, when you have weekly skirmishes where Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, Proud Boys, showing up with AR-15s outside of libraries, schools, hospitals. We're at a simmer now. We are at a simmer. It doesn't make it inevitable. I don't think we have to call it into being, but I think we have to beware of the threat level."
Sharlet went on to talk about Ashli Babbitt. He noted that when the far right speaks of her, she's described as an innocent, unarmed woman.
"She was carrying a nasty little knife. That's the evidence photo on the cover," said Sharlet. "As soon as I saw her death on Jan. 6th, and you could see the hands of the police officer who killed her, and he was a black man. Because I'm an American and I study American history and mythology, I knew what the right was going to do. And, sure enough, within days, they were telling the same old story. The lynching story."
Sharlet described the mythology of the little white girl attacked by the angry Black man. It's the same "story" that started the attacks in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that resulted in whites burning down the most powerful Black business community in the country and massacring hundreds. The myth is also used by Harper Lee in To Kill a Mockingbird. Sharlet explains it's the same story.
"There's a lot of people who speak of the right as a death cult," he said. "They want to be innocent of history, innocent of race and Ashli Babbitt served as this white martyr. So, now you have a situation where the Proud Boys hand out challenge coins with Ashli Babbitt. 'One more in the name of love,' tweets Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ). #sayhername."
See the discussion below or at the link here.
Expert in right-wing extremism slams Lauren Boebert and those readying for civil war www.youtube.com
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