Trump (& Several GOP Congressmen) Are Guilty Of Sedition

From Joyce Vance at MSNBC.com: 

A lot of ink has been spilled on the topic of whether Trump knew he’d lost the election. It’s an important question — if not the mostimportant question in the context of potential criminal culpability. 

Thursday, the committee seriously undercut the theory that Trump actually believed his “big lie.” (And one strongly suspects the committee is not done yet in this regard). Tonight we learned, for example, that Trump was told by both his data experts and his own attorney general that he’d lost.

This matters because of a legal doctrine called “willful blindness,” which says a defendant can’t continue to maintain he didn’t know something — in this case, that Trump didn’t know he’d lost the election — if they have been credibly notified of the truth. Hearing the truth from your attorney general, a man who’d gone along with virtually all of your other whims, would seem to qualify. Even Ivanka was compelled by the evidence against fraud, saying she respected and believed Barr when he said no fraud tainted the outcome of the election. Trump’s continued insistence that he’d won, despite credible evidence there wasn’t any fraud and he’d actually lost, puts prosecutors one step closer to having the evidence necessary to bring criminal charges. 

Willful blindness is especially relevant in terms of Trump’s efforts to compel Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” him 11,780 votes. (Raffensberger will reportedly testify in person later in these hearings.) 11,780, of course, was the precise number of votes Trump needed to beat Biden in the state. It seems almost too obvious to bear repeating, but if you know you’ve lost, and you ask people you think are on your side to manufacture enough ballots to let you win, then you’re engaging in criminal conduct.

From Michael A. Cohen at MSNBC.com:

I’ve lost track of all the bombshells in Cheney’s opening statement, but don’t sleep on this one: Multiple members of Congress desperately sought pardons from Trump for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The key part here is not that they sought pardons, but why they wanted them. It suggests consciousness of guilt from these members. Or to put in simpler terms: They knew they had done something wrong. 

Criminal GOP Congressman Tosses His Wife Under Bus

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-California) and his wife have been accused of a felony crime. They used funds donated to his campaign as their personal piggy bank -- to the turn of more than $250,000. He can't plead that he did not know the law, because he is serving his fourth term in Congress (having been elected in 2008), and followed his father in that position (who had served many years). He had to know that campaign funds cannot be used for personal expenses.

But true to his Republican roots, he denied his guilt. His first defense was to try and copy his hero, Donald Trump (Hunter was the second congressman to jump on the Trump bandwagon in 2016 -- the first being Rep. Chris Collins, who has also been charged with criminal behavior). Hunter tried to claim that he was accused by the "deep state".

That didn't fly, because the prosecutors have plenty of evidence showing how much money Hunter and his wife spent, and where that money came from. So, he has now come up with a new defense. He says his wife is to blame. He claims his wife was in charge of the campaign funds, and he was not aware she was dipping into those funds to pay personal expenses. That's ludicrous! How can you not know that a quarter of a million dollars was not coming out of your personal bank account?

Hunter's wife has also been charged, but that does not excuse his own criminal behavior. It was his own campaign funds that were being spent, and it was his responsibility to know how those funds were being used.

Trying to put all of the blame on his wife represents a new low for Republicans caught with their hand in the till. What kind of husband (claiming to be a family values christian) would do that?

It also represents a new low among criminals in general. I served nearly three decades is various aspects of law enforcement, working with hundreds of criminals, and none of them ever tried to blame their crimes on their spouses. Far from it. They defended their spouses (even when they were also guilty).

Hunter is not just a criminal. He is selfish and misogynistic. He has earned, and richly deserves, an extended sentence in a federal prison.

Republican Arrested For Supporting Terrorists

It has been common for Republicans to accuse Democrats, liberals, peace activists and anyone else who disagreed with them with aiding the terrorists. Of course, none of the accusations were true. But that didn't stop the Republicans from making the absurd accusations in an effort to shore up their own crumbling political fortunes.

That's why I was surprised to read about the REPUBLICAN that was arrested for aiding the terrorists. But he was not just a Republican. He was a former two-term Republican member of the United States House of Representatives (from 1981-1987). He was also appointed by Ronald Reagan to serve as a delegate to the United Nations in 1987.

So this was not someone who just identified himself as a Republican. This was a bonafide Reagan-Republican. A member of the conservative Republican establishment.

Yesterday, Michigan Republican, Mark Deli Siljander was indicted on federal charges of money laundering, conspiracy and obstructing justice. The money laundering and conspiracy charges spring from his helping an Islamic charity that was funneling money to terrorists, including $130,000 to an al-Queda terrorist who has threatened American troops in Afghanistan.

The obstructing justice charge came from his lying to federal authorities investigating the charity. Siljander denied he had been hired to lobby for the charity. The truth was that he had been paid $50,000 to lobby for the group. Even worse, the money used to pay him turned out to be stolen from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Who could have guessed that when the Republicans talked about politicians aiding the terrorists, they were actually talking about one of their own? Is there anybody these guys won't take money from?