ABC is reporting that federal agents searched former Trump DOJ official Jeffrey Clark’s home yesterday morning.
This and other articles are among the first I’ve seen that make me think there will be prosecutions of individuals involved in the attempted 2020 presidential election coup. This one is from the Post and reports a new round of subpoenas and what appear to be court-ordered searches of various individuals involved in the “fake elector” scheme. Let me note a couple points about that part of the coup conspiracy.
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A new report in the Washington Post today indicates the Justice Department might be expanding the scope of its focus on the fake Trump electors scheme, zeroing in on the people involved in the plot who may have intended to follow through or tried to follow through with the scheme.
Previous reports have revealed the DOJ was looking at the fake electors plot, but the bureau was reportedly mostly in talks with people who sounded the alarm about the scheme — which was a key layer of MAGAland’s campaign to keep Trump in power despite losing the election.
Read MoreRon Johnson has managed to win two elections in Wisconsin – both of which were races Democrats were optimistic about winning. But this new poll number out of Wisconsin is pretty striking on a number of counts.
Here are the numbers.
One of the more interesting things to come out of the Jan. 6th hearings is the greater detail about the involvement of members of Congress. One detail yesterday was the involvement of Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) in the fake electors plot. He somewhat lamely passed it off as the rogue behavior of an unnamed intern. Here’s one of several videos of Johnson yesterday rushing away from reporters trying to avoid questions.
JoinIn case you missed it, here is a recording of our Twitter Space. John Light, Josh Kovensky and Matt Shuham broke down today’s Jan. 6 House select committee hearing. Listen at the link below, and follow us on Twitter @TPM to join the next one!
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Let me comment briefly on the TPM Reader responses below on the “tactical” lifestyle, Jan. 6th, mass shootings and more. Most of these have been in the vein of, “It’s not just the long wars, it’s this too.” And I think in every case I agree. No big historical development or reality pops up out of nowhere, unrooted to the particular historical era in which it arises.
It’s true as MF puts it that the millions of young American men who saw combat in World War II didn’t come back and spend years dressing up as GIs. In a way they didn’t have to as they returned to a society rapidly reorganized around the Cold War. It’s worth noting that the long-running abandoned POW activism emerging out of the Vietnam War was in many ways just that and it was a seedbed of late 20th century right wing activism. But certainly the mere existence of foreign conflicts didn’t “cause” the tactical firearms culture. A whole host of factors conditioned that reaction.
JoinFrom TPM Reader JS …
JoinJust saw your take, via the wayback machine, regarding the “tactical” culture and Greitens’ ridiculous ad. One thing Busse left out in his Atlantic article and SS didn’t mention in his email is the impact the “Call of Duty” video game series has had on all of this. CoD is a first-person shooter game, which means you play the game from your character’s eye view – you literally feel like you’re in combat.
From TPM Reader FF …
JoinI would object to the notion of our deployments in the Middle East being the prime mover in guns moving to a tactical culture. Instead, I would look closer at investment firms like Citadel and Black Rock, whose participation in the weapons market was very much predicated on flooding the market with more and powerful weaponry to increase returns.