Garrett Ziegler
SEE NAVARRO
nephew of toby?
pow
see kleinhelder, sidney powell's lawyer vs smartmatic (gohmert vs pence]
mma 4 23
right-wing pundit and founder of conservative law group Article III Project, Mike Davis, appeared on CNN Primetime’s coverage of former President Donald Trump’s indictment, where he spread a conspiracy theory that baselessly connected the indictment to the Biden administration.
Davis was a guest on CNN’s special coverage of the indictment on the April 5 edition of CNN Primetime: Inside the Trump Investigations. He told host Pamela Brown, “Alvin Bragg recruited one of the top officials from the Biden Justice Department, Matthew Colangelo” just to “revive this dead case” against Trump. Brown later challenged him on his unfounded claims about the indictment being a political hit, revealing she had heard Davis “in other interviews” make the same conspiratorial claims.
[vid]
across right-wing media and on Twitter, Davis has been targeting Colangelo, baselessly claiming that because he previously worked for the Department of Justice and now works for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, this is evidence of the Biden administration’s involvement in Trump’s indictment.
On April 2, Davis took to Twitter to share his findings claiming the media “failed to mention” that Colangelo “was a political appointee for both Obama and Biden Administrations.” In a thread Davis shared Colangelo’s work history and called him a “senior Democrat operative” who was “brought in by Bragg to get Trump.” Davis then called on the House Judiciary committee to subpoena Colangelo as the “key link between Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and the Biden DOJ” as absolute evidence that the Biden administration orchestrated Trump’s indictment.
Davis then appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room, where he is a frequent guest, to share his conspiracy theory, which Bannon called the “interlinkage” and the “chain of custody right back to the Biden White House.” Without evidence, Davis claimed Colangelo is “the guy who is driving” the indictment and again referred to Colangelo as the “link between the Biden Justice Department and Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg.” Davis even criticized CNN for not reporting on Colangelo’s past work experience and claimed the network, and media in general, was “covering up his background.”
Bannon then called on his audience to “make this guy infamous” and displayed Colangelo’s image. Bannon stated “he should be brought in right away, we should get all his emails” and Davis agreed, even adding that “Congress absolutely has the Constitutional power, in fact duty, to investigate this."
[vid]he theory quickly made it to Fox News on April 4, where prime-time host Jesse Watters claimed about Colangelo, “No one wanted this case until Joe Biden’s Justice Department sent their partisan hatchet man into Bragg’s office.” Watters attacked Colangelo for not having any relevant experience and being a “terminator.” Watters also hosted Davis to further smear Colangelo and try to explain his baseless conspiracy theory. Davis once again called Colangelo “the driving force” behind Trump’s indictment and contradicted Watters' attacks by reviewing Colangelo’s extensive legal resume ending his rant by claiming it somehow shows the indictment is a “political hit by Biden to take out Trump." [vid]he same evening Davis appeared on Newsmax's Greg Kelly Reportsto repeat his unsubstantiated claims.
The morning after Davis’ April 5 appearance on CNN he was back on Bannon’s War Room to continue calling for Colangelo to be subpoenaed. Bannon even applauded Davis’ CNN appearance saying “I hope that’s the first of many at CNN” and calling it “the first time I think the CNN audience has really gotten the truth with both barrels."
[vid]
others sharing the unfounded theory:
The conspiracy was shared on March 30, by former Trump advisor Garett Ziegler’s 501(c)(3), Marco Polo. In a tweet, Ziegler said Colangelo was “overseeing the day-to-day of this charade,” while complaining about Trump’s indictment.
On April 3, Colangelo was named by Trump in a post on Truth Social where Trump called the indictment a “Witch Hunt” led by Biden and connected Colangelo to the administration, calling him a “top Democrat DOJ official.”
In the days following Davis’ media frenzy, Turning Point USA’s Benny Johnson tweeted about Colangelo, saying of his involvement in the Trump indictment, “Coincidence? I think not.” Right-wing influencer DC Draino also implied Biden sent Colangelo to the Manhattan DA’s office just to indict Trump.
January 6 defendant attorney Joseph McBride called Colangelo “the man behind the Trump indictment” and drew connections between Bragg, Colangelo, Biden, and the devil.
c pierce
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a42320078/fifth-amendment-january-6/
garrett Ziegler was an aide to White House trade advisor and natural B-movie villain Peter Navarroduring the previous administration*. But Ziegler was a mighty piece of work himself. From the Daily Beast:
Garrett Ziegler, who recently went on a sexist tear against former White House colleagues, took to Telegram to post the personal information of men he identified as agents. “This is one of the two feds who signed the ‘Receipt for Property’ form, which detailed—at a very high level—the fishing expedition that the FBI performed at Mar-a-Lago,” Ziegler said on both Truth Social and Telegram. The former Trump administration staffer that worked under White House trade adviser Peter Navarro further listed out the FBI agents’ date of birth, work emails and linked to alleged family members’ social media accounts. “Hope he doesn’t get a good night’s sleep for the rest of 2022,” Ziegler wrote on Truth Social, responding to another Truth Social user’s photos of one of the alleged FBI officials who signed off on the inventory receipts on the warrant.
Went on a sexist tear, you say? From CNN:
In the 27-minute livestream, Ziegler used vulgar and misogynistic language to attack Cassidy Hutchinsonand Alyssa Farah Griffin, two women who worked for the Trump White House but have since publicly broken from the former President and cooperated with the January 6 panel. He also accused the January 6 House select committee of being “anti-White,” without any evidence. (The nine-member panel is led by Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, who is Black.) “They’re Bolsheviks,” Ziegler said in the stream, referring to the far-left communists who led the Soviet Union, “so, they probably do hate the American founders and most White people in general. This is a Bolshevistic anti-White campaign. If you can’t see that, your eyes are freaking closed. And so, they see me as a young Christian who they can try to basically scare, right?”
As it happens, his sexist tear came not long after Ziegler had been deposed before the House select committee investigating the events of January 6. Ziegler was nowhere near as eloquent under oath as he was on the internet later. The transcript of his session was among 34 released by the committee Wednesday as it prepares its entire 800-some-page report. And in most of those transcripts—including Ziegler's, especially—the magic word is "Fifth."
You see, in an attempt to save time and effort, the various inmates of Camp Runamuck were allowed to simply say, "Fifth," to assert their constitutional right against self-incrimination. And judging by the number of times that right was invoked, it appears that almost anything said inside that crab bucket of a White House was self-incriminating—a possibility that, given that White House, I'm willing to entertain. (My favorite is the apparatchik who replied, "Fifth" when asked where they'd gone to college. The answer was Duke, and I completely understand.)
Garrett Ziegler, sexist ranter, was particularly cautious that he avoid the clever web of words in which committee counsel was attempting to enmesh his ass. His first invocation of the Fifth came when he was askedhow he'd obtained his job in the White House. But there were other, more intriguing ones. For example,
Q: Were you expecting violence in the Capitol...on January 6, prior to that date?
A: I'm invoking my right to silence under the Fifth Amendment.
Q: Did you instruct your wife or suggest your wife leave town prior to January 6 because of concerns about violence?
A: I'm invoking my right to silence under the Fifth Amendment.
Now, I am perpetually impatient with the argument that asserting one's Fifth Amendment right is tantamount to an admission of guilt. I was impatient when the former president* used that argument against Hillary Clinton's staffers who'd taken the Fifth to defend themselves against the congressional snipe-hunters when Clinton was secretary of State. For example, at a rally in Colorado in 2016, El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago—a man who'd invoked the Fifth 97 times during his first divorce proceeding—said, "Her staffers took the Fifth. So many people took the Fifth Amendment there was nobody left!" The 34 transcripts released Wednesday are the living embodiment of what the former president* was talking about.
There was some speechifying against the committee itself; Jeffrey Clark, the guy whom the plotters allegedly had lined up to be attorney general to give his blessing to the 'fake electors' scam, spent a long time haranguing the committee for what he said were its "pretenses" of fairness. Then he availed himself of the Fifth Amendment...120 times, beginning with whether or not he'd worked at the Department of Justice.
If god's in his heaven and all's right with the world, they'll all find gaily wrapped grants of immunity in their Christmas stockings. At which point, the only fifths in which they find comfort will be whatever they pour out when the day's testifying is done.
substack
Conclusion
As the House January 6 Committee reaches the critical days and perhaps even hours of its decision-making process with respect to sending a subpoena to Ginni Thomas, and as the U.S. House of Representatives quickly reaches the last drop-dead date for initiating an impeachment investigation of Justice Clarence Thomas—who continues to refuse to recuse himself from January 6 cases, but is closer to the progenitors of a Trumpist coup plot than any Supreme Court Justice in history has ever been to any federal crime of such magnitude—the evidence above, and the further information and investigation it implicitly and explicitly points toward, becomes as important as any revelation that’ll come from the Committee in a month of harrowing revelations.
The simple fact is that all of the coup plot progenitors mentioned above were echoing one another in unmistakable ways in Fall 2020 and early 2021. Of the federal divisions over which Congress has the constitutional duty of oversight, the Trump conspirators’ plot encompassed—at a minimum—the Supreme Court, the White House, DOJ, and the Department of Homeland Security.
Nor does it appear that the plot has run its course. The same individuals referenced above as being involved in a coup plot in 2020 and 2021 appear to still be involved in similar efforts in 2022.
Consider that former Department of Homeland Security employee Christina Bobb, whose role in Trump’s coup plot appears to have been in part to lobby her former employer to illegally interfere in national vote-counting processes, is now a member of Trump’s legal team. In the video below, she tells us what she’s working on now:
Twitter avatar for @RonFilipkowski
Ron Filipkowski
@RonFilipkowski
Trump’s attorney Christina Bobb tonight says things are in the works to overturn the 2020 election and possibly reinstate Trump. She says the plan is for 3 states to decertify their results and send resolutions to the next Congress after the midterms to overturn the results.
July 9th 2022
1,897 Retweets5,392 Likes
This shocking video isn’t from 2020 or 2021. It’s from this month—July—in 2022.
The plan Bobb details is identical to the one Ginni Thomas and others were working on before Trump left office, suggesting that Thomas requires House questioning not just about 2020 and 2021 but whether she has continued her covert lobbying of state GOP legislators and GOP members of Congress in 2022. After all, Bobb makes clear that, as a member of Trump’s legal team, her efforts to aid Trump’s candidly deranged plot to be “reinstated” as President of the United States following the 2022 elections requires action from the same individuals who Thomas was lobbying in 2020 and 2021—starting with the very same state legislators Thomas targeted. While Bobb admits that the current Congress wouldn’t attempt to further any such coup, she ends her summary of Trump’s current illegal scheme by saying, “After 2022, if we replace them [the current Democratic majority in the House of Representatives], who knows?”
Given that any such 2023 coup would eventually come before Clarence Thomas, the urgency of questioning Ginni Thomas now—before a possible Republican takeover of Congress in January 2023 ends the Committee’s brief lifespan—is urgent at a level that can’t be overstated. Any who doubt this should listen to what Trump himself has been saying lately, all of which dovetails with the statements coming from his lawyers and (again) were last heard from all his foremost 2020 and 2021 coup co-conspirators:
Twitter avatar for @RonFilipkowski
Ron Filipkowski
@RonFilipkowski
Trump’s attorney said yesterday that if they could get 3 states legislatures to pass these resolutions, then a 2023 GOP Congress could take this up, overturn the 2020 election, and reinstate Trump. Now this from her client.
Image
July 9th 2022
1,607 Retweets4,888 Likes
Meanwhile, following the recent Proof coverage of a little-noticed July 2021 Rumble interview between insurrectionists David K. Clements and Garrett Ziegler, there is now new attention being paid to the links between Team Kraken—which Ziegler let into the White House on December 18, 2020, without the proper authority to do so—and Trump’s administration, particularly top Trump adviser Peter Navarro’s office.
Twitter avatar for @RonFilipkowski
Ron Filipkowski
@RonFilipkowski
Peter Navarro’s aide Garrett Ziegler says he let Powell & Flynn into the WH without permission: “That was not scheduled. So when Meadows & Cipollone got called into that meeting and realized that Sidney Powell and Mike Flynn were there .. they had no idea how they got in.”
July 15th 2022
1,704 Retweets4,123 Likes
As evidence mounts that the December 18, 2020 meeting in question constituted an actionable Conspiracy to Commit Treason, the accusation that Trump and his many co-conspirators didn’t “merely” commit Conspiracy to Obstruct a Congressional Proceeding but a crime punishable by life imprisonment or even death are starting to appear in mainstream media—underscoring that what is at stake in the House January 6 Committee executing a thorough investigation of Trump’s plot before its time is up.
ABOVE: Garrett Ziegler.
Here’s MSNBC legal analyst (and former federal prosecutor) Glenn Kirschner on the appropriateness of treating the January 6 investigation as an investigation of Treason:
Twitter avatar for @ifindkarma
Adam Rifkin @ifindkarma
“Donald Trump launched the attack on the Capitol and refused to call it off… He told those around him Mike Pence should be hanged. Donald Trump waged war — levied war — against the United States on and around #January6th.”
@glennkirschner2 #JusticeMatters
Adam Rifkin @ifindkarma
@glennkirschner2 “Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them… is guilty of treason… and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”
18 U.S. Code § 2381 — https://t.co/X1T73pDXc5
https://t.co/uvjuBCFDj2 https://t.co/uI7Qujveda https://t.co/wu4SYrqD2j
July 12th 2022
Indeed, evidence of the size, scope, depth, and duration of Trump’s coup plot—this last too little a topic of public discussion thus far—is only increasing as the summer of 2022 wears on, emphasizing that the House January 6 Committee will likely need to hold more hearings in August or even September of this year. For instance, and as Proof will now report for the first time, there is new evidence in the Clements-Ziegler interview above that, contrary to his claims of having no awareness of or support for Trump authorizing the illegal interference of the U.S. armed forces in a U.S. election,Peter Navarro may have been present at the December 18, 2020 Trump-Team Kraken meeting conference—and therefore been well aware that precisely such a plot was being pushed by Team Kraken and advanced by Trump.
In the July 2021 Clements-Ziegler interview, Ziegler says that during his time in the White House as Navarro’s top aide (notably, he says that he and not Navarro primarily authored, with one or two other aides, the Navarro “reports” that helped animate the January 6 insurrectionists)he was only in Trump’s presence at a private meeting five or six times. He makes clear that his most substantive involvement with Trump came onDecember 18, 2020, when he led Team Kraken, by fits and starts, to the Oval Office.
Now consider this section of his interview with Clements (which begins at 41:50 in the linked video), after Ziegler has just referenced “December 18” several times and the topic of the conversation is, unambiguously, December 18, 2020 (emphasis added):
ZIEGLER: The memory that sticks out to me the most [of being in a private meeting with then-President Trump and others] is the 18th. That’s the most that I had spoken to him one-on-one and he had directly listened to me. And Peter [Navarro] was actually ill at the time, so he was on the phone—they conferenced him in. You know, Cipollone was there, [Jared] Kushner was there, Meadows was there, and I was basically saying—
CLEMENTS (looking concerned): The 18th of what?
ZIEGLER: January.
CLEMENTS (looking relieved): January, okay.
ZIEGLER: So this was after the Federal Bureau of Insurrection [sic] did their thing [on January 6]. {NB: Ziegler here adopts the conspiracy theory that the FBI planned and executed the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021].
Is it possible that, of the five or six times Ziegler had meaningful encounters with the President of the United States, two of them occurred on the 18th of a month and both involved Pat Cipollone, the White House Counsel? It’s possible. Or, this may’ve been a slip of the tongue that helps explain why—after the Trump-Team Kraken meeting ended in the wee hours of December 19—Trump tweeted about just two things: (1) the “wild protest” that was coming on January 6, and (2) the “Navarro reports” Ziegler had written and Navarro had put his name on.
In short, what has come into focus in the last two months is a ring of co-conspirators whose names are known and who nearly all have connections to either John Eastman, Ginni Thomas, or both. Eastman has now pleaded the Fifth Amendment a hundred times. It’s time for Ginni Thomas to answer questions to help protect our democracy or confirm herself—finally—as one of those who has secretly been trying to destroy it.
By Seth Abramson
an raw 8 22
Patrick Bergy, a former Department of Defense contract information assurance security officer who was embedded with a group of pro-Trump conspiracy theorists in Washington, DC following the 2020 election, is publicly questioning an account by his one-time benefactor, Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock.com CEO.
Last week, Byrne filed a sworn declaration in the federal case for the search warrant executed at former President Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago in south Florida. While the purpose of Byrne’s affidavit remains unclear, it included an intriguing tidbit of information relevant to a widely reported :{Dec. 18, 2020 meeting:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: in which Byrne, retired Lt. General Michael Flynn and attorney Sidney Powell visited Trump in the Oval Office. During the contentious meeting, which devolved into a shouting match with White House lawyers, Byrne, Flynn and Powell reportedly urged Trump to use the Department of Homeland Security or the National Guard to seize voting machines. At the end of the meeting, Trump reportedly appointed Powell to the position of special counsel.
In his declaration, filed in federal court in the Southern District of Florida on Aug. 18, Byrne wrote that Rudy Giuliani, who was serving as Trump’s personal attorney in the final days of the administration, disclosed to him during a lunch meeting in January 2022 that after Byrne, Flynn and Powell left the White House around 12:15 a.m. on Dec. 19, Giuliani lingered with Trump for a couple of minutes. According to Byrne’s declaration, Giuliani told him that after the others had left, “the president verbally reversed his decision and instructions” to appoint Powell special counsel, “and that is why those earlier decisions were never implemented.”
Bergy suggests in his affidavit, which was filed on Thursday, that he doubts Byrne's account about Giuliani's disclosure from the January 2022 lunch meeting. In his affidavit, Bergy describes observing Byrne leaving a meeting with Giuliani at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC around Jan. 11, 2021. Others in attendance at the meeting, according to Bergy, were Garrett Ziegler, a White House aide; conspiracy theorist Millie Weaver and her common-law husband Gavin Wince, and Phil Waldron, a retired Army colonel who pushed dubious claims of voter fraud to lawmakers.
“As I walked in Patrick Byrne was just leaving and was acting visibly upset following the meeting with Rudy and Garrett,” Bergy wrote. The affidavit concludes with Bergy writing that Byrne’s claim that he only learned about Trump's decision to rescind Powell’s appointment in January 2022 “defies logic based on how upset Patrick Byrne was when I saw him leaving the Willard meeting that day.”
Asked about Bergy’s account, Byrne said in an email to Raw Story that he saw Giuliani on the night of Jan. 6 and left Washington, DC on Jan. 8. He said Ziegler was not present when he encountered Giuliani. Bergy, in turn, told Raw Story he stands by his claim that he saw Byrne leaving a meeting with Giuliani and Ziegler, but that it could have taken place on Jan. 7 or 8.
Bergy describes himself in his affidavit as a “guest of Patrick Byrne, Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell and others” at Trump International Hotel, the Westin Arlington Gateway and Willard Hotel from mid-November 2020 through Jan. 17, 2021. During part of that time, he said he was also “a guest under an unsigned or dated Non-Disclosure Agreement with Rudy Giuliani, which I do not recognize.”
As previously reported by Raw Story, Bergy said he was invited to come to Washington, DC by Weaver and Wince, and joined a team housed by Byrne in the various hotels that also included conspiracy theorist Tore Maras; former military contractor Scott Bennett and Stephen Pigeon, an attorney for Washington state gubernatorial candidate Loren Culp. Bergy described thegroup’s purpose in his affidavit as “working to find evidence of election fraud, with the main focus being told to me put on the foreign influence that would allow them to use the Insurrection Act and call in National Guard.”
Bergy told Raw Story that he doubts that Giuliani actually witnessed Trump rescind his appointment of Sidney Powell after Powell, Byrne and Flynn left the White House in the early-morning hours following the Dec. 18, 2020 meeting. He said he doesn’t recall any mention of Trump revoking Powell’s authority among the network of people in Washington attempting to overturn the election after Dec. 18.
“If you want me to believe that story, sorry Charlie,” Bergy told Raw Story. “The timing on it and everything else going on, it’s just no way. Until someone shows me evidence otherwise, I would steer towards that not being the case. Even if he did tell Rudy, if you had a two-minute conversation with Rudy and no one else was around, how am I supposed to believe that?
“I can’t sit here and say Rudy lied, but I can say I don’t believe it,” Bergy added.
Neither Giuliani nor his attorneys could be reached for comment on this story.
Bergy told Raw Story that he believes the claim made by Byrne has the effect of protecting Trump.
As someone who has worked for the government on information security, Bergy said, the knowledge that the president had verbally rescinded an appointment that included a top-secret security clearance would have raised concern.
“It would have required that a full investigation for potential leaks or potential damage from that be investigated,” he said.
https://yyy.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/16/trump-white-house-aide-secret-author-dominion-report
guk no lnx
Trump White House aide was secret author of report used to push ‘big lie’
This article is more than 4 months old
Report on Dominion voting machines produced after 2020 election was not the work of volunteer in Trump’s post-election legal team
Donald Trump used a number of unsubstantiated allegations in the Dominion report in support of his lie that he defeated Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
Hugo Lowell in Washington
Thu 17Mar 2022
Weeks after the 2020 election, at least one Trump White House aide was named as secretly producing a report that alleged Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden because of Dominion Voting Systems – research that formed the basis of the former president’s wider efforts to overturn the election.
The Dominion report, subtitled “OVERVIEW 12/2/20 – History, Executives, Vote Manipulation Ability and Design, Foreign Ties”, was initially prepared so that it could be sent to legislatures in states where the Trump White House was trying to have Biden’s win reversed.
[Trump lawyer knew plan to delay Biden certification was unlawful, emails show
But top Trump officials would also use the research that stemmed from the White House aide-produced report to weigh other options to return Trump to the presidency, including having the former president sign off on executive orders to authorize sweeping emergency powers.
The previously unreported involvement of the Trump White House aide in the preparation of the Dominion report raises the extraordinary situation of at least one administration official being among the original sources of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The publicly available version of the Dominion report, which first surfaced in early December 2020 on the conservative outlet the Gateway Pundit, names on the cover and in metadata as its author Katherine Friess, a volunteer on the Trump post-election legal team.
But the Dominion report was in fact produced by the senior Trump White House policy aide Joanna Miller, according to the original version of the document reviewed by the Guardian and a source familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The original version of the Dominion report named Miller - who worked for the senior Trump adviser Peter Navarro – as the author on the cover page, until her name was abruptly replaced with that of Friess before the document was to be released publicly, the source said.
The involvement of a number of other Trump White House aides who worked in Navarro’s office was also scrubbed around that time, the source said. Friess has told the Daily Beast that she had nothing to do with the report and did not know how her name came to be on the document.
It was not clear why Miller’s name was removed from the report, which was sent to Trump’s former attorney Rudy Giuliani on 29 November 2020, or why the White House aide’s involvement was obfuscated in the final 2 December version.
Miller did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
images of two documents saying “Dominion voting systems” and below that, “overview: history, executives, vote manipulation ability and design, foreign ties”. Each document has a different date - left one is 29 November 2020, right one is 2 December 2020. left one says it’s by Joanna Miller, right one by Katherine Friess]
Different versions of the report. Photograph: Dominion Voting Systems report
The Dominion report made a number of unsubstantiated allegations that claimed Dominion Voting Systems corruptly ensured there could be “technology glitches which resulted in thousands of votes being added to Joe Biden’s total ballot count”.
Citing unnamed Venezuelan officials, the report also pushed the conspiracy theory that Dominion Voting Systems used software from the election company Smartmatic and had ties to “state-run Venezuelan software and telecommunications companies”.
After the Dominion report became public, Navarro incorporated the claims into his own three-part report, produced with assistance from his aides at the White House, including Miller and another policy aide, Garrett Ziegler, the source said.
:{
}:
Ziegler has also said on a rightwing podcast that he and others in Navarro’s office – seemingly referring to Trump White House aides Christopher Abbott and Hannah Robertson – started working on Navarro’s report about two weeks before the 2020 election took place.
“Two weeks before the election, we were doing those reports hoping that we would pepper the swing states with those,” Ziegler said of the three-part Navarro report in an appearance last July on The Professor’s Record with David K Clements.
The research in the Dominion report also formed the backbone of foreign election interference claims by the former Trump lawyer and conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell, who argued Trump could, as a result, assume emergency presidential powers and suspend normal law.
That included Trump’s executive order 13848, which authorized sweeping powers in the event of foreign election interference, as well as a draft executive order that would have authorized the seizure of voting machines, the Guardian has previously reported.
The claims about Venezuela in the Dominion report appear to have spurred Powell to ask Trump at a 18 December 2020 meeting at the White House – coincidentally facilitated by Ziegler – that she be appointed special counsel to investigate election fraud.
Miller’s authorship of the Dominion report was not the last time the Trump White House, or individuals in the administration, prepared materials to advance the former president’s claims about a stolen election and efforts to return himself to office.
The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack revealed last year it had found evidence the White House Communications Agency produced a letter for the Trump justice department official Jeffrey Clark to use to pressure states to decertify Biden’s election win.
https://www.rawstory.com/sidney-powell-special-counsel/
no lnx
Trump came perilously close to carrying out Sidney Powell's bizarre plot to steal the election: report
February 04, 2022
Trump came perilously close to carrying out Sidney Powell's bizarre plot to steal the election: report
Donald Trump personally reviewed a draft executive order that would have authorized the National Guard to seize voting machines and verbally agreed to appoint campaign lawyer Sidney Powell as special counsel to investigate his baseless fraud claims, according to a new report.
The twice-impeached one-term president did not follow through on the order, but four sources with knowledge of a Dec. 18, 2020, meeting at the White House told The Guardian that he came perilously close to doing so.
"Trump was handed the document when he sat down with four informal advisers – Powell, Trump’s former national security advisor Michael Flynn, former Trump aide Emily Newman and former Overstock chief executive Patrick Byrne – who had arrived at the White House unannounced," the newspaper reported. "The group had not scheduled an audience with Trump, but after Byrne messaged an acquaintance, they were cleared to enter the White House by Garrett Ziegler, a policy aide to former Trump advisor Peter Navarro, andPatrick Weaver, an aide with the National Security Council."
The draft that Trump reviewed was one of the final versions that Powell had prepared, and was retained automatically by the White House and recently turned over to the House select committee by the National Archives.
READ: Republicans in Congress were in on Trump's coup plot
White House attorney Patrick Cipollone and White House staff secretary Derek Lyons told Trump he lacked the constitutional authority to take those actions, but the former president said he might just make Powell special counsel anyway and unilaterally grant her security clearance.
He reportedly told Powell to coordinate with his attorney Rudy Giuliani, who had removed her from the campaign legal team a few weeks earlier and found her evidence of foreign election interference to be unpersuasive.
Powell told her associate that Trump had authorized her as some type of special counsel, and she called White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to ask for office space and security clearance, but Giuliani told him that she had been banned from the White House.
Meadows refused to grant Powell a "hard pass" to the White House, but she returned two days in a row on a temporary "appointment" pass granted by another aide to share documents accusing Iran of election threats, but she was not permitted to meet with Trump himself.
https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/garrett-ziegler-white-nationalist-grievances/
after invoking the Fifth Amendment and executive privilege more than 100 times to refuse to answer questions from the January 6th Committee on Tuesday, former White House aide Garrett Ziegler opened a livestream to vent his frustrations to his followers in a nearly 30-minute rant laden with white nationalist grievance on Telegram.
Ziegler complained that he has less resources to fight the committee than his older cohorts, including his boss former Trade Advisor Peter Navarro, who is suing the committee, and former White House strategist Steve Bannon, who is being prosecuted for contempt.
“They can pay their attorneys to go to trial,” Ziegler said. “I had to be very smart and circumspect. My goal was to avoid a contempt of Congress charge…. It’s going to be very, very hard for them to pass a contempt of Congress charge on me when I’ve given them documents, and I flew out to DC and sat in front of them. If they have a problem with me, they have a problem with the f***ing Fifth Amendment.
Citing his decision to invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination, Ziegler portrayed himself as a victim of left-wing persecution.
“They’re Bolsheviks so they probably do hate the Fifth Amendment, and most white people in general,” he said. “This is a Bolshevist, anti-white campaign…. They see me as a young Christian who they can basically try to scare.”
Ziegler, who reshares white nationalist Nicholas Fuentes’ content and has called Cambodia a “s***hole country” on his Telegram channel, quickly added: “I’m the least racist person that many of you have ever met, by the way. I have no bigotry. I just try to see the world for where it is.”
Then, his rant veered into misogyny when he lamented that no one else in his generation was defying the January 6th committee, because “the other people in the White House are total hos and thots.” He specifically named Cassidy Hutchinson,:{ the former aide to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows whose bombshell }
:{ revealed that President Trump wanted to let supporters with guns into the rally at the Ellipse, and Alyssa Farah Griffin, the former White House director of strategic communications and assistant to the president who }:reportedly:{ showed up to support Hutchinson when she testified.}:
Ziegler reported that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) logged in to the interview by teleconference, but ducked out when he realized he wasn’t going to learn any new information.
“It was a boring hour,” Ziegler said. "It was an awkward hour. I loathe these people.”
While spurning the committee, Ziegler provided additional detail about his role in facilitating a heated meeting at the White House on Dec. 18, 2020 in which attorney Sidney Powell, retired Lt. General Michael Flynn and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne urged President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and order the National Guard to seize ballots and re-run the election.
“What I did is I sent them a URL to a form to fill out to then they can request to the Secret Service to be admitted onto the property,” Ziegler said on Tuesday. “That’s exactly what I did. I did nothing more.I wasn’t even at the White House grounds when that meeting occurred. I had gone home because it was very late at night. I had no idea what they were discussing. I hoped that — my reason for sending the URL to the form was that somebody would advise the president to make a call to governors to get the National Guard to hand-count the paper ballots. I had no idea about the machines.” [what?]
Previously, Ziegler has told fellow election denier David K. Clements that he and Patrick Weaver, another White House aide in the National Security Council, worked together to let Powell, Flynn and Byrne into the White House.
“Basically, I had the visitor access,” Ziegler said. “And he went down and got General Flynn and Sidney Powell.”
Waldron declined to comment for this story.
Much of the information in the reports was funneled up from the outside team, Trimarco said.
Ziegler has spoken openly about using his pass to let attorney Sidney Powell and retired Lt. General Michael Flynn into the White House for a Dec. 18, 2020 meeting with President Trump andcontributing to a report authored by his boss, trade advisor Peter Navarro, that was used to undermine confidence in the election. But Raw Story has confirmed that Ziegler played a much more significant role than has been previously understood. Working directly with a team that reported to Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, Ziegler helped create a seamless information chain that was mobilized in the effort to overturn the election.
As previouslyreported, Ziegler let Powell and Flynn into the White House for an impromptu meeting with Trump, in which the trio reportedly urged the president to invoke the National Emergencies Act so that he could use the National Guard to seize ballots and appoint Powell as a special counsel to investigate the election. Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock.com CEO, has said that he contacted Ziegler to arrange the meeting. The visit caught Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and White House counsel Pat Cipollone by surprise, according to Ziegler, and Ziegler’s visitor access privileges were subsequently revoked.
The following day, Trump tweeted a link to the report authored by Navarro produced in collaboration with Ziegler, while calling his supporters to come to Washington, DC on Jan. 6 for a “wild rally.”
Ziegler also said he attempted to arrange a separate meeting between Powell and Trump, Raw Story has found.
“I walked Sidney over to the residence one night to try to get the president a binder full of evidence,” Ziegler asserted in a YouTube interview after he had left the White House. Powell was blocked from meeting with the president, he said, contending that Trump’s more cautious staff prevented the president from taking bolder action.
Ziegler disclosed on his Telegram channel last month that he received an invitation to speak with the staff and members of the January 6th Committee. The House cited Navarro, Ziegler’s former boss, for criminal contempt for defying subpoenas from the select committee and referred him to the US Department of Justice for prosecution on April 6.
While gathering information and drafting the Navarro report, Ziegler worked with a research team that reported to Giuliani, according to Giuliani associate Michael Trimarco. A Long Island businessman with a background in finance and tech, Trimarco told far-right conspiracy theorist Ann Vandersteel in a recent video that he had been helping Giuliani analyze the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop in October 2020, and then hastily switched over to researching alleged election fraud after the election.
The Westin hotel inArlington, Va. served as the initial hub for the teams collecting affidavits to support the legal challenges, Raw Story has found. Those teams promoted a fount of specious claims that would fuel the violent effort to prevent Congress from certifying the election. Byrne said in a video posted earlier this year that Trimarco “rented some rooms” for Powell “and a few other people” at the Westin. The video was removed from Byrne’s channel on the alternative video streaming platform Rumble, but a copy was republished by the news site One News Page, crediting Rumble as the original source.
“All of this would have fallen apart on that side of the river had it not been for [Trimarco] showing up and not just with a credit card, but trying to provide some adult supervision,” Byrne said. “He’s a real champion, and the MAGA crowd should know that when push came to shove, this fellow came up out of nowhere and was very valuable in helping corral all these forces and keep things from just spinning apart in the early days.”
In mid-November 2020, Powell, Flynn and Byrne decamped from the Westin to the Tomotley Plantation in South Carolina at the invitation of defamation attorney Lin Wood in mid-November. The team led by Powell and Flynn at Tomotley received widespread coverage. Less attention has been focused on a second team that stayed behind. Ziegler was a frequent presence at the Westin, which he dubbed the “cyber-patriots,” Trimarco said.
The team at the Westin “did have access to Garrett at the White House, they did get tours, and they did work with Garrett extensively,” Trimarco told Vandersteel. “I know he did — and he was working diligently with these folks to get as much information as quickly as we could into the right hands.”
Ziegler worked with Giuliani team to get information to Trump
Following in the footsteps of his older cousin Ron Ziegler, onetime press secretary for President Richard Nixon, Garrett Ziegler landed an internship at the White House as a college student in 2017.He joined the staff of the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy under Navarro two years later. Prior to the election, Ziegler said he worked on reports touting “the Trump economic record” in sectors like mining and manufacturing in swing states.Beginning around Nov. 15 — roughly the same time Powell moved her team from the Westin to the Tomotley Plantation — Ziegler said he and three other aides started helping Navarro compile reports casting doubt on the outcome of the election.
“We prepared — Peter gave direction,” Ziegler told David Clements, a former New Mexico State University professor who has amassed a large following on Telegram among election deniers and anti-vaccine adherents. “He laid it out, what his vision was. And our job was to get the first draft.”
In his account of his time working on the Giuliani election team at the Westin, Trimarco told Vandersteel he was impressed by Ziegler’s energy and found him to be mature beyond his years.
“I mean, this guy — talk about people really working 24-7,” Trimarco said. “He would come around at 11, midnight, 1, after he’s done at the White House, to get information. I saw him come by one or two times. But he was working with a few key people on our team to get the information.”
In the tangled web of relationships among the operatives working to overturn the election at the Westin, Tomotley and across the country, Trimarco was responsible for making sure crucial information reached Giuliani.
“If you wanted to get information from Sidney’s camp, at least at the very beginning, over to Rudy’s, you’d come through me,” Trimarco said. “That was the reason I was at a lot of these meetings — to get information over to Rudy, because he represented the president, for real. And we weren’t physically in the same location.”
While the “cyber-patriots” team was headquartered at the Westin, according to Trimarco, Giuliani has said he was working out of the Trump Hotel around the time of the election and then moved to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Shortly after Christmas, Giuliani said he moved to the Willard Hotel.Giuliani’s statements about his whereabouts during the period he was challenging the election on Trump’s behalf come from a deposition for a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems employee Eric Coomer.
Giuliani did not respond to multiple emails and voicemails to his lawyers seeking comment..
Ziegler was working so closely with the team at the Westin that information often reached Trump before it reached him, Trimarco said.
“Ironically, a lot of the stuff that got back to Rudy didn’t end up coming through me,” Trimarco told Vandersteel. “Because once that connection was made, Garrett would give it to Peter, and Peter would give it to the president, and then it would circle back to Rudy.”
Ziegler told Raw Story he would respond to questions for comment, but didn’t send responses by press time.
Trimarco comes from a politically connected family in New York. His involvement in politics long predates the effort to overturn the 2020 election. During a New York state court trial to decide a complaint brought by Trimarco against his former business partners, witnesses testified that Trimarco took part in a meeting with then-Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) in 2002 to discuss a venture that would theoretically capture and store biometric data to properly identify passengers at Long Island’s MacArthur Airport. Trimarco’s former partners accused him of failing to talk about their business during the meeting and instead promoting a business owned by his family.
Trimarco claimed in his March interview with Vandersteel that “the feds are coming after me” related to a matter involving Cambridge Analytica — the British consulting firm that used Facebook data to micro-target voters to the advantage of the Trump campaign in 2016. He further asserted that Giuliani was representing him in the matter. It is unclear exactly what Trimarco’s relationship to Cambridge Analytica is, but a Fast Companystory linked Cambridge Analytica to members of the Ergen family, who own Dish Network, and court records indicate that Trimarco was involved in marketing and distribution work for Dish Network in 2010.
In 2018, Trimarco sued Dish Network scion Chase Ergen, and he was represented by a New York City lawyer named Howard Kleinhendler.
Trimarco told Vandersteel that he was analyzing the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop for Giuliani in October 2020. Kleinhendler allowed him to come by his law office to print out pages from the device. The effort to mine the laptop for information that could damage the Biden campaign pivoted to generating baseless election fraud theories once it became apparent Trump was going to lose.
“When everything went south after election night and Howard was on the phone with me right away — ‘How can I help? Can I work on this? I want to help the cause,’” Trimarco recalled. The next day, Trimarco said Kleinhendler showed up at the Westin ready to go to work. Kleinhendler went on to file an election suit as Sidney Powell’s co-counsel in Arizona, and currently represents Powell in defamation suits brought by Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic.
Despite multiple attempts, Kleinhendler could not be reached for comment.
In his interview with Vandersteel, Trimarco recalled a meeting that took place at the Westin shortly after the election that included Kleinhendler and Powell. Two other men who attended the meeting — retired Army Col. Phil Waldron and Texas businessman Russell Ramsland — explained “their theories on how the system was hacked,” Trimarco said.
Ziegler maintains that during his time in the White House he was outspoken in his advocacy for Trump to take bold action to prevent the transfer of power to Joe Biden.
“I was telling whoever would listen to me in the White House: ‘Let’s just go look at the ballots. We don’t have to do it. Have the National Guard in Georgia do it,’” Ziegler told an interviewer, outlining a proposal similar to the one Powell, Flynn and Byrne pitched to President Trump at the White House meeting.
In late December 2020, Ziegler said he was “still holding out hope that some of the advice my boss was giving [Trump] that we needed to do something about this would actually get done,that he would quote-unquote cross the Rubicon…. But he didn’t do that.”
By then, the ceaseless drumbeat of unfounded claims that the vote had been electronically altered by foreign powers had come to be accepted as truth by Trump’s supporters. Outraged by what they considered treason by lawmakers, state officials and judges who thwarted the president’s attempt to cling to power, they took matters into their own hands. On Jan. 6, 2021, the pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol and forced Congress to delay certification of the electoral vote. The vote was ultimately certified and Biden was confirmed as the next president.
wiki?
garrett Ziegler is an American political aide and former White House staff in the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.[1]
A graduate of Saint Louis University, Ziegler served in the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy led by Peter Navarro.[2] He has written reports on domestic government procurement[3] and election integrity.[4] He has also served as a fellow at the John Jay Institute.[5]
References
- ↑ “Garrett M. Ziegler”. Pro Publica. Retrieved 24 June 2021.
- ↑ Mills, Charles (3 January 2020). “Altamont native describes role in White House”. Effingham Daily News. Retrieved 25 June 2021.
- ↑ White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy (2 October 2020). “Donald J. Trump: The Buy American, Hire American President.” Retrieved 24 June 2021.
- ↑ “U.S. Election Integrity: Recommendations Report”. Retrieved 24 June 2021.
- ↑ “John Jay Institute Alumni”. Retrieved 25 June 2021.
no lnx
E-Paper
EDITOR'S PICK FEATURED
Altamont native describes role in White House
Charles Mills Daily News Jan 3, 2020
Altamont Native Garrett Ziegler informed members and guests of the Effingham Country Chamber of Commerce about “America Under President Trump” during the Chamber’s First Friday luncheon.
Ziegler works in the White House as Senior Policy Analyst in the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy. He is the son of Mike and Anita Ziegler of Altamont and a 2014 Graduate of Altamont High School. Ziegler received abachelor’s degree in economics at St. Louis University 2018, graduating magna cum laude.
He was named Effingham Daily News Athlete of the Year April of 2014 and interned for U.S. Rep. John Shimkus, R%-Collinsville, at his Washington, D.C. Office through an Illinois State Society Congressional Intern Scholarship Award during the summer of 2016 when he was a junior at SLU.
Ziegler started the conversation by saying the thoughts he made at the luncheon where his thoughts alone and he wasn’t allowed to talk about any conversations he had with President Donald Trump.
“I wouldn’t be here literally if it weren’t for Craig Lindvahl,” Ziegler said, referring to the popular former teacher who died Thursday. “He was a terrific man and had a terrific legacy. He’s one of the best men to come through Effingham County. He started the CEO program and is respected all over the Midwest.
“We’ll miss him,” Ziegler added.
Ziegler said his family immigrated to the U.S. from southwest Germany, then to St. Louis and came to Effingham County in approximately 1861.
“The story of the county is quite phenomenal,” Ziegler said. “I want to spark a new appreciation for the uniqueness of Effingham County.”
He said Effingham County is different than counties in Illinois due to it’s central location, fertile ground, tremendous business community and faith. Ziegler mentioned several businesses in the area that are making a difference in the county.
“We have a lot to be proud of,” Ziegler said. “We are a special county. Regardless of what goes on in Washington and Springfield there is hope here.”
Ziegler recognized Chuck Keller as being the reason we are here today. He said he never knew him but gave him credit for bringing both Interstates 50 and 57 through Effingham.
“I was not aware of his role in getting the two interstates to cross here in Effingham,” Ziegler said. “And he was a Democrat.”
“Chuck Keller’s legacy is still going on today,” Ziegler said. “I thank Chuck Keller and think of him whenever a business decides to set up shop at the intersection of the interstates.”
“Like Chuck Keller I would like to resurrect his legacy,” Ziegler said about economist Friedrich List who he said had influenced his thinking about the economy.
“He was the best economist of the 19th century,” Ziegler said. “We are not going to have a country left if we give up all of our industries.”
Ziegler talked about his position in the White House and how his position falls under the leadership of Peter Navarro who is closer to the President. He talked about a speech Trump made about the economy in June of 2018 highlighting a few points from the speech.
Ziegler went over the four guideposts of Trump’s 2018 speech to include tax reform, prudent deregulation, energy extraction and fair and reciprocal trade.
He also went over the seven promises Trump kept during his campaign including withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, found the toughest negotiators, directed the Secretary of Commerce to prosecute trade violations, do a total renegotiation of North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and threaten to withdraw if you do not get what you want, label China a currency inflater, prosecute China at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and if China does not stop its illegal behavior tariffs would be imposed.
“So, the two trade laws we invoked were the Trade Act of 1974 and Trade Expansion Act of 1972,” Ziegler said.
Steve Raymond
News Report Staff
When Garrett Ziegler was in high school, he was mostly known as a standout athlete.
He was a third team all-state basketball selection and an all-conference baseball player for the Altamont Indians.
But those who were closest to Garrett knew there was another passion in his life.
“I loved two things all my life – sports and politics,” Garrett admitted. “My dad’s second cousin, Ronald Ziegler, was a press secretary for President Nixon, but nobody else in my family has ever been involved with politics. But I’ve always been interested in that.”
That interest was only peaked when he served as an intern for Congressman John Shimkus from May to August in 2016.
That experience would have satisfied many. But not Garrett, who then set his sights even a bit higher.
In July 2017, he went through an extensive online application process that took nearly five hours and included 10 essay responses.
But it proved to be a worthwhile exercise. About a month later, he received word that he had been selected as an intern for the White House.
“I’ve always known there were interns at the White House,” Garrett explained. “During my internship with Congressman Shimkus, I came into contact with people who now work in the White House. I believed if I applied, I might have a good shot at getting in. It all hinged on Donald Trump getting elected president.”
Garrett started as a White House intern on September 6 and served in that role until December 8. He took a semester off from St. Louis University. He worked between 45 and 50 hours each week, but received no pay.
There are 13 departments that White House interns can be placed into. Garrett was assigned to the National Economic Council, which is what he had hoped for, which makes sense. He is an economic major at SLU.
He worked as a research assistant for the Special Assistant to the President for Infrastructure Policy (DJ Gribbin) and Agriculture Policy (Ray Starling). His supervisor was Richard Chalkey, who is from Streator, and serves as the Associate Director of the NEC.
“The National Economic Council was established in 1992,” Garrett noted. “It’s a chief policy-making forum for considering economic matters. It deals with both international and domestic issues.
“As a research assistant, I wrote memos, helped with scheduling and did research on policy,” Garrett said. “There were a lot of meetings. I would provide information for everybody in those meetings and accumulate material that related to the topics that would be discussed. I enjoyed doing that a lot.
“I was able to attend some of those meetings, but not others. It all depended on the subject matter.”
Garrett was one of 90 interns during that three-month period. He said they were from all across the U.S. and were between 20-29 years old. And they were all serving in some role to help the president.
“President Trump is obviously unconventional, but he’s actually a very generous person,” Garrett said. “He’s an extraordinary man and a fighter, which in my opinion is exactly what we need right now. I know he says some things that rile people up, but I totally support his agenda.”
The son of Michael and Anita Ziegler, who will turn 22 in February, has certainly had some life-enhancing experiences since graduating from Altamont High School in 2014.
In addition to his experience in the White House and with Congressman Shimkus, Garrett also had the opportunity to study in Madrid, Spain, during his sophomore year at SLU. During that time, he visited more than a dozen countries in Europe and came to a realization.
“For the first time in my life, I became grateful for being born in the United States,” he said. “I have the greatest parents and family in the world and now know how good I’ve had it. My parents have helped open a lot of doors for me. And my grandmother, Norma Wohltman, has also done a lot for me. They have given me many opportunities to experience things.
“I also realized how important it is to have a society where everybody has a shot and I hope to contribute in a way so others can have that opportunity, too.”
The White House internship taught Garrett the importance of being prepared.
“You never know what’s going to happen at the White House,” Garrett emphasized. “I learned the importance of being prepared for every meeting; every interaction. I’m now a better writer, much more alert and very grateful. This was a great opportunity for me.”
Garrett has one more semester remaining at St. Louis University. He will graduate May 19.
So what’s next?
“I’m planning to go back to Washington D.C. to work in politics, although I’m not sure in what capacity yet,” Garrett said. “Then after one or two years, I’m planning to go to law school. I’m considering the military route and going into the JAG (Judge Advocate General) Corps. I’m also very interested in the military.”
But, ultimately, Garrett wants to get involved with politics.
And why not?
His life experiences and passion have prepared him for exactly that.
joanna:
GURLs
rising star in rep movement
http://www.furmangroup.com/about_exec_joanna.php
my name is Joanna Miller, I am a junior at American University studying National Security and Foreign Policy with a minor in Mandarin Chinese Language, and am currently on the Cyber Intelligence Research Team at IWP. My internship experience overall at IWP has been life-changing, and has inspired me to do things that I would have never imagined myself doing. This is all because of the fact that IWP equips its students and interns for future careers in intelligence, national security, and more by learning how to think about international relations issues in their proper context, rather than the way we imagine them to be. Also, IWP emphasizes the importance of being leaders whose primary goal is to serve others first, rather than climb the career ladder. Students and interns are taught by professors and research practitioners who have had long-term careers in the U.S. Military, Central Intelligence Agency, U.S. Department of State, and more, who give students and interns hands-on experiences relevant to actual work in the fields of intelligence and national security.
On the Cyber Intelligence Research Team, I have had the privilege of working with another intern on a research project supervised by Dean Lane, the Senior Vice President of Cyber Intelligence, who is a retired U.S. Navy pilot who fought with the Special Forces in the Vietnam War, was the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of many companies, and author of #1 bestseller CIO Wisdom. Our project this semester utilized open source intelligence to analyze Chinese and Russian cyber capabilities and assess how a cyber war between China and Russia over the Central Asian oil sector could occur.
On top of the fantastic research experience I have had, the IWP community has been nothing but organized, helpful, and supportive from the very first day. As an intern, whether I was needing help setting up for an event, needed career advice, wanted to be partnered with an alumnus working in a field in which I am interested, and more, professors, staff, and students have never fallen short of ensuring I had what I needed to be the most successful. IWP truly is a hidden gem in Washington, D.C. and has given me the experience of a lifetime that I am proud to share with family and friends.
https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/trump-2656976697/
The report used by former President Donald Trump to push his big lie about the 2020 presidential election was reportedly written by one of his own White House staffers, new details reveal. GUK
The Guardian has reportedly reviewed the original version of the reference document. While the public version of Trump's reference is said to have been authored by Katherine Friess, who served as a volunteer member of the former president's post-election legal team, new developments have revealed the report "was, in fact, produced by the senior Trump White House policy aide Joanna Miller."
[Joanna Miller served as a Senior Policy Analyst in the Trump White House covering Trade and Manufacturing Policy, and advancing President Trump’s Buy American, Hire American agenda. Prior to her time at the White House, she had served in the White House Liaison's office in the U.S. Department of State after graduating from American University in May of 2019.]
Per The Guardian, the report on Dominion Voting Systems, which was titled, “OVERVIEW 12/2/20 – History, Executives, Vote Manipulation Ability and Design, Foreign Ties” claimed the election technology company "corruptly ensured there could be 'technology glitches which resulted in thousands of votes being added to Joe Biden’s total ballot count.'”
According to an inside source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, "the original version of the Dominion report named Miller — who worked for the senior Trump adviser Peter Navarro — as the author on the cover page, until her name was abruptly replaced with that of Friess before the document was to be released publicly."
The report was supposed to be used as a tool to support Trump's efforts to have election results overturned in battleground states President Joe Biden won. However, Trump administration officials also began using the report to support other tactics they were reportedly considering to overturn the outcome of the election so the former president could remain in power.
After the report was made public, Navarro, according to the inside source, began referencing the baseless claims in his own report which he compiled with help from Miller and,Garrett Ziegler, who also worked as a policy aide for the Trump White House.
“Two weeks before the election, we were doing those reports hoping that we would pepper the swing states with those,” Ziegler said of former White House advisor Navarro's report.
The latest development comes as the House Select Committee continues its investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection and the circumstances surrounding it.
guk ... Dominion report made a number of unsubstantiated allegations that claimed Dominion Voting Systems corruptly ensured there could be “technology glitches which resulted in thousands of votes being added to Joe Biden’s total ballot count” Citing unnamed Venezuelan officials, the report also pushed the conspiracy theory that Dominion Voting Systems used software from the election company and had ties to “state-run Venezuelan software and telecommunications companies” After the Dominion report became public, Navarro incorporated the claims into his own three-part report, produced with assistance from his aides at the White House, including Miller and another policy aide, Garrett Ziegler, the source said....Ziegler has also said on a rightwing podcast that he and others in Navarro’s office – seemingly referring to Trump White House aides Christopher Abbott and Hannah Robertson – started working on Navarro’s report about two weeks before the 2020 election took place. “Two weeks before the election, we were doing those reports hoping that we would pepper the swing states with those,”Ziegler said of the three-part Navarro report in an appearance last July on The Professor’s Record with David K Clements. ...The research in the Dominion report also formed the backbone of foreign election interference claims by the former Trump lawyer and conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell, who argued Trump could, as a result, assume emergency presidential powers and suspend normal law.
executive order 13848, which authorized sweeping powers in the event of foreign election interference, as well as a draft executive order that would have authorized the seizure of voting machines, the Guardian has previously reported. guk
The claims about Venezuela in the Dominion report appear to have spurred Powell to ask Trump at a 18 December 2020 meeting at the White House – coincidentally facilitated by Ziegler – that she be appointed special counsel to investigate election fraud.
Miller’s authorship of the Dominion report was not the last time the Trump White House, or individuals in the administration, prepared materials to advance the former president’s claims about a stolen election and efforts to return himself to office.
The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack revealed last year it had found evidence the White House Communications Agency produced a letter for the Trump justice department official Jeffrey Clark to use to pressure states to decertify Biden’s election win.
no lnx
Feb. 10, 2022,
Summary
Former President Barack Obama meets with House Democrats. Former White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Director Peter Navarro discusses his role in trying to overturn the presidential election. Did Donald Trump or his team break the law again with secret White House logs?
Transcript
JASON JOHNSON, MSNBC HOST: THE BEAT WITH ARI MELBER starts right now.
Hi, Ari.
ARI MELBER, MSNBC HOST: Hi, Jason. Thank you.
Welcome to THE BEAT. I am Ari Melber.
And this is a major news night right here on this broadcast.
Trump White House veteran Peter Navarro is here, now, for his first exclusive TV appearance since facing that new subpoena from the January 6 Committee.
[18:00:06]
And this is how we got here:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: White House trade and senior economic adviser Peter Navarro.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Assistant to the president and director of the office of trade and manufacturing policy, Peter Navarro.
NICOLLE WALLACE, MSNBC HOST: Former White House trade guy Peter Navarro.
MELBER: A man often in the news, Peter Navarro, is our guest tonight.
PETER NAVARRO, FORMER DIRECTOR, WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF TRADE AND MANUFACTURING POLICY: We had over 100 congressmen and senators on Capitol Hill ready to implement the sweep.
RACHEL MADDOW, HOST, "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW": This guy did an interview with my colleague Ari Melber here on MSNBC last night.
They had this plan to hype these gossamer, fantastical claims of supposed fraud.
JOE SCARBOROUGH, CO-HOST, "MORNING JOE": He said the quiet part out loud.
STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT": Navarro explained that what the coup plot had in common with the football play was teamwork, and, obviously, brain damage.
ELIE HONIG, CNN: Congratulations, Peter Navarro. I think you have just earned yourself a subpoena.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Another member of Trump`s inner circle subpoenaed, former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Members of the committee subpoenaed Peter Navarro Wednesday.
LEIGH ANN CALDWELL, NBC NEWS CAPITOL HILL CORRESPONDENT: And the committee wants more details.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MELBER: The House committee there subpoenaing Navarro.
That was late yesterday, demanding his testimony on many of those topics around the election and post-election period.
And, as mentioned, former Trump aide Peter Navarro is here live tonight to answer the questions.
Welcome to THE BEAT, sir.
NAVARRO: Ari, great to be with you.
MELBER: Great to have you.
We have learned a lot over the last few weeks even about these different efforts to keep President Trump in power. One of the sets of reports has been about other, alternate or fraudulent electors.
:{
}:
When did you become aware of that plan?
:{
}:
NAVARRO: That`s not part of my remit or on my radar, Ari.
:{
}:
I was focused simply on the Green Bay Sweep plan, which we talked about in an earlier program, which was simply straight between the lines in the letter of the law, using the Electoral Count Act of 1887 as a blueprint to have the quarterback, Mike Pence, in the Green Bay Sweep remand votes back to the six battleground states for another look.
My presumption there, in assisting with that, based on the careful research I had done, was that there was a high probability that there was significant fraud and the election may well have been stolen. That was my mind-set then. Today, I`m convinced it was indeed stolen.
MELBER: Right.
So, youre saying that was the plan that you were working on. You said the other stuff wasnt on your radar.
NAVARRO: Yes. Correct.
MELBER: It has since become public.
Take a look at Boris Epshteyn, a lawyer for the campaign you know, regarding this plan.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Did you ever make calls like that regarding what you`re calling these alternate electors?
BORIS EPSHTEYN, FORMER TRUMP 2020 CAMPAIGN STRATEGIC ADVISER: I was quoted in "The Washington Post" in the last 24 hours.
:{
}:
Yes, I was part of the process to make sure there were alternate electors for when, as we hoped, the challenges to the seated electors would be heard and would be successful, per the 12th Amendment of the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: You see how that seems to overlap as well with what Mike Pence was going to do on January 6, what some hoped he would do. That was in public.
So, when you say not on your radar, are you saying here tonight you never heard about that until it became public in the press, or, while you were in government...
NAVARRO: That`s correct.
MELBER: ... you might have heard about it?
NAVARRO: That`s correct.
MELBER: Yes. OK.
NAVARRO: That`s correct.
My focus, Ari, again...
(CROSSTALK)
MELBER: And so -- well, let me get you one more on that, and then Im going to let you respond, Peter, because whats striking here -- and the facts matter.
NAVARRO: What Boris...
(CROSSTALK)
MELBER: And I know you`re -- yes.
And I know you have spoken out about what you say you were doing. And the committee wants to hear from you too. We will get to that.
But I want to show a little bit of Mike Pence on January 6, because he seemed aware that there was this effort to put forward those other electors. He changed the normal language on that day, which close observers noticed -- not everyone might -- where he talks about these being the only true electors.
Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MIKE PENCE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The parliamentarian has advised me is the only certificate of vote from that state, and purports to be a return from the state, and that has annexed to it a certificate from an authority of that state purporting to appoint or ascertain electors.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: So, just to be clear, your push on Pence, what you call the quarterback, it`s your contention that that was different, separate, and you were unaware of what Epshteyn and others have admitted and what he says Giuliani was involved with, which was to get Pence to cast doubt that day based on those electors?
NAVARRO: Correct.
My focus, Ari, was simply on the Green Bay Sweep plan, which was basically to have -- and it started flawlessly -- to have the battleground states challenge the results. That would trigger 24 hours of hearings in the House and the Senate.
And, by that, we could bypass the media and get out the truth of what probably happened in the battleground states. Quarterback Mike Pence`s job at that point was to take 10 days and go back and give the state legislatures, who really are the ones who have the power to determine whether an election is fraudulent, to give them a second look.
[18:05:12]
And that was my focus, Ari.
And I wrote that three-volume report, which documented in detail -- I hope, between now and the last time I was on, you took an opportunity to read that three-volume report. I wish you would, like, say whether you did or not. You have kind of danced around that, whether you have read chapter 21 in the "In Trump Time" book.
But its very clear that the Green Bay Sweep was simply designed not to overturn an election. It was simply designed to send the votes back for 10 days, to have the states have the opportunity to take another look, because, based on my evidence -- and its been backed up subsequent by what we found in the states -- that there was significant irregularities and fraud.
MELBER: Right.
Well, Peter, so lets look at that, because youre talking about the evidence and what people are asserting.
NAVARRO: Sure. Yes.
MELBER: We put together some of what you have asserted and your, what you want to be the quarterback, Vice President Pence, who, while this has all been playing out publicly, including your new subpoena, he disagrees with you. He says you`re wrong.
So, let`s look at what you have said and what he says. Here we go.
NAVARRO: Sure.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NAVARRO: The remedy was for Vice President Pence, as the quarterback in the Green Bay Sweep, to remand those votes back to the six battleground states.
The thing about Mike`s betrayal of President Trump, which is really interesting, is, he never shared the legal analysis of his general counsel.
I simply wanted to brief Mike on what I had found.
MELBER: Why wouldn`t he listen to you?
NAVARRO: His chief of staff, Marc Short, basically walled off Vice President Pence.
PENCE: President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election. Frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: That`s recent.
NAVARRO: Yes.
MELBER: What do you say to former Vice President Pence, who calls your plan, which he associates with Donald Trump supporting it, which is supporting your plan...
NAVARRO: Yes. Yes.
MELBER: ... your, Bannon-Navarro sweep...
NAVARRO: Sure. Yes.
MELBER: ... as wrong and un-American, sir?
NAVARRO: Yes.
Well, I would love to do an intervention with Mike Pence to get him out of the orb of Marc Short.
Let me reemphasize this point that you played, Ari. Regardless of what Pence did, the one thing he didnt do was come to President Trump and White House legal counsel Pat Cipollone before January 6 with the opinion drafted by Greg Jacob, Pences general counsel...
MELBER: Yes.
NAVARRO: ... and say, this is what we found. Let`s talk about it.
MELBER: But whats your -- whats your response to him, Peter?
NAVARRO: Now, when he -- now, hang on. Just let me say this, Ari.
MELBER: I mean, Peter -- Peter, he says youre un-American. He says youre wrong.
NAVARRO: Proper process in the White House...
MELBER: What`s your response to that?
NAVARRO: No, hang on. Let me just finish the thought here.
Proper process in the White House says that Pence, Jacob should have gone to the president and Cipollone before January 6 and said, this is what we found.
Mike is not a lawyer. Mike was just a tool and a puppet of these guys. He doesnt know a legal cite from Adam. Im telling you, he betrayed the president, simply by the act of not coming to the president and the White House legal counsel.
MELBER: So, let me get this...
NAVARRO: I can`t say that more -- enough.
MELBER: Yes. And the fact...
NAVARRO: Well, and hes just wrong. Hes trying to salvage his political career.
He`s dead as a political candidate.
MELBER: Look, this matters, Peter. I`m trying to do my job here and make sure -- Peter, trying to make sure we understand.
NAVARRO: Yes.
MELBER: So, your response is that you maintain to this day you just think Mike Pence is wrong, doesn`t understand the law or the Constitution.
That`s your contention?
NAVARRO: Yes.
And, look, heres the thing, Ari. Youre a lawyer. I have done -- I have done a deep dive on the legal opinions on this. The worst you can say about this is...
(LAUGHTER)
NAVARRO: ... is that theres disagreements over whats the law on this, OK?
You cannot assert, on the Pence side, as he has done unilaterally, that President Trump was wrong. There`s too much ambiguity.
MELBER: Yes.
NAVARRO: Theres ambiguity in the 12th Amendment. Theres ambiguity in the Electoral Count -- of 1887.
MELBER: Peter, I want to turn -- I want to turn to another piece...
NAVARRO: And it`s something that the courts probably would have ultimately decided.
MELBER: ... only because we have discussed some of that before.
NAVARRO: Sure.
MELBER: But to put a final note on this section, it would follow from your contention that you think Vice President Harris will ultimately have the call over who should be president, regardless of the results in the next election?
NAVARRO: See, you have misconstrued the whole Green Bay Sweep plan.
Its not for the vice president to determine who wins, OK? The only thing that Pence had the authority to do is go back to the states and let the states look at the votes. Its the states in our Constitution who have the right to decide who won an election in the states. That...
MELBER: But you`re not answering the question.
NAVARRO: And I`m saying that the vice president has the discretion to ask for a second look, to be clear.
MELBER: It seems like the question, when you put it on Harris, makes you - - Peter, yes, it seems like it makes you -- but it seems like it`s making you stretch, when we just change the name from Pence to Harris.
[18:10:03]
NAVARRO: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No.
MELBER: Are you holding the contention -- wait. Let me finish the question, and you will get to respond.
NAVARRO: I didn`t stretch. You said that Pence had...
MELBER: Peter, let me finish the question.
NAVARRO: ... the authority to change the election results.
MELBER: Peter, let me finish the question.
NAVARRO: I say that that was not the premise of our argument.
MELBER: Yes.
So, under your premise, Peter -- Peter...
NAVARRO: Ari, the premise was, simply, let`s take a second look.
MELBER: Right. So let`s say that.
NAVARRO: Yes.
MELBER: Under your contention, Vice President Harris could take any states that her side lost and selectively send those back.
That`s your current contention?
NAVARRO: If -- if -- any vice president...
MELBER: If what?
NAVARRO: ... in -- under the Electoral Count Act of 1887, if there are objections that are raised about a state`s electors, the provision is that you have two hours of debate in each chamber.
MELBER: Is that a yes or no, Peter?
NAVARRO: And, at the end of that, you have the ability to send those back to the states for a second look.
MELBER: Peter, youre an outspoken individual. Was that a yes? Because I didnt hear a yes. Is that a yes for Harris?
NAVARRO: No, the way you frame the question is wrong.
Youre assuming that the vice president had the ability to determine the outcome. Wrong. All the vice president had was the ability to go back to the states to have them look at the votes again. Thats all they can do. They don`t get to determine election...
(CROSSTALK)
MELBER: Peter, if you`re going to quote me on live television, people can hear what I just said.
NAVARRO: The premise is wrong.
MELBER: So, they heard me even narrow it as an exercise. I narrowed it for you and said, can she send it back just to likely the ones she doesn`t like?
They heard me narrow it, as lawyers would say, arguendo. Im not going to say whether thats true.
NAVARRO: Not the ones that she doesn`t like.
MELBER: And you can`t say yes to that.
NAVARRO: Not the ones that she doesn`t like, the ones that...
MELBER: I want to go -- I think we got your answer on that.
NAVARRO: Yes.
MELBER: I want to go to this other plot that has also been exposed since the last time you and I had an interview about a proposal to involve the military.
Take a look.
NAVARRO: Yes.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Politico has obtained an unsigned draft executive order that would have directed the defense secretary to seize voting machines.
MADDOW: Giuliani and Sidney Powell were trying to get President Trump to seize voting machines around the country.
REP. BENNIE THOMPSON (D-MS): A plan was put forth to potentially seize voting machines in the country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: When did you first hear about that plan?
NAVARRO: Just probably the same time you did.
MELBER: Did you ever arrange or...
NAVARRO: Again, not on my radar.
Its like, I think its -- Im here to talk about what I know. Thats not on my radar.
MELBER: Yes. No, that was an answer. I appreciate -- I appreciate the answer.
Peter?
NAVARRO: Yes.
MELBER: I appreciate the answer.
NAVARRO: Yes.
MELBER: So, the follow-up is, did you or your staff ever attend or arrange any meetings to discuss that plan?
NAVARRO: I never attended anything.
I read in the newspaper that one of my staff members, without my knowledge, may have been involved. I had no knowledge of that. But, no, I had nothing to do with that.
And, by the way, in the "In Trump Time" book, I`m on record as...
MELBER: Well, you had something to do with it.
NAVARRO: ... as criticizing...
MELBER: You just said you had something to do with it.
NAVARRO: ... Sidney Powell for -- pardon me?
:{
}:
MELBER: Sorry, sir.
:{
}:
I said you had something to do with it, if your aide facilitated it.
(LAUGHTER)
NAVARRO: Well, no, not...
MELBER: Let me give the background here as part of the interview, and then let me let you respond.
NAVARRO: I have no knowledge of what he did. I don`t know if he did it or not.
MELBER: Well, let`s put up...
NAVARRO: All I have seen are things in the press. So...
MELBER: Well, youre saying you dont know.
NAVARRO: So, no, no.
MELBER: Let me put this up for the viewers, and then I will let you respond.
"New York Times"...
NAVARRO: I had no knowledge of that. No, sorry.
MELBER: Yes.
"New York Times"...
NAVARRO: Well, if "The New York Times"...
MELBER: Peter?
NAVARRO: Yes. Yes.
MELBER: Peter, Im going to let you respond, but lets...
NAVARRO: What I read in "The New York Times" is not always true.
MELBER: Well, thats why youre here to discuss it, aren`t you?
NAVARRO: Well, I...
MELBER: So, let`s hear it, and then you can respond to it.
NAVARRO: Ari, I`m as straightforward with you as I am with everybody.
MELBER: Appreciate it.
Im going to read it -- Im going to read it to the viewers.
NAVARRO: I had no knowledge of that -- of that...
(CROSSTALK)
MELBER: "Flynn and Powell arrive at the White House to discuss their plan to use military to seize -- use the military to seize voting machines. They were escorted in by an aide to Peter Navarro."
NAVARRO: Yes.
MELBER: That aide, who you said youre only hearing about this later -- and this matters, Peter. Im sure you can see why this matters, especially if you want to condemn the plan.
NAVARRO: Yes.
MELBER: Here`s what your aide said publicly about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GARRETT ZIEGLER, FORMER AIDE TO PETER NAVARRO: I waved in General Flynn and Sidney Powell on the 18th -- on the Friday night of the 18th, for which Mark Meadows` office revoked my guest privileges.
I could no longer get people into the complex after that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NAVARRO: Yes.
MELBER: Thats your aide. He helped make sure that meeting happened in the Oval. It was about abusing military power for a plan that ultimately wasnt carried out because -- and then I will let you respond -- because Rudy Giuliani said, if they actually follow that, everyone would end up in prison.
Was it wrong for your aide to facilitate that meeting, and was that plan to involve the military bad?
:{
}:
NAVARRO: I have no comment on that.
I had no knowledge of that. He was working off the reservation. It was not at my direction. And its unfortunate that hes got implicated in that.
MELBER: And was it a bad idea or wrong to pursue the military to seize American voting machines?
:{
}:
NAVARRO: Thats -- that -- that, I would like to get more to the bottom of. I -- thats not something that I would have put forward, by any stretch of the imagination.
[18:15:03]
I have never been a machine guy.
Ari, the report I did, the three-volume Navarro report on PeterNavarro.com, by the way, voting machines were like a footnote to a footnote. There was just so many other things going on.
I have never been a machine guy. I have never been a Sidney Powell fan. I...
MELBER: Is that a yes?
NAVARRO: I called her a crackpot, a cracking crackpot in my book.
MELBER: Right. So, is that a yes that that was a bad idea, and you condemn it?
NAVARRO: Look, I would like to see what the proposal was, read the executive order.
I had no knowledge of any of that. So, you`re giving me a hypothetical. It sounds kind of wacky to all of us.
MELBER: It`s not hypothetical.
NAVARRO: Yes.
MELBER: Its not a hypothetical. Im going to -- again, I will let you respond again, sir. But this stuff matters.
NAVARRO: It`s funny, Ari.
Its funny about this interview, which is kind of interesting. Its like, I have so much knowledge to share with you about what I was involved in and what I know.
And youre asking me to comment on Boris Epshteyn or Sidney Powell or Rudy or whatever. And its like, that`s just not what I did. That was not part of my remit.
So, its come back -- I mean, I dont know what you`re trying to pin on me, but...
MELBER: Well, I think it`s -- respectfully, Mr. Navarro -- yes, respectfully, I will -- no.
NAVARRO: Yes.
MELBER: I`m trying to learn the facts.
Respectfully, if you are distancing yourself from Mr. Giuliani or Ms. Powell...
NAVARRO: I have got nothing to -- Im not distancing myself. Im just telling you that that stuff was not part of my remit, and I had no prior knowledge of it. Thats all. Its pretty simple.
MELBER: OK. Remit. You could say remit, radar, or distance. I don`t want to get lost in the words.
The point is, it is important if you`re saying those things were wrong.
Its important if -- again, I hope you understand, Mr. Navarro, when you people sneaking into the Oval Office because the chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said they shouldnt be there, for a plan that Rudy Giuliani said could send them all to jail, to try to get to...
NAVARRO: Yes. See, that`s all sorts of assumptions there. I had no knowledge.
MELBER: Let me finish, and then you will go, sir. Let me finish.
And they want to abuse military power, at the time -- and Im going to put up a timeline for you -- at the time where you say youre doing this remit of just the sweep.
So, we have the timeline here. I just want to get your response.
The White House is welcoming the electors plan that you say you didn`t know about in November. They have a legal memo on it. By December, you have this military proposal. You say not your remit. January, Bannon is pushing to sweep along with you. And you have a PowerPoint about military abuse on the eve of the insurrection.
So, to be clear, I will let you respond. Your contention is, you were only doing this so-called sweep, and didn`t know about any of that other stuff all around you?
NAVARRO: That`s correct.
MELBER: OK.
The subpoena is here from the House. And we did want to get your official response on that.
NAVARRO: Sure.
MELBER: Given that you have told me that you have a plan that you pushed to delay or deal with the certification...
NAVARRO: Yes.
MELBER: ... you told me 100 members back it, and you have said in public Trump was on board, if you say all those things out here, why risk a legal battle or going to jail to refuse to discuss them with the committee under oath?
:{
}:
NAVARRO: Because I have a loyalty to the Constitution and a loyalty to the president.
The president has invoked executive privilege in this matter. Its not my authority to revoke that privilege. I cant. I cant do that. Its not my privilege to waive.
Let me say that one more time, Ari.
MELBER: OK.
NAVARRO: It`s not my privilege to waive.
MELBER: OK.
NAVARRO: So, what I have told the other committee pulling this stuff, I will tell this committee, is simply, look, not my privilege to waive under the Constitution.
Your best course of action is simply go to the president directly and his attorneys, negotiate that with the president. And whatever the president decides...
MELBER: Yes.
NAVARRO: ... I will salute 45.
MELBER: That sounds hypothetically reasonable.
You say it`s not your privilege to waive.
NAVARRO: Thats the law. No, its the law.
MELBER: But lets look at how often you have waived it. Lets look some of the news you have made on these topics.
Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEVE BANNON, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF STRATEGIST: There`s been no outreach from 6 January Commission for Peter Navarro.
NAVARRO: Yes.
BANNON: And here`s the reason, because Peter Navarro, the first thing you will send over is, hey, put this in the official record, which would be the Navarro report.
NAVARRO: That is the dog that didn`t bark.
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro is spilling the beans.
NAVARRO: We had over 100 congressmen and senators on Capitol Hill ready to implement the sweep.
BANNON: Peter Navarro.
NAVARRO: Right? The boss tells Pence to take my frigging call.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Peter Navarro tells "Rolling Stone"...
NAVARRO: It was about sending the votes back.
Most or all of those states would decertify the election.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: How do you expect people to take seriously your claim this is secret and privileged, when you have been out there talking about it?
And when you and Bannon said the committees dog wouldnt bark, they were afraid of you and the report, it seems now, Peter, like the dog has barked.
[18:20:00]
NAVARRO: Chapter 21 in the "In Trump Time" book reveals what I have said about the Green Bay Sweep.
That doesn`t violate executive privilege. Nothing is in there. The committee is perfectly willing to read that book. I will send them copies for free. I will autograph them for them, if they like.
Going before the Congress, when the president has invoked executive privilege, is a totally different animal. And, as a lawyer, if you cant see the difference in that, I cant help with that, Ari.
But it is what it is. I have been subpoenaed to that committee to testify and to turn over documents. The president has said no. He`s invoking executive privilege. Not my privilege to waive. Not going to cooperate with that committee, until they negotiate a reasonable pathway with the president and his attorneys.
And I don`t believe the president is going to waive executive privilege, because the fundamental problem with this committee -- and I -- Ari, you and I think could agree on, we would love to get to the bottom of what happened on January 6, right, but that committee...
MELBER: Yes.
NAVARRO: ... is highly partisan.
MELBER: Yes. Well, just...
NAVARRO: I mean, I have real questions about that perimeter, why it was unguarded, things like that.
MELBER: I will give you one more question, but -- I will give you one more question, Peter...
NAVARRO: Sure.
MELBER: ... because we had a lot of time here, and I do appreciate you taking the questions, and we have learned some things here from you...
NAVARRO: Sure.
MELBER: ... including where you said you were involved and not and what you assert.
You have got to understand, though, that, yes, you can refer them to your book, but this is a legal process. You`re not above the law. The testimony they seek about the things where you would have already waived privilege by discussing it in public and in a book, a book that you have been selling...
NAVARRO: No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. No, no.
MELBER: Wait, Peter -- is waived.
NAVARRO: You can`t say I have waived privilege.
No, no, no, no. Stop right there, Ari.
MELBER: And so my last question to you is, do you understand that you have already waived it by discussing it? They want it under oath.
NAVARRO: That`s not what happened. I did not waive privilege.
No, no, no, no.
MELBER: And, number two, finally, Peter -- finally, Peter, Mr. Bannon was indicted for this.
Are you prepared to risk indictment for defying the subpoena?
NAVARRO: I have loyalty to the Constitution and the president.
He has invoked executive privilege. I -- I -- it`s not my privilege to waive, Ari. I will stand tall on this.
MELBER: Former Trump White House veteran Peter Navarro, facing that new subpoena yesterday, coming on here to discuss it with us, thank you for your time.
Appreciate you joining us.
NAVARRO: Ari, as always. Thank you.
MELBER: We turn now for analysis to Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for "The Nation."
Welcome back.
Elie, your reaction and thoughts to what we heard from Mr. Navarro?
ELIE MYSTAL, "THE NATION": Its not his privilege to waive because its not his privilege to invoke, because he doesn`t have executive privilege.
The documents that he is talking about, the testimony and the conversations that he`s talking about are not covered by executive privilege. And we know that because Donald Trump is not the executive. And Steve Bannon was never employed by the executive in the first place.
You asked him why he`s willing to talk about it in his book. He said to you: "I have so much knowledge to share with you."
Now, if he has knowledge that he can share with you, there is no legal reason he cannot share that knowledge with the committee. I would have asked -- he has talked about in his book -- sorry -- I wrote -- I was writing down stuff as he was going on.
MELBER: Yes, take your time.
MYSTAL: He talked about -- in his book about how he`s had conversations with Steve Bannon about this Green Bay Sweep without Trump in the room, right?
So I wouldn`t -- I would ask him, did you have conversations with Steve Bannon without Trump in the room? Did you have conversations with Giuliani without Trump in the room or Bernard Kerik?
MELBER: Well, he did with some of them.
MYSTAL: Right.
Did you have conversations with Bernard Kerik? Did you have conversations with your wife? Did you have conversations with your children?
Is it your position, Mr. Navarro, that every single conversation you had while you were employed by the White House is covered by executive privilege?
MELBER: Yes.
And, Elie...
MYSTAL: And once he realizes that he cant answer yes to that, you can see that most of the stuff that the committee is after wouldnt be covered by executive privilege, even if Trump had a legitimate claim to executive privilege...
MELBER: Yes.
MYSTAL: ... which he doesnt because hes no longer the executive.
MELBER: And we started with the fact questions and ended on process, quite deliberately, because he`s made it clear where he is on the process. And Bannon and others have tried to defy this committee.
I should note, for folks who are wondering, well, it doesnt anything work, the vast majority of witnesses contacted have cooperated with the committee. So, yes, sometimes the news and the energy is around some of the others. Most do not consent to interviews, so we dont even hear or get access to them.
But moving back to the facts, Elie, I`m curious what you thought about the way that he, in his own way, with his own wording, did seem to try to completely distance himself from two other seemingly related planks of this effort at a coup or to stop the peaceful transfer of power, fraudulent electors and the thwarted, not enacted, idea about using the military?
MYSTAL: Yes.
So its really weird to me. One of the things that Navarro doesnt do when he comes on to these, like, confessional programs is that he never explains who told him to do what he did, right, like, who told -- he never explains, who told him to go out and find these fake documents. Who told him to go out and come up with this report about fake electors? Who told him to pressure Mike Pence?
[18:25:17]
Like, was he just doing that on his own just out of the goodness of his heart? Or was he being instructed by other people in the White House to do that? And thats where you get into these -- thats where you get into the difficulty with understanding his claims on some of these other levels of potential crime, right?
So, like, if he didn`t tell his assistant to go let Sidney Powell and Mike Flynn in to come talk about stealing the -- then who did to the assistant? He was like, oh, the system was off the reservation going rogue. Does that happen -- so, you would ask him, does that happen often, Mr. Navarro? Do most of your assistants go rogue?
Is there another example of your assistant...
MELBER: Well, we know -- yes, I mean, I will say one thing on that. I mean, we put it up there so people can see.
We know thats very rare. We know that this was too much for even Meadows and Giuliani. And the assistant, Mr. Ziegler, had his credentials revoked. We didnt know that. That hadnt been reported -- thats from print reporting in "The Times" -- even two months ago. So some of this is still coming together.
The last thing before I lose you, Elie, is, I`m going to put this timeline back up on the screen briefly. This timeline is from a range of evidence and reporting. And lord knows the committee and the criminal investigators have far more.
But the timeline would suggest things that all cohere around January 6. You see the ramp-up in November, the electors. The military stuff`s going on. Bannon and Navarro are pushing Pence. The PowerPoint had the military stuff and Pence in it.
So when you look at that, Elie, it seems very important to Mr. Navarro. One thing we learned tonight that we didnt know a week ago is, it seems very important to him to say he was doing just this one thing, and the other things that may have been illegal, he says he didnt know about.
MYSTAL: Yes, he`s trying -- he believes that if he can keep this on he honestly believed that the election was stolen, that will keep him -- that will keep him safe, that that will keep him out of trouble.
And from where I sit -- and, again, I dont know how this is all going to play out. But from where I sit, unless he is willing to implicate somebody else who told him to go out and make these claims up, essentially, about the results of the election, unless he can point to somebody else who ordered him to do that, then hes on the hook for his own seditious conduct.
Now, if I were him, I dont -- I personally -- I mean, just looking at the man, I do not believe that he did this on his own steam. I believe he was ordered. I believe somebody did tell them, hey, Pete, go look into this. I dont know who that might have been, Bannon, Trump, whoever. But I don`t believe he did that on his own steam.
So, if I were him, I would tell the truth about that. But if he honestly wants to say...
MELBER: Yes. And it`s not -- yes.
MYSTAL: If he honestly wants to say that he did it on his own steam, then he is on the hook for his own conduct.
MELBER: Right.
No, I appreciate your analysis on that. And what we saw tonight, he cut an aide loose who seemed to be interested in the same type of election denials that he is. He cut Giuliani, Epshteyn...
MYSTAL: Kerik. Epshteyn.
MELBER: ... Kerik, others loose.
Whether there`s other contemporaneous documentation that might put pressure on that narrative is, again, why journalists and others do reporting.
But that`s some of what we learned.
Elie Mystal, I want to thank you.
We got to fit in a break.
But Barack Obama was out today meeting with House Democrats. We will explain that. Steve Schmidt is here tonight.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:32:49]
MELBER: Former President Obama`s making a rare foray into congressional politics today, huddling with House Democrats on strategy.
So, why today? Did Obama just have a free Thursday? Not exactly. Turns out today is the 15th anniversary of his original historic trip to Springfield, site of Lincoln`s house divided speech, where Obama announced that first campaign.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: This campaign has to be about reclaiming the meaning of citizenship, restoring our sense of common purpose, and realizing that few obstacles can withstand the power of millions of voices calling for change.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: By ourselves, this change will not happen. Divided, we are bound to fail. But the life of a tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer tells us that a different future is possible.
He tells us that there`s power in hope.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: A different future always possible, if you`re an optimist, but Obama is the one reminding everyone the Democrats face a different environment right now.
And hes telling them they cant just hope people will notice Joe Biden`s record-breaking economic boom. Reports are that, in this meeting, Obama counseled Washington Democrats to stop being bashful at all and flex on the very significant Biden economic gains.
Now, for his part, the current president does talk up the economy more. We have seen that lately. Today, he was out touting a plan on drug prices.
Theres also some symmetry in the Democrat who first brought Biden to the White House now reminding his party, you can be responsible and still show the public that youre winning with swagger.
In fact, if you remember, from Congress to the court, Obama, when he was winning, well, he made sure people knew.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Thats what I do! Thats what I do!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: "That`s what I do."
[18:35:00]
That`s what Obama looked like as player, whether playing hoops or playing against the kind of GOP obstruction that Biden faces now.
When you know how to play, it is said that you are P, and, when you play consistently, that you are pushing P.
Well, many Democrats feel Obama is pushing P consistently. And they want even more of that from the current president, perhaps longing for these B`s to get together, for Biden to follow Barack and start pushing B.
Well, with that in mind, we have a special guest in the Obama world, Heather McGhee, when we`re back in 60 seconds.
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MELBER: We`re joined now by Heather McGhee, who has an Obama connection of her own.
Although an independent analyst, it turns out the Obamas like a lot of her work. In fact, her book "The Sum of Us" is being turned by the Obamas into a podcast.
Congratulations on that, and welcome back.
HEATHER MCGHEE, MSNBC POLITICAL CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks so much, Ari.
MELBER: Great to have you.
And I mentioned playing, because Obama was responsible, he was careful, but he could play the game. And he did it with swagger, even as he was, whatever you want to call it, center-left, moderate on certain things.
What do you think about what he`s doing on both policy and swagger and energy in this huddle today?
MCGHEE: Well, I think the point that you made, and the point that the president, Obama, made is really quite important, because there`s no better economy to run on than this one.
What the Democrats are suffering from at this moment, in many ways, is a problem of the megaphone. The thing is, is that the Republican Party has an in-house propaganda outlet. And then everything else is -- in the far right reaches of the media ecosystem is pushing it to -- further and further to the right.
So seven of the top 10 Facebook memes shared on a daily basis are right- wing, right? You have got FOX News and OANN and Sinclair at the local level. And so is this feeling, like, whatever crazy thing the right wing says, has this media infrastructure that makes it louder than the facts and the truth?
Thats one piece of it. So, it doesnt matter if your message is good if nobody hears it.
And then Democrats also have the problem that there are real issues in the American economy in terms of costs, right, because of inflation. But the biggest thing that we can do for inflation right now is the Biden agenda that, unfortunately, two Democrats are holding up in Congress, right?
Yes, there`s the $3 more for your grocery basket, but what about the cost of housing, of child care, of health care? And that, those big double-digit increases that are tens of thousands of dollars for middle-class households, that is what the Build Back Better agenda would help with.
And its a Democrat problem that hes got.
MELBER: Yes, that`s fair and candid. I mean, that is the challenge.
The other thing is -- and, in fairness to Biden, Obama definitely ran up against this in his own way -- is that, when Democrats are in charge, sometimes, they come off as almost plaintive about all these challenges. It`s a very different mood than when Republicans are in charge.
And Biden struck the middle ground of that today. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And, by the way, Im a capitalist. Im a capitalist.
You should be able to make a million or a billion dollars. Just pay a little bit of your fair share. That`s all.
We have over 53 companies in America that made $40 billion last year -- didnt pay a single penny in taxes, not a single penny. Thats not right.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[18:40:10]
MELBER: You can call that a bedtime stories of late-stage capitalism.
But I think the rebuttal that some have -- and you can give us your thoughts -- is, OK, good that he recognizes a problem, for those who agree that it`s a problem. It certainly sounds unfair. But people say, OK, you all are in charge. You have been in charge for a year. What are you doing?
MCGHEE: Yes, thats where theres a real disconnect and where the agenda is the most popular Democratic agenda we have had for a long time, right?
Capping how much a family pays of their income on child care at 7 percent, that`s a hugely popular thing. Raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations, hugely popular. peels off a ton a independents and actually Republicans.
But, as I said, I mean, the difficulty is that hes been able, the Democrats have been able to accomplish a lot of their agenda. And you see that in the jobs numbers. You see that in the American poverty rate being the lowest its been on record, which should be something that everybody knows.
And yet the big remaining pieces are being stalled from within his own party.
I want to say one thing, though, about the sort of right-wing message and how the Democrats often get sort of caught up in the culture war and feel like they dont exactly know how to respond when it feels like theres a grassroots movement sort of mainstreaming white supremacy, banning black history, and trying to cancel Dr. King, as is happening in a dozen states across the country.
The Democrats have not been on the offensive about this. And they need to be. These bills, even though they have taken hold in a number of states, are hugely unpopular across the country. The American people agree that we should be teaching all of our history, both the struggle and the overcoming. They think that children should have the freedom to learn.
And they think that schools are, frankly, not a place where we should be injecting more chaos. But theres this difficulty that the Democrats tend to have at going on the offense when its about race.
MELBER: Yes, all great points. You make so many good points, makes me think you should team up with the president and put them out there. But you`re already doing that.
Heather, good to see you again. I hope you come back.
MCGHEE: Thank you, Ari. Great to have -- great to be with.
MELBER: Absolutely. Great to have you.
Coming up: Did Donald Trump or his team break the law again, this time with secret White House logs?
Well, Steve Schmidt weighs in on that and a whole lot more. He`s back on THE BEAT, special guest, next.
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[18:47:25]
MELBER: "The New York Times" has a new report that is making waves even in an era where people have come to expect some hypocrisy.
Investigators finding major gaps in the official White House telephone logs from a specific day, the day, January 6, of the insurrection, very few, suspicious few, records of calls by Trump, when investigators actually have reason to believe he was making them from the other call records they have subpoenaed and testimony.
Meanwhile, the House Oversight Committee is launching a probe into Trump`s removal of White House documents back home after reports that he may have taken some with classified information. There are calls to DOJ to mount a full criminal probe.
Now, Trump says that he meant to do nothing wrong. And yet this, like so many things, is the most completely typical self-owning hypocrisy that, if it were a plot at the end of the movie, you would say it was too obvious and symmetrical, because Trump claimed, perhaps falsely, to be outraged over how Hillary Clinton used a personal e-mail server.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The thing that you should be apologizing for are the 33,000 e-mails that you deleted. There has never been so many lies, so much deception.
There has never been anything like it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: We turn to Steve Schmidt, a longtime Republican operative and Trump critic.
Thanks for being here.
Your thoughts on this story?
STEVE SCHMIDT, POLITICAL STRATEGIST: Well, I think, Ari, first off, it`s good to be with you.
Second, I think that we`re going to find out what happened on that day down to the millisecond. And so I think that we will find out what happened to the deleted logs, who deleted them, when they were deleted, at whose orders were they deleted, and all the details will be filled in for the American people in the months ahead.
And then the other part of it, listen, if he removed classified information, if he took material from the White House, stole it, material that was required to be sent to the National Archives under the Presidential Records Act -- I served as a commissioned officer in the White House.
Everybody who worked in the White House that I served in understood what the Presidential Records Act was. If he broke the law, he should be prosecuted, like anybody else would.
MELBER: When you look at the sheer hypocrisy and the reaction of some around the country to say, another round of this, it feels like some of them get away a lot of the time.
You have worked in your career and with an organization that deals with accountability. What do you say to people who have that reaction?
SCHMIDT: Look, I think that one of the defining issues of our, Ari, is the total collapse of trust in every institution in the country.
It was a predicate for a man with the loathsome character of Donald Trump to being elected president of the United States in the first place. I think a seismic event in recent history was the economic collapse in 2008-2009.
The country saw, to the tune of tens and tens of millions of families that lost homes, lost jobs, not a single Wall Street banker went to prison. You had a situation until very recently, until it was unraveled by a judge, the Sackler family, for instance, a family that has a historic amount of American death on its account.
We have an accountability crisis in this country. So, is it reasonable for the American people to look at this and to say that there are rules for me and rules for them, and the two don`t seem to cross very often? Of course.
[18:50:09]
That being said, the wheels of justice grind slowly. The only thing worse than one political party in a two-party system openly chanting for political opponents to be locked up for political reasons is a second political party in that two-party system doing the same thing.
I know there`s a lot of criticism of Merrick Garland, but I got to tell you, Merrick Garland was the prosecutor on the Oklahoma City case. I think he understands full well the danger of right-wing extremism in this country.
Were at a moment where we cant confuse justice and politics.
MELBER: Yes.
SCHMIDT: I`m like anybody else who is frustrated by what seems to be somebody who, through an arrogance, an entitlement, a softness in the culture, for whatever many of the manifest reasons for it, seems to be above the law.
And the consequence for it is a cancer inside our body politic, inside our democracy, inside our pluralistic society. So, this is a core idea that we`re going to have to look at and test as a country.
The good news is, there will be no mystery about what happened on January 6. There will be no mystery about any of this. And then the American people are going to have to decide what to do about it.
MELBER: Yes.
While I have you, as a student of politics, I am curious what you think of the fact that, while there was much made of Trumps resiliency in the party, his numbers are down among Republicans. On some issues, including the COVID denialism, theres a fissure with DeSantis and others.
Do you see something different afoot here or not?
SCHMIDT: Yes, look, I think he`s getting boring.
I think that people are exhausted by them. I think that poll number is a wish. Do I wish he would go away? Yes, I wish he would go away and we would move on.
However, will those people not vote for him? They will vote for him. Here`s the political reality of this, beyond the wish that was captured in that poll. The political reality is, he is lock, stock and barrel in charge of the organization of the Republican Party. He controls all 50 state parties. QAnon factions control some of them.
And the national party did what it did. It just said that the violence, the mayhem, desecration was legitimate political discourse. That has meaning. They voted on it. That embrace of violence now stands in the front of us, unable -- it stands in front of us as the fundamental question that our politics has to settle now.
Are we ready to throw the American experiment into the garbage can for a brutalist system, where the strong take from the weak because they can, where the laws benefit the strong because theyre strong, where the powerful get more powerful preying on the weak because thats the natural order of things?
The imperfect antidote to that is democracy in all of its forms. Its the only system of government thats ever been conceived that puts the dignity of the human being beyond reach and above the power of the state. That`s what this is about.
You can talk about inflation. You can talk about the economy, Build Back Better, all of these things. We are coming to a moment where we must decide the core issues. And the core issues, no matter how important they are, are not the domestic legislative agenda of a president. They`re the values of a country that this presidency is called to defend against a real-life, growing, metastasizing autocratic movement that is, for example, spilling over our northern border and causing chaos there.
We live in a dangerous hour. It will get more dangerous. These next two elections will play a profound role in shaping the direction and the trajectory of this country over the next decades, and really determine what type of society we live in.
MELBER: Yes.
SCHMIDT: Will it be democratic? Will it be pluralistic? Will it be a nation of laws?
MELBER: Yes.
SCHMIDT: Will it be a nation where we strive for equality under the law?
MELBER: Yes.
SCHMIDT: Thats whats on the ballot.
MELBER: A metastasizing autocratic threat to the body politic itself.
You put it well and starkly. I hope people are listening.
[18:55:00]
Steve Schmidt, thank you.
And we will be right back.
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MELBER: A Republican lawmaker headed up to Trump Tower, trying to explain that she actually has some type of conservative credentials.
This is Congresswoman Nancy Mace, who filmed this video herself because Trump went after her against her primary opponent.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. NANCY MACE (R-SC): I`m in front of Trump Tower today.
And I remember, in 2015, when President Trump announced his run. I was one of his earliest supporters. I actually worked for the campaign in 2016. I worked at seven different states across the country to help get him elected.
As a strong fiscal conservative, I believe in putting America first. I believe in putting our country back on the path to prosperity.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Like so many people who`ve worked for Trump or with him or sought his support, she is learning the limits of his loyalty.
That does it for us. It has been quite an hour.
Thank you, as always, for spending time with us on THE BEAT. You can always find me online @AriMelber, on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or now TikTok. And you can tell me what you thought of the interviews tonight, or not.
I turn now to my friend Joy Reid. "THE REIDOUT" starts no