esquire chls pierce
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Get to Know the Oversight Project, the Heritage Foundation’s Legal Ratf*cking Operation
They seem to be plowing a whole lot of money into questionable investigations.
By Charles P. PiercePublished: Jul 24, 2024
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https://dougporter.substack.com/p/dems-blue-fire-melting-the-orange
...Finally, riffing off the above mention in the Washington Spectator excerpt of “private intelligence services,” I wish to call attention to a suspicious tidbit from the Oversight Project of the Heritage Foundation. Ostensibly this group exists to serve as a watchdog on governmental functioning, something every non-profit in DC smart enough to file a Freedom of Information Request should do.
But the Oversight Project is doing more than collecting, analyzing, and distributing information.
Esquire columnist Charles P Pierce:
It has long been plain that the folks at the Heritage Foundation want their Project 2025 agenda and will do pretty much anything, fair and foul, to enact it. They, and their various intellectual chop shops, are the American franchise of a worldwide movement to create corporate autocracy and political authoritarianism that has taken different forms all over the world and is only now facing political pushback in places like France and the United Kingdom. But this seems extreme evenfor the claque of budding Silvershirts.
...The Oversight Project is Heritage’s legal ratf*cking operation. Now, it seems, it has turned its attention to developing “data” indicating that Thomas Crooks did not act alone in his attempt to assassinate the former president.
Oversight took to social media on July 17to claim they had tracked Trump shooter Thomas Cooks’ movements for an entire year prior to the assassination attempt.
Via Huffington Post:
“We found the assassin’s connections through our in-depth analysis of mobile ad data to track movements of Crooks and his associates,” the Oversight Project wrote on social media on Monday, explaining that it had identified nine “devices that were located at Crook’s home and his work within the past year.”*}:
{The organization suggested that Crooks may have had some connection to the FBI before the shooting, writing: “Someone who regularly visited Crooks home and work also visited a building in Washington, DC located in Gallery Place. This is in the same vicinity of an @FBI office on June 26, 2023. Who’s device is this?”*}:
{The post was catnip for MAGA conspiracy theorists who believe the “deep state” — entrenched bureaucrats in federal agencies and law enforcement — has been trying to sabotage, arrest and now kill Trump.*}:
This sort of data collection would be cross referenced in some manner (evidence?) if the group actually meant to do something besides stir the fire.
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The spring, the Oversight Project ran academic exercises(The Transition Integrity Report) “to educate the public regarding crises that may arise in relation to the upcoming presidential election in the United States.”
It’s clear from reading this report that the intention was to establish a foundation (legally and propaganda-wise) for challenging the 2024 Presidential election results on behalf of groups ideologically aligned with Donald Trump.
The background section of this report starts with:
TIP 2024 was conceived in January in response to the Biden Administration’s weaponization of government against their domestic opposition and the President’s record of violating norms and constitutional limitations on executive power.
All TIP’s scenarios ended with Donald Trump winning the vote in November. All assumed massive left wing violence in the aftermath of the elections; that leftist forces had compromised security agencies; big tech would actively seek to give Democrats an advantage; and that China would interfere in the election in some way.
The scenarios “suggest that President Biden and his allies—with assistance from a weaponized governmental bureaucracy and loyal proxies in corporate media—are well-equipped to undermine electoral procedures or to challenge results that run counter to their interests.”
Notably, the TIP report doesn’t suggest any violence or voter fraud coming from right wing sources. Other than some lawfare type suggestions, there is no plan offered other than perhaps private individuals calling for protests in support of Trump.
Of course, now that President Biden has withdrawn from the electoral contest, there might be scenarios where Trump doesn’t win, something inconceivable in these exercises.
Last month on the far-right channel Real America’s Voice, Heritage Foundation President Kevin D. Roberts he was ready to take up arms in the fight against the “radical left.”
“We are in the process of the second American Revolution,” he said, “which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
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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.
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Charles P. Pierce
Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.
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