The Democratic Party’s Show-Trial in the U.S. Senate

The ‘Impeachment’ that is taking place in the U.S. Senate is not a criminal trial, at all, but instead a partisan propaganda operation to enable Donald Trump to be shamed and embarrassed but not sent to prison, and not executed, for what he has done, the actions and statements that he has perpetrated that fall under the following U.S. criminal laws:

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Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 808; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(L), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2147.)

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Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 807; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(2)(J), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2148.)

18 U.S. Code § 2385 – Advocating overthrow of Government

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Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government; or

Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or

Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

If two or more persons conspire to commit any offense named in this section, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

As used in this section, the terms “organizes” and “organize”, with respect to any society, group, or assembly of persons, include the recruiting of new members, the forming of new units, and the regrouping or expansion of existing clubs, classes, and other units of such society, group, or assembly of persons.

(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 808; July 24, 1956, ch. 678, § 2, 70 Stat. 623; Pub. L. 87–486, June 19, 1962, 76 Stat. 103; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(N), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2148.)

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(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully — (1 ) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact; (2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or (3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry;

shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or, if the offense involves international or domestic terrorism (as defined in section 2331), imprisoned not more than 8 years, or both. If the matter relates to an offense under chapter 109A, 109B, 110, or 117, or section 1591, then the term of imprisonment imposed under this section shall be not more than 8 years.

—

The “rioters” or “mob” that terrorized what was supposed to be “our” Government, on January 6th, had been individuals who were deceived by the operatives of Donald Trump, to believe the allegations that the Trump team presented here:

19 November 2020

Rudy Giuliani: (00:00)

Well, this is representative of our legal team. We’re representing President Trump and we’re representing the Trump campaign. When I finish, Sidney Powell and then Jenna Ellis will follow me. And we will present in brief the evidence that we’ve collected over the last, I guess it is two weeks. Also, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing are here with me. There are a lot more lawyers working on this, but I guess, we’re the senior lawyers. And Boris Epshteyn …

Here are summaries of the court-cases:

archive.is/Z7gzB    10 February 2021

Days before the 2020 presidential election, Dennis Montgomery, a software designer with a history of making dubious claims, asserted that a government supercomputer program would be used to switch votes from Trump to Biden on voting machines. Powell promoted the conspiracy theory on Lou Dobbs Tonight on November 6,^[43][44] and again two days later on Maria Bartiromo‘s Fox Business program, claiming to have “evidence that that is exactly what happened”.^[45] She also asserted that the CIA ignored warnings about the software, and urged Trump to fire director Gina Haspel.^[46] Christopher Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), characterized the supercomputer claim as “nonsense” and a “hoax”.^[47][48] CISA described the 2020 election as “the most secure in American history”, with “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised”.^[47][48]

In the wake of the election, Trump established a legal team to challenge the legitimacy of the results.^[49] On November 14, Trump named Rudy Giuliani to lead the team, with Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing, Jenna Ellis, and Powell as members of this team.^[50] The team proceeded to file numerous lawsuits in several states over alleged vote harvesting, illegal votes, machine errors, vote dumps, and late-counted votes. Precisely how Powell gained prominence in the legal team is unknown, even to some campaign officials. One official claimed Powell “simply showed up at headquarters”.^[26]

Giuliani and Powell alleged multiple instances of voter fraud in key states at a November 19 press conference.^[51] They cited an affidavit—filed by Russell Ramsland and L. Lin Wood on behalf of the Trump campaign^[52]—as evidence of manipulated results. In their comparison of votes cast against total voters registered in Michigan, Powell asserted that they found over-voting of “up to 350 percent in some places”.^[51] However, the affidavit’s conclusion was erroneous since it compared the Michigan vote tallies against population data from Minnesota (whose respective abbreviations are MI and MN, a possible source of the error).^[52][53] When The Washington Post independently checked the numbers, no voter discrepancies were found.^[51] When questioned the next day, Wood described this as “a simple mistake” and said the affidavit “will be corrected if it hasn’t been already”.^[52]

After Giuliani’s segment ended, Powell took the lectern and alleged, without evidence, that an international communist plot to rig the 2020 election had been engineered by Cuba, China, Venezuela, Hugo Chávez (who died in 2013), George Soros and the Clinton Foundation.^[12][54] She also alleged that Dominion Voting Systems “can set and run an algorithm that probably ran all over the country to take a certain percentage of votes from President Trump and flip them to President Biden”.^[55] The source for many of these claims appeared to be far right news organization One America News Network (OANN).^[12] She also repeated a conspiracy theory^[56]—spread by Congressman Louie Gohmert, OANN and others^[57]—that election results showing a landslide victory for Trump had been transmitted to the German office of the Spanish electronic voting firm Scytl, after which a company server was supposedly seized in a raid by the United States Army.^[12] The US Army and Scytl refuted these claims;^[58] Scytl has not had any offices in Germany since September 2019 and does not tabulate US votes.^[59][60]

Later that evening on his Fox News program Tucker Carlson Tonight, conservative commentator Tucker Carlson said he had invited Powell onto the show to provide proof of her allegations. After repeated requests, Powell became angry and said to “stop contacting her”, Carlson stated. Carlson’s team contacted other figures in the Trump campaign who said that Powell had given them no evidence for her allegations.^[61]

Giuliani and Ellis issued a November 22 statement that Powell was “practicing law on her own” and was not (or was no longer) a part of the Trump legal team.^[70][71][72] According to The Washington Post, the Trump campaign cut ties with Powell because she was seen as harming Trump’s broader legal efforts, and because Trump disliked the coverage she received from Tucker Carlson Tonight.^[73] Shortly after the announcement, her client Michael Flynn tweeted that Twitter had suspended her account for twelve hours, and that she agreed with the campaign’s announcement and was “staying the course” to prove election fraud.^[74] Dominion Voting Systems released a statement refuting Powell’s claims of fraud on November 26.^[75][26]

During an Oval Office meeting with Powell, Giuliani, Flynn, and Pat Cipollone on December 18, Trump suggested naming Powell as a special counsel to investigate allegations of election fraud. Most Trump advisors opposed the idea, while Powell characterized them as quitters.^[76] The meeting was reportedly heated and included Flynn’s proposal for the president to declare martial law.^[77] Powell had previously called on the president to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy military forces.^[78]

While working for Trump, Powell stated she would “release the Kraken“, a catchphrase from the 1981 film Clash of the Titans, and the expression spread across Twitter.^[85] After the Trump campaign cut ties with Powell, she continued to file independent election lawsuits in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin.^[86]

Sources described Powell’s election-related filings as filled with significant “sloppy mistakes”.^[87] In her Georgia lawsuit, she claimed that a computer algorithm took votes from Biden and flipped them to Trump, later amending the filing.^[88] In Powell’s submissions to district courts in Georgia and Michigan, district was misspelled three different ways on the first pages.^[89] Powell’s Michigan filing also had numerous formatting errors and misidentified one of her experts.^[89][90] Two Republicans said they had been named as a plaintiff in the Georgia and Wisconsin lawsuits despite not having given permission to be included (although one later agreed to remain as a plaintiff).^[87]

Powell’s lawsuits cited an anonymous witness, referred to as “Spyder” or “Spider”, who alleged that American voting systems were “certainly compromised by rogue actors, such as Iran and China”. Spyder’s real name was redacted from submitted documents; however, a bookmark in the file revealed his identity to be Joshua Merritt, an IT consultant. Although Powell’s filings describe Merritt as a former “military intelligence expert”, the United States Army Intelligence Center stated that he never worked in military intelligence and had not finished a training course in military intelligence. Merritt acknowledged that the description was wrong and attributed the error to Powell’s clerks. However, Merritt claimed he did finish the training, producing an “unofficial transcript” as evidence.^[91]

Powell also presented an affidavit from an individual she described as a former intelligence contractor with knowledge of a foreign conspiracy to subvert democracy, who Powell said needed to remain anonymous to protect their “reputation, professional career and personal safety”. The Washington Post identified the individual as pro-Trump podcaster Terpsichore Maras-Lindeman, and that parts of the affidavit matched a blog post she had written in November 2019. Maras-Lindeman had served in the Navy for less than a year over two decades earlier, and in a November 2018 civil suit the attorney general of North Dakota accused her of misappropriating funds for personal use from a charitable event she tried to organize. State attorneys asserted that she exaggerated her credentials and used multiple aliases and Social Security numbers in “a persistent effort…to deceive others”. Asked about Maras-Lindeman, Powell told the Post: “I don’t have the same information you do.”^[92]

Powell and Lin Wood filed a lawsuit against Georgia governor Brian Kemp and other state officials on November 25, alleging that Dominion Voting Systems was used to rig votes for Biden. The plaintiffs asked the court to halt the certification of elections results and order Kemp to certify Trump as the winner in Georgia.^[98] U.S. District Judge Timothy Batten issued a temporary restraining order on November 29 that voting machines in Georgia’s Cobb, Gwinnett, and Cherokee Counties were to preserve their data, after Wood had argued to retain “this information on a very limited basis”. Powell appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to expand the restraining order. A three-judge panel unanimously dismissed Powell’s appeal on December 4, citing a failure to prove that the restraining order caused serious harm. The panel also indicated that the original lawsuit, in which Powell also sought to have voting machines inspected, was “considerably delayed” by the appeal.^{[99][100][101]}

Powell’s evidence in the Georgia lawsuit included an affidavit from Ron Watkins, a former administrator of 8chan/8kun, the online home of QAnon. In his affidavit, Watkins stated that his reading of an online user guide for Dominion Voting Systems software led him to conclude that election fraud might be “within the realm of possibility”. Watkins did not provide any legitimate evidence of fraud.^[102] Powell also claimed that “a certificate from the [Georgia] Secretary of State was awarded to Dominion Voting Systems but is undated.” However, the attached certificate had apparently been edited to remove the date; the actual certificate is dated and available publicly.^[87][103]

Batten dismissed the case in a ruling from the bench on December 7.^[104] The judge ruled that the plaintiffs did not have legal standing to bring the case, filed the case too late (as the Dominion machines were adopted months earlier), and filed the case in the wrong venue, the appropriate venue being a state court.^[105] Batten also stated that the relief sought by Powell was impossible to grant.^[106] The plaintiffs filed an appeal (Case No. 20-14579)^[107] of Batten’s decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on December 8.^[108] Powell also appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied a motion to expedite the case.^[109][110] She dropped the lawsuit on January 19, 2021, one day before Biden’s inauguration.^[111]

Powell filed a lawsuit against Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and other state officials on November 25, alleging a variety of violations of the election code and asking the court to decertify the state’s election results or certify them for Trump.^[112][113] In the lawsuit, Powell submitted a witness’s declaration that Joe Biden had “received more than 100% of the votes” in Edison County; however, there is no Edison County in Michigan or any other U.S. state.^[114][115] There is an Edison Township in Minnesota, leading to speculation that the information was again taken from a list of Minnesota precincts.^[116]

U.S. District Judge Linda V. Parker denied the requested relief on December 7, stating that the plaintiffs had only offered “theories, conjecture, and speculation” of potential vote switching. The judge also declared that the “ship has sailed” for most of the relief requested by the plaintiffs, while the rest “is beyond the power of any court”. Furthermore, Parker wrote that the relief requested would “greatly harm the public interest” and felt that the plaintiffs’ motive for filing the case was not to win, but rather to shake “people’s faith in the democratic process and their trust in our government”.^[117] Powell has filed an appeal of the decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit,^[118] as well as the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied a motion for expedited review of the case.^[109][110] The city of Detroit has called for sanctions against the plaintiffs in the case as well as their counsel, requesting that Powell and the other attorneys be disbarred for “trying to use this court’s processes to validate their conspiracy theories”.^[19][119] Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel filed a similar motion on January 28, 2021, accusing Powell and three Michigan lawyers of violating their oaths by attempting to overturn Biden’s victory.^[18] On February 1, 2021, Nessel, along with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, filed complaints with the State Bar of Texas seeking Powell’s disbarment.^[120]

Powell filed a federal lawsuit against the Wisconsin Elections Commission on December 1, claiming that Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic were used to conduct electronic ballot-stuffing and rig votes for Joe Biden. The lawsuit asked the court to decertify the state’s election results or declare Donald Trump the winner of the state.^[121] The lawsuit mistakenly demanded the release of video footage from a voting center in Michigan and made erroneous references to the election in Georgia and the Georgia state legislature.^[87] U.S. District Judge Pamela Pepper filed a December 2 order noting that while an “expedited” injunction was sought, the initial filings did not “indicate whether the plaintiffs are asking the court to act more quickly or why”, and did not request a hearing or propose a briefing schedule.^[87] Pepper dismissed the case on December 9, writing that the “federal court has no authority or jurisdiction to grant the relief the remaining plaintiff seeks”, and that the litigation on behalf of the plaintiff was “sometimes odd and often harried” and ultimately failed to establish why a federal case was appropriate. Pepper also repeatedly stated that the plaintiff did not have legal standing to bring the case and concluded that granting the relief would be unconstitutional.^[122] Powell has filed an appeal of the decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.^[123]

——

26 January 2021

(CNN) — An election technology company that has been the focus of consistent conspiracy theories by Donald Trump and his allies has sued the former President’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani for defamation after he pushed the “Big Lie” about election fraud on his podcast and TV appearances.

Dominion Voting Systems is seeking more than $1.3 billion in damages.

“Just as Giuliani and his allies intended, the Big Lie went viral on social media as people tweeted, retweeted, and raged that Dominion had stolen their votes. While some lies — little lies — flare up on social media and die with the next news cycle, the Big Lie was different,” lawyers for Dominion wrote in the lawsuit, filed in DC District Court on Monday morning. “The harm to Dominion’s business and reputation is unprecedented and irreparable because of how fervently millions of people believe it.”

The lawsuit notes that while Giuliani spread falsehoods about Dominion being owned by Venezuelan communists and corrupting the election, he did not make those claims in lawsuits he pushed on behalf of Trump.

“Dominion’s defamation lawsuit for $1.3B will allow me to investigate their history, finances, and practices fully and completely,” Giuliani told CNN in a statement Monday. “The amount being asked for is, quite obviously, intended to frighten people of faint heart. It is another act of intimidation by the hate-filled left-wing to wipe out and censor the exercise of free speech, as well as the ability of lawyers to defend their clients vigorously.”

He said he will “investigate a countersuit against them for violating these Constitutional rights.”

In the lawsuit Monday, the company focused on how Giuliani continued to claim without evidence that Dominion aided election fraud even after he received a cease-and-desist letter. The Canadian-founded company details how listeners of Giuliani reacted by amplifying online his message of a stolen election. The former mayor of New York and well-known prosecutor repeated his claims on podcasts and his radio show and YouTube shows. He also used his platform in recent months to make money pitching cigars, a conservative alternative to the AARP and the sale of gold coins, the lawsuit says.

Giuliani also appeared on TV networks OANN, Fox and Fox Business to make accusations of election fraud, the lawsuit notes.

Dominion also details how on January 6 — hours before a crowd of Trump supporters in Washington violently overran the Capitol — Giuliani continued to push claims of election fraud about Dominion in tweets, on a YouTube appearance and in his own speech at the event. Giuliani said at the rally, without evidence, that he knew of an expert who had examined Dominion voting machines and saw changed votes, concluding, “This election was stolen,” according to the complaint.

Dominion sent Giuliani a second letter, asking for a retraction on January 10, the company says.

“Giuliani has not retracted his false claims about Dominion, and many of his false and defamatory television and radio appearances and tweets remain available online to a global internet audience. Indeed, to this day, he continues to double down on the Big Lie,” the lawsuit noted.

Dominion said it is now distrusted by millions of American voters and its employees have been harassed. The company believes hundreds of its contracts with states and localities are now in jeopardy and that the business projects a loss of profits in the next five years of $200 million, according to the lawsuit.

Tom Clare, a lawyer for the company, said it may seek to depose Giuliani as part of the lawsuit.

When asked on a call with the media Monday if Dominion plans to sue Trump himself, Clare said, “We’re not ruling anybody out.”

Previously, when Dominion sued Powell, the company said it was planning to bring additional lawsuits and was also looking at possibly suing media organizations that gave platforms to election disinformation. Clare said the same thing about Trump then — that the company hadn’t ruled out anyone yet as it plans additional litigation.

“There are a number of individuals and media companies that we think are complicit. They said them in their own voice, in their own personalities and in print, and they provided a platform,” Clare said previously, after the Powell lawsuit was filed on January 8.

“There will be others” sued, Clare said on Monday.

——

Here is the most comprehensive summary:

After the 2020 United States presidential election, the campaign for incumbent President Donald Trump and others filed and lost 86 lawsuits^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]} contesting election processes, vote counting, and the vote certification process in multiple states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.^[7]

Nearly all the suits were dismissed or dropped due to lack of evidence;^[8] judges, lawyers, and other observers described the suits as “frivolous“^[9] and “without merit”.^[10] In one instance, the Trump campaign and other groups seeking his reelection collectively lost multiple cases in six states on a single day.^[11] Only one ruling was initially in Trump’s favor: the timing within which first-time Pennsylvania voters must provide proper identification if they wanted to “cure” their ballots. This ruling affected very few votes,^[2] and it was later overturned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.^[12]

Trump, his attorneys, and his supporters falsely^[13] asserted widespread election fraud in public statements, though few such assertions were made in court.^[14] Every state except Wisconsin^[15] met the December 8 statutory “safe harbor” deadline to resolve disputes and certify voting results. The Trump legal team had said it would not consider this election certification deadline as an expiration date for its litigation of the election results.^[16][17][18] Three days after it was filed by Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, the Supreme Court on December 11 declined to hear a case supported by Trump and his Republican allies asking for electoral votes in four states to be rejected.^[19]

One suit, Michigan Welfare Rights Org. et al. v. Donald J. Trump et al., was brought by black voter groups in Michigan against Trump and his 2020 presidential campaign.^[20][21][22] Dominion Voting Systems brought defamation lawsuits against former Trump campaign lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, each for $1.3 billion.^[23][24] Smartmatic brought a defamation lawsuit against Fox Corporation and its anchors Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, and Jeanine Pirro as well as Giuliani and Powell for $2.7 billion.^[25]

————————

What Trump did was to serve as the CEO over an operation of Rebellion or insurrection, Treason, Advocating overthrow of Government, and Statements or entries generally that fall under the category of Fraud. The rioters or mob had been fooled by that operation, and consequently believed that Joe Biden was not legitimately the winner of the 2020 U.S. Presidential contest, so that what they were doing was being done against a theft of the U.S. Presidency and not, at all, against the legitimate Government of the United States. They broke many laws, but certainly did so at the systematic instigation by the then-sitting President and by his authorized agents, to deceive them to believe this.

Those CEO crimes are of the most severe type — against the lawful Government, itself. Treating them — as the Democratic Party now is doing — as if they are, instead, merely an impeachment in order to charge a President who cannot even so much as be then tried in the U.S. House so as maybe to expel him from the Presidency, is purely a political display — and not, at all, the necessary criminal trial of Trump, for those delineated violations of U.S. criminal laws — and it is not, at all, to subject him to the lawful penalties for those crimes, after his conviction therefore. It is merely a type of show-‘trial’, no real trial, at all. But a real trial is what this situation demands, if our laws mean anything, at all.

FURTHERMORE: Barack Obama, when he was subsequently exposed for his having similarly CEOed the first fraudulent impeachment fishing expedition against Trump — by Obama’s having been rigging ever since Summer of 2016 — before the general-election campaign — in order to lay the groundwork for what were actually illegal and fraudulently based undercover investigations against Trump — needs, similarly, to be brought forth and tried, instead, in a court, for Treason and fraud. Obama may have been slicker, and more intelligent, than Trump, but both men need to face criminal charges, if there is to be any justice, at all, in today’s America.

Covering-up, and continuing to use the impeachment process for mere political gain against a political opponent, is what happens in a dictatorship — which America has become.

Wiping these facts under the rug is only making them even worse than the raw reality of what is happening in today’s America. This is ugliness squared.