by Tony Wikrent
Oligarchs’ war on the experiment of republican self-government
The Money Trail to the January 6 Attack on the Capitol Is Ignored in Last Night’s Public Hearing
Pam Martens and Russ Martens, June 10, 2022 [Wall Street on Parade]
As we watched the two-hour public hearing on the critical facts uncovered by the House Select Committee on the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, we kept waiting to hear a discussion of the money trail that facilitated this attack. That discussion never came. And yet, big expenses were involved: dozens of buses were rented; signs advertising “Stop the Steal” were on the sides of some of those buses; food and lodging had to be paid for, in or around expensive Washington, D.C.; and, now, lawyers have to be paid to represent those indicted for brutalizing police on January 6 or destroying and/or stealing government property….
But the question that any good investigator of an unsolved crime scene must ask is this: who benefits from this crime? And to understand who, besides Donald Trump, would be the chief beneficiaries of a coup that installed Trump for an illegitimate second term as President, one has to follow the money trail. That money trail leads to Charles Koch, the billionaire Chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, one of the largest private corporations in the world….
One of the Koch front groups that played a major role in the 2016 election that put Donald Trump in the White House in the first place was Freedom Partners. (It quietly shut down in 2019 after the press started reporting on its role.) When the group was still active in 2018, we had taken a hard look at its Board of Directors. We found that all but one of its Board Members was a current or former Koch company employee. According to the Center for Media and Democracy, Freedom Partners ended up with 12 of its former employees working in the Trump Administration….
To handle any legal pushback, Koch Industries’ law firm, Jones Day, sent 12 of its law partners to staff up key positions in the Trump administration on the very day Trump was inaugurated. Jones Day has since removed the press release it issued at the time but you can read the reporting on it at the American Bar Association Journal….
According to the TrumpMarch.com website, which was sponsored by Women for America First, its “Coalition Partners” for the January 6 event at the Capitol included the Rule of Law Defense Fund; the Tea Party Patriots; and Turning Point Action, among others. The TrumpMarch.com website has since been taken down but it was captured on January 2, 2021 (give the page a little time to load) by the Internet Archives’ Wayback Machine.
Rule of Law Defense Fund is the dark money arm of Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), a group that was raising millions of dollars from corporate felons in order to elect the highest law enforcement officers at the state level. (See our in-depth report of January 14, 2021.) According to IRS filings made by RAGA, it has received $511,400 from Koch Industries and a subsidiary since 2014….
Another of the Coalition Partners, Turning Point Action, Tweeted that it was “honored to help make this happen, sending 80+ buses full of patriots to DC to fight for this president.” The Tweet was first reported by DailyDot.com.
Turning Point Action is a dark money group that does not report its donors to the Federal Election Commission. However, according to the Center for Media and Democracy, its sister group, Turning Point USA, has received $610,000 from Donors Trust since 2017. Charles Koch’s footprints are all over Donors Trust, another dark money group, as we exclusively reported in 2010. (See Koch Footprints Lead to Secret Slush Fund to Keep Fear Alive.)
#1 charge: “Illegal parading
Lambert Strether [Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 6-9-2022]
“Here is the chart of the charges under which they were convicted (there’s no legend, but orange seems to sentenced, and grey not yet sentenced:”
Graph
“The #1 charge: “Illegal parading.” Illegal parading?”
Did I experience aghastitude on “1/6″™? No.
Lambert Strether [Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 6-10-2022]
TW: I don’t agree with Strether’s argument that the events of January 6 2021 are not as terrible as Democrats, liberals, and the anti-Trumpers argue they are, but I think Strether is absolutely correct in his conclusion that what is driving these three groups of people is their sense of entitlement.
Did I experience aghastitude on “1/6″™? No. The Winter Palace in 1917 this was not. And what if that guy, instead of being a right-winger in a Trump hat, had been a union guy with a giant inflatable rat? I would have been cheering him on! Finally somebody stood up! What’s really driving the liberal Democrats — and, I suppose, Never Trump Republicans — is that deep down they think Capitol Hill is their space, democracy is “our” democracy, norms are their their norms, and that they will be comfortable again when the “insurrectionists” are rooted out and purged. But it’s not, it’s not, they’re not, and they won’t be. They lost their minds in 2016 for the same reasons, and never did manage to find them again, party leadership and PMC base together.
Insurrection is a crime (18 U.S. Code § 2383). So how come Merrick Garland charged the vast majority of the “insurrectionists” with illegal parading?
TW: The assault on the Capitol and attempt to stop the certification of Biden was a serious, seditious assault on the rule of law, posing a dire threat to republican self government. But a serious investigation of this threat would focus, as Pam and Russ Martens assert, on the funders. But that would be a threat to the powers that have transformed USA from a republic to a plutocratic oligarchy, and which own both the Republican and Democratic parties.
The Roots Of The January 6 Riot
Joel Warner, June 10, 2022 [The Lever]
“At its core, the January 6 insurrection was the weaponized manifestation of virulent anti-government sentiment in a putatively democratic country where a majority has not trusted its own government for two decades… The ideological crusade against government has always been a part of American politics. But it really began coalescing in modern form in the late 1970s when conservative demagogues, moguls, and business interests began building a movement to demonize public institutions…”
So as the horrors of January 6 become prime-time TV viewing, let’s not forget that the attempted coup wasn’t a political fluke whose danger has come and gone. The origins of the Capitol attack were a long time coming — and those who helped it along are still flush with corporate cash.
“Americans’ Views of Government: Decades of Distrust, Enduring Support for Its Role”
[Pew Research Center, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 6-9-2022]
“Americans remain deeply distrustful of and dissatisfied with their government. Just 20% say they trust the government in Washington to do the right thing just about always or most of the time – a sentiment that has changed very little since former President George W. Bush’s second term in office.”
Graph
“We’re Misunderstanding What Caused Jan. 6”
[FiveThirtyEight, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 6-10-2022]
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