Trump Completes Jan. 6 Autocoup With Mass Preemptive Pardons

A lot has happened. Here are some of the things. This is the TPM Morning Memo.

For my friends, everything…

Let the record show that President Donald Trump issued massive preemptive pardons to those involved in his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, five years to the day after the Four Seasons Landscaping debacle in Philadelphia.

Trump issued “full, complete and unconditional” pardons on November 7 to 77 people involved in the fake voter scheme and other aspects of the 2020 subversion effort, but they were not made public by the White House. Instead, US pardons attorney Ed Martin revealed the pardons in an article on X last night.

The pardons, coming the same week that Republicans were routed in an off-year election, complete Trump’s promise to vindicate his co-conspirators in the first non-peaceful transfer of executive power in American history. Trump had already granted pardons or commutations to some 1,500 participants in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. These commutations, on the first day of his second term, concerned 14 members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, some of whom were convicted of seditious conspiracy for their role in the attack.

Among the big names of the last wave of pardons:

• Rudy Giuliani
• Kenneth Chesebro
• Jeffrey Clark
• John Eastman
• Jenna Ellis
• Boris Epshteyn
• Marc Prés
• Sydney Powell

Trump explicitly excluded himself from this series of pardons: “This pardon does not apply to the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. »

The pardons were preventive. While some of those involved in the fake voter scheme have been charged in various lawsuits, only Trump has been federally charged with subverting the 2020 election. The federal case against Trump, brought by special counsel Jack Smith, was dropped after his re-election a year ago.

Trump’s pardon proclamation constitutes a milestone in the revisionist history of the 2020 election and its aftermath. It claims to “end a grave national injustice perpetrated against the American people” and “continue the process of national reconciliation”. The pardons granted are broad and include the fake voter scheme as well as “efforts to expose voter fraud and vulnerabilities.”

The unusual way in which the pardons were made public – via Ed Martin on X – reinforces the anarchy of the Trump II presidency. A GOP political hack with no experience as a prosecutor, Martin is not only a U.S. pardon attorney, but he is also designated a “special counsel” and head of the DOJ’s “Weapons Task Force,” a role in which he directs investigations and punitive prosecutions against alleged Trump enemies, including former DOJ members.

Martin’s

Revenge: 2016 electoral edition

As Trump puts the finishing touches on his rewrite of the 2020 election, his Justice Department continues to challenge the 2016 election with a highly politicized Miami-based investigation into a wide range of figures involved in the investigation into Russian interference to benefit Trump’s candidacy.

A New York Times report contains many new details about the grand jury investigation led by Miami U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones:

• Reding Quiñones issued more than two dozen subpoenas last week, including to officials who investigated ties between Russia and Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, demanding documents or communications related to the intelligence community’s assessment from July 1, 2016 to February 28, 2017, with a due date of November 20.
• Among the recipients of the subpoena: former DNI James R. Clapper Jr. and former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. (CNN separately reported that Florida prosecutors “decided to issue” a subpoena to former CIA Director John Brennan.)
• The investigation was launched earlier this year following criminal complaints from Trump intelligence officials and was assigned to U.S. Attorney David Metcalf of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, who “gave special authority” to focus on Brennan. The case was transferred this fall by DOJ officials from Metcalf to Reding Quiñones “as part of a move to significantly broaden the scope of the Brennan investigation to other, unspecified activities.”

The New York Times provides a bit more detail, but the gist of the report is that the Florida investigation appears to be driven by a “grand conspiracy” that imagines a deep state cabal targeting Trump for years. The scale of such a feverish conspiracy has the benefit of placing many of Trump’s alleged enemies under the specter of investigation and prosecution.

It remains unclear what facts likely gave rise to the investigation being based in Miami, other than the fact that Trump has his primary residence in South Florida.

The Punishment: Letitia James Edition

In a new filing, New York Attorney General Letitia James makes a compelling case for why she is the victim of vindictive and selective prosecution by Trump’s DOJ. The James case particularly targets Ed Martin, who is campaigning for his prosecution.

Shutdown ends with Senate Democrats spelunking

A bloc of eight Democratic senators broke ranks to end the government shutdown. A late night vote started the government funding process, which could take a few days to be fully implemented, especially if Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) slows down the process for his own reasons. Of the eight senators, two retire; none will be re-elected next year; and half come from two states, New Hampshire and Nevada: Angus King (ME), Tim Kaine (VA), Dick Durbin (IL), John Fetterman (PA), Maggie Hassan (NH), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Catherine Cortez Masto (NV), and Jacky Rosen (NV).

Reactions to this caveat, especially in light of Democrats’ strong showing in Tuesday’s election, have been fierce:

• Brian Beutler: “Collapsing while they were winning the fight, and while Trump abuses his power to harm ordinary people (denying SNAP benefits, canceling flights) supposedly as “punishment” for the shutdown, sets a nightmarish precedent. »
• TPM’s Josh Marshall: “A lot of people are seeing this as some sort of epic disaster and are making all the usual threats about not voting or not contributing or whatever. That’s just not what I see. It’s a big shift in the direction of the fight that we need in the years to come that just hasn’t gone far enough. Yet.”
• HuffPost: Democrats Line Up to Criticize Deal to Reopen Government

SNAP Funding Update

On a normal Monday, the legal battle over SNAP funding – which ended up in the Supreme Court – would have merited special attention. But given that there’s a good chance that the deal to end the government shutdown will render the fight against SNAP moot, it doesn’t make sense to devote any more of your limited attention to it.

Quote of the day

Jason Stanley, a former philosophy professor at Yale, on the Trump-led coup:

[L]Let’s look at what’s happening with the ships they’re blowing up and now in the Pacific, first in the Caribbean, now in the Pacific, they’re just murdering people for no reason. It’s completely illegal. In fact, this now means that Trump could kill anyone anywhere simply by calling them a terrorist. The way it’s going to work is they’re going to say, “Okay, these drug traffickers are terrorists. Oh, immigrants are terrorists. Anyone who protests ICE now is a terrorist. If you’re against us blowing up boats without any legal justification or evidence, or if you’re against ICE brutalizing little children, you’re a terrorist. The Democratic Party is a terrorist.” They are therefore trying to illegalize the opposition.

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