Of course, Fox: 2 months after he appeared on Foxnews railing against the Russia investigation, Eastman was sitting in the Oval Office with Trump.
The Lawyer Behind the Coup Memo on How Trump Could Stay in Office Despite Losing Election (better headline) nytimes.com/2021/10/02/us/…
😳“Soon, Mr. Eastman was meeting face to face at Mr. Trump’s urging with the attorney general, William P. Barr, and telling him how Mr. Trump could unilaterally impose limits on birthright citizenship.”
Eastman is just chock full of fringe far-right autocratic ideas, isn’t he?
Shocker: fascist AND racist. Eastman got on the Trump campaign’s radar with a birther-y article he wrote questioning @KamalaHarris’ legitimacy to be POTUS b/c her parents were immigrants. Jenna Ellis—another disbarment waiting to happen—brought it to Trump’s attention in a tweet.
btw in my mind Jenna Ellis will always be that uber annoying officious flight attendant in Meet the Parents
This is interesting. There’s a second longer coup memo. Since the plot continues, it’ll be important to see exactly what vulnerabilities they see.
And who is the desperate “Trump aide” that contacted Eastman 😬on Christmas Eve😅 to write a legal memo on the Jan.6 certification??
🤑Aaand there’s always a grifter element in TrumpWorld.
Eastman’s not only continuing to “investigate” specious reports of election fraud. He’s “writing a book on the subject.” And wants to represent Trump.
Of course he does. Lawless & litigious Trump is a goldmine for lawyers.
Man, they’re all so cynical & devious. Eastman didn’t even believe in the power his coup memo said a VP had! Yet he teamed up w/ Trump to pressure Pence anyway.
The White House (Meadows?) called a meeting for Jan. 4. “Eastman was the only adviser to the president in the room.”
omg Pence is so pathetic
“Did you hear that, Mr President?” Pence said to Trump at the Jan 4 meeting, pointing out that Eastman acknowledged the VP didn’t really have the power Trump wanted, to not certify Biden’s electoral victory on Jan 6.
Yeah, right. Trump talked about 12th Amendment legal scholarship.
“It started with the president talking about how some of the legal scholarship that had been done, saying under the 12th Amendment…” Eastman said.
This is really a damning report. Eastman didn't just write a memo to lend legitimacy to a coup. He conspired w/ Trump to suborn sedition—pressuring Pence to subvert a democratic election, knowing his legal theory was bogus.
Subpoenas, indictment, disbarment can't come too soon.
btw Before this @nytmike & @maggieNYT report on Eastman’s acts to make his coup memo a reality, Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky said Eastman should be condemned, shunned & disciplined for helping Trump subvert American democracy. That’s not enough now. sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/…
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😳“the first leak came less than 48 hours into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine… Some of the intelligence posted appeared to foretell battlefield development.”
Airman Teixeira Shared Sensitive Intelligence More Widely and for Longer Than Previously Known nytimes.com/2023/04/21/us/…
“Airman Teixeira also claimed that he was actively combing classified computer networks for material on the Ukraine war.…
At one point he offered to share information privately with members of the group living outside the United States. ‘DM me and I can tell you what I have’”😨
Teixeira leaked info to the larger group from Feb 2022-March 2023.
He insanely saw leaking war info as a news event >> “I was very happy and willing and enthusiastic to have covered this event for the past year and share with all of you something that not many people get to see”
#Russia’s clandestine spetsnaz forces have been gutted by the war in #Ukraine, will take Moscow years to rebuild them, according to classified U.S. assessments among the documents leaked on Discord washingtonpost.com/national-secur…
#Russia’s senior commanders were eager to seize momentum (expecting to assassinate Zelensky & a 3-day 🇺🇦war), so deployed spetsnaz commandos alongside infantry, resulting in massive dead/wounded—90+% attrition rate. One unit has only 125 personnel active left—out of 900 deployed.
"rapid depletion of Russia’s commando units…shifted the war’s dynamic from the outset, severely limiting Moscow’s ability to employ clandestine tactics… the staggering casualties…will render [spetsnaz] less effective, not only in Ukraine but [elsewhere] Russian forces operate"
"Putin's stolen an enormous amt of money from the Russian ppl. He's worried abt people turning on him. So he started a war to stay in power. Ukraine is definitely not his last stop"
Putin's a thief protecting his thiefdom. Aggression keeps him in power. That's why it won't stop.
"The Ukrainians have given us a chance to turn this century around, a chance for freedom & security that we could not have achieved by our own efforts… All we have to do is help them win."
@TimothyDSnyder "defeating an ongoing genocidal project—would be more than enough reason to want Ukrainian victory. But every single one of other 14 is hugely significant. Each presents the kind of opportunity…generations of policy planners…almost never get…we have not yet…seized the moment"
HRW investigated one of Russia's worst war crimes in a year of war crimes, at the #Kramatorsk🇺🇦 train station, a known evacuation hub. 500+ people waiting with families, pets & belongings to flee Donbas were hit by a missile packed w/ 50 small bombs. 58 killed, many more wounded.
10,000s of civilians were evacuated via the #Kramatorsk🇺🇦 train station in the days prior to Russia's April 8 deadly missile attack. People across Donbas came by buses organized for evacuees & by private car to board trains at Kramatorsk hub to relative safety in western Ukraine.
Everyone knew #Kramatorsk🇺🇦 was a main evacuation point from Donbas. Local officials posted public information w/ daily train schedules, encouraging civilians to evacuate as the threat posed by Russian forces grew. 8,200 evacuated on April 7, the day before Russia's strike.
Foxnews is the propaganda arm of the Republican Party—w/o which it might be a normal democratic party accountable to the public. But Fox cynically chose to prop up GOP toxic lies & frauds, more worried about “brand damage” than the brain damage they cause the country & democracy.
KEY Point: Fox figures who gave the most intense embrace to Trump allies peddling lies KNEW they were peddling lies.
More than unethical & hypocritical, Fox was key to mainstreaming the lies that caused the damage. W/o Fox, coup & insurrection would be fringe ideas not reality.
Fox isn't news. It's the propaganda arm of a terrorist political party—knowingly & deliberately pushing GOP lies, even purging journalists & fact-checkers to dupe viewers more easily.
With a suitably Orwellian justification: Fox is "respecting our audience"…by lying to them.🤨