 John, If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately:
Page 1: Donald Trump tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election. Before the election, he made plans to cast doubt on and undermine confidence in our nation’s election infrastructure. After the election, he knowingly sought to subvert our Constitution and system of elections through a sustained campaign of lies. His efforts culminated on January 6, 2021, when he incited, exacerbated, and otherwise engaged in a violent insurrection at the United States Capitol by a mob who believed they were following his orders, and refused to protect the Capitol or call off the mob for nearly three hours as the attack unfolded. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and interfere with the peaceful transfer of power were part of an insurrection against the Constitution of the United States. Because Trump took these actions after he swore an oath to support the Constitution, Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits him from being President and from qualifying for the Colorado ballot for President in 2024. Page 7: Courts have disqualified officials under the Fourteenth Amendment who played far less substantial roles in insurrections, and who, like Trump, did not personally commit violent acts. This includes Couy Griffin, a former New Mexico county commissioner who was a grassroots mobilizer, inciter, and member of Trump’s mob on January 6th (but did not commit violent acts or breach the Capitol building), and Kenneth Worthy, who served as a sheriff in a Confederate state (but did not take up arms in the Confederate army). If these individuals’ conduct warranted Section 3 disqualification, then surely Trump’s does as well. Page 8: Since January 6, 2021, Trump has publicly affirmed his disloyalty to the Constitution and his allegiance to the insurrectionists who seized the Capitol for him. He has called the insurrectionists “patriots,” vowed to give many “full pardons with an apology” if he becomes President again, financially supported them, released a song with a choir of convicted January 6th defendants called “Justice for All,” and hugged on camera a convicted January 6th defendant who has said that Pence and Members of Congress who voted to certify Biden’s victory should be executed for treason. Page 65: Trump’s statements had the intended effect of producing substantial anger against Vice President Pence—anger the mob acted on that day. During Trump’s speech, rallygoers could be heard shouting “storm the Capitol!” “invade the Capitol building!” and “take the Capitol!” Knowing his supporters were angry and armed, President Trump used the word “fight” or variations of it 20 times during his Ellipse speech. Nearly every mention was improvised: the word “fight” appears only once in a teleprompter draft of the speech. Trump claimed, from the perch of the presidency, that the very existence of our country depended on his supporters’ willingness to fight: “And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Page 70: At no point on January 6th did President Trump contact top officials in his administration such as the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, or the FBI Director to ensure they were working to quell the violence. He took no action to deploy the D.C. National Guard, which falls under the President’s direct command. Nor did he contact Vice President Pence to check on his safety. Page 77: In the nearly three hour period between 1:21 p.m. and 4:03 p.m., President Trump could have walked just down the hallway from the Oval Office to record a statement instructing the mob to go home from the White House Press Briefing Room, where cameras are ready to go live at a moment’s notice. He did not. Following nearly three hours of barbaric violence and desperate pleas for the President to intervene, and only after it was clear that the attack would fail to stop the election certification, Trump finally filmed a video statement at 4:03 p.m. telling the mob to “go home.” The video was released at 4:17 p.m. In the video, President Trump did not condemn the attack—he justified it. He repeated his lie of a “stolen” election, empathized with the attackers, and told them, “we love you” and “[y]ou’re very special.”
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|