The Stupid Coup

Coup plotters: Justice Ginni and Mr. Thomas
H/T Scissorhead Jimmy-T

Tiger Beat on the Potomac (thanks Charlie!) morning email thingie wins the morning with their latest scoop:

SCOOP:The House select committee investigating Jan. 6 sent a subpoena last week to ALEX HOLDER, a documentary filmmaker who was granted extensive access to President DONALD TRUMP and his inner circle, and who shot interviews with the then-president both before and after Jan. 6. The existence of this footage is previously unreported.

OK, this might be a legit surprise: Another documentary filmmaker, uh, documenting Team Evil. First the Proud Boys and now The 4th Reich?!

A source familiar with the project told Playbook on Monday night that Holder began filming on the campaign trail in September 2020 for a project on Trump’s reelection campaign. Over the course of several months, Holder had substantial access to Trump, Trump’s adult children and VP MIKE PENCE, both in the White House and on the campaign trail.

According to the subpoena, which was obtained exclusively by Playbook, the committee wants three main things from Holder:

(1) Raw footage from Jan. 6.

(2) Raw footage of interviews from September 2020 to present with Trump, Pence, DONALD TRUMP JR., IVANKA TRUMP, ERIC TRUMP and JARED KUSHNER.

(3) Raw footage “pertaining to discussions of election fraud or election integrity surrounding the November 2020 presidential election.”

Holder is expected to fully cooperate with the committee in an interview scheduled for Thursday. Read the full subpoena

If you are wondering why we feature insurrectionists Ginni and Clarence Thomas as our featured graphic, well elsewhere in the regular Politico, we learn:

Members of Trump’s inner circle began contemplating the notion of turning to state legislatures even before the election was called for Joe Biden. On Nov. 5, 2020, conservative attorney Cleta Mitchell — who had been leading preelection preparations for Trump’s legal team — reached out to Eastman with a request.

“John – what would you think of producing a legal memo outlining the constitutional role of state legislators in designating electors?” Mitchell wondered. “Rather than governors, the US Constitution vests that responsibility with state legislators. … why couldn’t legislatures reclaim that constitutional duty, and designate the electors – rather than delegating to governors.”

Cleta Mitchell is Ginni Thomas’s BFF. Where you see one of ’em, you actually see both of ’em.

Eastman wrote a memo later that month, which was then forwarded to the Oval Office by Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis, according to documents obtained by the Jan. 6 select committee. As Trump’s legal challenges to the election began to fail and states began certifying Biden’s victory, Eastman began consulting directly with state legislators, encouraging some to simply retabulate their popular votes in order to show Trump in the lead.

Back to Tiger Beat’s email thingie for more news of Ginni Thomas and the logistics of today’s hearing that starts at 10 AM Pacific:

Chair BENNIE THOMPSON (D-Miss.) and Vice Chair LIZ CHENEY (R-Wyo.) are expected to open the hearing, and Rep. ADAM SCHIFF(D-Calif.) will play a key role. There will be four witnesses broken up over two panels.

— The first panel features (1) Arizona House Speaker RUSTY BOWERS, (2)Georgia Secretary of State BRAD RAFFENSPERGER and (3) his deputy, GABRIEL STERLING.

Bowers is expected to describe the pressure campaign from Trump, RUDY GIULIANI and VIRGINIA THOMAS, the wife of Supreme Court Justice CLARENCE THOMAS. In one phone call, Trump and Giuliani pushed Bowers to change Arizona law retroactively “to allow the Legislature to choose a different slate of presidential electors than picked by voters.”

Raffensperger and Sterling are more well known nationally. Sterling held multiple press conferences as Georgia tallied its votes in 2020, at one point blasting the harassment and threats election workers were receiving. Famously, in a phone call on Jan. 2, 2021, Trump pushed Raffensperger to help him “find” just enough votes to help him win the state, and threatened him with “a criminal offense.”

— The second panel has just one witness: SHAYE MOSS, an election worker in Georgia. She and her mother processed ballots in 2020 and were targets of a smear campaign by Trump allies. David Wickert at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a deep dive on Moss, who was accused “of rigging the November 2020 election for Joe Biden with ‘suitcases’ of ballots on election night. The pair were featured in a video that Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani called a ‘smoking gun’ for voting fraud.”

A committee aide said that Moss would outline how “being targeted by the former president has upended her life and that of her mother. … They were subjected to death threats, intimidation, coercion, forced to go into hiding.”

It should be a barn-burner hearing at an awkward time of day.