Here's an important new story about what was supposed to happen on Jan 6:
I have been saying for months that the FBI and the Justice Department should have been holding regular briefings to explain to the American people what happened on Jan 6.
They haven't been doing it, and now Americans are either forgetting what happened, or thinking it was really no big deal, yada yada yada.
But today's news from Sydney Powell really does help explain for the first time what I always found to be the most inexplicable thing about that day: why was Trump trying so hard to delay the certification for a few hours or a day? What on earth was the point?
Remember all the stories about Rudy phoning Senator Tommy Tuberville to plead with him to throw up roadblocks to Senate certification? Remember the goofy idea of getting the House and Senate reps from six states to demand the House and Senate each have 2-hour debates on each state certification, which would have turned the process into an all day marathon and might well have adjourned it until the next day?
I could never understand why they were trying to play these games with the certification - what was the sense anyway?.
In the end, it didn't work. Yes, the House and Senate members for Arizona and Pennsylvania did force the extra debates for these states. But then, before the assembly could consider Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada, the insurrectionists had invaded the Capitol buildings and everyone ran for their lives. After that, when Pence and Pelosi reconvened later that evening, the mood had changed - lawmakers were spooked and no longer had any appetite for games and delays. So only the two states were debated and each vote was handled as quickly as they could. Everybody stayed until 3 am and finally Biden was declared president.
And after it was all over, I did wonder: What on earth was the point of the game-playing? Why were they trying so hard just to delay the inevitable for a day or two?
Now we find out why - Trump thought if they could delay the Biden certification until Jan 7, then Supreme Court Justice Alito would have time to overturn the problematic state certifications and then Republican state legislatures could throw the election to Trump.
...
.Powell's interview "suggests that the purpose of the insurrection was to DELAY the electoral college certification to give [Justice Samuel Alito] time to intervene on this legal challenge. But, Powell says they didn't anticipate Pelosi reconvening Congress that day."
Powell said that while then-President Donald Trump was inciting a riot at the Capitol, her team was filing a "12th Amendment constitutional challenge to the process the Congress was about to use."
"Justice Alito was our circuit justice for that," she recalled. "And we were suing the vice president to follow the 12th Amendment as opposed to the Electoral College Act."
Powell alleged that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi learned of the lawsuit and rushed to have Congress certify the election despite the ongoing attack on the U.S. Capitol.
"Everything broke loose and she really had to speed up reconvening Congress to get the vote going before Justice Alito might have issued an injunction to stop it all, which is what should have happened," the attorney said
So that makes it much easier to understand why Trump wanted the delay.
And it makes me realize again, how close the US government came to being overthrown by a failed president.
And in the end, maybe Trump did it to himself -- if Trump's insurrection hadn't been so successful, invading the Capitol and terrifying the House and Senate members, then maybe the Senate and House wouldn't have worked so hard on that critical night to get Biden confirmed then and there!
In other news today, I guess nobody told Post Media that the election is over.
COVID news keeps getting worse every day - more than a thousand new cases in Saskatchewan just this weekend.
This is absolutely nuts - the anti-vaxxers are terrified of COVID but they're now trying to demonize doctors and nurses, and they're putting together "protocols" to breathe hydrogen peroxide and gargle iodine.
My brother was at the Saskatoon Symphony performance this weekend, and there was one anti-vax cellist playing out front for spare change, because she refused to get vaccinated - so now she is losing her career and all her friends, just because of anti-vax ignorant stubbornness.
And it makes me absolutely furious that so many innocent people are being hurt by the anti-vax intransigence.
I see more and more doctors speaking out:
I agree with this too:
