22 Jul, 2022 12:25

Never-before-seen outtakes from Trump’s January 7 address presented

The former US president refused to say the scripted line “the election’s over” in his speech condemning the Capitol riot

Former US President Donald Trump refused to say the scripted line “the election’s over” in his January 7 speech in the aftermath of the Capitol riot, according to never-before-seen outtakes that were presented to the House Select Committee on Thursday.

The footage, which was recorded just over 24 hours after the January 6 Capitol riot, was played during what is now the ninth hearing from the panel investigating the unrest. In the clips, the 45th president could be heard objecting to scripted remarks that he was reading out from a teleprompter.

Trump began the statement by saying “I would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack yesterday.”

“And to those who broke the law, you will pay. You do not represent our movement, you do not represent our country. And if you broke the law —,” Trump paused, shook his head and pointed out that he can’t say that because he “already said ‘you will pay.’”

At another point in the video, he said: “But this election is now over. Congress has certified the results,” before stopping once again to protest, “I don’t want to say the election is over. I just want to say Congress has certified the results without saying the election’s over, okay?”

Trump’s daughter Ivanka could be heard off-screen confirming her father’s edits to the script.

In another take, Trump said, “I would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack yesterday,” before going off-script once again:“Yesterday is a hard word for me.”

“Just take it out?” Ivanka asked.

“Ah, good, take the word ‘yesterday’ out because it doesn’t work with it,” Trump said.

As the former president was trying to read the line: “My only goal was to ensure the integrity of the vote” he again paused and, visibly frustrated, slammed the lectern.

The final cut of the address that was released on January 7, the day after the Capitol riot, ended up being less than three minutes long.

The outtakes from Trump’s speech were presented to the January 6 committee as potential evidence that the former president had failed to sufficiently condemn the riots and had been unapologetic over what led to the unrest, namely his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Throughout the hearing, members of the House took turns arguing that Trump was unfit to hold office again after he teased a potential run for president in 2024.

Thousands of Trump supporters and election integrity advocates descended on Washington DC on January 6, 2021, to protest what they believed was a stolen election after Democrat Joe Biden claimed to have received the largest number of votes in US history. President Trump spoke to the crowd outside the White House before they marched on toward the Capitol. A group of protesters was able to enter the building while Congress was in session and the resulting chaos left several victims, including Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, who was shot dead by Capitol police.

The Select Committee on the January 6th Insurrection began holding hearings last July. Its leading lawmakers have attempted to portray the events of the day as “an attack on American democracy” orchestrated by Trump and his allies.

Meanwhile, Republicans still aligned with Trump have dismissed the January 6 investigation as an attempt to distract the American people from more crucial issues such as inflation and soaring gas prices. According to CNN, the GOP also reportedly plans to launch its own select committee to investigate matters such as voter fraud and the mistreatment of those jailed for their participation in the Capitol attack.

(Oh brother, J6 committee is insane)

https://www.rt.com/news/559455-capitol-riots-trump-outtakes/

21 Jul, 2022 10:38

US general assesses ‘commercial space’ role in Ukraine conflict

Private firms have successfully aided Kiev, Space Force chief John Raymond says

Commercial aerospace industry players have helped Kiev during the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the head of the US Space Force has said.

“My first observation I’d say is that space is important. And we have certainly seen that in this conflict,” General John Raymond, chief of US space operations, said on Tuesday at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.

“And I would also say that commercial space has been very important in providing capabilities that have been helpful to Ukraine.”

Raymond also said that the US military uses space capabilities “each and every day.”

“Today, nothing we do as a joint force that isn’t enabled by space,” he stated. “And it is a huge force multiplier.”

Elon Musk’s SpaceX said last month that it had delivered 15,000 kits of its Starlink satellite communication system to Ukraine, which, according to reports, helps Ukrainian troops aim artillery at Russian positions.

President Vladimir Zelensky told Wire in June that Starlink was “very effective” in maintaining internet access in embattled cities.

Reports in the media have also claimed that the US has been using classified and commercial satellites to provide Ukraine with intelligence on Russian troop movements.

“We routinely and have now for weeksbeen sharing information and intelligence about Russian units, both at sea and ashore,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told CNN in May.

https://www.rt.com/news/559376-us-space-force-ukraine/

21 Jul, 2022 09:01

HomeWorld News

South American trade bloc snubs Zelensky

The Ukrainian president will not be allowed to address the Mercosur summit, AFP reports

South America’s Mercosur trade bloc has declined a request by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to speak at its summit, host nation Paraguay said on Wednesday, according to the AFP news agency.

Mercosur members Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay failed to reach an agreement on whether to invite the Ukrainian leader, Deputy Foreign Minister, Raul Cano said, albeit refusing to name the countries that opposed the move.

“There was no consensus on such communication, that’s why the Ukrainian counterpart has already been informed that under current circumstances there are no conditions allowing to speak with the president of Ukraine in the Mercosur format,” the minister explained.

Earlier this month, Julio Cesar Arriola, Paraguay’s foreign minister, said that Zelensky had talked with Mario Abdo Benitez, the nation’s president, on the phone and asked for the opportunity to address the upcoming Mercosur summit. According to Arriola, Benitez promised to discuss the matter with his colleagues in the bloc.

Mercosur is an economic and political organization that was established in 1991 to create a common market and incentivize development in South America.

After Russia attacked Ukraine in late February, Zelensky has addressed a slew of national parliaments and major international forums, including NATO, the G7 and the UN in an effort to rally countries to Kiev’s cause and help it fight off Moscow’s offensive.

However, in late June, when the Ukrainian president took part in a virtual meeting with the African Union, only a handful of leaders reportedly tuned in to listen to his speech. Following the conference call, the President of Senegal and African Union Chairperson, Macky Sall, indicated that Africa’s position of neutrality over the conflict in Ukraine remained unchanged.

https://www.rt.com/news/559367-zelensky-summit-america-mercosur/

https://twitter.com/robbystarbuck/status/1550312123473039367?s=20&t=dDwkAAb7shSB-fYx6I2P3Q

@ConceptualJames locked out of twitter

https://twitter.com/AuronMacintyre/status/1550298287202336768?s=20&t=dDwkAAb7shSB-fYx6I2P3Q

Questions mounting about Ukraine, Yes!

https://twitter.com/MZHemingway/status/1550332342761410560?s=20&t=dDwkAAb7shSB-fYx6I2P3Q

Of Course Neocons Don't Want To Talk About Corruption In Ukraine

John Daniel DavidsonPart 1 of 2

Americans who even casually followed the news in the fall of 2020 probably know that Ukraine was infamously corrupt long before the United States sent the country $54 billion in aid after the Russian invasion in February. They might not know much else about Ukraine, but they know it’s the kind of place where just being the son of the vice president of the United States can get you an $83,000 monthly paycheck for sitting on the board of an energy company.

No one knows this better than Ukrainians themselves, who have to put up with a level of official corruption on par with countries like Mexico and Gabon. Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index ranked Ukraine 122 out of 180 countries worldwide, and the second most corrupt country in Europe — right after Russia.

But talking about any of this publicly is a big problem for establishment neocons in Washington because it invites uncomfortable questions about the U.S. role in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war. Just ask Ukrainian-born Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., who lived in Ukraine until she was 22 and has been back six times since the Russian invasion. Spartz probably understands what’s happening in Ukraine better than anyone else in Congress, and yet Republican House leaders now say they regret giving her such a prominent platform to speak out against the war.

Why? Because she’s asking hard questions about corruption among some of Ukraine’s top officials, as well as raising totally reasonable concerns about U.S. oversight of the billions of dollars and unprecedented amount of weaponry we’ve been pouring into the country.

Such questions undermine the neocon narrative that Ukraine is a noble beacon of democracy and freedom, and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a Churchillian figure whose integrity and policies cannot be questioned. That narrative is what the neocons are relying on to prolong the war with indefinite financing and use the conflict as a way to punish Russia.

Narrative integrity notwithstanding, the reality of Ukrainian corruption and the complete absence of U.S. accountability aren’t concerns that can simply be waved away, no matter what paper-thin talking points Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is spouting this week. The fact is, there’s plenty of evidence that Zelensky’s government is deeply corrupt, that he has surrounded himself with officials who served in previous corrupt Ukrainian governments, and that maybe Ukraine isn’t the kind of place the United States should be flooding with tens of billions of dollars in cash and weapons.

The backstory is that on Friday, Politico reported Republican House leaders (who of course remained anonymous) are “coming to regret” elevating Spartz as an authority on Ukraine after she criticized both Zelensky and President Joe Biden for “playing politics” with the war, and called on Congress to “establish proper oversight of critical infrastructure and delivery of weapons and aid.” Hers is a reasonable request, of course — especially after the debacle in Afghanistan last fall, when some $80 billion in U.S. military hardware wound up in the hands of the Taliban following the disastrous U.S. withdrawal.

Spartz also issued a letter asking the Biden administration to brief Congress on Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, widely considered to be the second most powerful person in Ukraine. Spartz said Yermak, a former media lawyer and movie producer with close ties to Russia, “raises many concerns with a variety of people in the United States and internationally.” She also noted Yermak’s appointment of Oleh Tatarov, who served as the head of the main investigative department of the Interior Ministry under former President Viktor Yanukovych. Recall that Yanukovych’s tenure was marked by stupendous levels of corruption and ended when he fled to Russia during the Euromaidan revolution in February 2014.

Tatarov, though, stayed in Ukraine and was appointed by Zelensky as his deputy chief of staff in August 2020. That December, he was charged with bribery by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), but the case was dropped after then-Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova twice replaced the prosecutors in charge and then pulled the case from the NABU and gave it to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), which dropped the charges.

Zelensky faced intense pressure to fire Tatarov but refused. According to the Kyiv Independent, by the time news broke of his acquittal, about a month before the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, Tatarov had “become the symbol of Zelensky’s tolerance of corruption in his inner circle.”…

https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/20/as-questions-mount-about-corruption-in-ukraine-the-neocon-narrative-is-unraveling/

>>16780592

==…Corruption In Ukraine__

Part 2 of 2

Now comes news that Zelensky has fired Venediktova, the prosecutor general who obstructed and effectively destroyed the case against Tatarov, as well as the head of the SBU, a man named Ivan Bakanov. In a speech Sunday night, Zelensky said the dismissals were a response to a large number of high treason investigations involving law enforcement personnel, including dozens of people who remain in occupied territory and, according to Zelensky, are working against the state….

Tatarov, though, wasn’t fired. He’s now in charge of anti-corruption efforts in Zelensky’s office….

Like everything else in Ukraine, there’s no way to know what’s actually happening there, but a few red flags should give American readers pause. For one thing, anonymous U.S. officials quoted by The New York Times would like you to know that everything is fine; there’s nothing to see here. They told the Times the dismissals “reflect Mr. Zelensky’s efforts to put more experienced leaders in key security positions.”

But you would think after nearly five months of waging an all-out defensive war against Russia, a war that Zelensky has characterized as a fight for national survival, the most experienced leaders would already be in key positions such as prosecutor general and head of domestic intelligence. Why weren’t they?

Bakanov, the now-fired head of the SBU, is a childhood friend of Zelensky and a former director of a television production company started by Zelensky and some of his friends. Why was a media executive appointed to lead the Security Service of Ukraine in the first place?

And why is Tatarov, of all people, in charge of anti-corruption efforts? As Spartz noted in her letter, Tatarov has delayed the appointment of an independent anti-corruption prosecutor for more than a year, rendering the NABU — the agency that brought corruption charges against him in 2020 and was still actively investigating him when he assumed his current post — incapacitated.

The dismissal of Bakanov also raises questions given the rumors that Tatarov had been spearheading an effort to replace him with an old colleague from the Yanukovych administration, Vasyl Malyuk, who was fired from the SBU a year ago but now, as a result of Bakanov’s firing, is running the agency.

A lot of questions here, and even at first glance it’s pretty clear that Ukrainian politics is a viper’s nest of corruption and graft. Just don’t ask any questions about it or demand any oversight, because that might get in the way of the neocons’ Ukraine agenda in Washington. The whole thing stinks, and it tells you everything you need to know about how much the Washington establishment cares about corruption in Ukraine and oversight of the $54 billion we’re sending in aid and weapons.

Instead of casting aspersions on Spartz, her Republican colleagues should be amplifying her concerns and demanding more oversight from the Biden administration. At the very least, if they disagree with her and think everything is fine in Ukraine, they should say so, and make an argument.

But they won’t, because digging into Ukraine’s corruption problems could jeopardize their plans to prolong the war in Ukraine with unlimited financing and turn it into a U.S. proxy war against Russia. The neocons in Washington all know, deep down, what most Americans figured out back in the fall of 2020: Any country where an energy company pays Hunter Biden $83,000 a month to sit on its board is mindbogglingly corrupt and has been for a very long time. It’s just that they don’t care.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/20/as-questions-mount-about-corruption-in-ukraine-the-neocon-narrative-is-unraveling/

>>16780592

>>16780601

This article a prime example of

“Who audits where the money goes”

https://twitter.com/cabot_phillips/status/1550241540076965897?s=20&t=OgFsjYx3KnRTeeVbzkTLfg

Truthfully, they probably gave Bidan too many drugs and is in full on dementia. No one believes he got the jab. People in the WH are not required to get the jab.

https://twitter.com/MZHemingway/status/1550479262393765889?s=20&t=OgFsjYx3KnRTeeVbzkTLfg

https://twitter.com/MZHemingway/status/1550477316668760064?s=20&t=OgFsjYx3KnRTeeVbzkTLfg

https://twitter.com/MZHemingway/status/1550464680837226500?s=20&t=OgFsjYx3KnRTeeVbzkTLfg

Excellent Long article (148 paragraphs) will only post 5 sections. Read article1 of 5

A radical plan for Trump’s second termJonathan Swan

Former President Trump’s top allies are preparing to radically reshape the federal government if he is re-elected, purging potentially thousands of civil servants and filling career posts with loyalists to him and his "America First” ideology, people involved in the discussions tell Axios.

The impact could go well beyond typical conservative targets such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Internal Revenue Service. Trump allies are working on plans that would potentially strip layers at the Justice Department — including the FBI, and reaching into national security, intelligence, the State Department and the Pentagon, sources close to the former president say.

During his presidency, Trump often complained about what he called “the deep state.”

The heart of the plan is derived from an executive order known as “Schedule F,”developed and refined in secret over most of the second half of Trump’s term and launched 13 days before the 2020 election.

The reporting for this series draws on extensive interviews over a period of more than three months with more than two dozen people close to the former president, and others who have firsthand knowledge of the work underway to prepare for a potential second term. Most spoke on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive planning and avoid Trump’s ire.

As Trump publicly flirts with a 2024 comeback campaign, this planning is quietly flourishing from Mar-a-Lago to Washington — with his blessing but without the knowledge of some people in his orbit.

Trump remains distracted by his obsession with contesting the 2020 election results. But he has endorsed the work of several groups to prime an administration-in-waiting. Personnel and action plans would be executed in the first 100 days of a second term starting on Jan. 20, 2025.

Their work could accelerate controversial policy and enforcement changes, but also enable revenge tours against real or perceived enemies, and potentially insulate the president and allies from investigation or prosecution.

They intend to stack thousands of mid-level staff jobs. Well-funded groups are already developing lists of candidates selected often for their animus against the system — in line with Trump’s long-running obsession with draining “the swamp.” This includes building extensive databases of people vetted as being committed to Trump and his agenda.

The preparations are far more advanced and ambitious than previously reported. What is happening now is an inversion of the slapdash and virtually non-existent infrastructure surrounding Trump ahead of his 2017 presidential transition.

These groups are operating on multiple fronts: shaping policies, identifying top lieutenants, curating an alternative labor force of unprecedented scale, and preparing for legal challenges and defenses that might go before Trump-friendly judges, all the way to a 6-3 Supreme Court.

The centerpiece

Trump signed an executive order,“Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” in October 2020, which established a new employment category for federal employees. It received wide media coverage for a short period, then was largely forgotten in the mayhem and aftermath of Jan. 6 — and quickly was rescinded by President Biden.

Sources close to Trump say that if he were elected to a second term, he would immediately reimpose it.

Tens of thousands of civil servants who serve in roles deemed to have some influence over policy would be reassigned as “Schedule F” employees. Upon reassignment, they would lose their employment protections.

New presidents typically get to replace more than 4,000 so-called “political” appointees to oversee the running of their administrations. But below this rotating layer of political appointees sits a mass of government workers who enjoy strong employment protections — and typically continue their service from one administration to the next, regardless of the president’s party affiliation.

An initial estimate by the Trump official who came up with Schedule F found it could apply to as many as 50,000 federal workers — a fraction of a workforce of more than 2 million, but a segment with a profound role in shaping American life.

Trump, in theory, could fire tens of thousands of career government officials with no recourse for appeals. He could replace them with people he believes are more loyal to him and to his “America First” agenda.

Even if Trump did not deploy Schedule F to this extent, the very fact that such power exists could create a significant chilling effect on government employees….

https://www.axios.com/2022/07/22/trump-2025-radical-plan-second-term

>>16780805

A radical plan for Trump’s second term

2 of 5

It would effectively upend the modern civil service, triggering a shock wave across the bureaucracy. The next president might then move to gut those pro-Trump ranks — and face the question of whether to replace them with her or his own loyalists, or revert to a traditional bureaucracy.

Such pendulum swings and politicization could threaten the continuity and quality of service to taxpayers, the regulatory protections, the checks on executive power, and other aspects of American democracy.

Trump’s allies claim such pendulum swings will not happen because they will not have to fire anything close to 50,000 federal workers to achieve the result, as one source put it, of “behavior change.” Firing a smaller segment of “bad apples” among the career officials at each agency would have the desired chilling effect on others tempted to obstruct Trump’s orders.

They say Schedule F will finally end the “farce” of a nonpartisan civil service that they say has been filled with activist liberals who have been undermining GOP presidents for decades.

Unions and Democrats would be expected to immediately fight a Schedule F order. But Trump’s advisers like their chances in a judicial system now dominated at its highest levels by conservatives.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who chairs the subcommittee that oversees the federal civil service, is among a small group of lawmakers who never stopped worrying about Schedule F, even after Biden rescinded the order. Connolly has been so alarmed that he attached an amendment to this year’s defense bill to prevent a future president from resurrecting Schedule F. The House passed Connolly’s amendment but Republicans hope to block it in the Senate.

Machine-in-waiting

No operation of this scale is possiblewithout the machinery to implement it. To that end, Trump has blessed a string of conservative organizations linked to advisers he currently trusts and calls on. Most of these conservative groups host senior figures from the Trump administration on their payroll, including former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

The names are a mix of familiar and new. They include Jeffrey Clark, the controversial lawyer Trump had wanted to install as attorney general in the end days of his presidency. Clark, who advocated a plan to contest the 2020 election results, is now in the crosshairs of the Jan. 6 committee and the FBI. Clark is working at the Center for Renewing America (CRA), the group founded by Russ Vought, the former head of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget.

Former Trump administration and transition officials working on personnel, legal or policy projects for a potential 2025 government include names like Vought, Meadows, Stephen Miller, Ed Corrigan, Wesley Denton, Brooke Rollins, James Sherk, Andrew Kloster and Troup Hemenway.

Others, who remain close to Trump and would be in contention for the most senior roles in a second-term administration, include Dan Scavino, John McEntee, Richard Grenell, Kash Patel, Robert O’Brien, David Bernhardt, John Ratcliffe, Peter Navarro and Pam Bondi.

Following splits from some of his past swathe of loyal advisers, Trump has tightened his circle. The Florida-based strategist Susie Wiles is Trump’s top political adviser. She runs his personal office and his political action committee. When he contemplates endorsements, Trump has often attached weight to the views of his former White House political director Brian Jack, pollster Tony Fabrizio, and his son Donald Trump Jr. He often consults another GOP pollster, John McLaughlin. For communications and press inquiries Trump calls on Taylor Budowich and Liz Harrington. Jason Miller remains in the mix.

As Trump’s obsessions with 2020 fester, he has also broken with many traditional conservative allies in Congress. Most notably, his relationship with the man who delivered Trump the rock-solid conservative Supreme Court he hankered for — Sen. Mitch McConnell — is broken. McConnell is no longer on speaking terms with the former president.

Now Trump looks to Rep. Jim Jordan as his closest confidant on Capitol Hill. He has stayed close to former Rep. Devin Nunes, who runs Trump's social media company, Truth Social. Trump continues to be a big fan of the far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

https://www.axios.com/2022/07/22/trump-2025-radical-plan-second-term

>>16780825

A radical plan for Trump’s second term

3 of 5

​​The advocacy groups who have effectively become extensions of the Trump infrastructure include the CRA, the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), and the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI).

Other groups — while not formally connected to Trump’s operation — have hired key lieutenants and are effectively serving his ends. The Heritage Foundation, the legacy conservative group, has moved closer to Trump under its new president, Kevin Roberts, and is building links to other parts of the “America First” movement.

Sources who spoke to Axios paint a vivid picture of how the backroom plans are taking shape, starting with a series of interactions in Florida earlier this year, on April 28.

Trump’s new targets

On that warm spring night in April, an armada of black Escalades drove through the rain from a West Palm Beach hotel to Donald Trump’s Mediterranean-style private club.

Donors and Trump allies were getting soaked through their clothes as they waited in a brief downpour to be frisked by wands before they could access the inner sanctum of Mar-a-Lago.

Inside, near the bar past the patio, a balding man with dramatically arched eyebrows was the center of attention at a cocktail table. He was discussing the top-level staffing of the Justice Department if Trump were to regain the presidency in 2025.

With a background as an environmental lawyer, Jeffrey Clark, a veteran of George W. Bush’s administration, was unknown to the public until early 2021. By the end of the Trump administration, he was serving as the acting head of the Justice Department’s civil division — although other DOJ leaders paid him little attention. But Trump, desperate to overturn the election, welcomed Clark, the only senior official willing to apply the full weight of the Justice Department to contesting Joe Biden’s victory, into his inner circle.

In February of this year, Clark repeatedly asserted his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination during a deposition with the Jan. 6 committee. And in the early hours of June 22, federal agents with an electronics-sniffing dog in tow arrived at Clark’s Virginia home to execute a search warrant and seize his devices.

But back in April, as Clark circulated at Mar-a-Lago wearing a loose-fitting black suit and blue shirt, any troubles related to the Jan. 6 investigation seemed a world away. Clark sounded optimistic. Half a dozen or so donors and Trump allies surrounded him at the high-top table.

One of the donors asked Clark what he thought would happen with the Justice Department if Trump won the 2024 election. Conveying the air of a deep confidant, Clark responded that he thought Trump had learned his lesson.

In a second term, Clark predicted, Trump would never appoint an attorney general who was not completely on board with his agenda.

There was a buzz around Clark. Given Trump wanted to make him attorney general in the final days of his first term, it is likely that Clark would be a serious contender for the top job in a second term.

By this stage in the evening, more than a hundred people were crammed onto the Mar-a-Lago patio. They were a mix of wealthy political donors and allies of the former president and they had come to see Trump himself bless Russ Vought’s organization, the Center for Renewing America.

Vought was a policy wonk who became one of Trump’s most trusted officials. Before joining the Trump administration in 2017 as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget — and ultimately going on to run the agency — Vought had a long career in conservative policy circles.

That included a stint as executive director and budget director of the Republican Study Committee — the largest bloc of House conservatives — and as the policy director for the House Republican Conference.

https://www.axios.com/2022/07/22/trump-2025-radical-plan-second-term

>>16780840

A radical plan for Trump’s second term

4 of 5

Trump was helping raise money for Vought’s CRA, which has been busily developing many of the policy and administrative plans that would likely form the foundation for a second-term Trump administration.

Trump himself was running late to the reception. But the introductory speaker, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, was filibustering, entertaining the crowd with stories about Trump and Vought’s efforts to fight a deep state that had tried to thwart them. Meadows paused. He scanned the patio. “Are there any Cabinet secretaries here?” he asked the audience. “Raise your hand if you’re a Cabinet secretary.”

Nobody raised their hand. “Well that’s a good thing,” Meadows said. “They often weren’t cooperating with us.”

Meadows was picking up on a theme from earlier in the day, when Vought’s group had held off-site sessions at The Ben, a luxury hotel a 10-minute drive up the coast from Mar-a-Lago.

In those closed-door sessions, Trump confidants, including former senior administration officials, discussed the mistakes they had made in the first term that would need to be corrected if they regained power.

They agreed it was not just the “deep state” career bureaucrats who needed to be replaced. Often, the former Trump officials said, their biggest problems were with the political people that Trump himself had regrettably appointed. Never again should Trump hire people like his former chief of staff John Kelly, his former defense secretaries, James Mattis and Mark Esper, his CIA director Gina Haspel, and virtually the entire leadership of every iteration of Trump’s Justice Department.

Shortly after noon, Kash Patel enteredThe Ben’s ballroom. Donors and Trump allies sat classroom-style at long rectangular tables in a room with beautiful views of the Atlantic Ocean.

The group was treated to a conversation between Patel and Mark Paoletta, a former senior Trump administration lawyer with a reputation for finding lateral ways to accomplish Trump’s goals. The Patel-Paoletta panel discussion was titled, “Battling the Deep State.”

Paoletta was a close family friend and prominent public defender of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni Thomas. Throughout the Trump administration, Ginni Thomas had taken a strong interest in administration personnel. She complained to White House officials, including Trump himself, that Trump’s people were obstructing “MAGA” officials from being appointed to key roles in the administration.

As Axios previously reported, Ginni Thomas had assembled detailed lists of disloyal government officials to oust — and trusted pro-Trump people to replace them.

Her recommendations to the White House included appointing the right-wing talk radio provocateur and former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino for a Homeland Security or counterterrorism adviser role. Thomas has recently been a subject of interest to the Jan. 6 Select Committee after the committee obtained text messages she sent to then-chief of staff Mark Meadows urging him to work harder to overturn the 2020 election.

Patel had enjoyed an extraordinary risefrom obscurity to power during the Trump era. Over the course of only a few years, he went from being a little-known Capitol Hill staffer to one of the most powerful figures in the U.S. national security apparatus.

He found favor with Trump by working for Devin Nunes when he played a central role in the GOP’s scrutiny of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Patel was the key author of a memo in which Nunes accused the Justice Department and the FBI of abusing surveillance laws as part of a politically motivated effort to take down Trump.

Some of Nunes’ and Patel’s criticisms of the DOJ’s actions were later validated by an inspector general, and Trump came to view Patel as one of his most loyal agents. He put him on his National Security Council and made him the Pentagon chief of staff.

In one astonishing but ill-fated plan, Trump had wanted to install Patel as either the deputy director of the CIA or the FBI late in his administration. He abandoned this only after vehement opposition and warnings from senior officials including Haspel and former Attorney General Bill Barr, who wrote in his own memoir that he told then-chief of staff Mark Meadows that Patel becoming deputy FBI director would happen “over my dead body.”

https://www.axios.com/2022/07/22/trump-2025-radical-plan-second-term

>>16780847

A radical plan for Trump’s second term

5 of 5

The new inner circle

The most important lesson Trump took from his first term relates to who he hires and to whom he listens.

Trump has reduced his circle of advisers and expunged nearly every former aide who refused to embrace his view that the 2020 election was "stolen."

He spends significant amounts of his time talking to luminaries of the "Stop the Steal" movement, including attorney Boris Epshteyn and the pillow entrepreneur Mike Lindell, who has spent at least $25 million of his own money sowing doubts about the 2020 election result.

Daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner are no longer involved in Trump’s political operation. Trump still talks to Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy but their relationship is not what it once was. The former president is no longer in close contact with a variety of former officials and GOP operatives who once had his ear. This group includes former senior adviser Hope Hicks, former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and former campaign manager Bill Stepien.

Though Stepien has limited personal contact with Trump these days, he is still a part of Trumpworld. He participates in a weekly call that involves close advisers to the former president including his son, Donald Trump Jr. And Stepien is running the campaigns of several Trump-endorsed candidates.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, however, is in a different categoryaltogether: now labeled enemy.

Former aides and administration officials said they have enjoyed friendly check-in phone calls and nostalgic encounters with Trump over the past 18 months. But they acknowledge their ability to influence the former president on any matter of importance has expired.

The dashed prospects of one prominent GOP candidate this year illuminate the unpredictable track of Trump’s loyalty. David McCormick, who ran for the Republican Senate primary in Pennsylvania this year, seemed on paper as well positioned as any candidate to convince Trump to endorse him.

A former hedge fund CEO and combat veteran, McCormick is married to Dina Powell McCormick, previously Trump’s deputy national security adviser. In 2016, Trump had interviewed McCormick to be his Treasury secretary and McCormick declined an offer to be Trump’s deputy secretary of Defense. The McCormicks are personal friends of Jared and Ivanka, and are close to Hicks, former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders and Trump’s former Pennsylvania state campaign director David Urban. None of this mattered.

Knowing that Trump and his wife Melania were fond of McCormick's primary rival, Mehmet Oz, and that Dr. Oz was backed by Trump's prime time TV cheerleader and Fox News host, Sean Hannity, the McCormicks made one request of Trump: to consider staying out of the primary. McCormick had moved ahead of Oz in polls more than a month before the May primary. Trump decided to make a late endorsement of Oz, but McCormick stayed up in the polls and Oz's unfavorables remained high. Trump retaliated with a vicious attack on McCormick on stage at a rally in Pennsylvania — single-handedly ensuring his defeat in a race decided by less than 1,000 votes.

A key litmus test was the 2020 election. Trump had been piqued by McCormick’s criticism of him after Jan. 6 and by McCormick’s refusal to publicly state that the 2020 election was “stolen.”

Trump has doubled down with a small group he views as loyal and courageous. The group includes his former senior White House officials, Dan Scavino, Stephen Miller and John McEntee. It also includes his fourth chief of staff, Mark Meadows, though their relationship was strained when Meadows recounted in his memoir private details of Trump’s hospitalization with COVID-19.

Trump trusts only a few of his former Cabinet secretaries and senior government officials, sources close to him said. He still talks casually to many others, and is seldom off his phone, but former aides who felt they could occasionally persuade Trump to change course say he is quick to shut down advice he does not want to hear.

He remains fixated on the “stolen” 2020 election. He cannot stop talking about it, no matter how many allies advise him it would serve his political interests to move on. Most have stopped trying.

Between rounds of golf, Trump is seething about the “ungrateful” and “treasonous” former officials from his administration who pop up on television, sometimes promoting a book, other times being praised or co-opted by his enemies.

Trump has complained bitterly about his “wacko” national security adviser John Bolton, his “weak” attorney general Bill Barr, his “RINO” (Republican In Name Only) Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and his “woke” chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, who, the former president sometimes charges, should be “tried for treason.”…