Month: October 2021

Briefings

Background Briefing: October 26, 2021

On By gram

 

Does Sedition or Treason Apply to Trump, Bannon and Members of Congress Behind the Planning of January 6?

We will begin with evidence emerging about the planning of the January 6 insurrection involving Trump, Bannon, Giuliani, Eastman, Meadows, Scavino and Patel and the organizers of the rally in coordination with a number of pro-Trump members of Congress; Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar, Mo Brooks, Madison Cawthorn, Andy Biggs and Louis Gohmert. Joining us to assess the evidence so far and hints of more to come and discuss whether treason or sedition applies to the activities of these participants is Carlton Larson, Professor of Constitutional Law and Legal History at the University of California, Davis. One of the nation’s leading authorities on the law of treason, he is the author of On Treason: A Citizen’s Guide to the Law and The Trials of Allegiance: Treason, Juries, and the American Revolution and we look into the dozens of planning meetings that took place between the rally organizers and members of Congress and the activities of Bannon’s War Room in the Willard Hotel in communication on January 5 with Trump in the White House who along with John Eastman, was pressuring the Vice President to refuse to certify Biden’s electoral victory.

 

We “Follow the Money” Behind the Financing of January 6

Then we “follow the money” and look into the financial connections between the Trump 2020 campaign and the dark money donor network into which millions were parked to obscure the funding of the January 6 rally and the mobilization of the insurgents who stormed the Capitol. Joining us is Anna Massoglia, a researcher, editor, and writer at the Center for Responsive Politics, where she studies foreign influence, digital and political ads, and is responsible for OpenSecrets’ Dark Money data as well as its Foreign Lobby Watch. We discuss her article at Open Secrets, “Details of the money behind Jan. 6 protests continue to emerge.”

 

An Expert on Sudan on the Military Coup Leader and his Backers in the Gulf

Then finally we speak with Steve Howard, a Professor and Associate Director for Graduate Studies at Ohio University who is a sociologist by training whose work focuses on social change in Africa and social movements in the Muslim world. He was a Visiting Professor at the Ahfad University for Women in Sudan and is the author of Sudan: Scenes from a youthful uprising, and we examine the record of the leader of the military coup who is “hosting” the former Prime Minister under house arrest at his residence and the influence of the regimes in the Gulf who prefer to have military kleptocrats rather than civilians running Sudan.