Jonathan Turley is an American libertarian attorney,legal scholar,writer,commentator,and legal analyst in broadcast and print journalism. A professor at George Washington University Law School,he has testified in United States congressional proceedings about constitutional and statutory issues. He has also testified in multiple impeachment hearings and removal trials in Congress,including the impeachment of President Bill Clinton and both the first and second impeachments of President Donald Trump. Turley is a First Amendment advocate and writes frequently on free speech restrictions in the private and public sectors. He is the author of The Indispensable Right:Free Speech in the Age of Rage.
John Charles Eastman is an American lawyer and former academic. He is the founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence,a public-interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute,a conservative think tank. He is a former professor and former dean at Chapman University School of Law. He ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for California's 34th congressional district in 1990,and for California Attorney General in 2010. He is a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Eastman has been criminally indicted in Georgia,and a judge has recommended that he be disbarred in California,for his role in assisting then-president Donald Trump's attempts to undo the 2020 election results,including by pressuring vice president Mike Pence to reject the votes of electors from crucial swing states that Joe Biden won while certifying the 2020 United States presidential election. He is believed to be one of the six alleged co-conspirators listed in the Justice Department’s indictment of Trump.
Various people and groups assert that former U.S. president Donald Trump engaged in impeachable activity both before and during his presidency,and talk of impeachment began before he took office. Grounds asserted for impeachment have included possible violations of the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the Constitution by accepting payments from foreign dignitaries;alleged collusion with Russia during the campaign for the 2016 United States presidential election;alleged obstruction of justice with respect to investigation of the collusion claim;and accusations of "Associating the Presidency with White Nationalism,Neo-Nazism and Hatred",which formed the basis of a resolution for impeachment brought on December 6,2017.
Jeffrey Bossert Clark is an American lawyer who was Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division from 2018 to 2021. In September 2020,he was also appointed acting head of the Civil Division. In 2020 and 2021,Clark allegedly helped then-president Donald Trump attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Clark's actions in that endeavor were reviewed by the District of Columbia Bar –the entity authorized by law to pursue attorney discipline and disbarment in the District of Columbia –which recommended discipline to the DC Court of Appeals in July 2022. He was identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal prosecution of Donald Trump over attempts to overturn the 2020 election. On August 14,2023,he was indicted along with 18 other people in the prosecution related to the 2020 election in Georgia.
Pasquale Anthony "Pat" Cipollone is an American attorney who served as White House Counsel for President Donald Trump. While in office he defended Trump in his first impeachment trial. He objected to Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election,and played a key role in the January 6 committee hearings,specifically the committee's sixth hearing.
This is a timeline of events in the first half of 2019 related to investigations into the many suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies relating to the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. It follows the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections,both before and after July 2016,until November 8,2016,the transition,the first and second halves of 2017,the first and second halves of 2018,and followed by the second half of 2019,2020,and 2021.
The inquiry process which preceded the first impeachment of Donald Trump,45th president of the United States,was initiated by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on September 24,2019,after a whistleblower alleged that Donald Trump may have abused the power of the presidency. Trump was accused of withholding military aid as a means of pressuring newly elected president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky to pursue investigations of Joe Biden and his son Hunter and to investigate a conspiracy theory that Ukraine,not Russia,was behind interference in the 2016 presidential election. More than a week after Trump had put a hold on the previously approved aid,he made these requests in a July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president,which the whistleblower said was intended to help Trump's reelection bid.
The first impeachment of President Donald Trump occurred on December 18,2019. On that date,the House of Representatives adopted two articles of impeachment against Trump:abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. On February 5,2020,the Senate voted to acquit Trump on both articles of impeachment.
After Democratic nominee Joe Biden won the 2020 United States presidential election,Republican nominee and then-incumbent president Donald Trump pursued an unprecedented effort to overturn the election,with support and assistance from his campaign,proxies,political allies,and many of his supporters. These efforts culminated in the January 6 United States Capitol attack by Trump supporters,which was widely described as an attempted coup d'état. One week later,Trump was impeached for incitement of insurrection but was acquitted by the Senate by a vote of 57–43,10 votes short of the 67 votes required to convict him.
On January 2,2021,during an hour-long conference call,then-U.S. President Donald Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to change the state's election results from the 2020 presidential election. Trump had been defeated by Joe Biden in the election,but refused to accept the outcome,and made a months-long effort to overturn the results. Prior to the call to Raffensperger,Trump and his campaign spoke repeatedly to state and local officials in at least three states in which he had lost,urging them to recount votes,throw out some ballots,or replace the Democratic slate of electors with a Republican slate. Trump's call with Raffensperger was reported by The Washington Post and other media outlets the day after it took place.
The following article is a broad timeline of the course of events surrounding the attack on the United States Capitol on January 6,2021,by rioters supporting United States President Donald Trump's attempts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. Pro-Trump rioters stormed the United States Capitol after assembling on the Ellipse of the Capitol complex for a rally headlined as the "Save America March".
The United States House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol was a bipartisan select committee of the U.S. House of Representatives established to investigate the U.S. Capitol attack.
This is a timeline of major events in second half of 2019 related to the investigations into the myriad links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies that are suspected of being inappropriate,relating to the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. It follows the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections before and after July 2016 up until election day November 8,and the transition,the first and second halves of 2017,the first and second halves of 2018,and the first half of 2019,but precedes that of 2020 and 2021.
The Eastman memos,also known as the "coup memo",are documents by John Eastman,an American law professor retained by then-President Donald Trump advancing the fringe legal theory that a U.S. Vice President has unilateral authority to reject certified State electors. This would have the effect of nullifying an election in order to produce an outcome personally desired by the Vice President,such as a result in the Vice President's own party's favor,including retaining himself as Vice President,or if the Vice President is himself the presidential candidate,then to unilaterally make himself president.
Cassidy Jacqueline Hutchinson is a former White House aide who served as assistant to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows during the Trump administration.
Gregory Jacob is an American lawyer who was legal counsel to U.S. Vice President Mike Pence during the administration of Donald Trump. He is currently a partner in the Washington office of the law firm,O'Melveny &Myers,specializing in ERISA matters.
Following the results of the 2020 United States presidential election,an obstruction scheme was devised by outgoing 45th U.S. president Donald Trump and his allies in seven states,Pennsylvania,Georgia,Michigan,Arizona,Wisconsin,Nevada,and New Mexico,to create and submit fraudulent certificates of ascertainment that falsely asserted Trump had won the electoral college vote in those states. The intent of the scheme was to pass the fraudulent certificates to then-vice president Mike Pence in the hope he would count them,rather than the authentic certificates,and thus overturn Joe Biden's victory. This effort helped form a fringe legal theory outlined by Trump attorney John Eastman in the Eastman memos,which claimed the vice president has constitutional discretion to swap official electors with an alternate slate during the certification process,thus changing the outcome of the electoral college vote and the overall winner of the presidential race. The scheme came to be known as the Pence Card. By 2023,many individuals in several states had been indicted for their alleged involvement,with other investigations underway.
The United States Justice Department investigation into attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election began in early 2021 with investigations and prosecutions of hundreds of individuals who participated in the January 6,2021 attack on the United States Capitol. By early 2022,the investigation had expanded to examine Donald Trump's inner circle,with the Justice Department impaneling several federal grand juries to investigate the attempts to overturn the election. Later in 2022,a special counsel was appointed. On August 1,2023,Trump was indicted. The indictment also describes six alleged co-conspirators.
An ongoing special counsel investigation was opened by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on November 18,2022,to continue two investigations initiated by the Justice Department (DOJ) regarding former U.S. President Donald Trump. Garland appointed Jack Smith,a longtime federal prosecutor,to lead the independent investigations. Smith was tasked with investigating Trump's role in the January 6 United States Capitol attack and Trump's mishandling of government records,including classified documents.
