Tuesday, January 12, 2021

Arizona U.S. Congressman Andy Biggs: He Doesn't Want The Public To Know His Role...

Andy Biggs, Arizona Republican U.S. Congressman - what we learned yesterday in a report published by The Intercept

Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Biggs Helped Plan January 6 Event, Lead Organizer Says

In December, Ali Alexander claimed he and three House Republicans were organizing the rally that led to a storming of the Capitol on January 6.

US President Donald Trump shows the facial mask of  Representative Andy Biggs as he arrives to deliver remarks on immigration and border security at the international airport in Yuma, Arizona on August 18, 2020. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP) (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
 
Excerpts from the report: "The head of the House Freedom Caucus, Republican Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, helped plan the January 6 event that culminated in a storming of the Capitol, according to Ali Alexander, a lead organizer of the gathering.
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Alexander, a pro-Trump personality, was an early founder of the “Stop the Steal” movement, and helped bring together various right-wing factions around a mass event on January 6, aimed to coincide with objections to the counting of Electoral College votes.

Alexander made his claim in three separate livestreams in late December, adding that Reps. Paul Gosar of Arizona and Mo Brooks of Alabama were also involved. “We’re the four guys who came up with a January 6 event,” Alexander said. On December 8, the Arizona Republican Party boosted Alexander, asking supporters if they were willing to give their lives in the fight over the results of the presidential election.

His claim is also buttressed by a fourth video from a December 19 rally at the Arizona state Capitol, at which Alexander played a video that Biggs had supplied. In the video, Biggs mentions Brooks as his ally in the fight. Gosar spoke in person at the event.

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> Biggs’s connection to Alexander was reported on Sunday by the Arizona Republic, which quoted his spokesperson, Daniel Stefanski, denying any connection to Alexander.Congressman Biggs is not aware of hearing of or meeting Mr. Alexander at any point — let alone working with him to organize some part of a planned protest,” Stefanski said. “He did not have any contact with protestors or rioters, nor did he ever encourage or foster the rally or protests.”

> Alexander did not respond to a text or phone call; his voicemail was full. Alexander, who adopted a new name after pleading guilty to felony property theft in 2007 and felony credit card abuse in 2008, has been suspended from Twitter and other platforms for his role in organizing the January 6 event.

> As the Daily Beast reported, he has said he has been unfairly blamed for the violence on January 6, and has gone underground.

> Alexander’s contemporaneous claims have taken on new relevance as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has floated the possibility of expelling members of Congress who are found to have been involved in the riot.

“Your views on the 25th Amendment, 14th Amendment Section 3 and impeachment are valued as we continue,” she wrote to her colleagues over the weekend.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, reads:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

> Alexander made his comments in a livestream posted December 28. Jason Paladino, an investigator with the Project on Government Oversight, archived the video from Alexander’s now-suspended account and provided it to The Intercept. “I was the person who came up with the January 6 idea with Congressman Gosar, Congressman Mo Brooks, and then Congressman Andy Biggs. We four schemed up of putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting so that who we couldn’t lobby, we could change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body hearing our loud roar from outside,” Alexander said in the livestream.
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> Alexander reiterated the claim of collaborating with Biggs, Gosar, and Brooks a second time, using almost identical language in a December 29 livestream similarly provided by Paladino, who has tracked Alexander.

“I’m the guy who came up with the idea of January 6 when I was talking with Congressman Gosar, Congressman Andy Biggs, and Congressman Mo Brooks. So we’re the four guys who came up with a January 6 event — #DoNotCertify — and it was to build momentum and pressure, and then on the day change hearts and minds of congresspeoples who weren’t yet decided, or saw everyone outside and said, ‘I can’t be on the other side of that mob,’” Alexander said a week before the event he predicted would bring more than a million people to Washington, D.C.

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> On December 21, Alexander made the same claim on a livestream. We’re working closely with Congressman Mo Brooks, we’re working closely with Congressman Andy Biggs, and closely with, obviously, Congressman Paul Gosar, my great friend,Alexander said. “I believe that the president should do something brave, I think the vice president should do something brave. I believe that that’s how we maintain the White House. … It’s a moral imperative to maintain the White House.”

The Office of Congressional Ethics has seen some of the claims made by Alexander and is looking into the connection between him, Gosar, Brooks, and Biggs, according to two sources familiar with the situation. The OCE was unable to confirm or deny whether any specific investigations are underway, in accordance with the office’s rules.

 > At the December 19 rally, two days before that claim, Alexander more clearly delineated the different roles Biggs and Gosar were playing. . .In the video, Biggs tells the audience:

I wish I could be with you today. I pledge to you that I’m going to keep fighting for President Trump. And when it comes to January 6, I’ll be right down there in the well of the House with my friend from Alabama, Mo Brooks, and dozens of others who will join me as we look at some of the elections around the country and we say, “How do you explain that?” And more than that, we’re going to stand up for this president and for the voters of America. That’s legal; not only is it legal, that’s constitutional; not only is it constitutional, it’s the moral thing to do. And we’re going to keep fighting. And I implore you to keep fighting too.

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> On the day of the riot, Gosar used his official Twitter account to call for peaceful protest, urging Trump supporters “not to get carried away” so no one gets hurt, while spreading an entirely different message on Parler, a right-wing social media platform created in opposition to Twitter. “Americans are upset,” he wrote, sharing a photo of the rioters climbing the Capitol walls. 

Rep. Paul Gosar post via Parler on Jan. 6, 2021.

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Screengrab: Parler

> At the December 19 rally, Alexander also thanked Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward I want to thank chairwoman Kelli Ward and the Arizona Republican Party. I work in seven states, and there is no party like the Arizona GOP Party, so let’s thank Kelli Ward,” Alexander said. Ward spoke at the rally.

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> That day, Donald Trump posted to his since-suspended Twitter account: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

> Gosar tagged Alexander on Twitter twice on January 6, and tagged him repeatedly in his posts throughout November and December.

As the mob broke into the Capitol, Gosar was in the middle of his speech objecting to the certification of Arizona’s Electoral College votes. Once the Capitol was cleared, Gosar continued to object, as blood dried on the marble floors just steps away."

Contact the authors:

Ryan Grimryan.grim@​theintercept.com@ryangrim

Aída Chávezaida.chavez@​theintercept.com@aidachavez

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1 RELATED CONTENT ON THIS BLOG September 12, 2019

We Are So Blessed Here In Arizona! CD 5 AZ-Congressman Andy Biggs Is The Chosen One 

Biggs is a newbie to Washington DC, elected to Congress in 2017. Just in the time since then, he's gained a reputation as an outspoken conservative voice in the House, where he is a member of the Judiciary and Science and Technology committees. He has come out in support of private prisons that allegedly allow immigrant detainees to work for as little as $1 a day and contributed to an effort to transform the investigation into the firing of FBI Director James B. Comey into a probe of Comey’s handling of Hillary Clinton’s email.
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House Freedom Caucus picks Andy Biggs as new chairman                        

House Freedom Caucus: What is it, and who's in it? | Pew ...

https://www.pewresearch.org › fact-tank › 2015/10/20 › house-freedom-ca...
Oct 20, 2015 - But what, exactly, is the House Freedom Caucus?
Pew Research Center has confirmed the identities of 36 Freedom Caucus members through

2 RELATED CONTENT ON THIS BLOG from 01>07.2020

QUESTION:: How did Arizona Ignite-The-Fuse To Incite Violence For Extremist Radical Take-Over Riots ??

In hindsight we all should have seen these attempted take-overs gathering momentum all the time - first in Wisconsin, then in Oregon, then in Idaho, and yesterday with mobs storming the U.S. Capitol when both Houses in Congress were disrupted with violence at the time Arizona was the first state to have results from the Electoral Congress certification for the election of the next President challenged. .  .Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs partnered with Texas Senator Ted Cruz to bring it to the floor. After 1 p.m. all hell broke loose in the Nation's Capitol
BLOGGER NOTE: To his credit, Utah Senator Mitt Romney, a devout Mormon who was called "a traitor" en route on a flight back to Washington D.C., denounced the extremism while 6 other Senators stayed on the other side. However 46 Republicans in the House of Congress were counted against accepting the Electoral College results.
There remains 13 more days until the peaceful transition of power is complete with the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
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Here In Arizona we saw this at the time ballots were being counted in Phoenix:
EUREKA!  If there's one thing that helps to explain almost everything happening here in Maricopa County, Arizona and America, this is it > Gnostic America with this image of a Trump supporter-QAnon believer speaking to a crowd outside the Maricopa County Recorder's Office when votes were being counted in the 2020 General Election
When it came time for Governor Doug Ducey and Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs to certify the appointed slate of electors votes, Trump attempted to interrupt the process with a timely phone call ringing "Hail to The Chief" - a call the governor sent to his voicemail.
(see earlier posts on this blog)
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All along we've had AZ GOP Chair Kelli Ward - and four fringe Republicans elected to the U.S. Congress - pound the drumbeats for more disruptions: using the same life-threatening strategies deployed by unrestrained hordes against the governor of Michigan directed at elected officials. Speaker of the Arizona State House Rusty Bowers for forced to shut down state government, fearing a take-down
(see earlier posts on this blog and use The SEARCHBOX)
 
 
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Arizona COVID-19 Response Back in June 2020 was Bad > 7 Months Later IT'S WORSE

Let's look back first to a report from June 2020:
Updated Jun. 11, 2020 5:19PM ET 

COVID Is So Bad in Arizona They’re Running Out of Beds

STORM BREWING

“It’s like Katrina,” one health expert in the state said.

As of Wednesday (June 10, 2020) afternoon, Arizona had at least 28,296 confirmed coronavirus cases and 1,706 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, which also showed a concerning upward trend.
The state had 1,553 new cases on June 5, its highest daily peak for new cases since the pandemic began.
According to a comparison of all 50 states, the Johns Hopkins data showed that Arizona had among the biggest upward case trends of any state in the U.S.
“We have seen a steady climb of COVID-19 cases in Arizona over the last two weeks,” Banner Health tweeted on Monday.
On May 15, the state’s stay-at-home order ended. Since that date, according to the hospital, “ventilated COVID-19 patients have quadrupled.
“This trend is concerning to us, and also correlates with a rise in cases that we are seeing in our hospital ICUs,” Banner Health wrote.
We’re going to run out of room to care for people, we’re going to run out of PPE, out of ICU beds, out of hospital beds, and we aren’t going to be able to provide care for the population of people who are going to need it.
Days before those tweets, Dr. Cara Christ, the director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, sent a letter to Arizona hospitals on June 6, ordering them to “fully activate” any COVID-19 emergency plans to prepare for crisis care 

> ". . .In the beginning, Arizona “had a really good stay-at-home order that people complied with,” said Will Humble, from the Arizona Public Health Association, a nearly century-old nonprofit that has helped shape public health in the state. “It had teeth in it, and Arizonans did a good job.” But the order ended on May 15, and then Memorial Day weekend provided the opportunity for residents to socialize, drink, and attend nightclubs, he said.

> “By May 26, there was a consistent increase in all 15 counties, and that trend was remarkable—it looks like a checkmark,” he continued. “Cases were declining, then the stay-at-home order ended, and they shot up.”

. . . But make no mistake, said Humble: “There’s a storm brewing.” 

“From a big picture perspective, all the sacrifice we’ve made as a state and as individuals has been squandered,” Humble added.

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2 DAYS AGO: January 9, 2021

Arizona tops COVID-19 marks of 10,000 deaths, 600,000 cases

State remains a coronavirus hotspot     

 

5 DAYS AGO:

Arizona becomes Covid hotspot of the world as governor resists restrictions

Doug Ducey has declined to institute a statewide mask mandate even as the state reports the highest rate of new cases in the US

How Libertarianism Made Arizona a Covid-19 Hot Spot | The Nation

Arizona is reporting the highest rate of new coronavirus cases in the United States, as the state’s governor continues to resist calls to install strong restrictive measures.

With an average of 118.3 new cases per 100,000 people, Arizona has become what health officials call the latest “hotspot of the world” because of soaring case loads.

> The state has the highest coronavirus diagnosis rate in the US, with one out of every 119 people testing positive in the past week.

> It reported nearly 300 coronavirus deaths, a pandemic high, and nearly 10,000 new infections on Thursday.

The surge has stressed Arizona’s healthcare system, with a record 4,920 Covid-19 patients occupying inpatient hospital beds and a record 1,101 patients in intensive care.

Health officials have urged Doug Ducey, Arizona’s governor, to install new measures as cases surge. Ducey, a Republican, so far has declined to institute a statewide mask mandate, allowed school districts to mostly make their own choices and allowed businesses to stay open.

“We have a governor and health director who don’t care. Their goal in my opinion is to vaccinate their way out of this,” said Will Humble, the head of the Arizona Public Health Association. “Eventually it will work. There’s just going to be a lot of dead people in the meantime.”

CJ Karamargin, the governor’s spokesman, said the current number of cases and deaths are “heartbreaking” but it’s a phenomenon happening in other states even with strict stay-at-home orders. . .

> “It’s way worse than July already, and it’s going to continue to get worse. We’re probably two weeks behind LA in terms of our situation,” said Humble, referring to Los Angeles county, where a Covid-19 surge has created a shortage of oxygen and led ambulance crews to stop transporting patients they can’t revive in the field.

> Dr Joshua LaBaer, the director of the Biodesign Institute research center at Arizona State University, called the state “the hotspot of the world right now”. He believes at least 1 in 10 people actually has the virus. . .

Dr Marjorie Bessel, the chief clinical officer of Banner Health, the state’s largest hospital chain, said the uncontrollable spread of the virus could be lessened if the government enforced mask requirements, barred indoor dining and cancelled large gatherings. People also need to wear masks and limit their contact to only those they live with.

“We are not doing a good job with this virus,” Bessel said of the state.

> “At this time during the surge of the pandemic, we need additional mitigation. We need enforcement of those mitigation activities, and we need everybody to do their own part.”

 

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Mesa City Council Swearing-In Ceremony: Night-Time In The Dark + Remote

A 45-Minute Night-Time ceremony with restrictions and limited invitations at the city-owned outdoor event space Mesa AmpiTheater - it could also set the stage for The Inauguration "Mr. Mayor". It's nice to see less POMP and more emphasis on CIRCUMSTANCES: The City of Mesa is the fastest-growing suburb in America that's for sure, but all that comes at the same time COVID-19 transmissions, deaths, risks and economic impacts are WORSE now than in June 2020, in spite of the city officials spending more than $132M in federal funds they called "Pots of Money" for Aid,Relief + Economic Security Are we better off now or was that planning incompetent, inept and/or corrupt?

From Felix Salmon (writing for Axios): A New Political Force is Emerging To Preserve America's System of Governance

Right-to-the-Point > What Salmon says:
1 Why it matters: Private-sector CEOs managed to act as a faster and more effective check on the power of the president than Congress could. They have money, they have power, and they have more of the public's trust than politicians do.
And they're using all of it in an attempt to preserve America's system of governance.
2 What's next: CEOs must be considered a permanent political force, wielding awesome power. This week's actions won't be the last.
> But now these executives will face continual questions about their choices or their silence.
3 The bottom line: In his final days in office, Trump has managed to unify corporate America — against him. The country's CEOs in general, and its tech CEOs in particular, have found themselves capable of projecting their power onto the White House in a way that was both successful and unprecedented.

How CEOs became the 4th branch of government

Credit Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
Illustration of an eagle wearing a tie, flying through the air holding a briefcase.  

"America needs law and order — but emphatically not the kind that President Trump has in mind when he uses the phrase. That's the message being sent by a broad coalition of CEOs who are silencing Trump and punishing his acolytes in Congress.

Why it matters: Private-sector CEOs managed to act as a faster and more effective check on the power of the president than Congress could. They have money, they have power, and they have more of the public's trust than politicians do. And they're using all of it in an attempt to preserve America's system of governance.

The big picture: The Constitution created an elaborate system of checks and balances that separated powers between the three branches of government. That system weakened as members of all three branches hewed increasingly to the platforms of the two political parties.

  • Be smart: A new political force is emerging — one based on centrist principles of predictability, stability, small-c conservatism, and, yes, the rule of law.

What they're saying: "You cannot call for violence," said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg Monday, in an interview with Reuters Next explaining why she de-platformed Trump.

"In this moment, the risk to our democracy was too big. We felt that we had to take the unprecedented step of an indefinite ban, and I’m glad that we did."

Between the lines: American capitalism is based on a foundation of legal contracts, all of which ultimately rely on the strength and stability of the government.

  • When a sitting president threatens that stability by inciting an insurrectionist mob that storms the legislature, corporate America will do everything in its power to restrain him.

Driving the news: Tech giants including Facebook, Google, Amazon and Twitter have worked in concert to quiet Trump and the far right. Other corporations are pulling political funding from all legislators who supported overturning the result of November's free and fair election.

  • And all of this has happened before the House of Representatives can even schedule an impeachment vote.

The backstory: Axios first told you about CEOs as America's new politicians in 2019, when they increasingly were responding to pressure.

  • Then corporate leaders mobilized last spring on coronavirus response, last summer over racial justice, and now they are joining ranks on climate change.

What's next: CEOs must be considered a permanent political force, wielding awesome power. This week's actions won't be the last.

  • But now these executives will face continual questions about their choices or their silence.

The bottom line: In his final days in office, Trump has managed to unify corporate America — against him. The country's CEOs in general, and its tech CEOs in particular, have found themselves capable of projecting their power onto the White House in a way that was both successful and unprecedented."

"The God Committee" Teaser Trailer