This Ripped-Up Note Could Help Jack Smith Take Down Donald Trump

A former Justice Department official believes that a note torn up by Donald Trump before the January 6, 2021, insurrection “absolutely” proves the former president’s intent to overthrow the 2020 presidential election results.

In the weeks immediately preceding the January 6 insurrection, Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, took to Newsmax, claiming that Trump could “take military capabilities” and “rerun an election” in key swing states that he lost.

But much to Trump’s chagrin, the military didn’t see it that way.

“There’s no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election,” read a joint statement issued by Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and Chief of Staff of the Army James McConville.

Personnel Chief John McEntee, tasked with rooting out obstructive staffers, then passed a note along to Trump.

“Chris Miller spoke to both of them and anticipates no more statements coming out,” McEntee wrote, referring to the administration’s defense secretary. “(If another happens, he will fire them).”

Hours later, Trump would tweet a call to action to his supporters, asking them to join him in D.C. on January 6.

“Big protest in D.C. on January 6,” he posted in late December. “Be there, will be wild!”

McEntee’s note, torn up by the former president but reconstructed, was collected as part of the House January 6 Committee’s investigation and now appears in the pages of ABC News journalist Jonathan Karl’s latest book, Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party.

“Doesn’t that get right at his intent of what he wanted them to do?” asked MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace.

“Absolutely,” responded Andrew Weissmann, an attorney and former official at the Justice Department.

“My general experience when I was in the government is that the military is incredibly law-abiding and really stands for the rule of law,” said Weissmann.

“As much as you think of it as a military organization with a hierarchy, they are also trained that they do not violate the Constitution. And when there’s an invalid order, they know that they cannot follow it because the Constitution comes first,” Weissmann noted, adding that the note is another example of Trump “brushing up” against a “guardrail.”

That detail could be key to special counsel Jack Smith’s case against the former president, in which Trump is charged with four felonies for disrupting Congress’s certification of the Electoral College results, conspiring to defraud the United States, and depriving U.S. citizens’ right to vote.

A city in Tennessee is using a recently passed ordinance essentially prohibiting homosexuality in public to try to ban library books that might violate the new rules.

Murfreesboro passed an ordinance in June banning “indecent behavior,” including “indecent exposure, public indecency, lewd behavior, nudity or sexual conduct.” As journalist Erin Reed first reported, this ordinance specifically mentions Section 21-72 of the city code. The city code states that sexual conduct includes homosexuality.

Anyone who violates the new ordinance is barred from hosting public events or selling goods and services at public events for two years. Anyone who violates the ordinance “in the presence of minors” is barred for five years.

An ACLU-backed challenge to the ordinance has already been launched, but that hasn’t stopped city officials from implementing the measure. Last Monday, the Rutherford County steering committee met to discuss removing all books that might potentially violate the ordinance from the public library. The resolution was met with widespread outcry from city residents.

“When have the people who ban books ever been the good guys?” local activist Keri Lambert demanded during the Monday county meeting.

Murfreesboro city officials have already used the ordinance to ban four books that discuss LGBTQ themes. In August, the county library board pulled the books Flamer, Let’s Talk About It, Queerfully and Wonderfully Made, and This Book Is Gay.

The board also implemented a new library card system that categorizes books into certain age groups. When it takes effect next year, children and teenagers will only be able to check out books that correspond to their age group; they will need permission from a parent or guardian to check out “adult” books.

Library director Rita Shacklett worried in August that the new rules would prevent students from accessing books they need for a class. She explained that many classic high school books, such as To Kill a Mockingbird, are now classified as “adult.”

It’s unclear if the county steering committee plans to pull books such as the A Song of Ice and Fire series, which includes multiple depictions of heterosexual sexual conduct.

Murfreesboro’s new ordinance is part of a much larger wave of attacks on LGBTQ rights in Tennessee and the rest of the country. In the past year, the so-called Volunteer State became the first state to try to ban drag performances. That law was overturned in court.

In March, the Tennessee House of Representatives passed a bill that would allow people to refuse to perform a marriage if they disagree with it, essentially gutting marriage equality. The bill was introduced in the Senate but deferred until next year.

One of Donald Trump’s former attorneys told Georgia prosecutors that Trump knew he had lost the 2020 election but was simply “not going to leave” the White House, testimony that could signal his death knell in the Fulton County case.

Jenna Ellis struck a plea deal with Fulton County prosecutors in late October, agreeing to testify against Trump in exchange for a lighter sentence. ABC News managed to acquire footage of her testimony, which it published Monday evening.

The video footage shows Ellis describing how senior Trump aide Dan Scavino told her during the 2020 White House Christmas party that “the boss” intended to simply stay in office. Ellis explained that everyone knew “the boss” meant Trump.

Ellis said she pointed out that Trump had lost the election and they had lost all of their attempts to challenge the result in court. Scavino replied, “Well, we don’t care, and we’re not going to leave.”

“And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said, ‘Well, the boss … is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power,’” Ellis said.

“And I said to him, ‘Well, it doesn’t quite work that way, you realize?’ And he said, ‘We don’t care.’”

ABC also obtained footage of former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell’s testimony. Powell, who claims she never actually worked for Trump, struck a plea deal with Georgia prosecutors in mid-October.

In her testimony, she describes being in frequent contact with Trump as she worked to seize voting machines nationwide. Powell also “reiterated the false assertion that Trump won the election—but acknowledged in the video that she didn’t know much about election law to begin with,” ABC reported.

Trump was charged with felony racketeering in Georgia for trying to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. He pleaded not guilty to all 13 charges. A big part of his defense is that he truly believed he won the election and was acting based on legal advice.

But Ellis’s testimony could prove to be his undoing. Neal Katyal, the former principal deputy solicitor general of the United States, said it was significant that Ellis’s conversation with Scavino took place after all of Trump’s election challenge cases were rejected, including by the Supreme Court.

“This evidence goes to criminal intent that Donald Trump wasn’t thinking about whether he won or lost, he was just going to stay in power no matter what,” Katyal said Monday night on MSNBC.

“All of this together paints a really damaging picture for Donald Trump.”

Michael Cohen doesn’t think that Donald Trump should be put behind bars—all because of his big mouth.

The former Trump fixer claimed imprisoning the former president could be “dangerous,” arguing that he belongs under house arrest instead.

“He needs to be held accountable,” Cohen told CNN on Monday. “Do I believe if it was anyone else that that individual would already be in prison or jail? The answer is emphatically yes.”

“But, because he was president of the United States, and for four years he was debriefed on a daily basis on our national security secrets, I personally as an American citizen, I would be concerned,” Cohen said, “because Donald is the kind of guy to sell any of that information for a bag of tuna or a book of stamps, and I do really mean that.”

“It’s dangerous for America to have somebody like Donald Trump in an environment where he can share the information,” he added. “Look, he’s shared it already with members of Mar-a-Lago as well as other individuals that came to visit, so why would he not do it if it benefited him somehow, in some way, in a prison situation?”

Last month, Cohen testified in Trump’s $250 million New York bank fraud trial that Trump made up numbers and then told Cohen to artificially inflate the real estate mogul’s net worth, sometimes by as much as billions of dollars, in order to broker better deals with banks and insurance companies.

“I was confused on how I was going to be,” Cohen said, recalling the moment he came face to face with Trump for the first time in years while taking the stand. “And actually, I felt nothing. It was so weird that here I am, sitting directly across from Donald Trump, and I felt absolutely nothing.”

But while Trump doesn’t face the ultimate consequence of prison time in that particular trial due to its nature as a civil case, he does in several other upcoming criminal trials, including the Georgia election interference case, the January 6 insurrection case, the classified documents case, and the hush-money case in which Trump surreptitiously paid off porn actress Stormy Daniels during his presidential campaign and then paid off Cohen while in the White House for helping him do it.

Donald Trump Jr. might have tripped up his legal team’s entire defense on Monday, slipping into his testimony that the family’s Florida property, Mar-a-Lago, is an “estate” rather than a club.

“My father purchased what was one of the finest estates anywhere in the world,” Don Jr. said Monday morning in reference to the building, which he called “amazing” and likened to an “American castle.”

But no amount of embellishment will hide Trump Jr.’s admission: The family’s beloved Florida home at Mar-a-Lago—which, incidentally, Trump has used as his primary residence since leaving the White House in 2021—is perceived by the family as an estate, or residential property.

The contested valuation of Mar-a-Lago is at the heart of the fraud trial against the Trump Organization. Last week, attorneys for the New York state attorney general’s office highlighted incongruous deeds and assessments for the former president’s various international properties, including a development deed for Mar-a-Lago that restricts the status of Trump’s primary residence to a club.

Despite the deed restrictions, the New York Attorney General’s Office argues, Trump overinflated the value of Mar-a-Lago on the basis that it was used as a private home and could be sold as such.

The $250 million bank fraud case hopes to prove that Trump deceived banks and insurers by massively overvaluing his net worth—with properties like Mar-a-Lago. So far, New York State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron has already ruled that Trump and his two sons, Don Jr. and Eric, committed fraud.