that would have directed the defense secretary to seize voting machines and calls for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the 2020 election. the executive order, whose author is unknown, is dated december 16th, 2020. that s more than two weeks after trump s attorney general william barr said the justice department had found no evidence of election fraud. politico also says the draft order would have given the defense secretary 60 days to write an assessment of the 2020 election. now, think of those dates. that suggests that it could have been a gambit to keep trump in office until at least mid-february of 2021. nbc news has not yet reviewed these documents. earlier on this network the trump official who ran the department that called the 2020 election the most secure in american history had this reaction to politico s report about the draft order. it is actually a clear violation of the act which means the department of defense cannot use federal troops for
raffensperger, a republican and his wife. joe biden s win. weeks after the first report, the justice department announced he was launching a special task force, dedicated to threats against election workers, saying, quote a threat to any election official, worker, or volunteer is a threat to democracy. well, it is been almost six months since that task force was bounced. today, if for charges. a texas man was indicted, today, for threatening election and government officials in georgia. indictment does not name the official, we re following them as officials a, b and c. on january the 5th, last, year titled, georgia patriot this time to kill official a, the chinese agent, $10,000. i guess the $10,000 was what he was offering to pay to have that official killed. he then goes on to talk about putting bullets in three georgia officials. calling them treasonous traitors. as i said, we do not know who the election officials are that this guy threatened, as for the weird stuff
further to one of the weirdest moments of the trump administration. take a look. this was june 2018 of hurricane season. donald trump and mike pence visited fema headquarters to be briefed on the hurricane. the first lady was also there. seated at the head of the table like she is the co-president or something like that. believe it or not, that wasn t even the will part. i want you to watch this. at one point, donald trump takes the water bottle in front of him and puts it on the floor. then mike pence does literally the exact same thing. it almost looked pavlovian for a minute here. anything donald trump does, or says. anybody who watches this can see it was totally bizarre. it was pretty off brand for mike pence, who spent the trump administration dutifully following behind the president. justifying every controversy and misstep trump made as his boss. as we saw, as the world saw, it came to a crashing halt on january 6th when mike pence refused to go along with donald trum
government s prosecution of the attack on the u.s. capitol taking a new turn. as stewart rhodes, founder of the oath keepers, makes his first court appearance on a charge of decision conspiracy. rhodes went barra federal judge in texas this afternoon. his lawyers spoke to reporters just after the hearing. he says he s not guilty and he wants to fight the charges. he intends to fight the charges until the very end. we expect some. we got several witnesses we re going to contact. we ve been in touch with family and coworkers and things, so we plan on presenting evidence. rhodes entered a not guilty plea. tonight he remains in custody in texas. his attorneys say they plan to fight the government s efforts to keep him in jail until his trial. he s been living free for the past year. he s been paying taxes. he has no criminal history. he s a yale law graduate. he has no passport, so he s not a flight risk. we ll have to hear what the government has to say as to the prima
On behalf of all of my colleagues at the networks of nbc news, good night. of nbc news, good night rachel has the night off, but we do have a really big showed a night. capping off would has been a really extraordinary night of news today in the united states. the last few days may be a part of our history in the last few days, as the thing we look back on. it s coming closer into focus. it was orchestrated by many republicans to overturn the results of the 2020 election and the our democracy. we re gonna get to everything that happened this week in a second. first, i want to rewind a bit